De Astra, Ad Astra

It started, oddly enough, with creationism.

As I sat somewhat nervously in the classroom, I noticed that there were only twelve minutes left in the lunch break. A 10th-grader in the corner - a boy I’d never heard speak before until now - piped up. “What are some of the ways that we can prove God exists?”

I glanced at the clock again. Ten minutes left. He promised this was the day he would talk about evolution and creation.

I slouched in my chair, exasperated.

Eight minutes.

“How in God’s name is he going to treat evolution in eight minutes?” I thought. A moment later, the well-dressed young man at the front of the room spoke.

“If you were to find a painting nailed to a tree in the middle of the forest, would you assume that the colours of a palate combined - completely at random - to produce it? Of course not,” began Jason Cole.

“A painting” he explained, “implies a painter.”

Right. *rolls up sleeves*

This teleological argument is refuted easily enough. First, it’s a logical fallacy. An argument from personal incredulity is being employed in the following way: “I can’t imagine how evolution could have produced such complexity, therefore it didn’t.” Just because we can’t imagine how something is possible, doesn’t mean it isn’t.

Further, everyone agrees that life is complicated, but complexity is not the same as design, and complexity arises by self-regulating processes in nature all the time. What kind of “designer” would give you a vestigial organ that serves absolutely no purpose except to possibly kill you? The existence of the appendix alone should be enough to show how ridiculous this notion is on it’s face.

Would that I had the rhetorical fortitude - or the time - to communicate these ideas that day last October.

But this rehashing of William Paley’s famous “watchmaker” argument would serve as my first introduction to the world of the “Inter-School Christian Fellowship.”

My friends are all well aware of my philosophical leanings, and when one of them learned that a new “youth pastor” running the school’s Christian Fellowship was issuing challenges to atheists in the school, he suggested that I attend a few meetings with him just to see what was up.

What followed were several weeks of spirited debate with one Jason Cole - youth pastor at the local “City Heights Church” (one of those non-denominational evangelical types). Although I’ve since graduated, Jason and I still more or less keep in touch. Last week, we both had a chance to appear on a local radio station where we sparred once again over evolution.

Borne out of this saga however, is the beginning of a story much more interesting, and culminating in an event much more spectacular than anything I could have imagined.

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Jerry Falwell was a toad. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Imagine that there were thousands of tiny computerized sensors the size of dust-specks floating around in your body, constantly scanning for infection, viruses, or even cancer? Well, researchers have predicted that this sort of situation could be a possibility in the near future.

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As a sort of continuation of my last entry, I thought I’d post this excellent example of how technology is allowing us to do science in ways we never thought possible.

The video, by the Seed Media Group, shows several fascinating applications of computer modeling to scientific research. From now on, computer simulations will be used to study the places and things that are currently inaccessible to the instruments and practitioners of science.

As computing power becomes more available, the simulations will grow more advanced. As was mentioned in an earlier post, researchers have succeeded in simulating the synaptic patterns of part of a mouse brain.

Neato.

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Well, lets analyze one of the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates individually:

Mitt Romney (R)

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In many ways, we are today reaching a critical juncture in the history of our species. We have seen more progress (technologically, politically, and socially) in the last few hundred years alone than in most of the rest of human history. Are we reaching a period of exponential growth — a point of no return? What does this unprecedented progress mean for our future?

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As you can see in this picture, the Citizens of Perth, Australia got a triple treat during this year’s Australia Day celebrations. To the left of the image (click for larger version), you can see the obligatory fireworks, as well as a lighting storm just on the other side of the water! To top it all off, the spectacular trail of Comet McNaught, which has been gracing the skies of the southern hemisphere for some time now, is plainly visible smack dab in the middle of it all.

The image’s long exposure time gives the scene an almost etherial glow, which is contrasted with the dark and foreboding storm clouds in the top right. Very beautiful! I just wish they had a version large enough for use as a desktop background.

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I’ve seen some pretty disgusting pictures painted of gay people recently, but some of the mindless utterances in Garrison Keillor’s revilement of an article on family, marriage, and monogamy really take the cake.

First, he takes on the apparently bankrupt institution of heterosexual monogamous marriage (conveniently leaving out the part about being in his 3rd). It’s the standard drivel, only with an extra helping of stupid — apparently in an attempt to appeal to the mindless among us who readily respond to grotesque caricatures:

I grew up the child of a mixed-gender marriage that lasted until death parted them… Back in the day, that was the standard arrangement. Everyone had a yard, a garage, a female mom, a male dad, and a refrigerator with leftover boiled potatoes in plastic dishes with snap-on lids…

[Emphasis mine]

How fitting it is, that someone so keen to trivialize the complicated nuances of family dynamics (gay or straight) by the crudest form of childish reductionism, is so so fond of caricatures. The first sign that this man is a blathering fool should be that he invokes the disgustingly idealized “young married couple with a little house on a hill, son, daughter, barking dog and white picket fence” myth as the ideal family arrangement.

But again, Mr. Keillor: the devil is in the details. Prior to “the day” which he so vacuously babbles about, marriage was primarily a property arrangement. Very rarely did love, at least in the sense that we think of it today, play a part in it. Women were treated as chattel, and were married off to men for reasons that were mostly related to economics, and had more to do with strengthening the relationship between two families, rather than two individuals. In this, Keillor is hopelessly nearsighted as he practices a kind of historical cherry-picking: He is eager to extol the virtues of the the supposedly ideal family structure that he grew up in, claiming it to be “traditional,” while ignoring the embarrassing history of the institution of marriage as a whole.

Apparently not having spouted enough nonsense, Keillor then declares that gay people are unfit to be parents. To argue this point, he crams 6 stereotypes about gay people into a single sentence, and then vomits it onto the page in what is surely the most breathtaking display of stupidity and ignorance I have seen in a long, long time.

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men—sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control.

Fortunately, Dan Savage arrives on the scene to rip him a new one where this is concerned so I don’t have to. I don’t know how many more of these airheaded editorials I can stomach before I get elevated blood pressure at the age of 16.

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Apparently, a “satanic vampire” is threatening to impale G. W. Bush…

…if he becomes president. That’s right, he’s running for president. Yeah, I did a double take when I read that, too. He also apparently ran for governor of Minnesota a little over a year ago before being jailed briefly for stalking. He’s out and about now, and is back to casting spells and placing curses.

It would be really awesome if this were just a joke, but sadly, it isn’t. I’m not sure if this guy is genuinely crazy, or just really deluded. Of course, either way, nothing changes the fact that it’s absolutely hilarious.

I suppose this is all very understandable. Vampires are way cool, and what’s more hip these days than threttening to impale the president?

I wish I was that cool. How many vampires do you know who talk into their cell phone like it’s some kind of futuristic Star Trek-esque communications device? I’ll tell you how many: 0.

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In a study of how people read news articles and other publications, Jakob Nielsen has incidentally come across a curious finding. It appears as though men (presumably straight), spent a significant portion of the time it took them to view a photograph of baseball player George Brett with their eyes directly affixed to his crotch. Women, by contrast, focused almost entirely on his face.

What could this mean? Well, two things, actually:

• Men are more interested in the size of their junk than women
• George Brett is one sexy beast (unlikely)

Regardless of which it is, this photo definetely says something interesting about where our eyes wander.

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It’s Pi day (3/14 — haha, get it?), and I can safely say I have accomplished something today. Ready? Here goes:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971

That’s right. I have Pi memorized to 40 decimal places, with an essay and a bunch of book reports due next week!

Of course, if you want to get really technical, Pi day should always be celebrated at 1:59:26 local time, but I was busy sleeping.

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