Army Reserve Duty

Part 1 - May 12
I'm leaving for some infantry training as part of my upcoming army reserve duty.
Me and my dear old worn out army bag (in the picture) are getting ready.
See you.

Part 2 - May 15
I'm back for a short vacation. It seems like this round is going to be safe for me, since this time, instead of patrolling our assigned sector, I'm supposed to assume a role in our Command and Control Center.

~~~
No p.s. for you! Come back one month!

Fooling the IRS - Benford’s Law

Sorry for once again posting about a math related issue. I’ll try some biology or physics next time…

Let’s say you think the IRS shouldn’t take so much of your hard earned money. So, you sit around and just fake the numbers. Do you think you can get away with it?

Benford's Law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many real-life sources of data, the leading digit is 1 almost one third of the time, and larger numbers occur as the leading digit with less and less frequency as they grow in magnitude, to the point that 9 is the first digit less than one time in twenty. This is the distribution of the numbers according to their first digit:
1 - 30.1%
2 - 17.6%
3 - 12.5%
4 - 9.7%
5 - 7.9%
6 - 6.7%
7 - 5.8%
8 - 5.1%
9 - 4.6%
This is based on the observation that real-world measurements are generally distributed logarithmically, thus the logarithm of a set of real-world measurements is generally distributed uniformly. This counter-intuitive result applies to a wide variety of figures, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, physical and mathematical constants, and processes described by power laws (which are very common in nature). The result holds regardless of the base in which the numbers are expressed, although the exact proportions of course change.

Real numbers on tax reports follow this pattern, but since this law is very counter-intuitive, people that fake the numbers almost always create different patterns. Many people will create an almost even distribution of first digits, or make up more numbers that start with the digits 4, 5, or 6. These patterns can be easily tested, and the fake report will immediately pop up, suggesting tax fraud. So what do you do when you wanna fake it? You Benford it!

~~~
p.s. They think they proved the Four Color Theorem; I say let them try it on the Middle East.

Fooling Your Math Teacher - Heads or Tails

Let’s say my hypothetical math teacher wanted to show me that the odds for heads or tails (on a fair coin toss) are about 50:50, so he gave me homework to toss a coin for 100 times and write down the result.
Well, I certainly have better things to do than tossing a coin 100 times just to demonstrate a simple probability of 50:50, so I decide to fake it.
I sit around and just randomly write “H” and “T”, making sure that the number of heads is roughly close to the number of tails and hand over my assignment:
H TT H T HH TT HH TT H TTT H T H TT H TT H T HH T HH T HH T H T H TTT H T H TT HHH T HH TT H TT HH TT H T H T H TT HH TT H TTT H TTT H T HH T H T H T HH T H TTT H T H
It may look OK, but my hypothetical math teacher should immediately suspect I didn’t really toss a coin. How can he tell? Well, I ran a simple computer program simulating 1 million sets of a 100 fair coin tosses, and this is what I got:
~54% of the results contained at least 7 consecutive H's or T's.
~81% of the results contained at least 6 consecutive H's or T's.
~99% of the results contained at least 5 consecutive H's or T's.
~99.97% of the results contained at least 4 consecutive H's or T's.
All of them contained at least 3 consecutive H's or T's.
Looking at my fake result, you'll notice that the maximum number of consecutive heads or tails is only three. Although the math teacher cannot be 100% sure, the chances for this result being a fake is 99.97% - I should have added longer consecutive series of H’s or T’s.
Some more interesting coin tossing related issues, and the exact probabilities for having consecutive heads or tails can be found here (thank you Michael Hovdan from the Reservoir Engineering Blog and Tamera Daun from Pentad for the link).

