CalvinDude.com

QUICK! What is the significance of the following sequence of numbers?

1 2 2 3 2 4 2 4 3 4 2 6 2 4 4 5 2 6 2 6 4 4 2 8 3 4 4 6 2 8 2 6 4 4 4 9 2 4 4 8 2 8 2 6 6 4 2 10 3 6 4 6 2 8 4 8 4 4 2 12 2 4 6 7 4 8 2 6 4 8 2 12 2 4 6 6 4 8 2 10 5 4 2 12 4 4 4 8 2 12 4 6 4 4 4 12 2 6 6 8

If it helps, here’s the graph of these points (click the graph for a larger picture):

Looking at the graph, you may have been able to figure out that every time a point is at height 2, it corresponds to a prime number. If you got that, then you’ll see that this is a graph of the number of factors each number between 1 and 100 has. Prime numbers, naturally, only have two factors: themselves and the number 1. (The number 1 is itself unique in that it is the only number with only 1 factor: itself).

I made this graph using Excel because, for the past few days, I’ve wondered what it would look like. Don’t ask me why: it’s just one of those things. In any case, as I began to put information into the Excel spreadsheet, there were several patterns that immediately popped out. The way I put in the info was like this.

First, start with a column numbered from 1 to 100. Then include a row from 1 to 100 at the top of the column going from right to left. I then put into the cells the number “1″ in the pattern of “1″ followed by n spaces (where n is the same as the column number). In layman’s terms, this means all the 1′s column is filled with 1s, every other number (the even numbers) is filled in the 2 column, every third number in the 3 column, etc. The result can be seen here (right click it and save it if you wish) or by looking at the following graph (which shows just a portion of the entire 1-100 range, due to size constraints):

First, we notice that listing the numbers in this fashion provides us with a right-triangle:

The slope highlighted in the above is at a 45 degree angle, which shows the upper-limits to the factors of the numbers. There are other lines that show up as well:

In this graphic, the red lines are the prime number slopes.

Naturally, this does look pretty cool. Perhaps there might be a way for someone to figure out the relationships between the primes. I, however, think this is another good illustration of the chaos theory, in this case where well-ordered systems contain hidden chaos. After all, there is no way to predict when the next prime number will occur, although we know some times when it will not–such as on even numbers or numbers that end in 5. Furthermore, there is no way for us to estimate exactly how many factors the next number in the series will have. (In this case, the next number is 101, which I happen to already know is a prime number…but how many factors does 102 have? This cannot be predicted from the graph provided–it has to be calculated.)

Perhaps I will later expand this up to 1,000 (although using Excel for this would be extremely lengthy). In the meantime, I think it’s still just fun to see the strange things one can find in math :-)

Today I reached the 500 mile mark (or is that milestone?) on my bike. *w00t463!!* I am so half-way there now.

On a not-even-close-to-being-related note, I finally managed to get the temperatures in my room at my house under control. But I don’t know exactly how I did it. See, before this weekend, my room would be the hottest room in the house, bar none. Then this weekend, I rearranged several things in my room, and suddenly the temperature dropped faster than this guy.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. And I do have some observations that prove it really is colder, and not that I’m just getting used to it. The first thing I noticed is that when I had a glass of ice water, the ice actually lasted until I was finished with the glass! Indeed, this was rather shocking to me because until recently if I brought ice water into the room, it would melt in about fifteen minutes or so. Now, it lasts well over half an hour.

Secondly, I woke up Sunday morning, and during the night I had actually pulled the blanket over me because it got so cold. I haven’t had to sleep with a blanket since about April because of how hot my room would get.

Finally, last night I watched a movie in my room, got up to use the facilities and when I left my room, the rest of the house felt hot. When I got back in to my room, it felt nice and cold again.

Yup, miraculously, my room has turned from the hottest room in the house to now the coolest. And again, I don’t know exactly how this happened. The only thing that I can think of that would contribute is the fact that I moved my fan closer to the window, where it blows the air outside. (Yes, I already knew that blowing hot air out of the house is better to cool it down than trying to blow outside air into the house, so I was already doing that–the only difference now is that I have my fan actually set in the window up against the screen instead of back a bit on the window sill.)

