XKCD to the tune of Modern Major General?

Today's XKCD ( http://xkcd.com/731/ ) had the following alt text: 

"Telescopes and bathyscapes and

sonar probes of Scottish lakes,

Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse

explained with abstract phase-space maps,

some x-ray slides, a music score,

Minard's Napoleonic war:

the most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here."

...Which seems a bit lyrical... 

Seems to me like it's intended to be sung to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan, "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" (from Pirates of Pinzance). I must admit, however, that at first I was thinking "A few of my favorite things". Modern Major General fits better, tho.

How 'bout them Saints?!

I imagine blogs to be much like seismographs - a large event will be recorded instantaneously by those closest to the event, and will, over time, propagate further out. Well, if that is the metaphor we are using, then my seismograph isn't plugged in and running very often, and this is actually recording an aftershock.

And, for that matter, I think "aftershock" is not too bad a way to put it. I don't think I've fully gotten over the "shock", at any rate. "How bout them Saints" used to be a phrase that people around here would say when they wanted to change the subject... and merely as an indication that they wanted to change the subject. It wasn't a lead-in to an actual conversation about a pro football team, but more of a way of saying, "There's got to be something else we can talk about, right?"

Now, however, one winning Super Bowl later, the Saints aren't just a topic of conversation, they're a cult... and "How 'bout them Saints" isn't just a phrase of speech, it's a likely headline across the front of a newspaper. I say "likely headline" because I didn't actually see the front of the newspaper the day after the Superbowl - they were all bought up. Like they were the last newspaper to be printed. Not only did they sell out - everywhere - early in the morning, but that was even with the fact that the newspaper companies printed more copies than normal in expectation of the demand. There is actually a car dealership in Baton Rouge that picked up what appears to be a truck full of papers and is advertising a free Saints Super Bowl win newspaper for coming in to the dealership.

To me, Baton Rouge has always been a sports town. Primarily, though, it's a college town, with both LSU and Southern University, there are a lot of extreme sports fans rooting for some large wild game cat or another and, with LSU colors being purple and gold (well, yellow, really) and Southern's colors being blue and yellow, it seems that "Yellow" is the most agreeable color to wear in the city of "Red Stick". (As a side note, since the Saints colors are black and gold (well, yellow, really), it's not a bad idea to buy stock in yellow if you live in the Baton Rouge area.)

It is quite amazing to me how fanatical the Baton Rouge area has become about the NEW ORLEANS Saints. Yes, they're the closest NFL team to Baton Rouge, but I was not prepared for the rush on newspapers and the merchandise vendors in tents not just on "every street corner" but more like set up in front of almost every other store. I could easily pass fifteen of these makeshift street vendors with black and gold (well, yellow, really) T-shirts on my way to work. It's just too much!

Did I watch the game? You bet your sweet bippie. I haven't watched a football game in years, I don't plan to watch another one in the coming years, but we not only watched the game, we threw together a small (very small) party to watch the game. We made a bucket of Mojitos, bought three six packs of Iron Beer (The national soft drink of Cuba) and had some generally Cuban themed snacks to accompany the Superbowl, which was held in Miami, Florida (pronounced, "Northern Cuba"). Although we invited a few people to join us, it ended up being just myself, my wife Ashley and Chris. Which was probably just as well, because we were so tied to the game - and the commercials - that we never even made it to fetch the Mojitos out of the freezer.

Besides the obvious quality of the commercials during the Superbowl and the excitement of the close game and the amazing plays, Chris had a personal interest in the game in that he grew up with Tracey Porter, the Saints player that turned and interception opportunity into a breakaway play where he covered three-quarters of the field and ended his run in a touchdown that proved to be the last points the Saints made (or needed) in the game. Chris would have had to have been much less excited to be "on the edge of his seat"; on two separate occasions, I had to remind him that it was fine for him to sit down and enjoy the game from the comfort of the couch. He would run to his house for something, then rush back and stand in the living room, watching with all-consuming determination at the television, waiting to see what happened next. I guess that comes from his covering sports as a photographer. I don't imagine you sit down much when your down on the side-lines of the field taking pictures of the action.

My poor dog had never witnessed a football game on television before. For that matter, he might not ever have seen a sporting event on TV - and definitely not one that people in the house cared a flip about. He was beside himself when there was a flag on a play, or points scored, or even a first down would cause the three of us to yell something; he would run up to the entertainment center and stand up on his hind legs and bark at the screen. (Sorry Tracey Porter, he just doesn't know you - it's nothing personal.) He also wasn't too keen on the fireworks and yelling that occurred from the streets around us just after the Saints actually won the Super Bowl. I have to say I was a bit surprised, myself. Even getting beyond the whole Baton Rouge / New Orleans thing, how did these people still have fireworks? Did they buy them specifically in case the Saints actually won? Or did they simply have leftovers after firing fireworks off to exhaustion for New Years? I guess I have a hard time with this, since they're not even legal to use in my neighborhood.

