After seeing this headline I figured I'd explain a little about what happened to Cheney (no he did not have his "heart battery" replaced - blocks of ice don't require batteries). Although, first I have to share my favorite take on the situation.
Implantable defibrillators (ICDs) and pacemakers come in two pieces - the can and the electrode. The electrode is the wire which in traditional devices go though a vein into the heart. The can in a tradition device sits under the skin near the top of the chest. The battery is incorporated in the can along with all of the electronics. When the battery runs down (typically indicated by the device beeping at some interval) the entire can is replaced. Both because once you open the can you don't want to seal it up again and re-implant it and because after 6 years it's good to upgrade to the latest model.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Vegas and Car Fire
Over the weekend I headed to Vegas for my class's pi reunion (3.14159265 years since graduation). It was a lot of fun - thanks to those who organized it and read this. It was good to see people I don't see much any more and even though there were a lot of people I didn't know it was nice to hang out in a crowd of MIT students again. It was also interesting to see the group of people in a different environment. And it was nice to see that I'm not the only person who has gotten old and can't stay up late anymore or eat as much.
Not that my life is in significant flux, but in the three years since undergrad I've lived three different places and had three different jobs (if you count grad school as a job). While there were some people who have settled into grad school or jobs, it was good to see that plenty of other people are also still bouncing around.
We stayed at the Wynn which was very nice. It was super hot in Las Vegas (on Saturday I was in a swimming pool, in the shade, and was still warm). Saw Cirque du Soleil's Mystere which was very cool and very weird. Won $7 playing video blackjack. And ate plenty of buffet food.
The drive out wasn't bad at all. But on the drive back we hit some serious traffic. Then on the final stretch of the ride things slowed down and there were flares blocking the right most lane because there was a car on fire! I'm talking beginning of Scrubs season 4 on fire (just before they get scooters), with three guys standing about 10 feet away watching the car burn.
Not that my life is in significant flux, but in the three years since undergrad I've lived three different places and had three different jobs (if you count grad school as a job). While there were some people who have settled into grad school or jobs, it was good to see that plenty of other people are also still bouncing around.
We stayed at the Wynn which was very nice. It was super hot in Las Vegas (on Saturday I was in a swimming pool, in the shade, and was still warm). Saw Cirque du Soleil's Mystere which was very cool and very weird. Won $7 playing video blackjack. And ate plenty of buffet food.
The drive out wasn't bad at all. But on the drive back we hit some serious traffic. Then on the final stretch of the ride things slowed down and there were flares blocking the right most lane because there was a car on fire! I'm talking beginning of Scrubs season 4 on fire (just before they get scooters), with three guys standing about 10 feet away watching the car burn.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Taoism
Well, if you've been following my reading pattern it is probably no surprise to see that Taoism by Jennifer Oldstone-Moore was up next. First thing I learned - Taosim and Daoism are the same thing.
I was going to say something about Taoism being to Confucianism as Kabbalah is to Judaism, but then I realized that I actually know less about Kabbalah than Taoism. Anyway, Taoism and Confucianism have the same base of ideas, but Taoism goes more into mysticism.
The Tao is "the way" and is the force that brought the world into existence. It's not a god, but rather a force (there are plenty of other gods - I think somewhere between Confucianism and Shinto for number of types of gods). People are not supposed to go against the Tao. Yin-Yang and Qi (Chi) are both key concepts in Taoism. Feng-Shui is also involved in Taoism.
The more mystical side of Taoism is that it involves searching for immortality through several means, one of which is alchemy (it is interesting the alchemy in the Neal Stephenson series I just finished is much closer to that of Taoism than what I would normally think of alchemy). Apparently gun powder was discovered in Taoist pursuit of immortality as well as several other scientific advancements. Also if you need an exorcism a Taoist priest is the way to go.
I was going to say something about Taoism being to Confucianism as Kabbalah is to Judaism, but then I realized that I actually know less about Kabbalah than Taoism. Anyway, Taoism and Confucianism have the same base of ideas, but Taoism goes more into mysticism.
The Tao is "the way" and is the force that brought the world into existence. It's not a god, but rather a force (there are plenty of other gods - I think somewhere between Confucianism and Shinto for number of types of gods). People are not supposed to go against the Tao. Yin-Yang and Qi (Chi) are both key concepts in Taoism. Feng-Shui is also involved in Taoism.
