Forrestry: Observations by Forrest

Our broken Electoral System

2012-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

When Americans elect a president every 4 years, the method we use is actually pretty strange when you stop to think about it:

1) Every state gets a number of votes equal to their number of representatives plus two. These are called "electoral votes".

2) 48 of the 50 states use a winner-takes-all system, where whichever presidential candidate gets the most votes in that state gets ALL the electoral votes of that state. The other two states use an adaptation of that method, where each candidate gets an electoral vote for each congressional district they win, plus two more for winning the overall state popular vote.

Electoral College for the year 2000

A notable side-effect of this policy is that someone can become President of the United States while losing the popular vote. This has happened 4 times out of 55 US presidential elections, or 7% of the time. Maybe that seems like an acceptably small fraction to you, but consider that there are also cases where it was very close to happening, like in 2004: Bush II had about 3,500,000 more nationwide votes than Kerry, but if 60,000 Bush voters had changed their minds and voted for Kerry in just one state (Ohio), he would have become the president. In the last 60 years, a "close" election like this, where fewer than 60,000 voters could've made the wrong man President, has come close to happening 6 times, meaning that 6/15 or 40% of recent elections were problematic.

For fun, I've taken the liberty of running some simulations. Each state is given its share of electoral votes as of the 2000 census, I specify the national popular vote totals and give each state its own vote total, normally distributed about the national mean, with a standard deviation taken from the last three presidential elections (about 11% each time). Then I check to see if the national popular vote winner is also the electoral college winner.

For an example election that's 48/52 (i.e. a 4% margin for one candidate), I ran this simulation 1,000,000 times, and here are the EV results:

We see that in more than 10% of the runs, the national popular vote winner does not become the president. Repeating this process for a collection of margins, I find the probability of the "wrong president" vs. national popular vote margin:

I also show the last eight elections as vertical lines on the bottom, highlighting in red the one that gave us the "wrong" person. Statistically speaking, we should have seen on average 1.3 "wrong" presidents in the past 8 elections. Reality, however, is constrained to integers in this case, so it's really no huge anomaly that we got 1 error out of 8. What's surprising to me is how astonishingly poor this system is at electing the popular vote winner to the presidency. With a national popular vote margin of 4% we get an error of 10%. With a margin of 1% we get an error of 37%. For margins smaller than 1% we may as well flip a coin, even though 1% represents more than 3,000,000 Americans.

Raw data is tabulated below. For reference, the margins of the last 8 elections ranged between 0.5% and 10%. The real miracle here is that we have had only four wrongly-elected presidents out of 55!

Popular Vote Margin	Probability of Wrong President
10%	0.06%
8%	0.52%
6%	2.7%
4%	10.4%
2%	26%
1%	37%
0.4%	44%
0.2%	47%

How big is the Universe?

2012-01-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, and sorry for the long time since my last post. Today I'll be giving an in-depth and unqualified analysis of current astronomy and cosmology. What I find interesting is the pace at which our knowledge of the universe's structure has developed.

1)Starting with ancient cultures, we have known or speculated that we live on a sphere ("Earth") nearby some other objects (the sun and planets), which are all surrounded by little twinkly lights (other stars). Assigning a date and person to this discovery is tricky, but a good guess is an African named Eratosthenes in Egypt, who measured the earth's diameter in ~200 BCE. He did this by noting that on the summer solstice, the sun shone exactly straight down in one city, but cast a shadow about 1/50th of a circle in another city. He knew the difference in the distance between the two cities, and using "math" he calculated the diameter of the earth. So the size of the known universe, in our understanding, was the earth's diameter: 12,800 km.

2)It wasn't until Johann Kepler in the 1600s that we were relatively confident that our Earth was not fixed, but was moving around the sun (and not the other way around). This had been hypothesized before, but only at that time had it been proven and accepted. This increased the size of the known universe to the diameter of the major axis of Saturn's orbit (then the furthest known planet): 1.4 billion km.

3)Even then, it wasn't until Frederich Bessel in 1838 that we confirmed that the other points of light in our sky are stars similar to our sun, and found the distances between them. He did this by measuring the angle of a "nearby" star against the background, further away stars as the earth moved in its orbit. Just like the two images from our eyes allow us to tell the distance to something, this parallax allowed us to calculate the distance to the stars. Until then the working theory was that they were unknown lights, possibly infinitely far away. Now the size of the known universe became the size of our galaxy: 950 million billion km.
4)Only in the twentieth century did we realize that our galaxy was not the entire universe, but merely one tiny, tiny piece of it. Edwin Hubble helped us realize this when he observed objects receding away from us much more quickly than the escape velocity of our galaxy, and this was later confirmed by measuring the brightness of certain standard objects (e.g. Cepheid Variables or Type 1a Supernovas) within those galaxies. This inflated our known universe to the distance between these "nearby" galaxies, about 60 billion billion km.

5) At about the same time, we discovered that the universe is expanding. Our perception of the size of the universe expanded with it, until in the 1960s we found the observational limit: a distance so far that the light has travelled for about 13-14 billion years. Wikipedia explains this barrier nicely:

In practice, we can see light only from as far back as the time of photon decoupling in the recombination epoch, which is when particles were first able to emit photons that were not quickly re-absorbed by other particles, before which the Universe was filled with a plasma opaque to photons. The collection of points in space at just the right distance so that photons emitted at the time of photon decoupling would be reaching us today form the surface of last scattering, and the photons emitted at the surface of last scattering are the ones we detect today as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

Now, you might think that that means the limit of our observable universe is a sphere of diameter 13 billion light-years. However, because space itself has expanded during that time, the objects we are observing from 13 billion years ago are now much farther away, meaning the diameter of the observable universe is almost one million billion billion km.

5) And only very recently (1998) have we realized that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a prediction which completely alters our view of the universe's fate. Current cosmological thinking has no estimate for the boundary of the universe. Our observable universe might be a tiny bubble in an infinite volume; the new estimate is literally "infinity until further notice".

Each of these five discoveries monumentally changed our understanding of the universe. Each time, the universe becomes monstrously larger than we had previously thought, and all of our assumptions become completely challenged. I have taken the liberty of tabulating the size of the "known universe" along with the date, for demonstration purposes:

date	size of known universe (km)	note
200 BCE	12,800	diameter of the earth
1600	1,400,000,000	size of our solar system
1838	950,000,000,000,000,000	diameter of our galaxy
1924	60,000,000,000,000,000,000	size of our "local group" of galaxies
1960s	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000	size of the observable universe
1998	"literally infinity"	astronomers give up

I observe that the rate of this growth as a function of time is not governed by any reasonable function, but might be considered to be logarithmic starting in 1600, with our known universe expanding by a factor of 10 every 24 years until recently, when astronomers simply gave up. This rate of growth (in understanding) is, I'm sorry, astronomical.

