Saturday, 31 March 2012

The Gummi-Bear Poem

One day I found a gummi-bear up my nose
All compacted and squishy -- well:
That's the way it goes

At first I thought it was a lump of snot
But snot that hard usually has a crust
When you pull it from your nose

I investigated the stuff scientifically, I found:
It squished snottily between my fingers
It squashed snottily between my toes

It was only when I licked it
That I realized it was another gummi-bear
That had got stuck, too long, up my nose

I don't know how it got there
I don't know whence it came
My sister says "it's gross".

But in actual fact, it was yummy.

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

15 questions evolutionists cannot satisfactorially explain.

I thought I'd try my hand at these ... questions in caps (sorry).

Most are "so what?" questions. Unlike religions, science does not claim to have all the answers. One of the things scientific method is good at is identifying things that don't need to be true. Thus, although we have uncertainty about what we know to be true, we can have a lot of confidence in what we know to be superfluous.

It is not possible to dissuade, through reason, someone from a position they did not arrive at through reason, so none of the answers will be "satisfactory" to the creationist. This blog is too small to give complete answers anyway - the best I can do is indicate where a decent reply may be found.
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1 – HOW DID LIFE ORIGINATE?
Through the laws of physics and natural selection.
We actually know a lot of ways that life could originate and understand a lot of the mechanisms. It is not so much that we don't know how life originated as that we are unsure of exactly which of the available methods actually happened.

2 – HOW DID THE DNA CODE ORIGINATE?
Via chemistry. It's a bit like the above - except we have fewer options.

3 – HOW COULD MUTATIONS—ACCIDENTAL COPYING MISTAKES (DNA ‘LETTERS’ EXCHANGED, DELETED OR ADDED, GENES DUPLICATED, CHROMOSOME INVERSIONS, ETC.)—CREATE THE HUGE VOLUMES OF INFORMATION IN THE DNA OF LIVING THINGS?
The huge volume of information is there without any of those processes.
Note: the question confuses DNA-level events with Chromosome level processes.

4 – WHY IS NATURAL SELECTION, A PRINCIPLE RECOGNIZED BY CREATIONISTS, TAUGHT AS ‘EVOLUTION’, AS IF IT EXPLAINS THE ORIGIN OF THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE?
It isn't. Natural selection is taught as one of the driving principles in the overall theory of evolution. It is not taught as if it were all of the theory.

5 – HOW DID NEW BIOCHEMICAL PATHWAYS, WHICH INVOLVE MULTIPLE ENZYMES WORKING TOGETHER IN SEQUENCE, ORIGINATE?
Through natural selection via intermediate processes. You'll have to be specific.

6 – LIVING THINGS LOOK LIKE THEY WERE DESIGNED, SO HOW DO EVOLUTIONISTS KNOW THAT THEY WERE NOT DESIGNED?
Living things only look designed from a distance. On closer examination we see that they lack many of the features humans usually associate with design like high levels of symmetry, regularity in components, efficiency, and so on.

7 – HOW DID MULTI-CELLULAR LIFE ORIGINATE?
From single-celled life which formed colonies.

8 – HOW DID SEX ORIGINATE?
From specialization within colonies.

9 – WHY ARE THE (EXPECTED) COUNTLESS MILLIONS OF TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS MISSING?
They aren't. We do not expect to find "countless milions" of fossils of any kind of organism: fossilization is a rare event. We have found "transitional" fossils though: of organisms that lie between two modern species.

10 – HOW DO ‘LIVING FOSSILS’ REMAIN UNCHANGED OVER SUPPOSED HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS, IF EVOLUTION HAS CHANGED WORMS INTO HUMANS IN THE SAME TIME FRAME?
They didn't. They mutated and radiated and selected. We are surrounded by their changed offspring.
You mean: "how is it that the anchient form is still around?" The answer is because they didn't get selected out. The theory of evolution means there is a chance that some forms will not vanish. It is a small chance, but you will notice that living fossils are rare and scarce.

11 – HOW DID BLIND CHEMISTRY CREATE MIND/INTELLIGENCE, MEANING, ALTRUISM AND MORALITY
Through evolution in social animals.

12 – WHY IS EVOLUTIONARY ‘JUST-SO’ STORYTELLING TOLERATED
Because it is better supported than the other forms of "just so" story-telling that preceded it, including the "just so" storytelling of creationists.

13 – WHERE ARE THE SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS DUE TO EVOLUTION?
All through biology and chemistry - and videogames.

14 – SCIENCE INVOLVES EXPERIMENTING TO FIGURE OUT HOW THINGS WORK; HOW THEY OPERATE. WHY IS EVOLUTION, A THEORY ABOUT HISTORY, TAUGHT AS IF IT IS THE SAME AS THIS OPERATIONAL SCIENCE?
Evolution is a theory about biology, not history. "Operational" science is not taught in school as there is no such thing.

