It might be time to recognize ISIS is a national government. I know you think I am off the deep end, but read to the end before you call for the men in white coats to come and get me. ISIS has held and defended significant territory in what used to be Syria, Iraq and Libya for some time and should be recognized as such.
Now, once we make this formal and legal recognition, we must also deal with the fact that they have taken credit for an attack on American soil in which 50 unarmed civilian Americans were killed without military reason for the target. This places ISIS, our newly recognized nation, in a worse position than Japan in 1941. Japan's attack was a surprise, and arguable unprovoked attack while we weren't yet at war with them, but it was against an entirely military government. Once we recognize ISIS as a nation, we can recognize the Orlando attack as what it was, the military attack of a foreign government on unarmed US civilians.
As such, I propose two bills be written and brought before congress concurrently; one to recognize ISIS as a sovereign nation in light of their long term control of significant territory, and a second to declare war on that newly formed territory in response to their act of war, an act that violates international rules of war, in Orlando this past weekend.
My readers know me as anti-war because of how I speak out against the Iraq war and the Afghan war, but the fact is, I have never been anti-war in general. I am anti those wars because of the reasons for which they were fought, the manner in which they have been fought, and the lack of care given to our veterans when they get home. I will support the war I am suggesting here if it is fought in the following manner.
1) Fight to win. None of the strategies used in any US war back to and including Korea are acceptable. This is a full on war.
2) No ground troops until we receive an unconditional surrender from the heads of ISIS. This war should be entirely drones, bombing runs and missiles, as much as we possibly can deliver, until the enemy fully surrenders or until literally none of them are left.
3) Civilians will never be the intended target of any military strike, however we recognize reluctantly that necessary destruction of strategic military targets sometimes effects civilians. This will not be considered reason enough to avoid militarily strategic targets.
4) Refugees of the area, as well as surrendering troops will be given proper quarter in neighboring countries that agree to house them. If no neighboring country agrees, land currently occupied by ISIS will be taken by overwhelming force and used to build proper quarter for refugees and prisoners of war.
5) Once unconditional surrender is received from the enemy, the lands previously occupied by ISIS are divided as territories of the US and any allies that fight along side of us (France, England, Canada, Australia, you are all invited to join in). These territories will remain under the protection and governance of their captors until such time as they show long term stability (see post-war occupied Germany).
6) All US troops assigned to this war, and previous wars, and their families WILL RECEIVE ALL CARE AND BENEFITS NECESSARY to recover from the effects of that war, regardless of the cost.
I hate war. I don't want war. But war has been brought here. We do have to recognize the culpability of the Bush administration's destabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan in bring about ISIS, and we do have to recognize the culpability of the Obama administration, and particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in allowing ISIS to gain strength in Iraq, Syria and Libya, and those facts should be taken into consideration in choosing our nation's next leaders, but the fact is, ISIS is responsible directly for what they have done in the US, and the US needs to respond to stop them, and to set and example for the rest of the world of how foreign attack on US citizens are handled. If we do not, the end may be near.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Friday, May 13, 2016
Dear US Church: Stop Expecting the Government to Be Your Friend
The church in the United States has some problems: declining church attendance, severely reduced evangelism efforts, and high divorces rates (though not as high as many think) to name a few. There have been countless articles and blog posts over the last several decades attempting to point at why we have all of these problems, but it seems that all of the logically based analyses have one thing in common, their diagnosis of the church as having misplaced its priorities.
The Bible is clear that the way to grow closer to God and to accomplish His will is through prayer, Bible Study and evangelism. But, so much of the time, money and intellectual effort of Christians in the United States today is spent on advocating for one political candidate or another, it is no wonder that we don't spend the kind of time on prayer, Bible study, and evangelism that the apostles and the early church fathers did. The question then becomes, is there any reason to believe that all of this effort being put into making a more christian-like government will really advance Gods causes?
We have a New Testament full of examples and a nearly 2000 year church history to answer that question with resounding "NO". Notice the Apostle Paul. His interactions with government were always for one or both of two purposes: 1) to try to get the government to leave him alone so he could preach, and 2) to try to evangelize leaders in front of whom he was on trial. That was it. No lobbying for or against gay rights; no lobbying for or against certain governmental spending programs or military campaigns, just the gospel.
A couple of hundred years later, an emperor got saved and a partnership between the church and the government was created. What did this lead to? The Dark Ages. 1000 years of lack of progress in the world both humanly and for the gospel. The problem is, when the church ties itself to human institutions, the human institutions always distract the church from its real purpose toward those of the world. The purpose of any human government is by definition, the earthly kingdom. Human government's priority will always be the here and now, the world and human interest. Spiritual concerns will always take a back seat in an organization whose main purpose is the earth and time.
So, why do Christians become so fascinated and distracted by government? It seems the hope is that the church can use the government to get people to behave the "way they should". But is that what Christ called us to do? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Yes, we are to teach them to obey the commandments, but our method is through discipleship, not through the government's sword. Jesus said "All authority in heaven and on earth" had been given to Him. We do not need authority from government. We need the blood, the words and the love of Christ. That is all the power we need.
So, how does this play out. First, Christians, stop trying to get the public schools to educate your children in a godly way. That is not what they exist for. State school exist to perpetuate the state's earthly kingdom and its goals. They will never put God first. It is not what they are there for. It is YOUR job to educate your children in a godly manner. For some, this may mean sending their kids to public schools and supplementing that instruction with home and church education. But as our culture deteriorates, it will be necessary for more and more Christian parents to abandon our educational partnership with the state and either place our children in private schools or educate them through a home schooling co-op we can start through our church. Now that the federal government has integrated the gender of locker rooms and bathrooms, this is a safety issue as well as an education issue.
Will it do any good for us to lobby to get the government to change its minds and make our schools more christian-like? perhaps, but how much better spent would that time, effort and money be on prayer, Bible study, evangelism, and the teaching of our own kids.
The Bible is clear that the way to grow closer to God and to accomplish His will is through prayer, Bible Study and evangelism. But, so much of the time, money and intellectual effort of Christians in the United States today is spent on advocating for one political candidate or another, it is no wonder that we don't spend the kind of time on prayer, Bible study, and evangelism that the apostles and the early church fathers did. The question then becomes, is there any reason to believe that all of this effort being put into making a more christian-like government will really advance Gods causes?
We have a New Testament full of examples and a nearly 2000 year church history to answer that question with resounding "NO". Notice the Apostle Paul. His interactions with government were always for one or both of two purposes: 1) to try to get the government to leave him alone so he could preach, and 2) to try to evangelize leaders in front of whom he was on trial. That was it. No lobbying for or against gay rights; no lobbying for or against certain governmental spending programs or military campaigns, just the gospel.
A couple of hundred years later, an emperor got saved and a partnership between the church and the government was created. What did this lead to? The Dark Ages. 1000 years of lack of progress in the world both humanly and for the gospel. The problem is, when the church ties itself to human institutions, the human institutions always distract the church from its real purpose toward those of the world. The purpose of any human government is by definition, the earthly kingdom. Human government's priority will always be the here and now, the world and human interest. Spiritual concerns will always take a back seat in an organization whose main purpose is the earth and time.
So, why do Christians become so fascinated and distracted by government? It seems the hope is that the church can use the government to get people to behave the "way they should". But is that what Christ called us to do? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Yes, we are to teach them to obey the commandments, but our method is through discipleship, not through the government's sword. Jesus said "All authority in heaven and on earth" had been given to Him. We do not need authority from government. We need the blood, the words and the love of Christ. That is all the power we need.
So, how does this play out. First, Christians, stop trying to get the public schools to educate your children in a godly way. That is not what they exist for. State school exist to perpetuate the state's earthly kingdom and its goals. They will never put God first. It is not what they are there for. It is YOUR job to educate your children in a godly manner. For some, this may mean sending their kids to public schools and supplementing that instruction with home and church education. But as our culture deteriorates, it will be necessary for more and more Christian parents to abandon our educational partnership with the state and either place our children in private schools or educate them through a home schooling co-op we can start through our church. Now that the federal government has integrated the gender of locker rooms and bathrooms, this is a safety issue as well as an education issue.
Will it do any good for us to lobby to get the government to change its minds and make our schools more christian-like? perhaps, but how much better spent would that time, effort and money be on prayer, Bible study, evangelism, and the teaching of our own kids.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
How the Participation Trophy Gave Us Donald Trump
In modern society, a lot of cynical, grumpy old men like me blame a lot of different things on "the participation trophy crowd", but hear me out:
The main idea behind participation trophies to to instill in children a sense that participating in a process is its own reward. The young person gets a trophy at the end of a sport season for attending practices and games often enough to avoid getting thrown off the team. The lesson being taught is this: Just showing up for an event is enough effort to deserve to receive a shiny object as a reward.
I see this idea manifest itself often in my teaching career. Quite often, students are flabbergasted that they do not receive a passing, or even good grade in my courses because they have attended regularly and turned in all the assignments. It matters little to them that the assignments they turned in were poorly done and their exams showed no proficiency in science. "I came to class every day and did my homework. That should be good enough for a 'C'".
