They have a daily blog displaying entries from George Orwell's diary. I found this one through the ever increasing might of my google reader service (I don't know how I managed to live in the dark age without a decent RSS reader, which is weird because most people in Japan/Korea don't use RSS service for some reason. They use portal sites).
I haven't really read it in detail yet, but Orwell seemed to have had some strange obsession with the number of eggs per day... Many of his entries consist of "One egg" or "Two eggs", nothing else. It's so concise as to be surreal... I'm reminded of E.E. Cummings for some strange reason.
Why the number of eggs? What did he do with the eggs? Did he eat them? Was he using them in some strange ritual that gave him the inspirations for his works? Was he just a little bit bonkers? Hmm.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Immortality
There are so many things about quantum mechanics that makes it so fun to play around with it in my head when i'm bored.
Schrodinger's cat is famous for being alive and dead at the same time, right? (Though he really proposed it as a way to point out the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum mechanics)
Well, following that same logic it is fully possible to turn someone near-immortal in the eyes of the humanity. Lock him or her in a box that allows for complete separation from the observable universe. It needn't even be a box of physical walls. It can be a box of, say, distances. So far that the man/woman is effectively outside the range of observable sphere around the known space.
(using time and space as an effective 'wall' is a notion frequently used by military strategists of old and new alike, btw. It's a principle of maneuverability)
It sounds funny, but technically we won't be able to tell if the subject of such a process is alive or dead, so that's immortality in a sense.
Schrodinger's cat is famous for being alive and dead at the same time, right? (Though he really proposed it as a way to point out the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum mechanics)
Well, following that same logic it is fully possible to turn someone near-immortal in the eyes of the humanity. Lock him or her in a box that allows for complete separation from the observable universe. It needn't even be a box of physical walls. It can be a box of, say, distances. So far that the man/woman is effectively outside the range of observable sphere around the known space.
(using time and space as an effective 'wall' is a notion frequently used by military strategists of old and new alike, btw. It's a principle of maneuverability)
It sounds funny, but technically we won't be able to tell if the subject of such a process is alive or dead, so that's immortality in a sense.
excerpt from Cory Doctorow
In answer to a question posed by an interviewer at the end of a comic "Futuristic Tales of The Here and Now"
TW:
Many people in your story suffer from a disease you term as "Zombiism." Is this comparable to, say, the horrendously extreme amount of AIDS cases in Africa, a continent also rife with warfare?
CD:
Yeah, and all the other diseases-like malaria, which kills one person every second-that our pharma companies can't even be bothered with because boner-pills are so much more profitable.
We grant global monopolies to these companies over the reproduction of chemical compounds. They argue that they need these patents because otherwise, no one would do the core research they do and we'd all be dead of disease without them.
But what do they spend their regulatory windfall on? Figuring out how to reformulate heartburn pills that are going public domain so that they can be re-patented, cheating the system and the world out of twenty more years of low-cost access to their magic potions; marketing budgets that beggar the imagination; lobbyists arguing for stricter rules.
Meanwhile, people are actually dying, in great numbers, of diseases treatable by drugs that Roche and Pfizer and the rest of the dope-mafia won't sell them at an accessible price, and won't let them make themselves.
This reminds me, there were quite a number of people representing pharmaceutical interests at the Hong Kong Synthetic Biology 4.0 conference... The possibility of building or reconfiguring microbial organisms to produce noble chemicals is certainly an attractive prospect, and is fast becoming an industrially viable production method of rare chemicals. A case in point, recent iGEM 2008 competition's winning entry was a synthetically designed vaccine against Halicobacter pylori which causes gastritis, built using immunobricks biological components designed in-house by undergraduates (albeit with support of graduate level faculty and facilities). The BioBricks foundation (upon which most of the synthetic biology practices today are based upon) runs on the principles of opensource like many of the server side technologies and programming languages in use today, and the possible social and economic ramifications of the growing field of synthetic biology is promising even at this early stage of development.
Are we seeing the beginning of the end for the workings of current generation pharmaceutical industry? Vaccinations and pills developed by relatively small scale biotech developers, perhaps even run by some of the poorer nations to counter against indigenous diseases?
TW:
Many people in your story suffer from a disease you term as "Zombiism." Is this comparable to, say, the horrendously extreme amount of AIDS cases in Africa, a continent also rife with warfare?
