Pontiac G8 Wiper Blades, super low-key custom equipment

The Pontiac G8 is a fun and enjoyable car, though a little rough around the edges for some details.  The G8 model never had time to be polished because it and the whole Pontiac brand where cancelled as a result of the GM bankruptcy from the Financial crisis of 2007–2008. So, there are just somethings where the owner needs to consider their options when replacing worn-out parts.  One consideration: the two windshield wiper blades.

The original sizes for the wiper blades didn't do a good job of clearing the window in front of the driver.  The stock wiper blades don't swipe enough of the upper middle area of the windshield to help the driver clearly see through portions of the window.  Another problem with the original blades is/was that some owners (including myself) reported chatter or incomplete clearing of the window during each swipe.  

Funny enough, it's not easy to find the sizes of the original wiper blades.  You can still buy them, supposedly, but the sizes aren't published in their descriptions. I think they were something like 24" length for the driver's side and 14" for the passenger side.  Whatever the sizes, the original blades left rather large of areas of the window unswiped during rain, not just at the top, but also the bottom of the window between swiped areas.

I didn't wait long to replace the original blades. Either late 2009 or 2010, I found some good quality replacement blades of the sizes 26" and 15".  (At the time, it wasn't easy to figure out replacements of alternate sizes.)  Believe it or not, my replacement blades performed well for 10 years.  Sometimes you get lucky.  Unfortunately, when it came time to replace them this year, I lost track of what I purchased before.

That didn't end up mattering, though.  In 2020, the secret has long since been out.  It's actually more common to find 26"/15" sizes than what might've been stock sizes.  On multiple sites, I found that the main size recommendations are 26"/15".  So, it is really down to quality (since price stopped being a factor since I'm no longer looking at stock blades).

After seeing recommendations on multiple websites (including forums) and reading many reviews, I settled on Trico brand blades:  Trico 25-260 Force Beam Wiper Blade 26" and Trico 25-150 Force Beam Wiper Blade 15".

Many modern blades try to support as many car models as possible, so they come with adapters.  I remember my first replacement blades being very simple to install.  This doesn't seem to be the case anymore.  The Trico's aren't hard to install, but it is a ~10 step process which includes removing their default adapter, adding the included secondary adapter, then removing a piece of that adapter to specifically fit the G8.  Again, not hard, but not intuitive either.  

I like the Tricos because they cover even more area of my windshield than my first replacements.  It amazes me just how much of the window they clear with each swipe. So far, the Tricos work well.  We'll see how they perform as the season changes.  

Charities suck and you suck for supporting them?

Presentations that provide misinformation or misrepresentations regarding charities are common.  Awhile back I ran into this seemingly well-meaning Youtube video  (below)  that attempts to expose the dirty underbelly of charities.  Normally, I don't promote content I see as wildly or widely off-base.  However, in this case, I feel it's important to see the earnest and confidence of the presentation and still be able to peer through the facade to come face-to-face with the video's deep flaws.

I've worked with funding of charities in the past.  After viewing this video, something just feels off about its presentation.  It's as though Thought2 (pronounce "42") is trying to promote an agenda of lowkey fearmongering rather than provide accurate information.  

Yes, administrative costs exist and are typically a large amount of where the donations are used in a well-run organization.  However, this video makes it sound like there are dozens if not hundreds of people on charity payrolls.  The truth is that most locally managed charities are scraping by with just a few people, who are often volunteers, in makeshift or hand-me-down office spaces.  

Yes, some charities are short-sighted in their march to achieve artificially important goals.  However, the video's example of water pumps drastically misses the point: most communities that were helped do have working water pumps, even if many do not.  

The video's example regarding clothes and electronic donations is also far off the mark.  As stated by another Youtube commenter (Tripe): 

"Blaming the entire collapse of the Kenyan textile market on imports isn't reality. He does state "domestic market" at one point, but that isn't the data he presents.  He blames charity for the loss of 500000 jobs, but those people were serving the entire industry, not only the domestic market. The same issues that lead to the collapse of exports were still affecting the domestic market as well.  They've had loads of problems including tariffs, labor prices, port prices, high energy costs, stiff competition from Asian countries, corruption, outdated machinery, credit problems, trade reforms and more. I think it would be more accurate to say imports are one of the factors that lead to the downfall of the domestic textile market and are currently retarding the resurgence of the domestic textile market in Kenya, (if they have the leadership for such a resurgence),  not the main cause of the collapse and the loss of 500000 jobs."

Also, I found the video's focus on Africa-support charities produces a dramatically skewed story.  IRL, many charities are for local benefit, so don't have same economic effects about which this video speaks.   Thoughty2 seems to be heavily focused on big-picture and grand-gesture charities.  The charity rating services that are mentioned in the video are heavily focused on these types of charities too.  This video makes no mention of rape crisis centers, suicide hotlines, or local food banks.

Oh, United Way also locally audits the charities that they support using similar criteria as the organization that this video promotes.  United Way audits charities within each community separately.  This means that even national organizations are audited at a local level to justify their funding in that area.  The problem with organizations that publish charities ratings is that the numbers are often misleading, with too much emphasis placed on making "administrative costs" out to be a bad thing.  Due to the nature of some charities and the location of the people they help, costs are naturally higher for some charities over others. United Way funds charities without making the mistake of assuming administrative costs are somehow bad just because.

I'm not sure if this video is well-intended, or if it intentionally misleads.  Either way, in my opinion, this video is completely unreliable for the topic of charities and should not be used as a reference in discussions regarding charities.

Gender inequality isn't the overarching issue often assumed within the Engineering field

As much as I appreciate the sentiment of this somewhat older  Letter to the Editor that still makes its rounds on the Internet, there's a lot of creative license here. As I read it, I said repeatedly to myself, "yes, I have experienced that." Yes, boys experience these things as well, right along with girls. The experience may not be about the same specific things, but feelings of inadequacy and fear of rejection affect almost everyone in school while growing up.

