Is Your Smart Phone Smarter than You?

I owe this posting to a friend of mine, who some happens to have the same name as me. If I recall correctly he said and I paraphrase, "How is it that your phone can download an mp3, surf the web, send a text message, conference call with your boss, and stream FM radio... but you can't drive while using your smart phone?"

I assumed that applied to morons, and I assumed myself to not be a moron. But I just got a smart phone last night, and I found I could not walk in straight line to my house while using it (something I could do well with a normal phone while text messaging the old fashion way). What happened?

I will call this the Smart Phone, Dumb User paradox, or SPDU paradox. Obviously the average human cannot use a smart phone any better than a normal cell phone while committing to a typical task. In fact, the multitasking performance goes down. Essentially, the human brain has so much RAM and can only process so much at once, i.e. our attention is limited. Really, the human brain can only do one task at a time, at least doing it well. When a person multitasks the brain just switches between two tasks very quickly. But, the efficiency the tasks are performed greatly drops. For instance, even with the advent of Blue Tooth, cell phone related vehicular accidents have not changed. Just because you use a hands-free phone won't make your driving habits better.

So why is it worse with smart phones? Probably because smart phones require a different interface to interact with it, i.e. scan-scrolling menus, swiping icons to activate them, digital key boards, et cetera. The more interactive the interface becomes the more the brain is required to interact with that interface. Normal cell phones required only to be told what to do by simply hitting buttons and would wait until the command was completed (sort of like LINUX, but with an interface). Now more is necessary and more of the brain's RAM is taken up.

Is the SPDU paradox the price we pay for our technology? Granted, the technology is incredible and definitely beneficial. I was rediscovering a childhood passion of studying the movement of the planets and the arrangement of constellations with my Google Sky app last night. But now I have no idea how to walk or talk to someone while I use my phone (unless they are on the phone with me). Welcome to the Information Age. Enjoy your depleting Random Access Memory until human evolution catches up.

Obesity : The Plight of the Fat Man (or Woman)

Any medical doctor will tell you obesity causes depression. The problem I find in this clear-cut statement is the causal relation between the two. Many people still think that the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) causes autism, even though it doesn't. It is simply because around the same time children usually receive their MMR vaccine is about the same age signs of autism are detectable, which is around age two or three.

So does obesity cause depression directly? That is, simply by being overweight you become depressed. Or is it a social factor? I suppose many doctors say both. And I suppose another good many would say it is indeterminate. The media essentially advertises that if you don't use this or that product you won't get laid (with "sexy" men and women in the ads). Weight loss program ads make it sound you will be miserable unless you join their program ("Get your life back!"). And today being obese is simply unattractive by today's standards.

But wind back the clocks four or five hundred years. In the Middle Ages (though the middle of what I cannot know) it was attractive to be fat. If you had a big gut you had money, because you could afford to get that fat. So back then, by pure logic and not causal influence, if you were fat you had money and women and power. What was there to be depressed about?

So where is the good ole' jolly fat man? Has the media killed the age old mantra of "fat people are jolly"? Or is obesity a cause of depression? Well not all overweight persons are depressed. I still remember a friend of mine from high school, Danny, whose self-proclaimed nickname was Fat Daddy. (Danny, I miss you and all the humor you brought to our lives. Those were sincerely the most laughter-filled days I have spent on this earth and I doubt anything will compare to them again.) But Danny killed his father at age 16 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison and, consequently is bipolar. Is a duality plague at work? Probably not. Depression is something like MS or homosexuality : it doesn't happen to just one set of people. Healthy people get depressed. Anorexics get depressed, and usually depression causes anorexia. White people get depressed, and so do Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Indians, Native Americans, and aborigines. Now I'm not a medical doctor, but I would suspect the causality of depression and obesity are significantly vague, albeit a good percentage of obese persons are clinically depressed and are, statistically, depressed more than healthy persons.

To illustrate a point on the social factor involved, what if, say, in 150 years having a nice tan and a body cut like Greek marble with a vogue haircut is not what is defined as attractive, but rather intelligence. Being more intelligent means you can get a better job and better be able to support a family. So a person of high intelligence would be more attractive by their GPA, how many books they read a week, and the nature of their PH.D work. Creating a social atmosphere as such medical doctors would probably say that stupidity was linked with depression. Sound adequate today? No, probably because ignorant people can by sheer luck of genes be "sexy" and get mates and fame, and would be far less likely to become depressed (unless a chemical imbalance kicks in).

