Monkey Diversity In Texas

Filed Under Brain Dump, Meme Posts
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The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

In this context, “almost surely” is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the “monkey” is not an actual monkey; rather, it is a metaphor for an abstract device that produces a random sequence of letters ad infinitum. The theorem illustrates the perils of reasoning about infinity by imagining a vast but finite number, and vice versa. The probability of a monkey typing a given string of text as long as, say, Hamlet, is so tiny that, were the experiment conducted, the chance of it actually occurring during a span of time of the order of the age of the universe is minuscule but not zero.

Ok, there is no Shakespeare (as far as I know), no monkeys, Bob is in Texas, probability of Bob reaching 100 submitters is high (not minuscule or zero), and no monkeys were harmed in the making of this blog post that promotes the 2nd ever BLOGAPOLOOZA over at Middle Zone Musings happening all month long. Want to participate? Read this and/or ping Bob by email or by Twitter. Oh, and yes, thanks to Wiki, we now know that the above image does not contain a monkey but a Chimpanzee, and Chimps should be regarded as apes and not monkeys.

P.S. My glorious post gets published today at 6pm!

Jan.

2009

A Message to Garcia

Filed Under Brain Dump, Logical Emotions, The MINeD Field
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General Calixto Garcia (left) and Brig. General William Ludlow, taken during their conference at the time of the landing of the American army, from p. 312 of Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain, Vol. II, published by Harper and Brothers in 1899. (another site indicates that it's Garcia on the right and Rowan on the left... dunno - probably stick with Wiki's data)

For whatever reason, Mark Gorman popped into my brain the other day. There is the small possibility that I was seriously deficient in Cajun humor at the time, but it was likely someting else. Mark Gorman is many things, but mainly, he is a minister and a speaker. As an athiest, Mr. Gorman is probably one of the least offensive ministers around - and he’s funny to boot. If you’re into that sort of thing and you haven’t heard him before, I would suggest checking him out - hey, it’s not every day you get a recommendation about a minister from an athiest! On the speaking side of things, Mark has been on the circuit for a number of years and he always has a great message regardless of the topic he’s on.

Many years back I was given a tape of Mark’s from when he did a talk back in the day for a group in the old Amway system. Amway/Quixtar - good/bad - not the point. The point is that many of the large training organizations associated with various MLM’s had/have the resources to bring in some great speakers. The tape in question was ‘A Higher Standard of Excellence‘ in which Mark relayed the article by Elbert Hubbard called ‘A Message to Garcia‘.

Because of various copyrights, I don’t think it would be wise to post the audio from the tape, however, if you have not read ‘A Message to Garcia’, here it is in its entirety complete with a foreword to put it in better context (if you have read/heard it, feel free to skip on down - I have a bit more for you):

Jan.

2009

If Something Important Happens - You’ll Know.

Filed Under Blog & Tech Items, Brain Dump
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A few years ago, Colleen and I canceled our cable television service, and gave away our TV. The original intent was to stop wasting our time watching crap and either talk or read more. The theory was sound, but ultimately the practice was a bit.. unrealistic (within months we were downloading our favourite shows and watching on the computer huddled around my 15″ monitor).. Today however, our TV is in the upper 30″ range (a freebie that replaced our 22″ TV), we still don’t have cable, but we watch the shows we want when we want via internet, and we watch movies. One thing we don’t watch is the news, we don’t get the newspaper either, and we’ll randomly do a drive-by on News.Google to see what’s happening.

A while back someone pointed out that the news is filled with sensational stories about bad things that happen. If something major happens that you truly need to be aware of - someone will let you know. Heck, they’ll let you know even if you don’t need to be aware of it.

Am I anti-news? No, not at all - I’m just anti-depressants and the news is one of the biggest ones around. Am I uninformed? Nope. If I need to know something I know where to look it up, I have family and friends who will keep me in the loop, and there is enough chatter throughout the office that will keep me well informed whether I want to be or not. Now, where this gets interesting is how you can know what is going on without actually accessing a news site.