There are still so many unresolved questions about the nature of our universe. So-called "dark matter" is required to explain why galaxies spin the way they do, and it has been detected indirectly, but we still have no idea about its nature. If it exists, there is postulated to be five times as much of it, whatever it is, than "regular" matter. Things become stranger: in order to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe, astronomers and cosmologists posit a "dark energy", an unknown force that would have to have 20 times as much "mass-energy" as observable mass in the universe. Mass-energy is the unit used because, as Einstein showed, energy can be converted into matter, or vice versa. If we converted all the dark energy into regular matter, there would be 20 times as much of it.

To butcher a quote by Socrates, "A wise man understands that he knows nothing." The more we study, the less we seem to understand. Maybe that's just the nature of the universe.

Dubai, revisited

2011-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

As my most devoted readers will note, I have a certain "soft spot" for the country known as the "United Arab Emirates", which is why I don't buy any products whose bar code number starts with 629. This point of view was encouraged when I saw this scrawled on my family's residence in the UAE:

That's why it was with great glee I read this article, which details yet another blunder in the brief history of that awful state. This is aside from the issue that their latest monstrosity, the briefly tallest building in the world (until it was revealed that its elevators weren't working, which disqualified it), ran out of money and was sold before it was finished, meaning it was renamed from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa ("burj" means tower, and "khalifa" is the guy who bought it from them). But now it's revealed officially that the dreadful "world" islands are eroding away, and the channels between them no longer navigable. Only one of the islands has any structures built on it, and that one is owned by the ruler of dubai! To quote the article, while 70% of the 300 islands have been bought,

Many investors who did buy the islands proved unwilling or unable to finance further work when Dubai's property prices halved in the space of a year. Some were hit by troubles elsewhere – the owner of the company which bought [the island shaped like] Ireland for £24 million, John O'Dolan, committed suicide, while the man who bought [the island shaped like] Britain for £43 million, Safi Qurashi, is serving seven years in jail in Dubai after being accused of bouncing cheques.

Which makes this as good a time as any to remind my loyal readers that being in debt in the UAE is a crime punishable by imprisonment, which doesn't make any sense. How are you supposed to earn the money you owe, if you're in prison? But anyway, back to the Amazing Eroding Islands:

The dispute being heard by the property tribunal involves Penguin Marine, the company which bought the rights to provide boat travel to the islands. With little business, it is trying to exit the contract, which involves paying an annual fee of just under £1 million to Nakheel. Nahkeel say they will cash an advanced payment guarantee worth just over £1 million if that happens. Penguin claim that work on the islands has "effectively stopped". Mr Wilmot-Smith described the project as "dead". Graham Lovett, for Nakheel, said the project was not dead but admitted it was "in a coma". ... The tribunal found for Nakheel on Thursday, saying it would give full reasoning later. A spokesman for Nakheel insisted the islands were not sinking. "Our periodical monitoring survey over the past three years didn't observe any substantial erosion that requires sand nourishment," a statement said.

I think it's a pretty funny demonstration of the property value literally "eroding away". It seems like a total economic collapse is right around the corner. All we have to do is sit back and wait for that terrible, terrible country to fall apart. But for those of us who don't feel like waiting, perhaps you can help me with my plan.

I know you can invest in a company by buying shares of its stock, or you can invest against a company by "short-selling" its shares (selling shares you don't own yet, and promising to buy some in the future to make up for it; it's pretty existential). This hurts the company by lowering the value of its shares. You can also invest in a country, by buying its currency. But I don't know of a way to "short" a country's currency. Anyone have any ideas? If we can pull together and short-sell the currency of the UAE, we can accelerate their collapse, make a nice profit, and help end this awful regime. It should be noted that the UAE's currency is pegged to the US dollar, meaning that until the country goes bankrupt, your investment is risk-free! But the minute the UAE treasury runs out of money with which to buy their currency back (with dollars), we can buy out of our short positions with a large profit.

An unqualified summary of alternative energy

2011-01-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! I'm no Energician or anything, but I do have some BS degree from this one school in the south, so I'm going to just go ahead and offer my (in)expert opinion on alternative energy.

When you come right down to it, most of our energy sources are solar energy in disguise. Coal, oil, and natural gas were formed when plants stored the sun's energy in their biomass and then decomposed. Hydroelectricity is available when water is flowing downhill, and we force it to turn our turbines; but that water was transported to the top of the hill when it was evaporated by sunlight, and fell back down from the sky. Wind exists on Earth only because of local variations in temperature, caused (for the most part) by sunlight. And, of course, solar panels directly harvest the sun's energy. In fact, the only sources of power I can think of that don't originate from the sun are nuclear power and (arguably) geothermal.

One very interesting energy harvesting scheme is called "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion". Essentially you have a huge pipe that goes down into the ocean to a depth of about 1,000 m, where the water is colder, about 5 C. At the same time you use water from the surface, which will be around 22 C. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that the heat will flow from hot to cold, but we put our devices in the way so that, like water falling down a hill, the whole process powers our machinations. And they say that the oceans provide a "limitless" supply of cold and hot water (maybe a dangerous idea).

Direct solar energy has a lot of promise. The above map shows the average intensity of sunlight. The blue dots represent the total area required, with current technology, to completely provide the current global demand for electricity. I think the map looks pretty neat.

However, as time wears on, our energy demands will tend to grow exponentially. Some guy made what's called the Kardashev Scale, which classifies how "advanced" a civilization is based on how much energy it can produce. To quote wikipedia, "a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, and Type III of its galaxy." We are estimated to have a rating of 0.72. Looking at the plot, which is on a logarithmic scale, our energy development over time is a straight line, which indicates exponential growth. Extrapolating from the data in just the last 110 years, it will take another 200 years or more to reach a rating of 1. Let's work on that, everybody.

EDIT: So on the Kardashev Scale, a Type 2 civilization will use roughly the energy output of an entire star. Freeman Dyson imagined what is now called a Dyson Sphere, a shell around a star that collects all the energy from that star. Dyson spheres have a few problems, though: If you build a solid shell around the star, then it wouldn't interact gravitationally with the star, and the two would slowly drift apart until they collided. If, instead, you build a swarm of space ships that orbits the star, then occasionally one would block the sun from the other. As you increase the number of spaceships, this happens more and more, until it becomes almost impossible to harvest all the star's energy.

Apocalypse hypothetical

2011-01-14T13:59:00.001-08:00

Imagine the following scenario: Astronomers have found an asteroid on a collision course with earth. It will destroy out civilization and kill all humans on the planet. However, that won't happen for another ten years. A large number of the world's top scientists have come together to try and solve the problem, and they have concluded that we will not be able to deflect the object from hitting Earth. The only chance for the continued survival of humanity is to send a spacecraft full of people, which might survive in space for the several thousand years necessary for the earth to become habitable. Each person in the world is given a choice: If you dedicate the next ten years of your life to helping build the space station, you will be entered into the lottery for a ticket onto the space station. You can give the ticket to whomever you want. Otherwise, you can just relax for ten years, and join the biggest party of mass hedonism since Caligula. What would you choose?

So the scenario doesn't say what your chances of getting a ticket are. Most likely, that would be determined by how much work the people get done in ten years. How many people are necessary to repopulate the world? Preliminary research (i.e. google search) points to somewhere around 1,000, to avoid inbreeding. So probably the best strategy is to have as many self-contained satellite habitats orbiting the earth, each with 1,000 people. And then hopefully at least one of these will survive. Another strategy is to have just one massive space ship, but that's a bad idea since then it only takes one big mistake or accident (or crazy person) to destroy it.

