space travel and the future

In the opening paragraph of a high school science textbook, the author tried to inspire youth toward the future. He stated how humankind going into the future was like a baby coming forth from the womb. I agree with this and it was inspiring.

He then went on to describe his view of the future: humans leave their womb, Earth, and head out among the stars as miners or colonists of some kind. I find this to be unimaginitive and close to wrong.

It's close to wrong because we will have significantly less freedom in space and survival there will be much more claustrophobic. It is unimaginitive because life in space is not in itself any different than life on earth. After the novelty fades our colonists will rarely think "this is another day on Mars" but just "this is another day".

Space exploration will be best handled by robots and this will be true for a long time. But don't think of this as an unambitious outlook. We have barely begun to understand our potentials, not just for being better humans, but also for transcending humanity itself. Such transcencion might be heaven or it might be hell and my bet is that it will be a little of both. My point is that the walls of our womb are not physical boundaries in space and that our liberation will come from within.

rabbit's razor

I will not believe something because I hope it to be true;
I will not refuse to believe something because I fear it to be true.

That's it.

The Paradise We Build

In Dante's "Divine Comedy" there are descriptions of hell, purgatory, and heaven. I was struck by how interesting was the inferno and how boring was the paradise. In the inner rings of heaven you find God in the center surrounded by cocentric circles of saints, all facing God and basking in his glory forever. I see this as "the eternal orgasm" model of heaven, but we should note that such an experience is more than sexual. It is the climax of all "chakras" or modes of feeling. It is the sublime thought, the quenched thirst, the perfect meal, et cetera.

But is such a heaven viable? Can we have perpetual climax? I don't think it's possible because we sense things in relation to the past and the future. I.e. "I felt normal before, but compared to that I feel great right now, and compared to that I have this to worry about tomorrow".

With our limited resources throughout history, we might've said that the idea is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering and frustration. Now that we are approaching great power and malleability, I think we should examine hard what heaven is like. Please, atheists, examine this question as well, for even if heaven does not yet exist, can you argue that it will never be?

I see heaven as the optimization of pleasure and frustration. There is truth in the cliched idea that our suffering makes our happiness possible.

Attrition and Entropy (running on fumes)

I got everything on my motorcycle working just in time for them to cancel my insurance. For months now employment has trickled in and money has trickled out. I lost my wallet on Friday, which was for a moment devastating. For a moment 'cause I remembered my serenity prayer:

accept the things I cannot change
change the things I can
etc.

I made a list of everything that was in my wallet and it turns out that the only thing I can't replace was an old phone number of an ex-girlfriend. The biggest loss was a Chevron gas card with $30 dollars on it. Here's an idea: instead of putting money on a gas card, can I just buy it in gallons?

So here I am, taking a break from applying for jobs. Would someone please hire me? In my last post I asked for your spare change and none was sent :-(

Here's the deal: all you out there in blogland are too far away for me to tutor or teach or engineer and you don't seem to want to take me up as a charity. So all I have left is my art. I will take commissions for $15 USD per hour plus materials plus postage.

My media are oils acrylics, wire, and words. I work fast. I am posting a sample of one of my abstracts which took me 3 seconds. Place your orders in a reply to this post.

P.S. the picture came out sideways. The black belongs on the bottom.

Job? uh...no.

So to keep this blog accurate I must retract my former excitement about getting a job. Apparently the Engineer wanted an assembler rather than an Engineer. I was overqualified, so now my prospects are pulling weeds, or tutoring a troubled 11 year old girl for two hours per week. I refuse to pull weeds; I'd rather starve. No, not really, but the rest of my life has been in an upward trajectory such that I hate to see such a setback. I have such knowledge that I feel omniscient yet they want 'just enough'.

So I'm going to see if I can get the Chinese to sell me a pirated copy of ProE so I can educate myself and get a job. With what shall I purchase it? Hmmm. I have 35c in my bank account and an eBay giftcard with 9c on it. Can you spare any change? please send it to:

Rabbit Killer
109 Madrona Rd.
Felton, CA 95019

p.s. write checks payable to 'Leif Husman' ; that's my slave name. All proceeds will go to making the world a better place. Promise.

rrrrrr! Save my fields!

I just spent 7 precious minutes updating my profile on 'orkut' which is google's social networking site. I navigate to a different tab and then save and poof! all my fields go blank with nothing updated. Well that's just frustrating :-( the most frustrating thing ever! I'm taking my social networking elsewhere. Who is on orkut anyway?

Doing vs. Teaching

I found out a couple weeks ago that my dream of teaching science to kids is virtually unattainable for four years. I took it in stride, but I realized I would need to do something in the meantime. I am taking computer classes (Linux, Perl, anything that's offered at Cabrillo), hoping I could do something with that. Whatever I do, I don't want to be underemployed...
So I got a job yesterday [yay!] and my only goal in doing so was to gain financial independence. Maybe I have issues, but it hurts to always have to ask for every little scrap of anything.
My job, however, is more than this. I have a chance to work for a small engineering firm (I am the only employee) and work as much as I want as an Engineer. I can just weld and assemble parts for $12 per hour or I can engineer systems for electric cars and be more than a minion.
This kind of open-ended potential is daunting. I [re]discovered while digging through the dirt that I am more comfortable with not giving my full effort and being satisfied with mediocrity. I resolved to not be satisfied with this. When I was younger I thought of Life as something that happened in the future, and Now was just preparation for that. Some 15 years later I am still having to make decisions. I can be trapped in elementary physics for the rest of my life, or I can go further and solve bigger problems...
When I put it like that it seems obvious. But teaching our children well is very important... I will be the best Engineer I can be and in a few years I will re-evaluate my life and see where humanity needs me.

