Time to Think

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{Michel Strogoff}
One of the most popular TV mini series broadcasted on Iranian TV just before revolution was Michel Strogoff. I remember it very well because at that time I was very fond of Jules Verne (and I am still fond of him). Its broadcast was continued even after revolution but with lots of censorship that eventually changed the story line completely and made it so stupid. There are many versions of this story produced for TV. The one broadcasted on Iran was a French production. The main character of the movie who played the role of Michele Strogoff was Jean-Pierre Decourt.

I think one of the strongest point of that mini series was its music which was composed by the famous French composer Vladimir Cosma. Those Iranians who are old enough probably remember that music very well. I was looking for that music for a long time until I found it recently. I put it here temporarily. Listening to music like this brings back such good memories for me. You will probably enjoy the music even if you did not see the series before. This version is only 32kbps with minimum quality to reduce the webserver loading. You will need Windows Media Player plugin for listening to the music.

{On Iran Earthquake}


Those lives that are lost, are lost forever, but those that are saved will never forget this tragic event. While international help is pouring into Iran, one wonders why people are so far yet so close to each other? Why should we care about each other only in times of turmoil? Why?

Please help survivors of this devastating earthquake through one of the following websites:

- Relief International
- Mercy Corps.

{Wright brothers and the dilemma of invention}
Last week was the centennial celebration of Wright brother’s flight as a turning point in the history of human journey toward the heavens. Wright brothers, who owned a bicycle repair shop, were able to invent powered flight while working in a small garage with very little help from some friends. To me, the magnitude and importance of this invention 100 years ago is comparable to building a space ship that can travel to the moon in less than an hour at the present time! Is it possible to build such thing today in a garage with small amount of money and help from some friend scientists? Of course not. The science and technology has advanced so much that it is impossible to have a big contribution in any part of it that can be recognized by ordinary people the way it happened to Wright brothers’ invention.

Today, all we can do in science and technology is to add bits and pieces to the existing knowledge. Look at the recently filed patents in the US patent office for example. How many big and revolutionary invention you see? Most of them are very small modifications of some previous works (and I do not say they are bad). This is natural. The breath of science and knowledge has become so vast that it is impossible to make big observable contributions any more. It seems that the easy inventions have been made by our ancestors and the difficult ones are left for us!

{Lunar Solar Power}
Recently, the idea of wireless power transmission commonly known as power beaming has been very hot among the scientists. One of the application of this technique is proposed by Dr. David Criswell who is the Director of the Institute for Space Systems Operation at the University of Huston (TX). Based on this proposal, solar power is collected on the surface of moon (that is always facing the earth) using huge solar arrays and the electricity generated by them is then directed toward a microwave transmitter which transform it to microwave signal at 2.5GHz. The high power radio signals are then beamed toward the earth using high gain antennas. On the surface of the Earth, very large array antennas gather the microwave signals and convert them back to electrical power. Some special satellites are also to be used for relaying the signal to the part of Earth that is not in line of sight with moon.

Of course the process is not as efficient as the wired power transmission but Dr. Criswell has claimed that the approach is completely feasible and economical too. In fact he believes that the cost will be a fraction of a cent per kilowatt electric hour. The details of this approach is available in here and here.

{writing a book}
I was just thinking that writing a fiction book is much easier than a nonfiction. In writing a fiction novel, you do not need to refer to many references and do much research on each individual sentence or statement that you make. You basically write everything that is in your mind. However, in writing a nonfiction or science book, you have to do so much research on each subject you want to cover in the book and provide reference to each of them. This makes the writing process very lengthy and difficult.
I think this is why there are so many novels and so many people who write novels in a very short period of time. I recently saw a project called nanowrimo in which participants tried to write a 50,000 words novel in a month. This will be a complete book that can be published and sold worldwide. Now, who can write a nonfiction book in a month?

{statistic}
I just read in a report that if we scale down the population of earth to 100, then only one person will have access to a computer and only one person will have an academic degree! This is terrible.

{The Matrix Revolutions-preliminary}

I saw the matrix revolutions and I did not find it as bad as people have said in their reviews. I don't want to spoil the plot of the movie for people who haven't seen it yet, so I prefer to talk about its philosophy in details later. I should only mention that the technical aspects of the movie, especially the CG and sound, were very good.

Regarding the plot, Wachowski brothers could have done a better job though. However I am not blaming them because they have touched on a topic that is potentially very difficult and controversial. While Hollywood is busy with making cliche movies, it is very good that the ideas such as future of AI is exposed to the people through such great project even if the philosophy behind it is not flawless.

{Is Iranian government getting more mature?}
You do not need to be politician or expert in the political science to know that governing a country is a very difficult and challenging task that needs lots of experience and wisdom (excluding the former Taliban governing approach of course!). Since the beginning of the Iranian revolution, government of Iran has been using a trial and error approach in almost all of its internal and foreign affairs due to the lack of experience. Most of the people who have had the key political roles in Iran, did not know how to govern a country when the revolution took place. Many of them did not have necessary academic background for the jobs that they were assigned to. Many wrong decisions were made with sever consequences on the economy, environment, international relations, health care system, etc.

Now after 25 years, it seems that the inexperienced politicians of yesterday are getting mature enough to learn from their previous mistakes and to do their jobs in a wiser and more professional way. Acceptance of a tougher inspections of nuclear sites by IRAN and complete cooperation with IAEA is the first sign of this new approach. There is still a long way to heal the previous damages but the process seems to have started.