I was rolling through the list of people who I am subscribed to and who are subscribed to my Twitter feed, and I was looking for people I should be subscribed to, who are subscribed to me, yet I am not subscribed to them. On a quick side note - Twitter, your interface could seriously use some work. After a couple pages of subscribers who I am subscribed to mixed in with a bunch of people I’m not (and have no intention of - unless there is a real full name associated with you account, I’m not likely to subscribe to ‘quickcash4u’ or some other crap like that), I came across TweetStats, which lead me to their main page. After doing some stats generating on my own Twitter activities (yeah, pretty strong at the beginning of 2008, and then everything seems to have died), I came across the overall trends section which gives a small snapshot of what’s going on in Twitterville:

tweetstats

Hmmm, I wonder what could possibly be going on in the world today… Christmas is the surprising trend today given that it was finished over a week ago, but I’m guessing that it’s people talking about their christmas vacation as they prepare to return to work (for those of us who had a nice long break and are NOT looking to return to the office tomorrow!). Without going to news.google, I’m pretty sure that the Israeli and Hamas are at it again in Gaza, the Colts and Chargers are playing (or just did play) a game, and Macworld has some news… verification with news.google… Hamas ready for bitter urban battle, Chargers shock Colts in overtime, and finally Apple fans pray for Steve Jobs surprise at final Macworld…

We are inundated with news, about everything, from just about everywhere. So what’s my point, right? Do yourself a favour this year, read/watch less news (I’m not saying become more ignorant about the world you live in), instead, keep your eyes open for small updates from many sources to get the overall picture of what is happening (then drill in on specifics), and when something major happens, trust me, you’ll know.

Dec.

2008

Solving The World’s Issues - It’s Easy.

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Wait. Solving the issues currently plaguing the world on a massive scale is easy? Climate change, poverty, crime, abuses, wars, and all that stuff can be easily solved?

You bet.

The challenge has never, ever, been about a lack of ideas or solutions. The biggest challenge in solving anything that involves people, is simply the paradigm shift in thinking and/or beliefs that is required to happen.

Ok, we’ll take an easy one: Climate Change. I hate to say it, however, more focus, attention, and actual change has come about (I believe) since Al Gore did up a small little presentation, video taped it, and dropped it onto a DVD for the masses to see. Sure, there has always been an environmentalist movement fighting to make this world a better place, yet for the longest time their best spokesperson was some ‘naturally clean’, hemp-wearing, pot-smoking, person who was so far to the extreme that very few could actually relate. Mr. Gore steps up, does a presentation, slaps around the people watching it and suddenly, being good the the environment is now mainstream.

So what changed? The paradigm of the masses changed. The shift in thinking based on accessible information changed the way large numbers of individuals think and act towards the environment. The solutions to actually reversing the course that humanity is on is the easy part, but each solution to any one aspect of change brings with it the challenge of overcoming existing paradigms and installing new ones. I’m not saying that Mr. Gore solved anything, however, a shift happened, and it happened in the right direction - it also proved that it’s possible to shift the paradigms of people as to how they view the state of the environment and the path it’s going down.

When we look at issues in ‘The Middle East’ - no, I’m not getting specific - the solutions to the various issues are indeed simple, yet the entrenched paradigms are the biggest challenges. These have been evlovling for generations and generations and the task of overcoming them is daunting to say the least - but the solutions are easy.

It is never hard to come up with a solution to a challenge - it’s overcoming and shifting the paradigms that is the big uphill battle. Look at work, life, city, state/provincial, national, and global issues - it’s the paradigms that are required to change trips us up nearly every time. Does this mean that they can’t be overcome? Absolutely not (the earth is no longer flat and we’re not the center of the universe anymore), however, the bigger the change, the longer it takes.

Nov.

2008

It’s Remembrance Day. Please Remember.

Filed Under Brain Dump, Logical Emotions
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Throughout that summer Fox and his squadron mates dive-bombed German rocket sites that began launching V-1 and V-2 rockets at English civilian centres. And as the Germans fell back in France, Allied Spitfires hastened the retreat by chasing German locomotives, tanks and truck convoys, all considered “targets of opportunity.”

Fox’s greatest “opportunity” appeared on the afternoon of July 17, 1944. He and his wing-mate Steve Randall spotted a German staff car racing along an avenue of trees. While Randall protected his quick descent, Fox swooped in out of the sun, strafed the vehicle and drove it off the road.

“I timed the shots so that I was able to fire and get him as the car came through a small opening in the trees … I got him on that pass,” Fox said. “We were moving pretty fast, but I knew I got him.”

By the time Randall and Fox had landed back at their base, the radio buzzed with exciting news. An Allied pilot had shot up a Horch convertible containing a driver, three German officers and the Desert Fox himself, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

<more>

-Ted Barris is a journalism professor at Centennial College.

Canadian Second World War hero Charley Fox’s notoriety may have stemmed from wounding one of the biggest names in the Third Reich, but it was his work paying tribute to fallen comrades after the war that distinguished him as a true hero.

Fox, a Spitfire pilot, died Oct. 18 in a car accident in southern Ontario. He was 88.

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By Georgie Binks, CBC News

I didn’t make it to Charley’s funeral and Chris and I never made it to the Legion to have lunch with him, after all these years. Through CHAA I did get to meet him and I’m thankful for that. Charley was one of the good guys, and he’ll always be missed.