Art of War

War is a large part of human development.  As Diamond's title Guns, Germs, and Steel puts it, humankind progresses in three ways; in technology (Steel), biology (Germs), and the ways that we fight (Guns).

The ways that we fight and our ability to fight always determine the outcome of a conflict.  Unless there is some massive stroke of luck, the army with a combination of the better weapons, the greater numbers, and the better strategy will win.  A group that is efficient at food-gathering (in today's world this would be money-gathering) can support people who specialize in fighting or in improving their technology.  Thus a quick way to judge a (human) society's level of development is how well they can do in a conflict.  The reason I specify human society is because another intelligent life form may come into being without using natural selection, which pretty much only promotes violence-capable living things to consciousness.

The conflicts that Diamond describes were at first fought only with sticks and stones, or through slow developmental progressions that do not really resemble conflicts, in which hunter-gatherers were pushed out of an area by much more advanced farming groups.  Diamond does not go into deep detail over these conflicts or what they arose over.  His interest lies more with the environmental differences that led to these conflicts.  As he puts it: "whether geography can account for history's broad pattern." (26)

A Tribute to Electrical Engineers

An entirely undervalued but FRIGGIN' hard profession, electrical engineers have to be part-time chemists, programmers, logicians, physicists, and (in my opinion) savants.

Electrical engineers theorize, design, and make the microscopic switches and gates on the surface of a computer chip. Each chip has billion upon billions of switches (OR, AND, NOT, etc.) etched into it.

Imagine that every single person on earth would answer yes or no depending from what they had just heard from another person. An electrical engineer's job is to arrange these 7 billion people into a form that can parse usable data. Every operation you do on your computer, from playing Crysis on its highest quality settings (impossible) to adding 2 to 3 is processed using ONLY yes and no answers. A lot of yes and no answers. All traveling at light speed. Through billions of gates.
Electrical engineers design and UNDERSTAND those systems. My brain melts after trying to understand how to create a simple oscillating circuit!

Now if you don't believe me, if you think theirs is an easy job, try this game on for size: Electrical engineers do this times a quadrapentarentyrannosaurusrexillion.

KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the People

I got past level 4 before throwing up. Bon chance!

Mr. Roboto

The question that should be asked of robotics today is not when an intelligent robot is created, but how long before a mob would tear it apart. This is what I do, I ask questions about questions that we haven't found the answer to. But don't thank me, thank my awesome powers of precognition.

Other stupid questions:

• Once space travel is commonplace, who will get sovernty on the moon? On the other planets? Other solar systems?
• If time travel supposedly is possible, why were there no grieving time-tourists watching as 9/11 took place?
• The end goal of capitalism is for everyone to buy from 'the company' and for everyone to work for 'the company.' Isn't this the same goal of communism? Only with 'the government' replacing 'the company.' Makes you wonder what the cold war was really about.
• If light travels slower through certain substances (refraction) shouldn't time move slower inside these substances as well? Remember, time slows the closer to the speed of light one goes.

Any stupid answers?

Fire?

Today we only see fire in the occasional campfire, inside our barbeque, or on our gas range. On the news we may see a rocket launch or the ruined walls of a building where some fire got out of control. These obvious forms of fire boast red-orange to white-blue flame. They billow with smoke and make the air shimmer through rising heat. These signs of fire are easy to see, they stand out and they are the achievements that we credit fire for: Heat in our shelters, warming food to kill bacteria and make it easier to digest, moving us around the world by propelling our planes and jets, and finally the ability to destroy.
Ah yes, to destroy. It seems all weapons can be boiled down to pointy sticks and fiery sticks. Ha! To think we have come so far when so little has been accomplished.
But I ramble.
Fire fulfills two important niches in our lives. This niches are as important now as they were to the first cave-ape-thing that burnt itself. Fire separates us from the rest of life on earth AND it lets us shape metal. All that other stuff about it giving us heat or light is minor. Fire keeps the dark ghosts out of our cave at night, and lets us make tools during the day. QED.
In closing, take a piece of cake, there is plenty for everyone. Now get out there and shout at me that I'm wrong.

-torwch

True Clocks

A watch is not a clock. Nothing we humans have created is a true clock. A true clock measures the passage of time by measuring the movement of time itself. Our clumsy "watches" don't do that at all. Our time keepers count the vibrations of tiny crystals of quartz. Atomic clocks in universities and labs count the vibrations of mercury or other finely tuned atoms. They all count something and then display the count to us in the time format we call seconds, minutes, hours. These measurements have no cosmic significance. Today, they are not even true fractions of the earth's day. They have become old relics, left over from the days when witches were burned at the stake. Our clocks may seem accurate and precise, but in fact these counters are very delicate and easy to screw up. A true clock will grant us huge insights into how our time works. This is not something we think about much.
Bringing you some insight,
torwch

FAWRE!!!

Our civilization is built on fire. Everything we use to live was born through electricity, welding, heat and ultimately, fire. Everything we touch has also been touched by fire, and most of it could not function without a moving, speedy little thing we call electricity, which is hugely dependent on fire, more on that later.

It is said that Nostradamus stole fire from the gods and gave us its secret. They, the gods, became angry and punished Nostradamus for a sizable portion of eternity. What were the gods afraid of? Would we become stronger, maybe rise against them? Would we question them?
Pretty much...

What is fire? What secret did the gods keep from us? It is pretty simple really. Fire takes oxygen from the air around us, mixes it with some carbon from whatever is burning and BAM! Instant heat, light and unfortunately some CO2.

With this source of warmth, our peoples flourished. Tools like axes that we scrapped together with rocks were reinvented. The coming of the Bronze Age propelled us up above the animals and into a class of organisms the like of which had never been seen... We were HUMAN, we are MAN!

Next time I feel like writing (next blog) will bring up the question "Could we encounter a civilization not based on fire???" See you then...
-Torwch