Phones are dangerous

Many people believe the ban of phones and other electronic devices on planes is a bit ridiculous.  I'm one of those people.  Apparently the flight attendant on American Airlines are as well.  On a domestic flight last night, as the airliner was landing and we were all in our seats with our electronic devices turned off, the flight attendant was using an AT&T branded American Airlines cell phone, possibly a Galaxy S3.  She was using an seat assignment app but also launching other apps until she heard me comment on her blatant disregard of her own instructions.

Airplanes fly through thunderstorms, radio waves, satellite communications, and all other sorts of radiation throughout each flight.  Cell phones work on planes, which means the radiation from cell phone towers can get through the hull regardless of whether or not cell phones are used.  The thought of an iPod messing with the sensitive equipment is a bit hard to believe.  Requesting that Kindles be turned off is just ridiculous, as its on state is no different than its off state when its wireless features are turned off.

The situation becomes more suspicious when you consider the different approaches by different airlines.  Some planes have WiFi onboard.  Some have a mini cell tower.  Over-the-ear headphones are banned on some airlines while ear buds are allowed.  iPod's cannot be used but the in-flight entertainment is fine.

I suspect there are three reasons for turning off cell phones:
1.  The cell phone network was not designed for phones to see more than a few cell phone towers and the communication protocol was not designed for rapid cell switching.
2.  Each cell in the cell phone network has limited capacity and allowing people to call/text when they land or at the airport could conceivably prevent the pilot from using the network if their radio dies.
3.  It's safer for the airline to tell people to turn off electronics if their could be a problem, then to crash and be the first to determine there is actually a problem.

I also suspect there are reasons for restricting music:  It limits the ability to hear important instructions.

I could even make a stretch and say hard objects like laptops/tablets would be physically dangerous in a crash and should be stowed when crashes are most likely.

Maybe it's just easier to create a strict ban of all electronics.  But creating a false reason just engenders disbelief and resentment.

Science: the new religion

Why are drugs sold by actors in lab coats?  What makes a fruit super?

I live in a country where science is paraded, used as tool to spread personal or corporate beliefs, and generally assumed to be correct.  I live in a country where people pit science against religions.  And I wonder, do I live in a country where science has become a religion?

Picture this.  If you take a man, give him 4 years of seminary school and an apprenticeship, put a robe on him, stick him behind a pulpit and let him talk, the people of his congregation will often accept what he says as Gospel.  He can control the crowd and influence their decisions.  If he says that science or a different religion is wrong, he is believed.

If you take a man, give him 4 years of college and some research study, put a lab coat on him, stick him behind a camera and let him talk, the people watching their televisions will often accept what he says as law.  He can control a viewership and influence their actions.  If he says that religion is wrong, he is believed.

It is not infrequent to have a conversation with someone who believes something because a scientist said so on TV or in a magazine, was picked up in a newspaper article, or because a semi-related study drew some conclusion.  Do humans share a common ancestor with gorillas?  Does fish oil give you healthy fatty acids?  Does stretching before exercise increase injury?  Does a belly jiggling machine help you lose weight and build muscle?  The answer to these questions may all be yes, or no, but defending them because a scientist says so is not a good reason.  You can find a scientist that is biased towards either.  It is the same as believing a priest because of his position.  The fallacy is the same.  And I wonder if the people in the crowds are the same - would the person who blindly worships science today have blindly followed a religion if born to different circumstances?

I see this a lot in new age religious text.  How quantum mechanics or some strange property of light is used to justify their beliefs.  The same holds true for health magazines.  The mere fact that they are inspired to use science as a way to validate their claims (when the science rarely applies) implies that people are more likely to believe it - if you invoke the word of science, your argument has weight.  However, reality is more like this: http://xkcd.com/1240/.

I believe that messages should be considered - thought upon, weighed, compared with personal experience of reality, and then dismissed, accepted, or challenged - regardless of who they come from.  For ideas that are not worth the effort, or you don't have the information to judge, then keep them separate from yourself, keep them as other peoples' ideas.

Science is great, and the scientific method is both obvious (now) and incredibly useful.  But there is a difference between believing particular statements of science and believing that the scientific method helps us understand our natural world.  The first is either faith or conclusions based on judgment of prior experience and the second is a judgment of principles.

Religion can be great and incredibly useful.  But there is a difference between believing the teachings of a religion and believing that a religion helps us know truth.  Again, the first requires faith or judgments based on experience.

Perhaps because of my background in science, I prefer judgment based on personal experience to faith - a belief based on faith should only be as strong as your trust in the guarantor of the idea, based on your own past experience.  This can be applied equally to science and religion.

Believing what we experience is infinitely more important than believing what we've been taught.  Prejudices, hatred, and cultural wars are borne of teachings and thoughts.  But experience is borne of truth.


