Spelunking the Universe
Archive for April, 2009
Capitalism a sickly child.
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
People often speak of Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and the other 40-50 ‘isms’ that fill up our most well documented governments as if they are all built upon ideas that work well on paper but will never function with humans. That is somewhat true but it isn’t because of the nature of humans it, I feel, is more so the nature of ‘these’ humans. I imagine if there was a mass extinction and a new breed (cognitively) of humans rose to power some of the previously inefficient government forms would actually work.
However my point isn’t to debate that, at least not this time. I’m looking more at the wonder that is Capitalism. Capitalism is interesting for multiple reasons but few outshine the fact that people refuse to admit that it is a terrible regulation system. The idea of the Free market, as far as I’ve ever read, has never worked out. You have a short period of time where people think things are working and then a crash where tons of people have their livelihoods destroyed. Then you move on to another period of time, a crash, and the cycle repeats over and over. However when asked how nice Capitalism is most people in positions to speak will say it kicks the shins of all other setups.
Indeed the idea of Socialism makes many people on television turn red with rage and rant on about how it doesn’t work and how everything will fall apart leaving us with nothing but fire, death, and babies for dinner (I’ve heard all 3). However these same people refuse to acknowledge the huge problems with Capitalism, indeed it is a terrible system. The free market tends to lead to not much more than corruption and those problems only grow over time till large businesses collapse and many people loose everything they’ve worked for. A large percentage of people live under the poverty level, there is a huge separation of wealth where a very small minority (fantastically small even) gathers almost all the wealth of the country.
I think the reason that Capitalism is so popular is not because it works. Honestly if a race horse worked as well as Capitalism the poor thing would be shot. It is popular because of the possibility of great wealth that stems from it. A true communist country would not have fabulously rich people, a true socialist country likely would not either, however in the realm of Capitalism comes that dream of glory and greatness. The irony is that it is so popular for this factor and yet so few people every truly gain from it.
To me the free market and capitalism are no different than their siblings. They only truly work on paper, indeed these are merely sickly children that are kept alive by nothing more than hope. It is a lack of hope that caused the recent crash in the US, had nobody cared that Bear Sterns was being as foolish and corrupt as it was and nobody had withdrew their investments it would have never gone under. Likewise if I’m not mistaken the great depression was a similar issue with people fearing banks not having their money so everyone tried to withdraw.
At any rate I am somewhat interested now to try and fashion my own government system. See how well I can make one and get some input from the folks who frequent these pages.
Brain full of Pain
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’m having some issues tonight with a pretty vicious headache. I’ll try and make tomorrow yummy enough for your mental tummy to make up for this slip.
However in the spirit of blowing your mind here is an article or two from the NYT that I thought were interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07itch.html?ref=science – The Science of Itching
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/politics/10morano.html?ref=science – Rush Limbaugh Employee attacks Climate Change Awareness (Interesting)
Enjoy the reads, one sparks thought and the other sparks a bit of distaste in me (I imagine you can figure out which is which).
Don’t try this at home.
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I was watching a show called “Time Warp” on Discovery today, all-in-all it is an interesting show however one particular phrase caught me off guard…at least the first 12 times or so it was said. During the show a man put his arm in a bear trap, they threw things at an exposed wood chipper, and they also took apart a lawn mower so that the blade was exposed on almost all sides.
I really feel this warning has gotten out of hand. If someone watches a guy put his hand in a bear trap and goes out to try it they would have inevitably died early. All the television did was give them an idea, they would have found something regardless to do and it may have ended up being far worse. If a kid takes apart a wood chipper, and dives at the thing like a thrown mackerel…some event would have happened with some object at some point regardless.
There is only so much you can do to keep certain levels of stupid alive. At a certain point you start creating a dangerous dynamic. Imagine if well over 50% of the US required warning labels to survive, this would be catastrophic for the future of the country. Indeed you’d likely find people expecting the government to fix everything, the country building an impossibly large debt to a point where no amount of income could pay it off, and people would start thinking that having health care and education for all is a terrible terrible situation regardless of the copious examples of how when used properly it works fantastically.
Thankfully we aren’t there at this point but I do feel that this is something that really should be addressed. If you have to tell people that they shouldn’t swallow a live viper then there is a very very serious problem.
The History Crushing Power of Our Planet
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
There seems to be a belief amongst a sizeable group of people that the Earth has never had the poo beaten out of it by meteor rocks. We look at the moon and see this abused sphere dancing around us and it gives the illusion of being our shield. While it is true that many of the things that have pummeled it would have hit us it has hardly been perfect.
