Validate Your Life

I love Philleas Fogg, Meridians, Space Sciences, Concepts of Time (like Time’s Arrow the Time’s Arrow star trek episode wasn’t that bad either) and albeit somewhat pseudo-science philosophical concepts of physics such as reverse-causality, and all that time-based Dr. Who jazz.   Unfortunately, this article is very un-Dr.Whoesque and quite bland.  But nevertheless, the DST thign was something I wanted to scrutinize upon tinkering with some awesome desktop clock gadgets and wanted to make sure the nuances of time zones and how GMT is perpetually free from the daylight-savings insanity, was lucid.

It’s useful for me to frame things in temporal to London.  Chicago is always LondonTime -6 (because during this DST period, London is UTC+1)  In Spring to Fall, Chicago is London Time (BST) -6, only  because all clocks are moved forward.  And in Fall to Spring, London is GMT/UTC/Zulu And Chicago is that- 6 (because the London time goes “back” to normal), but of course so does every other timezone (Chicago goes back to GMT-6, Sydney to GMT+9, and so on.  During DST it’s a headache a +1 gets added to all those London GMT+1, Chicagy GMT-5, Sydney GMT+10).   Fall to Spring (non-daylight savings time) LondonTime (Chicago time being, now (BST) -6), and now London Time coincides with GMT.  I reckon it’s a good clarification and also headache that GMT timezone DST fluctuations never occur; zulu is always UTC.  In other words, right now, it’s BST 11:02am, CST 5:02am, and GMT 10:02am.  So it’s annoying that half the year all time zones deviate in their relationship to GMT.  London is GMT+1 or GMT, New York is GMT-4 or GMT-5, Chicago is GMT-5 or GMT-6 (in respective DaylightSavings and Non-DayLightSavings Months, respectively).

It’s interesting to note that time and time zones are mere derivatives of man-made sentience placed (or sort of dumped, rather) on longitudes.  And then again, longitudes are geographical trigonometric man-made units of measurement as well. (more…)

Here’s  the Translations of the fields of study that I eliminated to their present and future and these may likely slightly fluctuate but meh.

I’ve evolved my past 5 studies to more uplifting, validating, clarifying studies.  The transduction are as follows:

• Psychology —> Video Games!  Simply the opposite of psychology. Instead of imprisoning one self with self-dialogue “snares” , actually just doing things in a game or real world.  Escaping prison of mind.  This one’s complex and I fully don’t understand it honestly, but it’s something along the lines of gamers are a community, they’re a niche (or “we” are a niche really).  We help each other out.  Friends are the best shrinks, psychologists, coaches in teh world and better. So gamers are friends, thus gaming (via the community of gamers) eclipses psychology completely, replacing it with something progressive, fun, cooperative, exciting as, and full of tons of free expression within the uplifting confines of a great game.  There’s room for passion and interacting but always the forward-moving, measurable progression in game.  Both those (the progress and passion) create massive clarity and peace.  This sounds a bit “zen huey-looey” but hey, I reckon I take gaming seriously.  I’m serious enough about it and the gaming community to recognize that hte best “therapy” one could ever provide or receive occured with mates!  Heck, I even consoled a mate about his dad’s cancer on vent once!  Bloody hell! I don’t expect gaming community to be that intense, but video games are moving in the right direction: involved, not paralyzed behind a 4th wall, and not to mention fun and structured.  Most of all, I LIKE video games!  I get charged with a group of gamers cooperatively working together in a player verse player basis to meet a goal that can only be ascertained with such cooperation!  Rockin’ good time!
• Computers —>  Neuroscience and Mnemonics and NLP and a few “conditionals” to conduct social interactions.  Utilizing the mind with it’s far-more-advanced technology than a computer as if it were a computer that’s always with you! Mnemonics has been a massively reoccurring interest in my life.  I studied it extensively after returning from my trip in the Mexico Yucatan in 2002.  I had the lobes of the brain on my desktop throughout college (this is also because my computer(s) basically are my brain(s) haha!), and NLP can create some aligning visualizations and NLP is great for anti-persuasion, so I only make choices that are keyed in with what I want and need not because someone else is effective at sales or persuading me off center.  NLP has some interesting hypnosis trance stuff which I may be trying to avoid but at least learning about it is effective.  The computer science moving towards social behavior deserves some explanation.  In fact all of these transmutations, uncertainly deserve more explanation, but hey, one step at a time.  Using computer science for social conditionals would mean setting up, for example, and if statement so that:
  • if (xyz_conditional) {
  • do_abc_expression;
  • }
  • which would conduct and organize my social interactions producing more flow, greater ease, heightened simplicity, and less anxiety because it’s all “programmed”!  This could be imprisoning in once sense, but when you’re constantly worried about what to say or do, this creates a very stabilizing ease.  Excellent!
• Drama        —> Music, namely classical, and Math.  ufoMathematical, auditory, some music has “performance” but is so much more precise, it makes drama look like sludge.  A comparison I think would be a commercial is to drama as a great feature film i to music.  That aside, some talented performers are very musical in their performance even if labeled “drama”.  Drama, especially with Eric Berne’s “drama triangles” with social “transactions” is the exact rubbish that I am moving away from.  Perpetually hold the adult title and discard the time-consuming and confusing states of stagnation and stuckness that produce quagmires of social confusion.  Math and classical music are the respective left and right brains of crispness and clarity. Quality times.
• English       —-> Voice work.  Not stuck trapped communicating through keyboard-pecking and expressing self though voice but WITH the structured composition learned from writing is marvelous and unquestionably an advancement.  I just spent about an hour photographing for digital archive, my book…that I wrote…that was basically notes on self-help book rubbish…and (it was called Validate Your Life) and get this utter blithering insanity…I actually took notes and highlights and bloody MARGIN comments on my own book!  So I photo-scanned all that in and put all the crumpled paper in a bag to burn, discard or just rummage through for remembering of how pathetically stuck my life was in the past withe self-help rubbish and religion infecting my thoughts! Math, anatomy, games, all of these new transmutations have revealed to me that illusion spell I was under in writing that self-help rubbish which was just regurgitated self-help rubbish I had previously read.
• Politics        —> Honesty and Journal-writing and Sharing!  Additionally possibly aquatic, swimming workouts, health.   The antithesis of politics.  My goal is not to be invulnerable, but vulnerability makes you incredibly solid and strong and connected.  To quote an unsophisticated source, Ferguson says “if you’re honest, you’re bullet-proof”.  I’m interested imperfection.  Conveying my faults, my problems, my confusions, my anxieties.  That’s being real for me and that leaves politics in a pathetic useless mangled dusty pile of rubbish.  Journaling and sharing that is clarity.  Also I know a lot of aquatic fun is tied in with these transmutations.  Maybe swimming and aquatic snorkeling and whatnot would be the antithesis of politics because there’s absolutely no red-tape (assuming you’re allowed to swim where you can) and there’s no political sticky rubbish.

