Category Archives: Entertainment
Our next president?
Perhaps the title should be “Women in the workforce”? The future is coming fast, and all my grandchildren are girls. Just think what will happen when AI discovers women power…
Internet Humor
Some things are just creative and cute at the same time. Especially since I live in California by choice!
New films
A couple of neat films have been released this week.
The first is short, about 6 minutes long, is from the American Museum of Natural History about human population growth over the last 200,000 years, called Human Population Through Time. It is a relaxing view.
Watch it by clicking here.
The other is from Leonardo DiCaprio as he explores the topic of climate change. This one is longer, about 1.5 hours, but I think it is well worth it. This is an excellent movie, in my opinion, and we should really thank Leonardo DiCaprio for the time and money he spent on this film.
You can see it by clicking here, to go to into YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=90CkXVF-Q8M
or even watch it here directly.
Some thoughts from October 2016
Random quotes from magazines.
Nature 20 October 2016 World View
It’s worth noting that a conscious superintelligent AI might actually be less dangerous than a non-conscious one, because, at least in humans, one process that puts the brakes on immoral behaviors is ‘affective empathy’: the emotional contagion that makes a person feel what they perceive another to be feeling. Maybe conscious AIs would care about us more than unconscious ones would.
There is a chance that the first superintelligent AI will be the only one we will ever make. This is because once it appears – conscious or not – it can improve itself and start changing the world according to its own values.
Science 21 October 2016 Science Lessons for the Next President
As the world warms, its oceans are swelling by an average of 3.2 millimeters a year; they have risen by nearly the height of a playing card since 1993. Some 40% of this increase stems from the physical expansion of water as it heats. The rest is mostly caused by melting mountain glaciers and retreating ice sheets in Greenland.
Because of regional geology, ocean currents, and shifts in gravitational pull caused by changes on Earth’s surface, such as the melting of massive ice sheets, the ocean does not rise evenly everywhere. Much of the East Coast is sinking as Earth’s mantle continues to adjust in complex ways to the disappearance of weighty ice age glaciers. …. These forces mean East Coast sea levels are rising at double the global rate, and at triple the average in Virginia and many points north.
Just a quote
“People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.” – Pedro Domingos in his 2015 book The Master Algorithm
Good Movies
In the days of old, I used to keep track of movies my wife and I watched. We would rate them and I built an Access database to keep track of them. That was back when you rented movies on CD — sometimes we would forget and rent the same movie over, so I wanted to help us keep track. But then Netflix hit and the CD stores moved away and I stopped updating the database. I do have some all-time favorites. The list below is just for fun, it is not necessarily a recommendation, it is more a sign of my OCPDness 🙂 I have purchased the CD version of some of these just to force someone to decide what to do with them when I die!
• 10,000 BC
• 2001 A Space Odyssey
• Absolute Power
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Contact
• Ex Machina
• Meet Joe Black
• Melancholia
• Taken
• The Circle
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• The Gods Must Be Crazy
• What The Bleep Do We Know
• Where To Invade Next (Michael Moore)
I went back and reviewed my Access database before writing this and must admit that lists of “favorites” are based on date. New things appear and old things loose their impact by sinking in memory. But if you never make a list of favorites, no one would know you cared! Remind me to add to this list next year!
“Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.” – Dr. Who
Good Movies
My current favorite movie is Ex Machina. I first heard about it last year and could never find it playing anywhere near here. It is a small budget film which rarely makes it to Monterey. We just bought the Amazon TV Fire Stick and found the movie free in Amazon Prime. Ex Machina was the first thing we watched on the Stick!
And I loved it…. yes, the movie and the Stick too. Meanwhile, this was written in Wikipedia.
Ex Machina is a 2015 British science fiction psychological thriller film. Ex Machina tells the story of a programmer who is invited by his employer, an eccentric billionaire, to administer the Turing test to an android with artificial intelligence.
Made on a budget of $15 million, the film has grossed over $38.2 million worldwide and received critical acclaim. The National Board of Review recognized it as one of the ten best independent films of the year. The film was also nominated for two Academy Awards; Best Original Screenplay and Best Visual Effects.
And it is 92% on Rotten Tomatoes!
If you like Science Fiction, are curious about the current Artificial Intelligence debate, like mysteries, or just like to find hard-to-find films, watch Ex Machina. I heartily recommend it.
Invite the world to surprise you by predicting what will happen!” – Anonymous
Santa Trackers
Yes, Santa Claus is getting ready to go. Rudolph and the other reindeer are getting last minute pep talks. By the way, did you know that both male and female reindeer have antlers? Yep. So Rudolph might actually be a girl! Go girl go!
Norad (North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been tracking Santa for 60 years now. They have the “official” web tracker. They were tracking before the internet was invented!!
The Norad Santa Tracker
But of course, Google has eyes over all the world too. So in case Norad goes down or gets too busy, you can check here too.
The Google Santa Tracker
santatracker.google.com/#village
Update late pm Dec 23.
I checked both trackers and discovered they show Santa starting at different times. I looked around and discovered that Norad starts tracking Santa at 7am GMT on Christmas Eve, and Google will be tracking Santa from 10am GMT on Christmas Eve.
Greenwich Mean Time is 8 hours ahead of Pacific Time: Norad starts 11pm Dec 23, Google starts 2am Dec 24.
So basically, he is already moving!
This Chart is Subject to Change!
Note: it says output defined relative to economy. Therefore, volunteering or donating or blogging for fun doesn’t count? Humm..
I have posted this chart here so I can find it again when I want to make an excuse 🙂
Super Harvest Blood Moon, a Total Lunar Eclipse, Sept 27, 2015
from National Geographic
On the evening of September 27, three separate lunar events converge. The total eclipse coincides with the full moon nearest the fall equinox, known as the harvest moon. What’s more, the moon is at its closest approach to Earth for the year, making it also a supermoon or perigee moon. That’s why it’s being coined by some as a Super Harvest Blood Moon.
This confluence has happened only five times since 1900. According to NASA, the last time we saw this celestial triple combination was in 1982, and it won’t repeat until 2033.
The most spectacular part of the eclipse will be the totality phase, when Earth’s shadow completely covers the moon and turns it an eerie red. The moon will dip into the deepest and darkest part of Earth’s shadow, or umbra, during the totality phase, which lasts as long as 72 minutes.
This weekend’s blood moon will be the last in a series of four lunar eclipses, dubbed a tetrad, over the last two years. That pattern won’t repeat for another 20 years or so.
Click the above link to learn even more about this unusual lunar event.
Below is the schedule for this eclipse in North America. Note that the moon doesn’t actually rise in the USA until after the eclipse has already started.
Pacific Zone
Begins: 5:11 pm
Moon Rise: 6:54 pm
Maximum: 7:47 pm
Ends: 10:22 pm
Mountain Zone
Begins: 6:11 pm
Moon Rise: 7:54 pm
Maximum: 8:47 pm
Ends: 11:22 pm
Central Zone
Begins: 7:11 pm
Moon Rise: 8:54 pm
Maximum: 9:47 pm
Ends: 12:22 am
Eastern Zone
Begins: 8:11 pm
Moon Rise: 9:54 pm
Maximum: 10:47 pm
Ends: 1:22 am
May you all have clear skys.
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” John Wooden
Google’s Birthday
It seems like just yesterday! Google celebrated September 7, 1998 (the day when the company was incorporated) as its birthday until 2005. In 2005 Google changed the date to September 27 to make it coincide with the announcement of the record number of pages that the search engine was indexing.
No matter. Google will serve cake this year with 17 candles! That means that most of the college freshmen this year will have grown up with Google search as a normal part of their lives. Amazing.
Here are a few more “birthdays” that have occurred in the past 17 years.
2001 Oct 23 – iPod
2004 Feb 04 – Facebook
2004 Apr 01 – Gmail
2005 Feb 14 – YouTube
2008 Spt 25 – DuckDuckGo
2009 Mar 29 – Twitter
2010 Apr 03 – iPad
2014 Mar 20 – Ello
What a prolific time period in which to be raised! I can’t imagine what is coming next. Cortana or Siri or some equivalent will probably get connected to our cars and then our robots! But if I can think of it, then that won’t be it! Something really new must be just around the corner…
Save Audio from Youtube
YouTube has been around a long time. I am just now learning how to grab the audio part of a YouTube video so I can play it on my computer or iPad. I do not profess to be smart about this subject, but for my own memories sake, and because I like to share, here is what I have found.
There are 2 websites that will grab the sound file for you and then download it to your computer as a MP3 file. They are Peggo and TheYouMP3. Both work fine, are free, and do not require registration. I am not an expert on MP3 files, and so cannot tell if one site is producing higher quality than the other. But I have opted to use Peggo.
You do not need to install any software. Simply open both YouTube and the other site, say Peggo. Find the video you like, copy it’s URL and then paste it into Peggo. Then click the Download button, and in a few seconds you will have the MP3 file. Simple stuff.
Tuebl
For memory sake:
In 2013, Amazon bought and then killed the free IOS app book reader called STANZA. If you had installed it before it disappeared, you can still use it. I am on IOS 8.4 and it still works fine. If you have it, be sure to use the catalog called TUEBL.
To add the Tuebl library to Stanza do this:
Open Stanza
Click on Get Books in lower toolbar.
Click the + symbol in the upper right corner or Edit if you already have a catalog.
Click “add a book source”.
Name ==> Tuebl
URL ==> http://tuebl.ca/search
Make sure OPDS Catalog is highlighted
Click Save and then Click Done
To get a book from Tuebl, click on it, then work your way through the catalog.
Perhaps the Tuebl catalog can be added to other book readers.
I’m using currently iBooks, Kindle, Play Books and Stanza.
And if you just want to see the Tuebl book library without Stanza, go to http://tuebl.ca
Ps. Tuebl stands for The Ultimate EBook Library 🙂
Eat your fruit!
Afternoon snack?
Raise the Thermostat
I have always liked room temperature to be higher than most everyone else. So I was pleased to see this new research announced in “Nature Climate Change” 3 Aug 2015.
In the 1960s, Danish scientist Povl Ole Fanger developed a model to predict a comfortable indoor office temperature for an average worker. Fanger used heat balance equations and studies about skin temperature to define ‘comfort’. He concluded that an office at 22°C (71.6°F) would be the most comfortable.
The problem with his method is the average office worker in the 1960s was a middle-aged man who wore a cotton long-sleeve shirt, a fitted vest accompanied by a blazer, long pants, topped off with socks and loafers.
The results of the new study included women and showed that, in addition to preferring warmer temperatures, women are often smaller, have more body fat than men and also tend to have slower metabolic rates. So, the 1960s standard office temperature is too cold for most women – not surprisingly – who prefer an office temperature of about 25°C (77°F).
They also noted that “gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort” would set building temperatures at slightly warmer levels, conserve energy and even help combat global warming.
So, to help save the planet, turn the thermostat up a bit!
Write me a movie 3
My wife reads a lot. She is currently on a “time travel” kick. I like to have her tell me about these stories since I too get a kick out of the potential paradoxes involved. I used to read lots of sci-fi but in those days, there was lots of politics involved too.
I have decided that the idea of meeting oneself in the past or future is not far-fetched after all. The accepted opinions say that you can’t have the same thing in the same place at the same time. But hey, that is a religious view, a philosophical opinion. Physically, our cells are always dying and being replaced by new ones. Therefore, at the cellular level, this current me only exists at one time. If a new me shows up, popping in from the future, we could converse quite easily, as person to person. If you think you have a soul that is “the real me” that exists as-is throughout time and beyond time, and that is the cause of the paradox — well suffice it to say that I don’t agree with you. The soul isn’t governed by the laws of physics.
Continue reading
First Peoples
PBS is starting a new series about prehistoric humans that will be starting June 24. I have already setup our DVR to record it. Around here it is on KQED-TV.
“See how the mixing of prehistoric human genes led the way for our species to survive and thrive around the globe. Archaeology, genetics and anthropology cast new light on 200,000 years of history, detailing how early humans became dominant.”
See more about it by clicking here
Write me a movie 2
Sometimes I dream up ideas for stories, books or movies. Generally they get told to the unlucky grand-kids who happened to be riding in the back seat on a long drive. No one ever writes them down, of course, and they get forgotten. I’ve never had the patience to actually write a full blown story. In this case, I wrote this on my iPad just a few months ago. Maybe someone else can “make me a movie”.
Marsha was skeptical when she first had the idea about the power of “imagination people”. In her Comparative Literature class in University, they had talked about how the ideas in science fiction books of the past seemed to be coming true in the present. But that was just discussion for grades sake, trying to see how many author’s names students could remember.
Continue reading
Salinas High Marching Band at the 2015 Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco
Check it out! Here is a link to a YouTube movie of the Salinas High School Cowboy Band in the Chinese New Years Parade in San Francisco on March 7, 2015. Watch carefully during the beginning, one of the Color Guard folks leading the band is my granddaughter! Hoorah…
you can save the link to the above video by copying this URL: “youtu.be/XjhpfGzkN78”
Leonard Nimoy (Mr Spock) Died Today
Actor Leonard Simon Nimoy, best known for his role as Mr. Spock, the logical half-Vulcan, half-human in the original Star Trek series and several movies, has died today at his home in Los Angeles of COPD.
born 26 Mar 1931 Boston, MA
died 27 Feb 2015 Bel Air, CA
A quick search on the web will find lots of links for him. Here are two: at Science Friday and at NPR
Jims BBS 