Death of the Music Industry

I just had a fantastic conversation with a co-worker about the Music Industry. It was fueled by this recent graph and discussion from Business Insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-charts-explain-the-real-death-of-the-music-industry-2011-2
Which was fueled by this less-recent incorrect graph by Bain:
http://laughingsquid.com/charting-the-death-of-the-music-industry/
Basically the music industry has seen a lot of action in the last 40 years and the info presented on Business Insider is pretty vivid and tells an interesting story. Read the info in the first link, well worth it.

1999 was not only the peak, but also the year that ripping CDs became cheap and easy. It's been a downhill slope from then on; the appearance of Digital Downloads only looks like a dying battle as it rode the back of the CD sales it was helping to destroy. It may be too early to tell how Digital will do in the future. Digital growth appears to be declining with the death of CDs; Digital is showing its own growth.

The really interesting peak is ~1978; 8-Track, vinyl and the new Cassette all shared a peak, and then (I can only assume) the ease of copying tapes, and copying Radio songs to tape, happened. This strangled the Music Industry until the invention of the CD, which for a few years kept the songs on lock down. You could still copy songs to tape off the radio, but then you had a crappy tape version, and all your friends were listening to the shiny CD version. This brings us to 2011, I haven't bought a CD in about 10 years, I have bought digital tracks in the last year (rarely a full album), and I very recently acquired a new vinyl disc from a local band.

So what happens to the Music Industry now? It's not like the industry is losing money, it just isn't quite making as much. I'm in a band and I'm going to record and release a new album this year,,, what do we do? At a quick glance it looks like we should jump ship now, but after further study I think there are niches for a band like mine to thrive.

First of all, recording equipment and software is at an all time low cost. So if bands can't afford to purchase the tools they need to record themselves, there are currently lots of small studios at great prices to do the work for you. Recording obviously isn't the issue. So you paid a little to get the recording made, but according to the graph there is little hope in you actually making any of that money (definitely not all) back. Seems like bands are primed to make a recording but at a loss to release it. Is Digital the only format we should focus on?

After a little analyzing here is my plan. After recording is done, pick the 2 best songs to be mixed and mastered early for digital release. These 2 songs will be released as singles digitally, they will be available a couple weeks before the full album release date. What album, in what format? CDs are currently just a bump in the music fans' road from purchasing songs to getting them on their iPod, after that the CD is landfill. Tapes are obviously obsolete; I had plenty of tapes that warped over time and easily broke (too many small moving parts. Vinyl was the last physical media that was worth owning.

Vinyl has its advantages: large album art, simple media format and an audio quality better than CD. So when our full album is released it will only be sold as a 12" Vinyl LP, and the sleeve will contain the download codes for the digital version of the full album. A short time after the Vinyl is released (maybe one week or less), we will then make the Digital version available for purchase. Digital music fans and pirates will either get the digital versions for free or for sale, but by that point it honestly won't matter. We will have sold the Digital Singles, we will have sold the Vinyls, and by the time the Digital Album is available for purchase we will already be working on writing our next album.

What does the next ten years look like for this graph? Perhaps all bands will be involved in a subscription model where you subscribe for a year; all year you get to listen to all the music you love on all your little digital devices, but the product lives in the cloud,,, you don't actually own it. This model exists now, but it hasn't really taken off yet. The next decade should prove to be pretty exciting in the Music Industry.

This was shared today too, 'burning' used to be called 'taping,' amazing!
Home Taping is Killing Music (ca. 1980)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music

Go Watch Exit Through the Gift Shop

This Banksy image could be seen from New York's Wall Street, it was put up during America's financial collapse of 2008.

If you have not already watched the film "Exit Through the Gift Shop," please stop looking at this posting, open a new tab and watch it streaming on Netflix or grab it from a torrenting site.  I will definitely be spoiling a few things here in the lines that follow.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is authentic documentary (non-fictional) footage, used to create a fictional story by Banksy, that exposes a non-fictional truth about the art industry at large.  This film focuses on authenticity, and if the formula of being authentic can be determined, it can be used to gain popularity and capital.  In the film, amongst many well known street artists, we are introduced to Thierry Guetta.

Thierry lacks authenticity; he is not a fashionista, he is not a street artist, but he becomes L.A.'s next big art hype.  Thierry is from France, is related to a very well known street artist, and knows enough of the formula to capitalize on those prepared to shell out a few bucks for what's hot.  The most authentic thing about Thierry is that he carries a video camera around and captures footage of everything around him, including the here-today-gone-tomorrow street art of his brother and then later Shepard Fairey and Banksy.  Thierry also proves to only be a camera man with a talent of keeping the camera running,,, when it comes to editing and producing a coherent film he fails.

In this film it is hard to determine what is documentary and what is silver screen fiction.  Did Thierry and Banksy really have the awkward falling out we saw after handing over his footage?  Or are they good friends and the fallout was created for the setup of the message of the film?  We may never know and it doesn't actually matter.  What matters is that Thierry's manufactured street art show brought in 1 million dollars in one night, and was asked to remain open for weeks longer than the original 3 days it was scheduled for.  The hip art community of L.A. was fooled and fell in love with the same unauthentic junk Thierry sold them a decade before with an inflated price tag.

