Causes (?) of Crime Rate Reduction

There are many interesting ideas (which might be right or wrong) about what caused crime rate reduction:

1. Fixing Broken Windows Effect: Fixing/preventing small crimes lead to fewer crimes in general. Criticism of the idea is here.

2. Legalized Abortion: Legal abortions lead to fewer unwanted babies, cutting down the number of criminals. Criticism here and here. However, in the extreme case, it's obvious that abortion does prevent crime--if there is no more baby, there will be no crime. :-D

3. Unleaded Fuel -> Less Crime: Presumably, lead turns people into idiots who commit more crimes. A paper can be found here.

It's interesting to note that abortion became legal in many US states around the same time that leaded fuel was banned.

If I have to bet which one is the most correct, I would bet on #3 more than on #2 and on #2 more than on #1.

I wonder what other toxic substances we are being exposed to will create problems in the coming decades.

Tatia, A Warrior Child

This morning, I was driving Titus and Tatia to the office to be picked up by their maternal grandparents. Tatia was throwing tantrum and crying (tearless!) for being prevented from messing around with the windows and shades in the car. I then turned on a song called "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Tomoyasu Hotei, and then she looked like this:

The music is a part of the soundtrack of Kill Bill: Volume 1

On a related news, Titus was was testing his strength in trying to push two cars away from each other sideway:

Meanwhile, Tanya was practicing her face-morphing skill. She looks different everyday:

You Too Can Be A Banker!

Banker to the Poor, that is.

Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work advocating lending money to entrepreneurs too poor for traditional bank loans. The Grameen Bank became a prototype for microcredit lending organizations all over the world.

Through the wonder of the Internet, you too can be a banker to the poor entrepreneurs throughout the world. Check out Kiva.org and MicroPlace ("Invest wisely. End Poverty.") I think this is a good thing for the world. Less poverty, more freedom, more education, less chance of being exploited.

Traveller's Guides To The Universe

I found a few links that might be handy when we all can explore space:

1. The Atlas of the Universe. Don't forget to look at the whole map.
2. What we can expect to see outside the window when we travel very fast: What would a relativistic interstellar traveller see?
3. Also, can we see the Lorentz-Fitzgeral contraction when we travel very fast?

To have some ideas about how big the universe is, think about this: In one second, light can travel the distance equivalent to about 7 times the Earth circumference. It takes light about 8 minutes to travel fromt the Sun to Earth. It takes light about 4 years to reach the nearest star outside the solar system. And it takes more than 10,000,000,000 years for light emitted by the farthest objects we can observe to reach Earth.

So, my plan is to live long enough to upload my brain state to cyborgs, wait till we have a warp drive, and explore the universe! :-D

Or maybe I will stay on Earth and watch Discovery Channel.

สัมภาษณ์ท่านผู้หญิงพูนศุข พนมยงค์

...สารคดี : ตอนที่เป็น เสรีไทยท่านผู้ หญิงทำหน้าที่อะไรครับ
ท่านผู้ หญิงพูนศุข : ช่วงนั้น หน้าสิ่วหน้าขวานมากที่สุดเชียว ทำเนียบท่าช้างเป็น ที่บัญชาการของเสรีไทยที่มีนายปรีดีเป็น หัวหน้า พออยู่ มาวันหนึ่ง นายพลโตโจ นายกรัฐมนตรีญี่ปุ่นก็มาเซ็นชื่อเยี่ยมที่ทำเนียบของนายปรีดี ผู้ สำเร็จราชการฯ แล้ว ก็เดินเข้า มาที่ศาลาริมน้ำ ซึ่งเป็นส่วน ที่พวกเสรีไทยใช้เป็น ที่ทำงาน โตโจคงอยากเห็นส่วน ที่เราอยู่ หมด น่ากลัวเหมือนกัน แต่โชคดีที่พวกญี่ปุ่นคงไม่ ระแคะระคาย ส่วน ฉันตอนนั้น ก็ช่วย ทำทุกอย่าง ช่วย นายปรีดีฟังข่าวติดตามสถานการณ์ต่างประเทศจาก วิทยุ อันที่จริงตอนนั้น ทางการห้ามฟังวิทยุสัมพันธมิตร ต้อง มีใบอนุญาตถึง ฟังได้...

คนไทยไม่ค่อยสนใจประวัติศาสตร์ เลยไม่ค่อยเรียนรู้บทเรียนจากอดีต ประวัติศาสตร์ที่สอนในโรงเรียนก็ไม่ค่อยเข้าท่า เป็น propaganda ก็เยอะ

Understand Classical Mechanics Precisely, Very Precisely

ย้ายไป http://witpoko.com/?p=486 แล้วครับ

Oxygen Was Toxic To Life

Current living things require oxygen to live. It was not always like this. As a matter of fact, oxygen was downright poisonous to life and nearly destroyed all life on Earth.

The most readable account of this event can be found here. Around 2.4-2.5 billion years ago, global cooling almost turned Earth into an ice ball, destroying all life then.

