Physics

A couple of months ago, I was shooting the shit with one of the guys at my favorite local gun shop. He's ex-military, more right-wing than I am (by a goodly amount), but not a nut and he knows guns. I've always been able to rely on him for solid information and advice, and found his opinions and information about guns to jibe with my own knowledge and experience.

Somehow the conversation turned to .50 caliber weapons. I don't own one, and don't have any desire to own one (though I do have a .54 flintlock). Some people do like them for target-shooting long distances, but those are heavy (upwards of a hundred pounds) and usually just a single shot, and priced well into four digits. The military versions are usually mounted on some kind of vehicle, to move the things and help control the recoil of the gun. Anyway, in the discussion about the .50 caliber military weapons, the gun-shop guy said "Go downtown. Look around. There is nowhere you can hide - not behind any car, not in any building - where a .50 cal can't reach you. That's why they're perfect for the military."

Now, guess where they're being deployed. Yup, right here in the US, by a Sheriff's Department. To let the bad guys know that the department is 'serious'. Via Reason:

Got two hours to spare? It could open up a whole new dimension in your life.

No, this is not some Amway scam, new-age Woo, or political revival. It's a series of brilliant videos (along with explanatory text) put together by a French mathematician which explore the existence of a fourth spatial dimension. And it is *very* cool. From ScienceNews:

So can any of these techniques help us visualize Schläfli’s 600-sided, four-dimensional shape? Using a computer, Ghys first passes Schläfli’s regular, four-dimensional shapes through three-dimensional space and looks at the three-dimensional “slices” created. This helps a bit, but just as in two dimensions, it’s not easy to assemble an image of the higher-dimensional shape this way.

OK, I spent *way* too much time playing this game last night: Orbitrunner. And because I'm the kind of guy that I am, I wanted to inflict it on you.

It's actually a very interesting bit of gaming, for as simple as seems at first glance. Here's the description from the site:

Control the Sun with your mouse. Use it to manipulate the planets' paths. The Sun's pull gets stronger as planets get closer. If the gravity is at a right angle to the direction of travel, an orbit can form. Make sure planets don't leave the screen or collide!

It's Primary Election day here, and in a bit I'll be going to the polls to make some careful, considered choices.

But things like this sometimes make me wonder why I bother. The human race is clearly doomed.

Jim Downey

(Via PZ.)

A clear case of 'common descent' if I've ever heard one:

Body of ballooning priest found at sea

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The body of a Brazilian priest who floated out over the ocean suspended by hundreds of helium-filled party balloons, has been found off the coast of southeastern Brazil, police have confirmed.

The corpse of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was spotted by a tugboat at sea near the city of Macae, three months after he disappeared while flying a contraption buoyed by balloons over the Atlantic Ocean in a fund-raising stunt.

Too bad he didn't pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, eh?

*sigh*

No, I'm not going to say "how sad". Guy tried to pull an idiotic stunt (even if it has been done multiple times). That he was a priest who was doing it so that he could help spread the 'Good News!' doesn't change the fact that he took a risk and got caught. Nothing tragic to see here, move along folks, move along.

Man, I loves me some Star Trek technobabble as much as the next guy. But get a load of this:

Amazon.com Product Description
Get the purest digital audio you've ever experienced from multi-channel DVD and CD playback through your Denon home theater receiver with the AK-DL1 dedicated cable. Made of high-purity copper wire, it's designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration and helps stabilize the digital transmission from occurrences of jitter and ripple. A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable's shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties. The connector features a rounded plug lever to prevent bending or breaking and direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable.

And it can be yours for the low, low price of $499.99.

Seriously. A $5 ethernet cable.

Back in 2005, Stephen Darksyde published a fantastic article here at UTI called "Ancestral Magnitudes". It used the metaphor of the "generation", and colorfully described human evolution in terms of our ancestors.

[DarkSyde] If the idea of a flat-earth or the Sun-god is a part of that faith then you either ignore the science and live in willful ignorance-at least in regard to that conflict-and trust to faith, or you adjust your theology. Those really are your only two choices as far as I can see.

What your objection more than likely reveals is that you don't like the idea of being the product of 'random' physics and biochemistry, that you feel there is no room for a Creator in such a scenario. I cannot imagine greater natural evidence for the Brilliance of a Creator than complex process unfolding over billions of years through countless steps in exquisite order spanning the entire Cosmos. The technical skill and artistic vision of such is to be admired in awe, and in that context evolution should be worthy of your devotion, not your disdain.

I encourage you to read the whole thing if you haven't already. It'll blow your mind.

