2007-01-15

Random Thoughts

So, I have a goal of losing 25 pounds by May. Right now, it isn't happening. Why not? Because I don't have a plan yet for how I'm going to do it. Oh well. I will eventually.

In re-reading my last post, I realize that I didn't elaborate on the concept of a created world versus a naturally ocurring world sufficiently. Let me re-formulate this for you: in the past few decades we have made tremendous strides in all the sciences, even going so far as to have be close to formulating an artificial life-form. We have managed to clone animals, and have mapped the human genome. We still haven't cured cancer, but we are making progress. Think about this, however; what is to stop us from eventually learning enough to be able to take raw materials and build a new planet? Is it so far fetched to think that we could learn how to take a lot of asteroids and somehow mesh them together, provide a LOT of energy and have a planet? If we can do this, then what is to stop us from then making sure that the planet is optimal for sustaining life?
If we, as pathetic humans, could learn to do all that, then why couldn't this earth have been created or formed? And, if it had been, how could we tell the difference without a point of reference? Would there be tell-tale signs of the planet having been put together? If we did this, we would probably hurry things along a bit by introducing species more quickly, and more abundantly than would be normal. We would also do it in the most fertile areas of the new planet, but after a few thousand years it might be difficult to tell. But if time (say a few million years or so), were not a factor, then you could just introduce the right elements and let things happen, intervening only as necessary. Thus, based on this line of reasoning, there is no reason to believe that we would be able to determine the difference between a planet that had been formed by a sufficiently advanced race and a planet natural to a star. Of course, who knows? Maybe if you learned enough, you could even form a star from the right materials and with enough energy. In fact, I would guess that the biggest obstacle to a human-built star would be the energy source necessary to start the reactions properly (that and the proper amount of material). Of course, I am not a physicist, so I don't know much about stars and all that, but the point is this: we are at a point scientifically where we can imagine being able to do some very remarkable things. We are nowhere close to actually doing those things, but we can imagine the things we would need to learn and master in order to be able to do those things--and that is a huge step forward from what we knew even a hundred years ago. I think that this points out that the idea that our earth was created is not so crazy as some would like to think. It just means that you have to accept that there is a very advanced being or race of beings out there somewhere. This may violate Occam's Razor, but there are a lot of times when this is how things really work. Occam's Razor is only useful as long as you can still describe the data.

I have a penchant for reading--I can typically read two or three novel-length works in a week. I don't usually, but I can. This is because I enjoy reading and I read very quickly. I recently read a lot of David Weber's books, and I really like them. I just wish the man wrote faster--I can read 10 or 15 years of his work inside a very short span of time. Sometimes reading very quickly is not as pleasant as it might seem.

2007-01-03

Date Formats, Annoying Atheists and more

I use the international date format YYYY-MM-DD when I write dates most of the time. Why? Because it works. It is a logical progression from the largest unit of time to the smallest. This extends quite nicely if you decide to add the time as well (e.g., HH:MM:SS), and affords less confusion than other formats. It really is too bad that no one uses it.

I don't mind atheists. I don't even mind them talking about why they don't believe the same things I do. I don't even mind those atheists who would prefer not to ever be exposed to anything religious (although I have to wonder why). What I do mind is those atheists that think they are right and that no one should believe in any deity. It's a silly concept. It's a silly plan. Let me say why.

America was founded on the concept of religious freedom, and this concept quickly spread through most of the Christian world and today the only countries that don't have religious freedom are those that are strongly tied to one ideology or another--e.g., China, Iran, Turkey, and some others. Atheists are able to freely state that they worship no god at all only because they are allowed freedom of religion. For those that argue that we should not believe, and that it is stupid to believe, you are essentially arguing that freedom of belief is an archaic and outdated idea, and we should not have freedom of religion. Of course, if we had a state religion, then you wouldn't be allowed to say it.

