Charles Denault III

We can move forwards, backwards, left, right, up, and down. But imagine if we could move those three dimensions? Instead of moving within those dimensions, what if we could just pick them up and move them. We already do this, we’re doing it right now. We’re all doing it at relatively the same rate. The faster we travel through those three dimensions, the faster we move those dimensions. So if we’re just sitting still on the Earth, we’re moving those dimensions at the same speed as someone who’s walking down the street; this is because the differences are extremely negligible. Though imagine the astronauts that are rocketing through space. They’re moving the three dimensions at a somewhat faster rate than we are.

When you move those three dimensions, you are traveling through time.

Time travel is nothing more than the moving of dimensions. The real question lies in whether or not we are capable of moving those dimensions backwards. After all, time travel into the future is extremely easy. You simply have to travel extremely fast. In other words, you simply have to move very quickly through the usual three dimensions in order to notice a change in the fourth dimension. So hop on a space ship traveling close to the speed of light, travel around the the solar system, and come back and you’ll have effectively traveled forward in time. For instance, if you spent 1 hour on the space ship traveling at the speed of light, something in the order of thousands of years would have passed on Earth. Similarly, if you were able to stand on the edge of a black hole, without being crushed into an infinitesimally small point of matter, you could also experience a massively large movement of the fourth dimension.

I never realized how much time I spent staring into the deep abyss that we call Facebook. I literally always had it open in one tab of Chrome, I had the app on my iPhone, and I got notifications, texts, and emails all day long. It controlled my life, and there’s no moderating it! Sure, you can tone down the number of emails you get, but as soon as someone posts to your wall, messages you, etc. you have to log in to see. Then you spend an hour stalking old flings, looking at childhood photos, playing games, and writing rather inane and cryptic messages on your friend’s walls. Following my brother in law, I went cold turkey and deleted that bad boy. I never looked back since.

With all of my new found free time, I’ve accomplished a lot of cool things. I’m opening a new business on the West Coast, I had time to work on ChuckFish.com, and I got to spend a lot of my spare time learning new things. I read through a few books. Here was my last reading list:

Social Engineering

A brilliant read on the inner-workings of the human mind and how people behave within society. It dives deep into the black arts of manipulation and related concepts. It’s tough to describe, but I recommend it if you’re interested in people/psychology.

Alpha Dogs

A great book on how small business owners stayed small, yet grew to become market leaders. Features a bicycle shop that does several million to an ice cream shop that lets managers essentially do whatever they want! It’s a neat read following neat businesses.

I read a few other books that weren’t as noteworthy, but at the time of this writing I’m about to open DNA, The secret of life by the one and only James D. Watson.

A little thought I had while bear hunting in Canada.

I’m not too sure of the implications of this, nor do I know if there is a need… Hell, I don’t even know if it’s even remotely possible.

Here it goes:

You can take a piece of DNA that codes for a protein. You can then break it down into the specific amino acid. That’s pretty self explanatory. We’ve been doing that for years now. Then you know the specific order of the amino acids. You officially have the primary structure of the protein that is being coded.

Then, using a “cheat sheet” of sorts, you could determine whether the amino acids form an alpha helix or a pleated sheet when they’re linked with hydrogen bonds. You now have the secondary structure. Repeat this process until you determine the tertiary and quaternary structures.

We already know the exact structure of many proteins, so assuming the amino acids follow the same rules when they fold. A comprehensive database can be formed to describe the specific folding, linkage, etc. A simple program could easily render the structure, allowing us to easily view the entire structure. Whether or not this is already being done, I’m not too sure… but I thought it might be neat. Who knows what sort of implications this could have, perhaps it would be the first step in visualizing more complex interactions between proteins, organelles, cells, tissues! Who knows! After all, I do believe that there is a pattern beneath everything and every organism on this planet is just a set of instructions.

Since the dawn of computers, scientists have longed to bring intelligence and consciousness to their computers. Countless attempts at beating the turing test, machines that can play chess, natural speech interpreters; it’s all a collection of algorithms written by a human trying to play God. Functions with specific arguments, designed to return an even more specific result. This sort of system can never yield anything other than a pure computation machine.

Biologists hardly understand the systems that make humans tick. It was only recently that “junk DNA” turned out to do something after-all. The electrical signals from the brain can be monitored endlessly, however the neuroscientist still cannot produce a picture of the cognitive canvas. They claim modern marvels by designing robotics that interface with brain, yet the true mystery is the brains elasticity and willingness to accept and control such devices, not their primitive technology.

I believe that computers are bound to go through phases, just as any other technology has done. Much alike the hand mill/steam mill example, the present day computer is not the pinnacle of technology, but merely an extremely basic version of what’s to come. Quantum computing will be the logical next step. The proposed computing power of such a machine would be unparalleled by today’s technology. Quantum computing, however, will be replaced. I believe that the ideal design lies within that of biological processes.

First, we must learn to understand the system. It will start with a primitive organism, such as a bacteria. The genome of the species will be fully documented, and programmable. Geneticists will be able to “code” for new genes, producing miraculous results. DNA will become the ultimate programming language, much like assembly for computers.

Scientists will then learn to utilize such protocols as chemotaxis and photosynthesis, one of the most elementary functions of these bacteria. More about DNA will slowly become understood, and the miracles of birth will be recorded in a clear and concise manor, easily reproduced.

Soon everything regarding biological species will be understood. From the way humans think, to the subtle differences between man and dog.

I believe that geneticists will uncover a higher level programming language embedded within the DNA. I believe that this language is going to be found within the non-coding regions of the genome, which was largely regarded as “junk.” It’s going to be at least a decade before it’s truly understood, and perhaps an additional decade before the conceited scientists realize they made numerous mistakes and misconceptions the first time around.

If computers have taught us anything, it may be that hardware is the structure for which everything is built, but the true innovation lies within the software. Even still, the software may have numerous levels. For instance, everything is ultimately built on a set of processor instructions, which then the operating system interacts, on top of which the programs run. For a system as elastic as the brain, which can lose ½ of it’s mass and still function perfectly, it wouldn’t make much sense that everything would be written in the lowest level language.

The brain structure has to stem from instructions within the DNA. Yet imagine if the coding regions of the DNA are merely construction instructions, while the operating portion resides within the noncoding region. The noncoding region is actually a cryptic structure which defines the very algorithms that control every process within the organism. This would also solve the age old question as to why the DNA of a chimp closely (98.something%) resembles that of a human, and a banana has somewhere around 50 % of similar DNA.  It’s because each organism, regardless of its structure, behaves and acts the exact same. All of this did, theoretically, extend from one single organism way back when… when the first cell adopted viral DNA! They’re all operating on very similar instructions, adding further validity that animals are not so different than you and I. (Assuming you’re human)