A few days ago, Xavier Onassis from the blog "Doubting Faith" published the same sort of mind-blowingly cool article about our universe, and it puts our place in that universe into stark, unflinching perspective.

[Xavier Onassis] Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that a universe this vast, and this spectacular could not be a random occurrence. Personally, I don't have a problem with it being one big coincidence. But, let's just say it's not.

Do you really think that a hypothetical all-powerful, all-knowing God, responsible for the creation of EVERYTHING in this incredibly vast universe would really give a flying fuck how you voted in the last election? Whether or not a couple of gay guys get married? Whether or not you keep Kosher or go on The Hajj?

Get over yourselves. You're not that fucking important. You need to look at the Big Picture and put things in perspective.

Just excellent. Highly recommended. Great job, Xavier.

OK, before I head out for the Heinlein Centennial, I had to share this little piece of the puzzle showing that we are, indeed, heading for the Crazy Years, as Brent recently mentioned:

Our Claim

Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy - that is our claim. By free we mean that the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we mean that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely.

The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change form.

Roy Abraham Varghese, theistic apologist and god-bothering author from the "Institute of Metascientific Research", was recently interviewed by the Dallas Observer. Varghese is widely credited as "the man who won over Anthony Flew", and is now currently working on a book called "There Is A God" with Flew.

Varghese is an interesting character because his contention is that without a meta-intelligence, all science devolves into incoherence if you drill-down deep enough, or pull back far enough.

It's a lot of pseudo-scientific nonsense of course, a philosophically slick update to the theistic evolutionist's mantra.

More below the fold...

This morning's This I Believe essay is by someone who is an engineer but with a solid science background, and it outlines how he went from belief in some kind of fundie religion (unspecified, but references in the essay make it clear it was some kind of 'Biblical Inerrancy' cult) to Deism (though he doesn't come out and call it that - I suppose it is possible that he doesn't know the history behind his current belief.)

This is some very exciting news! I've always maintained that even though our brains are fantastically complex, they are basically understandable. It looks as if this research is headed down the path of using computers to figure out exactly how we have been wired by evolution to think, feel, and reason - in effect, a mind-reading computer. It is being developed at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany by Dr John-Dylan Haynes, working with researchers in London and Tokyo.

[link] By studying changes in brain activity, it is now thought possible to identify how a person is going to act before they do so.

The breakthrough could have huge implications for brain-stimulated devices used by people suffering from paralysis.

In the study, volunteers were asked to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers but told not to reveal what they were going to do.

Using complex computer programs and sophisticated imaging of the brain, scientists were able to identify what each person was going to do with 70% accuracy.

There is a novel written by James Halperin called The Truth Machine that posits the invention of a 100% accurate "truth machine" that reads the brains of those who are connected to it and displays whether or not they are telling the truth. This breakthrough acts as a Singularity event on society and changes everything, allowing humanity to finally progress to the point where we conquer physical death through technology and innovative scientific research into genetics and nanotechnology.

It's a fun book to read - a little too utopian for my tastes, but fun.

While I was reading the article above, I was struck by something that one of the scientists involved with this project said:

[link] "In future it will be possible to read even abstract thoughts and intentions out of patients' brains.

"One day even the intentions such as 'open the blue folder' or 'reply to the email' could be picked up by brain scanners and turned into the appropriate action."

Is a "truth machine" in our near future? And what would be the impact of such a device on our society?

Evolution is a fact. It happens. It has happened. It continues to happen.

This is not in question. Those who protest either don't know what the heck evolution actually is, or they are lying to themselves and to you.

What I would like to talk about today is the perception that people have about what evolution is and is not, as well as what I believe we can do about it.

I have been arguing the creation/evolution debate for a long, long time. Back in 1986 I jumped into the infant online world with both feet, learning how to think critically and how to construct arguments. I have been an atheist since I was about 17 years old. I have been interested in science and the scientific method for much longer than that. The idea of a personal invisible imaginary friend seemed ridiculous to me even at the age of ten.

So, when the virtual world of the the new online services presented itself to me, I was floored. Here was a pure realm consisting of exact meaning. A world where people talked to each other almost mind-to-mind - cutting away the traps and the pitfalls that usually accompanied face to face conversation. Nervousness, apprehension, emotion, forgetfulness, shyness - none of this mattered when you were composing your thoughts off line in a text editor. You were able to edit and vet your words, making sure that they flowed well and made sense.

