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June 11, 2008
When people think of the inevitable spread of humanity to space and the colonization of it, they tend to think of people living on the Moon and Mars.
The problem with colonizing the various moons and planets is that they are huge gravity holes. We are having far too much trouble climbing out of Earth’s gravity hole in order to go and fall into other holes and set-back our achievement. Not only that, we are limited to the native gravity of the moon or planet. The moon only has a gravity of 0.16 gees. Mars only has a gravity of .38 gee. Our bodies do not fare well in a micro-gravity environment and tend to suffer health problems and bone loss. It is likely they will do poorly on the Moon and Mars.
Fortunately, we can generate full 1 gee gravity with asteroids. The trick is to spin the asteroid and then live inside it, the outward centripetal force can substitute for gravity. As it turns out, larger asteroids don’t have to be spun as fast to generate the an artificial gravity of 1 gee. The rotation rate affects the dizziness and the body’s health, 2.5 RPM is the recommended maximum and 1 RPM or less is considered ideal. This translates into asteroids that are at minimum 140 meters in radius and ideally bigger than 890 meters in radius.
Another advantage of asteroids is there are asteroids that come closer to the earth and have a lower delta-v than getting to the moon or mars. The delta-v determines the energy cost required to get there. In fact, some asteroids come near the earth and then swing back out to the asteroid belt. Wouldn’t that be a great way to colonize the asteroid belt? Jump on a NEA (Near Earth Asteroid), and ride it out to the belt and hop off and colonize all those asteroids?
The microgravity environment and the resources of the asteroid belt are huge pluses for industry. Microgravity would be useful in so many ways, in terms of shuttling resources around, and for science and technology processes. Mining would likely be a very low energy endeavor once established and the various metals will be quite easy to extract.
The ease of getting to asteroids, the ability to generate necessary gravity from spinning, the ability to ride the asteroid out to the asteroid belt, the greater accessibility of resources and access to microgravity environment makes asteroid colonization a clear winner. Lets forget about colonizing anything else. Sure, it is romantic to colonize the moon or mars, but it is a waste of resources when we can achieve much greater freedom and capabilities with asteroids.
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June 3, 2008
I am making this comparison because the similarities between these two people, one real and one fictional are too good to pass up.
First of all, Eckhart Tolle is the author of a new york bestseller called ‘The Power of NOW’. This book seems to me to be a repackaging of basic buddhistic principles of the mind & consciousness & the unconscious, and on how to achieve joy or enlightenment. His writing on this subject seems a bit superficial and a lot of the concepts are presented in a vague way by using imprecise words. For a better introduction to buddhist concepts, I recommend Mindfulness in Plain English, which is available online for free, but can also be purchased from a bookstore or amazon.com.
Ellsworth Toohey is one of the antagonists in Ayn Rand’s fictional book ‘The Fountainhead’. In the book he is a highly charismatic public speaker and writes a newspaper column and uses his influence to promote a sort of socialism/collectivism. He is well dressed, often wearing suits and his physical description is that of a small frail man with a big head.
Here is a picture of Eckhart Tolle:
Both Eckhart Tolle and Ellsworth Toohey have strange names with the same initials, a common appearance, both are writers, and both promote ‘mysticism’. One via his books on mindfulness/spirituality, the other via socialism/collectivism. Plenty in common!
Those that have read Ayn Rand’s writings will realize that my association of Eckhart Tolle to Ellsworth Toohey happens to be extremely negative. In Ayn Rand’s view, mysticism is tantamount to evil, because it means you are believing something for no reason, you are deliberately refusing to think or reason or be rational about that particular area of your “beliefs”.
Strangely, I’m actually not trying to be negative about Eckhart Tolle, that’s just a side effect of this comparison, because I thought there were so many darn similarities! The commonalities between these two characters is probably just a strong coincidence. I don’t think that Eckhart Tolle is as evil as Ellsworth Toohey.
I strongly think that there are real facts of human nature and the workings of the ‘brain-mind’ behind the various mindfulness & buddhism concepts. And I hope people will explore these fully and develop more precise ways of discussing these concepts.
For that reason, I think that Eckhart Tolle’s writings are probably positive for introducing a wide range of people to the basic concepts of mindfulness. Unfortunately, his writing style is very imprecise and encourages fuzzy-minded, mysticism-based beliefs anyways.
Huh.
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April 8, 2008
This is going to sound a little weird. But here goes.
I discovered this trick myself. It often works on the first or second try.
The basic mechanics of this trick is to swallow some air, but trap it in the throat, and then swallow on top of that. The second swallow can be done roughly or forcibly to try and shake things up.
Trapping the first swallow of air in the throat, is done in the same manner that you can use to hide something, such as a piece of bubble gum, and then bring it back later. If you are not familiar with this item hiding trick, then you might have trouble getting rid of your hiccups.
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March 11, 2008
I personally dislike the current naming scheme of partials. Right now they follow the format of _somepartial.html.erb (Rails 2.*). I find it rather distracting and hard to find what I want when I am in a directory full of partial files following that naming format.
My suggestion is to use .perb for partials. I think files like somepartial.html.perb would be much more pleasant to look at, a kind of syntax sugar to encourage more usage of partials perhaps. Also, I think it would be a more consistent naming scheme.
Vote for somepartial.html.perb ;)
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March 9, 2008
I was trying to figure out how to run a specific version of a gem, in this case, capistrano. I had capistrano 2.2.0 and 1.4.1 installed and I wanted to run the older version.
