I found a link on Thraxil to a couple of interesting web-essays by two fairly well-known people. One believes there is no God, and the other believes in God:
Penn Jillette (atheist) and William F Buckley, believer.

I found Buckley’s essay to be unusually elegant and interesting, and Jillette’s very matter-of-fact. I think Buckley implies something very true, which is that belief in a God is related to the universal need for identity. Of course I don’t feel his essay is at all convincing, but as Jillette says (and as I have written about), nobody can be sure of anything, so everyone should feel comfortable in some belief, whatever it is.

I’d rather not take an excerpt from Buckley’s essay because it needs to be read in its entirety, but here is an excerpt from Jillette’s that I feel like people need to hear (because often people do not see how the world could be better off without God):

Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

I never did understand why Black Friday was such a big deal to people. Apparently if you wait on line for 5 hours starting at 4:00 AM you can save a few bucks. But… only the first few people in line are eligible! Everyone else will have to combat their way through the hoardes of other brainwashed shoppers, only to have to wait on line again to pay for your regularly-priced merchandise! Holy crap, why on Earth didn’t I join that party?

Thom DeZengotita — Dalton teacher, book author, and HuffPo Blogger — evidently feels more or less the same way I do (except in a more intelligent, informed way):

It’s not ALL about the money. Just read or watch the interviews. The folks on line are like Harry Potter and Star Wars fans who dress up to attend openings. They want to be part of the show. And the more they want that, the more of a show it becomes, and so the more of them want to be part of it — and so on and on.

Thom points out that Black Friday is a “pseudo event”: an event that has been caused to occur or staged to engender press coverage and public interest (American Heritage definition). I know its nice to save a few bucks, but at a certain point its just not worth it. I bet a lot of people probably are doing it just because it makes them feel like part of an event. I guess there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but I would hope that everyone there was at least somewhat aware of that aspect of it… otherwise they might be disappointed when they realize they came too late for the $10 coupon!

FYI: I’ve added links to the bottom of each blog page that allow for easy navigation through older posts. Before this, you could not easily look back at posts by category, but now you can! Click on a category, then scroll to the bottom and you’ll be able to click the link and browse all previous posts from the category.

This was always possible, but for some reason I just never put it in my template. D’oh!

Despite the gritty topic, Rent is a powerful production with strong characters and terrific music.

Because I fancy myself some sort of computer scientist, I do find the idea of “everyday algorithms” amusing. For example, usability expert Don Norman did an “experiment” which examined how a person decides which toilet paper roll to choose if the stall has one of those two-roll TP dispensers. The “results” suggested that people use one of three algorithms:

1) always pick the roll with the most remaining (the larger roll)
2) always pick the roll with the least remaining (the smaller roll)
3) pick randomly

Clearly, those toilet paper dispensers were designed hoping that people would follow algorithm 2 because that way, when one roll runs out, there is a whole other roll remaining and one has quite a while until one needs to put a new roll on to replace the spent one. However, it turns out that most people will follow algorithm 1 and pick the larger roll!!!!!!!! Why??????? That is an interesting question, but what Don Norman is trying to point out is that when one designs a product for everyday use, it should work according to one’s instincts. The typical dual-roll TP dispenser doesn’t really do its job because both rolls usually run out at the same time.

Not exactly a bombshell of a topic, but isn’t it fun to obsess over minutia sometimes? See the link for some of his suggestions on dual-roll TP dispenser designs.

In a satisfying, well-focussed translation of the book, the Hogwarts crew faces old enemies, new challenges, new friends, death, and puberty!

I can’t believe this isn’t a joke! Jelly Belly has come out with “Sports Beans”: Jelly Beans “specially formulated for sports activity”.

Can you imagine pro athletes chugging a bag of these during halftime? How about dumping a bucket of them over the coach when they win the big game? Look out Gatorade!

For those who watched the Trading Spouses episode with crazy psycho Marguerite Perrin, you might enjoy my YTMND site (with original photoshopped graphic): (warning: sound) http://darksidedcreation.ytmnd.com/

YTMND is a “special” corner of the Internet and you may find some extremely offensive stuff there, so don’t wander off too far unless you are brave and not at the office.

