Wow.

Best. Episode. Ever.

Episode 17 of Heroes, entitled Company Man, has just blown my mind. If anyone has any doubts as to whether or not you should start watching, Company Man just shattered those doubts into a million pieces.

There is so much information in Company Man that I have to watch it again. “Wow” is so completely inadequate to describe it. How good was it?

Well, at the end of Unexpected Visitors (the previous episode) I was rooting for Matt Parker and the radioactive man. Finally, HRG (Mr. Bennet) was going to get his due. Or so I thought.

By the time the final scene in Company Man played, I was near tears at HRG’s plight.

You know those times when you think a friend has let you completely down and you demonize him or her? What an asshole, you think. I don’t need friends like this. You fume and rage at the betrayal, righteous anger pouring forth in a Vesuvian torrent.

And then someone tells you that the reason you got shafted was because her sister died, or his mom got cancer, and your whole perspective flips around. Your friend deserves an apology. She deserves a hug. He deserves a drink.

And HRG deserves better.

That’s how good Company Man was.

The Departed wins best movie and best director at the Oscars.

Boo! Hiss!

Boy, I bet Andrew Lau and Siu Fai Mak are miffed.

To be fair, Martin Scorsese is long overdue for an Oscar. And while I haven’t watched it yet, The Departed is very well-reviewed on rotten-tomatoes. But it seems to me that Infernal Affairs really got shafted. I hope getting the rights to an adaptation cost a bomb.

Personally, I was hoping for Little Miss Sunshine to take away the Oscar for best picture. But having won best original screenplay, I guess it was too much to hope for.

Let’s hope Infernal Affairs gets more attention after this win.

When Meredith Grey drowned last week, I thought: Yay!

Then this week, in what is basically an hour-long CPR scene (you know - person’s heart stops, doctors proclaim electric shocks are needed, people shout “clear!”, the heart stays stopped, the doctors all give up, but after the music crescendoes into absolute silence the familiar BEEP… BEEP… of the monitor tells the audience that yes, the patient is indeed alive, oh my god it’s a miracle), she came back to life.

I wonder, am I the only one who doesn’t like Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo)? Everyone eats up Grey’s Anatomy like it’s the best thing since sex. But the main character is so unlikeable and unbelievable that I wonder if viewers aren’t tuning in to watch Isobel Stevens (Katherine Heigl) instead.

Meredith is maladjusted, self-loathing, insecure, annoying, incompetent… and a slut. I’m sorry, but if you sleep around with more than one man and self-righteously proclaim that you’re not a slut, then you definitely are one (if you embrace your promiscuity, you ain’t a slut - just confident).

In contrast, Isobel is hardworking, beautiful (sorry Ellen), competent-yet-vulnerable, an all-round likeable gal. Why can’t she be the main character? I was heartbroken when Izzie lost Denny. On the other hand, I cackle like a maniac whenever Meredith gets screwed, because she usually has it coming. But it’s getting old, fast.

Should’ve killed Grey off and called it Isobel’s Anatomy. Mmm, tasty.

A friend of mine sat on the bus wondering if the air she was breathing could be the same air the dinosaurs were breathing. Never one to leave it at that, I’ve decided to take a closer look and see if it’s really possible (idle thinking alert!).

By volume, air is:

78.1% Nitrogen
20.9% Oxygen
0.93% Argon
0.04% Carbon Dioxide
Some Neon
Some Helium
Some other gases…

Nitrogen is involved in the nitrogen cycle. Free N₂ gets fixated by various means (lightning, bacteria, humans) and is then used by plants, which need it to make chlorophyll, which is used for photosynthesis. Nitrogen is also constantly being replenished by bacteria and fungi, which break down rotting biological matter. So while it’s possible that we’re breathing in the same nitrogen that dinosaurs breathed, it’s also highly probable that we’re eating them in our vegetables, too. Especially the really green ones.

Oxygen is involved in our respiration process, in burning stuff, etc. It’s a very promiscuous molecule, reacting with lots of stuff to form oxides. Most of it is locked in that form with the rocks in the Earth’s crust. Plants release oxygen as part of photosynthesis: some oxygen comes from the soil, some comes from carbon dioxide. And so on. So while it’s possible that we’re breathing in the same oxygen that dinosaurs breathed, it’s much more likely it’s locked in with rocks that were subsequently buried, or it’s locked in with limestone formed from all those shellfish, or it’s locked with some other oxide somewhere.

