PoliticalProgramming

Hey guys, I hope your having a great, relaxing summer. Sorry for the lack of new posts but I’ve been out of town for the past month and so haven’t been able to reach a computer with Internet access. I got some questions asking if I was giving up, which of course I am not, and I’m now hoping to get back to bi-weekly updates(although this might not be possible as we will be moving soon and it might be a while before we get our internet up). Anyways on to the topic for today, which is regarding the world energy crisis, the deepening pit we are digging for ourselves. Generous estimates say that our oil reserves will run out within 40 years, other experts say that we only have four. Either way our time is quickly running out and our children will be growing up in a world without oil. We’ve already dammed all the all the major rivers to utilize their potential energy, so water power is really going to be our saving grace. Nuclear power seems like a good idea except for the radioactive waste, infertility, and radiation that surround it. Biofuels are great except for the fact that it takes almost as much energy to make them as they produce. That and the fact that we’re already starving and don’t have that much surplus food lying around. The future seems bleak except for one possibility and that is solar energy.

Solar energy is  one of the energy methods with the most potential, and the least refinement. On average the sun pours approximately 1.37 kilowatts of pure energy on to each square meter of the surface. This means that with simply a square kilometer one could collect over a gigawatt of energy, to give a sense of scale this means that in about a 9 by 9 kilometer area there is enough power to power the whole of great Britain even at their peak energy consumption. On the other had to power the US, about 1.71 terawatts, which would take up a little more space but still it remains at only about 50 kilometers on each side. Give this is a large area, but when take in to consideration that it is an indefinite energy source, creates no pollution and takes away all foreign dependency, solar energy seems like a pretty good deal. The problem is right now solar panels are only about fifteen percent efficient, can only operate during certain times days, can only work best at certain angles at certain places, and must have  a direct line of sight with the sun, no clouds or anything. Also solar panels are pretty expensive to manufacture, meaning that as of today they only make up about 0.72 percent of the energy production in the world just because oil and gas are just so much cheaper.

So why are our solar cells so inefficient, and what can we do to change that? First of all this requires that one has some knowledge about solar cells and how they convert solar energy into electrical energy. There is a really great article to be found here at howstuffworks, but I’ll try to give you a brief overview. Basically they create two silicon crystals one positively charged and one negatively charged. Between these two crystals an electric field is formed and when a photon hits either one of the crystals electrons are released and are propelled along the electric field creating a current which we then store as electrical energy. But the main problem with this layout is that it only absorbs a small portion of the electro-magnetic scale (mainly waves in the 1.1 eV range). This accounts for a huge amount of energy loss in solar cells, about 70%, while the other percentage is due to resistance and imperfect conduction. So that means that unfortunately we could never have a perfect solar cell, but at least we could build ones that are a lot more efficient by absorbing more wavelengths. As of now this could be achieved with multiple materials but this lowers the voltage a lot and therefore produces less power. Ideally we would want a single material capable of absorbing all wavelengths, unfortunately a material does not currently exist that would make this possible so we might have to live with our current ones until nanotechnology really starts to pick up steam, and produces the things we are looking for. So what else can we do?

The answer lies not on earth, but in space. In space, solar technology has a multitude of advantages over solar cells on earth. First of all they absorb much more energy because the atmosphere hasn’t reflected or absorbed any the light, they also get much more sunlight for longer time periods and at a much more direct angle. All of this makes collecting the sun’s energy in space many times more efficient than down here on earth. Unfortunately this method is not very cost effective due to the high cost of launching rockets, and then there is the trouble of getting the electricity back down to earth. One idea for this is to convert the electricity back into a laser, beam the concentrated light down to earth and collect it there. Unfortunately we still face the problem with light to electricity efficiency and converting electricity to lasers is only about 50 percent efficient. There are other ideas but that is the one that I think has the highest chance of success. Remember there are hundreds of ways that this could work, all we need to do is find one, see you guys next time and keep having fun.

