Thursday, April 30, 2009

Lost Again

And now a few words about the TV show LOST:

First, since Faraday died in his present but his mom's past, does that mean that in her present she instantly has the memory of killing Daniel as a young woman as well as memories of raising him? Desmond had a memory of Faraday talking to him at the hatch from his past that suddenly came to him when Faraday was time skipping. Desmond had this new memory at the exact time in his present as Faraday's present frame of reference as though they were both running concurrently. This is my precedent for believing this. Either way, kinda weird.

Second, supposing the O6 are able to stop things from happening the way they originally did, what effect would that have exactly? I figure it this way. Supposing they were able to travel back to a time shortly before flight 815 they would still have memories of all that happened right, since it is happening to them all in their present time? They just would be able to live their lives after getting off in Los Angeles like they would have had 815 not crashed.

I'm also wondering about Charlotte. Supposing she leaves the island and it turns out that 815 doesn't crash, she would have no reason to visit the island post crash and thus would not be caught up in the time skipping. But she did die in her present, so would that mean that in late 2004, wherever she is in the world, she would die at that same time since she couldn't live after a point in which she would have died? Or do the rules change because she was time skipping? And would this apply to everyone who has died on the island after the crash of 815?

My head is swimming a bit so I'm hoping I can make sense of it. If you're into LOST I recommend Lostpedia.com or The Lost Diary for great info and ideas about where LOST is heading. If you're not into LOST you've saved yourself 15 hours per week of viewing, reading, thinking, dreaming and otherwise pondering. Congratulations either way!

A Brief History of My Warped Mind

Sorry it has been a while since I've posted. Hope you all are still with me. I haven't had much to think about since I've been immersed in sports this last week with my Lakers and Ducks advancing in their playoffs. I did have a dream last night that got me thinking. I dreamed that I was trying to come up with something to write and got to thinking about time travel. I was trying to come up with the merits of time traveling forward or time traveling backward and which was easier and more likely. Here is my unedited version of what I came up with. Keep in mind this was all in my subconscious so this will either be genius or completely ridiculous.

I reasoned that if one were trying to time travel forward this could theoretically be done. As one travels close to the speed of light or accelerates near a large source of gravitational energy the effect on time is as follows. From the perspective of an outsider looking at the traveler, the traveler's time seems to slow down. From the perspective of the traveler, everything around him seems to speed up. Theoretically, if one could accelerate to such a speed and take a trip away from Earth and return to the same point later on, much more time would have passed for those on Earth than the traveler. Thus, the traveler would have effectively traveled forward in time. It would be difficult to do this for many reasons. First, no ship could carry enough fuel to reach these kinds of speeds. Second, hitting one microscopic particle at such speeds would completely obliterate the ship. Much more plausible would be unleashing a currently unknown force which would warp space causing a craft to pass through at high speeds (a la Star Trek).

Traveling back in time would be much more difficult though. To reach a particular place in time in the past would require warping space in such a way that it opens a wormhole to a specific point in space time (a theoretical four dimensions with three dimensions being space as we know it and the fourth time). This would prove much more difficult and thus is not likely to be done before we can travel forward in time. Unfortunately, traveling forward in time poses no paradoxical situations but is also less useful, as one can only see what he will miss were he to live his life as normal and would likely not be able to travel back to the point in which he came from.

I did dream all of that and will look forward to doing research on whether this actually makes sense or whether it was complete gibberish that Stephen Hawking would synthetically laugh at. It was one of the more interesting dreams I have had lately though. Sometimes I do wish I would dream more about sports more. My brain gets too tired to work too hard at night.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Blacked Out

Just a frustration tonight. I was going to watch the Ducks play on VS. network in HD. One problem. Due to FCC and NHL league rules that are longer than War and Peace, if a game is on a local station, it is blacked out on the national station. OK, not a huge deal right? Wrong. The local station, Fox Sports Prime Ticket is broadcasting the game in standard definition. So I spent good money on an HDTV only to have to watch a game in standard definition when a broadcast in HD is available? What a disservice to Ducks fans. Fox Sports is allowed to be cheap and lower quality and we cannot vote with our remotes. Disgraceful! That being said, go Ducks!

Friday, April 17, 2009

Take Me To Your Leader

Recently I saw a documentary about possible alien contact with humans throughout the history of civilization ranging from indigenous South American peoples to Egyptians, to Mayans and others. The supposition was that the pyramids, buildings and technologies that these cultures used derived not from the human mind but from the minds of aliens visiting these early civilizations based on the idea that no human of that time could have conceived of such wondrous and revolutionary ideas. It was interesting to say the least and while I'm not a firm believer it did get me thinking about a few things.

