This is a test

I will be away for the next couple of weeks and, more importantly, away from land-based computers so I must resort to submitting "core dump" posts by email.

This is the first time I have ever tried this hence the test. Let me know if you didn't get this.

Starting Monday I will be crewing the ST LAWRENCE II from Kingston (L Ontario) to Port Dover (L Erie) and back. The first leg will be pretty light vrew-wise (6) so I'm praying for good weather and winds with any East component.

Going up the canal will be a challenge too. Still, wouldn't miss it.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

What Team Are You On?

In his book "Think Like a Champion" Donald Trump talks about the time, just after his show The Apprentice first aired, when Tom Brokaw tapped him on the shoulder and thanked him for the success of The Apprentice. Tom Brokaw did this, Trump says, because he is a team player, and NBC was his team, as was Trump. They were both on the same team.

This story got me wondering: What team am I on? It is a fact of human nature that we all want to belong to some group, either formally or informally. This is why there are countless clubs, associations, societies, yes even teams in the world. So what group do I see myself in?

In my work life I belong to my immediate work team; but I also belong to the department and company teams.

In my personal life, the smallest team I can belong to is the husband and wife team. But I also belong to my immediate family, my extended family, my church family. Beyond that it's a little harder to think of my city, province, country ... dare I say the human race? as my team.

The real question is: How big do you think? Do you think only in terms of the people you interact with? Or do you think in terms of a much larger community, perhaps your nation?

When people think in terms of, for example, their tribe/caste/race, it is easy to view members of other tribes/castes/races, but of the same nation, as enemies who deserve to be wiped out or enslaved. Their welfare is not your concern.

I believe the only correct answer to the question "What team am I on?" is "The Human Race". Can I think that big? I hope so. I shall certainly strive to. Will you join me?

Marriage

Apropos of nothing, except that I attended a wedding yesterday ...

It occurred to me that when people talk about a marriage breaking down or a broken marriage, it is not really the marriage, per se, that is the problem, and certainly has nothing to do with the institution of marriage. It is the two people in the marriage that is the problem. Either they have stopped caring, stopped trying, or grown too far apart. In short, they have stopped working on their relationship and are thinking of themselves as individuals rather than part of a whole.

A relationship (and marriage is just a formalized and sanctioned relationship), like any other living thing in the universe, requires work to maintain and grow. If you stop feeding a pet it dies. If you stop watering a plant it withers. If you stop ... what? ... to a relationship it dies. That is the question isn't it? What is the analog of feeding and watering for a relationship? What kind of things does one do to maintain and grow a relationship? Unfortunately, it is not that simple. A relationship is an enormously complicated thing, and the particular needs of a relationship will vary with the relationship. I can not give you any prescription. You must figure yours out for yourself - that's if you still care about the relationship, of course.

One primary ingredient, though, is communication. There must be open and honest communication between you and your partner. Once you have that, other needs of the relationship will make itself known.

35 Steps to Achieving Your Goals

I've always wanted to do a "47 Ways To ..." list. Trouble is I could never come up with 2, maybe 3 on a good day, of any list. Well, things are about to change! I have been thinking long and hard on not just goal setting, but goal achieving. What does it take to actually achieve your goals and have come up with a good-sized list.

How many times have we heard that just by writing down your goals you are a bazillion times more likely to achieve them? But, of course, that advice doesn't go far enough; it has been truncated. The missing part is what I want to write about in this post. But, for completeness I will present the entire process, including the first:

1. Write down your goals.

Most of us know this already but do we know why this is the most important step? Because most of us will believe what is written more than what is heard. The written word has a sense of permanency, a sense of legitimacy.

On the practical side, if it's written down you won't forget it. That's why students, reporters, doctors, and others take notes. Until we get the 16TB implant in our brains, paper and pen is still the best way to help remember things.

