Yeraze's Domain 3.0

From Supergirl, Yoda, and all of us, Happy Halloween!

[tag:family][tag:halloween]

Long ago, back in college in fact, I read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.  Great book, I loved every page of it.  Action packed, some interesting mix of religion, philosophy, and science, and alot of SciFi predictions (Gargoyles, the Metaverse, and much more).  After that, I set out to find what else Neal Stephenson had written and came across Cryptonomicon, with some high praise.  I quickly ordered it and started reading it.

Here it is 7 years later and I’ve finally finished it. This book is a hard read.  Entire chapters are completely irrelevant to the story, establishing nothing important and merely setting up the "tone" of future events.  It’s a confusing jumble of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse & Alan Turing in World War II, and his descendant Randall Waterhouse in the present.  Lawrence is cracking codes and working on information theory, while Randall is attempting to build an ISP in the Phillipines.  Other characters emerge across time, Bobby Shaftoe in WW2 and America Shaftoe in the present, but there’s nothing connecting them aside from genetics.  Page after page drones on about strange military operations and math so thick I felt like I was trudging through my calculus textbooks again.

With alot of determination, I finally forced my way through the first 2/3rds of the book, to be rewarded with what finally pulls everything together in the end.  Unfortunately, the book seems to culminate in the mindset of the Journey is more important than the destination, as the end of the book is rather weak compared to the previous contents.  Also, the journey itself is so meandering and barely comprehensible that even that has little value.

The book has its moments, mostly revolving around Bobby Shaftoe, but I’m glad to be done with it and never have to look at it.  After finishing it, I think that the best use of this book is as a book vault safe.
[tag:nealstephenson][tag:cryptonomicon][tag:book]

One of the books I took with me last week was Ervin Laszlo’s "Science and the Akashic Field".  Like "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters", it’s an interesting part philosophy/part quantum physics book that mixes such eternal questions as "What is the meaning of the universe?" and "What does quantum entanglement mean?".  When I saw the book, it immediately intrigued me as the "Akashic Field" is mentioned alot in the latest season of Eureka.

The book starts with some brief descriptions on what Quantum Physics predicts about the universe we know, and gets pretty quickly into the concept of Quantum Entanglement and nonlocality.  What he then postulates is that, on a larger scale, everything in the universe is entangled.  He then leads into various Gaia theories and paranormal activity (telekinesis, telepathy, after death experiences, etc) and theorizes that all of these are explainable by people becoming entangled with the environment or other people.

For example, he references many social experiments in telepathy and nonlocal communication.  Many of these involve requiring a deep mental/physiological connection between the two subjects (lovers, relatives) but some are done with basic mandatory 20-minute prayer or meditation, and show surprising results.

The conclusion is that the reason animals are able to sense drastic weather changes (tsunami’s, hurricane’s, etc) is that they are "aware" of the environment in a extra-sensory way.  This extra sense is provided via entanglement with the environment on a quantum level.  They are "informed" by the environment of what’s going on on a subconcious level, and are more open to it that we are.  In our more "civilized" way, we have mental blocks that prevent this information from rising to the conscious mind until we remove them through hypnosis, sleep, or careful study and practice.  Everything in the universe, from animal/plant evolution to human conciousness and thought are continuously contributing to the information of the universe and continuously receiving information from it, even if not really aware of it.  This universal information repository is referred to as the "Akashic Field", taken from the Indian world "Akasha" which describes the energy that makes the universe.

The ending conclusion is that neither evolution nor intelligent design are actually "correct", and infact both work together.  We’re in a much later "iteration" of the universe we know, with each iteration being "informed" (via nonlocality & entanglement) by information created in the previous one.  Animals evolve into more capable forms by exchanging information with their environment and creating mutations necessary or beneficial to existence.  Human consciousness, the capacity for creative thought and everything else in our head, is possible only through interaction with this field.  What initially created or seeded the knowledge within this field?  The "Creator", be it God, Allah, or the flying spaghetti monster, or possibly even another Universe long gone.

