A Hi-tech Walking Stick

German scientists have developed an intelligent walking stick that calls an ambulance if the owner falls over. Before the i-Stick tells the ambulance that "Eugena has fallen and can't get up." it plays a message telling the owner to get up. Then after an appropriate amount of time (hopefully not too short--you want to give the owner--an elderly person usually--enough time to pick up the i-Stick.) the i-Stick calls an ambulance or someone for assistance.

On the surface this sounds like a good idea, but then again I am foreseeing some potential problems. First, is it really necessary for the i-Stick to annoy the owner with a message telling him/her to get up? If the owner is conscious I would think he would try get up on his own. If the owner is unconscious or if her hearing aids has fallen out she is not going to hear that message. I suppose the manufacturer can blast the message really loud so the owner can hear it, but then again you don't want the i-Stick to blast the message that all the time. Also, if the owner is seriously hurt let's say with broken bones, do you really want the i-Stick to tell the owner to get up? I don't think that would be a good idea.

Second, what if the owner lays down and takes a nap or just goes to sleep? The owner lets go of the i-Stick and it falls over. While the owner is having a nice nap, the i-Stick waits a while for the owner to pick it up then it plays the "get up" message and scares the crap out of the owner. Can you say possible heart attack? As far as I know and I actually tried to check on this, the i-Stick does not have an on/off switch. I suppose the owner can hook the i-Stick on something so it stands vertically before he takes his nap. It would still be nice to have the option to turn it off though. Hopefully, the scientists will add the on/off switch and make the i-Stick so it does not turn itself off by accident when it falls over. That would not be good if that happened.

A much better idea is to scrap the "get up" message, and have the i-Stick have a button on it that the owner can press to get in contact with help--you know like the Lifeline® medical alert button.

America as a Special Target

For those of you who still cannot comprehend why the jihadists attacked America on 9/11 and why they hate America and its allies please read the five reasons below:

1. America represents those whom the Quran calls "People of The Book"--Jews and Christians.
2. America supports Israel.
3. America is the source of all that Muslims consider to be evil--pornography, alcohol, homosexual rights, evil music, evil fashion and evil culture.
4. America supports Christianity all over the world. More Christian missionaries come from the U.S. than any other country.
5. America is a government "of the people, by the people and for the people, " which makes it a heathen government in Muslim thinking because Allah is to be the head of all gov't.

Most people know about reason 2. Not just America, but other western countries are the source of reason 3. Most western countries drink alcohol. I think the main reason why America and other western countries are hated by Islamofacists is reason 5. Islam is a religion and a gov't combined. Fundamentalist Muslims do not recognize governments and their laws--the Quran is the only authority on such matters and on human behavior altogether. If the Quran says you cannot do such and such then you do not do such and such or else you will be severely punished. Period. Interestingly enough, if the Quran does not say anything about a certain behavior then it is okay. For instance, the Quran does not say anything about sex change surgery. Lawyers would call that a legal loophole. Because of this loophole, Iran allows sex change surgery.

By the way, the five reasons are from a very good book called Islam and Terrorism (2002) by Mark A. Gabriel, Ph. D. He was a former professor of Islamic history.

The Holographic Universe

A hologram is a photograph that allows a person to view at an object at different angles as if it were a real object. Unlike a normal photograph which use regular white light (polychromatic), holograms use monochromatic light (only one hue of the visible spectrum). To see the hologram you have to use the same hue of light that created the hologram in the first place. Holograms have an interesting property. If you break them, their individual pieces display the whole object, although a little less clearer. Holograms are appearing almost everywhere.

Researchers are trying to create what is called holographic memory. This is a hologram imprinted on a CD or DVD for storage. The hologram by its nature can contain much more memory than a normal CD or DVD. Holographic memory offers the possibility of storing 1 terabyte (TB) of data in a sugar-cube-sized crystal.

Then there is holophony--ie holographic sound. I first read about holophony in Michael Talbot's 1992 book The Holographic Universe. Holophony allows the listener to hear sounds in 3-D. Let's say you hear a robin chirp above you in a tree. If that sound is recorded on a holophonic device and played back to you, you will actually hear that robin chirp in exactly that position where you first actually heard it. To give you an idea what I'm talking about listen to this sound sample. It is only 1.9 MB to download and you need to hear the sample in headphones to hear the holophonic effect. Pay attention to the "shaker" sound on the left. It sounds like it is actually moving downward. It's an amazing effect. I think holophony is the next stage of sound recording.

