Evolution of life

Yesterday evening, my wife and I went to listen to the 'Exploring the Evolution of Life' Symposium at the university. What a pleasure to meet and hear articulate, intelligent discussion! Dr. Douglas Futuyma from the Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York gave a wonderful forty-minute presentation of Evolution as the "most important theory in Biology" and to a large extent a scientific theory about life and all its living things. Futuyma gave examples of experiments and studies - from geneticists to geologists and naturalists which support the incredibly intricate but correct predictions of Evolution. 

 Dr. Warren Allmon is with the Paleontological Research Institution and Cornell University gave a passinate discourse about the "spectrum of God", the scientific basis, conflicts, reconcilation for our understanding of its existence, scientific honesty and the politics of religion in America. Allmon does not rule out God's existence but added that there are several critical areas where the religion(s) cannot reconcile with our understanding of life and all consistent scientific, engineering successes which make our life work the way it is.

Ovarian cancer

I have been reading as much as I could about ovarian cancer. There are articles in magazines, books (e.g. "It's always something" by Gilda Radner), newspapers, and on the Net. Just Google "ovarian cancer personal story" and you can read hundreds of bewilderingly painful stories of the horror. The more I read about the ovarian cancer the more appalled, horrified I am of its devastation and the attempts at its treatment. Not only the disease attacks a very sensitive organ of a woman it is so unpredictable and deadly. There are not many consistent symptoms; its cause is almost unknown and there is no prevention. It is so terrifying a random blow and the surgeries and subsequent chemotherapy is almost equally chancy. 

What is the purpose of living a good, clean life and befallen by a random disease with a guarantee of barbaric poisonous attempt to cure? A healthy woman with vague symptoms could one day be an attractive person and on the next day an ovarian cancer patient with assured horrid, tortured treatment. This is the injustice, the unfairness and horror of cancers - ovarian cancer in particular - that I can't find words to describe my sorrow, anger and fear.

Poor technical writing and machine interfaces

I've had a Nikon CoolPix 8700 digital camera for some time. I am now trying to experiment with its short movie recording capability. Having these short movies with audio on my web site is fun. Well, it was not all that easy to decypher the poor technical writing of the Nikon's user manual. The step-by-step procedural explanations are quite unclear (example: the description to set the camera into movie mode did not explain how to 'enter' the options selected; meaning that the manual assumes the reader would know to press the 'Quick' button to select the options!??). 

 The interfacing displays are not so well-designed: one has to select many steps to get to 'User Mode 1' or '2' before setting the movie mode. Sure, there is a short cut to use the 'Func' button but one has to set it up using multiple steps first!

My Toolset

I have used computer and electronic tools for as long as I can remember. Back in the 1970's I bought a very first personal computer which really was a single board computer running Motorola 6800 microprocessor with several 7-segment LED's and a couple of toggle switches. It could not do much; a simple binary program turned the LED's on/off. I graduated to an Altair 8080 running an Intel 8080 microprocessor. I had to borrow a lot of money for it. 

The years went by fast and things changed so much along the way. Nowadays one does not talk much about what kind of hardware one owns. Software makes the tools. I use X1 Technologies, Inc. (which recently sold to Yahoo, I believe) for local Windows machine searches. It is a superior tool compared to Google Desktop which can not search inside many file types including PDF. The Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard is another tool that I absolutely need. It allows me to convert and shrink large scanned images of magazine, newspaper articles which cannot be readily found/downloaded into PDF [which is universally readable on many platforms]. 

Norton SystemWorks allows me to keep Windows happy; it scans the registry, checks for lost links, shortcuts, scans and repairs disks, ... Norton Internet Security is the tool to keep the bad buys from my local machines. Quicken Premier and Home system keeps my business and personal finance straight. Roxio Easy Media Creator is another software program that I can not do without. It is a bit cumbersome but has so many utilities to organize, create CD's and DVD's. I also use Microsoft Office Suite including Outlook and PowerPoint every day. 

I also use my Google gmail account and its other tools daily. The MKS Unix commands and tool set package for Windows machines is also one of my daily favorite tools. I use 'tar' instead of 'WinZip' to consolidate files to be 'ftp'ed to various machines including to the Linux boxes. Of course the Treo650 with built-in Palm organizer software is my constant companion. I put it on the night stand before going to bed every night and carry it with me as soon as I wake up. At my office I have the D-Link Wireless router setup and it helps to connect all my computers and printers wirelessly. 