Apply this same logic to voting. We see advertisements on every form of media encouraging people to "get out the vote". Those who have received participation trophies all their lives see it as an obligation to do the bare minimum in participating in our Republic. To them, the bare minimum is to take whatever "knowledge" they have accidentally gleaned from commercials that come on during their favorite reality programs and use that to decide which candidate to vote for. Just like in their little league sports careers, there is no sense of motivation for excellence. "If I go and vote, I have done my duty and I will get a sticker". They feel no need study history as a lens through which to evaluate the possible intended and unintended consequences of the policies advocated by whomever the TV has told them to vote for. They don't see a reason to research the actual careers and voting records of the candidates to see if they match the rhetoric of their campaigns, or to see if their character is such that we would even have them over to dinner, let alone have them govern our once great republic.
Here is the reality. The participant in ANY endeavor who does not give significant thought, time and effort to that endeavor provides a NEGATIVE value to the community associated with that endeavor. Having someone on a sports team who does not put full effort into training, practices and games brings the quality of the sport down. The league would be better served by cutting under preforming players and reducing the number of teams in the league if need be. That way, the remaining players could enjoy a higher quality version of their sport, and the cut players would be motivated to work harder and get ready to be a better player next year if they decide to pursue the sport.
The same is true in the classroom. Students who "show up" for college and do little else draw precious and scarce educational resources away from those who really want to better understand the universe, or the arts, or history or whatever focus a student may enjoy. If colleges were much quicker to remove under performing students, the remaining students could get a much more clearly and sharply presented education, and the removed students would know to step up their effort before attempting another university or college.
By the same token, people who vote without seriously looking at the issues facing our country and the history of those issues allow for people of low character and dubious policies to rise to power. Please Americans, I want you to vote, but only if you are spending multiple hours reading multiple traditional and non-traditional sources about the main issues of these elections and the histories and characters of those running for office. Feel free to include non-traditional candidates ("third" parties) when you see finally see clearly what dolts have risen to the tops of the major parties. Voters not willing to do this kind of work in their decision making do not deserve a sticker for voting. In fact, they deserve a dunce cap, and even worse, they deserve the candidates they are getting.
The main idea behind participation trophies to to instill in children a sense that participating in a process is its own reward. The young person gets a trophy at the end of a sport season for attending practices and games often enough to avoid getting thrown off the team. The lesson being taught is this: Just showing up for an event is enough effort to deserve to receive a shiny object as a reward.
I see this idea manifest itself often in my teaching career. Quite often, students are flabbergasted that they do not receive a passing, or even good grade in my courses because they have attended regularly and turned in all the assignments. It matters little to them that the assignments they turned in were poorly done and their exams showed no proficiency in science. "I came to class every day and did my homework. That should be good enough for a 'C'".
Apply this same logic to voting. We see advertisements on every form of media encouraging people to "get out the vote". Those who have received participation trophies all their lives see it as an obligation to do the bare minimum in participating in our Republic. To them, the bare minimum is to take whatever "knowledge" they have accidentally gleaned from commercials that come on during their favorite reality programs and use that to decide which candidate to vote for. Just like in their little league sports careers, there is no sense of motivation for excellence. "If I go and vote, I have done my duty and I will get a sticker". They feel no need study history as a lens through which to evaluate the possible intended and unintended consequences of the policies advocated by whomever the TV has told them to vote for. They don't see a reason to research the actual careers and voting records of the candidates to see if they match the rhetoric of their campaigns, or to see if their character is such that we would even have them over to dinner, let alone have them govern our once great republic.
Here is the reality. The participant in ANY endeavor who does not give significant thought, time and effort to that endeavor provides a NEGATIVE value to the community associated with that endeavor. Having someone on a sports team who does not put full effort into training, practices and games brings the quality of the sport down. The league would be better served by cutting under preforming players and reducing the number of teams in the league if need be. That way, the remaining players could enjoy a higher quality version of their sport, and the cut players would be motivated to work harder and get ready to be a better player next year if they decide to pursue the sport.
The same is true in the classroom. Students who "show up" for college and do little else draw precious and scarce educational resources away from those who really want to better understand the universe, or the arts, or history or whatever focus a student may enjoy. If colleges were much quicker to remove under performing students, the remaining students could get a much more clearly and sharply presented education, and the removed students would know to step up their effort before attempting another university or college.
By the same token, people who vote without seriously looking at the issues facing our country and the history of those issues allow for people of low character and dubious policies to rise to power. Please Americans, I want you to vote, but only if you are spending multiple hours reading multiple traditional and non-traditional sources about the main issues of these elections and the histories and characters of those running for office. Feel free to include non-traditional candidates ("third" parties) when you see finally see clearly what dolts have risen to the tops of the major parties. Voters not willing to do this kind of work in their decision making do not deserve a sticker for voting. In fact, they deserve a dunce cap, and even worse, they deserve the candidates they are getting.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Stop Using This to Defend Planned Parenthood
Over and Over again, I read defenders of Planned Parenthood stating "abortions aren't the only thing they do. They do other things that are good, so we shouldn't cancel their funding". You really REALLY have to stop that. It is insulting to your intelligence and to the intelligence of everyone reading it.
Adolf Hitler did a lot of things in Germany. He didn't "only" kill Jews. He had a lot of great programs to reduce crime, get youth off the streets and stimulate the economy. Does that mean we should have funded him during the 1930s? No, because the murders he committed outweighed anything he might have done that might have been called "good". He had to be eliminated.
Before you accuse me of hyperbole, let's look at the numbers. The crime for which Adolf Hitler is most famous is the murder of approximately six million Jewish people in concentration camps during his reign. This crime stands on its own in making the Nazi government one of the most universally considered evil organizations of all time. But what about Planned Parenthood? They have performed over seven million abortions since the SCOTUS's Roe Vs. Wade decision. For those of us that agree with the consensus of biologists and medical doctors that an unborn person is a separate and unique human life, we see that as over seven million murders. Defenders of Planned Parenthood make the case that abortions are different from Hitler's murders. Yes, abortions are murders of even more defenseless and vulnerable people than the victims of Hitler's murders, so in that way, they are different.
There is a case to be made that Planned Parenthood is an evil organization of the same order of magnitude as Nazi Germany, Stalin's Kremlin, or Mao's Communist China. As you try to convince me that I should continue to silently allow the government to funnel money out of my paycheck to an organization just like Hitler's SS, stop trying to use the idea that they also do some nice things to make up for the murders of seven million innocent and defenseless people. It makes you sound like a ridiculous idiot.
Adolf Hitler did a lot of things in Germany. He didn't "only" kill Jews. He had a lot of great programs to reduce crime, get youth off the streets and stimulate the economy. Does that mean we should have funded him during the 1930s? No, because the murders he committed outweighed anything he might have done that might have been called "good". He had to be eliminated.
Before you accuse me of hyperbole, let's look at the numbers. The crime for which Adolf Hitler is most famous is the murder of approximately six million Jewish people in concentration camps during his reign. This crime stands on its own in making the Nazi government one of the most universally considered evil organizations of all time. But what about Planned Parenthood? They have performed over seven million abortions since the SCOTUS's Roe Vs. Wade decision. For those of us that agree with the consensus of biologists and medical doctors that an unborn person is a separate and unique human life, we see that as over seven million murders. Defenders of Planned Parenthood make the case that abortions are different from Hitler's murders. Yes, abortions are murders of even more defenseless and vulnerable people than the victims of Hitler's murders, so in that way, they are different.
There is a case to be made that Planned Parenthood is an evil organization of the same order of magnitude as Nazi Germany, Stalin's Kremlin, or Mao's Communist China. As you try to convince me that I should continue to silently allow the government to funnel money out of my paycheck to an organization just like Hitler's SS, stop trying to use the idea that they also do some nice things to make up for the murders of seven million innocent and defenseless people. It makes you sound like a ridiculous idiot.
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
The Electoral Reform We Really Need and Will Never Get
In an election cycle where candidates like Bernie Sanders are advocating for, even preaching, campaign finance reform, we have to ask ourselves, would the reforms that he (or another candidate) are advocating really fix the problem of corruption in our electoral system? The answer is, of course, NO. A cursory read of the link above to Senator Sanders' plan for campaign finance reform shows how he would really reform it; a constitutional amendment putting Congress in charge of finance regulations, or, to use a farming analogy, a constitutional amendment putting foxes in charge of hen houses.
In order to actually solve a problem, one must look to the root cause of the problem rather than treating symptoms as Senator Sanders' ideas attempt to do. The cause of the problems of corruption in the electoral system today has its root in the development and institutionalization of the political parties themselves. The problems we are having today were foreseen as far back as 1797 by the "Father of our country" in George Washington's Farewell Address. In a time when we spend so much of our effort arguing about what this or that founding father "really meant" with certain texts in founding documents, it would do us well to look at George Washington's intent and warnings for the future of our country.