ADDENDUM:
After writing this entry and letting it ruminate in my mind, I read the chapter entitled "We've got it all backward" from Steve Hagen's Buddhism is not what you think.  In the chapter, Hagen states that people have it backwards: we think that religion is about believing in a set of beliefs and that science is about knowing reality; In truth, religion is about helping people experience reality and science is about cultivating a set of beliefs.

Beliefs are the fuel and output of science.  Scientists create beliefs (theorems), develop experiments to test the beliefs, and reject beliefs that do not hold up to testing.  Science does not create reality, but creates models of reality that are believed for a while and then replaced.

Religion is about reality.  About knowing the truth.  The problem with religion today is that it is often distilled into a set of beliefs, and these beliefs are then taught and believed.

Using this idea, which matches a theory I've been working on for a some time, I would say that the problem with science (or, more accurately, the problem with people) is that the public seems to believe the beliefs of science, much as today's religious believe in the beliefs of the religion.

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol

For her birthday and our anniversary, and since we have never been to a really fancy restaurant, I took my wife to Canlis in Seattle.

The night started off well.  I was warned beforehand that the restaurant only had valet parking but there was no one standing outside when we arrived (or more accurately, there was already a car in front of the restaurant occupying people) so I decided to try my luck.  I drove right through the valet stand and into the parking lot, chased after by a surprised attendant.

The food was good, the drink surprising, but more interesting was the service.  It was good.  Really good.  Annoyingly good.  Over the course of our meal, there must have been at 30 to 40 waitress-client interactions.  Clearing our plates, straitening our forks, poring water, asking how the food tastes.  With each course, there were two waitresses bringing our food and one waiter giving us the rundown.  At first, I made eye contact and said thank you to the waitresses as they finished their pampering.  After 20 interactions, I switched to eye contact, smiling, and nodding.  Near the end, it was just a slight smile and nod.

This got me thinking about the rich and how they treat servants.  Living in these conditions for two hours created a disconnect between the waitresses and I.  They no longer received the standard pleasantries from me because the pleasantries created a kind of social friction, degrading the meal experience and tiring me.  If one were in this situation for any length of time, I would expect that the servants would become, if not invisible, simply not nodded to on account of their omnipresence.

I did not particularly enjoy this part of the experience, and prefer people to remain thankingworthy.

Before this experience, it was easy to believe that some rich people simply don't care enough to treat their staff with simple dignities.  After this experience, however, I think it is not necessarily that the privileged lack a caring personality, but in their situation interactions would be greatly hampered by niceties.  The choice then becomes deciding if you want to be in that situation or not.  It may be better to not surround yourself with servants.

Aikido Techniques

In a flash of brilliance, a friend of mine decided to put together a set of Aikido training videos.  Here are some samples from the initial trial.

In the first, you'll notice her chin tucks down to avoid a possible strangling while easily twisting the attacker's hand to loosen his grip.  The twisted arm tenses and the small force transfers up the arm through the shoulder and drives the attacker off balance.  When the attacker is off balance, a quick cut of the hand would drop him to the ground quite painfully, but the sensei, instead, gently lowers her hand to avoid causing pain while remaining in control.

I was asked if this was real.  The attacker was not intentionally trying to stab the victim (for his own safety, since slower defenses are much less painful), but the rest is real.  From the moment the attacker's hand is grabbed, he has no control.  Since this was a casual and friendly environment, the sensei did not pay much attention to control once on the ground so you'll see the attacker try to take advantage and attack with his left hand.  Any hope was short lived as the sensei simply used his right arm to block his left, then pushed the sai towards his neck.

This was clearly my best idea of the night.

These three videos may not make the final cut.

Project: Workbench

A real man needs a real work bench.  So I built one.

I was getting pretty tired of (and sore from) doing all my shop work on the floor of my garage.  At least, that's my official excuse.  In reality, I want to build a tool shed to store all the tools I need to make a tool shed.  And to build the shed, I need a proper table.  And to build a proper table, I need some tools, but more on that later.

Since my wife refuses to park on the driveway, I don't have enough room for a traditional work bench so I designed one that folds up nicely beside my car.

The structure is made of 2x4s and has a pine top.  Pine is a soft wood, but the frame was already pretty heavy so I opted for something lighter that is both easier to lift and puts less stress on the hinges.  If it becomes a problem, I may replace the top later.  I was just barely strong enough to install it alone, but once hung it's not heavy at all - the wall bares most of the weight.

The legs swing down from beneath the table.  To prevent the legs from collapsing accidentally, I use a 6' piece of dowel that sits on a couple screws.  I'm considering adding a second 2x4 to each leg to make it more stable, look a little better, and give a little bit of room between the table and the wall when it's closed.  With this extra room, I can install plywood or pegboard beneath the table for extra tool storage. This would help as my tool chest is full, possibly because of all my screwdrivers!!

