Mike F.

Unseen Ghosts and Monsters

“That raises a whole bunch of generally unpleasant questions.”

November has somehow managed to sneak up on me, like an evil creature in some horror movie, moving with great stealth to claim its next victim. In October of 2018, I wrote a blog entry on ghosts, luck, and curses.[1] I explained how such phenomena might be interpretations of consequences, caused by us unaware and/or by obscure environmental factors. Whereas the phenomena in that earlier entry were potentially observable by anyone, this current entry touches on phenomena experienced only by certain individuals. In particular this entry is about individuals thinking they actually see ghosts or monsters, that are not visible to others. While it’s easy to dismiss such people as hallucinating or maybe just imagining things, there may be some truth to this type of phenomena.

BASIC Dialect Count

“…it pays to know more than one way to do things.”

Computer software is such a mainstream part of our culture, that it’s not unlikely to at least have heard of Visual Basic, or VB as it’s often called. VB is a popular programming language from Microsoft. Visual Basic, as its name implies, traces its roots back to the original BASIC programming language created at Dartmouth College in 1964.[1] While possibly the most popular collection of dialects of the BASIC language, VB is but a small minority in terms of dialect count. How many dialects of BASIC are there? Dozens? Hundreds?

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The Monster Under the Bed, Coronavirus Conspiracies, and the Best Pizza Ever

“…not something as trivial as the whereabouts of a lost sock.”

As a young child, I was afraid there was a monster under my bed, that would grab my feet and pull me into its lair. Over the years, I have learned that I am not the only one to have imagined such a thing. It seems so common, that it’s a cliché in American culture and even others.[1] But how or why is that even possible? What could I have in common with all those other people to cause this experience? What does it mean for humanity? Continue reading “The Monster Under the Bed, Coronavirus Conspiracies, and the Best Pizza Ever”

General vs. Specific Source Code

“Strangely, I still experience the same conflict”

For someone who likes logical puzzles, computer programming has a lot to offer. This was especially true for me as a teenager during the rise in popularity of personal computers. Learning to write programs with the BASIC programming language was like a dream come true. With a machine in front of me doing whatever it was instructed to do, I envisioned one day being able to build a robot like the one on “Lost in Space,” one of my favorite TV shows. After enjoying hundreds of hours programming an Atari 8-bit computer, computer science was an obvious choice for me when selecting a college major. Continue reading “General vs. Specific Source Code”

Our Underestimated Past

“Were the people of past generations crazy? Delusional?”

The month of January tends to be a time for reflecting on the previous year, in addition to planning for the year ahead. A lot can change in one year. In fact the world seems to be changing at an accelerating rate. The past century has seen the invention of digital computers, people walking on the moon, the rise of the Internet, cell phones for billions of people, medical care that is better than it has ever been, etc.[1] Younger generations are said to be advancing over the previous generations because of growing up with computers and mobile devices. With all our modern advances, past generations seem to intellectually pale in comparison. Is that really the case? Continue reading “Our Underestimated Past”

Santa’s Flight-Path Challenge

“This might take some trickery.”

Though there has been much speculation, no one really knows how Santa Claus does it all. Traditionally, he and his crew spend most of the year making and gathering toys for children all over the world. Then he delivers them all on Christmas Eve and early Christmas morning. The delivery itself creates some alarming statistics for how fast Santa’s sleigh must travel and how much time Santa has at each house, for delivering presents and consuming whatever milk and cookies the children leave for him. But I’m wondering, how can Santa even figure out a flight path? How does he choose the first house or the last house or any of them in between?

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Elaborate Food Tubes

“Evolution generally causes changes that are useful in some way.”

Of all the fall American holidays, Thanksgiving seems to place the most emphasis on eating. With so much food going into our mouths at this time of the year, it can be hard to ignore the need for waste to come out the other end. Some anatomical diagrams would have us believe that our food goes through us from one end to the other, as if simply going through a tube. We are of course more complex than that, but when did it all start? Not the first Thanksgiving, but when did we start the process of food going in one end and waste coming out the other? And how did we get to how we are today?

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Anxiety, Dandelions, and Witches

“While I’m (potentially) jumping to conclusions, as a bonus I could throw in conspiracy and global warming.”

Most people have occasional anxiety, especially with modern life being as complicated as it is. I myself sometimes have anxiety for no apparent reason, even when avoiding caffeine. On one particular occasion in the past year or two, I noticed having anxiety at a time when a couple people I know were having allergy symptoms. So I wondered if there were some kind of connection. Continue reading “Anxiety, Dandelions, and Witches”

The Logically Unknowable (Part 2)

“Still, they’re just counting numbers. Even a young child knows something about counting.”

I have already written about it being impossible to create a single fixed nonrandom computer program for determining the correctness of all existing software or future software.[1] One consequence is that antivirus software can never be perfect. So at a given time, we can’t know which software is correct out of all existing software, whether the procedure to check the software is correct, or whether we caught all the viruses that might be infecting a given computer. Yes, there’s logical computer stuff that is theoretically unknowable. With computer technology being a human invention, maybe we can find some comfort in math, which is thought to be universal. But don’t get your hopes up too much. Continue reading “The Logically Unknowable (Part 2)”

Wolves and Software Development

“…it seems appropriate to label one way the right way and the other way the wrong way.”

Years ago I heard about a Native American story about two wolves constantly battling each other inside each one of us. One wolf has a positive attitude towards people and life, the other negative. The question came up, which wolf wins? The answer is, the one you feed. I can see some truth to that. Negativity can cause more negativity, whether in the same person or other people. Being positive can be somewhat contagious as well. Self-help books point out that we tend to think in the way that we practice. But is the lesson of the wolves just for how we approach life? Continue reading “Wolves and Software Development”