Month: May 2016

Happy Mother’s Day

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My mom was born on on a day, somewhere in the Vancouver area. At least, I’m pretty sure of the location. She was the youngest out of five children, and grew up in Surrey, BC. Back then, Surrey wasn’t the sprawling suburb of Vancouver it is today. Back then, it was a much smaller place. She’s told me and my brothers about growing up with four older siblings, how my grandfather brewed root beer and put it in real beer bottles so it looked like they were all punks, the time one of my uncle’s set her leg on fire, the infamous ‘Bleach smells amazing story’. A bunch of laughs, funny moments and inside jokes from her childhood

Here’s the strange thing. Even though my mother has told me a ton of stories about her past, how she met my father, moving from Surrey, to Kamploops, to Revelstoke, and then finally to Golden, I never really knew my mother. I’m not sure many people do. If you were like me, then once you left the nest, you might only see your mother a few times a year, mostly at holidays. Even though you’re an adult now, you’re still the kid and she’s still the mom. And that the way it was, for over a decade after I left home. Until recently.

I quit my job last year, decided to hang up my scales and give up the drafting game for good. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do, but the first plan was to go back to Golden, stay a month or two, wait for a couple of final checks, then go traveling. I ended up staying four months.

First, the checks rolling in were taking their sweet time in getting to me. That was definitely one of the bigger reasons for sticking around. There was another big life change. My mother, within the first week or so of my arrival, put the house up for sale. The house I grew up in. The house that my parents had purchased back in 1991. A house that accumulated 25 years of stuff you normally accumulate after owning a house for 25 years. The house ended up selling within a couple of weeks.

When she told me the house was going up for sale, I honestly didn’t think much of it. House can take months, if not years to sell. Selling a house is a pain in the ass, mind you. The place needs to be spotless every time a potential buyer stops by to have a look. Which means that every time you have someone looking at the house, you end up having to clean the floors, wash the walls, vacuum, dust, and do the washrooms. Every. Single. Time. But we made it happen.

When she told me the house had sold and we need to start packing, I was stunned. Here I was, on a bit of a vacation, and now I was put in charge of packing, selling and moving a massive house. Five bedrooms, two living rooms, and a large workshop needed to be bagged, tagged and shipped to a new place. At this point, I still hadn’t really dealt with my father’s death, and packing up his stuff hit me pretty hard. There were a number of moments where I started welling up and had to go for a walk to regain my composure. But we made it happen.

The place we were renting was also up for sale, but we didn’t think much of it, as it had been on the market for a year and a half. After being in the new place, we found out it had sold. We were both pretty sick of moving at this point, so my mother threw caution to the wind and bought another place, a much smaller place, and we ended up moving again.

Through all of this, after two moves and three months of living together, my mom stopped being my mom all the time and was now more like my roommate Kathy. This may sound weird, but I actually got to meet Kathy for the first time. Truth be told, my mother is one of the best roommates I have ever had. She doesn’t party all that much, cleans up after herself, and all her friends seem pretty chill.

Jokes aside, I love my mother. But last year I got to find out that I actually like my mother. My mom is a cool person to hang out with. If she gave me a phone call and said she had two tickets to Europe, I’d go with her in a heart beat. Even at my age, that still seems rare that you know your mom as something other than mom. So maybe I’m luckier than most.

If you have the opportunity to give your mother a phone call or, even better, a hug, go do that. Life’s too short as it is. Not everyone is lucky to have their mom still around, and some peoples relationship with their mother is estranged. I count my good fortune that my mom is still around to talk to. Not only that, but my mom is someone I can go have a patio beer with on a hot summer’s day and we can both find ourselves laughing our asses off.

Cheers Mom. Love you tons!

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. Yes mom, if you haven’t noticed, the language on this blog is a lot cleaner than the last one. Everybody has to grow up eventually.

p.s.s. I finish SpaceX tomorrow!

p.s.s.s. Post was edited to remove the day and location of my mom’s birth. Can’t have scammers stealing identities!

 

The SpaceX Race

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Elon Musk is shooting for the moon. Not literally, mind you. He’s shooting for Mars. Elon Musk and his venture, SpaceX, represents the first of what will soon be many; a private industrialist’s foray into space exploration. Up until recently, the exploration of space has been limited to governments. While the funding for NASA was high during the cold war, it tapered off afterwards, as the two competing countries had little to prove. This has changed in recent years, as countries like China and India make their way into space. People are becoming interested in space again.