I did make a few mistakes when building the table.  It's designed to sit 36" above the floor and I measured it where the floor meets the wall.  My garage floor is slanted though, presumably to help water escape and flow away from the walls.  So the back of the table was 36" off the floor, the front-right was 36.75" and the front-left was 37.75" (that's a full inch drop from right to left!).  Since the legs weren't quite long enough, I had to remove the 2x4 support on the wall and screw it in 3/4" lower to accommodate.  Just when I thought I was done!

Next, the door hinges I bought caught on the wood and prevented it from moving.  If you look at any door in your house, you'll notice that the axels of the hinges hang off the door, in the air.  In my design, there is no gap between the axel and the wood so there was a lot of friction when I screwed in the hinges.  I fixed it by installing washers between the hinge and the wood.  In the picture below, you can see the washers and a set of four holes (two of which are unused after moving the 2x4).  You can also see that the hinges don't support any weight when the table is open - it's all on the feet and the wall mount.

To smooth the table, I bought a hand-held band saw.  This turned out to be useless - it made the surface more rough than when I started - so I had to fix the sand job by hand.  Next time I'll know to ignore the advice of the Home Depot employee and use a random orbital sander.  But now I have a belt saw.

And now I can build things for real!

The sound of OOF

Staying home from work today, I sent this email to my team:

The bad news is that I’m not feeling a whole lot better than yesterday.

The good news is that to get you through this troubling time without my presence, I provide you with rap.

Please read this in the voice of a thug, as who has street cred.
…and rather poor rapping skills.


Diagnosed with streptococcus.
It’s got me down; I cannot knock this.
Stay at home to rest and cough. It’s
Hard to be away from the office.
Try to remote in but they’ve blocked it!
Password’s expired and can’t unlock it!
All I want to do is log in!

Now my rage is engaged.
Feels like I’m encaged.
There's a war being waged.
How can it be in this day and age
That my body’s upstaged by a bacteriophage?

Word.

[sound of microphone hitting the floor as I walk away]

Project: Soft Box Mount

Helping to build my home studio, my mom gave me a Neewer 250 Watt strobe for my birthday and I want to attach a Loadstone Studio Ultimate Soften Light Soft Box to it.

The only problem is that the strobe has a non-standard mount...or maybe I just don't know the standard.  I guess that's what happens when you buy online without real knowledge.  Also, my soft boxes are designed to fit around a custom quad light socket mount.  The strobe has an outer diameter of 3 3/4" and the soft box base has a diameter of 6 1/4" with four post holes.

The Novatron N7301 Universal Speedring would be perfect for the job, so I bought it.  Unfortunately, The ePhoto Universal Speed Ring arrived instead, labelled as the N7301.  Amazon's customer service is pretty amazing though (again ranked #1) so I'll return it.

This leaves a whole in my studio.  I wasn't able to find another brand and I can't trust that I'll receive what I order next time, so to Home Depot I go!

They carry a 2"-4" bushing for PVC pipe:

A 4"-6" bushing would be perfect, I could just screw holes for the soft box rods and add some tensioning screws, but Home Depot doesn't carry that size.  Amazon does, but it costs $22 plus shipping, which is more than the N7301.

So back to Home Depot!

Here's what I bought for just under $20:

• A 7" light reflector (which fits on the back of some random light)
• Four 3/8" coupler nuts
• Some copper attachments used to secure piping
• Weather stripping

Here is it partially assembled.  I lined the interior with weather stripping and drilled eight holes using a hand drill.  You can see a tiny piece of weather shipping sitting on the right side of the ring where the next coupling nut will go.  I use this to keep the nut from slipping and to provide a little lift since the metal ring is slightly curved and I want the nuts to be square.  Plus, I had a lot of extra stripping left over.

Beware!  Drilling metal is not like drilling wood.  It's not sufficient to hold onto the part with your bare hand (and it's dangerous to use gloves with a drill, since catching a glove will cost you more than a little bit of skin).  If the drill bit catches the metal ring at 2000RPM, in a battle between your hand and the metal disk, it's not hard to guess who would win.  I'm glad I used my foot and proper shoes to hold down the piece as the metal did catch once after drilling my first hole - I lifted my foot before the drill bit stopped completely.  Bad move.

Also, use protective eye ware.  Metal chips are not your friend.

Here is the unit fully assembled and sitting atop one of my strobes.  It's not as pretty as it could be since I ran out of small screws.  To a keen reader, you'll notice that I'm also using my tripod-to-light stand tip adapter.

And finally, here is the unit assembled on my birthday light with the soft box inserted.

And for a little fun, here is the soft box I built quickly for my first test shoot that the new unit is replacing.  It worked okay, but kept falling down under its own weight.  I expect this new one to work much better.

