Human supernova - "Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"

In astronomy there is a rare event called a supernova which occurs roughly every 50 years in a galaxy the size of our Milky way.  This event is essentially when a very large star, much larger than our own, exhales it's final breath and causes an extremely luminous burst of radiation that often outshines an entire galaxy before fading from view.  Based on my very limited understanding of astronomy I understand that these events play an essential role in enriching the interstellar medium with the stuff required to enable the growth of future stars.  In fact, these interstellar events are so essential that in addition to creating the stuff (elements) which becomes the fuel for future stars, they also cause shock waves which awaken otherwise dormant parts of the galaxy.  The same can be said when humans reach the end of their lives on this earth as we know it.  Some end in a whimper, very much like the fate of our own star the sun, having very little effect on their surroundings while others are more like supernovae explosions awaking and reverberating their energy for generations.  

I had heard of the "Randy Pausch Last Lecture" some time ago when it first made the news.  It was until today when Google, one of the most brilliant companies on the planet added the following  text to their homepage "In Memoriam: Randy Pausch (1960-2008)" that I actually viewed the lecture in its entirety.  I knew this had to be important for Google to add this text to their otherwise unchanged home page since it developed a beta model to add this to the home.  To put this in perspective, Google announced today that it indexes more than a trillion pages.  They must really think about what goes on such prime real state.

If you have not yet viewed the lecture in it's entirety, I strongly recommend it.  Much like a supernova which spends a lifetime expelling energy, Randy Pausch in his short lived life enlighten so many people and in such large quantities.  What is so striking to me is that even at the end of his life, when most of us would be drowning in our self pity, he just seems to give so much praise to everyone around him which ever was captured by his orbit.  I could not help but be moved by how wonderful and fulfilled his life was.  And it did not seem to be that way by accident, it was because he himself was a source of light and great energy to so many around him.  He was the kind of person which inspires those which inspires others.  All he really seemed to want to do is pass on his energy to allow others to live their childhood dreams.  

This "pay it forward" mentality truly is the source of great happiness.  There is nothing more fulfilling than seeing others happy.  It appears to illuminate the core of people and all of those around you when all you want to do is be truly selfless.  As I mentioned earlier in this blog, when ordinary people which live their lives as most of us which is as selfish creatures, we end our lives much the same way which is just ordinary.  When true greatness end their lives early, such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, JFK and Bruce Lee pass way, it seems like it creates a chasm in humanity.  It seems like it is not enough to just add their name to a cold piece of marble and have a two day service, but these people go in the collective memory of humanity.  When these people go early, they are mentioned worldwide in all papers and people just stop and remember where they are so they never forget them.  Or, they are placed on the home page of arguably the most successful website in history.

Pepsi challenge - pssst, you do not have a choice...

How do you know you ever had a choice?  I do not mean only if confronted with the question "Coke or Pepsi" but every decision you ever made and will make for the rest of your life.  If all things were equal and you were presented with the same decision in a past moment, wouldn't the conditions and all of your physical make up always bring you to the same decision?  IF - a condition of "existence" is that you occupy space for a given period of time, then can you unravel time and all of the set conditions for that given decision.  I would like to present a case (albeit a very simple one, more of a teaser) for the lack of free will which will absolutely drive you crazy because you live in the moments following the decision, and you can never recreate that moment in which you made the decision.  Therefore you are always looking at decisions through the lens of the past, which had a very set list of conditions which can never be re-created?  My argument is centered in the premise that you make decisions based on past experiences inside a moment of time.  This is not to say this argument takes you to some romantic conclusion that "fate" dictates our lives and "che sera, sera" "what ever will be will be".  In fact I believe that the "idea" of free will is what gives us "control" over our lives, which is critical.  The element of "free will" which is in our control is the amount of deviance we have instilled for a period of time.  If time is consistently moving forward and you and I are building upon experience and making decisions can we really say that we control fate?  It is the nature of sequence, your decision to make a given decision is governed by a set of past experience and therefore you cannot change what you will do, you can only believe you are.  

If confronted with the same condition, at the same time, you will always make the same decision and you do not really control your decisions and your will.  

How 'bout them apples?

I did not realize how much Apple wants to get into the corporate space.  I wonder if this is the beginning of the end when Apple starts to go more "main-stream" and attempt to offer its iPhone products to companies.  As someone in corporate America very much wanting my company to leverage iPhones for our hand held devices, I can say that it is personally exciting.  For Apple to publicly declare war on "Research in Motion" which is behind Blackberries seems to feel outside it brand.  I can understand why it wants to get into this space, and the iPhone seems like a logical way to get into the space given its success in the mobile devices.   The company seems to be aware that it can get inside "Corporate America" through the mobile device space, but will customers accept it, especially those very loyal customers which use Apple products for creative purposes?  Bank of America recently developed a link to its mobile banking platform by developing in its new platform.  Could this be a first step into Apple committing to enterprise customers?  How will this dilute its focus on its core customers?  Will the core customer feel alienated when the "not-cool" people start using their corporate iPhone in a Dunkin Donuts?  Is this stretching its brand to far?  We will see, for now I can say that the strategy is exciting and I cannot wait to turn in my BlackBerry for an iPhone.   Here's to Apple for having a vision.  I am reminded of a quote from Sir. Winston Churchill, "this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Total eclipse

