Modern data acquisition systems that are used for gathering data during testing are now digital instead of analog. In layman's terms, snapshots of data are recorded at a specified rate and then lines are drawn between the snapshots. In the case of a pressure reading, an acquisition system records a pressure of say 100 psig and then records the pressure again some specified time later. A representative graph is then produced by connecting these readings with straight lines. In modern systems this rate can be very high, up to 50,000 times per second (50,000 hz). Naturally, matching sampling rate with signal rate becomes pretty important as you can get graphs that have no resemblance to reality if you don't correlate them correctly. Old movies wherein the wagon wheels appear to be spinning backwards are a good example of this error. The camera took a snapshot at a time rate that wasn't correlated and when these snapshots are spliced together the wheel appears to be spinning backwards. It turns out our mind does the same thing with optical data that we take in with our sense of sight.
I was reading a short article about update rates and the how that correlates to our understanding of time passing. According to the article humans have the ability to do optical updates in the 60 hz range. In other words, we can't do it much faster than that no matter what we do. Dogs and cats are in the 80-90 hz range. The author was putting forth the suggestion that this has to do with life expectancy AND suggesting that updating at a faster rate in effect makes the total time passage between life and death similar in both instances. Carrying this comparison a little further he went on to explain that the common fly has the ability to update in the 225-250 hz range. (This kind of explains why it is so hard to kill a fly with a fly swatter as we must move in extreme slow motion from their perspective). They also live a very short life... but .... is it true that it seems just as long to them?
Of course my mind instantly went off in several other directions on that same subject. I read some time ago that we seldom actually update at full speed. It simply takes up too much concentration and energy and for efficiency we usually observe something for long enough to establish a pattern and then slow down our update rates in favor of predictive snapshots taken occasionally only to confirm the pattern is correct. Presumably.... this means that the more comfortable we get with the idea that we don't need to fully utilize full update rates the slower this actually gets until it is at a rate that is only a very small energy drain. We can recalibrate and update faster when something is amiss and we sense that our prediction is wrong. This was all written in explanation of optical illusions and the fact that eyewitness accounts are often so wrong when it comes to the actual physics of what happened.
I found this interesting enough at the time but somehow the correlation between update rates and our understanding of the passage of time also triggered some completely new thoughts. I have been researching how aging affects the brain as I have noticed that I sometimes now struggle to recall words or terminology for a short period while discussing things with other people. What I discovered is that the brain is a lot like a processor in that it is very parallel but not necessarily extremely fast. As we age we start to form more connections but are not as parallel. In other words, we can pull up more detail and in depth understanding but not necessarily at the same speed. It is the difference between passing information at top speed and passing information at a slower speed but with more contingent connections. Upon reading this, I felt a little better as I noticed in my own case that the terminology came to me; it just sometimes was not instantaneous. It more or less matches what I have read about how this works.
All of this goes to explain my next connection from the update rate. One of the things I discovered in researching how the brain works is the oft quoted idea that exercising the brain is a necessary part of staying mentally sharp. I think that is pretty well known and accepted but the update thing suddenly added another dimension to the equation. Currently, there is a sort of cottage industry of sites such as luminosity pushing mental exercise word games and such as a means of keeping the brain agile and healthy. I think this will only work to a point. If we do crossword puzzles or any other similar activity we find that they get easier the more of them you do. We are so good at pattern recognition type thinking that we begin to see who people who design such things go about the process. I found this out years ago when I started doing crossword puzzles in our local morning paper. I struggled at first but soon could do them in a very short time period. However.... I found that when I tried to expand and do those in the evening paper or other publications I was not nearly as efficient at getting them done. I didn't put a whole lot of thought into why but I think it was simply pattern recognition of that particular author.
It seemed an arcane and ridiculous thing to spend a lot of time on at the time and I soon lost interest. Keeping in mind the update rate thing it suddenly dawned on me today that it isn't doing anything in particular that keeps our brain agile it is doing something we don't know how to do. In other words, it is the very process of learning something new that requires our concentration.... our focus... to the point that we are in effect straining the bounds of that update rate and making our brain work at full speed or full effort. That is the key I think. A new subject...... one that we have to constantly go back and forth to different sources and really rack our concentration out on is tiring but absolutely necessary for high brain function. In effect, it is the difference between jogging around the block and doing interval training. It is the heavy lifting of wading through something complicated enough to require our full attention that strengthens the thought process; not the comfortable recollection and repetition of something we know well.
If this is true.... and I think it demonstrably is; maybe it also explains why people are often more comfortable in shared belief systems. Having faith in why things occur is obviously much less taxing on the brain than searching for reasons why things occur. It also explains why most people prefer affirmation to information. Maybe I should start a research project correlating intellectual curiousity with early onset dementia and Alzheimer's.