Regardless of gender, each of us has to learn for ourselves how to be true to ourselves and explore our interests regardless of what others may feel. For me, I indeed pursued a career that my childhood friends specifically told me not to.

For me as a child, I got into trouble when I got dirty.

For me as a child, I never saw "bossy" used differently between girls and boys. I was called bossy. You are called bossy because you imposing your leadership upon others without mandate. Basically, you are called bossy because you aren't good at leadership, not because you are demonstrating leadership skill.  Kids shouldn't be expected to be good at leadership, so teach them. They need guidance on how to lead effectively.

For me as a child, I lived in constant fear of rejection for my interests, because kids and adults alike are just that judgemental.

For me as a child, I was indeed bombarded with images and slogans based on how I should appear and present myself. For every Barbie, there was a He-man. For every June Cleaver there is a James Bond.

For me, I grew up in a time when a boy would be singled out for acting too feminine.

For me as a child, I saw plenty of boys overlooked by teachers for a whole bunch of different reasons. I saw the impact of that neglect on those boys in my classes.  

For me, I was never a part of any popular clique, so the "boys club mentality" puzzled me.  This not a gender thing.  Clique-forming is tool which is natural to being human.  Cliques frequently form around common interests and personality compatibility.  Sometimes cliques are all-male or all-female, and sometimes they are not.  Sometimes multiple cliques overlap with each other.  Again, I'm not a fan of the behavior, but it's part of who we are as a species.

While it's true I'll never personally deal with being "diversity hire" (though I can legally declare myself as an ethnicity that would be surprizing to most observers), I've have never seen a woman hired or not hired for a job in Engineering because she's a woman.

The words in the letter are so far removed from my experience that it feels like it was written in a different world than the one we actually live in.

For the issue of gender inequality to be addressed seriously, we have engage in serious discussions about it, while avoiding ideas based on rhetoric. Why are girls discouraged away from Math or Science?  How frequently is that happening these days (and where)? Why are boys discouraged from being Nurses? Why are children in poor families overlooked and disregarded completely, regardless to subject matter or their gender? Why do people think the Engineering field rejects or otherwise poorly treats women in the field, when the opposite is true more often than not? 

The world isn't perfect.  There is sexism.  Society (from a North American perspective) has many tools to address sexism when it does appear.  It's out there, but it's not a dominant factor; being experienced far less in the modern world than in the world of our grandparents.

On the topic of Engineering, we should be mindful when encouraging anyone (boy or girl) to enter the field.  A high number of Engineering graduates end up never getting a job in Engineering or leaving the field early in their career.  Many end up in Sales (perhaps their degree helps, but wasn't actually necessary), business management (where an MBA may be more important), Quality (again where their degree helps but wasn't a requirement), Technical Writing, Marketing, and even full time blogging/vlogging. 

When you encourage someone to pursue Engineering, don't try to push it on them because you think it's right for them.  Let them find their own path.

So, you moved from a cushy climate to a region with significant snow and this is your first real winter?

Moving from a climate where it never snows to a climate with a lot of snow can be daunting, particularly for your first year of home ownership in such a region.  Snow isn't bad.  It just requires a certain level of awareness and skill to deal with it.  This article isn't meant for someone who's lived in snowy areas for a while.  It is meant for snow first-timers (and even second-timers too).  This article is just a starting point.  The following suggestions are just opinion.  Each person is response to make sure they are always acting in a safe manner regardless to any opinions expressed in this or any article.

Owning a home, where you have to manage snow on your own, presents a list of problems that need solutions.  For example, if you have a driveway and sidewalks, you are responsible for keeping those clear of snow, no matter how often it falls or how much accumulates.  These problems require various tools for their solutions.  Not all of us can have our own personal "Mr. Plow".

As someone who moved from the West Coast to New England, I quickly learned what was needed.  New England is particularly rough in Winter.  I researched the potential problems and solutions.  I will share my experiences by suggesting tools that I found to be helpful for dealing with snow seasons.  I will focus on what I found to be successful, and not dwell too much on failed or ineffective methods.  (Please see my FTC 16 CRF Part 255 notice in the right pane in reference to any affiliate links found this article. All affiliate links are incidental and were not used to determine the main content of this article.)

Snow Removal - Ground Level

There are various tiers of equipment that can move snow around, from a snow blower to a simple shovel.  However, a snow blower is typically overkill for most snowy days, and useless for the worse of days.  Also, it wouldn't be a good idea to use snow blowers on certain surfaces, such as a wood deck.  Snow blowers are most efficient for a particular amount of snow accumulation, or if you have a particularly large property.  For homes that I've owned, I never found snow blowers to be necessary.  To clear driveways and sidewalks, a shovel with a little elbow grease is typically the most versatile solution.  There are a lot of options for shovels.

First, don't use a shovel that isn't specifically designed for snow shovelling.  Using the wrong type of shovel will make your job a lot harder than it needs to be.  Second, I don't recommend using a metal snow shovel.  You may be tempted to think that metal is more reliable, but it's actually the less effective option in my experience.

Instead, get a non-metal snow shovel with a metal wear strip.  In fact, get two.  Two?  Yes.  One shovel with a wide "combo" or "shovel/pusher" blade and one shovel with a narrower blade.  The wide-bladed shovel will allow you to push and scoop a significant amount of snow very quickly and with much less effort; kind of like a bulldozer. This wide-blade shovel is your primary tool.  The shovel with a narrower blade will be useful when you need to move piles of snow but still need to do a little bulldozing too.

24 to 27" blade snow shovel options

18 to 20" blade snow shovel options

Snow Removal - Roof

Some regions with a lot of snow, such as Denver, don't keep the snow around very long.  So, although you may need to shovel throughout the season, that's about it.  However, New England is different.  Snow hangs around all Winter.  That's a problem for roofs.  As snow sits on your roof, the heat from your home will partially melt it from the bottom, and that melted snow freezes back into hard ice.  This forms something called ice dams.