President Washington had seen firsthand the awful effects that party allegiance can have on a country as he presided over the United States' reaction to the French Revolution and the European War that followed. Federalist and Anti-Federalists (the major parties back then) became spiteful and even vengeful toward one another as they argued over the position of neutrality taken by Washington and the subsequent treaty with England negotiated by Jon Jay and advocated for by the Federalists. Based on these observations, Washington saw a future for us of oscillating dominance by one party over another, which each using its turn in power to taken vengeance on the other, and rallying everyone from the highest officials in government to the common voter to take part on one side or the other. As such, over the last 220 years, we have developed this "win at all costs" mentality that has lead to those with money taking control of the two major parties in both determining winners of elections and policies supported by those winners.
So, what should the government do about this? The answer is as it always is: interfere LESS, not more. As it stands right now, the government at the federal, state, and some local levels all treat the Democratic and Republican Parties as more or less a duopoly. These parties are rewarded by the government in current and future elections for having held a certain percentage of the vote in previous elections. As such, they get preferred treatment on ballot access and on the ability to have candidates appear in televised debates. In some states, only "recognized" parties are legally allowed to fund raise to certain amounts, intentionally disenfranchising those hoping to form a "third party". These laws are passed by the dominant party in order to restrict competition and allow themselves an easier road to stay in power. This is exactly the kind of unfair and unscrupulous behavior decried in business by advocates of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but the government does not allow that law to be applied to its own political parties.
The best way our government can improve its current electoral system and reduce the corruption that cronyism brings is to stop recognizing political parties altogether. I am not saying that parties should be banned, just that they should not be recognized in the electoral process. The government should only recognize individuals running for office. Each individual running for office should have exactly the same legal requirements and procedures for ballot access, fund raising, and debate participation regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.
Under this system, if a political party wanted to choose a candidate from a list of those who desired to run under that party's flag, they would be free to do so, but completely without interference or support from the government. There would be no government run or staged primaries, primary debate, or primary funding. Each candidate who wanted to appear on the November ballot would have specific paperwork requirements to be filed by a specific date and that would be it. Party members would be free to assemble on their own prior to that date and choose a candidate to rally around and support, but they would do so with no help or recognition from the government. The paperwork requirements should be manageable enough that anyone with good enough ideas to rally a few hundred people around her (him) could get on the ballot in any/every state. Ballots should list candidates in random order and without listing their party affiliation. Voters who wanted to vote in an educated way would then need to research the individual candidates and find which one(s) they most aligned with morally, philosophically, and politically.
We all know this is never going to happen, because the members of the two parties currently in charge are never going to vote laws into existence that weaken their stranglehold on the gravy train that is the American Congress. Of course, I choose to live in the world where the impossible dream can come true if only ... will happen. The ... that would have to happen in this case would be for a majority of Americans to become simultaneously fed up with the ridiculousness of those who govern us and all at once decide only to vote for candidates not in one of the two traditional parties. What are the odds of that? Pretty slim, I admit. But I will say this: every time you cast a vote for a Democrat or a Republican, no matter what the reason for your vote, you are perpetuating the system; you are part of the problem.
In order to actually solve a problem, one must look to the root cause of the problem rather than treating symptoms as Senator Sanders' ideas attempt to do. The cause of the problems of corruption in the electoral system today has its root in the development and institutionalization of the political parties themselves. The problems we are having today were foreseen as far back as 1797 by the "Father of our country" in George Washington's Farewell Address. In a time when we spend so much of our effort arguing about what this or that founding father "really meant" with certain texts in founding documents, it would do us well to look at George Washington's intent and warnings for the future of our country.
President Washington had seen firsthand the awful effects that party allegiance can have on a country as he presided over the United States' reaction to the French Revolution and the European War that followed. Federalist and Anti-Federalists (the major parties back then) became spiteful and even vengeful toward one another as they argued over the position of neutrality taken by Washington and the subsequent treaty with England negotiated by Jon Jay and advocated for by the Federalists. Based on these observations, Washington saw a future for us of oscillating dominance by one party over another, which each using its turn in power to taken vengeance on the other, and rallying everyone from the highest officials in government to the common voter to take part on one side or the other. As such, over the last 220 years, we have developed this "win at all costs" mentality that has lead to those with money taking control of the two major parties in both determining winners of elections and policies supported by those winners.
So, what should the government do about this? The answer is as it always is: interfere LESS, not more. As it stands right now, the government at the federal, state, and some local levels all treat the Democratic and Republican Parties as more or less a duopoly. These parties are rewarded by the government in current and future elections for having held a certain percentage of the vote in previous elections. As such, they get preferred treatment on ballot access and on the ability to have candidates appear in televised debates. In some states, only "recognized" parties are legally allowed to fund raise to certain amounts, intentionally disenfranchising those hoping to form a "third party". These laws are passed by the dominant party in order to restrict competition and allow themselves an easier road to stay in power. This is exactly the kind of unfair and unscrupulous behavior decried in business by advocates of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but the government does not allow that law to be applied to its own political parties.
The best way our government can improve its current electoral system and reduce the corruption that cronyism brings is to stop recognizing political parties altogether. I am not saying that parties should be banned, just that they should not be recognized in the electoral process. The government should only recognize individuals running for office. Each individual running for office should have exactly the same legal requirements and procedures for ballot access, fund raising, and debate participation regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.
Under this system, if a political party wanted to choose a candidate from a list of those who desired to run under that party's flag, they would be free to do so, but completely without interference or support from the government. There would be no government run or staged primaries, primary debate, or primary funding. Each candidate who wanted to appear on the November ballot would have specific paperwork requirements to be filed by a specific date and that would be it. Party members would be free to assemble on their own prior to that date and choose a candidate to rally around and support, but they would do so with no help or recognition from the government. The paperwork requirements should be manageable enough that anyone with good enough ideas to rally a few hundred people around her (him) could get on the ballot in any/every state. Ballots should list candidates in random order and without listing their party affiliation. Voters who wanted to vote in an educated way would then need to research the individual candidates and find which one(s) they most aligned with morally, philosophically, and politically.
We all know this is never going to happen, because the members of the two parties currently in charge are never going to vote laws into existence that weaken their stranglehold on the gravy train that is the American Congress. Of course, I choose to live in the world where the impossible dream can come true if only ... will happen. The ... that would have to happen in this case would be for a majority of Americans to become simultaneously fed up with the ridiculousness of those who govern us and all at once decide only to vote for candidates not in one of the two traditional parties. What are the odds of that? Pretty slim, I admit. But I will say this: every time you cast a vote for a Democrat or a Republican, no matter what the reason for your vote, you are perpetuating the system; you are part of the problem.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Are Trolls Really NSA Operatives?
Do you often have trolls commenting or dominating conversation on your blog posts, Facebook posts, etc? My blog does not yet have a huge audience, so it is not much of an issue here, but it often is when I comment on public Facebook pages and on the articles of others. The question always comes up, "what motivates an internet troll?" The answer may be money, or some other compensation from the US federal government.
While scanning my Facebook feed I ran across what appear to be a fairly unreliable article claiming that internet trolls are often employees of the federal government whose goal it is to direct discourse on the internet in a particular direction. However, this article appears to be linked to an article by The Intercept that is a bit more reputable. The idea here is that agencies like the NSA monitor activity throughout the internet, particularly on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and yes, even Blogger. The organization for whom we have the most evidence of this right now is the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), We only know of the existence of this organization as a result of the courage of one our our heroes here at the Alkahest Institute, Edward Snowden. The two main purposes and tactics of JTRIG are to "(1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable". These tactics are used not just against foreign governments and such, but are sometimes used as "alternative law enforcement" to destroy the lives of those whose activities, legal or not, the government finds undesirable. They can do this by creating blogs claiming to be victims of their enemies, or by other "false flag" type operations.
As I said earlier, the organization for whom we have the most evidence of behaving this way is British Intelligence, but it would be silly not to assume that the FBI, NSA and CIA are engaged in the same types of behavior, if not worse. These tactics have even been suggested by some close to the current president of the United States: "Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-'independent' advocates to 'cognitively infiltrate' online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups." This same person is one of the people Barak Obama appointed recently to the NSA review panel, leaving once again, the government fox in charge of the citizens' hen house.
Please, as you have time, read more about this from the original article and its companion article. Now that we know that western, supposedly free, governments are behaving this way, how are we to handle it? How should we react to minor or major trollish behavior on our own pages? How skeptical should we be when a sudden destructive media campaign takes over a famous person's life for supposed bad behavior? (Bill Cosby?). As for the first question, my future response to all trolls on my internet outlets will be to accuse them of being NSA or JTRIG employees, not just because it may be true, but because it will be entertaining to watch their reaction. As for the second question, it will be much harder for me to believe in the publicly announced crimes of any famous person, almost regardless of the evidence, if that person has publicly held any opinions that are inconvenient to a branch of the government (cough, Bill Cosby, cough).