It’s an interesting theory, and he provides a wealth of information to back up his claim (Both scattered inline throughout the book, and in the rather extensive bibliography and reference section in the back).  I’m not sure how much of it I believe, but it certainly sounds fascinating and it’s something I plan to do more reading on.   Even as much as I enjoyed the read, and it definately gave me some things to think about, I’ve got to give it a 3 out of 5.  Why not higher? Well, it makes reference to some very suspect experiments performed long ago along the lines of Human Saliva responding to it’s host’s stimulus many miles away and using a lie detector on a plant, both as evidence of entanglement with the environment/host.  Both of these have been proven as inaccurate (usually as accidentally picking up environmental stimuli) by several scientists, and the MythBusters.
[tag:akashicfield][tag:quantum][tag:book]

Since I’m posting alot right now (about the Fairbanks trip and such), I noticed that the website is both cluttered & simply "dated" looking.  So I hit the geeklog.net site and downloaded a new theme to give it a fresh look, and I rearranged the sidebars a bit to get the important stuff a bit higher on the page. 

Hope you like it, and post a general thumbs-up/thumbs-down in the comments. 

10/29/2007 – I just went through and disabled alot of the clutter that wasn’t really useful before.  You’ll notice the top-right block is alot ligher now, all of the "Add to X" buttons and Technorati stuff is gone.  Also, the menu bar has been reorganized & cleaned up, and alot of the unnecessary options removed.
[tag:geeklog][tag:website]

So last week I got the chance to travel to Fairbanks, Alaska for a week.  I flew out there on a Tuesday, and returned on a Sunday.  I spent most of the time working with folks at ARSC, but had a chance Saturday to go out and just see the area.  It’s a very different place from what I imagined and had seen on TV, but very interesting nonetheless.

Needless to say, it’s cold.  Most of the trip it stayed just below freezing, around 27-30 degrees F.  There was one occasion where we got to see snowfall, and it dropped to -2, but most of the time it was just slightly below freezing.  Life at those temperatures, of course, entails many layers of clothing, coats, and gloves.  Nothing too surprising there, but what really fascinated me was how differently snow in Alaska is from Snow in Mississippi.

I’ve seen snow in Mississippi about 3 or 4 times in my life.  When it actually snows in Mississippi (not sleet, real snow that actually sticks on the ground) it typically melts before lunchtime.  Stick your hand in the snow and you’ll pull back a big white icy brick of a snowball.  I figured it would be the same in Alaska, but it’s quite different.  The snow in Alaska is very "powdery" (Photo) and will actually flow between your fingers like really big salt or sugar crystals.  The difference is in the fact that it stays below freezing so much longer in Alaska than in Mississippi.  In Mississippi, the temperature quickly rises above freezing, causing the snow to melt and transition rather quickly between water (at the surface, exposed to the elements) and frozen (packed in with other ice & snow), leading to icy roads (snow melts to form water, and re-freezes to form ice sheets) and packed snow (surface snow melts & flows deeper, re-freezing to tightly hold the snow together).  In Alasks, it never melts so that the snow sits on the road until the first car comes by and literally blows it off like sand.  It’s very different, and leads to the snow sticking around alot longer on the ground.  On less-traveled roads the snow eventually hits the same cycle of melt/freeze, leading to heavily packed icy roads, but most of the major roads aren’t a problem.

Also, they don’t use Salt on the roads in Alaska.  In most northern US states, they use Salt on iced roads to move the melting point of the ice, melting the ice and making the roads more easily traveled.  In Alaska, it’s far too cold for a few degrees to make a difference, so they actually use tiny gravel instead.  While this does help provide traction on snowy roads, it also makes pristine windshields an incredible rarity (Note to travelers, when you get a rental car make sure you query the busted windshield policy).  This eliminates the problems of rusting & automative deterioration usually caused by salt, but the extreme colds introduce the entirely new concept of "Winterizing" a car.  I had heard of this before, but thought it pretty much meant a warmer for the engine & antifreeze in a few places.  Actually, it gets so cold up there that you’ll notice every single car has a little electrical outlet hanging out the front.  These are used in pretty much every parking lot I saw, where they have outlets stuck about 3-feet off the ground to plug in the approximately 2KW of heating necessary to keep the gas, oil, and transmission fluid from gelling at -40 degrees F.  Also, I was told that in the coldest parts of the winter it’s not uncommon to see cars lined up along the side of the road as the fan belts shatter from the cold & tension, and it’s effectively pointless to replace them until it warms up.

