How to Make Tacos

When I cook, I only have about 5 different dishes I ever make regularly. One of my favorites is tacos. I used to use taco seasoning to season the meat, but due to lack of taco seasoning I started seasoning the meat on my own and I absolutely love the tacos that I make now. Here's how to make them.

1. Cook a half of a pound of ground beef. Don't overcook it and leave enough fat in there to keep it from getting dry. Add water if you need more moisture.
2. Salt-Add until it's salty enough.
   
3. Chili Powder-Add until it looks pretty. Pretty looking meat is extremely important.
   
4. Paprika-Add whatever feels right.
   
5. Cayenne Pepper-Make it more spicy than you think you should make it.
6. Assemble tacos using soft flour tortillas (I learned that fried corn tortillas are far superior, thanks to Bill E., but require more time and effort), lettuce, tomatoes, onions, salsa, Mexican style sour cream (it's significantly better than the regular stuff), and lots of cheese (in the style of Jelly Roll Morton).
7. Fold taco in half like a hard shell taco and eat.
8. Let whoever you cooked for do the cleaning. If you did a good job, they'll be glad to do this.

These are delicious and I'm actually very proud of these tacos. Let me know if you actually try it out. I'd be ecstatic if somebody actually used my recipe.

The Anatomy of Christmas Shopping

Click on the picture for ultra-zoom

Black friday is apparently really important for stores. I just feel like there might be a more efficient, less stressful way of doing it.

Merry Thanksgiving

For a thanksgiving post, I have 3 different options.

1. Write about what I'm thankful for
2. Talk about how much I love food, specifically pumpkin and pecan pie
3. Rant about spending the holiday away from home every year since I moved to CO

I'll have some self control and take the first option.

August of 1993 I moved to a new life in AK. August of 2005 I moved to Colorado. August of 2010 I moved to a new life in Denver. I'm very glad I can move on to a new life. Over the past few months I have loved life. I've been able to finally forget about the "traumatic," but not really, thing that happened to me last September. And I've had a quiet enough life to have time to just sit back and appreciate life. It's really nice to have the freedom to have a fresh, new start and to just live a brand new life. So I'm thankful for being able to move on to a new life.

Along with moving to a new life I'd like to mention that I absolutely love the new place I live. If you didn't know I live in a basement of a family's house. A mom, a 7 year old girl, and a 1 year old boy live upstairs. I've become very close to them. The Mama is a close friend of mine now and I feel like the kids are my niece and nephew. They have showed me what a young family should look like and how sad it is that there are so many fathers who are absolute failures and some who just aren't around much. I'm learning a lot from them and they are very encouraging to me because I could not stand living by myself.

And the usuals: Food, my Bianchi, my bus pass, coffee, the heater, my blankets, my guitarra, my job that pays me more than I've ever been paid, my church, my family, etc.

Merry Thanksgiving to all and to all a good day!

Drinking Tea is a Lot Like Quantum Mechanics

One of my favorite subjects in physics is Quantum Mechanics. I'm going to tell you about a very famous quantum mechanics problem called the Finite Quantum Well, also called Particle in a Box.

If you have ever drank out of a cup with a flat bottom and vertical walls then you have observed this problem in real life.

If you pull out a Celestial Seasonings tea bag (Any kind of "Zinger" is an excellent choice as well as most of their herbal teas. I'm not much of a green/black/white tea kinda guy) and put it in hot water, here's something to do while it's brewing: Tap the cup and watch the water. You'll see different "modes". One mode that you'll see just has one bump in the middle, going up and down. That's the first order. Second order is one with two oscillating bumps to each side. It get's really complicated really fast because fluid mechanics is ridiculous, but I'll just talk about the first 2 modes.

When you tap the cup, you give the liquid a kinetic energy. If you give it too much energy then the water will splash out of the cup, burning you with scalding hot water. You'll scream in pain, such on your hand for a while, and maybe even go over to the sink to rinse it with cold water. The more energy you give the water, the higher order modes you will get and the higher the water gets.

The cup provides potential energy. The further out you go, the higher the potential energy gets. Since the energy goes up as you go out, you get a stable equilibrium, meaning the water stays in the cup pretty well. If you put a cup upside down it won't have a stable equilibrium anymore since the energy goes down as you go out. The only way for water to get out of the cup is if it has more kinetic energy than the walls have potential energy, thus causing the burning hot splash.

In quantum, instead of having water in a cup, you have a particle in a box. The box has potential energy walls just like the cup and keeps the particle inside the box pretty well. You have modes just like the water in the cup. The lowest energy mode says that you will most likely find the particle in the center of the well. The second order mode says that you will either find the particle on one side or the other, just like the two oscillating bumps.

The most significant difference between these two problems is that quantum says that there's a probability you will find the particle outside the box for a single particle in a box with thin walls. If you had a quantum well shaped exactly like a coffee cup sitting on a table, then eventually the particle in the well will leak out, which is called tunneling. In terms of the water in a cup problem, this is essentially saying that if your cup sits there long enough then the water will leak out the sides (note that I didn't say it would spill over the top, which is the only way for your tea to leave your cup).

