Random Thought #203

We've been studying Confucius in our China class online recently. Its interesting that in China, he is referred to by his name of Gong Zi or Kong Zi, which means Master Kong. I believe his actual name was Kong Qia. So where did Confucius come from? Is it westernized? Even if it was, where did it come from? I mean Confucius doesn't sound like anything else or have any ties to anything else. I guess I'll have to dig deeper.

Random Thought #202

How is it that the facial hair that grows on your lip (assuming you're a guy) knows when to stop? All of the other facial hair just keeps growing and growing longer and longer but the hair on your lip just seems to stop. How does it know to do that? I mean, assuming it acted like all of the other hair, you'd have to part your  moustache every time you wanted to eat. Interesting isn't it?

Random Thought #201

Do you ever wonder where mail trucks come from? Who makes them? Who came up with the design for them? Does the same company make FedEx and UPS trucks too? We can often name many of the consumer brands but many of the commercial and industrial brands are rather foreign to us. Sort of makes you wonder.

Random Thought #200

I'm currently taking a class on EdX called ChinaX from Harvard that talks all about China and they introduced me to a Chinese Philosophy professor there at Harvard and I got to watch one of his lectures on Zhangzi. I loved it and it, along with this article explain why I continue to learn in areas that have nothing to do with my current job.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are-hundreds-of-harvard-students-studying-ancient-chinese-philosophy/280356/

Random Thought #199

This was just great! When I watched it the first time, I actually got a little misty-eyed but I wish more and more companies would treat their customers this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIEIvi2MuEk

I actually found a pretty cool company that creates personalized videos similar to what they did with the live Santa feed but I could see this being the future of advertising and sales.

www.idomoo.com

Random Thought #198

I hate Halloween! I've never understood the reason for it. Almost all holidays have some sort of historical significance, tradition, or happy story behind them. Not Halloween! Its pointless! Dress up as someone or something you aren't. Try to trick or scare people. Focus is on the dead, disgusting, terrifying, etc. Go to people's houses begging for candy. Rot your teeth out eating all of the candy. I just don't see any point to the holiday. Not even a day off of work. This really bothered me so I had to find out how Halloween got started. It actually has an interesting history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

I encourage you to read up on it. Its meant to remember our dead ancestors. This should be like the International Family History/Temple Work Day around the world. I found the history quite interesting and I bet nobody today knows the true history around how Halloween came into existence or even how relatively new it is in the US. Its barely 100 years old. Perhaps this next year, I'll dedicate Halloween to Family History or Temple Work. Maybe that will get me excited about Halloween.

Random Thought #197

You know as each year passes and Black Friday rolls around, it seems like the deals just start earlier and earlier. There are online deals sometimes weeks in advance and many of the brick and mortar stores start their Black Friday deals thursday night. Many would claim that this is destroying the holiday of Thanksgiving, as if Christmas hadn't done that already. I actually think its a good thing. Think of the insanity of spending endless hours out in the cold, away from your family, staying up late, fighting the crowds, stressing over whether you'll get the deals you want. Now, I can just get pretty much whatever I want online ahead of Thanksgiving and Black Friday and then get back to enjoying Thanksgiving the way it was intended; with family, friends, and other loves ones and focus on being thankful for the many blessings with which we've been blessed.

Random Thought #196

Bears have got to be the smartest animals on the planet. This whole hibernation thing is ingenious. Think about it. Spend all summer playing and having fun and enjoying yourself, then use the fall to fatten yourself up by eating an endless supply of food, only to sleep during the entire winter in a nice cozy den, then wake up and do it all over again. We should take a lesson from the bears. Those guys really know how to live!

Random Thought #195

Given the recent passing of Nelson Mandela, this talk was timely but its message is even more fundamentally important. It talks of the concept of "ubuntu" which is not only a flavor of Linux, but literally means "I am, because of you". It refers to the interrelatedness of everything and everyone. The simplest and purest form of this was disclosed to Adam and Eve when they discovered what joy was because of the existence of sadness. Joy in and of itself doesn't mean anything unless we use it in contrast to sadness. There must needs be opposites in all things so as to comprehend them and be able to choose between them. Someone speaking to an empty room has much less impact than would speaking to an audience. The speaker and their message have value because someone else heard it. We cannot become so selfish and conceited in thinking only of ourselves and our own needs without alienating ourselves and becoming even more lonely. We need each other and should start acting like it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/boyd_varty_what_i_learned_from_nelson_mandela.html

Random Thought #194

How we interact with our devices now seems to be more and more interactive and natural. A computer used to be like a robot where we commanded it to do something and it was there to execute that task. It was an object or a thing. More and more, we are starting to interact with machines as if they were individuals and we are not just consuming or inputting data, but we are interacting with and manipulating data. These are just some cool examples of this from MIT's tangle media group. Pretty cool stuff.

http://www.businessinsider.com/mit-tangible-media-group-technologies-2013-11

Random Thought #193

This next article is pretty technical in nature but I found it interesting in how networks or groupings of objects are discovered. Historically, there have been two primary methods of mapping these networks: statistical inference (guessing the next connection statistically) and/or spectral analysis (grouping nodes focusing on the flow of information - finding hubs or hot spots). This works well in most cases of denser populations but for sparse networks, it doesn't present a reliable map. The method described in this articlemakes a small modification that makes for more accurate mapping. This has implications in a number of areas such as finding links between colleagues at work as well as mapping the food cycle and the spread of diseases in communities.

http://www.santafe.edu/news/item/pnas-moore-spectral-redemption/

Random Thought #192

I grew up with Star Trek: The Next Generation but was never really into it. In retrospect, if I understood it better, I would be totally fascinated with it. The weapon on choice was the photon torpedo. It sounds good but its even cooler when you deconstruct it and understand the science behind it. Well lucky for all of you, I found an article that does just that. Without further ado, the photon torpedo: deconstructed

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/2013/12/03/how-photon-torpedoes-will-mark-an-end-to-the-energy-crisis/

Random Thought #191

This really blew my mind but you've got to figure that this would eventually happen. There always seems to be an issue with testing new drugs and treatments either because of the lack of willingness in human testers, too many variable to control, or we test on rats (which isn't necessarily a good test for a human but its allowed. Now, we can create simulated body parts on a chip and test these new drugs and treatments with better results and less risk. We could even create our own simulated human body. This is just too cool

http://www.ted.com/talks/geraldine_hamilton_body_parts_on_a_chip.html

Random Thought #190

This was just awesome. Its great to see people in such a good mood and so happy. By the end of this, you should be karaoke-ing with them. I know I was.

http://biggeekdad.com/2013/05/gas-station-karaoke-jam-session/

Random Thought #189

I found this quite interesting. Many have wondered what separates us "humans" from all other creatures? Is it our ability to think or reason? Is it that we have an opposable thumb? Nope. We cook and cooking is what allows us to sustain the immense number of neurons inside our gooey mass.

http://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain.html

Random Thought #188

Interesting little synopsis on "working memory". What it is and how it works. I found it pretty interesting

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_doolittle_how_your_working_memory_makes_sense_of_the_world.html