2. Create an action plan.

Ho hum... Most of us have seen this one before too. If your goal is the destination, your action plan is the map with your route high-lighted, like the Trip TIK's you can (still) get from the local CAA (or AAA for those south of the border). If you're too young to remember Trip TIKs think of them as the paper version of Google Maps Driving Directions (Map view). Like your goals, the action plan must also be written down to be really effective.

Still with me? Good, 'cause here come the steps that most people leave out when talking about achieving goals. They are crucial but actually super easy to understand and remember. So easy, in fact, I don't even need to write any explanation for any of them. You will note, though, that some of them are identical and I would say "how observant". The important thing, though, is the order. You MUST do them in order.

So, without further ado or, indeed fanfare, here are the remaining 33 steps:

3. G
4. e
5. t
6.  
7. o
8. f
9. f
10.  
11. y
12. o
13. u
14. r
15.  
16. a
17. s
18. s
19.  
20. a
21. n
22. d
23.  
24. d
25. o
26.  
27. s
28. o
29. m
30. e
31. t
32. h
33. i
34. n
35. g

That's all.

"It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich -- these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it."

-- Samuel Clemens The Autobiography of Mark Twain

There is a fine line between believing in your dreams and believing your dreams. In the former you believe that your dreams can become a reality. In the latter your believe your dreams are already reality; has already happened.

Most of us have probably experienced the power comes with the words "I believe in you". If someone, especially someone you looked up to, came up to you and said those words to you, you instantly become more confident, stand taller, have more determination to work through whatever challenges are facing you just so you do not let them down. Analogously, saying those words to your dreams give them the same power, so to speak. You give them validity.

The problem is, of course, that if you believe something has already happened you will not put any effort into making it happen.

Is God a simulation?

At the end of my previous post I said

"...in order to determine whether our Universe is a simulation either we must leave this Universe, or the Super programmer must enter it. I'm quite certain the former is not possible and can say nothing about the latter..."

Having thought about it a bit I believe I can, after all, say something about the latter; i.e. whether or not not the Super-programmer can enter our universe, and I believe the answer is "yes". Since we are, by definition, part of his universe he should be able to interact with us.

As an analogy, think about the popular Sims games. In these games the user control their characters' actions. But when not being controlled the characters (the Sims) seem to have a mind and personality of their own and can basically go about living their own lives. They will sleep, eat, go to work, wash, go out with friends, even die. In short, they pretty much live a "normal" life in their universe. The only difference between the Sims universe and the one we live in is a quantitative one: number of sims, complexity of the sims, the "artificial intelligence" of the sims, etc. Fast forward 50 years when our computers are 33 million times as powerful as they are today. How much more complex a "universe" do you think we can create?

As for the programmer interacting with the Sims? That's easy. You "inject" whatever you want to say into the Sim's "consciousness" (ever read "Conversations with God"?), or you create an "angel" to deliver your message. Or you locally change (or disable) the laws of physics to enable some event to happen - in short you create "miracles" for your Sims.

Perhaps the feeling

Life would be so much easier if only I had the source code.

isn't that far off base.

The only thing I don't like about this scenario is that it begs the question: Is the Super-programmer's universe in turn a simulation? And if so, how many layers of simulations are there? Is there, ultimately, a "real" universe? Who or what create that? Or does it, like fractals, go infinitely deep?

The mind boggles. Is this any harder to believe that the simple answer: "God created the Universe"?

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Stop the Universe, I just want to check that computer over there...

Heard what I consider to be a truly novel idea last night on Discovery Channel's "Through the Wormhole: Is There a Creator?" The concept is not a particularly new one: that our Universe is, in fact, a simulation in some super (an entirely inadequate adjective) computer being run by a super (even more inadequate adjective) programmer, much like the Sims games. The justification (not sure I would even call it a theory) is a juxtaposition of Moore's Law and the, for lack of a better word, "grainyness" of simulations.

Moore's Law says that computing power would double roughly every 12 to 18 months. Actually, Moore originally, in 1970, spoke only of the number of transistors that could fit on a chip, and he predicted a doubling every 12 months (which was later revised to 24 months). Though Moore spoke only of the number of transistors, others have applied his Law to other areas, such as memory capacity, storage capacity, even the number of pixels on a display or in a camera.