Luckily, the Earth didn't turn into an ice ball, and some organisms adapted to use oxygen in energy production. In fact, every animal and plants descends from single cell ancestors that captured those oxygen-adapted organisms. Right now, all our cells (except sperm cells) contain those organisms in the form of mitochondria. We inherit mitochondria from our mother, not from our father.

I Also Am A Fortune Teller (หมอดูฟันธง)*

I predict that Robert Axelrod will win a Nobel Prize for this work.

Well, he should anyway.

Now before you doubt my ability as a fortune teller, my Nobel prediction is currently 100% correct! In the late 1980's/early 1990's, I told my friends that Ahmed Zewail would surely win a Nobel prize in the future after listening to his talk about femtochemistry.

Well, one data point is probably a fluke anyway.

If you have not read "The Evolution of Cooperation", you should really take a look.

--- - ---- - ----- ---------
*Of course, fortune tellers seem to know the future by doing these:

1. Predict dramatic things.
2. Predict often.
3. Ignore wrong predictions.
4. Focus exclusively on correct predictions.
5. Master cold reading.

The correct question we should ask ourselves is "Does the fortune teller performs better than chance?" not "Does the fortune teller predicts anything correctly?" I'm quite sure that all fortune tellers are fraud. However, if any of them is real, there are many Nobel prizes awaiting those who can deduce the nature of time from those real fortune teller's performance.

T3 (AKA Tanya Saipetch) Has Arrived

Tanya is the biggest of all the T's, weighing in at 3,740 grams (8.2 lbs) and 52 cm (20.5") long. (Titus was 3,200 grams and Tatia was 3,000 grams.) She was born at 11:47 a.m.

She also has a lot of hair, an unusual occurrence in the history of the T's.

Aor and I came to Bangpo Hospital around 9 a.m. because today is the 39-week day for Tanya. Since Aor had caesarean sections for Titus and Tatia before, she would need to have another one for Tanya. I was a bit excited last night because this was the first time that we knew the date that the baby would come out--the other two times happened surprisingly, before the 39-week mark. Anyway, once we got to the operating room, it was quite familiar and calm. I recorded the procedure using a camcorder, being careful to record internal organs that Aor requested to see.

The operation started at 11 a.m. It took about 30 minutes to bring Tanya out and another 90 minutes to patch Aor up. Aor felt better than the last two times and she is now sleeping.

When asked about his feeling about another sister, Titus said, "I will delight her with hot chocolate."

When asked the same, Tatia said, "I'm a princess, whee, whee." (Thanks, Kevin & Rechelle!)

--- - ---- - ------ ---------

P.S.

1. More posts about Titus and Tatia can be found here and here.
2. Exciting 4-D Ultrasounds can be found here.

3. I will enroll Tanya in my advanced traning program.

ท่านปัญญา

ตัวอย่างคำสอนท่านปัญญานันทภิกขุ

“ขอให้ธรรมะจงล้างความสกปรกคือความเห็นผิดและการกระทำผิดๆ ของชาวพุทธให้หายไป จงพ้นจากความเขลา ความหลง จงหันมานับถือพระพุทธ พระธรรม พระสงฆ์ โดยประการเดียว การสั่นเซียมซี รดน้ำมนต์ เสี่ยงทาย ด้วยวิธีการต่างๆ จงหายไปจากแผ่นดินไทย

ขอให้อาจารย์เสกพระเครื่องทั้งหลาย จงได้เสกคนให้เป็นคนดีที่มีพระในใจ มิใช่มีพระห้อยคอแต่เมาเช้าถึงเย็น ขอให้พวกมิจฉาชีพทั้งหลาย จงกลับกลายเป็นคนดี มีความเห็นชอบตามทำนองคลองธรรม นี่เป็นพรของข้าพเจ้า มอบให้แก่ท่านทั้งหลายตามทัศนะของพระพุทธศาสนาที่บริสุทธิ์ ไม่มีสิ่งโสโครกสกปรกใดๆ เจือปน ขอให้ท่านทั้งหลายจงรับพรนี้ไปปฏิบัติตามทางของพระพุทธองค์เถิด”

หลวงพ่อฯ สอนไม่ให้งมงาย “ยกตัวอย่างว่าคนถือพระภูมิ เวลาตกอกตกใจ ต้องไปไหว้ทุกที ทีนี้ก็ไปไหว้อยู่บ่อยๆ แล้วทำอะไรมันได้ผล พอได้ผลขึ้นก็ดูหมิ่นตัวเองด้วยซ้ำไป ไม่เอาความสามารถตัวเองมาใช้ กลับไปบอกว่านี่แหละ เพราะพระภูมิช่วยจึงได้สำเร็จ คราวนี้นี่แหละเขาเรียกว่า ดูหมิ่นตัวเองอย่างเหลือเกิน ตัวเองนี่เป็นมนุษย์ผู้ประเสริฐสุดมีจิตมีปัญญากลับไม่ยกย่อง ไปยกย่องศาลเล็กๆ ข้างบ้านดีกว่าตัวไปเสียแล้ว...”

