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Reading Genius has been making my brain work again. Since Feynman did a lot of work on the atomic bomb, and tons of work with nuclear particles, the book talks a great deal about those things. As with all good books I read, it makes me think of stuff that’s not directly mentioned in the book (at least, not the yet). So, biking home last night, I had an interesting question pop into my mind.

How does an electron know when a circuit is complete?

Most of us have seen old Christmas tree lights. When one of the lamps burns out, you have to go through the entire string finding which bulb is burned out to replace it, because as soon as the circuit is broken electricity stops. My question is simple: how does an electron know there’s a circuit in the first place? How can it tell the difference?

It must “know” the whole circuit, not just the particles next to it. It’s like the electron has omniscience over the path it would take.

Of course, the other question is how fast does an electron know that the circuit is complete? This is one that I could actually design a test for. (Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s already been done by someone somewhere.) Since electricity travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, give or take a foot or two…), you just need a circuit of appropriate length. Figure out the resistance of the wires being used, etc. Then, you can time how long it takes for the circuit to be completed and the electricity to go through. If it takes longer than it should take given the speed of light less the resistance, the extra time is how long it takes for the electron to be “notified.”

Based on what I’ve read, however, I’d suspect that there wouldn’t be a delay of this type. My guess is that the electron would instantly “know” that the circuit was complete (which would violate the speed of light restrictions–but then, quantum mechanics already does this).

Recently, T-Stone and Loftus have gone to the trouble of admitting what everyone already knew: they don’t read what they respond to. Now, they certainly have the “right” to do this, of course. And on one level I don’t mind it. If they want to show the world they can’t be taken seriously intellectually, I’m all for it (less work for me). On the other hand, it gets really old.

Here’s a perfect example. In comments on this post, I pointed out that T-Stone hasn’t ever responded to my challenge that he prove evolution from the fossil record.

T-Stone said (all of T-Stone’s comments will be in bold to differentiate between what he said and my responses):

Still waiting for your answer about whether T and F stand as scientific theories in the syllogism you gave.

(BTW: The syllogism is located in comments on this post).

This doesn’t say much for your intelligence, T-Stone, since I’ve already answered in the very comments you reference. I said:

The point is that my “observation” about gravity (which was used as an illustration, not like I actually believe in “Object X”) is identical in structure to the “observations” provided by Newton. That is the point.

Thus, if you agree that Newton’s laws of motion are scientific theory, then so too is my hypothetical gravity claim.

And yes, F is a theory too, as I said in the comments:

In other words, if you say that observations are falsifiers, the observations themselves must be expressed in the form of a theory. If you say, “I have observed X to be the case” that is the same thing as saying, “I theorize that X is the case.”

Continuing, T-Stone said:

Still waiting for your response on what you would expect for a review of the fossil evidence.

Again, I already told you in those very comments:

By the way, I also note that T-Stone has still not provided us with proof from the fossil record of evolution (proof including, as I stated many times already, the mechanism of evolution, i.e. mutation followed by natural selection).

My comments referred to my previous comments on this post where I said:

Evolution, on the other hand, needs a process by which it can function (genetic mutation followed by natural selection). Mutations cannot be demonstrated by fossils since mutations require looking at DNA. Likewise, natural selection cannot be demonstrated by the fossil record either (except when natural selection is taken in its completely irrelevant tautological sense).

And:

Again, you cannot prove a mechanism for evolution from the fossil bed (natural selection using genetic mutations). All you can prove is that there were organisms that have similar-looking physical structures. But similar-looking physical structures do not prove evolution, for they do not address genetic mutations (something fossils do no preserve in the first place) nor natural selection (which is impossible to “store” in a fossil).

Again, I challenge you to “defeat” this claim. Prove evolution by using fossils alone. Prove linear descent with genetic mutation followed by natural selection.