So I'm looking at the situation where for two to three years, the scientists perfect a few models of space ship, then every factory in the world starts making as many of them as they can. Wikipedia says that in the last 50 years or so, only about 550 people have been launched into space. But our technology has grown exponentially (even though we are no longer capable of going to the moon) If we can devote a significant fraction of the world's GDP to this project, then we might be able to produce a few dozen of these space stations. . If we devote all our time and money to this problem, maybe we will be able to launch a few dozen of them before time runs out. So that's about 12,000 people who will be saved. At the same time, I would estimate that about half of the world's population would support this effort, that's about 3,000,000. That's a 1/25,000 chance for each person. A tiny chance, but perhaps worth it, if you know that you did your part in helping humanity avoid extinction?

Over several thousand years, each space station will undoubtedly develop its own culture and civilization, even if there is constant communication between space ships. Will they attack each other? If our space station's air filter breaks, will we raid another's, dooming them and saving ourselves? More likely, all space stations will work together, helping each other

Next is the problem of recolonization. When all the surviving space ships land, there might be some hostility between them. One issue is when, exactly, to land. If our space ship lands earlier than the others, we will have more time to set up a prosperous city and multiply. Later than the others, and we will have a more hospitable Earth to greet us. However, most likely there will be more than enough Earth for everybody, so this hostility probably won't cause human extinction.

A different possibility is to make a space craft that is capable of building more copies of itself from raw materials (moon rocks? asteroids?). That way we just launch a few "seed ships" and in a few millennia there will be hundreds or thousands ready to land. And in that case some may not want to land, but instead might move to other parts of the solar system (or to different stars!). This actually seems to me like a necessary step in the development of our civilization. With space stations that are not only self-reliant but also are capable of reproducing, we change all of space into a possible habitat for humanity. And in that case there's no need ever to return to Earth. We might just send it a post-card, though.

Weighted Democracy

2010-04-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

When governments were still young, one guy would sit around and say, "This is what our kingdom will do!" Later on, a few other guys made arrangements so that those few guys could decide what the government will do. Even later, rules were made so that all rich guys could have a say in their government's doings. Then it was all grown men. Then women too. Next...?

These are all examples of weighted democracy. At one point, the richer you were, the more influence you had over the government. Of course that's not at all what happens today (that was sarcasm, of course. Lobbyists are seen by many (i.e. me) as the most powerful branch of the US federal government. But anyway). Later it was shall we say "chromosome-weighted" where your vote was proportional to the number of y-chromosomes you had. Yeah, I skipped over racism, so sue me.

Let me suggest a new way to weight our proportion of control in government: Literal weight. One pound, one vote. According to this chart from the internet, it looks like 30-60 year olds are the heaviest among us. So idealistic cheese-eating liberals under thirty who never worked a day in their lives would get less of a vote, but so would your great grandfather who still makes racist comments at every family reunion. So that about breaks even.

Is one side of the political side fatter than the other? I'unno. There's the perception of cheese-eating, cigarette-smoking, french-type liberals who meet in cafes. And then there's the wal-mart suburbanites. Not sure if either of these fully captures a real demographic, as I myself have been to both a wal-mart and a cafe (and spent about equal amounts of time in each, if you weight by area. But not by volume: wal-mart wins then, with their high ceilings). Anyway, two more charts from the internet: The first shows the US states by fatness. The other shows obama/mccain states in the '008 presidential election.

As you can see, there seems to be a correlation between being fat and being in the South. And the south votes republican usually. Other than that I don't really see any trends. Now the south has roughly one-fourth of the citizens of the US, but it looks like they have a somewhat larger proportion of the weight of the US.

How would this change to our democratic way alter our behaviors? Would we all try to be super-fat, to get more votes? Would pork-barrel projects become more literal, supplying barrels of port to ever-fatter constituents? I don't think so. There would be an optimum each person has to strike between "being happy and fit" vs. "having slightly more political power". In a nation that weighs about fifty BILLION pounds (not an exaggeration), will five more pounds really help you this november? More likely, you'll just chug a few bottles of water right before you vote. Or maybe replace your daily gym visit with a trip to a fast food restaurant during October, which would most likely capitalize on this trend by offering silly-sounding deals like "The Democratizer": two deep-fried chicken patties, a quarter-pound of cheese, and no frilly starches or empty vitamins to fill your stomach up so you can fit the whole thing in there. As Burger King might say, "We're pro-choice: your choice of super-size fries or a thickshake!"

Forrest's incompetent money advice

2010-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the first installment of what I hope will be a long series of articles containing my incompetent advice, on many issues. Today the topic is money.

I won't cover the (much more important) issue of actually obtaining money in very much detail. Suffice it to say that there are many different ways to get it, and to spell them out would just be ... trivial. To list just a few examples: donation of haploid cells (if you happen to be a genetically fortunate male), having rich older relatives, and marrying "up". Or you could stick with the traditional "get a job" route, but that wouldn't be nearly as easy or fun as the aggregated average of my three examples.

Now that you have lots of money, what should you spend it on? If, like the majority of Americans your happiness is a linear correlation with your rate of spending, you should spend it all at once, and also max out your credit cards. If, however, you happiness production curve is more reasonable, there's an optimal amount of money you should spend in a typical week on frivolous things like ice cream, new clothes, or that kidney transplant you've been putting off.

As you can see, the more money you spend on nice things for yourself, the happier you get. But consider this example: You could spend $1000 on a small, shoddy-looking, used motorcycle and have some fun riding around and running errands, or you could spend $10,000 on a shiny new motorcycle and have a bit more fun impressing your friends and bothering the neighbors with your engine noise. On the other hand, you could spend $2 on bus fare, have to get up early every day, and miss the bus sometimes. Your choice depends on how much you would enjoy each thing, and also on how much money you had in the bank. Except for explaining what's going on, I can't offer any extra help on what to spend your money on. As my most loyal readers will note, I spend most of my money on bacon.

No, the topic that interests me today is what to do with money you're saving. Where should you keep it? The first option is in the bank. For many people, keeping the majority of your money in the bank is the smart thing to do. The bank will never lose your money (or if they do, Uncle Sam will cover it). You'll never* lose money at the bank. (* some restrictions and fees apply to low balances, too many transactions, using other banks' ATMs, or trying to access your money). Banks will even give you a small amount of interest, as a reward! Note, however, that this interest rate is generally not much better than the rate of inflation, and often (like right now) much lower. What this means is that yes, you won't lose money if you keep it in the bank, but you will lose value. You'll be able to buy fewer motorcycles with that money when you withdraw it in 5 years than you could have today. The moral here is that banks don't really keep your money "safe".

The next option is to keep all your money at home. You could either keep it as cash, which would be like a bank only without the fees, interest, and inconvenience. Or you could keep it as a commodity, like gold. Gold (in theory) is not subject to inflation. No more gold is ever created (yes, I know more gold is mined, but ignore that for a second). You can buy the same number of motorcycles in five years with the same lump of gold (or, like me, a small fraction of a motorcycle). However, you keeping stuff in your house isn't safe against robbery, and gold is inconvenient to change into cash.

