Introducing an Island within a Lake, on an Island within a Lake, on an Island…

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Photo: George Tapan

You are probably trying to work this out in your brain right now – how can you have an island within a lake, on an island that is within a lake, that all happens to be on another island?

Let’s start at the end and work our way down to the smallest island. The largest island in the Philippines is Luzon. On Luzon is a big freshwater lake, Taal Lake, that is roughly 15 by 10 miles. But the lake is not just water – on Taal Lake there is a medium-sized island formed by a volcano, appropriately named Volcano Island. Here’s where things get crazy. On Volcano Island is a lake sitting within the volcano crater. And just one more for good measure, in the crater lake is another small island (the speck in the middle of the picture above).

Does this remind anyone of the children’s song with the descriptive lyrics, forever zooming out and always ends with “and the green grass grows all around”?


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The Luxury of Ice – What Else Do We Take Completely For Granted?

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Photo: Kyle May

Not so long ago, ice was a real luxury. In the early 1800’s only the extremely wealthy had ice to cool their drinks. It was harvested by hand during the winter and stored throughout the summer in a covered well. Someone’s miserable job was to harvest ice from a frozen lake! Even more shocking: some parts of the world never had ice. If you lived in an area that didn’t get snow during the winter, you certainly weren’t going to have ice to use during the summer.

In one of the most interesting business ventures I have heard about, ice became a major export of Boston. During the winter ice harvesting season, ice was cut from the top of Boston ponds and stored in insulated ice houses throughout the rest of the year. These ice houses were constructed in many areas that were blessed with warm weather year-round such as the American South, the Caribbean, and India. The ice harvesting companies would then deliver tons of ice by ship or train as quickly as possible, with much of it melting on the way. One huge 180 ton shipment of ice made the journey from Boston to Calcutta, arriving nearly 4 months later with only 100 tons of ice!

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Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies – Or Would You Prefer the Truth?

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Everyone claims they want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But do they really? Think back to the conflicted teachings of your childhood – we are all taught to tell the truth because you wouldn’t want to be lied to. Yet adults acknowledged situations exist when it is necessary for grown-ups to tell little white lies. But of course children still shouldn’t … darn double standards.

One more trip down memory lane. Remember the movie Independence Day? In the movie the U.S. government has known about the existence of aliens for many years, but kept denying their existence to the public. In fact, they kept it so secret they didn’t even tell the current president.

PRESIDENT
“Regardless of what the tabloids have said, there were never any space crafts recovered by the government. Take my word for it, there is no Area 51 and no recovered space ship.”

Chief of Staff Nimziki suddenly clears his throat.

NIMZIKI
“Uh, excuse me, Mr. President, but that’s not entirely accurate.”

Fast forward a few minutes …

PRESIDENT
“Why the hell wasn’t I told about this place?”

NIMZIKI
“Two words, Mr. President. Plausible deniability.”

Of course I didn’t understand what the heck plausible deniability meant at the time, but it stuck in my mind. It’s one thing to not tell the general public about the aliens that visited earth, but the president is a horse of a different color.

Now that I’m slightly older, I understand that the government might not necessary want to alert the public of the existence of extraterrestrials. You saw how they reacted in the movie! Shooting guns in the air, crazy people partying on roofs, rioting, and general mayhem! But if it is in the government’s best interest to lie about this, what else is there? Where do you draw the line?

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The 29 Thousand Dollar Speeding Ticket – Linking the Fine to the Offender’s Wealth

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Photo: Woodley Wonderworks

A few weeks ago I posted about the controversial ways European countries are approaching drug reform. Today I’d like to broach a topic that you will probably more closely relate to: speeding tickets.

Once again those Europeans have proven to be creative with their laws – in some countries the price of an excessive speeding ticket is linked to the wealth of the driver. For example, a Swiss millionaire received a $290,000 ticket. He was also a repeat offender, going twice the speed limit, and had a personal wealth over $20 million.

So what do you think? The same concept is also applied to drunk driving. Now what do you think?

Someone more qualified than myself (a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA) doesn’t think it makes sense. If you don’t vary the price of goods (cars, houses, food, etc.) for the wealthy, why would you do it for a speeding ticket? Here’s why: just because you are rich, doesn’t make you above the laws of the land!

If you can afford to pay the penalty, does that mean you have the right to do it? No way Jose! If the only penalty for driving too fast was a $100 fine, Bill Gates could drive as fast as he wants. He could just pay $100 every time he gets caught. The goal of the law is not to make the government money, but rather to keep the roads safe.

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Who Else Wants To Do Ridiculous Stuff?

