Dreaming

Those of you that have seen Minority Report, will remember Tom Cruise draging objects across a screen and manipulating them in all kinds of ways, or pushing them aside to bring up something new. I dreamt about doing exactly that yesterday. It was really cool. No doubt the dream was brought on by a video of Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU's Courant Institute I saw recently. Click here.

The guys at NYU have come up an interface, which responds not only to touch and gestures, but to varying degrees of pressure. In the video he flips photos across the screen, zooms in, throws them away, and calls up new ones, among a variety of other cool uses. Truly amazing! Read about Han here.

NASA images

I was having a look at the NASA website today and came across a few interesting images.

The first one shows the unusually warm temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere this winter. It shows the December 2006 land surface temperature compared to the average December temperatures from 2000-2005. (Land surface temperatures are how hot or cool the land surface would feel to the touch. It is different from the air temperature, which is what weather stations usually measure.)

Where daytime land surface temperatures are above the five-year average the area is coloured red, places where it is below the average in blue, and places near the average are white. Dramatic swaths of red paint most of the Northern Hemisphere.

This second image shows rivers of smoke from Victorian bush fires from January 11, 2007. These fires are burning from areas in Victoria’s Great Dividing Range Mountains. Places where the satellite detected actively burning fires are outlined in red. Many fires were burning dangerously close to Lake Thomson, the principal source of water for Melbourne (beyond the western edge of the image).

More recently (16 January) the major interconnector between New South Wales and Victoria went down because of bush fires and left many in Melbourne without electricity.

Hverdag igen - nu med en pingvin

[Below is an account of the movie Happy Feet and a new addition to our family - Pingu the toy penguin]

Med farmor og farfar atter i Danmark, Tobias i børnehaven og de første to uger af den australske sommerferieperiode overstået, så er det så småt ved at være hverdag igen.

I mandags var vi i biffen. Vi så "Happy Feet", en tegnefilm om pingviner. Den handler om pingvinen Mumble som er anderledes end andre pingviner, formodentlig fordi hans far ikke har passet godt nok på hans æg (et lidt sørgelig budskab for ligestilling). Mumble kan ikke synge som alle de andre pingviner. Istedet kan han danse (eller steppe) og så er han ellers lidt af en individualist.

Han plages af et trauma tidligt i livet, hvor han jagtes af nogle rovfugle. En af dem er fuglemærket og påstår han har været borført af aliens (som vi ved er mennesker).

Tiden går, Mumble bliver ældre og pingvinerne plages af et fald i fiskebestanden. Fordi Mumble stepper som en vanvittig, ikke synger og er venner med nogle pingviner af en anden race, som taler med spansk accent, får han som det sorte får skylden for den svindende fiskebestand. Mumble tror imidlertid, at det er de fornævnte aliens, der har skylden og drager afsted med sine udenlandske venner for at bevise sin teori. De finder et forladt fiskecenter ved kysten. Men Mumble er ikke tilfreds. Fiskeriet skal stoppes og han svømmer derfor efter fiskbådene. De er ikke sådan at bide skeer med og han ender i en zoo på trods af hans anstrengelser

Mens han prøver, at kommunikere med menneskene (pingvinsprog virker ikke) stepper han, hvilket videnskabsmændene tager som tegn på at der er endnu uudforsket sociale aspekter ved pingviner. De sender Mumble tilbage til Antarctica (med en radiosender på ryggen så de kan finde ham). Her får han sin stamme til at steppe i koordineret facon (ala river dance) foran videnskabsmændene. Videooptagelser af de dansende pingviner vises verden rundt og herefter debatteres hvordan Antarctica kan beskyttes så pingvinerne kan bevares. Pingvinerne beholder deres fisk og vi kan alle leve lykkeligt til vore dages ende.

Tobias havde Pingu med i biffen. Pingu er en pingvinbamse som Christoffer har fået af farmor og farfar, men som Tobias har taget til sig som sin egen. Hvis der var een som skulle med og se en film om pingviner, så var det Pingu.

