CalvinDude.com

Whew.

Another extra long day. I’ve now got 9h 15m of overtime so far this week, which means after 3:45 tomorrow after noon everything I work the rest of this week will be paid at time and a half. The only problem is that our payroll is structured so that it skips a pay period before OT is actually paid. Oh, and today was the last day of our current pay period…which means I’ll get paid for the hours I worked, but since I haven’t hit 40 hours yet (only 33:15), I won’t actually get paid the time and a half until DECEMBER.

(It works like this, for both of you who care. We get paid for our 1st to 15th work on the 22nd of the month, and for our 15-31 work on the 7th of the next month. This means the regular hours that I worked for October 15-31 will be paid to me on November 7. However, because OT won’t begin to accumulate until November 1 (when I finally hit 40 hours for the week), the OT amount will not be included on the November 7th paycheck. It’ll be part of the pay period from November 1-15. Then, the OT is held for one more pay period (since payroll has to adjust for all the overtime worked between Nov 1 and 15th, and not just what I did on Nov 1-2), so I’ll get the time and a half paid for the November 15-30 pay period…which is paid out on December 7.)

I say yet again…Oh for fun.

BTW, NaNoWriMo begins in an hour and a half. I won’t be up waiting for it. The good news is that OT should be over tomorrow, assuming we don’t get slammed in the morning (but even if we do, we have to have all our October work finished by noon, and November work can be held until later if need be). As a result, I ought to be able to do NaNoWriMo this year.

We shall see. For now…it’s bed time.

Whew…it’s 9:00, and I’m finally getting ready to exit stage left and head on home. 13 hour days aren’t THAT bad…. :-P

I’ll be a little more sporadic on the blog for the next week or so. We have lots of OT at work again.

Oh for fun.

Chalk this one up to “The Low Oxygen Content at High Altitude is Finally Getting to Him” as I present for you…

1988 all over again.

In the form of.

Sentence fragments.

Eventually introducing.

A Techno Midi Song.

Yes…that’s really midi. Yes…that’s really techno. No…it’s not any good. But what do you expect for 20 minutes of sheer boredom? Err…which is to say it took me 20 minutes to write it, not that it’s 20 minutes long.

And I’m still proud of the Rox. They did what any team playing against a payroll three times their size would have done.

But since tradition demands a curse…I’ll call this one the Chuck Colson curse.

Last year, the Rox were surprising everyone in August…until Colson did a radio show on them. This year, the Rox were cruising undefeated in the playoffs…until Colson did a radio show on them before Game 1.

Obviously, the Colson curse is real.

Paramount is considering making a G.I. Joe movie. Only problem…Paramount is anti-American, and G.I. Joe is…well, a U.S. soldier. Easy enough solution.

G.I. Joe will now become GIJOE, which stands for “Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity.”

Aside from the stupidity of Hollywood, most people have no idea of where G.I. Joe came from in the first place. After all, he’s just a doll or, such as when I was growing up, a cartoon character. Right?

Right?

Well, no, actually. Instead, Vin Suprynowicz informs us of the truth:

On Nov. 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, Calif., southeast of Palm Springs. He was a combat veteran of World War II. His name was Mitchell Paige.

…

On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield that could threaten the Japanese route to Australia. Admiral Yamamoto knew how dangerous that was. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven the supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Brownings on that hillside, 65 years ago this week — manning their section of the thin khaki line that was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of Oct. 25, 1942 — it’s unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 armed and motivated attackers?

But by the time the night was over, “The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men,” historian Lippman reports. “The 16th (Japanese) Regiment’s losses are uncounted, but the 164th’s burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. … The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low.”

You’ve already figured out where the Japanese focused their attack, haven’t you? Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige’s platoon. Every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige’s Medal of Honor picks up the tale: “When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machine gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire.”

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was the first to discover how many able-bodied United States Marines it takes to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat.

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

The hill had held, because on the hill remained the minimum number of able-bodied United States Marines necessary to hold the position.

And that’s where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one ever heard of, called Guadalcanal.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel’s face on some kid’s doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren’t. That’s his mug, on the little Marine they call “G.I. Joe.” At least, it has been up till now.

Mitchell Paige’s only condition? That G.I. Joe must always remain a United States Marine.

The conclusion of the article puts it as best as it could be said: “But don’t worry. Far more important for our new movies not to offend anyone in Cairo or Karachi or Paris or Palembang.”

As I walked a beagle to lunch today, I had an epiphany. It begins with the fact that it is Fall, and as a result trees are everywhere shedding their leaves. These leaves quite often fall on the sidewalk.

Now let me ask you a question. As you are walking down a clean, empty sidewalk and you happen to notice a single leaf fall onto the sidewalk ahead of you, do you:

A) Examine the leaf in wonder as you walk past it?
B) Ignore the leaf completely?

Or

C) Curse the weather & seasons for conspiring to litter?