Right now, The Alkahest Institute is likely much to small to garner much negative interest from the American or British governments, but as we grow and the attacks begin, please remember not to believe the hype :-)
While scanning my Facebook feed I ran across what appear to be a fairly unreliable article claiming that internet trolls are often employees of the federal government whose goal it is to direct discourse on the internet in a particular direction. However, this article appears to be linked to an article by The Intercept that is a bit more reputable. The idea here is that agencies like the NSA monitor activity throughout the internet, particularly on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and yes, even Blogger. The organization for whom we have the most evidence of this right now is the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), We only know of the existence of this organization as a result of the courage of one our our heroes here at the Alkahest Institute, Edward Snowden. The two main purposes and tactics of JTRIG are to "(1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable". These tactics are used not just against foreign governments and such, but are sometimes used as "alternative law enforcement" to destroy the lives of those whose activities, legal or not, the government finds undesirable. They can do this by creating blogs claiming to be victims of their enemies, or by other "false flag" type operations.
As I said earlier, the organization for whom we have the most evidence of behaving this way is British Intelligence, but it would be silly not to assume that the FBI, NSA and CIA are engaged in the same types of behavior, if not worse. These tactics have even been suggested by some close to the current president of the United States: "Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-'independent' advocates to 'cognitively infiltrate' online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups." This same person is one of the people Barak Obama appointed recently to the NSA review panel, leaving once again, the government fox in charge of the citizens' hen house.
Please, as you have time, read more about this from the original article and its companion article. Now that we know that western, supposedly free, governments are behaving this way, how are we to handle it? How should we react to minor or major trollish behavior on our own pages? How skeptical should we be when a sudden destructive media campaign takes over a famous person's life for supposed bad behavior? (Bill Cosby?). As for the first question, my future response to all trolls on my internet outlets will be to accuse them of being NSA or JTRIG employees, not just because it may be true, but because it will be entertaining to watch their reaction. As for the second question, it will be much harder for me to believe in the publicly announced crimes of any famous person, almost regardless of the evidence, if that person has publicly held any opinions that are inconvenient to a branch of the government (cough, Bill Cosby, cough).
Right now, The Alkahest Institute is likely much to small to garner much negative interest from the American or British governments, but as we grow and the attacks begin, please remember not to believe the hype :-)
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
The Jeff Galloway Training Method
In 2008, I suffered what could some runners might call a catastrophic knee injury, catastrophic not because of the extent of the injury, but because of the effect it had on my running career. As a result of a combination of the slowness of my insurance company to want to run through the appropriate tests and the general incompetence among most medical professionals to diagnose running injuries, it was about a year and a half before I was back to running and am still not quite pain free. Combine that with the affinity I developed for fast food during that time and we have a ruined running career. Not that I was ever close to elite, but I could sneak an age group award fairly regularly at local 5Ks. The good news is though, I did manage to mostly recover without need for surgery.
At about the time I had given up on my running career altogether, I noticed a series of posts on the Facebook wall of a friend of mine who had broken her ankle and was recapturing her running career using the Jeff Galloway training method. Jeff Galloway is a former Olympic runner with decades of successful running experience. The idea of his plan is to break each run up into a series of short runs and walks rather than running the entire distance. For example, on a 30 minutes "run", one might run for 30 seconds, and walk for 15 seconds repeatedly for the entire 30 minutes. In addition to reducing the cardio and respiratory stress, the risk of joint and tendon injury is greatly reduced without losing much of the caloric or cardio benefit of the workout.
I began using the method in the spring of 2010. On most occasions I would run for about 3 minutes and then walk 1 minutes, sometimes slightly shortening or extending a run period such that my walks would talk place on an uphill, thus even further reducing the strain on the fragile knee. I am not back to pre-injury speed or mileage and I rarely run on consecutive days (another part of the plan), but I am able to run in a way that five years ago I figured would never happen again.
Jeff Galloway's page has a significant list of different training schedules for runners planning to run races ranging from 5K up to marathon. One area that needs to be greatly improved and/or expanded is the page associated with improving speed. At my age, I don't know how practical it is, but I would like to knock about a minute off my current mile time and about 5 or so minutes off my 5K time. That would not get me back to pre-injury pace, but it would get me to about what we would expect me to have regressed to by now without the injury. Jeff seems to have no practical suggestions for that, despite have a page on his site that appears to be dedicated to it.
If any of you have any experience with this or other similar training methods for old timers like me, I would love to read about it here in the comments section or on my Facebook page.
At about the time I had given up on my running career altogether, I noticed a series of posts on the Facebook wall of a friend of mine who had broken her ankle and was recapturing her running career using the Jeff Galloway training method. Jeff Galloway is a former Olympic runner with decades of successful running experience. The idea of his plan is to break each run up into a series of short runs and walks rather than running the entire distance. For example, on a 30 minutes "run", one might run for 30 seconds, and walk for 15 seconds repeatedly for the entire 30 minutes. In addition to reducing the cardio and respiratory stress, the risk of joint and tendon injury is greatly reduced without losing much of the caloric or cardio benefit of the workout.
I began using the method in the spring of 2010. On most occasions I would run for about 3 minutes and then walk 1 minutes, sometimes slightly shortening or extending a run period such that my walks would talk place on an uphill, thus even further reducing the strain on the fragile knee. I am not back to pre-injury speed or mileage and I rarely run on consecutive days (another part of the plan), but I am able to run in a way that five years ago I figured would never happen again.
Jeff Galloway's page has a significant list of different training schedules for runners planning to run races ranging from 5K up to marathon. One area that needs to be greatly improved and/or expanded is the page associated with improving speed. At my age, I don't know how practical it is, but I would like to knock about a minute off my current mile time and about 5 or so minutes off my 5K time. That would not get me back to pre-injury pace, but it would get me to about what we would expect me to have regressed to by now without the injury. Jeff seems to have no practical suggestions for that, despite have a page on his site that appears to be dedicated to it.
If any of you have any experience with this or other similar training methods for old timers like me, I would love to read about it here in the comments section or on my Facebook page.
Monday, February 2, 2015
How to Be Libertarian on the Vaccine Issue without Placing the World in Danger
This is a difficult question. One that even top Libertarians like Julie Borowski and Leif Bieberson are grappling with. As Libertarians, we generally teach that government force and regulation should not force any particular behavior on the individual and that government force should only be used to prohibit activities in which one person harms another without his permission. That becomes a sticky point even for some Libertarians, because the act of not vaccinating is seen by some to cause harm to others. But government should only be able to prevent harmful action, not harmful inaction and at its core, Libertarianism MUST reject any policy that allows the government to forcibly insert something in an unwilling person's body. So, back to the title, how can a person be Libertarian on the vaccine issue without being partially responsible for a world wide measles outbreak?
The best answer to that question is complicated in that it forces us to reexamine some of our assumptions and things that we take for granted. For example, the question of whether public school children should be forced to be vaccinated begs the question, should we have public schools? While not necessarily directly opposing freedom in general, the existence of public schools is antithetical to Libertarian ideals because once a society becomes dependent on government schools, they owe the government for that service. The government acquires the right to require vaccinations, uniforms, drug tests, locker searches, etc. in payment for the education we depend on. Before we can insist that the government shouldn't force certain behaviors on us, we have to stop accepting their handouts.
Once we give up on things like the public schools, we place ourselves in a position to be able to choose schools based, in part, on the vaccinations rules set by the private school owners, or just teach our children at home. But what then about areas that are privately owned, but frequented by large portions of the public? Should the government force vaccination in those cases? No, we never allow the government to force things into an unwilling person's body. However, in situations like this, when disease rates are rising as a result of people who choose not to vaccinate, what if there were a private solution? Businesses, like Disney, to use the example that has been in the news, that have become incubation sites for formerly nearly eradicated diseases could start to require vaccination records for their patrons. People could choose to attend the park (or other business) or not based on its vaccination policies. Vaccination policies would change as markets dictated and government force would not have to be used. Parks and other large businesses could decide for themselves whether they wanted to make exceptions based on a child having medical reasons for not being vaccinated. People who thought a particular business's policies were wrong or unfair could boycott the business. The market would be the force rather than government force.
This is my current thought, but it is open to growth as people share more ideas that I may have missed. Let me know what you think!!
Saturday, January 31, 2015
The Current Condition of Darwin's Hypothesis III
We have had more and more great conversation on my Facebook wall about this topic. Please, if you haven't already read them, go back and read posts one and two in this series to catch up on where we are. In the first post, I proposed a probability calculation that I felt, at the time, showed an impossibility for the main tenants of the Darwinian Hypothesis. After a short conversation on my Facebook wall, my second post attempted to defend the conclusions of my first with a smaller scale calculation, again using probability theory to show the unlikelihood of the very beginnings of Darwinian evolution occurring.
Since then, the Facebook conversation has continued and as part of that conversation I found a very interesting scientific paper by a physicist at MIT named Jeremy England that does a good job of refuting the assumptions my calculations. There is a summary written in mostly layman's terms here. The basic idea is that some molecules, or configurations of molecules, become more likely to assemble under certain circumstances because of their inherent ability to dissipate energy. At a macroscopic level, we can see and example of this in the phenomenon of Rayleigh–Bénard convection. The organized patter of convection cells that are generated when heating some liquids from the bottom are a more efficient way to dissipate heat energy than a more random movement of molecules would be, so the configuration self assembles with a much higher probability than other configurations. Dr. England proposes then that low entropy structures like life coding RNA or DNA strands or certain life supporting proteins might become much more favored than other microstates under certain conditions because of the inherent ability to dissipate heat energy found in living things. Since the math I used in my previous two posts assumed equal probabilities for each microstate, my calculations can no longer be considered valid.