SaiJai.net ได้รางวัลรองชนะเลิศที่งาน Thailand ICT Awards 2007

ขออวดผลงานชาวใส่ใจหน่อยนะครับ

ชาวใส่ใจส่ง SaiJai.net เข้าประกวดประเภท General Applications ในงาน Thailand ICT Awards 2007 และได้รางวัลรองชนะเลิศ (แพ้ระบบ Insurance Claim ที่ใช้ผ่าน PDA/GPS)

การแข่ง TICTA มีทุกปีนะครับ ใครสนใจก็ส่งได้ ประเภทของซอฟต์แวร์ก็หลากหลายมาก (แต่ถึงกระนั้นเราก็ไม่รู้ว่าจะส่ง SaiJai.net ลงประเภทไหน ฮ่า ฮ่า)

ผมเสียดายมากที่ไม่ได้รางวัลชนะเลิศ เพราะถ้าชนะจะได้ไปแข่งต่อที่สิงคโปร์ และผมคงได้แวะไปทาน Prime Rib ที่ Lawry's :-D

A Few Useful Computer Tools

What's under one megabyte, quickly accessible via hotkeys, can very quickly search Wikipedia/Google/IMDB/The Free Dictionary/Multiple news sites/etc., and enhance your clipboard to store lots and lots of your copied text? Don't know? Go to Transfz.com and download Transfz (pronounced "transfuse") for this super search tool. It is also a greenware, helping planting more trees when you donate to the project.

If you do many things repetitively on your computer, you might want to save time by assigning those tasks to hotkeys. The best hotkey program on Windows I know is AutoHotkey. I estimate that it save me about 30 minutes per day for the past year already.

Better Understanding VS. Stupid GPA

Say, you want your children to learn about nature, mathematics and sciences and to create new things. Traditional schools in Thailand won't allow calculators, computers, or the Internet during exams. However, using a computer with appropriate programs such as Mathematica is much better for actual understanding and experimentation. What should you do? (Hint: Creativity and understanding is intrinsically precious, GPA is much, much, less so.)

In this excellent essay, Theodore Gray and Jerry Glynn pointed out why automating mathematical manipulations using tools such as Mathematica would allow civilization to go forward. The lists of things that become less important and more important with such tools are instructive:

Less Important

• Guessing factors for polynomials
• Knowing many tricks for integration
• Being careful when copying over expressions many times
• Finding roots of complex equations
• Knowing how to do matrix row operations
• Knowing how to avoid dropping minus signs
• Memorizing specific rules for derivatives of such functions as tangent and secant
• Memorizing multiple angle formulas for trig functions

More Important

• Translating statements about problems in natural language into statements in mathematical or procedural language
• Learning how to experiment with math
• Knowing which integrals should best be done numerically
• Knowing how to work backwards or to use numerical methods to check symbolic results for plausibility
• Knowing how to use techniques from programming
• Understanding recursion and how to use it practically
• Knowing which functions are discontinuous and where they are discontinuous
• Knowing how to mix math and programming

Another important passage is:

Children need to know certain facts, but acquiring them is not the main point of learning, especially not in the earlier grades. Mainly children need to have effective habits of mind and an ability to think analytically. They also need to be self-motivated, because in real life there isn't always someone there to provide external motivation (unless they join the army).

The hardest things to teach are the skill of solving problems with incomplete information, the skill of figuring out which problems need solving in the first place, and the skill of finding and bringing together the resources needed to solve a problem.

Children are primed to want to learn. They start out valuing learning and accomplishment above anything else in the world. If you see a child uninterested in learning, it is overwhelmingly likely that the child was made that way by something in the child's world: Children do not start out that way. (Of course there are always exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions.)
--- - ---- - ----- ---------
P.S.
1. แนะนำการใช้ Mathematica ภาษาไทย
2. ถามตอบการใช้ Mathematica
3. Understanding the birthday paradox and hash collision using Mathematica

การฝังชิปให้สุนัขอาจจะทำให้สุนัขป่วยเป็นมะเร็งได้

สืบเนื่องจากข่าว "4 ก.ค.51 ไม่ขึ้นทะเบียนหมาเมืองกรุง เจอปรับ 5 พันบาท" และ "กทม.ฝังไมโครชิปสุนัขวันแรก มีผู้สนใจรับริการจำนวนมาก"

ผมว่าแก้ปัญหาไม่ตรงจุด นอกจากนี้ยังมี study ว่าการฝัง microchip อาจก่อให้เกิดมะเร็งในสัตว์ด้วยเช่น นี่ นี่ และ นี่

แม้ว่าผมจะไม่ได้รักสัตว์เท่าไรนัก แต่คนหลายๆคนเขารักเหมือนลูก เหมือนญาติ ถ้าเขารู้ว่ามันอาจมีความเสี่ยงถีง 4-5% ว่าสุนัขของเขาจะเป็นมะเร็งตรงที่ฝัง microchip เขาจะทำไหม คนทำจะกล้าฝังให้พี่น้องหรือลูกของเขาไหม

