Category: Society

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The Hollow Men

Roger Water’s Perfect Sense Part I:

The monkey sat on a pile of stones
And stared at the broken bone in his hand
And the stains of a Viennese quartet
Rang out across the land
The monkey looked up at the stars
And thought to himself
Memory is a stranger
History is for fools
And he cleaned his hands
In a pool of holy writing
Turned his back on the garden
And set out for the nearest town
Hold on hold on soldier
When you add it all up
The tears and the marrowbone
There’s an ounce of gold
And an ounce of pride in each ledger
And the Germans killed the Jews
And the Jews killed the Arabs
And the Arabs killed the hostages
And that is the news
And is it any wonder
That the monkey’s confused
He said Mama Mama
The President’s a fool
Why do I have to keep reading
These technical manuals
And the joint chiefs of staff
And the brokers on Wall Street said
Don’t make us laugh
You’re a smart kid
Time is linear
Memory is a stranger
History is for fools
Man is a tool in the hands
Of the great God Almighty
And they gave him command
Of a nuclear submarine
And sent him back in search of
The Garden of Eden

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Augmented Reality

This lunch I saw a talk about “Augmented Reality” which is like virtual reality, except that you use a combination of the real world and VR type equipment to add new elements to the real world. Thus, for instance, users wear transparent displays so that they see extra objects in their environment. At the end of the talk, the discussion turned to using such a system for gaming. Think of playing Doom with your own home and neighborhood as the actual physical setting. Right now, like all things VR, however, the equipment is just too damn expensive.
But it got me thinking about a gaming system along these lines, but maybe not as expensive. Imagine a handheld LCD screen with a camera attached. You hold the system in front of you and it shows you a display. Now this display is a combination of the real physical world around you and augmented reality elements. Now imagine a first person shooting game, for example. You and your friends running around shooting each other through these hand held screens. Sound like fun?

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Born Where?

Many revelations on my trip from Pasadena, CA to Santa Fe, NM. But first I have to get this out of my system: “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen is NOT the appropriate song to play when the U.S. wins at the Olympics. Why? Why? God damnit listen to the lyrics. We begin with

Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
‘Til you spend half your life just covering up

Hmm, let’s see: ending up like a tortured dog, lying to cover up? What an image to make me proud of being an American.

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

The poor and destitute make great soldiers. Very uplifting, let me tell you.

I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms

What a beautiful way to raise our hearts at the Olympics: let’s talk about a good friend who died in Vietnam and the picture you carry around of him and the girl he fathered in Saigon.

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go

And now back to slaving away at that job in a refinery, with no where to go. Ain’t this the kind of stuff that fits the pride and patriotism Olympians want to project.
On the other hand, Bruce’s song does rock and is spot on in its characterization of (rural) America. I guess what tweaks my twissle is that the song is clearly played with the concept of “hey ain’t it great to be an American” when really the song is about the opposite. So, in some ways, this song is very subversive. That’s what I think when I’m thinking optimistically. When I’m not in such bliss, I think about how subversive only works if there is a brain to subvert. And another strip and stripes bedazzled fan singing the song without hearing the words is going to make me go bongo.

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Googlinaire

From Salary.com: about 1000 of Google’s nearly 2,300 employees are paper millionaires. Wowzer.

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Physiology of Heartache

Today I got curious about what causes the physical feeling of “heartache.” Well at first I just was curious if I could find any well written physical descriptions of heartache. While there are certainly thousands of sentimental descriptions, I couldn’t find a single description of the physiology of heartache. Further according to one article there is no known physiological explanation for the physical feeling of heartache. Strange.
On the other hand, I did learn that there may be a relationship between a broken heart and an increased chance of a heart attack (although the few studies I dug up were not totally convincing.) Our modern world: “Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all (unless you’ve got a history of heart disease.)”

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The Economist Loves Doh

5/1-5/7 issue of The Economist.
Page 31, under the title “Our kind of Doh” we find:

‘Look at me. I’m reading The Economist. Did you know Indonesia is at a crossroads?’
While experiencing first-class travel for the first time, Homer Simpson lays out his credentials to succeed Colin Powell. The Simpsons, April 25th

On page 79 we find an article on Indonesia with the title:

Investing in Indonesia
At a crossroads

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Wagering Pascal

Today I decided that I wanted to calculate the probability that the god of christianity exists.
If I took a poll of the average citizen of the United States I’d get something like a 75% probability that he exists.
But wait, you object, the United States is not a fair representative sample from which to make so bold of statement about the existence or nonexistence of a christian god. OK, so why don’t we take a poll over the entire planet Earth? Then the probability of a christian god drops to something around 33%.
But wait again, you object, we need a fairer representative than the people of earth. What about other inhabitants of our galaxy? Well Jesus was spreading the gospel 2000 years ago, so his message (traveling at the speed of light) could only have traveled 2000 light years. This is enough to cover around (2000/50000)^2 = 0.16% of the Galaxy (we overcount due to the higher density at the center, but, oh well.) Thus we conclude that the probability of a christian god existing is 0.16%.
Now just you wait one more time! We live in a universe, not in a galaxy! The number of galaxies in the universe is something like 100 billion. So the probability of a christian god existing goes down to 0.0000000000016%.
For comparison, the chance of winning the California Lotto is 0.000007%.