Oh well. It’s a mystery, and again…I ain’t complaining!!! :-)

What is the chemical make-up of road spray?

More importantly, how long will it take before I die from it?

Most importantly, when will it stop raining when I bike home from work?

I just read through this article that has the bold headline: “Study: DInosaurs Starting Having Sex Young.” In that article, we read the conclusion:

Dinosaurs had sex well before they reached full physical maturity, just as crocodiles and people can, research now reveals.

The proof for this claim is:

To see when dinosaurs began having sex, researchers from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and their colleagues investigated all seven known specimens of dinosaurs that were buried while brooding eggs.

Yes. That’s right. Out of all the dinosaur fossils we have, a grand total of SEVEN specimens were examined.

Don’t worry, it gets worse, for later we read:

After four years of research, analysis revealed that although five of the dinosaurs had grown to adult size, two had not — one oviraptorid and one deinonychosaur.

That’s right. The universal claim that dinosaurs had sex young (meaning before fully adult-sized) is based on TWO dinosaur fossils, from two different species of dinosaurs.

This is about as scientifically valid as saying all birds don’t fly because we’ve observed two individuals, one a penguin and one an ostrich, that don’t fly. Even if we generalize the two individuals to the entirety of the species, that says nothing about dinosaurs as a whole.

Yet we read:

Paleontologist Peter Makovicky at the Field Museum in Chicago, who did not participate in this study, said: “It’s pretty difficult to get details on reproductive biology out of fossils, since you can’t directly observe it, but the group here was able to put together a number of recently found and described fossils to good use in a fascinating piece of work.”

Fascinating it may well be, but one thing it certainly is not is science. Biology, especially regarding paleontology, is the only branch of science where conclusions drawn on this type of “evidence” are not laughed at.

And I said it anyway. :-P

When I was in publik skrewl, I remember an economics class that we took. Part of the class involved learning about the stock market, and the way we did so was to play a game. Each of us started with $100 of fake money (hence the “publik” part of publik skrewl) that we then “invested” in five to ten stocks of our choosing. We would read the newspaper over the next week or so and see how the stock had changed. If it went up, we made money; if it went down we lost money.

Naturally, when this game started, I had a problem with it. The problem is that in the real stock market, buying or selling stocks impacts the value of the stock. We were pretending to buy and sell stocks, but we weren’t actually doing so; yet we took the results as if we had done so. This, to me, represented a problem.

You see, suppose that I decided to invest $20 of fake money in Pepsi. If this $20 had been real money, the value of the Pepsi stock would have changed, however little, at that point. The difference in the value would mean that the stock would have behaved differently than it did. People who invested before might not have, thinking perhaps the stock was a little closer to going down again; or the converse might have happened where investors saw a little extra there and decided to jump on the wagon too. The results are impossible to predict. All we can know for certain is that if I actually had invested $20 of real money, the stock would have been different than it was after I invested $20 of fake money that had no impact at all.

These little things do add up over time, much as the Butterfly Effect. My fake $100 total, if it had been real, would have had a tangible (although completely impossible to see) effect on the stock market. But we didn’t actually invest at all. Our fake investments did not affect the stock market, and therefore were not realistic. Thus, the game was flawed, which I pointed out to the teacher (but again, this being publik skrewl, instead of allowing me to take a class on the chaos theory’s emphasis on sensitive dependency on initial variables—something I didn’t know about at the time—I was told to just do the game like everyone else and stop causing trouble).

Now the reason I bring this up is not because it’s fun to talk about sensitive dependency on initial variables (although it is). Instead, it’s because I read John Loftus’s opening comments on this post:

God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters. He could’ve predicted when Mt. St. Helens would erupt, or when the Indonesian tsunami or hurricane Katrina would destroy so much. It would save lives and confirm he is God. Then too, he could’ve predicted the rise of the internet, or the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, Television, or the atomic bomb, and he could do it using non-ambiguous language that would be seen by all as a prophectic fulfillment. God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy. God could’ve told people about the vastness and the complexity of the universe before humans would have been able to confirm it. He could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, which has saved so many lives, and if predicted it would have speeded up its discovery.

