Order in Chaos

On the 16th, while travelling north to Maine for the holidays, I spent the better part of a day wandering around downtown Boston. I made a point to visit the New England Holocaust Memorial there – and snagged a few photos.

The memorial's made up of 6 glass pillars.

A closer shot of the pillars.

Yet another closer shot.

There's a walkway that goes through all of the pillars.

The panes of glass on the pillars are engraved with the numbers, symbolizing the numbers that the Jews were branded with.

A closer shot of the engraved numbers.

Another shot of the engraved numbers.

“Oh, I’m bad at math, haha“.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard this, and I’m sure you can’t either. I hear this all the time. I say I’m bad at math, but that’s because I had my [explative] handed to me on a plate in equations (which, as my calculus II professor put it, are “a whole new world of pain”). But when I hear a lot of people say that they’re bad at math, what they mean, is they can’t figure out 50% of 150. But that’s okay, cause they’re bad at math, haha.

What I’d like to particularly note is that people usually laugh after saying they’re bad at math. In fact, it’s “cool” to suck at math. “Oh, that math crap is hard and is for nerds and losers. I hate it, haha” I hear too often. I can appreciate a certain aversion to academics (yes, there have been times when I have cursed class, any class). However,  math, especially at the algebra level, is a basic enough skill that everyone should have at least a basic understanding and ability. Furthermore, it should not be “cool” to hate it.

My discrete math professor said something that I’ll never forget:

“Why is it that people think it’s cool or funny to suck at math? That’s like saying ‘Oh, I can’t read, I suck at reading, haha.’ People are ashamed to say they can’t read.”

The catalyst to this post was something that I saw over on Wil Wheaton’s blog today in which he indicated that he’s not as good at math as he used to be. Look at point 5 in his post, which expands upon

“I mean, I’m a pretty smart guy, and there are times when I have to write down a math problem that I used to be able to do in my head, and some of the spelling and grammar errors I make are just embarrassing – and I’m a writer! So my idea is for an 8 week class that meets once or twice a week for a couple hours, that would be a mental tune up for guys like me.”

This sounds like a fantastic idea, one which I’d probably attend. I love the idea that he wants to be better at math! In fact, I think that there might be something more here. There are all sorts of interest groups, organizations, and events that exist on a national level: hackerspaces, FabLab, MakerFair, ACM, IEEE, etc… Why can’t there be some sort of organization or group that offers adult oriented refresher course? I’d be more than happy to brainstorm with anyone who’d like to with me.

The Signature.

Yup, that’s it. It’s the worst security implement that mankind has ever invented. Worse than the secret handshake, worse than the ‘mother’s maiden name’, and worse than the easily picked old-school locks.

I’ve always thought this – but what finally pushed me over the edge was when I was at the bank today. I deposited one check. I put the check amount on the deposit slip, but forgot to put it in the ‘total’ at the bottom. So the teller filled it in and handed the slip back to me to initial. I thought to myself “initialing here does absolutely jack squat”. I obliged, of course. After all, I do want the money to find its way into my account.

But let’s go back to the idea in general. In technology, consumers want “perfect” security. They want a computer that’s “hacker proof, virus proof, and worm proof”. I know people who won’t purchase anything on sites like Amazon.com for fear of identity theft -”you never know who’s going to take your credit card number, boy… once it’s out there…it’s out there”. Yet, these same people use their credit card at a grocery store and are comfortable with the notion that their signature guarantees it was was a legitimate purchase. What’s even worse than real signatures are the signatures on those digital pads – they all look like absolute chicken scratch. What good does that really do, aside from meet some legal demand somewhere?

Yes, I’ve heard “well, ‘they’ can do handwriting analysis to see if it was really you”. I’m sure ‘they’ can, but how often will things go that far? What if it was a rubber-stamped or digital signature? What if it was legitimately me, but I had [accidentally] slammed my hand in the car door before coming into the store?

But signatures are not limited to bank deposit slips and credit card purchases. We use them every where, in all sorts of really important documents. How, in our modern world, is this still acceptable? In some cases, we need something better. In other cases – can we just forgo the whole thing all together?

Yeah, we all pretty much agree, aviation checklists are good. It’s reasonable, it’s smart, it just plain makes sense. Conversely, most of us have seen Office Space (or, we got that memo) and agree that, never mind TPS reports themselves, TPS Cover Sheets are stupid mindless paperwork keeping us from just gettin’ on with our jobs! Most people probably have not actually dealt with a TPS Report, per se, but we’re familiar with the metaphor – stupid worthless paperwork.

So what am I getting at? Aviation Checklists and TPS Report Cover Sheets are really the same thing.

Aviation Checklist (Yup, there’s an App for that!)	TPR Report Cover Sheet (did you get that memo?)

The purpose of the aviation check list is pretty straight forward. To keep you un-deadified.The purpose of the TPS Cover is a little more convoluted, but it’s essentially a management checklist.

So how did the aviation checklist come into being? Did someone, one day, say for no reason “Let’s have a checklist. Yeah!”. No. First, somebody messed up. Bad. Then, people got together and had a meeting to discuss what went wrong and how to solve the problem.

