Paul Natsuo Kishimoto - 2007

Personal mission statement

2007-12-20T00:00:00+01:00

As part of the excellent course APS501 Leadership & Leading for Groups & Organizations, we were offered leading (ha) questions and guidelines for writing a personal mission statement. Before you scream "Flake!" you should know our professor did more or less the same in his mid-20s, and considered it instrumental in attaining his eventual position as president, CEO & chairman of DuPont Canada.

That's not easily dismissed.

Here's what I came up with:

To become a balanced, thoughtful & serene person, so that I may always approach life and people with care and respect, and through doing so become a model of goodwill for those around me. I will do this by:

focusing on the timeless joys of friends, family, food, music and literature, rather than modern distractions,

living a healthy, active life and maintaining a high level of personal fitness,

appreciating the enlightening & liberating value of hard work, instead of working for compensation & recognition, and

sharing experiences through listening, leadership and honest discussion.

While much accessory thought was involved, exegesis of one's own writing is the height of vanity, so it must stand for itself.

Very large structures (2 of 2)

2007-10-15T00:00:00+02:00

Carrying on from the previous post…

Though we can't simply dismiss Carl Sagan's universe-architects in Contact by saying 'a π is a π is a π,' it's still true that the task of creating a universe is inconceivable, given that we hardly understand what our universe is and how it came into being. Another inconceivable endeavour is the building of a Dyson sphere—a structure completely enclosing a star so as to capture all its radiation on the inner surface.

But of course as soon as 'inconceivable' is aired, someone's going to bring up that Princess Bride quote: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Is it possible to build a Dyson sphere? Less than a hundred years ago, it would have been inconceivable to build the International Space Station (ISS). Go back another few centuries and the Three Gorges Dam would be inconceivable. Prehistoric man would doubtlessly have regarded the Great Wall of China as a feature of the landscape, unable to believe it had been shaped by human hands.

Superficially this is an issue of technology, but another aspect is intriguing: the non-technical resources required for these 'inconceivable' projects. This dovetails neatly with one theme of a Leadership course I'm taking this term; that engineers increasingly require leadership qualities and become useless without them as the world shrinks.

Major engineering efforts are also major leadership challenges. Examining the ISS or Three Gorges, the sheer number of people involved both directly and in support (mining and refining raw materials, fabricating parts, feeding and clothing the workers, etc.) is as stunning as the products. Many large projects rely on existing structures to get their immense workforces moving in the same direction, but this isn't always possible.

Take for example the new Airbus A380, an aircraft so huge one might say it's inconceivable that it could ever leave the ground. It's been hampered by years of delays, not because it is technically infeasible, but simply because there was no existing human structure necessary to engineer a redundant and multiply-failsafe electrical system containing over 500 km of wire. Creating such a thing for the first time was bound to be problematic. The ISS has been threatened by the variable political will behind some of its member agencies. These are not issues of technology, but of its application.

Returning to Dyson spheres, consider the scale of such an enterprise. It's probable that there are not enough people (or engineers) now living to complete such a project in a millenium, even if the technology were available. Assuming (very generously) that humanity continues to grow without eliminating itself, and manages to free itself from the Earth before the heat death of the Sun, we can hypothesize that the necessary technology would, in time, become available. Complete stagnation in the sciences would probably coincide with the failure of the species.

Then wondrously consider: what sort of human structures would be required to build Dyson's sphere? How would billions of people be motivated to work on a project that might span even an extended human lifetime? To speculate on such questions is the purview of some very interesting fiction, including Frank Herbert's Dune series that I return to again and again. Religion seems to be a likely candidate structure, and that's where I ended my train of thought: it is inconceivable that 'engineering' could entail fashioning entire religions simply to ensure a project is completed.

…Isn't it?

Very large structures (1 of 2)

2007-10-06T00:00:00+02:00

I was trolling (in the conventional sense) through Wikipedia today, reading about the Oort cloud, cosmology, and various superstructures and -voids in the Universe.

I also read about the shape of the Universe. For anyone without a math or science background, this is should be as baffling as I found it to be at first. More easily grasped is Gauss' Theorema Egregrium, which has to to do with curved surfaces, for example the surface of the Earth. The Theorema describes a characteristic of flat maps that anyone can observe: when displaying geographical features, flat maps distort shapes, distances, or both. If you've ever noticed that Greenland appears larger than Canada on some maps, you can appreciate what this means.