It sounds crazy, but it's true. And don't worry, it won't be long till your tea is done brewing.

In quantum, particles are described by a "wave function." If you square the wave function you get the probability distribution of the particle. You have all seen a bell curve, so when I say probability distribution, think about a bell curve. A very famous equation called Schroedinger's equation tells you all the wave functions for a given quantum well. If you write out an equation for the shape of a coffee cup and plug it into Schroedinger's equation, then you can solve for the wave function of that particular well (assuming you know how to solve differential equations). If you did this then you would see a bell curve for the first order mode. The tails of the curve would extend outside of the well, telling you that there's a probability of finding the particle outside of the well. What I'll mention in passing is that if the walls of your coffee cup are much thicker then a few nanometers, then the probability is mind bogglingly low. I assure you that nanoscientists are currently working on building a coffee cup with 3nm walls, so pretty soon you can buy your own quantum well coffee cup.

So now you know what a quantum well and a wave function are. They're pretty cool. You may drink your tea now.

Thank God for Gravity

I was feeling bike withdrawals yesterday because I hadn't ridden my bike in over a week due to the cold weather and my wimpiness. I decided to take my bike on the bus out to Golden for church and then ride my bike back. It was very refreshing. Just like eating a pumpkin pie when it's been a year since the last time you had one.

Usually I don't think about a whole lot when I ride my bike, but this time I was feeling incredibly contemplative. For whatever reason I started thinking about a world without gravity and how different riding a bike would be in this world.

Imagine this floaty world and a flat plane that you needed to get across, say to go to the grocery store. Suppose you had some sort of bike railroad that kept your wheels attached to a rail so you wouldn't float off. It would be very weird.

You would start to pedal, but every time you pushed down your body would move up a lot and your bike wouldn't go forward as well. You need something to push against and on Earth we have gravity to push against to push our pedals.

It would be much more natural to get clipless pedals and do a lot more pulling than pushing like we do these days. Cyclists would develop different muscles. Their quads wouldn't be quite so epic and whatever the muscle that operates the hamstring is would be much more epic.

Crashes would be a bit less devastating. You wouldn't ever fall to the ground, but if you flew off your bike and headed towards a wall or other hard object, it would be just as painful as running into a wall with gravity.

It saddens me to think about this because it just doesn't seem very intuitive for a gravitiless world to have bicycles. I don't think the bike ever would have ever been discovered if we had no gravity. Technological natural selection probably would have never gotten to the point of making a bicycle. Any form of bicycle would have likely evolved to a completely different machine, not resembling a bicycle in a world with gravity.

Perhaps there would be an equally fun and useful machine in this gravitiless world, but for now thank God for gravity because it means we can ride bikes.

How to travel in time: Expansion and contraction of possibilities space

As you may know, November 12 is a very important date. It will forever be the iconic date people will think of when they think of time travel. In all seriousness, it should be November 5th, but V for Vendetta went back in time and stole that date before Back to the Future could really claim it. November 5th was the day Marty went back in time and November 12th was the day he came "back to the future." Not only is this one of the best movies of all time, it is also one of the greatest discussions on Time Travel Philosophy.Today's blog post is dedicated to this topic.

Traveling in time is of course impossible. At least any useful time travel. Special relativity says that if you go really fast then return to your planet you will have aged much faster than your Earthling peers. This is about as interesting as it gets. This is just a nuisance and, to my knowledge, is not very useful. Using special relativity you can do tricks with time so that it moves at a different rate than other times, but there is no way to actually go back in time according to modern science (that I'm aware of).

While this is sad, you may have read my post explaining the Banksian Sphere, which challenges humanity to adopt new ways of thinking. This suggests that we may be able to discover time travel if we simply go at it from a completely different direction than simple scientists would. This means that time travel may still be possible using alternate dimensions or other methods, but we just haven't discovered it yet. That being said, we can continue our one sided philosophical discussion.

I think that deja vus are really cool. I love it when I get one because for a minute you feel like you have the superpower of predicting the future. It feels like sometime a long time ago you predicted that this situation would happen. I would claim (using my Banksian Sphere (B.S.) methodology) that you never predicted the future and that it is also not just a mind trick. But rather, it is the extreme deformation of possibilities of reality, allowing one part of the universe to come near to the universe at some time in the past. If you have an infinite dimensional "possibilities space" with infinite possibilities of outcomes for the universe traveling along a single time axis, then it would be possible for a certain point in the "possibilities space" to line up with the same point at a time in the past. This would be possible if the timeline loops back so it's close to where it was before or if the possibilities space expands an contracts throughout time.

I would tend to believe the expansion and contraction theory. If the possibilities space expands and contracts, then it means that it would take more or less effort to go from one point to another. For instance, in this part of the universe (Denver, CO, USA, Earth, Milky Way...mmm milky way) it is very easy for me to fill up my water bottle and drink clean water. A few thousand years ago, it was much more difficult to go from point one (sitting in my chair) to point two (sitting in my chair drinking clean water). These two points in possibilities space have come closer to each other over time. Contrarily, it was much easier to find a record player at the store 40 years ago than it is today. The two points of not having a record player and having a record player have gotten farther apart.