Stephen Wagnor's hypothesis about EVPs on the paranormal.about.com web site is what got me thinking about holograms in general. He thinks EVPs are holographic mental or personality imprints of people who once lived. Since the imprint might contain all the information of a person's personality it might respond to questions. He might be onto something. In the world of parapsychology, there is a phenomena known as a "residue haunting." Residue haunting is the belief that horrible events somehow imprint upon their surroundings. These imprints are not necessarily holographic but they do reoccur and there is no interaction with these type of hauntings. Certain "sensitive" people are able to replay these events.

In theory, any light wavelength (ultraviolet, infrared, etc.) can make its own hologram. Actually, any energy with wave-like properties can make hologram.

As a final thought on this subject, could the whole universe be one big hologram? That's something to think about.

Israel's "Bionic Hornet"

Israel is using nanotechnology to build a "bionic hornet" for military purposes. In the Reuters' article, it said the hornet will take photos and kill the enemy. Neat! Good for them! The US should be thinking along the same lines in the war on terror.

What Israel could also be building is a "bionic roach." They could have the roach explode or better still release some poisonous gas like cyanide when it reaches its target.

General Motors Car Starter

Starting some time next year, GM will have a car starter that keeps track of gas, whether the engine is running, your tire pressure, and your current mileage. It also can tell you if you locked the doors and has a radio pre-sets on it. Wow! The only thing it does not tell you (maybe GM will add this later on. Something the engineers will have to work on.) is whether you need to change the oil or not. All this info is displayed on a LCD screen.

Do you really need a car starter to keep track of gas? If you are not looking at the gas gage every now and then while you are driving then a car starter is not going to be of much use to you unless it beeps a sound to let you know you are low on gas. Then of course if it does that it's almost too late for you to fill the car up with gas. As for letting you know your engine is running or not, surely a driver would remember if (s)he turned off the engine or not? If a person cannot remember turning the engine on or off, then (s)he has got bigger problems--loosing his/her short term memory.

As for the rest of the information on the car starter is not too bad. Having the car starter keep track of tire pressure is nice because it saves you time in checking all four tires. If they can get it check the oil and the air filter that would be helpful too. As for it allowing you to change radio pre-sets, I don't know. It seems to me you can do that in the car. That almost seems like some engineer was thinking, "Oh, you know what would be really cool to add as an option to the car starter..."

If you did not already know, GM already has part of their OnStar program, a car diagonistics email it can send out to the owners. The car basically does a "health" check of itself then emails a report to the owner.

How Smart is Your Right Foot?

This was forwarded to me from my sister:

Just try this. It is from an orthopedic surgeon.

This will boggle your mind and you will keep trying over and over again to see if you can outsmart your foot, but you can't. It's preprogrammed in your brain!

1. WITHOUT anyone watching you (they will think you are GOOFY) and while sitting where you are at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with you right hand.

Your foot will change direction.

I told you so!

And there's nothing you can do about it!

You and I both know how stupid it is, but before the day is done you are going to try it again, if you've not already done so.

I think the reason why the right foot changes direction is because the brain is trying to simultaneous to do both motions that are similar with the same hemisphere. Both the right hand and right foot are controlled by the left hemisphere. If you let your left hand draw a "6" then the right foot won't change direction. I have actually done this experiment with the left hand drawing a "6" and the right foot did not change direction.

Dreams and Memory

Dreams, "inside" phenomena, and input that enter through the senses are stored in the brain the same way and are treated the same way. Essentially, the brain cannot tell the difference. This explains why dreams are so real, especially nightmares. When you have a physical response while awake, that same physical response will be the same when you dream about it. The mind thinks what it is experiencing is real, that is it is happening outside the brain. This also probably explains the psychosomatic principle. This sometimes can be a problem too. For instance, confusing memories for stored dreams.

