The Ultimate Vacation

Where did you go for your last vacation? Disneyland? Hawaii? Europe? Colin went to Mongolia. He wrote about it in his most fascinating blog, creatively titled "Colin's Mongolian Adventure". Let's not knock Colin. He went to a different destination - to a place where he could see something new and exciting, to challenge himself and come back with engaging stories and lasting memories. I hope Colin doesn't mind if I reproduce a small section of his blog:

To summarize, everything in Mongolia can accurately be explained by merely adding the words "Crazy Mongolian" at the beginning of the name. (E.g. Crazy Mongolian bus drivers; Crazy Mongolian jungle birds; Crazy Mongolian construction workers; and Crazy Mongolian liver diseases.)

This is truly the best I can explain the country.

After all the planning, effort and expense he put into his adventure-trip to Mongolia, the best way he can summarize the place is to call the people "crazy"? Whatever would Gengis Kahn think of Mongolia's hard-earned reputation? "Crazy", indeed! He would be rolling in his grave if he read that. But I thought we weren't going to knock Colin. Let's face it, at lest he left his comfort zone and did something interesting, even if his summary of the whole experience is a little short on adjectives.

It seems to me, though, that the reason most people want to go away on a vacation is either for: luxury (think 6 star Hawaiian resort hotel), fun (think Disneyland), quiet (picture deserted tropical beaches, fine, white sand and exquisite solitude) or adventure (backpacking in Europe, a ride down the Amazon, or an African safari). I think the last category of people get the most out of their vacation. Adventurers get to meet interesting people, enjoy fascinating experiences and contract exotic diseases.

I bet that the ultimate adventure holiday would be a trip to space. According to this short piece on www.space.com, "on April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito, a California-based multi-millionaire, became the first ever space tourist". Mr Tito boarded a Russian spacecraft and then spent two weeks on the International Space Station.

Now that has to be the ultimate vacation.

Firstly, you have the excitement of the buildup. You are sent to a secret Russian camp to learn how to survive lack of gravity, oxygen deprivation and G-forces that push your face through to the back of your head. Then you pay millions of dollars and trust your life to a spacecraft made by a country that can't even produce a decent automobile. You then leave your spacecraft and live in an isolated metal box called a space station, which is basically a fragile pod equivalent to a tiny, vulnerable Lego construction, delicately floating in a great ocean of nothingness. You then spend two weeks getting in the way of a bunch of nervous scientists, hoping that the oxygen doesn't run out, that equipment doesn't malfunction, that asteroids don't crush you while you sleep, that food rations don't get accidentally shot out of an airlock, that aliens don't attack, or that the pilot for your return trip doesn't lose the keys to the spaceship. I can think of nothing more fun than that.

Tito's 2-week jaunt on the International Space Station in 2001 hasn't yet spawned a space-hotel industry. Despite the predictions (or fantasies) of futurists, techies and trekies alike, space-station hotels are still a long way off. A less-than-thrilling article by Leonard David entitled, "The Future of Travel: Aquatic to Cosmic Destinations" quotes an "expert" who says, "You can't have a successful hotel if you don't have the means of getting people there." How cleverly insightful.

Fortunately or unfortunately, at least for now, the majority of us are limited to searching for more Earthly adventures. So next time you feel like a break from the drudgery of life, either borrow a couple of million, learn Russian and bunk down with the Cosmonauts, or do what Colin did and find something different, like climbing Mount Everest using only a ball of string and a toothpick.

Send me a postcard.

Semi-Intelligent Gifts

It is that time of year again when all good little children write down their wish lists and hope for the best: firetrucks, footballs, fluffy bunnies. However, parents' shopping lists this year featured a $300 robotic dinosaur called Pleo, who, incidentally, is the most popular toy of 2007 (at least according to some website or other, which probably makes it true).

According to the blurb:

"This techno dino is equipped with sensors (35 in total) throughout his tiny body, allowing Pleo to react instantly to sight, sound and touch. They also make Pleo capable of expressions and reactions. They also make each Pleo unique. As Pleos learn, Ugobe says, they begin to form their own distinct behaviors and personalities developed from their environment".

