The Ages of Sand

I read this very interesting transcription of a lecture that Douglas Adams gave at a conference in the late 90's. It's entitled 'Is there an Artificial God?'. He talks about some of his ideas of where our notion of God came from and also some personal opinions on it. That is interesting, but I found another idea that he brings up more interesting. The four ages of sand.

The ages are regarding our intellectual evolution throughout the years and how many of it is related to sand. I will summarize it here, but you should really take some time to read what he has to say, it's very intriguing and different.

The First Age: Up until the 15th century or so, we would take our view of the universe and the world around us from the church. Some high officials told us what to believe, told us we were not to question them, and so on. But someone took some sand, made it into glass, then formed the glass into a lens, and then made a telescope. This was the first time we were able to truly view the heavens with real accuracy. From this simple sand, we realized that the Earth was not the center of the universe, in fact it's not even the center of anything really, except for us. This was a revolutionary and counter-intuitive realization on our part.

The 2nd Age: Then, we took this same sand, and made microscopes. So instead of peering upwards and outwards, we began to peer inwards and discovered that our 'solid' world which we had taken for granted, on the sub-atomic level, is mostly made of nothing. This is another realization which is just as, or if not more, counter-intuitive.


The 3rd Age: After a few years, we began to take this sand, and process it into crystalline silicon, from which transistors, IC's, and the computer was created. This, again, completely revolutioned our world. We now understand from simple programming, that very complex and amazing results can come from a few lines of very simple code. The computer does much of the math and bitch work that we previously coud not do before. From this, we began to really understand complex ideas such as evolution. Instead of waiting generations for evolution to take place, we could simulate it and run the iterations very quickly to really see and understand this powerful process.

The 4th Age: He links this age with the internet (which is connected with computers and fibre-optic cable which of course come from sand). This mass communication has, as we all know, revolutionized our means and efficiency of accomplishing previously time-consuming tasks. Of course, one could write an encyclopedia on how the computer and the internet has changed our society and how we view the world, but I assume you understand.

So, out greatest intellectual achievements have really come from sand, the ground up rock that the Earth has stored and processed over billions of years. Very interesting idea.

I really recommend this lecture to anyone who really wonders why we believe, why we must regard God as an invisible creature who takes human forms, etc.

It is clear that talking about defacing the omniprescence of God is a very contrversial topic, and he understood this too, he ends the talk with 'You are now free to begin hurtling chairs around'. He really does have a good sense of humour.

I'm comin home tomorrow!!!! I'll see everyone real soon. read. think. enjoy. peace

Snipped the Mop

Well, I got my hair cut today. My hair was getting way too long, it was really starting to bug me, I couldnt ever see anything. I asked my friend Annalise to take the plunge and try cutting my mop.

It turned out ok, considering she had never cut anyone's hair before. She was kinda nervous, and surprisingly, I wasn't at all. You'd think it would be the other way around. Anyway, I got some pics of the event and so I figured I'd share it with the people of the web. peace

Deep Time

I found this cool PBS site on Evolution. It has some nice Flash animations of the history of the earth, it gives a good scope as to just how long 4 billion years actually is. I say if you have a half hour to kill check this out thoroughly, its a good one.

I also put it in my links of the week section. peace

5L of love

The 5L Mass

Yesterday a few of us went out drinking. This one bar serves these ginormous 5L jugs of beer. Now, 5L is an awful lot of beer, its approx 15 Canadian beers.

Anyways, a buddy Scott decided to go for it, and ordered one of these montrosities. I had a feeling he could do it, but seeing that beer go down slowly and slowly and him getting progressively drunker and drunker made me truly appreciate the event. Overall, I had myself a fun night.

After this place we headed to another party on campus here and drank till our hearts content. We went back to Ryan's place to enjoy some green and met all sorts of strange people along the way. I amost think that the randomness that occurrs is always the most entertaining part of any party night.

Oh yah, I almost forgot, a Canadian here Simon has been corrupted by the awful hairstylings that take place here. For an idea, check this out. its absolutely hideous.

HE was cutting his hair and decided to go Euro, I shudder just thinking of it. There was also some talk of getting a dirty moustasche contest going in the new year, it would be a good time, but I definitely would never get a chance with a lady for the entire contest, that I am sure of. And just thinking of how Alex looked in China also makes me shudder...ugh

Who loves ya baby?

