CalvinDude.com

I remember a few years ago watching the Tour de Lance as Lance Armstrong raced. There was one stage where, at the end, Lance said he had felt like something was wrong: he was less energetic, and it just felt like he was lagging, not quite all “there”, etc. The culprit? Turns out his brake was locked down and he had been biking against it the whole time.

Well, the same thing happened to me yesterday. I biked in, and I was thinking, “Man, I feel so sluggish. It’s like I’ve got no energy today.” When I got to work I discovered the spring on my brake had slipped off the little tab thingy (that’s the technical term, of course) and as a result my front brake had been slightly engaged the entire trip in. The funny thing is that it didn’t feel like it; it felt like I was more sluggish, not like I was biking through added resistence.

Oh well. At least now I share something with Lance… :-P

Yesterday, we were minding our own business trying to work when suddenly…POW!

The electricity went out. Well, not really. Half of the electricity went out. Most computers crashed. Mine, amazingly, did not–but since the servers crashed I couldn’t do anything anyway. Our phone system went out on the second floor, but not on the first floor. Lights on the east side of the building were out, but not on the west side. When I went home, I changed into my biking clothes in the locker room, where there were lights; but the lights were out in the bathroom next to the locker room. In the server room, the computers and the scanning machine had no power; but the fan in the corner was working (albeit at a much too slow rotation as it didn’t have full power).

Turns out that one of the fuses at the transformer blew. The utilties company had to come to repair it. This meant I got to go home early since there was nothing we could do work-wise until it was fixed.

Man, I’m so glad only normal stuff happens to me….

I’m wondering about lemmings. You know, the little furballs that commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs into the ocean. Somehow, I’m sure there’s an appropriate metaphor in this. Ah yes, here it is.

Work.

Specifically where I work. I won’t go into details. Just suffice to say that, as I see the impending cliff rushing toward us, I’m still compelled to keep my little lemming legs running forward at full speed.

Which brings up the interesting question. Is it better to drive over the cliff and hope you come out the other side, or abandon ship (to have as many mixed metaphors as possible, ya know–so far, just lemmings driving ship-cars off cliffs. I can improve this! Perhaps they’re rearranging furnitature on the Challenger after drinking the Kool-Aid too. Then again, maybe they just listen to Linkin Park.)?

But seriously, it makes you wonder what each lemming thinks as they go toward the cliff. “I don’t know what’s going on, but surely that guy up front must.” Or maybe: “This is stupid, but I’m bored so why not?” Perhaps there’s one or two who think, “This is one way to never have to worry about rent again.”

Normally, I woulda thought I’d be one of them in the back going, “Ow! Ow! Pulled a hammy! Gotta rest. See you suckas later!” But now I know better. It’s more like fate, Neo: it’s as inevitable as it is inedible.

I picked up Ernst Mayr’s What Evolution Is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the title seemed to suggest that this book would be a detailed look at, come to think of it, what evolution is. And secondly, the back of the book boldly proclaimed: “With rare clarity and accessibility, Mayr poses the questions at the heart of evolution—What is the evidence for evolution on earth? What is the origin and role of organic diversity?”

It was the first question that I wanted answers to: What is the evidence for evolution on earth? The back of the book promised that “Mayr poses” this question. I assumed that meant he would actually answer this question, not merely pose it. But apparently I thought wrong.

For you see, Mayr, in his introduction, wrote: “That evolution has taken place is so well established that…a detailed presentation of the evidence is no longer needed” (What Evolution Is. 2001. New York: Basic Books, p. xv).

This reminds me a bit of what Dawkins said: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)” (Dawkins, Richard. 1989. “Book Review” (of Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey’s Blueprint), The New York Times, section 7, April 9, p. 3).

Darwinists keep reminding us that evolution has been proven beyond all doubt, and that only stupid, ignorant, or insane people would not agree to it. Yet when offered the chance to demonstrate this overwhelming evidence, do they do so? No. We just get statements of authority: “Don’t worry about asking for the evidence. Just accept that it’s been proven.”

Is this science? In any case, I have to wonder. If Mayr is not going to provide us with the “well established” evidence for evolution, then couldn’t he at least point to where that evidence is located so that everyone can look at it and judge the evidence for himself? Would that be too much to ask for, rather than requiring us to accept the existence of this phantom evidence that is “out there” in the “well established”, but never referenced, scholarly universe?

Today, I crossed the 340 mile mark, bringing me over 1/3 of the way to my first 1,000 miles on my new bike. Hurrah hurrah.

Today is my birthday, and since this post is about mathematical observations I’ll express my age in this way. My age = the 10th prime number.