ผมไม่แน่ใจว่าการทำอย่างนี้จะแก้ปัญหาอะไร ถ้ามีสุนัขอยู่เกือบล้านตัว แต่มี microchip ให้ 50,000 อัน จะบังคับให้เราซื้อหรือ

แล้วถ้าสุนัขเราเป็นมะเร็งตรงที่ฝัง หรือchipหาย ใครจะรับผิดชอบ

Good Article, Bad Example

Naomi Wolf wrote a good How-To article on how to turn a democracy into a fascist state. However, her example of the 2006 Thailand Coup as an example of a process of turning Thailand into a fascist state is wrong. It's closer to the truth to view the coup as turning a proto-fascist government of Thaksin Shinawatra into a proto-democratic state. In this respect, the U.S.A. is in even more trouble than Thailand since there's nobody to stop the process of fascism. It might be wise to heed the advice of this retired soldier.

I wrote my voluminous impression of the coup in the past. After a year, I have to say that I'm quite disappointed with the result. There are so many things that could have been done by the people who seized power to prepare Thailand for a stable democracy. Instead, it's quite likely that Thailand will go into more vicious cycles of failed democracy after this coming election since many of the same politicians who bought votes will likely be in the parliament again.

BTW, you can see Naomi Wolf in talking about her book in this video clip.

If You Have To Die, Try To Die In Chilled Liquid

It seems that injecting cold saline solution into the body after the heart stops can prevent enough cell death that you can be resurrected!

There is another related news article about reviving the dead here.

Here is an excerpt from the first news article:

61-year-old Bill Bondar is living proof that people can be brought back from the dead.

"I didn't know I died, I didn't feel anything, I still don't believe it," Bill said.

"I looked at his face, and I was looking at a dead man," Bill's wife Monica said.

It happened just after the couple left a jam session. Bill collapsed outside their home, lifeless.

"That was the most frightening thing I ever saw in my life and I knew my husband was gone. He was gone," said Monica.

Paramedics were able to restart his heart, but that's just part of the battle. Cells continue to die, and there can be damage to vital organs like the brain, that could be fatal.

ทำไมการดูชะตาชีวิตด้วยวันเดือนปีเกิดจึงไม่น่าจะทำได้

ย้ายไป http://witpoko.com/?p=497 แล้วครับ

Bizarre Experiments

See how far people were willing to go in the name of science! Here are twenty very surprising/strange/horrifying/or just plain cool experiments collected by Alex Boese, the author of Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments.

I especially like #2, #7, #12, #16, #17, and #19.

The World Really Needs Peaceful Muslims' Help

These pictures left me speechless and very sad. We should all be able to live and let live, but fundamentalist nuts from various religions are spoiling it for everyone.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Top Censored Stories

Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008, of 2007, of other years. You can find out about Project Censored here.

It's good to hear news that didn't make it to the mainstream. It sharpens my conspiracy theory instinct and it is true quite often :-)

In Thailand, it seems that most mainstream news outlets exist only to make money and keep the population numb enough for the Pyramid of Capitalist System. We should have a list for Thailand too.

A Few Useful Tips Forwarded To Me

How to use salt to tenderize steak,
Many uses of tennis balls,
Solar cooling and heating of your home,
How to make your own biodiesel, and
HOW TO BECOME INVISIBLE (for only $24.95, with free bonus books: SECRETS OF SEXUAL SEDUCTION and THE WIZARD'S BOOK OF ANIMAL SECRETS!!!)

If you buy the last one, please tell me how the it works. We can share a Nobel Prize, or two :-)

Superstition Is Not Limited To Human!

In 1948, there was an experiment by B.F. Skinner that showed that pigeons appeared to exhibit superstitious behaviors.


Full paper is here.


I think the result might be applicable to why human perform rituals, pray, bribe karma wheel, buy lotteries, etc. I also wonder whether animals have their religious thoughts too.


I like to collect these animal examples because, based on what we learn from animal and human behaviors, I believe that biology created human morals and religions through evolution of societal units and it's up to the us, not supernatural mechanisms, to make sure that bad deeds got punished and good deeds got rewarded. I don't believe that human require special treatment from nature in terms of mechanisms that shaped us.


A few books that shaped my thinking about this matter:

• Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes
• Peacemaking among Primates
• Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition
• Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
• Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration
• The Evolution of Cooperation

In the last book, bacteria show cooperative behaviors that might be examples of what we would call moral behaviors. That book, along with The Blind Watchmaker started my education in evolution.

Lastest Batch Of Pictures From Aor

Once again, my wife Aor has posted many of our family pictures on Tabblo (a very easy to use picture sharing and printing website.)