BTW, the image is of an ancient Hebrew coin from Judea, coined at 68 AD during The First Jewish-Roman War. These are ancient letters on the coin, but I can read them: That’s “SHEKEL ISRAEL” (Israeli Shekel) and “SHIN-GIMMEL” (marks the third year of the war) on the left, and “YERUSHALAYIM HAKDOSHA” (holy Jerusalem) on the right.

~~~
p.s. Cannibals don’t like brave men; they prefer chickens.

BlogCatalog T-Shirt Slogans

BlogCatalog is probably one of the best bloggers’ online hangouts nowadays. It’s a blog directory, a help forum for bloggers, a general discussion board, a social network, and much more - all rolled into one site.

Anyway, the other day, the BlogCatalog admins were looking for a slogan for a new BlogCatalog T-Shirt. First I thought about paraphrasing Julius Caesar, so I came up with “I came, I saw, I bookmarked…” – but it’s wasn’t that creative. So I thought, why not motivate new users to sign up? “AdSense money not enough for alcohol and hookers? Post your blog here!” - but I wasn’t sure they approve of using curse words like AdSense. Then I thought about the fact that I visit this site on a daily basis, so I offered “Destroying offline social lives since 2004…” – but that was too sad and pretty lame. I almost retreated to using an old one of mine like “The servers cost a fortune, the least you can do is check out the site…”, but as I said, it’s an old one. It’s a social network too, I said to myself, and came up with “Meeting your friends as in MySpace, minus the epileptic seizure effect…” – but I wasn’t sure it’s wise to aggravate a site in that magnitude. Then, I thought, why hold back? “Where even the greatest blogging legends are reduced to a 50x50 avatars…”, “It's not a smudge on your shirt, it's our logo”, “Please sign up; our admin is sick of creating fictive accounts…”, “We paid $9.29 for the domain; a few more years and we might even return the initial investment…”, “In this community, it's the members' intellect returning the 404 errors…”

I wonder which one they’ll pick.

~~~
p.s. Was that 1000 bytes in a kilobyte, or 1024 meters in a kilometer?

To Infinity... and Beyond!

The Eternity II puzzle is an edge-matching puzzle invented by Christopher Monckton, and is marketed and copyrighted by TOMY UK Ltd. The prize for the first person who submits a correct solution is $2,000,000.

This puzzle involves placing 256 square pieces into a 16x16 grid, constrained by the requirement to match adjacent edges (see picture). Each puzzle piece has its edges on one side marked with different shape/color combinations, each of which must match precisely with its neighboring side on each adjacent piece when the puzzle is complete. Each piece can be used in 4 orientations, there are 22 shapes/colors (not including the gray edges), and there is a starter piece which must be placed near the center of the board.

The number of possible configurations for the Eternity II puzzle is 1 × 4! × 56! × 195! × 4^195 = ~10^557, much larger than the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe, so even a super-computer running for many years will not find the solution to this problem. OK, so as you probably understand, there is no way to solve this puzzle completely and get those 2 million US dollars, but about a week ago I heard they offer a smaller prize to people who get close. I don’t believe anyone can even get close to the complete solution, but being a smart a*s, I just had to see how close a semi-sophisticated brute-force algorithm can get me, so I went and bought this puzzle. Naturally, I wrote a simple program (see my logo) and ran it on my PC last night. After a few hours of running, and a few millions of checked arrangements, the best score produced by my program was 236 out of the 256 tiles, that's ~92.2%. It may seem like much, but it isn’t.

Stay tuned… :p

~~~
p.s. Anybody else disturbed by the fact that Superman reversed time by rotating the Earth clockwise?

A Riddle in the Dark

Four friends are trying to cross a dark tunnel with a single torch.

Aragorn can cross the tunnel in 1 minute.

Legolas can cross the tunnel in 2 minutes.

Gimli can cross the tunnel in 4 minutes.

Frodo can cross the tunnel in 5 minutes.

The tunnel is very narrow, so they can walk alone or in pairs, but no more than two at the same time.

If two friends are walking together, they walk at the speed of the slower one.

They must use the torch while walking through the dark tunnel.

The torch will be extinguished in 12 minutes.

Can they make it? How?

~~~
p.s. I've found a marvelous proof of the Goldbach Conjecture which this p.s. is too short to contain.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

I came across this weird test. It displays a spinning silhouette of a dancer, and asks you to decide which way the dancer is spinning.
It claims that if you see it rotates clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain, meaning these would describe you: emotional, uses feeling, "big picture" oriented, imagination rules, symbols and images, present and future, philosophy & religion, can "get it" (i.e. meaning), believes, appreciates, spatial perception, knows object function, fantasy based, presents possibilities, impetuous and risk taking.
It claims that if you see it rotates counterclockwise, then you use more of the left side of the brain, meaning these would describe you: rational, uses logic, detail oriented, facts rule, words and language, present and past, math and science, can comprehend, knowing, acknowledges, order/pattern perception, knows object name, reality based, forms strategies, practical and safe.

