2011 - Looking for my next adventure

Aren't you impressed that I actually posted a second time?  haha  


Must admit - this year has already started off with loads of entertainment.  A lot has already happened and of course a lot is yet to come - professional and personal goals that I'm working on and that I'll elaborate on further as they come nearer (I'm a "don't count my chickens before they hatch" kind of guy - so I don't usually announce things until they actually happen or it's basically a given that they are going to happen :).  


Let's take a look at this week's topics:


The Bodacious Tour 2011: Life in Full Bloom


(Shout-out to Casey Van Camp on this one for his collaboration)


As mentioned last week,  the organizers of the Bodacious Tour have been planning our next adventures because well, you know, as they said in The Music Man:

You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering. 

Metropolitan DC and Northern Virginia are absolutely awesome for things to do that are "worth remembering", and to show that we're out to prove it we proudly present the proposals for this year's events (hooray! <cheering>).  The reasons why they're proposals are as follows:

1. We don't have set a calendar yet because a) Casey is getting married in the next few months and b) I am wrapping up things in school.  As much as we love the Bodacious Tour, we like to think we also have our priorities straight :)
2. We may not be able to do all of these this year, so we're still in the finalizing-events stage.
3. There may be things that we haven't heard about yet that we will want to do instead!

Now that we're past all the disclaimers, let's get to the list:

Whitewater http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/ohiopyle.aspx or http://www.gauley.com/

 

Richard Petty Driving Experience http://www.drivepetty.com/Experience/ScheduleDetails_RI.aspx

 

Shark Diving in NY http://www.ecophotoexplorers.com/montaukcagediving.asp

 

Ocean City, MD http://ococean.com/

 

Helicopter Tour of the Grand Canyon http://www.grandcanyon.com/grandcanyonhelicoptertours.html

 

Hang Gliding http://www.silverwingshanggliding.com/

 

ATVs in West Virginia http://www.trailsheaven.com/default.aspx

 

Wind Tunnel http://www.paracletexp.com/

 

Natural Bridge http://www.naturalbridgeva.com/

 

Foamhenge http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/9209

 

Skydiving http://www.skydiveorange.com/

 

Genesee Valley http://www.geneseevalley.org/programs/corporate/

 

Go Ape http://www.goape.com/

 

Baltimore Trapeze School http://washingtondc.trapezeschool.com/

 

Punkin Chunkin http://www.punkinchunkin.com/

 

Ropes Course MD http://www.upwardenterprises.com/prog_ropes.html

 

Spelunking http://www.wvexplorer.com/recreation/caving/southern-caverns.asp

The Christmas Spectacular Comeback

Yes, we're excited too :)  We will absolutely for sure do the wind tunnel experience again as we both agreed that was our favorite trip in The Inaugural Season (2010).  The other ones are still under consideration, but stay tuned - Facebook and the blogosphere will keep you posted on the events!  Are you going to part of them?

Professional Pursuits and Academics

This post this week is going to strike a bit more of a philosophical note.  I'm unabashed in stating this: I am very religious person and devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Most people who know me are very familiar with this side of me, and they are also familiar that I'm a very technically-oriented science geek while I'm at it.  It probably should come as no surprise then that I frequently find myself in discussions with people discussing the topic of religion and science and how to reconcile the two.  That's of course a very in-depth topic, but what I'm going to share with you is an important part of my paradigm of how it all makes sense to me.  

We live in a technologically advanced society (just check out some of my links on Facebook for an idea of where we're going) that is also becoming increasingly secularized.  I personally believe that what we're doing in some cases is replacing our faith in God with a faith in science and technology - essentially deifying science and scientific reasoning (though its adherents would never, ever admit this or phrase it that way) to fulfill that innate need that human beings have to believe in something.  (No matter how sophisticated you believe you are [and many people in DC fancy themselves to be quite sophisticated], we still want to have hope in something greater than ourselves)  Frequently I hear about how science has debunked how Big Bang and what-not have rendered notions of God obsolete.  Science, people tell me, is explaining it all - why all this happened (cosmic explosion about 14 billion years ago generating an ever-expanding universe subject to very powerful forces such as gravity; lightning strikes in the "primordial soup" that created the amino acids that were the building blocks of simple life forms; etc.).  We know why things have developed the way they have - it's just nature, and there's no way around that.

Need proof?

Stephen Hawking, most notable physicist of our day

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator

Nature, the premiere scientific journal http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

Well, as an applied scientist myself, I'd like to share with you something about that line of reasoning with which I disagree.  I want to share with you a section from the first chapter of my quantum physics textbook that I think articulates my argument perfectly.  Here we go:

The second vexing question concerns the "why" of these theories.  Why does Nature behave according to Einstein's relativity, rather than according to Galileo's?  Why do particles sometimes behave as waves, and waves sometimes as particles?  Why do atoms join to form compounds?  Why do higher forms of life evolve from lower forms? Although scientists can provide extremely precise answers to the "how" of these theories, they cannot provide the answers to the "why," not because their powers of observation or experiment abilities are limited, but rather because the questions are outside the realm of experimentation.  These questions are of extreme importance, and as potential practitioners of pure or applied science you should be aware of them and spend some time thinking about them.  If answers to these questions are to be found at all, they will be found not in the field of science, but in the fields of philosophy or theology. As you being to study the facts of modern science, you should keep these additional questions in mind and perhaps seek your instructor's opinions concerning them.  Although such speculations are an exciting intellectual endeavor in their own right, they will not be discussed in this text.        

~Dr. Kenneth Krane, Modern Physics, Second Edition, John Wiley and Sons 1995

I agree with this sentiment totally.  Science tells us "how;" the honest among scientists would volunteer nothing about "why."  For that reason, when teachers or professors or researchers take it upon themselves to discredit religious notions they are abusing the authority they have as professionals because they are speaking authoritatively about topics outside their realm.  Granted, they are entitled to their opinions - but people like teachers and respected professionals like Stephen Hawking and Stephen Jay Gould do not share these things as opinions in the classroom.  They state them as fact, and that is inappropriate.


With that out of the way :), my classes are going to be very interesting.  It's going to be a challenging semester at times, but I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this will be all worth it. As I said last week, the two classes that are capturing my interest the most are quantum mechanics and the medical imaging class.  It amazes to see how we can model how the world works with such precision, and I am really excited to some day have a chance to put that to good use to help people feel better through advances in medical instrumentation and computational technologies.  Here's a link to a technology I'm really interested in:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_coherence_tomography

No radiation needed to image the body for a clearer picture using only light?  Let's make this happen.


Interesting


I am a big believer in making things more efficient, cost-effective, and cleaner.  So, I think that this is an interesting product people should know about:  compressed air powered automobiles.  No emissions but the atmosphere it takes in :)


http://www.mdi.lu/english/airpod.php




Speaking of such things, remember when you thought that sunshine was free? Not any more...


http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpps/news/offbeat/spanish-woman-claims-she-now-owns-sun-dpgonc-20101126-gc_10808147


Until next week :)