Forbidden Planet

I am often peeved at the way evolution is presented and explained. It is bad enough when lay people get it wrong, but it is intolerable when science commentators and scientists explain it sloppily. First things first, the term evolution comes from the Latin evolutio meaning unrolling. In modern English vernacular is has the generally understood meaning of a progressive change in a particular direction - the general direction being understood as being better or more advanced from the previous form. This is a horrible term to use for the process Darwin described because it comes with preconceptions that are simply untrue - namely that of a progressive change in a particular direction for good (as opposed to its antonym, devolution). It also does not help that so many science commentators (all I would say) and scientists (most, I would say) continue to perpetuate this inaccuracy. The say things like, "Plants evolved colourful flowers to attract insects," or "Organisms evo...

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. - St. Augustine Image nabbed from here . Or, go here and navigate to Norway (link is on the left side). [UPDATED: 13:23 30-August-2006 to attribute quote.]

Noticed lots of swarming ants today. Pointed them out to Jason and told him that all the prince and princess ants were flying off to find mates. His response was to stomp on them. He is very pragmatic when it comes to bugs - the sole of his shoe seems to be the general solution to any question involving bugs. Image nabbed from here .

If you are like me (which is unlikely), you probably large quantities of fruit and notice that some of them tend to go bad by weeks end. This is especially noticeable with small fruits like grapes, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. What I have found helps is to wash them when you get home (or at least rinse them), they seem to last until the end of the week without spoiling. (Of course, I have not done any controlled experiments by washing only half of them and then observing what happens, but my sublective opinion is that washing them seems to make them last longer).

I had a friend who believed that humans did not achieve sentience (self awareness) until sometime in their 20s. Consequently, for her, there was little difference between a child and, say, a dog or a cat. A child may have more sapience (knowledge, understanding and ability to reason), but it was not sentient. A rather severe opinion, but I suppose it could be argued that people achieve sentience at various times in their life - or, perhaps, never.

While I presume most of you are wonderfully supple and flexible, I am not. Even when I was much younger, I could not touch my toes - and that has not changed over the intervening years. However, I did come across a little trick that can get you closer to your toes, if not actually touching them. Bend over to try and touch your toes. Don't strain yourself. While bent over, take a deep breath. As you exhale you will notice that your finger tips get closer to your toes. You can repeat this exercise a few times and see if you can reach your toes. It takes me four sets of inhale / exhale to get me to touch my toes. I can feel the muscles at the back of my legs straining, but no pain. WARNING: use your common sense, don't hurt yourself. If you are in pain, stop. If you have difficulty breathing, stop. If you are faint or dizzy, stop. If you lack common sense, then definitely don't start. If you are prone to be litigatious, don't even think about starting, just move onto the n...

Sofia and the kids returned from their extended stay in Peru last night. I went back to Montreal (I work in Ottawa) to greet them. I arrived home around 17:45 and they arrived around 18:30. It was very good to see them again, to hug them and to hold them. It is a different feeling to sleep in a house with people in it, rather than alone in an empty house. I took the kids to the park and played with them a bit there, but Jason's bike got a flat so we returned home. I went with JJ to buy a new inner tube, which I had hoped to install last night, but didn't. It will have to wait until I return Thursday night. Holding those we cherish in our arms is a very, very powerful experience.

If our car tires are unbalanced the car shakes at high speed. If our diet is unbalanced our health suffers. If a building is unbalanced it falls down. If our neurochemicals are unbalanced our sanity suffers. Talking about balance is somewhat cliched. It seems everyone does - at least indirectly by promising miraculous ways of improving some aspect of our lives. When I slipped into despondency around three years ago, I began to think about what could be possible causes and what solutions I could apply. One of the things I noticed was that my life was seriously unbalanced (it still is). I identified 5 areas I thought were essential for maintaining a balanced life (there may be more, for example faith, but I think that one fits into community). Work was and continues to be the single largest occupier of my time, although I have managed to make some meager improvements to family and self aspects. Sadly, friends and community are significantly lacking. Looking at work: Monday through Thurs...

One of the problems I have with institutions of learning (schools) is that they are not structured to foster and nurture independent thought. I agree with Plato's assertion (at least I think it was Plato) that learning consists not of stuffing people with information so much as opening the doors of knowledge within them. Clearly there is a bit of a precedence dilemma, since it seem that we need to have at least some knowledge imbued into us in order that we can start to ask questions (or even realize that there are questions to be asked). As an aside: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The best answer I have heard is "the egg because the Earth is the egg from which the chicken originally came". I believe that some priming of the mind with information is necessary to get it started asking questions, but once it is up and running and asking questions then we need to switch to a different mode of teaching. Maybe other people are different, perhaps many people like to ...

Ever wanted to control the movements of a human being, well you can (sort of) with Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation Essentially there are a pair of electrodes mounted behind the ears and a small electric current will stimulate the vestibular system causing the person to feel pulled in that direction. While it is not perfect, it does allow you to somewhat control when a person turns. I saw a good example of it on Daily Planet this evening - although the person under control had a rather drunken quality to their movements. You can read more about it here . There is also a video available (8Mb), but it does not show as clearly the effect as I saw on Daily Planet. It is envisioned that this could be used in conjunction with video games to enhance the sensation of virtual reality. It was also suggested that this could be used as a personal guidance system for those who are map reading challenged. You would enter you destination on a small device plugged int othe system. then you would set o...