The Earth has an amazing ability of erasing everything that happens given enough time. Plates are constantly moving and sliding under one another, melting away and later sprouting up to fill cracks somewhere else in a seemingly endless cycle. It is not unlike a conveyer belt, essentially it is convection with molten and not-so-molten rock instead of hot water or air.
Very recently (Monday) Italy was hit with a large Earthquake, 6.3 Magnitude, while obviously human life is always the priority and I am not trying to trivialize that loss (which has reached nearly 300 last time I checked it is important to know the historical impact of these sort of events.
The Earth in a moment can flatten Millennia of history. Structures that have survived world wars and century upon century of erosion leveled with the greatest of ease. It’s humbling to say the least. Something that humans must remember. No matter what we do, while we may end all biological life on Earth we will likely never leave a lasting scar on the planet. At least I’m fairly skeptical that we will.
(Image from NYT)
That is assuming we don’t survive long enough to have the core of the Earth finally cool completely (thus making continental drift nonexistent). But I ‘think’ that before that the sun will scorch the surface.
The Bone Reader
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’ve often wondered just how people know how a certain animal would walk when all they have is bones. Well low and behold my Dinosaur course (I for the life of me will never remember its technical name) has explained it quite well. I’m not sure if this will be a long update but it should be informative.
For those curious most of these images are snagged from the PowerPoint presentation which probably were initially snagged from Google images. Unfortunately I can’t cite them specifically better than that.
Dinosaurs were erect walkers, that is to say while reptiles such as the Comodo Dragon below actually have legs that first go to the left or right (away from the body) and then at the elbow or knee bend to go earth ward, Dinosaurs instead stood straight up and down on their four legs (think Elephant). Anyone who has seen this bone configuration will note that it requires large exaggerated body movements for the animal to move forward. There are various videos online of these animals moving and I highly suggest checking one out.
(Imaged from: elalmanaque)
But as I was saying earlier how do we know this? Well interestingly enough (and somewhat intuitive once you think about it) bones do not very greatly between organisms. There are a series of bone formations depending on a few strict walking options. You have the 45% comodo like stance, the literal 90% exactly comodo stance, the straight stance of an elephant or Gazelle like animal (or bipeds even) or perhaps 1 or 2 other variations that I’m not thinking about .
When you look at the leg bones of an animal that are in good condition you can discern which of these stances they would have used and it just becomes a matter of thinking like an architect.
On the left you have an alligator femur. It may be hard to tell from the image but essentially the top part of the femur that goes into the Alligators hip is essentially just one big ball. This is because nearly all alligators (and crocodiles) walk in the exaggerated arcing motion (again think Comodo if necessary). The reason for this is that no other shape would effectively work in these large circular motions but a sphere, at least no other shape that is easy to make 
…evolution is a lazy lazy mistress (more on that tomorrow maybe). However on the right you have the bone of an erect walker, in fact doubly so because it is also a bipedal walker, that is-you guessed it-a human femur. Alright…I don’t know if you DID guess it but I have always wanted to put that in a post.
The human femur join basically plugs in like a socket, because it is only moving in one plane (if you are lucky haha). Likewise the knee joint is very specialized with a channel down its center because all dragging happens forward and back and the channel probably provides a region for adequate cushioning. For a better visual let me grab the image that actually inspired this post.
This is an amazing shot that seems to perfectly portray my point. The knee joint on a human or any upright walker is made quite specialized. It REALLY does not want to go to the left or right and anyone who has ever had their leg do that can tell you it is a terribly painful experience.
This is why we know how dinosaurs walk, and indeed we most likely even know how they swam. All animals in any particular walking style swim almost (if not exactly) the same! It’s really fascinating, you can take a snake that has is not native to lakes or ponds and chuck it in. You’ll find it swimming along like absolutely any other snake. You take any reptile or lizard with the same arm and leg setup of crocs or Comodo’s and they will swim exactly the same. These little bits of info are courtesy of the professor of course, I just felt they were important enough to get out to you folks.
In a closing note since this should pretty much inform people is something else extremely fascinating to me and frankly something that should be brought up in every evolutionary discussion. Has anyone ever wondered why all sea mammals swim in a different manner than any other type of sea creature? A dolphin swims in the same manner as a Gazelle runs! It’s really fascinating to watch a dolphin swim straight along a path and then watch a gazelle run down a straight path. You will see the exact same body motions between the two organisms. At some point long ago a land mammal, for whatever reason, returned to the sea and structurally it changed enough to streamline to the water however, and this is what I find so intriguing, it didn’t change the way that it moves. Essentially if a dolphin had legs instead of a tail fin I’m sure it would swim even more hauntingly like its land based siblings.
