We’re Still Here

Posted on September 10, 2008 Written by 3 Comments

There was quite a bit of consternation about whether you would still exist to read this now.

In case you are in fact reading this particular message, that meant the Large Hadron Collider in Europe has not created little black holes that will swallow the Earth.  The particles are being smashed in an effort to recreate conditions present at the beginning of the universe.

For a little background on that topic, I present the scholarly works of MC Hawking.

Side note… when I get home, I have to explain to my six-year-old what a “black hole” is. I’m not allowed to show her the video. Any suggestions?

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, humor, LHC, CERN, YouTube, Stephen Hawking, black holes[/tags]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged: ,

Awake and Aware

Posted on April 2, 2008 Written by 3 Comments

I haven’t been sharing the ups and downs of my cousin Billy, not because there haven’t been, but because they haven’t been earthshaking in either direction. However, the overall trend seemed to be headed downhill.

Until this morning.

This is from my cousin Dave:

While sitting in Bill’s room blabbering and telling jokes I noticed Bill looking toward me and trying to grin. I told him I would go get dad and Kathy and come back to the hospital. We came back by and I started showing Bill pictures on my laptop and when I’d show him a funny one, he’d try and laugh. The Dr. walked in about this point and walked over to Bill and said “are you hungry?”, and Bill replied with a quiet,breathy, but very distinct “Yes”.

You could have heard a pin drop after he said that. I called Sharon and told her and I held the cell phone to Bill’s ear so she could say hi. Bill really perked up hearing her voice and he responded to her and said very weakly ,”How you doing?” Sharon was in tears. I called Patrick who couldn’t believe Bill had spoken and while holding the phone to Bill’s ear so Patrick could talk I heard Bill respond and say ‘Brandon”. Well, Brandon is Bill’s dog.. and 15 minutes later Patrick shows up at the hospital WITH Bill’s dog and Bill petted the dog.

He hasn’t responded to a Dr. since he’s been in the hospital (March 16).. They were basically giving up on him Sunday figuring he wasn’t going to make it would be gone soon….UNREAL! We’re hoping for no relapses, and small positive steps forward!!! If he can pull through this he still faces a complete bypass.

I don’t know how much human knowledge we lost when the Library at Alexandria burned — I’m reasonably certain that as a people, we know more at this time and place than ever. We know more about anatomy, physiology, physics, disease, injury, and medicine. We have tools that allow us to watch cells split in two, and tools to help us correct defects in the hard-wiring of those same cells. We are even learning how to help the body regrow parts it has lost.

And as a whole, we still don’t know squat.

Again, thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts and prayers. The whole family appreciates it.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, medicine[/tags]

Filed Under: Personal Tagged:

Look For the Twist

Posted on March 27, 2008 Written by 2 Comments

Steve Harden was one of my best friends in high school and college. We were in many of the same science and math classes, although he had a very strong artistic streak. When it came time to get serious about actually graduating, Steve declared a double-major in Chemistry and Art.

One of my other friends (who had a penchant for asking rather snotty questions) posed the following: “What are you going to do with that? Draw illustrations for science textbooks?”

Steve answered “No. I may go the other direction, and get involved with art restoration.”

I’ve always thought the most interesting niches develop at the intersections of different disciplines. That’s where the concepts of one dovetail with the uncertain problems of the other and reveal a new way to solve. Fermat’s Last Theorem tied mathematicians up in knots for centuries, until a topologist translated the problem into his field and attacked it in a new way.

While the intersections can provide insight, you must be careful not to jump to hasty conclusions. That intersection that you view from directly above might just be an overpass. In Steve’s case, it was the chemist’s knowledge that enriched the art, rather than the artist’s touch helping the chemist communicate.

Are you making unnecessary assumptions about which road’s on top?

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, science, communications, philosophy, art, Fermat, mathematics, topology[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Philosophy Tagged: , ,

Steer by the Stars

Posted on September 20, 2007 Written by 3 Comments
Parallax

“All of us get lost in the darkness, dreamers learn to steer by the stars.”

- Rush, “The Pass,” Presto (1989)

There’s a reason why sailors used the stars as their guide. Because of the immense distances between stars, they have no apparent “parallax” for earth-bound observers. Parallax is the measure of perspective change, and is best demonstrated by looking at the same object twice with a different eye closed.

Parallax

For an object far enough away, the differences in the left eye and the right eye cancel. In fact, for the purposes of interstellar distances, you could have one “eye” on one side of the Earth and the other “eye” across the planet, and not get an appreciable difference. There are plans to put two telescopes into Earth’s solar orbit, on opposite sides. (Putting the two lenses 186 million miles apart would provide some true binocular perspective to some of the universe. But this isn’t an astrophysics discussion…)

Instead, I want you to think like a sailor. Steer by the things that are the most fixed and least changing. Steering by the stars kept the navigators from going off-course, where supplies of food or fresh water might not be at hand. Steering by the stars used to be a matter of survival.