Exterior signs of ice dams are icicles.  Interior signs of ice dams are leaks from the roof onto your ceiling and into your home.  To avoid the formation of ice dams, snow should be removed from the lowest 3 to 6 feet of your roof, above the gutter.  This is where ice dams will typically form, so removal of snow from this area is important.  The tool I used to remove rooftop snow was the roof rake.  The roof rake I used was the 21-foot Garelick.  However, newer products may be better.  Be sure to check customer reviews for current products that may be better.

There are powered or chemical options too.  Every circumstance is different, so these passive options may be necessary for various reasons.

Ice on the ground

To remove ice on the ground or not?  That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself.  Arguments can be made as the necessity of ice removal, or not.  For me, safety is a concern.  Removal of ice from paths and driveways creates the safest scenario.  Slipping on ice is dangerous and very unpleasant.  If you quickly remove snow, you can avoid most ice accumulation on walkable/drivable areas.  However, sometimes ice will just form on your paved areas regardless to the preventative actions you take.

There are a lot of options to chemically remove ice on the ground. The most basic is rock salt.  Other chemicals claim to work better.  Others claim to be environmentally-friendly.  There are even supposed pet-safe products.  Any product you choose should work well enough when the ice is thin.  However, don't rely on chemicals if you have an inch of ice.  In that event, you'll need to hack at the ice.  I don't really have advice as to the best ice-hacking tool because no tool seemed particularly efficient to me.  You just have to hack at the ice until you can pry it off.

Oh, don't be tempted to take shortcuts, like hot water.  Hot water doesn't stay hot for long when poured onto frozen ground.  You'll likely just end up making more ice.

Can you preemptively apply salt or other chemicals before snowfall?  Sure.  In light to moderate conditions, this will work well.  However, if 3 feet of snow falls overnight, don't expect a clear walkway when you wake up.  Expect 3 feet deep snow with a crusty layer at the bottom.

Your Car

Even if you park your car in a garage or carport, you'll still likely need to drive it at some point during a snowy day.

You'll need methods to remove snow and ice from your car's windows, hood and roof.  Window scrapers are necessary, even if you have a fancy windshield cover.  Keep at least one window scraper in your car at all times during late fall to early spring.

Driving in bad conditions

Now, when it comes to actually driving in bad conditions, different cars have different requirements.

If you have a front wheel drive (FWD) car, your car is not well-balanced between front and back, but your car's heaviest point (the engine) is solidly over your drive wheels.  This means you'll be less likely to lose traction in bad conditions *IF* you know how to handle your car in those conditions.  The problem is that many FWD drivers operate their car in the same fashion as if it was a rear wheel drive car.  This means the car can get squirrely, even when driving fairly straight.  I'm not going to go into driving basics, but do your research and learn as much as you can about the correct way to drive with a FWD car in bad conditions.

If you have a rear wheel drive (RWD) car, your car is also not well-balanced between the front and back.  However, the heaviest point (the engine) is not over your drive wheels.  This means you may have trouble getting traction on your drive wheels.  You may not be "squirrely", but you may spin your tires when trying to get up a gentle snow-covered hill.  To mitigate this limitation, use bags of sand or other well distributed weight over your rear tires within your trunk.  Bags of sand are good because they won't shift around a lot.  Even something as little as 50 pounds over each tire can help.  200 pounds over each tire would be ideal, particularly if you have a big engine.  With weight over my rear wheels, I found my car to be very stable and reliable.

I remember several occasions in bad conditions where other cars (both rear and front wheel drive) spun-out around me while I was able to drive without any significant trouble.

All wheel drive (AWD) is better.  AWD cars don't have the limitations of RWD and FWD cars.  However, that doesn't mean you don't have to be careful.  If you hit ice (particularly when going downhill or at the wrong speed), your car's wheel configuration won't matter that much.  Always use caution when driving in bad conditions.  Better yet, don't drive in bad conditions, if possible.

Snow Tires

Regardless to your car's drive type, consider getting a full set of snow tires if you live in New England or similar climates.  I found Blizzak snow tires to be very reliable for my needs. For ease of use, I purchased a whole separate set of rims just for my snow tires.  Since I had my snow tires mounted on their own rims, tire shops or the dealer usually switched out my tires from all-season to snow tires (and back again) for free as part of routine checks or tire rotations.

In Denver, snow tires don't seem necessary since snow doesn't hang around for very long.  Research to see if snow tires are recommended for your area before making the investment.

Snow Boots

Yup, just like your car, you'll need something to make you more stable in the snow.  Get one or more pairs of snow boots.  Just having waterproof shoes or hightops will not be enough. You'll need full-fledged snow boots.

Snow boots will allow you to do all the stuff previously mentioned in this article, like shovelling snow.  Seriously, don't try to shovel snow with your street shoes.

Anything else?

Yup, I can go on about such things like clothes to consider, or what to do when the power goes out.  However, there's already enough here to make you think twice about moving to a snowy climate.  So, perhaps I'll cover those things another time.  Overall, where you can prevent issues, do so. Always use caution when outside in bad weather, even if you are just walking your dog.  Good luck!

Machine Learning is artificial, but it's not necessarily intelligent

Machine Learning is "artificial", but it's not really intelligent from a certain point of view. There appears to be a trend going on in the industry right now that uses the terms "Machine Learning" and "Artificial Intelligence" interchangeably (or at least sees Machine Learning is a type of AI).

Intelligence is the often measured as the ability to see connections between different things.  Machine Learning doesn't see connections.  It just uses CPU time for brute-force analysis to find connections based on many iterative cycles of failures and successes in stages.  Early failures are often permanently disregarded, and early successes given too much value, even if they follow deadend paths . Machine Learning typically is not able to see that future success could actually come from pathways where it experienced early failure, unless there is human intervention of some sort.

