Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Possible doctoral topic: can renewables power the world?

It may seem like an unusual topic for a PhD thesis in International Relations / Politics, but it seems to me like it could actually be a useful and interesting one.

The questions would be:

  1. What kind of standard of living could be supported for the world population using only renewable forms of energy?
  2. How quickly could that be deployed, given all the technical and political hurdles?

Ultimately, it is a very political question. The geopolitics of energy have already been front-and-centre for decades, since at least the 1973 oil price shocks. There is also the large and growing dependence of the European Union on Russia for gas, as well as increasing American dependence on exceptionally dirty oil from Canada.

The research could include investigation of places that have already deployed various renewables widely (hydro in Quebec, geothermal in Iceland, wind in Denmark, etc), as well as consideration of what is happening in rapidly developing states like China.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Dinosaur demise historiography

At the Ottawa Museum of Nature the other day, I saw their video presentation on the demise of dinosaurs. It was interesting to compare it with videos I saw as a child on the same topic. The ones I remember were claymation productions, put out by the National Film Board of Canada. This one was computer animated, and used multimedia effects like fans to simulate the shockwave from the Yucatan asteroid collision.

More than in videos I can recall, this one stressed that both birds and mammals already existed when the extinction of dinosaurs took place. It also included a couple of references to the paleoclimate, describing some of the ways in which the Cretaceous Earth differed from the modern form. The film was also forthright in describing some enduring scientific uncertainties, such as how long it took after the impact for the dinosaurs to actually die.

The Museum of Nature is a pretty great place, even though they removed the live frog exhibit which was my favourite part. They have a rather excellent gift shop that sells – among other things – hand puppets shaped like crabs and very affordable large actual fossils.

Helpless in zero G

It occurred to me the other day that people would be incredibly helpless in a large, zero-gravity environment. If you managed to become stationary, out of reach from any walls or objects, you would effectively be stranded, screaming for someone to come collect you.

Unless you have some kind of rocket motor with you, you are dependent on being able to push off of things to control your movement. Also, zero gravity could involve other unpleasant elements. For instance, if you push off from one surface too aggressively, all you can do it wait until you crunch into the far wall. There would be no particularly effective way to reduce your rate of movement, though you could try splaying yourself out like a sky-diver trying to descend slowly.

This somewhat alters my sense of how much fun a huge recreational space station would be.

More meaningful date systems

Expressing dates in the ‘Common Era‘ system is familiar, but perhaps not overly rational or useful. To be sure, there were things of historical significance happening around 1 CE. Tiberius quelled revolts in Germania; the Kingdom of Aksum was founded; and Ovid wrote ‘Metamorphoses’.

At the same time, it can hardly be considered a watershed point in human history. While it would be less precise to do so, I think a case can be made that we could be better off measuring the date using the start of human civilization as the zero point, with years before expressed in terms of how far they are ‘pre-civilization’ or ‘pre-civ’ and those after expressed in years ‘post-civilization’ or ‘post-civ’.

One risk is that we may discover that our present understanding of when civilization emerged is wrong. The general sense at the moment is that we are around the year 10,000 post-civ. It’s possible that archaeological evidence will reveal older civilizations, which would raise the question of either moving the zero point or accepting one that is no longer seen as accurate.

An alternative, which would be more precise, would be to choose a date to represent the start of the Industrial Revolution – say, 1750 CE. We could then measure dates both forward and backward from that point. This would be year 261 of the industrial era. The former year 0 would be 1750 years before the industrial era.

Either the civilization or the industrial approach could be helpful in making us think accurately about human history. We have been living in civilizations for about 10,000 years now – a fact that has importance for what we know about human beings, and how we can try to achieve our aims in the world. The same is true of the fact that we have lived in an industrialized world for about 250 years (though it obviously didn’t arrive all at once).

Will my vote matter?

Previously, I created a flowchart for use in voting in Canadian elections. It occurred to me today that it could be interesting to elaborate the concept into a website.

The site would allow people to enter their riding and rank their preferences for either local candidates or parties. It could then estimate the odds that their vote will make a difference they care about. For instance, if someone strongly prefers Party X to Party Y, and both candidates have a shot at winning in that person’s riding, then their vote is relatively likely to matter. By contrast, if someone hates both Party A and Party B equally, and one of their candidates is basically certain to win, then that person’s vote is relatively unlikely to matter.

