I have undertaken, by popular demand (of 1 constituting about 10% of my readership) to address the subject of time travel, mostly how the current laws of physics make Terminator Salvation quite impossible (aside from the idea that we could inadvertently create sentience in a computer system.)

Time travel can be quite confusing, so I’ll begin by putting things in their correct context. A physicist does not like the term time travel because travel is, by definition, something you do in spatial dimensions. You may travel through a room, but we do not travel through time. Time is a part of the universe in which we live and, like space, is also relative. This means that there is no such thing as an absolute standard of time. In other words, no physical law states that two observers must measure time at the same rate. This is part of the Twins Paradox. Basically if you gave a pair of twins the most accurate atomic clocks known to man and then put one twin on top of Mt. Everest (highest point on Earth) for the rest of his life and the other twin at the bottom of the Marianas Trench (lowest point on Earth) set both clocks for 50 years to the second, the Everest clock would expire first, relative to an observer at sea level.

All this is to say that neither time nor space are constants, so in some sense if you get in a car and drive anywhere (thanks to time dialation) you have “traveled” forward in time, i.e. you have arrived at a point in time that did not take the whole time to get to from the point of a relatively stationary observer. With me so far? Okay. Time travel is actually exploiting a closed timelike curve, or a loop in space-time. Because space and time are inter-connected it is (theoretically) possible to perturb space and time into a loop. Though there is only speculation about how this might be accomplished, a loop in space-time would allow something to return to a previous point in time that exists on the loop. Attaining this goal requires something science calls exotic material or matter which has the quality of negative average energy density. At the moment exotic matter is just an idea; there is currently no proof of its existence. (If it did exist it would also be integral to ½ of a Star Trek-like warp drive, but that is another story.) For now I’ll ignore the more popular go-faster-than-light time travel theories because they don’t work well for literally getting a tangible object to some place corresponding with a time in the past.

So let us assume that such a thing as a time machine exists that is capable of both creating and exploiting a closed timelike curve. Usually this sort of thing appears in science fiction, particularly in the film series Terminator. So the question becomes, can a person, or machine go back in time and change things? The answer to this question is most often no. The reason is that it violates causality. Causality is the idea that every physical event has a cause. We may not know or fully understand the cause, or even be able to predict a cause’s effect but all effects have a cause. For this reason, the probability of an effect having a cause in the future is zero unless the cause is not a cause, i.e., is produces no effects. Theoretically a person could go back in time and observe some historic event, but not interfere. A person could go back in time and change something, but only so long as that thing did not have any effect on history. This means a person could save some of a species of plant, animal etc., and replace it with a facsimile, and then bring the thing back to the future to begin having effects there. This idea is called the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. Basically, no event in the past can be predicated on an event in the future which might be predicated on that same event in the past.

What does this ultimately mean? It means that John Conner could not have sent his own father back in time to conceive him with his mother. It also means that SkyNet could not possibly hope to improve the future by changing the past. Doing so is the definition of a space-time paradox which is either prevented from occurring by the laws of physics or drastically bad for the universe because it would cause the laws of physics to breakdown. The only other places I know where the laws of physics as we know them do not apply are inside the event horizons of black holes. This doesn’t mean that a space-time paradox would create a black hole; it does mean that in said paradox the universe as we know it breaks down and the ability to comprehend as we do goes along with it.

On the off chance that there is a bigger geek than me reading this going “Hey! What about the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics?” Novikov assumes these are inaccessible, and if you have some evidence to suggest that they are, I’m all ears Doc Brown. 1.21 JIGAWATTS!

Having spent many years doing things on the Internet has taught me that virtually anything (knowledge-wise) is available online. I remember at the age of 16 I found an old 1930s era telephone; I found the wiring schematics online, re-wired it and made it work. This was back in the mid to late 90s when the commercial Internet was booming, but fast and easy access for all was not necessarily the rule.

What follows is a list of online resources that make available all kinds of information quickly and easily. If you know of any good websites please comment with information such as topic / subject matter and URL. As a final comment I am intentionally leaving out search engines, e.g. Google, because everyone knows about them and they require a certain understanding of the Internet to be really effective.