Hey guys today I’m going to talk about an issue that could ruin the Internet as we know it if we don’t join together to stop it. I am of course talking about Net Neutrality. This is kind of a hard concept to understand and I myself have just fully comprehended it today, but I’ll try to explain it in this article. Net Neutrality is really just an argument about who can control the Internet, the government or the corporations. Right now the net is open to almost everyone, any kid with a modem can go online and they can look at blogs, sites, images, videos, or really whatever they want to look at, at the highest speed that their connection can support. This is the concept of Net Neutrality, that the cable and telephone companies can not interfere with your information or the speed that some sites reach you. Unfortunately due to our capitalistic society some of the head honchos at these cable and telephone companies realized that they could make more money from the Internet if they charge for faster speed.

This would complete destroy, the ideals of equality and connection on the Internet. The big companies would be able to pay the tax, while millions of other sites would be shunned to the side and some even shut down if they couldn’t pay off the cable companies. This would create a one way media, where only big companies could get in and turn it into something like T.V., Radio, or Newspapers, all controlled by a few big companies. This is not something we can let happen to the Internet, because it’s the multitude of views and opinions that make it such a great medium for just about everything. Please help the millions of Americans and myself in ending corporate influence on the Internet, you can go to this site http://www.savetheinternet.com, send a letter to your members of congress, or just spread the word. Together we can keep the internet from falling into corporate hands like newspapers, television and radio, lets keep the internet in the hands of the people.

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of updates lately but I’ve been really busy lately preparing for finals and so haven’t had much time to work on the blog, and I’ve kinda been at a lack of ideas. Moving on, today I’ve been investigating something that has always perplexed me. What I have been wondering is why state capitals seem to be located in the middle of nowhere in the US, but in Europe its the exact opposite and capitals are huge thriving centers of culture, and economy. The first example that pops into my head would be New York, where one would expect the capital to be New York City but instead it is Albany, which has almost ten times less people. In Europe it’s the exact opposite with places like Paris both being capitals and huge cities in their own right. Why is America different from most of the western world in this regard?

One of the first things I realized is maybe I’m looking at apples and oranges. Maybe I can’t compare a state capital with the capital of a country. But if you think about many states in the US are the same size or bigger than European countries, so size obviously isn’t a problem. Also both lie within the same line of latitude, giving them similar temperatures, and climates. The geographic conditions vary greatly over the United States and Europe so they also have that in common. Now it would seem that the two are actually pretty similar, and have similar geographic/natural conditions. So if it wasn’t the lay of the land what did create the rift between them?

So after doing a couple hours of research and not finding anything I eventually came to my own conclusions that the reason for this difference was the time periods in which major cities and capitals began to appear. In Europe places like Paris and London have existed for thousands of years, whereas capitals like Albany and Sacramento have been around a few hundred at the most. One of the most important changes between these time periods was industrialization, which would allow for bigger cities that didn’t have to rely on close by rivers and natural resources. When European capitals were established they were usually built near rivers and in easily defensible positions, London on the Thames, Paris on the Seine, and the same thing happened in the US, Albany on the Hudson, Carson City on the Carson River and Lake Tahoe. In Europe these capitals were the only place to live for as other places were open to attack or lacked natural resources, and over hundreds of years, and they slowly grew to be huge centers of culture, wealth attracting more people and creating a kind of vicious cycle. In the US on the other hand soon after these capitals were created industrialization happened and people could start to expand a lot easier, finding new places to settle in large populations, not based on strategic position, where they started the big cities we know today like LA, New York and Las Vegas. In Europe when Industrialization started to occur the people actually wanted to stay in the capitals because they had already become such centers for trade and commerce that it was more effective for them to live there. In the end that is what created the difference between these great powers and it will continue to be like that unless something huge happens. That’s all for today, thanks for reading.

Math has always impressed people as the search for more and more ways to dazzle their friends, and so I have decided to dedicate this article to all of those math tricks used to stun your peers.

Always know the Number: This is a classic one where you are asked to choose a number between one and ten, put it through a series of equations and then the other person always happens to know your number. My favorite example is as follows.
Pick a number between 1 and 10 inclusive. Now multiply it by 9. Next add the digits of the number you have gotten. Subtract 5. Now think of the letter of the alphabet that corresponds to this new number. (A=1, B=2, etc.). Now think of a country that starts with that letter. Now think of an animal that’s name starts with the second letter of the country. Were you thinking of Elephants and Denmark?
If you weren’t either you really know your countries or you’re doing the math wrong. This works because the digits of any number 1-10 multiplied by 9 will always be nine. 9, 18, 27, 36 etc. they all work and after that you can do whatever you want with it.

