Alex and Phill Bike Across Canada!

I should have written this a while ago…but better late than never!

My friend and I have decided to bike across Canada. We’re putting a hold on our PhD studies, and taking 2.5 months to saddle up and peddle from Vancouver, BC to St. John’s Newfoundland: 7,800km or so.

We started May 1st, which may explain why I haven’t updated this blog in a while. Currently we’re in Thunder Bay visiting my cousin, who I haven’t seen in 10 years or so. Crazy! The total distance so far is 3,250km (May 29th)

If you’re wanting to follow my exploits, I set up a twitter account, which I try to update every day… although recently I’ve noticed that a lot of pics I take and try to upload never make it
twitter.com/#!/alexphillxcnd

Scale

Understanding relative sizes is mind-boggling. Here are two internet resources to help you understand how maddeningly large the ‘known’ universe is compared to us, and how maddeningly large we are compared to the planck constant (for example). The first is a video from the late 1970s. The second is a neat flash website from this year. Finally, I’ll quote a short article by Jim Holt from the now defunct magazine Lingua Franca, about how large we are compared to the biggest and smallest thing in the universe, and how far along we are compared to the shortest and longest known lengths of time.

Running…

I got into running a couple of years ago. I started in Toronto, and would just run around Queen’s Park a bunch. I don’t remember how many times. Later on, when I came to Hamilton, I tried to keep up the running. I think I ran maybe 15kms one time, from Westdale to Dundas and back. That was a big deal for me at the time.
Since then, I run a half-marathon back in November 2011:

James Maxwell and Art

James Maxwell, besides developing the electromagnetic theory (second unification of physics after Newton), and the kinetic theory of gases, also developed the first durable color photograph:

World Trade Center Under Construction: Old and New

I don’t know why I was looking up the One World Trade Center. I guess I wanted to know how far along they were in building it. Anyways, on the wikipedia article, someone posted a photo of the tower under construction from just two days ago. Then I was reading the article on the original towers, and found a picture of those towers under construction (sometime in 1971). I thought the two pictures looked similar and would look good side by side. I’ve got nothing to say, just wanted to share the photos:

The old photo can be found here, and the new one here.

Trees and Economics…Also: Žižek, Philip K. Dick, and Carl Jung

The following topics probably don’t connect that well, but one made me think about the other, and I wanted to write about both, so, two birds, one blog post. I’m currently reading Joseph Heath’s book Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism. The title is probably misleading. Heath divides the book into 6 sections (ignoring the intro and epilogue), the first three dealing with fallacies that right-wing people make about economics, and the second three dealing with fallacies that left-wing people make.

View From International Space Station

This is hands down one of the most amazing things my eyes have ever beheld (excuse the hyperbole).