Defending “The Space”

Discussion

As I watch “Jesus Camp”, “Expelled”, and “The God Who Wasn’t There” (see contextual note at the bottom of this article if you haven’t seen them, and for my impressions as a context of this article), I see a certain lack of acknowledging self-bias, or at least a respecting the opposing viewpoint and giving them more than a straw-man representation. These three films are incindiary – the viewer will see things that will probably upset them, whether or not they are for/against the viewpoint advocated by the film. Opponents of each of these films’ viewpoints will feel misrepresented, and proponents of the films’ viewpoint will feel vindicated, but perhaps with a lingering sensation that the other side was presented unfairly.

I see these three films as prime examples of people expressing their perceptions of the ‘other’ – the group that they oppose, feel persecuted by, or are otherwise fearful of their overwhelming power in some institution of society (e.g., religion, academia, politics).

In “Expelled” and “The God Who Wasn’t There” which prop up pet theories by examining some isolated bits of historical/scientific evidence, I see an extraordinary lack of self-scrutiny. Both prop up their viewpoints by interviewing and interjecting quotes from experts in appropriate fields that are biased toward their side, and then compare these answers to those of laymen representing the opposition. Neither seriously grills their experts. Both think of good follow-up questions for the opposition interviewees that scrutinize the last answer to a question, but instead of asking the interviewee this question, they snidely ask it in a voice-over in the film, giving no chance for rebuttal or an answer to the question by the interviewee.

“Jesus Camp” is only slightly better – it does not provide direct editorialization other than by showing some footage of a radio show host who opines about how the evangelicals are a scary conservative social movement that wants to turn everyone to their side, that will not be tolerant of a liberal minority when the conservatives are in political power. Other than this commentary, the majority of the film is spent observing prayer meetings / sermons or interviews of the children they follow. The editing style gives a sense of casual observation – just poking a camera into this microcosm of evangelical children and seeing what these kids experience. Fairly neutral.

These three films all portrayed a group of people that opposes the film’s viewpoint, and all are unfairly biased – and I qualify biased with unfairly for this reason: While everyone may express personal bias, I believe it damages the trust (”the space”) between two opposing sides when we try and caricature the other side without asking that side how they feel about that caricature. I do believe that caricatures are a necessary evil since discussion requires brevity of expression to communicate big ideas. So it is important that we ask the ‘other’, is it ok – is it sufficiciently accurate – for me to summarize you as being this way? None of these films do this. They caricature without backtracking to ask the people they interview, “Is it okay if I edit the interview down to these snippets? Is there something I can do to better represent your view in a reasonable amount of time?”

Many of the controversial discussions I happen across on the internet or in person seem to end up getting sidetracked by the issue of one (or both sides) having to correct the opposing party’s view of themselves. The “angry atheist”, or the “bible-thumping christian” are not fair characterizations for a lot of people, and it really just ends up wasting time when we keep reinforcing modes of thought that stem from a couple mental biases:

1. Ingroup/Outgroup Biases: We like to to think of the ingroup as rational, logical, reasonable, civilized, compassionate; we like to think of the outgroup/other as emotional, irrational, unreasonable, uncivilized, mean-spirited.

2. Confirmation Bias: we search out evidence that confirms our own position, and don’t spend much time looking for support of opposing viewpoints or evidence that contradicts our theories of interpretation.

Often enough, these biases misguide us into a supposition about our evidence/theory, or about the motivations of the other as less than noble. This damages “the space” – the trust that needs to be firmly established between opposing groups before meaningful discussion and mutual understanding can begin to take place. I’m disappointed when I see such damaging conversation take place in so much of the media (internet, TV, newspapers, editorials, etc.) I can find about issues important to me – religion, civil rights, politics, science. I’d like the discussion to rise to the level of making progress, instead of just being inflammatory.