The third option is to invest your money. The word "invest" branches into a lot of other things, but the underlying principles are the same for each type: you essentially gamble your money, hoping the value of your investments will rise. With higher risk comes higher reward: you know for sure that in the bank, your money will be worth almost as much as it is now, when you withdraw it in five years. With an investment, you run the risk of losing value, but that earns you the possibility of gaining value. Now different investments are in different places on the "risk - reward" spectrum.

As you can see from this image I pulled straight from wikipedia, with higher risk comes higher reward. The light blue line represents possible investment choices, and the dark blue line, which is unique to each individual, represents a line of constant "utility", which pretty much means "happiness". Some people are young and OK with more risks, so their dark blue line shifts up-right. Others might be planning to buy a house soon, and have the right amount of money, so they don't want to lose that money. Their dark blue line shifts down-left. Yet other people might want to help save humanity by investing in green energy or something, which would change their "happiness" curve in various ways.

Diversification: Buying stocks can give you a good return, but there is a way to lower the amount of risk without compromising the amount of return: Diversification (that's right, Diversification). Let's say you buy $100 worth of google. Google's stock will roughly follow that of all stocks in its main area, like microsoft and apple. But sometimes when google does poorly, apple does well. If you buy a collection of several stocks from that sector, like microsoft, apple, and google, then the value won't jump around as much, but it will still rise when the sector rises. But you can take this one step further and say "when tech stocks fall, sunblock stocks will rise!" (because all those WoWers and googlers have pale, pale skin) and also buy some shares in the sun-block sector. Taking it even further, you might note that when stocks do poorly, bonds do well, so you could buy some of those.

In fact, a while ago some people had the great idea to put all their money together and hire someone to decide what to invest it all in (so they didn't have to quit their jobs and watch the stock market all day). That's called a mutual fund. Various other types of investments exist, filling niches of the risk-reward spectrum and offering different amounts of diversification.

Say it with me: Oh-Ten

2010-02-22T13:50:00.000-08:00

That's right! We're going to start saying the last THREE digits of years. We used to use two digits back in the '900s, then in '000 we got all scared about the so called "Y2K" so we moved to four digits. Then around '002 we moved back to two digits because obviously Y2K didn't happen. I mean, it did, but all the bad stuff didn't happen. But I'm telling you we shouldn't move back down from four to two. Have a look at the graph of human life expectancy over time, gleaned from this article:

As you can see, for the past two hundred years human life expectancy has been rising steadily. Soon, most people will live to be over 100 years old. Now, the reason we originally wanted to use two digits is because in our 35-year lifespans (for those of us who love the bacon) we would never be troubled with using the same number twice. Imagine if we called this the year zero, only using the last digit of the year. It would only make sense if we would never live to see the next year zero. But we WILL live to see the next year '10, so we need to act now and change our conventions. In the year '110, it will be too late to go back and change all our blog posts!

Act now! Say it with me: Oh-Ten!

War and Obesity: the human condition

2010-02-17T18:30:00.000-08:00

In many places in the world, food is not abundant, and many people starve. But in the US, most people can afford to buy more food than they could ever possibly eat. Some of us can just eat and eat like slobs and never gain a pound (don't cry for me America), while others become overweight. However, bacteria don't get obese, they just make tons of children. In the long term even humans will follow suit, multiplying in the presence of excess food. As Darwin explains, a given population of organisms will grow exponentially until they use all available food. There is no doubt that the human population is growing at least exponentially (and maybe even superexponentially). Even if our current rate of food production were sustainable (which, because it's supported by fertilizers made from fossil fuels, some argue that it's not), we would eventually multiply to fill that vacuum. Until then, we will be overweight.

And once the number of people roughly equals the sustainable food supply, we will start to compete for those resources. We will go to war! Unless we can either a) transcend the laws of biology or b) find an infinite supply of resources, it seems that the human condition is to be at war. Let's examine two possible strategies to resist our fate:

1) The universe is infinite, right? Can't we just colonize every planet? This doesn't work for two reasons. First, while the amount of space is infinite, the amount of energy and mass (i. e. resources) is not. It's a huge amount, but given enough time we could expand to consume it all. Second, that still won't help the problem of local fluctuations in food, resulting in local warfare. Once we colonize the whole solar system, there might be a surplus of food on Jupiter, but we can't bring it to Venus, where people are starving. We have the same problem right now, on Earth, where one country gets fat while another starves and fights.

2) Our brains separate us from the animals, right? Can't we just all agree to have exactly two children per couple, plus a few extra in case of accidental deaths? Well wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all agree, but we won't. Those of us who do agree will pass on our agree-to-limit-procreation genes to a smaller and smaller fraction of the population than those with procreate-as-much-as-you-can-and-don't-listen-to-ecologists-or-bloggers genes. It's exactly the sort of trait that natural selection keeps a collection of on the walls of its hunting lodge.

Mutant Atomic Super Men part 2

2010-02-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about these so-called atomic super men. And of course what I mean is, this hypothesized splitting of the human race in a few thousand years (see past post). While watching the horrible yet hypnotic tv show "Manswers" where some guy screams at you the whole time about things guys like (always acted out with unrealistic women present), I was informed about the possibility of men selling their reproductive haploid cells. You know what I'm talking about. And if you don't, I'll explain in the most family-friendly style possible. Men go to a clinic and undergo some activities. Then later on, women go to the clinic and can have babies, without the trouble of spending years finding, bonding with, and mating with a man. The problem (from my perspective) is that if I do this, then I don't get any choice for mate selection. From an evolutionary point of view, it makes sense for every man to do this, because it costs him nothing (in fact he gets paid right now, because so few men do it), and his genes could be passed on to several children without him having to feed or raise them. But my goal in life isn't just to spread my genes as far and wide as possible. If I found out that some female version of Hitler (see Godwin's Law), or someone ugly in every way (including on the inside) was the mother of my baby, I would feel kind of sick. Don't I have a responsibility to boycott, as every other man has, this woman who is spreading ugly genes? (Again I stress, I mean not just physically ugly, but selfish, rude, impatient, impulsive, short-sighted, irrational, etc.)

Let's put that on the side for a minute. I can assume that, because they actually pay us guys lots of money (like, $100 a week) to do this easy, quick activity, that not many men are doing it. And reading a little bit more about it, it looks like it takes kind of a lot of money for a woman to then benefit from this procedure. From this I infer that it happens rarely, and does not have a big effect on our gene pool. In addition, because these clinics are pretty selective about men, I assume that the "fit" genes from the men sort of balance out any potentially "unfit" genes from the mothers.

So if this process is having almost no effect, what happens to our unpleasant, ugly woman? She might not find an acceptable mate through her twenties, but as she gets older and her clock ticks louder, she may be forced to settle for someone just as unfit as she is. Two people with unfit genes will be more likely to make children with unfit genes, who may be stuck in the same situation. In fact, it seems like the children would be even less fit, maybe? I'm not a geneticist, but don't two tall people make a really tall child? And two unfit people make a really unfit child. Not sure about this. But anyway.