This video should scare all of us, and not because of the wolves: 

Amazon learned a similar lesson on its own regarding Machine Learning, as detailed in the following venturebeat.com article. The article describes how Amazon had to scrap their Machine Learning program for hiring people. The program's purpose was to remove gender bias in hiring of new employees. However, their program developed gender bias on its own, despite the development team's best efforts to remove bias. Article: Amazon scrapped a secret AI recruitment tool that showed bias against women [archive.org].

This article on Volt DB (6 Reasons Why Your Machine Learning Project Will Fail to Get Into Production [archive.org]) goes into common problems with Machine Learning projects. It boils down to data quality. The problem is, data from the real world will always be of poor quality.

South Dakota v. Wayfair Supreme Court ruling on interstate sales tax seems to be based on wishful thinking

In the recent case of South Dakota v. Wayfair, et al, the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution has been redefined by the Supreme to remove prohibitions on states to collect sales tax on interstate transactions where the buyer is within their state. I am thoroughly suprized by this ruling, as it overturns long held understanding of Commerce Clause. As best as I can tell from reading the ruling, it's based on the same touchy-feelingly arguments that have been pervasive among the states about "losing money" and "the Internet changes everything". The decision takes for granted that money must be owed just because their is a transaction and the state has a sales tax. The ruling dismisses the very real challenge for small business who now have to deal with the burden of over 5000 tax jurisdictions. The ruling simply lemented an edge-case consequence of the previous ruling rather than allowing Congress to address the edge-case through legislation.

In an effort to level the playing field, Supreme Court created a whole new unlevel field on a much larger scale. The ruling also goes into a state's sovereign power, but it ignores the fact that this ruling is at the expense of every states' sovereign power being eroded, as now one state can tax another state's business directly. Since a sale tax is a tax, does this now mean one state can tax the income of a business in other state for the money earned on the transactions within their borders?  This would seem to further level the playing flat so that businesses in other states experience the same double taxation that businesses within the state experience already. [sarc]

This ruling also fully legitimizes Use Taxes, where the individual person must pay the sales tax directly to the state (rather than the business doing the collection), even though the transaction occurs in other state, like when you drive across state lines to buy something, then bring it back home.

Based on this ruling, states should not only have a right to tax transactions that occur outside of their state, but they should be able to tax transactions that occur in foreign countries now too. Additionally, since the Indian Tribes are specifically mentioned in the Commerce Clause, do they now have the right to tax businesses in the same new manner as now granted to the states, taxing businesses anywhere in the country (or the world)? This is going to be an annoying twenty or so years while the lower courts sort out this mess unless we can get Congress to enact something that addresses everyone's concerns. Since this is specifically an interstate commerce issue, Congress does have the right to set up a system that solves these problems and addresses states', comsumers' and business' needs.

For me the SCOTUS arguments are not convincing, based on wishing to make things fair by legislating from the bench without working through the consequences. I find myself agreeing with Justice Roberts' dissenting view. There were issues with the previous rules, but we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater (my words).

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Ruling text, with pro and con arguments by SCOTUS: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf

We didn't evolve from apes?

I'm not going to touch on arguments pro and con regarding evolution or creationism in this article. This is simply a criticism of a particular ploy used when some engage in those arguments.  It's common to hear a proponent for evolution to say the following when in a discussion with a creationist:

Humans didn't evolve from apes.  We evolved from a common ancestor with apes.

But this statement is disingenuous. The truth is that we did evolve from an early ape species which diversified over time into five great apes species and sixteen ape species, namely Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangutans, Humans and various Gibbons.  Sure, it's true we didn't evolve from Chimpanzees, but we did evolve from an ape species from which all other modern ape species also evolved.

I guess the claim of not evolving from apes came out of the desire to side step or disrupt creationists' arguments driven by their misconceptions about evolution.  If a creationist says "evolution says we evolved from apes", then it's an easy comeback to say "no it doesn't, actually."  But, in truth, yes, evolution does indeed say we evolved from an ape species, and this is backed up by modern discoveries.  There's no need dance around this by splitting hairs on what is meant by the word "ape".

• Is a wolf a canine?  Yes.  Is a fox a canine? Yes.  Did wolves and foxes evolve from a common canine species? Yes.  Then wolves and foxes evolved from canines.

This example is just to drive the point home.  Canines and apes (all mammals, reptiles and amphibians, actually) all evolved from common tetrapod ancestor species that first lived on land about 400 million years ago. Yes, we are all tetrapods that evolved from a common tetrapod ancestor species.  In the larger scope, we evolved from tetrapods!  Just as more immediately, we evolved from apes.

First round of life in the Universe might have been possible extremely early

I've posted other articles about the possibility of life in our Galaxy based on what is known right now.  For this article, after going into some concepts from a somewhat recent study, I'm going to speculate a bit based on the suggestion by that study that life was possible for a very specific period of 10 million years to 17 million years after the formation of the Universe.  The study is The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe.

What is significant about this very specific period after our Universe's formation?  According to the study, the cosmic microwave background provided a uniform heating source that was between 0 to 100°C (the melting point and boiling point of water at 1atm) during 10-17 million years after the formation of our Universe.  This means that there was no Habitable Zone around stars since the entire Universe was one gigantic habitable zone (except maybe being too close to a star).^[001]

Hypothetical earliest stars in our Universe

Challenges for Earliest Stars and Planets

There's a catch.  Stars that formed immediately after the Big Bang were very different than the stars we now see.  The only two elements available in the Universe were Hydrogen and Helium.  These early stars are referred to as being metal-poor, lacking access to elements heavier than than Helium.  There is speculation that the very first stars where actually extremely metal-poor.  Material from which terrestrial planets could have formed simply wasn't available yet.  When these first stars died, they produced the elements necessary for the formation of planets and metal-rich stars.  The death of these stars had to happen very quickly in order to meet the criteria necessary to consider life being possible so early in our Universe's existence.