So, while not new, Moore's Law does tell us that in, say 10 years, computers will be 30 times more powerful (if we use the more conservative 2 year doubling period) and in 50 years they will be 33 MILLION times as powerful. Can you imagine what kind of programs we could run with that kind of computing power?! We must be careful, of course, not to take these predictions too seriously since 50 years is a LONG time in the electronics business and we all know how difficult it is to predict things even 5 years down the road. (I can't even predict what I'm going to have for lunch tomorrow.) The point is that if in our own near future computers could become more powerful than the human brain, is it unreasonable to suppose there could exist a computer that is so powerful that it could simulate a universe as complex as our own?

The other part of the justification for the simulated Universe proposal is that a common characteristic of all simulations is that as one zooms in on any artificial construct, an image, for example, one reaches a point where one begins to see the "pixels" that make up the image. (We conveniently ignore fractals.) One reaches a level of detail where the basic building blocks become visible. The proposal says that we are now beginning to see the building blocks of the Universe in the form of quarks and the other sub-nuclear particles: that their existence points to the Universe as a simulation.

As I said, a novel idea.

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet but take comfort in the proposition that in order to determine whether our Universe is a simulation either we must leave this Universe, or the Super programmer must enter it. I'm quite certain the former is not possible and can say nothing about the latter, so as far as I'm concerned the question does not exist.

...

Now, what am I going to write about today...

Is it really "free"?

You know what really ticks me off? Someone sends you an email that looks interesting, and offers you a "free" report. From the title you think "That sounds like it might be useful - probably not, but you never know." So I click on the link and, lo and behold, there is a short video on the landing page that tells me ABSOLUTELY NOTHING except to direct me to enter my email address to receive the report.

Now, I wasn't born yesterday, and have actually fallen for enough of these to know that over the next few days or weeks, I am going to get inundated with "follow-up" messages promoting other "useful" stuff that they know I will need and want.

I am sorry, but that does not meet my definition of "free". If what you are offering me is so great, I should be beating a path back to your site, and not have to be enticed back with "follow-up" messages. If your offering is not what I need at the moment, I DO NOT WANT TO BE PESTERED! Don't act like the salesperson we all dread: the ones that stick to you like gum on the bottom of your shoe the minute you walk in the store.

If you truly have a free offer, great! Give it to me (without expecting anything in return, including my email address) and go away. If you have what I need I will be back. Keep pestering me and I definitely will not be back.

By the way, I just "discovered" trashmail.net, a free service that lets you create disposable email addresses. It seems to be based in Germany and seems like a great idea for just these kinds of "free" offers. Unfortunately, I went to sign up and haven't received my confirmation email yet, so I can not report on their effectiveness, but I definitely like the idea.

How do you tip?

My wife and I have had a long-standing disagreement about whether it is better to leave a tip on the table, or add it to the bill. (Note that I am not touching the question of whether one should tip at all. Most wait staff make so little salary-wise I have no problem adding to the pot.) There are pros and cons for both sides and things seem pretty evenly matched. The major points are:

I think that adding it to the bill is just simpler. Besides, who carries cash around these days? Heck, you don't even need cash for Tim Horton's anymore!

My wife feels that leaving it on the table ensures that the waiter/waitress gets the tip. Of course, that may not happen if he/she doesn't clear her own tables.

Well, guess what? I am changing my mind, but with a twist. The other night we were out for dinner (New Year's Eve, in fact) and the waitress we had was just super. She had a genuinely happy smile and a "Happy New Year" for everybody. She made sure all her customers knew who she was and what she was doing about their order any time she walked by. If there was a delay she made sure the customers knew that she knew and was looking after it. In short she made the whole experience a very enjoyable one.

It occurred to me after we finished that neither adding the tip to the bill (even a generous one), nor leaving it on the table would do. This woman had to be personally acknowledged. So, from now on, any one who deserves a generous tip will also be thanked personally.