I want discussions to take the next step: for people to think of their favorite group to hate on an ideological, poltical, or religious issue – think about the possiblity that they might have some noble motive, some good reason for feeling the way that they do. Truly believe that the opponent has a legitimate set of human feelings and reasons for thinking what they do – that perhaps, if in their shoes, you would maybe have the same feelings too. Think about why the argument is taking place, rather than the exact logic of an opponent’s argument. Ask why you both care about the issue at hand. Are these noble endeavors and emotions? This, I hope, is the context of good discussion.

———

Contextual Note – here is a summary of each movie, and my impression of what view I think the film/film-maker(s) were advocating, so you have an idea of what stuck out for me in these films:

“Jesus Camp” is a documentary that follows around a few kids that go to an evangelical bible camp in the summer and some related church rallies/activities.

My impression: The film-makers view the evangelicals depicted in the film as a political/social threat to religious freedom in the U.S.. The film features numerous clips of the christians making fairly totalitarian statements about controlling the law of the land by using their voting block to sway elections and their children to sway peoples’ hearts. It also seemed like the film-makers wanted the viewer to see the evangelicals as a bit extreme, and with silly spiritual rituals or beliefs – there were many clips of speaking-in-tongues, singing, laying on of hands, etc.

“The God Who Wasn’t There” is a documentary/commentary film by an atheist that discusses some history related to the timing of the writing of various parts of the Bible, interpretation of the Bible, and his personal education in a private christian elementary school.

My impression: The atheist is antagonistic towards fundamentalist christians and thinks their beliefs are untenable by the standard of historical evidence, thinks moderate christians should be fundamentalists (they’re liberal ideas about interpretation are just silly), and feels the school he attended was wrong in indoctrinating / forcing the children to believe in christianity if the principal admits to the possiblity of being wrong about his choice of the ‘correct’ religion.

“Expelled” tries to make the case that the ‘Intelligent Design’ movement is being unfairly kept out of school curricula because of a sheer bias by the academic community towards naturalism / evolutionary / darwinist thought.

My impression: The film-makers viewed “Big Science” as an academic establishment based upon atheistic/anti-religious values that is bent on supporting evolution being taught in schools regardless of scientific evidence that supports or is contrarian to this theory. This view is supported by interviews with various scholars who prop up the idea that the ID movement is a generally persecuted by “Big Science” for bad reasons – e.g., scientists are too narrow-minded with their set-in-stone ideologies to allow for other possible theories to even be evaluated by the scientific establishment. The film also strongly implied that science leads to a society with a moral vacuum, whereas religion brings people to God and helps them to play nice with each other.

Notes on projects: Switches, Cheap Flamable substances, and Power Supplies

I’ve been working on a lot of projects lately that interweave a fair amount with my work. These are some notes on ideas/designs for some things I will be building in short order, as well as generally useful information for procuring materials on the cheap related to these projects.

Flash Circuit Spark Gap, High Voltage Pulse Supply for a Coil Gun

There are a lot of things you can do with the flash circuit from a camera, since it functions as a charging unit for a 330V 120-150 microfarad capacitor, as well as provides a 3rd high potential electrode for creating a spark gap (which is usually a xenon tube, but if the other two electrodes from the capacitor are closer together, it can go through air as well).

Buying a disposable camera for $4 is probably the most convenient option for getting these circuits, however that starts to add up if you’re experimenting with several or want to put some in parallel for more power. The main advantage to using disposable cameras is that you would get a uniforml, exactly the same circuit every time that you would know how to hook up, as well as a camera enclosure that is easy to take apart.

I’ve read suggestions on various websites that say you should go to a film developing shop and ask nicely, and they may give you the used electronics minus the film they developed for free. However, the three places I went to all refused – even when I offered to pay for them at less than the cost per unit of getting a brand new camera.

