02:35 pm - Cynical Half Formed Rant

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. cola sales are expected to fall 1 percent this year, and one industry expert says it's partly because Coke and Pepsi have put their legendary cola wars on ice.

But Coke's CEO Neville Isdell agreed with Sicher that cola makers need to rev up competition in order to spur demand for their brands.

Again, my feeling that advertising beyond technical specifications, cost and availability, should be made illegal is supported by recent events.  I do enjoy a Coke or Mountain Dew occasionally, but not at the levels of consumption from early graduate school.  Still this strikes me as wrong.

Cola sales are declining by about 1% in the overall beverage market.  The marketing types feel that they need to generate demand for their products by increasing the "cola wars."  Rather than provide products that consumers want to purchase, they opt to generate hype to convince people to want what they already offer in order to counter a shift to healthier lifestyles. The "free market model" we've bought into as the answer to all problems operates on the assumption that rational choices on the part of the consumer to drive supply and demand.  Are the cola wars informative or rational?  Is there any link to global terrorism in pursuing this war?  Why should we give our money to cynical manipulators, so they can squeeze more money out of us for products that we don't really want?  What hope does the average consumer have of ever becoming educated about the real choices available?

To paraphrase the first Calvin and Hobbes comic strip that I read (paraphrased because I can't find the actual strip)

Hobbes: "It says drinking this soda will enhance your sex appeal."
Calvin: "BRAAAAP!!!"
Hobbes: "Their claims seem to be exaggerated."
Calvin: "Phoo.  Up the nose."

10:43 am - Quote induced reflection

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.  William Gibson

Okay, so my most recent posts have been induced by random quotes on my Google homepage.  Still it is the introduction of randomness into any process that provides creativity.  The oddly positioned lens or mirror allows glimpses that often add nothing, but occasionally grant new understanding.

This quote has reminded me of the place of science and progress in the world today.  Things are happening, advances are being made, prophecies of all ilks are being fulfilled and refuted, and we step into the future.  The future that everyone seems to expect, whether optimistic, pessimistic, or unforeseen (not as big a self contradiction as you'd think) happens all the time.  I can only speak of my small patchwork piece of perceived reality and I can only keep up with mere fraction of the new knowledge generated in my areas of expertise.  It's perhaps a more Zen-like state of consciousness.  You don't know that the future has arrived until you can look back on the moment with the perspective of hindsight.  Then it isn't really the future, is it? 

So we must prepare ourselves to receive a changing world.  Not by predicting the next sequence of events with five decimal place precision, but by stretching our understanding of possibilities, probabilities, and consequences.  Or we resign ourselves to be subsumed by the crashing waves of events that are not only uncontrollable, but incomprehensible.  So read more science fiction to prepare yourself for the strangeness yet to come.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.  Dwight D. Eisenhower

11:30 am - A bitter optimist

A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun - and neither can stop the march of events. Robert Heinlein

A pessimist confronted with two bad choices, chooses them both. Jewish Proverb

How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right? Robert Mallet

A realist is just a pessimist who thinks he's right. Me

-----

Went to the World Fantasy Convention in um.... SARASOTA Springs, NY two weekends back.  It was great and overwhelming and I'll write some more later when I'm not feeling as sick and confused.  (Just gotta remember that I wasn't in Florida...)

11:05 am - Fencon Report

So I made it back from Fencon that Sunday, but delayed posting. Why? Dunno. Simple procrastination would be the obvious choice.

Had a great panel first thing Friday night on Military SF. Probably the best panel I've ever been on, complete with talking points prepared on the flight down. The other panelists, Toni Weisskopf, Steve Perry, and Bill Ledbetter. Of course, the talented panelists hit most of my discussion points before I had to bring them up. One thing that I didn't bring up was my podcast interview with David Drake, which I was involved in last year. I haven't even listened to it myself (something about how I sound outside my own head vs. the outside world...)