What does all this mean? Maybe it means I have too much time on my hands... but more likely it is just another manifestation of somehow needing to understand how everything ties together.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Work Ethic
Occasionally, something happens in the periphery of my life that really makes me angry. Usually it has something to do with a personal acquaintance but it can be more random. I was raised in a manner that probably doesn't occur that much anymore in that my parents instilled in me a work ethic that is very prevalent in my world view. In other words, any task that is worth doing is worth doing to the ultimate of your ability. I seldom do anything at less than a full effort as I not only feel it is the right thing to do; I get a sense of satisfaction from the effort as well.
The other side of this ethic is the idea that life is often unfair. Reality teaches us that the concept of fair seldom is the overriding concern in nature so to expect that life will be fair is to put yourself in for a lot of disappointment. Better to understand that fair is a human concept and one that seldom actually applies across the wide spectrum of our lives except as a goal. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for the concept of being fair and feel that it is a fundamental goal in our relationship with other people. However, to expect that everything in life will be fair is not very realistic.
I have always felt that employment is simply an extension of myself. In other words, I don't separate my working life from my personal aspirations of how to treat other people. If I work for someone, I do my level best to give them the best return on the investment they are making in me. Again, it is not simply an ethical concern, it is part of the self satisfaction I derive from my work and the catalyst for going to work in the first place. I have been lucky enough to have worked in industries where I enjoy my work. Either that or I have never stayed in a job that I didn't enjoy, but I honestly don't remember a job that I had where I hated going to work every day. I have had some rough jobs, working in sweat shop manufacturing, farm work, construction work on many different levels, and even worked for a while in retail sales when I was in high school. I always derived a sense of satisfaction from doing the job and doing it well. I can't say I would have done the jobs without getting pay, but I also would not say that I ever did a job that I didn't derive a sense of satisfaction from.
Recently, I have become aware of a shift in how jobs are perceived. The last few years have been very hard on those seeking employment as unemployment has hit and lingered at levels that were simply unheard of for much of my working life. I won't bother to go into the realities of how such numbers are computed but it seems rather obvious that jobs are much harder to come by today than at any point in memory. Beyond that, most jobs that are available are low paying jobs with little or no opportunity for real advancement. This has led to a situation where there is excess of labor and very little demand of anything but the barest minimum of skilled labor in most jobs that are available. It has also created an ideology amongst business owners that I find to be dangerous and destructive.
Many businesses now operate on a business model that considers the excess of labor as their own private disposable pool of labor. We are seeing that play out in ways that simply didn't exist for much of this half of the last century. Wal-Mart is just one example of an entity that subsists largely off of that pool of labor but there are many, many more very successful and wealth corporate entities that use this same model. The long and the short of this model is that most employees wind up working less than full time so that they get no benefits. This would not be possible if unemployment was not rampant and a lot of these corporations fully realize this and lobby accordingly.
Free market adherents point out that this is perfectly acceptable under our system without admitting that this is not a free market in reality. Many of these industries take full advantage of government subsidies and tax breaks to build their business and in effect utilize government assistance programs to subsidize the ability of their employees to subsist on the wages they pay them. In other words, the government subsidizes their profits by making up the slack in what their employees make while at the same time giving massive tax breaks to the corporation up front. This system actually has no resemblance at all to a free market but you won't hear that view espoused very often.
I see this scenario playing out over and over again with my daughter's friends. The same people that rail against the work ethic of our youth and insist on cutting government assistance programs make huge profits off of the system through tax breaks and stock investments. I see the same germination of a work ethic in my daughter's friends that I am so familiar with but it is being strangled by a system that treats them like so many cogs in a machine. They struggle to subsist on wages little above minimum wage while their hours are cut and they are increasingly treated with less respect and more disdain from the people who profit from their labor. Small business owners short their hours, demand faster and more efficient use of their time while at the same time complaining that their employees have no loyalty.
Ethics is a two way street. You cannot treat people with no respect and expect to get respect in return. That has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with reality. There has been a lot of publicity lately about how skewed our economic distribution system has become. Corporate leaders now make 700 times what their employees make as a national average. Small business owners seem to have taken this ratio to heart as well. While I have not seen real numbers on this difference, I can see by direct observation that the ratio at this level is well out of balance. Employees who work 32 hours a week at less than $10 an hour support business owners who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and call themselves job creators in a self-congratulatory way.
