About Romeo

Born in Romania in the Botosani district (Romanian: Judet) sometimes between 1960 and 1970. Immigrated to Canada in 2001. Computers and more precise software for application and database servers as well as automation (micro electronics) is the way I make a living. Working for IBM Canada Ltd since 2010 to present

I stand with you, Orlando, Brussels, Paris, Pakistan, and for all people who lost or had their lives destroyed by madness of extremisms

Orlando Florida US Jun 12, 2016, 50 dead 53 injured. People died and got hurt again, is there a way to stop this from happening?

  • Paris France, Nov 13, 2015, 130 dead and more then 350 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • San Bernardino California US, Dec 2, 2015, 14 dead and 22 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • Brussels Belgium, Mar 22, 2016, 35 dead and more than 300 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • Lahore Pakistan, Mar 27, 2016, 75 dead and more than 300 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • Orlando Florida US Jun 12, 2016, 50 dead 53 injured
  • And then the Sirian Civil War counting to more than 400000 people killed until now with millions pushed to live their lives with mostly nothing
  • And the list is longer, to long…

I would like to extend my condolences to all the people who lost loved ones in all those tragedies.

In total, in less than a year, we lost 130+14+35+75+50=304 people and destroyed or badly impacted the lives of 350+22+300+300+53=more than 1025 people by a handful of other people who’s minds were twisted by extreme ideas. I can’t even imagine what 400000 dead and millions more displaced means for a time we call ourselves “civilized”.

But by simply stopping here, by only feeling sorry for the loss, would not make much difference for the future. We need to start open our eyes minds and harts to the truth no matter how hard is to find it.

Against all the primal instincts which pushes us to answer the violence with violence the path to a solution include quite a different path. It is said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing again and again without changing anything and expecting different results. If that is true it is also an extreme, and we could tame the definition by excluding the “changing anything” to “changing enough” to reach a realistic goal. The thing is, we all find ourselves in various shades of insanity and need to continuously correct our action to stay out of it.

My personal opinion is that one important root cause, if not the most important one, on all our history, but more important these days is our ability to communicate.

The communication process implies extracting information from our minds, filter it, encode it in speech or words, then transport it over various mediums like airwaves (voice), electromagnetic waves, in networks, or solids, to one or more people, the receivers. The receiver(s) will then attempt to decode the information and (attempt to) re-integrate it in their minds. Both the sender and receiver have different mind contexts and each of those steps can and usually will be subject of errors.

My explanation of the communication process, may look “Rube Goldberg”-is but it is darn simple compared to the full fledged phenomena.

We usually do all this in “automatic” mode, paying little attention or no or little attention to all the possibilities for errors and that is where things break down. We assume we “master” communication, when in fact we kind of suck at it and the consequence of this inability is dire.

These days our abilities to transport information has advanced faster than our ability to process the information we receive (and make sense of it) due all the technological advances. Now we are witnessing the first consequences of this imbalance between our abilities to transport information, and our ability to process it. On top of that, we are unable to distinguish between fact and fiction and our ability to listen and understand other cultures has diminished due to of this informational overload.

All this pushes some of us to drawn in the informational flow, and tumble down into the vortex of madness and extremism.

Carl Sagan had this prescient view, he expressed in his last interview with Charlie Rose. Charlie asks, “What’s the danger of all this…?” referring to the Science and Technology in the hands of the public. Carl answers “We arrange the society based on Science and Technology where nobody understand anything about Science and Technology and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow-out in our faces…”  For the full interview (if you didn’t see it yet) check here.

I’m coining this phenomena the “Informageddon” as a derived form of the regular Armageddon, describing a way to screw ourselves big time due our collective madness and stupidity.

Of course, you may say, you can go crazy about it, but nothing would really happen (to others) if there will be no guns. Personally I think we should be able to defend ourselves, however if anyone would own a classic gun can lead to a arms race at the micro social level. All this is good for making bucks on short term but makes no sense on long term. I will discuss more about how to balance the need for self defence and what sort of technology can we use to replace the actual guns. As a Canadian I’m impacted in a slight different way than a US citizen but the problem is actually universal and needs attention.

I’m sure that there is a brighter future ahead of us. Yet the path to it is narrow and not a straight one, but I believe in it. To draw the path to an acceptable future we need to understand the dangers of the new technologies as well as their strengths. As with all other Technological wonders we can use every one of them for both good and bad, the distinction is apparent when we are able to see the big picture on long term.

“In order to be able to harvest the fruits, first we must take care of the roots”

The last two important aspects of the social organization, which can push towards the “Informageddon” are the specialization and competition. Even though both of them are essential for our progress an unhealthy amount or kind of each can hamper the progress.

We can distinguish two types of competition, constructive (or positive) and destructive (or negative). To understand the difference I have to tell you a small story. “Once upon a time there were two neighbours. And they (as with many of us these days) were competing on who had a better life. They both had livestock and were proud of their animals. One day the goat of one of them dies accidentally. In the evening both neighbours pray to God. First one asks God for good health for his family and livestock and wishes the best for his neighbour. He shares some of his goat milk with his neighbour whose goat died . The other neighbour though, prays for his neighbour’s goat to die too so he would not be in the position to be helped as he feels this as humiliating”.

You can see clearly the difference between constructive competition in the first person action and the destructive one from the other person.We can see how for the entire system (the two people together) helping each other leads to a stronger state whereas in the destructive case both would suffer. The problem with the technology is that it speeds up all processes and makes it harder and harder to people to react with long term plans. This inadvertently favours he destructive type of competition.