The answer is, of course, none of the above. Because what you do (at least if you’re male) is you step on the leaf! Don’t try to deny this guys, you know it’s true. If a leaf falls on the sidewalk five feet in front of you, without even thinking about it, you manage to shift your stride ever so slightly so that your foot will come down exactly on the leaf and you’ll hear that satisfying CRUNCH. (By the way, surveys have demonstrated this: a full 93% of men admit to going out of their way to crunch leaves. Interestingly enough, the study also found that 7% of men lie about whether they go out of their way to step on leaves.)

Anyway, I happened to notice today en route to lunch that there was a section of sidewalk that was about 2/3s empty, but 1/3 covered by leaves. This is due to the wind that had blown the leaves into a leaf-drift on the left-hand side of the sidewalk. So, 1/3 of the sidewalk was covered with leaves and 2/3s was clear.

Naturally, the vast majority of people were walking on the 1/3 side covered in leaves, and only stepped out of the leaves in order to pass others. Statistically, this validates my point that people enjoy crunching leaves.

At first, I didn’t make the connection, but now that I’ve had some time to think about it I realize that this actually proves Darwinism correct. You see, I live in Colorado Springs, and I’ve seen pictures of the Springs back in the 1870s when it was founded. There are no trees anywhere. It’s prairie all over the place. Even pictures going up into the mountains (Ute Pass) show no trees on the hills.

Now, there are trees everywhere. Why are the trees here now? Because they were planted. But people could have planted any number of different kinds of trees. We have blue spruce, pine, and other trees littering the mountainsides all over Colorado. So why is it that the vast majority of trees that were planted in the city are deciduous trees?

Because people like to crunch leaves in the Fall. It’s that simple. Nature has selected for deciduous trees so that humans (at least male humans) are able to crunch leaves during Fall. This gives pleasure to the humans, and ensures that they will plant new deciduous trees when old ones die. The result of this symbiotic relationship causes selection pressures to choose for deciduous trees. The result is that in just over 100 years since the founding of Colorado Springs, we have gone from prairie having no trees to twelve billion leaves in my backyard that I have to clear out.

Need we any more proof that Darwinism is true than this simple observation?

UPDATE: After I concluded the above, I decided to test my theories a little (this is the proper sequence when doing true science, BTW). I asked a couple of guys at work my survey question. The question was simply “If you see a leaf on the sidewalk, do you A) look at it as you walk by, B) ignore it completely, or C) curse the weather for littering?” The first guy I asked said, “I have a fourth option: I step on it.” The second guy said, “Is it a dry leaf? If so, I step on it.”

2 for 2. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s scientifically proven now.

Henry/Robert/Arminibot 3000 Serial Number 777666 is questioning Reformed doctrine once more. While it is obvious to anyone who has studied the issues that H/R/A has not, I thought it might be a beneficial exercise for those concerned if we took the robot motif up once again and pondered a thought experiment.

Is it possible to give a robot free will? To make, as it were, an android?

The question is important because it helps us to define how exactly a choice is made. Currently, computers can be programmed to make “choices” by assigning a weight-value to different options. From there, a risk/reward calculation can be made, and the computer can pick which option has the greatest potential for reward with the lowest amount of risk. This is ultimately how computers can play chess games. They analyze a multitude number of possible moves and rank the orders in terms of which one is statistically most likely to occur.

But obviously this “choice” isn’t a free choice. It relies upon a set of initial factors, such as the hardware used to create the computer. (If a chipset is flawed, the calculations will be flawed and the computer will make erroneous choices.) Further, the software has to be programmed such that the computer is able to assign a weight to various chess functions. A computer is not “born” knowing that pawn a5 is a horrible opening move. It has to be programmed in, and the various values of the board have to be programmed in. Further, the specific values of what levels of risk are acceptable must also be programmed in. These are not laws of nature. They are dependent upon the programmer.

Naturally, one can test the computer after that by simulating several games until the best moves are found. Further testing against human opponents can further hone the skills of the computer. Eventually, you have Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov.

But this brings up an interesting problem for the libertarian, especially as defined by H/R/A. H/R/A believes that a choice cannot be free unless it is possible to choose a different option. But let us present a computer with two options for an opening move. Either the computer can pick pawn to e5, or it can pick pawn to a5. Given the programming in place, it is impossible for the computer to actually pick pawn to a5 because of how horrible that opening move is compared to the standard pawn to e5 approach.

Now ask Kasparov to make the same decision. Given Kasparov’s knowledge of chess, it is equally impossible for Kasparov to make the move pawn to a5 instead of pawn to e5. Yet we would not say that Kasparov is acting against his free will were he to always play pawn to e5 instead of pawn to a5. We would say he is making the smart move. He would be an idiot to make the other choice.

H/R/A might respond by saying that Kasparov could choose to behave stupidly, if that’s what Kasparov wanted to do, but Kasparov doesn’t want to act stupidly, so he will limit his selection to the smart move each time. This, however, changes H/R/A’s position! What first defined free will as the ability to do otherwise has become simply doing that which one wants to do.

But this secondary definition of free will is actually the very definition that Calvinists hold to. People always do that which they want to do, and the unregenerate always wants to disobey God. Under this definition of free will, Calvinists fully support free will. As such, moving to this explanation doesn’t help H/R/A at all. In fact, it forces an immediate checkmate against his viewpoint.

