December 29th, 2012 by Michael Tabor
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest man – made machine ever built – 17 miles long and between 165 to 575 feet in circumference. It is a circular tunnel – shaped structure below ground, situated near Geneva and it is so huge that it crosses the border between France and Switzerland four times. Its function and purpose is to unfold and reveal to mankind the seemingly untenable mysteries of where human beings came from, a much deeper understanding of the laws of nature, and how the universe got started. This unfathomable feat is accomplished in a nutshell, by accelerating sub – atomic particles (protons) in opposite directions to the speed of 186,000 miles a second (speed of light) and then smashing them together to create new particles, particularly the particle of all particles – Higgs Boson or “The God Particle.” (don’t ask me for the specifics of Higgs Boson, I’m not a physicist and I just have a general understanding of it).
In the process of colliding these prodigiously small particles (when I say small. I mean unimaginably small. We human beings can never see an atom, not even with the most powerful microscopes in the world and we’re smashing stuff even smaller than atoms —- sub – atomic [protons] particles. This is all approximate, but we can fit 100 trillion atoms nicely on a pinhead and to get an image of how small a proton is [located in the nucleus] just imagine if an atom was the size of Giant’s Stadium, a proton would be the size of a marble. Wild stuff – ahh?) we will also learn all about different dimensions (String Theory), dark matter, supersymmetry, and a whole lot of other stuff that physicists will finally get to discover and with which, advance our understanding of the natural world in which we live.
I won’t overwhelm you with all the technical specifications (most of this is over my head anyway) but I had to simply just write a little about, what in my mind, is one of man’s most important achievements.
So WHADAYATHINK? What do you think ? It’s simply hard to fathom how these brilliant scientists were able to conceptualize and then build something so prodigious, complex, and precise as the LHC. It’s also hard to wrap your mind around the fact that this incredible structure is used for the sole purpose of accelerating and then subsequently smashing infinitesimally tiny sub – atomic particles (invisible particles) traveling at the speed of light.
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October 19th, 2012 by Michael Tabor
Written by guest blogger, Karl Larson
In the 1950′s, 1960′s and 1970′s was the beginning of the growth of technology that eventually created the mobile phone, computer, internet, and GPS, it was government funded university research; the military funded Military Air & space programs and NASA that originally fueled these industries. These technologies would have never been fueled by private enterprise most of the tough specifications required funding that might be considered too risky for private enterprise. These early stages of development and success created in industry and system of venture capital investments that snowballed the process fueling the exponential growth in the 1980′s 1990′s and early 2000s.We are using everyday products that were created during this time that we only read about in Science fiction novels / movies and television shows. Who would have thought that more than 3 Billion people are connected everyday via the mobile phone or that 1/6 of the world’s population can communicate on an internet device daily via Facebook. These were all created by the process explained above not by just private enterprise but by government programs and private enterprise working together sometimes not even knowing it, but working together all the same.
We are currently stuck in neutral and need other program(s) like these to fuel the next innovation and growth boom. Private enterprise can not create this alone, we need to have programs that to some seem unprofitable to fund technologies that might seem way too risky for the private investor. Government programs can fuel economic growth as they did in the past. Private enterprise and small business alone can not drive economic prosperity in the USA. Private and public enterprises all demand a profit, and shareholders today wish to see that profit in months not years or decades. Government backed or generated programs are not in it for the profit, the programs should be designed to fuel new unproven technologies. Some will fail,but the successful ones will create new markets and business’s we have never even predicted.
Austerity and Cutting of spending will only lead to more economic uncertainty. Fighting with China for their low paying jobs is a losing proposition. Putting tariffs in place will not work. The Low paying jobs that went to China will not come back; we need to focus on what will work here now. Focusing on high tech alternative energy and technologies, New ideas fueled within the university system. Aerospace, Military and NAS programs. if we expand H1A Visa’s foreign students who get their degrees here in the USA will actually stay and work here innovating HERE not in China or India or Japan, Korea. It will be these students and our own kids who will create industries that we don’t even know about or can imagine yet. Making it easier to manufacture here with minimum restrictions and regulations and low Business taxes will make it more attractive to actually innovate here then keep the manufacturing here and not ship it to Contract Manufactures in south east Asia.
