Big Bang a Big Problem?

Turn your television to one of the highest channels it can tune to. Most sets go up to channel 125 or 181. Static, right? Well, turn the brightness and contrast down. WAY down. Lot less static, right? Well, what if I told you that 1 out of every 100 or so of those static dots is due to radiation left over from the big bang. How is this a problem? Well, this won't be filtered out when you're watching TV on a higher channels, so even with perfect reception, you'll still get static. Gets annoying when you're trying to watch reruns of the Golden Girls.

Dr. Math #1: Girls = Evil

Okay, everybody's seen the proof of why girls are evil. But, in the interest of practicing mathematical proofs written in English, I'm going to go into more detail on why this is true-or, to be more accurate, why all good girls are evil. The proof creates a restriction that it doesn't necessarily prove or disprove that bad girls are evil, but it's a conclusion that cannot be drawn from the proof. To begin, I'll state some axioms (statements assumed to be true), and a lemma, a statement too insignificant to be a fully-fledged theorem, but is required to be true for proofs that refer to it, and thus need to be proven itself.

Axiom 1: Positive values are considered good, whilst negative values are considered bad.
Axiom 2: Good will take on two meanings. The first meaning, which will be used in this article unless otherwise specified, is the opposite of bad. The second meaning is the opposite of evil.
Axiom 3: Bad and evil are not the same concepts. To be bad is to cause disruption in society, but to be evil is to seek personal gratification by means of being bad.
Axiom 4: Girls and women can be used interchangably.

Lemma 1: good -> not(evil) is false
Proof: To prove a statement false, all that is required is to show one true example which contradicts the statement. I propose to you Batman. He was certainly a good superhero, but in many ways he was also evil. Batman sought vengeance for his parents, and though it was the bad guys that killed his parents it was still a very evil act to do it in much the way Batman did (but alas, it was what made Batman so great but that's not my point). Lemma 1 proven.

Okay, now to get on with the proof. We begin with the common statement "women are time and money." Breaking this down into the logical portions, we get "women = time * money". Note that "and" can mean either addition or multiplication. In this case, multiplication is assumed because "time" and "money" have different units and cannot be added.

Now, where does one get money? Through a job. Most jobs are paid a rate based on the amount of time worked, thus time is directly proportional to money, or "time = k * money" for some constant k based on how big your paycheck is. Therefore, from "women = time * money" is equivalent to "women = k * money^2".

Returning to axiom 3, to be evil is to achieve goals by any means of being bad. Throughout history, it has proven time and time again that the common goal of evility is power, and power means money or, more accurately, money is the root of all evil. Thus "money = sqrt(evil)" or "money^2 = evil". Hence "women = k * money^2" becomes "women = k * evil" or "women are directly proportional to evil and how much money you make" and our proof is done.

To close, an interesting restriction was created based on socialogical assumptions during the proof. In order for money to be the square root of evil within the realm of reality, it requires that evil be non-negative (note that this isn't a contradiction, see lemma 1). Therefore, since evil must be a zero or positive value, and assuming you get paid at your job (thus you don't pay your employer) and the proportionality constant is either zero (you don't have a job) or positive, women must also be zero or positive. This creates two results: if you don't have a job, women are zero and you don't get one, or women must be positve or good. The latter case creates the final conclusion that "good girls are evil."

Life, the Universe, and All That Jazz

Somewhere in the western spiral arm of the galaxy (though to be fair, “west” depends entirely on whichever orientation the main axis of your body is in and, more importantly, the direction the majority of your heads are looking) lies a small blue/green planet inhabited by the descendants of an ape-like species. The average individual of this species is quite intelligent, having developed nuclear fission before the amazingly simple digital watch. However, on the whole, the species is mindbogglingly stupid, fighting countless wars over some “God” fellow and letting one man subtly dictate what would become possibly the most important technology for a good many years. This man is known to the people as Douglas Adams.

This technology is the Internet. Although Adams certainly did not invent the Internet, he imagined a system much like it, possibly without knowing so. The Internet is essentially a network of devices that allows information to be transmitted instantaneously across the globe. "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Adams' signature book, features something called the “Sub Etha Net.” The Sub Etha Net allowed for information to be transmitted almost instantaneously across the Galaxy. Developed just a few years earlier from the time of writing was a technology known as “ethernet”, which has become the de facto standard for networking computers. The similarities between “Sub Etha Net” and Internet over ethernet are astounding, from naming (from “aether”, the substance once thought to fill space) to concept (instantaneous transmission of information). It is unlikely that Adams was aware of what would become of the Internet, but perhaps the similarities influenced his readers to adapt the technologies and increase the popularity to the level that it has reached.

