The worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

BECOMING A PERSON OF INTEREST

Part of the US government's job is to keep track of domestic affairs. Since 9/11 this has seemingly evolved from hobby to obsession. Wiretapping with minimal legal recourse by 'secret agencies' is a controversial practice that is commonly assumed to occur. I speculate that deeper, more dubious intelligence gathering methods are being employed.

Except for ideological reasons, these practices are meant to be seen as irrelevant to the non-terrorizing population. Think again Mr. Brown. I have reason to believe that two seemingly innocuous actions on my part have put me on some sort of watch list.

How/if this will impact my future is unknown. In the least, I actually feel a little paranoid about writing this entry. I'm purposefully staying away from acronyms like N S A, or posting certain IP addresses. I would suggest that my freedom of speech has been compromised.



On a previous version of my .EDU webpage (now deleted) I described my research interests. I am sufficiently religious (Christian, as is 76% of the US population) that I mentioned God in my introduction--basically saying that he has given us a lot of natural tools to do some useful things.

I happen to keep some basic statistics about who visits my webpage. There were multiple hits from the pent a gon and a few others from Virginia while this page was up. I will not go into details other than saying it sort of creeped me out. My page is not frequented that often, so I am pretty sure these were associated with the gov ernment. When I removed the references to God, the hits ceased.


A second instance of me stumbling towards possible infamy occurred back in my undergraduate days post nine-eleven. I was vacationing in Eastern Washington: hiking, exploring, etc. I thought it would be fun to visit the Han ford nu clear re search facility. My map (circa 1995) indicated there was a visitors center.

As I drove to where I thought the center would be, I was stopped by a roadblock with a humV. A sol dier, complete with mach ine gun and green ades came out and asked me questions for a while. He took my ID information and lic plate number.


I can not say whether the information was retained for years. Although I imagine a little black book with my name on it with a page for each of these 'incidents'. Once my book gets say, 9 pages, it gets bumped up to a higher level of surveillance.

As with any passive surveillance system, it is nearly impossible to determine what information is collected about you. And this is the problem. The checks and balances of our democracy break down in the area of national security. In a sense, we have to 'trust' that the government is behaving decently.

The founding fathers knew that power leads to corruption. If information is power, then the secret agencies have more power than any other segment of the population. Will the moral control poorly demonstrated by wiretapping and illegal interrogation techniques snowball into greater decay? What will the limit of their 'power' be as information about citizens becomes more available? To what end?

Star Trek

Star Trek is an energetic, not too geeky, sci-fi film that will give you a few shots of adrenaline along with a warm hearted sigh every now and then.

Despite its heavily weighted fiction over science, and lack of significant romance, this film has a universal appeal to thinkers and feelers alike -- due to good ideas and character development.

bottom line:
This film is like a beautified and engrossing Starship Troopers. It lacks the deeper metaphors of Star Wars -- but it's spring, the sun is out and who wants to think anyway.

shazbot!

An exact accelerated stochastic simulation algorithm
J. Chem. Phys. 130, 144110 (2009)
http://link.aip.org/link/?JCPSA6/130/144110/1

The Orals

Imagine being thrown into a room with five of the smartest people in the county. They grill you for a solid 1-2 hours on intricately technical matters. You must, on the spot, answer their questions which you have never seen before.

This ancient right of passage tests your knowledge and ability to think on the spot. If things go poorly, your childhood dream of becoming a scientist may destroyed.

Not a nightmare, not an audition to 'American Idol Scientist', this is your Oral Examination.

If we shadows have offended

The revised economic stimulus package is set to fly through the congress and senate for approval. It is a complicated measure, but there is at least one aspect of this and the treasury bill which appeals to me.

The US government is poised to print money, and lots of it (up to ~$350 BILLION if I'm reading things correctly). Normally, printing money can result in inflation, hyperinflation and possibly a crash in currency. So your $1000 in the bank could be worth about as much as 1,000 pesos.

However, from what I can tell we are already experiencing deflation, where money increases in value as time goes on. You probably noticed the great holiday sales, or substantially lower gas prices. Your money is worth more than it used to be.

Despite the initial advantages of deflation, it can also lead to serious consequences. The Great Depression experienced about 10% deflation per year. Why is it bad? There are two main reasons. First, if people know that prices for goods are going down in the future, they will be inclined to wait to purchase goods. So manufacturers will have to reduce the price of their products in order to sell them, not break even and possibly go out of business. This will result in even less money in the system. Second, most investments will not pay-off during times of extreme deflation. For an investment to 'break even', it would need to grow at a rate faster than deflation. If not, it is better to put your money in the bank and let it sit there. This also results in less money in the system. And when there is less of something, it means that it will be worth more*.

* with the exception of new songs or re-arrangements of songs or dances to the re-arrangements of songs by ABBA.