And:

Notice that T-Stone has not done what I asked him to do. I asked him to demonstrate evolution from the fossil record. I even specifically stated the exact problem he would face–the fact that the fossil record cannot demonstrate a mechanism for evolution (genetic mutation followed by natural selection).

Now all I can say in response to this, T-Stone, is only a complete freaking IDIOT would still be “waiting” for me to explain what I’m looking for.

Look, I know you’re not one to read other people’s posts and all…but if you’re going to post your disagreements and expect to be taken seriously, you’re gonna have to do the legwork and actually read what I wrote.

I’ve been reading Genius by James Gleick, as I’ve mentioned earlier on this blog. It’s a biography of Feynman, inventor of the famous Feynman Diagram. One thing that’s interesting about the book is that it describes how Feynman disliked music. While he grasped rhythm, he didn’t care for the concepts of melody. This is unusual, given that usual mathematicians (as Feynman was) are musically oriented due to the relationship between music and math.

Feynman was not interested in anything artistic, according to this biography. His was more of a cool, calculating view than an impassioned artistic look.

While many people have told me they consider me to be a very intelligent person, and while I love logic and looking at things philosophically, I am so glad that God also made me an artistic person. To me, art is the way that the universe feels right after logic tells me what is known right. So, unlike Feynman, I tend to marry both art & science. To me, each compliments the other.

Of course, because I’m not “specialized”, I’ll never invent something like Feynman diagrams. But being able to appreciate what I do see logically by application through art more than makes up for that in my book.

Chuck Norris has given us his campaign promises (HT: Patrick Chan).

If I’m elected president, I will…

Require members of Congress to work out on the Total Gym 15 minutes each day — or else they can’t vote on anything.

Cut spending by dismissing the Secret Service, at least for my eight years in office (why would I need them?).

Resurrect Bruce Lee and appoint him head of homeland security (OK, the CIA and FBI too).

Give a presidential pardon to … no one, ever. Baretta was right in the ’70s, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time. Don’t do it!”

Turn the Rose Garden into a new fighting ring for the World Combat League, in which liberals and conservatives will fight for legislative leadership and priority. (For fun, Saturday night fights will feature a recurring bout between Hannity and Colmes). “American Idol” already told me they will provide the entertainment.

Require Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to personally pay for national, comprehensive medical coverage for every American (or meet me in the Rose Garden).

Increase jobs in America by sending ninja teams to sabotage and steal them back from other countries.

Tattoo an American flag with the words, “In God we trust,” on the forehead of every atheist.

Give a tax credit to anyone naming their children Walker or Texas Ranger (excluding Will Farrell).

Resolve the Iraq war by bringing all of our military personnel home immediately, then going over there by myself for “martial arts negotiations.”

Hang Saddam Hussein (Whoops — scratch that — already did it undercover).

Convey my plan for world peace to the United Nations: taking the governor of California with me on our “kick butt and ask questions later” USO world tour.

Give every new military enlistee abroad a copy of my upcoming new book, “The Threat of Justice,” with the words, “Arnold and I will be back to pump you up!” above my autograph.

Bring on Donald Trump as my apprentice. When my presidential term is complete and he has obtained his black belt, or whichever comes first, he can buy the White House and of course rename it (to, what else, “The Trump House”).

Create new immigration legislation: to deport all liberals (then force them to listen to Bill O’ Reilly every day for five years, at which point they may return).

Ask producer Mark Barnett to film “Survivor — Camp David,” where world leaders will meet annually, for an all-out cage-fighting championship. The winner will take home $1,000,000 in Disney Dollars, good in Europe or America.

Send an autographed photo of me and my horse (no dogs in my White House) to everyone who commits to read my new WorldNetDaily “presidential column” and blast a blog who dares to disagree with me.

Complete the plan to bring Tony Blair to the U.S. as my vice president.

Expose the real WMDs — my fists and feet.

Replace Letterman, Leno or Conan once monthly, since stand-up comedy is what most governmental officials do anyway.