The rest of the con was quite good, except I had messed up the date of the fancy dinner, thinking it was Saturday rather than Friday. Got a chance to meet Connie Willis and David Mattingly, both wonderful people. Of course, strangely, the entire con was plagued with technical difficulties. (My computer died right before my presentation on Death Rays. Projectors failed or had no red. Sound systems died midway through the masquerade. If electronics were involved, it didn't go off without a hitch.) But the con staff and the people attending made that seem like a minor difficulty, easily forgotten and certainly forgiven.

I was really happy to see all my old friends from the days of conventions past.

10:27 am - FENCON

I'm making it back to Fencon!!!  After Conestoga, this is certainly a fun con.  I'll be doing my traveling Death Ray show and get to moderate a panel on Military in SF.  A little nervous about the last one.  Certainly not for a lack of opinions or discussion topics or credibility, but Toni Weisskopf will also be on the panel. 

Just because you greatly increase your visibility does not mean you've done something you hope will be remembered.

02:54 pm - Stupid Questions

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
  - Scott Adams

A quote by the Dibert dude on my iGoogle daily quotes.  Although funny, this is wrong.  It goes along with a collorary of this particular duck-billed platitude from the military.

"There are no stupid questions.  Only stupid lieutenants." 
  -Anonymous NCO.

And this is the crux.  The question has no inherent stupidity (perhaps posed out of ignorance, but that's why people ask questions...)  Only the person receiving the answer and their actions subsequently determines the stupidity.  If the answer fails to ease the symptoms if not the affliction of stupidity, it's the dummy's fault, not the question.

04:42 pm - What RPGs Taught Me About My Life

I'm not talking about rocket propelled grenades, though that is a different yet valid story.

Years ago I played a pencil-n-paper role playing game called Traveller.  When I say that I played it, I mean that I went to my friend's house, sat at a table, and generated a player character.  The game booklets had a sweeping capability for generating backstory and skills.  But to get anything interesting, you had to spend decades of the character's life rolling dice on the tables in the front of the book.  So the characters ended up ancient... like thirty or forty.  I never did do anything other than generate characters with that system.

So on this day I remember the wisdom that I didn't recognize at that time.  It takes time to accomplish anything or become something more than you are now.  I also learned that wisdom is wasted on the old.  What use is the wisdom of age that has no actions to guide compared to energy with no direction to go?  About the same.  Can't always live in the future or dwell on the past.

I guess we do have to be Travellers within our own times.

03:35 pm - Headline you'll never see: "Physics Still Works As Expected!!!"

I haven't posted in a long time. Not planning on going into details for actual reasons, but I cannot remain silent right now.

But Gunter Nimtz is at it again. He claims faster-than-light (FTL) or superluminal propagation. Not again. Thought this silly demonstration  was dead back in 2001.

Slashdot picked the report up as well as others. It's interesting, but wrong.  WRONG!  I had to write my dissertation on this, four years after I performed the experiments.  Nimtz and others basic failure is assigning a path to a evanescent field--a field that doesn't propagate as regular light does.  If you don't know which direction you've gone, you can't find out how fast you were going.  Sure you have a stopwatch, but no distance. 

Nimtz claims observation of photon tunneling, but it's optical tunneling which is analogous to quantum tunneling.  The math is the same for one specific case. The photons only appear to go faster if you assume a propagation direction, since you need both transit time and propagation distance to determine a velocity of transit.  If you can, take a look at the first figure in the second paper linked below.  That's a cartoony picture of two prisms that get separated by a distance Delta.  The two lines show how the direction of propagation is laterally shifted.  Nimtz is assuming the path goes across the gap at a right angle to the surface.  Simple assumption to make, but wrong. The beam is deviated by the gap and simply traverses through less high index material so it shows up sooner than expected.  (Light slows down when going through transparent material like glass or water.  The amount the light slows is called it's refractive or optical index.  Glass typically has index of 1.5 meaning that light travels at c/1.5 inside the glass.  We can always make light slow down.)

