Epic tale of awesome epicness!

So, after reading Argallsaurus' latest post I looked my resolutions over. As it is June now, I think it is as good a time as ever to re-evaluate my yearly goals. I have many items on my list that I think I probably will not get to before the summer is out, but I have some goals that I could get started on right away.

One of those goals was to write a story.

I have little half-written tid-bits of stories I have written here and there (Potatoman, Dr. Nowhere, etc.) but I recently started a new story and I think I will post it on here in installments. It is the epic tale of one Wrathmall Tega, told in compelling prose. A legendary figure vanished from memory, plucked from the mysterious mists of time to entertain you. Well, that is enough 'ado'; here is the first installment:

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This is the story of a giant of a man; a man among giants, a dwarf among midgets. The legendary tale of a legend, with a tail, you've never heard.

Born in a barn that was being burned to the ground, Wrathmall Tega learned to run before he could crawl. Sporting a mullet from birth, his first words were "Bitch!" and "Bake me some chicken", but not necessarily in that order.

On his 6th birthday he took to the rails. He spent the next two years of his life doing freelance crime fighting and living a hobo's life. His only source of income was pawning the gold teeth of the criminals he punched in the face.

When he was 9, Big Three records took out a recording contract on his life. little is known of "The battle of the music masters" other than when it was over, Stevie Wonder was blind, Michael Jackson was white, and Ricky Martin was apparently turned Mexican. In his autobiography, Tega had this to say about the horrific scene: '...then they tried to sing me to death, so I beat the music out of them'. Paramount studios allegedly paid him a record $2 billion for the movie rights, with the unique stipulation that Wrathmall would play every character... and direct.

By the time he was 13 he was a Bollywood sensation. He had starred in over 400 films, most of which were less than 10 minutes long. His most famous role was in a short behind the scenes scene of him yelling at a cat. It was filmed accidentally when one of the grips left a camera rolling by mistake. It grossed $400 million dollars and netted him an Academy Award nomination for best actor (he lost out to the cat from the same film, but he later said that there were no hard feelings between the co-stars).

Tiring of the movie scene he converted all his assets into salt-water taffy and chartered a ship to take him around the world. His adventures at sea are well documented by the undersea nations in the Mermenclypedia under the heading "The Terrible Stranger". Eventually his ship wrecked on the tip of Cape Horn, He was the sole survivor. He then walked north, eventually stumbling onto the Augsburg College campus in Minneapolis Minnesota some time later.

Two weeks later he left with a Bachelor of Science in Physics, which he earned by defeating every faculty member of the Physics department in singles hand-to-hand combat. He then mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again...

...until now!

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Stay tuned for more next time!

Baby project

So I have been taking pictures of my baby (go figure) and I am in the process of compiling them into a flash movie. The idea is that I will have a picture of him in roughly the same position every day, and when you compile all the pictures you will see him grow up.

I am going to have it more as a slideshow than a full-on movie as it is difficult to get him in the exact same position, and with the same facial expressions. If I were to make it with each picture as a frame then it would just turn into mush. However, I think the effect of a slide show will accomplish what I want just fine.

Right now I plan to keep it up for his first year. So when I am done the slide show will have him growing from newborn (Day 0) to 1 year old (Day 365). Although if I manage to keep up with the project that long I might want to keep it going...

BWAHAHA!

The mad paper towel reverser strikes again!

Baby!

I had a baby!

And he is beautiful! A 9 pound 15 ounce bouncing baby boy, born May 8th, 2011!

Uploading my brain

I have been pondering a thought for some time now. There has long been a science-fiction-y concept floating around that one day we will have computers advanced enough that we could upload our brains and continue living within the computer indefinitely. I have always been of the opinion that if you upload your brain into a computer, you would be effectively making a *copy* of your consciousness. Even if during the process of uploading, your meat-brain was destroyed to create the computer consciousness, and even if the computer's thought processes were indistinguishable from your normal meat-brain thought processes, it still would not be the proper "you". Sort of like how a clone of you would not be you, but more like a twin in practice. This would be a computerized twin of your brain functions.

But this got me to thinking. The "me" that is now, is not the "me" from last year. The molecules that make up my brain are different, it's the pattern that self-identifies me as "me". And while I do not believe this lends credence to my computer "me" being the real "me" I do think it leads to an interesting situation. Consider the following:

One day I get a brain implant that would supplement my memory. This would essentially just be analogous to an external hard drive. It is a space to store my memories and recall them, effectively granting me an eidetic memory. Am I still me "me"? I would argue, yes. Now, say, over the course of years I increased the functionality of this implant. So now it can perform functions as well as store memories, but the functions it performs are a supplement to my main meat-brain thought processes. I can regulate processes such as mathematical calculations to the implant as it can perform them in a fraction of the time. Am I still me? But as I get older I start regulating more and more of my thought processes to the implant, and upgrading its abilities. At some point I would probably get too old for my physical brain to function anymore. But if my implant was robust enough it could continue processes long after my physical brain/body had passed away. Am I still "me"?

At every step my sense of self would have changed to include whatever added aspect the implant granted to me. It would effectively become part of me. So would that part of me continue to be me after my physical body dies? I would think, yes. It would not be the same "me" as I am now... but in the same sense that I am not the same "me" as I was last year.

Now, another question would be: if my consciousness was now functioning on a computer would I still have emotions without the chemistry of my brain? Something to ponder...

Casual Science

My friend over at Sci-ducation has come up with an idea for blogging about scientific research. It is a tandem approach, where each of us will read a scientific paper and write a blog-post discussing it in detail, raising questions about it, and possibilities for future research. Then the second person will try and find a paper that deals with one of those questions, if possible, and write a blog-post about that paper in much the same manner. This could go on until the topic is exhausted, or we find a better, more interesting topic.

I am all in for this endeavor! Now, to find a good starting paper...

Over-due baby

Well Felix's due date has come and gone, and yet he is still hanging out inside my wife.

It is really inconsiderate of him. Although, I was 11 days late when I was born...

*sniff* He's just like his daddy... ;-)