Since I’m something of a cheapskate/thriftshopper, I went to my local St. Vincent DePaul’s thrift store and a few Deseret Industries stores and found plenty of flash cameras priced for $1 a piece. I’ve taken apart about 6 of these so far, and each one is a pain in the ass. They all have different placements of screws, use waaay too many tiny screws that are wound in there pretty tight (I had to use some Leatherman pliers and a precision screw driver to get some of them to even start to come out), and some of the cameras have some fancy features related to focusing, red-eye reduction, etc. that means you will find a a few big circuit boards inside that are rather complicated looking. The flash circuit itself is fairly simple and doesn’t take up much space, and sometimes it is on it’s own PCB and can be cut off from the rest. The bare circuit pictured above had two other small PCBs attached and was thankfully pretty simple to figure out. You’re best bet for finding cameras with simple circuits inside is to avoid ones with lots of features (variable ISO, any sort of automatic focus, etc.). Focus free cameras are a good bet. They will sometimes have a motor inside for winding the film, but this circuit is easily disconnected and ancillary to the main circuit board that powers the flash. Just make sure you test out the camera before hand to make sure the flash works (all the cameras I’ve run into don’t need any film in them to do so), and take it apart slowly and observe what the various external buttons and switches do internally to trigger things. If you do this while taking it apart, it’s a lot easier to figure out what wires to cross or put switches on later in an enclosure.

The nice thing about these $1 cameras is that, although they are harder to take apart, they often contain a lot of extra components that you can use later – small DC motors, LEDs, switches or brush contacts, small plastic lenses, and photodiodes.

Spark Gaps

As an atmospheric air spark gap circuit, you can generally get a good zap that can easily scare the shit out of me when I’m not expecting it, and even when I am sometimes. The good thing about such a spark is that it can reliably ignite vapors of alcohol! At work, we’ve been working on a large potato gun that has had trouble firing when we use a BBQ piezoelectric sparker on a long cord (for the safety of the guy with the trigger.. you don’t want to be anywhere near this potato gun when it goes off).

The main problem with using this circuit for an igniter is that you must make absolutely sure there is sufficient spacing between any high voltage wiring, otherwise there will be invisible sparks inside the launching circuit or along the 3+ ft. cable that goes to the spark gap inside the potato gun. However, the piezoelectric igniter only makes a small spark, and corrosion of the electrodes makes it even weaker every time, leading to an unreliable ignition when you push the button. This is partly why I wanted to build this spark gap – it should make a very good igniter for any combustion chamber we can hook it up to.

At first I wanted to use a standard 3-prong extension cord to connect the flash circuit enclosure to the endcap of the potato gun, which has the spark gap built in; however, this did not work. My guess is that the 3rd high potential electrode sparks to one of the other electrodes somewhere along the line before it reaches the spark gap. Using short alligator clip wires from Radioshack worked perfectly fine, so it would appear that there needs to be a bit more insulation for that wire in whatever cable you make, or you need to have it run along a separate cable that can hang freely away from the other two wires that are connected directly to the 330V capacitor. In a prototype I made, the 330V lines run along some speaker wire with thick clear plastic insulation, and the high potential line is connected to a 3rd red wire with similarly thick insulation that is allowed to hang a bit away from the speaker wire. This has worked with mixed success, though the prototype circuit was a bit banged up by this point and wasn’t working that reliably with short wires anyway, so I will have to do some further testing with this.

Coil guns

The circuit can also be used as a power supply for a pulse of high voltage current for a small coil gun. There are several instructables on making such devices, so I will not repeat this information here, however there are a few design considerations for using the same circuit that I’ve been considering.

First is that a coil gun device only uses the capacitor’s electrodes, and there is an immediate problem with this: discharging the device. From what I’ve been reading, and from personal experience, it is probably a bad idea to use a standard small on/off switch on one of the wires connecting the capacitor to the coil, since the sudden high voltage and current is likely to do some welding inside the switch. This requires something a bit different – a relay of some sort where switch contacts come together by a trigger that uses mechanical or electromagnetic means.

Since I prefer to avoid mechanical parts due to the fact that they wear out sooner, I started looking for options. Here’s what I found:

Reed Relays: uses an coil of wire that creates a magnetic field that will either close or open a reed switch (two ferromagnetic contacts inside a hermetically sealed tube). The main consideration here is whether or not you want to have to power a switch as well as the main circuit. If the voltage for powering the circuit happens to match the relay’s coil voltage (the voltage needed to close/open the switch), then this works out just dandy. Of course, this type of switch also necessitates having an extra on/off or momentary switch for the power supply of the reed relay itself.

