In the World

I think that meteorologists, climatologists, weather modelers, and anyone else who has anything to do with the environmental sciences should have to ride motorcycles to work.

Then maybe, just maybe, they will understand why there are those of us who find it extremely laughable that they think they know ANYTHING about the climate and the weather on Earth.

When I ride my motorcycle to work–a whopping 13 miles–the temperature can vary by ten degrees or more along a distance of just a couple hundred yards. There’s no way you can purport to know what the mean temperature of the entire planet is without your margin of error being larger than any possible change. You just can’t get a large enough sample to account for all the variables.

So get a motorcycle, and see how much you trust your weather models then.

I’ve always been a very creative person, but for the past four or five years I’ve really gotten out of the habit of just allowing creativity to happen.

By that, I mean playing. Like kids.

When children play, they aren’t bound by the constraints of logic, engineering, common sense, physics, the laws of nature, time, space, or even gravity. You want to travel through time? Build a time machine out of a cardboard box, an open doorway, or a Delorean.

One of my favorite creative “exercises” was LEGOs (copyright, trademark of the LEGO corporation in Denmark; please please please don’t sue me). I have a bin full of them. I’d sit down, and without thinking about what I wanted to make, I would just start sticking pieces together. Eventually, some sort of concept would emerge, that I would then focus on refining (usually by scrapping what I had done and starting over from scratch) what had been dredged up out of mind. Usually some kind of spaceship. But wow were they pretty spectacular ships. Beat out anything LEGO was selling in kits, that’s for sure.

I’m reading a little book right now called “The Imagineering Way”, and it’s about how Disney’s creative teams (called Imagineers) go about their creative process. It’s a fascinating little book on freeing your creativity and using a creative process that frees you instead of limits you.

It remind me of a chapter in John Maxwell’s “Put Your Dream to the Test”, wherein Michael Hyatt talks about focusing on what you want to do and where you want to be. Focus on the goal, and the “how” will come together. In “The Imagineering Way”, Karen Armitage asks “What am I doing that is getting in the way of what I want to happen.”

In my case, I think I’ve spent so much time handling the day-to-day of just getting things done and making decisions, that I’ve forgotten to focus on the big picture somewhat. I spend so much time on the “hows” that I’ve neglected the “whats”.

Here’s what I’m doing now to foster my creative process. Some of these things I used to do but got out of the habit, others are new:

1. Keep an idea notebook. Use it. (past notebooks have included everything from television shows to real estate development).
2. Get out the LEGO collection (put away when Munchkin was born).
3. Play with spaceship models again (I have an impression collection and am always looking for more).
4. Don’t worry about “how” an idea would work, just write it down.
5. Set up a tinker workspace (haven’t had one since high school).
6. Learn a new programming language (Python wins, I think).
7. Set aside at least an hour to exercise creativity every night by doing one of the above.

And above all: Stick with it!

For some time now, Nathan has been asking me what my dreams and aspirations are.

And my answer? I don’t know.

Not personally, anyway. I can’t say that I’ve really thought about it much in the past few years. But for me, separating myself from Destiny Image has always been just a bit of a challenge (and you can read as much sarcasm into that as you want). You see, I’m one of those people who puts their entire heart, mind, and soul into something when I really get involved with it. My own personal goals have been my goals at Destiny Image for so long, that I’m not sure where one ends and the other begins.

This year, I think I started to separate it a little bit, finally. I’ve scheduled trips that not only have nothing to do with work, but can’t have anything to do with work unless I let my creative juices start to run and make it about work.

Because while I may not have an overarching life goal at this point, I can set shorter-term goals. Things like spend more time with my daughter or don’t kill myself on my motorcycle or don’t get stressed out and actually enjoy vacation.

My mid-term and long-term goals have always incorporated Destiny Image, but I’m fairly adrift now. I’ve accomplished all the goals I’ve already set out to achieve, but I haven’t replaced them with new goals.

I have a long weekend; I think I will set aside some time to ponder this.

I thought this was absolutely hilarious.

It’s a lot of programming jokes. If you’re not a programming, or not into absolutely hilarious stuff, don’t bother reading.

Incidentally, I’m trying to decide what programming language to pick up to get back into programming. I’ve pretty much narrowed it down to Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP.

I guess I’ll just flip a coin and hope it comes up Perl. I think I’d be a little worried about accidentally sticking an “Import SkyNet;” statement into one of my Python programs. And I already like Perl.

Notice there is no mention of Java, C++, Visual ANYTHING, or Lisp. I think the days of masochism in programming should be over. Although, Objective-C might be a possibility, because that’s the language of choice in the dev kit for OSX and the iPhone.

Maybe I’ll try my hand at a climatology model. I’m betting I could do better than the hacks at Los Alamos. *grin*

I don’t post about my science interest too often. Partly because I tend toward the theoretical/math stuff (which most people don’t follow), but mostly because I just don’t feel like defending my positions on major misuses (IMHO) of modern science.

But I heard one yesterday that I simply have to rant about.

Yesterday evening (Tuesday, May 19) on WHYY out of Philadelphia (an NPR station, I know) the station had a guest on to talk about the horrors of climate change and what the Obama administration and the current Congress is going to do to save us all.

I abhor these kinds of discussions, because the stations always get these quack scientists who couldn’t model their way through a maze in a coloring book to talk about the Deep And Profound Things.