First, I have to say this whole right-brain functions vs. left-brain functions is a very gross generalization, and there are many scientific studies showing this distinction is mostly incorrect, since complex mental activity requires cooperation from both hemispheres.

Now about this specific test… If you look away for a few seconds, and then look back at the image, sometimes, it changes direction. What just happened? Did my whole character change in a few seconds, or is this test stupid? This is my theory: It’s just a shadow. At any given time you can’t really tell if the dancer is facing forward or backward since there are no features; her raised leg is simply going from side to side and the rotation is just an illusion created by our mind. If on the split second your eyes first saw the image, the dancer’s raised leg was going to the left, you would think that she was spinning clockwise since we are used to people looking at us; if it was moving to the right, you would think that she was rotating counterclockwise. From that point, your brain had already decided which direction the dancer was spinning and it would be very difficult to change your mind without looking away. It is NOT about whether you are emotional or rational, but the exact split second your eyes first saw the image.

I think that if after reading this post, you still believe this test can determine if you have a right-brain or a left-brain, then you probably have a no-brain.

~~~
p.s. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the Y10K bug.

Happy 1st Birthday!!! This Blog is One Year Old!!!

Today, the 25th of January 2008, is Urikalization’s first birthday!!!

The past year has been a great experience for me. After a few years of ignoring the phenomena, I finally joined the Blogosphere. It was a great fun, even when it kept me up till 3:30AM when I need to wake up at 7:30AM.

During this year, I created 40 posts, that’s an average of about 1 new post every 9 days. I admit this rate of publishing is quite low relative to other blogs out there, but the truth is that many of my posts require me to do some research before I write them. Sometimes, while researching, I’m getting tossed to another subject, and completely forget about the original subject I was going to post about; sometimes, I simply don’t have the time or mood, and sometimes I’m just being lazy.

A few thousand visitors from all over the globe dropped by this blog, resulting in a total of 14,000 visits. Some of them even stayed for a while, read the posts, and left some very interesting comments. Got myself some great reviews, some surprising awards, and best of all - some new cool friends.

It’s hard for me to define Urikalization, but I think I like what it turned out to be.

~~~
p.s. Why build a space shuttle when we can simply fold paper 42 times?

Failing for 130,000 Days Doesn’t Mean You Shouldn’t Try Again

A few decades ago, when I was in school, our math teacher gave us an assignment for homework. After a few days, the teacher came clean. This was what we had to prove:
It is impossible to separate any power higher than the second into two like powers.
You might recognize it in this form:
If an integer n is greater than 2, then the equation
aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ
has no solutions in non-zero integers a, b, and c.

In 1637, Pierre de Fermat wrote on the margin of a famous math book he owned, "I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." This note eventually became known as Fermat's Last Theorem, probably the biggest most famous mathematical problem ever. It looks so simple and innocent, understandable even to kids, so it is only natural that all the mathematicians tried to prove this simple statement. They all tried. They all failed. For more than three and a half centuries, all the great mathematicians took a shot at this problem to no avail. It seemed like this problem was beyond human capabilities.

Then, one day out of the blue in 1993, an unknown mathematician named Andrew Wiles shocked the world. After working on the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture (the last huge impossible missing piece of the puzzle) alone and in secrecy for 7 years, he completed the proof using modular functions and elliptic curves. He achieved what was thought to be impossible for 358 years, in what is considered by many as the greatest most brilliant mathematical piece ever written. Later, a mistake was found in his proof, but he managed to fix it after another extremely frustrating year of failing. I’m skipping a lot of details, so I must recommend the fascinating book by Simon Singh.