I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits; Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were going to St. Ives? I have often wondered if this was intended as a mathematical puzzle to keep the kids quiet on long trips as the tried to figure it out or if it is simply a nursery rhyme. Interestingly enought, the total number of objects including the wives and their cargo is 7 + 47 + 243 + 1701 = 2000 Add me and the man and you get 2002. I wonder if there is a simple way to solve the problem? I used brute force, calculating out the number and then summing them. While I can do math, doing the products and sums in my had requires a lot of attention, I need to constantly focus and remind myself of the numbers = so I end up pretty zoned out. Is there a simple property of 7s that can be exploited? Similar, perhaps to properties of 9s? Can I easily calculate it on my knuckles? Nine is an intersting number. You can easily discover is a num...

There is something fundamentally wrong with people being cheerful as they walk into work extolling the magnificent day outside. The past few days in Ottawa have been magnificent - low to mid twenties (70s for my imperial readers), with a sane humidity (69% today). It is the sort of day you should be outside, not entombed indoors. So what makes people so cheerful when it is sunny outside and they are stuck inside? Don't they feel a sense of lost opportunity? Of life passing them by as the grind away the nose on their face? I sit here wondering how many days I will be able to enjoy. How many days I will be able to say, "I lived and enjoyed this day. A day I shared with my friends and family." Or shall I be one of those who on his deathbed will say, "If only I had played hooky. Was turning my back on the this wonderful gift God gave today worth it?" (note, I am literally sitting with my back to the window). Staring at my monitor, surrounded by gray cubicle walls, b...

I started reading Franz Kafka's 'The Trial' last night. I had seen Orson Welles' film version and thought, despite his assertion that it was the best film he had ever made, that it was unfocussed and rather jumbled. Personally, I thought it could be editted to make two separate films. As well, I found that Mr. K. (played by Anthony Perkins) was inconsistent: sometimes afraid, other times defiant, or flippant, or even indifferent. In reading the notes to the book, I discovered that it was an unfinished manuscript and Kafka had requested that all his works finished and unfinished be burned on his death. Since the book was unfinished the first few publications reordered the chapters to try and make a more sensible and coherent story (Kafka did not number his chapters, he simply named them). The book starts pretty much the same way the movie did with a rather bizarre arrest sequence. Surreal is probably a better way to describe it, since it is more like a bad dream than bla...

Borrowed this from ms q while I search for new topics to blog about. Brain Lateralization Test Results Right Brain (54%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (52%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain Are You Right or Left Brained? personality tests by similarminds.com Some more from teh site: Left brain dominant individuals are more orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. They are good at understanding directions and anything that is explicit and logical. They can have trouble comprehending emotions and abstract concepts, they can feel lost when things are not clear, doubting anything that is not stated and proven. Right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what's not said, visualizing things, and making things up. They can lack attention to detail, directness, organiz...

My last photo blog about Peru. What can one say about the food except that it is good. That is one of my main joys of traveling - sampling authentic cuisine and trying new foods (street vendors with their wafting aromas are a big temptation for me, this time I was a good boy). The most common type of restaurant to be found is pollo a la brasa (roasted chicken). The most common chain being Roky's, followed by Norky's and a host of smaller restaurants. At Roky's they roast the chickens over a wood fire and they have the best taste. Norky's is indistinguishable from Roky'y - identical food is served. A quarter roast chicken with fries and salad is about 8 Nuevo Soles (about US$2.75). You can get the same at a smaller mom and pop type restaurant for about 4.50 Soles. The French fries are fantastic. Chinese food, called chifa, is also very popular. Things like hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza are less popular (mostly only in touristy areas, but if you are really desperate, ...

Lest I leave you with the impression that Peru is dry and arid, I present for you some of the flora I took pictures of as well. A red flower in Ica. Rose in Ica. Purple flowers in Ica. Cactus berries in Ica. Wide shot of cactus and berries. Orange flowers at a zoo near Ica. Colourful leaves at a zoo near Ica. Rock garden at a zoo near Ica. Vegetation in the Paracas National Reserve. Wider shot of vegetation in Paracas National Reserve. Scrub in Paracas National Reserve. Wide shot of scrub in Paracas National Reserve. Flowers in Paracas National Reserve. Poinsetta outside aunt Cecilia's home in Lima. Flowers outside aunt Cecilia's home in Lima. Berries from above plant. Orange flowers in Baranco, Lima. White flowers in Baranco, Lima. All pictures are copyright of me.

Paracas is one of the driest places on the Earth, averaging about 1.6mm of rain per year. You can check out more about rainfall in Peru here . The driest place on Earth is the Atacama desert in Chile - where in some places rainfall has never been recorded. The Paracas National Reserve is 335000 hectares and about 2/3 of that is Pacific Ocean coastal waters. While the land is very arid, the ocean is teaming with life. You can take a boat trip to observe penguins, sea lions and porpoises (we did not). Salt bed road. First stop - The Cathedral. Desolate mountains. More desolate mountains. Arid surface close up. Taken while lying on my belly. Coast. More coast. Yet more coast. Even more coast. Note the yellowish rock, the red sand and the blue-green ocean. Still more coast. Close-up of rocky part from the previous picture showing various algal life. Last coast picture. There be sea lions down there. We could hear them - even see some movement, but my camera did not have enough zoom (6x) to...