General Knowledge:

1. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org
2. Wikibooks, http://en.wikibooks.org (There are a number of great resources under the wiki heading, you can find them at the bottom of the Wikipedia main page.)
3. iTunes U (This is available via the iTunes store and contains thousands of free video and audio from Universities around the world)
4. Adobe Media Player (You can download this from Adobe, it has great informational videos as well as episodes of Star Trek and 90210 etc.)
5. Digg, http://digg.com (Harnesses the power of the random surfer to find all kinds of stuff. It’s not the most organized collection of info, but neither is this blog post.)

General Science:

1. Wolfram Alpha, http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

History Source Material

1. Internet History Sourcebook Project, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ (This is a listing of primary source materials for all epochs of recorded human history. Indispensable to the history buff or history major.)
2. Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page (This should not necessarily be under the history heading, but this site contains tens of thousands of free e-books [historical because their copyrights have expired.])

Music

1. Ricci Adams’ musictheory.net, http://www.musictheory.net/ (Includes various utilities and trainers, all available for download)
2. Chordie, http://www.chordie.com (Includes tons of guitar chords, tablature, lessons and instruction for free)

Tech Stuff

1. Revision3, http://www.revision3.com (A website of free videos about everything cool, technical and some other random stuff.)

It is often said that the best offense is a good defense, or maybe it is the other way around. In any case preparing for a zombie attack will make it easier when it does in fact occur. There are certain precursors or signs to look for that signal a massive undead uprising. These signs vary depending on the type of zombies that issue forth.

The voodoo/magical zombies will be the easiest to detect because there are many forces that keep a large number of them from being created. Armies of these zombies can’t be summoned at the drop of a hat. Something special is required to really rouse the dead en masse. Usually some astronomical phenomenon will do the trick. If the planets are all aligned, or some weather anomaly turn the moon red, this is a sure sign that something bad is about to happen. For the exceptionally paranoid reader: read the Book of Revelation, especially the parts about the breaking of seals and pouring out of judgment. (It will be your job to stand in crowds of running people, recite those scriptures and say that this is God’s righteous punishment.) Because voodoo has roots in Catholicism there are also certain ecclesiastical powers that prevent zombie uprisings. A wide scale uprising can, therefore only take place at the actual end of days or in the interim period between popes.

How to Prepare:

Freak astronomical events only occur at a great expanse of years (1000 years is a good round number.) Unfortunately, there are not accurate records about the last zombie uprising because they have been suppressed by governments and/or some secret societies. Fortunately there are steps that can be taken. Determining what astronomical events to be concerned about we must first determine what previous astronomical events caused a mass zombie disturbance. This is a more challenging task. First we will need a panel of experts versed in dead languages, cryptographers, archeologists, astronomers, astrophysicists, and mystics. This group will be charged with poring over the sacred documents looking for codes, finding ancient libraries (the Holy Grail and/or Ark of the Covenant,) monitoring the sky, etc. They will warn of potential astronomical events so that society will not be caught unawares.

Popes, unfortunately, come and go more frequently (there have been 200 some in the past 2000 years.) We can petition the Vatican to have a new pope ready to go before the current pope dies. In fact, there can be a list of potential candidates just be safe (like the order of presidential succession.) This should prevent any lapse in ecclesiastical authority. After all it is surely bad doctrine to expose the faithful to potential zombie attack on an average of every 10 years.

Finding documents hidden by the government and secret societies is more difficult. First, an Anti-Zombie political party must be formed. The leader of this party must be elected chief executive of all countries that hold democratic elections so that he or she can appoint other Anti-Zombie Party members to key positions within intelligence agencies. For countries without democratically elected governments, Anti-Zombie nations will simply declare them a threat to their respective national securities, invade them, and talk their secret documents.

For secret societies everyone must be vigilant. When visiting friends, family and neighbors, search for signs that they belong to a secret society. Check closets for dark hooded cloaks and swords. Keep an eye out for strange tattoos. Touch every book in their library and pull on everything attached to the wall or floor as it may be a lever that opens the secret door leading to an underground lair. If there is any doubt it is best to err on the side of caution. Kidnap the potential secret society member and institute and number of medieval or modern torture methods to get them to confess. Remember that the innocent tend to confess quickly because they don’t know why they are being tortured so they’ll just tell you anything to prevent you from hurting them. In this case play the whole thing off as a joke and offer to buy them a beer but warn them sternly that if they know anything about secret societies or zombies to inform you immediately. After all this go ahead and track their movements for good measure. A good secret society member will warn other members; this may lead you right to their headquarters.