The beam of light is taking a short cut.

So I have to link to some other scholarly works here:

Optical Tunneling

Direct Measurements of Optical Tunneling moving in space.

(Crap.  These links are to poorly scanned papers.  I'll have to fix this later...)

I really had thought this was finished.  Really, really thought it was over.  I even e-mailed Gunter Nimtz and others who had made claims of superluminal propagation through matched prism pairs.  I got replies saying they'd look at the papers from a few, but I can't remember who now. 

Time to try to spread the unsexy word.  This experiment doesn't break the light barrier.  But it shows the authors have failed to do their own research.  Next time, get it past other scientists first.

Current Mood: aggravated

06:51 pm - Not quite the same English but Oh-So-True

From a frozen Aloo Tikki Choley (Seriously good microwave food... well better than a typical 'Merican frozen meal...) This is more useful than most fortune cookies.

On the side of the box below "Allergy Advice" <-- Nice that they're giving me advice, huh?

Quote: "Factory: Product made in a nut free area, but nuts elsewhere."

So true... think about it.

01:38 pm

From the Top Stories gadget on the Google Homepage...

Update: Palestinian Leaders Plead For Clam On Streets Of Gaza

Oh, where is Letterman (not David mind you...)


================
All is well, but busy. I live and will resume my normal programming soon.

12:47 am - Update

I'm in Annapolis and starting to settle down in a Spartan environment. The job is good, nearly perfect from the first impressions. Except there isn't a teaching aspect.

It'll be a while to establish myself.

06:31 pm - I live

Can't add anything right now...

11:18 am - Three Phrases with Cynical Comments

I've grown to loathe three phrases.  They don't mean anything on their own, but everytime they precede an unpleasant interaction that has nothing to do with the actual phrase.  These tactics destroy communication.

"Let's be honest here."  What follows this phrase, contrary to first cynical reflex, is not a string of lies in a simplistic contrarian manner.  Lies, truths, or half-truths may be spit out.  Mostly this is an excuse to be a right awful bastard.  It's a feint with the left jab followed by the right hook.  It's the chance to spout vitriol and make an ass of yourself with the protection of a legal disclaimer.  No one else can counter attack, because "Hey, I was just being honest..."

"I'm just being realistic."  This is the most annoying argument starter and attempted argument ender.  I would say that no one who is a realist could ever call themselves a realist.  If you truly are a realist, you'd understand that you have inherent biases.  When someone says, "I'm just being realistic" what they mean is "I'm right and won't listen to anything you have to say."  In fact this is derived from the axiom, "A realist is just a pessimist who thinks he's right."

"You don't understand me."  If this were the opening to a real discussion, this would be a positive statement.  How often does it get used to clear up a misunderstanding?  Heh.  Ask any guy who has ever had a relationship.  What this means is, "You don't agree with me."  One can understand someone, but not think she's correct.  And how often is the request for reciprocal understanding laughed at?

Current Mood: cynical

08:41 pm - Afghanistan, the other war

Afghanistan has been of particular interest to me since I served there in 2003-2004.  Now when I see that the US is backing out further from the clear mission and clear mandate by handing over control to NATO.  I served under NATO in Bosnia (twice).  NATO is competent and I believe in our allies.

But I really feel we're in the process of not finishing what we set out to do in 2001.  US troops are still the majority in the region, but it's a far lower number than in Iraq (at least a factor of 10x less).  Consequently the casualty rate per capita is actually higher in the Central Asia region than in the sand box.  Anyway, we have a real responsibility that is being ignored and slowly allowed to fade away.  But no one really seems to care.

Someone should have said, "You can't have another war until you finish the one you already got."

