ENTJ Heaven

As the fiscal year draws to a close I find myself dreaming of a far off place...  A place where no one works outside the hours of 8-5 because all the work got done during normal working hours because everyone at work was really motivated and got everything done.  A place where you do not have to wonder whether or not someone who is tasked to do something will do it.  A place where people need only minimal management.  A place where the work is challenging, creative and meaningful.  This is a place I would like to call ENTJ heaven.

In ENTJ heaven everyone is optimistic.  They love thinking out loud and brainstorming and creacting.  If someone has a challenging creative idea people try to come up with a way to make it happen.  Pessimism is rare in ENTJ heaven. 

In ENTJ heaven when work gets out everyone goes to the swimming pool and plays water polo.  Not inner tube water polo.  I mean real water polo.  Where you can relieve your stress by swimming around and chasing a ball and pushing people underwater.  ( inner tube water polo???)  After everyone is done playing water polo and getting a fun workout they then go get dinner.  It is usually really artisan because for some reason most ENTJs seem to be good cooks.

After dinner there is a jam session.  For some reason most ENTJs seem to have some form of musical talent so that is good too.  Some nights they might forgo the jam session to watch a TED talk, or go see a band or a play.  Then the ENTJs go off and do things like build haptic devices to cure dog blindness or plan a trip to Nepal.  As the night starts to wind down they go have some drinks in the hot tub before going to bed.

That is how it is in ENTJ heaven...  Actually to be honest I have it pretty good.  I am not sure I am that far away... But I really wouldn't mind playing water polo once in awhile :-). 

My musing on the security implications of 3D printers for the Culture of Life

Recently I heard Tim Staples talk on Catholic Answers about the upcoming election and the issues of most importance to Catholics.  He mentioned the 5 top non-negotiable issues and then went on to briefly mention there were a number of other things that should also be non-negotiable including pornography.  I immediately thought to myself, "is he implying we need to criminalize pornography?"  It seems like an almost impossible thing to enforce in our current society simply because of the technology that is available to us today.  Even if it was criminalized I am not sure what practical effect it would have since we have the internet, digital cameras, and other countries that may not criminalize pornography.  Throw in openly available cryptography software and it just seems like a big mess.  I feel like it has the potential to turn into something similiar to the prohibition of alcohol.  I have thought about it for awhile and been reading about the issue, and I am curious to see what would happen if we tried it.  It may or may not be successful in the sense that people actually stop watching porn.  If your goal is to actually stop the spread, manufacture and use of pornography I am not sure criminalization is an effective way to do it.  I can see it going either way.  But I digress...  This made me think of something more interesting. 3D printers.

3D printing technology has really taken off in the last decade.  I would not be surprised at all if in the next decade or so everyone has ready access to a 3D printer capable of printing a wide variety of polymer parts. Online repositories already exist of things you can download to print.  A good example is the "Thingverse"

http://www.thingiverse.com/

So this implies that these printers could also be used to manufacture contraband.  It is not inconceivable that someone could print out a plastic gun using 3D printer technology.  Actually it has already begun:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/23/3d-printing-weapons/

here is another interesting article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/07/28/the-end-of-gun-control/

So it is very possible that criminals of the future will make use of encryption and steganography to distribute files to print out contraband.  People will be printing out guns and knives and pipes and who knows what else...  And there will be no practical way to stop it. 

This this made me think of something else.  What effect would this have on the issue of abortion?  Right now the pro-life movement is working diligently to criminalize abortion.  I heard a presentation at the Catholic Medical Association annual conference a year ago where someone pointed out that the pro-life movement is very young in comparison to movements like the slavery abolition movement in North America.  They pointed out that it took many centuries to abolish slavery and in comparison the pro-life movement is not even half a century old.  They made the point that the pro-life movement may have a long road ahead of it.  So given that outlook what effect will technology have on the issue?

Well sensor technology is getting cheaper by the month.  Recently a $2 device was developed that could attach to a smartphone to give you an eye exam.  Smart phones and medical apps are being developed at a rapid pace to monitor a variety of vital signs and to tell people when to take their medicine or exercise etc, etc.  In the not too distant future smart phones may interact with embedded medical devices.  Given this reality coupled with the development of 3D printers it is entirely possible that even if abortion was criminalized in the United States some underground pro-choice group could build plans for a home-made vacuum aspiration machine that could be downloaded off the internet.  The plans could be encrypted and hidden using stenganography.  People could even use onion routing to make it less traceable.  There would probably be almost no way to stop this from happening.  

I do not bring this up to sound discouraging to the pro-life movement.  I bring it up because given the  potential for a long-term abortion-abolition movement I would like to suggest that they consider the possibility of how technology may alter the social and culture landscape.  If the pro-life movement is really concerned with preventing abortions and saving lives it may be worth considering what could happen even if the criminalization of abortion is achieved.  Criminalization alone may not be effective at actually signifigantly reducing the number of abortions.  It may be worth taking into account when strategic decisions are made on the use of human, spiritual and physical resources at the disposal of the pro-life movement.  I feel that if you want to be successful you don't go to where the ball is, you go to where the ball is going to be.  Given that Catholics often have  a very long-term outlook so I am confident it will all be worked out in the end. 


We are definitely entering a brave new world... Be ready.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/aug/17/sex-reproduction-aarathi-prasad

The Pig Roast of Fall 2012

Every so often I get some notion in my head that I have to bring to fruitiion.  That was the case about a year and a half ago.  For some reason I got the idea that I should roast a pig.  My original plan was to find a butcher and get the pig and roast him in a hole and have a party.  I told a firend of mine and she was very pessimistic about the whole thing.  She said - "you can't roast a pig, you have to kill it and skin it and dig a hole...,:  Well I thought to myself I wasn't really planning on doing all of that but now that you mention it that could be fun too.  So I decided I would be involved with the whole operation from live pig to dinner.  It took awhiel because my job keeps me busy and I had to coordinate with my friend who was going to teach me the skinning and roasting but we finally did it.  Here are the pictures. 

