Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

I cdnuolt blveiee htat I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

How I Arrived Here
I stumbled upon this comparison when visiting a friends blog. Jessie had posted a comic that summed up, briefly, many aspects of a geek. One of which was libertarianism. Of course the joke related to Ron Paul, but this post is not about what political ideal Ron Paul truly follows. Jessie didn’t understand the relationship between computer scientists and libertarians. Truthfully, I never noticed there was a correlation. Well perhaps I did, I just didn’t ponder much about it.

I began thinking deeply about the question, but failed to formulate any sound idea. Since I am a libertarian and a computer scientist, I was left perplexed. I gave my first gut thought on Jessie’s blog, but it was more of a joke and directed more for geeks as opposed to programmers. Most of my friends are geeks and programmers from school. We’ve engaged in political talk time and time again. Many are in fact libertarian or at least follow many libertarian view points. So it would appear the correlation exists.

The Article
This must have equally bothered Jessie because she dug up a blog post that talked about it. More specifically, a blog post that reposted an article by Stuart Reges. The article is somewhat lengthy, but quite fascinating. He explains how libertarians think so differently from non-libertarians and effectively correlates that with programmers and non-programmers. I highly recommend taking a look, however for a quick over view I’ve written a short summary of the key points.

Summary
Stuart talks about his background briefly and an interesting analysis of results of a computer science AP exam back in the 80’s. He develops a theory stating computer scientists have of model of computation and can “play computer” in their head. Stuart goes on to explain this concept with a typical story seen among his TAs. He then relates this to libertarianism by the same type of connection. A programmer’s model of computation is to their ability to “play computer” as a libertarian’s model of interaction is to their ability to “play society”. He continues by giving examples to back up this claim:

Libertarians are able to look at a given law or government ruling (a piece of code segment) and tell you exactly how it will effect society (overall program). Libertarians will also try to solve the problem not treat the symptoms. This was the classic problem seen by his TAs. Just as a programmer can abstract away certain layers of code, so too can a libertarian abstract away certain layers of government. Libertarians will also follow “top-down programming” principles with their decentralize government thinking. Let higher levels be independent and handle few tasks, while the lower levels handle more of the details. Finally, he states libertarian thinking can be answered with mathematical certitude. If two Libertarians disagree, each asserts the other has a flaw in their logic.

Conclusion
My summary is very simply and leaves out a lot of details. It doesn’t do the main article any justice. I found Stuarts thinking dead on and made perfect sense to me. Perhaps the programmer in myself prevented me to step outside the box to understand how I think like a libertarian or vice versa. If I’m ever faced with this subject again, I will be better prepared in formulating my thoughts. Perhaps when time allows, I’ll make the same connection from a different view point since a non-programmer may have trouble understanding the arguments made in the article.

Flexible light source for 24/7 lighting

Seems almost too good to be true right? Well apparently someone has come up with a technology to prove otherwise. They are calling it Litroenergy. Unfortunately the above article doesn’t say who “they” are. Though, with a little digging around I discovered “they” are MPK Co.

Litroenergy requires no light source and no electricty. Wait…no electricity? How’s that possible? I’m no science geek but I thought light had something to do with electrons being ejected or bouncing around their orbits…which requires energy. So if not electricity, where’s the energy coming from?

They further claim that the materials are flexible, unaffected by temperature and pressure, inexpensive, non-toxic (…non-toxic?), and could save billions in energy cost. Its like the miracle discovery that you only hear about in sci-fi movies. Think about? One could never have to worry about turning off the lights because you’re wasting electricity. Cities like New York and Vegas who live during the night could DRASTICALLY benefit from such a light. Electric consumption would drop, which means power plant demands would drop, which means less dependency of natural resources, which makes everyone from environmentalists to Joe Shmoe happy. Your mind starts racing and saying, “THIS IS IT! we’ve done it! We’re going to drastically change the world”, but…

Then you reach the bottom of the article and they hit you with this. “One back drop to reckon with is that this material is radioactive and uses radioactive TRITIUM to glow” Radioactive?! Oooohhh, so that’s how they get around the electricity. No wonder why they said non-toxic. Granted I don’t know enough about tritium, but I would question what the long term health effects of being around the stuff will do.

So basically there goes the idea of saving the planet. Also, it seems this light source doesn’t “shine” but glows. All the boasting about saving billions is probably not gonna happen. The pics included are pretty cool and I’m sure we’ll find uses for it, but quite frankly its not that bright. I doubt it’ll replace the standard light bulb anytime soon and it seems that one can’t turn it off. Its a light source that will continuously emit light. Despite how misleading the article is, it is a great discovery non the less. Just feel bad for that poor sap wearing all the radioactive tritium to demo the light. Hope he doesn’t plan on having kids.

So I ran across an interesting article demonstrating how easy it was to dupe Comcast. All the person had was a phone number and an address and was able to get account info by pretending to be a Comcast tech out in the field. Check the link out. It reminded me of an old memory way back in 2000 or was it 2001? Anywho, I had attended a H.O.P.E convention in New York City. One of the classes was a Social Engineering class in which Kevin Mitnick spoke. Well more like he called in and took questions because he was still in jail at that time. LoL.