Indeed who needs to imagine?: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/481248/ . The kid in this video actually exists, this is his record breaking performance. You’ll notice how he is armless and motions through the water almost exactly like a dolphin. Fascinating stuff.
Revisiting Global Climate Change
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
While I’ve discussed this before the topic popped up recently while I was surfing through Amazon. Essentially it broke down to two groups of people, people who are fanatically against anything wasteful and those fanatically against anything changing at all. Either group has their problems as is true with any dichotomy of extremes. However in the discussion there was something that I found odd.
While I agree that it has been proven we can do just about anything in a decade or less if we actually want to (see: Obliterate an Entire City or Landing on the Moon) it doesn’t seem like a reasonable expectation for just about anything that we cannot brag about or threaten other countries with. It’s the unfortunate reality of a nation that spends more than half its budget on weaponry.
That aside I’m hard pressed to see the negative aspects of actually switching over to renewable energies. Even if we are to accept that humanity has no effect on the worlds climate, which seems a bit naive but even given this possibility, what do we have to gain from using resources that are limited.
Unlike Oil, Gas, and Coal sources like wind and solar should be around for as long as we are alive. If either ceases to be we can be sure that power will be the last of our worries. There is however a very unfortunate trait that humans (almost regardless of global region) express and that is the general desire to wait until critical mass before attempting to fix a situation. We kept building bigger bombs until suddenly we had the ability to end most (if not all) life on Earth, the US waited far too long to address the issue of AIDS which may have greatly lessened its impact, many ecological disasters were ignored until the regions became useless. Indeed the Dust Bowl was hardly an event that happened overnight, nor are the rather consistent economic crashes in the US and abroad.
The (somewhat morbid) humor in it all is that overall there would be far more financial gain overall to not wait till the last minute. Each time it only provides the illusion of overall gain with the actuality being that an extreme minority come out well with the vast majority being decimated either fiscally or literally.
The idea of infinitely harvestable energy is so exciting that I’m surprised people aren’t all over it. Imagine a society that has no limitation on the power it generates. Anytime new projects arise the nation could place more solar paneling down. Likewise with every new innovation in these energy sources we could improve our output. This would free up massive amounts of money to be put towards other important avenues.
But perhaps I’m just being too idealistic. However I can think of no case in the universe where something, living or not, can continually intake without an equal or higher outtake and not cease to function. All organisms die if they take in absolutely anything faster than they can use or expel it and all matter will eventually collapse upon itself if more matter is put on than can be expelled. The Earth is no different and it bothers me that people think it is special.
Invasion! Or lack thereof.
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’ve often wondered what purpose any aliens would have to invade the Earth. There is no element that you can find on Earth that is not more abundant somewhere else, enslavement seems pretty poor since any race wise enough to transit across solar systems should have the technology to acquire far more efficient workers…namely the robotic kind that don’t produce waste.
Likewise Humans in particular don’t seem like they’d be all that fun to torture or kill, it would make more sense to find a race that isn’t busy murdering its own. You want one that is unified so that the sense of terror is more palpable (I do a lot of character development for tyrants…) Attacking a violent race is boring, you are left with a species that frankly would have likely killed itself off without your help. That’s like trying to assist a computer in calculating something, it was doing quite well on its own.
Also if you are a species that has developed the ability to travel across the universe you’ll likely have terraforming down to a science. Why enter a planet that already has tons of organisms with their own bacteria’s that could easily kill you in hours or days when you could instead start your own relatively clean planet with all your own bacteria that you are used to.
Likewise it would seem smarter to invest on a planet with a younger star than our sun. To optimize the amount of time that a planet can be used. No reason to spend all sorts of time fixing up a planet just to have its star explode in your face a few million years down the road (because I’m hard pressed to think that all sentient species are as obnoxiously present oriented like humans).
As it stands I’m hardpressed to see any reason that any alien would ever, future or past, come to the Earth. Our anus is hardly interesting enough to justify the levels of probing that have been attributed to extraterrestrials and rednecks are only funny the first 2-3 times you meet with them. So I’d say perhaps it is more Jack Daniels than ET leaving people with sore rumps and paranoia.
Epic Fallout
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I figured today I would post a collection of images I’ve…well…collected while playing a modified version of Fallout 3. The mod list will be at the bottom of the post for those curious on how to get the same satisfaction as I am. Warning in advance that some of this is a bit graphic, but considering that this IS the post apocalyptic US one should not be surprised. Most of this is barely on par with violence seen all the time in southern California or basically anywhere in Mexico (and various nations).