People can make an effort to notice when they are dreaming. By noticing weird events, trying to levitate, etc. I am referring to the practice of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is hard, and not easy to do but it can be done through practice. You kind of lose this ability when you get older. I do not do it as often as I used to.

Bonehead Bank Robbers

Here is the lesson about not doing your homework before executing an action. According to the Ananova web site, a gang of Romanian bank robbers broke into a bank only to find it empty of money! The bank had moved to another address. Evidently these bank robbers must have been amateurs--I am thinking this was their first robbery.

America also has its own bonehead robbers. This March, two masked robbers in California held up a credit union bank. For those of you who do not know, credit union banks are usually cashless.

Evidently, the above bank robbers did not read the Freeman Institute's rules for bank robbers before committing these acts. It might have helped them. Then again...who knows.

A Stupid Lawsuit

The company Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation is suing Youtube.com. They say web surfers have mistyped the word "youtube.com" and typed in "utube.com" instead. This caused the utube.com web site to crash. Is this really the fault of youtube.com? These same people could have just have easily typed in ytube.com (the letter "y" is left of the "u" letter on a QWERTY keyboard) and have gotten a music video web site. Is this web site going to sue youtube.com next?

I cannot read the minds of people mistakenly going to the utube web site instead of the youtube web site but I can take an educated guess. The people going to the utube web site are people that talk in Internet chat rooms. The people I am referring to are teenagers who use acronyms when talking to each other like lol (laugh out loud) or imho (in my humble opinion) or in this case u (you). So, when a chat-room teenager hears about the youtube web site from a friend or even from TV for the first time (s)he will by habit type "utube" instead of "youtube" in the address bar. That is what I believe is happening.

OBTW, If you are wondering I have never visited an Internet chat room. I have used an instant messaging program though.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 6

• Courtesy is the glue that holds society together.
• I think the president should have a system analyst, an economist, and a businessman as part as his advisors.
• Bottom-up taxation. Only taxes allowed: Sales, property and city income. The city collects its taxes first, whatever is left goes to the county. Whatever is left from the county's expenses goes to the state. After the state expenses whatever is left goes to the federal government.
• The Law of Run-Time Bugs: The number of bugs a program has is inversely proportional to how awake the programmer is. The more awake the programmer is the less buggy the program will be.
• Celebrities are glorified court jesters.
• Be weary of news organizations that have an agenda.
• I think it is interesting the same groups of people who adore the U.N. don't want President Bush to have multilateral talks with North Korea. Both gets the world community involved, so what's the difference?
• Those Americans who don't want America to win the war in Iraq are unpatriotic. I want the U.S. to win all the wars it fights. Period. Saying you don't want the U.S. to win the war is like rooting for team A when you claim you are a fan of team B during a ball game.
• Any heterosexual man in a romantic relationship who is for gay marriage would have to be for polyandry (a wife having more than one husband), because if you open the door for gay marriage you open the door for other types of marriages like polyandry, polygamy, group marriage, a woman marrying a dolphin, etc. I don't think any heterosexual man would want to share their partner with other men.
• I think it is good business for businesses to stay out of controversial issues. If they support a controversial issue they might lose a lot of current customers and potential customers.

Lie Detector

How can you tell if a person lies? That is an interesting question. Can you tell from a person's behavior? If he avoids eye contact when talking to you or if his timing is off between emotions gestures/expressions and words when speaking to you he could be lying. Also, if the person rubs her eyes or touches her nose she could be lying. Then again her nose may just itch. You would have to look at multiple behaviors to get a more accurate reading. Also, it helps if you observe the person over a long period of time to look for lying patterns. You actually need a more independent way to detect a lie that has a low rate of chance.

How about polygraph tests? Polygraph tests only measure several physiological variables such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration and skin conductivity. If you are nervous taking the test you can possibly fail the test. There is even web sites that will tell you how to beat a polygraph test. The unreliability of polygraph tests is why in some criminal trials it is not admissible even though police departments use them. Polygraph tests are better but not by much.

What we need a way to measure the lie where the person cannot beat the measuring device. What about just measuring physical reactions of the brain? It appears that there are physical manifestations in the brain when you lie and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanner can measure it. There is no way a person can control the behavior of your brain--ie the communication among the neurons in your brain. Brain scientists are saying measuring these manifestations are pretty reliable.