Normally, during the launch of a rocket, the primary booster is jettisoned and discarded. To lower the cost of sending things into space, SpaceX is trying to reuse these boosters by landing them of at sea. SpaceX has managed to successfully land three reusable rocket boosters back onto platforms out at sea.

You might be one of those people who are wondering why we’re even still bothering with space. Right now, you’re rolling your eyes, saying “Mr. Charlton, there is nothing out there in space.” Pardon me if I come across a little rude here, but I’ll tell you what is in space. The Goddamn rest of the Universe.

There’s energy to be harvested, heavy metals to extract, light metals for those who prefer a more classic sound, water, and maybe even the possibility of life. Not to mention there is one monstrous thing waiting out there for the first person who decides to get there first. Money. With all of these resources out there, completely untouched and untapped, the first person to get their hands on that treasure would be untouchable. There’s trillions of dollars worth of resources out there. Space mining may create the first trillionaires.

Wrapped up in mask of someone who has humanities best interest at heart, whether it’s with space exploration or electric cars, you have to remember that Elon Musk is a business man, first and foremost. He’s known for SpaceX and Tesla, but was the founder of PayPal, the giant online service that handles billions of dollars of web transactions. I’m not suggesting that what Elon Musk is doing is less than admirable or without merit to humanity. He’s changed the way we do business with PayPal, he’s changing the way we drive and commute with Tesla, and he’s changing the way we look at space with SpaceX.

The only thing concerning me is he want to get other companies up into space. Governments, minus the occasional ‘Star Wars’ idea of putting nuclear devices in space, have so far been respectful of space. Would corporations be as respectful of the stars as they are of my space down here?

The last thing I want to see in the sky is a massive space billboard, a digital projection across the ionosphere, saying ‘Today’s sunshine brought to you by Coca-Cola’. You can be absolutely certain some cretin in the Coca-Cola marketing department would read this and think to themselves “You, know what, if we could do that, that would be great. Wouldn’t you want to see that? A friendly reminder to our customers that, hey, if your feeling parched, there’s always the refreshing taste of Cola-Cola to quench your thirst.”

I kid. Realistically though, there is another issue, and it still has to do with corporations entering space. It’s the debris. As you read this, there are roughly 29,000 bits of trash larger than a cantaloupe, 670,000 pieces of trash bigger than a marble, and there’s 170 million pieces smaller than that. Even something like a fleck of paint can do damage when it’s traveling at kilometers per second. Should an error occur, and a commercial rocket ends up accidentally hitting a satellite, then the results could be catastrophic. The two object could break into thousands of pieces themselves. This debris could impact other satellites, causing them to get destroyed and become trash as well. It’s called the Kessler syndrome, a runaway of space collisions, rendering our ability as a species to leave the planet impossible. Simply put, if there’s too much junk in orbit, we as species will be unable to leave and be stuck on Earth.

Should we be worried about corporations leading the pack regarding space exploration? Will they be able to handle their own due diligence in our orbit? I’ll be talking about that tomorrow.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. It’s a big enough topic for two posts, so I’m going to milk it when I can.

p.s.s. Although I’d be annoyed with a commercial, projecting a movie from space would be an interesting way to bring the world together.

 

 

AlphaGo

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He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without a clicking of a single relay.

“Yes, now there is a God.”

Fredric Brown – “Answer”

Five games of Go took place between the 9th and 15th of March. The game of Go is a Chinese strategy board game, created over two and a half thousand years ago. Even though it has simple rules, it is considered more difficult than chess, as the board is much larger, giving the players a wider scope in which to play. Games can last up to six hours. Professional ranking are 1st dan, the lowest ranking,  to 9th dan. Those five games in March were between Grandmaster Lee Sedol, a 9th dan from South Korea, and AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence developed by Google DeepMind. AlphaGo ended up winning four of the five matches.

You may be asking yourself what the big deal is.

Go is a notoriously difficult game with a staggering number of board positions and outcomes. There are so many permutations of the board that there are less atoms in the universe than there are Go board layouts. Because this number is so high, a computer can’t brute-force it’s way to a victory, the way it has in the past with chess.

Computers aren’t very smart. At their very core, they are only able to answer yes or no, one or zero, or in actuality, whether there is current passing through an electrical gate or not. It’s referred to as binary. What a computer excels at, thanks to seventy years of electrical engineering innovations, is answering yes or no millions of times in less than a second. Consider a password four digits long. If a computer wanted to crack the code, it would stand at the gate, bang it’s head against the door and yells “0000” and waits for a response. If this is the correct password, great. The computer grants you access. If it’s not the right password, it bangs it’s head against the door again, yells “0001” and again waits for a response. This is how a computer would ‘brute-force’ a solution.