Oh, where have all the fat men gone? The media kill them, every one. Oh, when will they ever learn?

Facebook and the New Narcissus Pool

I have long held the conviction that Facebook is nothing more than a generator of narcissism. It's "social networking", as it is so delightfully called. But in reality Facebook is a place of egocentricity and self-promotion. How so? Look at your status updates... if they are about you and what you are doing, then we can safely call it narcissism. Especially if it is about you majority of the time.

It isn't that astonishing that psychologists and anthropologists are studying the aspects of Facebook. Recently published in Scientific America (November 2010, article by John H. Tucker) the findings of Mehdizadeh, an undergraduate at York University of Toronto (now graduated), about narcissism and low self-esteem through studying users of Facebook. This was studied by the frequency users sign on, how long they stay logged on, the frequency of status updates and wall postings, and photo sharing. If I may use a portion of the article:

After measuring each subject using the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem  Scale, Mehdizadeh... discovered narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than an hour on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos (striking a pose or using Photoshop, for example). Narcissists were also more likely to showcase themselves through status updates (using phrases like "I'm so glamorous I bleed glitter") and wall activity (posting self-serving links like "My Celebrity Look-alikes").
Self-esteem and narcissism are often interrelated but don't always go hand in hand. Some psychologists believe that narcissists - those who have a pervasive pattern grandiosity, a need for admiration, as well as a lack of empathy - unconscious inflate their sense of self-importance as a defense against feeling inadequate. Not enough empirical research has been produced to confrim that link, although Mehdizadeh's study seems to support it. Because narcissists have less capacity to sustain intimate or long-term relationships, Mehdizadeh thinks that they would be more drawn to the online world of virtual friends and emotionally detached communication.

So right there we might have a case of Jungian symbols of transformation and the alteration of unconscious archetypal motifs into various similar patterns. For instance, the evil mother motif may crop up later in life as an irate female boss in dreams (the Hamlet Complex). So, Narcissus laying by the pool admiring the one he loves, i.e. himself, is transformed into Facebook. I guess we can change that Caravaggio painting of Narcissus updating his status about how some creepy nymph kept repeating everything he said.

Welcome to a new era where social networking doesn't connect us all as it promotes itself, but means we get to know ourselves, as the Narcissus myth implies. But I guess all we can learn about ourselves is that we are all full of ourselves. I suppose class reunions every tens years wasn't enough, and now we can have them everyday with social networking.

A Struggle in the Economy = A Struggling Justice System

What, above anything possible, would be the worst we could lose in this recession? Your job? Well that is pretty bad. Your health care? That is certainly worse. But those are things that affect individuals separately, not collectively. How about a failing business? That affects a collective, but only a small portion. On a societal level, certainly the worst thing we can lose is exactly what this country was founded on : justice. Without justice we certainly have no rights or individual and collective freedoms. Most would emphatically agree, with the exception of a large number of idiots (from the Greek word for "inward" or "private" and the word "individual" itself is possibly derived from idiot). Sure, without justice our society would be flooded with criminals and con artists.

But one would argue that most cities haven't cut budgets too much on law enforcement and have increased the number of police officers. This, of course, is variable from city to city and from region to region, but mostly true. But the police are not the whole equation to justice. As Dick Wolfe (creator or Law & Order) puts it : "In the criminal justice system the People are represented by two separate and equally important groups : the police who investigate crimes and the the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders..." In the past six months, since the Stimulus Package ran dry, civil courts have had to lay off a good portion of their staff, which means more work per person. So the police can bring in offenders, but if the civil courts cannot handle the work load a lot falls through the cracks. I recently spoke to an architect working on the Brockton Courthouse and he mentioned that they were not just renovating the building, they had to volunteer billable hours of clerical work.

Of course, a good deal of technology has been developed and commercialized and is available, which can help relieve the issues that arise with budget cuts. One new technology that is experimentally being used in courts is teleconferencing; essentially, holding trials digitally. This helps save the costs of transporting defendants and detainees from jails and juvenile centers, as well as paying for jurors' hotel and meals, and the judge only has to come into the office have drinks with the DA. Sounds great, but then there is the Sixth Amendment that is violated, the Confrontation Clause : the right to face your accuser.

Ideologically, the judicial system is what maintains Democracy. Without it the Nation loses all concepts of justice. Justice, the foundation of this country and the protection rights and freedoms. Now, all of this I have certainly over-hyped, simply to illustrate a point. Our judicial system is certainly suffering in this economy, but the civic staff are just working harder. Justice seems to be served, though it is struggling to do so. But the point is, of all things we can possibly lose, the worst is justice. That is what distinguishes the human society from the ambivalent natural world of "kill or be killed" and survival. Justice is our natural order of rights and freedom. Most strongly, freedom from.

Star Stuff : Where is the Line Drawn of What is Human?

It is truly a funny thing the history of the Universe and, particularly, evolution. The long debate of The Other has its blurry lines of what is human. Seventy years ago Africans or any persons of dark skin were not considered human. Eighty years ago women really didn't count much either. Take the timeline back further to Ancient Greece, in which anyone who was not a Greek was not considered human. But we know that we are all the same. Richard Dawkins once noted that if you were to take two chimpanzees or two different groups in the same geographic region their DNA would be far more different from each other than a white homo sapien sapien's DNA would be from an Australian aborigine. We are identical with very very very minute differences, such as skin tone and hair color. "We are all Africans".

Dawkins also once questioned where the line of what is human drawn? Dawkins gives the example : if you were to bring an Australopithecus to church would they consider him or her to be on par with a homosexual? That is, would they deny this ancestor of ours admittance because he is not our kind of human? But this Australopithecus would certainly be human, and evolution shows this. Even if he or she were admitted, where is line drawn? What about chimps? They are our cousins on the long evolutionary line. They may not be of our lineage, but they are still family! How about an arboreal ape, who are certainly our long extinct ancestors? Do they count? If we jump back really far in time, what about a fish? We descended from fish. How about single cell bacteria? They started the whole process of life. Maybe we could just bring in a big bowl of nucleotides and amino acids which constitute the building blocks of DNA. Is that sacrilegious?

The human line between people of different races, genders, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation would be abolished overnight if aliens from another world come to destroy us. It would probably be something like Ronald Regan's dream of the human race uniting to destroy them. But if we found life on another planet would we call them family as well? One might argue : no, because they're not from earth and most certainly not part of our evolutionary chain. Carl Sagan mentions frequently that everything in the Universe is made up of "star stuff", and he means everything. We too are made up of star stuff, and so too would creatures on another planet. The evolutionary chain goes back much farther than the first accidental accumulation of nucleotides and amino acids, it goes back to about a few billion years after the Big Bang when dust particles started to condense together by gravity and form the first stars. The stars explode and give birth to new stars, and even planets. Stars are what makes elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

If that is how far the evolutionary chains goes back, then can we call creatures on another planet brothers and sisters? Sure. But let's say humans wanted to start blowing up stars and planets with no life on them, let's say, hypothetically, to extract various materials and minerals. Can we call those stars and planets brothers and sisters? They make the stuffs of life and give it homes. They are made of the same stuffs we are made of. Don't they have a right to exist just like humans?

So where is the line drawn? It is most certainly is blurry line when trying to decide what is human. But in the spirit of Carl Sagan, we are all stars. As Joseph Campbell once said : "We are in the heavens!"

Your baby picture with your cosmic family :

 

Zombies : Fear of The Other or Just Plain Fear?

Why are all these zombie films, alien films, and vampire films so popular? Because they play on our fear of "The Other", whatever that other may be : immigrants (usually expressed in alien films), Communism (usually vampires and zombies), terrorists, Muslims, Jews, Protestants, and anything else that stimulates the natural human tendency to be xenophobic. It is the films like K-Pax and ET that express a mutual understanding and coexistence between two similar, yet different peoples (films we rarely see).

Now the big question is not about how they play on our fearful tendencies towards things we don't understand or identify with, but rather : is the fear they impose something legitimate? A biochemist from a neighboring lab of MIT (I suspect Novartis Institute for Biological Research) came into work today and was sincerely worried about zombies; legitimately worried about zombies. He even emphasized his point by saying "And I'm a scientist!" Could there be something to this? Or has he been watching too many zombie films lately?

Sure nanotechnology has produced some great results in the production of materials, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, and the medical field in general. About two years ago I was at an ASHRAE conference in Charleston, SC and the speaker was discussing nanotechnology and he was particularly excited about a breakthrough in making a virus that can attacks cancer cells. Last I checked this virus is still not 100%, but it will certainly strike a cold chill in someone who has seen I Am Legend (the virus to battle cancer turns people into zombies).

Now people can fantasize all they want about how they want (or actually believe) vampires are real, or zombies and aliens will arise and attack us. But aside from this masochistic wishful-thinking, we know this is just plain silly. So if we are scaring ourselves silly, we are doing one fine job of doing so. Or is it the same xenophobia manifesting itself in a new form? A form we actually invented!

What's the Point? I Mean Besides Making Our Lives More Mundane

I got into an argument at school with my fellow classmates over M-Theory and the higher dimensions, i.e. the 11th Dimension. I am currently using the process string theory uses to achieve higher spatial dimensions in order to create a building. And one fellow said, "Why? Why do scientist waste all that money and time to think up such wacky stuff?" Of course, it never crossed his mind that architects waste a lot of time and money to create buildings based off of theoretical ideas like the primitive hut or tectonics. The latter being what we are addressing in my class. And like scientists, architects get awards for "wasting" money!

But what is the point of continuing manned missions to the moon or sending a satellite to Pluto? We won the Space Race, right? Why are scientists and astronomers still interested in wasting tax dollars (people usually think it all comes from tax dollars, but a good chunk of it comes from donations) on those things? Or why are we wasting money on building something like the Large Hadron Collider to investigate things so small they don't matter?

Hmmm... so, just let me get this straight : just because all the wonderful and magnificent things we discover with modern technology about modern physics has yet to be brought down to the level of the mundane so you can use it in a pedestrian way it is all considered pointless? Even if it was brought down to a mundane utility people would only take it for granted. Think back to the Space Race. Now think about all the technological developments that were necessary to get to the moon. A lot of money was spent, yes, and there were a lot of failures to quickly learn from. But all that technology and infrastructural developments lead to things like microwave ovens, freeze dried food, lasers, compact discs, digital watches, smaller computers, cell phones, et cetera. All of these items and more are taken for granted.


So what's the point of 11 dimensions, holographic universes, gravitons, and the LHC? So that in a few decades we can take the developments from those explorations and commercialize it to a mundane existence that the egocentric layman will take for granted. That's the point : so that you may take it for granted one day. Thanks for making the cause of understanding our world sound less worthwhile.

And Today the SEC is Up 25 Points

Is the US taking a secular shift? Is religion on a downfall? According to Boston's MetroNews many churches in the Northeastern United States are for sale because congregations no longer "need as much space as they once did." This news unto itself does not indicate a secular shift, as that conclusion is based on causal relations that are not necessarily correlated. It could simply be a signal that churches no longer serve their purpose as a public institution (many churches have become privatized, such as Evangelical and Scientology churches). It could also be a sign of churches failing to deliver their message to the congregation in a changing Zeitgeist. Many people today still hold their religious beliefs and rarely go to church, save maybe on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday.

A sign of a secular shift is in the statistics. According to the Metro 26% of Millennials (born after 1981) claim themselves to be religiously unaffiliated, as opposed to the Baby Boomers being roughly 10% unaffiliated. Now, the Metro calls them "religiously unaffiliated", which is a nice way of saying "atheist", simply because "atheist" is a controversial word, for whatever reasons I cannot understand. But, 26%! That's not even a minority! That out ranks (in the United States) Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, and the Tea Party!

So what happens to these churches? Many of the churches in the Northeast are being demolished, and very little effort has gone on to call some of these structures "historic" in order to prevent demolition. Before I left Savannah, Georgia a church a couple of blocks up the street from where I was living was being converted into condos (with one of the bathrooms in the bell tower!).

The big question right now is should we conserve these "cultures" or "religions"? The question I feel that is more important is : should we conserve and save a system that fails to serve society? This is a heavy question considering that most congregation are privatized and serve only themselves. This question goes beyond religious beliefs and faith, but is concerned with society at large. If it is a private institution and no longer serves its civic duty, then as a private institution it must save itself. Churches already get tax exemption, why should they get tax dollars to save themselves?

This does seem like a very hostile question, but instead of "churches" and "congregations" let us say "government" : if a privatized government no longer serves its civic duty to society should we preserve it? Most people would advocate it to be abolished. Considering this country is constantly try to meld church and state (something that is supposed to remain separate), the question of saving congregations is a heavy question indeed.

The Ugly Side of Being Healthy

I first encountered the term orthorexia, a still controversial condition in the medical field, from Joe Juhasz's blog. But I more or less dismissed the idea of being so healthy it was actually unhealthy. That is until this morning on my way to the subway I saw a young girl eating raw broccoli, but she looked anorexic. I realize that raw broccoli was probably her whole diet (though she could be recovering from anorexia, but in that case I would expect her to have a hot dog).

Exactly what is the ugly side of being healthy? Aside from being so healthy it is unhealthy, the truly ugly side is that it won't stop you from dying. Is being "healthy" a side effect of living? As opposed to surviving? Are we so domesticated that it has become a symptom of modern civilization to be healthy? Is being healthy on par with playing golf and watching TV? We don't need to be healthy or play golf to survive long enough pass on our genes.

The only thing that being healthy and being unhealthy have in common is that death is for certain. The problem with the two poles is the inherent psychological judgment passed on them. One is frowned upon and the other is not. But being healthy is so highly revered that it can be unhealthy and still kill you! Just like smoking cigarettes : if you quit you're still going to die.

Of course, a rebuttal would be : "But if you eat healthy and quit smoking you will live a long, healthy life." AND? And you will still die. Isn't "long life" and "healthy living" symptoms of domesticated living and not survival? If we were surviving we would live just long enough to mate and pass on our genes. Congrats! Death is still certain!

"What will happen at the end of living? And the beginning of survival?"
-Chief Seattle

The Mythos of Science

Myth is nothing more than a story. Point in fact, that is exactly what the word myth means : story. Stories are created to explain the whats, whys, hows, wheres, and whens. Science is nothing more than a set of myths, or, more properly called today, "theories" that try to tell the story of the whats and hows.

Scientific theories are always base on observations and they are created in order to fit certain natural phenomena. The Ptolemaic Universe model was based on a geocentric universe, and was not created out of whim or egocentricity. The earth was observed as a large heavy body, and by observation the larger the body the more difficult it is to move. Mountains are harder to move than stones, and mountains sit on the earth, so the earth could be viewed as immovable. But the sun looks light and mobile and arcs across the sky-dome. Therefore, based on observation the hypothesis/myth was put forth that the sun revolves around the earth.

I am aware of the rebuttal to this : "Well, what would it have looked like if the earth was rotating?" Certainly it would have looked the same as the sun revolving about the earth, but logic alone this did not fit. The only thing that gave problems to Ptolemaic Universe is the planets. But note, the geocentric universe was a necessary step towards the current model of the universe.

If anything, science comes off very mythic; as mythic as, say the Judaic "proof-it's-there theory" in the creation story. Current theories in physics, particularly M Theory is just as bizarre. M Theory makes the hypothesis that the universe is a holographic 7th dimensional object on a 10th dimensional membrane (or "brane") amongst an infinite number of other universes. Universes are created by the collision of branes. These branes are made up of strings, which are the most fundamental building blocks of all matter, ether, and energy.

Sound strange? Sure it does if you're not a physicist (or even if you are physicist). But thus far, according to the mathematics and certain observations in the fields of cosmology and quantum mechanics, M Theory works.

Science is our myth today, and there is no doubt about that. Science is our understanding of "where did I come from and why and I here?" I certainly believe Stephen Hawkings is right when he claimed that our theories in science today may seem as ridiculous in 4000 years as the talking snake in the garden is ridiculous to us today.