Similarly, Carbon dioxide gets put through several interesting reactive processes. It dissolves in the ocean, it gets broken down by plants, it gets absorbed into organisms for making shells, etc. Carbon dioxide (and monoxide) also comes from burning organic fuels (like petroleum), because the carbon in them reacts with oxygen. And so on. So again, it’s more likely that we’re not breathing in carbon dioxide that dinosaurs breathed.

That leaves us with the noble gases, the ones that hardly react with anything at all. The largest portion in the atmosphere belongs to Argon, which is also used to fill tungsten light bulbs because it’s just so un-reactive. The atmosphere also has trace amounts of helium and neon. According to Wikipedia, “no conventional compounds of helium or neon have yet been prepared”.

So there you have it. If dinosaurs breathed in argon, neon or helium, then there’s a high chance we’re breathing the very same atoms of argon, neon or helium ourselves, simply because they’ve not reacted with anything or gotten swept away. The ancient atmosphere had more oxygen than the current one, but I don’t know that the proportion of noble gases present has changed.

Corrections are welcome! But don’t take this seriously. It is, after all, just idle speculation.

(This is part II of a two-part review of The God Delusion. Part I deals with its weaknesses, part II deals with its strengths).

Where the book shines is its scientific treatment of why there is no God. It comes as no surprise that Dawkins is himself a prominent evolutionary biologist; his philosophical arguments are far less convincing than his scientific ones. Fortunately, the scientific arguments are convincing enough that I feel they need no further bolstering.

Dawkins clarifies early on what his idea of “God” is: a personal God, an omniscient and omnipotent being, who not only created the universe but is active in its management and in the lives of its denizens - humans. He goes to great lengths to distinguish it from other characterisations of God (for example, God as the being who set the universe in motion, but is otherwise impersonal and uncaring about our fate; or God as something within all of us).

Then the main thrust comes, in which he promotes evolution as the most elegant and deeply satisfying explanation for creation and complexity there is. And I can’t help but feel firmly convinced, because it’s just so simple when you look at it, that you really couldn’t think it happened any other way.

(more…)

(I’ve split the review because it’s very long. Part I deals with the weaknesses, and Part II deals with the strengths.)

I just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. It’s a very interesting piece of work, and reading it I find myself backing down from my previous opinion that Dawkins is a “fundamentalist atheist”, as much a fundamentalist as religious nuts are. He comes off as far more reasonable than his lectures / readings would suggest. I suspect most of the perceived irritation stems from the fact that he’s gotten so many of the same unsophisticated questions and accusations from religious folks, that when he hears them in a Q&A session he can’t help but be frustrated.

As is expected for a work of this ambition, it falls short in many places. Most notably, the last chapter is empty and unconvincing when compared to the earlier chapters.

Much of his animosity towards religion appears to be directed towards the harm and “brainwashing” it causes children. Apart from the Intelligent Design versus Evolution debate (I’ll deal with that later), I find most of his arguments here very unconvincing.

For example, he rails against calling children “Muslim children” or “Catholic children”. To him, it is tantamount to calling the child a “Marxist child” or a “Communist child”. He prefers the construction “child of Muslim parents”, explaining that at least that way, it will be apparent to the child that they have a choice as to what religion they will choose.

But a child born to Muslim parents has no choice but to be Muslim, and a Catholic baptized at birth has no choice but to be Catholic. It doesn’t matter what the child thinks - their religious elders have already decided for them. Even if I call them “children of Catholic parents”, it does no good. And remember, in certain countries apostasy is a crime punishable by death.

The other area where the final chapter fails is the cursory examination of the comforting ability of religion. Religion plays a strong role in comforting people, both via first-order belief in God, and via the second-order pre-made social network.

Dawkins first brushes the whole issue aside by saying: “just because it’s comforting, does not make it true”. Fine; I too will brush aside the issue by saying: “just because it’s true, does not make it comforting”.

