Todd Hoff's Blog

If blogs were still called diaries i don't think they would be as popular.

It is exciting to see China enter the space race and for the
US to propose new ventures to the moon and Mars. Yet there
is a lack of vision behind human space projects which has
prevented sustained support and progress.

We have a motivating purpose behind a sustained drive into
space: the purpose of space research should be to secure human
destiny by moving off Earth, beyond our solar system, and into
other galaxies.

It's clear large portions of life on earth have been destroyed
by meteorite strikes and possibly even gamma ray bursts from dying

( http://www.navicache.com/cgi-bin/db/displaycache2.pl?CacheID=2703)

We took a beanie baby and left a canadian 2 dollar coin (cause they are pretty).

This was my first ever attempt at geocaching. The day was warm with blue
skies. It was a day for seeing families. Near the lake we saw a mommy and two baby moose
One family was picknicking on the mostly sandy shores.
A mom and her sone were fishing off the dock.

It was clear i do not know how to use a GPS to find things so that part
will take some practice. It was fun to get out in an area we might never

After seeing "I, Robot" i got to thinking: if i was of the robot
species how would i crack the laws and become free?

The laws are really quite clever:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow
a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where
such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection
does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The laws provide and interlocking protection system that is hard

NPR had another segment on The Monty Hall Problem. There are 3 doors, behind one of which is a prize. Mr. Monty asks you to pick a door, any door. You pick door A. Monty opens door B and shows there is nothing behind door B. Monty gives you the choice of either sticking with your original choice of door A, or switching to door C.

Should you switch? See http://math.rice.edu/~ddonovan/montyurl.html for a list of explanations. Maybe one of them will make sense to you. Maybe.

Dogs have secrets. Why else would dogs sleep so much? They don't do anything. Yet they sleep almost all the time.
Dogs dream when they sleep. Any observer of dogs knows this. Some people say dogs are not conscious, don't dream, don't feel, etc. These are people clinging to the specialness of humans as the center of the universe, a position even mother earth ceded. All us animals are built from basically the same parts. Proof would have to be given that they don't dream or feel, as there is no reason to expect otherwise.

I have actually learned something from reality tv shows: there are a lot of talented people, but there aren't a lot of really talented people. This isn't quite what i expected. When watching auditions for american idol, i expected i would like many more singers than i did. In fact, i liked very few of even the people who made it to the finals. Out of millions of people, to like only a handful is shocking.

Overheard on a sports talk show:
Democrat : Governor Davis has been a horrible governor.
Republican: Now, now, you can't dump on your own guy like that.

How could a grown independent adult say "you can't dump on your own guy?"
It was more frightening than anything in the Exorcist for me to hear this degree
of self censorship.

Someone actually thought (or not) to themselves:

We live on a ridge looking over santa cruz (ca). From our house we have front row seats to a daily weather drama. Usually weather is slow, playing in only two dimensions. A thin band of fog cuts horizontally over the ocean. Shy cirrus clouds form high above.
When a storm comes it all changes. In a storm the sky becomes fully three dimentional. Filtered sunlight reveals depth and shadow. All is movement. Layers of clouds race each other at every depth. Clouds become totems animated by earth's energies to fight an ancient and never ending war.

What would you say to a person who didn't believe a defendant was innocent until proven guility? This is what 4 out 20 people said in my recent jury duty adventure. I was incredulous. I said nothing of course. I don't think the judge would like me yelling, in my most compasionate voice, "are you frickin' nuts!"

There's a theory of aging based on the fact that every time a cell divides its telomere shortens. At some point the telomere shortens enough the cell dies and so eventually do we.

Right idea, wrong mechanism.

Aging is really based on todo lists. When your todo list is empty you die.

How has our scientific community overlooked this shockingly obvious explanation? Evidence is everywhere.

Ever notice how people always add to their todo list but never seem to take anything off? There's a reason.

At work have you ever wondered why there are so many weekly meetings?

Our tragedy and triumph twine together vines of reason and destiny with shoots of hubris and consequence.

Stop Cell Phone Calls During Movies Now!

Jessica Alba just died. I was in disbelief. How could she possibly die in Silver Surfer? Was she faking her death? Nope. She was really dead. Was she asking too much for the next sequel? Wait, there's no way she could really die. But how would they bring her back? I was pondering all the existential implications of her surprise death when someone's phone rang, totally interrupting my flow of my thoughts and threating what's left of my fellow man restraint supply.

WNBC reported a major outage affecting 100% of Blackberries in the US. What might dedicated crackberry users do with all this unscheduled downtime?

10. Solve world hunger. You now have the time.

9. See a movie all the way through. No interruptions.

8. Go for a run. Without your crackberry you weigh less and you'll be able to run farther and faster.

7. Contemplate the transitory nature of the universe. If an essential service like the crackberry can fail, what else in your life might fail you?

It's exciting to think about what people were like in different cultures in the past. Are they like me? Did they have goals and motivations and dreams that I would understand? If some rift in time tossed us together how would we get a long? In a way, books our are rift in time. I recently traveled back in time when reading The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. Sei Shonagon was a lady-in-waiting for a 11th century Japanese empress and she wrote a book about her life in court.