Isn't it conceivable that this group of people would eventually develop traits that cause them to "settle" for others similar to them? And of course most of the "fit" people won't want to mate with this group. Now we have the makings for a species split. Two groups of individuals of the same species who stop mating with each other. And eventually, each will appear attractive and fit to others of their own species. Sound plausible?

I'm not even convinced myself, but it's an interesting idea. And the evolutionary force of "male promiscuity" would oppose it. By that I mean, these desperate, unfit women might cheat on their unfit mates with more fit males to get better genes, while these more fit males would have no real cost in letting this woman have their baby. For this reason I don't think the human race will split until we colonize another planet, or until some kind of nuclear apocalypse.

Engineers over-represented in islamic terror groups?

2010-02-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

A startling expose of the seedy underworld that is engineering has found that those people with a degree in engineering are severely over-represented in violent islamic extremist groups (full article). According to the study, engineers account for only about 3% of the (male) populace of the arab countries in question, while the terror groups examined were 44% engineering graduates. As an engineering grad myself, and a 'shiftless' [get it?] twenty-something arab male, this study strikes close to home. What about being me (apparently) makes me want to be a terrorist?

My first thought is that the study used a biased sample: they interviewed only those terrorists who were caught. A possible reason that engineers are more likely to be caught might be the explained, as all complicated theories are, by the plot of the movie "The Dark Knight". [Spoiler alert] The joker employs some talented criminals to help him rob a bank, and then once they complete their tasks, he has them killed so he doesn't have to share the loot with them. However, violent islamic terrorists aren't stealing money, they're just trying to damage, kill, terrify, etc. In addition, the engineers who were caught would be angry at being used, and possibly inform on the rest of the organization. So maybe it's not a biased sample.

Engineers are good at figuring things out and making things happen, so here's my hypothesis: If you get a bunch of angry people together, sure they'll talk about doing something about it. But they won't get caught for talking. An engineer will draw up a blueprint for how the objective could be achieved. For good or for bad, engineers make things happen.

The paper looks at tons of data, and here I distill some interesting bits:

-Engineering professors in the US are 58% conservative, compared with 34% of scientists

-Engineering professors are also very religious: 67% versus 49% of scientists

-Globally, violent left-wing groups have almost no engineers, while violent right-wing groups have more (especially in the middle east)

The paper concludes that a combination of two things caused engineers to be over-represented in violent islamic groups. First, after the oil crisis last century there were fewer jobs for engineers. Second, there is something about the engineering mindset which correlates religiousness, conservatism, and the engineering profession.

Mutant Atomic Race of Super Men?

2010-02-08T12:23:00.000-08:00

Let me start this like any other good article: by raffirming that I'm not a secret nazi racist. Now that's out of the way. So. I was reading an interesting article on bbc which quotes "Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics" when he predicts that

The human race would peak in the year 3000, before a decline due to dependence on technology. People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species.

An interesting concept. First, let's think about how a species could diverge evolutionarily while being in the same geographical place (i. e. all of earth). Let's say you're some kind of squirrel thing. To get food you could either dig up tubers or you could climb up a tree and get some nuts. Let say right now the population has arms that are okay at climbing and at digging. But if they could just evolve thumbs, they might be able to climb a lot better, but no longer be able to dig. Or they could evolve shovelly-hands which would help them dig a lot better, but they wouldn't be able to climb any more. The species might evolve into two, since the child of a shovelly-arm and a thumb-hand would be bad at both things.

Aren't we starting to "decline" already? By that I mean, if all our technology were removed, we would be less fit than a thousand years ago. Our feet can't handle the rough ground. More of us are born with diseases which are merely inconvenient right now, with medical technology, but would be fatal or very bad otherwise. You might argue that we don't do hardly any real stuff now. Our houses are built by human-operated machines. Our food is harvested by human-operated machines from farms. Most of our transportation is by car, plane, or train. Even birth is increasingly being performed through C-Section. Women with poor birthing hips, who in the past would not have been able to pass on their genes, are now fine. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of these things, but it does show our increasing reliance on technology.

However, with the increasing research in genomic technology, there are some quiet murmurings about the possibility of, say, making sure your baby doesn't get a certain gene. If you have sickle cell anemia, for example, you might be able to take your haploid cells to a clinic, and have them filter our the ones without that gene. But would parents always select the most "fit" child? That depends on what we mean by fit, exactly. Right now, in American society, one might say that blonde women are more fit, because they're perceived as more attractive. But other women can just dye their hair. But in the wild, blond hair is less fit for most of the earth. Sunny days require a dark sun-reflector, which black hair (and black skin) do pretty well. No, the parents will choose their children to be the most fit in the framework of the anticipated environment.

Drake's weakness

2010-02-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

Every astronomer and science nerd has wondered: are we alone in the universe? One such nerd (or was he an astronomer?), Dr. Frank Drake, came up with the Drake Equation, which tries to estimate the number of detectable civilizations there are in the galaxy. Let's take a brief look at the equation:

1. The rate of star formation in our galaxy

2. The fraction of those stars with planets

3. The number of life-friendly planets around those stars

4. The fraction of life-friendly planets that develop life

5. The fraction of life-full planets that develop intelligence

6. The fraction of civilizations that broadcast detectably into space

7. The length of time such detectable civilizations exist

We are supposed to take the product of these seven terms, and that will tell us the number of detectable civilizations at any given time in our galaxy. But maybe you've noticed a certain earthling-centric bias built into this equation? It assumes that the only place life can exist is on a planet, near a star. Because that's exactly how we are. Now, let me assert that life could hypothetically take on many different forms. Instead of water-based life, we could have ammonia-based life. Instead of having cells, cell-less viruses might be considered alive. There was even a meme - I mean, fad - in the '80s in favor of Clay Theory, which hypothesized that a certain type of clay-based life might be possible, where drying stream-beds crystallize, and those crystals that work the best and kick up the most dust will infect the most other stream-beds. Crystals are just a pattern in the clay, but our own DNA and cells are just patterns of the same few elements. Consider the latest type of marketing, "viral videos". A company will make a funny/cool video promoting their product, then wait for college kids to stumble onto it and send it to each other like wild fire. The company pays almost nothing, but gets lots of exposure. The idea of the video can be said to be alive, living as a pattern on our computers and in our brains. And we infect each other just like the flu.

What I'm trying to get at is that other life can be startlingly different from us. We shouldn't expect that all life in the universe is on a little planet about this big, revolving about that far from a star about this size. What about bigger planets? Moons? Dust rings around stars? Inside stars themselves? Or even in cold, distant space? One of these in particular - life inside stars - seems to me to be the most plausible. The mass of all the planets in the universe is much much smaller than the mass of all the stars, and that mass is a lot hotter. We know that matter-based life requires at least some kind of energy or entropy, so in general, hotter is better.

But then again, I'm no astrobiologist.