You can see that the naturalness of going from one point to another in possibilities space is not necessarily constant (and not necessarily varying either). I don't currently have any evidence that time loops back on itself, but I'd be interested in hearing theories on that. So if you believe my scientifically flawed argument for the expansion and contraction of possibilities space, then you can easily deduce the possibility of time travel. If a possibility line expands so much that it actually spreads back to the same possibility at a different time, then it may be possible to travel in time.

I hope this inspires all you peeps to figure out how to travel in time.

I wouldn't believe me if I were you. I'm starting to feel ashamed of my weird ideas that should be a disgrace to science.

How to Prevent Footinmouth Disease

Some people reminisce about high school. But when I think about high school I think, High school? Really? Are you serious? High school was the lamest 4 years of my life. My school had Senior Superlatives, which are things like Prettiest Smile, Most Athletic, Most Flirtatious, etc. Well I actually was one of the winners of these "awards." Well if I was popular enough to get an award, then why was high school so lame? I should tell you what the award was. Although I was once ashamed of it, I am now proud to say that I won the senior class "Super Shy" award. Pretty cool huh? For someone who was insecure about my quietness at the time, this was like giving an award for "Most Stupid" or "Most Socially Awkward."

I was in all the advanced classes, so all the people that actually cared enough to vote about who was most popular knew who I was. I was the quiet guy who was good at math and never talked to anyone but Justin. They all knew my name and they all knew I was the quietest kid in class, so they voted me in. My sister won the same award 2 years prior and I always thought extremely highly of her and thought she was pretty popular and not actually quiet, so I ended up not being incredibly bothered by winning that award.

Actually, I'm now kind of proud when I get to tell people I won that award. My perspective on being quiet has changed completely. I was once ashamed of my quietness, but now I'm usually very glad I'm quiet.

Most people assume that quietness is because the person is shy. They think that quiet people have something to say, but just don't have the courage to speak up about it. Perhaps they're afraid of being judged or are overly judgmental of their own ability to formulate thoughts. Shyness is certainly a common reason for being quiet, but is very often not the only reason for being quiet.

Another very common reason for being quiet is simply not having anything to say. There's not much to say about this. This is usually the reason I don't say anything, because I just don't have anything to say. I'm interested in listening to the person talking or I don't feel like silence is as awkward as most people feel. Sometimes there is just nothing to say.

Slow thinking is another reason people are quiet. We were having a discussion at a small group meeting about something philosophical. There was no reading ahead of time. It was just an impromptu discussion. My friend noticed that I hadn't said much and asked me what I was thinking because it looked like I was thinking about something. Well, I was thinking about something, but I was honestly just having a hard time keeping up with the conversation. They were jumping from one topic to the next before I had enough time to come up with my own thought on the subject. It's a lot easier for me to come up with thoughts when I've had time.That's why I like writing and it's also why I can talk about plenty of things when I've spent plenty of time preparing.

The last reason that I'll mention is when people don't talk because they are secretively judging everyone and are being mean by not talking. This is a high school concept. By "high school" I mean stupid. It's extremely rare that this is the case. Shy people are not necessarily that person you should worry about burning down the building. Yes, sometimes the quiet ones are the ones who "burn down the building," but most quiet people are perfectly nice people with good intentions, just like the talkative ones.

Do you know someone who claims their mouth is so big they can fit both their feet in it? I do. I know a few people like that. I feel sorry for them. I have certainly put my foot in my mouth plenty of times, but it's not too common of an occurrence because I usually think about what I say before saying it. This is one of the best benefits of being quiet. Usually quiet people just have the natural tendency to think about what they will say before saying it, thus implementing the "speech filter" before speaking...not right while your toe is entering your mouth. This is a benefit, but it's also not. It's not because I am often so good at using my speech filter before speaking that I'm also really good at letting people see only what I want them to see. Nothing slips out, just the good stuff that make me look like I'm a better, wiser person than I actually am. This is a problem.

Also, people who talk all the time are annoying. You may know someone like this. I know a couple. I'd like to hear one of their opinions on why they talk so much, because my ideas on why they talk are probably wrong. I usually tend to believe that they just like to hear themselves talk or that they think their opinion is more legitimate than another's. Not talking is a great way to avoid annoying people...usually.

Sometimes quiet people are annoying too, though. They (when I say they I mean we) have lots of awkward silences. It takes them too long to think of things to say in a one-on-one conversation to completely avoid silences. We often aren't bothered by silence at all.

I remember riding in a car with a friend who I was thought was quiet, but found out she wasn't. The first hint that she wasn't was when we were in the car riding back from ice skating and she said something like, "I feel weird that we aren't talking." Alarms went off in my head. What? Quiet people don't mind silence. You're an impostor! I thought we had quietness in common, but you aren't truly a quiet person. You just haven't gotten used to the new group you're a part of yet. My suspicions were later confirmed. She wasn't a deep down quiet person, just a temporary one. Even though quiet people don't mind silence, I fully understand the awkwardness of it. Quiet people just know how to embrace the awkwardness.

That is all. Maybe you understand quietness better.