There are roughly ten to the power of eighty variations of the Go board. Here’s what that looks like written out.

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

No computer has the ability to brute force a number so large. AlphaGo had to learn how to play. It did so by first playing and studying human opponents, and when it became proficient enough, AlphaGo started to play against itself. Within a short amount of time, it played more games than any person alive. With that knowledge, it was able to defeat Lee Sedol. Not only defeat him, but AlphaGo made uncharacteristically inhuman moves, some that were so baffling that Lee Sedol had to get up from the table and take fifteen minutes to regain his composure.

The game of Go represented the last milestone of Artificial Intelligence in the arena of board games. When DeepBlue beat Chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997, a machine victory for Go was considered a hundred years away. Five months ago, experts said it would be another ten years before a computer would be able to play at the Grandmaster level. What does that mean for tomorrow?

Here’s some music to begin tomorrow’s celebration.

Computers ability to replace human beings for tasks once thought too complex to be automated are becoming increasingly realistic. Cars that are able to drive themselves are just around the corner. Many jobs consisting of manual labour will be replaced. There will be a technological revolution that will dwarf the industrial revolution.

Where exactly do humans have the edge? What if a machine becomes self-aware, and decides that it’s so much better at work that humans are obsolete? Would it put humans in people zoos? Would it wipe humanity out?

There is one thing a human being has over all artificial intelligence; it’s emotions. One of the necessary things needed to make a decision, specifically an irrational decision, is emotions. If you give a rational task to a computer, something like “Learn Go”, it can do that. A computer isn’t a biological organism though. The human will to live, learn, strive and become better isn’t a logical process, it’s a biological one. It’s the desire to propagate the species genes further onwards.

There was a study done by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. He studied people who had brain damage, specifically the parts of the brain where emotions were controlled. His test subjects had lost the ability to feel any emotion. What he found is they had no way of making irrational decisions. If they had a choice between chicken and fish for dinner, there was no real rational method of choosing between the two. They knew they had to eat, but became stuck when having to make a choice that had no real impact on the outcome of being fed. As a result, they were unable to come to a decision.

Teaching a computer to play Go is incredibly challenging, but we’ve proven that the human race is capable of that. What may be an impossible task is to give a computer curiosity, drive, ambition. We might be surprised that the first question an AI asks is “Now what?”. At it’s core, no matter how good the computer gets at analyzing a problem, it still will more than likely need to be asked to solve the problem in the first place. A computer, even with intelligence, isn’t driven by a need to be better. I’m not convinced it ever will be.

The terrifying aspect of AI isn’t the artificial intelligence itself, but who happens to be at the helm. AlphaGo made moves out of the scope of human thinking. An AI isn’t bound by any human sense of regulation or morality, unless we program it to. If someone with a lack of foresight asks the computer a question, the computer might come to a solution that is potentially illegal, immoral, and even disastrous. This has already happened, when a online shopping bot, after being given $100 in bitcoin, purchased illicet drugs. Asking an artificial intelligence to “Make me the richest person alive” may result in the computer coming to the conclusion that the easiest way to do this is wipe out every person with more wealth. We have to be very careful about what we ask of a machine that has the potential to do anything. Humans, once again, are at the mercy of our own hubris.

The robot apocalypse is coming, and it won’t be a fight for your lives, it will be a fight for your livelihood. This shouldn’t be a bad thing though. Computers were created to make lives easier, so that people would have more leisure time. This, for many people, hasn’t been the case. The idea of capitalism and the rules of supply and demand, is one that is slowly becoming obsolete. In the digital age, the rules are changing, and the idea of ownership has been challenged for the last decade and a half. “You wouldn’t download a car, would you?”, which is often the cry of anti-piracy legislators. If someone had the resources to do so, you can be certain they would.

To put things bluntly, if we manage this paradigm shift correctly, it could usher in the greatest renaissance the planet has ever seen. If we don’t, the inequality of the world could be gigantic, separating classes of people so thoroughly that they may as well be two different species.

If they do actually create an artificial intelligence, one capable of real, rational thought, then I’m not sure how forward I’m looking to that. The last thing I want to do is deal with my toaster having an existential crisis when I want a bagel.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

P.s. the only reason people think that Judgement Day would happen is because humans either subjugate or eradicate every other species on the planet.

