Fiesta Hermosa

Ok, I lied. The next major music event will be Bluesapalooza. But this weekend I just had to slip down to Venice, jump on my bike, and ride down to Hermosa Beach for Fiesta Hermosa and some more live music.

Fiesta: from the root word festus, meaning "festive, joyful, merry,"

And all three of those words definitely apply to the atmosphere at Hermosa. I think it is an incredible benefit to be a member of the race we call mankind, where humans get together and share their creative joy with others. (Bears or armadillos don't do this, for example).

The tribute band Harmony (Three Dog Night) was playing when I arrived, and spreading the joy of their lively music.

Joy to the world
All the boys and girls now
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me

A 55 year old Business Man, a 35 year old Soccer Mom, a 25 year old Fat Chick, and a 4-5 year old Skinny Black Boy all got up to dance in front of the stage on one of their numbers. Just the four of them and they were all interacting and having a great time. I thought, What Diversity? And not the BS government version.

You know I love the ladies
Love to have my fun
I'm a high life flyer and a rainbow rider
A straight shootin' son-of-a-gun

The other tribute band was Space Oddity (you guessed, a David Bowie band). Not only did this band have the sound, riffs, feel of the original but the singer looked just like David Bowie. The long narrow face, the gestures, poses and all. Of course the wigs did help create the image. (You know I am probably a crappy critic. I just enjoy the music so much I don't find anything wrong with the music or bands). They played a large number of the mainstream hits going all the way back to the Ziggy Stardust days, and up into the 80's. Also, surprisingly, they played some not as common tunes, like TVC 15. Overall, a crowd-pleasing performance.

Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel
Come get up my baby
Look at that sky, life's begun
Nights are warm and the days are young

And on the Beer Garden Stage I first saw a bit of Myron Barnet & the Pistolers. They played a driving rock-blues-funk style which seemed to suit the beer drinkers and the afternoon sun.

And then, later in the Beer Garden, a local South Bay favorite, Tres Hombres took the stage. They are a classic rock cover band, which does an admirable job on most all the tunes I heard. They are great party-time favorites (or was it just late in the afternoon after most of the crowd had a few beers) and had they whole area in front of the stage filled with a variety of dancers. These ranged from groovers in their early 20's to a booty shaking white-haired fan in mid to late 60's.

What a great way to spend an afternoon! On the ocean, at Hermosa Beach, listening to a great variety of live music.

The Great Global Warming Controversy

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a very well done documentary with the purpose of showing that the science of global warming is 'bad science'. Many high placed scientists and leaders are interviewed, they make a very good argument for the 'bad science', and actually even offers what they feel is the true causes of global warming. The documentary expounds on the idea that alarmism has be used to stir up attention and media coverage to the benefit of all those doing research and getting government grants. They say the political forces are so strong as to threaten those who disagree.

But then Chris Merchant, from the University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences, does a Debunk of The Great Global Warming Swindle. He goes through the major arguments of the documentary, one a time and shows how they are based on bad logic, 'bad science', or contrived data. He makes a convincing argument that the whole documentary was a con job.

And then Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says his comments in the film were taken out of context. He also says The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.

So, who to believe? I would have to say I am not totally convinced by either side's arguments so far. It is a complex situation with lots of variables. Just as a matter of common sense it seems like it is not a good idea to dump mass amounts of pollutants into the air. Whether this will cause global warming or global cooling or whatever, I am not sure. But it can't hurt to clean up the air. And even if there is only a small chance the global warming guys are correct, creating better air quality might be a good direction to move in. Whether its reason for alarm I am not so sure of.

What do you think?

The New Food Chain

There are many indications that our current power structure may be slowly changing from domination by military might and force, to more toward the realm of energy control. There may be energy wars along the way, but it is said by some that ultimately he who controls the energy controls the military and commerce. The theme of commerce superseding military power was elaborated on in the classical science fiction work by Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Trilogy (which actually turned into more than 3 books). But that was on a universe-wide basis. Perhaps at the time he didn't know how important energy would become on this planet.