Final Considerations:

Voodoo and/or necromancy are not practiced widely in highly industrialized nations. This means that it is more likely that an attack by these zombies will begin someplace like the Caribbean. If other nations are, at least, prepared to repel the boarders most people should be safe until a more permanent solution can be implemented.

I must first apologize to my loyal reader base for not posting for the last 3 months or so. It couldn’t be helped. I had work, school and apathy preventing me from writing anything in particular. As of late I have been studying a new topic that I would like to explore. Namely, the inevitable rise of Zombies, how to survive in a zombie infested world, the necessary counter-strike and the new governments and social institutions that will arise in the aftermath.

I’ve been working on the problem for some time. The major problem in planning is knowing what kind of zombies will rise up. We must first assume that anything called a zombie is either undead or like undead. If they can die of exsanguination, be poisoned, or killed by destroying some major organ besides the brain they are definitely not zombies. These creatures are cannibals which require a completely different plan altogether. Having a rough definition of zombie, it is necessary to determine what types of zombies are attacking to determine the appropriate counter measures.

First order of business is determining what kinds of zombies are out there. There seem to be several main classifications of zombies. They are the voodoo/necromancer zombie, marsh/sea zombies, the viral/bacterial zombie, the scientific zombie, and the symbiotic zombie. The voodoo/necromancer zombies are the oldest and probably least dangerous. They don’t spread zombism and require knowledge of arcane black arts to create. This makes them susceptible to conventional and sacred attacks. The marsh/sea zombies are created by mythical powers associated with earth marshes or seas, like those in Underwater Nazi Zombies. The viral/bacterial zombies are like those in 28 Days and I Am Legend. They are created by some viral or bacterial infection and usually spread the infection when they bite someone, but don’t kill them. The scientific zombie is usually a government experiment gone wrong or something other technological monstrosity. These zombies may or may not easily infect others. Finally the symbiotic zombie is created when some organism, alien or terrestrial inhabits the victims and turns them into zombies.

There are additional classifications based on how they act or operate as opposed to how they are created. There are the slow lumbering undead types, fast bloodthirsty types, self propagating and non-propagating types, photophobic and non-photophobic types, cursed and non-cursed types, and miscellaneous. The photophobic zombies fear light, or otherwise can’t come out during the day. Cursed zombies may have a laundry list of powers and restrictions, they may only come out during a full moon, or not be able to enter holy ground they. They may be able to hypnotize their victims or melt in holy water. Really these types are bound by their specific curse. Miscellaneous zombies cover the weird stuff like Stephen King’s psionic zombies.

Am I missing anything? Should I add or remove something? What do you think?

My previous post has been received with mixed emotion.  In case anyone was wondering, yes, that was tongue-in-cheek.  This post will be accurate to the best of my knowledge.  Once again I will be covering spirits.

Like many things as ubiquitous as liquor, the origins of distillation have disappeared into the mists of time.  The noticeable usage and consumption of spirits begins in the early medieval period.  Arab alchemists were, most likely, the first to perfect distillation.  The expansion of Islam into Europe and the subsequent growth and expansion of European trade brought scientific communities together.  The knowledge spread and soon thereafter the product of that knowledge was becoming widely available.

There were mixed reactions to spirits but the majority of people accepted the new beverage quite willingly.  The medicinal value of wine had long been extolled by the ancients.  Because spirits were a concentrated version of wine or beer it was considered to be just that much more beneficial.  The real boon for liquor came with the age of exploration.  Beer and wine survived longer than water without spoiling but spirits where potable almost indefinitely.  An equal amount of spirits could make water safe for consumption or make several times the number of sailors forget their troubles.

As a brief and anachronistic aside, the British fleet probably saw the greatest effects thanks to Admiral Edward Vernon, aka Old Grogram or Old Grog (Grogram was a type of cloth used to make coats of which Admiral Vernon was quite fond.)  Old Grog diluted sailor’s rum with water.  This made for a good balance between potable water reserves and jolliness.  A short time later, lemon or lime juice was added to help ward off scurvy.  Some historians suggest that Britain’s maritime supremacy has to do with healthier, happier sailors.

In the early days of liquor, whiskey and brandy where the most commonly available beverages (brandy from the anglo-germanic brandt-wein and brandy-winn literally meaning burnt wine.)  Wine fortified with additional alcohol (the first of note being Port Wine, from Portugal.  I’m guessing you know where its name originates,) was also popular.  These new drinks now made much longer oversea expeditions possible.  The main items that returned in the cargo holds of these far-voyaging ships were spices.

