Lord, Lord

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' (Matthew 7:21-23)

There are many people who claim to be Christians who aren't. Hitler may well have thought he was a "Christian," but his use of the Lord's name to incite violence against Jews and, ultimately, to try to exterminate them, would suggest Hitler's claim to being "Christian" was just words.

Clearly I'm in no position to say who truly is chosen by God and who is not. So I'm not saying for certain that Hitler was or was not. God will make that judgment, if he has not yet done that. But one can get a sense for another's posture towards Christ. What we do with our sense of that is where the danger lies. The Bible seems to suggest at worst we just walk away from those who would not treat the "things of God" as Holy. I can't think of anything that would suggest we harm them just because we don't think they're Christians.

Discerning in our own hearts our own posture towards Christ is a useful exercise. I'm not entirely certain I'm in a good place on that score. I count as a blessing my awareness of this, though. I'd rather wrestle with that question than be oblivious to it.

* * *
It is Saturday night and I should be home from G'burg. But my flight Friday evening was canceled and no flights were available until Sunday night. So I'm in a hotel near Dulles. And I'm in a foul mood.

The U.S. air travel industry is running at 100%, and the slightest disturbance results in extended problems. The disturbance on Friday was a "perfect storm" -- bad weather in Dallas and Chicago resulted in extended flight delays; and spring break travel meant all flights were oversold. Hence I had no options to get home until Sunday. It's the movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" in real life.

* * *
The "silicon on insulator" stuff is cool. I'm always amazed that people can sit there and conjure up these things:

Then they discovered Separation by Implantation of Oxygen (SIMOX). SIMOX involves the direct injection of purified oxygen into the silicon wafer at an extremely high temperature. The oxygen bonds with the silicon and forms thin layers of silicon oxide. This layer of silicon oxide film is perfect enough that it bonds with the pure crystal silicon layer.

Amazing.

* * *
On another subject, when do you think moral reasons for taking a particular decision outweigh rational reasons for the decision? Always?

Perhaps. But only if I had a firm conviction of what was moral. Some things are clear; others less so. My gut tells me my sense of reason should test my sense of morality, and also the other way around.

I'm trying to think of a case where morality would dictate one thing and reason clearly dictate something opposite. I'm having trouble.

"Rational reasoning" is not always clear-cut, is it? I would imagine my sense of what is "rational" can be as cloudy as my sense of what is "moral." But I'm a confused person generally.

* * *
Imagine if you worked in an office and one worker had a simple message on his door :

"I know the secret !"

How would you feel?

I'd think the person was being boastful, being selfish, or lying. Or perhaps all three.

People who use Christianity

I was looking through the speeches of none other than Adolf Hitler. I'm trying to understand how so many German people could be misled, how so many of them could give up their morals, their very identities to follow this man. I have no answers. I do see a hint that Hitler tapped into what the people thought was an injustice (the WW1 reparations) and fanned this feeling like a bush fire. It'a very scary. I also found this extract .. was Hitler a Christian or was he just using Christianity as another lever to incite his followers?

"And finally we were also the first to point the people on any large scale to a danger which insinuated itself into our midst - a danger which millions failed to realize and which will nonetheless lead us all into ruin - the Jewish danger. And today people are saying yet again that we were 'agitators.' I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I SAY: MY FEELING AS A CHRISTIAN POINTS ME TO MY LORD AND SAVIOUR AS A FIGHTER. IT POINTS ME TO THE MAN WHO ONCE IN LONELINESS, SURROUNDED ONLY BY A FEW FOLLOWERS, RECOGNIZED THESE JEWS FOR WHAT THEY WERE AND SUMMONED MEN TO THE FIGHT AGAINST THEM AND WHO, GOD'S TRUTH! WAS GREATEST NOT AS SUFFERER BUT AS FIGHTER. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before - the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago - a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people"

Foul. If Hitler was a real Christian then I assume he went to Heaven? This is a morally unacceptable thought isn't it?

All good things can also be used for bad it seems.

Silicon on insulator

http://search400.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid3_gci551314,00.html

I'm bullish about this. Humans working for IBM invented this, and it's in ALL of our Personal Computers. Nuff said :)

Moral vs Rational

RICHARDSON, Texas, March 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- In an awesome display of power and mastery, chess players from The University of Texas at Dallas thoroughly dominated their opponents to win the 2007 Final Four of Chess tournament, held this weekend in Fort Worth, Texas.

With the victory, UT Dallas won the President's Cup trophy, emblematic of the Final Four champion, as well as the right to continue calling itself the best collegiate chess team in the land, a title the university reclaimed last December by winning the 2006 Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, the most prestigious college chess competition held each year in the Western Hemisphere.

UT Dallas finished the round-robin Final Four without a loss and beat the closest competitor, archrival University of Maryland, Baltimore County, by a margin of five and one-half points (10.5 versus 5)- a huge gap in chess competition and the widest margin ever in the seven-year history of the Final Four. In the three rounds held over two days, UT Dallas compiled an overwhelming record of nine wins and three draws. The other two competitors, Miami Dade College (4.5 points) and Duke University (4 points), finished third and fourth, respectively.

Easy money indeed :)

+++

Pride? Stubbornness? Fear?

Yes we have strong urge to be righteous. Just look at kids, they love to be proven correct and they usually assume they are correct. One of life's hard lessons is learning that we're often not correct and that people will often have different opinions from us and want to fight us to prove they are right and we are wrong. This is the basis of competitive sports. Of course one would expect a creature born of natural selection/survival of the fittest to have this characteristic strongly ingrained. We want to get one up on our fellow man, to have some advantage.

Imagine if you worked in an office and one worker had a simple message on his door :

"I know the secret !"

How would you feel?

+++

On another subject, when do you think moral reasons for taking a particular decision outweigh rational reasons for the decision? Always? Thoughts please!

Slavery

How Christian nations ever allowed slavery is odd, but then again I guess there are slaves mentioned in The Bible - did Jesus ever campaign against slavery? I don't recall so, but then again He knew Wilberforce would do so some 1800 years later.

Mark Steyn, a columnist here in the United States (but whose work appears in Canadian and UK publications), wrote a review of the movie "Amazing Grace." He didn't really care much for the movie, preferring instead the book of the same title by Eric Metaxas. Nevertheless, Steyn offers the following in his review which I found interesting:

What did Wilberforce 'cure'? Two centuries ago, on March 25, 1807, one very persistent British backbencher secured the passage by Parliament of an Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade throughout His Majesty's realms and territories. It's not that no one remembers the disease ever existed, but that we recall it as a kind of freak pandemic -- a SARS or bird flu that flares up and whirs round the world and is then eradicated. The American education system teaches it as such -- as a kind of wicked perversion the Atlantic settlers had conjured out of their own ambition. In reality, it was more like the common cold -- a fact of life. The institution predates the word's etymology, from the Slavs brought from eastern Europe to the glittering metropolis of Rome. It predates by some millennia the earliest laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia. The first legally recognized slave in the American colonies was owned by a black man who had himself arrived as an indentured servant. The first slave owners on the North American continent were hunter-gatherers. As Metaxas puts it, 'Slavery was as accepted as birth and marriage and death, was so woven into the tapestry of human history that you could barely see its threads, much less pull them out. Everywhere on the globe, for 5,000 years, the idea of human civilization without slavery was unimaginable.'

And then this:

'What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery,' says Metaxas, 'something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: he vanquished the very mindset that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia. He destroyed an entire way of seeing the world, one that had held sway from the beginning of history, and he replaced it with another way of seeing the world.'

That, to my eye, seems to explain why Christian societies would have permitted slavery. Summed up -- it's always been that way.

It was Wilberforce's Christianity that was the flame behind his passion. The movie does a fair job presenting it as such. It could easily have scrubbed from the script the religious context, making his motivation being more "doing the right thing" rather than doing God's will. But they did not, though some evangelical types have taken exception to the downplaying of the strictly Christian elements. I think that criticism is misguided. I think there's enough Christian theme to be effective without being off-putting.