I actually try to play it as I feel whatever character I’ve made would. Considering psychological trauma, morals, and various other issues. For instance one time night was hitting and with these mods that can be quite fatal on normal or higher difficulty so I had the decision of going into a home or staying outside and likely dying. Upon entering I was harassed by the owner who had a bonesaw on her table and various other scary implements. I ended up killing her and taking up shelter in the place. It was a tough decision but one I felt was proper given the fact she’d have likely killed me if I tried to just sleep there 
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The wonders of roleplay 
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Wonderment
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
There was an interesting point brought up in the Architecture of Museums course I’m taking. It was the discussion of Wonderment and Resonance. The idea that if you provide someone with a sense of Wonderment they will in turn be interested in learning more about the item or topic and it’ll resonate in them (at least that was MY interpretation of the idea I might be wrong).
It’s a novel concept that never quite clicked for me. However I think this is something I’ve tried (and I feel failed but that’s personal criticism perhaps) in my writings. To create a sense of wonderment however small so that it helps propagate further curiosities into the topic. I find a nice level of satisfaction when I see the links on these posts getting hit because it means that just maybe the person has gone off to learn more about whatever topic is on the agenda for that day.
Really this is missing from most educational books these days. There is absolutely no sense of wonderment in the literature. It is dry and almost a chore to read. As a guy who gets the same satisfaction from a good book as he does from a good burger (and I love me a good burger) I find it almost alarming how difficult it is for me to read some books for college. They take a topic that is so fantastically interesting, like say the chemical composition of the human brain, and make it into the most dry dull read in the history of man. I end up wishing I had a copy of war and peace to read instead because at least the length of time it takes me to complete the reading would match the size of the book (1.4k Pages).
In the future if my fantasy novels do become popular and I have a good deal of cash under my belt so that writing can be my priority I think I might dig into college textbook writing. There is just not enough justice being done to so many of the topics that are available in college. It almost looks forced when you read these long drawn out discussions using words that are not only unnecessary but occasionally wrong. Yes I know, you love to remind people they are in college by using transelementation and various other excessively verbose terms but give it a friggin’ rest every once in a while. I don’t like reading 50k words on a subject that could have more vividly been covered in 5k.
So perhaps a future project which would be even more enjoyable because it would require studying topics I’m not familiar with. Perhaps I’ve been jaded by all the good books I’ve read but there is a serious disconnect between the wonder invoked by the topic and the almost Saharan dryness of the texts covering it. Likewise it shouldn’t cost more to get a book that is written by someone who’s ever held a real conversation in their life. It would have cost the students in Human Memory an extra 100 dollars to get a book written in a dialect that has been used in the last 5 decades. We went with the cheaper book and boy…just thinking about it reminds me that this was a topic (alright bit of a rant) that has been long overdue.
I wonder if any librarians chuckled at the use of overdue in a post about books? No? Alright I’ll go then.
Taken a good look at a Tyrannosaurus lately?
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
You ever had a bombshell drop in a class and had nobody but you seem truly interested. I would appear that inside the bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex they found actual fleshy bits!
http://www.smm.org/buzz/blog/tyrannosaurus_rex_flesh_pictures
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
However as with all things it would appear that UW is trying to crush this wonderful bit of news for me (Darn you UW). So I’m not entirely sure whether or not I’m reading about the same bone or if one bone has flesh and another is sludge or if indeed that one both is just sludge (even though those scans that look like bird flesh are pretty convincing). But it gives some hope, I don’t feel that any dinosaur could function properly with our current environment compared to theirs. Perhaps we could work to make pygmy versions of them. However considering that you can’t even have cats without people letting them into the wild (or pythons for that matter) I suppose this would certainly end poorly.
There are constant reminders that the most unlikely of events can indeed happen. Offhand I don’t know the principle but there is the idea that anything that can happen will happen (or has). I like this for one reason, if we are to assume that any value greater than 0 is possible (that is anything that can happen can happen…pretty novel concept) then it would seem pretty silly to assume anything that has a 1 in a trillion chance is never going to happen.
Yet you will find people constantly treat it like that. “There is a one in a gajillion chance you’d have written the exact thing as that other person on your own.” Yet the fact remains the original person wrote it on their own. Likewise if there is any chance then it may have indeed happened. Just seems silly to have fractions over a hundredth if we aren’t going to treat them as possible.
Ah…at any rate it is good to see some possible truth from Jurassic park .