Europeans had, apparently, been eating bland foods for so long that the experience of spiciness drove the creation and expansion of overseas empires (never mind the land and precious metals, etc.)  One such “spice” that tickled a particular European tooth was sugar.  The search for sugar took Europeans into Africa where they paid much of their local help in brandy or whiskey.  Like the priests of old, distilled alcoholic beverages became an abundant, reproducible, easily divisible and storable form of currency.  Not long after discovering their love of sugar they decided it made more sense to grow it themselves.

It should be mentioned at this point that the European love of sugar and desire to produce it as cheaply and abundantly as possible contributed heavily to the advancement of the African slave trade.  Any history of western expansion is inexorably tied with these sad portions of human history and the development of rum, liquor made from the byproducts of the sugar production or molasses, made the slave trade even more lucrative.  Sugar was already a highly valuable commodity.  The additional value of cheap rum in high demand caused the sugar industry to grow ever more rapidly.  More sugar meant more need for slaves, more slaves meant more rum and sugar, more Rum and sugar meant more slaves.  One of the most interesting facts about liquor is that demand seemed limitless, no matter how much was produced or how cheaply it could be acquired; there was always a call for more.

In the Americas in particular, daily life was awash in hard liquor.  The adversities of daily life in the colonies, particularly on the frontiers drove most people to distraction.  Even after the dissolution of British rule rum and various types of whiskey were widely and heavily consumed by the lower classes (which was almost everyone.)  So strong was the American love of whiskey that when Alexander Hamilton proposed a tax on whiskey by the gallon there was an all out rebellion.  Naturally the rebels didn’t do much because their goal was to be three sheets to the wind as often as possible.  It just goes to show that when the government drives through a levy that makes a county dry, good ol’ boys who were drinking whiskey and rye, start singing “This’ll be the day that I die.”

Having written about beer and wine, it seems only fitting (especially because it follows the chronology of the book where I am getting most of this information,) to write about spirits.  Not the evil kind, though their history has had little in the way of positive effect on human history.  No I mean heavily alcoholic beverages, the kinds that require distillation.  Because of the numerous different types I will focus on one in this particular post, namely brandy.

The history of brandy is not very long in the grand scheme of human history.  It begins in 1969 with the formation of the band Looking Glass.  Lead guitarist Elliot Lurie had an undisclosed “relationship” with a girl (her name is unfortunately lost to history forever.)  In order to lightly disguise that a song he was writing was about her, he changed the name of the song’s protagonist to Brandy (the girl’s actual name was reportedly similar.)  In 1972, Epic Records signed Looking Glass and produced their first album.  That album contained the run away hit Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl.) The rest is a roller coaster ride of meteoric rise to fame and tragedy.

The same year that Brandy was released it topped the charts for 3 weeks and went gold later that year.  Looking Glass, the struggling artists became overnight sensations.  Unfortunately their polished studio sound conflicted with their hard edge from previous years.  Fans were made and lost overnight.  What followed was a downward spiral into the depths of depression for all the band members except for drummer Jeff Grob.

Grob had long been a connoisseur of fine whiskey and scotch.  His contribution had been to recommend the addition of this line:

And there’s a girl, in this harbor town
And she works, laying whiskey down
They say “Brandy, fetch another round”
She serves them whiskey and wine

Grob and Lurie had been arguing about the merits of whiskey and wine respectively for years.  In an attempt to reach a middle ground and potentially prop up the bands teetering finances, Grob set out to make whiskey from wine.  His initial creation, a distillation of wine with the delicacy of wine, but the kick of a good scotch, was an immediate success.

The next hurdle was what to name the amazing new beverage.  Many ideas were proposed including Wineskey (derived from blending wine and whiskey) and Grolurskyval (derived from blending portions of all the band members last names.)  Finally it came to them, Brandy.  The drink would bear the name of the forlorn girl from the song.  It was perfect.

Unfortunately the band was denied both patent and copyright when it was discovered that the name Brandy conflicted, not only with Epic Records copyright of the song, but also with a similar beverage by the same name that had been discovered several thousand years earlier and was already widely produced and distributed.  The band never recovered from this final blow.  The next year Elliot Lurie died in a terrible gardening accident that has gone unsolved to this day.  A short time later, Jeff Grob became the first rock star to die by spontaneous human combustion.