Dubai and armageddon

2010-02-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

According to Outer Space, the world-shaped islands being built in dubai are sinking into the sea. Just another piece of bad news in this country having a bad ~~year~~ ~~century~~ existence. For those of you just tuning in to the scene at United Arab Emirates, let's have a quick history lesson. In 1971, Allah and Garfield decided that we mortals needed a literal hell on earth to motivate us not to wake up our pet cats unpleasantly, and also not to be women.

The UAE is one of the only countries in the world where citizens are a minority of residents. In other words, there are more people from other countries living there than there are Emiratis. Don't worry, there's no path to citizenship for noncitizens. The only way for a noncitizen to get a visa is to have a job. The minute you lose your job, your lease contract will be invalid, your visa revoked, and you will be put on on the next flight home, often in police custody. Thankfully, some noncitizen residents don't have to worry about losing their jobs, because they are slaves. Planeloads of men from Pakistan and women from Sri Lanka arrive daily, lured by promises of high wages, low rent, and a good standard of living. When they land, however, their passports are confiscated by their employers. So if they try to flee, they will be arrested at the airport. Dubai doesn't have bankruptcy, so if you go in debt and can't pay it off, you go to prison. These ~~immigrants~~ imported people have to keep working, or they will be arrested, jailed, and then if they're lucky, deported.

But how do these people keep getting hoodwinked? This isn't the 1700s, where European ships could weigh anchor off the coast of the nearest island and lure the natives aboard with candy. These people have internets! And cable news! The answer is something we Americans (and, you know, the modern world) take for granted: freedom of the press. The only media is state-run. When, for example, the brother of Abu Dhabi's ruler was caught on videotape methodically and ruthlessly torturing someone, the entire incident was not reported by the UAE press, and blocked on the whole internets. And when that man was acquitted and his accusers convicted on charges of drugging him (presumably their fetish is getting run over, electrocuted, and having things stuck into sensitive places, and then having it videotaped and broadcast globally), that was also covered up. [NOTE: if you do watch the video, it's extremely graphic. That's why I didn't post a link. Just google "uae torture".]

The media instead runs stories such as "Oman Divorce Rate Drops 12%", in which we are informed that the corresponding "rate of second marriage" has risen by 10%. They even interview a female marriage counselor, to ask why that is. She tells us that first wives have only themselves to blame for causing their man to lose interest. As if you could help being 55! A 55-year-old woman cannot be as young, wrinkle-free, athletic, and fertile as a 20-year-old. It's just not possible. But this is the image presented in the media. What's fed to kids in school is even worse. Any mention of Jews or pigs is forbidden. No sex education, of course, but also no real history. The history they present in their schoolbooks is about as complete as the one I gave earlier in this post. As a student, if you fail your Islam course (which is required for many children) you have to repeat the grade, but you can fail your math, chemistry, and physics without worry.

Some say that the justice system is improving in the region, but you may have heard about the most recent in a long line of outrageous cases? An English woman in Dubai for a Christmas vacation with her fiance. She passed out drunk in a hotel bathroom, and was raped. When she reported it, she was arrested for having sex outside of wedlock with her fiance. She was advised to marry her fiance immediately and drop her rape charge, otherwise she would be detained and probably jailed. Or these was this tragedy, wherein a French boy was offered a ride from a (citizen) friend and schoolmate. But the car also contained two (citizen) convicts. The three of them took him to a desolate stretch of desert and raped him. When he and his family went to police, they discouraged him from pressing charges and even raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity. On top of that, they delayed telling him for weeks that one of those convicts had tested positive for HIV four years earlier.

These people want it both ways: they want to keep their dogmatic conservative ideals of tribal islam, and at the same time want to promote this image of modernization and liberalism, so that they can can attract tourists and investors. They'll deport any foreigners with HIV, but they will conceal the identities of citizens with HIV. These three cases are only the most recent and notable of the injustices of the UAE. You can be sure that there are many more that are hidden by the state-run media, or guarded by the corrupt police.

One aspect of the culture of the Gulf States that I was abruptly confronted with recently is their sense of entitlement. Every business in the UAE has to hire a certain quota of Emiratis. Which means there will be fierce competition to hire you, if you're a citizen. That in turn leads to high wages, lots of power, and little responsibility. But you don't even need to work to get money, if you're a citizen. There's no tax for Emiratis, and they're given a yearly stipend, in fact. The stipend isn't much, but if you get married, you get a ton of money. And you can get married four times! It's this culture of irresponsibility and entitlement that contributed to the essential bankruptcy of Dubai (that's why the Burj Dubai , the tallest building in the world this year, was renamed: they basically sold its name for money). And this sense of entitlement spills over into nieghboring Saudi Arabia, where King Fahd University sent me several emails informing me of employment opportunities. I don't know why they think they are entitled to directly spamming all potential employees, when every other university sends a little letter to the department head, who puts that letter in a large sheaf of letters, and sets that in a public place so we can go look if we're job-hunting. I went up to look at that stack of letters, and discovered that King Fahd's was special: two pages pinned to the cork-board, where literally hundreds of similar letters are collected in a sheaf together. I don't know how they wrangled special treatment here, in one of the departments of a premiere American public university.

What use is a corn cob?

2009-06-18T16:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I had corn on the cob (with ribs and salad - possibly some subconscious recognition of summer). Corn was 3 ears/dollar, so that's pretty cheap, right? Or at least, cheaper than chicken ($4/lb or so). Get home, rip off the leaves from each ear, de-silk it (NOT using Rachel Ray's method), boil it, gnaw off the kernels, then toss out the cob. But wait! Looking at the huge mound of corn leaves and corn cob, it seems like I didn't really get my $0.33 worth. Maybe I can use the corn cob in some other food, or in any way at all. Otherwise, it seems like such a waste.

Googling reveals a few bleak possibilities:
If you have red corn cobs, you can make a corn cob jelly that doesn't seem to have much promise. What else, google? Someone named Christine has a recipe for Corn Cob Stock which actually looks pretty good. I haven't made it (yet) but the problem I can foresee is that the cob will STILL be there, unused, and only a small amount of it will have been leached out to go into the stock. Isn't there anything we can do to use this thing? Answer me, google! Apparently, people used to use corn cobs as toilet paper. I can see that. Hmm... Well, the corn cob contains lots of wood and starch. Maybe we can ferment them and make ethanol? Maybe if I just grind it up in the blender, add some yeast(?), and leave it to ferment for a while, then distill it, I can basically make vodka.

So far we have toilet paper and ethanol. Any more suggestions?

Is Captain Obvious the editor?

2009-06-08T18:20:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while I stumble across a gem like this one, which is a Physorg article with the title

Study suggests obese women should not gain weight

As it turns out, this article is only 60% as stupid as it sounds. They found that obese pregnant women don't need to gain weight to have a healthy baby. By the way, props to Kierston for finding this one. Next up, Kierston also found this gem, also from physorg:

Plant-based, low-carb diet may promote weight loss and improve cholesterol levels

Really? Cutting down on carbs, meats, and dairy (and mushrooms, I guess) will help your health? Someone should tell my dietician, who suggested a high-carb, no-vegetable diet (not really; that would be retarded). Next, moving away from physorg, we find that Wii Sports burns fewer calories than the real thing and apparently we need an article from The Washington Post telling us that obama is time's person of the year. It's not enough that Time themselves actually ran an article to this effect (yes, it's meant to be as dry as a burned cracker). Finally this cnn article explains that the anonymous people of the internet can be mean.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Any other obvious headlines out there?