Ask Al Gore to provide me with a special governmental study on the connection between spotted owl extinction and global warming. (I’m pretty sure Michael Moore will film the docudrama).

Help Rosie transition from “The View” to the pew — it might help her get over that anger problem. If the pew doesn’t work, she can spar Trump in the Rose Garden.

First and foremost, however, my greatest priorities will be to …

Personally smoke out bin Laden by myself and round-house kick him all the way back to America, where my United Fighting Arts Federation will handle the justice issues.

Make all Chuck Norris facts come true (well, not quite all of them — I’m a happily, married man!)

*w00t* Finally, a candidate with MY principals in mind!!!

First, I have now discovered what I do when I get stressed. I buy books. Just about any book will do. Perhaps it’s because at heart I am a bibliophile. My parents tell me that from the time I was born, I’ve been fascinated with books. My mom showed me a picture of me at, if I remember correctly, my first Christmas. I’m laying on the floor with a book propped open in front of me. Of course, the book is upside down–I couldn’t read until I was 5! But still the books were there.

When older, my brother, sister, and I always cleaned up in the book reading contests the local libraries held. This continued through high school. For instance, in one contest where we got credit for every 200 pages we read, I read The Far Pavillions by M. M. Kaye (about 900 pages long) and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer (about 1100 pages long). And those two titles should also give you an indication of the types of books I read too–anything! (The Far Pavillions is an epic romance set in India under British rule where Ashton Hillary Akbarh Pelham-Martin (yes, I still remember his name, although I may have mispelled it) grows up, and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is naturally a non-fiction historical book about World War II.)

Anyway, like I said: when I get stressed, I turn to books. Others eat bowls of ice cream. Not me. I buy books like A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Genius, a biography of Richard Feynman by James Gleick (author of Chaos: The Making of a New Science), and When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time by Michael Benton. All of these books I’ve bought since Wednesday. And that doesn’t even include my chess books.

Yes, stress is an interesting thing. I stayed with relatives due to the whole roommate situation until last night. Last night, I got home and looked at my room and was reminded of entropy. See, I’m the first to admit that I’m not the most organized person…but even I could tell my room was a disaster after the cops were finished with their search. (It’s called a “Search Warrant” not a “House Cleaning Warrant” ya know.)

Oh well. At least now I won’t have my computer to distract me from cleaning up my room. Still, it will be frustrating not having the ability to write when the muse strikes (which seems to happen more often when I can’t write than when I can). But, when I’m bored with cleaning, I will still have my books!

And that, for me, is something.

Record Low In Colorado Springs.

The temperature in Colorado Springs hit a record low of 37 degrees overnight, breaking a record of 38 set in 1906, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather service’s official point of reference is the Colorado Springs Airport, and temperatures were actually lower elsewhere in the region.

Randy Gray, the observation program leader at the weather service in Pueblo, said it was 28 degrees at 6 a.m. at the Air Force Academy. He also said a weather-watcher near Leadville reported just under a half-inch of snow over the past 24 hours.

“There was a low-pressure system that originated in the Pacific Northwest. We didn’t actually even bare the brunt of that system because it passed north of Colorado. It had a real strong circulation with it, so we were sort of on the south end of the low-pressure system,” Gray said.

THIS IS BUSH’S FAULT!!!!

It all started with a pizza box.

I had come home from work and found a pizza box on top of my computer monitor. I immediately knew that someone had been there using my computer since I never put anything on top of my monitor. My monitor is old and gets overheated quickly when things are placed on the top.

At first I didn’t think of it. My roommate had said he was going to move out soon, and I assumed at the time that he had gotten onto my computer to search for a rental truck or something similar to that. Still, when I opened my internet browser, I discovered my browser cache had been cleared and the history erased.

I also discovered I had a new virus on my computer.

Naturally, I thought that it was possible a virus had cleared out my cache and erased the history if my computer had been used in an attack. The only problem with this theory was the pizza box.

Someone had to physically be in my room to move it. And two weeks later, confirmation happened in the worst manner possible.