{University Students}
I have seen 3 different types of graduate students in Canadian universities. Those who have got their undergraduate and high school degrees from North America, China, and Iran. It is interesting to see how different their approaches in research and study is (of course this is in average and cannot be extended to everybody).

In one type, the grad student finds a paper, read it in 30 minutes, put it away and start thinking and writing his/her own idea even if he/she does not have enough information about the topic. Students in the second group, read the paper over and over for days until they have understood it perfectly, then they start to do the same thing that the authors of that paper did with small modifications.

And finally the students in the last group, start reading the paper. Then come across a reference in the first paragraph. Go to the library and find that reference. Photocopy that paper or download it. Continue the original paper and do the same thing with all other references in the paper. At the end of the day he will have 20 papers on hand which have to read them all and find their references again. After one week, you have read 100 papers and exposed to many different topics and completely deviated from the original research!

I leave it to you to decide the nationality of students in each group!

{Matrix}
I am going to see Matrix Revolutions tonight and frankly do not know what to expect after seeing all those bad reviews about the movie. I hope it won't be a total waste of time.

{The Universe's Computer}
Erik Benson has had an interesting post on his website about comparing a universe with a computer, and as far as I understand his question is something like this: "How the universe is able to calculate the exact effects of each atom on the other, to infinite accuracy in even simple physical phenomena like throwing a baseball?"

There are many good comments on his weblog about this, but I want to add one more comment to those. There is a fundamental theorem in mathematics called the central limit theorem which basically states that distribution of most random variables approaches Normal distribution in the limit. For example if we drop a box of toothpicks (if you recall from the movie Rain Man!), the toothpicks on the ground will have a pattern similar to the normal distribution, i.e. more thootpicks in the middle and the numbers become less as we get farther away from the center with a rate of decay of inverse exponential. If we mark each of the toothpicks with a unique color, the outcome of the experiment will be the same pattern. There is a similar story in the baseball example too. Each of the quantum particles of the baseball can behave randomly but in average, the whole set of particles will manifest as an object we know as a baseball.

So coming back to the question of throwing the baseball, the nature does not need to do number crunching calculations on the billions of atoms and particles to make sure that the baseball will follow the same path we intended, because the effect of all particles in average is what that is important and that average comes from the macroscopic observations.

Of course, according to the quantum mechanics, there is a tiny possibility (e.g. think of 10 to the power of -1000000!) that the baseball even disintegrates in the air for no specific reason! Or simply pass through the wall! So we can never be sure about the outcome of our experiment either. If we assume that the nature always find the solution with 100% accuracy then we get stuck in the situation that Erik has explained in his weblog but the truth is that it is impossible to have a probability of 1 for anything in the physical world. This is the lesson of quantum mechanic.

{TV commercials}
I think those disclaimers shown on TV commercials are very stupid. They are several lines in so small fonts that nobody can read them even after recording them on tape let alone during the 5 seconds that they are shown on the commercial. What is the point of having them on the commercial when nobody can read them? I guess some companies have been sued because they did not disclaim before, so everybody tries to put such things on the commercial to be safe.
For drugs, they have to announce the possible side effects during the commercial rather than just writing them on the bottom of screen. Why not enforcing the same rule for all products. These companies are fooling people and making lots of money by false advertising and should not be let to escape by just putting small unreadable disclaimers on their commercials.

Another thing is the way they use psychology to make people believe that their service or product is a bargain. I was incidentally watching an add for health insurance that kept repeating "it will cost you only dollars a day". Oh yeah? Is that really cheap? Dollars a day can potentially mean $300/month or $3600/year. How about that? Why don't they say "40 cents per hours"? That will sound even cheaper!! These ads are insult to the viewer's intelligence.

{Weblog}
One good thing about writing in a weblog is that it forces you to think and realize that some of your thoughts were wrong. Some people use to write their ideas immediately when they strike into their minds. However, this is not always a good thing. Sometimes we have an instant opinion about something that maybe wrong and cannot realize it until we start thinking about it. Especially when you start writing about that, then you find out it is not right.

{Mars attacked}
In the next 2 months, there will be 3 spacecrafts on the surface of Mars. One of them is European, named Beagle2 and the other two are American named Spirit and Opportunity. Considering the small number of spacecrafts sent to Mars, having 3 spacecraft on Mars simultaneously seams like an attack to Mars!

Get more information on these missions at NASA Mars exploration and ESA Mars express websites. Beagle2 has a dedicated weblog too.

{Artificial Intelligence}

I want to understand why so many people are against the idea of machines taking control over mankind. If machines become so advanced that can wipe out humankind, they deserve to be the superior creatures. This is the lesson of evolution.

How do we justify our brutality against animals when we eat their flesh to survive? Justification is simple. We are intelligent and they are not as intelligent as us. Can't machines tell the same thing about us one day?

Update: Of course, this does not mean that we won't fight. No, not at all. Humanity will do all it can to remain the superior race but the truth is that we will lose the battle one way or another. The signs of defeat are evident even now. Right now, dumb machines are doing all difficult and sensitive tasks much better than us. While we cannot keep up with their extreme power of computation and mechanical precision, yet are giving more and more power to them to control our lives. In fact, our life style depends on the machine so much that we can hardly survive without them. All of this is happening while dumb machines. What happens if they become self conscious and intelligent? There are many things in this world that are against our will but we have to make peace with them. We like it or not, the future belongs to the more intelligent creatures.