Here are the pictures:

Mother Day in Thailand

Titus' 4th Birthday

Titus and Tatia's Water Color Adventure

Titus' Field Trip at Khao Yai

มีหนังสือมาแนะนำครับ

หนังสือ "X-Ray คนไทย 360 องศา" ครับ เขียนโดยคุณ พงษ์ ผาวิจิตร

เป็นข้อสังเกตว่าลักษณะของคนไทยเป็นอย่างไร และควรจะแก้นิสัยอะไรให้ดีขึ้น เขียนได้แสบๆ คันๆ แต่มีสาระดีครับ อ่านไปก็หัวเราะหึหึไป ผมอ่านแล้วก็สำรวจตัวเองและพบว่ามีนิสัยไม่ดีเยอะเหมือนกัน ถ้าไม่ได้อ่านก็คงไม่ได้เห็นนิสัยเสียของตนเองชัดๆ

เล่มไม่ใหญ่ 240 หน้า ราคา 200 บาท ถ้ามีเวลา ลองอ่านดูครับ

Sometimes Experts Don't Know Much

The Rosenhan experiment showed that psychiatric hospital staff couldn't reliably distinguish between the sane and the insane in the hospital. The full paper can be found here.

According to another study at Cornell, you can implant false memories into preschool children to make them think the memories are true, and experts cannot distinguish, by interviewing the children, which memories are true and which are false.

So, when experts' claims conflict with reality, you should be careful in checking whether the claims are true or not. Most people (yes, including me) appear (or pretend) to know more than they actually know.

--- - ---- - ----- ---------
P.S. How to believe anything? That's a hard question that cannot be completely solved. I think we can only hope to converge closer and closer to the truth. Gotama Buddha tried to teach the Kalamas people using the list we know as Kalama Sutra. Personally, I like the Bayesian approach of updating my belief on whether something is true or false as I gain more and more evidences. A short overview of Bayesian inference is here. A reading list can be found here.

A Surprisingly Honest Interview

In this 2005 Spiegel interview, Pan Yue, China's Deputy Minister of the Environment described how China's fantastic growth in GDP has tremendous environmental cost.

More info about Pan Yue can be found on Wikipedia. Here is another article by him in English in July 2007.

It will be good for everyone on this earth when policy makers are smart enough to ponder the true cost of development and have enough inner strength to do the right things. Measuring GDP without the cost to environment is simply incorrect, and we will ultimately pay the price.

Tatia's Underwater Demolition Training Commenced

She is on her way to be in a special force in the future. You can see her rare training photos here.

Danica McKellar Is My Hero

I remember Danica McKellar playing the part of Winnie Cooper in the TV show The Wonder Years in the late 1980s to early 1990s. She has a new book out called Math Doesn't Suck to promote mathematics to young people.

She said, "When girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible, but I want to show them that being smart is cool. Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life." and "I want to tell girls that cute and dumb isn't as good as cute and smart."

By the way, Ms. McKellar has a theorem named after her. It's called the "Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem," and you can see the paper here. She also tutors kids online at Danica's Corner.

She also appeared in lingerie for Stuff magazine.

Cute + Dumb < Cute + Smart, indeed.

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P.S. My beautiful and smart wife approved this post.

แนะนำให้อ่านครับ

ถ้าใครสนใจว่าประวัติความเป็นมาของประเทศไทย และสนใจประวัติวีรสตรีที่ไม่จอมปลอม รีบไปซื้อ นิตยสาร สารคดี ฉบับ ที่ 269 กรกฎาคม 2550 เลยนะครับ หน้าปกเป็นรูปท่านผู้หญิงพูนศุข พนมยงค์ ถูกตำรวจคุมตัวไปขังด้วยข้อหาที่ไม่เป็นความจริง

ท่านผู้ หญิงพูนศุข ภรรยาของรัฐบุรุษอาวุโส ปรีดี พนมยงค์ ผู้ ก่อการอภิวัฒน์สยามประเทศ ท่านเป็นผู้ หญิงตัวเล็ก ๆ ที่กล้าต่อกรกับ ทหารอาวุธครบมือ แม้ใน ยามที่เผชิญมรสุมทางการเมืองครั้งแล้ว ครั้งเล่า ท่านก็ยัง เด็ดเดี่ยว ยึดมั่นใน สัจจะ กล้าประกาศความ จริง และให้ อภัยกับ ทุกคน ตลอดชีวิต ท่านได้ ทำหน้าที่ภรรยา และ แม่อย่างเข้มแข็ง ใช้ ชีวิตเรียบง่ายเยี่ยงชนธรรมดามาโดย ตลอด ใน บั้นปลายชีวิตยังช่วย งานสังคมใน ทุกโอกาส ท่านคือแบบอย่างของความ สูงสุดคืนสู่สามัญโดย แท้ แม้จนวาระสุดท้ายของชีวิต ก็ยัง “ไม่ ขอรับเกียรติยศใด ๆ ทั้ง สิ้น” คงไม่ เกินจริงที่จะ กล่าวว่า สตรี “ผู้ ยิ่งน้อย” ท่านนี้เองที่ชนรุ่นหลังกราบไหว้ได้ อย่างสนิทใจ

Autistic People Cannot Lie (Easily)

I found this essay by Simon Baron-Cohen (the psychologist whose cousin is Borat's Sacha Baron-Cohen) about people with autism and Asperger's syndrome and their lack of lying skill very interesting.