It's like my opinion of street corner Bible-thumping preachers, all red of face and spewing spittle in their righteous indignation -- for every one person they attract to Jesus, they send 99 away. They justify their way by pointing to John the Baptist, who was portrayed as something of a wild man. Times are different. And Jesus himself, except for the driving of the moneychangers from the temple, is portrayed as more gentle and humble, more calm and sensible.

* * *
I liked the movie "Amazing Grace," but I did not think it was a great movie. I liked it because of its general tone and tenor -- quiet, dignified. But it had some flaws.

* * *
I often wonder if any American folk actually think English people in England are really like that? I would bet "yes", and I think it's those folk that The Simpsons is making light fun of.

I think there's a large swath of America that does think England is Buckingham Palace, the changing of the guard, and Big Ben. Just like some people in other parts of the world think America is just people in huge cars with lots of money and cowboys dotting the horizon.

* * *
It's really hard not to fight sometimes isn't it?

You're right. There's a powerful driver within our souls to prove ourselves right ... even when it doesn't really matter if we do. Pride? Stubbornness? Fear?

Foreign

There's something quite lonely about spending a weekend in a hotel in a generic business location. Particularly one that is so close to where I lived for 10 years. It's like I sense this used to be "home" but now I'm just a visitor.

Yes, hotels on the weekends are in that changeover period, gearing up for the next business week and hosting wedding receptions or the odd בר מצוה.

I can see how it must be strange travelling back to old stomping grounds. New environs cause some tension within us, when we live in a place for a while we become familiar with it and the tension eases. How long do you have to be away from a place to feel that tension again when you return to it? 2-3 years perhaps I think.

These days I do like the odd trip stateside to stay in a hotel but I've had to decline two offers already this year, plus as offer to go to Amsterdam - for family reasons - so enjoy it while you can! Everything in moderation :)

and where relatively obscure English actors are allowed to quietly project a personality onto the screen -- is my favorite kind of movie.

Heh those are good movies. I will have to check out Amazing Grace. I recall a lesson on Wilberforce at school in the late 70's, all about the emancipation of slaves. How Christian nations ever allowed slavery is odd, but then again I guess there are slaves metioned in The Bible - did Jesus ever campaign against slavery? I don't recall so, but then again He knew Wilberforce would do so some 1800 years later.

It occurs to me that in some ways we are all slaves.

A very different type of movie I saw recently is Pans Labyrinth ((El Laberinto del fauno) a Spanish movie by Guillermo del Toro. I cannot recommend it highly enough, I get DVDs sent to me all the time by the rental company and this one really stands out. It's set at the end of the second world war in Spain, it's about the Spanish civil war and how that pits neighbour against neighbour. It is so well done, and you're left with the realization that the only real monsters out there are humans.

If I have such a cause, I'm not sure what it is. Your cause right now is your daughter.

Maybe your cause is to enlighten the world with your clarity of vision? You're very good at taking complicated things and boiling them down so that non-rocket-scientists can understand them.

Caring for a child is very rewarding and is indeed a good reason to "keep going", but I'm not sure if I have "a cause". If anything it would be along the lines of encouraging humans to live in harmony and to make the best of their abilities without necessarily seeking an advantage over their fellow man -- that is my wish, not sure what I am doing for it as a cause though.

Are the British stereotypes shown amusing? Or annoying?

I love that episode by the way, only having seen it about five times now ;) One of the best Bart quotes ever are in that episode here. I love it when the lady behind Barts voice does her "Old English" way of speaking. Such stereotypes don't annoy me at all, especially when they are done in a parody of the way that some Americans might think of the English. I often wonder if any American folk actually think English people in England are really like that? I would bet "yes", and I think it's those folk that The Simpsons is making light fun of.

There was a chorus of "That's great!" and "She deserved it!" from others on the forum.

That's what we do isn't it?

We have a preference for the familiar and this has the benefit of leading us into group behaviour (pool resources, fight predators, etc)

The trouble is, this same behaviour which benefits our survival also creates wars between the groups -- they are unfamilar - "not us" so cause stress. So the group of "bikers" fight the group of "mobile phone users". It doesn't matter who the groups are, they will fight. Natural selection in action.

I am so tempted to argue back on the forum ... but a little birdy in my conscious is telling me to walk away

What would fighting achieve here? If you can convince the biker group not to be slaves to their DNA then that would be a miracle. Mind you, Wilberforce did get that bill through Parliament :)

It's really hard not to fight sometimes isn't it?

Sunday Musings

I'm in the Hilton hotel in Gaithersburg this Sunday ... I've spent the weekend in G'burg since I had to be in town these two weeks. I saw no sense in flying all the way back to Tucson just to come back a few days later.

There's something quite lonely about spending a weekend in a hotel in a generic business location. Particularly one that is so close to where I lived for 10 years. It's like I sense this used to be "home" but now I'm just a visitor.

* * *
Yesterday I went to see the movie "Amazing Grace," a biography about William Wilberforce, the MP back in the early 1800's who fought to abolish slavery. It was a very good -- but not perfect -- film. That general style of movies -- the relatively quiet movie where character portrayal trumps action, and where relatively obscure English actors are allowed to quietly project a personality onto the screen -- is my favorite kind of movie.

I got to thinking about the portrayal of William Wilberforce and William Pitt ("The Younger" -- I just learned his father also served as PM ... thanks, Wikipedia). In particular, I was thinking about men who "think big," who have a vision and strive towards that vision. And I compared that to myself. I am no big thinker. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, as we can't all be broad visionaries, out tilting at our particular windmills.

Still, I think there's something within the male of our species that yearns to have a cause bigger than himself. Whatever the spiritual or biochemical motivations for that are, I believe it to be true. If I have such a cause, I'm not sure what it is. Your cause right now is your daughter.

* * *
I was watching an episode of the Simpsons the other day where the family goes to England. Tony Blair meets them at the airport, Homer acts the typical boorish American and later rear-ends the Queen, landing himself in London Tower. I got to thinking: "What does N think about this episode?" Are the British stereotypes shown amusing? Or annoying?

* * *
On the motorcycle forum I frequent there was a thread posted yesterday in which someone with straight pipes (unbaffled exhaust) pulled up next to a woman in a car at a stop light and on her phone. The rider revved the engine, making a very loud noise, for no reason by (his own admission). The woman barked back at him about keeping quiet. So the rider did it again ... this time for an extended period of time.

There was a chorus of "That's great!" and "She deserved it!" from others on the forum.

I saw it different. I didn't see why he had to intentionally aggravate the situation by gunning his engine at a stop light. (Frankly, I don't see the purpose of straight pipes at all, other than to create the impression of being tough, and a "biker.") She could have rolled up her window, so barking back was simply adding to the combined aggression. But the returned revving of the engine, all done in spite, was not an attractive thing to do in my mind.

I see this attitude quite a bit on this forum. Many say "I don't care what people think of me!" They take that as a justification to be quite obnoxious. I think they do care ... when their attitude has consequences. But of course they'll never admit that. It's easier to blame others than take responsibility.

Motorcyclists have a generally poor reputation in the U.S., mostly because of people riding around in an unsafe fashion (sport bike riders), or with the excessively loud pipes (cruiser riders), or who project a thug image (the "motorcycle gang" thing so many seek to play with their black leather. They bemoan the "disrespect" they get from "cagers" (people in cars), yet much of it is of their own making.

I am so tempted to argue back on the forum ... but a little birdy in my conscious is telling me to walk away.

Inside Out

My point is, this is the stuff we see in the results of high energy particle collisions all the time, no-one really knows why, we have the same question as the ants.