Squaring any number ending in 5: This is a nice trick that you can use to square some really large numbers like 205, or even 1005, in your head in a couple seconds. The thing to remember is that the last two digits will always be 25 and to get the other digits you simply take everything except the five and multiply it by itself plus one. For example in 205, you ignore the five and multiply 20 by 21 to get 420 and then simply append 25 to get 42,025. Check and see, this will work with any number ending in 5.

Squares involving only 1’s: This one is from the book The Number Devil and although is pretty restricted is still kinda interesting. This involves squares of numbers that are made up of solely 1’s like 11, 111, and 1,111. When ever you square a number like this the answer will be a palindrome in ascending order where the middle number is the number of ones. That might be kind of hard to understand so I’m just going to give you an example. 11*11 is 121, 111*111 is 12321 and so on. This can be a pretty amazing if you square a number like 111111111, although the trick stops working somewhere around 1111111111.

Add up all the numbers from 1 to N: This is a trick found by Karl Friedrich Gauss when his math teacher got angry and told the kids to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss found a way to answer the question and astounded his teacher when he got a solution in 30 seconds. He realized that it could be rearranged into (1+100)+(2+99) +….+(50+51) where each binomial equals 101 and since there were 50 terms 101*50=5050. This rule applies to adding up the numbers from 1 to N where it is equal to (N+1)*(N/2). Pretty fun to do to show off that you can add the numbers 1 to 570 in ten seconds.(It’s 162,735)

Proximity Squaring: This one can be pretty amazing when used in conjunction with the fives one. This is to help you square a number as long as you know the square of either adjacent number. This ones pretty simple and all it requires is that you take the adjacent number square and add the adjacent number and your number to it. For example 45 squared is 2025, then to get 46 squared you simply do 2025 +45+46 to get 2116, and while this may not be exactly easy is still a lot easier than doing it from scratch in your head.

If you use all of these rights, you can probably impress a lot of your friends and leave many of them scratching their heads wondering how on earth you did it.

Yesterday my friend sent me a link to Google’s April fools joke Virgle. I was disappointed when I found out it wasn’t real, but I started to formulate my own plans to get a colony on Mars, and after a day of planning I’ll share them with you.

The First Ship: The first thing required for a Martian colony is an initial ship that would get robots/workers to start building up the necessities. Here there are two options, the first is that it could be fired off in the standard way and waste millions of gallons of fuel, pollute the atmosphere and cost millions of dollars for a single launch. Or we could just use one of these. Of course building and maintaining a huge magnetic launching loop like this could cost millions, but in the end it would be a good investment. With this technology we could launch a ship just about every day, making it a lot easier and cheaper to launch mass amounts of technology, resources, robots etc. If the magnets were ramped up and we launched at the right time of the year, when earth and Mars are the closest, then the time for the initial spaceship to get there could be as little as five months.

First Contact: This is probably one of the more important stages, the time when the first buildings are set up, and the of terraforming Mars begins. One of the first things that should be done is a release of photosynthetic bacteria. These bacteria could start converting the massive amounts of carbon-dioxide into the gas of life, oxygen. These bacteria would have to be very durable, and fast at multiplying to survive the harsh conditions of Mars. Fortunately they would not have any natural predators and so could probably flourish and start to re-oxygenize the atmosphere of Mars. On the ship the robots would have all the materials that they needed to assemble a simple shelter where humans could land later. Successive shipments of materials would arrive about every month so the robots could continue assembly on a shelter and after about a year, they would have put together something where the first colonists could live. After this the robots, would start to mine Martian soil for iron deposits to find more materials for successive buildings, while the first humans were set to be launched.

