Take my comments about that previous sailplane video being cool and just toss them out the window. Now, with utter amazement, view a video of flying squirrel suits in action. Note how, in mid-flight, users of the suit can do gymnastic tumbles. Also pay attention to the super super cool triple coordinated back flip off of a cliff that then transitions into flight using the suit.
Here’s a good one; A Football Power in a Small Kansas Town - New York Times. To summarize:
They are a high school football team, a superb one that has won 51 games in a row and three consecutive state championships, and has outscored opponents this season, 704-0. They are more than that, however, to the 1,931 people here who all know one another’s names: The Redmen are proof that hard work and accountability still mean something.
It makes me very happy indeed that, in the middle of America, towns built around such integrity and hard work still exist.
File this one under “really random factoids.” In the Wikipedia article about Target is a paragraph that caught me completely off guard:
In 2006, The Washington Post revealed that Target is operating two sophisticated criminal forensics laboratories, one at their headquarters in Minneapolis, the other in Las Vegas, NV. Originally, the lab was created as an internal need for the company to investigate instances of theft and fraud and other criminal actions that have occurred on its own properties. Eventually, the company began offering pro bono services to law enforcement agencies across the country. Target’s Forensic Services has assisted agencies at all levels of government, including Federal agencies such as the United States Secret Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The labs have become such a popular resource for law enforcement that Target has had to restrict the cases it assists in to only violent felonies.
So, let’s say there’s a violent crime in North Minneapolis. There’s a good chance that the forensics lab owned by Target will be processing some of the crime scene materials… for free. I can’t decide if this is really cool, really weird, or both.
Annnnd - best short video this month: Flying a Sailplane Off a Cliff. Writes a commenter:
Makes you wonder how the Swiss ever found the time to work on clocks and chocolate…
Apparently, with wind and slopes, launching a plane like this is pretty simple — can’t imagine how you practice, though. Hmm.
Much to the chagrin of many an established church, people like me find comfort and solace in the logical investigation of the existence of God. I say: “many paths to faith.” Anyhow, on his New York Times blog, Stanley Fish recently posted an examination of the intersection of two authors’ views on suffering and evil (logically) titled “Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God.” It’s an interesting treatment of the topic — I am particularly drawn to this Anthony Flew character, author of There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.
Before I delve into the New York Times blog, let’s take a look at a summary from that page about Anthony Flew, which describes who he is a bit better:
Flew is a pioneer for modern atheism. His famous paper, Theology and Falsification, was first presented at a meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club chaired by C. S. Lewis and went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades. Flew earned his fame by arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He now believes that such evidence exists…
This history makes Flew a rather bit more interesting when he says, “well, now I think there’s a God.” Here’s an interesting excerpt from the New York Times blog post explaining Flew’s ideas about materialism (emphasis mine):
In an appendix to the book, Abraham Varghese makes Flew’s point with the aid of an everyday example: “To suggest that the computer ‘understands’ what it is doing is like saying that a power line can meditate on the question of free will and determinism or that the chemicals in a test tube can apply the principle of non-contradiction in solving a problem, or that a DVD player understands and enjoys the music it plays.”
How did purposive behavior of the kind we engage in all the time – understanding, meditating, enjoying – ever emerge from electrons and chemical elements?
The usual origin-of-life theories, Flew observes, are caught in an infinite regress that can only be stopped by an arbitrary statement of the kind he himself used to make: ” . . . our knowledge of the universe must stop with the big bang, which is to be seen as the ultimate fact.” Or, “The laws of physics are ‘lawless laws’ that arise from the void – end of discussion.” He is now persuaded that such pronouncements beg the crucial question – why is there something rather than nothing? – a question to which he replies with the very proposition he argued against for most of his life: “The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.”
I greatly enjoy reading the end logical output of someone’s struggle with this topic, and it helps when the fellow is an 84 year-old expert. Exposure to these arguments transform the intangible nature of my thoughts and questions about the bedrock pieces of Life into ideas with shape and weight. It changes a question like “Why am I here?” to a statement like “Taking this path of thought will help me better understand the unknown pieces here.”
I’ve always taken issue with the title of Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion — I’ve certainly judged that book by its title, which essentially states that believing in God is an affront to logic and reason, and that doing so makes the believer flawed in some way. Taking this type of tone, one criticizing the believer rather than the beliefs, seems to me the exact wrong way to deal with this atheism issue — to see this tact taken in such a high profile book is particularly discouraging. Indeed, such an idea returns us to a quote from that original New York Times blog post:
In short, these books neither trivialize their subject nor demonize those who have a different view of it, which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.
Perhaps, with logic and reason, informed dialogue can lead to real discussions based not on blind attacks of passion, but on reasonable people pushing the envelope on previous discussions, thus helping those with and without belief in God to better understand what their stance means.
Here’s some great advice on how to make sure your broadband internet connection is working properly:
For example, if you buy your own modem, NEVER say “I need my new modem INSTALLED.” Say “I need my new modem PROVISIONED”. 95% of the support people will know right away what you need and won’t bother asking you about Windows and you’ll be online 15 minutes later.
Know how to get to the status page of your modem (usually http://192.168.100.1/ [192.168.100.1] but may vary depending on model). Know that your downstream signal needs to be between -10 and +10 dBmV. Know that your downstream SNR should be above 33. Know that your upstream power should be between +30 and +50 dBmV. When my signal dropped because of a splice in the line gone bad, I didn’t tell Comcast “my internet don’t work”, I told them, “my downstream power is -16, which is out-of-spec, I need a tech to take a look at this”. I had a tech out the very next morning and was back online by the afternoon.
The above is from a Slashdot comment I ran across a while back. Filed for future reference.
A recent post from defective yeti about serving trick-or-treaters called Halloween: Post Mortem reminds me how funny Mr. Matthew Baldwin’s writing is. Why did I ever stop reading?
The quantity of trick-or-treaters they expected to receive was described to us as “a lot.” I took this to mean, like, 100. Instead, it was more like “a throng” or “a battalion” … possibly even “a multitude.” I don’t know what time they opened their front door (the insanity was already well on its way by the time we arrived at 6:00), but it did not close again until well after 9:00. The stream of kidmanity was ceaseless.
…
Our friends had purchased 100 pounds of candy; by the end of the evening, every last Tootsie Roll had been distributed.
Read the whole post for full effect — it’s hilarious.
Coudal Partners’ Layer Tennis | Week 6, Volley 3 could be called “Before you were born.” It’s phenomenal that it was put together in 15 minutes — be sure to check out the rest of that layer tennis match, it’s the best week thus far. You can also visit Marian Bantjes’s Website for more.
I’ve been reading up on running into the winter — that is, I’m curious how to keep my body the right temperature out on the trails when the temperature itself is all over the place. A certain Dr. Pribut has written up some good information about running in the cold:
Polypropylene and goretex clothes are also an aid to keeping your body warm and dry. The wicking action of polypropylene is excellent. Combined with a light weight goretex suit - you can run comfortably without the necessity of old fashioned thick layering. When it is not too cold, one layer of a polypropylene shirt below a sweat shirt should be enough for your upper body and polypropylene or lycra tights should suffice for your legs. When it becomes very cold, goretex or nylon will help lessen the effect of windchill.
His writing style is a bit… truncated and fragmented, but it’s packed with good information and a helpful windchill chart. It looks like the next things I need are a good pair of winter running socks and a wicking upper layer (Gore-tex, ho!).
‘Course, that stuff is rather frighteningly expensive.
Incredibly incredible origami. In which entire figures are produced from “ONE UNCUT SQUARE of paper”. My jaw, it drops.
↓ More