The 2-Gigabyte Mini Cruzer thumb drive has a nice little built-in encrypter protecting my critical data from casual hackers. I have a couple of digital cameras: a Nikon with 8 Mega pixels and a physically much smaller Olympus with 6 Mega pixels. They both are very nice cameras with movie capability. I run several web sites using a local Linux server. NetworkSolutions registers all my domain and supports URL forwarding. I recently purchased an Apple's Mac machine. 

Its 'Spotlight' search engine is quite amazing. These tools have made my work a bit easier, more organized and my life richer with better information, wider contacts and reach. The tools allow me to explore, search and learn things which I could never be able to do without them and to realize one of my assertions at my PhD interview that data at a sufficient quantity can yield intrinsic qualitative information.

All good things must end

We had a quiet Christmas. We decided not to buy anything for ourselves this Christmas. We spent time hiking to the park with our little Sheba and catching up on movies we had not seen. "Mulholland Drive" is dark and sad. "Magnolia" can be confusing. "Empire of the Sun" is also sad. We enjoyed the light-hearted "A Room with a View".

We had Russian King Crab legs for Christmas Eve Dinner. Costco brought these luscious creatures to the local market recently and they are a great buy. We also made the Italian Cioppino for Christmas day and after. It is also delicious.

Will be going for a hike again today. It has been quite warm here this week. Forecast to be raining and snowy tomorrow.

Rants and Raves

We look up health information, notably on ovarian cancer on the web quite often [because we know someone who has elevated risks of the disease] and use them as another set of data points to make informed decisions. Unfortunately there are many anecdotal tales (e.g. ovarian cancer symptoms, ...) of heart breaks but the lack of quantitative information details (how often, every 6 hours, 10 days cycles, ...? the IBS-like symptoms or pains/symptoms occur?, ...) makes these stories much less useful. 

The obscene millions of dollars that CU Boulder football coach got when fired for poor performance are noted in a letter to the Denver Post by Anne Culver on December 17, 2005, "... What happened to the concept of sports as a contribution to health, character and the spirit of teamwork? In a world where ball catchers, throwers and other 'entertainers' make millions, and social workers, school teachers and nurses make a pittance [What's wrong with this picture?], it's high time somebody laid it on the line: Sports [especially, collegiate ones] should comprise a contribution to the quality of our lives [and secondary to the goal of a university to educate all students], not a hot commodity for buying and selling." 

Frank Petkovich of San Francisco wrote in the Dec 26, 2005 Businessweek that "... in my eight years with three venture capitalist-funded startups, I have found that many of these VCs are simply lucky imbeciles hiring other lucky imbeciles to run most of the Valley companies." He wrote to comment about the fair play that Google is requesting VCs to complete information spreadsheets before meeting with them.

Stem cells researches & 'Cinderella Man' movie

We watched in awe a PBS Innovation segment about stem cell researches and experiments to re-grow human organ cells. Both embryonic and adult stem cells - from nose, bone marrow - were employed with good results to repair damaged heart muscles, the immune system and spinal cord injuries. [The horrific stories of spinal cord injuries/accidents were also so sad]. I am sure that more researches, studies will have to be carried out before this modality of therapy can be used more widely. And if this therapy works, hopefully it will be a tremendous medical breakthrough. 

We also enjoyed 'Cinderella Man'. Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger's performance was terrific. The story of Jimmy Braddock, the Depression-period common-man hero boxer is beautifully told. The little scene of Braddock telling his hungry son not to steal was touching. This uplifting story of family, love, poverty, integrity and courage is worth seeing.

'March of the Penguins' & 'Spring, Summer, ...' movies

We saw 'March of the Penguins' and enjoyed it so much. What a quality movie! The cinema photography was gorgeous and the story is compelling. Last week we re-rented 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring', a Korean movie. It was also a very quality movie. Highly recommended.

Ayn Rand

We went to the university lecture on Ayn Rand and her objectivism philosophy. I did have some previous exposure to her view on ethics, morality and what it means to live an egotist life of reason, purpose and self-esteem and that "... man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achiement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." 

The lecturer was good in introducing the overview of Ayn Rand's philosophy and adept at answering questions from the audience. However, he left some unsatisfied questioners with slippery arguments on happiness, altruism and the demanding life of a true Ayn Rand follower. In its purest form, Ayn Rand's philosophy is idealist and heroic. 

But with the messy reality of societies here and abroad, the vastly different levels of educations and socio-economic standings it would be hard or impossible to apply her objectivism philosophy to our daily life: how would one respond to victims of natural disasters here and abroad; how should one accept cheaper products/services manufactured by illegal aliens which would definitely be to one's benefits; how would society survive if the more numerous, better armed and less enlightened would threaten the life, liberty and freedom of the rest? 