I found a 5V 0.5A reed relay at Radioshack for $2. The flash circuit I’m using is powered by 3V, so hopefully that spec is a bit off and the reed relay can be triggered by a bit lower voltage. If not, I can just use it for some other project.

Magnetic Reed Switch: This is a reed switch that is triggered when a magnet is placed near it. It’s a bit simpler solution than the electomagnetic alternative since it doesn’t require it’s own power source to work and you can use anything from a ceramic magnet that’s right next to the switch to a neodymium magnet that’s capable of turning on the switch from several centimeters away. I happened to find an LED light intended for drawers that has a default-closed magnetic reed switch inside it. By placing the “magnetic sensor” right next to it on some part of the drawer that will move, when you open the drawer the LED will turn on automatically. I plan on taking it apart and seeing if this circuit can be used as a switch for my higher voltage application. Since I don’t know the specs for the components involved, it’s possible I could fry it, but considering I got it for $1 at Dollar Tree, I’m not too concerned about this.

Resistance Switch : This kind of switch is something I’ve always thought was really cool. You can convert a wall-powered lamp’s metal body into a capacitance switch using a kit that costs about $20 at Ace Hardware – i.e., to expensive for this project. However, I found a small desk resistance switch light with 2 small orb electrodes sticking out at Goodwill today for $2, so I grabbed it. Hopefully this circuit can be used for this type of application as well. We’ll see. I’m not sure how I’ll find more of them, but I sure hope there’s some store online that sells them for cheap because I’ll probably buy a few more if they only cost $5-6.

My hope for this type of switching system is that the switch itself works as an isolated electrical relay, so touching those resistance electrodes doesn’t mean I’ll be shocking myself if I hook up the switching mechanism to something with more than the fairly harmless voltage of a small lightbulb (3-6V).

Power Supplies

Of course, these projects are convenient because they can be run off of batteries – a low voltage, low drain application. But wouldn’t it be better if you could plug it into the wall if you were doing a lot of testing, or you happen to be using it indoors more than out?

Personally, I’d like to make mine to last, and something that can be powered by battery for portable use and wall-power if it’s going to be used indoors much for personal entertainment. So, I started looking around for some AC-to-DC power supplies (wall-warts) that were the appropriate voltages and currents. At Radioshack, most of the standard power supplies will run you about $16-$20 depending on voltage, amperage, or if you get a variable voltage power supply. This is kind’ve steep, so I started looking in thrift stores. I discovered that most cell-phone chargers are 3.7V 700mA power supplies, and a few are 5V 700mA. Also, Deseret Industries has a lot of electronics that are really underpriced for their actual value. I found a few 3, 4.5, 6, and 9V Radioshack branded, in-the-original-box power supplies for $2 each. Since I only really needed 3V for this and 6V for another project, this is what I grabbed.

The one thing that is unfortunate about using standard power plugs/jacks for this is that unless you happen to find an adaptaplug for your radioshack power supply in a thrift store, you’re stuck with buying them individually for $6 a piece or $14 for a set of four. I bit the bullet and bought a size M adapter for a $2 port (also at radioshack) that I could integrate into an enclosure for the circuit.