Do you think we'll ever figure it out? Or will we always scratch our heads and wonder exactly how and why ... just like we do now with aspirin. From what I understand, the exact biochemical process that makes aspirin beneficial is still unknown. :-)

I wonder what a human plucked out of 4D spacetime, rotated in 5D and placed back into 4D spacetime would look like? Inside out?

I can't conceive of what the "5D" would be! Darn you and your expansive imagination! Perhaps they'd look fuzzy ... as their five dimensional state struggled to fit within four dimensions?

Not sure who is in their team but they better be good. It will be interesting to see who wins.

When you asked the question about the universities ... I was answered back on the basis of who enjoys the loftiest reputation overall. As to their chess teams ... that I don't know.

Duke University has an awful football team and a very good basketball team. It's been that way or quite some time.

Inversion

Oh, Duke University ... by a country mile.

Not sure who is in their team but they better be good. It will be interesting to see who wins.

+++

Ok back to my really bad ant drawings. So the ants are stuck on the ground they don't know about up, so they live and die in those 2 dimensions. One day, two ants are strolling (do ants stroll?) along and they see an ant (dead or otherwise) on it's back legs in the air. Nobody has ever seen this before, it looks very strange (ugh!) The ants start to think "how could this have happened?" (assuming they can wonder)

What ideas might they come up with as to how the ant got like that?



This happenstance could be one of those "miracles" that are indistinguishable from science/technology?

My point is, this is the stuff we see in the results of high energy particle collisions all the time, no-one really knows why, we have the same question as the ants.

I wonder what a human plucked out of 4D spacetime, rotated in 5D and placed back into 4D spacetime would look like? Inside out?

Top Universities

Miami Dade
University of Maryland Baltimore County
University of Texas-Dallas
Duke University

From a purely ivy-league USA perspective, which of these colleges is the "best"? (Like is one or more an "Oxford" or a "Cambridge" ?)

Oh, Duke University ... by a country mile. The University of Texas is a well respected university, but it mostly applies to the Austin campus, not Dallas. The same for the University of Maryland. The main campus is in College Station, not the satellite location in Baltimore County. Miami Dade is, from what I understand, a community college.

I've not paid much attention to which schools are the best in the U.S., but I'm going to guess the following are on everyone's top 10 somewhere:

• Harvard
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  
• Stanford
• University of Pennsylvania

Duke is usually there as well, as is Princeton and the University of Chicago. Northwestern University (just north of Chicago). My school, Michigan State University, ranks high in agricultural stuff and veterinary medicine ... but not generally that good overall. Oh well.

Dallas Cowboys ?

Okay that page was very interesting - it said the four finalists this weekend are:

Miami Dade
University of Maryland Baltimore County
University of Texas-Dallas
Duke University

From a purely ivy-league USA perspective, which of these colleges is the "best"? (Like is one or more an "Oxford" or a "Cambrigde" ?)

Googling, if I were a betting man I would say Texas have a good chance:

"The UT Dallas team will be represented at the Final Four by two grandmasters on boards one and two — arts and technology major and sophomore Alejandro Ramirez and computer science graduate student Magesh Chandran Panchanathan. On boards three and four will be international masters Marko Zivanic, a junior computer science major and Drasko Boskovic, a junior business administration major. Alternates will be international masters Dmitri Shneider, a senior finance major, and Davorin Kuljasevic, a sophomore business administration major"

Easy money :)

Underdog Chess Champions

You'll like this.

Roses Are Red, My Love ... Violets Are Blue

I imagine space to be a like a folded origami rose, folded in on itself again and again (and again) - everything is touching.

See ... I can't picture that. It's just beyond my limited mind. Space is a big sphere with no limit. That's my view. Wrong, no doubt, but that's all I can picture.

* * *
I've seen traveling windscreen repair people, but never traveling bodywork people like that. That's actually pretty cool. It would save many hours sitting in the dealer's waiting room. Though the Toyota dealership in Tucson has free WiFi, so it's not too bad.

* * *
If I "saw" it all I'd feel overwhelmed (awe) and then, as you said perhaps fear. And if the sense and awareness faded away (like it did for Dr. McCoy in the "Spock's Brain" episode) I'd probably be filled with an incredible sadness. Not because I wasn't omniscient anymore, but rather I suspect having access to that sudden awareness would be like being close to God himself ... in some way, anyway.

Yin and Jung

I can't see something traversing 93M miles instantly. My imagination isn't wide enough. :-)

Sure it is.

Take my badly drawn ant (please!)



I am highly suspicious that it is like this for us. If we could only "look" in a direction we don't normally look ("up" for the ant) and jump in a direction we normally don't go ("up" for the ant) then we could get to where we are going a lot quicker (from A to B in my example).

I imagine space to be a like a folded origami rose, folded in on itself again and again (and again) - everything is touching. Unfortunately though for us we have to traverse the paper (rose petals) we don't know how to jump across the folds.



It's amazing the complexities you can get from a single sheet of folded paper (or folded space :) I wonder what group describes the symmetries of a rose?

+++

I had a small prang in the car a few weeks ago trying to squeeze into a space outside of Katherine's school. Just dented the bodywork of my car a little, these days though they have a new service, they bring the bodyshop to the car. So the car is parked outside of my house and some guy has erected a tent around it and is repairing the damage - saves days of losing the car to the body shop. Progress! Although you probably have had the same service in the USA for years. Here are some pics taken just now outside of my house:





+++

Can you imagine being granted the ability -- miraculously, of course -- to "see" all the mysteries of creation revealed in your mind. Let's assume you had the capacity for emotional reaction for that moment. What would be your reaction?

Wow tough question, I really have no idea, could be anything. If I had any comprehension of the truth at all then I imagine I could feel like I felt when I was a small child. Fear and awe. Of course "outrageous laughter" could be another response, depending on what the truth was :)

How do you think you'd take it?

Moon Bomb Experiments

And your Moon Bomb started this train of thought!

I can assure you we had no such esoteric thoughts at the time! In fact, we gave almost no thought to any scientific questions.

I applaud your ability to think at such a level. I can't bring my mind to expand that far. My mind is hindered by what I view as physical limits. I can't see something traversing 93M miles instantly. My imagination isn't wide enough. :-)

Can you imagine being granted the ability -- miraculously, of course -- to "see" all the mysteries of creation revealed in your mind. Let's assume you had the capacity for emotional reaction for that moment. What would be your reaction?

Speculation

I'm just wondering if your scenario is like our "assumed axioms" -- "assume a rigid steel bar that transfers energy immediately ..." Sure, if that were true, then the earth would "move" before the light reached it. But is our axiom true?

I don't think these "rods" I am postulating would be made out of anything we know (like steel) - if they were then clearly they would be seen by ordinary instruments in vacuo. I am wondering if they are mathematically rigid (ie. don't transmit energy through a lattice of particles, like in steel) but can oscillate as waves pass through them. As they are truly "rigid" they might have this apparently superluminal effect.

My concern with all this is our definition of the term now.

For instance, in science books for kids you might read:

"If a planet was orbiting a star 2,000 light years away from the Earth, if they took a telescope and looked at the Earth now they would see it as it was in the times of Jesus".

This is the common mistake. Now means now, ie. Mar 21 2007 for us. As we live in spacetime rather than just space, it is non-sensical to say if they looked back at the Earth now. Our now is not their now. As you travel away from the Earth in space you actual time travel also.

Which I suspect is what would happen to the end of the rigid rod if it exsited only in our 4D spacetime. The end of the rod near to the Sun would be in a different now, so information would not be passed at greater speed than that of light.

So if the rod exists it might exist in a higher dimension, this would give it the properties of making it a) invisible to us and b) able to transmit information faster than lightspeed (as we see in quantum entaglement).

I can't think of any experiment to find the rod though. I guess the same problem is with "string theory" - there aren't any experiments you can do to look at a string.

Still, this is purely conjecture in an attempt to explain forces and quantum entanglement: all matter in the Universe is connected together right now through invisible hyperdimensional non-compressing rods.