Exit Through the Gift Shop exposes a lack of authenticity in our current culture.  From fake fashion clothing with a high price tag, to Disneyland's fake adventure and experience for our young,,, all the way to creating an art hype out of someone who only knows an artist about as well as we all know Andy Warhol, but is not actually an artist himself. 

Banksy is supreme authenticity; however you might ask, why did Banksy hold an art exhibition in similar fashion to the one Thierry held?  The elephant in the room is when you remove Banksy's art from the wall in West Bank during a troubled time and sell it in an art gallery.  Calling Banksy a street artist and leaving it at that misses the point of Banksy completely.  Banksy is a street activist who uses art, time and space as his medium; remove this art from it's time and space and you are actually left with nothing of value.  In fact I would argue that the most authentic items in our culture are probably priceless, and hence if you are being sold something you think is authentic you should most likely close your coin purse.

This film is the perfect massconception.  For further information read the book Authenticity, or read Adbusters.  And if you bought something by Mr. Brainwash, I hope you are aware, enough prints were made so everyone in the world could own one,,, so you better love it.  "I have an Andy Warhol, but I think it's in the closet?"

Bloom Box Scam

I thought I should drop the hatchet on Bloom Energy before they drop the bomb with the unveiling of their new clean energy fuel cell the Bloom Box this Wednesday. If you need to know a little more about the Bloom Box and Bloom energy, you should watch this video (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n) from Monday night's episode of 60 Minutes. Seriously,,, watch it then read on. (So fitting to be sponsored by Pfizer, biggest scam of the human species).

So what's the scam right? If these Bloom Boxes are a scam and they don't work then no one will buy them,,, so the scam will be over almost as soon as it starts; not too much harm, not too much foul. Perhaps not the case? Part of the scam is that I think these things actually work (meaning they run more efficiently than our community/state coal burning facilities and are cheaper to run than paying for energy from the grid), and so does Mr. John Doerr (he's the Gandolf-like character that is about to unfold in this story, he discovered and funded Netscape, Amazon and Google), and with the help of 60 Minutes,,, so will you. 60 Minutes brings this amazing breakthrough in energy production to the mainstream *investing* public. OK, so it sounds good, but the best scams are complex and this one has 2 parts.

Part one is financial. The seed has already been planted on 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes reports a single Bloom Box costs about $700,000 but John Doerr (the wizard) thinks he can reduce that cost to as low as $3000 in the next 5 to 10 year time frame. This last sentence (the spell) does two things: it assures investors that this is both an advanced technology because crappy tech doesn't cost 3 quarters of a million dollars per unit,,, AND it ensures that this advanced technology will be brought to people's homes in the next 5 to 10 years at a price the lower-middle class could afford. For those of you who don't invest regularly, 5 year and 10 year prospectus of stocks are very important for long-term lazy investors, in fact they are often all that novice investors look at when investing. An investor that doesn't want to work the stock market on a daily basis likes to find good steady growth over 5 or 10 years. John Doerr is basically saying the 10 year prospectus for Bloom Energy looks really good. And it will look good (perfectly timed juxtaposed against our currently failing market); you know and use Google because Mr. Doerr and Google both did what they said they would.

So you might be thinking you don't see the scam. It's true, technology-wise and financial-wise we are not being scammed quite yet. It's part two, the execution of the scam that hits us pretty hard: ecological impact. Bloom Energy and the Bloom Box would be successful no matter what happened at this time. They have a product that not only is assumed to work but is much more efficient than our current energy grid. Bloom Energy does not need a wizard (John Doerr) to make money and be successful. However, if they want to make ungodly amounts of money and rule the world,,, it helps to have a wizard to cast a few spells. While Bloom Boxes cost $700,000 they will only be bought by large corporations like Walmart, Ebay, and your local energy companies,,, during this time people like you and me will only be able to invest in these companies and the corporation Bloom Energy. Let's say in 10 years the Bloom Box does drop to $3000, then today's investors will also become owners of a Bloom Box. Sounds killer but there is a catch.

A Bloom Box is presented as a more efficient and compact way to produce usable energy. When compared to our current grid, the Bloom Box allows more efficient energy at a lower cost to be made and used. This is fine if only the largest top 500 companies used Bloom Boxes, it's more efficient than the energy they were using before the Bloom Box. But once you put many Bloom Boxes at every company in America (corporations and startups), and 1 or 2 at every home in America, the efficiency is lost. The total net emissions for all Bloom Box units at that scale will completely out-weigh the current emissions of our old grid (this is speculative of course, but I think it makes a good argument,,, at least good enough for someone smarter than me to crunch the numbers and do some possible comparisons). This scam has a quick financial turnaround and a slow ecological turnaround, which means it is perfect to exploit and capitalize on.

It's cool that Bloom Energy has created this advanced technology. We should embrace it and ask our energy companies to get on board and use Bloom Boxes to power the grid. This will make our monthly energy bills more affordable and we can sleep better at night knowing that the grid is running cleaner than it used to; perhaps stop using coal all together in the US. That's not a scam,,, everyone wins; people get a better product, Bloom Energy capitalizes in an acceptable way, America energy becomes cleaner, and nothing is exploited. Most importantly the wizard goes home and the investors looking for easy money look elsewhere (or they buy PG&E stock, after PG&E purchases a ton of Bloom Boxes, and cross their fingers).

