Look Up To The Sky

Inspired by a conversation with my wife, here's a post that's a bit more thoughtful than usual (not a coincidence!):

In the face of failures, disappointment, resentment, despair, and worry why is our most instinctive reaction to look up to the endless boundaries of the skies? I don’t know, but I ask why? 

From my two and a half meager decades on Earth I gather that people fear the unknown, but they are also able to find comfort in it. 

We've all had our moments, the ups and downs, unexpected loss and unexpected bliss and though we don’t always understand why things happen we collectively agree that the answers must be somewhere out there in the depths of never ending space.

As you can tell this post is more about the human emotion rather than science (yes…guys have emotions too! I mean a little prodding is usually required...)

The hues of the skies appear differently to all of us. Perhaps those who lay on a bed of prickly grass seek to find an answer or a message from those unreachable to us. We may believe that the depths of space are home to a species greater than ours, one which has all the answers. Or maybe we gaze at the skies to find our own answers, each one of us, looking through a different lens.

It is mind blowing to realize that the sky is the one and only thing the world truly shares, without partitions or borders. Just one boundless atmosphere.  

I leave you with a view from my apartment window; an example of how the sky is always there

True Detective's connection to Sci Fi

What do True Detective (2014) and Snow Crash (1992) have in common?

Spoiler Note: As a supporter of spoiler free zones (workplaces, homes, elevators e.t.c) the following blog post does not contain any such expletives.
Read without fear.

A few weeks ago one of my (very critical) friends recommended True Detective to me. I was on the go so in jest I asked him to send me a link so I could read up on it later (how self-centered of me)....and instead of laughing at me... he actually emailed it to me. 

I had no choice. I had to watch.

A week later, a convinced but skeptical wife was sitting next to me ready to absorb what truly is an amazing show. But that's not what I wanted to talk about, rather it was a very interesting quote from Rust that piqued my interest:

Detective Rustin Cohle: "Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective at proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking."

Sounds like the usual epic dialogue that Rust submits us to but wait - did he just quote one of my favorite sci-fi / cyberpunk novels of all time? Snow Crash is a 1992 novel written by Neal Stephenson and I'll save all my gushing words of praise for the next audiobook review (I know you're all anxiously waiting for it). 

I think it's incredible that two very different genres and different mediums can intersect at a point like that and then likely never intersect again. True Detective is by all accounts a crime drama with a dark twist. Snow Crash is a major work of science fiction with a heavy dose of cyberpunk. And yet, for a moment they were suddenly talking about the exact same thing.

The concept is controversial but novel. The idea is that viruses are not only limited to the digital or biological world but can also exist in the mental world, and are transmitted by language. It's used in the literal sense in the book but in the real world it's used as an analogy, most famously by Richard Dawkins. 

So there - now you have something unique, interesting and even controversial to add to the next lunch time edition of "Co-workers who believe their favorite TV show is better"

Oh I almost forgot, you know what else Richard Dawkins is famous for? He coined the word Meme.

See what I did there?

True Detectives > Snow Crash > Linguistic Viruses > Richard Dawkins > Memes

The Moon.

Striking isn't it?

We've all seen it, the gigantic, ominous, orange orb floating near the horizon that we all crane our necks to catch as it hides behind tall buildings while we run about our busy nights. Many question how this is possible but few ever get a chance to answer that. 

In about 10 minutes or less I will try my best:


The Moon Illusion

So if you're curious about this you're in pretty good company - the first man to be puzzled by this was Aristotle way back in 400 B.C.

He figured it had something to do with the atmosphere considering you're seeing the moon through a lot more of the atmosphere when it's at the horizon:

Figure 3.14 - Artist's (my) depiction of possible atmospheric effects | NOT drawn to scale. At all.

He figured it was causing some sort of magnification but that wasn't true, although it did account for half of our illusion: the orange hue. Similar to the sun that looks like a delicious egg yolk close to the horizon the moon also looks more orange.


The Answers (maybe...)

Both objects
are exactly the
same size

There are two main explanations for the illusion.

The first is the Ponzo Illusion. Basically our brains through evolution over the years have developed several shortcuts. This one tells us that due to perspective, towards the horizon things are more far away (i.e as the lines converge).

Therefore, if two objects look exactly the same at the horizon and nearer to us, then the one near the horizon must be bigger. 