A similar history lies behind much “mindless” paperwork similar to TPS Covers. A young or growing company, without the proper process or individual accountability, can turn a team of young, energetic, and enthusiastic recent college grads into a collection of sleep-deprived jaded suicidal alcoholics in mere days. After one, or more, projects have missed deadlines horribly, a meeting is called. In that meeting it’s asked “Why was the project so late? The original time line still looks reasonable – something went wrong. How can we fix this?”. The answer is often more process, more checklists, more paperwork.

So, TPS Cover Sheets are the end result of a project (or three) gone wrong. As much as a pain as they may be, they may actually be saving you from being driven into a jaded state of suicidal alcoholism. Conversely, there’s definitely the possibility that too much process and paperwork comes out of the meeting – perhaps an email to an email list for a memo for the coversheet for the tps report, which is ultimately for the test process for the actual product. There’s obviously a balance, but TPS Report Cover Sheets are probably not as bad as Peter Gibbons would have you believe. In the end – Damn, it feels good to be a gansta.

Looks like FaceBook has revamped groups. Awesome! I’ve always thought that was a weakpoint of theirs, especially as we’ve been trained to look on the homepage for updates. Why, when the rest of the site is brought to us, should we have to go seek out what’s a happening in the groups ourselves? A consequence of this has been many cool groups have died of inactivity.

I hope these new changes revive groups in FaceBook. After all, they are a social network focused on helping people connect. What better way to socialize and connect than in a group? Real life socializing is about groups; we do do more than roam in solitude yelling out what we’re thinking and doing in the hopes of sparking some camaraderie.

There are groups that I’m part of that I wish people were into more, or I’ve neglected check even though there’s been activity, or that I’ve completely forgotten that I was part of. With group activity appearing on the homepage I expect some of these groups to be re-energized.

A small list of some of my groups

• USU ACM last post 28 Sept 09
• Maxwell 1: First Forever! 2005 last post 21 Dec 08
• I Remember the Ice Storm of 1998 last post… yesterday?!? I had no idea!
• Cichlid Enthusiasts last post 17 Sept 09
• Art on lined paper is much better than paying attention in class last post 9 Nov 07

Just a few night-pics of my city. Click on any image for full-resolution version.

San Diego Night Skyline

San Diego Skyline, Zoomed In

San Diego Gaslamp Quarter, Downtown

Downtown San Diego, 6th Ave & C St

Pop quiz: I am
a) an expert on earthquakes
b) an expert on tsunami
c) from the US west coast
d) none of the above

If you guessed d, you’re right. I’m none of those things. However, I do live in San Diego, California now. Shortly after moving here from the US eastern seaboard, I started checking out the US Geological Survey’s World Earthquake Map on a somewhat regular basis. If nothing else, it’s kinda neat. Something that caught my eye was that the western side (Asia, Australia) of the ring of fire has much more large earthquakes than the eastern side (US west coast). Granted, the earthquake maps only show large earthquakes world wide, while showing all of the smaller ones stateside. However, if they were to only show large ones period, there would be next to none in the US.

Recent Earthquakes in the Australian Region

Recent EarthQuakes in the United States

You may have also heard about the 29 September tsunami causing earthquake in the south pacific. The details of this are still coming in, so the Wikipedia page linked to above is a work in rapid progress; if you read it, it probably won’t be what I read a few minutes ago.

Recent earthquakes in South Pacific. Red are within past hour, blue within past 24 hours.

Now, living in San Diego, whilst there is a tsunami warning – perhaps not something one might take shruggingly.However, the tsunami danger is relatively low, mostly due to the underwater terrain and the sort of geological activity that occurs in this part of the planet. Shortly after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, which claimed 230,000 people, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a story detailing the low tsunami danger. As I write this, I’m reading twitter updates that the first tsunami waves hit the SD coast a few minutes ago – and they were little more than a ripple. I’ll try to update this post in the morning with exact wave heights.

The sea floor off the SoCal coast, riddled with valleys & mountains.

The sea floor off the coast of southern California and northern Baja California is riddled with underwater mountains and valleys. These mountains and valleys sap tsunami strength. In fact, on underwater mountain chain known as the Cortes Bank rises from 5,000 feet to within 5 feet of the surface 115 miles off the coast. As such, this the home to some fantastic surfing waves! Surfing waves – awesome; tsunami waves, no so great. Luckily however, tsunami’s are not much a concern in southern California.

Surfing on the Cortes Bank

Here are a couple of perfect examples of the interesting, and often unintuitive, relationship that may exist between order and chaos.

Blocking Fire Exits? Researchers in Tokyo have noticed that an obstruction, such as a pole, strategically set approximately 30 degrees to either side of an emergency exit actually increases the rate at which people escape a certain and fiery death. via  physicscentral.com

Bad Drivers are Good? We’ve all been frustrated (to say the least) with bad drivers on the road. New research suggests that a certain percentage of drivers who break the rules actually increases traffic flow. The idea is basically that if everyone follows the rules, we clump together and actually get in each others way.  Having a few bad drivers (roughly 40%) breaks up the flow of drivers following the rules, like a cheetah cutting through a herd of gazelles (video below).  also via physicscentral.com

Okay, so it’s not a cheetah or gazelles. It’s me chasing sheep on a camping trip.