The usefulness of Dr. England's work is not limited to attempting to explain life or evolution. In fact, I will be trying to apply some of the ideas from his paper to my own research in computational chemistry. But it is important to note that Dr. England's work is, by his own admission, not yet complete in its application to the generation of living things from non-living matter and that other highly regarded members of the science community like Eugene Shakhnovich of Harvard University find his application of his ideas to life phenomena "extremely speculative". Even if his work concludes in the way he hopes and expects, Dr. England will only have shown the mathematical possibility of abiogenesis and the early steps of evolution, not their actual occurrence.
The Darwinian Hypothesis has several other mathematical and scientific problems that we will look at in some future blog posts, but for right now, I will be taking a break from Evolutionary topics just because there is a growing list of other things I would like to discuss here related to my other interests like politics, distance running and racing, general theology, etc. I don't want this to become an evolution/creation only blog. There are indeed more important ideas to discuss.
Whether you agree with me or not on this or other topics, if you are finding these posts and discussions interesting, please follow this blog and feel free to join the conversation. I can also be found on the Facebook page I linked above and on a newly created Twitter account, so please follow me on whichever of those you regularly use.
Since then, the Facebook conversation has continued and as part of that conversation I found a very interesting scientific paper by a physicist at MIT named Jeremy England that does a good job of refuting the assumptions my calculations. There is a summary written in mostly layman's terms here. The basic idea is that some molecules, or configurations of molecules, become more likely to assemble under certain circumstances because of their inherent ability to dissipate energy. At a macroscopic level, we can see and example of this in the phenomenon of Rayleigh–Bénard convection. The organized patter of convection cells that are generated when heating some liquids from the bottom are a more efficient way to dissipate heat energy than a more random movement of molecules would be, so the configuration self assembles with a much higher probability than other configurations. Dr. England proposes then that low entropy structures like life coding RNA or DNA strands or certain life supporting proteins might become much more favored than other microstates under certain conditions because of the inherent ability to dissipate heat energy found in living things. Since the math I used in my previous two posts assumed equal probabilities for each microstate, my calculations can no longer be considered valid.
The usefulness of Dr. England's work is not limited to attempting to explain life or evolution. In fact, I will be trying to apply some of the ideas from his paper to my own research in computational chemistry. But it is important to note that Dr. England's work is, by his own admission, not yet complete in its application to the generation of living things from non-living matter and that other highly regarded members of the science community like Eugene Shakhnovich of Harvard University find his application of his ideas to life phenomena "extremely speculative". Even if his work concludes in the way he hopes and expects, Dr. England will only have shown the mathematical possibility of abiogenesis and the early steps of evolution, not their actual occurrence.
The Darwinian Hypothesis has several other mathematical and scientific problems that we will look at in some future blog posts, but for right now, I will be taking a break from Evolutionary topics just because there is a growing list of other things I would like to discuss here related to my other interests like politics, distance running and racing, general theology, etc. I don't want this to become an evolution/creation only blog. There are indeed more important ideas to discuss.
Whether you agree with me or not on this or other topics, if you are finding these posts and discussions interesting, please follow this blog and feel free to join the conversation. I can also be found on the Facebook page I linked above and on a newly created Twitter account, so please follow me on whichever of those you regularly use.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
The Current Condition of Darwin's Hypothesis II
One of my readers generated a very good discussion about my last blog post on my Facebook wall (I encourage all of you to like my page ;-). He had several criticisms, some of which may be valid, about the underlying assumptions in the math that led me to the astronomically small probabilities for Darwin's Hypothesis. While I think that correcting for the assumptions will likely not lead to any less ridiculous probability calculation, he is correct that I can not mathematically prove that for all of them. There are too many variables in a problem that size. So, let's try this from a slightly smaller scale angle, and making all assumptions and approximations on the side of the evolutionary hypothesis. If I leave an unaccounted for assumption without realizing it, please feel free to point it out either in the comments below or on my Facebook page (which I encourage you to like). Throughout the post, and through all my future blog posts, I will place hyperlinks that will bring you to Wikipedia or other article pages that will explain the terms that are highlighted, or show where I get my numbers.
Let’s begin with a very generous estimate. Even if we involve all of the carbon atoms in the world (about 2*10^47) and allow them all to be only involved in DNA, that
would require about 20 carbon atoms per base-pair including the backbones. That means we have enough carbon atoms
available on earth for about 10^46 base-pairs with about one quarter of them
representing each possible coding letter that is used on the genetic code. There are 3.1 billion base-pairs necessary
for the recipe of one correctly formed human being, but again being
conservative, for the sake of argument let’s say that since only two percent of
those are in coding regions and most amino acid codons can be coded in more
than one way that we are looking at only about 30 million that must eventually
be brought to a certain order. Now, having likely grossly overstated the number of
base-pairs available and grossly understated the number of them that must find
a specific order, let’s begin building a human by random, but iterative evolutionary processes.
The first thing that will
need to happen is that a set of DNA large enough to be the code for a living
thing will have to be assembled by random processes without the benefit of the
DNA replication or natural selection that goes on in a cell since this will be the first cell. The living thing with the least number of base-pairs in its genome that has been discovered so far is the Carsonella bacterium which has 160,000 base-pairs in its genome, coding for 182 different proteins. The Carsonella bacterium is a very useful case for this discussion in that not only is it the smallest living thing in the world from a genomics perspective, but it is only half the size of the next smallest living thing to be discovered so far. Also, bacteria genomes are 98% coding regions, which leave us a lot less room for error, so to speak, in the ordering of the base-pairs.
So, before we begin assembling a human, let's begin assembling a Carsonella bacterium sized organism for the human to eventually evolve from. There are 10^96329 ways in which 160,000 base-pairs, with four possibilities at each site, can be assembled. Our earth allows us enough carbon for, at most, as stated, about 10^46 base-pairs. That gives us enough base-pairs to assemble about 7*10^40 Carsonella Bacterium length genome possibilities at a time. It is believed by evolutionists that about one billion years passed between the birth of the earth and the first life upon it. The average chemical reaction takes about 200 femtoseconds. If we count the number of 200 femtosecond reaction intervals in the one billion years that allegedly passed between the birth of the earth and the first life upon it, and multiply that 7*10^40 as the top end maximum number of 160,000 base-pair genomes could be brought into existence at one time, that billion years allows for, at most, about 5*10^74 Carsonella Bacterium sized genome combinations attempts, which means that in that time period, it is physically impossible for more than one in 2*10^96254 of the possible assemblies for 160,000 base-pairs to have been attempted.
The question then arises, what fraction of the possible 10^96329 ways in which 160,000 base-pairs can be assembled would lead to a living thing that could code for the necessary proteins to sustain reproducible life and get the natural selection ball rolling? Is the 5*10^74 arrangements we allow time for enough to expect a living Carsonella Bacterium sized living thing to emerge? At this point I am a bit stuck mathematically, because I can not find a spreadsheet program or an online calculator that will calculate a probability using the hypergeometric distribution on numbers this large. I have worked out some of the math as best I could in the picture below.
Where P is the probability of generating a life sustaining combination of 160,000 base-pairs using the time and population parameters above and K is the total number of life sustaining combinations possible. When K is a small number on the order of one, this probability approaches 1 in about 10^96400. As K gets larger, the probability will get more manageable, but considering that only one species of a bacteria with this small a number of base pairs has ever been discovered, and that the next simplest known bacteria is twice as complex, there are likely not a very large number of life sustaining possibilities on bacteria that small. If someone can give us reason to suggest that K might be larger than a few million, and than find a calculating program that can handle numbers this size and plug them in and find a reasonable probability for generating even the smallest life form in the billion years suggested by evolution, please let me know either here or on my Facebook wall. I will also keep looking for online calculators that can handle this workload. If/when we can finish this calculation I will update this blog with a part three of this post. In the meantime, I think this calculation demonstrates the extreme unlikeliness of the evolutionary hypothesis in the light of the amount of genetic information that would have to be generated from complete disorganization.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Thoughts on the Current Condition of Darwin's Evolutionary Hypothesis
Charles Darwin published his most famous work, "On the Origin of the Species" on November 24, 1859. In the decades that followed, it became foundation of evolutionary biology. Though it did not attempt to explain abiogenesis, the origin of the first living thing, this work, and his companion work, "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" has served for over one hundred and fifty years as the basis for the most comprehensive naturalist (without consideration of an outside creator) hypothesis for explaining biodiversity.
As a creationist, I do not have a problem with the way this unfolded. While the naturalist rarely admits to it, they approach observational data with a bias. They seek to fit their findings of the workings of the universe to a model that explains what we see without interference from a god. Creationists are biased as well, and I admit that. We seek to fit the same data to our concept of a universe that is much younger, and which God spoke into existence with biodiversity already as complex as what we see now, if not more so. It is fine for both sides of the debate to approach with their biases as long as we admit those biases, and as long as data drives our conclusions.
