—More on the Truth Project

1 Corinthians 2:14

¹⁴The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

We watched the 4th or 5th episode in the series The Truth Project  from Focus on the Family[http://www.thetruthproject.org/] with the Sunday School class yesterday,  which focused on evolutionary theory, Intelligent Design, and philosophical and scientific ideas on these topics. 

Class members appeared to agree that species change, adapt to their environments, appear, and disappear [I feel that requiring God to have created a static Universe to accommodate our literary comprehension is also a mistake].   It is the replacement of the Creator with a statistical fluctuation that  defies reason and sober judgment.  Worse, modern science has adopted as dogma that the Universe must not have been Designed—and will not tolerate questions that confront this principle, in defiance of its own most fundamental ethos. 

Moreover, the narrator of the series didn’t begin to plumb the depths of the preposterous conclusions necessary to omit God from our understanding of the Universe.  I have seen a number of additional examples– Richard Dawkins, who was mentioned several times in the episode, figures prominently in several:

“VOICES OF SCIENCE – Available Now on DVD
Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, PZ Myers, David Buss
Four fascinating discussions between Richard Dawkins and some of today’s top scientists.”  http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2868

Steven Weinberg, who is required to conclude that it’s still a stochastic fluctuation, regardless:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

One of my favorites, which shows that the spontaneous appearance of self-aware beings from nothing in the middle of nowhere is actually >more likely< than 6 billion sentient observers randomly showing up on a nondescript, rocky backwater planet:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

[The presence of this species is thermodynamically preposterous.  Please stop existing all over our tidy Universe.]

Then there’s Steven Hawking’s “Top-Down Cosmology”, a quantum-mechanical abstraction that requires that the history of the Universe is being written as—or because?—we observe it, which means that we are creating the Universe as we speak, but the possibility that an intelligent Creator ever did so must apparently be excluded as contradicting scientific >dogma<:

“Hawking is now pushing a different strat­egy, which he calls top-down cosmology.  It is not the case, he says, that the past uniquely determines the present. Because the universe has many possible histories and just as many possible beginnings, the present state of the universe selects the past. “This means that the histories of the Universe depend on what is being measured,” Hawking wrote in a recent paper, “contrary to the usual idea that the Universe has an objective, observer-independent history.””
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/11-stephen-hawking-is-making-his-comeback/article_view?b_start:int=3&-C=

Another summary of the concepts above:
“God or a multiverse?”
  By Mark Vernon on Tuesday, December 9 2008, 08:16 – Science
http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/index.php?post/2008/12/09/1174-god-or-a-multiverse

“Quantum physics says goodbye to reality”:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

My earlier weblog comments on these articles:
—On Science
http://savageutopia.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/336/
—Some Other Questions[—Integrity? and/or a failure to communicate?]
http://savageutopia.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/some-other-questions-2/
—It’s Science Again 

http://savageutopia.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/its-science-again/

—A Driving Experience in Anchorage, Alaska

As I was driving South from Anchorage, Alaska, I saw some debris on the Seward Hwy. in the right lane. Ahead, a truck stopped completely in the left—the fast passing–lane. I thought he might have blown a tire, so I continued rather than completely blocking the road. Then I saw the large moose on the right shoulder, just before he decided to step into the roadway directly in front of me. I swerved hard into the left lane, then had to swerve hard back into the right lane to miss the truck stopped dead on the left. The center line had a film of ice and compacted snow, and the SUV is a bit top-heavy and has a very soft suspension, which made everything more interesting than I usually prefer. I’m sure the automated traction control helped, but it seemed to compensate a little behind the real-world events. If I had instinctively slammed on the brakes in the process, I probably would have rolled it at least once. I couldn’t see far enough behind me to see if everyone else on the road missed the animal, and the truck driver and I both eventually went on our respective ways.

Thankfully, it has been a somewhat less memorable Christmas Eve than it might have been. At least I didn’t spill the lattes….

—Or, Why There are No Climatology Rock Stars

Scientists Respond to “Climategate” E-Mail Controversy: Scientific American

U.N. Climate Talks Deadlocked as Clashes Erupt Outside – Europe | Map | News – FOXNews.com

Watch a TV show about Astronomy or Physics, or maybe Paleontology, and you will likely hear a lively discussion about various alternate hypotheses about observed phenomena, witness something of the scientific process of trying to understand the Universe, maybe even see a heated argument or two.  Every time a bird drops a scrap of baguette in the  Large Hadron Collider, it’s front-page news.  Guys like Michio Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson are very popular in their efforts to communicate the discoveries of current scientific explorations to the general public—probably the closest scientists get to being rock stars.

Ask a professional climatologist how he arrived at theories of global warming and carbon trading, and you will likely be branded a knuckle-dragging Republican.  What is the difference?  Why is it okay for a field of scientific inquiry to be conducted by ad hominem tirades and squiggly lines as innocent of demonstrated statistical integrity as a Scientology tract?  