Whomever is the President in January needs to work with the congress and get this economy out of the mud and make this country a powerhouse of innovation and prosperity for all. That in my opinion is the most important issue. I have not heard from either candidate a solid action plan that will really create these opportunities. What happened to accountability? What happened to actually holding these guys to a standard of telling us exactly how they are going to get it done. Where is the plan? I have only seen fluff and meaningless vaporware.
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October 20th, 2011 by Michael Tabor
Yesterday I explicitly set forth a couple of reasons why we are enmeshed in this terrible economy of ours (U.S.A.): 1) America has had it too good for too long and as a result we have become complacent; we have spoiled our children and hence our children (now today’s workforce) no longer have that edge. We have lost our parent’s and grandparent’s work ethic. 2) We are now more than ever part of a global economy.
I purposely began with our being complacent (again, I am not talking about individuals, there are people who have worked just as hard as the old-timers have – I’m referring to the whole mass or aggregate number of people.) because what I’m going to blog about today perfectly logically follows suit.
The number of people attending, finishing, and earning a college degree (though watered down – another blog) has actually increased and therefore we have a more educated population than we had at the time of the golden era of postwar prosperity (1945 – 1973). So what happened? We are more educated than our parents are (as I stated in yesterday’s blog, my father raised a family of six and carried only a high school diploma) doesn’t it stand to reason that we should continue to prosper and perhaps even enjoy more fruits of our labor?
Look at my first paragraph and read yesterday’s blog and therein lies the answer; we have become more educated BUT so has the rest of the world AND – this is new – the rest of the world (especially China and India) have earned advanced degrees in SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, and ENGINEERING. You simply cannot go wrong if you pursue science, technology (IT, computers, etc.), and engineering.
Students from Asia come to this country, we educate them (in the sciences, technology, and engineering) in our best colleges and universities, and then they go back home and build up their country. They build infrastructure and create jobs at an exponential rate far surpassing the United States because they earned advanced degrees in SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, and ENGINEERING.
Well, why didn’t we think of this? Why didn’t we major in S.T.E. ? Answer – because it’s incredibly hard work – plain and simple. Everything is cyclical; we majored in sociology, psychology, film studies, the arts, etc. because it was fun and easy. We weren’t concerned about putting food on the table and feeding our family like the rest of the world was, so we majored in sociology. Trust me, a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a token is just enough to get you on the subway.
So WhadaYaThink ? What do you Think? Hey, I majored in Journalism, do not get me wrong it was no cakewalk, but it pales in comparison to science, technology, and engineering. What happened to us is just human nature; we weren’t starving, we got complacent and most of us got a liberal arts education. I used the word cyclical in the last paragraph because it’s apropos. We have to suffer a little, and then get back on track. If you don’t want to ever have to worry about getting a job, then get an advanced degree in SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, and ENGINEERING. The liberal arts are important and we need them. Besides, if you major in computer science, there will obviously be a concentration in that area, however every college will also mandate that one earns at least 60 credits worth of liberal arts and studies in the humanities. If I were to do things over, would I major in journalism? Absolutely! But I would have a double major – Science/Journalism. I would have to work my tail off and I’m sure I would spend every moment studying, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about money or landing a job. What do you think ?
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October 6th, 2011 by Michael Tabor
To finish the quote from this blog: “We’re here… universe. Otherwise, why else even be here? “This is a quote from Steve Jobs who is credited with having originated this; however there is evidence that Socrates said it first just in different words; Whether or not this is the case is irrelevant because Mr. Jobs had always proudly and openly admitted that Socrates influenced his whole life. Steve went as far as to say that he would trade all his technological knowledge he acquired throughout his life, just to spend an afternoon with Socrates.
