Second Chances

I don't usually post about me.  Or rather, I post often about things I find interesting. 
While my vast readership would challenge my opinion on interesting - I infrequently persevere :-)

   

Today is our anniversary.
We have spent the last dozen years blissfully together.
Every day and especially on this one, I choose Holly.
Again and again...

If I could muster up the grumpiness to find anything to regret, it is that we will not have long enough lives to likely celebrate a 40, 50 or 60 year anniversary.

But I digress.



Life can be hard.  Anyone who lives it recognizes that.  Now compared to many, mine has been rather charmed.  Even so, mistakes were made, and I found myself at almost 40 without a life partner.  Without someone to share the highs and lows of life.  To have and to hold. 

In retrospect, it is clear that I met Holly just at the right time.  The life experiences I went through were the best teacher.  Showing me clearly who I am and what I desired out of life.  I am not saying that had we met another time in our lives that we would not have ended up together.  I am pretty sure that some things are just meant to be.  But it took a failed first chance to prepare me for the miracle of Holly. For those that don't know her, it is your loss.  She is an amazing woman, who quietly shines her beautiful light on her small corner of the world.  As far as second chances go, this was the granddaddy of them all. 

In the beginnings of us, we spent a couple days on Catalina Island.  One of the places I remember well was Two Harbors.  An isthmus of land separating two beautiful harbors.  I enjoy analogies, and felt as if each of us were the harbors, and finally discovering each other, bridging the narrow gap that had kept us apart. 






Discovery was short.  Like 2 puzzle pieces we fell into each other easily and snugly. 
Life may continue to be hard, but having Holly in my life ads a sweetness and joy to everything. 
I can't imagine life without her.  She is my true North.  The place I call home. 

It IS a Happy Anniversary indeed.

Moore & Rose

How many of you are familiar with Moore's Law?  Probably most if you have any geek about you :-)

For those who don't know, Moore's Law (circa 1965) is the observation that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.   That just happens to align strongly with processing speed and memory capacity. 
So we can thank Moore's law for predicting the fancy computers we own today.
Actually - the law was originally thought to likely run its course within around 10 years.  Quite impressively, it remains true today as well!

So who is Rose?  And what is Rose's Law?  That would be Geordie Rose, who observed a very similar trend for Qubits. 
What - you ask - are qubits?  It is a made up word, a word made from the joining of "Quantum" and "bit".   Bits in the traditional digital world are binary representations, a 0 or a 1, True or False, On of Off.  Take your pick.  The key is they can take on one of two distinct values.  Nearly every modern computer works in this digital world, and quite successfully too.  Qubits can have many discrete states at the same time.  It can be a 0 and a 1 at the same time!  Part of the magic of the quantum world's weirdness.

So back to bits and qubits.  Moore used the following meager set of 5 data points to discover his law.


Rose has used the following to derive his Law:

Both represent an exponential growth in linear terms.  The difference... and this is key - it that a doubling in transistor density represents a doubling in processing power.   A doubling of Qubits represents an EXPONENTIAL growth. 
Without going very far out in the future - this could mean that in 1 or 2 years, a quantum computer will be faster than the fastest computer we have today. 
Give it another 1 or 2 years, and ONE quantum computer will be faster than all the computers on earth combined. 
Give it another 1 or 2 years, and it could conceivably be faster than the entire universe! 
Mind you, I don't even know what that last one really means.  But if it does not sound a bit scary to you, you have not watched enough science fiction!
How can it do this?  Quoting from David Deutsch, "it harnesses the refractive echoes of many trillions of parallel universes to perform a computation". 

I for one, will welcome our Robot overlords :-)


PS - neither Moore nor Rose named their laws... neither owned an ego that large. 

The Ultimate Sales Job

We don't have a newspaper delivered, much to the dismay of our local paper the Rockford Register Star and some of my friends and family. Even so, today they delivered us a free Sunday newspaper. As I opened it up before throwing it in the recycling bin, I was surprised to see that of the maybe 50-60 pages, we just might have 5-6 pages of actual news. The rest? Advertising.
And having just come back from a Thanksgiving holiday in Houston, the ratio was even worse.

