dabacon

September 12, 2003

Because I could not stop for Death

Is it heartening, or scary, to read Emily Dickinson’s views on “publish or perish.” Is the end result of demanding quality over quantity to die agoraphobic but be discovered brilliant?

Publication – is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man-
Poverty-be justifying
For so foul a thing

Possibly-but We-would rather
from Our Garret go
White-Unto the White Creator-
Than invest-Our Snow-

Thought belong to Him who gave it-
Then-to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration-Sell
the Royal Air

In the Parcel-Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace-
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price

-Emily Dickinson, 709

September 8, 2003

Diamond Age

Wired has an article about synthetic diamonds. It’s worth a read, if only for the second company involved: Apollo Diamond. AD’s primary goal is not the consumer diamond market, but they are focusing on the long term possibility of producing diamond wafers for computer wafers (high thermal conductivity, eh?) Sometimes a story really feels like it might have something to do with the future, and this is exactly such a story.
Interestingly, the main man behind AD is Robert Linares, who has been awarded an award from the Navy for “diamond based Quantum computing.”

September 8, 2003

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Slashdot is running an article about theToynbee tiles. These small colorful mysterious tiles have been spotted around the world embedded in street asphalt. Here is a picture of such a tile stolen off the web
Nobody knows who has placed these tiles around the world, or exactly what the message in the tiles means.
Interestingly, the Toynbee refered to in the tiles, an English historian, believed that humanity’s perception of history shaped its future. Even futher, we can postulate that humanity’s perception of its past not only shapes the future but explicitly creates the future (for how else is the future to be shaped in not from information about the past as encoded into the present.) Then what are we to make of these strange tiles? One person’s attempt to shape our future into a reality in which heaven is actually a holding pen on the planet Jupiter? Immortality through the manipulation of our collective perception of what we expect to find on Jupiter.

September 7, 2003

A Philip K Dick Quote

To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.

-Philip K Dick, VALIS

September 5, 2003

Some Old Pictures

Here are a few old pictures which I thought I’d post.
The first is of house I recently moved into in South Pasadena, on Cawston Avenue. Apparently, Cawston was the name of the family which owned the famous ostrich farm in South Pasadena. I have looked closely at this picture and cannot find any ostrich feathers:

The second picture is of my mom at The Getty Mueseum:

The final picture is of the little stone pyramid I carved out of alabaster
This was my first attempt at carving anything. I learned that I need to buy a tool called a rasp in order to do some of the finer detail work.

September 5, 2003

Zuma Canyon

Two Saturday’s ago (August 23, 2003) I went on a hike up Zuma Canyon. I left Pasadena around 8am, left a bike at the top of the canyon and drove down to the trailhead in Malibu. Here is a picture of the Zuma Canyon from where I left my bike:
The hike is quite beautiful, involving some simple bouldering and bushwacking. It took about four and a half hours of pretty serious climbing. The lower creekbed was very dense with brush, but the middle and upper sections were relatively brush free. Here are some of the boulder’s which I scrambled up:
The ride down from the top of the canyon on a paved road is a bit tight (the road has a few places where there is not much of a bikepath), but it is great to get to the bottom and to be able to go for a swim at the beach after such a strenuous hike.
Professor Chris Brennen has a nice description of this hike on his website.
Unfortunately, in spite of all the warnings on websites, I did not wear long pants or long sleeves and thus ended up getting poison oak. Not a serious case, but even today, nearly two weeks later, I still have some remaining rashes. Such is the price for my stupidity.

September 5, 2003

The First Post

Here is the first post to my new blog “The Quantum Pontiff.” What should you expect from this blog? Well, quantum pontification, of course. But also skiing, stonecarving, poker, and other exciting stuff. Well maybe not so exciting for everyone. But I’m sure my mom will like the page.