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Everyone needs a certain amount of craziness in their life. For some, it is simply enough that Glee does a random episode of Rocky Horror. I hope that is not the only crazy thing keeping your life interesting.

I have been traveling a lot on the weekends to introduce the right amount of hectic-ness and excitement in my life. Unfortunately winter is on its way and this approach is about to loose its excitement. So what other options do I have to throw in a little craziness? I see it breaking down into two categories:

Building Fun Things

I have a mechanical engineering degree for a reason: so that I can build toys for my own amusement. The toy itself will be fun, but the real joy comes from the journey itself – creating something real t(hat is also hopefully big and dangerous). This category falls somewhere in between Mythbusters and Junkyard Wars.


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Doing Silly Things Just Because

The other category doesn’t require any tools, junk, or money. All you need is the miraculous human body and a little creativity. Things like eating a ton of carrots to see if your skin turns orange or having a competition to see who can stay awake the longest. Two Canadians best friends, Kenny and Spenny, had a TV show with weekly competitions – hilarity ensues.


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Anyone Interested?

These types of things are always more fun with a friend. Who has an idea they would like to try? Or if I come up with something, who would be interested in joining in?

If All of Your Friends Thought Global Warming Was a Hoax, Would You?

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Photo: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The Republican party here in the United States has an all but official stance that global warming is a hoax. They aren’t simply opposed to cap-and-trade or a carbon tax – they took it one step further and have dismissed the scientific research as hogwash. I incorrectly assumed that this was an extremely conservative viewpoint that I simply couldn’t relate to. But that is wrong – it turns out conservatives in democracies the world over do not take the same stance as Republicans!

The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.

It is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here.

It is difficult to get anything done when half the country doesn’t think there is a problem. And it’s difficult for the world to make progress combating global warming without the United States being intimately involved.

We have seen that a candidate’s chances are slim when they disagree with their political party on key issues. I don’t believe all republican politicians personally believe global warming isn’t at least partially influenced by human behavior, but given our broken two-party political system, if you are conservative you deny global warming. Even harder, you have to pretend Sarah Palin is smart.

Doesn’t it seem like the conservative approach would be to do everything in our power to stop our carbon emissions with so many unknowns? We don’t know how fast our habits are changing the temperature, we don’t know how the frequency of hurricanes and other natural disasters will be affected, we don’t know if the ocean’s carbon dioxide will be released as these global changes take place making things even worse, and we don’t know if the trend can be reversed.

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Stanford’s Freshman Roommate Matching Process Revealed

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Photo: Scorbette37

Stanford University is unique in the way they handle freshman rooming assignments. Freshmen aren’t allowed to choose who they want to live with, nor are they even told their assignment until they show up for the first day of orientation. Even if you and your best friend were lucky enough to get into Stanford, you certainly won’t be living with him freshman year.

The new students show up at the dorm the first day of orientation not even knowing their roommate’s name. No preconceived judging can take place, even in this Facebook world we live in. But that certainly doesn’t mean no one knows them – the entire dorm staff is required to memorize all the student’s names before they even show up. The students are greeted with enthusiastic personal cheers from a dozen people.

To make this process even more interesting – all the freshman roommate assignments are done by hand. Unlike other schools, no computer algorithm is used to quickly make assignments. Rather, two current students spend all summer playing matchmaker. The process has been subject to many rumors, but a recent Stanford News article helped shed some light:

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Is it Time to Rethink the War on Drugs?

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Photo: Giuseppe Bognanni

Sometimes the United States finds itself in wars that it cannot win. And the worst part about it, we don’t lose either. What can possibly be worse than losing a war? If they go on indefinitely. Well here is one war that has been going on for 40 years with no end in sight: the war on drugs.

Ineffective
School initiatives began 40 years ago to educate children about the dangers of drugs and to “just say no”. I don’t think anyone can argue against trying to keep drugs away from children. But that doesn’t mean it is effective – since 1970 there has been a 0% change in high school drug use.

Any new ideas or are we just going to keep plugging away and hope it eventually works? I can’t help but think of Albert Einstein’s quote, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I hate to break it to you, but 40 years = over and over.

Russ Jones is a retired narc who has spent over 30 years on the front line of the war – he should know better than almost anyone how we are doing. And he believes it is time to call it off!

“The U.S. over the last four decades has spent $1 trillion of our tax dollars, made 38 million nonviolent drug arrests and quadrupled our prison population,” Jones said. “And the rate of addiction today, 1.3 percent, is the same as it was in 1970, when we started.”

Isn’t it a good thing that there have been 38 million arrests? Isn’t that progress? Well, not really! Do you think all the addicts that bought from that dealer are just going to stop using and start going to church on Sundays? Nope. The next drug dealer slides right in and business keeps humming.