I also went to see a movie with my family. "The Life of Pi".  It was well done and thought provoking.  But I digress.  Before we could enjoy the movie, we had to wade through 20 minutes of advertising.  Not for other movies - but for cars, perfume, furniture, dish detergent and all manner of things I usually take pains to not subject myself to.
And as I scan magazines, I suspect the content to advertisement ratio is similarly diminutive.
Thankfully we record all of our TV, so we can skip the story disruptions nicely.
Looking over the football college bowls... they are no longer the sugar & orange bowls, they are the Allstate & Discover bowls and played in the Mercedes-Benz Super dome & Sun Life Stadiums.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear.  Advertising is everywhere. 

But here is the rub.  What do ALL of these things have in common?  We already payed for them.  Newspapers, magazines, movies, sports, cable TV.   
We have gone from advertisement despising folk to ones who now shell out a pretty penny to have these media and entertainment providers shove it down our throats. 
In an insidiously perverse way, I have to give them kudos.  I would not have thought this possible 20 years ago.

You a Pansy? Take hope.

If I called you a pansy, you would be, rightfully, insulted. 
Assuming of course, you cared about my opinion. 

Even so, I have to wonder about the term.  It is mid November.  Every potted plant we cared for meticulously through Spring, Summer, and now Autumn, has died and gone to plant heaven.  Par for the course and expected.  With one exception.   A most resilient little plant, pictured here.





We don't water it anymore.  We have not brought the plant in from the heat or cold.  And yet here it is, the last survivor from a brutally hot 2012 Summer.  Not just alive, but blooming vigorously.

 

So the next time you think to call someone a pansy, you may wish to rethink your choice of words!

 



Climate Change & Sandy

If you have not heard about Climate Change - you are to be congratulated. That level of isolation is truly hard to come by... you will probably live longer and happier than most of us :-)

If you have - I am sure it is also not news to you that the topic makes a resurgence in the headlines every time a weather event such as Sandy occurs.  Those who feel it is important to proselytize the masses with their concern can point to such events and say "See... Climate Change... we told you so".  And those who for various reasons choose to remain skeptical of the science discount these events as nothing more than the natural variation endemic to weather.

For me?  For once I would say they are both right, or wrong - take your pick.
Here is how I build an analogy - simplistic as it may be.

Suppose you are playing a game of dice.  You pick.  Also assume that someone has loaded the dice in such a way that the odds of hitting snake eyes is a little higher.  Let's even assume that you know the dice are loaded.  First off, I am pretty sure that if in the game you are playing snake eyes is not a good roll, you will not want to be the player using them!  But for argument sake, you do. 
Do you claim then, that every snake eyes you roll is a direct result of the dice being loaded?  Of course not.  That is just silliness.  But over time, with careful bookkeeping - you will see more of them than if you had fair dice. 
Climate change is similar.  A warming planet loads the weather dice.  To point to any one weather event and claim it is a direct result of climate change is wrong headed - and is really a misrepresentation of how climate change works.  This weather event is just one roll of the dice. 

 

The Gas Price Lie

I am fact checker.  Those who know me understand my positions are data driven (mostly). 
Which is one of the reasons I so enjoy many of the fact checking sites that have pervaded the internet over the last decade.

But I was sorely let down last week when I read FactCheck's "Obama's Numbers".

Lots of information there.  I have not verified most of it - but a quick perusal showed one that seemed glaringly wrong.  Specifically that gas prices have risen 106% under Obama's term thus far.
Now mind you, I honestly don't think presidents have much say or impact on the matter.  But we know that in the weeks leading up to the election, lots of misinformation (a.k.a lies) are thrown around by both parties. 
And this one particularly irks me.  Why?  Because it is such a straightforward check that can be so easily dismissed!   So how did FactCheck miss this as well?  Let's take a look.

This represents the last 8 years of average gas prices.  You will notice that right around when Bush left office, we had radically low gas prices.  Between $1.60 and $1.80 a gallon.  Current prices are now in the mid to upper $3 dollars.  Using these 2 points - we get the numbers FactCheck generated. 

We could end the story there, but should not.  Taking the data and running the numbers, we get that during Bush's first term prices averaged $1.66 / gallon.  During Bush's second term prices averaged $2.91 / gallon.  A nice 75% price increase.  During Obama's term thus far, prices averaged $3.13 /gallon.  A reasonable 7-8% price increase.

So the next time someone lies to you about this - call them out.  Embarrass them for parroting bad information.  If they are sticking to the party line - and insist on their cherry picked number - remind them that the only reason prices were as low on Bush's exit was because we had a global economic meltdown.  I am surprised they want to use that to their credit.