Natural selection acts on the quantum world

From Nature Magazine,
Teaser:

Because, as Zurek says, "the Universe is quantum to the core," this property seems to undermine the notion of an objective reality. In this type of situation, every tourist who gazed at Buckingham Palace would change the arrangement of the building's windows, say, merely by the act of looking, so that subsequent tourists would see something slightly different.

Yet that clearly isn't what happens. This sensitivity to observation at the quantum level (which Albert Einstein famously compared to God constructing the quantum world by throwing dice to decide its state) seems to go away at the everyday, macroscopic level. "God plays dice on a quantum level quite willingly," says Zurek, "but, somehow, when the bets become macroscopic he is more reluctant to gamble." How does that happen?

link

Ebook reader - Sony LIBRIE

Being a reading-geek, I have always wanted to read electronic news and books away from my computer. The laptop had the portability -but had the problem of battery, heat, noise, weight, and readbility. I used my Palm handheld, but the screen was too small, plus it still wasn't as good as paper. So, it was with interest that I heard about projects to display print as good as paper. One of the companies E-Ink came out with the resolution almost as good as paper-print, and it only consumed power when new text is redrawn. So, that was about 2 years ago. I have forgotten about the whole deal. But, it seems like Sony has produced a consumer hand-held for the Japanese market April of 2004. Here's one review:

First, the good news. Initial reports of the screen quality left me quite unprepared for the actual thing. The screen is unbelievable. Not quite paper, more like a dull plastic like look. My first impression of the device was that it was not an actual working unit, but a plastic mock up made for stores. With high contrast black text on a reflective background, the screen has a readability rivaling actual paper. The weight of the book is also quite a shock. About the weight of a long paperback, the book will be both easy on the eyes as well as very easy to hold and carry around.

official Sony product link (in Japanese only)

The apocalypse as the locomotive of capitalism

The Economist Magazine does the Apocalypse. A slightly tongue-in-cheek historical and social exploration...

Mr Campion draws parallels between the “scientific” historical materialism of Marx and the religious apocalyptic experience. Thus primitive communism is the Garden of Eden, the emergence of private property and the class system is the fall, the final gasps of capitalism are the last days, the proletariat are the chosen people and the socialist revolution is the second coming and the New Jerusalem.

And

Science treasures its own apocalypses. The modern environmental movement appears to have borrowed only half of the apocalyptic narrative. There is a Garden of Eden (unspoilt nature), a fall (economic development), the usual moral degeneracy (it's all man's fault) and the pressing sense that the world is enjoying its final days (time is running out: please donate now!). So far, however, the green lobby does not appear to have realised it is missing the standard happy ending. Perhaps, until it does, environmentalism is destined to remain in the political margins. Everyone needs redemption.

link

Destructive Emotions on Michael Krasny's Forum

I heard this interesting discussion a while back on the scientific research of meditation, mindfulness, and compassion on KQED's radio show, Forum. I'm posting it up for archiving sake. They interview the authors of the book "Destructive Emotions," which chronicles a unique collaboration between western scientists and Buddhist Monks. One of the author wrote the bestseller on Emotion Intelligence, and the other is a researcher in UCSF. And for anybody else interested in teaching, they talk about techniques akin to meditation that help teachers deal with kids. And one of the researchers talked about a broadbased movement, SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) that teach kids empathy skills. link

Quality of Smart versus Intelligent

A Professor of English, Literature, and Culture at Carnegie Mellon wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education an article called, Here's the Problem With Being So 'Smart.'

Smart still retains its association with novelty, in keeping with its sense of immediacy, such that a smart scholarly project does something new and different to attract our interest among a glut of publications. In fact, "interesting" is a complementary value to smart. One might praise a reading of the cultural history of gardens in the 18th-century novel not as "sound" or "rigorous" but as "interesting" and "smart," because it makes a new and sharp connection. Rigor takes the frame of scientific proof; smart the frame of the market, which mandates interest amid a crowd of competitors. Deeming something smart, to use Kant's framework, is a judgment of taste rather than a judgment of reason. Like most judgments of taste, it is finally a measure of the people who hold it or lack it.

The promise of smart is that it purports to be a way to talk about quality in a sea of quantity. But the problem is that it internalizes the competitive ethos of the university, aiming not for the cultivation of intelligence but for individual success in the academic market. It functions something like the old shibboleth "quality of mind," which claimed to be a pure standard but frequently became a shorthand for membership in the old boys' network. It was the self-confirming taste of those who talked and thought in similar ways. The danger of smart is that it confirms the moves and mannerisms of a new and perhaps equally closed network.

link

This reminds me of another quote from Huston Smith's book, Forgotten Truths: "Truth, Elie Wiesel has reminded us, is betrayed by its repetition. Insofar as things have been said, there is no need to resay them. Is there anything respecting our thesis that has not been said and needs to be said?"