A major component of the Internet is the search engine. A single computer that will instantaneously look through all the computers on the network and find exactly what you are looking for. From music and movies to math and physics to how to get a date with a tree, there is very little information known to humans that cannot be found on the Internet. Search engines appeared much after "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was written, but may have been inspired by the other fictional device, the device for which the book was named: "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The fictional "Guide" was a book-sized device that could display information on any subject, from music and movies to math and physics to how to get a date with a tree, just by asking for it. Again, the similarities are striking. The probability of Adams predicting two very important technologies is very low, and perhaps even less probable is that a major theme in the real Guide was probability.

His influence extends even further throughout time. Forty-two, the arbitrarily chosen Ultimate Answer, is an important number in religion and even Adams' own life, adding to the improbability. Perhaps forty-two truly is the Answer, and humankind just hasn't realized it yet.

I wrote this for a scholarship essay, and I must say I'm quite proud of it. In three high school and two university English courses this is, by far, the best piece of prose I've ever written.

Chimera

Also known as "Darmok II: Bride of Darmok"

As any of you who use iTunes know, it comes bundled with QuickTime.

I don't use QuickTime. I don't like it. You have to pay to get full use of it, plus I have a video player that plays every format under the Tuscan Sun which, by a freaky coincidence, happens to be our sun.

So you can understand why I would uninstall QuickTime.

Unfortunately, "iTunes requires QuickTime. Please reinstall iTunes."

Thanks, Apple, your marketing division pisses me off once again.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

It all started some four years ago. A device was designed and was heralded and was widely considered the bext hunk of plastic and metal since the four-slice toaster. This device was revised and much improved three times over the following years, and alas, it had attained perfection. The only way to make it better was to make it cheaper; over time, production costs would lower as they always do and they could lower the cost of this perfect divice and allow many more people to bathe in its glory (as the price tag, though not overly high, was just outside the budget of many middle-class people). And this happened. The cost of producing this device was well under the price tag, and so profit margins were much higher than predicted.

This device is, of course, the Apple iPod. By it's fourth generation, it was perfect. I suppose the harddrive could be improved, or the battery life, but every device could use those improvements. But then when Apple decided to give its customers a break, they only gave customers with big pockets a break. They introduced iPod photo. It had three times the storage space and a color screen. You could view photos stored on the harddrive with it, but with a 2" screen and a $600 sticker (indeed, most of whom that could afford one casually probably already had a digital camera and/or cameraphone anyway, which can take pictures as well as view them), it was mostly a gimmicky cash draw. Okay, as useless as this was, the perfection-embodied black-and-white 20GB model was still offered, so let the baby have her bottle. iPod photo was not as big a mistake (in my opinion, 'cause these mistakes prevent me from owning one) as the following two.

Apple gave, again, people a break. This time they targeted existing potential iPod (base model) buyers, by giving the base model a color screen. Hmm... Let's see... Color screen is more expensive, base model stayed at the same price, therefore the base model with b&w screen should've cost less... Yes, it should have. But it didn't. Apple never brought in any new buyers, only gave potential buyers a gimmicky incentive that they wouldn't have any use for anyway.

And again, another break. Again, no lowering of price, but the new components definately cost more. These include a bigger, higher resolution, more refreshed screen; a bigger standard harddrive (30GB), a slightly smaller form factor, longer battery life, and Firewire support removed completely. All this makes each iPod cost about as much extra as they became cheaper to produce. Again, Apple could've brought in many new customers by making the iPod more affordable but they didn't. And so I still don't got one.

I reckon that, were Apple to reintroduce the black & white 20GB 4G iPod, it would retail for probably $250. With education discount, I could get an iPod for $342 Cdn, and I'd say that the high-def screen and other improvements tally $100 or so. The only thing is, the iPod Nano 4GB goes for $281, after the same discount. But I guess Apple has to make some incentive for their superfluous device (the smaller size of Mini/Nano is not worth the small price difference, especially considering the comparatively little storage space).

Alright, so this is what I call a "rant". Basically, all my entries will take one of a few forms. They may be psychosocialogical consequences of simple Physics (or any other science) concepts, such as the previous post. I might go on a spiel about companies disappointing me or impressing me. A humerous anecdote from time to time. Or maybe something completely different. What I won't do is talk about me. That will be over on my personal blog, and that tends to get boring.

In a Mirror, Darkly

When you look at yourself in a mirror, you're actually seeing yourself some 2 nanoseconds ago. In essence, you will always see a younger you, and wonder where the time went.

And if anyone remembers, ReBoot measured time culturally in nanoseconds like we measure in minutes.