But those things which so attracted me to online text-based communication seemed to make others dumber than they would have been otherwise. Time and again I witnessed ostensibly intelligent people stumble and rush through a message or a rebuttal, making themselves sound like fools due to incoherent rambling, spelling and grammar errors, and faulty, fallacious reasoning.

It's almost as if they didn't care how they were perceived when they were online.

I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. Online communications in this day and age - YouTube notwithstanding - is primarily text based. That is to say that if you cannot form cogent and thoughtful sentences, spelled correctly with the meaning coming through crystal clear, then why the hell are you arguing online - using text to try and get your meaning across to the other guy?

But that is neither here nor there - except as a base for my thoughts about evolution and the way that I have observed that people look at it.

More below the fold...

Thanks to my new favorite funny website Fundies Say The Darndest Things, we find out from a budding 20-year-old Christian braintrust nicknamed "lily00" that physics can be different on different planets, but that the Holy Bible is unchanging.

Who knew?

[link] "[Explaining how calculations were made for the unlikelihood of Earth being able to support life]

They looked at what humans needed for life. I don't know what the big deal is about the laws of physics. Can't the laws of physics be different in another planet if there is one? I agree with many of the points the movie brought out though, like needed liquid water, the right amount of sun, things like that. If there is another planet out there, they probably have the same Holy Bible we do and everything. Really cool."

lily00, Christian Forums

It is amazing to me that someone like this can lead a normal life without, oh I don't know, chopping their fingers off while grating cheese or something. Ignorance on this scale just absolutely floors me. It underscores the problem with science acceptance, education, and understanding in this country.

Most folks seem to be just like this "lily00" idiot. They just just wallow in ignorance, and then loudly proclaim that they are darned proud of being an ignorant moron - as if that is somehow preferable or more honorable than taking the time to learn and become become educated and knowledgeable.

I weep for our country.

Cool! Or hot, rather.

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York create a black hole in the lab.

Now that the US Patent office has issued patent number 6,960,975 for an anti-gravity device, I want my damn flying car.

Any day now, oh yes, any day...

"The body of both the decedent and his dog were found within hours after death ... a 22 year-old male in top-notch physical condition ... he had the 'heart and lungs of a racing horse'. There are no marks, no sign of trauma internal or external, there is no bruising of the heart or brain in either cadaver. Toxicology results are negative ... What am I supposed to list as CoD? Curse of Leslie County? The Appalachian Witch?"--Leslie County, KY Medical Examiner who wished to remain anonymous

"We were at 28,000 feet .. just completed our last compass check before descending for the bomb-run ... It appeared out of nowhere, a big, reddish, Gremlin following us, just above our left wing. It was fairly dim but for a split second, I swear on my mother's grave ... I think I saw a face!" --WW 2 co-pilot who wished to remain anonymous

Witches and Gremlins? Silly superstitious stories? Nope: This stuff really happens. And among both high altitude meteorologists and remote mountain county coroners, the culprit in these disparate phenomena would oddly converge independently on the same answer.

Warning: Large Graphics Below

Jeff Kuecker of Zeitgeist vs. Nomos is afraid of what the emerging possibility of teleportation would do to his immortal soul. You know, the part that makes us us, according to him. Jeff goes on to state the un-evidenced proposition that these "souls" actually exist, and he states it as if it were a fact - suggesting in his post that souls exist in the same way that a sidewalk outside your home exists, for example. It is implied to be a concrete, unquestionable fact. This is not surprising, really, coming from a Christian like Jeff, because the very definition of the theistic position is the acceptance of concepts like "souls", the supernatural, and a god without any evidence whatsoever. However, I have to take issue with this underlying assumption. He tells us that the human soul is immaterial, non-physical, invisible, and undetectable.

Hmnn.

[link] The problem is that we are not our bodies. We have bodies. But we, the things that make us us, our ego, self-consciousness, beliefs, memories, states of mind, all these things are not physical. They are part of our souls, the souls that animate our bodies.

I was talking to a good friend of mine earlier this week about magic and mystery. The conversation started because she overheard me explaining how a rainbow works to my six year old son. I explained about prisms, refraction and dispersion. I went on to say that water droplets in the air can act like millions of tiny prisms, refracting and dispersing sunlight to create these wonderful and beautiful displays for us to look at.

She was quite shocked. She told me that explaining things like rainbows "ruins the magic".

I replied that I thought that knowing how things like rainbows work only makes them more "magical", not less.

A lot of folks live in a very superficial plane of existence - where everything can be reduced to a symptom and only happens on the surface. They don't know, nor do they want to find out, how the magic happens.

That's very sad.

I'll take millions of tiny prisms over an unexplained rainbow any day.