There are some evidence shown by evolutionary biologists that a society of an organism would have better chance of survival if the majority of individuals acted altruistically. This is contradictory to Ayn Rand's ethics of every man is an end in himself. I do like and agree with many of Ayn Rand's philosophical views of self-reliance and heroic individualism. But at the same time I am not sure how her philosophy would change the messy, uncertain predicaments of our current society. Try telling the millions of Americans who worship Hollywood celebrities or sports heroes or the under-educated/underclass mass about living a life of reason, purpose of self-esteem and see how far you'll get!

Avian flu

I have been reading about the seriousness of bird flu and the potential pandemic risk for some time now. The possibility of the mutated virus is quite scary with rapid spread of the contagion which could kill or disable hundreds of millions of people world-wide.

However, there are some experts expressing their skeptical opinions of the danger. They said that the mutated or a combined avian flu and regular influenza virus may not carry the same potency of the current virus.

It is hard to know whether this very sensational danger will materialize soon or it will just gradually reduce to a dangerous but localized and manageable disease such as West Nile virus.

Overcome with nostalgia

It was dark outside. I sat here and listened to some old recordings. Linda Ronstadt, Bocelli, BeeGees, and Brahms, and ... suddenly I was overcome with emotion, a sense of loss, of nostalgia but also of joy. The images of my past rushed through and over me. The soft, hazy picture of a young father and his son on an early Saturday morning outing along the cliffs of Palos Verdes Estates beach, of my mother, of old loves and losses, ... The emotions were so powerful that I had to stop the music and walked upstairs to get away, to run away.

Woke up from a dream

It was quite cold for a couple of days. We did not get any snow here but reportedly several feet of snow had fallen on I-70 and in the mountains. I've just finished reading "Complications, a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science" by Atul Gawande. The gut-wrenching stories of medical uncertainty, mistakes, and enormous sufferings were soberly told.

I looked out my windows into the night and saw the city lights below our house. It felt as if I was just awaken from a dream to the dark, sad, and certain reality of aging, sickness and death. I realized that the only painful certainty is the sad, permanent separation and the real sufferings of those I love the most. My thoughts were in California, on the coast, in the mountains thinking dreaming about time lost, gone and of nostalgic feelings. I lingered at the window looking outside for a long time before going to bed. I gave my wife - still sleeping soundly - a tight hug and gentle kiss as I lay down next to her. Wide awake and uncertain.

The new "used-car" salesmen

Electronic store sales folks are the new "used-car" salesmen/women. They - generally, more men than women - pompously and unwisely believe that they do know more than what they really know. I went to the local Verizon store yesterday to purchase the new broadband wireless service. This is to back up our regular Net access to approve employee time cards if and when our computer system is down or during long winter power outages. John, a polyester-suited, portly store sales manager came over to me with a big greeting smile and a tight handshake. 

I noticed his 90's yellow power tie neatly wrapped around his thick neck. I explained to him what I came looking for and he told me that the product was in stock and "... you would love this baby... it is rock hard.... it is a snap to install it... Come back here and I'd help you if any problem at all." Verizon's online map showed our home area was within the broadband wireless coverage. Well, it is on the border of the coverage area. I installed the client software, the PC card, and was not able to activate the service. 

After a long, tedious and somewhat dumb-down conversation with a Verizon technician I was able to configure the card and activate it manually. However, the technician thought that I ought to return and get a new Verizon's cellular modem card. I brought the laptop and the Verizon equipment back to the store and explained to John what I'd done. He's now not the gregarious sales person I met in the morning. He told me that it must have been my installation and went right ahead to reinstall the software. He ejected the card without using the safe disconnection method demanded by Microsoft Windows. 

It got worse when he shutdown the laptop without going through the normal stopping process. I was not too happy about his heavy-handedness and took the machine back telling him to let me do what he thought would be necessary to recheck the card and its access. John finally agreed that the PC card is defective. He gave me a new card. I was able to configure and activate it within several minutes. The Net access via Verizon broadband wireless at the store is fairly fast and would be adequate for my needs. 

Verizon broadband wireless will drop to lower national access bandwidth (14.4Kbps) automatically when it detects an inadequate broadband signal strength. Well, that what I experienced at home. This new problem would prevent me from provide an adequate Net access backup. The overly optimistic Verizon sale pitch and the less-than knowledgeable sales people remind me of those sleezy used-car salesmen of years past. This is not the first time I encounter these clueless and pompous sales folks. It is unfortunate that many less experienced customers will continue being buffaloed and misled by sales pitches and advertisements. Caveat Emptor.

