Re: OT: Gravity explained

John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:31:59 +1300, Terry Given <my_name@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:


John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:39:49 +1300, Terry Given <my_name@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:



John Larkin wrote:


On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:57:22 -0300, YD <ydtechHAT@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




Late at night, by candle light, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> penned this immortal
opus:




On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 21:55:53 GMT, Rich the Philosophizer
<rtp@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:23:47 -0500, default wrote:




"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational
force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing
them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education,
applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Gravity is Love.

Cheers!
Rich


This seems to be the original version:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

The Christian haters are happy to pick up a parody like that and
widely repeat as serious Belief, so they can then mock it.

Like the bumper sticker says, mean people suck.

John

What's wrong with making fun of goofy beliefs? The ID people truly
believe they're on to something, however wrong. If they'd keep it to
themselves it would be allright but trying to legislate it down
everybody's throat is a big no-no in my book. That makes them a fair
target for everything thrown at them.

- YD.


Evolution, as it applies to the origin of DNA, is arguably a goofy
belief. I've seen calculation by serious scientists that resulted in
probabilities than most statisticians would classify as "impossible."

go shuffle a deck of cards, thoroughly.

Then spread them out.

then calculate the probability of that particular arrangement.

Its ~ 10^68, about the same as the number of atoms in the universe.

remarakbly though, it happened.

Clearly God did it :)




But the overwhelming fraction of those arrangements is useless. Hell,
you probably can't find a run that makes a decent poker hand.

John

indeed. but it dose a fairly good job of explaining the "its jolly unlikely" argument (via the weak anthropic principle)


The WAP always bothers me. The overwhelming probability is that, right
now, neither you nor I should exist.


personally, I have no problem with the concept of something creating our universe. I expect in a century or two we will be able to do just that, and will have sufficient knowledge to understand the consequences.

All this *** about houses, an eternal afterlife at Jesus' right hand et al, the ascension of Mary, blah blah, is absolute twaddle though; the tooth fairy makes more sense. And as far as ID is concerned, how come 75% of all pregnancies self-terminate as the blastocyst is FUBAR.


Certainly the idea of a benevolent God who supervises the health of
every sparrow is hard to accept; He would *not* be a nice person. But
I find it interesting how adamant many people are to not be assiciated
with believers; adamant to the point of taking silly dogmatic
positions to dispel any suspicion that they may be closet Christians.

indeed. And a good read of the bible(s) suggests He isnt very nice either.


Interesting that dogs or horses can mate just once and be practically
guaranteed of delivering a live offspring or three. I think humans
are, evolutionarily, still in the "kluge" stage of development.

did you ever read the article (IEEE spectrum IIRC) about reliability modelling and humans? the authors basically applied weibull-style stats to humans, and got interesting results - we look a lot like massively parallel machines that start with huge numbers of flaws, but kinda work anyway.

which makes sense from an evolutionary (AKA compounded kluge) perspective


Explain Eeyore, Phil and Homer (who never seems to post anything except silly diatribes against America, without which most of electronics just wouldnt exist).


Eeyore is OK, often.

true, but he's currently messing up the opto thread, and Keith is just encouraging him. plus most posts seem to be pointless requests for (often unnecessary) details. Still at least he's polite.


The others are beyond explanation, unless you buy
the "kluge" thing.


All religions are equally silly. I just wish religious zealots wouldnt come knocking on my door early on saturday morning. I dont pester them about my non-beliefs. Its a great pity the 11th commandment wasnt "thou shalt not proselytise"


We get a lot more environmentalists than bible-bangers, but the
bangers are more polite.

John

indeed. I once had a T-shirt that said "Jesus nukes gay whales"


although envronmentalists do have one good point: industries (it matters not which ones) really shouldnt be allowed to make horrid messes without cleaning them up.

Here in NZ dairy farming is responsible for 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions (methane from burping ruminants), and almost all of our water pollution issue, via nutrient and cow-*** runoff. Not much can be done about the former, but you should hear the farmers scream when it is suggested they keep the cow *** out of rivers.....almost as loud as they scream for government assistance whenever floodplains flood.


I do like the environmentalist take on electricity, which looks kinda like this:

No nuke plants - OK, the economics are dubious, and the messes are astonishingly hard to dispose of.

No coal power plants - hmm, modern coal plants are a lot better than the old ones. greenies hate the coal mines, but hell, if they clean up the resultant mess when their done, whats wrong with that.

No hydro plants - getting silly here. they object to drowing perfectly good valleys (which could house burping ruminants ;). its almost a moot point here, as there are only so many suitable sites, and we have already used most of them.

No windmills - because they are ugly. this is just plain stupid.


(I'm surprised no-one is mooting coppicing for wood-fired power plants, which is carbon neutral)


I guess ultimately all zealots are cut from the same cloth :)

Cheers
Terry
.