More precisely, Gauss's results mean that the curvature of the Earth (or any other surface) can be determined by measuring some angles and distances on the surface, and that this determination is unique in some sense. If you draw a triangle on a curved surface, you can see that its angles do not add up to 180°. Now, the crucial point is this: the same principle applies to space. Space has a curvature which determines the relation of distances and angles within it.

I find it's best to just accept that without trying too hard to picture it.

Anyway, the 'Shape of the Universe' article discusses the ramifications of the space curvature of the Universe. If a parameter Ω is not exactly 1, then space is curved and some interesting things happen: the Pythagorean theorem (a²+b²=c²) becomes false, and the value of π varies.

This brought to mind the galactic architects of Carl Sagan's Contact and the concept of a message from God in π. Interestingly enough, that article states:

Any intelligence, working in any universe—no matter what the characteristics of its particular "space-time fabric"—must deduce the same value of π, presuming they are able to think of numbers at all, and that logic is not a property of the Cosmos.

If we're very particular, we can argue that this statement is false without the qualifier, "when Ω=1."

I seem to be pushing my usual word count, so I'll continue my thoughts in another post.

Solving the wrong problem

2007-10-02T00:00:00+02:00

I missed Nuit Blanche last year, so I had a great time this Saturday and Sunday wandering around with some teammates from the Iron Dragons. I won't say more, but you can view some photos at Torontoist or on Kim's Flickr account. Also, I have to go back to Bau-Xi sometime for a less hurried look.

Around 1 AM we were passing through Yorkville and squeezed into the packed Bay & Cumberland Starbucks to get some java (Disclaimer: I'm still a Second Cup nut! A friend passed me a $20 Starbucks card he was given but didn't intend to use). I picked up a couple of bottles of ethos water for our friends.

This ended up bothering me for the rest of the night. Ethos water? The premise (providing clean water to poor children) is nice, but I have a very strong distaste for "consumption philanthropy." Eliminating breast cancer is another cause that is avariciously exploited. Faced with the choice to:

enable people to do marginal good via increased consumption, or
encourage people to do good for its own sake and reduce consumption

…the latter is vastly preferable. Some entries in the August Harper's Index echoed facts available on Wikipedia; namely that 3-5 l of water is used to produce and transport a bottle of water, not including the water being sold, that the millions of bottles sold annually are made from petrochemicals, and that they are rarely recycled. On top of this, though 10¢ of my more-than-$2 purchase went to humanitarian work, Ethos Water made some unspecified profit.

Put another way, why not buy a Nalgene and use it (as my mother has) for 20 years. You'd spend $10 once and the (clean, conveniently fluorinated) tap water is free. Instead of buying two-dollar bottled water a few times a week, spending perhaps $6000 and thereby contributing $300, you could save or even invest that money, give thousands to humanitarian works and reduce your carbon footprint.

With a little thought, it's usually apparent how to solve the right problem.

Will Butler

2007-09-23T00:00:00+02:00

"Either way, it takes up too much space in your mind. It's not what you should be thinking about. "You should be thinking about how good the cup of coffee you're drinking tastes. Everything figures itself out from there. At least it has up to this point. And I assume it'll keep figuring itself out without too much bother." —Will Butler of Arcade Fire V. Wagner. "The Heat Begins To Rise." Toronto Star (Feb. 11, 2007), sec. C p. 4.

On Rousseau

2007-08-08T00:00:00+02:00

I'm reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract (Goodreads, Penguin, Wikipedia) and really enjoying it. Either translation from French to English is a perfected art nowadays, or the originally writing is good. Both is more likely both. Whatever the reason, the prose is very clean and many good points are made simply and strongly in every paragraph.

The book clarifies one's thoughts on the roles and authority of citizens and governments. Of particular usefulness is the distinction between the general will and the will of all. The former is the opinion of the whole civic body, whereas the latter is merely the sum of the particular (i.e. subjective) will of each individual. Rousseau explains how the former naturally tends to act for the public good, whereas the latter inevitably reflects self-interest. He goes on to identify general will as the only possible guidance for good government, which to my mind is a strong rebuttal to things like tax cuts for the purpose of vote-buying.

The relevance of some of the observations to modern politics is amazing for a book more than 200 years old. Here are some quotes from Book III, Chapter 4: Democracy (my emphasis in bold).