From the essay:

"And then there are people with autism. Their neurological condition leads not only to difficulties socializing and chatting but also to difficulties recognizing when someone might be deceiving them or understanding how to deceive others. Many children with autism are perplexed by why someone would even want to deceive others, or why someone would think about fiction or pretense. They have no difficulty with facts (version 1 of reality) and can tell you easily if something is true or false (“Is the moon made of rocks? Yes! Is the moon made of cheese? No!”). But they may be puzzled by version 2 of reality, that “John believes the moon is made of cheese.” Why would a person believe something that is untrue?"

By the way, the inventor of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen also has Asperger's syndrome.

Interesting Point/Counterpoint: Did Islamic Civilization Propelled The World Through The Dark Age?

The argument for: How Islam has kept us out of the ‘Dark Ages’

The argument against: What Arab Civilization?

My favorite word derived from Arabic is "algorithm" which, according to Wiktionary, comes ... from Medieval Latin algorismus, a mangled transliteration of the name of the Islamic mathematician al-Khwārizmī (Arabic: الخوارزمي, "native of Khwarezm.")

Examples for English words derived from Arabic can be found here. Admiral, adobe, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, etc. are among them.

Understanding Something Is More Than Just Knowing Fancy Words

An anecdote by Richard Feynman:

For example, there was a book that started out with four pictures: first there was a windup toy; then there was an automobile; then there was a boy riding a bicycle; then there was something else. And underneath each picture it said, "What makes it go?"

I thought, "I know what it is: They're going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work."

It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about: "What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining." And then we would have fun discussing it:

"No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up," I would say. "How did the spring get wound up?" he would ask.

"I wound it up."

"And how did you get moving?"

"From eating."

"And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it's because the sun is shining that all these things are moving." That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun's power.

I turned the page. The answer was, for the wind-up toy, "Energy makes it go." And for the boy on the bicycle, "Energy makes it go." For everything, "Energy makes it go."

Now that doesn't mean anything. Suppose it's "Wakalixes." That's the general principle: "Wakalixes makes it go." There's no knowledge coming in. The child doesn't learn anything; it's just a word!

What they should have done is to look at the wind-up toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind "energy." Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.

So, when you try to understand how something works or comes to be, and some authority say to you it's because of X, you better know how X operates.

If you haven't read a book called "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", you should really read it at least once in your life. It contains a lot of fun adventures by the great scientist Richard Feynman.

T3 Is Near Completion

We have the latest 4-D ultrasound of the T3 project today. This is her 23rd week and she should come out around October 26 or so. You can see an exciting movie of her sleeping here.

As usual, we went to Bangpo General Hospital in the morning to meet Dr. Vichit who brought Titus and Tatia to this planet. We are quite certain he will do the same for T3.

Titus was born before we had access to the 4-D ultrasound so he doesn't have his pre-natal movies. Tatia's movies can be found in my previous posts here and here.

You know, T3 looks very much like Tatia, so maybe the ultrasound machine always draws the same face every time :-D

ความสามารถของธีธัช

อาทิตย์ที่ผ่านมา ธีธัชแต่งเนื้อเพลงไว้สองเพลง แต่ยังไม่มีทำนอง โดยพยายามร้องในรถ และโต๊ะอาหาร:

ค้างคาวเอ๋ย
เจ้านอนท่าไหน
นอนห้อยหัว
แสดงว่าถูก

และ

ยีราฟเอ๋ย
ทำไมไม่กินเนื้อ
แต่สิงโตกินเนื้อ
สัตว์อื่นๆ

นอกจากนี้หลังจากธีธัชดูหนังตัวอย่าง Transformers ไปหนึ่งรอบ เมื่อเห็นรูป(นางเอกหนัง Transformers)นี้ในหนังสือ Movie Time:

ก็เรียกผมให้ดูว่าเป็นหนังหุ่นยนต์

เข้าใจจำนะลูก

Pound = lb. and Ounce = oz. Why?

This is one of the questions that kept me wondering, but not enough to actively look for the answer. Today, my RSS feeder found a short article by the World's Smartest Human Being, Cecil Adams:

"Lb." stands for libra, the basic unit of Roman weight, from which our present-day pound derives. The libra weighed a little under 12 ounces avoirdupois.

"Oz." stands for the Italian onza, ounce. It came into use in the 15th century. Ounce comes from the Latin uncia, a 12th, which is also the source of the term "inch."

Of course, in the end, it does not explain why pound comes from pondo while lb. comes from libra. I guess random accident of human decisions got stuck with us again.

I have read the Straight Dope in physical book format since 1987 and found it very interesting. You might want to visit the website.

A Debate About Life After Death

Michael Shermer gains my respect as a great proponent and educator against irrational beliefs.