The second half of this explanation is the Ebbinghaus Illusion, more commonly known as "Wow, my car looks huge next to that smart car!". This one's pretty simple, when the moon is next to the horizon it's passing by other objects unlike when it's up in the sky, giving our brains a frame of reference and therefore enlarging the size of the Moon.


The p(i)lot twist!

Sounds pretty legitimate? I thought so too, UNTIL I read that the illusion is experienced even by airline pilots flying far enough that they don't have the same reference objects that we do.

What does this mean? Well it's just one of many unexplained scientific mysteries that continue to remind us of how complex and challenging nature can be.


Fun with Moon illusions

In closing I figured we all deserved a fun set of moon illusions rather than such difficult to understand and scary looking ones. My favorite is definitely the "moon painting".

The inaugural audiobook review

Everyone loves reviews, they're fun to read, help us decide what to spend our time on and they're a great way to form opinions. Most reviews are about movies, TV shows..and even books (yes! those heavy looking objects situated in rows on your shelves). 

But, as someone who has spent countless hours of precious time stuck on GTA highways in agonizing bumper-to-bumper traffic I would much rather review audiobooks. Yes, yes..I know what you're thinking but I tell you audiobooks saved my life. Seriously, during those difficult early morning commutes as a sleep-deprived new parent, music, talk radio, cold air, water on my face, food and prayer could not keep me awake. 

It was the wonderful voice of Jim Dale that kept my ears peeled to the car speakers. His wonderful narration of the Harry Potter series had me on the edge of my driver's seat, my clammy hands in a 9 and 3 position as Harry and his friends escaped from many dangerous situations and I bravely admit that I had my car-designated tissue box close at hand as Jim aptly narrated the more sorrowful moments of the book.

Rendezvous with Rama

So today I will briefly review the audiobook Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and performed by Peter Ganim. First off, the book itself was surprisingly wonderful. Expertly judging the book by it's title I assumed that it would somehow tie science fiction to Hinduism - I wasn't even close. It's an amazing blend of eerie atmosphere, suspense and action within a backdrop of a largely unknown entity. I won't ruin the book for you but Clarke does an astounding job of putting you right into the story and have you want to have your questions answered as soon as possible. I would be lying if I said I never sat in my parking spot at home/work for a few extra minutes because it was just too good to hit pause.

That brings me to the audio portion of it. Because it's a book that is constantly on the move; exploring, scouting and running away, it complimented driving very well. The narrator does an excellent job of emphasizing the most important parts of the tale. As for voices he uses a colorful mix of accents and tones to portray the various characters but deliberately avoids letting the characters become the focal point simply because of the voice acting (in contrast to Jim Dale's very colorful portrayal of Harry and Co). Peter builds the suspense extremely well, something not that easy to do in this book because of the of the mostly in-animate antagonist.

All in all this is an excellent audio book and I would highly recommend it. Don't be scared off by the genre of "hard science fiction", it's completely readable and no it is not like reading a science textbook!

I give this audioboook 4.5 head phones out of 5

Scale

Back in the 1990s, movies could be pretty hit and miss. Some (including myself) would even say that genres like sci-fi, fantasy and superhero have "grown up" in the current era. But that doesn't mean that they didn't have their moments of pure genius. Men In Black was a both a box office hit and a critical success. But for me the most memorable moment was this:

Wow. How novel an idea is that? Our entire universe...could actually be just a marble in the hands of some random alien. What this scene really did for me was help me realize how important and exciting the concept of scale was. 

The difference in size between a very tiny object (atom) and a very large one (the sun) is mind boggling. But what was even more interesting was something I like to call "Infinite Scale". This is the idea that as science advances we will find smaller and smaller objects (neutrino) and on the other end of the spectrum, larger and larger ones (Sloan Great Wall). 

But hey, why listen to me drone on about it when instead you could play around with an awesome flash animation made by a couple of apparently genius teenagers:

Wicked-Awesome? Thought so. But there's an even better example of scale much closer to home:

It would take 1.3 million earths to fill 1 sun (source)

Now that..admittedly...is a little terrifying, and really puts a perspective on how far we are from the sun to be able to see it as a friendly, yellow floating smiley face (instead of that very ominous monster above).

To top off my discussion about scale I will leave you with this. Scientists now tell us that the largest scale possible is the "End of Greatness" , where the universe looks the same in all directions, and there is no longer any sense of being able to tell one part from another. You've basically zoomed out so far that it all looks like one big homogeneous structure....

Kinda looks like a marble wouldn't you say?