Please take some time and think how much of the constructive versus destructive competition is promoted more these days? What is the impact on long term of all the secrecy out there and all the actions we are involved in. This is the first step towards a sane future.

For future articles check the “Informageddon” category.

 

Is this guy inventing the ZPM?

I stumbled on youtube.com on this video recorded from a presentation given by Nassim Haramein presenting a new model for interpreting the world of small (we now brand as Quantum Mechanics) where simply put he presents a model and some calculations supporting the idea that protons are made out of small Black-Holes!

Cool!, Not sure is the model holds water but you have to admit the idea is cool.

However this is not all, Nassim says he works on a device which is able to extract energy directly out of the space itself. This takes me back to a Sci-Fi I love, the Star-Gate series where they talk about an energy source used by some very advanced (and ancient!) civilizations, called ZPM or Zero Point Module. In the flick the ZPM is a sort of battery which can generate an enormous amount of energy being able to power spaceships as large as entire cities for thousands of years. The ZPM “extracts energy from a region of the space”.

Now, you’ll say, well Sci-Fi is some % of “Sci” + some % of “Fi” so it is not exactly real.

Let’s take a look at the history of the “Tablet Computer”, Wikipedia has an article about this where they show that the idea was first floated around since 1951 by Isaac Asimov as a “Calculator Pad” in the novel Foundation. Just take a look at the “pads” used by the different Sci-Fi movies (Star-Treck, and Star-* in general). I found this pintrest pin funny saying “1988 Star-Trck tablet computer presented, 2002 Microsoft introduces a tablet computer and 2010 iPad is introduced”. At the time when those movies were produced the notion of “tablet computer” looke light years away, yet we have them now and they look even damn better than what we imagined only few years ago.

That seem to be the case with multiple “ideas out of their times” which then we realized them one way or another. The most obvious of all is our ability to fly. Given all this, I will not be too surprised if the ZPM can actually be built. Then, buckle-up your sit belts as our reality will really take off. Only if, it would happen for us all…

Even if it does not actually predict any ZPM this article about Black Holes from Stephen Wolfram is cool too.

Bellow Nassim Haramein about this potential new energy source. Will this be successful? I’d like to think so yet only time will tell. He is leading “The Resonance Project” @ http://resonance.is .

What would happen if you give a monkey a machine-gun?

Carl Sagan talking about the danger of marring more and more advanced technologies with very little or no understanding of the technology background by the masses.
Was he right? I thing he was. Arthur Clarke observed that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic”. Which means that for most of the people out there science and technology is magic, this allows religious fanatics to attack science by brainwashing the very people using the technology. And at the top of the magic hill are the computers… We have to take computers out of the magic by simplifying them and making them understandable by everyone, or the future may not be ours.

All human beings make mistakes, and we are all human, how blind love leads to death

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Author: Mark Twain

The road to hell is paved only with good intentions.
Author: Unknown

It take a village to raise a child.
Author: Unknown

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We all think “I had nothing to do with it” if you think so think again, if you don’t you are an indirect enabler of violence…

Paris I stand with you

Have no Fear!, Fear leads to hate and hate leads to suffering”. My hart goes out for all people hurting now in Paris and all over the world.

We can’t change the past or even the present but we can change the future. Fear is born from lack of quality information and quality information is only born from deep listening and understanding of our peers. Ignorance is not bliss is death. We can’t afford ignorance no more.

candlelight

Pope Francis

Pope Francis. I pray for for him from all my hart to succeed in convincing people that love and inclusiveness “Is The Way”.

Even though, I don’t side with the organized religion for the same reasons I don’t side with any political parties, I’m impressed on the effort Pope Francis makes to straight our twisted current ways, all focussed on short term and small group gains. He does need all the help from God and us all to succeed, because what he fights is almost impossible to fight, to convince people to balance their focus to include more of the long term impact of their actions and and full societal (Earth level) wealth. In this case I see wealth as more (way more) than just money…

pope_francis

Why do we die?

Just reading this excellent book of history of science and knowledge called “The upright thinkers” by Leonard Mlodinov and read what Max Plank thought about revolutionary new ideas. Plank said “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and new generation grows up that is familiar with it“.

This resonates with some of my own observations about how human mind works. A child mind is like a fluid, just prepared, cement mixture, getting more like a set cement stone as we age. We get to be stony and unable to adapt. This gets so bad that in the end both the body and the mind becomes a drag to the current reality and the universe simply discards us.

Interesting is that in the bible, Jesus says that God expects us to be like children. I’m pretty sure he (or they if he was invented) was thinking of the same phenomena of low adaptivity as we age. On the bright side this shows though also the the path to the immortality… You guess, stay adaptive, meaning you have to be able to drop all you know and embrace new ideas if they prove to explain how the reality works!

The other observation is that all conservatory ideals seem (at least for now) deemed to fail. Simply the universe can’t be stopped from changing, we have to adapt or end up in the garbage.

What really matters, Have you found joy in your life? Have your life brought joy to others?

We ask ourselves at least once in our lives why are we here and what really matters. There are rivers of written words on this subject so I’d hate to add more stuff on it. But I found this explanation in an unusual palace and it stuck with me. I’d like to share it as it wormed my hart and gave me a direction in the jungle of life.

In the movie “The Bucket List” Morgan Freeman’s middle class character asks Jack Nicholson’s rich character two questions. He says that “The ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death, when their soul got to the entry to heaven the God asked them two questions. Their answers to the questions determined if they were admitted or not. The questions were:
— Have you found Joy in your life?  
— Have your life brought joy to others?