The Economist has a great obituary on the last of the great Micronesian ocean navigators – Mau Piailug.

Piailug grew up on a tiny (less than 3km long) island where survival required sailing far out to sea for deep water fishing. The inhabitants of the island were experts in navigation using stars, winds, birds and various other signs available before the advent of modern navigation.

Piailug began studying to be a master navigator with his grandfather at age 5 and was the last local to learn navigation in the traditional way. From the article:

“He could read how far he was from shore, and its direction, by the feel of the swell against the hull. He could detect shallower water by colour, and see the light of invisible lagoons reflected in the undersides of clouds. Sweeter-tasting fish meant rivers in the offing; groups of birds, homing in the evening, showed him where land lay.”

He became famous by successfully sailing a little double hulled canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti using no modern equipment at all. In an expedition reminiscent of the great Kon Tiki journey he did so to prove that it was possible for ancient navigators to do so.

In his later life Piailug taught others the ways of navigation, this time allowing them to make notes and record the ancient knowledge. If he hadn’t done so, this amazing knowledge would have been lost to us forever.

“What is the purpose of life” is obviously not a stupid question. It’s a very good question.

The purpose of life is more life.

All life is purely trying to create more copies of itself. The purpose of every living organism on this planet (yourself included) is to create as many copies of it’s genes as possible.

That is all.

That’s not what you meant right? What is the deeper purpose of life? What is the meaning of life?

That question is actually a lot like “What is the square root of a tomato?”

It doesn’t make sense.

There is no deeper purpose of life. Life just is. It is a bleak realization, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I was recently reading the preface to Richard Dawkins’s Unweaving the Rainbow which contains this excellent quote:

Gone is all purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.

The excellent Big Picture blog from The Boston Globe recently published a set of photos of that lunatic leader, Kim Jong-il touring North Korea.

North Korea is so screwed up that it’s really interesting. Thank heavens I don’t live there.

Anyway, this blog has taken some of those photos and added hilarious captions to them. Kim is a pretty hilarious character to begin with (what he is doing to his people is no laughing matter).

Let me be clear: I think Julius Malema is a complete tool. I can’t stand the man and I wish that the ANC would do something about him. He makes me afraid for our nation.

So I was pretty happy when I heard that he had been convicted of hate speech. But I’m conflicted. I disagree with the judgment…

Malema claimed that Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser was lying because she had not fled after the alleged rape:

“When a woman didn’t enjoy it, she leaves early in the morning. Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast and ask for taxi money”.

I think that is an offensive, ignorant and downright deplorable statement to have made. If the ANC were at all responsible they would have fired him on the spot. They are not that type of organization and that is a problem for all of us.

That said, I really don’t believe that the state should be able to fine Malema for this statement. Anyone making statements like this should be judged by society.

When the state enforces what you can and can’t say then things start to go wrong.

There’s a little thing called freedom of speech. I think it is quite important.

The South African law on hate speech says:

No person may publish, propagate, advocate or communicate words based on one or more of the prohibited grounds, against any person, that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to -
(a) be hurtful;
(b) be harmful or to incite harm;
(c) promote or propagate hatred.

This is too paternalistic. Just imagine the impact on freedom of speech.

Malema should be ridiculed. The ANC should have fired him long ago. But he should not be fined by the government for saying something offensive.

Google has created a site called How Google Works that explains how Google does what it does in very simple terms.

For example, the video below is a simple, 3 minute explanation of how Google search works.

Watch  it.

The Economist has a fascinating article on the arms race going on between American soldiers and bomb makers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A great example is something called “Darwin” patrols. Many early improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were triggered by remote controls for garage doors. The CIA quickly realized this and began driving around pressing their own garage openers. Any bomb makers nearby would be blown up.

Predictably, these easy wins didn’t last. By killing those bomb makers the CIA effectively improved bomb making. Only better IEDs and bomb makers survived – hence the name “Darwin” patrols.