That is where the modern naturalist, the subscriber to Darwin's hypotheses, has a significant problem. Darwinism suffered a mortal wound in 1952 when Francis Crick and James Watson published their findings on the structure of the DNA molecule. It was revealed that the complete recipe for a particular human being, or any other living thing, was contained in code made up of a series of base pairs put together in a double helix, the shape of a spiral staircase. The reason that was the mortal wound for the Evolutionary Hypothesis is that soon, it would be known just how many pieces there are to that code. By 2003, findings of the Human Genome Project showed that the number of base pairs in the recipe for one human being is approximately 3.1 billion. Not all of those base pairs code for specific molecules a body will make. Some of them serve other purposes like controlling the shape of the DNA during cell division, but all of it is necessary to the activity of the information needed to generate one human being.
Now, not all of us have the same exact order to our 3.1 billion base pairs. A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is a place along the code where different people within a population might have a different base pair, or step on the spiral staircase, or character in the code, than others in the same population. As of October 16, 2014, just over 100 million SNPs had been found in human beings, leaving almost exactly 3 billion base pairs, that have to be just in place for the recipe of a human to be accurate. Diseases like sickle-cell anemia are caused by having just one of those base-pairs out of place.
If Watson and Crick were the mortal wound for Darwinism, the Human Genome Project was its dying breath. The recipe, the code, for a human being is 3 billion characters long, using an alphabet that has four characters (rather than the 26 in our writing alphabet). But if the human genome was assembled by chance errors in DNA replication over the course of billions of years, we have to ask the question, what is the probability that the necessary order of the 3 billion non-SNP base pairs would be achieved? It is a fairly simple calculation. With four possibilities at each site, and 3 billion sites, the odds are one in four to the 3 billionth power. Since we usually give very small probabilities in terms of exponents of 10, we can convert that number to one in ten to the 1.8 billionth power (10^1,800,000,000).
To put the magnitude of this number in perspective, the number of atoms in a spec of dust is 10^16. There are about 10^25 atoms in a glass of water, and there are 10^80 atoms in the entire universe (exponents scale up quickly). If the universe is 13.8 billion years old as current evolutionary hypotheses state, less than 10^18 seconds have passed since the beginning of the universe. Given all of the atoms in the universe and all of the time that is alleged to have passed, it is still mathematically ridiculous to consider the probabilities necessary for the recipe of a human to assemble, and that is even once the base pairs themselves and the machinery to assemble them are already assumed to be in place.
As I said earlier, I do not fault the atheist and the agnostic for wanting to fit the observable data into a model of the universe that ignores the need for a creator, but if they want to continue to do so, Darwinian Evolution in its current form no longer fits the data available to us, nor does any model that requires 3 billion bits of information to be assembled by random errors.
As a creationist, I do not have a problem with the way this unfolded. While the naturalist rarely admits to it, they approach observational data with a bias. They seek to fit their findings of the workings of the universe to a model that explains what we see without interference from a god. Creationists are biased as well, and I admit that. We seek to fit the same data to our concept of a universe that is much younger, and which God spoke into existence with biodiversity already as complex as what we see now, if not more so. It is fine for both sides of the debate to approach with their biases as long as we admit those biases, and as long as data drives our conclusions.
That is where the modern naturalist, the subscriber to Darwin's hypotheses, has a significant problem. Darwinism suffered a mortal wound in 1952 when Francis Crick and James Watson published their findings on the structure of the DNA molecule. It was revealed that the complete recipe for a particular human being, or any other living thing, was contained in code made up of a series of base pairs put together in a double helix, the shape of a spiral staircase. The reason that was the mortal wound for the Evolutionary Hypothesis is that soon, it would be known just how many pieces there are to that code. By 2003, findings of the Human Genome Project showed that the number of base pairs in the recipe for one human being is approximately 3.1 billion. Not all of those base pairs code for specific molecules a body will make. Some of them serve other purposes like controlling the shape of the DNA during cell division, but all of it is necessary to the activity of the information needed to generate one human being.
Now, not all of us have the same exact order to our 3.1 billion base pairs. A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is a place along the code where different people within a population might have a different base pair, or step on the spiral staircase, or character in the code, than others in the same population. As of October 16, 2014, just over 100 million SNPs had been found in human beings, leaving almost exactly 3 billion base pairs, that have to be just in place for the recipe of a human to be accurate. Diseases like sickle-cell anemia are caused by having just one of those base-pairs out of place.
If Watson and Crick were the mortal wound for Darwinism, the Human Genome Project was its dying breath. The recipe, the code, for a human being is 3 billion characters long, using an alphabet that has four characters (rather than the 26 in our writing alphabet). But if the human genome was assembled by chance errors in DNA replication over the course of billions of years, we have to ask the question, what is the probability that the necessary order of the 3 billion non-SNP base pairs would be achieved? It is a fairly simple calculation. With four possibilities at each site, and 3 billion sites, the odds are one in four to the 3 billionth power. Since we usually give very small probabilities in terms of exponents of 10, we can convert that number to one in ten to the 1.8 billionth power (10^1,800,000,000).
To put the magnitude of this number in perspective, the number of atoms in a spec of dust is 10^16. There are about 10^25 atoms in a glass of water, and there are 10^80 atoms in the entire universe (exponents scale up quickly). If the universe is 13.8 billion years old as current evolutionary hypotheses state, less than 10^18 seconds have passed since the beginning of the universe. Given all of the atoms in the universe and all of the time that is alleged to have passed, it is still mathematically ridiculous to consider the probabilities necessary for the recipe of a human to assemble, and that is even once the base pairs themselves and the machinery to assemble them are already assumed to be in place.
As I said earlier, I do not fault the atheist and the agnostic for wanting to fit the observable data into a model of the universe that ignores the need for a creator, but if they want to continue to do so, Darwinian Evolution in its current form no longer fits the data available to us, nor does any model that requires 3 billion bits of information to be assembled by random errors.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
New England Patriots Didn't Cheat (This Time), Because... SCIENCE!!!
I am not usually much of a football guy and most of my sports related posts here will be either about baseball or running, but this week on social media has been all about football, and became a major topic on my personal Facebook wall. As I alluded to in previous posts, I am a chemistry professor at a mid-sized state university. As a result, I have some friends in the Physics department, one of whom happens to be a big time Patriots fan. I don't hate the Patriots, and on the occasion that I watch football at all, I am a Packers fan, so I really didn't have a horse in this race, but it became more and more fun for me to watch the drama unfold on Facebook, especially from a science perspective.
Because of my initial lack of interest, I stayed out of it for a while, but my Patriot-fan-Physics friend made a post that caught my eye. In his initial post, he corrected an initial media science faux pas wherein a particular media outlet had correctly done their algebra in calculating the pressure drop to be expected from the temperature drop that occurred in going from locker room to field, but had inserted the wrong pressure number into the equation. You see, when it is stated that the pressure to which the football is pumped is 12.5 pounds per square inch, that is not the total pressure inside the ball, that is the pressure difference between the inside of the ball and the outside. Normal atmospheric pressure is about 14.5 pounds per square inch, so to do the calculation correctly, one has to begin with a total pressure of 27 pounds per square inch. My friend worked the calculating this way and found that the total pressure after the temperature drop would be around 24 pounds per square inch, making the gauge reading on the ball 11.5 pounds per square inch, vindicating the New England Patriots.
So, not because I care so much about the football outcome, but because I loved the idea of gas laws being applied to popularly followed news events, I shared my friend's status on Facebook and added a few funny jabs of my own quoting Big Bang Theory and Bernie Mac to get the discussion going. One of my oldest and dearest friends, an ivy league educated engineer, called us out on our physics, claiming that the assumption we made of constant volume would not be true, that the drop in temperature would cause both a volume AND a pressure reduction, each offsetting the other a bit, thus calling into question the significant pressure drop seen in the Patriot footballs. I saw his point, but wasn't sure that the volume change in a ball the consistency of a football would be significant at that pressure, but geekiness took over and we began designing an experiment to conduct in the Physics lab at the university that I would have posted on here had we got it done, but alas, the physicists at Carnegie Melon beat us to it and have already posted their findings which are detailed in another person's blog:
News Cut's Blog on Carnegie Melon's Deflategate Study
Long story short, my Patriots-fan-Physicist friend was correct, the volume change was negligible and the pressure drop due to temperature change was more than 1 PSI. Additionally, the pressure drop due to getting the ball wet was also nearly 1 PSI, making the Patriots appear totally innocent of all charges related to deflategate. As an added bonus, one of Professor Alkahest's greatest foils, Bill Nye the Pseudoscience Guy, came out with his opinions on the matter right at about the same time, but without having verified his opinions with appropriate experiments (as he often does) and got it completely wrong. It is important to note here that Bill Nye was allowing his bias as a Seahawks fan to effect his scientific judgement (as shown by video evidence). If you would like to see Bill Nye embarrassing himself by ignoring the Combined Gas Law and claiming that the only way to change pressure is to change the number of gas molecules in a container please go to this address and prepare to giggle (notice that his experiments use giant orange party balloons instead of actual footballs... OH THE RIGOR ... heeheehee):
Bill Nye being silly on deadspin
Morals of today's stories:
1) Any news item that causes people to learn a little science is an awesome news item.