It is not good for him who makes the laws to execute them, or for the body of the people to turn its attention away from a general standpoint and devote it to particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public affairs, and the abuse of the laws by the government is a less evil than the corruption of the legislator, which is the inevitable sequel to a particular standpoint.

It may be added that there is no government so subject to civil wars and intestine agitations as democratic or popular government, because there is none which has so strong and continual a tendency to change to another form, or which demands more vigilance and courage for its maintenance as it is. Under such a constitution above all, the citizen should arm himself with strength and constancy, and say, every day of his life, what a virtuous Count Palatine said in the Diet of Poland: Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium [I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery].

The above are from a translation by C.D.H. Cole in the public domain; the Penguin edition is translated by Maurice Cranston but the text is largely identical.

By a general interpretation, Canada and certainly the United States could be failed or dead states, which is worrying. Worse yet is that Rousseau does not allow for the revival of failing states; only their replacement with new ones. Simple solutions to our political problems seem ever more remote from the realm of possibility.

All The Small Things

2007-07-31T00:00:00+02:00

Contrary to popular advice, I often sweat the small stuff. Today, cups.

Coffee shops generate litter. Ideally, we should each tote around a mug to whip out whenever we need a caffeine fix. I try and do this as much as possible, but the paper cup is unlikely to be obsoleted.

Paper cups are not terrible because they can be recycled or composted, unlike (in most locations) styrofoam. Second Cup (my favourite coffee chain) uses cups by Dover Cup in Brampton, Ontario. Tim Horton's and several other shops and use a cup branded Conference Cup, made by Dopaco. I wonder, though—if MEC can use biodegragable plastic bags, why not rigid lids of the same material?

Also, Second Cup locations (including the one at College Street and King's College Road that I visit with healthy frequency), seem to switch at random from plastic to wooden stir sticks and back. At Tim Horton's they prepare your coffee for you, so these are done away with altogether. I find it unfortunate that bags of mostly compostable waste (coffee, grounds, sugar and packets, some stir sticks, cups) are put out as landfill garbage because of a few plastic items.

It is possible but likely not practical to separate the two, but why not use BPI-approved packaging so the entire waste stream can be composted? More info here.

Comments

2007-07-19T00:00:00+02:00

After reading this, I've installed several Drupal modules:

Now anyone should be able to comment without logging in by answering a simple math question. If you have cookies enabled, your user information can be saved for future use. The system should be familiar to users of Blogger and similar sites.

Writer's Block

2007-07-18T00:00:00+02:00

After another long hiatus—five months—I now have a list of topics on which I have concrete ideas, which might be enough to start regular writing. Writing six or seven items in quick succession will hopefully establish a habit.

Apropos the long delay, a discussion of writer's block, for the delay testifies to a lack of confidence in the value of my writing. I address the various aspects of this doubt in turn.

What authority can I claim? The cliché "the more I learn, the less I know" is painfully relevant. It has become habit, as I form an opinion, to check Google, Wikipedia, as many newspapers as I can locate and any other source that might be an authority on the topic. Inevitably I find my initial position to be naïve, uninformed, or already recorded by some other source—usually with more eloquence and rigor than I could summon. What is the use of writing, then?

The simple rejoinder is that everyone is in the same bind. If, in stating my own opinion or view, I can reference the better sources on which it rests, then the reader can at least use my work as direction to further study. If I juxtapose competing views is a unique way, another view is formed that someone may find worthy of adoption.

Who should be my audience? Cynically, no one. If I forgo shouting into the void, however, I should select a group to address. How to choose this group? If I do it on a topic-by-topic basis, I will end up trying to instruct my betters. At worst my writing will seem inconsistent and variable, especially when the audience is not stated directly. In attempting to address too large a group I would lose useful context. If I choose too small a group I will only rant.

The easiest audience to consider is the sum of my friends, family, classmates and other peers. If I imagine this group doing me the honour of sitting to hear me speak, I will save myself the trouble of reiterating basic concepts; I will not feel pressured to posture and impress; and I can expect a sympathetic allowance when my words or arguments are awkward.

What format should I use? This encompasses several other problems. Should I repeat entirely my thoughts on a topic? If not, which parts should I omit? Will an arbitrary set length be restrictive? How do I avoid prattle? If I reflect, the chief difficulty in the past has been untangling a certain issue from those closely related. In engineering problems and subsystems are usually well-delineated, but to separate most other things is difficult, especially as I try to hold a holistic world-view. To borrow a programming term, my writing always suffers "feature creep."