The more mystical side of Taoism is that it involves searching for immortality through several means, one of which is alchemy (it is interesting the alchemy in the Neal Stephenson series I just finished is much closer to that of Taoism than what I would normally think of alchemy). Apparently gun powder was discovered in Taoist pursuit of immortality as well as several other scientific advancements. Also if you need an exorcism a Taoist priest is the way to go.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Confucianism
Just finished Confucianism by Jennifer Oldstone-Moore. I know that Confucianism and Shinto influenced each other, and I'm reading fairly brief descriptions of the religions, but they seem to have a lot of similarities. Although Shinto does have way more types of spirits.
Confucianism seems to have a somewhat unusual story since a lot of it was established long before Confucius came around. It seems like a lot of the spiritual side was already established as well as some of the social theory. Then Confucius promoted a view of government and family relationships and all together it became Confucianism (Confucius was not actually that into talking about the spiritual side). On the spiritual side, spirits are dead ancestors and the spirit world in many ways mirrors the living world and the two interact. The concept of yin-yang comes from Confucianism as well as qi (chi). And the book didn't talk about it much, but divination is also somewhere in there. On the social side, families and the government are supposed to have well defined roles. Children are supposed to be respectful of their parents. Parents are supposed to educate their children and be compassionate. The role between the government and the people is supposed to be a lot like the role between parents and children. Part of the tradition is exams to determine who gets government jobs. Like most religions some of the ideas sound great (promoting education for everyone and compassionate government), but some aren't so hot (very unequal gender roles and obedience to a monarchy).
The connection between the emperor to the spirit world is a lot stronger than for others and there are a lot of rituals that only the emperor could perform. I think that a lot of the big tourist sites in China are Confucian temples where the emperor would perform ceremonies.
Confucianism seems to have a somewhat unusual story since a lot of it was established long before Confucius came around. It seems like a lot of the spiritual side was already established as well as some of the social theory. Then Confucius promoted a view of government and family relationships and all together it became Confucianism (Confucius was not actually that into talking about the spiritual side). On the spiritual side, spirits are dead ancestors and the spirit world in many ways mirrors the living world and the two interact. The concept of yin-yang comes from Confucianism as well as qi (chi). And the book didn't talk about it much, but divination is also somewhere in there. On the social side, families and the government are supposed to have well defined roles. Children are supposed to be respectful of their parents. Parents are supposed to educate their children and be compassionate. The role between the government and the people is supposed to be a lot like the role between parents and children. Part of the tradition is exams to determine who gets government jobs. Like most religions some of the ideas sound great (promoting education for everyone and compassionate government), but some aren't so hot (very unequal gender roles and obedience to a monarchy).
The connection between the emperor to the spirit world is a lot stronger than for others and there are a lot of rituals that only the emperor could perform. I think that a lot of the big tourist sites in China are Confucian temples where the emperor would perform ceremonies.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
HP
Since both of the comments on my last post talked about Harry Potter I figured I'd share my "Harry Potter situation" and an observation. Also note that in this post I compare HP to LOTR. I am in no way trying to say one is better than the other. LOTR is just a good comparison point as a long fantasy series that was recently turned into films.
I've seen all of the Harry Potter movies (the early ones multiple times). I listened to most of book 5 on tape while in Bar Harbor. At one point (sometime around when movie 3 came out) I started reading book 1 at the Harvard Coop. I'm not someone who typically re-reads a book (LOTR is a rare exception, but the gap was about 10 years) and already knowing the major points from the movie I was having trouble getting into it (I realize it wasn't a fair try since Harry hadn't even gotten to Hogwarts so I may give it another try at some point). And I was told the major plot points of book 6 (I'm almost tempted to contact that person to find out what happens in book 7 since she's probably done by now).
I like all the movies, but the last two seemed like they were rushing to hit the major plot points and unable to spend time on the character and background development that the other movies were able to capture (yeah, I think I stole this theory from someone else, but I'm going with it). I know hardcore Harry fans think that all of the movies had left out major details and I didn't know if listening to book 5 was throwing off my opinion so I decided to look at just how rushed the movies were.
I think it is fairly clear that the movies were trying to pack a reasonable amount in at the beginning, but the last two have been trying to fit in way more book per minute. And the first few books were about in line with LOTR's page/minute rate. Given the length of books 6 and 7 I hope they consider making longer movies or even splitting them into multiple movies (or I guess I could just break down and read the books rather than depending on film makers to cover all the details).
Final thoughts - I enjoyed the fight scene between Dumbledore and Voldemort although I spent a lot of it wondering when Harry was going to get up and do something useful (although when Dumbledore tossed him on his ass with a flick of the wrist I realized he was way out of his league). Perhaps someone knows the answer to this - for the kids it seems like a major portion of spell casting is saying the right word, but adults don't seem to have to say anything to cast spells. What's up with that?