These same business owners rail against paying taxes while at the same time offering jobs that make it impossible for their employees to make a wage high enough to support themselves. Most are presently realigning their work scheduling to make sure that they are not liable for providing health care coverage for their employees under the new law. While this saves them money on the front end, it inevitably costs them more money on the long end when these employees are later forced to seek the most expensive care in the free world at hospital emergency rooms. These costs are then passed on to everyone else in the form of higher insurance premiums to cover these exorbitant costs to the system. In other words, those who have insurance subsidize those who don't while business owners reap the difference in profit margins.
The point of my most recent anger came in a conversation with my daughter the other night. The small business owner she has worked for the last few years is expanding his business. He has a fairly loyal group of steady employees who have worked for him for the last few years; so much so that he rarely makes an appearance at his business except to pick up money and distribute paychecks. As a part of his expansion he is asking this core group of employees to help train new employees and establish his new business in another community. This means a further trip to work, more responsibility, and more headaches for everyone.
In order to deal with these problems he has established a new policy requiring all employees to come to a weekly organizational meeting at the new place of business. In fairness to him, all these employees have received a modest increase in pay for their new responsibilities. However, these new required meetings are to be attended on their own time. His employees are all hourly employees but are expected to increase their attendance of off work meetings for which they will not get paid.
This is a point of contention to the point of outright anger with me. Every employer can choose to employ their people as hourly wage earners or as salaried employees. As there are advantages and disadvantages to each system, it is a matter of choosing which is best for the employer as employees seldom get the chance to choose. Having chosen to pay people on an hourly basis because it is most beneficial to the owner, it is both ethically reprehensible and illegal to then demand these employees attend meetings for which they will not be paid. These meetings are not so that the employees can advance their prospects or increase their earning power they are called so that the owner can advance his personal prospects and increase his profits.
I would venture to say that most small businesses still realize that it is their employees who make or break their business. Somehow, many can't seem to make the connection between treating their employees with respect and having their employees' respect in return. After all, loyalty and respect are simply outgrowths of this basic concept of human ethics. Give and you shall receive is accepted as a concrete truth without understanding that it is impossible to continuously receive without giving. Unfortunately, many of these concepts of honesty, integrity, and basic human consideration have been replaced with simple greed and profit maximization at the expense of all else.
I have made every effort to teach my daughter the value of work and ethical honesty. If you work for someone you owe them your best effort and your absolute honesty. The current economic situation of disposable labor makes a mockery of all of these ideals. I am tired of seeing the same people who rail about work ethics utilize business practices devoid of ethics of any kind. People learn by example and we are teaching a whole generation of workers that ethics and work are mutually exclusive. I cannot say what the results of this type of business model will be with any certainty. Whatever the result will be, they are multiplied in effect by the duration that we allow this to continue and I see no end in sight.
The other side of this ethic is the idea that life is often unfair. Reality teaches us that the concept of fair seldom is the overriding concern in nature so to expect that life will be fair is to put yourself in for a lot of disappointment. Better to understand that fair is a human concept and one that seldom actually applies across the wide spectrum of our lives except as a goal. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for the concept of being fair and feel that it is a fundamental goal in our relationship with other people. However, to expect that everything in life will be fair is not very realistic.
I have always felt that employment is simply an extension of myself. In other words, I don't separate my working life from my personal aspirations of how to treat other people. If I work for someone, I do my level best to give them the best return on the investment they are making in me. Again, it is not simply an ethical concern, it is part of the self satisfaction I derive from my work and the catalyst for going to work in the first place. I have been lucky enough to have worked in industries where I enjoy my work. Either that or I have never stayed in a job that I didn't enjoy, but I honestly don't remember a job that I had where I hated going to work every day. I have had some rough jobs, working in sweat shop manufacturing, farm work, construction work on many different levels, and even worked for a while in retail sales when I was in high school. I always derived a sense of satisfaction from doing the job and doing it well. I can't say I would have done the jobs without getting pay, but I also would not say that I ever did a job that I didn't derive a sense of satisfaction from.
Recently, I have become aware of a shift in how jobs are perceived. The last few years have been very hard on those seeking employment as unemployment has hit and lingered at levels that were simply unheard of for much of my working life. I won't bother to go into the realities of how such numbers are computed but it seems rather obvious that jobs are much harder to come by today than at any point in memory. Beyond that, most jobs that are available are low paying jobs with little or no opportunity for real advancement. This has led to a situation where there is excess of labor and very little demand of anything but the barest minimum of skilled labor in most jobs that are available. It has also created an ideology amongst business owners that I find to be dangerous and destructive.