In order for rocky planets to exist at these early times, massive stars with tens to hundreds of solar masses, whose lifetime is much shorter than the age of the Universe, had to form and enrich the primordial gas with heavy elements through winds and supernova explosions.^[001]

Cosmic simulations suggest the formation of massive early stars that explode relatively quickly.^[001]  Gravitational lensing also suggests the formation of such stars in the earliest galaxies.^[002]  Given the possibility for such stars and such explosions of such stars, planet formation early in the Universe was also possible.^[001] Given the cosmic microwave background heat of the Universe, the likelihood of planets with water on their surface was again also possible.

On the plus side for these planets, once the cosmic microwave background cooled down after the 17 million year mark, the planets themselves may have been able to keep warm enough on their own for quite awhile, even without a nearby star.

[Thermal gradients needed for life] can be supplied by geological variations on the surface of rocky planets. Examples for sources of free energy are geothermal energy powered by the planet’s gravitational binding energy at formation and radioactive energy from unstable elements produced by the earliest supernova. These internal heat sources (in addition to possible heating by a nearby star), may have kept planets warm even without the cosmic microwave background, extending the habitable epoch...^[001]

Speculation

Although the study The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe suggests that life may have been possible in the early Universe, much of that life may not have survived past 17 millions years after the Big Bang unless it was lucky enough to be in the Habitable Zone within a solar system that included a very stable star.  However, even if the life didn't survive, the organic matter from which the life formed may have survived.  The survival of this life or its material could have seeded the later Universe, drastically increasing the chances of life reemerging.   Some speculate life on Earth originates from extra-solar system sources.  Perhaps the material necessary for the emergence of life was already in the mix from which our Sun formed.  The mechanism for such transference of life and materials is called Panspermia, or specifically, Pseudo-panspermia and Lithopanspermia.

It seems there would have been a substantial gap between the first wave of early life and the next wave of life; this next wave presumably being the epoch within which we find ourselves now.  How might species from the early epoch be viewed by species of the current epoch?

From a Science Fiction perspective, such early life may have evolved to sentience very early in our Universe's existence.  Being so close to our Universe's beginning and having so long to evolve may have allowed these early species to development god-like powers by now.  Such species may be Q of Star Trek: TNG, Time Lords of Doctor Who, Nibblonians of Futurama, and perhaps less god-like Precursors of Star Control II and Progenitors, also of Star Trek: TNG.

Would signs of god-like species be discernible to us young species?  We wouldn't likely see evidence in the form of direct radio signals, as such species would have long since evolved beyond such primitive methods of communication.  Perhaps we could catch a glimpse of these early species in the earliest days of their development via EM signals they emitted billions of years ago, from distance galaxies.

We'd have to know where to point our detectors.  Signals from ancient civilizations within our own galaxy would have passed us by billions of years ago.  However, signals from ancient civilizations in galaxies billions of light years away would be reaching us at the same time as the rest of the light from those galaxies.  Such signals would be faint and scattered, but they may be just distinct enough to discern from the background noise.  For example, at certain times of the year, Earth glows at certain EM frequencies much brighter than any other object in our galaxy.  A similar civilization billions of years ago in a galaxy billions of lights away might be obvious to us once we start looking for such phenomenon.

The idea that life may have developed so early in our Universe's existence opens up a Universe of possibilities.  Our understanding of our origins may be even effected by this concept.  On the other hand, maybe life in our Universe wasn't possible at all until very recently.  Maybe we are one of the first species to develop sentience in all of the Universe.  I'll cover more about this in a later article.

Primary reference:
A. Loeb, International Journal of Astrobiology, 13, no. 4, (Sept., 2014), arXiv:1312.0613 [astro-ph.CO], The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe

Response:
Hacker News

Article Series:

• Limited lifespan of Habitable Zones around other stars [and a loosely held secret finally revealed about me]
• Small stars may have stable Habitable Zones, but habitable planets might not be common there
• Habitable Planets around White Dwarfs
• Habitable Worlds Around Binary Star Systems might not match Sci-fi
• How many Earth-like planets are orbiting Sun-like stars?
• First round of life in the Universe might have been possible extremely early
• Factors a planet needs for suitability of life; perhaps
• "Goldilocks zone of metallicity" on a galactic scale
• Maybe we are the first

Begs the question is the idiom that you aren't using wrong, but some think you do

Are you begging the question?  What is begging a question?  Well, it depends.  There are two different terms that are very similar, but have very different uses.  The first is beg the question fallacy.  This is the traditional use of the term. This is a type of fallacy where a premise includes the claim or assumption that its conclusion is true.  (This is covered in some brief detail at Fallacy: Begging the Question (backup link).)

For example, "All cats are evil, otherwise you would not see cats do evil things."

The premise of this statement is that cats are evil, and the justification is that you see cats do evil things.  The statement forms a circular argument.

But, there's another common use of the term that often appears as , "begs the question", as in, "your statement begs the question of who will do this work".  It means that there is an obvious or ignored question that arises from a statement.

There are grammarians and logicians that will argue that this is somehow the wrong use of the term, such as the website begthequestion.info (backup link) (which dedicates itself to this topic).  Ironically, these individuals often employ logical fallacies to disregard the modern usage of the term.  There are people that seem gleefully unaware of how English works.  Common usage is correct usage. Dictionaries now list the modern usage on equal weight as the logical fallacy definition.  See idioms area on freedictionary.com (backup link).

There is often a claim that using the phrase in the modern sense is somehow confusing (see some of these claims on QuickAndDirty.com (backup link) by Grammar Girl). However, common usage is so prevalent, there is no confusion as to when the term is being used one way or another.  If someone wishes to distinguish between the logical fallacy and the assertion of an obvious/ignored question, then they do so with context, just as they would for the use of any other common terms with multiple meanings.  This begs the question, why is denial of the validity of the modern definition so important to some people?

OK, Coke got me...