Deepak Chopra is very likely one of the greatest (and very rich) living charlatan of our time. He is a real medical doctor, by the way.

They had a debate about Life after Death. You should be able to guess which side I am on.

A moral of the story is: Even if a person is a real medical doctor, it does not mean that he is not a bullshitter and we should always question authority.

If there is life after death, there is no evidence for it. Given what we have observed in the world, I don't think it's likely there is such a thing. It's not depressing to me that after I die, I would feel exactly like before I was born and that I should live the best/most useful life I can during the short time I have. Many people I talked to don't feel the same way and prefer that there is an afterlife.

Skepticality Podcast

Everytime I visited the USA, I would always buy the current issues of Skeptic magazine. The magazine is the official publication of the Skeptics Society, a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas, and the promotion of science.

I was looking for something interesting to listen to on my computer and mp3 player, and I found out about Skepticality, which is the official podcast of Skeptic magazine. I was very happy to see the podcast archive that should feed me for a year.

There are two things that currently annoy me greatly and make me think that skepticism should be more widely practiced in Thailand:

1. The "Jatukam Ramathep" hype in Thailand.
2. Books such as "ไอนสไตน์ถาม พระพุทธเจ้าตอบ" which short-change the intricacy and beauty of science in the public's mind by confusing various religious claims with scientific ideas.

In the first annoyance, I am quite pissed that people who claim to be Buddhists blatantly ignore Gautama Buddha's teaching and give in to superstition and worship to attain their well-being. It's as if Buddha never existed and never taught us what he discovered.

For the second annoyance, I usually found gross inaccuracies about what we know about the world through scientific investigation in this type of books. Given the authors' sloppiness about being well-informed and accurate about science, I think it's prudent to assume that they are similarly sloppy about their religion too. The uninformed readers would be fooled by the authors' eloquence and misunderstand our universe in the end. A mind poison, indeed.

Of course, the two annoyances are just the latest fads that reflect our society's preference, and I think the more people consciously become a skeptic, the more we can dispel ignorance and superstition from our society. I firmly believe that democracy critically depends on a large number of informed citizens that can make logical decisions. Sadly such a prerequisite seems to be absent from Thailand.

Anyway, I would like to end on a more positive note and would like to introduce you to a very entertaining video of Michael Shermer giving a talk titled "Why people believe strange things." If your Internet connection is not fast, you would probably want to download the file and play it later.

M81

Here is a beautiful description of what the M81 galaxy meant to an astronomer when he looked at it.

High resolution pictures and more info about M81 can be found here.

If you are not sure what a galaxy is, you should really check this Wikipedia article.

Billions and billions (and billions...) of galaxies, each with billions and billions (and billions...) of stars. Our Sun is just one of these stars. All life on Earth's surface derive their energy input from the Sun.

By the way, M81 is considered quite close to us at about 12 million light-years away. Now, to put that distance in perspective, it took light 12 million years to travel from M81 to Earth. Meanwhile, the speed of light is so great (to us) that light can travel around the Earth 7 times in one second. (Light travels about 300,000 kilometers per second, or about a billion kilometers per hour.)

We live in a really big universe.

ความสุขใจเล็กๆน้อยๆ

คุณสาธิต (Atrium's system administrator extraordinaire) ส่งเมล์มาบอกผมว่ามี blog สองแห่ง (ที่ไม่ใช่ผมเอง) เขียนถึง SaiJai.net:

http://oatato.exteen.com/20070511/entry
และ
http://pourboire.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E380E0F17AF2445!7285.entry

ถ้าใครรู้จักคนอื่นๆที่ชอบ SaiJai.net อย่าลืมบอกกันนะครับ หรือถ้ามีคำแนะนำติชมให้ปรับปรุงอะไรก็ช่วยบอกด้วยครับ

SaiJai.net: อุปกรณ์เลี้ยงลูกช่วยลดปัญหาเด็กพ่อแม่ไม่สั่งสอน
SaiJai.net: ดูแลการใช้คอมของลูก แม้คุณจะนั่งอยู่ที่ทำงาน :-)

Design For The Other 90%

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”

—Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

This website contains very cool products that should ease the suffering of most people in the world. I think many can be used or adapted in Thailand.

My favorites include:

Pot-In-Pot Cooler, which is a simple refridgerator using only water and pottery,

LifeStraw, which is a straw that will filter unclean water into drinking water,

Ceramic Water Filter, which supplies clean drinking water,

One Laptop Per Child, which (will be) a $100 durable laptop suitable for child exploration and learning, and,

Solar Dish Kitchen, which cooks with sunlight.

On a related note, Ancient Persia discovered a way to use the wind to cool their living space using windcatchers. The modern evolution is the planned Burj al-Taqa building in Dubai that will use wind and sunlight to save energy.