We can't let this scam work. Scams are bad, it's that simple. Don't invest when Bloom Energy unveils on Weds,,, they first need to adjust their deployment strategy before our culture should be on board. And don't buy a Bloom Box when the price is reduced in 10 years. This is a dangerous scam. This scam will cost us our ecosystem at a time when we need to be working harder to preserve it. As a final note I do think Bloom Boxes are a good step if implemented properly and used in the correct manner, however we should not waiver from our ultimate energy goal, which is ironically pointed out at the beginning of the 60 Minutes report: "The Holy Grail is a power source that is inexpensive, clean, with no emissions." This goal is out there it just requires the involvement of our entire American culture, not just a few scientists with a price tag and our pocket books. This holy grail will be discussed in my next post.

By the way, in case you are curious,,, in this story K. R. Sridhar, Bloom Box creator, is Frodo,,, and Michael Kanellos, the skeptic,is definitely portrayed as Gollum.

*FYI, I am not qualified to give investment advice, these thoughts are just speculation based on my opinion. I think the scam could go a couple ways: investors will turn a quick profit and pull out in less than a year since the Bloom Box proves not to work as advertised, and the company goes down in flames,,, or investors stick it out for 10 years because of the success of the Bloom Box, and the slow destruction of our ecosystem speeds up just a little more. Either way I'm bummed at the end of the day/5 to 10 year time frame.

One Hour of CNN

Now is the time to buy a Toyota. If I actually believed what the American news told me, I would say you could read that comment as sarcasm, unfortunately American news is crap and now really is the best time to buy a Toyota.

Last weekend I had the un-pleasure of watching an hour of CNN. The news hour that was on was building up to a headline story concerning faulty accelerators in certain Toyota models. During this hour's un-breaking news stories I also had the displeasure of watching commercials,,, I watched about 6 minutes of Buick ads during this entire news hour. It seemed odd but it didn't hit me until after I saw the headline story. To highlight the accelerator issue CNN interviewed a proclaimed victim of the faulty Toyota accelerator. When it turned out to be just a young, inexperienced driver (with the worst looking neck-brace I've seen since Brenda was rear-ended on 90210), I realized I was witnessing a smear campaign.

Obviously the Toyota Prius has stolen the car spotlight for most Americans over the past 10 years, all this while the American car companies are being bailed out and losing all credibility with the American car buying public. So a woman who is accused of being drunk or speeding while losing control of her Toyota down a steep hill, says the car was at fault (3 year olds get away with this kind of lie, not mothers with 3 kids). This incident is quickly swooped up by our national news networks and the same network sells ad time to the American car companies,,, brilliant! Cars with an automatic transmission have an idol speed of a couple mph, this idol speed is quickly increased when matched with a steep inclined plane. I have never been in a car where this idol speed couldn't be controlled by the brake, she was a bad driver and she's lucky to be alive.

If your national news source has advertising in between news blocks, I recommend you find a new news source. Now couldn't be a better time to buy a Toyota, boycott American car companies.

It's been a year,,,

,,, since I last made an entry in my Blog. I would like to change that starting this new 2010, I actually really like this Blog. To start I will be adding my shared feed from Google Reader. I figure it's something I add a bunch of articles to almost everyday, some funny, some mind expanding, and some I just find important tidbits of information, oh and LEGOs. Sounds fantastic right? So this is where I plan to start. I don't know how regularly I will be adding Blog posts, but rest assured the shared feed will be continually active, RAD right?

I hope this Blog finds you all well, and if not, get well soon. Blam!

Extra Terrestrial Life Forms, Part I

I recently watched a series of videos on YouTube of an episode of Larry King Live with Bill Nye shooting down a bunch of UFO believers and followers.  I wanted to make this blog post in support of Bill Nye's skepticism.  Bill's main point is that all the evidence we have shows the proof that unidentified things are seen and reported, to make the jump that these unidentified objects and recorded images are otherworldly is pretty drastic.  

It brings to mind the belief in faeries.  A long time ago faeries were considered the unexplainable trouble makers, causing all kinds of mischief while our backs were turned.  An example would be: let's say you lived in the forest and you just finished your laundry, you hung it to dry and while it was drying you decided to take a walk.  When you get back from your walk to gather up all the dry linens you find they have been strewn about the forest and dragged through the mud.  Who did this?!  There is no one else around; you know this because you were left in charge for the day.  Well, there could be a couple explanations.  One, the wind picked up and after tugging on the hung linens for a few minutes they were ripped from the branches and fell in the mud.  Or two, maybe a wild animal came through and pulled the linens down and drug them through the mud as it was scared away by you returning.  The problem with both of these explanations is that they require that the story include that the linens were unattended or poorly hung.

Since you don't want to get in trouble for leaving the linens unattended, you decide to say this happened while your back was turned.  But an animal wouldn't come through with you so close by, and if the wind was blowing hard you should have been close enough to catch things before they got to the mud.  The result is to make up something impossible.  Faeries were often described in these kind of situations.  Not only do they fit the bill, something mischievous happened in an impossible circumstance,,, but who doesn't want to hear more proof about something that would be amazing like faeries.  