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A huge fan of the “rolling clothes” WITH RUBBERBAND (Huge tip), I kept all my clothes like that even while at home!! I actually just stopped recently keeping all my clothes and rubberbanded AT HOME, but will likely do that on a trip.

My biggest problem is the “what if the opportunity arises for xyz?” and xyz could be “wearing a suit”, looking sharp, that random sporting event that pops up, using a laptop need (bring laptop yeah/nae?)

I think one of the most outrageous “OVERPACKING” trips was a trip to Santa Barbara I took to see afriend, not knowing if i’d stay a night or a week, and knowing that we talked about surf I brought something like

• a laptop and bag
• a surfboard
• wetsuit
• suitcase with week’s worth of clothes
• swim bag and suit
• formal dress clothes (collared shirts, ties (hanign in car))

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Astronomy: The Phoenix craft of the “Mars Scout Program” to mars is a $475 million mission to launch and land the Phoenix spacecraft on the surface of Mars and explore it. When you consider the massive undertaking of such a project, NASA’s slim budget of $475 million is extremely frugal, pennies really, but despite it’s relatively slim budget, it’s been an incredible success. The Phoenix lander was set to explore Mars for 90 “sols” (Martian days, or about 92 earth days). But instead of lasting a mere 3 months, it lasted almost 5, and only lost transmission to the approaching harsh Martian winter. Phoenix broke the barrier setting a lot of discoveries in previously uncharted territory.
The Phoenix included a set of ovens to heat minerals and materials it picked up as well as an electronic “wet chemistry lab” to run various experiments on the substances it sampled. Phoenix was the first spacecraft to ever “break the surface” (pun somewhat intended) and dig beneath the ice of another planet. This technological advancement revealed that the northern plains of Mars are more habitable for life than expected. Instead discovering inhospibility soil acids, Phoenix discovered alkaline soils, which could be actually conducive to potential plant life!!! It may not be green aliens with three heads and phasers, and rather possible microbes, but the Phoenix has come the closest mankind ever has to discovering life on another planet!

The Future of the Mars Scout Program will include an exciting “SUV-sized” Mars Science Lab (MSL — and yes, and actual “laboratory”) hehe. Like its predecessors Spirit  (January 4, 2004 landing) and Opportunity, (January 25, 2004 landing)  the MSL will have vehicular mobility.

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion just announced a possible breakthrough for astronauts enduring long-distance space travel. The earth is protected from meteorites, high velocity cosmic rays, and other space debris from its surrounding “magnetosphere”. Cutting edge physicists aim to simulate this magnetosphere around a space craft. Scientists intelligiently merely mimicked the sophisticated protection mechanism already surrounding the earth and voila, a new breakthrough that could extend space travel incredibly.