So, the next time people tell you "Drop it, it’s too difficult", you can refer them to this.

~~~
p.s. Why fish don’t talk? ‘Cause they’re busy! (credit goes to my 3.5 year old son)

Sand and Steel - Field Artillery Training

I just came back from army reserve duty doing a few days of field artillery training. December is definitely not the best time of the year to hang around in the deserts of southern Israel.

Pros: the guys at artillery battalion 8157, the endless wind-sculptured untamed view, the undisturbed round rainbows, the unpolluted night sky, and the extra time to think.

Cons: missing the family, the extreme cold, the threatening weather, the dirt on your hands, the sand in your eyes, and the extra time to think.

My Hebrew is much better than my English (which I mostly got from watching episodes of MacGyver), but I think this came out ok:


~
The son of autumn starts to mumble, sending his ameba fingers through a cloak of mist, reaching for the open neck of the unsuspecting sun too busy melting away into the hundred shades of the foam of the sea.
A long metal snake sails through the vast sandy plane claiming its territory with a spray of gasoline; its camouflaged scales are moaning and clashing in a mythical fencing duel of thousand brave knights.
A frowning cloud roars an ice-cold command, and its army of drops silently forages the city, transforming stone into marble, asphalt into granite, a shattered street lamp into a treasure of diamonds.
The steel serpent raises its heads to the rhythm of drums of adrenalin rush, praying to the lord of manmade thunder, spitting gifts from Prometheus across the pastel horizon, carving coffee trails in the pale porcelain of the Milky Way.
Motion-blurred figures sniff the wet ground though cracks in the pavements, howling to the ivory moon through arrow slits in their Babel glass castles.
Skyscrapers piercing through heaven; angels bleeding tears into the winds of the west; chain tracks as far as the eye can see.
Rust in peace ol’ tank; scrub the gray ol’ man; let us have our rainbows again.

~~~
p.s. Isn't Natalie Portman the ultimate proof to Intelligent Design?

A Heretic in the Temple of Saint Albert

I admit it. I’m a huge fan of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (the parts that I can understand). These ideas from the beginning of the 20th century are so beautiful! Mass-energy equivalence, the speed of light, reference frames, length contraction, time dilation, gravitational space-time curvature, relativity of simultaneity, the Twin Paradox etc. How can you not fall in love with Albert’s mind-blowing elegant ideas?

- Heretic: "But for the last decades we keep on failing merging The Theory of Relativity with Quantum Physics to one unified set of equations. The physicists’ Holy Grail, ‘Quantum Gravity’, ‘The Grand Unified Theory’, ‘The Theory of Everything’ still eludes us."

- Priest: "Damn! Hmmm… ok, got an idea! Let’s just use one set of equations to describe the very large like cars, planes, stars, galaxies, and a different set to describe the very small like sub-atomic particles. Don’t give me that look, I know what you’re thinking, but surely Einstein can’t possibly be wrong, right?"

- Heretic: "But the mass of the observable matter in the universe is too small to explain its structure and behavior."

- Priest: "Damn! Hmmm… ok, got an idea! Let’s just invent something with some mysterious name like… hmmm… dark matter or something, a hypothetical matter of unknown composition that does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be observed directly. Don’t give me that look again, you know Einstein can’t be wrong."

- Heretic: "But the universe is accelerating outwards instead of slowing down like you would expect because of the gravity pull between the galaxies."

- Priest: "Damn! Hmmm… ok, got an idea! Let’s just invent something with some mysterious name like… hmmm… dark energy or something, a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe. Enough with the look already! I’m telling you, Einstein can’t be wrong!"

- Heretic: "Should we stop searching for awkward workarounds for all the things that don’t conform to The Theory of Relativity, just because we don’t want to believe Saint Albert could have been wrong? Should we start questioning Einstein? Should we admit we still don’t understand simple gravity?"

- Priest: "Pray 'E=MC2' three times a day and you'll be forgiven for your heresy."

~~~
p.s. Violins have 4 strings, guitars have 6. Damn! Could have been a musician if I didn’t have 5 fingers.

The Elegant Path to a Higher Google PageRank

* Rob a bank and leave a picture of you with your blog URL written on your forehead. You'll see, the gullible policemen will handle all your advertising for free.

* Go to the zoo and exchange links with caged animals; preferably, exotic ones (just don’t trust bunnies, they’ll probably screw you).

* For your site about necrophilia use a domain name like games-for-kids dot com. Some parents might be amused… ok… maybe just semi-amused… Important: if they’re coming for you with torches – RUN!

* Write all your posts in Eskimo language, it will look like an intelligent blog. Only you will know it’s actually just a list of their 23,719 words for ‘snow’.

* Use a flickering shiny shocking green GIF image as your background; this way your visitors will be forced to stay on your site for a few minutes - at least until their epileptic seizure is over.

* Write your URL all over your naked body; then take a shower, you pervert! And don’t forget to scrub!

* Add this site to your blogroll. It won't help you get a higher Google PageRank, but it might impress the chicks.

~~~
p.s. If someone dies from a broken heart, is it responsible to transplant his pump?