This particular discussion started off with the interviewer asking the “scientist” about  the science behind global warming/climate change, and whether it was really a threat. Talk about a leading question! The “scientist” spent the next 5 minutes explaining how the science had proven that 1) global climate change was real, and that 2) it was being caused by changes in the composition of the atmosphere that were the result of man’s activities on the earth.

This then segued into a a gushing talk about how Congress and the American government was finally taking a leadership stance in the fight against global warming, and how 35mpg cars, mileage-destroying emissions limits, and carbon cap-and-trade schemes were going to save the world.

There’s just a couple problems. They are 1) global climate change is real and has been happening since earth has had an atmospehere and 2) we do not know if the changes in the atmosphere are damaging.

First, geology tells us that the earth’s climate is ever-changing. And it changes fast. Dinosaurs? Killed off in mass extinctions at least a half-dozen times. The geologic record in North America says that once the last ice age ended (around 12,000 years ago) it only took about 100 years for the glaciers to retreat to the arctic circle. We’re talking thousands of miles of glacial melt-off in just 100 years! That’s glacial retreat of more than 10 miles every year. To give this some scale, “scientists” are worried about glacial shearing of less than a mile per year, which is being replaced by new glacier growth.

Second, as an example of “we don’t know what the hell the consequences of our actions are”, is a recent study that shows how knee-jerk environmental regulations of the 1970′s have actually excaserbated the problem of atmospheric pollution. [Note to self, insert reference as soon you find the study again.]

Don’t get me wrong, I like science. I love science. I just hate seeing it misused to dupe people into supporting something that the science doesn’t actually support.

After the hilarious marketing failure that was Windows Vista, Microsoft seems to have once again realized that customers really do matter.

Enter Windows 7.

Windows XP (eXPerience) was wildly successful for Microsoft, correcting much of the bad will it inflicted upon its user base through Windows ME (MillEnium), Microsoft’s less-than-inspiring followup to the excellent Windows 95/98 product chain.

And here and here are the interesting bits of Win7 news I stumbled across today while attempting to recover from a week of vacation.

Built-in virtualization? Who does Microsoft think they are? Apple? I will admit, though, that Classic was a brilliant idea on Apple’s part, and they managed to execute it pretty well (not flawlessly, mind you, but well).

I guess it’s time to fire up another VirtualBox instance and try out the latest Windows 7 beta.

Yesterday I acquired, through an ancient and arcane right, my first Commemorative Star Trek Glass from Burger King.

When I opened the bag containing the subject of the rite of passage that I had performed, I was joyed to that, among other notations on the box, that the glass itself had been “Made in U.S.A.”

I’m sure to some people this doesn’t matter, but it matters to me. The box was made in China, but the glass–the true product purchased by the reading of magnetically-stored binary-encoded information and authorized through the transmission of electrons to regions unknown–was made in the country I call home.

Yay U-S-A!

But then I opened the box. Apparently, a cardboard box was not sufficient protection, for there, draping my glass, was a clear plastic bag covered in black type. One line on the bag caught my attention: “MADE IN CHINA.”

So now I’m confused.

Was the glass made in the United States or China? Was the plastic bag made in China?

So BK, care to comment? Didn’t think so. Nobody reads my blog anyway.

…Please!

The movie is good. Great, even. An excellent restart to a classic series that lost its way in recent years.

JJ Abrams was brilliant. The cast was superb. The special effects were incredible (so much so, in fact, that I had to keep reminding myself that the starships were CG). The art was…well…it was ART. I’m looking forward to wallpaper images of the freaking credits.

Above all else, though, Star Trek was true to what made Star Trek tick: It’s about the people. What makes James T. Kirk tick? Who is Spock beneath that cool Vulcan exterior? Where did Sulu learn to fence like THAT? What made the crew of the Enterprise the best in the fleet? Why did they work so well together? Star Trek was almost more than just a story about good vs. evil–it was about the people that made life and death decisions every day. The story is just the backdrop. The reason to get to know the people. but it’s still a great story.

I’ve heard a lot of advance doubt and criticism about some of the casting choices. I shared some of those doubts. Chris Pine as Kirk? Who’s he? Would I be able to look at Zach Quinto without expecting him to start whipping people around rooms and sawing scalps off? And John Cho as Sulu? Karl Urban as McCoy? Simon Pegg even? Those fears were all for naught, as this is probably one of the best-cast films I’ve ever seen. It ranks right up there with Lord of the Rings for a casting director who needs a big, big raise.

There were so many little gems in this movie, too. People who have never seen Star Trek before will love the movie, but Abrams threw in so many little inside Trekkie jokes, nods, and winks that it’ll take watching the movie a couple times to catch them all.

And yet, Abrams managed to pull the movie off in such a way that he cleared the slate for new Star Trek movies, TV shows, or other media that deviate from the existing canon. It was a brilliant move. He pays homage to where Star Trek has been, and to the fans who have kept it alive for so many years, yet still manages to hit the reset button without it feeling cheap or contrived.

I was amazed.

For the first time since Lord of the Rings, a movie has actually met, and maybe even exceeded, my expectations.

Live long and prosper, JJ Abrams.

P.S. I hope you have the cast locked in to multi-film contracts, and you’re ready to start filming. I would like to see more Star Trek as soon as possible! TV maybe? Please? Pretty please?