Bottom-Line: Magnetic Force field aims to protect astronauts from space harshness.

Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic “umbrella” that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say.
The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to the Moon or Mars.
But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants.
Lab tests are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.
The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.
Astronauts’ risk
Our star is a constant source of charged particles, and storms that arise on the Sun’s surface result in huge numbers of these particles spilling into space.
As well as this plasma, or “solar wind”, high velocity particles known as cosmic rays also flood through our galaxy.
The Earth’s magnetosphere deflects many of these particles that rain down on the planet, and our atmosphere absorbs most of the rest.

The first time we switched it on, it worked
Ruth Bamford
International space agencies acknowledge that astronauts face a significant risk of ill health and even death if they experience major exposure to this harsh environment.
And even the spacecraft themselves are not immune to the effects. A solar flare crippled the electronics on Japan’s mission to Mars, Nozomi, in 2002, for example.
But researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the Universities of York and Strathclyde, and IST Lisbon have shown how it might be possible to create a portable mini-magnetosphere for spaceships.
People scale
In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the “hole”.
It was not initially clear the idea would work, said Ruth Bamford, who led the research.
“There was a belief that you couldn’t make a little hole in the solar wind small enough to do this at all,” Dr Bamford, from RAL, told BBC News.
“It was believed that you had to have something very large, approaching planetary scale, to work in this way.”
The team has had to take into account the physics of plasmas at the comparatively tiny human scale. To create its metre-sized trial, the team used a plasma jet and a simple $20 magnet.
“The first time we switched it on, it worked,” said Dr Bamford.
What is more, the trial field seems to adjust itself automatically. “It does have the capacity to be somewhat self-regulating, just like the Earth’s magnetosphere is,” Dr Bamford explained.
“When it gets a strong push from the solar wind, the bubble gets smaller. The video shows us increasing the pressure of the solar wind, and the shield gets smaller but brighter.”
Power issues
Many more experiments are needed, Dr Bamford admits, to understand how best to harness the effect; and a practical implementation is probably 15 to 20 years away.

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Legal Crap and Frightening News: There’s a lot of lame crap going on in the legal world. The attorney general of California sued three small trucking companies for violating labors to avoid paying payroll taxes. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted on 7 counts of corruption and should serve 5 years for each count, but apparently may serve much less. On a much scarier note, the Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms bureau successful stopped anotehr school killing spree before it started. Some idiot neo-nazis had some heinously inhuman plan to decapitate African Americans and assassinate Barrack Obama. Wow. It’s times like these where corruption, illegal earning, and racist brutality seem to clog the news that you feel pretty pathetic calling yourself American. At the very least it certainly doesn’t make you feel safe! In fact, the news in America has gotten so foul and disturbing (I can’t believe there’s still racist neo-nacist hate group buffoons still around), there’s really no point in continuing to cover it. But just the fact that dangerous hate-group racism still exists in America really causes you to scrutinize that irrationality. The opinions on slavery from the Civil War really might have left a scar and some racist people remain dangerously confused and primitive, but this chunk of news just reeks of a lot of fear. Jeez, just the thought that if Obama gets elected he could be under the threat of a racist assassination is, well, a sad sign that maybe some haven’t evolved as much as they should have. Fortunately, tomatoes have evolved!

Bottom-line: Sometimes current events are so atrocious, at times it’s good just to not pay attention to the news.

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Transportation: Interestingly enough, local Californians and many other commuters have grown a liking to the public transportation method of commuting they adopted to deal with outrageous gas prices not too long ago. Now that gas prices have dropped, many commuters still prefer the public transportation method. Hey, better for the environment, less pollution, and cheaper; they just have to make sure they get a good bus driver!

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Heath Ledger might win the oscar for his maniacal Joker character, making this the second posthumous “Best Actor” award in over 30 years, the most recent (hardly not recent) went to Peter Finch in Network in 1977.

Also, I noticed the ever-growing “I hate Paris club” has continued to spawn. Disdain for that woman — who, imho, is not really that bad, and in some areas, quite likeable, like her ability to handle media and magnetize press to her image (that also, of course, is the same reason why so many loathe her) — has become a “fad” a trendy thing to do. Even actresses I admire, like incredibly talented Tina Fey appear to loathe her: “She’s so unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close. Her hair looks like fraggle.” What really stumps me is how she so effectively gets under the skin of so many successful people. Does she threaten? Are they confused by her success? If she was a nobody they wouldn’t bother commenting about her. Anyways, that ridicule, no doubt, satisfies Ms. Hilton’s image agenda rendering her more successful. Bad flack or Good flack still registers as some kind of attention, so if you objectively seek attention, she’s got it!