In any case, where I work they give out $10 gift certificates to local restaurants for people’s birthdays. Our department celebrates these birthdays by going on the 3rd Thursday of the month (regardless of when the birthday actually is) as a group. Thus, yesterday we went to Chipotle. I ordered my food and the cost came out to $7.95. I gave the card to the woman at the register and she swiped it and asked, “Do you want a receipt?” I said no, because who needs more paper in their pockets? Then she asked: “Do you want to know what your balance is?”

I looked over at the display and saw it said $7.95. So I said, “Well, I assume it’s going to be $2.05.”

She burst out laughing at this point, since the ridiculousness of the situation was fairly apparent. I mean, how hard is it to subtract $7.95 from $10.00? But as I contemplated this, I realized that for a lot of people (read: publik skewl students), this would be hard. After all, if you want a great, although quite mean, prank to pull on a poor high school student, go to McDonalds. When they say, “That’ll be 6.87″ give them $10. Then, after they press the button on the keyboard to make change, say, “Oh, here’s $0.02 too.” Watch their eyes glaze over and the beads of sweat break out on their foreheads…

In reality, though, math has tons of shortcuts that make it really easy. But people don’t consider these shortcuts to be “math.” A quick example: when multiplying numbers by 9, the result will have digits that add up to the number 9. (Actually, if I remember correctly there is a limit to this–it might not do it for large numbers; but for small numbers it certainly does.) Thus, if you want a quick multiplication table for 9s, it’s way easy. Just write the following:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Then, next to these numbers, do the opposite, so you have:

09
18
27
36
45
54
63
72
81
90

And there you go. The multiplication table from 1 to 10 (of course, normally you’d drop the opening 0 from 09; but that’s just a format issue–it’s the same number).

This, however, is considered “cheating.” I don’t think it’s any less math, however, than the multiplication by 10 trick. You know:

N x 10 = ‘N’0

(That is, any number multiplied by 10 is the original number with a 0 added to the end of it.)

How is this math, but the 9s multiplication table not?

In any case, there are a lot of math shortcuts out there that make computing stuff in your head so much simpler. But no one teaches these things any more. It’s taught even less so because of an over-reliance of calculators. Ironically, I was talking with a co-worker today who has a birthday tomorrow. He’s two years younger than I am, so I said, “Wow, I’m one day plus 365 times 2 older than you are.” At which point, he said, “I wonder how many days that is” and grabbed his calculator to computer it. I said, “It’s 731″ and got that result in my head the same time he got it on his calculator.

Incidentally, when I do multiplication of big numbers in my head, I don’t do it “correctly.” Most people would multiply 365 x 2 by going right to left (starting with 2 x 5, then adding that to 2 x 60–although they probably would actually think of it as 2 x 6, not realizing that the placement of the number hides the “tens” column–and then ending with 2 x 300). I reverse that. I start with 2 x 300 as 600 (although I do the same reduction trick, where I’m simply thinking of it as 2 x 3); but I also know that the 6 next to the 3 in 365 is greater than 4, so I automatically view the 2 x 3 section as resulting in 7, because carrying the 1 is going to happen anyway. So I start with 700.

Then I do 65 x 2 in the same manner. First, I know the 6 x 2 = 12 (but since I’ve already carried the 1, I only care about the 2; and the 5 portion of 65 is greater than 4, so I change the 2 to 3: thus 730.

Finally, the 5 is in the same manner. 5 x 2 = 10; I’ve already carried the 1 so I ignore it and I have 0. Thus, I have the number already obtained in the order it makes sense: 730. (And, of course, I then add in the 1 extra day at this point to get the final result of 731.)

Doing it in this order, it remains left -> right. I don’t have to do the reversal of right to left, with the subsequent remembering what I’m carrying over, etc. I handle both at the same time and the process occurs quickly. Of course, it takes some getting used to doing math in this order instead of the way we’re all taught, going right to left instead of left to right. But once you’ve trained your brain to ignore the nonsense you were taught in elementary school, math is a lot easier.

Just a quick update, since I haven’t done this in a while. This morning, biking in, I got to 326 miles.

It’s been a week since I last challenged T-Stone to demonstrate evolution (specifically, mutation followed by Natural Selection) from the fossil record. However, T-Stone has since said he has family obligations that prevent him from writing as much during the summer. Therefore, I thought I would do the pro-family thing and help T-Stone out a bit here by demonstrating why he should just give up now. Now he can spend the time with his kids rather than in a futile effort to prove the impossible-to-prove.

To show how futile T-Stone’s efforts would be, I am going to employ an over-simplification of the problem. If the theory, even stated in such an obviously simplified manner, is hard (read: impossible) to prove, then it is going to be even more difficult to prove it from the complicated reality.

Let us begin as simply as possible. Suppose that T-Stone finds two fossils of the same species. What type of fossils these are doesn’t really matter, but for the purposes of illustration let’s say they’re Cothurnocystis fossils (yes, I just wanted to include a “big word” here to give T-Stone something else to do a trivial Google search on). Let us also argue that, due to the rock strata they are discovered in, T-Stone knows for a fact which one of the fossils is older than the other fossil.