I looked up at the full moon and remembered that tonight is the total eclipse of the moon starting at 7:43 eastern time for those of us in the viewing range, which is parts of North America.  I realized how much we take science for granted in what was such a terrifying event is now just something which occurs with such mathematical predictability, thanks to what we learned from Newton.  For those of you which are not familiar or interested in what happens during a total lunar eclipse, the full moon passes through the shadow of the earth for a period of time, turns red then re-emerges into a full moon.  The moon is such a dominant aspect of the night sky, that I can only imagine how horrifying it was when it turned red with no apparent regularity.  It must have felt as those those observing this routine celestial event that the heavens were completely out of their control.  Can you imagine how much of our "modern" lives we do not understand and chalk up to the mystical?  Fast forward time to February 5008, when someone else is writing on how naive those living in 2008 thought it was to actually believe there was an afterlife, or that the earth does not expand and retract in regular cycles?  I am not in any way saying that the earth expands and retracts, but I can only imagine what "truths" we hold which are almost completely ridiculous to future versions of ourselves.  

Note to future Tom, please do not judge me for believing that I exist in only the current version of myself.  

Link to lunar eclipse details - click here

Limits of knowledge...

How can we tell what is "true" when we are limited by our human concepts of what is "real"?  When I read 'Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godelz' by Rebecca Goldstein it radically reshaped how I approach truth.  When I was younger, I came to settle on the fact that math was the only universal truth, other than what is "true" to you individually. This was radically changed when I started to learn more about what Kurt Godel was offering in his "incompleteness theory".  He basically started with being obsessed by proving that there are limits to how we approach math and how it can cannot be proven within its confines.  His theorem was so advanced, it was considered brilliant by his good friend and walking partner Einstein.  How would you know your limitations when you are confined to our very small understanding of the universe through our "human view"?  That is to say, how can one tell their view is biased when it is formulated by a series of things you learned throughout your life.  Your view is formed by your experiences, understanding and perception of reality.  How can you come up with a truly unique point of view or idea, when it is always based on how humans perceive the universe, or our very small planet, or country, or spoon fed ideology.  Therefore our version of truth will always be interpreted through the lens of the human experience.  It would almost be impossible to describe a concept which does not exist on our planet.  Even the concept of a black hole is described by very human examples of what we know.  Einstein was so unique, or perceived to be unique because he brought together several advanced concepts of his time together in a very unique way to create his 2 great theories of general and special theories of relativity.  He always said "I stand on the shoulders of giants", because his ideas where out there in the world of science, but not brought together the way he did by integrating time as a dimension.  I would argue, that his theory was not entirely unique and limited by our understanding of mathematics and logic.  Godel eventually died because he starved himself to death because he believed he was being poisoned.  This is a topic I will cover in other entries, which is how do you know you are crazy if you are locked in your own mind?  Or how do you know what an evolved human looks like if it is completely outside of our understanding of what is reality?  In the movie '2001 Space odyssey' the character "moon watcher" was evolving into a modern human, but no one around him understood what was happening to him.  The monolith seemed to be a large black rectangle to us, but could be something far greater to the evolved human.   

Amazing link to a Richard Dawkins lecture... click here

Loyalty...to friends, teachers, etc.

I totally forgot that my best friend Jay and I decided to visit another Taekwondo studio while we still were studying under our current instructor.  I guess, the way I rationalized it was that I knew our "Sabumnim" or teacher, was and will always be our teacher.  It was more like a vacation get away to visit another school then to come back home to our Sabumnim.  That was where we learned to better appreciate the spinning round house kick and fake leg spin kicks.  Our instructor was a Hapkido instructor first, then a Taekwondo instructor second.  Until recently, did I realize how amazing his Hapkido was.  He was the highest ranking american having trained by the late great grandmaster Choi Young Sool.  When ever I see Hapkido, it does not quite look authentic as we trained in it.

I feel totally terrible that we took a short vacation from our instructor of 10 years.  He dedicated his entire like to martial arts and was very well known in all of the circles.  I hope he realizes how much we appreciated him as an instructor and in many cases as a mentor.

In martial arts loyalty to your instructor is a big deal, as the student teacher relationship is sacred.  I guess I did find loyalty in martial arts as it introduced me to my best friend of almost 20 years.  We were like Fight Quest as we would attend 4-5 classes a week, plus endless time practicing our "Taeguek" forms to perfection.  I think I will know them to the day I die, and I  owe that to the strong friendship I had for most of my years training martial arts.

Fight Quest

I started watching a Discovery Channel show called 'FIGHT QUEST' which is about these two guys, Jimmy and Doug, who travel around the world learning different styles of martial arts.  I started to DVR the show when I started to see all of the styles they covered.  I really liked the ones on Hapkido and Gracie Jujitsu.  I really liked the Hapkido episode as I trained in Taekwondo and Hapkido since I was 14.  I am surprised that they do not get their a$$ kicked more than they do.  The studios they visit seem to take it easy on them when it comes to the final fight.  I do have to say they seem to train them really hard.