2) Science beats engineering, always and all ways.
3) We are only having this ridiculous conversation because the NFL is stupid enough to allow the game balls to be prepared and controlled by the participants in the game rather than by the officials. In intelligent sports, the officials have control of the game balls until they come into use. Therefore, baseball beats football, always and all ways.
Because of my initial lack of interest, I stayed out of it for a while, but my Patriot-fan-Physics friend made a post that caught my eye. In his initial post, he corrected an initial media science faux pas wherein a particular media outlet had correctly done their algebra in calculating the pressure drop to be expected from the temperature drop that occurred in going from locker room to field, but had inserted the wrong pressure number into the equation. You see, when it is stated that the pressure to which the football is pumped is 12.5 pounds per square inch, that is not the total pressure inside the ball, that is the pressure difference between the inside of the ball and the outside. Normal atmospheric pressure is about 14.5 pounds per square inch, so to do the calculation correctly, one has to begin with a total pressure of 27 pounds per square inch. My friend worked the calculating this way and found that the total pressure after the temperature drop would be around 24 pounds per square inch, making the gauge reading on the ball 11.5 pounds per square inch, vindicating the New England Patriots.
So, not because I care so much about the football outcome, but because I loved the idea of gas laws being applied to popularly followed news events, I shared my friend's status on Facebook and added a few funny jabs of my own quoting Big Bang Theory and Bernie Mac to get the discussion going. One of my oldest and dearest friends, an ivy league educated engineer, called us out on our physics, claiming that the assumption we made of constant volume would not be true, that the drop in temperature would cause both a volume AND a pressure reduction, each offsetting the other a bit, thus calling into question the significant pressure drop seen in the Patriot footballs. I saw his point, but wasn't sure that the volume change in a ball the consistency of a football would be significant at that pressure, but geekiness took over and we began designing an experiment to conduct in the Physics lab at the university that I would have posted on here had we got it done, but alas, the physicists at Carnegie Melon beat us to it and have already posted their findings which are detailed in another person's blog:
News Cut's Blog on Carnegie Melon's Deflategate Study
Long story short, my Patriots-fan-Physicist friend was correct, the volume change was negligible and the pressure drop due to temperature change was more than 1 PSI. Additionally, the pressure drop due to getting the ball wet was also nearly 1 PSI, making the Patriots appear totally innocent of all charges related to deflategate. As an added bonus, one of Professor Alkahest's greatest foils, Bill Nye the Pseudoscience Guy, came out with his opinions on the matter right at about the same time, but without having verified his opinions with appropriate experiments (as he often does) and got it completely wrong. It is important to note here that Bill Nye was allowing his bias as a Seahawks fan to effect his scientific judgement (as shown by video evidence). If you would like to see Bill Nye embarrassing himself by ignoring the Combined Gas Law and claiming that the only way to change pressure is to change the number of gas molecules in a container please go to this address and prepare to giggle (notice that his experiments use giant orange party balloons instead of actual footballs... OH THE RIGOR ... heeheehee):
Bill Nye being silly on deadspin
Morals of today's stories:
1) Any news item that causes people to learn a little science is an awesome news item.
2) Science beats engineering, always and all ways.
3) We are only having this ridiculous conversation because the NFL is stupid enough to allow the game balls to be prepared and controlled by the participants in the game rather than by the officials. In intelligent sports, the officials have control of the game balls until they come into use. Therefore, baseball beats football, always and all ways.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Are Libertarianism and Anarchism Compatible, or are they Enemies?
As some of you have probably noticed, this blog is a bit eclectic. Quite often I will be writing about whatever has struck my fancy in my internet news and blog readings. You might expect this week that if I am going to write a political blog, that it might focus on one thing or another that President Obama did or did not say in the State of the Union Address, but the fact is, that is a really boring topic. Everything he said was expected and the arguments that have grown out of it are exactly what was expected. We won't cover any new ground that way. One argument I have seen going on on the Facebook walls of fellow libertarian commentators Austin Petersen, Libertarian Girl and Julie Borowski is where, how and if the anarcho-capitalist fits into the liberty movement.
I don't want to put words into anyone's mouths, but it seems that the anarcho-capitalists often argue, and angrily so, that they are the only "true libertarians" and that asserting the need of a government of any kind makes one a statist pig. The problem is that history has shown that true anarchy, the complete lack of government, leads to tyranny moreso than most forms of government. Now, here me out before you thrust the statist label upon me. The question that keeps being asked of the anarchists is how those in an anarchic society might deal with those who violate the rights of others in a particularly evil fashion (murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc.). Quite often, the answer given by the anarchist is that "I would just kill that person". On the surface, that argument seems to work because in anarchic society there is no law or police to prevent one from handling his own justice and revenge, but there is also no mechanism for due process toward the accused, and no way of preventing retaliation and long, bloody feuds.
That is the drawback to anarchy. Due process is out the window and only those mighty enough to take revenge get the appearance of justice while those who are weaker only get justice, peace, and protection if they can convince a mightier person to help them. This is where the slope starts to slide toward tyranny. There is a good chance the weaker persons accept this protection and justice from their stronger counterparts in exchange for some service. This sounds great to the anarcho-capitalist so far; a free market solution to justice and protection. However, this is the exactly how feudalism begins. People in an anarchic society voluntarily put themselves into servitude to an overlord of some sort because of the protection and pseudo-justice he can supply, until after a generation or so, the servitude is no longer voluntary and we have full blown feudalism. A large scale historical example is Europe in the 1000 years after the fall of Rome, a smaller scale, but more detailed example would be reading the history of Corsica during the same period
A powerful, but limited in scope, constitutional government stands to bring the most liberty to the most people because it alleviates the need for weaker persons and their progeny to become subject to a feudal overlord system for protection. This is what the American forefathers, particularly the libertarian leaning ones, envisioned for the United States. Unfortunately, keeping the scope of that governing body as limited as it should be is a difficult and eternal task and it has gotten away from us in the last few generations. That is why revolutions (sometimes peaceable, sometimes not) have been necessary from time to time throughout human history. I am still hopeful that our problems can be solved peaceably, but it will need to be done soon. I am afraid are approaching the tipping point.
I don't want to put words into anyone's mouths, but it seems that the anarcho-capitalists often argue, and angrily so, that they are the only "true libertarians" and that asserting the need of a government of any kind makes one a statist pig. The problem is that history has shown that true anarchy, the complete lack of government, leads to tyranny moreso than most forms of government. Now, here me out before you thrust the statist label upon me. The question that keeps being asked of the anarchists is how those in an anarchic society might deal with those who violate the rights of others in a particularly evil fashion (murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc.). Quite often, the answer given by the anarchist is that "I would just kill that person". On the surface, that argument seems to work because in anarchic society there is no law or police to prevent one from handling his own justice and revenge, but there is also no mechanism for due process toward the accused, and no way of preventing retaliation and long, bloody feuds.
That is the drawback to anarchy. Due process is out the window and only those mighty enough to take revenge get the appearance of justice while those who are weaker only get justice, peace, and protection if they can convince a mightier person to help them. This is where the slope starts to slide toward tyranny. There is a good chance the weaker persons accept this protection and justice from their stronger counterparts in exchange for some service. This sounds great to the anarcho-capitalist so far; a free market solution to justice and protection. However, this is the exactly how feudalism begins. People in an anarchic society voluntarily put themselves into servitude to an overlord of some sort because of the protection and pseudo-justice he can supply, until after a generation or so, the servitude is no longer voluntary and we have full blown feudalism. A large scale historical example is Europe in the 1000 years after the fall of Rome, a smaller scale, but more detailed example would be reading the history of Corsica during the same period
A powerful, but limited in scope, constitutional government stands to bring the most liberty to the most people because it alleviates the need for weaker persons and their progeny to become subject to a feudal overlord system for protection. This is what the American forefathers, particularly the libertarian leaning ones, envisioned for the United States. Unfortunately, keeping the scope of that governing body as limited as it should be is a difficult and eternal task and it has gotten away from us in the last few generations. That is why revolutions (sometimes peaceable, sometimes not) have been necessary from time to time throughout human history. I am still hopeful that our problems can be solved peaceably, but it will need to be done soon. I am afraid are approaching the tipping point.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Eye for an Eye... Is the Bible a Statist Book?
There are many, both Christians and non-Christians who think of the Bible as being a staunchly pro-government, or "statist" book because of verses like Exodus 21:24 - "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (see also Leviticus 24:20). Agnostic and atheist libertarians see this as a reason to discard the Bible and some Christians see this verse as a reason for endorsing harsh government punishments against certain crimes, but the fact is, they have misunderstood the intent of the verse. What we have to remember is that God was instructing Moses to write to a people that had been living for several hundred years under a VERY authoritarian government in Egypt and who were used to being punished excessively for small crimes by a vengeful dictatorship.