From the sounds of it, Pleo is better than a real pet because you can go away for a vacation and not have to worry about it. You can just leave it sitting on the shelf, scowling for two weeks. Imagine its joy when you return. Either that or it will greet you with a lop-sided smile, enticing you to come close so that it can open its cute little mouth and bite your head off.

The sentence "As Pleos learn, Ugobe says, they begin to form their own distinct behaviors and personalities developed from their environment" is very interesting. The sadist in me would like to see if one can give Pleo a multi-personality disorder. In fact, I wonder if we can use Pleo for social and psychological experiments. Instead of forming groups of willing human subjects to undergo psychological tests, we can simply have piles of Pleos, ready to risk irreversible psychological damage for the greater good.

Learn from his environment? I can't think of anything more dangerous than leaving the poor, cute little robot alone with five-year-old children. What will he learn from his environment? To throw tantrums, hit siblings and pull hair? Great. That's all any parent needs, a toy that thinks he is a child. Now, where have I seen this before?

Pleo isn't the only semi-intelligent robot on the market, although he might be one of the cutest.

How about the WowWee Alive Elvis Animatronic Robot: ""...a lifelike singing and talking bust of the best selling solo artist in U.S. history." - just the King's head and shoulders? No stepping on his blue-suede shoes.

Then you have Robo Robbie: "Robo Robbie is a simple toy by any means, and you can tell by its price ($18.89) and design. In essence, Robo Robbie is a walking, talking, and dancing robot that shoots harmless foam discs from its mouth as well." A foam-spewing toy? I don't get it.

For those futurists out there who think that today we are building the technology that will eventually take over the world, I suggest you sit back, relax and wait another fifty years. I don't think Pleo, a singing head and Robo Robbie are quite up to world domination. Well, at least it doesn't mention it on the box...

Science: That's Entertainment!

I think that the point of scientific, theory, conjecture and experimentation is for our entertainment pleasure. I can just see all the white-coated scientists with their rotten tomatoes at the ready, aiming for my good typing hand. How dare I minimise the importance of scientific wisdom! Think of all of the good that science has brought to the world! In one line I reduced to mockery millennia of effort and thought. Entertainment, indeed!

In the hope of causing a ruckus, I am prepared to defend my viewpoint - feel free to disagree. Take a look at this website. It lists the top 20 most bizarre scientific experiments of all time (note that they are only the top 20. This implies there are more!) Some of them are truly revolting, others are interesting and the rest are amusing. But they are all entertaining. I mean, reading them is fun. Science = Entertainment.

I know you are thinking that the scientific experiments on a website called "museumofhoaxes.com" can't possibly be serious. And even if they are, they don't really deal with hard-core scientific issues. But don't dismiss my theory just yet.

You can't get more mainstream-scientific than than the quintessential scientist, Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein and his contemporaries, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, created a thought experiment. A thought experiment is a theoretical experiment, all you have to do is postulate. You don't actually have to do anything. In the scientific world, this famous thought experiment is lovingly referred to as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox. In a nutshell (according to Wikipedia), the EPR Paradox "challenged long-held ideas about the relation between the observed values of physical quantities and the values that can be accounted for by a physical theory". Or, even more simply, the EPR Paradox attempts to prove that the theory of Quantum Mechanics is not complete.

When you take into account all of the arguments, the EPR Paradox seems convincing: Quantum Mechanics is found lacking. Unfortunately, real experiments have cast doubts on the soundness of the EPR Paradox.

How in the universe (pun) can this possibly be "Entertainment"?

Well, it is entertaining on a few levels. Firstly, the wonderful irony is that Einstein's theory of relativity is one of the major pillars of Quantum Mechanics and Einstein found the whole philosophy of Quantum Mechanics difficult to stomach. That, in itself, is amusing. But even more so, the debate gave rise to the following two delightful quotes:

"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

The rebuttal:

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time." -Pratchett and Gaiman's book "Good Omens".

If science can spawn magical quotes like these, then there is no doubt that the purpose of it all is for our entertainment.

(This post is in response to a challenge to write a blog about the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. How did I do?)