Minorities and the Others That Support them

I am straight. I have never been part of a pro-gay movement. And I feel sort of guilty about that.

the thing is, I've never really thought about it before. I support all forms of equality, but I have never once felt the need to actively help any minority, including gays, Blacks, and women (though how 50% makes a minority I don't know). I don't think many people really get involved in these types of things, even if they support the principles. the simple reason is that majority groups aren't searching for that piece of their life most of the time.

the the movie "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", the protagonist finds himself with a great hole in his life. he tries to fill it by joining a black equality group. They don't want him. I think this says alot about how far we have come in bridging such gaps since the time when that movie was set. Still, The drive simply isn't there for anyone but a minority to actively fight. Having considered this , I would like to help some such group. unfortunately they don't exist in Qatar, so I feel rather trapped. Darn.

Poor Poor Joy Division

Having flipped through other Love Will tear Us Apart covers on youtube, I have determined that there are alot of people who don't get Joy Division, but think that they do. As if the previously mentioned "Let's Dance To Joy Division" weren't bad enough, most of the covers and comments I saw were totally emo. though there was one guy wearing a scary mask. He was cool. His version was good to. And I won't mention names but there is a girl out there with one hell of an over-inflated ego. She had to look at her fingers to play 2 chords while singing the song. the video has 40,000 views. Maybe Ian was on to something with the depression and suicide bit...

If I Had A Science Blog...

Than this would be my tagline:

"Making the impossible slightly more accessible
Making the implausible slightly less acceptable"

Love Will Tear Us Apart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWhYPO6qvg

This isn't my favourite Joy Division song (that honour goes to the version of Ceremony on Heart and Soul) but it really lends itself to one man and a guitar thing. I've played it life a few times, but this is the most that Iv'e played around with it.

By the way, there's a song called "let's dance to joy division". It sucks. just thought you should know. If he hadn't already it would cause Ian Curtis to kill himself. And I mean no offence to him when I say this.

Multi-Causal Universes?

If there are multiple universes, I wonder if they all follow the same laws as ours.

Think about it: does every possible state of the universe within our physical parameters occur? or does every set of laws exist? could there even be non-causal universes? If there were, then there must be an infinite number because there is a infinite number of possible parameters.

"Time, it's flexing like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
It's script is you and me"
-David Bowie

Apple Has Their Collective Heads In the Clouds of the 80s

A brief history lesson. Back when Apple Computing was essentially 2 guys and a garage, those 2 guys had alot of cool ideas. They created the Apple which only sold to computer geeks. the Apple II, however, really sold the lay audience that they wanted and needed computers.

When 5 1/4" floppy drive went on sale they cost thousands of dollars. The Steves (Jobs and Wosniak) designed a drive for the Apple II which drastically cut down the number of chips required. By doing this they significantly reduced the cost and size of the apple. the drive cost under 200 dollars to make, but they sold it for about 600. This seems evil, but if you consider the fact that they were still a small company and that they were still pricing far below the competition you can see that they were justified in charging for their creativity.

And now we have the mac book air. Starting at 3500 dollars, we have the most stripped down computer you can find. The thinnest perhaps, but the functionality is minimal. And people wonder why Microsoft is the leader. I would love to own a mac, but they simply cost to much. A 1000 dollar PC goes for at least 1500 in mac terms. and PCs have so much more software support it isn't funny.

the same goes for iPods. They cost about 250 to make AT MOST. add another 50 bucks for transportation and R&D and they still charge almost double for the best models. I have an iPod, but that's only because iTunes is so darn good. They are coasting on a piece of software. and those 600 dollar iPods? Your lucky if it lasts a day after the warranty expires.

Apple has forgotten about the innovation that allowed them to get away with this kind of behaviour.

My Ode to Carl Sagan.

We go about our daily lives
and generate a ceaseless drive
that can't be true
but is not a lie
a precious who
some sacred why

We doubt this is all
and obey ancient scrawl.
We cannot admit
that this is our end.
How audacious is it?
to think that we are godsend.

The works of the sentient
Human or alien
They fall short of black holes
And quickly will rot
But we bask in the soul
Of this pale blue dot

X-files Hates Guns!