Shameless Plug: YogurtLand

2009-06-06T12:28:00.001-07:00

Yes I saw the light yesterday. Victor convinced me to try some frozen yogurt from "YogurtLand" (at Bancroft and Telegraph, for those of you in the Berkeley area). It's very simple (and amazing): you grab any one of three sizes of container, the smallest of which is the free sample container. If you use one of the two real containers, then you serve yourself some soft-serve frozen yogurt in a variety of interesting flavors (like Ghirardelli chocolate), top with any kind of toppings you want (fresh fruit, cubes of cheesecake, cubes of brownie, sprinkles, cereals, etc). Finally, they weight the conglomerated mass and charge a flat rate: 30 cents/ounce. A normal sized, well-topped yogurt thing is like $2-3. Excellent.

The first in my series of shameless plugs.

Literature, part 1: What is it?

2009-06-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

The new PhD comics got me thinking about literature. What is it good for? First, let's try and sort out what things are and aren't literature. Camera instruction manual: not literature. Thermodynamics textbook: not literature. "The Telltale Heart" by Edgar Poe: literature. Dictionary: not literature. So the rule so far seems to be a story, which may or may not be true, that is read purely for enjoyment.

But what about "All the King's Men" by Robert Warren? In high school I was assigned to read it, and if you managed to trudge through it, well you have much more stamina and tolerance for unpleasant things than I do. But even if you enjoyed that book, there must be some book that you were assigned to read, but didn't enjoy. The goal in these English classes was to ... make sure we can read? make us think critically about hidden meanings? make sure we can express ourselves clearly? I think it might be that last one. But where does the literature come in? Why not read passages from Transport Phenomena (2nd Ed) (by Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot - best book ever!), and analyze those? Anyway, this means that even things we read that we don't enjoy are still considered literature. So let's modify our definition: "Literature tells a story."

What does Wikipedia have to say?

Critics may exclude works from the classification "literature," for example, on the grounds of a poor standard of grammar and syntax, of an unbelievable or disjointed story-line, or of inconsistent or unconvincing characters. Genre fiction (for example: romance, crime, or science fiction) may also become excluded from consideration as "literature."

So it can be unenjoyable, but it can't have a disjointed storyline (like "Slaughterhouse Five," which appeared in the Time magazine list, '100 all-time best English-language novels written since 1923'). It doesn't even need to have a purpose, does it? In fact (if I may be allowed to build my straw man), purists might argue that a real work of literature must not have any purpose. For example, this straw purist might read a hypothetical short story, in which the main character stops at one point to enjoy "an ice-cold Pepsi. Man, nothing quenches my thirst on a hot sweaty day like today quite like Pepsi. Oh man, that's good and refreshing." The purpose, obviously, is to plug this brand. But if it's got a believable storyline and realistic characters, then is it still literature? Maybe not. What about a parable, a story with the purpose of teaching kids moral values? If it's well-written and teaches "good" morals then everyone supports them, right? Like the tale of the tortoise and the hare. But if it teaches, I don't know, racism and violence, but is still well-written, is it still literature? You tell me, straw man: "No, it's not!" he might croak.

OK, let's be fair. Whether or not something is literature seems to be a matter of opinion, and so we can't expect that all definitions will be consistent.Here's what we've got so far: "Literature tells a story (well)." It doesn't have to be true, it doesn't have to be enjoyable, and it doesn't need to have any sort of purpose.

Any of you out there secretly love literature and want to stick up for it? Comment below.

Nunchucks: Why are they illegal in CA?

2009-05-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

I will neither confirm nor deny my possession of wooden nunchucks at my residence in California. But I will say this: they are about as dangerous as a baseball bat. Guns are legal in California. Knives, pitchforks, sharpened sticks are legal in California. But there is one weapon so amazing, so dangerous, so concealable, to which there is NO defense, that a state law is required to keep it under control. Even the Sansetsukon, which is just a pair of nunchucks with an extra nunchuck on one end, is legal in CA. But the almighty nunchuck is forbidden. Looking at the picture of Bruce Lee, though, sort of helps you imagine what these people were thinking. Keep in mind Bruce Lee is from California, and he can actually play ping pong with a pair of nunchucks. (I'm told that this video isn't real, so watch this one instead; he whips them out at 1:20)

Try and remember what it was like in the dark ages when you could legally tie two sticks together. You're leaving your friend's party at midnight, walking to your car, when a comical accent says behind you, "Giv-a me all you money!" You turn around, and a vaguely Asian mugger is brandishing nunchucks at you. You try and defend yourself using your gun, but as everyone knows, nunchucks repel bullets. Your knife is equally useless. They find your body the next morning, covered with nunchuck-shaped gashes.

This law is particularly ironic considering that, according to wikipedia, nunchucks were probably adapted as a weapon (from a farming tool) because of a ban on edged weapons. Irony, thy name is California Penal Code. Next they'll ban blunt objects longer than 3 feet. All trees will be burnt., all femurs broken.

By the way, if you haven't looked at the wiki page for the Sansetsukon, or the bruce lee video do so now. They're pretty cool.

Forrest's sarcastic book reviews: "A Man in Full"

2009-05-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many sarcastic book reviews. Today I will review Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full. Some quick stats:

pages: 742
year release: 1998
believable characters: 0.4
entertainment value: 0.0

I would start this paragraph off with a spoiler alert, but the book has no plot. Tom Wolfe uses "reporting techniques" to write this entire novel, and it shows. Almost all of the first two hundred pages consist of endlessly detailed descriptions of people and their places. I didn't get much further than that, but in order to pass the course I was taking I read a quick summary. If you don't include all the crappy description, the book is about four pages long. It's as if Tom Wolfe watched ten minutes of "Days of our lives" and decided to base an 800-page colossus on it.

"But," you might argue, "detailed descriptions have some merit!" Yes, if you're describing interesting or beautiful things. But not a dingy Atlanta apartment, with the sniveling tenant inside, who has a nose like a harpsichord and boots to match. The ceiling fan spins like it's got somewhere to be, but the grit on the door speaks volumes about the ...

It goes on like that for the rest of the book, and makes about as much sense. Squeezed between the inane recitation is the crude outline of a plot. A wealthy, behind-the-times southern businessman has financial difficulties, and then goes crazy and joins a fringe religion. Various other characters are also described. In fact the whole book seems to have been written with Atlanta readers in mind, with a shout-out to every dull neighborhood between Chamblee (northeast of Atlanta, GA) and Oakland (just east of San Francisco, CA). But it seems like a successful strategy. Get all the rich white people who have lived in, or who have relatives from, Atlanta, to buy the book. "Moving to Atlanta? Here's a great book that (I'm told) is about Atlanta!" or "You've never been to my homeland, Atlanta? Here's a great book you have to read before you come!"

