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This story prompted me to respond to one of the forwarded emails from my Pops. Mostly jokes, sometimes funny, but every once in a while you get one that is slightly off-color due to race, religion, and what not. What follows is my response to a bad joke about the Conservative and Liberal movements.

I love you Dad, but we obviously disagree about some things. If I could offer one tip to the older generation that has figured out how to forward email: use the BCC feature so I can’t respond back to all your friends

Click “(more)” to read the emails:

(more…)

Finished reading Leonard Susskin’s The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. While giving a great deal of explanation of the Anthropic Principle and an in depth discussion of String Theory, the most astounding topic I encountered was the Holographic Principle.

While offering scientific explanations to “weird” physical observations (i.e. Einstein’s Spooky Action at a Distance and teleportation from Quantum Entanglement), it also provides an interesting look into the supernatural. Stories of an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air…bending of spoons with your mind…these supernatural occurrences could be explained by the theory that the 3D world that we consider reality is really just an illusion, a projection of a 2D hologram. Furthermore, the very nature of a hologram is such that everything is everywhere, meaning everything in our universe is infinitely interconnected.

This has struck a huge chord with me, personally: a considerable time ago I noticed that street lights happen to turn off as I walk or drive near them: Street Lamp Interference. I have long considered that some sort of “energy” is connecting us with our environment. This connection may not be a connection at all, the physical separation of 3D objects in our “world” may just be an illusion..even time may be an illusion. Past, present, and future may all exist simultaneously.

I could go on for days about the profound implications of this line of thought, but will end it for now. Feel free to contact me for more links to essays on this subject…they are very interesting reads!

Thanks to all those anonymous people that voted “best to hang out with for a day” and “smartest” as a WEAKNESS! Not quite sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ll take the STRENGTHS either way

An email from Chainn, an application on Facebook:

Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:

sexiest
toughest
best scientist

WEAKNESSES:

smartest
best to hang out with for a day

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Originally uploaded by njcalugar

Went to the Red Bull Air Races on Saturday and Sunday. The air races were pretty neat, but the best part of the day was the Navy exhibition. They flew a F/A-18 Hornet over the crowd such that it was almost hovering vertically at very high thrust. On pass one he leveled it off and took off. On pass two he simply added thrust and went straight up to 2500-ft. BADASS!!

I tried several times a few years ago and sucked. Was hoping that if I got up, my snowboarding experience would help, but I couldn’t do a thing. I need to get a BIG board to learn on…we’re talking barge here. The highlight of my morning was the dolphins that were riding a wave about 5ft away from me. They were so close I could see their eyes and snouts…AWESOME!! Off to the Red Bull Air Races!

Just started reading a new book today: The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design by Leonard Susskind. I haven’t gotten too far, but the book is basically a presentation of the Anthropic Principle. The Anthropic Principle challenges the conclusion that a deity must have designed this world / universe to make it this perfect by saying that we can observe a universe perfectly tailored for our existence. This is a very simple notion, but is a lot less common than observing nature and deciding God must have made the heavens and the earth. Looking forward to writing about my thoughts after completing the book…until then…

Watching the Cavs vs Wizards Game 1 and LeBron once again just hung in the air forever, and managed to flip it up at the last second for 2. So I had an idea for a Nike / LeBron commercial: How does he do it? Anti-Gravity Nike Boots!

Not sure what I’m going to do with battlemonkey.net yet, but a blog seemed to be the easiest way to put up something. My ideas are:

• battlemonkey.net history
• Web Technology Blog
• Ramblings on stuff that interests me: Web Applications, Politics, Religion, Utopian Society, Futurism, Sports

Any votes?