One thing I heard of but didnt’ get to see (it wasn’t cold enough yet) was the "Ice Bridge" spanning the Tanana creek.  When it’s cold, evidently they open driving across the river as a nice 10-20 minute shortcut into town.  With the obvious safety concerns, how do you know when it’s warm enough that the bridge is unsafe and it’s time to close it?  I was told that you look for the first "Someone fell in the ice" story in the paper, and that’s how you know.  A bit scary if not entertaining.  So with all the various automotive impediments, Air travel is pretty important.  At the Fairbanks airport (they actually have 2 airports, one local & one international), you’ll see several smaller airlines that run frequent flights between various cities in Alaska, the most popular being Fairbanks to Anchorage.  Air travel is a major industry in Alaska, and I saw planes in flight almost constantly. 

So, enough about cars & weather.  What do people do in Fairbanks?  Well, I was surprised to hear that there is actually a Moose Hunting season in Alaska.  Given the sheer size of a Moose (According to WikiPedia, ~1500lbs and 6ft at the shoulder), I was really wondering what kind of weapon does it take to kill a moose?  I was told a 308 magnum works pretty well, but that killing them in surprisingly easy.  The hard part is dealing with the 1500lb carcass.  Apparently they have enough (very lean) meat to feed several people for an entire winter, so it’s usually a group affair.  Fishing is also a big industry in Alaska.  Everywhere we went, Salmon & Halibut were on the menu.  Salmon can be caught locally, but evidently they’re about dead by the time they get to Fairbanks, while halibut tend to be a bit easier. Either way, they’re good.  Alot of Crab was on the Menu as well (Alaskan King Crab), but I’m not much of a crab eater.

The trip was alot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the possibility of going back.. Unfortunatley, I was unable to see an Aurora while I was there, despite my efforts.  With any luck, next time will be better
[tag:alaska][tag:fairbanks]

Ok, I’ve managed to get the panorams of my Alaska trip online.  They have been reduced to 1/16th their original size (25% in width & height), to keep server-load and bandwidth down, but you can get the general idea.  These were all taken with my Sony CyberShot DSC-P31 camera.  A few things to note:

• The DSC-P31 really has no exposure control, so the brightness of images can vary widely. Especially when shooting horizons near the sun.
• I didn’t use a Tripod, these were all freehanded.  As such, the stitching isn’t perfect as there is some slight parallax between images.
• These were all stitched with my panoram tools of choice: Hugin & EnBlend.

With that in mind, feel free to check out the gallery entitled "Alaskan Panorams".  My pride and joy is the picture entitled "UAF Campus". 

At full resolution, this one makes a perfect background to stretch across my dual-screen 30" displays, coming it at 5761×1506.  A close second to this is the view from Parks Monument.

Updated 3:00pm  I’ve uploaded several more pictures, showing stuff from the Museum of the North, the Cloudberry Bed & Breakfast, and various Alaskan Wilderness shots.  You can find them all listed under the "Alaska" Album.
[tag:alaska][tag:hugin][tag:panoram][tag:picture]

I know it’s been a while since I updated, but I’ve spent the last week in Fairbanks, Alaska!  Between the travel & the trip itself, I’ve got a fair bit to post… To break it down:

• Flying on Delta & Alaska Airlines
• Our beautiful Bed & Breakfast, the Cloudberry
• The University of Alaska Museum of the North
• Strange stuff I noticed in Alaska
• Book Review: Cryptonomicon, Science & the Akashic Field, and O’Reillys Ajax Hacks.
• Lots of pictures, including 4 or 5 great Panorams.

So keep checking back, I’ll try to post at least one or two of these a day over the next week.