For another project involving speakers, I’ve been looking for a 12V 3A power supply to be used for the amp system. I already have a fairly nice stereo system that uses this type of adapter, and when I plugged the adapter into some amplified computer speakers I found at the Idaho Youth Ranch, it actually worked fairly well, so I figured I should find another power supply using these specs if I were to have an independent system for taking places. Before noticing that I needed 3A, I bought a 12V 900mA DC power supply at Idaho Youth Ranch for $2. This didn’t provide sufficient power to the amplified speaker system I bought for $4 there, so I kept looking. I stopped by an estate sale yesterday and happened to find an electric train track 12V 2A DC power supply for $5, and grabbed it. When I got home and tested it with a multimeter while it was plugged in, I found that it actually produced about 19V, with a knob for varying the amperage. It’s rated for 2A, but I was able to turn it up to about 5A before the Overload indicator turned on and there was an immediate drop in current. Since this thing is fairly ancient and starts to heat up after a few minutes, my guess is that it’s probably a good idea to not stray too far from the 2A on the box, but I think it could conceivably put out 3A for a while. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I want to hook it up to my speaker system for fear of frying some part of the amplifier circuits or otherwise damaging them by putting through too much voltage. So, I will have to keep looking for a 12V 3A supply or perhaps use a high wattage resistor to lower the voltage drop across the speaker system. I’m not sure if this would work since I don’t know much about electronics, but given that’s what is usually done to change the voltage drop across an LED hooked up to batteries that are higher voltage than what the LED is rated for, I’d guess this would work. Not sure, but I also I don’t have a high wattage resistor for trying this out.

Back to the flames…

As a sidenote, I’ve been looking into some cheap sources of flammable stuff for igniting. Butane lighter refill canisters are a good option, or even butane lighters – the gas can be pretty easily trapped in bubble solution or soapy films. It’s pretty fun to light that stuff inside a cheap wine glass with a lighter – the flame is fairly impressive.

Alcohol isn’t too hard to come by either though. I found a bottle of rubbing alcohol that is 50% ethyl alcohol at a Family Dollar yesterday. I also found some gel hand sanitizer that is 62% ethyl alcohol. The gel lights on fire pretty easily with a lighter, but I’m not yet sure whether it can be lit by a spark gap. We shall see! Either way, it is fun stuff to play with. A glob of it on a metal plate will burn down to a small amount of watery residue in a few minutes. The flame is mostly blue, so I think it is burning very efficiently and produces a fair amount of heat – I could easily burn my hand just holding it a foot above the small flame.

Another Sidenote on Unreliable Spark Gap Igniters: Use Matches

I’ve been working on some prototype spark gap igniters with the flash circuit in simple push light enclosures (the kind that look like a big staples “Easy” button) that can be easily had for a $1 at a thrift store or dollar store. It takes some modding, but it can be done. Best of all, the button for the light can be turned into the ignition switch! It kind’ve has a cheesy, cheaply made feel to it but the switch inside is quite reliable. Just be sure to exchange the switch for a momentary rather than the on/off kind typically in there.

In any case, as I was working with flash circuits and trying to put them inside one of these push lights, the first couple circuits got a bit banged up while I was figuring out the wiring and learning how to solder these things up. They were still capable of producing a smaller spark, but they just don’t do as well as a circuit that hasn’t been messed with quite as much. I’m not going to take the time to rework these and make sure there aren’t any shorts and such, but to get it to at least work for the purposes of lighting some alcohol in an ignition chamber, there is a simple solution: rub off some of the phosphorous from matchheads onto the spark gap electrodes. While the spark isn’t quite as big anymore, it does seem to be enough to ignite the matchhead stuff, which in turn is easily enough to light some alcohol vapors. This trick may be useful for a spark gap using a standard piezoelectric voltage source as well. It requires a bit more work than just having a reliable battery powered circuit, but if that’s what you’ve got and you need a solution in a pinch, this one seems to work fairly well.

Gloating: My New LG Rumor, Samsung SyncMaster 2253LW

Well, last week’s been better than Christmas!

Marvin (a friend of my Dad’s from way back) bought me a Samsung SyncMaster2253LW LCD! It’s wonderful. 21.6″, 8000:1 contrast, 2ms response… I’m lovin’ it! Watched a movie and quite a few Star Trek TNG episodes on it already :). Now that I’ve got a big external screen to use, I broke out the old Black Friday $20 after rebate Logitech RF keyboard/mouse combo that I had in a storage box. No need to use an RF mouse (already have a bluetooth one that connects automatically that’s convenient for travel as well), but having the wireless keyboard and big display is very nice since it has media controls (volume, mute, etc.) and launch buttons.