Work:In praise of Idleness

*Highly Recommended*
Mark Slouka's humorous article on the value of idleness from the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. Equal part praise of idleness, and critique of modern American society. Ends with a social implication of a society in perpetual busyness.

QUITTING THE PAINT FACTORY
On the virtues of idleness

Ah, but here's the rub: Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idle­ness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil.

And another teaser:

Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn't. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure - particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology - is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn't shave; it's not a member of the team; it doesn't play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized.

link

Ancient Books Manuscripts

In my recent web surfing, I found the British Library, which is digitalizing their collection of some of ancient books. This includes scans of beautiful Illuminated Manuscripts and other books like Leonardo's Notebook, Lindishfarne Gospel, a Sultan's copy of the Qur'an, and a copy of the Vajra (Diamond) Sutra. Many of the books, include text and audio remarks from the Curator on different sections of the book. And includes a magnifying glass for examining details (though not for the Diamond Sutra), and an interactive way of turning the pages (it's pretty cool). link....

Note: There's a cute addition, History of the England, written by Jane Austen.
Updated Note: There's an enhanced 2.0 version, which could be found here. You do need Windows Vista, Windows XP with .Net 3.0, or Quicksilver. link....

-------------------In addition,-------------------------------------
So, the scan of this Diamond Sutra Scroll was found in a sealed desert cave in Dunhuang, Chinese Central Asia, along with 40,000 other scrolls, hidden and perserved. Alone with carvings, statues, and paintings.

Here is the website that is the hub for Curator, Historians, with an emphasis on digitisation. It's called, The International Dunhuang Project (IDP), which is an interesintg website on its own.

This website seems to be rich with resources and links based on discovery from Dunhuang, but 2 image archive links I suggest is:

For the more limited image archive, but more User-friendly, Tour-like format, with Curator commentary, try: link

For high-res images database, try: link

Brain Research:Brainport

Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain.

Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.

link

Animal Cognition:Prairie Dog Language

Another neat animals-are-smarter-than-we-thought article from the Associated Press. Scientist research unveils the complexity of Prairie Dog language. link

The Big Bang, Part XXXXIV?

A Universal Cycle of birth and rebirth occurs every trillion years or so, according to one new cosmology based on String Theory. Big bangs result when two 10-dimensional "branes" collide and expand and then collide again. In this scenario, our universe marks just one phase in this infinite cycle.

A simpler summary:
Scientific American: String Theory revision of the recurring Big Bang

A lengthier, more technical summary:
Scientific American: A Recycled Universe

Mob Psychology

NPR Day to Day interviews the writer of the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, discuss the unwisdom of Crowds. Traits of the crowd: anonymity, lower social penalty and personal responsibility, and self-feeding cascade allows a smaller group of hard-core unruly fans to get everybody to chant racist epitets they normally don't chant.

Okay. You say, I heard it all before. However, conversely, if there's enough people who are known to never participate in violence with the crowd (like women and children), the crowd's behavior will be moderated. [Skip to 3:00 for that part]. link

The State of String Theory

From the New York Times, celebrating 20th anniversary of the String Theory. A lengthy article detailing the genesis, success, controversies, and possible implications of String Theory.

A tantalizing quote:

In effect, as Dr. Witten put it, an extra dimension of space can mysteriously appear out of "nothing."

The lesson, he said, may be that time and space are only illusions or approximations, emerging somehow from something more primitive and fundamental about nature, the way protons and neutrons are built of quarks.

The real secret of string theory, he said, will probably not be new symmetries, but rather a novel prescription for constructing space-time.

"It's a new aspect of the theory," Dr. Witten said. "Whether we are getting closer to the deep principle, I don't know."

As he put it in a talk in October, "It's plausible that we will someday understand string theory."

link

Camera that Draw Outlines

Technical Review of a camera with 4 flashes to render edge outlines. Pretty cool effect (superior to Photoshop with more dimensionality), and looks like sketches from a skilled cartoonist.

link1
link2

Geopolitical Intrigue: West vs. Russia redux

With significant geopolitical stake in the outcome of the disputed Ukrainian election, a bizarre episode lingers. The opposition leader fell ill and his physical appearance was changed dramatically. He claims he was poisoned by the incumbent government. The differences are quite dramatic....


For more bizarre details, check out this AP wire release:
Questions Linger About Yuschenko's Illness

Update: It's official. Doctors have tested for dioxin, and it came back 6000 times normal levels. Doctors are exploring ways to eliminate the dioxins in his body. Since Dioxin settles in body fat, they are talking about liposuction or even using Olestra. However, his film stars looks will not come back. link

Geopolitical Strategies: Countering Al Qaeda

Operational counters against aims of Al Qaeda posted on Daily Kos:

Most people, most of the time, just want to get along. They'll accept a little inconvenience, ignore a few insults, and smile at people they hate if it allows them to get on with their lives. Most people on both sides of your issue just wish the issue would go away. If you're not careful, those apathetic majorities will get together and craft a compromise. And where's your revolution then?