Loftus writes this in the context of saying: “If God wants us to believe, why are the so-called prophecies so vague and unclear? We who are skeptics find it easy, and I mean easy, to discount them all.” So it is clear that Loftus’s alternatives imply that had God given different prophecies, Loftus would be less likely to be a skeptic.

Now it is easy to refute the suggestions that Loftus gives. After all, none of these prophecies would make sense before the 20th and 21st centuries, so Loftus is in essence saying that God should have been completely incomprehensible to everyone between 33 AD and Loftus’s genesis. However, rather than spending a great deal of time pointing out the Loftusiocentric aspect of the above claims, there is another more important point. Once again, it deals with sensitive dependence upon initial variables.

You see, it is impossible for Loftus to know how he would behave were the Bible different. If the Bible did, in deed, have all the prophecies that Loftus listed above, it would still be impossible to predict (from a non-Calvinist sense) whether Loftus would be a believer or not. We only have access to the way the Bible was written; we don’t know what it would be like if it was different.

Consider another example. Suppose Loftus and I are playing poker (after all, I’m not a Southern Baptist!). Suppose that after shuffling the deck ten times, a deal would result in my having a full house and Loftus having a royal flush. But we shuffle the cards eleven times before we deal, and my three kings beats Loftus’s two sixes. The extra shuffle changed the outcome completely, but none of us will ever know (aside from the arbitrary claim of this example) what the first shuffle would have done. Needless to say, the “alternative futures” of both events is different. This could, in fact, decide who wins the entire match and who does not, and it’s all dependent upon one extra shuffle of the cards.

Now we know when we shuffle the deck of cards, we change the outcome of the future (for the cards we would have gotten are no longer the cards we receive). But we do not know how this has changed. In the same way, speculating about differences in the past is just as fruitless. We do not know how the future (and our present) would be different if the past had changed.

In fact, given the way that Scripture has shaped society in its present form, I can say it is quite like that, were the Bible to have been altered to make the predictions Loftus demands of it our entire culture would be so radically different today as to render the person “John Loftus” irrelevant in that alternate future. The social structures in place affect more than just individuals today; it affects who met and married whom in the past, who went to war and for what reasons, who lives and who dies in a multitude of events.

In fact, given the nature of statistics, it is astronomically more likely that if the Bible were different John Loftus would never have been born than it is that John Loftus would have existed and yet been a believer instead of a doubter. The various aspects of history are so intertwined with the way that Bible actually is that to alter it at that point in the past is to completely alter our current society, and in ways that are impossible to predict.

Now Loftus might argue that society would be better today where these changes in effect in the past; but Loftus cannot know this, and it is equally as possible that where these changes in effect in the past, there would be absolutely no society today at all. We do not know what the changes would have been. It’s a reshuffling of the deck, and none of us have the ability to determine what the outcome would be.

But if Christianity is right, then God does know what the outcome would be. (And if Calvinism is correct, God decreed what that outcome would be.) Even taking foreordination out of the picture, God still could have decided that more people would be saved if the Bible is written the way it currently is than if it was written to suit Loftus’s tastes. Who are we to say that God shouldn’t have tossed Loftus overboard to save more people?

Including foreordination only solidifies the picture. The Bible was written as it was written so that those whom God calls will be justified. Those whom He does not call are not justified.

And finally, the matter of prediction really isn’t the problem Loftus has with the Bible in the first place. After all, the Mayan calendar predicts solar eclipses with great accuracy. I don’t see Loftus becoming a Mayan priest anytime soon…

I had a quick thought just a minute ago regarding the concept of parallel universes that arise (as the theory goes) every time a quantum wavefunction has to collapse to a specific point. The theory is that each possible place that the quantum particle could appear at is found in a parallel universe (i.e., each universe has a different position for the particle, and the sum total of the universes add up to the sum total of how many different places the particle could be).