P.s.s. once again, the real enemy is MAN!

p.s.s.s. I took some leaps here, but would love to discuss it with anyone in the future.

America: Taking it in the Trumper

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“It’s always good to be underestimated.”

Donald Trump

On June 15th, 2015, Donald J. Trump announced he would be throwing in his hat into the presidential race. People laughed, believing the idea to be ludicrous. Never in a million years would Donald Trump be the representative of the Republican party, people said. He’s been played off as a joke by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brian, and a smattering of other late night talk show hosts. He was not taken seriously as a contender.

As of May 3rd, 2016, Donald J. Trump has more or less secured the Republican nomination. Talk show hosts will continue to parade him as a clown. People will continue to laugh. Pollsters are already speculating whether or not he would win in a showdown against Hillary Clinton, while she continues to face Bernie Sanders. Most are leaning towards a victory for Hillary. He’s not taken seriously as a contender.

There’s a fifty percent chance the next President of the United States will be Donald J. Trump. The joke stopped being funny months ago.

“If you get good ratings, they’ll cover you even though you have nothing to say.”

Donald Trump

He mused over the deportation of muslims. His numbers went up. He thought outloud about building a wall between the United States and Mexico, a feat that is logistically impossible. His numbers went up. He stated that women who have abortions should be punished. His numbers went up.

The media, on both the left and the right side of the spectrum, want you to believe Donald Trump is an incompetent buffoon, that he’s a spoiled rich rich who grew up with daddy’s money. What people need to understand in that Trump is incredibly smart, and terribly savvy. Few people on planet Earth are as good at selling themselves as Trump. His fortune was made in Real Estate. He wrote a book, ‘The Art of the Deal’. He’s had numerous holdings, many of which were filed for bankruptcy, yet he’d still get most of his investment back. He’s an artist when it comes to manipulating the system so he ends up on top. Every product he owns bears his name, and all of them are labeled as luxury items, for the elite like Trump.

Trump isn’t terrifying because of what he says. The comments regarding muslims, the Mexican wall, the abortion issues; he’s only saying these things to keep the camera pointed on him. It’s questionable as to whether or not he actually believes what he says. Trump is terrifying because he’s not interested in getting involved in politics. He interested on getting his name on the presidency.

“I’ve got the hottest brand in the world”

Donald Trump

As terrifying as the prospect of a president whose interest in politics is to further his product line, there’s something more insidious in the mix. Donald Trump has taken advantage of the republican base, a base that has gone further and further right in the last decade. For years, the leaders of the republican party has been cultivating a pride in ignorance, a hatred in those who are different, not part of ‘our’ group. They’ve been fed on a steady diet of Fox News, where emotions trump facts. Trump saw this wedge, and hit it with a sledgehammer. The other republican leaders have been scrambling for a year now, trying to make sense, and counter, a man who will say anything to stay in the spotlight.

The republican party has been poking at the hornets nest for a while now. Donald Trump threw a rock at it.

That box has been opened wide, and there’s going to be no way to close it now. If you think Donald Trump as president would be a disaster, you have more to fear if he doesn’t. Donald Trump says a lot of terrible things, but it’s to simply leverage his position. Make no mistake, Trump isn’t going to be the next Hitler. He’s not going to round up muslims and throw them in camps. He’s not going to outlaw abortions. He’s not going to build a wall between two countries and make the other country pay for it. His base, the one he’s been pandering too, certainly wants him to. The United States has been slowly descending into a state of authoritative control. A nation that willingly trades it’s freedoms for the illusion of safety. For the promise that a ruler will step in and protect the flock. The NSA has been given resources to spy on Americans. The police in America have become increasingly militarized. The idea of deporting a group of people based on their religion was hailed as ‘someone finally talking sense’.

The future republican candidates will be less subtle than Donald. They’ll want to round up dissenters, they’ll want corporal punishment, they’ll want to limit the choices a woman have other their own bodies. They’ll have no qualms over separating ‘us’ and ‘them’.

“My whole life is about winning. I don’t lose often. I almost never lose.”

Donald Trump

Am I scared if Donald Trump becomes president? Well, no. I’m not sure how well he understands the role of the presidency, and I have a feeling that he’ll be sorely disappointed to find out politics requires a ridiculous amount of diplomacy and compromise. There isn’t a lot winning in politics. You win once every four years, and the time spent in between is arguing over which municipalities will get road repairs. Compared to the life Donald Trump lives now, I think he’ll find it boring , frustrating and tiring.