Then he sidetracks into how religious people tend to fear death more than non-religious people. He provides only anecdotal evidence for this phenomenon, a fact he readily admits. Then he goes on to argue about euthanasia and why religious persons don’t support it. Why the fascination with death? There are plenty of other comfort-functions religion performs. Many of them stem from the very real effects of having a cohesive, supportive social network other than your friends and family upon which to rely. The comfort-functions of religion are undeniable and very real, and it does no good to simply dismiss them for not being “true”.

My point is this. Dawkins could have devoted more of the book into examining his root thesis: Why is there no God? Instead, the final chapter seems tacked-on and empty, and only weakens the message.

My last complaint is that Dawkins gave the philosophical treatment of the subject matter a rather inadequate amount of analysis. Even to someone like me, who doesn’t really care about philosophy, the omission is glaringly obvious. The book would have benefitted greatly from a separate philosopher author.

Actually, the book would have benefitted greatly if it had been a collaborative project amongst intellectuals from all the disciplines of humanity, including that much-maligned subject, theology. As it is, the parts of the book that deal with cross-disciplinary material like astrophysics and philosophy are woefully under-represented.

Fortunately, the chapters on biology are excellent, and it is to that I’ll turn my attention to in Part II.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

This is my reaction as I look at a fluorescent light bulb “helpfully” held together by scotch tape:

To understand the reaction, some background information is necessary. You see, my room has a combination ceiling fan and light, with three slots for light bulbs available.

As you can see, one of those slots is empty. I left it empty because its last occupant blew up, spewing sparks and bits of fluorescent bulb across me and my room.

I also left express instructions to the household to not install any new bulbs into that particular slot, because the constant vibration of the fan is what excites them into their explosive tendencies.

I told my father again when he tried to replace it, to stop. And my mother mentioned that the fan was improperly installed and causes vibrations that cause bulbs to go BOOM.

I guess I should have put a big flashing warning sign there as well, because dear daddy replaced the fluorescent bulb today. I only noticed because I heard rattling from the ceiling, and the previous explosive encounter had trained me to move quickly should a repeat performance manifest. So I got up on a chair and unscrewed the bulb, and was greeted with the gem above. Here it is again, just for emphasis:

It’s not even electrical tape or duct tape. It’s bloody scotch tape.

Lest you feel my rage unwarranted, let me add that he is a bloody engineer. He used to work with Hyundai in its infant days, and then went to Coca-Cola to work on their bottling plants.

For the region.

This is not an isolated incident. One time, he didn’t affix my sister’s ceiling light properly. My sister’s room’s ceiling light is one of those big, glass, discus-like affairs that are held up by screws. The glass cover is more than twice the diameter of her head. One unexpected day, the cover did exactly what you’d expect: it crashed to the floor.

Again, lest you feel my rage unwarranted, my sister’s study table is directly underneath that light. If that thing had hit her, I would have done some highly illegal things to somebody.

The incompetency is not limited to ceiling fixtures.

He persists in feeding the cat dried cuttlefish, which she cannot digest, and thus vomits out, along with whatever happened to be in her belly at the time. I have to clean that vomit up before the neighbours complain that the staircase has partly digested sotong, lizard and catfood smeared across it. When confronted with the fact, he rigorously denies responsibility, pointing out that the food bowl is empty - empty because I threw the sotong away before my cat got to it.

Then there was the time he left the clothes in the washing machine for so long that cockroaches creeped into it. Then he turned the machine on. Guess who had to pick out bits of cockroach leg and antennae out of his clothes?

Or how about the time he spilled ramen soup all over the kitchen counter? He wiped the counter, but not what seeped into the drawers underneath. And he obviously left it there for some time before clearing it up, because I had to dismantle all the drawers and literally pour the liquid MSG out before I could even start washing all the utensils inside.

I know, I know. I shouldn’t be saying these things - he is, after all, my father. But damn, there’s only so much one can take. Having a rattling time bomb held together by scotch tape dangling over your head changes your perspective, you know?

So next time you see Homer Simpson or Peter Griffith do something that seems utterly and impossibly stupid, you can go ahead and suspend your disbelief: it really is very plausible.

I live with one.

