Speed kills

'Speed kills, slow down' many times have I heard this being thrown at us as a people in reference to our cars and that speeding puts us all at greater risk. This is true but the statement rings untrue to someone who knows what really kills in crashes. What kills people in car crashes is stopping quickly, newtons law ( 'an object will keep moving in one direction until stopped' ) is what kills people. Think about it if your moving at 100kph you have a fairly large amount of energy if you crash into a brick wall you stop very quickly and (if you have one on) your seatbelt stops you making a dramatic exit from life, the issue is that everything inside you wants to keep moving forward this somewhat poses some problems for the delicate organs inside you often ending in damage. Just to prove further that stopping is the problem not going faster think about now fast we are going to start with let me list a few things that affect our speed. ( assuming that we could have a fixed point in space-time to calculate our speed from) We have our global rotation, speed of orbit around the sun, ok yea pretty basic and now the slightly insane part, on top of those two we have our solar systems orbit around the galaxy then we have the galaxy's movement in relation to the other galaxy's and finally the total universal migration to the 'dead spot' of space and lastly general universal expansion rate. They all add up (and occasionally subtract) to the total speed. So saying speed kills is generally wrong but I guess it sounds better than 'stopping kills so don't crash' DFTBA

One year on

This being the 4th of September everything I see is tinted in the memory of fear from a 7.1 earthquake and not knowing what was going to happen. That has of course taught me a valuable lesson that being that hey life could be worse I have lived through the year I never considered.

So what have I learned that I can teach you all?

Never ever underestimate the human spirit I have spoken to people who pulled friends out of rubble, lost houses, lost friends and family and seen death in front of them. Myself I discovered that even when at what I had deemed the limit of my ability to stay and fight for my friends and help them I could take so many more emotional hits and keep going.

I apologize if this is to much emotional blabbering for you, however if you think about it when your world is shaken and torn down and you experience the true fear of death it's hard not to get emotional. The thing that got me through it was relationship with people when people bind together it's amazing and it turns darkness into something bearable.

As a final word to those who have never experienced anything like what myself and my fellow Christchurch citizens, value your friends more and remember your life and theirs can be taken at any moment don't live for tomorrow because nothing is ever certain your life can be taken instantly. In closing do not forget your mortality EVER.

(written on the 4th of September)

Hear the pressure

Sound

I am writing this in my room while listening to some music, sound is something that has always interested me from its method of production to its reproduction to audio capture to storing audio all the way down to how we hear.

what is sound? sound is simply a pressure wave a simple transference of energy from the thing that generates the energy to the things. Imagine someone jumping into a swimming pool and how the waves travel outward from the impact of the person hitting the water that is a wave of energy travelling through the water. Now imagine a explosion (a big one) now the shock wave from the explosion is actually a sound be it a loud one its exactly the same thing, simply a pressure wave in a medium.

So what your hearing when you listen to music is ripples in the air these ripples then travel into your ear and get turned into a signal that your brain translates into something you can understand its all rather clever and complicated.

Sound recording and reproduction are also rather amazing to record a sound you need something to pick up the sound, way back in the day when the record was being invented it was a needle on a a material and the vibrations in the air were mirrored onto the material as it turned so when the process was reversed the audio imprint was converted back into audio. want proof of how simple it is? find a old record player with a working needle and and a record and place the needle into the grooves and spin the record without the player plugged in and you will be able to hear the audio just off the needle from its vibrations picked up off the disk. Think thats cool but old? well let me tell you CD's are actually just a digital version of a record it uses the same idea but it picks up the pits in the disk to read the data on the disk then gets processed and run through a amp so you can hear the audio.

I guess also you would like to hear things loud? this is the fun part, run a audio signal through an amp wich simply makes the electrical signal bigger then sends them to a speaker that is made of essentially three parts a coil a magnet and a diaphragm (the diaphragm is the part you can see). The signal is  from the amp is run into the coil that generates a magnetic field that acts on the magnet placed on the back of the diaphragm that then vibrates with with the electrical field.

OK well that's my again watered down explanation of the subject, sound is something that is around us every day and with nearly everyone listening to music every day I think people never stop and think about what sound really is we are only listening the pressure waves in the air. Whats my point? well my point is to show you that there is more in the world than you may have thought about before there is always that one step below what you can see, I encourage you all to take off the worlds cover and have a look at the inner workings and be amazed at what you find.

DFTBA

Snow

well well well look ice is falling on the ground and settling. I find it cool (excuse the pun) but mostly on the level of 'hey dude everything is white' other wise its just cold and inconvenient, this leads me to wonder what is it about snow that excites people? Is it the fact that it is somewhat rare or is it the somewhat romantic idea of snow and snowflakes?

The other reasons snow makes me excited to me its sort of a combination of what snow is and what its useful for. I know this may sound boring but to me I find snow cool (again excuse the pun) is that it is a very complex structure made out of water crystals each one being slightly different to another. hey even if your not science you have got to admit that its kinda cool. What is snow useful for? well really come on do I really need to point this out? its a relatively inexpensive creative medium for the creation of representations of people who rather admire the pie and have since converted to a more spherical existence. Also it is a good way of sorting out disputes between friends and family through the application of frozen projectiles.

Or you could just make snow men and have snow ball fights.

I guess the other thing I find fascinating about snow is its ability to bring people together in such a light hearted manor through a simple shared experience. If the world needs anything its just that.

So bring on the snow

DFTBA

Our brains are awesome

Ok so the fact that our brains are awesome is pretty well known so I just wanna touch one thing. Think about txting, I know it's not exactly a brain taxing activity however think about it you txt on top of many other tasks. I tend to think of our multitasking ability sort of similar to the iOS multitasking, it's not really running everything at the same time it only makes it seem like it by saving the programs state then closes that task, then opens the next one. With this similarity think about how you txt, you pause the task your doing and then txt yet we somehow remember almost every separate conversation and continue it then go back to our previous task. This may not sound like an amazing thing but you do this without even trying. The human is very clever without you even noticing. And that's just a simple thing it does. A mere memory operation. Think about everything else it does, it's a clever grey blob so take care of it.


DFTBA

Inside the dodecahedron

Ok the title may seem unusual, the fact is it's named after my favorite theory on the universe, that being that the universe's outer limit is a dodecahedron. If you are not sure what that is it's basicly a football. The title is also the same as the blog title the reason is I was originally thinking of calling it inside the box, but lets face it boxes are kinda boring and are made out if the most unimaginative shape so yea that explains that.

Why base the title off a Possible shape of the universe? Well simple if I think inside the universe thats outside the box but also gives me some form of limit. Not a very useful limit I will admit but a limit none the less.

Anyway onto the more normalish stuff, I made this blog to share my random wonderings and perspectives on well life the universe and everything. So yea I hope you find it moderately interesting or more interesting than moderate.

DFTBA

P.S blog posts will get longer as I get used to this and the page is a work in progress