My point is this: freedom means that you have to put up with other people doing things you don't like. As long as it does not cause you harm (physical or otherwise), then you have two choices: tolerate it or convince the other person to stop. Tolerating things we don't like so most people (atheist and other) choose to try to prevent those behaviors. This is fine until you resort to violence or threat of violence. Codifying these things into law is a form of violence. Why? Because you are essentially saying: I don't like what you do, and if you don't stop, I will get the police to put you into jail. While laws are necessary, laws that restrict behavior that is merely annoying rather than harmful are unjust and make criminals out of ordinary people. If you do this enough, eventually everyone becomes a criminal.

Thus we have a distinction in the types of laws that may be passed: laws that are based on preventing harm and laws that are based on preventing inconvenience, annoyance and irritation. Some call these latter laws "legislating morality", although it goes far beyond requiring people to do what you think is good and decent. Atheism has recently become the champion of legislation that focuses on preventing inconveniences to themselves. The most famous of these types of laws is the silly idea of banning prayer in school. As a Christian, I think it should be up to each child if they want to pray or not, and if there is a group prayer (even one led by the teacher), exclusion should be voluntary. It might also spark some valuable discussion about why any particular child decided not to participate (along the lines of "Does anyone know why Billy doesn't want to pray to Allah?"). The point of schools is to learn how to learn and banning prayer is actually a barrier to this.

Similarly, banning prayer in city council meetings is silly. If you don't want officials that pray, then don't vote for them, although I think that is a sad criterion for supporting a candidate or not.

On a similar note, I recently read an excerpt from Orson Scott Card's new book Empire, which is about a civil war in the USA along political lines (Democrats vs. Republicans). The premise is that someone wants to start the war, and to take over the country. What I read is interesting, but led to think about some other lines that we could see war over: one is the atheism/believer divide. I recently saw a news story about someone being killed because they were atheist, and I've seen lots of others about tension between the groups. I feel it as well. It is increasingly popular on internet discussion forums to declare your support for atheism and bash anything remotely related to religion. What would a war between these two groups look like? What would a war between CAIR (an Islamic institution) and the Baptist Convention look like? Who would side with whom (would Mormons support the Baptists or just stay out of it?)? How would any of these conflicts get started and what would be the spark? Right now, I see a lot of debate over evolution, which I see as a silly unproductive and pointless debate (I'll detail why in a moment). OSC's book is available at his website: Hatrack.org.

Why is evolution a silly debate? First, because it doesn't matter. If you could convince everyone that the earth is either 6000 years old or 4 billion + years old, it would still have no bearing on the real debate: was the earth the result of a supreme being's work. Second, only the truly uninformed Christians and Jews (and whoever else) actually believe that the earth is only 6000 years old. Even my mom, who is hardly the scholarly type, will admit that the Bible says nothing about the age of the earth. Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons) believe that the earth was created in six eras or time-frames, but those that are paying attention recognize that these aren't even presented as being equal in length. We also happen to believe that the earth and the planets around us were created from pre-existing material. So far, I suspect that this is perfectly in line with what most atheists believe--the earth formed over a period of time from pre-existing materials. The big debate in evolution is over the origin of man. My question, which no one has ever answered, is this: if you had one world where all creatures evolved from a single source and a world designed by an advanced technology, would you be able to tell the difference? Both would have gaps in fossil records, both would have various species that had gone extinct (unless you also argue that the created world is continually managed, which most Christians do not), and both would of a necessity have similarities across species (if for no other reason than the fact that surviving in a similar environmnet probably requires a specific set of genetic traits, which indicates similar DNA). Thus, even with the two to compare, it is unlikely that we would be able to definitively state which one was created rather than naturally formed.

Since it would likely be difficult, even with two worlds, where we know one is created, to tell the difference, how can we possibly claim to be certain given that we do not have a comparison? We can't even always be certain who has a particlarly debilitating disease or not. AIDS? I don't think that any of the tests are 100% accurate with no false positive and no false negatives. I'm certain that there are some things we are able to achieve perfect detection, but my point is this: our science has a long way to go.

Well, that's it, I'm out. Have a great day, and I'll try to updae again soon.