The remaining two members of the band (whose names are sadly also lost to history) were left stunned by the deaths of Grob and Lurie became deeply spiritual.  After a long period out of the public eye they formed the Christian Brothers Distillery which makes fine brandy to this day.  Their memoirs were later purchased by Rob Reiner and adapted for screen.  The final product This Is Spinal Tap was a runaway success despite numerous libel and slander suits from Def Leppard.

What do we want from our data?

There are 6 generally accepted qualities that data should have.  Data should be:

• Accurate:  Reliability and precision, the degree to which the correctness of a quantity is expressed
• Relevant:  Appropriate to decision making requirements
• Secure:  Cannot be inadvertently or unscrupulously destroyed, accessed or altered
• Shareable:  Many people can access it
• Timely:  Most current information
• Transportable:  Easily ported to the necessary decision makers

Data and information may take many forms, some of which may be difficult or nearly impossible to capture.  Graphs, images, tables, reports, documents (narrative) and sales materials are all types of data and information.  Corporate culture and social networks are also types of data and information that are highly used, but difficult to capture.  When a new employee arrives, they often tap into this soft data management network that is collectively managed by the employees.  Who hasn’t started a new job and wondered “Who do I talk to about this problem…?”  Usually we go to someone and ask.  That person will then tell you “how things are done here” (corporate culture) or “go talk to so-and-so” (social networking.)  These are vital to a company, but are rarely documented and less often still, well documented.

This illustrates the difference between hard and soft data and information.  Something that is hard is not reliant on a flow of energy (computer or human brain), e.g., things found in filing cabinets, hard-drives, drawers, warehouses, etc.  Something that is soft is found in the human brain, on RAM, on a computer monitor (and not saved), etc.  Granted that the average human brain will work in some capacity for around 70 years, which is longer than the life of any hard-drive up to this point, it is still considered soft information.  Why?  I don’t know, it just is.  Probably has something to do with our current inability to directly access data stored on the human brain via IT.

If we roughly reverse the good values of data we get the 6 things we want to avoid:

• Badly Interfaced:  Hard to scrupulously access
• Delayed:  Long waits for requested data
• Not Integrated:  Data is scattered all over the dang place
• Redundant:  Same data stored in different places for no good reason
• Uncontrolled:  Data gets into the database willy-nilly
• Unrealistic:  Data doesn’t reflect a real world need

These are bad, don’t do them.

The beauty of the web is the power of interconnectivity, now many businesses can have internal and external data sources.  Internal are those sources which are collected by the company.  External are databases compiled by some entity outside the company.  The real challenge becomes integrating data from an external source, where the IS department has no control over the 6 positive data qualities.

For all my local cohorts I hope that this is in someway helpful or thought provoking.  Our clients are big on Web 2.0, even though when pressed for an exact definition they may not be able to give a clear, unified picture of their views and needs.  This is normal as most clients know what they need, but not exactly how to get it or what form it should take.  In any case, remember what is good and what is bad about data management.  This may help guide certain systems forward.  Or something.  This kind of thing is found in books anyway, so someone thinks it’s important.

Source:  Mostly from Wiley’s Data Management, Databases and Organizations, by Richard T. Watson, 4th ed.

Wine is nearly as old as beer.  To make wine really possible humans had to develop a better container.  Beer will ferment in anything that will hold water; wine requires something a little more genteel, in this instance pottery.  Once pottery was discovered (aside from the fact that it made it much easier to keep water out of things,) it allowed men to hold and ferment grape juice.

The grapes found throughout Europe and Asia are not the grapes American’s would general snack on (known as table grapes.)  Wine grapes that make the varietals we know today (pinot, merlot, etc.) are vitus vinifera.

In ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt grains were more widely cultivated so beer was more widely available.  As Mesopotamian empires grew in wealth and expanded, areas ideal for viticulture (growing of vines) came under their control or influence. 

The earliest viticulture was very different from the viticulture of today.  The farmer would grow an orchard of some sort of fruit tree then cultivate the grape vines on the tree.  (To grow and cultivate grapes the vines need to climb something.  Today we build artificial trellises, in the past they used trees.)  Wine is more temperamental than beer.  It takes less grain to make X amount of beer than it takes to make the same amount of wine.  Wine needs to be stored more carefully and in ancient times an acre of land could yield more grain because vines had to grow on trees which were separated by greater distances.  Because grapes are less hearty than grain, they can only be grown under certain climactic conditions so transportation becomes an issue.  As a result of all these factors wine in Mesopotamia and Egypt was generally much more expensive.