[UPDATE: Unfortunately, Coca-Cola Life was discontinued completely in 2020 as an underperforming brand. It is possible that the 2016 change in formula to reduce sugar content might have contributed its decline in sales.]

Coca-Cola is always coming out with new products.  Sometimes they make mistakes that turn out to be brilliant blunders.  Sometimes, they just make duds.  Sometimes you don't know it's Coke at all.  And, sometimes they make a winner.

Coca-Cola Life could be a winner.  I only found the new beverage by accident at a nearby Target.  The odd color caught my attention, so I got a 2L bottle to try it out.  It is a drink that about matches the taste of Coke, but having only 63% of the original caleries (90 vs. 143 calories of Coke Classic).  They acheive this improvement by using cane sugar and Stevia instead of corn syrup.  Some people claim cane sugar has a better taste than corn syrup.  (I'm one of those people.)

I think the timing for this improvement is very important, as medical field is just now beginning to understand that sugar is the real culprit in heart disease.  Even though there is still substantial sugar in Coca-Cola Life, there is less than Coke Classic.  Not only that, Stevia has been showing promising results that suggest it might help lower blood pressure.  (If someone is taking blood pressure medication, this may have unintentional compounding effects with their medication.  Moderate risk of interaction between Stevia and a few mediations has been asserted.)

For myself, although I find the name a little awkward, I like Coca-Cola Life.  It pretty much tastes like Coke Classic.  There is a slight difference, but certainly much less difference seen from diet drinks.  It certainly doesn't have the annoying aftertaste that I experience with every other sugar substitute. I'm on the lookout for more packaging options, such as those tiny cans that seem to popular these days.

Old Perry Mason show becomes reality for Cops

What's up with all these Perry Mason style Grand Jury hearings being used to acquit police officers?  The latest case in New York is just nuts, where the accused officer was even allowed to testify, just like in the old Perry Mason show.  How are these Prosecutors allowing any defense at all during the hearing, let alone 2 hours of testimony by the accused without cross-examination (as in the Ferguson case)?  The cops are not being acquitted because of following the process. They are being acquitted because the Prosecutors are gaming the system to support the accused officers.  If a regular citizen is pulled up in front of a grand jury, they cannot present a case, they cannot challenge the presented evidence and they certainly don't get to testify for two hours without cross-examination.  Looks like it's time for other accused people to demand equal protection under the law, for equal treatment to these officers are getting during Grand Jury trails.

Article 1 section 2 paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution and why you aren't being represented!

Also read Why I don't fear a
US Constitutional Convention
and yet still do not want one

Here's what a source says about our House of Representatives, "In the original constitutional debates there were pro-federalist delegates proposing that a House member could represent up to 50,000 constituents, while more anti-federalist framers sought one House member up to 20,000 citizens.  The debate, therefore, was over the people wanting smaller Congressional Districts and not larger. In September 1787, they settled on the language, "The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000," thus limiting a Congressional District minimum size to 30,000 citizens. No Congressional District maximum size was included because the framers believed both the members of Congress and their constituents would inherently want Congressional Districts as small as the constitution would permit."¹

Another source states, "The Constitution says that the total number of representatives shall not be greater than one for every 30,000 citizens. During the ratification debates over the Constitution, opponents argued that such a ratio was inadequate to properly represent the country. But even using the original ratio in the Constitution, the House of Representatives would have consisted of about 9,400 members after the 2000 census. Faced with the ever increasing size of the House, Congress voted in 1929 to limit the number of representatives to 435."²

Needless to say, our current Congress has not been keeping the size of Congressional Districts in-line with the intent of our Constitution's framers.  Today, Congressional Districts have 710,767 citizens. This is way over the original expectations of roughly 50,000.

Can you imagine a House of Representatives with 9400 members?  How would business get done?  Well, maybe that's the point.  There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign. 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials.  It would make pork barrel projects almost nonexistent because districts would be too small to gather enough support for the most silly of funding requests.  It's a lot harder to buy off 9400 people than it is 435.  Particularly if each of those 9400 people have to go back to talk directly to just 30,000 people several times a year.  Representatives' support would really have to come from the local grassroots level.  They might even vote per their constituents desires!  Imagine that!

The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. If we keep to the current system of making huge bills with tons and tons of legal code, things would be unmanageable.  However, that doesn't necessarily need to be a roadblock. Maybe we shouldn't keep the current system of bill introduction!  Maybe our Representatives should really just submit succinct laws that apply to very specific things.  We would still need a huge bill from time to time to address social and other national issues, and the national budget, but we would pretty much end riders that plague the current system.  We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process.  (Anyone hear of this Wonder called The Internet?)

More meaningful and useful laws might actually get passed because they wouldn't be tied up so frequently in political maneuverings.  Political Parties couldn't hold our government hostage with standoffs, because their members would be so easily replaced.  We would actually be able to hold our Representatives accountable!

Also see: How to find your US representatives and tweet them

When did the Fastlane on Highways start to be called the Passing Lane?

When did the fastlane on highways start to be called a passing lane? From what I seen, a few years ago there was was a big nationwide push to change the concept of our highways and freeways; from fastlane/slowlane to the idea of a weaving-between-lanes-to-keep-a-constant-speed. Constant weaving between lanes not only is more dangerous, it actually slows down traffic. Every time there is a lane change, there is potential to slow down traffic behind the change. Also, forcing more traffic into fewer lanes inherently increases traffic back-up and congestion. What is this passing lane concept trying to solve? It's not solving the problem of traffic congestion. It appears to be making things worse.

 The problem is that highways in US weren't designed with passing lane concept in mind. Passing lane concept makes little sense in the context of driving on a highway or freeway within most larger cities with current infrastructure. If law enforcement and lawmakers want to create new driving rules that change our driving habits this drastically, they need to fund changes to road system to support those new rules. This would in line with HOV lanes, where current lanes are not converted HOV, but rather the highway is expanded to add a new lane for HOV.