As the coalition forces become better at detecting IEDs the bomb makers get better at making them. There are plenty more examples of innovation being met with innovation in the article.

Both sides must constantly keep improving just to keep up. This is common in evolutionary biology and is known as the Red Queen effect.

In Through the Looking Glass (the sequel to Alice in Wonderland) the Red Queen tells Alice:

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

It’s a great name for this effect.

Wherever there is competition, from biology to the Iraq war to the office, the Red Queen effect arises. We have to keep moving, just to stay where we are.

This fascinating article describes a case where a lone wild dog is actively teaming up with hyenas and jackals.

There were plenty of wild dog in the area in the past, but as lion population increased the local wild dog clan was wiped out.

This single adult female remained, and the rangers assumed that she would soon be killed.

However, she has been thriving with “help from some highly unusual and totally unexpected quarters.”

She has integrated fairly well with the larger members of the local hyena clan. She has been photographed interacting and even touching noses with them.

She also “solicits adult black-backed jackals to follow her on the hunt and even regurgitates meat on her return for the growing jackal pups!”

It seems that wild dogs have incredibly strong social instincts. So strong that when this animal had no other wild dogs to interact with she formed bonds with animals of another species. Amazing.

The first time I had to replace a credit card (stolen) I noticed that many of the digits were the same. My wife has a card from the same bank and she also shares most digits with me.

Obviously the first few digits are bank specific.

This page has a brief outline of the meaning behind the numbers.

The first digit is the type of card:

• 3 = Amex or Diners Club
• 4 = VISA
• 5 = Mastercard

The rest of the digits depend on the type of card.

The format of VISA credit card numbers

TBBB-BBAA-AAAA-AAAC

• T is for the type of card. In this case always 4 as this is a VISA card
• B is a six digit code for the bank
• A is a 9 digit account number
• C is a check digiti calculated from all of the other digits

Everyone knows that South African ID numbers start with date of birth. If you were born on May 13, 1988 then your ID number starts with 880513.

This post details what the rest of the digits in an ID number mean.

The format is:

{YYMMDD} {G} {SSS} {C} {X} {Z}

• {YYMMDD} is the date of birth
• {G} is gender. 0-4 is female and 5-9 is male
• {SSS} is a sequence number
• {C} is citizenship. 0 for South Africans and 1 for other citizens
• {X} is usually 8 or 9 – not clear what this is
• {Z} is a check digit calculated from the other digits

So for the ID number 8909025012083 we know certain things about the person:

• Born on September 2nd, 1989
• Male
• 12th male born on that date to get an ID number
• South African citizen

Not very useful, but interesting.

OkCupid is a large online dating website. They therefore have a lot of data relating to interesting subjects.

Their blog, OkTrends, is dedicated to showing statistical analyses of various parts of their dataset. It’s fascinating reading and I highly recommend it.

The latest post is about the merits of older women and includes a lot of interesting graphs.

This graph shows the oldest and youngest women that men claim they are interested in as they get older.

• Men are only ever willing to consider women slightly older than themselves
• As they grow older men are interested in relatively younger and younger women

This graph, by contrast, shows the ages of women that men actually try to chat up on the website.

• Men are actually sending messages to women much younger than their supposed youngest acceptable
• By far the most messages are going to very young women

This is the same for women.

• Women are also interested in men younger than they say they are
• Women are less age sensitive than men

Even more interesting are the vertical color changes. For example, as soon as women turn 20 it seems that they suddenly feel comfortable contacting much older men.

The same thing happens again when women turn 29. At 28 women send plenty of messages to young men (19 or 20) and almost none to men over 42.

But when they turn 29 women suddenly send almost no messages to men under 22 but start sending many more messages to men in their 40′s and early 50′s.

The benefits of older women

The blog then goes on to sing the praises of older women.

Older women are cheekier when it comes to sex (several more graphs on the site):

Older women are also more comfortable with themselves (again more graphs on the site):

There is a lot more information and many more graphs (including several interactive ones) on the actual blog. I recommend taking a look.