I've seen all of the Harry Potter movies (the early ones multiple times). I listened to most of book 5 on tape while in Bar Harbor. At one point (sometime around when movie 3 came out) I started reading book 1 at the Harvard Coop. I'm not someone who typically re-reads a book (LOTR is a rare exception, but the gap was about 10 years) and already knowing the major points from the movie I was having trouble getting into it (I realize it wasn't a fair try since Harry hadn't even gotten to Hogwarts so I may give it another try at some point). And I was told the major plot points of book 6 (I'm almost tempted to contact that person to find out what happens in book 7 since she's probably done by now).
I like all the movies, but the last two seemed like they were rushing to hit the major plot points and unable to spend time on the character and background development that the other movies were able to capture (yeah, I think I stole this theory from someone else, but I'm going with it). I know hardcore Harry fans think that all of the movies had left out major details and I didn't know if listening to book 5 was throwing off my opinion so I decided to look at just how rushed the movies were.
| Name | Book [pages] | Film [minutes] | Book/Film [pages/minute] |
| LOTR | 1200 | 558 | 2.15 |
| LOTR DVD | 1200 | 682 | 1.76 |
| HP 1 | 309 | 152 | 2.03 |
| HP 2 | 256 | 161 | 1.59 |
| HP 3 | 320 | 141 | 2.27 |
| HP 4 | 752 | 157 | 4.79 |
| HP 5 | 870 | 138 | 6.30 |
I think it is fairly clear that the movies were trying to pack a reasonable amount in at the beginning, but the last two have been trying to fit in way more book per minute. And the first few books were about in line with LOTR's page/minute rate. Given the length of books 6 and 7 I hope they consider making longer movies or even splitting them into multiple movies (or I guess I could just break down and read the books rather than depending on film makers to cover all the details).
Final thoughts - I enjoyed the fight scene between Dumbledore and Voldemort although I spent a lot of it wondering when Harry was going to get up and do something useful (although when Dumbledore tossed him on his ass with a flick of the wrist I realized he was way out of his league). Perhaps someone knows the answer to this - for the kids it seems like a major portion of spell casting is saying the right word, but adults don't seem to have to say anything to cast spells. What's up with that?
Friday, July 20, 2007
The System of the World and Shinto
This week I finished The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. In an episode of Family Guy Peter turns down a boat for a mystery box then about 2 minutes later he turns to Lois and says, "hey remember the time I turned down the boat for the mystery box?". This book has a few lines like that, but they are referring to the first book in the series, which I read over a year ago so it actually made sense. I was going to write about how it seemed weird reading the series over the course of a year, but I realized that it is nothing to compared to what all the Harry Potter fans have been going through.
Anyway, Neal did pull a bit of his classic style of starting crazy and then ending super crazy, but it was a bit more muted since the starting point was real history and the end point had to fit into history. I give Neal credit for doing something different, but I do hope he gets back to futuristic novels. The series talks a lot about alchemy and at work we had sorted some parts into piles we called gold and silver then we found a way to make silvers into golds so I started calling it alchemy and it caught on. So now a few people at work refer to the group that figured it out as alchemists.
And apparently Randall Munroe is also spying on me (yeah I know the alt-text is about Cryptonomicron, but close enough).
I also read Shinto by Scott Littleton. Those who know far more about Shinto feel free to correct me. It's odd, other than Jess talking about it, I don't think I had heard of Shinto before, but apparently it is the major religion in Japan. One of the main things I got from the book is that in Japan they are much more willing to mix religions. Both taking parts of others and incorporating them and being both Shinto and Buddhist and picking which parts of each to celebrate. Such as, most marriages are the Shinto custom and most funerals are the Buddhist tradition (in general Shinto is more about what happens when alive and Buddhism is more about after death).
Shinto has a huge number of spirits of varying types and ranks. To me it is interesting since Judaism prides itself so much on being the first monotheistic religion that growing up Jewish it gave me a sense that monotheism is in some way more advanced, but really there's no reason that's true. Also having tons of gods and spirits seems way more interesting. It also seems to allow for better stories since the gods are not all powerful and interact rather than just having this unknowable all powerful force.
Anyway, Neal did pull a bit of his classic style of starting crazy and then ending super crazy, but it was a bit more muted since the starting point was real history and the end point had to fit into history. I give Neal credit for doing something different, but I do hope he gets back to futuristic novels. The series talks a lot about alchemy and at work we had sorted some parts into piles we called gold and silver then we found a way to make silvers into golds so I started calling it alchemy and it caught on. So now a few people at work refer to the group that figured it out as alchemists.