The difference is that the climate debate isn’t about science, or the climate, and it’s certainly not about the welfare of the species or the planet.  It’s about a political opportunity to intimately control people, by restricting their access to energy, by taxing them for living their lives. 

People will not stop eating, breathing, and moving about the world because of a squiggly line that curls up on the end.   If the proponents of anthrogenic climate change theories and radical intervention in energy production and global weather won’t rationally discuss their reasoning and the basis for their findings with the rest of us, we will have to reach our own conclusions without them. 

And if there really is a looming climate crisis, this sneering condescension does the species a grave disservice.

—Thanksgiving…Really!

We are now officially living in “interesting times”.  Everything seems to be in a state of collapse—government, law, morals, ethics, personal judgement, democracy, religion, public trust, and just about anything else people ever placed their faith in, except the one thing which people can put their faith in.  The more we explore with our science and technology, the less sense the Universe makes.  The more we legislate and adjudicate with our “common sense” and “wisdom”, the fouler and more despicable our public institutions become.   The whole world economy is on the precipice of an abyss, at a time when the most powerful government in history is in the hands of people who apparently think its destruction is a good idea—a prelude to some witless notion of a “revolution” which has already failed miserably everywhere else it’s been tried.

It not just that everything humanity depends on is falling apart—-nothing humans depend on ever worked in the first place.   It just that now even our collective delusions of civilization are disintegrating.

And so, I am thankful beyond adequate words that God in His mercy has provided something we can depend on, and hope for, and look forward to, and which we can be joyful in even as we speak:

Romans 8:37-39 (New International Version)

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

–Car DVRs for Driving Safety?

Gizmodo:  Specialized DVR For Cars Could Make Teens Better Drivers

Spy-in-the-cab could improve teenage driving – tech – 08 November 2009 – New Scientist

Some of us had this discussion recently.  I posted a suggestion about something similar some time ago.  Looks like others are thinking about it, too.  But why only teens?  Cars will need full black boxes with 360° video coverage for delinquents of all ages to stop the psychopathic butchery of tens of thousands on U.S. roads annually.  We have become so desensitized to this staggering loss of life that people will probably stall any corrections with squabbling about “privacy”, and so on, but something has to be done.

Or we could start driving sanely, with greater concern for the welfare of others than for our own convenience and egotistical dominance. 

Try an experiment:  The next time you’re in the grocery store, and you’re ready to check out, don’t wait in line—just force your way to the front, and push any elderly people or preoccupied moms with coupons out of your way.  It’s your line, no waiting!  Who gave them the right to be in front of you?!

What would you say if you saw such behavior in public—stupid, inexcusable, should be arrested, or maybe you think nobody would actually act like that?  So why do you drive that way?

—ARES 1-X Test Flight

Ares I-X launches – managers claim successful test flight | NASASpaceFlight.com

The main ascent components seemed to work, although no telemetry results have been revealed yet.  As the dummy upper stage/spacecraft/abort system separated, it tumbled violently instead of coasting along the flight path, as if unguided.  As it appeared certain to swing around and impact the coasting booster, they froze the NASA-TV feed.  According to NASASpaceflight.com, only two parachutes on the booster deployed.  There was no live coverage of the descending booster, and controllers appeared to have lost all live communication with the flight systems.

[nm about the ascent plume business---I suspect it was a view as the nozzle gimballed away, then they switched flight cameras.]

Mostly successful in that it didn’t hit the tower and fly sideways into Atlantis on the other pad, or shake itself to bits on ascent.  But since it was essentially a Shuttle SRB in a manned spacecraft costume, the relevance to future development will be a matter of marketing rather than actual engineering.

—Champions Online(TM): Quick Review

I spent the first three days of my 14-day trial trying to figure out why I could log in to the account, but not the game.  Three days without a meaningful response to  a trouble ticket or forum posts.  I—myself—finally figured out that my password was being copied, then pasted, with a stray trailing space.  The account login properly disposed of it, while the game login did not.  Customer service is the basis of successful MMO efforts, guys, not something you add on after you get cool effects and snappy patter installed. 

Anyway,  I finally made it into the tutorial, which seems to be effective in teaching game mechanics, at least.  The game has a very comic-book, flat-shaded feel, which is an artistic decision to be sure.  Whether it compares favorably to other efforts such as City of Heroes is something others will decide in time.  

The gameplay interface is very rough.  It was nearly impossible to control the character from the keyboard—I have to use the right-mouse-button to control facing to get anywhere. 

There is a lot of humor in the game which is, frankly, juvenile at best—accidentally turning your enemies into teddy bears, and so on.   The artifacts one picks up are often silly, and I have yet to see an explanation of what you do with them other than bind and absorb attribute boosts from them.  There is something mentioned about “trading” which hasn’t been explained anywhere I’ve looked.