 The US actually does have some designed to be passing lanes. These are usually found when going up long or particularly steep hills. It usually involves a lane being added to the right side, rather than the left side of the road. This makes the most sense in the US. Slower traffic is supposed to move over to the right! That is how our road system was designed.

 A slower driver who refuses to move over to the right is the problem, not everyone else trying to drive safely at a constant speed! How about instead of trying to magically change US driving habits in a way that just isn't supported by our infrastructure, let's enforce the rule that slower traffic move to the right!

epinions.com is soon to end as we know it

I wrote a highly critical article about epinions.com in September 2013 where I stated they have made themselves irrelevant in 2013.  epinions.com used to be a great site where anyone could go to get high quality and unbiased user reviews of just about any type of product.  It wasn't polluted with shills and ads.  

Then, it did started getting polluted with ads. Soon, it became hard to tell links to ads from genuine content.  Then, it became hard to find genuine content at all.  Ads ruled.  (Though, shills never really seemed to be able to take hold.)

Even still, I used epinions.com frequently enough until 2012.  Thru no conscious action, I just stopped using the site.  Eventually, I realized this and wrote my critical review as to why.

Well, today, epinions has announced they will be ending its community and reviews system.  This is no surprize to me.  They lost their way, and eventually people just stopped using the site.  The site fell into the trap of trying to sell ads to generate funding rather than offering a superior product that people flock to.  Their focus became monetization without understanding how to generate income from their product without losing its soul.

Their email to members stated,

After a challenging 2013, Epinions will no longer maintain community related operations of its website. We are proud that we were able to serve as a facilitator of shared experiences and thoughtful dialogue over the past 15 years. However, several obstacles, such as declining participation, have deeply affected our business and forced us to make this difficult decision. 

Yeah, 2013 is when I stopped using the site, so this makes perfect sense.  The site stopped being a repository for high quality reviews, and just became a poor quality online mall.

Community submissions ended today.  Reviews can no longer be added.  Last payments to reviewers will be issued on March 6, 2014.  Access to online accounts and message boards will end on March 25,2014.  The suddenness of this suggests a poorly planned shutdown, which means they prolly just ran out of money.

Farewell, epinions!  Whatever form you eventually take, I'm sure I will not be apart of it.

Net Neutrality has been cancelled based on a technicality in the law!

Net Neutrality, which prevents Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to particular websites (such as their own over a competitors) is in deep risk of being completely gone! Recent court ruling struck down Net Neutrality based on a flimsy technicality. NBC, ABC and CBS have not reported this sweeping change, apparently because they benefit, according to Forward Progress.

The removal of Net Neutrality would mean Internet providers can create artificial bottlenecks in service and charge fees to both customers and websites to avoid these bottlenecks (mind you, they are already making lots of money for service that costs very little to provide; they just want more of the pie to end up in their coffers by using the threat of degrading service). This matter is so serious that Fox News story actually sited civil rights as possibly being at risk!

Yahoo's Blunder with unnecessary changes to their services is well explained on slashdot.org

Yahoo's blunder with unnecessary changes to their services such as Yahoo! Groups is well explained on slashdot.org by anonymous poster.

If you have no userbase, the Agile concept of ship (garbage) early and ship (garbage) often even before you really have an MVP actually makes some sense. If you have a 6-month runway of capital before you go belly-up and start over (oh, I'm sorry, "pivot"), there's no point in wasting another month to get it right.

But if you already have a userbase, the developer-centric attitude of leaving what, to users, is core functionality in the backlog while you release half-assed stuff that merely shows off how good you are with AJAX, or how quickly your UX people can change the design from one week to the next, doesn't work. It's bad for your customer base, it alienates them, and it eventually drives them to your competitors.

More of this person's comment can be found here. If you are interested in exploring the topics brought up by this person, click on the links I added to their quote above.  That will take you to Wikipedia articles that will explain each of the terms.  

Stupid press and their stupid ways (Facebook haters)

From time to time there are articles claiming the end of Facebook.  These articles are all pretty much the same, saying how "kids" are using other social media sites now, such as Vine, Snapchat, Ask.fm, and Instagram.  Really?

Vine is not used instead of Facebook.  Vine is used instead of Youtube.  It's a video app.

Snapchat is only being used for sending sexy videos that cannot be stored.  Again, not something that was ever really Facebook's thing.  Facebook might be losing some use to Snapchat, but I don't think it's much.  Youtube is losing more than Facebook.

Ask.fm is really competition for Reddit and Yahoo! Answers rather than Facebook.  Maybe Reddit is stealing time away from Facebook, but ultimately, even these individuals end up on Facebook for social networking (even as they pretend to hate it).  Reddit doesn't have a strong social interaction and is mostly just strangers posting for strangers.

What about Instagram?  People use Instagram instead of older services like Flickr and Photobucket.  It's a photo app.  There is a stronger social aspect, but photos aren't really a replacement for communicating on Facebook.  It's more like one-way bragging, which ultimately doesn't promote long and engaging interaction.  When people respond to someone else's brags, they are trying to make themselves relevant in the context of the braggartry, and that's what tends to happen on Facebook.  That's something that just isn't possible on Instagram.

You know what kids are using instead of Facebook?  Nothing, ...kinda.  They are using text messaging.  Texting is why Facebook is seeing a small decline in usage in the younger demographics.  Aggressive use of texting is temporary for people, though.  Textings doesn't grow as your network grows.  There's a certain point where texting becomes intrusive.  When that happens, people move their social networking to a more broad service.  When they do, that service still tends to be Facebook.

I'm not a Facebook pumper.  I can live with or without it.  I do know it is the most convenient service right now.  There is just something about it that makes it more usable than Google+.  Anyone that thinks that Facebook will go the way of Myspace and Friendster just isn't paying attention or only seeing what they want to see.  Until something that is actually better comes around, Facebook isn't going to die from a supposed mass migration of its user base.