And your Moon Bomb started this train of thought !

Non-Infinite Symmetry

I have to confess I just flat-out do not understand all that stuff. E8? 248 dimensions? What?

* * *
Also it would seem that an economy such as the UK's could absorb an extra 1 million printed GBP without too much of a devaluation of the currency, I don't think anyone would notice - so her idea is probably sound, but not repeatable (much).

It could. What makes it more complex is that the amount it can absorb is not based on the number itself, but rather based on people's perception of the quantity of money. It's when we reach a point where people start sensing that more money is floating around that the inflation cycle starts. It's a very macro thing ... not a specific formula.

* * *
Then I was thinking, if you could attach a rigid steel rod from the Earth to The Moon and pushed the Earth end slightly towards The Moon, would The Moon end move immediately?

I understand what you're getting at here ... but let me fall into a pragmatic role here for a moment. If I have a lever with a rigid rod 1 meter long that pushed another lever, does the other lever truly move "immediately?" Or is there an imperceptible time lag as the force on one end results in molecular and atomic compression and the transfer of that energy through the bar to the other? Extend that out to 93M miles ... might the transference of energy travel along the bar at some rate perhaps slower than the speed of light?

I'm just wondering if your scenario is like our "assumed axioms" -- "assume a rigid steel bar that transfers energy immediately ..." Sure, if that were true, then the earth would "move" before the light reached it. But is our axiom true?

Order for 248 and 248 only

"What's attractive about studying E8 is that it's as complicated as symmetry can get",

This is a very sobering thought isn't it?

Symmetries are not infinite.

Therefore if matter is truly different ways of looking at the same thing, then there are not infinitely different types of matter (particle).

Perhaps the Universe is finite.

This makes me happy as I am scared of infinity :)

Shapes

Somehow -- and I honestly don't know how to do this -- we need to come up with a way to show that the value of some commodity diminishes as the quantity of that commodity increases.

Yes this is what I am struggling with. Also it would seem that an economy such as the UK's could absorb an extra 1 million printed GBP without too much of a devaluation of the currency, I don't think anyone would notice - so her idea is probably sound, but not repeatable (much).

Or we could just let her be a little girl. :-)

Yes! She's gone off early to London this morning, part of her year (year 5) are visiting The National Gallery and The British Museum, I hope she has fun, she was very excited !

+++

It was a very clear dusk last night and The Moon was a tiny crescent, but one could see that The Moon was round due to prominent Earthshine, Katherine liked the idea that we were seeing the shape of The Moon through Sun light entering our eyes after it had already bounced off of The Earth, rather than directly bouncing off of The Moon. I got to thinking about a couple or three of things:

First, I was thinking more about your Moon Bomb idea; question - would the cable as it was reeling in due to the Earth's rotation, damage the Earth as it wrapped around? Possibly damaging other countries other than the intended target in the process? Or did I get the idea wrong?

Thirdly, I was wondering how different we would be as a race without these strange objects in the skies to look upon, they make us wonder and look for answers to their movements.

Secondly, and this takes longer thus the odd order, I was thinking about The Moon's progress around The Earth. The description Einstein came up with about 4D curved spacetime as an explanation is so beautiful, it made me think it must be correct. My intuition tells me this but I could be wrong, how can I know? I can't. Anyway I got to thinking that if spacetime can be curved then what exactly is "a vacuum"? If a vacuum is nothing then how can you curve it? So my conclusion was that spacetime must have a fabric and the vacuum of space is not simply "nothing".

Then I got to thinking about magnets. As a child I played with and was fascinated by magnets, but how do they work? So then I got to thinking about electromagnetic forces, and forces in general. Somehow these forces act across distances with seemingly nothing in between, but hang on, if a vacuum has a fabric then maybe they are acting on something in between the objects, perhaps the same something?

Then I was thinking, if you could attach a rigid steel rod from the Earth to The Moon and pushed the Earth end slightly towards The Moon, would The Moon end move immediately? Thus signaling the transfer of information in a way that was faster than light? Maybe The Moon is a bad example, take The Sun, put a rigid rod between The Earth and The Sun. Push the rod towards The Sun, does it move immediately at The Sun end thus negatating the fact that The Sun is 9 light minutes away?

Then I thought perhaps the whole concept of "immediately" or "time" was relative, but that's another discussion.

My thoughts were perhaps "forces" are propagated through waves travelling at the speed of light along the rods connecting particles. Maybe two "particles" represent the two ends of a rod. We can't see the rod but it's there and these rods can curve, so perhaps spacetime is made of rods?

Perhaps the pushing of the rod (rather than a wave travelling along it) is what is happening in quantum entaglement where you get what Einstein called "Spooky action at a distance", ie. do something here and something immediately happens over there.

Depending on how you look at rods depends on how you see them, symmetries of rods, but we can only see the ends. I think this big E8 number mathematicians just worked out might have something to do with it. What if there are really 248 dimensions rather than the 10 the M-brane theory has come up with? 248 is the Lie-group limit for some reason, not sure why.

I Got Satisfaction

Upon reflection, the CD analogy is actually flawed. The problem with it is that once a friend has traded for a particular CD, they'd have no need for another of the same thing. So if K had 1 more to trade or a 100 it wouldn't matter ... her friend would rightly say, "I don't want it, I have one. I won't trade you anything for it." That's an example of instant devaluation due to complete satisfaction of desire.

This is really hard ... another thought that came to mind was trying to "buy" from K something she really values, but using a scrap of paper. But that's too abstract ... she'll say "But that's just paper, while a pound note is real money!" The pound note is also just paper, but it carries value because we people agree to view it as valuable.

Somehow -- and I honestly don't know how to do this -- we need to come up with a way to show that the value of some commodity diminishes as the quantity of that commodity increases.

Or we could just let her be a little girl. :-)

Supply and Demand

"Hey! I'm not going to trade 5-for-1 any more. You have so many of those I won't even trade 1-for-1 any more."

A good analogy/thought. So, I tell this to my daughter and follow up with: "So the African person with his newly printed money goes to the shop to buy some goods, but the shopkeeper says ...

a) The price has gone up, give me even more money
b) No I don't want your money at all, I can get money from someone else there is lots of it
c) Something else'
"?

The CD lesson might point to b) above. But would a) be the actual fact? If it is then she'll say, but the African person has a LOT of money now so he can afford to give as much money to the shopkeeper as is necessary. For an extra 1 million printed dollars (which must be negligible compared to the currency in circulation) I would say she would be right to think that.

Thanks for your ideas, teaching small ones is not easy!

The Currency of Kids

but the problem is the one you already mentioned earlier - abstracting the value of goods/items to being represented by paper money that causes the difficulty I think.

I agree. Which is why introducing the concept of paper money is too difficult. Keeping the language in the currency of what kids use -- whatever that may be for an English girl -- is probably the key.

Here's one possible approach. Imagine K and her friends collected and traded music CD's. Let's say K had a popular new CD and her friends really wanted it. They wanted it so bad they would be willing to trade five of their other CDs for it.

Now imagine you fired up your CD burner and burned hundreds of copies of that CD. Would K's friends still be willing to trade at five CD's per one of the new CD? Or would the flood of copies of the CD drop the value? My guess is soon her friends would see K with all her copies of the new CD and say, "Hey! I'm not going to trade 5-for-1 any more. You have so many of those I won't even trade 1-for-1 any more."

Just a thought.

Money Market

Bartering food in the way you describe it, yes the child can understand ... but the problem is the one you already mentioned earlier - abstracting the value of goods/items to being represented by paper money that causes the difficulty I think. If I can get over THAT hurdle I then have a chance to discuss the ramifications of printing more money.

Still to a child why not print 1 million dollars more - it's not going to change the economy is it? The quantity is too small. What would printing 1 millions dollars and giving it to poor people really do to the economy? I don't know, but it could make say 10 poor people in Africa have a good life. This is how the child sees it.