Faeries and extra terrestrial visitors on Earth are very desirable.  (The biggest reason why magic shows work is because the audience wants magic to be real.)  Even if you don't believe in either, the existence of these things would be very cool?  We all wish for these things to be true.  Watching the men that were up against Bill Nye on Larry King Live, I saw some guys with a really good story.  We love having good stories, these guys' story got them on Larry King Live 40 years after the event took place, that's a pretty good story.  The second half of the program features a PHD in Physics who is the author of a book about UFOs and the Director of a film about UFOs.  Both capitol driven media based on stories similar to the old men from the first half.  When you have something to sell for $29.99 you get a little protective of the subject matter, you have income to worry about.  I support Bill Nye, there is a universe of possibilities for these sightings, why does extra terrestrial life have to be the obvious answer?

Part II, my theory for the possibility of extra terrestrial life.

Telepathy Part II

Part I brings me to the belief that we have been developing our telepathic abilities for millions of years now.  Today our ability to see and hear are incredibly advanced.  We have spent many years working out equations on how both of these systems work, these discoveries are used to create the incredible picture quality of our modern TVs and the spectacular sound quality of our music and films.  And to think all these calculations are basically done on autopilot in our own minds.

To hear the voice of the person standing next to you first the sound has to be made.  The person's mind sends electrical signals through the nervous system to make the larynx function in just a way in which the air we are standing in is disrupted by a specific vibration that makes it from the person's mouth to your ears.  Your ears are designed to collect these vibrations and turn them from mechanical energy into electrical energy and send a very precise signal to a very specific center in your brain.  This area of your brain will register the signal and decode it to be the message, "hello."  And that happens all the time and as far as we are concerned we don't even flinch at having to decode the vibrations from our neighbors' larynx, we just know it.  Yet scientists and audio technicians have spent hundreds of years to figure out what our mind knows instinctively.

Our ability to read what people write to us might even be more amazing.  First we need the person next to you to write or draw something on a piece of paper, then light from the Sun or a nearby lamp reflects off the paper and into your eyes.  Your eye has receptors called rods and cones in it, these will recognize the very narrow range of visible light and turn the minute waves from mechanical energy into electrical signals which are sent from the retina to the sections of your brain responsible for vision.  This signal is decoded in these sections of the brain then distributed to other parts of the brain (our memory) to decipher the signals as a word we know or an image we recognize.  All this happens in the blink of an eye.  Our video cameras are getting pretty good at mimicking this task, but that technology is just about 100 years old, this is all very new to humans.  But for our brains this is old news, a child's game.

Telepathy is here, we use it everyday.  This blog is a perfect example.  I am allowing people with similar interests as me to read my thoughts.  You are being allowed to see what's on my mind.  Unfortunately many people lie and are deceptive with the things they say and write,,, so the truth is often very difficult to attain.  I promise you, I am not a liar.  I might be wrong about stuff but I do not think I am lying, this is the truth as I have come to understand it.  I would imagine if you read enough of my writings perhaps you would become skilled enough to predict other things about me.  Or at very least gain enough insite to predict what I might write about next.  So, can you guess?

Telepathy Part I

Telepathy is defined as:

"tele meaning 'distant' and patheia meaning 'to be affected by',,, describes the purported transfer of information on thoughts between individuals by means other than the five classical senses (Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smell, Touch)"

This seems awfully limiting. The only way I can envision this strict form of telepathy ever happening will be with the advancements of technology. Cell phones are getting smaller and smaller, perhaps one day they will just be implanted in our brains at a certain age.  In the future when you start going to school a brain-cell phone will be required along with certain shots and vaccines. Then we will have this ability to do everything that our cell phones do today but enclosed in our minds. It will only take some time for hackers to access the conversations you are having with your brain-cell phones. I guess this will be most like true telepathy? And one step further, maybe the hackers will one day be able to access your entire mind database without you even needing to make a call? So even this far off ability is pushing the strict limitations of the above definition of telepathy.

What I mean is, receiving cell reception in our minds isn't much different from using our ears to hear words or our eyes to see text or body language. Cell phone reception travels in waves just like light and sound, but our body does not have a biological receptor to receive these waves. Visible light, which we use to see and read, holds a very particular section of the electromagnetic spectrum, about 700nm to about 450nm. Sound waves like the ones we use to hear the human voice are found in the 20Hz to about 20KHz range (about the wavelength of 10Mm [Mega meters] in the electromagnetic spectrum). The cell phones we use function in a couple different sections of spectrum around the 1m wave length. The reality is, every form of communication we have is due to the manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum: light waves, sound waves, cell phone waves. Even touch is probably measurable as a very slow and large wave. Human beings are probably a part of a slow and large wave; large objects like our planet, Sun and even black holes are all a part of extremely slow gigantic waves (relatively).

So the definition above is strictly requiring telepathy to be done by means other than the five classical senses, or as we just discovered by means other than the manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum. And quite honestly, I think just about everything can somehow fit into the electromagnetic spectrum,,, except for perhaps magic. Then I guess telepathy is no more than a parlor trick, a slight of hand where a range of the electromagnetic spectrum is used unknown to the common folks.

Perhaps we need a better definition of telepathy which doesn't keep such a strangle hold on the use of non-electromagnetic spectrum?