กฏแห่งกรรม* มีจริง แต่เกิดจากคน ไม่ใช่ปาฏิหาริย์

ถ้าปล่อยไปตามยถากรรม รอให้คนชั่วตายไปก่อนได้รับโทษ กฏแห่งกรรมก็จะไม่ทำงาน

ผมเชื่อว่า กฏแห่งกรรมเป็นคุณสมบัติที่เกิดขึ้น (emergent property) เมื่อสมาชิกในสังคมมีความเป็นมนุษย์ถึงระดับหนึ่ง

กฏแห่งกรรมไม่ใช่สิ่งศักดิ์สิทธิ์ ที่เราเพียงหวังพึ่ง แล้วก็จะดลบันดาลให้มีผล

สมาชิกในสังคมดี -> กฏแห่งกรรมทำงานเสมอๆ (ทำดี highly correlated กับ ได้ดี) -> สังคมดี

สมาชิกในสังคมไม่ค่อยดี -> กฏแห่งกรรมทำงานเป็นบางครั้ง (ทำดี somewhat correlated กับ ได้ดี) -> สังคมไม่ค่อยดี

สมาชิกในสังคมแย่ -> กฏแห่งกรรมไม่ทำงาน (ทำดี uncorrelated กับ ได้ดี) -> สังคมแย่

สมาชิกในสังคมเลว -> กฏแห่งกรรมทำงานแบบกลับข้าง (ทำชั่ว highly uncorrelated กับ ได้ดี) -> สังคมเลว

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*Of course, "กฏแห่งกรรม" in a trivial sense of causality already exists, since we live in a reasonably predictable universe governed by physical laws, not an arbitrary universe like Harry Potter's.

hakia Search Engine

I found a new search engine called "hakia" that seems not to be worse than Google and seems to be better at handling natural questions (such as "How to stream flash video from website?", "How to find the age of the universe?", etc.)

So, if you search for information a lot, you might find this useful. You can see the examples above the search box for more ideas.

Cellulose-Based Personal Armor System From AAI (Aor Armory International)

See the pictures here. I was stunned.

Titus the Artist & Tatia the Bully

Yes, my wife updated her Tabblo again. You can see Titus' water color painting here. Also, Tatia's crime was reported here.

Evidences For Life's Common Ancestors & The Tree Of Life

A good friend of mine asked me what evidences I have for my belief in the idea that all living things on earth have common ancestors. This is an excellent question since it's very important to base our judgement about reality on good evidences, or we can easily be led astray by our commonsense, biases, and other extremely appealing ideas that don't match reality.*

My specific belief is this: All living things on Earth descend from one or small number of groups of ancestors. (I would like to say one group, but I'm open to the possibility that there are unknown life forms that have independent ancestors, distinct from our group.)

For this particular belief, a very good summary of evidences can be be found here (29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.)

Also, a very informative depiction of known life on Earth can be found at the Tree of Life Web Project. Make sure that you read this page about the interpretation of the image.

An implication of the belief is that I am a (mostly distant) relative of bacteria, mushrooms, blue-green algae, jasmine rice, earth worms, monitor lizards, cows, starfish, mangoes, octopuses, fire ants, bees, dogs, monkeys, gorillas, parrots, sharks, triceratops, T-Rexes, the slaves that built the pyramids, Ghenghis Khan, and you, the reader.

Another implication that if there are extra-terrestrial beings (which I really hope there are, although I don't have any evidence for that yet) it's very unlikely for them to look very similar to us. Even if we and ET have the same common ancestors, that ancestors must have come to earth billions of years ago and will have enough time to evolve into us and myriads forms of animals and plants. Similarly, the ET would descend from the common ancestors over the similarly long time period. So, Captain Kirk in Star Trek should not be able to mate with those ET chicks if he is not really, really into inter-planetary bestiality. (Same reasoning applies to Superman and Lois Lane.**)

Yet another implication is that human is not the apex of evolution. There will be other lifeforms in the billions of years ahead if we don't destroy all life first. We are the first Earth lifeform that can destroy all life on Earth using our technology, but we are not necessarily the best lifeform. To think that we are the peak of all possible lifeforms is just extremely arrogant.

Finally, my body is made of atoms from things (living/dead, never-alive) from the past. Therefore, I also believe that when I die, some atoms that used to be me will be recycled into other living things in the future but the atoms won't carry any of my memory there, since my memory is not stored in specific atoms, but in the patterns of how atoms are arranged. This is supported by the fact that, atoms inside my bodies are very likely to have been in bodies of people of the past, yet I don't share their memory. Conversely, with very high probability, atoms that are in my body now weren't the same atoms that were in my body when I was a child, yet I still remember many things from my childhood. This gives me a hope that, in principle, human can preserve identity/memory by capturing the memory patterns and upload them to more permanent substrate and become relatively immortal.

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* The great Richard Feynman summed it up (in this book) thus: "... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd.

I'm going to have fun telling you about this absurdity, because I find it delightful. Please don't turn yourself off because you can't believe Nature is so strange. Just hear me all out, and I hope you'll be as delighted as I am when we're through."


**Larry Niven wrote a very funny essay called "Man of Steel,Woman of Kleenex" on the problems involved when Superman and Lois Lane try to mate.