Last Thoughts of 2007

Many people celebrated Christmas a short while ago (or other religious festivities) and refer to it as a special time of year, often mentioning a "Christmas mood" - time to spend with your family, time to relax, sit together in the warmth, escaping the problems of the outside world. It's only a few days, but people are looking forward to it for a long time. It's a time when people behave differently. For some people it is a depressing time, mostly because they see other people enjoying it and get even more depressed than normal.
I'm an atheist. I don't believe in the story of the birth of Christ. For me Christmas has lost it's religious background, but is still a special time which I spend with my family. A time where I can relax, meet friends and exchange gifts. For me Christmas is a family celebration. It hasn't lost any importance just because I don't believe in the religious bits and pieces. It is still a special time, but, to be honest, it could be any time of year.

Tomorrow the year 2007 ends. But what does that mean? We think of the new year as a new start, an opportunity to change things, to do things better than last year. Many of us have New Year's resolutions to exactly specify what they want to change; like a tick-list. We think of it as a new white sheet of paper which is waiting to be filled, a white canvas we can paint on. Are we really able to look at the sheet of last year, think about it, reset our life and draw it differently this time?
From a scientific point of view all that happens is the date changes. We have the calendar to count time and for reasons of convenience we use different units which enable us to speak about fixed periods of time: a month, a year, days, seconds. So all that happens is that the last chunk, the portion of the date called "year", gets incremented by one.
Time is flowing continuously and as time flows, so do our lives. Scientifically there is no resetting our lives at New Year's Eve, no new start. It just goes on. All that really changes is a number.

So, as an atheist, although Christmas has no background I still don't want to miss the time with my family. I just call it Christmas so everybody knows what I'm talking about. It's just a concept everybody knows. But, it doesn't have to be on the 25th of December, I could do the same things any other time. It's nice it's in winter (at least here!) but it doesn't have to be. As long as it is at least once a year! ;-)
As a scientist, I know that nothing changes on New Year's Eve but a number. Still, I think about a new year as a chance to do things differently than last year, to try new ideas. As with Christmas, New Year's Eve is also an abstract concept. Everything we associate with it just exists in our heads. Does this make it less important? I don't think so! Humans need concepts, sometimes more and sometimes less abstract. We use them to organise our world, to make it easier to understand and have gotten used to so many of them, we sometimes forget they are just concepts. But, concepts can be changed and should be questioned from time to time.

We need a time like Christmas so we don't forget the importance of a few relaxing days or the importance of family. We use the concept "year" and need New Year's Eve to partition the time given to us into chunks we can handle. But, many people forget the things we do in these times could be done all the time. I can change things in my life all the time, can spend time with my family all the time and can relax as often as I think is necessary. Christmas and New Year's Eve are concepts which help us remember, but we should not narrow it down to these few days only.

I hope you all had a nice few days over Christmas and have the list with resolutions ready for tomorrow. My only resolution is to celebrate "New Year's Eve" every day next year. Thinking about the last ones, perhaps I should omit the alcohol and only think about changes and opportunities! :)

Happy New Year everyone!

Sven

Quote: Freedom to doubt

"The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and, I believe, in other fields. It was born of a struggle. It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt, to be unsure. And I do not want us to forget the importance of the struggle and, by default, to let the thing fall away. I feel a responsibility as a scientist who knows the great value of satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, and the progress made possible by such a philosophy, progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought. I feel a responsibility to proclaim the value of this freedom and to teach that doubt is not to be feared, but that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations."

Richard P. Feynman
(in "The Meaning of It All", Lecture 1, 1998)

Think before forwarding!

Chain-letters were already around on paper before the internet started (we all remember the "Send this on and you will find luck the next day" letters). Although money (postage) and work (making paper copies) was involved, the chain letters still found enough gullible people to be able to spread. With the start of electronic mail and the possibility to copy and forward hundreds of emails within seconds, the chain letter had its time of prosperity. Hoaxes and chain letters became a real threat to every mail server as they got flooded with millions of copies within minutes.

I couldn't understand why it worked before the internet at all, I understood why it flourished in the early days of the world wide web, as people just sent on everything they got if it sounded a bit reasonable (and it was just too easy to do!), but in the time of online viruses, worms and spam, I really thought people would start to think before they press the forward button!!

Most of the hoaxes and chain letters are easy to spot. If you are not sure, a simple search on google normally reveals their true nature. So why do people still believe that they can get anything for free if they send an email to all their friends?? In the beginning I was annoyed when I got the same email 20 times a day from friends....nowadays I'm almost getting angry! Somehow I have this strange opinion that people could spot and delete them themselves.

I have to be honest, I didn't get one for a while and there was a sprout of hope that we've reached a critical mass of people who are aware of them to kill them once and for all. But how wrong I was! Two days ago I saw the walls in Facebook filled with this message:

Attention all Facebook membeRs.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg

It has all features of a standard chain letter: It gives you a nice story about a problem (which is not there in the first place), threatens the receiver by telling you that something is going to happen to you if you don't forward it and askes you to send it to all your friends, pets, toys and future children! There are immideately several questions which should come up:

• Why can't Facebook check my activity within the system?
• Why don't they just send a message to everybody themselves?
• Would Facebook really delete accounts without hesitation?
• Why can't Mark Zuckerberg write "members" correctly???

So why don't people ask these questions, think about them, have a laugh and delete the post?
Facebook had to react (as walls filled up with millions of stupid chain letters) and delete them!

I hope everybody who read this post is going to think twice everytime a child wants a liver by email, some account is going to be closed down, Microsoft wants to send you money or the world can only be saved by sending on a message! It will never be true and I'm going to hate you for having to delete the emails/posts that reach me! And believe me, only one in a hundred is going to get a different reaction, like the mother of all chain letters or the anti-letter. So if you are not absolutely sure, don't try! ;-)

In hope to have changed the world again with this post,
Sven

Is this the right name for brakes?

I saw these brakes today on a bike. They look like really good brakes, but the name confused me a little bit! Is "Hope" really the right name for a company producing brakes? :) I can only hope it's well used irony or you never seriously have to brake :-D
(I don't want to comment on the quality of the product itself, as I've never tested them!)