One Small Step for Genotype, One Giant Leap for Phenotype

The DNA difference between humans and chimpanzees is very small, currently estimated somewhere around 1%-4%, depending on which source you read, and what exact pattern matching algorithm you use for the comparison. This small evolutionary step in the DNA code of our ancestors was obviously enough to build a whole different brain. To paraphrase on Neil Armstrong: one small step for genotype, one giant leap for phenotype.

Last week, following a discussion thread on BlogCatalog’s Popular Science group, I began to wonder what is the most significant human feature that kept monkeys on trees and launched us to the moon. Sure, we have a bigger brain and there are a lot of differences, but what is the single most important human feature, the one that makes the biggest difference, the one that helps us build cars, airplanes and spaceships, while apes’ biggest achievement so far is using a stick to fish termites?

Maybe human native tribes living today can help me here. Although they have the same DNA and the same potential as modern societies, many of these tribes are still living in the Stone Age, with zero chance of escaping Earth’s gravity anytime soon. So it must be some unused cultural-encouraged potential they’re missing…

hmmm… I wonder... maybe it’s writing? Both monkeys and native tribes, failed to develop written language. Writing enables accumulative and effective knowledge transfer between people and across generations. It also enables exceeding short-term 7 elements memory capability, making complex mathematical calculations possible.

What do you think?

~~~
p.s. Give my two kids half a donut each and they’ll probably fight over who got the hole.

Is Programming an Art Form?

Recently, I’ve found out that almost all programmers truly believe that writing code the right way, can be considered an art form. This is my minority report…

Regarding intention… Although art is a term almost impossible to define, Wikipedia claims that art is a product of human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind, by transmitting emotions or ideas. I never wrote a class to stimulate the human senses, and I never wrote a method with transmitting emotions in mind; you write code simply to make something work, preferably in such a way that will ease testing, debugging, maintenance and future enhancements.

Regarding creativity… It is true that for any given software problem, there are many possible implementation solutions; all have pros and cons; some are more “creative” than others. But… in my book, writing code “the right way” means striving for the most simple solution (KISS principal), following known design patterns (GoF, Fowler, et cetera), standard practices (MS, W3C, et cetera), and sticking to a strict naming convention (MS, Sun, et cetera). Come to think of that, the more creative you’ll be, the more depressed I’ll be when handling your code. So, in my book, the best programmer is actually the less creative guy on the team; the one that copies as much as he can from books written by others. Not exactly your typical artist profile…

Programming sure requires intelligence, knowledge, skill, good judgment, customer awareness, diligence and patience, but I don’t see that as an art form. Besides, don’t you feel that programming is too much a left brain thing?

~~~
p.s. I'm still waiting for Apple’s iWife with a big red mute button as its main feature.

The Day the Sky will Fall - Colliding with the Andromeda Galaxy

Meet Andromeda, a beautiful spiral galaxy (you must see this) bigger than our own, approximately 2 million light-years away. Andromeda is blue-shifted, meaning it’s heading our way, however this does not mean it will definitely collide with our Milky Way, since the galaxy's tangential velocity is unknown. Galaxies colliding is a frequent event within galaxy groups, and there are signs that Andromeda has already swallowed several other galaxies in the past. In Greek mythology, the young princess Andromeda was pretty helpless, needed to be saved by Perseus from the sea monster sent by Posiedon to the coast of Ethiopia. In real life, it seems like this girl can take care of herself pretty well...

If we are on a collision course, this neighbor heading our way at a relative speed of about 140 kilometres per second, should pay us a visit in about 3 billion years, even before our sun will start turning into a red giant, boiling our oceans and evaporating our atmosphere in the process. In the aftermath, it is predicted that both galaxies will change beyond recognition, merging to form a new giant elliptical galaxy – sometimes being referred to as the “Milkomeda” galaxy. And what will become of our solar system in the case of a collision? The chances of a physical impact between stars, planets or moons are very low, since the majority of galaxy space is actually empty, but the enormous gravity pull will take its toll for sure. One option is that our solar system will be thrown away to a higher orbit around the new center of Milkomeda. Another option is that we will be totally ejected from the galaxy to drift alone through the vast empty inter-galactic space. Another cheerful option is that we will be thrown toward the core, where a super-massive black hole lurking behind its event horizon will devour us.