Sub-Atomic or Supervelocity Universe, Part III (stay tuned,,,)

I need to grow up a little bit before I can finish this series.  Expect to see a real Part III in the next year or two.  It's been a year since I wrote the last two,,, not sure if I'm still on the same page with myself.  Stay tuned.

I missed my blog.

Sub-Atomic or Supervelocity Universe, Part II

In a previous post I stated that "there must be more for us out there." Actually, maybe we are missing that there is more for us in there. Just because our ability to observe and measure anything past the inner cellular level is limited to the technology we have at hand, we tend to forget that Space is infinite. Even though we can't observe at such a small focus doesn't mean we shouldn't be interested in such minute levels of Space,,, and more importantly Space is infinite so even though it is minute relative to a human's niche in Space, it is not minute relative to Space in general. Relative to humans: atoms are small and galaxies are large. While a human can sort of gauge the size of a galaxy (we know how long a mile is, a light year is a shit load of miles, and a galaxy is a shit load of light years across), we have a really hard time gauging the size of an atom (a trillionth of a mile just doesn't mean anything to a human let alone a trillion trillionths of a mile). 

We know that millions of atoms help to form more familiar objects like pillows and bendy-straws, but our familiarity with those tangible items do not help us better understand the atom,,, so we are stuck, waiting for scientists to develop a more advanced scope to capture a peak at what these atoms are doing. Currently everything we know about the atom (much like the Allegory of the Cave) is how things built of atoms behave under certain conditions, much like studying an object by only being able to observe the object's shadow.  A shadow could be the energy change in an object due to a chamical reaction.

We're kind of in the dark here, but technological advancements are turning on the lights one by one. Ultimately we really need to stop overlooking the reality that the Space you can cup in your hands is just as important as the Space that is our Milky Way Galaxy. In our tangible universe, there are a couple limiting attributes: first limit is the speed c, second limit is the mass ZERO. But we can observe the "shadows" of things with speed c and mass 0. We are seeing the shadows of items in another universe, and my next post will try to define some of the things that exist in the Sub-atomic (Supervelocity) Universe, and define some of their attributes. Could we ever enter this particular other universe?

Sub-Atomic or Supervelocity Universe, Part I

It's sort of one of those chicken or the egg discussions. For those of you unfamiliar with a "chicken or the egg" situation, I will briefly explain. It's a rhetorical question where you ask someone which came first; basically did the existence of the egg lead to the existence of the chicken or did the existence of the chicken lead to the existence of the egg? And by rhetorical I mean that it is not meant to be answered. However, logically (since a chicken exists and we have an understanding of evolution) the only way a chicken could have come to walk the Earth is if it was born, and chickens are hatched from eggs,,, so ultimately the egg had to exist first. But honestly this doesn't really help the point of my Blog, I just wanted to explain the "chicken or the egg" situation.

What came first, the sub-atomic size or the speed faster than c? I'll admit, I'm getting pretty out there with this one. In fact I'm mildly sure that none of what I'm discussing here exists in any text books or on any other web-pages,,, so it might as well be considered fiction. However, I don't think this is fiction and I truly do hold these thoughts as completely possible so humor me on this one. The stuff you will find in text books and on other web pages is: when an object nears the speed c, it nears a mass equal to zero. For example if a 12 inch ruler is traveling at 9/10 the speed of c, it would appear to be only 6 inches,,, and after the ruler was traveling 10/10 the speed of c (or c), it would appear to be 0 inches long. So if I combine this with my previous investigation of photons, a photon fits this expectation of being something that has zero mass and travels faster than c. My "chicken or the egg" question is, what came first, "the photon's speed which would have a result of making the photon have a mass of zero?,,, OR the photon's mass of zero allows it to travel at a speed faster than c?" This is completely rhetorical since we can't tangibly examine a photon. Perhaps if we could stop a photon and see what it was like at a velocity equal to zero, we could measure its mass and formulate an answer. Unfortunately we are not quite there yet, and we can't fully define what a photon is. How does this result in another Universe different from our own? Part II.

Philosophical Physics Set I

Plato might have had it more right than he knew when he wrote the Allegory of the Cave. I would highly advise anyone, with some free time, to read the Allegory of the Cave (Book VII of Plato's best-known work, The Republic). In summation, the story is how regular people are only aware of what they are told or the information that they are fed. The philosopher or the scholar are the ones that break free of the shadows and interpretations to see the real world and in turn escape the cave and, even though dealing with the truth is more difficult and painful, continue to live outside of the cave. It really is a very awesome and powerful metaphor of how we deal with the world around us. Escaping the cave in Plato's story is more of a mental liberation to learn and understand the world around us. However, escaping the cave doesn't mean we are completely free to experience the universe. Subsequent to our escape we are now confined to a planet that circles a star in a space with seemingly never-ending boundaries, and we are only equipped with a limited set of senses.

When exploring the reality of the universe we need to remove ourselves from the planet Earth and not limit ourselves to the common senses. Much of Einstein's ideas defy what we experience from day to day, and he makes that very clear in his papers. He is often explaining his ideas twice, under real world expectations and in theoretical terms (mainly because he deals with things that travel near to the speed of c, and we don't experience things that move that fast). The elephant in the room is, does it even matter to study it if it only theoretically exists? We can't experience this in our everyday lives so why waste our time? I do not agree, if we are okay with binding our bodies to the earth then we are simply ignorant Earthlings, there must be more for us out there.

