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Creating....

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So, Dr. Stephen Hawking has, it appears, finally gotten off the fence concerning a Creator, or at least that's my take-away from this Reuters article.

<blcokquote>"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.
Okay, people, let's think about this. This is very important: There were no laws of nature (including the Law of Gravity) before the beginning of the universe.

The importance of that sentence cannot be overstated. I will say it again:

There were no laws of nature (including the Law of Gravity) before the beginning of the universe.

What Dr. Hawking seems to be implying is the the Law of Gravity (and perhaps over laws) were in existence prior to the beginning of the universe. How odd is that? There was no matter and no space for gravity to act on or in, and yet, he claims, gravity existed.

I know that if you have not thought about this before, you might not grasp the impossibility of this, but before our universe and outside our universe there is nothing. No, it's not empty space beyond the universe, there is no space beyond our universe, or before it. There is NOTHING, and I mean that in the most extreme sense. There is no matter, no space, not even time beyond or before our universe.

....

A thought on "Critical Thinking"

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I've seen the term "critical thinking" abused so much over the last few years that I despair that most of the people who use the term do not even understand what it means.

As defined by popular use:
critical thinking: to be critical of anything you do not agree with.

A better definition (from wikipedia's page):
critical thinking: Critical thinking involves determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, or, concerning a given inference or argument, determining whether there is adequate justification to accept the conclusion as true.

One of the core tools in critical thinking is to question the presuppositions, biases, influences, intentions and goals for the source of the information. The mistake that we all make, but most of us are unaware of is that we all come with our own presuppositions, biases, influences, intentions and goals. Those presuppositions, biases, influences, intentions and goals that we harbor are often hidden from our own consciousness, and interfere with our ability to honestly and carefully weigh information and it's sources.

If you're not questioning your own presuppositions, biases, influences, intentions and goals, you are not thinking critically.

[quote] Dangers of Consuming Knowledge

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And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul?
Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful; neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all alike; though I should not wonder, O my friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If, therefore, you have understanding of what is good and evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras or of any one; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and then the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them away in another vessel; when you have paid for them you must receive them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited; and therefore we should deliberate and take counsel with our elders; for we are still young -- too young to determine such a matter. And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras; and when We have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others; for not only is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and, if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men.
- Plato, Protagoras

Why I love Apple -- and don't use their products

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I love Apple! I've only owned one iPod in my life, and I intend to never repeat that mistake, however, I do love Apple!

I love Apple because their legions of mind-numbed fanzombies will buy anything that the great and powerful Fruit pushes at them. They have successfully hire best design firms on the planet and turn out some of the shiniest and and well designed products. When Apple does something, anything, they instantly validate that market. Take any market that Apple has entered: countless companies have tried and failed there before them. Apple ruthlessly hashes the failures, threshes their weaknesses and refines their successes. When Apple releases a new product into a market, it is a thing of glorious beauty.

I'm not willing to be owned by any company, so I refuse to place the iTunes chains on myself and my mind.

I love Apple -- March of the tablets

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I'll write another post explaining why I love Apple. Suffice it to say that the iPad has validated a segment that has been floundering for years -- the tablet. IBM, Toshiba, Nokia, Archos and more have been putting out excellent tablet products for years, but all have been considered the eccentric curiosity of geeks or specialty products for niche industry applications. Produced in relatively small numbers and relatively high prices, these products have all suffered the fate of small software libraries and short life cycles. Now that Apple has blessed this segment as culturally interesting, there is a flood of Android tablets prepping to hit the market.

Samsung will be announcing their impressive Galaxy S tablet this week.
Toshiba has an excellent looking tablet they will be showing off at an industry trade show this year.
Archos, perhaps the vanguard in this niche, announced a host of Android powered devices with a wide spectrum of power and price ranges.
Rumor has it that Motorola is working with Verizon and directly with Google on something -- Motorola wants their crown back.
Viewsonic, who has made several runs at this market, has announced a 7" tablet.
LG, seeking to make a comeback, has announced a 7" tablet.
There are a dozen less-well-known and several virtually unknown players with tablet plans.

And all of these are running the beautiful, elegant, robust, flexible and non-incarcerating Android operating system.

