Self-Titled

Is Computer Science really a science? Computer scientists don’t apply the scientific method. Testing is currently essential for implementing software correctly, but only because we’re either too lazy or incapable of verifying correctness beforehand due to the extreme complexity of the systems and tools we use.  It all boils down to manipulating an abstract machine, in most cases a register machine, which is a mathematical construct. The colors that appear on your monitor and the data written to your hard drive are merely side effects of the mathematical operations we compute. I think Computer Science is mathematics, not science. In fact, many universities place their Computer Science program within the mathematics department, not the engineering department.

I’ve had an idea for a story for a while now that I think would be pretty interesting to write. In the future, a computerized virtual world would be accessible to most people like a utility, much like the internet. Users could interact with the virtual world like a virtual reality game, where your sight and hearing are tuned to the virtual world, not the real one. Its use has become so pervasive that people do many things in the virtual world that are currently done in the real world, such as playing games, meeting people, conducting business, collaborating, performing financial transactions, etc. People from all over the world can access this virtual world. Virtual items are exchanged between users in the virtual world and have real-world values according to average real-world resale prices.

It would be interesting to explore how loyalties, alliances, and power might shift and reform in the virtual world, independent of the real world. Most people from the same country share common feelings of loyalty to their own country. What if you and your next-door neighbor in the real world were secretly members of opposing factions in the virtual world? What if those differences had real-world significance, like support of or opposition to human rights or national sovereignty? Could virtual allegiances lead to a shift in real power?

It would also be fun to explore the role played by the organization, perhaps a company, that created and maintains the virtual world. Do users who obtain and possess items in the virtual world own them in the real world? Is the organization responsible for changes in property values due to changes in the virtual world’s rules or content? Should stealing in the virtual world be a criminal act in the real world? These are some interesting questions that game makers and players struggle to answer even today.

I actually cannibalized this idea for a short story I wrote for a fiction writing class I took last quarter. Instead of focusing on the broader implications of such a system, I narrowed the scope to focus only on two strangers who interact in the real and virtual worlds simultaneously without realizing it. One person is chasing the other in the virtual world. Eventually, they both realize who the other is. Then the other person chases the virtual chaser in the real world.  I still haven’t come up with a good ending to the story.  If anyone has any ideas, please post them!

It seems to me that large wildfires like that of southern California are unavoidable. I’m not an expert, but it’s my understanding that wildfires are a natural phenomenon that play a useful role in the life cycle of the environment. They can clear out thick underbrush and smaller trees that can come to choke larger trees and in doing so they enrich the soil with the ashes they leave behind. In fact, Yellowstone has a policy of letting small natural fires burn freely because its management recognizes these benefits. So allowing reasonably-sized wildfires to burn is a good thing in the long run, given they don’t damage anything or injure anyone.

In California, however, people live all over the place, and it’s probably not safe to let fires burn in most places. So all that underbrush keeps piling up over the years without being swept away in small doses naturally. We quickly put out any fire that might do so. So when we can’t get one of these fires under control, they explode into a firestorm that does lots of damage.

I’m not sure what the solution would be for states like California. What will probably happen is nothing, since there probably isn’t an obvious, free solution. Not until a lot more people die. It’s funny, isn’t it, how most people seem to prefer to err on the side of ignorance and plead later that no one could have foreseen what happened instead of doing the prudent thing and doing something preventative. Maybe we’re just intrinsically lazy, unwilling to see or seek problems when none are obvious. It seems to be some kind of natural law that people must die before anything is done.

Anyway, maybe the city planners could mandate cleared bands of land that could form a grid of buffers to keep fires from spreading from area to area. This way we could clear each piece of land of dry underbrush separately and safely and also prevent the spread of fires from the wild into urbanized areas. You could turn the bands into parks or fields.

Damn it! I was just sitting here, watching the end of Return of the Jedi on TV. You know, the party on Endor after the big climax where the music plays and they’re all dancing and hugging. They changed the ending! The music was much quieter and less energetic and they now have that dude who plays Anakin in Episodes 1-3 standing there as a ghost instead of the older version of himself. The changes thoroughly sucked ass. The music always used to give me a warm feeling and it was touching to see the old Anakin stand there with Yoda and Obi Wan. Now there’s no sense of euphoria at the end. Plus I don’t give a crap about young Anakin, there’s no place for him in this story.

Damn you, George Lucas! Leave my classics alone.  Most art is probably never perfected in creators’ opinions. But the artists need to put it out there for people to enjoy, so at some point you have to leave it be and set it free.

You can’t even buy the original version of the movie anymore!  South Park was right.

I went to a firing range several weeks ago for my friend Jose’s birthday. I had never been to a firing range before. There were about ten of us and the range was divided into five lanes. Each lane had a different pistol and boxes of ammunition that you used to reload the weapon when it was your turn.

I had never fired a pistol before, but I was still surprised at how nervous I was to fire a pistol. I wasn’t alone; several other people there hadn’t done it before either and were also nervous. I had no idea it was so tough to load a clip of ammunition; those springs are tense! I was able to fire most of the guns two or three times, five to ten shots per turn. I usually gripped the gun tightly and just squeezed one off in the general direction of the target without really caring about my aim just to get used to the loud noise and sudden motion. Then I could get into it and focus my aim.

Towards the end, they swapped out the circular targets we were using for some posters of terrorists holding women hostage. I decided to take the easy way out and shoot the women instead. I ended up getting one woman in her open mouth dead center and also square in her chest. Yes, I’m that incredible.

The Christmas card poem that didn’t make it:

Greetings Bill and Maria!
I had a great idea
To send you my love via
…
I’m writing this in a pizzeria
In a galleria in South Korea
I hope I don’t get diarrhea
In their bathroom I could get gonorrhea