All the previously mentioned factors helped make wine a more “civilized” beverage and marker of wealth and status in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.  As trade spread around the Mediterranean other cultures, specifically the Greeks, came into contact with other wine drinking cultures.  The Greeks thought themselves superior indeed and began distinguishing themselves from the “barbarians” by their wine drinking habits.  (They were distinct in many other ways, thought, dress, manner, etc., but wine and beer drinking were universal and offered the Greeks a way to distinguish themselves on ground held in common with all other cultures.)

The Greeks had a very distinctive culture.  They were fond of intellectual pursuits such as philosophy and rhetoric.  They were also fond of drinking parties called symposia.  The Greeks had a love hate relationship with wine.  They thought it was a tasty and safe drink, but they believed over indulgence could cause insanity.  For this reason the Greeks generally mixed water with their wine, anywhere from 2 parts water to 1 part wine all the way up to 20 parts water to one part wine (this was for their concentrated wines.)  Wine mixed 1:1 with water was still thought of as strong wine and should be avoided.

As the Greeks expanded their colonies across the Mediterranean they spread wine culture with them.  For the first time wines became known for their region of production (the wine from Lesbos was particularly popular.)  After the Romans came to power Greek wine culture became ubiquitous.  The primary difference was that the availability of wine made good wine a status symbol.  Roman culture became stratified by the type of wine consumed.  More over, the expansionist nature of the Romans brought wine culture as far north as Britain, south into Saharan Africa and east to the Indus valley in India.  Retired soldiers, politicians, merchants and almost anyone else dreamed of cultivating vineyards for the production of wine.  Even after the western portion of the Roman Empire fell to the “barbarians” the new kingdoms that arose maintained the vineyards and expanded where they could.

The spread of Christianity and the development of the concept of Christendom solidified the importance of wine in Euro-Christian culture, especially as a way of drawing a distinction between Christians and Muslims.  Wine played a central role in the traditions of the Catholic Church as being one half of the Eucharist.  Christ’s first miracle of turning water into wine, as well as repeated references to wine in the New Testament made wine a point of religious pride.  In contrast wine and beer were, if not expressly forbidden, strongly discouraged in Islam.  Though the particular warning says nothing of beverages made from anything beside grapes and grains, a general prohibition was established for all Islam (even if it wasn’t widely enforced as it was Arab scientists who perfected the distillation of wine into brandy.)

Wine continued to grow and thrive throughout Europe with the notable exception of the British Isles.  When colonization of the New World began, England tried to establish viticulture in their colonies.  Unfortunately vitus vinifera would not thrive in such a harsh climate as Virginia and northward.  Furthermore, native American vines, vitus lubrusca, did not (and many still think so) produce palatable wine.  By a strange twist however, vitus lubrusca saved vitus vinifera wine in the 19^th century.  An outbreak of phylloxera decimated European vineyards.  A hybrid with vitus lubrusca root stock (which is naturally phylloxera resistant) was grafted onto the roots of vitus vinifera all over Europe to save the wine industry there.

Though there has always been a wine industry in the United States, the best wine producing regions (save for a few good New England locations) weren’t sufficiently settled until the 1850’s through the 1890’s.  Even then it took along time before the American wine making industry came into its own and was well regarded by the rest of the world.  Not until the early 1970’s did west coast wine makers start producing wines that were considered excellent on the world stage.  Today all 50 states (including Alaska apparently) produce wine.  Within the last decade or so, the preference for wine has matched or started to outpace the preference for beer and spirits.  This has a few major benefits:  More wine of a high quality will be produced locally which will be cheaper and easier to acquire.  The health benefits of wine (in moderation) have been proven, especially in helping to prevent heart disease.

Data, information and knowledge are the most important resources to many businesses today.  Though often used interchangeably, they are distinct and separate.  More importantly, the distinctions between these are subjective, based upon business requirements.

Data are raw facts; they are not useful in making decisions.  They are the numbers that make up sales, metrics, etc.  The addition of some meta-data (data about the data) can make them easier to use and comprehend, but for them to be useful they must be converted into information.