These fossils can fit somewhere on a “typical” genealogical branch:

But where do they fit in there? Is it possible for T-Stone to prove that one fossil is a descendant of the other? The answer is a resounding: no. Let us look at this. Suppose that the fossils are descendants of one another. In such a case, we’d have something looking like:

But it could just as easily be something like:

In fact, the odds that two fossils are actually in a direct lineage are small when you consider how many thousands of members of each species actually exist, and how many offspring come from each of these organisms. So right off the bat, we see that T-Stone cannot even prove two fossils are in direct lineage with each other.

If we cannot prove that two fossils of the same species are direct descendants, how can we demonstrate that a fossil of another species is directly descended from the previous fossil? Obviously we cannot.

One way that Darwinists avoid this problem is to ignore the direct lineage problem within the species itself. That is, the Darwinist will take each of the two fossils found for the same species as representative of the whole. Thus, the two Cothurnocystis fossils are arbitrarily allowed to stand for any of the points along the genealogical chart. This is because the species, as a whole, shares aspects; and thus, the Darwinists claims, we can treat each individual as typical of the whole.

Aside from the fact that this commits the error of composition and becomes a hasty generalization, it doesn’t really solve the problem for the evolutionist. After all, now instead of having individuals in the chart, we have entire species. If each dot represents an entire species instead of individuals within a species, we still cannot tell if fossils from two different species, a Cothurnocystis fossil and a more modern echinoderm (like a starfish) for instance, are direct descendants either. In other words, is the relationship direct:

Or indirect:

The Darwinist cannot say.

But there is another problem with these diagrams. The problem is that everything that is black in the diagrams is pure conjecture. That’s right; the relationships between various fossils are purely human invention. There is nothing in the fossil record that shows the links between the fossils.

As such, the relationship between two fossils is found only in the imagination of humans who interpret the fossil record. The fossil record does not show these relationships, for it is possible that there is yet another alternative explanation:

That’s right; the second fossil might not be related to the first fossil at all. Without being able to show the direct links, we have only the conjecture that there is a link.

But what is the conjecture based on? The conjecture is based on having already accepted the theory of Darwinistic Evolution as true. That is, the links between fossils are “discovered” only when one first assumes this kind of evolution is true. There is nothing in the fossil evidence that indicates whether there is a direct link, indirect link, or no link at all between two fossils. The evidence is not sufficient to say which one it is.

As such, my original comment—the one way back on the comments on this post still stands. I originally said:

Evolutionary claims are completely independent of the fossil record. Consider what the fossil record shows and compare that to the evolutionary theory.

The fossil record shows only organisms that existed at some point in the past. That is it. It says nothing about the relationship between organisms–that is left to extrapolation.

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).

So the theory of evolution is quite independent of the fossil record. The fossil record is only used as a prop. The claim is that the fossil record is what we would expect given evolution. But as I pointed out above, given the inability to recreate this (due to the massive amount of time and the pure randomness of fossil formation), this claim is anything but empirical.

So at most, all the fossil record can be used for is to say that it is consistent with evolutionary theory. But then, the fossil record is so spotty that it is “consistent” with virtually any theory.

Evolution cannot be proven from the fossil record, because one can never show the direct lineage between two fossils of the same species, let alone between two different species. The Darwinist claims that they don’t need to show direct lineage between specific individuals can only be true if one first assumes Darwinian Evolution. In other words, belief in Evolution precedes this interpretation of the fossil record.

With this in mind, T-Stone should now return to ferrying his children to baseball games and drop this matter completely.

Francis flew furiously forward from four felonious factions (feline fowl-frogs from Frankfurt, frothing: “Forget foes, fiends! First face forward! Fortune favors foolish followers! Fascia follows from Fascists! Fraud fears Freud! From Feynman’s fractals find functions for franchising frozen foreknowledge, fought for future freedom feigning frightened frivolity forever, for Fred found Fran fixatedly following Frank’s fingertips, feeling faux-fraternal felicity for fine forecasters; forehead fissures formed faults from frontal facades, forbearing festering fright!”), fortuitously, for faster frolicking fractals found forbearance for five fortnights, frankly, feeding funny folktales, Frau Furlong.

Since many evolutionists speak of “junk DNA” as evidence for evolution, the following articles are interesting (HT: Steve Hays).

Encyclopedia Of DNA: New Findings Challenge Established Views On Human Genome

‘Junk’ DNA makes compulsive reading

One quote (from the second article):

“It would now take a very brave person to call non-coding DNA junk,” says Greally.

In other words, the “Darwinism-of-the-gaps” idea doesn’t quite look as compelling anymore…