First of all, who is to say that humans couldn't have come up with such wonders as the great pyramids, Stonehenge and the Mayan calendar on their own. Certainly Albert Einstein was a genius of the highest order but certainly he is not the smartest human being to live is he? Some would argue that Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century and Leonardo da Vinci of the 16th Century were just as smart, if not smarter than Einstein. It stands to reason that history is littered with individuals whose genius far surpassed those of their peers. Certainly there were such geniuses in the Roman Empire, Egyptian and Mayan civilizations. Why would it be unreasonable to think that a group of smart Egyptians, whose only job was to engineer a lasting monument to the great Pharoah Kufu, would be able to conceive the idea for the pyramids within a decade's time?

When comparing the intelligence levels of humans now versus 100,000 years ago it is certainly easy to make the claim that the overall potential of intelligent thought is much higher now that it was then. But 4,000 years ago? Certainly as a species we haven't yet evolved so far, or previous peoples were so far devolved, that the great wonders and structures of the past could only be built with the help of an advanced civilization from another planet or corner of the universe. Preposterous.

Does this mean I belive that aliens haven't visited Earth? Indeed it does. If they had visited for such long periods of time and made contact with so many people wouldn't we have 100% definitive proof that they had visited us? Certainly a civilization advanced enough to send spacecraft from past our solar system to visit us might be clever enough to escape our detection a few times, but thousands of times each time they abduct a hick from Kentucky and give him or her a probing? Not likely. Also, who is to say that such an advanced species and civilization would harmlessly observe us like we were an interesting animal species (which we are)? If their nature is anything like ours they cannot simply observe said creature but would find a way to exploit or kill it. Certainly if we were to make contact with an alien race it is likely they would not be entirely friendly to us and would likely posess greater powers than we would have. Does that sound like a wasp's nest we want to be poking at?

Naturally, you may be wondering if I believe that aliens exist. Well, I do. Here is my reasoning. Life on Earth sprang up almost as soon as it could have given the conditions of the early periods of the planet. As soon as temperatures were, well, temperate enough to support life, the first twitches of living matter began to burst forth into creation. If one were content to believe we are the only life in the universe it could be easy enough to explain away by saying God planned it that way. But then why would God also create bacteria on Mars? To jerk us around? Certainly the bacteria must have been created during a period when the atmosphere and conditions on Mars were more conducive to life. If this happened on a planet close to us certainly it might happen on other planets with conditions similar to ours.

What are the odds this would be the case? Glad you asked. This is all merely speculative of course because nobody can be sure what the state of planets is on a universal scale, especially considering we are only now discovering planets that are 500 light years from us and that the universe extends in all directions around us for more than 10 billion light years. But here it goes. There are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies each having approximately 100 billion stars. This multiplies out to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. Let us now suppose that only 1 out of 100 have a planet orbiting with them. Out of those stars that have a planet orbiting around it, only 1 out of 1000 have a planet with a solid surface. Of those with a solid surface only 1 out of 1000 have the elements that we know necessary for life. Of those planets, only 1 out of 100 are the correct distance from its star to keep temperatures moderate. And of these planets with all the right conditions only 1 of 100 will develop life with only 1 of 100 of those evolving to intelligent life.

Doing the calculations that would leave 100 million planets in the universe which would give rise to intelligent life. This is being extremely conservative as it is likely the ratios are much lower and thus the number of planents fostering intelligent beings is likely much much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10,000. That would leave as many as 1 trillion planets in our universe with intelligent life developing on it. So it would seem the universe would be teeming with sentient beings. But seeing as how there are 100 billion galaxies, that would leave only 10 planets in each galaxy harboring intelligent life. So as we see, beings who know they are special are still few and far between. Yet another reason I believe we haven't been visited yet.

Let's not be so naive as to think that we are the only ones alive in the universe able to take a step back and examine our place in it. Let us also not be so quick to believe that we are smarter and better than those who came before us simply because when we look at a calendar it reads 2009. Human beings have always been special and are as special now as they ever have been, though maybe not as special as we think.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Warming Up

Funny how the smallest things can set the brain in motion. This morning my daughter wanted to play "Arctic". I'm not even sure what that means but it did get me thinking. Recently I've read a few articles that have come up about global warming. I know what you're thinking, but I swear that this isn't the usual opinion. I'm not here to argue about whether or not the global temperature is rising. For the record, I think it is but not as quickly as many alarmist scientists would have you believe.

The reason for this post is to discuss whether or not the global temperature rising would be a bad thing. Everyone seems so concerned with whether the temperature is going up and the thoughts of cataclysmic disaster that no perspective seems to go far beyond this. Nobody in the media will dare disobey the party line and suggest that the temperature going up is anything but the worst disaster in the history of human civilization. I disagree.