No matter how it will end, it will be a spectacular sight to watch. And you thought our current night sky is beautiful… Just think of how it will look in 3 billion years, when Andromeda will stretch its spiral arms to fill the entire black canvas above...

~~~
p.s. If I’ll drop two balls of different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, will I be sued for polluting?

Beating Asafa - Zeno's Paradox

Meet Asafa Powell, the 100m current record holder. If chased by a lion, he’ll make the first 100 meters in 9.77 seconds (so find another partner for that dangerous backpacking trip to Africa...)

Meet Maya, my 1.5 year old daughter (I have another 3.5 year old son named Yoav). When she runs, her feet twist inwards and her upper body leans forward in a scary angle, so an observer will probably define her running as a controlled crash.

Now here’s a scenario for you: a race between Asafa and my kid.
Let’s use round numbers.
Powell runs ten meters a second (I hope he won’t accidentally browse to this blog ‘cause he’ll probably kill me for that). My kid controlled-crashes one meter a second. Since my kid is in kindergarten, and Asafa is world famous, he foolishly agrees to grant her a ten meters lead. Ready. Set. Go!

1 second after the gun fires, the amused runner will close the lead, but my kid will manage to advance 1 meter in that time.
Current status: My 1.5 year old kid still has a 1 meter lead over the current record holder.

100 milliseconds later, the smiling Jamaican will pass this meter, but my daughter will manage to advance another 10 centimeters in that time.
Current status: My 1.5 year old kid still has a 10 centimeters lead over the current record holder.

10 milliseconds later, the optimistic sprinter will pass this small distance, but my 1.5 year old will manage to advance another 1 centimeter in that time.
Current status: My 1.5 year old kid still has a 1 centimeter lead over the current record holder.

1 millisecond later, the frustrated athlete will pass this tiny distance, but my cute underdog will manage to advance another 1 millimeter in that time.
Current status: My 1.5 year old kid still has a 1 millimeter lead over the current record holder.

Etc…

Can Asafa Powell ever catch up, or was he acting foolishly by agreeing to grant my daughter this lead?

~~~
p.s. Engraved on my tombstone: "I hope it’s not just 42…"

Forever Young

This is an Ankh - the ancient Egyptian symbol of life. They believed in immortality and the afterworld that was filled with comfort and happiness, and were probably anxious to get there. I don’t. This is why I write this post.

Life expectancy is constantly rising; the world average is almost at 70, and in some modern countries it is already above 80. Still, a person living for more than 90 years is very impressive, and reaching 100 is extremely rare. What would it take to break this 2 digits barrier? What would it take to break the 3 digits barrier?

Surely, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and many other problems need to be addressed, but assuming all these are solved, can we live to be 500 years old?

First, we’ll probably need to address the “end replication problem”. The Telomere is a region at the end of each chromosome (in humans it’s a repetitive sequence of TTAGGG). Because of some complex mechanical reasons, every time the DNA is replicated, the Telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes are shortened, until the point where there are no more Telomeres left, and the DNA is no longer able to replicate itself. Surely, this limits our life span, since the length of the Telomeres only decreases from the moment we are just a single cell within our mother’s body. Note that cancer cells can overcome this problem to create cells that can replicate indefinitely, but we need to solve this problem on healthy cells as well.

Assuming we’ll solve the Telomeres issue, DNA damage seems like the next big problem to overcome. Our DNA is constantly getting corrupted by random mutations; additions, omissions and dislocations of DNA sections; viruses inserting their DNA sequence into ours; attacks by free radicals; cancerous materials like those found in polluted air and cigarette smoke; electro-magnetic radiation in sunlight (UV radiation), X-ray and radioactive materials. Your perfect DNA is accumulating damage from day one, eventually resulting in problems like cancer.

We can try and fix the damaged DNA by applying sophisticated state-of-the-art gene therapy technologies, but I’m afraid we’re many decades (centuries?) away from a total understanding of our DNA, and no one really knows what will happen if we’ll start messing with it. It seems like our best chance lies in laboratories researching stem cells (cells that retain the ability to renew themselves through cell division and can differentiate into a diverse range of specialized cell types). I’m talking about rejuvenating the whole body (mind included). A few years ago, I saw a documentary about trying to treat Parkinson’s disease by injecting stem cells into a patient’s brain. It only helped to a small degree and for a very short period of time, but still it was very impressive. Stem cells might be the Holy Grail in our quest for partial immortality.