The intent of those Old Testament verses then, which can also be seen by analyzing the normal nuances of the Hebrew words used in the original language, is that punishments should ONLY be an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, etc. The verse was intended to restrain future Hebrew judges and kings from being excessive in their punishments in the way that they were used to seeing in Egypt. This portion of the Hebrew law originally served the same purpose as our Constitution and Bill of Rights, to RESTRAIN the government, not to increase it.
We get an even further understanding of what God meant here when we look at Jesus's response to that law in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38-39 - "You have heard that it was said, 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.' But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also". In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus looked at several Old Testament laws, corrected historically inaccurate impressions of those laws, and extended their meaning for the then future time of grace after His sacrifice. If Exodus was meant to restrain government from using too much force in retaliation for crimes against one another, Jesus suggested not to involve government led retaliation for personal crimes at all. The idea here is that if we respond to our enemies with kindness rather than retribution, they are much more likely to see reason to believe the gospel when we share it. Paul extended this idea of leaving the government out of disputes in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter six when he commanded that Christians not take their disagreements with one another to the courts. One reason he gives is that we can not trust a heathen court system to intercede correctly for us. What could be more libertarian, or more applicable for today?
That pattern of leaving the government out of disputes is maintained throughout the New Testament. Although the government is often hostile to Christians, we are never advised to lobby the government to change in any way. Paul only ever uses his special advantages as a citizen in the Roman governmental system to increase his freedom of expression in sharing the gospel, never to try to lobby the government to control the sinful behaviors of others.
As Christians, we are never advancing the gospel or the will of God when we use the violent arm of the government to punish people's sins. That is not what Christ did; it is not what Paul did; it is not what we are commanded to do. Our job as Christians is to share God's word with as many people as we can get to listen, to disciple those who believe, to pray for those who do not, and to love ALL of them and treat them kindly regardless of how they treat us.
Monday, January 12, 2015
A Scientific Approach to Training
Two of the topics I promised for this blog are running and science. Today, you get a twofer as I will be talking about the overlap between them. If you are a serious competition runner or coach, and you haven't heard of GO Athletics or their "System Based Training" method, please take a look at their webpages and see what you think:
https://goathleticsblog.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/goathleticssbt/info?tab=page_info
The idea here is that not all athletes are the same. There is no one training schedule or workout program that will bring all athletes to their maximum abilities. If you want to get the best races out of yourself or the athletes you coach, you have to find out what your (or their) body responds best to. The best way to find this out is through physiological testing during a workout. When an expert physiologist administers and analyzes the results of this test, she can find the strengths and weaknesses of each energy system for a particular athlete, and then tailor a workout, condition and nutrition program for that athlete, allowing him or her to reach their maximum potential as a runner and racer.
I wish this had been around in my competitive racing days. Professor Alkahest is an old man in the running world at this point, but I am definitely recommending this for my younger and more active in the sport counterparts and am very tempted to give it a shot myself even at my advanced stage of decrepitness.
At this point, I think GO Athletics is only available to do testing in the Philadelphia area. I am not sure if there are similar companies in other areas or if they plan to expand to other areas. If you have worked with a program like this before or have any input or opinions, please feel free to express them in the comments section.
https://goathleticsblog.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/goathleticssbt/info?tab=page_info
The idea here is that not all athletes are the same. There is no one training schedule or workout program that will bring all athletes to their maximum abilities. If you want to get the best races out of yourself or the athletes you coach, you have to find out what your (or their) body responds best to. The best way to find this out is through physiological testing during a workout. When an expert physiologist administers and analyzes the results of this test, she can find the strengths and weaknesses of each energy system for a particular athlete, and then tailor a workout, condition and nutrition program for that athlete, allowing him or her to reach their maximum potential as a runner and racer.
I wish this had been around in my competitive racing days. Professor Alkahest is an old man in the running world at this point, but I am definitely recommending this for my younger and more active in the sport counterparts and am very tempted to give it a shot myself even at my advanced stage of decrepitness.
At this point, I think GO Athletics is only available to do testing in the Philadelphia area. I am not sure if there are similar companies in other areas or if they plan to expand to other areas. If you have worked with a program like this before or have any input or opinions, please feel free to express them in the comments section.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Who Does Religion Really Insult?
Like I said earlier, this blog will deal with all sorts of contemporary issues including politics, theology, science, baseball, etc. Quite often I will chose our topic for the day based on whatever struck my interest when looking through Facebook posts from my friends. For that reason, today's topic will be theology. I noticed the picture below on a friend's Facebook page yesterday and decided that this was deserving of a discussion. What this picture says is certainly true of most religions. Religions the world over are a list of dos and don'ts that the adherent hopes will ingratiate themselves to God in a way that will bring blessing and maybe even allow them into whatever their concept of Heaven (Nirvana, etc.) is. The Muslims have their sharia law, the Hindus have their Karma, Catholics have their rites and sacraments, Cain of the Bible had his vegetable sacrifices, etc. etc.
But the fact is, it is not really an insult to humanity to think this way. If anything, it is false flattery. The idea that there is something that human beings, who can hardly get through an hour without doing, saying or thinking something regrettable, can do something, or even a list of somethings, to fix the gap between them and a perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful Being is the height of absurd pride. Why do we think that attempting to follow a rule book will make up for all of the ways in which we hurt people and cause a perfect God to allow us into His perfect Place? The real insult in human religion is not to the humanity, it is to God and to Heaven.
That is where Biblical Christianity is different. The list of dos and don'ts in the Bible are not there to show us how to place God in our debt or to make up for our sin or even to get us into Heaven. They are there to show us that we can never do any of that by our own work, that we can never measure up to Him, that we are forever in His debt. "Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24 NASB). Our ticket to Heaven is not through obedience to the law. Our ticket to Heaven is given as a gift when we realize we can't earn it. The only way a human can appear to God to be good enough to get into Heaven is to look like Jesus Christ. We look to God the Father like Jesus Christ when we trust in His sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sin, not in our own abilities to make up for our sins. Any human being that is saved is saved just like the thief on the cross next to Jesus who said "And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" And Jesus said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."
Salvation comes only to the one who trusts only in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to pay for his sin. Many find that even much more insulting than the list of dos and don'ts discussed in the meme below, but that is the truth of the human condition.
But the fact is, it is not really an insult to humanity to think this way. If anything, it is false flattery. The idea that there is something that human beings, who can hardly get through an hour without doing, saying or thinking something regrettable, can do something, or even a list of somethings, to fix the gap between them and a perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful Being is the height of absurd pride. Why do we think that attempting to follow a rule book will make up for all of the ways in which we hurt people and cause a perfect God to allow us into His perfect Place? The real insult in human religion is not to the humanity, it is to God and to Heaven.
That is where Biblical Christianity is different. The list of dos and don'ts in the Bible are not there to show us how to place God in our debt or to make up for our sin or even to get us into Heaven. They are there to show us that we can never do any of that by our own work, that we can never measure up to Him, that we are forever in His debt. "Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24 NASB). Our ticket to Heaven is not through obedience to the law. Our ticket to Heaven is given as a gift when we realize we can't earn it. The only way a human can appear to God to be good enough to get into Heaven is to look like Jesus Christ. We look to God the Father like Jesus Christ when we trust in His sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sin, not in our own abilities to make up for our sins. Any human being that is saved is saved just like the thief on the cross next to Jesus who said "And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" And Jesus said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."
Salvation comes only to the one who trusts only in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to pay for his sin. Many find that even much more insulting than the list of dos and don'ts discussed in the meme below, but that is the truth of the human condition.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Introduction to Professor Alkahest and His Blog
As the world continues to grow and change, and as more and more people add their thoughts and ideas to the conversations being carried on throughout the world, I become more and more inclined to add my thoughts to the mix. I don't do this because my thoughts are always correct, but because putting them out there sharpens me, and I am hoping will sharpen other thinkers who converse with me. So, please feel free as I post my thoughts each day to comment in agreement or disagreement with anything I have said. All opinions are welcome provided that they are expressed without vulgarity or threat of violence to anyone.
My posts will deal mostly with my interests. These include theology (I am Christian), politics (I am libertarian leaning but not affiliated with any organized party), science (I am a professor of chemistry at a mid-sized university), and sports (mostly running and baseball). If any of these topics interest you, hopefully you will find some though provoking conversations on this page.
I call myself Professor Alkahest rather than using my real name because some of what I will post here will be controversial. People with opinions like mine sometimes draw threats and I will seek to avoid that if possible. That being said, there may already be enough information in these paragraphs for some of you to figure out who I am, and I won't panic if word gets out.
If you are wondering about the word Alkahest, it is an ancient word associated with the art/science of alchemy, the grandfather art to modern chemistry. It was thought of as "the power from above" to distill any substance down to its essence particles, the "universal solvent". At its best, I hope this blog will serve in that capacity for ideas, distilling them down to their essence, and examining them for their value and merit in today's society.
I will try to get something new up here at least a few times each week. Please keep stopping back :-) and like me on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Professor-Alkahest/576163565847894
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