2006-03-11

MovieMatchOnline.com

This is something that I am involved with currently. We are new, but we offer a movie matching & review site where you can find folks who have similar taste in movies. Enjoy

Update:Movie Match Online hasn't really done much in a while. Most of us are in grad school, so while the concept is still kicking around, the site isn't anything special--yet. I'll keep you posted.

2006-01-26

Personal Update

Wow. I haven't updated since before Jacob was born, and I failed to upload the update when he was born. In essence, this means that I haven't ever really updated.

Very quickly, this means that I have now finished my Master's Degree (and am continuing in the Ph.D. program), and have been very busy. I will update more when I have a chance.

2005-09-22

Famiy Update

It's a boy! Jacob Alexander Orchard was born on September 20th, 2005 at 16:08, weighing in at a hefty 8lbs 8oz, and measuring 19 and 7/8ths inches. He is healthy and strong, with no medical problems. He does have one interesting feature--the flap of skin that attaches his tongue to the floor of his mouth extends to the front of his tongue, and this is causing some difficulty in nursing. He has a doctor's appointment on Friday, and I suspect that they will clip this peice of skin at that time.

Both mother and baby are doing well, and so we are happy. Jenny is recovering quite quickly, and is very glad to have the baby out. Some history is in order at this point. Jacob's original due date was the 24th, but due to our history of quite large babies, he was scheduled to be induced on the 20th. On the 19th, Jenny went to the doctor for a pre-induction checkup, and during the visit it was discovered that he had flipped over and was going to be breach. The really unfortunate part of all this is that the hospital does not do breach deliveries. Our only options were to allow a Cesarian or to try to flip him over. If he didn't cooperate and flip over, then the Cesarian would be required, and the success rate is about 50%. So we scheduled the procedure on the 20th and showed up and eyebleed o'clock in the morning (5:00), getting up at stupid-thirty to make that time. We got to the hospital, and Jenny was prepped as if the Cesarian would be necessary (some vote of confidence, huh?).

At about 9:15, they were finally ready to try to flip him around, and the doctor comments that he's only going to try it twice. Jenny had been heavily drugged up, and it's a good thing. The doctor and his assistant pressed hard on her stomach, the doctor catching the baby's head, and the assistant catching his backside. The look on Jenny's face made me certain that it was at least as painful as it looked (and it looked extremely uncomfortable). The doctor moved his hands around, and then suddenly, it was done, and he was where he belonged, thank goodness.

At that point, they took Jenny from the Operating Room (where they put her just in case there were problems and a Cesarian was necessary), and into the Labor & Delivery room, where they induced labor, and Jenny promptly fell asleep (she was tired!). The rest, as they say, is history. We are currently still at the hospital, but will be leaving in an hour or so.

2004-09-03

Okay, I've been playing around with various designs for a while now. I once thought that I would .pngs with transparency to create some really nifty effects, but everytime I try it, I realize that it looks awful in IE. Oh well. Maybe when MS gets their act together and makes IE worth having, I will see if I can do that. Until then, I have decided that I like this layout, and I plan on keeping it. This is good, because I've owned the domain name since December 03, and have had webspace considerably longer than that.

So, what is this all about? I have designed this site to serve a number of purposes--first to let me friends and family to knwo what I'm up to, and to allow others to get to know me. I don't know that I will get to write here all that often, but I hope to keep the site fairly up-to-date.

You will notice that I don't have any contact information on this page, and that is by design--I don't want some yahoo using this as a spam portal! I also don't want some nutcase trying to stalk me. That said, if you want my personal information, I am sure that it is easy enough to get. Oh well.

Just a note about myself, I am currently enrolled in a Master's Program in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. I also happen to work very part time designing web pages (for myself and others, but I also have a real job doing it). As such, I cannot really take solicitations for design services, unless you live outside of SC, GA, TN, or NC. That's just the way it is (no-compete clauses and all that). I would be willing to consider design projects outside that area. My expertise is in PHP/VALID HTML (XHTML) and CSS. I am also competent with MySQL, and SQL in general (though for honesty's sake, I am NOT a DBA. I just know enough to not screw up a mid-size project). Once again, if you need to contact me, pretty much anything like info at this domain will get to me.

Have a nice day