I may check out the book you referred to, my one concern with it is that it may be more relevant to US citizens than UK.

Concept of Relative Value

I've been thinking a lot about the essence of economics. Sure, we can get buried really quickly in all sorts of minutia. What I'm thinking about are the essential core principles. And when I think about it, economics is all about the concept of relative value. By that I mean the value of one thing compared to another -- and that value changes over time, and it differs from person to person.

I recall when I was a kid in the school cafeteria. Without realizing what they were doing, the kids would engage in a spirited exchange market trading food items. From my experience, a dill pickle had very little value; a cupcake quite a bit. And then all sorts of interesting things would happen: if I was competing with someone else to acquire a cupcake in trade, no matter how many dill pickles I might have to trade, the sheer quantity of my dill pickles would never trump another kid's apple pie. So value is not a simple mathematical model. 100 pickles or 1000 pickles -- it makes no difference because pickles weren't valued relative to the cupcake. However, I might be able to trade a pickle for a bunch of carrot sticks. And it might be a 1-for-1 trade. So it's not like pickles have no value. It's all relative.

I was fortunate to not have much of a sweet tooth, so if I had a piece of cake or a cookie or whatever, I'd happily trade it away and get a lot more food in return. Others were so smitten by the sweets they'd trade their whole lunch for a Hostess coconut snowball cake. On the relatively rare occasion I'd buy a hot lunch (normally I brought a bagged lunch), I'd quickly establish interest in trading for my dessert, which I didn't really care for. I once traded my small piece of chocolate cake for someone else's lasagna and vegetables. Essentially their whole lunch. I was happy, they were happy. I was nourished. Them? Well, that wasn't my concern.

Note: and here's where the concept of currency (money) comes into play. As I said before, paper money (in particular) has no inherent value. Money serves as a proxy of actual value. I value my $1 bill because of what I can buy with that $1 bill. And that is based on trust that others will honor that $1 bill as an exchangeable representation of value. To trade my dill pickle for a cupcake using money requires an agreement on how many pickles per dollar, and then what fraction of a cupcake for a dollar. Once done, the dollar is nothing but a proxy, a representation of the relative value of the pickle vs. the cupcake.

It's a fascinating topic ... it really is. The dynamics are endless.

There's a "basic economics" text book written by Thomas Sowell that I've read really good things about. It's on Amazon here. I'm not saying you should get it ... but if you're thinking about delving into the topic some, it might be a good place to start.

Teaching Economics

Ain't easy. There are some intuitive things that one either "gets" or does not. Your daughter does not yet "get" the concept of supply and demand. Well, she does, I think ... deep inside, but it's not yet taken hold in a tangible thought pattern. Does she do any trading with her friends at all -- in whatever currency little girls use -- CD's, doll clothes, whatever? If so, perhaps you can bridge the gap by tapping into her current understanding of "value" based on her own experiences. Paper money is just paper to her ... she probably doesn't understand that it's a mere representation of value, but not itself valuable. That itself is a slippery concept. Hence the question, "Why not print more?"

* * *
Does that mean they are not accountable to anyone? Here in the UK their are "watchdog" bodies that regulate the activities of politicians - do you not have something like that in the USA?

There are all sorts of independent watchdog groups. But ultimately it comes down to the Congress being accountable to itself, with a nod to the Supreme Court which has supremacy in matters of interpretation of the Constitution.

Years ago, back when the Clintons first assumed the office, there was a big row over Hillary Clinton's nationalization of the health care system here. She proposed a massive bureaucratic structure. It was "good for America" she said. But apparently not good enough for Congress, who made she they were exempted from it. The whole thing collapsed under its own weight, thankfully. We need certain reforms; we don't need that.

* * *
Blair seems happy to make millions for himself, his wife too. So clearly they are capitalists.

I'm not sure I see the connection between Blair's stifling imposition of government into the lives of the public, and their exploitation of their office to line their own pockets, with "capitalism." It sounds more like the classic Soviet model to me. :-)

* * *
The one factor that might make a manned mission worthwhile is the imagination of children that such a mission captures. Once sparked this can lead the children to grow up wanting to go into science, which is a benefit to everyone.

In principle I might agree. But I think that's a gamble. For one, the kids may not have their imaginations sparked. They're a jaded lot nowadays, as I'm sure you're aware. Two, that is based on the assumption of success, isn't it? What happens if the whole thing falls apart, either due to technical problems, or lack of sustained interest, or some catastrophic event?

I agree with the research into asteroid deflection. Now that stirs the imagination!

* * *
When I was a kid, aged 11-14 or so, I used to make little Airfix models of planes, you know glue them together, paint them, hang them from the ceiling etc. I must have made 75-100 planes in my time. The Concorde is probably the most iconic of passenger jets I think. And the Spitfire is the most beautiful plane I ever saw, still is.

I had a few of those things, but not many. I recall having a P-38 Lightning and a P-51 Mustang, as well as the gorgeous Spitfire. I agree wholeheartedly that the design of the Spitfire was classic. And yes, the Concorde was definitely an iconic figure for our age group. I saw that fly over Raleigh, NC back in the mid-80's. Pretty much the whole city stopped work to go outside and watch it go over. :-)

Supermarine

When I think of "capitalism," a better phrase for it would be "resource allocation based on free market mechanics." Contrast that with "resource allocation based on the decisions of a ruling elite,"

I am woefully ignorant of this area of human endeavour. My daugher asked me yesterday why can't we just print a ton of money and send it to the poor people in Africa so they could buy houses, cookers and showers ?! (sic)

I told her about rampant inflation in pre-2nd World War Germany and even showed her some pictures from Google Images of ladies shopping with full barrow loads of bank notes and burning them in their fires because that was a cheaper way of keeping warm than buying wood.

So she asked me the same question again.

Then I started on about "supply and demand" and that people only wanted things that were hard to come by and if you printed more money it would just make people want it less.

She asked me to explain it to her in a way that she could understand. And I couldn't. I completely failed in this, I can explain mathematics and science to her in a way that she understands, she says "I wish our lessons were like that!" but I cannot explain basic economics to her. Which means a couple of things at least 1) I do not understand basic economics and 2) It's almost impossible to teach something you have been unable to create any enthusiam within yourself for and possibly ... 3) the best teachers have a passion for whatever is they are teaching; from this passion comes the desire to articulate the subject in a way that the recipient can "get".

On well I must try harder, I have a responsibility to educate my daughter to the best of my abilities whilst she is here with me.

Here in America our illustrious Congress has exempted themselves from darn near every law they impose upon us.

Does that mean they are not accountable to anyone? Here in the UK their are "watchdog" bodies that regulate the activities of politicians - do you not have something like that in the USA?

The UK Blair government has made it their business to stick their noses in lots of places that aren't welcome, every street corner seems to have a camera watching (ala 1984) and The Courts interfere in family life where they are not welcome - with the blessing of the government. Blair seems happy to make millions for himself, his wife too. So clearly they are capitalists. I'm not sure if they want to exempt themselves from any laws though.

+++

Manned Mission to Mars? Not sure. I think I'd rather see the money spent on an observation/defence program to scan the skies for the wormwood and work out ways to deflect it. I agree with robotic missions to the planets for sure, I don't think you're way off base. The one factor that might make a manned mission worthwhile is the imagination of children that such a mission captures. Once sparked this can lead the children to grow up wanting to go into science, which is a benefit to everyone.

+++

Yes the 747 is iconic. I think I read somewhere that it was first designed to haul goods rather than people. The new airbus will get lots of use in China and India as those economies come on line and Japan of course. One day the Chinese economy may even be bigger than that of the US. It's funny, K said to me about a month ago "How come everything is made in China?" Hehe.