I had come home from work like I normally do, biking in. I was tired, hot, and sweaty, but I wanted to check my e-mail quickly before I jumped in the shower.
Since I also am a bit of a news phile, my tradition was to load up my.yahoo.com, which in addition to showing me the number of emails my Yahoo! e-mail had unread in the inbox, would also display a list of current headlines.

When I went to my.yahoo.com, I got an unusual screen rather than the normal screen. It looked like I wasn’t signed in, but in addition to that there was no place for me to sign in either. Frustrated, I decided to simply go to mail.yahoo.com instead, rather than using the my.yahoo.com portal.

When the mail opened, it was again an unfamiliar screen. But at this point I realized something. My computer was already signed in.

You see, I normally left my computer running full time at home while I was at work. This is probably mostly due to laziness in not wanting to wait for it to load when I got home, but it also came in handy when I had to transfer large files. In any case, since I always had my computer on and since there was no password to worry about, I realized suddenly that my roommate had been using my computer again. And this time, he hadn’t logged out.

Unfortunately for my roommate, I was also able to see some of the subject headers for the emails he had. And what I read gave me instant chills. The topics were all about “Little Girls” and various link headers and things of that nature. With trepidation, I clicked on one of the e-mails.

My fears were soon confirmed. Not only had my roommate been using my computer without my permission, but his e-mail inbox was leading me to believe he was actively searching for child porn. My first reaction was one of utter shock. This is something that happens to “other people”, not me. This can’t be real! It just can’t be.

But as I read through a few more e-mails, wherein other people spoke of stories involving incest and child rape, I knew that I had to do something. Then I stumbled across two emails that really disturbed me.

The first was an email FROM my roommate (it had his name on it) to the account. It was just a couple of links, and appeared to be him simply sending himself an e-mail from a different account. The second e-mail was different. It was in response to another person, and said (paraphrased), “I didn’t mean you are a registered sex offender. I meant I was. One of my co-workers found out about it and has been trying to get me fired for months. Well, the other night I printed out one of the stories at work and forgot about it. It was discovered, and the management put 2 and 2 together and I got fired.“

I was stunned. I knew my roommate was supposed to be moving out because he was supposedly being transferred in his job. But if he had just gotten fired, he wouldn’t be moving out. Furthermore, I had just learned it’s very possible he was a registered sex offender too! I couldn’t not act, and even though I knew there was no way this would not inconvenience me, I had no other option.

Unfortunately, my cell phone charger recently died. As a result, I had no way to contact anyone via phone. So I jumped on-line in #prosapologian, James White’s internet channel, where I have lots of friends. As soon as I was in there, I private messaged the first person I saw, Crewbear.

At this point, I was still in shock and my hands were shaking as I began to type. “I think my roommate has been surfing for child porn on my computer. What do I do?”

Crewbear, thankfully, was rational and calm (unlike me at the time). He immediately said, “Call the police.” I said I didn’t have a working phone. He immediately responded, “Give me their number.”

So a man from a completely different state called my local police and filed the original police report. About half an hour later, a police officer showed up at my house. As he entered the house, he said, “Now one of your roommates is a registered sex offender, right?“ The way he said it wasn’t really a question.
All I could respond with was, “One of his e-mails made me think he is.“

The officer glanced at my computer and informed me that he was not a computer techie, and I’d need to call “Sex Crimes” in the morning.

At this point I knew one thing. There was no way that I was going to let my roommate have access to my computer ever again. So I messaged Crewbear once more, and he called my brother-in-law, John. John drove down from his house (about 30 miles away) and took my computer back to his house.

I knew that I needed a cover story though. None of my roommates had been home when the police had come over, so they were clueless that I knew anything. I had to keep it that way until I heard from the police.
Thankfully, the earlier virus I had gotten on the computer gave me the idea. My cover story became “My computer had a virus and crashed. I took it to Circuit City for repairs.” Since my roommate used my computer and my default page was set to my own site, I put a story on my blog as well, just in case he read it to see why my computer was suddenly missing.