This blog is going to have many quotes by virtue of the fact that that Steve Jobs was a genius, an entrepreneur, a man who studied Socrates, an obvious visionary, and a huge mover and Shaker who made a lot of money. People who possess the aforementioned attributes are listened to, taken seriously, and are often quoted – Why? Because in a nutshell we want what they have and what Steve had (not the pancreatic cancer, of course) and by studying him and memorizing his quotes we will be taken seriously and who knows perhaps if one is a good student , we ourselves may acquire some of the great things Jobs had. “R.I.P. Steve Jobs. You touched an ugly world of technology and made it beautiful.” A twitter user quoted. (Not only is Jobs quoted but even the people who talk about him are quoted.)
Let’s take a look at some of the things Steven Jobs accomplished:
As a child:
The founder of Hewlett-Packard, William Hewlett, was so impressed with the obviously gifted young Steve Jobs that he personally hired him to work at Hewlett-Packard when he was just 13 years old.
This is an offbeat accomplishment: Steven discovered that the whistle that came in the cereal box of Captain Crunch was tuned to a frequency that made it possible to make free long distance calls by blowing the whistle in a certain way into the phone. Wow!
As an Adult:
He made the personal computer easier to use by designing and developing the Macintosh computer.(Note: his 1979 visit to Xerox’s research center in Palo Alto was without question, the key moment for the development of Jobs’ Macintosh computer; he took note of the graphic video display and the mouse pointing device. Wow! The mouse-pointing device – that’s it! So easy and user-friendly, a 90 year-old great grandpa could figure this out with ease. No technology experience needed, as simple as seeing what you want, pointing, and clicking.)
He developed and brought to market the i-Pod, the i-Phone, and the iPad.
He was a friend of George Lucas, the famous Star Wars film writer, producer, and director, and consequently started a company called Pixar Animation Studios. This company founded by Jobs had such an impact on the world, that computer-animated film became a mainstream art enjoyed by children and adults worldwide. The first film Pixar worked on was the blockbuster – “Toy Story.”
There is so much more he accomplished and I can go into so much more detail but this is a blog. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do….” Said Steve;. All successful people know this truism – if you love it you do it with care and as a result you do it well.
Steve was not your suit and tie business guy, though there are pictures of him with a tie, as soon as he had the power he shed the corporate look and supplanted that wardrobe with jeans, sneakers and a casual shirt. He sometimes would walk around the office barefooted. Mr. Jobs was after all a hippie at heart and a true San Franciscan – and yes he was a practicing Buddhist and indeed he experimented with LSD which he boldly went on to say that the experience of altering consciousness with this drug forever changed his life for the better. He even proclaimed that ingesting LSD was actually two or three of the most important things he had ever done with his life. (Experimenting with hallucinogenics, such as LSD and mescaline, was not uncommon amongst intellectuals and visionaries. The great Aldous Huxley, author of” Brave New World” (1932), consumed mescaline and had written an incredibly thought-provoking book about the experience – “The Doors of Perception” (1954).
“Innovation has no limits. The only limit is your imagination.” Steve was as innovative and visionary as they come. He was very interested in the look of his products – not only did his products have to be efficacious but they also needed to look good and have style; Jobs was prodigiously interested in taste. “There is no shortcut to excellence.’ Steve perhaps was stating the obvious, but this is a hugely important quote because I think it’s what young people of the United States suffer from today – instant gratification isn’t quick enough. I want it now! I’m not going to medical school, it’s 12 years of my life and I won’t make a dime until I’m 30. Well, I think we all should try to be more patient and remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day; we ought to practice delayed gratification and view it as a profound virtue. (I know, I could die tomorrow and what’s the point of going to school and not reaping the benefits. True, nothing in life is guaranteed and people die before they even have a chance. But when you’re dead you are dead and what if you don’t die?)
