Neal's Domain

A lightning strike is a brilliant whiz electricity that is created by thunderstorms.  Every lightning strike you ever see is potentially extremely hazardous.  If one is ever in an environment and hear a thunder boom, then one is in range of a lightning strike.  After tallying deaths from hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning, lightning is the most deadly of the three.  About 100 people are killed every year by a lightning strike.

So what is a lightning strike?  What you are seeing in the sky is actually an electrical current.  Inside a storm cloud, frozen water droplets rub against each other and creates a gradient of electrical charges, whereas the positively charged protons align on cloud’s apex and negatively charged electrons align on the bottom.  The negative charge at the cloud’s bottom produces a positive charge on the earth’s surface below the cloud.  The positive charge is focused on anything that is closest to the cloud, such as trees and mountains.  Once the electrical gradients build up and the attraction becomes too strong, the system “collapses” and the protons and electrons fall into equilibrium as a lightning strike.

Some facts about lightning:

• The shock you see or feel after walking across a carpet are using the same principles as lightning.  You can also see the gradient produces when rubbing your hair against a balloon.  The friction causes a difference/gradient in electrical potentials and makes your hair and the balloon attract.
• A lightning strike is about 60,000 degrees, which is hotter than our sun.
• Lightning is what causes thunder.  When lightning occurs, it creates a hole of air (i.e. a vacuum) through which it travels. Once the lightning dissipates, the air retracts into the vacuum and produces a small shock wave that makes the thunder sound.

Isn’t a lightning strike cool?

Swimming can be an excellent workout, both aerobically and anaerobically. It is an activity that can be done all throughout a person’s life and the benefits of swimming affect both the body and the mind. However, what specifically makes swimming so healthy? The answer to this question relies on what a person is trying to achieve.

One of the benefits of swimming is building muscle groups. In fact, swimming can be called a whole body workout, especially if you do different swimming strokes, rather than focusing on just one.

While your muscles get bigger, you will also increase the strength of your heart and exercise endurance. However, because swimming is a repetitive exercise rather than one that uses heavy weights, the person’s bone density will not increase dramatically.

Swimming is done for lots of reasons. Yes, the benefits of swimming include heart and respiratory health, but you can also turn swimming into a social event. You can meets some buddies at the local pool to swim, and start some team based game like volleyball. Swimming also allows you to get away from hot weather during the summer months and cool off. Its a great activity for vacation and other family events. If you and your friends or family decide to go to the beach, it is necessary to be a good swimmer in the ocean because it sometimes can be unforgiving (e.g. rip currents).

If you are a treadmill fanatic, like to jog through the park often, or lift weights at the gym, another activity to add to your exercise routine should definitely be swimming. Your pulse is kept up for the duration of the activity and also takes the constant weight that jogging can have on your feet. If you have sore, swollen, or damaged body parts, swimming can be great for exercise in it’s simulated low gravity environment. This is why swimming is used many times for physical therapy or rehabilitation after surgery or an injury.

The development of artificial intelligence has allowed many different functional parts of the human  conscious to be isolated and interpreted using an artificial intelligence programming language.  Some examples include natural language processing, adaptive processing, and computer vision.  When programming AI,  focusing on these specific categories of human abilities can be debilitating to the general  function of the program.  Also, the specific category itself (e.g. natural language processing)  could be incorrectly specified or theorized prior to interpretation through an artificial intelligence programming language.  This problem can only be overcome through small revisions of the program itself.  Another problem with programming artificial intelligence is that proper standards are not laid out for the  programmer.  Typically a programmer has these standards or requirements in detail before writing  the program.  In the case of artificial intelligence, the implementation (i.e.  instructions/algorithms) is itself an experiment and problem area.

Because many challenges in artificial intelligence are clouded, an artificial intelligence programming language does not necessarily imply specialized techniques or programming styles, such as with memory  allocation.  The programmer also does not have to worry about using low-level computer languages  for creating new types of data.  That being said, the most useful artificial intelligence programming language is usually a high-level one, where a simple declarative form can be used.   Using a high-level programming language also contains pre-crafted data types such as lists, arrays,  and tree structures.  Numerical operators are also very important in artificial intelligence  algorithms, and hence are useful for high-level languages.  The only downside to using declarative  programming for artificial intelligence is that AI abstractions and processes can be inefficient on  a standard PC architecture.  To increase the efficiency of the AI algorithm, an imperative  programming language like C can be used, though the algorithm would likely be harder to implement.

In summary, high-level programming languages should be used, such as python, in a declarative style  when the focus of the programmer is on ease and simplicity.

The new 2011 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has received a lot of criticism because of its appearance shortly after the Swedish version.  Many people say that Americans should instead learn to read subtitles (which we can).  I have not seen the Swedish version, and so I have nothing against it, but the new one by David Fincher is very good in my opinion and should be classified as a must see.  It seems to linger in your mind days after you watch (which is a sign of a good movie) and because of this, I have chosen to write a short The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo summary and review. So, possible spoilers are ahead!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Summary:

The movie opens with Daniel Craig, who plays a magazine publisher named Mikael, getting in legal trouble for committing slander against some rich politician.  At this point, I am worried that the movie is going to be another bust about some political showdown that I can’t understand.   It then gets interesting when a strange old man named Henrik calls Mikael and asks him to help him solve a case in exchange for getting dirt against the politician who got him in legal trouble.  Henrik says that his niece, Harriet, was missing and suspected to be murdered many years ago, and that he believed someone in his large family did it.  The strange thing about this family was that almost everyone lived on a single island together in separate houses, but almost none of them spoke to one another.