My thought was this. If this theory is true, then there does exist a universe out there where all the quantum reactions occur exactly as they would under classicial physics. That is, in one of the universes, it is impossible to formulate quantum mechanics because, by virtue of the fact that this universe happens to be the one that the wavefunction always collapses to the point that would be predicted by Newton, there are no experiments that could show the “wave-like” structure of subatomic particles.

Now if that universe exists, as it must under the theory, it is also possible that a parallel universe acting on a completely different structure of laws would, through the parallelisms, create our universe. That is, if there is something other than quantum mechanics involved, yet the infinite parallel universes exist, then the universe does in fact exist wherein it would appear like our universe is governed by quantum mechanics even if based on completely different laws than the laws we use to describe our universe!

Naturally, the only refuge for the believer in this theory is to claim the statistical improbability of being in one of these universes. Yet the fact remains that under the theory, this universe does in fact exist and we cannot know that we are not in that universe where the laws seem to be one way but are, in fact, caused by something completely different.

While checking headlines this morning, I saw this story about Zina Linnik, a 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped over the fourth of July and later found dead. With all that happened with my former roommate (who is still in jail, thankfully, since he cannot post bond), I’ve done some research over the past month. As a result, I can’t remember the exact source, but I read somewhere that the FBI now considers kidnapping for ransom to be a “dead crime.” The FBI is so good at capturing people who try to ransom others that there’s no incentive for anyone to kidnap anyone for ransom. Because of that, virtually every kidnapping that now occurs is a part of a sex crime.

I should note that this is kidnapping in the traditional sense of the word, rather than kidnapping in the legal sense. After all, if someone robs a department store and forces all the employees into a back room, he may very well have legally committed kidnapping there (illegally forcing someone to move more than a specific distance, such as 100 feet, IIRC, constitutes the definition of “kidnapping” in the legal sense). Those kinds of kidnapping are more “incidental” than the purposeful kidnapping more commonly perceived.

The problem with having kidnapping for ransom as a “dead crime” is that it means the vast majority of kidnappings are going to end up as they did for Zina Linnik. By the time the FBI gets involved in a typical kidnapping case, about four hours have already passed. During that time, the sexual assault and the murder has more than likely already occured. Thus, by the time the FBI first hears about the case (despite what they say to the press) they are already gearing up for a murder investigation rather than a straightforward kidnapping investigation.

Thankfully, there are some exceptions to this. However, the exceptions are very few.

In the end, in order to make kidnapping for sexual purposes a “dead crime” along with ransom kidnappings, the incentive for the kidnapping needs to end. In my opinion, the only just way for this to occur is to reinstitute the death penalty for sex offenders, especially those who kidnap and kill their victims. We will never stop all crime because people are evil; but stopping as much as possible is better than stopping nothing at all.

I just saw this article. In it, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams says of President Bush:

Right now, I could kill George Bush. No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.

This, I think, demonstrates the untennable position of pacifism better than anything else. Everyone has ideals that they will fight for when someone opposes them. Most passafists…urm, I mean “pacifists” of course…are lucky in that most of their ideals are never challenged. Thus, antiwar activists like Williams–people who are not repressed by Islamofascists–are never challenged on their antiwar beliefs in a way that matters. For instance, if someone were to put a gun to Williams’ head, if she were truly nonviolent she would have to “take one for the team” and die without resisting. Which means that pacifism is simply another word for masochism.

Yesterday started out bad and sorta went downhill from there. Oh, not in a major way. In fact, taking a proper perspective on events, it really wasn’t that bad of a day at all. Just little annoying things is all.

Take the morning, for instance. When I woke up, I saw the tree outside my bedroom window shaking. I knew then that I’d have to leave early to bike in because whenever the wind blows, it ALWAYS blows directly into my face as I bike. Sure enough, this was to be no exception.

To put it in perspective, there is a place where I can bike downhill a little bit as I go in. On a normal day, when I bike through this section (it’s about half a mile long) I can coast to at least 18 mph on my mountain bike. Yesterday, pedaling as hard as I could, I could barely crack 10 mph. And once the road leveled out, I dropped down below 6 mph at times, even though I was pedaling as hard as I ever have.