I’m paraphrasing here but Jobs stated that we, as Americans are always taking things – the food we eat is not grown by ourselves, we speak a language that other people already developed, almost everything we possess comes from the blood, sweat, and tears of others. (I mean we pay for these things if we’re not criminals, but you know what I mean.) He went on to say that creating something new and adding it to the pool of already existing human experience and knowledge is the greatest feeling in the world. And, I personally think he unveiled the secret of happiness and a good life. Giving, helping others, and making a difference. As the title of the blog says: We’re here to put a dent in the universe.
Oh, there is so much more to write about this incredible man who was only alive on this planet for 56 years. The tears are starting to come and I just want to say, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had Steve around for another 20 or 30 years.
Finally WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think? I will end this Op-ed obituary and blog with a statement from Steven Jobs and Apple’s archrival, Microsoft’s Bill gates when he heard that Steve passed away at the age of 56. “For those of us lucky enough to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.” God bless Steven Jobs, R.I.P.
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October 4th, 2011 by Michael Tabor
Look out Apple ipad, here comes the Kindle Fire! This tablet, the Kindle Fire, is set to be released in November of this year and the folks at Apple are already nervous and concerned and for good reason. The IT gurus are predicting that the Kindle Fire will give Apple’s ipad a good run for its money and even bolder statements have been made suggesting that it’s a foregone conclusion; the Kindle Fire, for the price, is simply superior to Apple’s ipad and will crush Apple and its competition. The cost of the Kindle fire is a mere $199.00 and has all the features that Apple’s ipad has such as: streaming movies and TV shows, a 7-inch multi-touch display, and total access to the Amazon Appstore. Yet the consumer today can’t even begin to think about purchasing an ipad without spending at least 5 bills – $499.00 to be exact. For all you “techies” out there, here are some of the specs:
The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch touch-sensitive color screen.
It will run on a customized Android 2.3 operating system on a GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4 dual-core processor.
Connectivity is through 802.11n Wi-Fi and USB 2.0
8 GB OF Storage.
Now to put the aforementioned specs into English: The Kindle Fire is awesome and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. You will be able to watch movies, listen to music (it can carry 800 songs) & hold 6000 books. Wow ! Is it even possible for $199.00? Yes and there is more. You have access to the Amazon Appstore, e-mail, webmail (which literally combines all your e-mail, yahoo, Hotmail, AOL into one).
So WhadaYaThink ? Is it too good to be true? I look forward to all your comments.
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May 17th, 2011 by Michael Tabor
Life is difficult for everyone no matter who you are. It is even hard for someone who is wealthy and healthy because we all know that what we have now is not going to last forever and we’re all going to get sick and die someday. How difficult must it be for Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who suffers from one the most awful and incurable disease known to man – ALS. Yet ALS does not stop Mr. Hawking from lecturing and publishing brilliant book after brilliant book. Sure Mr. Hawking is luckily wealthy (he’s a genius and therefore is a celebrity and sells a lot of books.)so is able to work.
What sadly turns many people off is that he is an outspoken atheist. I love the quote he makes “Religion is for people who don’t want to do the math.” I, personally am not a scientist but I read a lot of science, which is basically the theory less, well – the math hahahaahh. However, I do get it. It takes a lot of talent for a scientist to explain very complex and nuanced issues in layman’s language. Hawking seems to be a little more difficult to read than say Natalie Angier, Daniel Dennett and E.O. Wilson (but make no mistake this is tough reading and you do feel like you’re back in college) but after the third time reading A Brief Hisrory of Time I believe I’ve got to the crux of this masterpiece. I do however still get lost on black holes; maybe because it’s such a mind-boggling concept that my brain can’t handle it. A black hole is or was a star that exploded into a supernova (gravitational collapse) and whose gravitational field is so intense that NOTHING can escape – not even LIGHT! This is spooky stuff my friends and Stephen Hawking is the guru on black holes.
What I applaud about Hawking is here is this man who is almost completely paralyzed yet spends every waking moment working and trying to find the answers to well – everything. He has contributed a plethora of knowledge in the world of Physics and cosmology i.e. he proved that black holes emit radiation. Today this is known as Hawking radiation. Let’s face it, Stephen Hawking is smarter than everyone else and he was cursed with the horrible disease of ALS. Who knows what else he would have come up with if time weren’t wasted on things like bathing, eating, and going to the bathroom (things we take for granted must be painstakingly difficult for him.)
