And the new US president is...

Most people won't know the winner of US presidential elections until later this year. Initially, I thought that the next president will be decided by who can profit most from the insanely insecure voting machines...

Now, however, I have changed my mind and realised that security vulnerabilities are not as important anymore, as the most important and decisive factor of them all has decided to reveal himself and swing his weight behind Mike Huckabee! He would probably become the president himself, if only it wasn't so boring. Who needs the nuclear briefcase anyway, when a roundhouse kick right to the face can solve any and all problems?

Ladies and gentlemen, please bow low for Chuck Norris and his will of steel! :-)

Spying on the poikilotherms

This post is overdue for a month or so, but finally here, as promised.

One of Chicago's major attractions is the Shedd Aquarium, reportedly the largest indoor aquarium in the world, with more than 8000 exotic animals, several special exhibits, and, of course, Guinness. ;-)
Perhaps the most famous guy everywhere is a fat lizard who goes by the title dragon king of Komodo, has charming eyes, and skin so soft and smooth it makes gravel look like silk.
The lizards were my favourite exhibit, I like the lazy, cold blooded creatures. They are almost as cool as frogs, and pose well for portraits.
Baby beluga, probably the most famous if his kind, born right here at Shedd. Needless to say, he is a great face for marketing, and his posters are all over the town.
More lizards. Am I the only one who finds his majesty's eyes creepy? Stare that down, Juliecorn!
The fish were a royal pain to photograph. Dark room, lot of movement, glass to focus through... never before had I so many pictures that were of unacceptable quality. Worse yet, it's very difficult to judge on the small LCD display, which makes me wish I had waited for Nikon 300D. ;-) However, I was extremely pleased the performance, especially how well the noise was managed even at high sensitivity.
Here, it's pretty clear that the glass is not as transparent as it should be, but still - it could have been much worse, so overall I was happy. Thanks to Satyam and Larisa for joining me, it was a nice trip. One last panorama shot as we were coming back home. Hooray for the light smog!

VR or non-VR, that is the question

Brian Whitworth's latest scientific masturbation argues, that it is perfectly reasonable to conjecture that "the world is an information simulation running on a three-dimensional space-time screen". Amongst his arguments, that are quite interesting at the first glance at least, is that the existence of quantum phenomena could be due to the underlying digital nature of the simulation. He also claims that his VR hypothesis can explain relativity, the big bang and more.

That alone would not be anything extraordinary, we have seen it many times before. However, he argues that it should be possible to perform experiments to prove the hypothesis, which is rather interesting. The reasoning is that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual...

Not only he fails to suggest what that imaginary thing would be, but my question is, how do we find out, what information processing in a universe that may be significantly different from ours can, or cannot do? And what if the simulation module would cheat on us, and deliberately fake the experiment results? ;-)

Also, this concept reminds me of religion, in sense that there are several phenomena that we cannot explain, so we suggest that they are the work of God, (or the VR almighty, makes no difference to me.) My argument is that this world is quite dull to be a VR simulation. There are way too many boring limits. Then again, it could be some early development version... ;-)

If nothing else, by pondering this alone, I have brought the creator's attention to myself, so
should I disappear, or mysteriously change my mind, we will know something's awry here. Then again, we will not, because the simulation system will clear its tracks. Darn, we are doomed to live in the Matrix! And my superpowers are long overdue...