So your first goal as a violent extremist is not to kill your enemies, but to radicalize the apathetic majority on your side of the issue. If everyone becomes a violent extremist, then you (as one of the early violent extremists) are a leader of consequence. Conversely, if a reasonable compromise is worked out, you are a nuisance.

link

Nature and you

Although rational in many ways, the idea of considering human beings as something apart from nature is dangerous. Evolution has shaped all organisms, us included. Moreover, we are all shaped to live in particular environments. If animals are kept under unfavourable conditions their health tends to deteriorate, they typically behave oddly and appear discontent. People living in modern societies show similar ailments, as witnessed by the incidence of various maladies, including mental disorders. I believe it is possible to alleviate these problems by creating living conditions closer to those our genes are adapted to; but in order to do so, we need to accept our biological inheritance.

link

Environmental Self-Test

Rate your environmental footprint. You get brownie points for being Vegetarian, taking public transit, recycling, etc.

link

Locally Based Economic Model in Sri Lanka

Audio article about a local bottom-up ethical economic development in Sri Lanka. NPR : Sri Lanka's Village-Based Alternative to Globalization. link

Social Consumerism

The reality is that only about 5% of consumers make ethical decisions in their purchasing habits. Innovation by business alone will not be enough to tackle the overwhelming problems of our time, from climate change to global poverty. If we were to wait patiently for business to deliver the goods, we would all be underwater before long.

Deborah Doane
New Economics Foundation
London

In a world where consumerism is the underlying social and economic force, yet most people orient purchases detached from effects of production, unless it is factored into the price. (Examples: European governments factor in overall cost for using gasoline, as oppose to indirect subsidized gas prices in the US). Here's a Database to check up on your favorite Coporation. Responsible Shopper Database on Companies: link

Map Geek: Traditional Map Overlay on Satellite Photos

Cool interface with Map overlay of satellite photo over London. Multimap.com features Aerial pictures that covers England and also features regular maps for rest of Western Europe. link

On Hatred

From Jacob Holdt's photo essay on the KKK. Insightful writing on hatred, love, abuse, despair, and social status. link

Parallel Universe

Science American's supplement to the Parallel Universe article.
link

Scientific Rigor

How to be a Skeptic. How to draw boundaries between science and pseudoscience, Part II. Part I is no longer available. link

The State of Big Bang

From Scientific American:

The big bang is often described as an event that occurred long ago, a great explosion that created the universe. In actuality, the theory says nothing about the moment of creation, which is a job for quantum physics (or metaphysics). It simply states that as far back as we can extrapolate, the cosmos has been expanding, thinning out and cooling down. The big bang is best thought of not as a singular event but as an ongoing process, a gradual molding of order out of chaos. The recent observations have given this picture a coherence it never had before.

From the perspective of life on Earth, cosmic history started with inflation--a celestial reboot that wiped out whatever came before and left the cosmos a featureless place. The universe was without form, and void. Inflation then filled it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation. The radiation varied from place to place in an utterly random way; mathematically, it was as random as random could be.

Gradually the universe imposed order on itself. The familiar particles of matter, such as electrons and protons, condensed out of the radiation like water droplets in a cloud of steam. Sound waves coursed through the amorphous mix, giving it shape. Matter steadily wrested control of the cosmos away from radiation. Several hundred thousand years after inflation, matter declared final victory and cut itself loose from radiation.

Scientific American: Four Keys to Cosmology. Some additional proofs needed to explain the full out the big bang theory. link

Non-Uniformity, Light Faster in the Past?

Scientific American: Was Light Faster in the Past?

If matter in motion is too slow for light, why not make the speed of light faster and faster into the past? Throwing out heavyweight Einstein and his near constant speed of light is no easy task. Yet that is the burden of the new iconoclasts. Maybe they can make a cosmos with wildly varying speeds of light, and maybe they can keep the gas uniform, but they give no clear reward for so denying our well-tested Einstein on this theorist's journey into the past. Their strongest argument is the very flatness of space: it turns out that a cosmos with a changing speed of light must be a flat one and a uniform one as well, if energy is to be conserved. There is much more to be said about the untested physics of these variable vacuum light speeds. More than one form of theory is out there, to say nothing of the myriad options opened by multiple dimensions.

link

Before the Beginning of Time

Scientific American: The Myth of the Beginning of Time

Was the big bang really the beginning of time? Or did the universe exist before then? Such a question seemed almost blasphemous only a decade ago. Most cosmologists insisted that it simply made no sense--that to contemplate a time before the big bang was like asking for directions to a place north of the North Pole. But developments in theoretical physics, especially the rise of string theory, have changed their perspective. The pre-bang universe has become the latest frontier of cosmology.