My internet is acting weird, I’ve been unable to connect to Squarebrain and login and I can’t write anything. I’m working on it, but since I’ve somehow managed to connect this afternoon I’m going to take the opportunity to say:

Happy New Year!

(For you western readers, the Lunar New Year is a huge deal, far overpowering Christmas and the (Gregorian) New Year and just about every other holiday in the western hemisphere. Whereas some businesses still operate during those western holidays, during the Lunar New Year the CBD is a near-complete ghost town. On wednesday, things go back to normal again…)

Wired’s Chris Kohler has a nice interview up about the Singapore-MIT game lab announced last year. They have an interesting plan - to do research on the creation of videogames, and to pitch it to the videogame community by actually making games, as opposed to releasing an academic research paper.

I doubt, however, that Singapore is the best place to do this sort of thing. Zeng works in the videogame industry, and his opinion of local game developers can be summed up as “individually talented, but with nobody to provide them with vision”.

Without a strong sense of vision, I’m not sure the Singapore chapter of this game lab will be on equal footing with the MIT chapter. I wouldn’t want the local talent to be reduced to highly trained code monkeys, when in fact they are capable of so much more.

I guess we’ll just have to see what kind of games come out of this lab.

Just a couple of days ago, dwave demonstrated the first real practically working quantum computer. This is a big deal, as a working quantum computer could render the strongest big prime-number-based encryption system completely useless.

Dwave’s computer currently solves sudoku puzzles. Within a few years, we might finally get a computer that can trash humans at go (implementing an efficient go algorithm is notoriously difficult).

There’s a lot of interesting analysis here, including one up by ars.technica that speculates that dwave is trying to set itself up as the next standard in quantum computing APIs (much like intel’s x86 architecture is the current standard).

But to me, this is just plain frickin’ cool. Just a few years ago researchers could only speculate about quantum computing. Now there’s a quantum computer, sitting there ready to carry Moore’s law into the next ridiculous generation.

We live in interesting times, my friends.

Grammy Awards, Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal: “My Humps”, Black Eyed Peas.

In other news, my month-old moldy ejaculatory discharge won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Also, I solved P versus NP on the back of a paper napkin, achieved world peace and cleared the energy crisis.

Because if “My Humps” can win a Grammy, then I can do anything!

I discovered these quotes sitting around in a dusty file I came across while cleaning up my junk. I tend to write these down while I study because otherwise I’d die of boredom. Here are three of the better ones I could find!

Number 1: Peter Smith J in Baigent v Random House, rather gleefully putting down Michael Baigent. Zing!

"Mr Baigent was a poor witness. Those are not my words: they are the words of his own Counsel… Those words do not in my view do justice to the inadequacy of Mr Baigent’s performance."

Number 2: Jacob J in Milliken v Walk Off Mats, who really did not like a certain Mr Thorley’s arguments, counsel for the defendants in the case. On two occasions his irritation shows. There is this gem:

"Mr Thorley says I should not go on gut reaction but on the evidence. My gut reaction is to go on the evidence."

And this other delicious put-down, that stops just short of suggesting that Mr Thorley was afraid of one of the witnesses:

"Mr Thorley suggested the stabs might not have gone through [the mat]. He never put the suggestion to Mr Howard [a man who punches holes through mats]. Moreover Mr Howard did not strike me as a man who, if he wanted to stab a perforation through a mat, would fail."

Number 3: Wise words from Lord Hoffman in Kirin Amgen v Hoechst, giving a succinct reason why the court should not waste its time examining the patent file:

“…life is too short for the limited assistance which it can provide.”

I so agree, dude.

Check out these cats getting spanked.

Mrrrowr, I like that, yeah!

On a more personal note, I don’t advise trying this with your cat. Mine kind of tolerated being spanked for a while, then went cat-crazy on her back. Now she’s busy vainly cleaning up and sulking. Too much of a pussy, I guess (MMmmmmmm, yeah, take that punishment… hah! hah! Alright alright I will stop now).

(Kitty is not amused)

So sayeth the doom9 forums (via digg).

HD-DVD DRM
2006 - 2007

(And all he did was examine the playback of the HD-DVD in memory).

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