Evolution is a theory which informs a great many scientific experiments and which is supported by many as well. However it is not taught as experimental science either since it is not an experimental science. It is a part of the framework of modern biology - which is an experimental science.

15 – WHY IS A FUNDAMENTALLY RELIGIOUS IDEA, A DOGMATIC BELIEF SYSTEM THAT FAILS TO EXPLAIN THE EVIDENCE, TAUGHT IN SCIENCE CLASSES?
Fundamentally religious ideas and dogmatic belief systems are not taught in science classes.
Anyway you've got it backwards: scientific theories are not expected to explain the evidence - that would be unscientific - instead, the theories are expected to be supported by the evidence.

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Hopefully you can see that the questions represent fundamental misunderstanding about what science does. Many people are looking for some sort of certainty, some sort of Answer, in life. Science is not that Answer - though it can provide useful tools to seek one. Scientists do not know everything and do not claim to. It is the religious people who claim access to absolute Truth and by pointing to the absence of the same from scientific theories they are just saying that science is not a religion.

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

That time of year...

Its coming up to April 1st I see:
YEARLY INTERNET MAINTENANCE ANNOUNCEMENT
IT IS URGENT THAT YOU DO NOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET FROM MARCH 31st 23:59 GMT (11:59 PM) UNTIL 00:01 GMT (12:01 AM) APRIL 2nd.
It's that time again. As many of you know, each year the Internet must be closed down for a 24 hour period of time in order to receive maintenance, or a "Tune Up" if you will.
Many dead links on the World Wide Web will be removed, as well as ftp links that are no longer used. Lost email will also be removed from the system at this time. The White House is very interested in this part of the project.
In addition to the normal maintenance to be completed this year, we will also be using new high pressure information jets to clear out the bottlenecks that have plagued the internet so greatly this past year.
Although the down time for maintenance will be an inconvenience for many people, you will find this will allow for a much more efficient and faster responding internet.
This year, the "Tune Up" will occur from 23:59 GMT (11:59 PM) on March 31st until 00:01 GMT (12:01 AM) on April 2nd. During that 24 hour period, dozens of powerful Internet bots at key locations around the globe will simultaneously scan the Internet and complete the desired maintenance jobs wherever they may be required.
To help protect any valuable data you may have on the Internet from possible corruption, we highly recommend you take the following steps before this 24 hour maintenance period begins:
1. Disconnect all terminals and LANs from the Internet.
2. Disconnect all Internet servers from the Internet.
3. Refrain from connecting any computer, or any other Internet connection device, to the Internet in any way.
Note: The term "other Internet connection device" includes such devices as WebTV.
Again, we understand the inconvenience this will cause many people. And for that, we apologize. However, the great increase in Internet performance you will experience after this short period of maintenance will far outweigh any problems it will cause.
This message comes to you from the Internet via your Internet Service Provider.


Notice the switch-off date? It's all day April 1st (check again) though that means the hoaxers are the fools since they continue the joke in the afternoon.

Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Democracy is Inefficient (paper) Democracy is Inefficient (paper) Democracy is Inefficient (paper)

Tell us something we don't know!

Recent research in the press says
Democratic election is the preferred method for determining political administrators nowadays.
What? Where? By whom? Certainly there are an awful lot of them these days... but the actual power seems to be transferred as much by military and hereditary means as by the ballot.

The intention is to find the best possible leader in order to improve the group's competitiveness and success.
Um... no it isn't. I don't think anyone seriously believes that the purpose of holding elections is to pick the "best possible" leader - the idea is something to do with trying to avoid totalitarian tyranny by increasing public involvement in state affairs. We accept the inefficiency as a necessary byproduct.

Though preferred, democratic election is far from being optimal in this respect, and is increasingly becoming the target for fraud.
... they do need a citation for this point, but I don't think anyone is disagreeing here. It's just that I'd argue that many of the World's democracies have this aspect built in and if they don't they should.

A model was developed to scientifically analyze the presentelectoral system's insufficiency. It is based on Fauceir assumptions.

Faucier assumptions? ... this is a mathematical toolkit for study of evolving systems that have certain characteristics - like biological evolution. The application to political systems is dubious.

Its calculations enable principles to be developed that optimize the election process, while also revealing the limits of elections in societies growing ever more complex, so that in the end elections have to be replaced by processes similar to what has proved optimal throughout naturally occurring evolution - natural selection.
The assumptions in the analysis favor evolving systems: Faucier, remember, the conclusion is built-in ...

Natural selection is seldom optimal in nature so no reason to think it will be optimal in politics. Add to this that the researchers ideas about the aim of democratic elections, what problem they are supposed to solve, are flawed and the results are not surprising. They have attempted to analyse a system according to measures that were never a priority in setting up the system in the first place: of course it didn't work.

And that's just in the abstract.