Oh yah, one more thing, I will be landing in Canada in 6 days, Im really looking forward to seeing everyone again, its been quite a trip out here, and as much as 2 weeks is shorter than i would have liked, its plenty of time to get back to the roots. See ya soon y'all!

Project Censored.org

I came across this good news site, Projectcensored.org. It's definitely left sided, but has some interesting stuff.

A good example is this article on the proposed vote rigging of the 2004 American election. It raises some interesting issues... I for one get alarmed when a candidate recieved more votes in a district than registered voters, but that's just me...

I added it to my News links on the sidebar. It's worth a read.

Clinton's Speech on Climate Change

Bill Clinton speaks in Montreal on climate change. It's a bit long, but he's got the right idea.

Problems Resolved

So this whole browser issue was really starting to bug me, so I took it upon myself to completely rebuild the site from scratch. It took me many hours, but I eventually got everything I want in both Firefox and IE. It took alot of playing around, but I think it looks fine now.

I also changed the slideshow to some pictures from Cologne when I was there a few weeks ago.

I'm done with coding for some time now.

Europe at night!

I found this cool looking picture of Europe at night. It was composed of a couple day and night photographs of Europe but really captures our civilization nicely. If you are ever wondering of where this poor ol Canadian is at, take a look at this picture, zoom in maybe about 10,000 times, and you'll see my pretty mug staring you in the face.

It's a Mad World...

Slideshow

Ive been fiddling with getting a slideshow working on the sidebar. After a couple hours of fooling around, it seems that it works fairly well. As with all my coding adventures, it works lovely in Firefox but IE is having troubles. I won't go any further as to my opinion on this issue, but I have included a link to install Firefox for free. So if you don't have it yet, for the love of God man, get it! What are you waiting for?!!!

Ideally, I would like to have the slideshow run so that I could just post some pics to a folder on the server and have everything else take care of itself. To do this, I would need to upload a PHP file to my blogger folder which they wont let me do. Uploading pictures is a pain as it is. But my goal is to kinda have different picture shows every week or so. It probably won't happen every week, but I'll try my best. Im learning some pretty useful stuff here in terms of Javascript and HTML. Ive never really done this before and it's great practice as I will probably need it sometime in the future.

Again, if theres some major problems that I have missed, please let me know. And enjoy the show!

I really should start concentrating on school more...

Mama, Im coming Home!

I want to put out the news that I will be home for Christmas and New Years. I am landing in Canada on the 22nd and leaving for Germany on the 6th of January.

I am really looking forward to seeing everyone and catching up on the last few months. For the most part, I know whats going on in everyone's life, but I still can't wait to come back to visit.

Planned Events: Toronto Subway Crawl (if youre interested, let me know as its always good to have lots of people out, but be prepared to drink!). Ashley's house for New Years (word is he's bringing some Absinthe back from England, so the Green Fairy may be making an appearance). Lot's of running around from Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, and anywhere else that my adventure takes me.

As I no longer have a place of residence in Hamilton, I'm going to need a place to crash when I'm up there. If any of you have a spare couch or something semi-soft to sleep on, also let me know please. There's a special German treat for anyone putting me up, so either comment here, or just email me personally with whatcha got.

Nothing too exciting to report over here. School is still pretty light and unchallenging, but I start my labs soon so that will keep me busy for a bit. Ive been hanging out alot with other German and internationbal students here. Dinner is so much better when youre not eating alone in your room. peace out

Connections

I found this cool site through StumbleUpon.

It's a nicely connected web of information, which adjusts the items shown to what you prefer. It may sound strange here, but I guess you have to check it out for yourself. I threw it on my links of the week tab on the sitebar to the right.

Another thing, Ive decided that Im giving up trying to format the page to both IE and Firefox, I really don't know what IE's problem is, but it just doesnt do what my code tells it to do. Obviously, Firefox seems to understand what I coded, so it's not all me. Anyway, if you're viewing the site through IE, I suggest you get Firefox, I mean it's free, so there's really no downside to it.

This is gonna be short as I have class early tomorrow and I'd like to go. This last week I've been pretty lax on the going-to-class thing. A habit I don't want to get into.