Many businesses now operate on a business model that considers the excess of labor as their own private disposable pool of labor. We are seeing that play out in ways that simply didn't exist for much of this half of the last century. Wal-Mart is just one example of an entity that subsists largely off of that pool of labor but there are many, many more very successful and wealth corporate entities that use this same model. The long and the short of this model is that most employees wind up working less than full time so that they get no benefits. This would not be possible if unemployment was not rampant and a lot of these corporations fully realize this and lobby accordingly.
Free market adherents point out that this is perfectly acceptable under our system without admitting that this is not a free market in reality. Many of these industries take full advantage of government subsidies and tax breaks to build their business and in effect utilize government assistance programs to subsidize the ability of their employees to subsist on the wages they pay them. In other words, the government subsidizes their profits by making up the slack in what their employees make while at the same time giving massive tax breaks to the corporation up front. This system actually has no resemblance at all to a free market but you won't hear that view espoused very often.
I see this scenario playing out over and over again with my daughter's friends. The same people that rail against the work ethic of our youth and insist on cutting government assistance programs make huge profits off of the system through tax breaks and stock investments. I see the same germination of a work ethic in my daughter's friends that I am so familiar with but it is being strangled by a system that treats them like so many cogs in a machine. They struggle to subsist on wages little above minimum wage while their hours are cut and they are increasingly treated with less respect and more disdain from the people who profit from their labor. Small business owners short their hours, demand faster and more efficient use of their time while at the same time complaining that their employees have no loyalty.
Ethics is a two way street. You cannot treat people with no respect and expect to get respect in return. That has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with reality. There has been a lot of publicity lately about how skewed our economic distribution system has become. Corporate leaders now make 700 times what their employees make as a national average. Small business owners seem to have taken this ratio to heart as well. While I have not seen real numbers on this difference, I can see by direct observation that the ratio at this level is well out of balance. Employees who work 32 hours a week at less than $10 an hour support business owners who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and call themselves job creators in a self-congratulatory way.
These same business owners rail against paying taxes while at the same time offering jobs that make it impossible for their employees to make a wage high enough to support themselves. Most are presently realigning their work scheduling to make sure that they are not liable for providing health care coverage for their employees under the new law. While this saves them money on the front end, it inevitably costs them more money on the long end when these employees are later forced to seek the most expensive care in the free world at hospital emergency rooms. These costs are then passed on to everyone else in the form of higher insurance premiums to cover these exorbitant costs to the system. In other words, those who have insurance subsidize those who don't while business owners reap the difference in profit margins.
The point of my most recent anger came in a conversation with my daughter the other night. The small business owner she has worked for the last few years is expanding his business. He has a fairly loyal group of steady employees who have worked for him for the last few years; so much so that he rarely makes an appearance at his business except to pick up money and distribute paychecks. As a part of his expansion he is asking this core group of employees to help train new employees and establish his new business in another community. This means a further trip to work, more responsibility, and more headaches for everyone.
In order to deal with these problems he has established a new policy requiring all employees to come to a weekly organizational meeting at the new place of business. In fairness to him, all these employees have received a modest increase in pay for their new responsibilities. However, these new required meetings are to be attended on their own time. His employees are all hourly employees but are expected to increase their attendance of off work meetings for which they will not get paid.
This is a point of contention to the point of outright anger with me. Every employer can choose to employ their people as hourly wage earners or as salaried employees. As there are advantages and disadvantages to each system, it is a matter of choosing which is best for the employer as employees seldom get the chance to choose. Having chosen to pay people on an hourly basis because it is most beneficial to the owner, it is both ethically reprehensible and illegal to then demand these employees attend meetings for which they will not be paid. These meetings are not so that the employees can advance their prospects or increase their earning power they are called so that the owner can advance his personal prospects and increase his profits.
I would venture to say that most small businesses still realize that it is their employees who make or break their business. Somehow, many can't seem to make the connection between treating their employees with respect and having their employees' respect in return. After all, loyalty and respect are simply outgrowths of this basic concept of human ethics. Give and you shall receive is accepted as a concrete truth without understanding that it is impossible to continuously receive without giving. Unfortunately, many of these concepts of honesty, integrity, and basic human consideration have been replaced with simple greed and profit maximization at the expense of all else.
I have made every effort to teach my daughter the value of work and ethical honesty. If you work for someone you owe them your best effort and your absolute honesty. The current economic situation of disposable labor makes a mockery of all of these ideals. I am tired of seeing the same people who rail about work ethics utilize business practices devoid of ethics of any kind. People learn by example and we are teaching a whole generation of workers that ethics and work are mutually exclusive. I cannot say what the results of this type of business model will be with any certainty. Whatever the result will be, they are multiplied in effect by the duration that we allow this to continue and I see no end in sight.
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