Some of the humor is, however, pretty good, if a little “self-referential”:

—The Cray 1 Supercomputer: Computing in the Good Old Days

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_1

The photo is of a Cray-1 from the Smithsonian Air&Space Museum in Washington, D.C. [Maybe I'll get around to posting some of the aircraft later] They used to call these “supercomputers”.  This one, use for early weather modeling and atmospheric research, was a 64-bit machine, and had a mind-boggling 1 megabyte of memory! The memory, and the liquid freon cooling system it required to operate are no longer with it.  The rat’s nest in the middle of the trademark cylindrical shape of the Cray is what we old people used to call “wire wrap” connections (I still have two of the tools used to make wrapped connections on little square posts).  Another display says that because of the circular shape, although there are “over 60 miles of wire in the Cray”, no connection is more than 2 feet long. 

If the Cray-1’s processor was fully “hard-wired”, as opposed to the micro-coded CPU’s we use now, this thing is even more mind-boggling.  Try to imagine the patience needed to hand-wire all those connections, squinting at some telephone-book-sized wiring diagram.  Then try to imagine how one would correct a mistake later.  One of Cray’s earlier machines was so complex that it basically couldn’t be kept running. 

Granted that many peripherals probably have this much computing power today, and air cooling generally suffices unless you’re a die-hard FPS’er, but it’s good to consider how we got to the incredible little boxes of computing power under our desks.  Our personal computers represent a lot of very expensive lessons, many learned the hard way. 

I think Texas A&M still has the horrible old Amdahl in the basement of its engineering building that I had to punch cards for in 1979.  The past isn’t as distant as you may think.

—Warning! Incoming PC Game Demo Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum

[Ok, maybe the Reboot stuff is getting a little dated]

 Batman: Arkham Asylum PC Demo

This appears to be a sort of merging of fighting game and RPG.  The HTH combat has a lot of potential, with very natural and fluid flow between available attacks, take-downs, and combinations.  It would probably be really great as a multiplayer game.  Unfortunately, it appears that no support will be provided for any of the popular PC controllers, except for the MS XBox PC Controller, whatever that is. 

My video card is already too old to support the latest physics engine used in the game.  It didn’t really seem to matter much. 

RockSteady has gone to great lengths to produce a gritty, depressing environment and extremely detailed characters—some maybe a little too detailed.  Batman’s exposed facial features look like he was in the tub too long.  He is able to do a wide range of acrobatic moves, grapple and climb on wall features, glide, and crouch, but for some reason cannot jump onto the top of a desk.  Only a very small sample of objects in the environment were interactive.  The Detective Mode allows inspection of critical elements in the space, warns of enemies, and can be used to understand the wiring of gates and shock fields, and so on.  This also has a lot of entertainment potential, which may not have been very thoroughly exploited, at least in the demo.

The battles I tried seemed far too easy.  I just walked around and set off a series of punches and kicks until the target fell down.  This never really got any harder even with a large number of inmates attacking at once.  It was sort of the martial-arts-movie thing where the bad guys politely wait for their turn to attack one at a time [better be sure I spell "martial" right---don't need that misunderstanding again].  The scary psycho-murdering monster in the first major combat succumbed to 3-4 simple punches and collapsed in a convenient heap.  It was never clear whether I was taking significant damage, except for  a few grunts, and cheering by the inmates.

I can remember making game demos by carving out a limited subset of the released game, but I really think the extraction was done with more forethought than was apparently used here.  After the first major combat I wasted at least an hour wandering around the room prying and breaking things to no avail, only to learn that the particular device needed to solve the puzzle simply isn’t activated in the game.  No documents tell you this, nor is there any indication that the demo is over.  You are simply left with no way to continue.  I hope this isn’t a preview of customer support for the game.

There were forum comments about the use of a draconian anti-piracy system with the full distribution, which will only allow the game to be reloaded three times before the disk must be repurchased.  The publisher would only say that the rumor will only be addressed closer to release for the PC version.

This could be a very interesting development in the evolution of fighter-shooter-RPG computer games, if fully exploited.  Many of these possibilities seem to have been underachieved in the demo.   I will probably check back on the title sometime next year, after the inevitable post-release quality assurance has been performed by other customers.  Multiplayer?

—The Whole Glen Beck Thing

8-25-09 video

Parts of the presentation are maybe a bit melodramatic, but the implications are clear:  the Obama administration and powerful lawmakers are surrounded by, immersed in, and apparently often consist of radical extremists, Marxist-Leninist ideologues, and purveyors of social theories that would have exceeded the suspension of disbelief of an average audience had it appeared in any of the standard 20th Century dystopian fiction.  If there is a rational counter-argument, or a plausible demonstration that this is all being blown out of proportion somehow, let’s hear it.  But it is the reasonable responsibility of the citizens of a Republic to require answers to these questions. 

I have been advocating an open, mature discussion of health care reform and other issues facing the Nation, free of partisan bickering, cheerleading, boycotts, tirades [by the President of the United States!] against average citizens as paid-off flunkies, and 3rd-grade-level ad hominem taunting. There are ways for the grown-ups to talk about these matters constructively on Twitter and in other places on the Internet.  Even if consensus isn’t possible, at least we could return to a basic respect for the requirements of a free society.  The alternative may very well be National extinction.