In Earth's history, there have been tens and even hundreds of millions of years where the global temperature was much hotter than it is now. There were no polar ice caps, no glaciers, and much of the land surface was covered in savannas, deserts and jungles. There weren't many evergreen forests or harsh winter conditions. Many have argued that in fact this was the way Earth was for most of its history and that right now we are in a moderately cool period. It is very possible that we are heading for such another period right now. The truth is that nobody knows for sure and anybody who can claim to know for certain is lying.

Some of the theories for what will happen include further melting of the polar ice caps, rising ocean levels, droughts, floods, more and stronger hurricanes, famine, nuclear war. Ok, maybe not the last one, but all of the other predictions have been repeated over and over and over on television, online, in the papers. If all of these things were to happen in the next century or two they would prove to have very bad consequences for us human beings. People would die, buildings would be destroyed, whole towns could be wiped out. As bad as this would be for us, would it really be so bad for the planet?

When wildfires burn in the western U.S. they are a disaster because people have chosen to build homes in areas succeptable to them. Sea levels will rise if the polar ice caps melt but that is only a bad thing because we have homes and businesses on the water's edge. An outsider looking down on earth from an altitude of 30,000 miles would not notice anything of significance to the overall health of the planet and would not be able to see the suffering of people below. Humans have not been on the planet but for a brief sliver of time. We will be gone long before Earth itself meets its demise in the outer gas layers of the Sun.

We need to accept that if things are warming up, there will likely be little we can do to slow down the momentum. Instead, we need to be focusing on ways to protect ourselves from the results of such a rise in temperatures. Not to be some kind of a granola lover or anything, but I think sometimes we do need to take a step back and realize that we are not the end all or be all of this planet. We need to learn how to adjust to what Earth is doing, rather than hope that Earth adjusts to what we are doing. Accept and embrace global warming and the fact that we don't have to go back to living in caves and straw huts to do something about it. Instead we just need to go forward in our lives and work with Earth, realizing that we are but small creatures on a large planet. Adapting our lives around Earth and not the other way around is the key to our survival.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Random Thoughts

This will run a little longer than my previous posts, so make sure you have a little bit of time to really read through. Hopefully it will make sense.

Lately in sports every team has gone to great measures to try to find the latest way to get an advantage. With video everywhere and constant analysis of games, it is harder and harder to hide your weaknesses and tendencies. In baseball this is hardest of all. Teams scout games in person, assistants watch every frame of video over and over looking to see what a team does, how it does it, and when it does it. With all of this video espionage happening, is there any way for a team to prevent the world from knowing what it is going to do? Perhaps. If you have a basic knowledge of poker and baseball you will likely be able to follow the discussion with no problem. Even if you don't but enjoy numbers and new ideas, read on. If you have no inclination towards either poker, baseball, math, numbers or theories, then I won't be offended if you don't read this. Just check out my archive. I'll wait while you click the archive on the right. Still with me? Ok, let's begin.

In poker, the great players will randomize their play. Especially before the flop in no limit Hold 'Em, you want to disguise your play so your opponents will not know what cards you are holding. For instance when you are dealt a great hand like pocket aces, the tendency is to put in a good sized raise. If your opponents were not paying attention to what you were doing this would be the optimal play because you are putting in more money with the best hand. However, being that your opponents do pay attention to your play, if you raise every time with pocket aces your opponents may suspect that you hold aces whenever you put in a big raise. To counteract this you will need to just call with aces to disguise your play. Conversely, with marginal hands you will occasionally have to call or raise instead of folding so that opponents will not be able to know that you always have a good hand when playing. Pretty basic so far, right?

Going a step further, when do you decide to raise, when do you decide to call and when do you decide to fold? Well, you can try to mix up your play, but being human we tend to fall into patterns and eventually we will become somewhat predictable to the very observant. The way we get around this is to randomize play. For instance, you might decide to raise 75% of the time with aces and just call 25% of the time. How do you randomize? You look down at your watch and if the second hand is between 00 and 44, you raise. If it is between 45 and 59, you call. Even if your opponents knew you were doing this, unless they could see your watch, they still wouldn't know what you had on any given hand.

How does this relate back to baseball? Suppose you were in a situation with a runner on first base and 1 out. A manager might decide that with a runner on base he would want to have the runner steal 200% of the time and 30% of the time try to advance the runner with a hit and run play where the runner takes off on the pitch and the batter tries to hit the ball fair. So 50% of the time he will make some sort of move with the runner. So how will the manager decide which times to run and which not? If he tries to mix it up he may fall into a pattern. The best way is to, when the decision is made, glance at a watch and use the second hand to randomize the decision. Then, the opposing manager will never know fully when the move is coming and will have to either choose to be conservative and always play for the move, thus giving up position, or decide to ignore the possibility and make an attempt more likely to succeed when tried. It may be a slight advantage on any given time, but added up over the course of a season, it can amount to quite a lot.

