This World and Me

Suppose a device is created which would vaporize the atoms and molecules that form your body, transport them to another place in the world, then reassemble them exactly the way they were. Let's call this procedure type-A teleportation (this is a distinction I am making up, and it will be clear later in this post why it is necessary). We sometimes see these kinds of teleportation devices depicted in science fiction and fantasy. They are also occasionally mentioned as a thought experiment in the philosophy of personal identity , which is the branch of philosophy that revolves around, among other things, the question, "What makes you the same person you are at another time?" We might answer that we know we are the same person we were yesterday because we have the same memories as the person yesterday. Let's call this the psychological account of personal identity . The psychological account is worrisome because memories and human psychology are fickle things. Say y...

Archaeologists estimate that the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed around the year 2560 BC. It is easy to lose perspective on just how far back in time this was. The end of classical antiquity, which is the period of history that includes the Roman Empire and Ancient Greek civilization, occurred around the year 600 AD. The fall of the Roman Republic with the death of Julius Caesar occurred around 20 BC. This is not much more than 2000 years ago. The Ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids more than double the length of time since the fall of the Roman Republic. To put it a different way, the Ancient Greeks are to us today as the Ancient Egyptians were to the Ancient Greeks . And all throughout these millennia, many billions of human beings lived and died. Of these billions, how many are still remembered today? There is a proverb that I've heard several times now which states that every human dies twice: the first when you stop breathing forever, and the second when your name is...

A few months ago, I published a post called Great Big House in New Orleans , in which I discuss a game I used to play in my elementary school music class. In that post, I explained how I designed an efficient algorithm that allowed me to quickly find the winning position of the game given how many people are playing. I published the actual algorithm itself in a second post . Basically, in the game, all students in the class sat in a circle and passed a stuffed pumpkin around while singing a song. The rules of the game were such that every eighth student gets out (i.e. exits the circle), and the last student to remain in the circle wins. Essentially, I discovered that if you have add one person to the group of people playing the game, the winning position shifts to the right by eight. For example, in an elementary school class of 21 students sitting in a circle, the student sitting at position 10 will win. If I add one student to the class, the winning position increases by eight. ...

In the summer of 2017, my family did a tour of the U.S. national parks. We had traveled out west first to Salt Lake City, where we rented out a small storage closet and placed our fencing bags there (more on that soon), then traveled south to visit Bryce Canyon National Park, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, and the Horseshoe Bend. These were absolutely stunning sights, to say the least. Words don't do them justice, and while it's possible for you to search up on Google an image of each location, in my view nothing beats actually going there and experiencing it for yourself. I think by looking at a picture of it, you create an expectation for how it will look when you go, and it may actually result in the views being less spectacular if the image was digitally touched up to make it look better. When it comes to national parks, it's best to go in cold. The natural formations are absolutely breathtaking. After spending a week touring the parks south ...

The term "comedy" has a variety of meanings. In everyday use, it is a form of entertainment filled with jokes, satire, and storytelling, intended by the author to be funny – to make the audience laugh. In elementary school classes, if a student is the "class comedian", he is always goofing around, trying to get others to laugh at him. There are different kinds of comedy: stand-up comedy, situational comedy (often abbreviated to "sitcom"), surreal comedy, romantic comedy, tragicomedy. In this post I would like to discuss the genre "comedy" in the context of the works of William Shakespeare and identify one modern film franchise which contain themes that resemble those of Shakespearean comedy. * * * First, a little background. William Shakespeare is one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. His birthdate is not documented, but we know he was baptized on April 26, 1564, and died on April 23, 1616. (2016 contain...

goodbye  · ɡo͝odˈbī ·  (1) exclam.  (also goodby or good-by ) used to express good wishes when parting or at the end of a conversation. (2) noun (plural goodbyes or goodbys ) an instance of saying “goodbye”; a parting. — The New Oxford American Dictionary On a warm July morning in Nuremberg, Germany, I was standing at an airport with my host family, waiting to meet the other American students who had been selected to travel to Germany for three weeks . It was the last day of the trip. One by one, the friends I had made in Germany trickled in with their host families. We smiled and excitedly chattered as we recalled the previous night, when we had thrown a huge party with just us kids. We assembled ourselves – Americans and our German host siblings – and took a massive group photograph. I assembled with my own host family and took a smaller photograph of just us together. Just a moment later, we had to say goodbye. I shook my host father's hand, hugged my...

Song of the Week #8 is "If My Heart Was a House" by Owl City . This week, I'm excited to be talking about another song from my favorite musician. Seven weeks ago, the very first song of the week was "Cave In" from Owl City's spectacular  Ocean Eyes  album. "If My Heart Was a House" is a somewhat more obscure song – it's track number 6 on disc 2 of the deluxe version of Ocean Eyes  – but that doesn't make it any less powerful. In a music ranking survey conducted on the forum /r/OWLCITY on the website Reddit in 2016, "If My Heart Was a House" was voted the song that forum subscribers would choose to listen to over any other song created by Adam Young, the man behind Owl City. "If My Heart Was a House" is a song about love. If that part is not immediately apparent from the title, it becomes apparent within the first few seconds of the song. You're the sky that I fell through, And I remember the view, Whenever ...