Project: Light Stand Tip

I've been working on setting up a home studio, mostly to see what I come up with.  However, it's quite expensive so I've been doing on the cheap.  Also, I enjoy building things.  So when I needed to mount a background light, the obvious choice was to use an old tripod that's too weak for my camera.

See mom, it's good I don't throw anything away!

In order to do this, I needed an adapter form the tripod mount to the light stand mount.  I could buy one from Amazon for $12 including shipping, or I can spend half an hour at home depot wandering the halls.

The end result should look like this:

Obviously, it would be best to use a lathe, but getting one of those would push the price a little bit past $12.

Here's what I did:

Using a large washer, small washer, 1/4" coupler nut, and small 1/4" bolt, I screwed the nut onto the tripod and the screw onto the nut.  That's all!

And all for less than $2, given that I only needed to buy the coupler nut.  And here it is doing it's job:

Your mother's kitchen

Growing up in the 20th and 21st centeries, I've become accustomed to the race of technology.  When I was young, our TV was black and white and our remote control (which was awesome) was wired.  Now I can hook up my phone to a projector, both of which fit in my pocket, and watch movies anywhere.  Then there are computers, wireless HDMI, self-driving cars, and 3D printers. The world today is unrecognizable from the world my parents grew up in.

Which is why is surprises me that my kitchen hasn't changed.  The same appliances that exist today existed when my mom was my age.  There were microwaves, stand mixers, blenders, fridge-freezer combos, garbage disposals, ovens, stoves, and can openers.  With all the technology in the kitchen I would expect things to progress faster.  Even knives are the same.

More people now have espresso machines, and I'm sure the Slap Chop hasn't been around for long, but tell me it isn't odd that your grandmother would be immediately at home in your kitchen but likely be stimied by the operation of your TV or telephone.

And why is this?  Is food inherantly simple?  Have we been playing with food for so long that we've done everything possible to it?  Or is innovation slowed by either the multitude of useless single-function vapourware they sell on late-night TV that all appear to be variations on the blender or, at least, the belief that these are all useless?

I don't know, but it surprices me.

Crown Royal Maple Review

I like Crown Royal.  It's my favourite whiskey.  When I was younger I drank Crown and coke, which is still my staple at the bar.  As I've matured and become able to afford better alcohol, I've switched to either Crown Royal Limited Edition and coke or occasionally Crown Royal Special Reserve on the rocks, as it's painful to mix that.

Crown Royal recently came out with a new flavour - their first flavoured whiskey - Crown Royal Maple Finish.  As soon as you crack the bottle you'll notice the difference.  This isn't a subtle hint of maple.  The smell is potent.  The moment you twist the lid your friends will perk up, step out of their rooms, and come to the kitchen expecting pancakes.  It's like smelling the deep heart of maple syrup kingdom, which I assume lies somewhere in central Quebec.

After opening the bottle, Tom and I poured ourselves a drink, mixed with coke.

And it was horrible.  It's hard to describe how bad this was, but those two liquids shall hence forth never again be mixed.  We resolved to finish our drinks and I even poured a second, vowing to drink what I bought, and immediately regretted that decision.  While I did finish both drinks, it was through sheer pride and I would refuse another if one were to offer.  Ian's rating: undrinkable.

So time passed and the shock dissolved.  I brought the bottle to Aaron's place as a prank.  We each had a small cup neat.  It was much better on it's own, but still not great, and Aaron labelled it the pedophile's whiskey on account of the sweetness.  It is as good as drinking Crown Royal original unmixed, which is doable but not pleasant.  Ian's rating: passable.

Then Aaron tried it with coke and was immediately horrified.  I was pleased.

Next, I tried mixing it with lemon juice.  Ian's rating: also undrinkable.
Then, I tried it with limeade.  Ian's rating: drinkable but not entirely pleasant.

I was nearing my limit.  If it's maple then I will allow it to do what maple does.  I will fulfill it's destiny.  I will make pancakes.  And that's what I did.  I replaced the milk with whiskey and milk powder and the results looked great:

And with my first bite I was much more than surprised.  Shocked might be a better word.  That is a lot of alcohol for one pancake.  But the pancake was okay.  And then the burning sensation set it.  I don't know if the whiskey became more concentrated in the process, the alcohol boiled off and just left contaminants, if whiskey and flour should never be mixed, or water is necessary for flour to become edible, but whatever it was, it burned.  Except for that, and the overwhelming alcohol taste, the pancakes weren't bad.  Ian's rating: regretfully inedible.

And finally I tried Crown Royal Maple Finish with lemonade.  Surprisingly after the previous episodes, it was not bad.  One might even make the claim that it's good.  Ian's rating: well worth a second cup.

In the end I made it work, but seriously, don't waste your money.

We're smarter now

Within thirty minutes of returning home with four jars of my mom's jam, my wife and I had a serious conversation on how to handle the situation.

The decision was unanimous and we labelled the jars.

Crisis averted.