Okay, Or Is It?

I basically took a week off from Massconceptions, but I wanted to post this to give you something to think about. "Okay" is a grand massconcept of the American culture. We actually have no concrete explanation of "okay"s origins and the whole thing may remain to be a mystery forever. I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on "okay" and submerse yourself into the mystery that is,,, OKAY.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay
The proven and not so proven history of the term is absolutely amazing. A classic massconception.

Infinite Education

Infinity is not very easy for earthlings to understand. We seem to have an O.K. time dealing with numbers being infinite. For example thinking of a really really big number and then just adding 1 to it,,, or adding 1 million to it and making it that much larger. A very special number in math is pi, and it is a number that continues on with an infinite number of decimal places,,, as far as we can tell. We seem fine with that idea and infinity in the case of numbers is widely accepted. Einstein popularized the fact that both Time and Space were not absolute but infinite. Most earthlings seem fine with accepting this on the basis that Einstein is really smart and knows more than them. I would like to spend a little time on explaining the facts on infinite Space and Time; actually it is pretty much easier to take in and grasp than you might think.
Let's start with the easy one you already seem to understand; numbers are infinite. The reason this is so easy is because when we use numbers we can always add 1 on to any number we already know and then add 1 on to the result of that number and so on. That example doesn't work as well with Space or Time; you can add 1 second onto any minute that just passed but how will that help prove that time is infinite? To prove that both Space and Time are infinite we will have to use another method to visualize how numbers are infinite. When anything is considered infinite it is both infinitely large and infinitely small. The small end of infinity is often overlooked. So lets take a number and start dividing it by 2 (or in half). You can grab a calculator if you like because the result will be exponentially small.
So 100 divided by 2 is 50.
50 divided by 2 is 25.
25 divided by 2 is 12.5.
12.5 divided by 2 is 6.25.
Keep dividing by 2 and you get to a number less than 1 (0.78125). Depending on the calculator you will soon reach a number that looks like this, 7.62939453125E-4 (or, 7.62939453125 x 10^-4,,, OR, .000762939453125). Ultimately you will continue to see numbers with more zeros between the decimal and the first number other than zero, or larger and larger negative numbers at the end of the number,,, however you will NEVER reach zero. This is a trait of infinity; no matter how many times you halve something it will never reach a zero amount of that something.
If we earthlings can accept that for numbers we will have a much easier time proving that Space and Time are in fact infinite as well. For those who don't know, space is measured in distance or length or volume et cetera. So let's say we take the distance of 100cm and we start dividing it by 2, we would get 50cm. Do you see where this is going? Ultimately we will result in distances that are very small (relatively to 100cm) but will never reach a distance that is zero; hence distance (or Space) is infinite. Time is pretty much just the same story with different units; take the time of 100secs and start dividing it by 2 and so on and you will also never reach zero. Hence there is an infinite amount of time in 100secs.
The massconception is that we are slaves to our units of measurement. We understand 1 meter because it is about an arm's length. We understand 24 hours because it is the time it takes for the Earth to make 1 full rotation on its axis. A Second means nothing if the Earth isn't associated with its current behavior around the Sun, a Second is just a lump of Time. Our measurements are the only way we can really understand and capture Space and Time, and all of our measurements are relative to the tangible universe around us. If the Earth stopped spinning and slowly started drifting into the Sun and all earthlings burned up would Time stop? The answer is most definitely NO. It's similar to the pre-Copernicus model of the universe where the Earth is the center of the solar system, earthlings just assume the universe revolves around them and it really truly is difficult to break our self-centered-ness.
So why does this even matter, you might ask? Well if both Space and Time are infinite then the distance between two atoms is just as important as the distance between two planets and everything in between. Earthlings must understand Time and Space without units before being able to understand a universe. I will use infinite Space and Time later in exploring the Sub-Atomic Universe (or "Supervelocity Universe").

Healthy Body: Exercise the Environment

First Blog of 2008, let's hope it changes the world.
So the other day I was sitting at my local BART station waiting for a friend. After talking with my friend Sara I notice this gentleman rushing into the station's courtyard. He's dressed in some tight bicycle shorts and a tank top,,, honestly he looked a little silly for just being out and about, but not too silly for the gym. I watched him as he rushed through the courtyard. I figured he was in a rush to make his train, but then noticed he was picking up a good handful of trash on his way to the terminal. Then I noticed he kept rushing and picking up more armfuls of trash and smashed them into the trash can. He continued this for almost 10 minutes, speeding from loose wrapper to trash can; squatting and sprinting every chance he got. Then he just ran off when the place was completely clean! Totally rad.
So I didn't get to talk to the gentleman or discuss what he was actually doing, but I have a hypothesis and I plan on making it a new part of my everyday workout.
So I don't go to gyms, in fact I believe in the use of gyms less and less all the time. What happens at the gym?,,, able bodied humans go there to tone their bodies, get in shape, be healthy, and/or build their muscles. And what is the gain? A healthy body, ripped pectorals or an increased self esteem. Seems pretty vain, seems like a waste, and I'm not really into it. What I got from this quick gentleman in bicycle shorts was the idea that getting a workout and cleaning up the environment was not only possible but free and rather un-vain (considering the way he was dressed).
Basically this man ran or jogged to the BART station (perhaps 15 minutes away from where he lives), this would have raised his heart rate long enough to benefit from an aerobic workout. Once he was at the BART station he kept his speed up (keeping his heart rate up), and started squatting and sprinting from wrapper to wrapper. He would also smash his arm-loads of trash into the waste baskets. Then he ran off either to go home or to another destination for another clean up/workout! Understandably, this isn't a solution if you desire huge muscles, you could only achieve this from intense weight training. But if large muscles are what you want I would suggest you stop the gym and get a labor intensive job like construction, moving crew or landscaping. I hate seeing some dude from Google with big 'ol arms,,, so fake so vain.
So man in bicycle shorts, you are a genius and I salute you. I wish there were more of you out there. I'm working on it.
Don't join a gym for your New Year's resolution, do something good for your body and the environment instead. Adjust your lifestyle and help the planet we live in, doesn't get much better than that. Happy New Year.

