Experiments in Life

Help save our oceans that is.

One of the biology blogs I follow is trying to get people signed up to help save the deep sea environment. I’ve already signed up and I’m hoping maybe a few of you would be interested as well. Here is the link to follow to see if you are interested. So far, it’s been easy to do.

All You Have To Do Is Just One

Also, next year is the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin. To celebrate, a sailing replica of the HMS Beagle will be launched. There is a site to donate and a blog to follow if you are interested. There is even a store, where t-shirt purchases include a $10 donation to the building funds. I think it’s pretty cool and will end up with a t-shirt myself eventually.

Take a look and help us celebrate!

The Beagle Project

So, when Ashley broached the idea of a Halloween costume for Emily, I was a little hesitant. My thoughts were, “She is so young, she will not remember anything we put her in, so why bother?” My next thought was, “She is so young, she will not remember anything we put her in. This is the perfect opportunity to dress her in something embarrassingly cute!” So, without further ado, I present our daughter, Yoda.

I mean, really, how often do you get to dress your daughter up as an 800 year old little green man?

With the arrival of the new TiVo HD, I began investigating all of the features that I missed out on while only having a Series1 TiVo. That search led me to check out Amazon Unbox, a feature added to TiVo in early 2007 that allows you to rent or buy movies from Amazon and have them downloaded directly to your TiVo. My first thought was “Where do I sign up?” After doing a little more digging, I found out that each movie rental is $3.99. Each rental movie can only stay on the TiVo for 30 days. Once you start the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it before it expires. Personally, I think that this is a horrible model and that TiVo could do better.
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A recent post on Good Math, Bad Math caught my attention this morning. The article talk about mathematics being independent of a deity; mathematics is based on abstract reasoning so it will be consistent whether the universe was created by a benevolent deity or whether it just is. The article is in response to a geometry class description at a Baptist high school. However, a comment by chaos_engineer just made me laugh out loud.

Of course. Christians would be taught real geometry, with the Euclidean version of the parallel postulate.

People who practice flawed religions would naturally be more comfortable studying flawed, non-Euclidean geometries. Jews could learn Riemann’s version of the parallel postulate, Muslims could learn Lobachevksy’s, and atheists could learn H. P. Lovecraft’s.

OK, so maybe it is just funny if you are an amateur mathematician and a fan of H. P. Lovecraft. However, I am both

Lately, I have been reading a site called Good Math, Bad Math. On Fridays, the author posts in his Pathological Programming category, which is reserved for a description of some very, very strange and pointless programming languages. Today’s post tickled me: the programming language is called Chef and programs in it are written like recipes. The thing that tickled me the most: there is a serve with sub-recipe statement that causes a sous-chef to go off and prepare the sub-recipe and return the dish to the main chef — basically, a function call.

Well, after much waiting, my MacBook finally arrived last night. I am now the proud owner of a 13-in MacBook with the Core 2 Duo processor; I ordered the laptop the day after the new model was released with the faster processor. After doing some research, I maxed out the RAM that the MacBook can hold — a whopping 2 Gigs! I got to play with it some last night and will continue moving all of my music and pictures off of my home server and onto the laptop tonight when I get home.

Ok, so I do not knit, crochet, or sew. However, one of the sites that I have been reading lately has linked to the Binary Hat. Basically, the site gives a description of how to make a hat that encodes the word “hat” in binary in the pattern of light and dark stripes. I appeals to the the inner-geek (and the outer-geek) in me.

Tivo has released its Series 3 Tivo at a whopping $799. I have been waiting for this to come out instead of jumping on the Series 2 bandwagon since I am looking to upgrade to an HDTV at some point in the near (for some unspecified value of near) future. Unfortunately, the cards are not playing in my favor. To get HD, your cable provider must support CableCARD. Guess who has no plans to support CableCARD? That’s right, Knology. So, if I ever want HD, I will probably have to jump ship and go with something like DirectTV or Dish Networks. At that point, a Series 3 will do me no good, since the Series 3 Tivo does not support satellite.

Seeing that Rick is reading the Elegant Universe made me remember that I still had the third and final episode of the Nova special on the Elegant Universe on the Tivo. Having just taken the time to finish it, I think that I will have to put the book on my reading list, although it will probably take a back burner to The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe — a book that I have sitting on my bookshelf, waiting to be read when I have the time.

This third episode mentioned a theory called M-theory that is seen as the successor to string theory. The show made two comments that left me puzzled; therefore, I want to read the book to see if my questions are resolved or whether it is an unknown part of the theory. M-theory posits that our universe might exist on a 4-dimensional (mem)brane that coexists with other 4-dimensional branes in 11-dimensional space. The first thing that really bothered me is the thought that gravity is not weaker than the other forces, but rather the energy of gravity bleeds off into these other branes. One of the experiments that physicists believe would help bolster M-theory is that they should be able to see a graviton be created in a particle accelerator and then see it disappear as it bleeds off into a different brane. What bugs me about that is that it should work in reverse. I think that gravitons from these other branes should be able to bleed into our universe and would appear as gravitational fields with no known source. Obviously, we do not see that happen — at least as far as I know. So, I do not see how that could be a valid part of the theory. Maybe the book will explain that.

The second thing that bugged me is the thought that the Big Bang was caused by two of these 4-dimensional branes bumping into each other and causing the explosion of energy that we believe is the Big Bang. What I do not like about this is that it really does not answer any questions. Sure, maybe that could explain from whence our universe came. However, it is suggesting that there is something outside of the universe and giving no explanation for it. Another thought about the Big Bang is that I do not know what troubles me more: the thought of the universe having a beginning (where did it come from?) or the thought that the universe is completely eternal (infinity bothers me to think about and once again, where did it come from?). Please, before you try to answer the question with “God created it,” remember my responses — “Infinity bothers me to think about” and “Where did it come from?”

Thus ends my physical and metaphysical ramblings for the night, at least on this site.

Okay. I told a couple of people about this first article and promised I would post it. Well, I’m finally getting around to it. It’s been kind of a crazy week. Anyway, hope you enjoy the articles.

Harry Potter Dinosaur

This next article is a really neat science breakthrough. It’s impact on genetics could be huge. I’m not really up on this subject though. Guess I’ve been slacking on the biology news. I can’t wait to read more about it. This article definitely demands I learn more about the subject.

New genetic twist