CD:
Yeah, and all the other diseases-like malaria, which kills one person every second-that our pharma companies can't even be bothered with because boner-pills are so much more profitable.
We grant global monopolies to these companies over the reproduction of chemical compounds. They argue that they need these patents because otherwise, no one would do the core research they do and we'd all be dead of disease without them.
But what do they spend their regulatory windfall on? Figuring out how to reformulate heartburn pills that are going public domain so that they can be re-patented, cheating the system and the world out of twenty more years of low-cost access to their magic potions; marketing budgets that beggar the imagination; lobbyists arguing for stricter rules.
Meanwhile, people are actually dying, in great numbers, of diseases treatable by drugs that Roche and Pfizer and the rest of the dope-mafia won't sell them at an accessible price, and won't let them make themselves.
This reminds me, there were quite a number of people representing pharmaceutical interests at the Hong Kong Synthetic Biology 4.0 conference... The possibility of building or reconfiguring microbial organisms to produce noble chemicals is certainly an attractive prospect, and is fast becoming an industrially viable production method of rare chemicals. A case in point, recent iGEM 2008 competition's winning entry was a synthetically designed vaccine against Halicobacter pylori which causes gastritis, built using immunobricks biological components designed in-house by undergraduates (albeit with support of graduate level faculty and facilities). The BioBricks foundation (upon which most of the synthetic biology practices today are based upon) runs on the principles of opensource like many of the server side technologies and programming languages in use today, and the possible social and economic ramifications of the growing field of synthetic biology is promising even at this early stage of development.
Are we seeing the beginning of the end for the workings of current generation pharmaceutical industry? Vaccinations and pills developed by relatively small scale biotech developers, perhaps even run by some of the poorer nations to counter against indigenous diseases?
Friday, November 28, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Bunch of cool things.
First, USB Tachikoma!
Sometimes I get a feeling that Japan gets away with the coolest gadgets (which isn't really the case I assure you, as was the case with 1G iPhone and XO laptop). Apparently the above USB-Tachikoma can connect to the Japanese Windows OS (no love for linux???) and do some minigames, hang around the desktop, and inform the user of any new emails using their cute Tachikoma voice. I've tried looking for one, but the GS4U website seem to be out of stock. The photo and the article come from way back, so I guess it can't be helped.
Speaking of gadgets, the amazon is going strong with their XO laptop give one get one program since this monday. I have some pocket money (a bonus for a job well done), so I was thinking about buying a cool new gadget/book to satisfy my cravings (curses, this hollow consumerist society!)... I have around ten or so books I'm laying my eyes on that I'll be picking up dirt-cheap from the Strand bookstore, a lovely benefit of living in middle of NYC. As for gadgets, I'm trying to decide between an iPhone and a XO laptop... Both of them can be used for my work, so I'm not entirely wasting my money away. :)
iPhone is more refined of the two devices, with beautiful human interface design, OS X, and a plethora of applications available for free or for real cheap that can be directly attributed to my work at the lab (though I must note that most science apps on the iPhone seem to lean toward the biology side of things. When will physicists get some love from the Apple community?). It's light, it's portable, the benefits of the machine goes on and on. XO laptop on the other hand, is a little clunky. I love the little machine (I've had chance to use both the iPhone and the XO laptop first hand), from its kid-friendly design to some amazing engineering employed in construction of the machine itself. It's only that at this stage the laptop is still a bit rough around the edges from the bits of bug in the OS to some tweak necessary to turn it into a fully functioning work-capable machine... Also, considering the nature of the laptop, it's not much more powerful compared to the iPhone's computational capacity, as odd as it might sound.
On the surface, iPhone is really a winner. Being a phone it's connectivity is ever present, and it's more mobile compared to a full laptop, no matter how small it might be. Since I'm already a AT&T customer the monthly bills are not much of an issue... Yet when I sit down and think about it there's this pesky issue of philosophy. The popularity of iPhone is not built on its novelty multitouch/design factor. It;s the extensive software library available for the phone... As you can see I'm more of a google Android type of person you see :P Seriously, the matter of openness on hardware platform is something I'm rather concerned with, so the claustrophobic software landscape espoused by Apple isn't something I feel comfortable supporting by buying their product... Compared to the iPhone, XO laptop is the platonic ideal of software freedom materialized. And it's ever-hackable.