Trying to run /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/capistrano-1.4.1/bin/cap only gave me an error:
undefined method `execute!' for Capistrano::CLI:Class (NoMethodError).
Turns out the trick is to use:
cap _1.4.1_ deploy
I haven’t tried it with other gems, but I am guessing it should be consistent across rubygems and that will be the way to execute older versions of ruby gems.
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March 9, 2008
28384376 * 1024 = 29065601024
The 1024 is repeated in the answer. I initially thought it was a bug in my program, but double-checked, and I thought it was pretty cool how the 1024 ends up at the end, with a buffer (the zero) between it and the rest of the number.
Perhaps alife could be done entirely using numbers and math operations.
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March 7, 2008
for i in ` git st | grep deleted | awk ‘{print $3}’ ` ; do git rm $i; done
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February 25, 2008
Have you ever taken a 3 hour exam and noticed a few people leaving a good 60 minutes before anyone else has even finished? Perhaps later you find out that one or two of these early finishers actually got high marks on their exams. Maybe you even discover that one of them got the highest overall marks in the class.
So you are left thinking that this person must be freakishly smart. Ironically, the early finisher is often thinking the opposite: “.. people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. ” - Paul Graham
If you went and talked to most of these early finishers, they would be hard pressed to tell you why or how they manage to do so well and do it fast. As it happens, in-between procrastination at high school and university, I occasionally pulled off the feat of finishing an exam way ahead of everyone while still getting 90% or better on the exam. I also knew a few early finishers in university, and I talked to them about how they did it, using my personal experience to corroborate what the “trick” is.
Ultimately, it boils down to speed. The trick is to push yourself to answer problems as fast as you can. Also, you want to get instant feedback on each problem and find out if you got it right or wrong.
For example, when doing a math problem out of the textbook, do the ones that have an answer in the back of the book. Do it as fast as you can, then look it up at the back, and if you got it wrong, figure out why and then move on. It can feel uncomfortable when you are going so fast, because it feels like you are out of control and that you might miss a crucial step. That is a normal feeling and perfectly acceptable.
I have observed that the bulk of students, including many slow but straight A students try to consciously solve the math problems. They go at it slow enough to understand the problem at a conscious level, and rigidly follow all the steps. As a result, they take ages to solve one math problem. There is no particular benefit to doing it this way, you aren’t going to be right more often, but you will feel more in control.
Going fast works, but why does it?
Well, I think it is because our pre-frontal cerebral cortex (where the frontal lobes are) is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. This is primarily where our consciousness is located, and it is only taking up a fraction of our brain. What about the rest of our brain? It has been around a heck of lot longer evolutionarily speaking, and it has survived millions of years to get to where it is now. Where do you think your instincts or gut feelings come from?
The rest of your brain that is not “you” (your consciousness), has a lot more computational resources and is a lot smarter than your consciousness can be. That is how it can detect things “you” didn’t notice, and report this as instincts to your consciousness. Check out dirtsimple.org’s Multiple Self article for a similar explanation about how you are not your consciousness.
Now that you know that your conscious part of your brain isn’t that smart, and that you have a lot more resources in your reach, how can you access that? Well, that is the tricky and uncomfortable part. Ultimately, it is about going faster than your consciousness can handle, and trusting in the rest of your brain. It requires a fair amount of faith, but the results will astonish you if you can take the leap.
Note: This applies to all technical & memorization-heavy subjects.
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February 12, 2008
After reading about the Uberman’s sleep schedule awhile ago, I began asking myself what sort of university education would the Uberman go for? What kind of degree path would he follow?
Well, the Uberman would probably aim for several things at once. Firstly, he would aim for solid fundamentals. For example, Math and English would be excellent fundamentals, and a quite a few people go for dual degrees in that. However, there is also Physics and Philosophy which Ayn Rand, one of the female ubermensch, highly recommends. Fortunately, Physics and Philosophy encompass enough of Math and English respectively.
The Uberman would also go for the holy trinity of professional degrees: Engineer, Lawyer, and Medical Doctor. He would also try to study some of the key technologies of the future. He would try to study Genetic manipulation, Molecular Nanotechnology, Space technologies (Rockets/Colonization/Mining/Robotics), and AI technologies like Evolutionary Computation (Evolutation for short). Additionally, he would go to the best universities in the world.
What would the end result be? Perhaps it would look something like this:
Dual Bachelor degrees in Engineering Physics (w/ concentration in Nanotechnology) & Philosophy.
Dual Masters degrees in: M.B.A & J.D (Law)
Dual Doctorate degrees in: M.D & Ph.D in Genetics/Biochemistry
Most universities support dual degrees in M.B.A & J.D, and also M.D & Ph.D. The M.B.A is a bit of a bonus, however, it can be considered the fourth professional degree.
For the first set of dual degrees, due to the Engineering and Physics, MIT is probably the best university to go to. For the Masters and Doctorate degree selections, Harvard is at the top in both. However, the Uberman would probably want to vary the universities, and perhaps go to Cambridge for either the Masters or Doctorate degree selections.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with MIT, it appears to lack the exact choice of the Bachelor degrees unlike some Canadian Universities such as: University of Alberta: Engineering Physics (Nanoengineering Option) .
It should be noted that I failed to fit in the AI and Space technologies into the Uberman’s study plan. I have no ideas how to do so.
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