And apparently Randall Munroe is also spying on me (yeah I know the alt-text is about Cryptonomicron, but close enough).
I also read Shinto by Scott Littleton. Those who know far more about Shinto feel free to correct me. It's odd, other than Jess talking about it, I don't think I had heard of Shinto before, but apparently it is the major religion in Japan. One of the main things I got from the book is that in Japan they are much more willing to mix religions. Both taking parts of others and incorporating them and being both Shinto and Buddhist and picking which parts of each to celebrate. Such as, most marriages are the Shinto custom and most funerals are the Buddhist tradition (in general Shinto is more about what happens when alive and Buddhism is more about after death).
Shinto has a huge number of spirits of varying types and ranks. To me it is interesting since Judaism prides itself so much on being the first monotheistic religion that growing up Jewish it gave me a sense that monotheism is in some way more advanced, but really there's no reason that's true. Also having tons of gods and spirits seems way more interesting. It also seems to allow for better stories since the gods are not all powerful and interact rather than just having this unknowable all powerful force.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Santa Barbara for the 4th
At work they were nice enough to give us the 2nd and 3rd as well as the 4th as vacation days. So on Sunday I headed up to Santa Barbara and stayed with my Uncle's family and came back the morning of the 5th. It was great to see everyone.
In addition to enjoying time with my Uncle, Aunt, and two Cousins the trip provided a great break from my normal schedule. For the 4th we went to the beach to hang out and again at night for the fireworks. The day before I went biking with one of my cousins down to the wharf. I won a game made up by my other cousin thanks to my mad dice rolling skillz. I found it ironic that between riding in a convertible and spending time on the beach, it was when I sat outside reading a book that I got a sun burn (it was a pretty funny burn since it was the difference between that day's shirt and my normal tan line and was only on one side).
Thank you to my Uncle's family for hosting, feeding, and entertaining me.
Oh, and it was the first time I took public transportation in Southern California. I took the train there and back. It was a bit slower than driving with no traffic, but I'm guessing there was some traffic that weekend and it was great because I got to read instead of staring at the car ahead of me. They also had outlets for every seat so on the way back I watched a few episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program.
In addition to enjoying time with my Uncle, Aunt, and two Cousins the trip provided a great break from my normal schedule. For the 4th we went to the beach to hang out and again at night for the fireworks. The day before I went biking with one of my cousins down to the wharf. I won a game made up by my other cousin thanks to my mad dice rolling skillz. I found it ironic that between riding in a convertible and spending time on the beach, it was when I sat outside reading a book that I got a sun burn (it was a pretty funny burn since it was the difference between that day's shirt and my normal tan line and was only on one side).
Thank you to my Uncle's family for hosting, feeding, and entertaining me.
Oh, and it was the first time I took public transportation in Southern California. I took the train there and back. It was a bit slower than driving with no traffic, but I'm guessing there was some traffic that weekend and it was great because I got to read instead of staring at the car ahead of me. They also had outlets for every seat so on the way back I watched a few episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Buddha
I figured that if I'm going to visit two countries where I'll see a bunch of Buddhist stuff it would be nice to know something about Buddhism other than that Buddha was a fat, happy, Chinese guy (oh, guess it is good I read a book, since he was actually a skinny Indian guy who thought that life is suffering).
Well I'm not claiming to be an expert, or really know much at all about it since I read Buddha, A Very Short Introduction and well it was very short. What I did pick up is that Buddhism assumes reincarnation and a lot of the religion is instruction in how to meditate and what you should be searching for when meditating. At least how the author presented it, unlike Western religions that are mostly about god and the instructions he hands down by talking to people, Buddhism developed more like philosophy. Buddha worked with many teachers of different religions and methods of meditation and using reasoning he developed a new set of views. While there was some divine intervention, the teachings are presented as Buddha's thoughts and findings.
Well I'm not claiming to be an expert, or really know much at all about it since I read Buddha, A Very Short Introduction and well it was very short. What I did pick up is that Buddhism assumes reincarnation and a lot of the religion is instruction in how to meditate and what you should be searching for when meditating. At least how the author presented it, unlike Western religions that are mostly about god and the instructions he hands down by talking to people, Buddhism developed more like philosophy. Buddha worked with many teachers of different religions and methods of meditation and using reasoning he developed a new set of views. While there was some divine intervention, the teachings are presented as Buddha's thoughts and findings.
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