If I was only a few years younger I would have snapped up the XO-laptop in a heartbeat.... Now that I have a full time research job now I just don't think I can spend the amount of time required for me to do all the DIY stuff required to fix the XO laptop to fit my usability profile though. Sigh, choices choices. Maybe I should just be grateful that I eve have time to type up something like this on a weekday?
Sometimes I get a feeling that Japan gets away with the coolest gadgets (which isn't really the case I assure you, as was the case with 1G iPhone and XO laptop). Apparently the above USB-Tachikoma can connect to the Japanese Windows OS (no love for linux???) and do some minigames, hang around the desktop, and inform the user of any new emails using their cute Tachikoma voice. I've tried looking for one, but the GS4U website seem to be out of stock. The photo and the article come from way back, so I guess it can't be helped.
Speaking of gadgets, the amazon is going strong with their XO laptop give one get one program since this monday. I have some pocket money (a bonus for a job well done), so I was thinking about buying a cool new gadget/book to satisfy my cravings (curses, this hollow consumerist society!)... I have around ten or so books I'm laying my eyes on that I'll be picking up dirt-cheap from the Strand bookstore, a lovely benefit of living in middle of NYC. As for gadgets, I'm trying to decide between an iPhone and a XO laptop... Both of them can be used for my work, so I'm not entirely wasting my money away. :)
iPhone is more refined of the two devices, with beautiful human interface design, OS X, and a plethora of applications available for free or for real cheap that can be directly attributed to my work at the lab (though I must note that most science apps on the iPhone seem to lean toward the biology side of things. When will physicists get some love from the Apple community?). It's light, it's portable, the benefits of the machine goes on and on. XO laptop on the other hand, is a little clunky. I love the little machine (I've had chance to use both the iPhone and the XO laptop first hand), from its kid-friendly design to some amazing engineering employed in construction of the machine itself. It's only that at this stage the laptop is still a bit rough around the edges from the bits of bug in the OS to some tweak necessary to turn it into a fully functioning work-capable machine... Also, considering the nature of the laptop, it's not much more powerful compared to the iPhone's computational capacity, as odd as it might sound.
On the surface, iPhone is really a winner. Being a phone it's connectivity is ever present, and it's more mobile compared to a full laptop, no matter how small it might be. Since I'm already a AT&T customer the monthly bills are not much of an issue... Yet when I sit down and think about it there's this pesky issue of philosophy. The popularity of iPhone is not built on its novelty multitouch/design factor. It;s the extensive software library available for the phone... As you can see I'm more of a google Android type of person you see :P Seriously, the matter of openness on hardware platform is something I'm rather concerned with, so the claustrophobic software landscape espoused by Apple isn't something I feel comfortable supporting by buying their product... Compared to the iPhone, XO laptop is the platonic ideal of software freedom materialized. And it's ever-hackable.
If I was only a few years younger I would have snapped up the XO-laptop in a heartbeat.... Now that I have a full time research job now I just don't think I can spend the amount of time required for me to do all the DIY stuff required to fix the XO laptop to fit my usability profile though. Sigh, choices choices. Maybe I should just be grateful that I eve have time to type up something like this on a weekday?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Chrome rant
First, take a look at this. Bunch of 'monsters' written in the processing language. This little language from MIT is even more versatile than I first thought. I'm thinking of writing a small visualization bot of sorts later on, which might take some time since my primary medium of choice Mathematica just got bumped upto version 7. I'm harassing the school depot so I can get the latest copy without having to pay the ridiculous pricetag that comes with this (albeit vital) program environment.
These days I find myself using three web browsers at once, four if I include a little text-only script stuff (much like modified emacs) that I use exclusively to communicate with my school computer (which does all the heavy lifting these days).
I use IE for all those pesky Korean/Japanese community sites that requires all those active x for full functionality (yes folks. For all the glitter the Asia is a backwards place when it comes to CC licences and GNU philosophy) so I can keep in touch with people there. I'm currently in process of bugging them to ditch the crappy web services and migrate to twitter/tumblr/swurl/friendfeed. Fro somereason there's already a sizable Japanese community on the twitter I think. Though most of them just ends up making a post or two and revert back to their original active x crap services (because all their other friends are still on the other service. Ugh).
I use firefox for all the research stuff. I have noscript which block out practically every single content on the website except for pure txt unless I manually configure the site to show its content, which is a lifesaver when I have fifty tabs open and some website decides to pull in 'bling is the thing' flash content on my computer. The ADP is just as essential. I usually spend most of my time in firefox without encountering a single ad, so less distraction, and less processing power/RAM wasted for something I'm not going to buy anyway. The zotero and 'science toolbar' courtesy of the thriving firefox plugin/extensions community makes making notes and bibliographies a sinch. I can practically fly through dozens of archives and scientific data depots on the web in course of minutes using my fully customized setup.
And then there's the google chrome. The chrome is still in the beta stage (like most other google services really), and lacks some significant functionality like ADP and zotero integration, but I still come back to the browser time and time again. There's something innately elegant about the basic design and layout of the chrome browser that make it a joy ot use it to surf the web. And the speed isn't half bad either (I guess all that webkit engine hypes have a good reason). I like how the bookmark bar appears and disappears at the touch of a shortcut, and I like how I can browse the web without using the mouse with some modification. I love the maximum amount of screen estate allotted to the content of the website itself instead of browser interface, a big faux pas firefox 3.0 made with its big shiny buttons. I love how i don't have to lose entire sessions of tabs when a single tab fails to respond. I can just shift-esc, pull up the in-browser taskmanager, and cancel or troubleshoot the problem tab. I love how the ctrl-f brings up the search bar at the top of the browser window instead of the bottom, and I like how it doesn't take an entire line of my screen estate. it's ergonomically sound, and just plain makes sense.
Google chrome is the browser I use when I 'just want to go to Disney Land', so to speak. And since the chrome is open source I can live with my conscience, unlike with IE (though I wouldn't use it if it was open source). Google chrome in its basic design is the web browser firefox 3 should have been.
These days I find myself using three web browsers at once, four if I include a little text-only script stuff (much like modified emacs) that I use exclusively to communicate with my school computer (which does all the heavy lifting these days).
I use IE for all those pesky Korean/Japanese community sites that requires all those active x for full functionality (yes folks. For all the glitter the Asia is a backwards place when it comes to CC licences and GNU philosophy) so I can keep in touch with people there. I'm currently in process of bugging them to ditch the crappy web services and migrate to twitter/tumblr/swurl/friendfeed. Fro somereason there's already a sizable Japanese community on the twitter I think. Though most of them just ends up making a post or two and revert back to their original active x crap services (because all their other friends are still on the other service. Ugh).
I use firefox for all the research stuff. I have noscript which block out practically every single content on the website except for pure txt unless I manually configure the site to show its content, which is a lifesaver when I have fifty tabs open and some website decides to pull in 'bling is the thing' flash content on my computer. The ADP is just as essential. I usually spend most of my time in firefox without encountering a single ad, so less distraction, and less processing power/RAM wasted for something I'm not going to buy anyway. The zotero and 'science toolbar' courtesy of the thriving firefox plugin/extensions community makes making notes and bibliographies a sinch. I can practically fly through dozens of archives and scientific data depots on the web in course of minutes using my fully customized setup.
And then there's the google chrome. The chrome is still in the beta stage (like most other google services really), and lacks some significant functionality like ADP and zotero integration, but I still come back to the browser time and time again. There's something innately elegant about the basic design and layout of the chrome browser that make it a joy ot use it to surf the web. And the speed isn't half bad either (I guess all that webkit engine hypes have a good reason). I like how the bookmark bar appears and disappears at the touch of a shortcut, and I like how I can browse the web without using the mouse with some modification. I love the maximum amount of screen estate allotted to the content of the website itself instead of browser interface, a big faux pas firefox 3.0 made with its big shiny buttons. I love how i don't have to lose entire sessions of tabs when a single tab fails to respond. I can just shift-esc, pull up the in-browser taskmanager, and cancel or troubleshoot the problem tab. I love how the ctrl-f brings up the search bar at the top of the browser window instead of the bottom, and I like how it doesn't take an entire line of my screen estate. it's ergonomically sound, and just plain makes sense.
Google chrome is the browser I use when I 'just want to go to Disney Land', so to speak. And since the chrome is open source I can live with my conscience, unlike with IE (though I wouldn't use it if it was open source). Google chrome in its basic design is the web browser firefox 3 should have been.
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