There is merit to all the services mentioned above.  Some services appeal to certain people more than others.  Facebook's success is that it is a generalist that covers all the bases.  

Opinion about epinions.com decline

epinions.com used to be a great resource to get real world, vetted and high quality customer reviews for all sorts of products from books to cars.  Contributing to epinions.com was actually minimally lucrative, as you got compensated for your product reviews.  Fellow members of the website would critique submitted reviews to help others improve the quality and review writing skills.  The higher quality reviews earned a larger share of whatever earnings were made.

I was never really sure just how the compensation worked, but over the years, I made less than $100 total from my nine posted product reviews.  My first review was posted in 2002 about my old Acura TL Type-S, for which I earned the coveted "Very Helpful" rating.  Over a period of one decade, that review has earned me a whopping total $20.

In the past, I've endorsed and recommended the use of epinions.com.  I frequently went there for reviews of products in which I was interested.  Then something starting changing in 2012.  I stopped using epinions.com.  I didn't really know why at the time.  It just happened.  Looking back, I believe it may have been because reviews were getting harder to find.  It was not that there was less of them, but rather the structure of the website had started changing for the worse.

Sometime this summer of 2013, I was writing a review for another product on Amazon.com and figured it was good enough to add to epinions.com.  I thought I might as well make my 3¢ a year. So, I went back to the epinions.com website and searched for the product.  It was a book.

I searched for the book and found a webpage that listed a bunch of sites that sold the book.  There was no product page.  In the past, the product page would come up as the search result.  This is where one would go to add a review.  But now, there was just a listing of other websites.  Sure, older products still had product pages, though you'd have to surf through the myriad of links to other websites in order to find them.  Much to my dismay, epinions.com had become an inferior online mall.  There isn't even a rewards program, like with higher quality online malls such as MyPoints.com.  epinions.com made itself completely irrelevant.

I guess some areas on the website are still maintained, such as electronics, where it appears to be a little easier to find the product pages for newer products.  It's just not enough to justify giving the website a second thought anymore.

Notion of Creation is not a theory, and scientific theories aren't proposed notions

Bible based knowledge does not lead to new scientific knowledge.  People used to think the Bible was useful to learn about nature.  They did try to use it as a guide to make new discoveries.  However, over time, scientists started finding out that the Bible just gets so much wrong.    The Bible literally has almost every major point wrong about the universe, from its description of Earth as a flat world with a tent over head to its description of rabbits as cud chewers. The value of the Bible is it's a general moral guide taken in the context within the times each portion was originally written/re-written. Taking it for more than that is truly grasping as straws.  People discovered the hard way that the Bible was not a good starting point to learn about nature. That's why the practice of referring to the Bible as a source for science was stopped over time.

So, to that point, Creationism based on the Bible isn't a theory. It is a failed notion. A theory isn't just a proposal. It is a proven working model of the Universe with a lot of peer reviewed data, from which accurate predictions can be made. To extend this further, those predictions often create new areas of exploration and further growth of knowledge, directly leading to new technologies, either in the exploration of the theory or as a result of knowledge learned from the theory. Last major invention spurred by Bible belief was the telescope, and use of that technology disproved that belief; the creator being forced to recant his statements about reality and live under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

On the other hand, Darwin didn't create the Theory of Evolution, he proposed the core concepts based on his observations. Evolution was born out of the peer review process with much more independently collected data. Evolution wasn't a theory until there was a massive amount of data and extraneous amount of analysis of that data, from which the natural model was molded.

Why is Creationism not a theory? Because it doesn't have one iota of this. The supporters want a magical shortcut, using circular arguments and cherrypicked research of other people's works in the form of anecdotes and impressive looking fake equations. No actual proven predictions come from Creationsm nor from its child contrivance called Intelligent Design. Creationism is the end of knowledge, not its birth. That is why is it not a theory and it is not science. Now, that said, the challenge is always there for Creationism supporters to objectively collect data and test hypotheses. Even if they don't prove their hypotheses, at least new knowledge would come from that. This process has yet to be undertaken by Creationist (and Intelligent Design believers), or if it has, results have been hidden.

Examples of observations that would grow knowledge along the Creationist track:

• Find DNA in mammals that cannot be traced back to a common ancestor or introduced by some other natural process.
• Show completely distinct lifeforms with no ancestry at all. 
• Find data that offers new evidence to reinterpret apparent evolution in our own species, from malaria resistance to lactose persistence.
• Additionally, find data that better explains why pre-agricultural humans did not have cavities and modern humans with no cavities is almost unheard of? (Hint, that has been very well explained with a recent study of mouth-dwelling bacteria and their evolution to adapt to our changing diets, along with our own evolution for such too.)

These examples cannot be explained with anecdotes.  Hard evidence has to be presented from scientific studies using the Scientific Method.  Research doesn't count for this.  New evidence has be presented.  That evidence must be collected and peer reviewed.  Until that happens, Creation Notion can never be put on equal footing with any Scientific Theory, especially the Theory of Evolution.

WP on MJ legalization; and the prohibition

The article Five myths about legalization of marijuana has a lot of interesting points about legalization of marijuana and what is likely to really happen.

When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.

I don't really agree with the tone for the conclusions about the 5th myth in the article regarding the politics of the matter. The Marijuana Prohibition (and prohibition on all drugs for that matter) is neither a liberal or conservative battle.  Many individuals from both camps have reasons to support the Drug Prohibition. And, many individuals from both camps have reasons to end it.

For me, these are reasons to end prohibition:

• personal liberty
• disproportionate application of the laws massive federal investment into the Drug War has not decreased drug addiction nor substantially affected overall use
• expensive drug related battles (literally) that only make our enemies stronger and us weaker by the day
• allows focus on treatment for those are prone to addiciton rather than turning them into career criminals
• better use of local funds to help other areas of society and infrastructure
• tax money from the regulation of drugs, etc.

These issues cross the political spectrum.