Today's Chuck Norris Fact:
Simply by pulling on both ends, Chuck Norris can stretch diamonds back into coal.
It's difficult to believe that it's been 10 days since I last posted. Well, I guess it's not THAT hard to believe...I have had an incredibly busy, incredibly stressful 10 days. I only wish I could have made more time to post some earlier. I get blog post ideas a lot (and I put them in my backpack so I don't forget them, or I type them in to my Treo 650). But while I've had lots of ideas buzzing about in my head, very few have made it either to my backpack or to my Treo. That doesn't mean I don't have plenty of material, though. So let's get to it.
I've been having a lot of thoughts about physics lately...sometimes my past comes back to haunt me in unusual ways. A few sets of career plans ago, I was a lowly physics major in college, struggling through calculus and fighting with equations on electromagnetic field strengths and weak and strong forces. I still follow physics some, particularly when the news is interesting. So when I have thought of this nature, it never bothers me.
I was thinking about Einstein's famous mass/energy equivalence equation, E=mc^2. I would say that there are very few people who haven't at least heard this equation once in their lives. Indeed, it is a fundamental part of the universe around us. But how practical is it to use in the real world? If energy really does equal mass times the speed of light squared, why not try it out for real? And here's what I found.
I weigh about 180 pounds. Converting this to a useful mass unit, I discovered that this means I have approximately 81.65 kilograms of mass. The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters/second (m/s). So, with Google Calculator's help, I found that the speed of light squared is actually 8.99 x 10^16 m^2/s^2, or approximately 89900000000000000 m^2/s^2. So, plugging these values in to Einstein's equation, here's what we get:
E = mc^2
E = 81.65 kg x 8.99 x 10^16 m^2/s^2
E = 7.34 x 10^18 joules
So, if you converted me directly to energy, you would get about 7340000000000000000 joules of energy. To put that into a friendlier context, that is 1.754 x 10^18 calories. An ideal daily diet contains about 2,000 calories, so my energy is theoretically enough to sustain an average adult human for approximately 2.4 trillion years. My energy is also equal to about 2.039 x 10^12 kilowatt-hours, which is approximately 254 million times the amount of electricity an average Colorado household used in 2003. Or 55,707,346,690 gallons of gasoline, which is enough gas for me to drive my 15-mile-per-gallon Land Rover Discovery from the Earth to the Sun nearly 9,000 times (if a highway between the two existed).
Next time you think you're low on energy, I suggest you go through a little exercise like this and think again.
I'm seeing an interesting trend of discourse on the Internet. While conservative blogs are plentiful and helpful in fighting the constant spin of the mainstream media and the "standard" news outlets such as Reuters and AP, there are also home-grown news sites such as Slashdot or Digg which, being more technical and thus more attractive to technically-oriented humans, also display a frightful bias toward liberal politics and ideas. While none of this is necessarily a bad thing, it comes with another interesting tendency...the tendency to simply denounce others as fools without letting them fully explain or argue their position or even letting around to respond properly. The Internet has its roots in academia and thus supposedly supports free discourse, and it provides so many opportunities to meet and debate others of differing viewpoints than your own. I find it highly ironic that despite these roots, the Internet has degenerated into an environment in which people merely go back to the same sort of "folks like me" tribalism and discourse that has plagued the human race for thousands of years. Conservatives typically only go to conservative blogs, and liberals typically only go to liberal blogs. And within those controlled environments, you are free to make the assumption that everyone else there feels exactly like you and you are free to console and be consoled by those who think just like you think.
The Internet has not freed humans to discuss and peacefully resolve their differences, it has merely become the world's largest support group for those with every conceivable viewpoint or creed. I know how comforting this can be, but I would also suggest that it has marginalized debate on substantive issues, because on the Internet, you can ALWAYS find a "majority" that follows your own point of view.
As all of you well know, an arrest has finally been made in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. I don't know what life is like in other parts of the country, but here in Denver, as you might imagine, there is really very little other news that is worthy to remove this saga, and I would hesitate to suggest that even something like another 9/11-style terrorist attack could remove the details of John Karr's haircut or most recent meal from our TV screens. The obsession, so fresh here 10 years ago, has returned with a vengeance. JonBenet's murder resounds for me, because it happened less than a mile from the apartment I was living in at the time, and we had lived in that apartment less than a month (and in the Denver area less than 4 months). It was the beginning of my acquaintance with the City of Boulder and its inability to be serious in providing a useful, higher quality of life for its citizens.
So here I am today, as I approach the 10th anniversary of my move from Oklahoma to the Denver metro next weekend, coming full-circle with something that truly marked my early time here in a way I can't describe. And I'm just as sick of it now as I was then. For JonBenet, who would be 16 (or nearly so) now, justice will probably never be done, as Boulder will find some other way to mess it up, I'm sure. The media will happily capitalize on her memory as they are doing and continue to do (again, as witnessed by the constant John Karr coverage).
Let's give a quick demo of what our news has been like the last few days: "Good evening, this is John Davis, Colorado News. Tonight's headlines: Colorado loses its governor to assassination...millions die in California as a huge 9.7 earthquake rips the California coast into the sea...but first, our TOP STORY. John Karr, the alleged killer of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, landed today at Denver International Airport and was immediately taken to the Boulder Count Detention Center in Boulder, where he will be held on 5 quadrillion dollars bond." And later, STILL without hearing about those other seemingly more newsworthy stories, "John Karr ate milk-fed veal, non-organic cooked baby carrots, caviar, and prairie dog milk today for his first meal in captivity in Boulder. Local activists were outraged." I'm serious, it really is like this. There's been a cease-fire put in place in Lebanon, potentially ending a serious war there, but no matter, John Karr tied his shoe three times.
In the words of Dorothy Parker, You can lead a whore to knowledge, but you can't make her think.
I got to experience something I hadn't fully experienced in quite some time. Last week, Heidi and I went to Wal Mart to buy school supplies. If you've never had to do this, I envy you and I pity you, because it is a wonderful and terribly experience. I thought I was prepared for this, believing that it would be tough, but we'd get through OK with everything we needed. I can say with all honesty, though, that I was in no way prepared for the nightmare that it was. Wal Mart had almost nothing we needed, and it seems that everyone in the northwest Denver metro came to Wal Mart while we were there to buy their children's school supplies as well. People were frustrated or rude or both. We left exasperated and with only about 1/3 of the total amount of supplies we needed. So, we ended up going to Super Target later that day. Not only did they have everything we needed, but it was about 1/10th as crowded. Just goes to show you that it does pay to shop around. Wal Mart is great about 7 times out of 10, but they're not everything.
Also perplexing was why Donovan, as he enters first grade, no longer needs the gigantic pencils we used to use, or why the ubiquitous Big Chief tablets just aren't good enough any more. Likewise missing from the list was good ol' Elmer's Glue, replaced by the bland-but-cleaner-and-easier-to-use glue sticks. Oh well, progress, I suppose. I still have to think that with some things, the old ways are still the best. At least a laptop isn't on the list for first graders yet.
Thanks for reading along.
No comments:
Post a Comment