The next day, John dropped the computer off where I work. In my department, we have a secure room that I stored the computer in. It fit in with the other computers. At the same time, I looked up my roommate’s name on the sex offender’s registry for Colorado. Sure enough, he was listed there as a multiple offense felon. At that point, I notified my HR department about what I had discovered and asked them for guidance. There were a few reasons for this–first, I am friends with one of the HR guys; secondly, I work at a Christian non-profit that has, as one of it’s ministries, outreach programs for teens. I didn’t want what my roommate did to reflect on this ministry, and I also knew they had some experience in dealing legally with the issue. Then, finally, I called the Sex Crimes number and left a message there.

Now the waiting began. There was no response from the police at all, no call backs for a week. At the end of the week, I finally decided to take my computer back to my home because I needed to use it, and if the police weren’t going to look over it I certainly had plenty of tasks I could use it for instead! So I took it to my house, and once there realized that I had set my temporary internet files to store onto my external hard drive instead of my internal hard drive. Ironically, the entire time I had my computer at work, I had “no evidence” of anything at all!

In any case, the next week passed by and it appeared the police weren’t going to respond to my phone calls at all. My cover story was still holding–neither of my two roommates suspected that I knew anything different. But I was now an actor in my own home. Every day I would go home and pretend I didn’t know anything. I would have to smile and nod my head and be friendly toward the guy I had taken to calling, in my mind, “My [expletive] sex offender roommate.”

My dislike for the man was formed not only from the fact that he was a pervert who had dragged me, against my will, into the middle of his perversion, but also because I know what it’s like to have been abused as a child. Thankfully, I was never sexually abused, and my abuse was at the hands of people my own age who had pretended to be my friends. But I knew how much it had affected my own life, how even to this day I have problems trusting people (it was my “friends” after all who had so savagely attacked me). And now I knew that this man was most certainly not getting better–he was doing the very things that would lead him toward another attack.

You see, his convictions were two-fold. One was for sexual assault of a child, the other for possession of child pornography. I researched and saw the statistics, that most sex offenders are repeat offenders and that convictions are few and far between, not only because they are underreported but because sometimes there isn’t enough evidence for a conviction.

I had a molester in the room next to mine and I knew he was doing things that would lead toward more children being molested, if there hadn’t already been more.

That all changed on the afternoon of June 6. In the middle of the afternoon, I got a phone call. It was from my other roommate (the non-sex offender roommate). He said, “We have a situation at home, and I just need to make sure you’re not heading home anytime soon.”

I said, “No, I’m still here until 4:30 this afternoon. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

There was a pause, and then he said, “Well, the SWAT team is here and they’re looking for [my other roommate]. He’s in a lot of trouble.”

At that point, I felt a tiny bit of relief. It was fairly short-lived, however, as about half an hour later I got a phone call from a detective who was interviewing my sex-offender roommate. He apologized for not reaching back sooner, since there was an apparent mix-up with the first officer who responded to my home. The detective told me that he should have been personally notified, and if that had been done he would have gone over that night and looked at my computer then. After that, I told him about how I had called the Sex Crimes division, and he said the number I used was just a message number, and the people who would be able to check it were out of state on a different investigation until that day. He said they were currently going through the messages, but the search warrant for my house had been issued because my roommate was already under investigation for allegedly uploading child pornography at the public library. When they executed the search warrant, they discovered my own call from a few weeks ago.

In any case, my computer was confiscated. Again, the detective apologized, but told me that there was currently a 10-month lag for forensics on computers.
He said he would try to get the computer sent to the Pueblo PD for faster examination, but couldn’t make any promises there. And naturally, it’s still possible that my computer will remain evidence throughout a trial too.

So, while things didn’t go out as quickly as I wanted, the police have finally acted, and now the truth can come out. I will continue to inform people as this progresses. But for now, prayers are definitely encouraged.