In other news, Matt LeBlanc’s former “Friends” agent, Camille Cerio (not to be confused with pregnant Camilla Alves, McConaughey’s girlfriend, of no relation) is trying to sue him for $1 million in unpaid commissions. He actually EARNED $1 million per show, though! And considering that the Friends’ series tallied NUMBER episodes, he should have no problem covering that, but gotta pay those dues!

That about raps it up for celebrity gossip, other than the usual — a lot of babies, a lot of pregnancies, a lot of marriages, and a lot of trips to the beach! One question, do they “time” these things. It just seems like babies are popping out all over the place in the summer with Pitt-Jolie’s twins and McConaughey-Alves’s expecting and more, it seems that way.

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135 years ago, Jules Verne Published Around the World in 80 days. The geography of the globe is roughly the same, but the economy and global boundaries have changed.

Phileas Fogg navigated the globe with 20,000 pounds or roughly $40,000 with currency conversion. Factoring inflation, however, one realizes good ol’ Mr. Fogg circumnavigated with the equivalent of #### modern pounds or $$$$.

Great. Now that we are up to speed on the economics of 1873, we can launch into the story.

In the United States

Zip codes in CA run from 90000-96199. If you’re outside of that range, you’re in the wrong place!!! Haha!

I Never Knew the Difference Between all these so here’s the skinny on the spirits of the world.

Wine and beer are fermented, but All Hard Alcohol == Liquor == Spirits is DISTILLED, not fermented. Therefore, all the hard alcohol listed below are made through a distillation process. What is being distilled (potatoes, grains, corn, sugarcane, or plants) is what determines the hard alcohol.

Vodka comes from potatoes, grains, or sugar beets.

Whiskey is distilled from grain mash and aged in wooden casks (Irish and Scottish).

Brandy is like the distilled form of wine (but it has hard alcohol content of 40-60%). It comes from grapes, pomace, or fermented fruit.

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Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it was pretty insane.

First, all three types of precipitation – rain, hail, and snow. The only thing missing was cats and dogs.

Secondly, all of that lovely precipitation was blowing nearly completely horizontal with high wind gusts.

Thirdly, it was freezing, 5:30am, and the Lakefront was exploding up on shore a good 20 to 30 splash zones.

Finally, the range of sight in weather like this is already pretty obfuscated, but I ran with my specs on, so my glasses were fogged for almost the entire run making visibility almost 0%.

It was the craziest amounts of precipitation, the worst wind conditions, and the most horrendous horizontal blizzard situation I’ve ever encountered. Ah, you gotta love it though. I remember at Colorado College, some runners preferred the colder, icier weather because they didn’t over heat, so to most of the population this is atrocious, but the sparse few, it could be the best running weather.

The 2007 Hawaii journal is from February, 2007. It consists of the adventure experience visiting Waikiki, Waimea Bay, and the North Shore of Oahu, the surf heaven. While it was short and you always can “catch just one more wave”, it was certainly exciting.

The Punta Laguna, Mexico journal is from Summer of 2002. This was a tropical conservation project in the Yucatan jungle. The group I was with studied spider monkeys with 2 PHd scientists, lived and played soccer with the local Mayans, visted archaeological sites, and studied the botany and ecology of the local Punta Laguna rainforest. There was also an anthropological, linguistic, and cultural exchagne in this amazing adventure as well.

There’s only one bottom line here: this trip was NUTS (but highly productively itinerant)!

This is the photo album, journalized, recorded anthology of my most recent (and quite scintillating, expansive, and gloriously beautiful, I might add) trip up north from Santa Barbara, CA to Stayton, OR. This illustrates the visual (via photographs) and written (via journals) component. I couldn’t find anyone to travel with so when I wasn’t calling friends or kin, I recorded most of the new mental territory covered. Those recordings can be accessed soon.

Considering that it was my first road trip, I (without speeding) moved at an extremely fast pace, making excellent time, covering 2.045 miles in 48 hours (3pm November 14 – 3pm November 16, 2006) from Santa Barbara, CA to Stayton, OR. Covering major ground and visiting the Google Campus, San Franisco, Pacific Heights Health Club, Redwood National Forest, (outlying towns of Humboldt, Eureka, and Miranda, as well) The NW/SW Coastline, Coos Bay, Eugene, and finally Stayton.

This whole travel album, mind you was in 48 hours! I had tremendous gratitude for being able to call and be in touch with friends and family via phone, but if I actually had passengers along for the ride, I think they would have hurled (if not, give me a call for the next road trip!). I just like to cover a lot of ground, with comprehensive expediency.

Staying at my grandmother’s has been a very different culture shock with the three meals a day, constant temperature control, and all the cards, scrabble, and talks! I actually can’t wait to go back to Stayton!

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