“When I arrested a rapist or a robber, the community was safer,” Jones said. “When I arrested a drug dealer, all I did was create a job opening.”

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Cal Ripken Jr. – All That is Man

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With the beginning of the baseball playoffs, I figured it was time to bring back the All That is Man series. Baseball obviously isn’t the manliest sport (volleyball is), but that doesn’t mean manly men don’t play it. Cal Ripken Jr. played in 2632 straight games and revolutionized the shortstop position from scrawny guys that can’t hit to what it is today. Cal is All That is Man for these four reasons:

Competitiveness
Men are competitive. So is Ripken. “On the night before the start of the season in which he would break one of the most prestigious records in baseball history, Ripken played two-on-two wearing loafers, because there was a hoop and there were players. Did his team win? ‘We crushed,’ he said.”

“During all the coverage of the streak, someone in the family circulated the story that I cheated my own grandmother at canasta. I don’t remember that, but I might have occasionally drawn too many cards on her, because I did cheat on everyone else. For years I kept detailed statistics on all these family [card] games, for the sole purpose of trying to prove that I was the best. The only positive note here is that I finally figured out that the only proof of how good you are is if you play within the rules.” – Cal

“Ripken is nothing if not consistent, even in his approach to something as simple as a home trampoline. Family lore has it that Cal wouldn’t get on the trampoline until he had watched his wife perform on it a few times. Then he started practicing by himself. The first time he tried it in front of anyone, he pretended he had never been on it. ‘Right,’ said Kelly with a smile. ‘He’d probably had 25 hours of practice.'”

Toughness
If you play every game for 16+ years you have to be pretty tough – everyone gets injured, but he just played through it. He once rolled his ankle during a game. It swelled up, black and blue but he finished the game. Afterwards he went to the hospital – the doctor told him to stay off it for two weeks. What’d Cal do? He threw the crutches away as soon as he got to the car and played in the next game!

“The Orioles used to play a game to determine which player could take the most pain, and which one was the hardest to bruise, a game invented by Ripken, who, of course, was also the champion. ‘Ten minutes before the start of a game,’ former Oriole pitcher Ben McDonald once said, ‘a couple of our guys jumped Rip and dug their knuckles in his ribs. We had him pinned down. He was yelling, ‘No! No!’ but he wouldn’t give up. He would rather die that give up. The next day, I had a huge bruise on my ribs, and he had a tiny red spot.’”

Maybe he got the toughness from his father: “When I was a kid, he would come home from playing soccer,” Cal Jr. said. “He played midfield when he was in his 50s. He would have these huge blood blisters under his big toe. He’d take out a power drill, drill into the toe, the blood would come spurting out, and he’d go ‘Ooooooooh.'”

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Paradoxes to Ponder – Part Deux

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Photo: makelessnoise

Last week I posted some of my favorite paradoxes (Click her for part 1.) – here are some more gems:

Service recovery paradox: “Successfully fixing a problem with a defective product may lead to higher consumer satisfaction than in the case where no problem occurred at all.” This is the business flavor of the paradox, but it can be similarly applied to social aspects as well. Someone who is born again or overcomes some failure that was entirely their fault, often garners more respect than those who avoided the pitfall in the first place. Go figure. Nice guys finish last, that’s why I’m a bad boy.

Heat death paradox: “Since the universe is not infinitely old, it cannot be infinite in extent.” Any hot object transfers heat to its cooler surroundings, until everything is at the same temperature. If the universe were infinitely old there must have been enough time for the stars to cool and warm their surroundings. Everywhere should therefore be at the same temperature and there should either be no stars, or everything should be as hot as stars. So the universe can’t be infinitely old, and since it can’t be infinitely old it cannot extend to infinity.

False positive paradox: “A test that is accurate the vast majority of the time could show you have a disease, but the probability that you actually have it could still be tiny.” Consider a test with no false negatives, which gives a false positive only 0.04004% of the time, applied to a million people, in which 1 person in 10,000 is infected. The expected outcome would be: 100 people would receive a true positive, 400 people would receive a false positive, and 999,500 would would be correctly negative. Thus, only 20% of the positive results are correct, even though the test is “over 99.95% accurate”.

Tolerance paradox – “A tolerant person is antagonistic toward intolerance, hence intolerant of it. The tolerant individual is by definition intolerant of intolerance, but in so being must be intolerant of himself.” Should the tolerant person be tolerant of intolerance in others? So maybe the most tolerant people are those that are just completely indifferent to the cause?

More: Wikipedia’s complete list