I thought I would share these curiously revolting plush toys: Pee and Poo. Don’t worry, it’s safe for work-viewing.

Should the word “is” be removed from the English language? I randomly came across this article by Robert Anton Wilson which I found fascinating. He suggests that people stop using the word “is” because it carries too strong an implication of absolute identity. Furthermore, by finding alternatives to the word “is”, we are forced to think more about what we are saying and why we perceive things to be the way we think them to be. It encourages people not to rush to judgement and be cautious about their perceptions.

For example, instead of saying “Eric is stupid”, you would need to rephrase it in a manner which either reflects what drew you to that conclusion (”I saw Eric’s test results and they were low”) or which simply claims responsibility for that perception (”I think of Eric as a stupid person”). Wilson does not mean we should stop using any form of the verb “to be”, but rather that we should strive to use it sparingly, and to try not to assume that we know the way things are “in fact”… because factuality is subjective to your own perception!

Wilson uses the UFO-sighting example to illustrate his point. When you see something up in the sky and you don’t recognize it… how can you possibly conclude that it is an alien space ship? You don’t know what it is, and therefore you cannot possibly draw a strong conclusion about it… you can merely speculate and have a weak conclusion. If you have poor vision and you tried spending a day without your glasses, you would be constantly struggling for conclusions for the identities of the things and people you saw. Are you satisfied not being sure about something? If you see someone at a distance who looks like someone you know… only to find out as you got closer that it was not who you were thinking of… then you have just experienced a false conclusion of identity. This is much trickier in the linguistic sense than in the simple case of visual identification because it requires an extreme amount of self-awareness. Think about it!

A heavy and powerful disjointed journey through two lives brought together by death.

I didn’t have very high hopes for the Kansas Board of Education Intelligent Design issue, and it looks like my fears have come true, and the fundamentalists have won the rights to brainwash Kansas schoolchildren for at least a year. Most disconcerting is that “the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.” This is so shameful, I am at a loss for words. This is a tremendous step backwards in the progress of our society, and I hope that this serves as a wake-up-call for those republicans who feel as though voting for conservative politicians won’t have real consequences such as this. Roe v. Wade will be overturned if we continue to elect these selfish, delusional idiots. Who knows what will follow?

According to many new sources, including the Washington Post, Cardinal Paul Poupard, of the Vatican, has urged followers not to stray from reason. Check out this excellent quote:

“We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link, […] But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism”

That is just good common sense. I’m so happy to see religious leaders giving a balanced statement on religion and science. I may be a scientist, but it doesn’t mean I want to see human cloning any time soon. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. Likewise, I think it’s pretty clear this is a message to the USA telling us (and our President) that it’s okay to be in touch with reality.

In the debate between free will vs. determinism, I am a fervent supporter of determinism. Interestingly enough, I realized this weekend that determinism sort of implies a creator of some sort. If there is a cause behind everything, physical and phenomenal, doesn’t that imply that something must have begun this chain of causality? The concept of a creator is a popular answer to fill in that gap, although I see no reason why this creator has to be the traditional human-like father-figure. The creator could be something completely uninteresting and is most-likely inconceivable by any human on Earth so I will not even try to imagine…

Another brilliant lunchtime conversation has led to the formation of two competing theories of Sandwiches: Quantum Sandwich Theory and Intelligent Sandwich Design.

Quantum Sandwich Theory, as I interpret it, indicates that we cannot ever determine the “true” state of the sandwich… i.e. our perceived stability of the sandwich is merely an epiphenomenon, and its true form is at any given time is only expressable in probabilistic terms.

Intelligent Sandwich Design, as I interpret it, indicates that sandwiches display evidence of intelligent design and suggest the existence of a Supreme Sandwich Creator. ISD explicitly denies the possibility that sandwiches as we know them today are the result of the evolution of generations of earlier sandwiches.

I welcome your interpretations and discussion!