Scanning a person's brain to see if she is lying would probably eventually do away with polygraph tests. Businesses, CIA, FBI and NSA could scan potential employee's brains to see if they are trustworthy. The police could scan suspects to see if they are guilty of a crime or not. It would even be possible to scan airline passengers' brains to see if they would harm passengers on the plain. The big obstacle to using the fMRI is the cost. That and the size of the fMRI. It's really big. Both would have to shrink to make it more affordable and convenient to use. Plus there are some criticisms of the fMRI. Still measuring brain patterns would still be more reliable than the polygraph test.

When telling if someone is lying regardless of the measuring device the measurer has to ask the right question. Asking a blind person from birth what color your eyes are is meaningless to the blind person. He cannot answer the question because color is meaningless to him. Also the person has to know he is telling a lie. If the person is psychotic or blacked out during a crime he might not know if he is lying or not. Here is a good question for a passenger boarding an airplane: "Are you intending to physically harm anyone on the plane you are boarding." This is a good question because word anyone also includes the crew and not just the passengers. If you said kill rather than physically harm then this might leave out anyone who is going to just injure the pilots of the plane inorder to hi-jack it.

When asking a yes-no question you have to be specific and avoid opinionated questions. You also have to ask questions that get the answers you want. That is don't ask the passenger if he is a terrorist (an opinionated question to the passenger) if you want to know if he is going to commit a crime (a factual question). He probably would not consider himself a terrorist. He could just be an unstable person. If a person refuses to answer the question or spins then he should definitely not be allowed on the plane.

Online Voting

It's conceivable in the future to be able to vote online. County web sites already have (at least mine has) a web site where you can go and look up your voter information. You have to enter your first name, last name, and date of birth. These are required fields. You can also enter the county where you live. How much more programming would it take to have the actual ballot on that web site? I don't think too much more.

All it would take is a separate login screen for just the ballot. You would enter the above information plus a one-time password. This password would be randomly generated by the county clerk's office. They email the password to you. Once you login with the password, your name, and birth date (actually the password is all you would really need since it is unique) and vote the password is erased so you cannot vote again. Online voting would also speed up vote counting. Once you vote online that vote is instantly counted.

There would be security issues for online voting. You don't want viruses infecting the web site or a virus or worm could prevent a person from accessing the web site. Then there are malicious web sites that use fake logins. Of course you would not want the ballot web site to time out on you. And you would hope the server load of the web site could possible take every voter in the county voting at the same time. It could happen. Another big issue is privacy of your ballot--ie you would not want other people seeing how you voted especially from someone trying to hack into the ballot database. You want to know your votes were being counted and also allowed to re-do your votes if you made a mistake. Here a "confirmation" screen would help. The screen would display who or what you voted for with a "redo votes" or "back" button and the "vote" button at the bottom of the screen.

Republicans vs. Democrats

According to the American Conservative Ratings web site, twelve senators in 2005 got a perfect score 100 for voting for pro-Conservative bills. All those senators that got that perfect score are Republicans. Just so you know the American Conservative Union gave some Republican senators low ratings--two Republicans got a score of 32. Most of the scores for Republicans are 80 or higher. The highest score for a Democrat senator is 60. All the rest of Democrat senators had lower scores. What about the House? In 2005, 38 representatives got a perfect of 100. Again, all those are Republicans. The other Republicans got scores of 80 or more. The highest score for Democrat representatives is 64. I think there were three in all who got that score. In summary, the Republicans are more conservative than Democrats.
Which party is taxpayer friendly? The Republicans. According to the Americans for Tax Reform web site, two Senators got perfect scores--both Republicans. The other Republican senators got scores of 80 or more. One Democratic senator got a rating of 65--all the rest of the Democrat senators had lower scores than him. According to that same web site, eight Representatives got a perfect score again all were Republicans. The highest score a Democrat Representative has is 48. All the rest of the Democrats' scores were lower. The National Taxpayers Union web site says that the Republican average rating for the Senate is 69%. The Democratic senators rating is 12%! Wow, that is low! The Republicans in the House gets an average rating of 60%. The House Democrats average rating is 17%!
Which party promotes Judeo-Christian ideals? Republicans. According to the Family Research Council, the lowest Republican score is 29. Three Republicans had that score. The highest Republican score is 100. Over 30 Republicans had that score. The highest Democratic score is 92. Only one Democrat had that score. The lowest Democrat score is zero. Over 30 Democrats had that score. A lot of Democrats had scores in the single digit range. You would think a lot more Democrats would have scores closer to 60. Apparently not.
Want illegal immigration under control? According to Congress Grades.org, only 21 Democrats want illegal immigration reform. 167 Republicans want illegal immigration reform.

