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The Geeks' Guide to World Domination

Page 9

by Garth Sundem


  Count your touching fingers as ten each (i.e., 10 for left middle and 10 for right index).

  Count any fingers below those touching as ten each (i.e., left ring and pinky; right middle, index, and pinky).

  Multiply fingers above those touching (i.e., two times one from left thumb and index times right thumb).

  Add the numbers from steps 5–7 (i.e., 20 + 50 + 2). This is your answer.

  CHINESE NAMES OF POPULAR TAKE-OUT FOODS

  Imagine you were magically transplanted from your cubicle, bedroom, dorm room, laboratory, or favorite comic store to the heart of mainland China. How would you survive? What would you eat?

  Likewise, imagine what would happen if your local source of Chinese take-out changed to non-English-speaking management. Again, how would you survive?

  Just in case, consider photocopying the chart below and carrying it with you at all times.

  33 SONGS YOU CAN PLAY ON GUITAR WITH ONLY THE FOLLOWING THREE CHORDS

  Practice the three chords above and then use your ear to figure out any of the following songs:

  “O Susanna”

  “Happy Birthday”

  “Home on the Range”

  “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”

  “You Are My Sunshine”

  “Old MacDonald”

  “Puff, the Magic Dragon”

  “This Land Is Your Land”

  “She'll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”

  “Blowin’ in the Wind”

  “John Henry”

  “For What It's Worth”

  “Feelin’ Alright”

  “Margaritaville”

  “If Not for You”

  “I Shot the Sheriff”

  “Tangled Up in Blue”

  “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”

  “Heart of Gold”

  “Wild World”

  “Barbara Ann”

  “Get Back”

  “Love Me Do”

  “Twist and Shout”

  “Give Me One Reason”

  “Lay Down Sally”

  “All Along the Watchtower”

  “Candle in the Wind”

  “Not Fade Away”

  “Sweet Home Chicago”

  “Lively Up Yourself”

  “Hound Dog”

  “The First Cut Is the Deepest”

  THREE TWO-PLAYER PAPER-AND-PENCIL GAMES

  CLASSIC EYE- BENDERS FROM THE WORLD OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

  Gestalt psychology considers the brain a holistic machine, the effect of which is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, different centers of the brain might be responsible for processing light signals, flipping through the mental Rolodex to match these light patterns with something we have seen before, recalling words to describe this picture, and sorting the sociocultural data that implies the scene might be of interest to others, but the sum of these functions is our ability to say, “Look! Two dogs humping!”

  Key to Gestalt psychology is the study of the brain's process of visual cognition, specifically the brain's ability (and desire) to imply form from the seemingly formless using the strategies of emergence, reification, multista-bility, and invariance (examples shown here).

  To test the limits of your brain's ability to create form using the rules of Gestalt psychology, try staring at a wall of faux painting until images emerge (or, for a more traditional example, at clouds). Some claim an auditory equivalent, such as listening to white noise machines until they hear words (or, for a more traditional example, to Beatles records played backward).

  GREAT THINKERS WHO HAVE MET TRAGICOMICALLY GRUESOME ENDS

  IMPORTANT LINKS FOR USE WITH THE SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON

  AI AND THE END OF HUMAN RELEVANCE

  In 1989, the Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov easily defeated the computer Deep Thought (name drawn from the Douglas Adams book). In 1997, Deep Blue kicked his ass, spawning accusations of cheating (which IBM denied). In a million-dollar rematch in 2003, Kasparov fought Deep Junior to a draw.

  If, as Marcel Duchamp said, chess has “all the beauty of art and more,” do Kasparov's break-even results mean that computers have drawn abreast of human creation, soon to overtake our brain's ability to interpret, create, and learn?

  Researchers and developers of Artificial Intelligence say yes—yes, it does. Soon, they say, humans will be at best slaves and more likely relegated to distant, digitally archived memory (for better or for worse).

  Since 1950, when Alan Turing (see “Turing Machine,” page 205) posed the question Can computers think? the race has been on to make human beings obsolete. The real question, according to most AI researchers, is not whether computers can replicate human intelligence closely enough to be indistinguishable from it (already, in many situations, it can) but whether quacking like a duck is the same as being a duck—is the exact replication of intelligence actually intelligence? (For more, see the Chinese Room argument in the Thought Experiment described on page 10.)

  data from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), Patrick Reynolds at the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science has computed the ideal Hollywood “centers” for use with the game six degrees of separation. According to Reynolds at oracleofbacon.org, Mr. Bacon is, in fact, only the 1,049th-best actor to use as the connecting center of your movie trivia universe (with a Bacon number of 2.946 steps). Contrast this with Robert De Niro's number of 2.758 (28th best center), Sean Connery's number of 2.730 (13th best center), and the top four centers Donald Sutherland (2.701), Dennis Hopper (2.698), Christopher Lee (2.684), and the king of them all, Rod Steiger, with a minuscule 2.679 (due mostly to the 146 movie appearances listed in his IMDb history).

  more disturbing than the idea of being able to program computers to accomplish nearly anything better than humans is the idea that we won't need to program computers at all—they will soon be perfectly capable of learning to outperform us on their own. DARPA is currently investing heavily in Bootstrapped Learning (BL), or the idea of electronic systems that learn from human instructors without the need for programming (i.e., Robo X sits in the back of your child's kindergarten classroom, later attends lectures at MIT, and finally creates its own generation of improved, studious robots).