I can only imagine what Mardi Gras must have been like this year. I didn't venture toward New Orleans for it this year, but the normal Mardi Gras crowds are more than enough for me, so I am fine with not being in parade crowds that were up to 50 people deep in places. Hard to imagine, but I'm okay with keeping it limited to my imagination. If you went to Mardi Gras 2010 (and survived), congratulations and thank you for your tourist dollars... you don't get 50 people deep from the natives here.

Discover Your Brain on Videogames...

When it comes to mainstream media, video games usually get the short end of the stick, at best, and the business end of the stick more often. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to see an article entitled, "This is Your Brain on Video Games" in the Brain Special Issue of Discovery recently.

It's a nice read, and I won't ruin it for anyone, but, in short, it indicates that playing videogames can help to sharpen an individual's brain - not in the "hand-eye coordination" way that we hear as a somewhat frequent retort to the media's latest frenzied attempt to blame anything from violence in our schools and road-rage to terrorism and global warming on our favorite digital passtime, but in what they describe as "mental dexterity" - essentially, playing videogames can help train a person to solve problems. Who knew?

Blatherings about Life the Universe and Everything.

No, I'm not talking about the book, Life, the Universe and Everything.

The following is a quickly-jotted-down stream of consciousness-esque series of thoughts I had, cleaned up and presented here for your bemusement. I actually jotted this down some time ago, and just recently found this while cleaning up some drafts in my blog... Enjoy!

...Okay, so we know that light is a wave and a particle. Or, if you prefer, a wave-particle... appropriately traveling through what we consider space-time. Named thusly, because we are more familiar with "space" 3-dimensions, and we simply lob in a fourth, which we call time. However, if you ask someone what the three dimensions are, they would respond something to the effect of length, width and height... which are all simply scalar distance measurements. And, depending on your choice of origin and orientation, those three could be anything, so long as they are "normal" to each other. Length could be width or height, and the others rotate appropriately to suit. Simply turning an object in your hands and considering what its "height" is will reveal the very definition to be very weak and backwards-thinking. How can we hope to uncover the science behind the creation of a universe when we measure reality and all of existence with relation to the gravitational center of our planet of birth ...or any single planet for that matter? If height is "up" and up is "away from down" and down is the direction that things fall when dropped on Earth, then our definitions are waaay too "preschool" to approach the task.

So, given that we are looking at some arbitrary distance (we'll call length, in this case), if we take an object and dissect it perfectly (impossible, but that's another story), then we end up with twice the number of objects, each with half the length - voila! ...preservation of matter (or, more technically, matter-duration, in space-time). These two objects can occupy the same space, much like cars in parking lots do... by taking turns. They can't occupy the same space at the same time. They, likewise, can occupy the same time. This is, in fact, totally normal and expected, in our point of view. You would be quite shocked to find that if you cut an object in half one half disappeared and would only reappear at the disappearance of the other half. However, we have already illustrated above that one axis is no different from another axis and, in fact, objects can be rotated such that their lengths can swing around to become their widths, with other axes following suit. This poses some interesting questions...

First, quarks. We can observe a quark existing in two places at the same time and then apparently disappearing from existence. Can we move quarks? If so, is it possible to move two "of the same quark" into the SAME 3D space? I wonder if this would be possible at all. Much like the familiar objective behavior of normally observed objects occupying the same space, but at different times, given an axial rotation, it may be impossible for the same quark to occupy different times at the same space. Moving on...

Quarks have been observed to rotate in opposite directions to each other. We see similar behavior when we wave at ourselves in a mirror. Or when an image is flipped in a camera. This observed phenomena is resultant of optics - lens effects. Could there be something in nature that acts as a "matter-duration" lens, not of light, but of quarks, causing a "reflection" effect on the quark, so that the spins are actually identical (As would be necessary if it is the same quark), but the space-time orientation of the quark is adjusted by this lens effect?

If items could occupy the same space-time location-moments, then the only mathematical description that could isolate these object-instances would be mass. Mathematically speaking, however, this would present an "n-paradox", where we could agree that there is a given number of instances coexisting, and the amount of mass ascribed to each instance would have to be identical, lacking any way of specifying one from the other. It follows that any number of possibilities would be equally true, so long as the number (n) of assumed instances times the assumed mass of a given instance equals the total mass occupying that specific location-moment. This should hold true right on up to a single object in space-time being recognized as an infinite number of instances with infinitely small mass. If you could focus on a single instance, moving one would be infinitely easy. Should we assume that the others, being instances which are bound in space-time would move with them?