Catching up with news

Got a 2 am wakeup call from Jan telling the good news that Andy passed the OCPD Academy final. Andy was exhausted from the night test so I asked her to pass our big congratulations to him. Susan and I could not be happier for Andy. I have been quite busy with work and did not have time to update the blog. The last entry stopped just before we boarded the North Passage Alaska Celebrity cruise. I continued to maintain that Alaska is a bit over-rated. Susan liked it better than me. 

The foods on the cruise were so plentiful and overly abundant. They are definitely not for any one on a weight-reduction or maintaining diet. I almost had to peel Susan off the delicious European pastries counter. Our last visit to the home of the Iditerod champion Jeff King and his family was memorable to us. Susan loved dogs and almost did not want to leave those huskies behind. We were so glad to be home, though. Sheba was absolutely nuts seeing us.

Butchart Gardens

May 19, 05: The ferry ride from Port Angeles, USA to Victoria, B.C., Canada was fun. It was windy, cold and drizzling all the way. It took about 3 hours for us to cross the strait and only about 15 minutes to clear Canadian custom. We took a cab to the Swans Hotel. It still was early in the morning so we decided to run to the bus station to get tickets to the Butchart Gardens. The bus ride, about 1 hour reminded me of the bus excursion we had in Hawaii: winding roads through tree-lined and forested areas. 

The Gardens were a very nice place. Flowers were in bloom everywhere. All kinds of colorful, carefully cultivated flowers sectioned into many dedicated areas/gardens. British-style gardens of flowers, plants and Japanese intimate ponds, Koi fish, bonsais, flowers and small deserts of cacti, bamboos, ... We had lunch at the Butchart Pavillion. It was a very British event with crumpets and formal teas. We asked the Canadian waitress with a crisp English accent to take our pictures which we found out later to be a bit underexposed. 

We returned to our hotel later in the afternoon. After a short nap, we walked several miles to the Coast Hotel to have dinner at the famed Blue Crab restaurant. The service was impressive. The foods were good but not exceptionally so.

Seattle: start of the Alaska cruise

May 17, 05: We flew to Seattle. Nowadays, air travel is just like cattle-car of years past. The flight was packed. Mercifully, it was a short flight. It took a while for us to get a taxi to our hotel near the Space Needle. We tried to check in but the room was not ready, yet. The Hampton Inn clerk was a bit absent-minded. We left our luggage at the counter and walked to the Pike Place Market. We passed by the Space Needle. It was a bit shadier than I'd thought.

May 18: Richard came by early waiting for us in front of the hotel. We checked out and went with him to Port Angeles. It was a bit farther than I'd thought. We had a nice dinner with his wife. Their house in the country is spacious. He'd drop us off at the Coho MotorCoach to Victoria, B.C.

Food poisoning scare

We had a wonderful party yesterday afternoon. Probably fifty folks showed up in waves. Our neighbors enjoyed the back patio while Susan's friends from work staked out the living room and the kitchen. There were plenty of foods. We over-ordered for 70 folks. We have 3 shrimp and 1 sandwiches trays left over. I should have put them in the refrigerator immediately. Well, come to think of it the refrig was pretty packed. The trays sat in room temperature for at least 3-4 hours.

This afternoon I re-boiled the shrimps and we ate them. Two more days and we will be on our honeymoon Alaska cruise. I felt a bit dumb now risking food poisoning before this important trip. Just have to wait and see...

My seasonal allergy is gone!

Before our wedding I had the heating system filter replaced. We also vacuumed our house a little more frequently and the new bedding. The rains might have washed away the pollens or we are now well into spring when pollens are not as prevalent. Well, my allergy is almost gone now! I still have a little sniffle in the early (say, 5am) morning and some nose blowing. But the allergy severity is much less. My sleep is much, much better at night. Oh, life! Healthy and beautiful life!

Got married

We got married on May 7. It was a beautiful day after a couple of weeks of weird weather going from heat to snow to rain. The photo session at the photographer's studio was quite fun; we were able to have many pictures, poses, groupings with my son, our little Pomeranian, Miss Sheba which behaved impeccably well - I think she enjoyed the exhibition - and our friends. We went to Chautauqua Park for the wedding ceremony with the local Municipal judge. We are now married!

Miserable allergy

Can't sleep. My nose is itchy and running. Eyes are watery. The allergy season starts out in earnest for me. Feeling really miserable. I took an anti-histamine pill. I used to cut it in half but now feel that I need the whole pill to stave off the allergy. It should take about half an hour before the pill takes effect. Surely, allergy does not kill but the misery index is quite high.