Speed Of Light or Maximum Observable Velocity, Part II

My idea is that the labeling of the speed of light was a side product of discovering the Maximum Observable Velocity of our Universe. I know this might be a stretch but c isn't the speed of light. c is the Maximum Observable Velocity of our tangible Universe, and light is the only (noticeable) thing that travels fast enough to allow us to discover this limitation of our Universe. Light was merely the beacon that lead us to our modern day conclusion that light travels at c, which is the fastest speed possible. So you might ask why this allows me to suggest that c is not the speed of light. Making c the Maximum Observable Velocity (and not light speed) of this Universe will allow one to imagine the true attributes of light. So here's the dilemma, a long time ago we found that light takes a certain amount of time to travel from one side of a space to the other. As more accurate instruments developed, the speed at which light traveled across the (vacuum sealed) space was measured at 299,792,458m/s. After further experiments investigated the speed at which light travels, scientists found that this speed was CONSTANT. Basically, in a vacuum sealed room, whether the light source was moving towards or away from the speed sensor, the speed recorded was ALWAYS 299,792,458m/s. Today, I make this science dilemma and not science fact.
Now that we recognize 299,792,458m/s as the Maximum Observable Velocity of our Universe (c), what if light was traveling at a much faster speed than c? If this were the case and the speed of light was actually > (greater than) c + 100mph, then measuring the speed of light from a train moving away from the speed sensor at 60mph would still only result in a measurement of c.
Example A: "Speed of Light" - 60mph = c
Perhaps if we knew that the actual Speed of Light was < (less than) c + 120mph we could strap a light source onto an air plane flying 120mph, then measure the speed of the light on the air plane moving away from the speed sensor as < c.
Example B: "Speed of Light" - 120mph < style="font-style: italic;">c, or greater, to determine the actual Speed of Light. This results in our universe only ever being able to realize Example A, due to the limitations of our universe. Kind of heavy right, aren't you glad you had those Triscuits? So what does this mean for the rest of the Universe,,, or Universes? Hmmm, Part III or a seperate post? We shall see.

Speed Of Light or Maximum Observable Velocity, Part I

This is my birthday Blog so I figured I'd make it a good one. I recommend a handful of tasty Triscuits to go along with this post.
I've always had a hard time dealing with the absolute speed of light. I enjoy that the value c (Speed of light = 299,792,458m/s) has lent a helpful hand in so many of modern science's most useful equations. Equations formulated by Maxwell, Einstein and Lorentz all rely on the constant speed of light. Even one of the most famous equations of them all, E=mc^2 (pronounced, "e" equals em sea squared) uses the constant speed of light to help us better explain or understand the universe around us. Incredible! But what has always been most incredible is that the speed of light is constant. Not only can you not speed it up greater than c, such as shining a light from a moving train in the direction the train is moving,,, but you also CAN'T SLOW IT DOWN to less than c, such as shining a light from a moving train in the opposite direction. It is constant, can't change it, observable truth has proven it, and the BIGGEST of big-time scientists have used it to prove what they had faith in most.
Do you understand what I'm saying and why I see this as completely wild and mildly unacceptable? When I sit on a train moving at 60mph and I throw the pit of my apricot at 40mph towards my future destination, a static (not moving) observer on the near-by bluff will witness my pit flying through the air at 100mph (assuming zero wind resistance). But if I do this EXACT same thing replacing my apricot pit with a beam of light, the static observer will not witness the light beam moving at c+60mph; the static observer will witness your regular old run of the mill (constant speed) beam of light traveling at c. UNCHANGED, even though it was being changed just like the apricot pit.
Now due to this conundrum I can't sleep at night and I find myself constantly asking why an apricot pit behaves so fundamentally different from a beam of light? Furthermore, why is the speed of light an important factor of E=mc^2? c is not subjective, it is very much only (and always) 299,792,458m/s which is, indisputably, only the speed of light (in a vacuum). So I understand how the number 299,792,458 squared, then multiplied by a mass in kilograms results in a large number of x kilogram meters^2/sec^2 (or Joules), which is an amount of energy (E). So the number and the units make sense,,, but why does it have to be the speed of light. Why can't c be the speed of a HELL OF fast jet plane in m/s? Or the speed of the Earth in m/s? Why does light have anything to do with this? Part II coming soon, like tomorrow! I'm so 28 right now.