Thanks, Apple, I'll buy you a beer, but I won't buy your products.

(Keep in mind that the two products that largely opened the door for Apple to reintroduce the tablet (remember the Newton? Brian remembers.) were the Amazon.com Kindle and the Barnes & Nobel Nook -- both Android powered.)

The Androids invade Southeastern New Mexico!

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I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see it, but it's happening. Leaco our local rural telco/cell phone provider (CDMA)/internet provider has finally managed to add Android phones to their cell phone offerings! The HTC Hero is the top phone (released July 2009), and the Motorola Milestone the lower one (released November 2009). Neither one of these is really new, but both are excellent devices from players who have committed strongly to Android and are producing some of the best phones available.

While these aren't the "latest and greatest" Androids (which all will be locked by exclusive offers through the big players), the other local telco is offering a Nokia phone that was released in December 2008 as their top of the line device. Even Alltel -- the can't-be-gone-soon-enough former-nationwide carrier -- has the HTC Hero as their ONLY Android device. Not too shabby for "Smallco!"

A note to my younger self

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Always be true to who God created you to be. Know love. Know truth. Truth is greater than the desires of the individual. Truth is real and separate from yourself and knowable. Do not let anyone steal that from you.

[photo] St. Louis Cathedral

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One of the chapels inside the St. Louis Cathedral, St. Louis, MO.

IMG_9347.jpg (44.9 kb)

Vlingo [geek, smartphone]

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Vlingo is a third-party voice-activation app. While Vlingo is pretty ticked off my Google's announcement of new voice features announced yesterday, Vlingo does offer something I've wanted -- reading my email to me. Reading email to me is a pretty cool feature, but having it read my SMS messages while I'm on the road is awesome -- and it does that, too.

I'm sure Google will get around to adding that feature, too -- and further irritate Vlingo, but in the mean time, Vlingo does it very well.

Vlingo is available for Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia smartphones.

Pretty slick shtick.

The dangers of rejecting understanding

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My cousin posted a link to The Irrationality of Pure Reason, and Mystery's Victory at Desiring God.

I find that it's to easy to abuse this wisdom and people slide all the way over to fideism (faith-ism) -- everything is faith. Anything desired becomes 'true' because I want to believe that it's true. Truth becomes irrelevant in the glaring (false) light of (false) faith. "I believe it, that settles it."

The Trinity is not illogical, but it is beyond our understanding. The God-man is not illogical, but does supersede the boundaries of our ability to reason. The fact that I cannot comprehend quantum physics does not cause it to be unreal or real. Reality is real regardless of our ability to grasp at understanding it. Rejection of understanding is only foolishness, no the spirituality it parades as.

Poof text: The whole Bible

Scripture is replete with admonitions to seek learning, wisdom, understanding. When we reject it all for fideism, we reject part of the Image of God, to our own destruction.

[quote] On not understanding what you disagree with

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In general, if you can't imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you probably just don't understand it yet.
- Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (Fourth Ed.)

The march of the Smart Phones

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Nielson has posted it's lasted numbers on Smart Phones.

Smart Phones are steadily taking the day:

There are some interesting Operation System numbers in there, but it's interesting to see that iPhone owners are very loyal, but Blackberry owners are starting to give up hope.

Blackberry is going to do something very interesting very soon.

new server

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Okay, I think the new server is ready... now to start migrating sites... GS is the first. Let's see how this goes.

house keeping

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I moved some folders that were needlessly cluttering things up into a "Trash bin." These will no longer be available to public viewing. Turns out that things that seemed to be useful at the time weren't.

[quote] Freedom of Choice and Quantum Uncertainty are not related

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Such indeterminacy, however, does not reduce to the causelessness of chance. A handful of philosophers and Nobel Prize winning scientists advanced the supposition that such interdeterminacy might make room for freedom of choice within the bounds of nature; but more sober minds rightly dismiss the supposition. The causal indeterminacy involved in certain scientific formulations, especially those of quantum mechanics, simply bears no resemblance to the causal indeterminacy involved in freedom of choice.
- Mortimer J. Alder, Ten Philosophical Mistakes

[quote] The mind and the brain, Mortimer Adler

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The action of the brain is only a necessary, but not the sufficient, condition for the functioning of the human mind and for the operations of conceptual thought. We do not think with our brains, even though we cannot think without them.

- Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes

Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know

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Several times I've wanted to refer to the table of contents of Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know, by Wayne Grudem while on the road. (Also available for the Kindle.) I haven't ever found the table of contents in text form, so I'm posting it here for future reference.

Table of Contents:

What Is the Bible?
What Is God Like?
What Is the Trinity?
What Is Creation?
What Is Prayer?
What Are Angles, Satan, and Demons?
What Is Man?
What Is Sin?
Who Is Christ?
What Is the Atonement?
What Is the Resurrection?
What Is Election?
What Does It Mean to Become a Christian?
What Are Justification and Adoption?
What Are Sanctification and Perseverance?
What Is Death?
What Is the Church?
What Will Happen When Christ Returns?
What Is the Final Judgement?
What Is Heaven?

I'm using this book for a Discipleship study. One of my old preachers used to tell us, "Do the basics well."

Spring

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West of Dexter, NM, on NM Highway 2.

IMG_9075.jpg (59.3 kb)

iPad surprisingly poor usability results

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Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for May 10 is now online at:
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html

Summary:
iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with
frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print
metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems.

There are several things here to comment on:
1) It's surprising to see Apple "fail." (And by "fail," I mean, "fail to achieve the very high level of usability we all expect from Apple.")
2) It's a new, blended paradigm, and Apple is breaking new(ish) ground.
3) This will be fixed (or mostly fixed) long before the second generation of iPad tablets is released.

I am not a big fan of the way Apple treats their customers, but I do admire their dedication to usability.

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Comment in the peanut gallery -- too good to not pass on in 'public.'

by JoshuaJayG [ posted: 10.May.2010 05:21 PM ]
I like apple products, I mean, I own a MacBook. I like my MacBook and I like my iPod touch, however, there are somethings I would not buy. I would not buy an iPad or an iPhone. For a phone, I would get an HTC or other similar smart phone. Apple locks down their products to their software more than most other companies. But then again, I am sure you know that. I was surprised by their customer support (to an extent) when I needed repair on my MacBook as they replaced my screen for free when it got scratched. I am not, however, impressed by having to supply an upfront cost for technical support. Dumb idea. Apple makes a lot of money by restricting their platforms to their software, but it isn't for me. I can load Windows (and maybe Linux) on my mac, but I can't put anything on my iPhone that isn't apple without causing big problems. Have fun, Steve Jobs.

Joshua

2010 reading update

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I haven't been doing a good job of keeping my list of books up to date, so I'm just going to dump an update:

Jesus Loves the Little Children: Why We Baptize Children, Daniel R. Hyde
The Car, Gary Paulsen
Aeschylus, Plays by:
* The Suppliant Maidens
* The Persians
* The Seven Against Thebes
* Prometheus Bound
* Agamemnon
* Cheophoroe
* Eumenides
Sophocles, Plays by
* Oedipus the King
* Oedipus at Colonus
* Antigone
* Ajax (Ajas)
* Electra
* Trachiniae
* Philoctetes
Problem of Pain, CS Lewis (Audiobook)
Abolition of Man, CS Lewis (Audiobook)
Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (Audiobook - Librivox.org)
Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence (Audiobook - Librivox.org)
Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton (Audiobook - Librivox.org)

An ACORN by any other name....

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CNN Breaking news: "Embattled community organizing group ACORN says it is closing its operations."

Which makes me think, "An ACORN by any other name is still institutionalized corruption."

PECAN, WALNUT, PEANUT.... whatever. ACORN will be back, just under a different name. If you think those people are just going away, you're quite the fool.

weeping

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"House passes health care reform, the most sweeping social legislation in more than four decades."
-- CNN Breaking News

Funny things Steve Jobs says

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“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Mr. Jobs told Apple employees during an all-hands meeting shortly after the public introduction of the iPad in January, according to two employees who were there and heard the presentation. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

Uh, Steve, Apple does not now, nor has it ever owned some special place in the cellphone market. I do not recall Motorola or Nokia (or anyone else) pitching a hissy fit when Apple entered their core business.