Going straight into 40 mph winds with gusts over 60—the kind of wind that knocked over several trees throughout town, for instance—will do that to you. The only benefit to having it straight in my face was that if it was gusting from the side, I would probably have been knocked over.

In any case, I got in to work on time because I left earlier. By the time I was ready to head home after work, storm clouds appeared overhead. Yup, after biking in to work against the wind, I got to bike home in a downpour.

Mind you, the wind had changed directions by that point too. Yup, I was biking straight into it again. This time it was only gusting up to about 20 mph, but when that 20 mph is carrying those huge, fat raindrops that hurt when they hit you, it’s not fun in the least.

In any case, the rain finally let up by the time I got to the Burger King near where I live, so I decided to stop by and treat myself to dinner since I had survived such hellish weather. When I got to the register, I was still a little damp from the rain (although the wind blowing actually helped to keep me drier than I would have been). The lady at the register asked me how my day was going and if I had had to bike long in the rain.

Here’s where I said what I shouldn’t have said. See, after thinking about how the day started and what I had just gone through, I half-sarcastically said: “God’s picking on me today.”

I say it was half-sarcastic only because while the tone was sarcastic, there was some definite disgruntled feeling behind it. But I figured, hey what more could happen?

Apparently God can think of things. For you see, when I got back to my bike I unchained it and pulled it away from the post…

Well, let’s just say the front tire looked kinda funny. Yup, it was flat. Completely flat. But I know for a fact it was not flat when I rode in. See, it was the front tire, and let’s just say that if your front tire is flat you can’t help but notice it if you try to turn. It feels like you’re trying to rotate on Jello or silly puddy. In fact, even pushing it with a flat tire it’s hard to control where the bike is heading, because the rim keeps sliding off the rubber padding that’s now deflated, and the front of the bike will go any which way. So I most certainly knew for a fact that the tire was full when I got to the Burger King, but it was as flat as it ever possibly could be when I got out.

So I had to push the bike a mile home from that point. Oh yeah, and since I didn’t have any spare tubes at my house, I got to push the dumb thing in in the morning too. This time just under four miles so I could get to the free shuttle. Next, I’ll get to push it another mile from where I work to the bike shop where I can buy a new tube and let them install it for me! But that will be after I get off work.

Now I will say this much. When it happened, my first reaction was actually to laugh rather than to yell at God or something like that. I mean, sure it had been annoying before with the weather and all, but the irony of the situation was just the kind of thing that makes my first reaction be ironic laughter. It’s actually even why I am writing about it now. It’s the kind of thing that I would do to Steve Winters (although Travis is about the only person who will understand this comment).

Maybe you might think I’m a masochist or something, but this kind of response from God is exactly what I needed. I think if I had gotten outside and the wind had suddenly shifted direction so I could just sit on my bike and get blown up the hill to my house, I wouldn’t have appreciated it in the least. I also wouldn’t have ever considered the fact that what happened was a direct response to my complaint.

Instead, God made it clear, in a way that was annoying but not as much as it could have been (He could have, after all, had a bus run me over and put me in traction for the next six months). This was more like a little thump on the top of my head, God’s way of cutting through the clutter and saying, “What’s your problem? I gave Job boils. You want some of that?”

Obviously, I know some atheists read my blog. They might think it’s just plain dumb bad luck that my tire happened to go flat after the day I had today and the comment I had made. But see, I know the implicit challenge I had in the comment when I said, “God’s picking on me today.” I know what I was thinking at the time—I know that mixed in with the sarcasm and the complaining was a little bit of a challenge to the Almighty.

I was daring Him to top what He had done, just to show He was actually listening.

Well, God was listening. It wasn’t bad luck at all. And that’s also part of the reason I could laugh over it. So I will simply respond to the atheists the same way that Job did: Shall I not accept the bad from God along with the good? The Lord gives and He takes away…blessed be the Name of the Lord!