 Here is the pig to be roasted.  I was told he was really mean and did not grow to expectations so he was going to get eaten. 

 Here is the pig post skinning and gutting. 

 Halving the pig. 

  This is the bacon.

 The back of the pig.

 The leg we will roast.

 Chickens on the ranch.  They will probably get eaten later. 

 Canning. 

 Starting to dig the hole. 

 The dirt was really rocky so we had to use a digging bar. 

 Digging the hole. 

 A chicken plucker. 

 A scooper to move the ash.

 preparing the fire

 Burlap sacks

 Here is the pig wrapped in his foil. 

 Here are the embers ready for the pig. 

 We used some colored.  

 We out an extra fire on top just to be sure. 

 Digging up the food. 

 Pulling the bags out of the whole. 

 Food coming out of the burlap. 

 The meat was so soft I could take it right off with a plastic fork.  It just fell apart. 

 Some of my students enjoying the cookout.

 Maybe this goat will get roasted next. 

 Now I am wondering if I should try to roast a pig on every continent.  Europe or Asia first?














I am wondering if now I should roast a pig on every contient. 

Create in Me A Pure Heart Oh God.: Dealing with lust and having fun at the same time.

Last week I was in San Diego listening to some people give a talk on purity and chastity.  I have been a Catholic my whole life and I have heard this stuff many, many times over and I have always been on-board with the message so it really was not anything new to me.  It was a good talk though.  There was one thing though that you always hear about at these things that has never satisfied me...Dealing with lustful thoughts.  They gave an example of how to deal with it, and once again I was far from satisfied.  I have actively spent the last 15 years of my life trying to find a reasonable way to deal with it and I have heard many things over the years.  Suggestions like "give the girl a name," or "say some kind of prayer,"  I guess those suggestions were ok, but I have only been marginally impressed by their effectiveness.  I am not sure exactly how it happened.  Like many things in my life their is a long and complicated story behind it, but the other night I think God whispered a new suggestion in my ear.

At the end of the day God is really not looking for slaves or servants or people just following his orders.  That would be lame and he would get bored.  What he really wants are friends and sons and daughters.  People who share his passion for community and togetherness etc, etc.  No one wants a friend who does things just because they are forced to do them.  You want a friend who wants, from the bottom of their heart ot be on the same page and come to similar goals.  God wants us to have a heart similar to his.  God wants to transform us to have a pure Heart.  This is one of the fundamental differences between Catholisim and Secular Humanism.  Secular humanism only cares out measurable results.  Catholicism seeks personal transformation of the heart for the purpose of friendship with God.  In the case of lustful thoughts this is an example of a disordered passion.  A lack of cleanliness of heart.  God really wants us to desire a pure heart.  It's in the beatitudes:

"Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God,"

It is easy to get into the thinking that lustful thoughts are some kind of "thought crime,"  I think this is missing the point.  The point is God wants us to be transformed to have a pure heart and intentions.  So what was the suggestion I was given?  It was simple.  When you are tempted you just pray the following prayer,

"Create in me, a clean heart oh God"

They say that when you sing you pray twice, so if you want to you can even sing it.  I used to be in church choirs and singing is fun so that is what I do.  In this case not only are you just getting away from the temptation of lust, you are also trying to improve your practice of the Beatitudes.  Every temptation to lust is now an opportunity to become a better person plus you get to sing which is also fun.  I feel like this is so much more peaceful and fulfilling than all the suggestions I have heard in the past and I just thought I would share it in case it might help anyone else out.  It seems so easy and obvious I feel a bit foolish after all these years.  I guess it will help may humility along as well.  I hope you enjoy.

My Day Job

Recently Popular Mechanics ran a story on some of the research I do.  I am pretty proud of it.  Check it out. If you are interested in Cyber-Physical security research please do not hesitate to contact me.  This an emerging and exciting field in my opinion.  There are not too many of us cyber-physical security researchers out there. 

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/robots/self-defense-for-the-self-driving-car-12410682

Mayavi2 import problems in Ubuntu 10.04, python 2.6.5

Recently I was trying to import mayavi2 into python 2.6.5 on Ubuntu 10.04
Mayavi2 can be downloaded and installed using:

sudo apt-get install mayavi2

From there when I tried to import it into python using the line in the tutorials:

import mayavi

I would get the error msg:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in
ImportError: No module named mayavi

After a little searching through the installed files I tried

import enthought.mayavi

That did the trick.  You can test it using the exmple posted here:

http://docs.enthought.com/mayavi/mayavi/mlab.html


Here is the code with my slight modification. 

from numpy import pi, sin, cos, mgrid
dphi, dtheta = pi/250.0, pi/250.0
[phi,theta] = mgrid[0:pi+dphi*1.5:dphi,0:2*pi+dtheta*1.5:dtheta]
m0 = 4; m1 = 3; m2 = 2; m3 = 3; m4 = 6; m5 = 2; m6 = 6; m7 = 4;
r = sin(m0*phi)**m1 + cos(m2*phi)**m3 + sin(m4*theta)**m5 + cos(m6*theta)**m7
x = r*sin(phi)*cos(theta)
y = r*cos(phi)
z = r*sin(phi)*sin(theta)

# View it.
from enthought.mayavi import mlab
s = mlab.mesh(x, y, z)
mlab.show()