Tobias er nærmest besat af Pingu. Et par eksempler kan nok hjælpe lidt på forståelsen. Pingu sover i en sovepose ligesom Tobias. Majken måtte have symaskinen frem og sy en til dyret. Da vi var nede og handle ind og Pingu ikke var med bemærkede Tobias, at vi skulle skynde os hjem til Pingu fordi den savnede ham og ikke kunne lide at være alene. Ja, Pingu har meget menneskelige følser på trods af, at Tobias gentagne gange har gjort os opmærksom på at han kun er en bamse (f.eks. da han lukkede ham inde i en plasticpose og jeg bemærkede at han nok ikke kunne få luft).

Pingu får hellere ikke lov til at komme med i børnehaven. Ifølge Tobias ville han blive fyldt med sand og det ville han ikke kunne li'. Det er nu osse meget godt, at Pingu bliver hjemme når Tobias er afsted, så kan Pingu’s rette ejermand - Christoffer - nemlig få lov til at have ham lidt i fred.

Happy Feet er en sød film. Den er flot lavet og Tobias var ret begejstret for den. Det er dog langt fra en storfilm og der er for meget sang og musik til min smag.

Tobias and time preference

We tend to regard waiting as a cost and prefer a benefit now rather than in the future. This is captured in the notion of time preference and concerns the rate at which we as individuals trade-off present and future outcomes (or consumption).

Children sometimes see things slightly differently, so I tried a small experiment with Tobias a couple of days ago. I asked him the following: Would you like 1 ice cream now or 2 tomorrow? His answer was 1 today. I then asked whether he would prefer 1 ice cream now or 3 tomorrow. His immediate reaction was, wow ... 3 ice creams - that's a lot. After some thought he decided upon 3 tomorrow, although it was a difficult choice. He was very tempted to go with 1 ice cream today.

Tobias clearly has a very high positive rate of time preference. He values the present very highly and does not appear to think much of the future. There are a number of reasons why this might be the case:

• He is very impatient;
• He views the future as very uncertain - if consumption of a good is deferred it may never be enjoyed at all, i.e. we as parents change our opinion tomorrow or forget the deal; and
• He has diminishing marginal utility - additional consumption at a later date may add less to utility than consumption now.

Alternatively, he might have been starving and in need of an energy boost. Of course I carefully designed the experiment to avoid this situation by offering him an ice cream as a dessert after a main meal :-).

For Tobias I think impatience is driving his desire for ice cream. Uncertainty over the future also plays a key role because the future is a difficult concept to grasp at his age. Nevertheless, I hope he understands and appreciates that we as parents keep our promises (or at least try to).

But things are not always as they seem. Today I asked him the same questions again. This time he was unwilling to defer his ice cream consumption to the next day. I even offered him 4 ice creams and to that he responded, shaking his head in disbelief: Dad, 4 is too much!

Rock Climbing @ Kangaroo Point

I have often run past the rock climbing wall at Kangaroo Point thinking it would be fun to try. On Wednesday we arranged a climb with Majken’s friend Rikke.

I thought scaling the vertical rock wall would be easy, but boy was I mistaken. I only just managed to fight my way to the top. Rock climbing is a very technical discipline that requires plenty of strength and agility.

Which Superhero are You?

Want to be Superhero tested? Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz. I was 80% Green Lantern, hot-headed with a strong will power and a good imagination.

New Year

New Year celebrations were fairly low key (as they have been for a number of years now). Compared to the localised firework bonanza in Denmark with everyone pitching in with a few rockets and screamers, Australians take a more civilised and centralised approach with a ban on fireworks.

At a quarter to nine o’clock we headed down to the Brisbane River to see the fireworks display for children. This was a warm-up session before the midnight display for adults.

The following morning we practiced our rocket launching skills in the park (see pics below).