When I was a kid, aged 11-14 or so, I used to make little Airfix models of planes, you know glue them together, paint them, hang them from the ceiling etc. I must have made 75-100 planes in my time. The Concorde is probably the most iconic of passenger jets I think. And the Spitfire is the most beautiful plane I ever saw, still is.

Airbus A380

Is there a big enough market for this to pay back on the investment?

I recall a lecture way back in college -- in my transportation classes -- and we were talking about the prospects of a super-jumbo plane ... bigger than the 747 which defined big back then. The professor expressed skepticism ... his point was that the bigger the plane, the more effort it took to collect the "payload." Meaning ... except for high-volume trunk routes, getting 500+ people together to go somewhere ain't easy.

Boeing is betting their corporation on the opposite model -- smaller planes that can more efficiently spirit fewer people to lots of different locations. I guess the objectives of their design was much better fuel efficiency per passenger mile delivered.

Did you know that the 747 was originally designed to be a freight carrier? The notion of carrying people was an afterthought. The bubble cockpit was so the nose could hinge up and expose the main tube of the plane to cargo loading.

Is there any more iconic plane profile in all the world than the 747?

Mission to Mars?

There's been some talk here in the States about the role and mission of NASA. Some feel the agency needs a new mission ... a bold one ... a manned trip to Mars.

I completely disagree. I don't believe the public really cares all that much for such a mission. Nobody really believes we'll establish a "colony" there, any more than we've been successful establishing a viable orbiting space station. Going there would just be an exercise in saying we did it, but little more.

Second, I think most people view the trials and troubles of this earth and think, "We don't need to spend the time and money on that. We have more important things to worry about already."

Finally, I think in the back of most people's minds is the notion of a spacecraft with astronauts in it being disabled far out in space with no chance for rescue. It's one thing for a shuttle to blow up -- that's a death everyone can grasp. But simply drifting off into nothingness would leave an odd and disturbing chill in people's minds. They sense that now, I think. Plus, the feeling of utter helplessness would leave quite a scar. All the more reason, I think, that a mission to Mars is just talk.

Unmanned probes and such? Cool ... the more the merrier.

Thoughts? Am I just way off base here?

Chatting Up

Uh oh ... that's embarrassing. I used the phrase rather unconsciously. I had you in mind as I typed it, and I knew you had a phrase in that neighborhood ... chatting, chatting with, chatting up.

I wonder if my subconscious is trying to tell me something? :-)

Capitalism

I am surprised to see you call it a socialist ideal though ("imposed socialism"), this is normally the capitalist way - exploiting your advantages over your fellow is more a "right wing" than "left wing" activity in my opinion, but I could be wrong.

I had a big long post -- full of my own hot air -- and upon reflection it was stupid. So I deleted it.

When I think of "capitalism," a better phrase for it would be "resource allocation based on free market mechanics." Contrast that with "resource allocation based on the decisions of a ruling elite," which is what I would characterize "socialism" as. Neither is perfect, but I believe history has shown that free market mechanics produce greater wealth than controlled mechanics.

The thing about free market economies is that sometimes there are painful periods of transition. Right now the market does not value low-skilled assembly workers. Hence there are a lot of people in the U.S. (and probably the UK) who previously held assembly line work who no longer do. We have nobody to blame but ourselves -- we, the consumers, allocated resources freely. We took our money to Wal-Mart.

I also believe that a free market economy can be subject to abuse. So I agree with some degree of regulation. But I think the defining difference is this: free market proponents start from a position of no regulation and grudgingly move to some regulation; socialist proponents start from a position of complete regulation and grudgingly move to some free market practices.

I have expressed my disdain for the ruling elite because they are utter hypocrites. They violate the "treat others" rule in near everything they do. Notice how I did not say "socialists" there ... I said "ruling elite." Here in America our illustrious Congress has exempted themselves from darn near every law they impose upon us. The difference between them and a socialist regime such as the Soviet Union had was that every two years we can do something about it. In 2006 this country did just that.

Snobbery (Goldwingers not waving originally)

This estimate of the CO2 output of Mt St Helens:

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp6/question1375.html

claims approx 900 million tons, lets say a billion, or 5 to 10 times all of the Earth's volcanic CO2 contributions in one year, or 1/10th of the human production in one year.

This kind of makes sense - using basic laws of chemistry/physics (Boyle's Law) and considering just how many volcanoes there are on Earth, it's unlikely that a single volcano could outstrip the CO2 production of all of the Earth's volcanoes in a single year by thousands of times - which it would need to do to beat the efforts of humanity since we began.

+++

Mark my words -- if and when this thing takes root at the policy level, what you'll see in the fine print will be all sorts of exemptions for individuals and organizations who craft the policy.

I agree that this will happen for sure. It's back to human nature, the idea to gain a competitive advantage. I am surprised to see you call it a socialist ideal though ("imposed socialism"), this is normally the capitalist way - exploiting your advantages over your fellow is more a "right wing" than "left wing" activity in my opinion, but I could be wrong. I'm thinking along the lines that the rich only get through exploiting the less rich. I think that's how economies work anyway.

+++

My point earlier was that believing in something non-falsifiable (whatever the object or thing is) is identical to having a closed mind on the subject. I wasn't suggesting there was anything inherently bad about having a closed mind on the subject.

+++

Being inconsistent may be like breaking a promise also, "I said I would do A but then I go and do B". It's about intentions again isn't it? We can have the best will in the world to be consistent/logical and then fail to be so.

+++

The biking fraternity sounds dandy in the US, do you have lady bikers also?

I also enjoy the camaraderie of chatting up other bikers at gas stations

"Chatting up" at the gas station means a person with hopes of trying to get amorous with the other in the UK by the way ! For your example we brits would say "chatting to". Be careful, you know what those leather-clad bikers are like :)

Kaboom!

Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year.

It may be that what I read was in fact a piece of misinformation ... I really don't know. But I'll say this -- I'm just a little skeptical of the information you posted. Not that it is wrong, but that it's not addressing my initial point. Volcanoes might well product 1100 million tons/year, but I'm not talking about annual production ... I'm talking about extraordinary production, created by an extraordinary event like the eruption of St. Helens (1980) or Pinatuba (1991) the expected output from the "Yellowstone Caldera" (which went off 600K years ago and is, I understand, a bit overdue ... yikes!). The articles you referenced didn't seem to say whether the annual figures accounted for extraordinary events, or were true annual output figures. If it did, I didn't see it.

* * *
I have no axe to grind either way, I'm just looking for the truth.

I'll take it one step further -- truth and reasonable policy decisions that flow from that truth. Right now I don't believe we have either. I believe with all my heart that this "climate change" thing is being used as a trojan horse for imposed socialism. Mark my words -- if and when this thing takes root at the policy level, what you'll see in the fine print will be all sorts of exemptions for individuals and organizations who craft the policy. They'll impose travel taxes on tourists to curb "unnecessary flying" but they'll exempt themselves for their "fact finding missions."

Watch also how they'll look to shift most of the burden on the United States. Kyoto already tries to do that -- China and India, two of the most polluting countries in the world and getting worse each year (I was in Beijing; I experienced first hand the awful quality of their air), were exempted. Why?

People say, "The U.S. represents 5% of the people but consumes 25% of the energy." That may be true enough. We also produce a comparable share of the world's GDP, and that is what fuels the quality of life elsewhere. You want to see death on a scale far larger than any "global warming" will produce any time soon? Hobble the U.S. economy to the tune of 20% or more (which is roughly what compliance with the strictest interpretations of Kyoto would have called for). That would drag down the rest of the world. Suddenly farmers in Africa would have nobody to sell their coffee to; no more supplemental food shipments to Africa and other poor countries; no more massive subsidization of drug and relief efforts overseas.

That's my axe to grind.