It will take a few decades, but the 2 and later 3 digits barriers will be broken - I promise. There is a common Hebrew greeting announced on every birthday that goes something like “may you live 120 years”. I foresee a day when this blessing will turn into a curse.

~~~
p.s. Money’s green - should they test for color blindness when hiring for NYSE?

Sharing the Burden

The time has come again.
Exactly one year has passed since the war in Lebanon, and I’ve been called again to serve in my army reserve unit.

General location: Israel’s eastern border.
Specific location: unknown.
General mission: secure the border.
Specific activities: unknown.
General time frame: one month.
Vacation policy: unknown.

Today in Israel, although it’s supposed to be compulsory, only about half of Israel’s citizens choose to serve in the army, and only a small portion of them serve in combat units which actually share the heavy (and dangerous) burden of securing our country 24x7. It comes down to a choice of conscience between your personal interests and the good of the country - a tough choice indeed. Never mind that it could be dangerous, leaving my family for such a long period of time is almost unbearable.
I’m leaving on Monday.
Wish me luck.

~~~
* The usual semi-amusing p.s. is omitted due to "SHVEEZOOT" (Hebrew slang for an army related depression).

Where Is My Mind?

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to demonstrate thought. A human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test.

The way I see it, there are two ways to build a computer that can pass this test. The first way is to understand each one of the brain’s functionality and implement it by software. This means we must fully comprehend each aspect of human thinking in order to copy these successfully and fool the judge that the computer he’s talking to is actually a human. I don’t know why, but it seems all the A.I. scientists are trying to go this way when it’s clear we will need a full understanding of human psychology, logic, emotions, humor, etc. Seems like passing a Turing test this way is centuries away.

The other method is to focus on how a single brain cell works and interact with other brain cells, and then simply scan a human brain in great detail and recreate the whole neural network in software code. This seems to me like a much easier task since we don’t actually have to understand how humans think. We already understand pretty well how a neuron works and the mechanism behind brain cells interaction, so I think it can be achieved in a few decades. One problem with this method is that it may be necessary to slice the brain to small pieces while scanning, meaning the physical scanned human will be killed, but I’m sure there will be plenty of volunteers. Think about it, moving from a carbon-based existence to a silicon-based implementation will make you almost immortal; no aging, no diseases, no car accidents, and you will always be able to backup your brain somewhere and restore it if needed. In addition to that you will have many extra bonuses like almost infinite number of virtual worlds to visit, lightning-fast thinking and more. I believe in a few decades, many people, myself included, will take this leap into virtual-only existence on a hard disk and live in a matrix-like world - probably on some Google hosting server :-)

While uploading the human society, will we take the opportunity to omit old “negative” human behaviors like aggression that was once necessary for human carbon-based biological evolution on Earth, in order to create a “better” human civilization? I don’t think a scanned human will agree that a good-behavior-only filter will be applied to his personality while uploading it because it won’t be exactly him anymore, so it seems like our new society will be just as good (and bad) as the current one. So what will we do with all this virtual aggression? How about nuking you, the original human society… The existence of a physical civilization outside of our Google server will jeopardize us virtual inhabitants (somebody can push the “off” button on the server), so it’s only a matter of time when we (the virtual people) will try and destroy you (the physical people). Since us virtual humans will control every computer in the world and will be able to make decisions and take actions in a matter of nanoseconds – I’m afraid that if you won’t agree to give up your physical existence and join us - you’re doomed. Sorry, get uploaded or be terminated. Resistance is futile.

~~~
p.s. Can the second guy on the moon gloat over the third tenor?

Cap’n, Me Cap’n! Yer Lads Be Jumpin’ Ship!

Assaf Koren a.k.a. “Suffik”, left my company this week to pursue his dream, founding a new startup named WebSpeakup. Apart from being a very good off-work friend of mine and a personal loss, it’s been the third ultra-talented guy leaving us in the past few weeks. “Boogie”, “Suffik” and “Shorty”, have all jumped overboard to their own startup boats, leaving the rest of us dangling on the deck of our old leaking tub.

It’s only a few hours ago that I finally realized why the big boss a.k.a. “Mr. close-talker” is unable to keep the crew together. It’s the language! It seems like no matter how hard you try, you just can’t inspire people talking in Hebrew. English is not bad. Old pirate English is even better. I’m sure Bartholomew Roberts didn’t have this kind of problems…

So boss, instead of just complaining like all the other employees, I’ve created this version of a motivation speech you can use. Just before you start, note that this speech was intended to be read out loud with an exaggerated accent, rolling R’s and a generally rough pirate-like voice damaged by long years of salty air and spicy rum…

Here goes…



~
Ahoy mateys!
Arrr, in th' scuttlebutt 't be whispered some lads among us be havin' swallowed th' anchor t' become lubbers fo’ a piece o’ eight! Garr, as yer cap’n 't shiver me timbers! Fair winds ye bilge rats, ye scurvy dogs! Th’ cat o’ nine tails shall flog ye, ye scuppered swabs! Avast me hearties, do nay follo'! Ye ol’ sea dogs, yer daddles, yer gulleys, yer barkers be raised! Oi, let th’ Jolly Roger be hoisted! Damn yer eyes, aye, t’ Fiddler’s Green we be sailin’!
~

Now try that in Hebrew…