Stephen Hawking believes that our time (human species) on earth is limited; either we are going to be wiped out by nuclear war, an enormous natural disaster, or some lethal virus. Our time on earth is limited and part of Hawking’s legacy is to have been a major factor in furthering space exploration.
I am going to end this blog with some personal quotes that the great Stephen Hawking has recently made to Diane Sawyer:
“I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I am not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”
“There is no heaven or afterlife …that’s a fairytale for people afraid of the dark.” (many people don’t like this statement)
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing.”
Stephen Hawking is a great man with a giant-sized brain and lets just hope that he lives to 100 and finally discovers all the answers to all the great questions we humans have been asking ourselves from time immemorial.
Now it is your turn WHADAWETHINK ? Do you agree with Stephan Hawking that this is it – there is no God ? Do you think, despite his secularism, he is a great man ? There is so much to talk about – please contribute and have fun with this.
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February 16th, 2011 by Michael Tabor
A friend of mine sent me this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyXHF3PyyWoIBM’s ‘Watson’ – a machine vs. man on Jeopardy; science fiction seemingly becoming science fact ; and the mere notion that man can actually create a machine with intelligence – meaning a machine which can think, conceptualize, reason and perhaps empathize is nothing short of astounding! (I know there are some science fiction that never materialized like flying saucers and robots mowing your lawn.)
I remember back in college (this was long before the internet) my philosophy teacher talked about this very topic at length. Can and will man ever construct a machine with REAL intelligence? At that point in time our professor explained to us that the dumbest guy in the room was far more intelligent than the fastest and most powerful computer in the world. After all computers have no intelligence; the digital, analog or hybrid device merely stores, organizes and processes information and performs tasks and is even proficient at carrying out and solving highly complex mathematical and logical operations at incredible speeds that no human can match but nevertheless a computer is still dumber than a box of rocks.
The reason for this is because a computer is a machine, it’s not alive and it’s capable of performing all sorts of incredible things because we – human beings – program it to do so. It is simply following a set of instructions we have given it and at a very elementary level all it is doing is executing operations based on zeros and ones, Xs and Os, and on and off. (I am not an IT specialist but this is just a very general explanation for lay people on how computers operate at a very basic level.)
I began again thinking seriously about discerning, thinking, intelligent machines when I started this web site. As I mentioned earlier I know next to nothing about IT; I’m on the computer all day and I know as much next guy but I’m clueless when it comes to programming (I don’t even know how to use Twitter yet). When my web designer and other IT specialists began talking to me about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and building traffic, etc I was amazed to hear discussion about a machine gauging the content of the web site. Sure I can understand a site that gets an enormous amount of traffic appearing higher on Google; however I scratched my head when I was told that a search engine not only ranks a site by the number of hits, links to other sites, etc but also will rank a site with excellent content higher based on a prodigiously complex algorithm created by human beings. I am skeptical about the latter because as far as I know machines still have no real intelligence. (Not yet anyway).
What I’m really wondering and getting at – is will we ever create a ‘Hal’ – you know the machine in Stanley Kubrick’s – ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (one of my all time favorite movies – released in 1968 – the whole movie really is about this very topic, evolution, technology gone crazy) or will the movie ‘The Terminator’ become a reality?
I can write 10,000 pages on this and still not address all the issues surrounding this very thought-provoking topic. So now it’s your turn WHADAWETHINK? Do you think man will ever create a machine with emotions? Let’s say we can develop an intelligent conscientious robot sometime in the future, should it/he/she have the same rights as we – human beings? Do you think it’s a good idea to create these intelligent, thinking machines; after all it would be capable to easily wipe us out if elected to – how many human beings do you know who has read every single book ever written and who also has a perfect memory with the ability to retrieve any information instantaneously? Lots of ethical considerations here; please contribute and we would love to here what you think about this or WHADAWETHINK?
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