Worst. Book. Ever.

Until the next installment of of "Forrest's sarcastic book reviews." Any suggtions?

Kill all roaches: my legacy to humanity

2009-05-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

If you get to know me, you'll soon learn that I hate roaches so very, very much. Maybe it has to do with my childhood, or something. I don't know. But I know this: millions of years from now, when my body is nought but dust, my works (huge pyramid tomb, obelisks, and statues of me) utterly destroyed, and my name forgotten, I want my legacy to be the complete and permanent extinction of all roaches. That's how I want to make my unmistakable and timeless mark on the universe. And here's how to do it.

We need to create a mutation in them that has the following two effects.
1) If the individual receives only one copy, then the gene affects meiosis such that ALL of the individual's offspring receive a copy of the gene, rather than just half.
2) If the individual receives two copies (one from each parent), then the individual is stillborn or sterile.

We only need to introduce a small number of these mutated individuals into the world to start the process. The first effect will cause this gene to spread among any population of roaches. No matter how quickly they multiply, even if every female lays ten million eggs, they cannot escape this gene forever. The second effect makes sure all of them die once they have this gene. If you work out the differential equations, the result is an exponential decline, approaching zero. Of course, at low numbers, stochastic effects dominate, and it's possible that all 10 of the "diseased" individuals will die in an accident, leaving 3 "healthy" ones. But then a lack of genetic variation should help us, and the same stochastic effects might favor us by just finishing them off.

Another effect which might harm our efforts is the mixed-ness of roach populations. If we introduce this gene into a population, and it kills that entire population before any leave to other groups to infect them, then we fail. Just like the ebola virus, our gene might be too lethal to spread successfully. In addition, we have to consider that there are several roach species. We'd have to execute this process for each species. But that gives us an opportunity to perfect our method of extermination.

Finally, we examine the possibility of ecological harm. Would the sudden disappearance of roaches disturb the environment? Yes. They are plentiful, eat stuff nothing else wants (dead leaves), and lots of other things eat them. But is it worth it? Lack of roaches, or ecological stability? I don't think it's that simple; the ecosphere can cope, other less repulsive things will start eating leaves and living in our walls (like cute little kitten-shaped insects, perhaps). But to make our difficult choice a little bit easier, I leave you with the (paraphrased) words of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not [have to deal with roaches] but [can play with kittens all day long]. I have a dream today!"

Easing the blow of rejection

2009-05-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. High school students are going through the rituals. Writing goth poems about each other, giving "tearful" goodbyes to their teachers and friends, telling their girlfriends that they want to pursue that long-distance relationship even though all they really want is someone to make out with when they visit home on the holidays. *inhale deeply* Spring is turning over into summer, and the graduation time has begun! Just makes you want to write a goth poem about it, doesn't it?

You can ask any new high school grad, though, and they'll tell you the college they're going to attend isn't the best one they applied to. It only makes sense to apply to schools a bit better than you think you'll get into, just in case. And a bit worse ("Safety schools", like the University of Georgia).

Applying to a school can be a difficult and time-consuming process. We bare our souls, write long essays, and pay cash money for their consideration. What do we get back? Just a letter, starting with the words "We regret to inform you..." Some people like to collect these, just to display them when they're successful, to sort of mash them in the face of the college which rejected them. But it's just not that interesting. "Oh, you're the CEO of Omnicorp, and you got rejected from Harvard. Hm. No, I don't really want to see the rejection letter, thanks. Ah, there it is. And Yale too? Really? So what do you do all day?" No, I envision a world where these rejection letters are exciting, interesting, and can be traded like baseball cards and stamps.

My vision: When you are rejected from a college, the president is obliged to enclose a photocopy of his/her butt. Yes, I'm serious. Humor me for a couple of paragraphs.

Think about it. Superficially, it seems like a hostile gesture. "You're so unqualified that I'll show you my butt, with the hope that you won't reapply, visit our campus, or do business with our alumni." But look a little deeper. It's a personal touch, something the printed-on "signature" fails to add. You're seeing something that only the president's spouse, doctor, parents, and other rejectees have seen. And it might provide an incentive for the president to lose some weight, or for the board of directors to choose a hot college president.

This convention would completely turn around the pecking order of colleges. Everyone has Stanford's president's butt-cheeks, but nobody can seem to get that picture of Dr. Michael M. Crow, the president of Arizona State. And it turns things around for students, too. That weirdo valedictorian of your high school probably didn't get a single butt-shot, but your pot-head loser buddy has plenty to share.

Foot fungus, thirst are the terrorists' victory

2009-05-20T10:18:00.001-07:00

If you've flown on a plane in the past 8 years (which you have), then you know what I'm talking about. Those people, who allegedly hate our way of life and want us to suffer, have succeeded. First (not chronologically), the shoe bomber. Yeah, he didn't blow up a plane with his shoes, but consider this. How many Americans have had to stop what they're doing, hunch their crippled, feeble backs over, and take off their shoes? And then walk barefoot right behind that guy with the terrible feet? (Those of you who know me know I'm talking about myself: terrible, awful feet.) It's a lot like death: absolutely everyone has to go through it, and we all look stupid and uncomfortable while it's happening. Next, the "drink bombers" or whatever we're calling them now. The people who tried to make a bomb out of liquids brought onto the plane in huge sports drinks bottles. They're the reason we can't bring on any liquids larger than 3 ounces. No drinks, no lotion, nothing.

How can we fight this new terrorist threat? Stop flying? Wear socks? Drive? Or we can turn these things around, by having airports offer free foot baths to everyone. You'd have to show up an extra hour early, but I might fly just to get a foot bath. Also: free drinks! Open bars at all airports. Imagine what the terrorists would think when their schemes only result in us engaging in more hedonistic pleasures they hate so much: alcohol, enjoying that foot bath way too much, gambling on which of us will be "randomly selected".

How to make a great movie

2009-05-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

One of the theaters in downtown Berkeley has "Flashback Thursdays", where they play movies from a while ago, complete with previews of movies that came out around the same time. So a few weeks ago I saw "Starship Troopers" with some friends, and we all decided it was the best movie ever. We decide that about a lot of things. But anyway, I was trying to think of some kind of formula for amazing movies. While it's actually a terrible movie, "Titanic" made a lot of money. And of course the whole star wars franchise (except episodes 1 and 2) made some money also. Now, what do these movies have in common?

Hot women! And in some cases, topless, with pg-13 ratings so you can watch it without your parents knowing! But there are lots of movies with topless women, and not all of them are awesome movies. Let's "randomly" choose some more great movies everyone loves. Star Trek has, like, 30 movies and 10 tv shows. Yes, Seven-of-Nine is very sexy, but most Star Trek movies and shows didn't have very many sexy moments (or young women at all). Unless you're into Shatner.

What do Star Trek, Star Wars, Titanic, and Starship Troopers have in common?

Spaceships! Okay, maybe not "Titanic", but the others do. And we love our spaceships. So our equation becomes "hot women+ Spaceships = blockbuster". Now I just need to work the (truly) best movies of all time in somehow, the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Hmmm...