There are different possible methodologies for the site. For instance, it could be based entirely on past election results, entirely on polling data, or on some combination of the two.

In circumstances where a person is told that their vote is unlikely to matter – for instance, if they prefer a party with minority support in every riding – the website could direct the person to more information on electoral reform and alternative electoral systems like the various kinds of proportional representation.

Unsurprisingly, this is one of those ideas that falls into the “things that may be interesting to discuss, but which I do not have the time to actually do” category.

iPhone 4 camera

The camera in the iPhone 4 doesn’t compare with a dedicated point and shoot camera, when it comes to image quality or creative flexibility. At the same time, it is a camera that is easy to carry around everywhere, so it is a way to document things that would otherwise go unrecorded.

I have added an iPhone set to my Flickr page, and I will keep adding to it bit by bit.

The EXIF data for the photos includes geolocation information, which should be useful for anyone who wants to stalk or murder me (hint: I am often around Bank Street in Ottawa).

Appreciating Pinker

Now that I am forty pages in, I can enthusiastically endorse Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. It engages with complex and important ideas in a highly accessible way, without the tediousness that sometimes accompanies technical writing. In terms of his brilliance in covering challenging topics comprehensibly, Pinker reminds me of Richard Dawkins and Simon Singh.

It’s one of those books where you want to underline and quote nearly every sentence.

Understanding complex dynamic systems

Complex dynamic systems are the most difficult things in the universe to understand because they are bundles of relationships that interact in complex ways. It’s easiest to explain what they are through an example. Think of the Earth’s climate. It has discrete elements like incoming sunlight and the physical properties of water. The elements interact in complex ways that vary with time. Water forms clouds and icesheets which affect the reflection of light. The amount of ice on Earth has an effect on the totality of life on Earth, which then interacts in complex ways with other elements of the climate system: the erosion of rock, the composition of the atmosphere, etc, etc, etc.

Understanding a complex dynamic system at all is challenging. For instance, there is the task of understanding all the interactions that are ongoing when something is in a steady state. The level of complexity jumps when you consider the totality of steady and unsteady states, and all the ways by which they can turn into one another.

It seems arguable that the main task of thinking entities in the universe is to better understand complex dynamic systems. That understanding is always partial – akin to the French concept of connaitre rather than the concept of savoir. You can write down the totality of a person’s phone number on a piece of paper, but you can only express a partial view of what ‘Paris’ or ‘German’ or ‘physics’ is. In addition, it seems that complex dynamic systems are nested and that if we want to be able to behave intelligently in the world, we need to have some kind of understanding of all of them:

  • The rules of the universe: gravitation, electromagnetism, the nature of matter, etc
  • The physical Earth: the composition of the planet, and the way physical elements interact
  • The totality of life on Earth: genetics, behaviour, the history of life, etc
  • The human body: cells, organs, genes, the endocrine system, the physical brain, etc
  • The human mind: cognition, politics, economics, creativity, etc

At some point in history, it may be necessary and useful to consider the physical and/or mental characteristics of life from places other than the Earth.

The better a particular being understands each of these complex dynamic systems, the more capable they are of acting effectively in the world (a concept that presumes the existence of intentions, which ties back to each of the dynamic systems under consideration). Understanding them all better is thus a strategy capable of advancing the achievement of any conceivable goal, with the possible exception of intentional laziness or the avoidance of mentally taxing work.

The iPhone’s ‘airplane mode’

‘Airplane mode’ is definitely one of the nicest features of the iPhone. By swiping one easily accessible control, you can disable incoming calls and texts. By default, it also turns off WiFi.

This is useful for two major reasons. For one thing, it allows you to always have an iPhone with you without always being open to random contact at any moment of the day. It is nice to enjoy a walk, film, or conversation without periodic email or text message updates.

It is also useful because the battery life of the iPhone 4 really isn’t great. Even when it was brand new, I found that it could not last from 9:00am until 5:00pm with moderate use (some web browsing, some app use, some texts). It is the kind of phone where you really need a charger both at work and at home, and where you can get caught out without power if something unexpected happens.