Electronic Voting

My town is using an Election Systems & Software (ES&S) iVotronic touch screen voting system this election. A registered voter signs in, then a poll worker inserts the Personal Electronic Ballot (PEB) into the slot of the machine. Then via the touch screen a voter makes his/her selections. The voter can even review his/her selections and change any of them. Finally, (s)he presses the "Vote" button to cast the vote. This system does not make a paper printout of the selections for the voter. That would have been a nice receipt for the voter and would have possibly relieved any suspicions of any voter (like ones who are weary of computers) who thinks his/her vote is not being counted. All in all, I don't think this is a bad system.

The ES&S web site talks about Anywhere Voting Architecture. What the company wants to do is to allow a voter to vote anywhere in their town. An ambitious proposal, but I like it. I think this is where voting is heading. But any voting system will have to prevent voting fraud as much as possible. Basically, a voting system has to prevent voting fraud by checking three things: 1) It should only allow registered voters to vote. 2) It has to verify the person voting is actually the person voting--not an impersonator. 3) It should only allow a person to cast a ballot only once. The voting system we have in place now is not bad. It is too bad there are some people against photo id for voting. That would help with checking 2). Unless the poll workers know a voter anyone can pose as the voter. A person has to show photo id when writing a check, why not when voting? I just don't get it.

I think a better way to accomplish all three checks is to use fingerprint scanners connected into the electronic voting machines. This is the way my system would work. In a city or town all registered voters would have their fingerprint patterns of their right forefinger in a database. It could also be the left forefinger--it does not really matter. This fingerprint pattern would be linked to their name and address and a voting indicator switch (VIS). The VIS indicates whether the voter has voted or not. A voter goes to the poll and puts his finger on the scanner. The scanner reads his fingerprint and checks it against voter fingerprints in the database. If it finds a match (ie the voter is registered) then the system looks at the VIS. If the VIS is false (ie the voter has not voted yet) then screens like in the iVotronic system are displayed. Once the voter presses the "Vote" button the VIS is set to true--thus disallowing people to vote more than once. If the registered voter tries to vote again she will get a "You have already voted." message displayed on the screen. Then the police comes and arrests the person for voter fraud--just joking, although that could be set up too. If the system cannot find the print in the database the system can ask the person to retry re-entering the fingerprint. After three tries the person gets a "not a registered voter" message. After which the voter can talk to a poll worker about not being allowed to vote. As you can see, my voting system handles all three voting checks really well, especially check three because all fingerprints are unique (even identical twins have unique fingerprints).

This system could be even more advance by allowing a registered voter to vote anywhere in the country. It might require a more complicated system to do this but it would still be doable. I don't think it would be that much more complicated. Of course, you would need a country wide database with all the fingerprints in it. The fingerprint program would check to see where a voter lives and bring up the appropriate ballot screens. The only potential problem is if a voter was in another state and after three tries the system could not read his fingerprint, he would be stuck. The poll workers could not really help him. He would have to go back to his residence to vote.

Is my system foolproof you might ask? No system is 100% foolproof. I suppose a person could chop off a finger (gross!) of a registered voter and sneak it into a polling place and put that on the scanner. Or if the scanner was an optical scanner it could be fooled with picture of a fingerprint. Still, my future system would still be better than what we have now. I suppose you could use an retinal scanner instead of a fingerprint scanner. That would be virtually foolproof, but that technology is more intrusive and more inconvenient (a person has to stand still for 10 to 15 seconds) than a fingerprint scanner. Also, retinal scanners do not work with blind people and people with cataracts.