 

“As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.”

Donald Trump

Hey, a loud mouth asshole with too much money can be right every once and a while, right?

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. I’m coming after Hillary next week. She’s no better.

p.s.s. Tomorrow I talk about Alpha Go, and I welcome our future robot overlords.

Fort McMurray

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If you were to look at the oil and gas industry in Alberta as a body, Calgary would be the brain. It’s where the head offices are, and consulting firms for Shell, Imperial, Suncor and other oil and gas companies do most of the engineering and design work. Edmonton would be the muscle, providing the manpower and the logistics. If Calgary’s the brains, and Edmonton is the brawn, Fort McMurray is the heart.

If you live in Canada, you’ve probably heard of Fort Mac. The largest tarsands operations are in Fort McMurray, or close to it. Anyone who’s worked in the oil and gas field lives up there, has worked up there, or at the very least have designed or planned something in the area. It’s the little city that never sleeps. It’s a lot smaller than Edmonton or Calgary, but it’s just as well known. Working up there usually means twelve hour days, for stretches up to three weeks. For a long time, Fort Mac represented one of the last places you could get a solid job without a degree, where the working class person could get not only a job, but build a dream. That dream is going up in smoke. Literally.

An out-of-control fire has ravaged over 10,000 hectares and destroyed over 1,600 homes and buildings. For the 80,000 people who evacuated, many won’t have a dwelling to come home to. That’s what was speculated five hours before writing this, and the numbers are sure to go up when the final tally is taken and the fires are put out.

Right now there is a huge amount of love and support from around the country. People are donating money, and most importantly, their time. There’s also people soaking up some schadenfreude, saying the fires are the cause of climate change, snidely pointing and laughing at the misfortunes of other. There are those who are pointing out that, due to the mass layoffs in the oilpatch, it’s convenient this fire stuck a town mired in debt and foreclosure, that this could be a blessing in disguise for those who have lost their jobs. Insurance money will roll in, they assure, and those who were in a bind will have their shackles broken.

One meme in particular has been floating around, the picture of the oilfield truck blazing down the highway, with the caption “Don’t worry, Fort Mac! We are coming with tools, trucks, our trades. And we will rebuild!”. The sentiment is nice, but the logistics of this should be something to consider.

Compared to the Slave Lake fires of 2011, the Fort Mac fires are twice the size and have destroyed close to four times the number of buildings. Compared to the Calgary floods of 2013, the city of Calgary is situated in the middle of Alberta, along both the TransCanada and the Queen Elizabeth, while Fort Mac is five and a half hours from the nearest major city. When the numbers come back and the fires extinguished, how much of Fort McMurray will be left to rebuild?

Rebuilding takes money. Even though the the city, the province, and the country are strapped for cash, you can be certain the money will be found somewhere. Rebuilding takes people. There are a lot of people with the skills and the knowledge to make that happen. More importantly though, rebuilding takes time. The hard truth is the reconstruction of Fort Mac will take a lot more time than Slave Lake or Calgary. Simply due to the scope of the area impacted, and the location of the area itself.

If you want to help, the best way to do that is through donations. Right now you can text REDCROSS to 30333 to donate $5, or you can text REDCROSS to 45678 to donate $10. If you are thinking about donating clothing, furniture, or household items, refrain from doing so. Too many items are often shipped, and often cause havoc for those organizing the fundraising.

To those throwing the political gauntlets, this isn’t the time to do it. Whether you’re trumpeting the governments’ success or their failures, we can judge them down the line. There’s still three years for both the federal and provincial governments, whether you like it or not. You’ll have plenty of time to place judgement regarding their handling of this crisis.

To those laughing at the irony regarding the possibility of Fort McMurray destruction due to climate change, just remember this; Climate change affects us all. It would be like deriding your foot for having cancer.

To those of you saying that this will be a huge payout from the insurance companies, I only have this to say to you; You have obviously never dealt with an insurance company.

To those witch hunting the former NDP candidate who tweeted the fire was ‘Karmic’, please stop. What he said was ignorant and childish, and trying to burn the man in effigy is equally ignorant and childish. Venting your anger and frustrations by trying to ‘get’ a man who said something stupid on a platform called ‘Twitter’ is a reminder of exactly what terrifies me about social media.

Sincerely,

The Illustrious Mr. Charlton

p.s. Yes, I do have my own site now.

p.s.s. I have a friend up in Firebag, working at camp. Says it’s weird to have children running around and dogs barking in his wing.