Mikael searches for clues, but becomes stumped and decides that he requires investigative assistance.  He is recommended Lisbeth, who is the girl with the dragon tattoo.  She has a rough life, to say the least.  She tried to burn her father alive when she was a child and been under social control of the government ever since.  In the movie she is also raped by her legal guardian, but gets him back later in a rather vicious way.

Lisbeth comes to help Mikael, and they both realize they are trying to catch a serial killer within Henrik’s family.  Mikael finally suspects that the brother of Harriet killed her and enters his home one night uninvited.  The brother then pulls up to his house and catches Mikael before he has a chance to leave.  There is animal mutilation in this movie and a person’s cheek is sliced open with a golf club, but the most distressing part for me is when the Harriet’s brother puts a plastic bag over Mikael’s head and watches him gasp for breath.  It was so disturbing and like watching a fish out of water.  Before the killer is about to kill Mikael, Lisbeth comes to save the day and hits him over the head.  The killer manages to escape, but Lisbeth catches him on her motorcycle, watching as his car wrecks and bursts into flames.

This movie is an excellent movie with twists and turns, but what really sealed the deal and kept my attention was the acting by the character, Lisbeth.  This character was unusual to say the least.  You won’t get nearly the entertainment from reading a boring The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo summary though.  Go watch the film to get the full effect.

I love biology and I love computers, so what really gets me excited is when the two fields come together. It’s fun to test people’s ability to emulate the natural world on a computer to produce biology games. What is also fun is the watch evolution occur right on your computer screen. This is the second article I will be anthropomorphic in, but I always thought the “creativity” of evolution was amazing, and for it to happen in real-time is even more impressive. So, without further ado, I am going to provide you with a list of my favorite biology games about evolution (in no particular order).

1. Gene Pool – This is a very sleek, user-friendly biology game for simulating natural selection where a population of organisms in a simulated pond evolve to obtain food more easily.  Organisms cannot fight, but will learn different and unique swimming abilities to get to food particles faster.  The organisms can also be manipulated in a variety of ways to induce artificial selection. http://www.swimbots.com/
2. Framsticks – Not so much a biology game as much as evolution software.  I have never used it before but have watched several videos and explored their site.  This tool is for three dimensional evolution of both bodies and brain abilities of the organism.  Also, a variety of evolution experiments can be done, such as coevolution or modeling ecosystems. http://www.framsticks.com/
3. Darwinbots – This biology game is similar to Gene Pool where the user views an artificial pond of organisms, but allows much more user control. It is also more complicated than Gene Pool, which might be better for people who are serious about evolving a neat artificial life robot.  Another difference from Gene Pool is that these organisms have the ability to fight each other for food resources. http://wiki.darwinbots.com/w/Main_Page
4. Spore – From the creator of Sims, this biology game is a very fun game that is loosely based on evolution.  In fact, when I think about it, I don’t think selection occurs at all, at least not in the way it does naturally.  Instead, users have a creature editor, where they can add and remove body parts, allowing them to morph their organism into the desired appearance.  What is so cool about Spore is that a person’s imagination is pretty much the limit when it comes to making their own three-dimensional creatures.  While some biologists might frown at the biology game’s accuracy, I think this is one everyone should check out for its fun and amazing features.  http://www.spore.com/ftl

Ghost Adventures is one of my favorite shows on television.  Besides the fact that I watch it to see real and crazy ghost footage, the personalities of Zak, Nick, and Aaron are so hilarious that they would keep skeptics watching.  I know this because my own skeptical father watched a few episodes with me and the show kept his interest.  But anyway, to relieve most of my readers’ anticipation, I have compiled a list of what I think are good sources of Ghost Adventures full episodes.  The following list is ranked according to what I think are the best sources in terms of quality, ease, number of episodes, etc.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSf29YMl-Sg This is a YouTube link to the very first episode of the first season.  You can easily view following episodes in the related videos section to the side.  This is my favorite source of Ghost Adventures full episodes because it is free.  Also, there are comments below all videos so you can view or be a part of conversations for each episode.
2. http://www.ovguide.com/tv/ghost_adventures.htm This link has every episode of Ghost Adventures available to watch for free.  The quality is good and you don’t have to sign up for the site or anything.  Just click and watch Ghost adventures full episodes.
3. http://www.tv-links.eu/tv-shows/Ghost-Adventures_16808/ This link has every episode and is available for free just like site # 2, but this link is ranked #3 for several reasons.  There is no sign-up, but every video you click on sends you to another site.  I also had some bandwidth problems loading some of the videos.
4. If you have Netflix, this could be the best option for watching Ghost Adventures full episodes.  However, I chose to rank this option as #4 because if you do not already have Netflix, it is an added cost of $7 per month.  It’s really not a bad deal though.  Every episode can be streamed directly, and you also get plenty of other (mediocre) movies.