Information is collected data, organized and interpreted into something that can aide in the decision making process.  A chart comparing sales data from multiple regions across time could be a type of information used to make a decision.  A chart showing overall unit test coverage per line of code might be another example of data.

Knowledge is the ability to turn data into information and apply said information.  An individual may be presented with data showing the performance metrics for a piece of software.  They cannot transform that data into information for a decision maker if they do not know what GHz represents.  More over information is useless if a decision maker cannot apply it to a real situation.

As previously noted, these terms are subjective.  Data for one person may be perfectly valid information for someone with a higher degree of expertise.  Knowledge may allow two individuals to extrapolate two completely different sets of information for the same data.

Example:

Data = 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…

For some people this may mean nothing at all.  In case you are one of those people, here is some knowledge.  This is the Fibonacci sequence and it is made by adding one number to the next number, i.e., 1 + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3 + 2 = 5 + 3 = 8, etc.  Two different people might extrapolate the following information from this data.

Person 1:  The ratio of each successive pair of numbers in the series quickly converges on 1.61804. . . , as 5 divided by 3 is 1.666…, and 8 divided by 5 is 1.60.  This value is called phi.

Person 2: This pattern shows the ideal growth of a population in gendered reproduction with one living offspring per gestational cycle.  An example of this is rabbit populations.

The first piece of information might be useful to a mathematician and the second to a farmer, though the average person may still think of the information as data without more knowledge.

What does this ultimately mean?  Using this knowledge about data, information and knowledge a person can begin analyzing the data being collected by an organization to determine what information is needed, what data supports that information and what knowledge is required to coordinate data and information.  Form there IS is born in the realm of data management.

The history of western civilization is a history closely related to beer.  What?

While there are no written documents chronicling the discovery of beer, it was highly significant to the creation of western society as we know it.  So here is a quick history of beer in hopefully less than a page, no fluff, just facts.

Pre-literate humans were probably hunter-gathers for the majority of their history.  In Mesopotamia they followed wild game and harvested wild fruits, nuts and grains that grew abundantly in the Fertile Crescent.  Grains have the happy property that when they are dried they can be stored for a long time (years.)  For the average person to successfully eat and process grain it needs to be ground down.  Some people harvested grain and between harvest and drying the grain got wet and began to sprout.  What they discovered after drying grain that had sprouted was that the grain was sweeter than before.  This is because a diastase enzyme is released that breaks up the complex carbohydrates in grain into simple sugars.  (This process is still necessary to make beer today from whole grain.)  It wasn’t long before people were making a sort of gruel or porridge from the grain.  Adding more water and boiling heat has several benefits.  Virtually all bacteria will die after 4 minutes boil.  Boiled grains are easier to consume because they get softer (easier on the teeth.)  Boiling breaks down even more of the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars.  This process is the basis of all beer.

The gruel or porridge would have been stored in woven baskets or animal skins.  If allowed to stand open, wild yeasts (which are practically omnipresent in temperate environs) will infiltrate the gruel.  In a few days the gruel will become frothy and pleasantly intoxicating.  (Suspensions of yeast are also one of the best sources for Vitamin B in the Neolithic period.)  Over time, using the same vessels to make beer improved the quality.  This made people believe that there was something magical about beer.  In reality heartier yeasts survived and multiplied in the vessel and got stuck in cracks, nooks, crannies etc.  The next time liquid was added these yeasts would colonize the beer first preventing too many wild yeasts from imparting an off taste.  So that is how beer was discovered.  What is its significance to society?

In Mesopotamia and Egypt, settled agriculture led to the development of cities.  For the first time some people did not have to be involved in food production, which allowed for the rise of a class of priests who took payments to appease the gods in the form of bread and beer.  The priests started public works projects and paid the workers in bread and beer.  The need to maintain records of who was paid and how much was one of the key factors in the development of writing.  Water supplies usually became fouled very quickly near human settlements, beer it generally much safer to drink.  In Egypt and Mesopotamia bread and beer were euphemisms for good health, wealth and happiness.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh (one of the oldest pieces of recorded literature) the warrior Enkidu was not considered a man (though he could speak and was formed like a really hairy man) until he’d had sex and drank beer and eaten bread.  Once he had done those things he “became” a man in the eyes of the Mesopotamians.  In Egypt, Osiris saved mankind from the wrath of Hathor by getting her drunk and making her forget her mission to destroy all mankind.

Hooray Beer!

Source:  Mostly from the first two chapters of A History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage