the importance of drafting

here is a picture of the world record for a sport they call moto-pacing

look at the size of that chain ring! the current world record is currently at 167mph!

how Americas wealth is distributed, represented as cats and pizza

what the GOP nominees have said, and havent said

I have never seen Pi represented this way

I have never seen Pi represented this way and I makes a lot of sense. Reading the wiki on Pi it says that Pi is a mathmatical constant that is equal to the the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle.
this is also called Archimedes constant but I don't know why

Final excerpt from Contact by Carl Sagan

They had been right to keep the truth from her. She was not sufficiently advanced to receive that signal, much less decrypt it. She had spent her career attempting to make contact with the most remote and alien of strangers, while in her own life she had made contact with hardly anyone at all. She had been fierce in debunking the creation myths of others, and oblivious to the lie at the core of her own. She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

 ***

Finished Contact by Carl Sagan last night and let me say that I was impressed by his writing, I never knew him as much as a writer. I found the book to be revealing of a deep philosophy of life that I didnt know Sagan possessed. I found this video expresses a similar philosophy to what he wrote in contact, here is a glimpse of his thoughts:

Oh how I would love to gain the perspective that Carl Sagan had as an astronomer. to even grasp a fraction of how he understood the vastness of the universe and utterly insignificant scale of our own existence. After reading this book I can see how people say that Astronomy is a science that stretches your perceptions of the world and causes you to reconsider once held beliefs.

Throughout the book he writes (through the experiences of the characters) of how contemplating the vastness of the universe evokes feelings not unlike those of a religious experience or a Numinous experience. 

Before I had read Contact I was under the impression that Carl Sagan was an Atheist, now after reading the book I think I would say that Carl Sagan was very much a religious man (officially he said he was an agnostic),
just not in the same way we would normally say someone is religious. On religion he said:

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

What this quote doesn't show is his deep, personal, view of the universe. How the complete insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the unimaginable size of the universe should cause us to reconsider deeply held beliefs of how we treat and view each other. To take a step back and ask the question "does this really matter? is this something that the only known intelligent beings in the universe should be doing?  Dont we deserve to be treated better and likewise treat others better?", were the questions that in my mind really mattered to Carl Sagan.

I think that the significance of a book is only truly apparent to a reader after a period of time has passed. Enough time to let the most important parts stew in your mind till you finally understand and know what the author was trying to say, and connect it with your previous thoughts and feelings. Only after a period of time has passed I think will you know how the book influenced you. Maybe a follow-up post will be in order

Central planned economy and the US

Posting this here so I can discuss this with someone who knows about Economics so they can explain it to me better.

an extreme concentration of wealth at the center of our market economy has led to a form of central planning. The concentration of wealth is now in so few hands and is so extreme in degree, that the combined liquid financial power of all of those not in this small group is inconsequential to determining the direction of the economy. As a result, we now have the equivalent of centralized planning in global marketplaces. A few thousand extremely wealthy people making decisions on the allocation of our collective wealth. The result is inevitable: gross misallocation across all facets of the private economy.

The rich are different — and not in a good way, studies suggest

the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest."
In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.Then there is the problem of Tea Partiers’ own class position. While they are funded by the wealthy, many do not identify themselves as wealthy (though there is dispute on the real demographics). Still, a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.
most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.

There is one interesting piece of evidence showing that many rich people may not be selfish as much as willfully clueless, and therefore unable to make the cognitive link between need and resources. Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal.
The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was.

article makes a lot of bold claims that make me wonder how much of it is actually true. for instance nothing is said of what constitutes "rich" which could definitely skew results. Too bad they don't link to any of the sources

Excerpt from Contact by Carl Sagan

  "I want to know what you think of us," she said shortly, "what you really think."
He did not hesitate for a moment. "All right. I think it's amazing that you've done as well as you have.You've got hardly any theory of social organization, astonishingly backward economic systems, no grasp of the machinery of historical prediction, and very little knowledge about yourselves. Considering how fast your world is changing, it's amazing you haven't blown yourselves to bits by now. That's why we don't want to write you off just yet. You humans have a certain talent for adaptability--at least in the short term."
  "That's the issue, isn't it?"
  "That's one issue. You can see that, after a while, the civilizations with only short-tem perspectives just aren't around. They work out their destinies also."

11 hour shifts are brutal

Confucian Virtue

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own States. Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed. Their States being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.
- Passage from The Great Learning, Confucius 

Abstemious: marked by temperance of induldgence, sparring in consumption of food and drink

Dear London rioters

Dear London rioters,

You have opened the eyes of the world to so much,you have shown how powerful a grassroots movement can be, you have shown just how easy it is to unleash chaos, you have shown just how powerless governments can be in the face of a movement like yours. And what do you do with this new found power? Do you work to actually make a positive change, to try and build a future that you yourself would want to live in after politicians have taken away so much. 
No, you havent . Instead you have shown the world what you are really about: looting a pair of sneakers and torching whatever strikes your fancy. You are not about promoting any sort of principle or social good. You could have enacted so much change if only you saw the empowering effects of principle, intead you got hell-bent on some power trip. You are scum. You make me sick

Twitter #londonriots

Twitter / Search - #londonriots: "The Youth of the Middle East rise up for basic freedoms.The Youth of London rise up for a HD ready 42' Plasma TV #londonriots"

Constitutional Convention

would love to hear if anything comes of this. Seems like as good a time as any with today's ideologues and political gridlock

The Framers created a method for escaping from captured government—an Article V Constitutional Convention. If two-thirds of the states pass resolutions calling for a convention, then all sides will have the opportunity to argue for the changes they believe will restore our Republic. Any amendment proposed must then be ratified by three fourths of the states to become law.
On September 24th, people from across America and across the political spectrum will convene at Harvard University to discuss the advisability and feasibility of organizing towards a Constitutional Convention. The conference's lead organizers are both proponents and opponents of an Article V convention and we actively encourage the participation of those who support a convention and those who oppose holding a convention at all.

even though it does have a Tea Party "representative" as a co-chair representative for the conference I would like to see what ideas they come up with

On Reading

Rarely have young people been expected to have truly deep knowledge of particular texts. Instead, education, especially in its "liberal arts" embodiments, has been devoted to providing students with navigational tools—with enough knowledge to find their way through situations that they might confront later in life. (Even the old English public schools flogged their students through years of Latin and Greek not because Latin and Greek were intrinsically valuable, still less useful, but because the discipline of such study would have a salutary effect on young men's characters. And these are the terms in which survivors of that system typically praise it.) This is one of the ways in which the artes liberales are supposed to be "liberal," that is, "liberating": They free you to make your own way through the challenges of life without requiring external props.

this is the sort of education we need to be getting in our schools. these days there are so many different avenues for getting information it is easy to be overcome with information overload. As noted in the article information overload has been heralded as a problem since books were first printed on the Gutenberg press, and since then many techniques have been developed to try and overcome this problem. Techniques such as speed reading or skimming are advocated, and while these techniques work for some and are effective in trying to filter out the good from the bad they simply don't address another symptom of information overload: that is the fact that there is so much information that even if you are able to snag a piece of literature we don't have the mental determination to deep, focused attention needed for serious analysis and learning.

A Liberal Education is the sort of education I want, an education that doesn't just fill me up with knowledge and trivia but that build character and the attributes necessary to lean on my own, yet as the article discusses it is something that is difficult to teach. Rarely do people have the passion, focus, self determination or whatever you want to call it these days to not only search out a book but become engaged and actively thinking, interacting with what an author of a literary work is trying to express. I myself find that I am far to passive and merely sit back and absorb what I can from a book.

Those who proclaimed that 'knowledge is power' meant that the only true education is self-education

The Peak Oil Crisis: Parsing the GDP

The Peak Oil Crisis: Parsing the GDP: "The important point is that between the $1.44 a gallon gasoline of 2002 and the $4.20 a gallon gasoline of July 2008, the cost of filling our collective fuel tanks, rose by some $2.2 billion a day. With half of this money leaving the country to pay for oil imports, it is not difficult to figure out why the economy has not been doing too well of late. Conversely, when gasoline fell from $4.20 a gallon in July to $1.84 in December of 2008, $1.8 billion a day reappeared in our collective pockets and the economy started to revive."

Crunch time

Last week of my math class, don't have much more time till I have to take the accuplacer test to see what math class I get into. I really hope I am able to test into a level 1000 or higher class but I am not optimistic that that will happen. Reguardless of what happens I am glad to be learning and gaining math skills, which in turn makes me more comfortable with the thought of taking a physics course in the near future. The only downside that I can see at the moment would be to prolong my education

New blog tags

Sometimes I dont like to admit it but I actually consume a lot of internet. But in all my time online I am always impressed at the way the internet is able to show me new and interesting material from such diverse and unrelated backgrounds which makes me see the internet as yes a place for trivial and mindless dribble but at the same time a place for people to connect with some of the most interesting ideas from anywhere in the world. In coming across material for the blog I am reminded of Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins which read:

Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice

I really like how these show that for everything we strive for we must always never forget to lose sight of the core principles for which we do things. That all things are in opposition to each other and although it seems counter-intuitive, we must seek balance between the things we do and desire.

looking at these precepts I think I could find examples of each of the sins and share them here. While Gandhi recognized these as sins I wonder if it would be possible to find the Seven Moral Virtues

Wealth with Work
Pleasure with Conscience
Science with Humanity
Knowledge with Character
Politics with Principle
Commerce with Morality
Worship with Sacrifice

So to kick things off I will share a video that shows Science with Humanity

In this video it shows how some musicians have made music out of the radioactive decay of elements. The musicians have managed to blend music with science and I think the result is something you will enjoy!

Update 8/15/11: after some further thought I think I will have to put this tag on the back-burner for the moment due to the fact that I haven't really used it. I originally envisioned this to be a reoccurring tag I could put on subsequent posts but that hasn't turned out to be the case after having it for a few weeks. I can see why Gandhi saw these and sins and while I notice many of these things as sins I didn't intend for this tag to be used to highlight the sins of the world here. I wanted to be able to show the seven moral virtues and I still have hope that they exist in the world I think that they are hard to come by.

What Happened to Obama’s Passion? - NYTimes.com

Stories I believe are integral parts of how we interact and view the world. For thousands of years before the written word, stories were the sole means of transmitting and preserving valuable information. I would not be surprised if it is found that there exists some hardwired tendency for humanity to naturally gravitate towards storytelling as the de facto form of information dissemination. The stories we tell ourselves guide our preconceptions and shape our values which is why as it is so important as discussed in the article why politicians need to craft a story (whether the story is based on factual evidence is another case, just look to the republican story of "small government" in all things except in social policy such as gay rights and abortion along with "national defense") is necessary for people to believe and support you. Obama is credited with running a highly successful election campaign but has not seen the same success in his presidency. Ask anyone what Obama's campaign slogan was and all will easily respond "hope", but this slogan was built upon Obama's up and coming rags to riches story he crafted and people bought it. But what is the narrative pushed by Obama post election? Has his "centrist" policies and endless compromise muddled the story Obama was elected on and left voters confused?

What Happened to Obama’s Passion? - NYTimes.com: "The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought. Our species existed for more than 100,000 years before the earliest signs of literacy, and another 5,000 years would pass before the majority of humans would know how to read and write.

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”"

The Dutch Way - Bicycles and Fresh Bread - NYTimes.com

good commentary on not only the structural but cultural differences on American style transportation and Dutch transportation. Both structural and cultural barriers will need to be overcome if we are to achieve a balanced transportation infrastructure. 

The Dutch Way - Bicycles and Fresh Bread - NYTimes.com: "Dutch drivers are taught that when you are about to get out of the car, you reach for the door handle with your right hand — bringing your arm across your body to the door. This forces a driver to swivel shoulders and head, so that before opening the door you can see if there is a bike coming from behind. Likewise, every Dutch child has to pass a bicycle safety exam at school. The coexistence of different modes of travel is hard-wired into the culture.
This in turn relates to lots of other things — such as bread. How? Cyclists can’t carry six bags of groceries; bulk buying is almost nonexistent. Instead of shopping for a week, people stop at the market daily. So the need for processed loaves that will last for days is gone. A result: good bread."