Korg Part 2

I now have a fully functioning Korg Delta!!
I got it about a month ago and I was very dismayed to find it only partially functioning. Four of the five function generators were shot and the octave balance in the strings section was scratchy. Well, I downloaded the service manual, disassembled the keyboard, desoldered the malfunctioning components, contacted Mouser Electronics and found replacements, waited...

... Soldered the replacement parts in, put it back together and fired it up.

I'll post pictures below, and detailed notes to anyone of you with questions.

Oh, and thanks to the good people at sci.electronics.basic for all their helpful advice.

http://www.archive.org/download/KorgPentatonic/KorgPent.wma

http://www.archive.org/download/KorgBminor/Korg5.wma

Korg Delta

Okay, here it is. You can see four dashed-line boxes around four resistors with the little arrows through them. These controls comprise the envelope generator:

A = Attack
D = Delay
S = Sustain
R = Release

Like I said, the 2MA attack pot is flaky and I would like to replace it. But I've searched high and low and can find, at most, a 1MA slider. Will this work?

rK

grind

I think that if I write often enough maybe pearls will spill out...

I can no longer write in my paper journal.

I cannot post on BigThink because they don't accept 3GP and won't for another 6 months. I was, however, able to get in early enough to secure the name, Rabbit, which is almost always taken by someone who is probably not named Rabbit.

Rabbit is my nome-de-guerre, and believe me, this is war!

I'm waiting for a miracle - and amusing myself in the meantime by building a foundation...

I keep putting 'gather answers' on my to-do list, but I'm afraid no one would believe me.

Spring Break Ramble

It's Spring Break and my head is empty. It is 11:02 in the morning and I'm still in my pajamas while my girlfriend is hard at work, working to pay the mortgage, etc...

I would love to be working, but I'm not allowed, by law, to work in my chosen profession until 2o12. Will the singularity be here by then? I don't know - I don't think so, which vaguely reminds me of a dream: swallowing the genetic improvements or something...

Anyway, I'm all for progress as long as I can revert back to the old way when I want. When I got a new cell phone I was very resistant, and very indignant when the pimply faced boy told me they no longer carried my phone (Nokia 3012). In the end I upgraded to a Sony Ericsson, which I now love, and put my Nokia lovingly in the box thinking I would take it out and use it in the future for 'something'. Well, I have taken it out exactly 3 times to turn it on and play my favorite ring tone, the chicken dance, then put it back. The only thing I miss is the chicken dance and the fact that I could lay the phone on its edge and spin it around.

Anyway, I'd better get dressed and do something. I can't tell if anyone at all reads this blog, so if by some chance you do, please comment so I know...


rambling to the void
rK

Cruise to Cabo part 1

I took the Carnival Elation to Cabo San Lucas last week. I was expecting to like Mexico more than the Cruise Ship, but I found the opposite. I really enjoyed the cruise ship and Cabo was kinda like some parts of many California towns. The most remarkable thing is how hard they hustled for the American dollar. If you made eye contact they would surround you asking if you wanted a water taxi, or whatever. I must look like a drug addict because I was constantly offered weed and coke. I ended up getting an ostrich skin wallet and a pair of silver cufflinks for a fairly good price. I was typically able to talk them down 10-15% off the asking price. We ate lunch at a taqueria which is much like any taqueria you can find in California. I had to ask them to turn off the 80's rock because I didn't come all the way from America to listen to Bon Jovi.

Something to know about the cruise ship:
$6 ATM fee, so make sure you have all the cash you need
$2.39 Cokes, but the apple juice is free
$8 drinks, for you lushes
Some friends took Cabo by Land and Sea and said it sucked.

I will publish photos in my next post, but I gotta go do homework now...

rK

Saving the mouse

Okay, we had this problem with our little mouse. She got these humongous sores on her back and we didn't know what to do. She was in the cage alone so it wasn't another mouse chewing on her and it didn't look like it was in a place where she could chew on it herself. After much searching on the web, from some places looking for donations for advice, I finally found an ancient FAQ which named the culprit: FOOD INTOLERANCE.

We were shopping for mouse food and were at a store that had none. We saw "hamster food" and it looked like the kind of stuff you'd feed a mouse, so we bought it. The other two mice are doing fine on it.

So we started feeding her a mix of oats, rice, alphabet spaghetti, and bacos. She is healing just fine. We also squirted her with band-aid brand disinfectant to keep her from getting infected.


Eating the culprit hamster food


Nasty sores


10 days later, new food, healing fine.

fourth step

Okay, I made this cool spreadsheet which helps with the fourth step. Google doesn't support new *.sxls files however so I offer it here as an excel 97-03 file. I hope you find it helpful.

fourth step

let me know if it doesn't work.

rK

god's first whim

I've been thinking about the singularity a lot and I've been meaning to pick up Kurzweil's book on the subject. What strikes me is how opaque it is; one can infer nothing past it. It's like this:

What's interesting is that Kurzweil presumes that the progress continues in the accelerating manner even after the singularity begins. We ca make no such assumptions. If we can assume "wise control" we can't presume to know what that would entail. It may be very well that our newly invented Demigod masters may unanimously find it unwise to continue towards omnipotence. God is dangerous. If God is born, the fate of the entire world depends on God's first whim.

first blog

Okay, so this is my first blog and I don't know what to write. One thing I know is that I don't want this to replace the ink and paper journal that I've been keeping since 2000. I'm too used to journalling my thoughts that way. But when I come up with something good, where is it going to go? Different audiences, I guess, will get different things...

I think blogs are pretty pretentious, by the way, it's like putting out a christmas album. You're presuming that people are, or should be, interested in what you have to say. I try to be relevant though. I'm reading all the good books: the ones on the cutting edge, and I might synthesize a relevant paradigm on this blog.

Maybe it will be better with a worldwide audience. Writing in my journal is too much like...