Look ... there's no question that many in the United States are ostentatious. Yes, we live a big lifestyle. I don't think I do all that much, but I'll grant many do. But I think these fools (and yes, I use that word with intent) who craft worldwide global bureaucratic policy want it both ways. They want to hobble the U.S. out of envy, yet they want to milk the U.S. wealth for all its worth. All the while, of course, while they craft exemptions from their own rules so the ruling elite can live in luxury while others carry the burden.

I truly, truly hate those people.

Volcanic Discharges

Fair enough. I forget where I read this ... somewhere ... that when Mt. St. Helens erupted it spewed more CO2 into the atmosphere in one day than all of mankind did in the last 100 years. I don't know if that's strictly true, but it would not surprise me.

I don't think thats true. I wouldn't know whether to be surprised or not though, where do you get the knowledge to be not surprised from? :)

INFLUENCE ON THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT:

Volcanic eruptions can enhance global warming by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. However, a far greater amount of CO2 is contributed to the atmosphere by human activities each year than by volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year. The small amount of global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect). Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since 1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), described below, greenhouse warming would have been more pronounced

Source: http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html

This appears to be backed up by the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano

Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year.

And it's pretty easy to get the human CO2 emissions estimate from a number of places.

I have no axe to grind either way, I'm just looking for the truth. Like I said, I believe that it's too early to say whether human CO2 emissions have caused the climate change we are experiencing, they may have a neglible or zero effect for all I know. But I don't think the Mt. St Helens thing is correct. I guess it could be used by others who have come to the conclusion that it's NOT human emissions causing Global Warming to write it on the web somewhere to further their agenda, whatever that might be. I still say we have to investigate all claims though.

I will respond on your other points later .. I'm off to pick up my daughter now!

Brotherhood of Riders

Yes ... here in the United States the act of extending the left hand in a gesture of greeting is quite common. And the horizontal two fingers is one gesture; an open palm another; just the index finger extended a third. I do it all the time ... it's fun. I also enjoy the camaraderie of chatting up other bikers at gas stations. People are really eager to talk about their bikes. All it takes is a few open-ended questions from me and off they go. :-)

What's interesting about the hand thing is who does not do it ... and when. When I had my Honda Shadow V-Twin, I noticed a lot of Goldwingers wouldn't acknowledge me. Now that I have a Wing, they acknowledge me. I don't find that kind of exclusivity very attractive. Harley riders will frequently gesture, even to me on my Wing. As a class, I've found Harley riders to be quite friendly, both in gesturing and chatting at gas stations. As a class, I've found sport bike riders to be the least communicative.

While I enjoy the casual social interaction of bikers, I'm not really into the "brotherhood of bikers" thing. We just happen to be people who own motorcycles. My motorcycle does not define me, nor does our common bond of a motorcycle open up some special line of communication that wasn't there before. Convenient line of communication, yes; special, no.

* * *
Question: is believing something to be non-falsifiable synonymous with having a closed mind about that particular topic?

I think by definition nothing should be considered non-falsifiable. But, that said, I think there are things a person may choose to consider non-falsifiable simply to avoid engaging in the discussions and debates. Two examples:

• My commitment to my wife is not non-falsifiable. I am perfectly capable of violating the covenant of our marriage. A discussion of the topic would reveal such breaches in my thinking at the least; in my actions quite possibly (excepting physical contact). But that doesn't mean I relish the opportunity to discuss the topic, or dwell on things I'm doing in violation of our marriage covenant. I don't wish to explore how falsifiable my claims of commitment are. I'd rather privately focus on being true and taking my infractions to the Lord, not others.
• Questions of faith ... same logic here: probing the potential for falsification for me is a detrimental process. That's not to say that it's not worthwhile for others who have the capacity for it. But for me, it's counter-productive. So I choose to hold the Bible as inerrant, though rationally I understand that reasonable discussions of the validity of composition and content may take place.

I think a good deal of this is in how the person presents themselves and their position on non-falsification. The Christian who arrogantly and hatefully dismisses someone who sincerely questions the Bible does wrong. The non-Christian who intentionally antagonizes the believer for the sole purpose of upsetting the Christian does wrong. The scientist who betrays the principle of open inquiry does wrong.

* * *
Let's stick with the facts, the first being "we have altered the composition of the Earth's atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels". The debate should be around understanding what this alteration means to the Earth's climate, if anything, both now and in the future."

Fair enough. I forget where I read this ... somewhere ... that when Mt. St. Helens erupted it spewed more CO2 into the atmosphere in one day than all of mankind did in the last 100 years. I don't know if that's strictly true, but it would not surprise me.

* * *
The law of unintended consequences -- with the recent emphasis on ethanol as a replacement for fossil fuels, the profit margin on corn production has gone way up. That has resulted in two things, both not good:

1. Corn prices have sky-rocketed, making a basic staple increasingly difficult to acquire for people of very limited means
2. Much more land is going into corn production, including rain forests which are being razed to make room to grow corn for ethanol production.
   

Mexico

Hey I didn't realize that Tucson was so near to the border with Mexico ... and it looks like the town of Douglas is half in the USA and half in Mexico .. not quite Istanbul I know but still a surprise to me, I think there is an air force base around there somewhere. Another good long ride pal, you can see it's significant on Google Earth, of which there is an upgrade now - well I installed the Google Pack thing and an updated Google Earth appeared.

Yeah I don't go for those low-rider type bikes much either. Still, meeting folks on the road, it would seem that everywhere in the world bikers are a strong community, I often thought this may be due to them (you!) having a common enemy ie."the car". When two bikers pass in France they stick two fingers out at eachother - not the V for victory Churchill sign, but two fingers held out horizontally. Do they do that is the USA? I love that about riding in France, impossible to do in the UK as it would mean taking your hand of the accelerator, it can only happen where you drive on the "right hand side" of the road. When I first drove in France I thought "What are all these people doing?" Then I got to really like it, it's like reaching out to touch one-another. We are community beings us humans, we like to form groups, I am convinced the behaviour is innate. It's self evident how this behaviour would have had bred in a species borne of natural selection too.

+++

A while ago now I replied to a UK friend who aksed me my views on Global Warming:

"I don't know whether the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, and we have contributed a lot since the industrial revolution, is causing global warming or not. More research is necessary. The trouble with the whole global warming issue is that it's deemed to be a liberal/democrat flag waving banner, so everyone with a conservative/republican bent is just looking to say it's hogwash. In addition - everywhere it seems now - minority groups have far too much power, political correctness has gone mad, and "global warming" is lumped together with these "leftists". So the debate over global warming has come down to left vs right (as usual), with a bunch of "scientists" thrown in competing for grant money.

Let's stick with the facts, the first being "we have altered the composition of the Earth's atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels". The debate should be around understanding what this alteration means to the Earth's climate, if anything, both now and in the future."

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My view is, if you are a scientist then you cannot hold to the non-falsifiable concept that Global Warming is all the result of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere due to the activities of humanity. You cannot hold to the non-falsifiability of anything. You have to keep an open mind about everything.

Question: is believing something to be non-falsifiable synonymous with having a closed mind about that particular topic?

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And, "is being inconsistent like breaking a promise?" ...

Today's 400 Mile Ride

Set out this morning at about 8:30am and returned home about 4:30pm. 400 miles at a relatively leisurely pace:


Click here for a larger image.

Do you see that stretch on the right side of the picture where I turned south in New Mexico and proceeded down to Douglas? 100 miles of nothing ... beautiful scenery, but only one town to speak of. And no gas at all. Luckily I'd topped off my tank just before the start of that journey so I had sufficient to get to the other end of that. Still, it's an eye opener ... and lesson learned: never trust that gas will be there. If I'm about to set out across the wilderness, top up.

Custom Bike

I bumped into this guy while out riding today:


Click here for a larger image.

His bike is a new "custom" bike. The outfit from which he purchased it takes standard parts from the market and bolts them into semi-custom frames. Here's a picture of just the bike:


Click here for a larger image.