The paper itself focuses on the ability of ordinary people to make a judgement on the competency of a candidate in some field important to the election. However, they ignore two important aspects: 1. the decision is not made in isolation; 2. the candidate does not have to have technical expertise in government to be a good choice.

  1. is why freedom of speech is essential to a functioning democracy
  2. is why incumbents hire staff to advise them ... and do the donkey-work.

The elected officials do not "run the country", that's not their job. Their job is to represent the interests of their electorate within the process of government ... the actual government includes a lot unelected people too. They are the ones with the expertise. In a way, the elected guys act to slow things down by forcing the unelected to work to get an idea into law. Well... more than they would otherwise.

After identifying "ignorance" as a major problem with election systems, they fail to identify, or under-value, "knowledge" as a solution. The lack is in critical analysis - this is the set of meta-skills that allow someone without specialized knowledge to judge the competence before the fact of someone claiming to have it. Without these skills, our elections have become a lemon's market.

The idea they did come up with would probably interest Greg Egan for a story. How would an elections system based on natural selection work? What would it look like?

Monday, 5 March 2012

Bills bills bills

I am surrounding by so many bills it's like feeding ducks!

I have today cancelled by home phone and old internet access. People who have been used to contacting me that way will no longer be able to. Basically it is cheaper for me to make phone calls via google voice than it is to rent a landline and make free calls.

This will save me $60-70 a month for a phone and dialup I basically don't use.

All my ISP is now 100% waiheke-based (YNET). I may be forced to drop them for a while too and just use a local cafe in the mornings. This would safe $50 a month on broadband, which I haven't been paying, but if I use a cafe I'll have to pay them for a coffee or something each day I go ... so it's not so big-a saving (about $30/month tops) but I do get to control it for lean months.

April Semi's are coming due for Toastmaster's - they want $70 ... can't afford it so I'll have to flag them as well. I'm really going lean and mean on this one. It's annoying because to socialize on Waiheke you gotta join a club and they all want paying.

This still leaves outstanding tax credits ... I'll have to give IRD a call, and rates. Rates are not so bad as I have a big discount on them. I've changed energy company, but the basic plan is actually worse than the old one so I have to change plans. They have a decent discount on an auto-pay internet-based plan.

All this is while waiting for work and/or the final property settlement to come in. Word is I have to last until August at the latest ... that will be the latest latest so I'm not all that hopeful.

Winter is coming - time to batten down the hatches.
I feel like I've sleepwalking and just stood on a tack.

Sunday, 4 March 2012

US: Contraception Coverage Supporters Sluts and Prostitutes

Only in the USA.

The proposal (via avflox) seems to be that religious institution's health insurance should cover birth control .... something that would probably vex those institution's whose religion is dead set against that very thing.

The argument opposing seems to be that getting women easier access to contraception will make them want to have more sex and more often. (And supports those who already behave like this.)

Now I am somewhat biased here, I quite like the idea of more women wanting to have more sex since this can only impact positively on my life, but I'm pretty sure that this is not a very negative argument in _anyone's_ books. Not exactly demotivational is it?

Add to this that a very rational and well researched suggestion that maybe those contraceptive drugs which are needed as part of required medical treatment for debilitating or life-threatening conditions could reasonably be covered by insurance without contravening religious reservations about women's sexuality got dismissed due to the suspicion that the woman delivering the suggestion enjoys having lots of sex (look up the meaning of "slut" sometime).

I'll just repeat that in case you didn't get it. The position is this: a woman can only have a valid point if she does not enjoy sex. Her intellectual validity is inversely proportional to her sexual proclivity.

Now it seems to me that, by that standard, _nobodies_ opinion has any value. How the panel can have any credibility at all after this is beyond me. Do we really want policy decisions about reproductive medicine be made by people who do not enjoy sex? Perhaps the panel would be more open to the same facts delivered by a nun? (Actually, that's probably worth arranging.) Though one suspects they'd be more receptive to a priest.

Indeed, one suspects that the panel members are not getting any and, therefore, don't see why anyone else should either. Left alone, this looks like an opportunity for drug companies to repackage popular brands of "birth control pills" as "cancer pills" and charge more.

The anger directed at the panel is also puzzling: how can their position produce any other than incredulous guffaws? The pro-coverage people have been supplied with an new, unofficial, slogan: "support coverage, get laid". It's got to be good for you.

Thursday, 1 March 2012

TIE Interceptor Model


For practice I built this TIE Interceptor model in Wings3D. It's a low-res version which is why the ball/cockpit looks chunky - fix with interpolation. What's interesting about this process is that these models were first built as physical models - so the bits that are easy to do in real life with bits and bobs, like the pipes and the ball and curved stuff, are actually the hard parts in computer modelling that has to be done with all triangles.

Hello March!

The long February is over and the days are getting wetter.

For the record - I am directing certain women (you know who you are) to this blog as a first step to finding out more about me. The next step is under my pic - follow the link to google+ and discover the awesomness ;)

I think I should alter the "Nickname" field.