Human Contact: The first humans of course will not be civilians but highly trained engineers/scientists. They will probably be launched in much the same way as the robots if a way can be found to overcome the G forces. Now unless we figure a successful way of inducing homeostasis for 5 months, we will have to deal with the obvious troubles of food, water, oxygen etc. Food could possibly be produced by genetically enhanced plants, oxygen by bacteria, water could be recycled. Although the science required for this doesn’t exist now it is highly probable that it will in about 20-30 years. Another important thing to remember is the effects of zero gravity on the human balance and perception. After a while in zero gravity the inner ear mechanisms are messed up and when they are reintroduced to gravity they can experience nausea, and lack of coordination and balance for several days. To prevent this each occupant of the space shuttle would have to spend about a half or a full hour in a centrifuge per day, to simulate gravity and keep the body prepared to work as soon as gravity is reintroduced. Once the humans reach the planets surface they will set to work immediately, fixing anything that’s broken, studying the natural phenomena, and building up the compound. Food and water would have to be recycled or regrown in much the same way as the ship but at least the bacteria would be providing oxygen. The scientists/engineers would be up there for approximately a year until a suitable return ship was built. After about another ten years of building up, using both human and robotic work forces, the first citizens could arrive.

Colonization/Terraforming: The main goal for Mars would be to create a second world, somewhere people could go if Earth becomes uninhabitable. To do this a colony would need to be started with people who were willing to come to live and work on another planet. I think that the only way to really get people to fly the required five months would be to have a socialist society and provide everything for them. This way especially the poorer population would be attracted to life on another planet. In general the economy would have to be pretty self dependent as it would take months for shipments from earth to arrive and having a complete socialist government is probably the best way to do this. Eventually a capitalist economy could be instituted if it was needed. Plants would have to be created that could adopt to the Martian terrains and that could produce enough food to feed the masses. Using large explosives or heating the ice caps could be melted and reintroduce water into the environment. The atmosphere would have to be built up so to prevent the deadly radiation that would easily kill most unprotected humans. In addition to all of this heat would have to be poured into Mars, possibly by using powerful green house gasses which we are currently trying to avoid. While these changes were happening the housing areas would have to be built up, entertainment added, work out rooms, things like that to keep the people of Mars happy. Information between earth and Mars could still happen quickly but things like IM, phone, or any instant communication would be impossible because of the 4 minute travel time. The Internet would also be almost impossible to access from Mars and another one would probably have to be set up if the citizens wanted an Internet to communicate on. Eventually after several years there would be the first generations of actual Martians, people born on Mars. It can not be predicted how the conditions of Mars would effect babies but if they lived then they could make way for an entire civilization of people born on Mars not just shuttled up from earth. After a long time the colony would have become a civilization with a unique culture, currency, language, government, and people. It would negotiate with the other countries as an equal, maybe become the first intergalactic superpower, maybe pave the road for a human empire that stretches the solar system, the possibilities are endless.

The colonization of Mars is such a big thing with so many different parts that it would be impossible to think of them all alone. These are simply the ideas that i have thought about, and if you have anything that you think would be interesting leave a comment and tell the world about.

Today computers keep getting smaller and smaller, disk space gets bigger, processors get faster and overall computers are advancing at an amazing rate. Moore’s Law says that our computing power will continue to double every two years and up till now it has been surprisingly accurate, but eventually standard electronics, silicon circuits, hard drives and flash drives will reach their limits. Someday it will be impossible to fit any more transistors on chip, impossible to make our computer run any faster, unless we rework the whole way our computers are run. That is the purpose of this article, to explore the alternate possibilities for computing and their flaws/drawbacks.

Optical Computing: Optical computing is one of the first possibilities for an electronic alternative, that would allow for near boundless advances in speed and miniaturization. An optical computer is a computer that uses photons and light instead of electrons to store and work with data. With modern computers we are limited to the speed of the electron, which although is astoundingly fast just sometimes doesn’t cut it. On the other hand photons are the fastest thing in the universe, traveling almost 10 times faster than an electron. This would significantly speed up processors, and data manipulation. The other thing to consider is that photons are actually mass less and so could possibly store hundreds of times more information.

Where are they? To make an optical computer, one would need to use an optical transistor, a device that could amplify or switch on and off light beams. An optical transistor has to be made out of a very special material, that can respond to the amount of light passing through it, and output a relative amount of light, similar to a transistor reacting to the amount of voltage run through it. These materials have what is called a nonlinear refractive index and are basically non-existent in nature. A refractive index is the measure of how much the speed of light is reduced inside the medium. For a normal linear refractive index this number is usually constant and so would not make a good switch; on the other hand a non-linear refractive index can change depending upon the intensity of the light entering the medium. The problem is that these materials are rare, and not easy to mass produce. There are also problems with making these materials into small enough switches to be considered, so it may be a while before you can go out and buy an optical computer.