12:28 pm - Politics vs. Ideals

"...the report had been leaked for political purposes." cnn.com

Okay.  But if one's political views are based on personal ideals, this shouldn't be as much of an insult as it is intended.  In fact, this should be the first warning.  If ideals and politics don't match up, what is the unspoken motive?  This seems as damning of the one who spoke the phrase as well as the intended target of the quote.  For certainly they are engaged in politics--the visible maneuverings on the tactical level--but where is the strategy, the ideals and beliefs that guide, that is apparently invisible and separate?

...the media accounts of the leak was meant to "create confusion in the minds of the American people"  cnn.com

Having too much information can only lead to confusion, right?

09:38 am - Nanotech and SF Cons

The nanotech lab went over reasonably well.  No major snags (note to self, always have twice the amount of tubing and clamps as you think you'll need).  The students synthesized latex and gold nanoparticles that will be used later in the semester for the upcoming analysis laboratories.  One weird thing occurred.  One of the chemistry students (I'll call him Ralphie) brought his mother along.  She's a chemist apparently (perhaps even from the same institution that Ralphie is attending.  Sure the lab happened on a Saturday and I have nothing against pursuing professional interest and life-long education, but she should have kept her goggles on in the lab, not freaked out because students used ethanol in the final rinse of the reaction flask, and not been insistent that more pizza be ordered even when the students had eaten their fill.  Very awkward for me.  I'm familiar with soccer moms, but chem lab moms?

I screamed down the road to FenCon.  I ended up spending most of the evening chatting in the bar area with people.  That was a good thing.  Even got a bed to myself, courtesy of the owner/sr. editor of MeishaMerlin books (check them out, esp. Strange Robby.)  A totally unforseen kindness, but not too surprising in hindsight.  Had a good panel on "What makes a good villain?" with Selina Rosen, Alan Dean Foster, Jim Butcher, and Deborah LeBlanc.  Of course the discussion boiled down to antagonist vs. villain vs. psycho. 

01:22 pm - FenCon Rocks

I cannot say enough good things about the folks who run FenCon. Seriously. I posted before that I wasn't going to be able to make it. Then I thought half a con is better than no con. All my programming is on Sunday. I love you guys! (Guys is used in the gender non-specific mode here.) So in my opinion, half a FenCon is worth a full regular con.

(My buds at Apollocon, kgkofmel and amysisson, this isn't anyway a slight on you. Apollocon is not a regular con either! I'm just glad I haven't had the need for special accomodation.)

I'll be doing the Baen's Universe panel, Writers of the Future panel, and "What makes a good villain?"  So excited.  Especially after playing with my nanospheres the day before.

10:11 am - The Meme Ends Here

From catsparx Post 6 weird habits/things that you do. 

1.  I won't tag people, because I feel I'm one of the internet black holes.  Same reason I very rarely forward things, even if extremely funny.

2.  On any road trip, I look for soaring raptors, because I take it as a sign that I'll come back in one piece. 

3.  I've eaten ketchup right out of the packet.  Not on anything.  Right out of the packet.  There's a reason for that, but I won't go into it here.

4.  I won't eat at a McDonalds.  Not for health reasons, but because they pissed me off with their fast-food arrogance.  I'm one of the 3 out of 10 that won't be starting his morning at McDonalds.  Ever.

5.  If I like an album that I've ripped from someone's collection, I'll buy the CD.  But there has to be at least three songs that I really enjoy.

6.  I wear the combat boots I was issued when I was in the Army for casual attire.  Hey, they're comfy (now), I have several pair, and I already own them (I wouldn't say they're free, because they weren't...)

Maybe these aren't that weird, but I don't see many other people doing the same.

10:15 am - I Had No Idea Dept

From www.cnn.com:

Angered Hussein: 'We will crush your heads'

12:26 pm - Dust in the wind...

A dear close friend lost her father to his struggle with cancer today.  She was alone at the hospital in Bombay today when the news came from the doctors.  Dr. K. Ramani was a wise,  loved, and respected man.  I am honored to have met him.  The family is gathering to mourn his passing.