My home computer is now out of comission.

More details later as there’s an important reason for this development. :-(

Apparently, today is National Bike To Work Day. This looses it’s appeal when you have to bike to work every day already. In fact, it just becomes annoying because ALL THE BIKE RACKS ARE BEING USED AND YOU HAVE TO CHAIN YOUR BIKE TO A STUPID TREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I blame Bush. Stupid Global Warming making everyone wanna ride bikes now. GRRRR….

In the comments on this post, Touchstone (who has an insatiable need to mock T-Bloggers before the Debunking atheists can–you know, the typical Christian response to other Christians who challenge atheists….) mocked Steve Hays and myself before dancing around a direct challenge I issued him. I triple dog dared T-Stone to demonstrate evolution from the fossil record.

Naturally, he didn’t, as I pointed out before. But I wanted to take the opportunity of his comment to address one of the other things T-Stone said.

T-Stone, speaking of falsification, said:

Here’s a blurb from a physics professor named James Schombert at the University of Oregon I’ve participated with on other forums in the past on this subject:

The scientific method has four steps:

* observation/experimentation
* deduction
* hypothesis
* falsification

Note that there is an emphasis on falsification, not verification. If a theory passes any test then our confidence in the theory is reinforced, but it is never proven correct in a mathematically sense. Thus, a powerful hypothesis is one that is highly vulnerable to falsification and that can be tested in many ways. Science can be separated from pseudo-science by the Principle of Falsification, the concept that ideas must be capable of being proven false in order to be scientifically valid.

There are several problems with this, however (especially the way T-Stone is taking it). For example, every single universal negative argument can be falsified. If I said, “There are no elves in Greenland” then all it would take is one elf to prove my statement wrong. This would ironically put universal negatives in the class of being impossible to prove logically, yet being (according to T-Stone), “a high quality scientific theory.”

But there are other arguments that fit this same category. If I said, “There is proof for the existence of aliens on the back of Alpha Centauri”, that statement would be possible to falsify. All you’d have to do is get to the back of Alpha Centauri. That one is not physically capable of doing so right now does not mean the theory is not falsifiable, for at some point in the future it could happen that someone could go to the back of Alpha Centauri.

Now my examples are obviously trivial examples designed to prove a point. Let’s use a more pertinent example.

T-Stone is in essence arguing:

A. Evolution is falsifiable.
B. Creationists have not falsified evolution.
C. Therefore, evolution is true.

But this logic is identical to the logic that I gave above regarding aliens on Alpha Centauri. See:

A. The theory that there is evidence of aliens on the back of Alpha Centauri is falsifiable.
B. T-Stone has not falsified it.
C. Therefore, the theory is true.

This is obviously bogus. For the same reason, T-Stone’s implicit argument that Evolution is true because Creationists haven’t falsified it is likewise bogus (and that ignores the fact that Creationists have falsified many points of Evolution already).

On a more scientifically-broad basis, however, falsification is not some “magic” thing that suddenly gives a theory credibility. Indeed, it is not the case that all theories must be falsifiable to be scientific. In fact, is it possible to falsify the falsifiability theory? If not, then would that not mean that a non-scientific theory is defining science?

Now one other thing to point out. T-Stone said: “Being falsifiable makes it [a theory] ‘real science’, even if it is eventually falsified.” By that standard, my argument for the existence of aliens on the back of Alpha Centauri is “real science” even though I just made it up for the purposes of refuting T-Stone.

T-Stone said:

Ask yourself how “common design”, an idea Steve Hays likes to throw out, or your favorite creation theory would be falsified.

That’s easy. Demonstrate how an irreducibly complex chemical reaction in a cell occurs without anyone designing the mechanisms. Just show one of them spontaneously occurring without a designer. That would falsify the theory, wouldn’t it?

Hey, I guess ID is “real science” after all now that we’ve got T-Stone’s stamp of approval on it.