Also, for those of you using another browser (Netscape, Opera, etc) if you could quickly post a comment on how the site looks through these, that would help me alot.

out

Yet another security flaw with IE

I read an article on slashdot.com about a security flaw with IE and Google Desktop. It shows that using a CSS script on the website, it can access and log information returned from your machine by Google Desktop. The guy who found it has created a page about it, explaining how it works and how his test page displays information.

There's a test page that can tell you if your version of IE is vulnerable or not. I tested it on mine, and it only got about halfway, it didn't go as far as the author said his script went, although it still accessed some data from my machine.

I suggest that you read his page first, before trying the test page to understand how the information is laid out, otherwise it may seem a little chaotic.

This, and combined with my recent problems with this blog in IE support my thesis that there is a significant difference between IE and other browsers, ie. FF. And that if possible, people should be using something else, like Opera.

I'd also like to extend a request that if my page is ever looking really out of place, and things arent working, please leave a comment including the problem and the browser that you use. I use Firefox and do all of my initial tests in it, and it works lovely, but IE is another story.

P.S. On a completely unrelated note, I had my first dream in German last night. Really strange, it's kinda got me in a daze this morning.

Some changes

Ive been working for the last day or so getting some Javascript expandable trees working in my links section. I will be updating the Links of the Week, well, hopefully every week. It works fine in Firefox, but its a little strange in IE. I don't know why, its outta my hands. For now, I'm gonna leave it as is, and try and see if I can fix it later on.

I also added a little winter theme. It cant be seen in IE, I dont know why. Why can't we all just get along?

I'm not a strong programmer, but Im so glad that other people like coding and have no problem sharing. Makes my life alot easier.

The other white meat

In theme with my Canadian politics stint here, a good friend of mine decided to take some matters into his own hands and inform the Canadian people about what our options are on voting day.

As I stated in a previous post, I am rather dissatisfied with the three major powers in Canadian politics, the Liberals, the Conservatives, and the NDP. I mentioned that I will probably vote Green.

But, did you know we have many more options than just the Green party as an alternative? Feeling a little leftist? Vote for the Communist party of Canada or the Marxist-Leninist Party. Like your drugs? There's always the Marijuana party. Are you an Albertan oil farmer pissed off that Ottawa is constantly thinking about themselves? Try the Western Block Party. Sick of all of em? Decline your ballot! I wasn't really aware of this option, but its a valid one. There's many different options available and we have a right to be as informed as possible. With today's advent of the internet, information is always available.

This is why VoteNobody.org was started. It's a brand new organization that aims at informing the voters of the different options of expressing our right to vote in today's democracy.

Give it a look see and sign up for the mailing list. I know Aaron pretty well, and I've always respected his views on politics. He knows what he's talking about. He's not out to tell you one way or the other, but to simply have all options in a single resource.

So give it a look see and help out with the cause. It's brand new and he needs some help on the battlefront. Happy reading!

Shunned by Google and no more free laundry

I wanted to try the Google ad service, Google Adsense. It's the standard Google ads that most of us have become accustomed to ignore. I simply wanted to see it working, and maybe if it was actually sucessful, i would make some beer money out of it, although I wasn't expecting to bring in the green from it.

Anyway, as per terms of agreement, Google inspects your site to make sure it is worthy of their ads, and mine failed. heh. They didn't like my references to 'drugs and drug paraphenalia'. So I got rejected...ouch.

I will try to lay off the drug references and see of they will like me then, but as the Germans would say, 'mal schauen', we'll see.

Speaking of Germans, I have been priviledged these past months to free laundry here. We pay with a card system, that we have to top off. Someone realized a way to scam the card readers, in which it would let you do laundry, but not take off any credit from the card. This was fantastic. But the clever Germans caught on, and switched the program to eliminate this. Now, Im stuck paying for laundry like a chump. It's not that much, like 3 Euros for a load to wash and dry, but still, it adds up, and I'm also cheap.

I also added this Google search bar to my index at the right. I have not been able to get good search results from my own page, maybe someone out there will have an idea. If you have a few minutes, could you try some search terms from my site and see if it gives anything? And if you have an idea as to why it doesn't want to actually search my site, please let me know.

gotta go, class is waiting...