The new willingness to consider what might have happened before the bang is the latest swing of an intellectual pendulum that has rocked back and forth for millennia. In one form or another, the issue of the ultimate beginning has engaged philosophers and theologians in nearly every culture. It is entwined with a grand set of concerns, one famously encapsulated in an 1897 painting by Paul Gauguin: D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" The piece depicts the cycle of birth, life and death--origin, identity and destiny for each individual--and these personal concerns connect directly to cosmic ones. We can trace our lineage back through the generations, back through our animal ancestors, to early forms of life and protolife, to the elements synthesized in the primordial universe, to the amorphous energy deposited in space before that. Does our family tree extend forever backward? Or do its roots terminate? Is the cosmos as impermanent as we are?

link

Vegan Baking

How to subtitute eggs, milk, etc when baking. The Post Punk Kitchen tells you how. link

On Killing

Is anyone ever truly prepared to kill? From Christian Science Monitor

Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities.

link

Gourmet Chocolate Review

Reviews of yummy Chocolates by Meta-Efficient. link

Kite-Photos

Engadget's HOW-TO: Take digital photos from a kite.

HOW-TO: Take digital photos from a kite Part 1, the camera - Engadget - www.engadget.com

HOW-TO: Take digital photos from a kite, Part 2, the kite and the pictures - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Aerial Kite Photo Gallery and 360 degree Panorama from Scott Haefner

Frank Gehry Unleashes Design

Gehry Menaces Onlookers with new creation....

Frank Gehry recently unveiled his design of the new World Cup of Hockey trophy at his home town of Toronto. Here's an excerpt from the Toronto Sun's cheeky coverage of the press conference.

When Gehry pulled the covering off the trophy, it was like someone had tugged the burlap bag off the Elephant Man.

This was a quintessential Canadian moment. Here was one of our own, brought back because he hit it big in the States, unveiling the worst idea anyone ever conceived, to a stupefied crowd.

We have learned one thing: In a pinch, an enterprising cop could use the World Cup of Hockey trophy as a stun gun.

No one, not one reporter, spoke what each and every one of us was feeling.

No one jumped up and said, "Judas Priest, Frank, what the hell is that?"

On Iraq:Photo journal of Iraqi policemen

As the Iraqi insurgency persists violently before the June 30, 2004 hand-over deadline, a common target for the insurgents seems to be the newly formed Iraqi police force. Variety of attacks using car bombs, heavily armed men, and mortars have targeted police officers and police infrastructures like stations and academies. But, the news reports always felt like an abstraction -- a sterile Police Blotter report.

Example from recent BBC reports: (Mosul 6-24-04, car bombs went off in the al-Wakhas district and on the Wadi Hajar police station in the south of the city the Iraqi Police Academy, another police station and the al-Jumhuri hospital were also attacked, said police and doctors.)

So, when I recently saw this BBC News feature involving a photo journal of a Baghdad Iraqi Policeman, I was curious to find out more. In this undated article, an Iraqi police officer describes a day in the newly formed police force. [summary]: In a fairly upbeat fashion, he details his daily routine and working with American Military Polices (MPs). From his comments, it's hard to get a handle on the day-to-day security picture around his precinct, he only talks about local petty thieves. Additionally, I get the sense of hope and optimism. Unfortunately, I can't figure out the time frame of his opinions, and whether or not they were before or after the uptick in violence (which may or may not involve his area), and the Abu Graibe prisoner scandal. link

Update: Slate.com has a new article on why Iraqi Cops are struggling. An Excerpt

Then the war came. Saddam was replaced by Americans who gave you 100 bucks a month, a blue shirt, and a 9 mm Glock pistol. They appointed a new captain, a former soldier, and told him he was king of the precinct. Things were looking up.

That was a year ago. Now the captain is a black scorch mark outside the station where the car bomb went off. The Americans are talking about detective training, but how can you investigate theft when you're being shot at each day? The new captain won't patrol without an armored escort. Your father has received death threats if you don't resign. You don't know who the bad guys are. You suspect two or three men, but if you haul them in and hang them by their thumbs, the Americans will have you fired. Or worse, some fellow Iraqi will put a bullet in your head.

link

Paper Printout Toys

Yamaha Motor has cool paper schematics that you can download, print, and assemble into toy paper models. Themes vary from its core product, motorcycles, to colorful rare animals, and holiday decorations (like Jack O'Lanterns). The details are incredible. For example, the "YZR-R1" model consists of 14 pages worth of parts. Additionally, you can construct an additional garage, that includes a Mechanic's toolbox, spare tires, bike mount, and spare cans. Impressive.... link

Update: Canon also has a very nice site on paper toy assembly. Check it out here: link