For the sake of prolificacy, I will limit any post to a short essay. This one is already over 500 words, more than I can reasonably ask most to wade through. Shorter posts can be more numerous, are much easier to proofread, and most importantly will force me to distill my unruly thoughts.

So—onwards and upwards! The next post is due within a week; the topic will be consumerism.

Earth Challenge

2007-02-14T00:00:00+01:00

The Earth Challenge (Wikipedia) was announced, an occasion for some hand-waving math.

What if you simply planted trees? They act as a carbon sink, sequestering carbon dioxide as biomass. One statistic says that one million trees will sequester 0.9 teragrams over their 40 year lifetime. That is:

0.9 Tg = 9×10¹¹ g

9×10¹¹ g ÷ 10⁶ trees ÷ 4×10¹ a = 2.25×10⁴ g·tree^-1·a^-1

That is, one tree will fix 22.5 kg of carbon dioxide in one year. The Earth Challenge requires removal of 1 billion tonnes (10¹⁵ g) annually from the atmosphere. You would have to plant:

10¹⁵ g ÷ 2.25×10⁴ g·tree^-1·a^-1 × 1 a = 4.4×10¹⁰ tree

Ie. 44 billion trees. The same article states these would cost roughly ten cents apiece, or $4.4 billion—a bit much in comparison to the prize money, but not an astronomical figure. Also, estimating 500 trees per hectare, that's

4.4×10¹⁰ tree ÷ 5×10² tree·ha^-1 = 8.8×10⁷ ha = 8.8×10⁵ km²

…slightly more than the 718,000 km² of Amazon rainforest that's been clear-cut since 1970, or 2.2% of the 3.952 billion hectares of global forest cover. Still, that $4.4 billion forest, almost the size of Ontario, would only offset about one twenty-fifth of estimated man-made emissions.

Global Warming

2007-02-05T00:00:00+01:00

Weather in Toronto has recently taken a cold turn. Given the recent release of the First Working Group / Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, the joke du jour has become "What's all this fuss about global warming?" This bothers me for two reasons.

First, I feel it's heedless to joke about what is, by general consensus of the scientific community, a serious problem. It betrays a simplistic, "out-of-sight out-of-mind" naïveté. By analogy (here I corroborate Godwin's Law), consider how foolish they felt in 1945 who said, in 1940, "Holocaust? What Holocaust?"

Secondly—humour me for a moment while I indulge in some wildly speculative and baseless hand-waving—'more frequent extreme weather' is among the commonly listed effects of climate change. A 2006 IPCC report quoted in the Wikipedia article states:

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.

For the non-technical, consider a gross oversimplification in the form of a ball suspended by a spring. The increase in global temperature corresponds not to a higher or lower resting state for the ball, but an increase of energy in the ball-spring system, a "bouncier" state. A system with more energy has more frequent and more extreme states - the ball will reach higher peaks and lower troughs more frequently than it would in a less energetic system.

In the more complex system of the atmosphere, the connection is less obvious. For this reason the newspapers often equivocate: "Hurricane Katrina was possibly, but not definitely linked to climate change…" Regardless, more floods and simultaneously more droughts are being reported in many areas. 'Freak' weather events in the news have become more destructive, and insurance companies (earning their keep on being neither optimistic nor pessimistic) are trading climate futures to offset expected losses due to natural disasters.

The entire climate is more volatile, which brings me (at last) to my point: What is to suggest that cold weather disproves global warming? If we have four warm winters and one brutally cold winter (or four warm winter months and one brutally cold month) the average temperature may barely increase. However, fifty or a hundred years ago, we would have had five consecutive, wholly unremarkable 'average' winters. Consider, on January 20, 2005, the temperature was -17°C. On the same day in 2006 it reached 10°C, while the mean is -8°C. It's only one data point, and you may dismiss my view as apocalyptic, but if extreme weather is a harbinger of climate change then it is ridiculous to suggest that a cold snap means we have nothing to worry about.

CDRDAO

2007-02-03T00:00:00+01:00

For the LazyWeb: After wasting over half an hour searching for a free, simple Windows utility to clone a CD for my mother, I gave up and used Ubuntu. With the disc in my recorder, I opened a terminal and typed:

cdrdao copy --device /dev/cdrw

CDRDAO prompted me to insert a new disk but otherwise ran unattended.