Well, I think there is an additional new paradigm shift (I love using that phrase now, since I saw it so much before I cleared it in the dictionary) in the works. I believe that down the road Information may define a new higher level power structure.

First of all, I must admit I am an information slut. I love the fact that I can get on the web and find out about almost any subject known to man within a few seconds. The amount of information available is increasing exponentially, along with technology to extract it, store it, and communicate it. (see Singularity) The current estimate is that the amount of information available to members of our society is doubling every two years. This is so absurd that someone going to college for a 4 or 5 year degree may find that by the time he graduates that the data he studied in the first two years is obsolete.

But there is another problem, besides the rate of information growth. Anyone who has researched much on the web knows that there is a major problem often with the quality of the data. How can I put it. There is so much BS out there that it boggles the mind. Or, I might say, this is a BS Planet. Know matter what topic you choose there are always alternative views and data on it. Often quite contradictory. If you have ever researched very deeply into topics reported by the major network media, you know that they almost always have a spin and are not a reliable source for data. Of course bloggers, while sometimes more accurate, are just as susceptible to bias and inaccuracy. There are academic and government agencies online, but they often have an agenda and only report the data that they support. And on and on. Its a data quagmire out there. So it helps to have some tools, some knowledge in how to evaluate data. But that's not my main theme here.

I might point out that with wildly different views of the world from different people around the world that it becomes obvious that reality is what we believe it to be. Ask different people what is real and you are likely to get many totally different answers. But this is not my main theme either.

Somewhere along the line, there will be entities, most likely some business, that will set itself up to take in all the data available and sort and sift it for reliability and promote itself as the best purveyor of truth. This would mostly be rated on a statistical basis as a percentage likelihood of being true. But this business would make it their business to soak up, accumulate on some automated basis, all the data available and sort it out, again on an automated basis, and rank it for truthfulness. Of course a lot of this would be self-documenting in the form of video, audio, images and other media. They could also promote that the have all the knowledge known to mankind. How valuable would this be. Well, eventually I think they would come out on top of the food chain of power brokers. Like a super intelligence agency, with data for sale. If there was anything to be known, they would know it. The more data they got the more they could barter for data they didn't yet have. They would know all geological data about mineral deposits, all the secrets the politicians are hiding, all the data about military plans and programs, etc.

The only other contender I believe might challenge them is a bandwidth provider mogul. With the exploding amount of information available, 80% spam on email, exponentially growing use of the web for video and other rich media, bandwidth could become a real premium. Everyone can't have access to huge amounts of data and media if you can't move it around fast enough.

But my feeling is that Information will trump bandwidth. Especially, when you consider the point where the data is fed to computers that are much 'smarter' than humans and are capable of inventing new technology. I just hope I don't see the government create an Information Czar, or someone develop a Wizard of Oz religion where the data is available only through an Oracle. But, onward and upward. Chin up, bloke! I embrace the future.

Let There Be Light

As Hertz proved, light is an electromagnetic wave. And all such waves, whether they are x-rays, ultra-violet, micro-waves, infra-red, radio or TV waves, or visible light, have the same basic properties.



And fascinating properties they are. In any EM wave there are 3 directions of motion, and all three are at right angles to each other. What a cool concept, eh? What are the 3 directions? Well, the most obvious is the direction that the wave is traveling, like from the Radio Station to your antenna. But in each wave there is an electric force field and a magnetic force field. Thus the name electromagnetic. The electric force field moves up and down at right angles to the direction of travel of the wave. And the magnet field moves up and down at right angles to the electric field, and to the direction of travel. It is easier to grasp with a diagram:



Or here is a Flash Animation showing the motion of an EM wave:

transverse-electromagnetic-wave

Other than its basic structure the other extremely interesting thing about EM waves is the duality of its nature. A change in electric force (keyword change) will produce a magnetic field. Conversely, a change in magnetic field will produce an electric field. In other words the constant flow of electricity like in a battery won't do anything, but and increase or decrease in electric force creates a corresponding magnetic field. Likewise an increase or decrease (not just a constant force) in a magnetic field will make an electric force.