I’ve had a habit over the last 12 years that I am proud of. Every year, I re-examine my 5, 10, and 15-year plans. Yes, they are different. I look at where I want to be in my life 15 years down the road, and that helps me set 5 and 10-year milestones that guide me in my decisions. Many times, I’ve altered those plans – I didn’t have a path to take me to my current job. It was an opportunity that fell well within the boundaries of my 15-year plan.

By steering by the stars, I found a different path – one that is more fulfilling then the one I originally charted. And by focusing only on the really important core values in the 15-year plan, I don’t get caught seeking the superficial.

Where do you want to be in 15 years? In five? Wouldn’t you like to know?

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, planning, productivity, optics, Rush[/tags]

Filed Under: Personal, Philosophy Tagged:

An Inconvenient Irony

Posted on June 19, 2007 Written by Leave a Comment
Paris Hilton

Al Gore is angry at all the attention Paris Hilton is getting. From The Sun:

Paris Hilton“The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. We have to ask ourselves what is going on here?”

Sadly, Paris Hilton is a figment of our collective imagination. She is a celebrity without merit. A star without a firmament. An empress with no clothes. She is the product of a culture that places so much value and credibility with fame, that we can take a cause seriously only after it’s been adopted by someone famous. Like these Live Earth concerts, for instance… no one cares about saving the planet until the Chili Peppers and Madonna an-

Oh. Snap!

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Live Earth, Paris Hilton, Al Gore, celebrity, activism, pop culture[/tags]

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Dvorak Hexed

Posted on May 31, 2007 Written by Leave a Comment

PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak is in a tizzy about the “Dumbing Down” of our society, thanks to journalists who think we are morons. A recent article about the cracking of the AACS encryption code didn’t properly refer to the hexadecimal code used:

An online uproar came in response to a series of cease-and-desist letters from lawyers for a group of companies that use the copy protection system, demanding that the code be removed from several Web sites.

Rather than wiping out the code—a string of 32 digits and letters in a specialized counting system—the legal notices sparked its proliferation on Web sites, in chat rooms, inside cleverly doctored digital photographs and on user-submitted news sites…

Dvorak’s “chief beef” is that the Times must think we’re all too stupid to not know what hexadecimal code is (or those that don’t can’t learn by context.) He has personal experience with these editorial decisions:

“Having written for many newspapers—The Times included—I cannot tell you how often editors have balked at using the term hard disk. Forget about terms like gate array. And only recently has RAM been accepted.“

My concern is that we’re locking ourselves into the notion that we must write for only one audience at a time. Good writing makes a point. Great writing is layered enough to inform those at a high baseline, and raise the bar for those who aren’t quite there. It’s a skill that becomes even more important in a medium like the web, where we can’t expect everyone to follow the linear path. If you’re reading an article online, it’s no bother to pop to a different window and look up something on the side. (Or to roll over the acronym you didn’t know, to see if there is a tooltip.)

It’s hard to build an audience by talking down to it.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, John Dvorak, hexadecimal, New York Times[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication Tagged: , ,

A Prime Time Mystery

Posted on May 24, 2007 Written by Leave a Comment

{Scientists still don’t know why the cicadas emerge every 17 years.}

That’s not an exact quote from ABC News reporter Claire Shipman, but it is fairly close. On this morning’s GMA, she filed a report about the emergence of “Brood XIII,” a noisy event to be sure. For a moment, I was baffled as to why she’d refer to the 17-year cycle as a mystery, especially since the answer is based in math and common sense. (And was the subject of several articles by the late Stephen Jay Gould as far back as 30 years ago.)

It’s simply a matter of evolution and adaptation. It’s a survival strategy. Burst forth in giant numbers, and predators will never be able to eat your species to extinction. However, if you emerge from your slumber every year, your predators can adapt their numbers to enjoy a regular lunch. If you pop up every other year, you’ll be a meal for every predator with an even-year cycle of its own.

Over the generations, those cicadas that emerged on a cycle that was a prime number were the least likely to bump across a predator with cycle that might sync up (and wipe out the brood.) Which explains why the two largest brood cycles are now 17 years and 13 years – two somewhat large primes that don’t fit any easy multiples.

What I find interesting would be the eventual intersection of those two brood cycles, which happens every 221 years. There’s no real guarantee that both would pop up within the same window, but it is possible (broods make their noise, make their babies, and die off within 30 days or so.) The 13-year Brood hit in 2004, with the 17-year Brood firing up now. Here is the breakdown of future years: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Communication Tagged: , , , ,
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