Quantum Computing: The next possibility for a future computer is a quantum computer. Normal computers store their information in electron containers, where a full container would indicate a 1 and an empty container would indicate a 0. A quantum computer on the other hand stores its information in the quantum states of particles like atoms, ions, photons and electrons. Because it stores information in quantum states a Quantum computer is able to have more than just a 1 or a 0 allowing for thousands of different calculations per second. This would allow a quantum computer to run in the same way a supercomputer does, processing many different parts at the same time. A normal computer on the other hand usually only processes one thing at a time, unless you have a dual processors than you can go through 2 processes at a time. It is estimated that a quantum computer could run a million times faster than computers we have today using this parallel computing.

Where are they? Actually household quantum computers may not be that far away. Scientists have already built powerful working 16 bit quantum computers and some say that they could even be mass produced as early as October of this year. One of the only restrictions is that the computer would have to be completely isolated from all atoms, molecules etc. except for its reading and storage atoms. This is extremely hard to do outside of a lab because one needs a material that can keep everything out.

DNA Computing: The final form of computing that is a possible alternate for silicon resistors is DNA Computing. A computer like this would use the millions of nucleotides in DNA to store data and do extremely complex computations in short periods of time. The core idea behind a DNA computer is the floating fragments of DNA that it will contain. The DNA can be spliced together with another piece of DNA, broken apart, split in half, etc. to make a unique possibility which can then be read and determined to either be valid or invalid. Basically DNA will use a brute force attack on any problem it has using billions of strands of DNA to try billions of possibilities at once. Because of this it can run in much the same way as a quantum computer in terms of parallel computing but it also has another set of distinct differences that make it a good choice for a future computer. For example DNA will always be plentiful as we could harness it from any organism, even our own bodies. Also it is compact, if we could fully unlock the power of DNA a pound could match the entire storage capacity of every computer made today.

Where are they? Simple DNA computers have already been built, but they are still in very prototypic stages. The trouble with DNA computing, is reading the DNA computations and determining whether they are correct or incorrect and what to do with them. Also DNA computers are more built towards solving equations than running games, word processing, etc. This means that it could be a long time until a desktop DNA computers is sold in stores.

There are other possibile silicon alternates, but these are the three that I found more interesting. I hope you enjoyed learning about this, and maybe something else will come along that will blow these out of the water, only time will tell.

I’ve been under a lot of pressure these last couple days, taking SATs, History tests, catching up absent work and I have not had much time for my blog. Because of this I have also noticed a decrease in the quality of the articles. This has encouraged me to change the way I run this blog. Previously I have been trying to keep updates daily, from now on I will only post when I have written a truly quality post. I’m hoping to do this 3-4 times a week but that is still uncertain. I hope by doing this I can make sure all my articles are interesting and not just fillers that I am not proud of. This new policy will be implemented immediately, but I will try to keep the blog updated with interesting articles. Thank you all for you patience and support.

Today I’m going to continue my analysis of toys but this time I’m going to examine possibly one of the oldest games in the world. Yes I am talking about playing cards, first invented in 12th century and since then have inspired countless other games, sold millions of cards and have entertained the world when all other sources of entertainment have disappeared. The thing that makes these little pieces of paper or plastic so fun is their flexibility. They can be adapted for a countless number of games everyone unique and fun.

To start off I’ll give a little bit of history about playing cards. The first recorded playing cards are from 12th century China, although it is also speculated that they were used as currency as well. These cards incorporated a plethora of complex suits and numbers. Eventually in 1370 the cards were imported into Europe but it wasn’t till the invention of woodcuts that they were mass produced. It was the French who assigned the suits that we use today, the clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds. These simple shapes were easy to produce and quickly became the standard through out much of Europe. The French also assigned historical figures to all of the face cards with Julius Cesar being the king of Diamonds, and the King of Spades as David. Later design changes took place, and eventually we ended up with the modern playing cards we know today.