So this creates an interesting chain effect. How do you kill an EM Wave. When an electric field collapses, this action causes a magnetic field to curl around it. The very collapse of the field is a change. When the magnetic field collapses, it creates (re-incarnates?) an electric field. And so on, forever, in perpetual motion. Once started this action continues on without end. You can blow out the candle but not the light it creates.

One more interesting thing about EM Waves. As you may have noticed, there is no way to picture an EM Wave in less than 3 dimensions. This is relatively unique in physics. You can picture a sound wave, for example, in 1 or 2 dimensions. In fact all of the laws of mechanical physics can be represented in the 2 dimensions of the surface of a pool table. But not so with light and EM Waves. Hey, who made these rules up, anyway?

Behind Sight on Front Sight

My 18 year old son and I just returned from a handgun defense training course at Front Sight near Las Vegas. This was an all weekend long affair, starting promptly at 8:00 in the morning, ending at 6:45PM on Saturday and 5:40PM on Friday. This course is one of many weapons training courses that Front Sight offers. We took the 2-Day Handgun Defense Course. There is also a 4-Day Handgun Defense Course, skill-building courses, and more advanced tactical courses for handguns. They also have courses for rifle, shotgun, automatic weapons, and many other courses.

The first thing I was impressed with after driving out in the middle of the dessert, about 45 miles southwest of Las Vegas, was that there were hundreds of people at the center at 8:00 AM on Saturday. I later found out that Front Sight trains more people than all the other domestic training operations in the nation. The second thing I was impressed with was the quality of the instructors and training programs (perhaps this is why so many people). They have instructors who were former military, former law enforcement, and with credentials a mile long in the number of skills they have mastered. Most of these guys are masters in many weapons, and often with both hands. That is perhaps why law enforcement comes to Front Sight to get trained. Ex-military and ex-cops say the training at Front Sight is much better than what they got previously. In fact, even SWAT team instructors go to Front Sight to get trained so they can train their crew correctly.

The third thing I was impressed with was their sense of purpose. They have as a major goal the education of the public so as to raise their awareness of the importance of the Second Amendment and to create a positive image in the community of gun ownership. They have public relations programs going which seem to be working well judging by the amount of positive press generated. One campaign targets opinion leaders, knowing that when opinion leaders say something others will follow. They freely allow press into the premises for interviews and video, with one provision. They have to take a course first.

Our Rangemaster was an ex-military drill instructor, and had a bit of that stereotypical movie drill sergeant mid-west twang. But he had a bit of sense of humor ("Are you trying to hit a midget's knees?") and was likable enough. The Drillmaster and the other 3 instructors in our class would lecture a little, show us by example how it is done, and then drill us on the range. It was taken slowly, little bit at a time, building up the various skills needed to safely use a handgun for self-defense. But mainly, it was drill, drill, drill. I never knew there were so many skills involved in properly handling and using a weapon. There were also tactical drills; drills on how to handle yourself in a gun fight, or situation requiring deadly force. We even got to train in a simulation room (with live ammo), where good guys and bad guys pop up and you need to decide quickly whether to shoot and where.

It was interesting to note that despite my pre-conceived notions of how it would feel to be in around a bunch of guys packing handguns, while we sat in the lecture hall having lunch, with perhaps 100 guys (and gals) with guns, I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. In fact it felt very secure.

There was also the thinking side of the training. We had several classes, the majority taught by a former Sheriff's deputy, on the ethical and legal side of the use of handguns. He had us put ourselves in the situations where one would, or would not, need to use a gun and think through what we would do, and if we really wanted to. The idea is to get the hesitations out by deciding as much as possible ahead of time instead of being in indecision in a critical situation. Also, the legal implications, both criminal and civil, are quite stupendous. Well, worth knowing ahead of time.

All in all, we learned a huge amount about how to use and defend ourselves with handguns. What we also learned was there was a huge amount more to know and learn. To be a responsible citizen with a handgun, it is an ongoing process requiring practice and training.

www.frontsight.com