~~~
p.s. If i had a dollar for every time someone gave me his two cents…

16,777,215 Ways to Be Original

Do you remember why you started blogging in the first place? Try to remember… Way back, before you found out all you do is recycle content from other websites, before you scrolled down and discovered your whole blog is embedded with stupid movies from YouTube, before the HitCounter rush, before the FeedBurner hysteria, before the Analytics reports, before the AdSense clicks… It was about making your unique mark, wasn't it? It was about saying something that hasn’t been said yet; it was about launching your jagged observations to the cyberspace and the hell with the consequences; it was about changing the world one bit at a time, remember? Why don’t you stop recycling and start creating some original content? After all, Web2.0 is all about user created content, right? Yes, it’s hard. Copy-and-paste two-minutes-per-post is a habit easy to acquire and it won’t go down without a fight. Why don’t you start with something simple, like choosing a new background color for your blog? Yes, I know white is the new trend, but don’t you think it’s time for you to replace that ultra-clean over-dignified hyper-boring white background with something a little more original? You’ve got 24 bits of RGB at your disposal, that’s 16,777,215 colors other than white for you to choose from. Come one, take a risk! Be bold! Make it shocking-pink! Make it slimy-green! Enough with all these pale web pages! Light up those pixels! First step - paint the web; next step – change the world!

~~~
p.s. I predict one day Second Life’s avatars will sell their human owners on Second eBay!

Counting Crows, Hunting Bugs - Hempel's Paradox

A new version of our product is just around the corner. We’ve just passed the code-freeze date, meaning no more writing code. The plan is to spend the next few weeks hunting down all those elusive bugs lurking viciously beneath the unsuspecting user interface. The rigorous checking and rechecking of all the features will probably prove to be a very boring task, so I came up with this alternative idea straight to the welcoming arms of escapism.

The Hempel's paradox is one example of a situation where inductive logic violates intuition. Let’s examine the hypothesis that all ravens are black. I must admit I’ve seen some gray crows in Israel, but I’m ready to ignore that and proceed with this example the Hempel’s way. While walking around in the world, every black raven observed should increase your belief in this hypothesis. No surprise there, but… this statement is equivalent, in logical terms, to the statement that all non-black things are non-ravens, so as it turns out, a red apple observed should also increase your belief in the hypothesis that all ravens are black. If you could see all the non-black things in the universe and ensure none of them is a crow, you could indeed conclude that the hypothesis is true. Since the number of non-black things is far, far larger than the number of crows, observing one more non-black non-raven thing can only make a very small difference to your degree of belief in the hypothesis compared to the difference made by observing one more black crow, but still, a red apple really does strengthen the hypothesis that all ravens are black.

With Hempel at my side I plan to call my new boss and inform her I’m staying home next week. She will probably expect me to validate ‘Our product contains no bugs’, but my strategy is to convince her I’ll check the equivalent ‘If there’s a software bug it’s not in our product’. I hope she’ll authorize this so I’ll be able to start the bug hunting on Sunday morning. I plan to begin by rigorously checking StarCraft. Wish me luck.

~~~
p.s. My husband was the first human on Mars and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

Round Shaped Structures for a Square Minded Culture

A few years ago, an architecture student told me it’s very frustrating to finish university and get flushed to the real world with all those innovative ideas, only to be faced with the harsh reality and discover people insist on living in simple rectangle shaped houses with boring square rooms. A few years after replying him with “it’s only natural” I want to recall my statement. Snowflakes and hive chambers are hexagons, dew drops and sea urchins are round, planets and moons dance in