This can also be applied to other situations such as picking a runner off of a base, bunting, or even whether to take the first pitch or swing. Many hitters either swing at the first pitch more than average or take the first pitch more than average. Knowing this, pitchers will throw more strikes to those who tend to take the first pitch and throw bad pitches to those tending to swing at the first pitch. Hitters will sometimes go against their own trend but this can lead to unintentional patters pitchers can pick up on. If a hitter randomizes this decision pitchers must make a choice. Let's look at some sample scenarios. We will ignore the idea of a pitcher throwing a ball when he intends to throw a strike and vice versa. These scenarios will likely cancel each other out.

The pitcher decides to throw a strike on the first pitch. The batter is swinging. The batter will either get a hit, end up with a strike, or hitting into an out. Let's give odds to each. Getting a hit will happen 50% of the time, ending up with a strike 25% and hitting into an out 25%.

The pitcher decides to throw a strike on the first pitch. The batter is not swinging. The pitcher will be ahead in the count. This will be a strike 100% of the time.

The pitcher decides to throw a ball on the first pitch. The batter is swinging. Either the batter will hit into an out, get a hit or will get a strike so the pitcher is ahead in the count. Odds of an out are 50%, getting a strike 40%, and getting a hit 10%.

The pitcher decides to throw a ball on the first pitch. The batter is not swinging. The pitcher will be behind in the count 100% of the time.

Adding up the percentages, and supposing the pitcher throws half strikes and half balls on the first pitch, a hit will happen 15% of the time. An out will happen 19% of the time. A strike will happen 41% of the time. A ball will happen 25% of the time. Outs happen about three times more frequently than hits on average during a game. During our scenario outs happen only about 30% more than hits rather than 300% more. And even if the ball is not put into play, the batter will only be behind in the count in 60% of those times. Not a bad result. Increasing your odds of getting a hit and not giving up a huge advantage in the count certainly puts you ahead of the game. This is a huge advantage which cannot be ignored.

Not to be lost in all of this is the psychological advantage you gain in the process. Typically, pitchers are deciding what is thrown and the batters must react. In this scenario, however, the batter knows what he is going to do and the pitcher must try to react to what he thinks the batter is going to do. This small distraction can cause bad results for the pitcher.

Not to say that this has not been explored before but I've never seen it and all of this is off the top of my head and based on the years of baseball I have watched. I do feel that there is a large upside to this approach and when utilized properly can swing a game and possibly the season. Just as a small edge exploited time after time can turn a losing poker player into a winning poker player, such can be the results in baseball. Whichever team can use this to their advantage will find themselves that much closer to a World Series Championship.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Too Many Choices, Not Enough Time

On the way home tonight I heard the song "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men. I recalled how that song stayed at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 13 straight weeks. This was later outdone by the group themselves on a collaboration with Mariah Carey titled "One Sweet Day". That song stayed at number one for 16 weeks. Imagine almost 4 months with the same song as the most popular song in the country.

16 years later I take a look at the current pop culture landscape or our great nation and am 100% confident that could never happen again. The cycle of anything pop culture related is so sped up now that hardly anything has a chance to really catch on before it is old news. If a song hits number one, it is there for a couple weeks, then another song replaces is. Movies open to a huge weekend box office, then fade the next week as people consume the next movie. It is a never ending cycle of out with the (not so old) and in with the new.

Why is this? Certainly our current go go go society feeds into this attitude. With all of us having such busy lives we are moving from one activity to the next, paying only limited attention to all things on the periphery of our immediate doings. Nobody sits and listens to the radio anymore. It is only something that is on in the background in the car. TV is watched while doing homework, or working from home. With Netflix, even movies are mainly watched in the home and sent right back out. There are just too many options and too little time to enjoy them all. We no longer have a few radio stations, 3 TV channels and a 4 screen movie theater in town. Now we have 50 radio stations (over 100 if you have XM or Sirius), hundreds of channels on DirecTV and 30 screen multiplex theaters.

We no longer have the patience to consume slowly and completely anymore. True classics aren't heard or seen by nearly as many people as even a moderate hit was fifteen years ago. The internet has allowed us to target information quickly and precisely, allowing us to live in our own bubbles, consuming only what we deem necessary and not leaving us time to enjoy again and again. We should all slow things way down from time to time, fully enjoy what we are taking in, and spread the word and get outside our bubbles so others may also enjoy.

It is interesting how the more we have to enjoy, the less we enjoy it.