  The tools of AI are hugely complex, drawing not only on the idea that more and faster 1's and 0's are good, but also on mathematics, economics, probability theory, psychology, genetics (and natural selection), advanced concepts of neural networks, and many, many other seriously abstruse technical and scientific concepts. However, the general problems of AI are fairly well de-fined, breaking the overall goal of “intelligence” into the following eight subtasks: deduction/ reasoning/problem-solving, knowledge representation, planning, learning, language processing, perception, motion, and social intelligence.

  The combination of these tasks would result in Strong AI, or general intelligence. Like astro-and quantum physicists working toward a Unified Theory from the angle of their individual specialties, many AI researchers concentrate on one of the aforementioned problem areas, hoping to solve their tentacle, for later combination with other tentacles to create the full octopus; others consider Strong AI itself a necessary step toward solving any component, citing the intercon-nectedness of tasks.

  No matter the approach, the accelerating pace of AI successes will soon necessitate sending a small pod of humans in search of another planet, and upon discovery, destroying all remnants of technology that traveled with them, in hopes of restarting and thus prolonging the human race.

  THANKSGIVING DINNER IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS

  1. TURKEY

  Buy a cook-in-the-bag turkey breast roast. Turn on the oven. Throw it in. If your guests or house pets don't see you carve it, they will never know your dinner never gobbled (or, more precisely, that it is the unholy conglomeration of many separate gobblers).

  2. MASHED POTATOES

  Buy instant. Just add boiling water and enough butter and cream cheese to mask the
slightly musty taste.

  3. GRAVY

  In the can.

  4. CRANBERRY SAUCE

  In the can. Be sure to actually place in dish and mash until the dog-food-esque shape is unrecognizable.

  5. STUFFING

  Stove Top. Consider adding craisins.

  6. BUTTERMILK ROLLS

  In the can. Look for Pillsbury or other similar rolls. Plop on baking sheet and set the timer.

  7. PUMPKIN PIE

  Because pumpkin pie freezes so well, buying the Cadillac frozen model is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

  SUGGESTIONS/ REFINEMENTS

  • If you start the evening with a bottle or three of good wine, by the time you serve dinner, your guests will be predisposed to expect quality and will be inebriated enough to overlook telltale signs of corner-cutting.

  • Consider making one of the above dishes from scratch. Then, regale your guests with stories of the painstaking creation. They will assume you slaved over the other dishes, as well.

  • Use your best dishes and silverware (or rent place settings from a party shop). Again, heighten guests’ expectations of quality.

  • Be sure to dispose of all boxes and cans before guests’ arrival.

  APOLYTON UNIVERSITY: B.A. IN BS OR NEW-WAVE IT DEGREE?

  The online game Civilization III is tricky to master. Do you beat competing civilizations into submission with your military? Do you conquer with diplomacy? Do you emphasize culture and learning? Each goal requires a different strategy, and winning strategies are highly specialized and precise. In fact, learning to play the game optimally can be as intricate and time-consuming as a college course.

  Enter Apolyton University, the Web's premier Civ3 learning site, where you can take courses titled “The glory of culture” or “Give peace a chance” (or other, less pacifistic classes). Quality control is provided by deans functioning under the intellectual umbrella of the university president.

  There are two situations that make Apolyton especially cool:

  1. The goal of Apolyton University is to transform newbies into game users capable of assisting with later Civilization development. In fact, Dr. Kurt Squire, writing in the journal Interact (vol. 31, no. 10–11) described a lull in Apolyton's courses when many deans were hired to consult on Civilization IV. In other words, AU not only teaches game skills, but offers technical training with real-world value—the completion of AU courses leads to jobs.

  2. Due to Civ3's inclusion of historically accurate civilization details (and the accompanying Civilopedia, which includes hundreds of pages of information on civilizations’ technologies, geography, and militaries), the game is, in fact, useful in existing history education classrooms. Middle-school teachers have a tough time getting kids to read textbooks—not so (for better or for worse) with video games.

  TWELVE HARRY POTTER SPELLS FOR USE IN DUELING

  Accio: summons an object to hand.

  Confringo: the blasting charm.

  Confundus: causes the target to become confused.

  Engorgio: causes target, or specific part of target, to grow (countercharm: reducio).

  Evanesco: makes target disappear.

  Expelliarmus: this disarmament spell is Potter's signature charm.

