I do not exist... Microscope

Ok... So we know that we are insane and we know that we can not prove that we exist by our perceptions because that is all a "matrix" like remote sensing scam... Right?  If any of this is not clear to you, try going back a few posts (Don't you hate be'n dumb, I do not exist)

I mentioned that I could think of at least 4 simple arguments that I do not exist.  The Matrix thing was one.  A mosquito senses me totally differently than I sense me... Who is right?  Neither of us experiences the reality of what we perceive but only an affect of that reality.  So, now I want to move to the next argument... my microscopic self.

I really do not need to go very far to find out that I am more than what I thought I was.  Some say that right now I host thousands of varieties of parasites eating my flesh.  (check out  http://www.essortment.com/all/humanbodyparas_rayv.htm )  Everything from internal worms, external worms, mites, bacteria, fungi... the list seems to never end!  Not all of them are harmful, and I even take a dose of live intestinal "bugs" regularly.  So, is that what I see in the mirror?  No wonder I am not happy in the morning...  Most of these guys can be seen with a microscope.  But how about going a bit smaller...

What about the chemical nature of me?  In the great series of books by Dr. Paul Brand and Phillip Yancy I learned a lot about my body.  ("Where is God when it hurts" about leprosy, "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made," "In His Image")  Dr. Brand said that every molecule in my body is different every 3 years.  What???  How about bone?  Yep, the blasts tunnel through, the clasts fill the holes back up with brand new stuff, and I have a new me.  Incredible!  That made me change my thoughts about burial.  I used to think that I should keep all of my parts together, ya know?  But... what parts are me?  All of the parts are swapped out all the time!  (The Druids put their friends bodies up on a high platform where the scavengers could eat the flesh.  When only bones remained, they buried everything but the skull which they kept around so that they could remember their friend... "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him."  (Shakespeare, Hamlet))

Now, speaking of death.  Think a minute.  My body is 65% water... so that is not going to stick around for long.  Bye bye me...  There are the Big 4 (including the the water) Oxygen (65.0%) Carbon (18.5%) Hydrogen (9.5%) Nitrogen (3.2%).  Wow... that sounds like plastic to me.  ( http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-05/927309210.An.r.html).  So, lets see... basically, 96% of my body will float away as CO2, H2O, Amonia, N2 and other smells.  The rest is just "trace minerals" like Calcium (1.5%) Phosphorus (1.0%) Potassium (0.4%) Sulfur (0.3%) Sodium (0.2%) Chlorine (0.2%) Magnesium (0.1%) Iodine (0.1%) and Iron (0.1%), plus a few others.

Did you ever think of your self as a pile of ashes help together by water, carbon, and Nitrogen?  God just breathed on a bit of dust ya know...  I remember Bill Cosby had a shtick about  a dead guy.  Cosby hated it when people at funerals always said "Doesn't he look like himself?"  He hoped he would not!  He thought they should have a recording going that was made by the person before their death.  "Hello, this is Bill.  Don't I look like myself?"

Anyway, surely you can see that I am not what I believe myself to be.  I am not a collection of chemicals... they change all the time.  I am not even just myself... I have millions of friends eating me alive - ugh.  So, what am I?  Am I a program encoded in my DNA?  If my hip bone is constantly changing, why does it keep looking like my hip bone?  So, am I my hip bone, or am I the code that constructs the hip bone?  I certainly do not think of myself as a program, but now I can not think of myself as having a hip bone either.

Yikes... Now, not only can I not sense myself, I actually know that I am a collection of constantly changing stuff!  I am certainly do not exist as the me I see in the mirror - right?  Maybe I should move on the the other 2 arguments - the Cosmos and the Condensate.  We shall see if I exist there.

Speedier Computers... really...

Computers are getting faster, smaller in size, and bigger in capacity.  So what is next?

http://www.popsci.com/corey-binns/article/2008-09/how-your-laptop-will-just-keep-getting-faster

Popular Science has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid.  They have a lot of stuff online these days and I admit to spending too many hours scanning photo galleries... although I still do most of my article reading in the good old printed magazine.

I saw a really amazing article today about 3 technological advances that should be having effects soon:

- Memsistor -- they join resistors, capacitors, and inductors as elements of a circuit.  Basically, they are resistors that can change resistance and remember the last resistance when the power is off... poof!  "Instant on" computers!  It can pack 100 gigs in a square centimeter, are faster than flash and very energy efficient.

-  Graphene -- Graphite is made of layers (yea, like ogres) and each of those layers is a single layer of honeycomb carbon atoms called Graphene.  It is very conductive, is 100 times more efficient than silicon, and has been used to create the smallest transistor so far... 1 atom thick and 10 atoms wide.  Yikes!

- Electron spin injection -- only electrons with selected spin (up or down) make it through a gate.  If they go through you get a 1 if they scatter you get a 0.  Basically, each electron can be a bit.  Using this idea, semiconductor lasers can send information between computer elements 1000 times faster and more efficiently... bye bye wires.

Ain't sci-tech fun???  OK, I want 4 gigs of RAM, a 400 gig drive, and a teraHertz clock... on my wrist... now!   Why not throw in brain wave control and in-air projected display (both seen this year in simple demo form).