And, more importantly, Google doesn't really care about Apple in the overall picture. Apple is small fries. Microsoft appears to be the target of Google's unabated march. I don't hear Steve Balmer screaming about Android encroaching on Windows Mobile territory.

New Toy from Google! Google Public Data Explorer

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Google Public Data Explorer. I hope they can feed it all kinds of interesting data quickly.

Fun, fun!

[quote] Herodotus on the Persians

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It is also [the Persians'] general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.

- Herodotus, History

Doh! AT&T iPhone's an Android!

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Androidguys.com let's us in on Android On Lockdown: AT&T Removes Best Parts of Android from Backflip.

Well folks, if you haven't heard by now, AT&T's first Android Handset, the Motorola Backflip, has been locked down and crippled. In doing this, AT&T has not only removed Google search, but disabled Android's ability to install non-market apk files outside of the official Android Market by removing the option for BACKFLIP users to install applications from unknown sources.

Why this was done is unknown, but users will no longer be able to install apps purchased on alternative markets. For developers that utilize the BACKFLIP, this will will also prove troublesome as they will be unable to test apps on the device. The app experience has truly been IPhonified. Quite frankly, I am disappointed, but not really surprised as AT&T has attempted to control phones and apps within their realm for quite some time.

We know that AT&T is trying very hard to be a gatekeeper. We also know they are not a fan of open standards. What are your thoughts? Would you buy this phone? How far do you think this will this go? Did Apple have a role in this? I know what I think and that is that you should not purchase this phone. Sorry.

The never-ending supply of human (and institutional) stupidity never ceases to astound me.

I'm setting here wondering if:

Apple encouraged/pushed/forced/strong-armed AT&T into this
AT&T just decided that Apple's lock-in/lock-down business model is superior
AT&T is doing this as a peace offering to Apple to maintain their exclusive on the iPhone
AT&T is doing this intentionally to poison the Android appeal so that they can claim they are supporting Android, but making it much less appealing than the iPhone
something else completely.

It's not time to panic, yet (some interesting charts)

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Here are some URLs to charts that I intend to do some interesting things with. It's going to take time, and it would be much easier if I had the raw data rather than just the carts.

I will endeavor. The world must be saved (from it's inmates)!

Chartsbin.com - Energy: http://goo.gl/umAe
Chartsbin.com - Historical Oil Production by Region, 1965 to Present: http://goo.gl/gxxU
Chartsbin.com - Historical World Reserves-to-production ratio of Oil, 1980 to Present: http://goo.gl/qlAy
Chartsbin.com - Historical Oil Consumption by Region, 1965 to Present: http://goo.gl/TUUA
Chartsbin.com - Historical Crude Oil prices, 1861 to Present: http://goo.gl/MtjS

Hint: I'm going to use the methodology of Al Gore and his ilk to Save the World! (From Al Gore and his ilk.)

quote: War and peace, Herodotus

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"No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons."
- Croesus (595 BC – c. 547? BC) king of Lydia from 560 to 546 BC
(as quoted by Herodotus in The History)

Think.... No, NO! Don't think!

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As much as I like thinking, I still think this video is pretty funny.

http://goo.gl/wVV4

Speed listening and being green

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I like to listen to podcasts, but I've found that they usually take up too much time and go too slowly.

Several years ago I hacked a script that would take an MP3, dump it to a WAV file, process it to speed it up, process it to lower the pitch (so that it didn't sound like chipmunks on cocaine), and re-compress it back into an MP3.

Some time later, a newer version of the tools I was using allowed me to speed up the tempo without "chipmonking" the voices, which made it faster and more efficient (while reducing the amount of energy used by the computer and allowing me a false sense of moral superiority for being "green").

While glancing over the documentation for Mplayer the other day, I noticed that Mplayer now has a built-in scaletemp function. The latest version of my script can shift the tempo and dump to WAV, then re-compress in a just two steps (because Mplayer can't dump directly to MP3).

Further improving my "greeness," I am no longer downloading the file, then tempo-shifting it, but tempo-shifting it before I write to disk the first time.

I think I'm going to do something special for myself to celebrate my false sense of environmental moral superiority.

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