A Briefer History of Time

I just finished reading Stephen Hawking's book A Briefer History of Time. I was fascinated with what I read. This is the revised edition from his original A Brief History of Time. I didn't fully understand everything I read, but that certainly was expected. One thing I wish he would've done better is used more descriptive pictures when attempting to describe a particular topic. The pictures were too simplistic and I believe more work could've gone into some of them. However, I don't want to sound too critical. For an admitted physics novice, I loved the book.

For me, physics was always one of the most difficult and boring subjects. However, Hawking has raised my interest in physics (for arguably the first time). I took three semesters of Physics in high school and another three in college (two on Newtonian physics and one on quantum mechanics). I'm not sure why, but I had no interest and muddled my way through all of them. The quantum mechanics class was definitely over my head. I'm thinking about restarting at the beginning and finding a "Physics 101" book. I'm also interested in finding more out about String Theory. I'm planning on reading The Universe in a Nutshell next.

Interestingly enough, I was intrigued by the similarities between some of Jeff Hawkins comments on Intelligent Computing and Stephen Hawking's discussion of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The similarity being that in both cases there's no finite, deterministic answer. Rather there can only be an approximation or best guess. I still have trouble digesting that this is how the brain works (as described in On Intelligence). Based on my understanding, in a similar way The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle underlies the Theory of Quantum Mechanics and basically states that it's not possible to be exactly sure of both the position and velocity of a particle. It sounds like Einstein had trouble buying into this uncertainty, so I don't feel too bad about my reservations.

In the final chapter (Conclusion), Hawking discusses both the scientific and the philosophical aspects of a Unified Theory. It's mind-boggling to think as Hawking suggests... "Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we would know the mind of God."

Atom Recycling

In On Intelligence I read that approximately 98% of your body's atoms are replaced approximately every 3 years. I also heard the same thing on NPR (National Public Radio) a few weeks ago. If you stop to think about this for a moment, it's pretty amazing and a little scary at the same time. Over the course of those three years (while your atoms are being replaced), you're general sense of self and your appearance remain fairly consistent, which is quite remarkable.

On Intelligence

I've just started re-reading On Intelligence, the book by Jeff Hawkins. I read it for the first time approximately four months ago. His ideas on how the human brain works are profound.

In the first chapter, Hawkins dispels Artificial Intelligence and the reasons why he believes it has failed. Basically, the human brain works differently than computers. As a result, computers are not intelligent by their very nature. Instead, we must first understand how the human brain works; particularly the neocortex. The first chapter also lays out that "... understanding cannot be measured by external behavior... it is instead an internal metric of how the brain remembers things and uses its memories to make predictions."

Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures

I just finished reading the book Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures. There were a few decent pieces of information, but overall I was not very impressed. Some of the content was OK, but the grammatical errors and different writing styles made it a very disappointing read. There were four different authors which contributed to the flow problems, and it was obvious that some of the chapters were more poorly written than others. In addition, it didn't seem like anyone even proofed the book. I can understand a few errors, but I found myself re-reading sentence after sentence trying to understand what words were missing, misspelled or out-of-place.

The chapter on transactions was pretty decent. I liked the information on compensating transactions, which I had heard called three phase commit previously. The chapter on UDDI was pretty decent as well. I was disappointed in the last chapter on Event-Driven Architecture. It just seemed to be a hodge-podge catch all of the author's thoughts without much meat.

Plant a Tree, Help Save the Planet

I planted two new oak trees in the backyard yesterday. One is a Bur Oak and the other is a Northern Pin Oak. I wish I would have planted them sooner, but oh well. I can't wait for them to get big to provide some privacy and shade.