  Impedimenta: slows target's progress toward the caster.

  Incarcerus: ties target with ropes.

  Incendio: produces fire.

  Protego: the shield charm causes minor jinxes to rebound.

  Reparo: repairs broken or damaged objects.

  Stupefy: a red jet of light blasts the target into unconsciousness.

  THE SIMPLEST ELECTRIC MOTOR

  In 1986, the band Tesla recorded their debut album, Mechanical Resonance, which included the classic track “Modern Day Cowboy,” alongside catchy arena anthems such as “EZ Come EZ Go.” While their album title accurately describes the physical process that led to the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940, it has little connection to the Serbian-American inventor Nicola Tesla. However, the name of the band itself resuscitated the inventor's street cred. Apparently, discovering the rotating magnetic field principle, thereby fathering the electric motor and thus indirectly jump-starting the second industrial revolution, doesn't necessarily generate groupies among semimodern American teenagers. (The scientist Michael Faraday also advanced the field of elec-tromagnetism, but his name has, to date, failed to inspire adoption by a post-Zeppelin pseudoglam band.)

  The electric motor uses two magnets: one fixed permanent magnet and one electromagnet that spins within this fixed field. As you would expect, the rotating magnet would like to come to rest with its north pole pointing at the fixed magnet's south, and its south pole pointing at the fixed magnet's north (remember, opposites attract). Here's the trick: As soon as the relevant poles align, the rotating electromagnet flips its electrical field and thus reverses its magnetic poles (thank you, Tesla). All of a sudden, like poles are aligned and the rotating magnet must keep spinning in order to stick its south end toward the fixed magnet's north. And, just as this happens, the rotating magnet again flips fields, and—ride a painted pony, let the spinning wheel spin.

  PATTERNS IN THE PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

  As any chemist knows, the periodic table is so much more than a list. In fact, the table's progenitor, Dmitri Mendeleev, added the word “periodic” to describe the recurring trends of his carefully arranged elements.

  THE PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

  Read left to right, top to bottom, the elements are organized by increasing atomic weight (the number of protons, which defines the element). Each row is known as a period, and subsequent rows represent shells of electrons. For example, helium has only one shell of electrons orbiting around its two protons (with two negatively charged electrons in this shell balancing the protons’ positive charge). Gold (Au) has 79 electrons organized into six shells to balance its 79 protons. Elements in columns are known as groups, with these groups determining many characteristics, including reactivity (because elements in groups have the same number of electrons in their outermost or valence shell, which is the shell governing atomic interactions).

  Elements like to have full valence shells. The rightmost column (group 18) has naturally full valence shells—these “noble gases” don't need to take, give, or share electrons to get what they want and thus have very low reactivity. Conversely, the halogens in group 17 need to pick up only one electron to be happy (in the quantum sense) and are thus very friendly when given the chance to react with, for example, hydrogen (to make hydrofluoric, hydrochloric, hydrobromic, and hydroiodic acids). In the leftmost group, hydrogen tends to grab a shared electron in hopes of filling its two-electron valence shell (becoming like helium). Lithium, sodium, potassium, and the others in group 1 tend to ditch an electron, thus clearing out this last valence shell and becoming positively charge ions (because their protons now overpower their electrons). This is why the elements of group 1 react so readily with the elements of group 17, which have followed similar strategy in sucking in an additional electron to fill their valence shells, thereby become negatively charged ions (thus table salt—NaCl). This is also why potassium reacts so violently with water, ripping into H2O to make KHO with a whole bunch of extra heat and hydrogen, which tend to go boom.

  A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE

  How close can the young archer come to scoring a total of 100, using as many arrows as she pleases?

  A BIT OF PSEUDO- INCOMPREHEN- SIBILIA FROM A PAPER MY FRIEND WROTE

  “The rift tips will only propagate in this manner if the strength to tensile fracture of the adjacent lithosphere is small relative to the strength of the frozen rift. If, on the other hand, the adjacent lithosphere is too strong to be fractured by rift tip propagation, deformation and faulting will remain localized on the rift centre.”

  Richard F. Katz and Eberhard Bodenschatz, “Taking Wax for a Spin: Microplates in an Analog Model of Plate Tectonics.” Eu-rophysics News Sep
t.–Oct. 2005, 155–58.

  DRAGONS IN MYTH

  Many researchers point to the similarities between dragon myths of widely disparate ancient cultures as proof of one of the following three theories: pre-Columbian contact between ancient cultures, the dragon's actual existence across said cultures, or the existence of an Atlantean nexus of learning, enlightenment, and mythical beasts, long since reclaimed by the sea. Other, less open-minded scientists blame the dragon on humans’ collective unconscious fear of snakes, lions, and birds of prey, or on the exaggeration of real-life models such as monitor lizards and dinosaur bones. Still other researchers point to the rather loose definition of dragon, which allows any fairly scaly beast larger than a horse to claim the title, thus augmenting the distribution.

 

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