Mulder and Sculley from the X-Files both have guns. They are FBI agents, it only makes sense. But for some reason, they don't keep them nearby when in their homes or hotel rooms. Given that they often come under personal attack, you would think that they would keep them close. It's not like they tend not to pick them up for dramatic purposes. Quite the contrary, there is generally a 5 second scene where they pick it up off of a desk or couch. How strange.

On another note, they tend to butcher pseudo-science in that show. Like the time loss in the first episode. Mulder said that it was due to a physical difference in the time dimension. The reason that people lose time is that they don't remember 2 hours. Everyone knows that, why did they have to invent something? It's all silly anyway!

BTW, Sculley is cute.

Me and Religion

I try to keep this blog impersonal, with my opinion playing a backseat to the various thoughts and ideas that I've had. However, the best way to analyse what somebody says is to know exactly what their stance is on the subject that they are discussing. I run into religion alot (especially when discussing evolution) so I've decided to go into detail about my take on the matter.

Occam's Razor. DONE!

Ok, let's be serious. The first thing that we have to start with is that there is no evidence for the existence of a god (hence he term faith). There is no evidence that could disprove the existence of a god. Anything that happens could be caused by a divine power. Steven Hawking talked about this in A Brief History Of Time when he said "The expanding universe does not disprove the existence of god, but it does place limits on when he could have carried out his jobs". If god exists than he does everything according to the laws that we have extrapolated from the evidence.

On the other hand, there is lots of stuff that could happen to imply a god. If events occurred completely randomly, or according to purely ideological reasons than that would imply a higher power. Of course, when we discover a phenomenon it always takes some time to figure out what caused it, but if we spent 4000 years trying to figure out the laws that define gravity it would be fair to say that there isn't a description that really works. If gravity is the only thing that we couldn't describe, than we should assume that we haven't developed the proper math yet. However, if we make no progress in any scientific field over that time than the idea that there is a god doesn't really break Occam's razor anymore.

So, we have seen steadily increasing rates of progress in science and everything seems to hold up quite well (pending further evidence). So, why should I add a god?

Let's look at a big question as an example of applying Occam's razor. Where did the universe come from? Right now we don't think that we can infer anything that happened or existed before the big bang. So, god could have set the universe in motion. But then where did he come from? It's another layer of complexity that we don't need. Science works by putting the answerable unknowns right behind what we already know. So putting something as big as GOD behind that curtain makes a huge number of assumptions. And even if god did exists before the big bang than he almost certainly doesn't exist now, because he fundamentally changed the way the universe works. He becomes a massive anomaly in a causal universe. Oh yeah, and why haven't we found heaven or hell yet? And why aren't all skeptics struck down by lightning bolts? Just a thought... It almost seems like god wants us to believe in a causal universe...

The nutty religion of Scientology was invented about 50 years ago by a science fiction writer named L Ron Hubbard. He did it to avoid being thrown in jail for making medical claims and left a paper trail of allegations and statement. The guy even wrote about how much money you can make by creating a religion. So, what if that happened when the Bible was written? What about the Koran? Of course the evidence for that is gone. If a scientific study is done a while ago, we should probably redo it now in order to test our base assumptions. The only reason to believe that any one religion is correct (again, assuming that there is a god) is if we derive it from religious texts. Unfortunately there are a gazillion religions and texts, with no method of determining if one is more legitimate than another. There is no subjective way of determining that the christian god exists and that Allah does not. This question is unanswerable unless god herself (god couldn't be male, since she essentially gave birth to the universe) were to come down and set things straight. So even if I accepted god, It's highly unlikely that the REAL god is YOUR god.

The last point I want to make is in a similar vein (I know that this is an argument from final consequences, but it's not like I'm debating anything but real evidence anyway). Who does god think that she is, judging people all the time? Depending on which account you believe, I'm going straight to hell when I die. But I don't think that I have done anything so horribly wrong that it deserves eternal torture and neither does society. So because one consciousness doesn't like me, I go to hell. how is that fair? God sounds like big brother to me. Big Brother was built on faith to. Big Brother both loves and punishes his people. Creepy.

So, now having offended just about everyone in some way, I will finish describing my take on religion. Ok, so god might exist but if she does we don't know what she is like. So that makes me agnostic. I think the whole idea is silly and my gut reaction is atheist, but my intellectually honest self is agnostic.

"There was a time when religion ruled the world
It was called the dark ages"
-Greydon Square