The Rules...

Well, I do not follow basketball but everyone always asked who you have selected to win the NCAA tournament... I am going to predict a winner. though not in the usual way. I am going to flip a coin, there will be upsets (some practical others more likely not...)

so the Rules to how I will select the winner is simple.

• Heads will always be for the team on the upper bracket
• Tails will always be on the lower bracket
• I will not "re-flip" even if that means MSU is knocked off or another good team even if it is 99% unlikely that good team will fall to another... granted I don't know who is "good" except for the ranking by their Name...
• The Fate is in the coin, My coin is a well used and noting unique, just one from my pocket.

so we will see what happens, i will post my solutions soon

Vampires, the good ones

As I lie on the bed at the American Red Cross Blood Drive in the Union, I am reminded of my designation for the Nurses running the blood drive “Vampires”; this is technically wrong cause they are not using the blood for themselves (nor do they drink it) but nonetheless they take my blood. They take my blood only cause I freely give it when I can because I am able to and I can withstand the pain of the needle because there are those who need the blood and are in much more pain than I. Donating blood is something that every person should do if able, because we never know when we will need a transfusion ourselves. But it goes deeper than that because we should be willing to help our fellow citizen of the world because they are in need. The old saying and golden rule “do onto others as you would have them do onto you” is cliché, yes, but appropriate. How can we ask someone else to do something that we are unwilling to do ourselves?

This is similar to the topic of tithing, we give our money to a church or charities because we have been blessed with money, and so we wish to give back. Just as we do with our money we should do with our health, give because we have been blessed. Those who are able have been blessed with a body that is healthy enough to help others, so we should donate even though we may dislike/fear needles. This extends to donating organs, while alive or dead. It takes a special person to donate an organ while they are healthy because the operations are risky and the organ may be donated in vain. However, if we are viable donors after our parting from the living, one should consider it. Partially because we will never need them ever again but also, and more importantly, they may save another’s life or several lives. How can we justify taking without giving? I am not God (nor are you) and we may never save/prevent a death but if we are given that opportunity to try, why would anyone think, “it’s not me” or “it’s not someone I know.”

Scientific thought: “To Doubt”

I am listening to the book "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Richard Feynman a notable physicist of the 20th century and one that I find very interesting because of his Philosophy concerning life and physics/science with his usual abstract and off the wall approach to life and physics.

First before this post will make sense to those of you reading who do not know who Feynman is, should know some background first. Feynman grew up during the 20’s and notably Great depression and he was a self study kid who learned much as a kid by taking things apart and putting them back together, also he and his dad spent a lot of time wondering outside looking and examining the physical world around him to understand it and the processes found in nature. So keeping that in mind.

Feynman’s view and approach to physics and more likely than not his definition of physics is this: “to take the universe apart and putting it back together, so that we may understand how the individual pieces work in order to understand how it all works as one.” Now those of you who know me understand why I like Feynman so much and his philosophy regarding science. But I like this definition of Physics because it is exactly what Physicists do! We explore how the universe works and why it works so well, the intricacies of Nature. Nature has no end, no possibility of ending (for another Blog…). The more we try to understand it the more we realize we know nothing about it because we learn the depth of our own ignorance! Science is systematic doubt of experts and their scientific discoveries; not what you were taught in grade school, I was not. We, Physicists (or Scientists in general) are taught to doubt those we deem “Experts” and our Professors who teach us the Physical Laws of Nature. This is because if you do not doubt the validity of science then the possibility of a better answer will never be considered! Take Einstein for example, he invalidated Newton’s Laws concerning gravity; yes, Newton’s laws work for the common man but they do not hold when taking the Universe apart.

Interesting what we call a college education… so when someone asks me what I “learned” in college; I will reply “to doubt!” This is a unsatisfactory answer but a fun one; Feynman also said something similar to this when questioned about his winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. Unfortunately this is why so many Scientists loose their Faith in God, they doubt so much that they doubt the fact that some things will always remain: A Mystery and unsolvable in a scientific manner.

Brownian Motion & life

Brownian Motion is the random “walk” of a gas particle. If it were possible to trace a single atom within a gas we would observe that its motion or “walk” is determined by the interactions it has with other atoms within the gas. Its walk is determined by the collisions it has with other atoms forming the gas. These collisions will determine the new direction of our particle, which will be in a new random direction and will effect the subsequent collision. The frequency of collisions is also random, however, this is estimated because of the “mean free path” which is the average time between collisions. Also, the particle we are following through the gas is able to absorb or emit energy, that is to say speed up or slow down as a result of the collision. Everything in a Brownian system is random by definition, so the outcome and walk is impossible to predict and impractical.
I find that life is very near Brownian Motion; our lives are not a Brownian system because life is not defined by a random walk. However, life is random to a degree because we cannot control it; but we can direct our own lives by the choices we make. Life is random because as we live our life, we run into people and discover how “small” the world really is. My best example of this is when I sat next to an older gentleman on an airplane coming home from São Paulo, Brazil in January of 2007. As we began to talk I found out that he graduated from Graceland University, where I was currently studying! The random experiences and happenings that only occur in life. Although, we would never have met if I did not choose go to Brazil and but also if he did not make the same. Some would call this fate but I do not believe in fate, because that would remove the responsibility one has in their choices and the randomness found in life.
Thanks to the new friend I made over Christmas break, after a random friend search on Facebook, I am now starting to Blog. The choice I made to search for new friends now resulted in this Blog though I made a conscious decision to Blog.
More Brownian topics to come later, although they will not truly be Brownian because I must choose to Blog about them; I figured I would point out this subtlety… but maybe you got that I don’t know if you would seeing how I may or may not know you the reader.