This kind of bike really isn't my cup of tea, but this guy seemed right proud of his baby.

A Priori

There is no point arguing with someone who believes that The Bible is a priori non-falsifiable.

That's true of anything. If someone has decided to believe something is non-falsifiable, then no amount of logical argumentation will make a difference.

Incidentally, this is where the "science" of climate change has come. Quotes like "the matter is settled ... it is now merely a question of what we do about it" float around like confetti. Of course the science is not at all settled:

• That the earth has warmed over the last century may be true enough.
• Whether the change is anything abnormal within the context of normal historical cycles is almost never discussed
• Whether the change is in fact due to human activity is a wide open question, despite "scientists" hoping desperately to make it a settled matter.
• Whether any proposed method of correction will actually do anything is an even more wide open question.

You and I will need to simply agree to disagree on the Bible. I don't claim to have perfect faith in its infallibility. I do claim to understand that unless I believe it is essentially true, then I really have no basis to believe that any one part of it is true. John 3:16 becomes just another component that may or may not hold validity.

Absolutely True

And of course one may argue with the premise ... but if the discussion revolves around the validity of the premise rather than a mere refutation of the conclusion ... well, then it's a more interesting discussion.

Exactly. That's the problem I have with philosophical logic. There is nothing inherently "logical" about a fear response to danger, unless you define the axiom in the way that you did "If danger then fear, and if danger is the case then fear is the case". But that only applies to organisms that feel fear. It's a logical statement for organisms that feel fear, but an illogical statement for organsims that do not/cannot feel fear.

Logical does not necessarily equate to pure efficiency, does it?

I don't believe so.

1 + 1 = 2 is an axiom that applies to both organisms that feel and do not feel fear.

The speed of light in vacuo is a constant c and this applies to both Christians and Muslims. The Theory of Special Relativity is built upon this observation of constancy of c in vacuo.

What are the better premesis to build a logical house of cards upon? I would suggest those that apply in the majority of cases.

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Or "scientists" who cherry pick their data to support their agenda? Or global warming activists who fly a private jet to some function? Or a chess grandmaster who argues that a game is a draw when a third option -- me shooting him through the forehead -- is available?

The first example is being consistent to their internal set of values, the second is hypocritical, not necessarily illogical and the third, even if you kill the GM, by the rules of chess, the game is either won or drawn.

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There is no point arguing with someone who believes that The Bible is a priori non-falsifiable. You will always get to this .. fill in the blanks as you see fit.

(a) At first, this is difficult to understand, ....... (b) the contradiction exists in our understanding, not in the Bible, (c) the solution is simple; all you need to do is accept what the Bible says.

(a) is a patronzing ... "You are right and smart to be confused, but alas not smart enough ..
(b) You have failed to understand, but I'll say "our" not "your" understanding to make it look less harsh
(c) A little bit more patronizing (You mean you didn't get this simple solution??) Also don't be a doubting Thomas, be warned! You may be punished

These people can be as inconsistent, illogical and irrational as they wish. I believe that most of these people are not evil (>99%). I believe they do so out of love (of the Godhead) - and they don't really believe that love is subject to the logical. They may be correct, they may be misguided, life is short so be happy. (This goes to my previous post of "what if life wasn't short"? Then I might have to take up more of an issue with such folks). Unfortunately I think there have been a few throughout history using Religion for control purposes, it's a crying shame.

As you once reminded me, it depends on whether you really seek the truth or seek shelter, it would be good if we could find both together. Lennon said it:

Im sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
Ive had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Money for dope
Money for rope

Im sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mamas little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

Ive had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Its money for dope
Money for rope

Ah, Im sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

Ive had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

Practical vs. Logical

Surely if you are going to die anyway wouldn't it be logical to use any method, however remote it's likelihood of succeeding, to save the crew?

Ah, I think I see. Spock's use of "logical" throughout that series is really more akin to some notion of what's practical, or efficient, rather than based on axiomatic construction. Spock's aversion to emotions was said to be because it was "illogical." Axiomatically there's nothing illogical about it at all:

• Premise: A situation that threatens death triggers a fear response
• Condition: I am in a situation that threatens death
• Conclusion: Therefore, my reaction is a fear response

The reaction is perfectly logical. It may not be the most practical response, nor the most efficient nor the most admirable ... but it is logical. And of course one may argue with the premise ... but if the discussion revolves around the validity of the premise rather than a mere refutation of the conclusion ... well, then it's a more interesting discussion.

Logical does not necessarily equate to pure efficiency, does it?

Oh in that case do you want innerant Bible believers to recognize the inconsistencies in The Bible? Would you like Lewis to give option (c) ie. to recognize that an inconsistency with his "force you down an alley of only two given options (a) and (b)" might exist?

Or "scientists" who cherry pick their data to support their agenda? Or global warming activists who fly a private jet to some function? Or a chess grandmaster who argues that a game is a draw when a third option -- me shooting him through the forehead -- is available?

I would love Bible inerrancy advocates to recognize the difficulties in the Bible. I do not believe it necessarily valid to label them inconsistencies ... if by inconsistency one really means falsehood. This website has a whole section on "difficulties" (see navigation bar on left, about one screen down). I'm nearly certain you won't be satisfied with the answers given. But I think it's a good example of someone at least acknowledging that certain passages are not blindingly obvious.

Inconsistency

Help me understand what you're meaning by philosophical logic. Better yet, give me an example of Spock's use of it.

Most of the things Spock said fall into this category.

In "Shore Leave" Spock said "On my planet 'to rest' is to rest, to cease using energy. To me it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass using energy instead of saving it."

Is the axiom that this philosophical logic based upon (to rest = cease to use energy) open to interpretation with regards to vacationing? You betcha! It's not like an AND gate or a XOR operation, which are based on axioms that are not open to interpretation.

One other that comes to mind is that episode where they were escaping off some planet and Spock had to burn off in a flare the last of the shuttle craft fuel in a desperate attempt to signal the Enterprise as to their location. After they had been saved Spock said "it was illogical to use the fuel in this manner due to the very low likelyhood that the Enterprise would see it" (or words to that effect), now what axiom is that based upon? Surely if you are going to die anyway wouldn't it be logical to use any method, however remote it's likelyhood of succeeding, to save the crew?

I guess more than anything what I want is people to employ consistency, and failing that, then at a bare minimum to recognize that inconsistency may exist.

Oh in that case do you want innerant Bible believers to recognize the inconsistencies in The Bible? Would you like Lewis to give option (c) ie. to recognize that an inconsistency with his "force you down an alley of only two given options (a) and (b)" might exist?

I'll confess I'm often inconsistent in my argumentation. It maddens me when I'm caught in it

If you answered "no" to either of the previous two questions then you've been caught in it again sir ! :) There is a third option of course, ie. decline to answer the previous two questions !

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Is inconsistency like breaking a promise?

Argumentation and Consistency

But what is logic? Which type are we talking about here? There is formal symbolic and mathematical logic, on which modern mathematics and computers are built and then there is the woolley philosophical logic - which is what I think we are talking about here (please correct me if I am wrong).

I honestly don't know. I'm aware of the mathematical logic; less so the philosophical logic you referenced. Your comment that Mr. Spock used philosophic logic all the time threw me.

I guess more than anything what I want is people to employ consistency, and failing that, then at a bare minimum to recognize that inconsistency may exist. How much squishier can I get? But even that seems to be out of bounds. Inconsistency? Even when they're being blatant about it, they continue to flail away.

Note: I'll confess I'm often inconsistent in my argumentation. It maddens me when I'm caught in it ... I wish I was more tight with my reasoning.

We've had the discussion before about how mathematical axioms are by definition true because we assert them to be true. Whether they are or are not really doesn't matter ... for the purposes of the exercise we assume X and work from there.

Help me understand what you're meaning by philosophical logic. Better yet, give me an example of Spock's use of it.