...A question best left to the Jedi, that is...

My Deserted Island

I love computers. I also am quite fond of technology, in general. In fact, typically my biggest gripe about technology is that I often am disappointed by the rate with which it advances. Why can't I go to the store and by a personal robot akin to R2-D2 or C-3P0? Why don't we have Star Trek's transporter technology yet? Why hasn't Stark Industries announced repulsor technology yet?

Despite my technophilia, I have, recently, started to wonder if all of this advanced technology that has, effectively, made the world so small that people on remote locations half a world apart can video conference with each other (or pwn each other) in real time is merely increasing the general stress level of all parties concerned. Communication has become not just prevalent, but pervasive. Ironically, I am discussing this via the Internet - the single most prevalent and pervasive communication channel in the world.

I have even toyed around with the possibility of purchasing a small island somewhere and setting up "camp," so to speak, with a self-sustaining home powered by a solar panel array and wind power, with a garden that produces just enough food to support me and mine. To simplify.

Imagine... If you owned your home outright, your land outright... you had no use for a vehicle... your electrical needs were met (for free) by the sun and the wind... and you had, for all intents and purpose, no need (okay, little need) for money. Imagine the freedom this would provide. You could do any of several low-income things and generate enough money to get by.

Probably most ironic in this entire scenario is that I can't imagine attempting this without some sort of (reasonably high-speed) Internet access. If I were that removed from the bustle of everyday modern life, I would definitely need some way to communicate... and the Internet seems to do a good job of replacing telephones, televisions and newspapers.

...but I never forget a Face(book)

Ah, social networking sites. There are so many out there, each with their own little twists or gimmicks or specific focus. Lately, I've been trying to reconnect with friends from days gone by on Facebook. That's been an interesting experience, and an eye-opening one.

When I was about to marry my beautiful bride, Ashley, we had talked about what her name would be. Hyphenation came up and, at the time, I felt very hurt and insulted. I wanted the world to know that she was with me. I wanted her to take my last name ...to become a Perkins.

In the end, that's what she did, and she tells me, from time to time, that she is happy to be a Perkins. Usually, it's when I'm tossing around the idea of changing my name from "Robert Earle Perkins" to "Game Vortex .com". Perhaps she's mainly not too thrilled in becoming Mrs. ".com", but she and I are both happy with our new life together, and I think, for her, the name is part of that.

However, it wasn't until recently, as I tried to locate friends from back in high school, that I see how hard it can be to find someone once their name has been changed. On Facebook, I search for females from back in high school and pull back various results, often nothing that looks like it's likely to be the correct one. Most of the women I went to school with have since gotten married and, since I don't know their last names, it's difficult to find them. In fact, I end up letting others do most of the work. When I find someone I know, I look at their friends, in hopes that I will recognize someone from high school.

It seems strange, actually... most of the people from my high school (located an hour north of Baton Rouge) seem to have settled in Baton Rouge or the immediate vicinity, but I never see any of them as I go about the city. I suppose I only shop in a couple of grocery stores and I don't really frequent the mall, but I do eat at a lot of restaurants ...yet I never see anyone from "back in the day."

To compound things, there will often be search results that look like they might be someone I know, but when I try to look to verify, either the profile is locked unless you're a accepted friend or there's no profile picture... or the profile pic isn't clear and all of the other pictures they have are of other people - friends, family and the like.

It can get quite tiring. But, Facebook can serve as a nice way to keep in touch with friends you don't see so much anymore.

Do you know me? Check my Facebook page and say "hi."

Robert Perkins' Facebook profile

Butterflies (with baseball bats) in my stomach...

[Warning: The Surgeon General has determined that blog posts, such as this one, that mention medical procedures may not be for the weak at heart... or stomach.]

You know that "butterflies in the stomach" feeling that you can get sometimes when you're nervous about something? Well, yesterday I had a "throat scope" done on me to check for any damage from stomach acid issues I've been having. Other than some mild throat irritation, everything seemed to go just fine, thank you very much.

But then, this morning, I got a call back from the clinic. Completely routine, mind you, just checking up on me, reminding me that I can call on Friday for my results and that I have a follow up appointment in two months, but it got me spooked, I guess... a little worried.

Now, as I sit here writing this, my stomach is churning and sore and I don't know how much of it is butterflies, how much is (perhaps) simple bruising or something (they did remove some polyps while they were in there) and how much might be the McDonalds food I ate for lunch squeezing out of my stomach and around my pancreas.

It's not a good thing when the "butterflies" you have are due to an abnormal feeling in your stomach. It's downright self propagating.