Now for the math people out there I’m going to talk about one of the most played card games ever, Poker. Everyone loves poker, it gives you the chance for money and is fun and addictive. But one of the more interesting aspects of it is the probabilities involved. One has a 42.3% chance of getting a pair one of the lowest hands possible, meaning you would get it about 1 out of every 2 hands. On the other hand to get a royal flush the probability (not counting other players) is 0.000154% meaning it would only happen 1 out of 649,739 hands. That’s all for tonight see you guys tommorow.

In 1974 Erno Rubik invented the first Rubik’s cube and now 34 years later over 300 million cubes have been sold around the globe, that is one for every person in the United States. Being able to solve a Rubik’s cube has become a symbol of intelligence, and prestige, despite the fact that all it requires is time to memorize and dedication. If anyone doesn’t know how to solve a Rubik’s Cube I would high suggest that you learn, because it will provide you with a lot of entertainment, and give you one up on the people who can’t, you can find a pretty good explanation here but be prepared to spend the better part of the day learning (unless you have a photographic memory). Now I’m not writing about how to solve the cube exactly, but more about some of the algorithms, about the cube itself, and maybe a little bit on its raise in social prominence.

First thing to consider when looking at a Rubik’s cube is that there about 43 quintillion different possibilities, and only 1 correct one. This will make it clear why anyone who doesn’t know how to solve a cube will have a very, very low chance of stumbling upon the solution by chance. But for people who know the code, it can take as little as 30 seconds to solve a 3×3. The interesting thing is that there is an algorithm for almost every part of solving the cube, with the exception of the first step. It is amazing that five or six algorithms can take any unsolved cube and solve it

The algorithms are very interesting to study but even more interesting is the cube itself. For anyone who has dissected a cube they will know that it is simply a six sided cross while the other 21 pieces are the only ones that actually rotate. This means the centers will always be in the right place unless you have disassembled the cube. The cube is such a simple and small thing and yet it is so complex that it has consumed countless hours, solving, cutting down solving time etc. and that is just one thing that makes it such a great toy.

Another thing that I always found interesting is that a normal cube is usually referred to as a 3×3 instead of a 3×3x3. This is possibly because cube implies that all sides are the same, but then why isn’t it simply referred to as a 3.

The final thing to look at here is how far the Rubik’s cube has risen as a symbol of social status. If a person is seen solving or have already solved a Rubik’s cube, they are immediately thought of to be smarter than people would see them normally. This is possibly because of the seeming impossibility of the cube to those unaware, it seems almost inhuman to be able to solve it at all, much less in less than a minute. That wraps up my talk about Rubik’s cubes, and if you still are decided whether you should learn how to solve one, go learn, it will be entertaining, make you look smart and overall be a great experience.

As we were discussing the Russian Revolution in history today, I started to wonder if a revolution on the same scale could happen in a modernized country. Today with modern methods of communication, the media, the Internet etc. would it be easier or harder to organize a revolution. Does the government and the military have to much power making it impossible for an armed revolution to take place. Or are countries just as ripe for revolution as they have always been.

One of the first things to consider is the growing power of the military. In Russia the military was armed with rifles, bayonets etc. giving them a good advantage over the peasants. On the other hand today, the military posses bombers, gas, tanks, machine guns. If there were ever to be an armed revolution it would seem that the military would be able to put it down relatively easily seeing as normal people don’t have access to weapons even coming close to those of the military. If there were ever a full scale revolt the government could likely kill millions assuming the soldiers didn’t join the revolutionaries.

On the other hand the increase of mass media, like the Internet have allowed messages and ideals to spread much more rapidly. One of the best examples of this would be the recent protests by Anonymous against the church of Scientology. On February 10th they were able to rally approximately 80,000 people world wide for their cause. If people were already feeling discontent than a radical revolutionary could quickly and easily spread the word, recruit for the cause etc. Unfortunately in places that seem like they need a revolution, say China, the government has the power to regulate any mass media and stop any revolutionary ideas leaking into it. Considering that most people only get their information from the Internet, TV, or newspaper, if successful censorship takes place it would be even harder to spread word of a revolution than it would have been before.

The final point to look at is that most countries have settled into a liberal and free type of government protecting personal rights. These are all the things that revolutions happen for and if many countries already have them, well then there aren’t going to be very many revolutions. That’s all for tonight see you tomorrow.