What is chaos? Part II

It is not surprising we aim to excite chaos in the world around us. In most cases we find chaos to be very attractive. If you had to pick a favorite from 10 bouquets of flowers and 9 of them were just red roses but the 10th has less red roses, a fern and some babies breath,,, which would you choose? Chaos has been added to one of the bouquets and you like it more. Someone with a chaotic personality may be viewed as more interesting than a more normal person. However, a chaotic personality might be the person at the party you want to avoid. The truth is that chaos is both good and bad, it's what we love and what we hate. If we didn't have chaos everything would just be normal and sterile, who wants that? Chaos is what makes life worth living, we just need to make sure we don't let it get out of control. And let's try and cool it on how we order the Earth, it does fine on its own. In conclusion, chaos and order are relative and subjective, their relationship could be viewed as just another Yin and Yang.

What is chaos? Part I

People write books on chaos, it has a theory associated with it, I've looked into it, and it's really a lot to handle. Let's try and break it down as simple as possible.
What is the opposite of chaos? Perhaps order. And what is another opposite of order? Disorder. Then we can say chaos is disorder. Let's further examine what disorder is with an example of a house that is in perfect order. All its utilities work great, the paint is fresh and the yard was just landscaped. Then imagine that the house was left as is, the owners didn't touch it, inside or out and other people were not allowed to trespass for 30 years. When the owners returned to the house, they first found that the yard was completely overgrown and out of control. The beautiful paint was now chipped and pealing from the weather, and inside was a mess of dust, cobwebs and other remains of small animals that once found shelter there. The owners would quickly say that their home was in disorder (or chaos). This is true, disorder has taken place,,, but what does this say about human order? We build a perfect house on a plot of Earth's land, we let it naturally deteriorate and the home has changed into something resembling the original plot of Earth's land,,, and we call it disorder. Where in actuality humans have disordered (or changed the order of) the Earth. So what is Chaos and what is Order? From one perspective humans increase order, from another they excite chaos. If chaos is disorder then maybe disorder isn't really the opposite of order but just a change in order. This means disorder isn't very different from order at all,,, and maybe order isn't as different as chaos as we think.

Healthy Body: Walking

I've been very aware of my body the past few weeks. And not too long ago I was thinking about how, when I was a kid, my everyday activities were enough to stay in incredible little kid fitness. Realizing that when I was a kid I would run up that slope, climb that tree and roll down that hill. Things have changed; I am no longer made of rubber these days and my natural metabolism is slowly diminishing. I am not the sort of person that would ever join a gym or spend a lot of time on a treadmill, so I thought about how I could turn my day to day into a great workout. First off, i have a bad left knee so my day to day workout includes more than average knee awareness.
First, walk like a ninja. To explain this, when you are walking down the street and there are a few other people walking ahead of you, walk without letting those people hear your footsteps. Be very aware of your steps, don't drag your feet and don't stomp. Try to put every foot down heal to toe and keep the leg motion very fluid. Also, on flat surfaces your gravity is at equilibrium and you should WALK at the fastest (comfortable) pace possible. Make sure not to run (both feet being off the ground is running) unless you plan on running the whole time; running is high impact for my knees and I try to avoid it.
Second, be sure to walk up stairs or an incline with a straight back and don't forget to breath. It is o.k. to slow your stride as you have now moved away from equilibrium and should compensate. In fact, climbing up stairs should be slow, aware steps, taking full advantage of the muscles being used. Let's say in your daily trips to and from the office there is only one stair case you need to climb, so you think you should run up it and sprint down it for a good little work out. Wrong. Guaranteed you will feel the burn more just by slowly climbing and slowly descending those stairs everyday. If you run up the stairs I suggest you keep the running going for the next 15 minutes if you plan to have a workout.
Third, heading down hill your equilibrium now changes and it is normal to hurry down a slope or stairs. Hurrying down a slope can be visualized as throwing your torso out in front and catching it with your legs. This is horrible on the knees and very little muscle is being used while doing it. When heading down a hill, or stairs, take it very slow. When you first start doing this you will feel a shaking from the muscles in your legs. This will make you aware that you are walking down hill properly. The tremors in the muscles are atrophy, and atrophy is the sign of a weak muscle being used beyond it's limitations. These muscle tremors will go away after making slow down hill (and stair) walking a normal activity. Can you believe that most humans' legs probably shake under just the weight of their own body, this is a little sad and we should really be doing something about this. To be more clear about down stairs and down hill slopes, you will continue to walk heal to toe slowly down a slope. However descending down stairs you will be going toe to heal. Really be aware of lowering your heal on every step, you will feel this in your calves.
Forth, you actually need to make walking a part of your day. Every little bit helps but if the only times you walk during the day are from your front door to your car, then from your car to your office and again at the end of the day you need to get more walking in. Consider walking to the grocery store and carrying the bags back home. Or if grocery stores are too far away, don't mill around trying to get the parking spaces right out front. Pull into the lot and park in the first open space in the back. Do what you can to make walking a bigger part of your day.
Fifth, start becoming aware of all the muscles and motions your body makes, be aware of your arms and back. Try and get the most out of all your daily movements. Yuk.