Congratulations And Updates...

The Olympics

First of all I'd like to congratulate all of the Olympic athletes for amazing performances in what is certainly a great year for the Olympics. They really are heroes and considering the amount of time and effort that is put into a performance of only a few minutes, they are nothing less than remarkable as are the people that make that possible. Every second of several years of effort leading up to one moment of achievement, though the sense thereof I hope for all such athletes comes from the achievement of having tried rather than having not tried at all. There is only loss for one who does not try.

In The Writing Arena

There have been numerous chapters added to A Lady's Perogative: Wounded Aerth, Heroes Of Our Own and finally to Our Place making this set of updates one of the biggest in the history of this blog. 

In addition I've written a whole slew of new poetry as well possibly inspired by the perseverance of Olympic athletes, the opening ceremonies and a little bit from my own struggles against some real life trolls.

Heroes Of Our Own is going to require a little bit more going over in order to get the quirks out but it seems to be taking on a life of its own. Definitely a recommended read for cosplayers.

On Risque Factor (viewer discretion is advised) there has been at least one new article posted on Social Engineering And Identity Theft that should be read by media measurement specialists and content producers and providers alike as it really gives some clues to the forces currently shaping the internet in terms of content and the obstacles that are likely going to affect the value of content and advertising unless it is at least checked out a bit.

Technology

One area that recently received some attention from a great television show (Charlie Rose) was an interview that talked about D-Wave, a company that makes real quantum computers which I was completely unaware of. 

Quantum computers are of course computers that avoid the pitfalls of classical and linear computing by taking advantage of qubits, which enable a calculation to be conducted based upon superposition and the collapse of the wave function. It is analogous to computing all the possible solutions to a given task simultaneously or even computing the solutions to such tasks utilizing the time space of other universes running completely concurrent to our own and using one such universe for the superposition of each qubit.

This is some pretty amazing news and I suspect that we are within the next twenty years going to see a revolution that will equal that of all other technical revolutions that came before it including machine intelligence and possibly a complete understanding of human consciousness and its relation to the quantum mechanical properties of the universe.

Imagine having computers that could help us simulate phenomenon that would make the development of cures for disease and testing theories related to technologies like warp travel possible. The engineering of super materials bonded at the atomic level and some other absolutely phenomenal achievements will be possible.

These are some of the possibilities with quantum computing of course the challenge lies in developing techniques to use the concept of superposition in the calculation of these problems. Developing software for quantum computers will become a career with huge demand in the next decade.

Science, Religion And Faith

In the book Contact by Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan as does the excellent movie directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jodie Foster and Mathew McConaughey, science and religion are put at odds with one another (as they often have) when scientists at SETI receive a message from a distant alien intelligence. Recently science and religion have been finding similar unrest and this is a shame.

In a day and age where more and more developments are leading to new discoveries and taking humankind further into our future, why is it that the two must compete for the right to exist or even to be taken seriously. Mostly its about who has say in the distribution of finances with regard to research and our future as a species upon this planet and our place in the universe. 

Science, Religion, Philosophy and Faith have and always will have an important place in all of our most important decisions for to tread without one is to journey without an important part of ourselves. It is excessive zeal, dogma and pragma that seem to be the real culprits and obstacles to progress. Both the religious and the non-religious are susceptible to disease just as both most certainly benefit from a cure. Both sides of such a debate lose people to death and both sides likely do a some soul searching therein.

One is objective and one is subjective. One is how long have we been here? The other is why are we here? One has a definite answer. For the other the answer is different for each of us. Reconciling those differences is our challenge.

Stay Well and and don't let them make you into the bad one,
Brian Joseph Johns