Before abandoning this illustration completely, let us take another thought experiment. I own Chessmaster 10, and the lowest AI opponent you can face is a chimpanzee that uses completely random moves. There is no attempt to weigh which move is better. The computer compiles a list of all possible legal moves and randomly chooses one of those moves.

Is this random choice any freer than the choice a computer makes by weighing a list? The answer to that question is a resounding no. Once again, the computer chooses based on hardware structures and software limitations. Computers are not really random—they have random seed generators that are strictly controlled. They mimic random events, but in reality they are not random at all. (Each time you reuse the same random seed generator, you get the same result. To avoid this as much as possible, most programs use the date and time functions for their random seed generation. Since it is basically impossible for a person to pick the exact same millisecond on a clock each time he runs a program–even if he resets the clock–it always appears to us as a random result.) So, even engaging in random “choices” is not really random for a computer. Suppose a computer randomly picks the move pawn to a5. This move is determined by the hardware features working together with the software features of the computer so that at the exact moment the program is run, it will always pick pawn to a5. There is never a time when it will not pick pawn to a5 under those circumstances.

But there is a way to get truly random data (assuming one doesn’t have access to the omniscient mind of God). You could hook the computer up to a piece of radioactive matter. Since radioactivity occurs at a completely random, totally impossible to predict, rate for individuals particles, you could create a computer to use those random results to make decisions about chess moves.

But is this any freer? Again, the answer is a resounding no! After all, there is no value in the radioactive decay that says, “If this particle goes now, choose option pawn to a5.” The ability to translate a truly random event into a choice is still based on the software to define what each selection must be. And we haven’t even addressed the elephant in the room: the fact that these random choices are still determined by radioactive decay!

Suppose, however, we were able to surmount those obstacles and create a computer that could make choices that were not based on its hardware or software. It could play a truly random game of chess.

Does anyone think the computer would win the chess game? Of course not. Does anyone think that a computer making choices without reference to a designers hardware specs or software instructions would make good choices? Of course not.

Why, then, do Arminians insist that people must be able to make choices without regard to our hardware (brains) or our software (our nature)? How is it possible for our choices to be good ones if we are able to ignore the hardware specs and the software limitations? How is it possible for us to make any decisions at all outside of the governing physical and spiritual specs that we have?

I just read this article on ESPN’s website. (BTW, I have to point out that ESPN obviously stands for the Eastern Sports Programming Network, when it comes to baseball, as they only care about the Yankees and the Red Sox, and the rest of the MLB doesn’t even exist.) Anyway, the author of that article pointed out an interesting fact:

The Rockies likely would have been rusty under the old format, just as the Tigers were last year. But at least they would have only had six days off, not eight. At least their starters wouldn’t be pitching on nearly two weeks’ rest.

And at least the Rockies wouldn’t have had more days off this month (14) than the Colorado Avalanche (11).

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think it’s good for anyone — the teams or the networks — when baseball’s premiere event too closely resembles the NHL.

Ah, Caple, I was with you until that last paragraph. I, for one, think baseball would be greatly improved if the catcher was able to cross check the runner trying to come across the plate. But that’s just me….

In all seriousness, now, what is it with people who work for a sports network continually ripping on hockey? I know I’m an apologist for hockey, but it’s because it’s so easy to be one if you just watch a few games. I’ve talked to many people who say they hate hockey, and I ask, “How many games have you seen?” Usually the answer is, “None, because why would I want to watch such a stupid sport?” Or: “I’ve seen highlights of hockey fights on TV.”

Yeah, like that’s hockey.

Nobody watches hockey because nobody likes hockey because nobody watches hockey…blah blah blah.

But the fact of the matter is, I guarantee that if you’re a sports fan of any type and you pick any random NHL team (although this is even better if you pick a good team like the Avs or even the dreaded Redwings) and simply watch five consecutive games out of the season, by the end of the fifth game you will like hockey. You might not love the game, as I do, but you will understand that it is a good sport. Of all the sports I’ve watched, hockey is by far the easiest to pick up and understand. And the flow of the game is so intense, with the possibility of either team scoring on every single play (even a 3 goal lead late in the third period isn’t safe), you’ll probably realize you like hockey about the same time you notice you just spent the last twenty minutes chewing off your fingernails while sitting on the edge of the couch praying (especially if you’re an atheist) that your goalie will stop the next breakaway.

So, ESPN writers can have their little game that someone as out-of-shape as I am in could actually play in. If you really want sports, you’ll know that the more baseball is like the NHL the better baseball will be….

We’re used to our teams being utterly destroyed in championship games.

Yup, it’s the bottom of the 5th right now. Boston’s winning 11-1. Make that 12-1, as the bases-loaded walk scores. (These are the Rockies of old.)

Is it the 8 day delay? Probably not, although it definitely didn’t help the Rockies any. Oh well. C’est la vie.

At least it’s not a real sport.

UPDATE: For those who don’t already know, the final was 13-1.