Plus, since I’ve waited patiently for 2 years, Sprint gave me a $150 credit towards a new phone. I got the LG Rumor for about $50 after the credits and rebates. It has a slide-out qwerty pad that makes texting soooo much easier. I’d say the only failing of this phone is not having the bluetooth A2P profile for mp3 compressed stereo streaming audio. It supports mp3’s and a bevy of other formats that you can store on a microSD card in the phone and use it as an mp3 player. If it had that bluetooth profile, I probably would. Otherwise, may as well stick to my Creative Zen V Plus that I already have for wired listening.. But, I still love this phone! It’s pretty slim for having a slide out keyboard, and the interface is fairly nice. I love texting on it. It’s really just an excuse to use twitter that much more now that tapping out my status won’t take for $*(#ing ever using T9, which I was never that quick with.

So, after all this gifting/buying frenzy, I had to buy a microSD card for the phone, which I did at buy.com since they had a sale on a combo package with mini- and -SD and -USB adapters. I’m not sure what I’ll use it for – maybe just storing pictures of the people in my contacts book. And probably the “Red Alert” klaxon sound from Star Trek for my ring tone ;).

I also bought a 4gb Kingmax superstick so that I could make one of those shredded USB cord flash drives. I plan on putting a portable linux environment on it. Probably Puppylinux, since Marvin recommended it – apparently it was designed to be run off of a flash drive and to minimize writing to the flash in order to extend the drive’s useful life.

 

In other news, since I finally have an external monitor of some sort, I can finally work on getting my old 800Mhz desktop running again to maybe function as an internet-accessible fileserver for my external HDDs. I ordered a USB WiFi card for it a while back that came in the mail a few days ago. I assumed that it had an integrated graphics card, but upon further inspection, found out this was not the case. Ugh. @*()!ing ugh. Now I have to scrounge up a video card from somewhere to get this thing running. Maybe I can ask for one from my Dad – I’m sure he’s got a few spares somewhere.

Things are certainly looking up! My room’s finally coming together and I’ve got a well put together entertainment system with loads of media. Now, to find someone to share it with. :)

Origins of Sexuality & Moral Stances

I just read a few days ago another article by Greta Christina that I couldn’t help but comment on. It’s another one of those essays that eloquently puts into words a lot of meaty argument that I’m generally not good at expressing myself.

Here it is: Born or Learned? Sexuality, Science, and Party Lines

I will make the tacit assumption that you, the reader, are familiar with the typical problems associated with this question: Is sexuality innate (genetic) or environmental (pre-natal conditioning / variation in genetic expression during basic development + how the child is raised)?

I liked this article because it elaborates some basic points that I’ve agreed with for a while now:

• The origins of sexuality is an interesting scientific question.
• The answer(s) to this question are completely irrelevant to any discussion regarding equality of rights / civil status of queers in society.

Why do these two statements have nothing to do with each other though? Well, because we’re human. And we live in a secular society. It’s really a simple matter of human rights.

However, others beg to differ, and this is where the rub comes in. The reason others differ in this respect is because they are not a-ok with the idea of sexuality other than straight-and-narrow-minded. When queerness is viewed as a problem, rather than an incidental characteristic, then it can’t be viewed as a civil rights issue. If it had such a status, it would imply that such a characteristic were tolerated, or even, *gasp*, valued.

I think this is really where the battle lies. Because, after all, finding out that, say, gay parents are more likely to have gay kids, wouldn’t matter – nobody would care. Nonetheless, studies show that kids seem to turn out gay/straight at the same rate regardless of whether they have gay/straight parents. While an interesting fact, this is a non-issue in politics if queerness is acceptable.

It seems that on a baseline, this issue is not really about fighting religious dogma. It is more about easing the sociologically narrow-minded into the idea of queerness, but only queers that marry as virgins and stay together *forever*, just like straight people. We just happen to like the same gender. After that, ease into the idea of plural marriage. Or polyamory, or sex before marriage. Yep, it’s a moral slip-n-slide. It just takes time. I can understand the resistance of the social conservatives – it would mean they’d actually have to change their values! It seems like the word conservative almost universally means holding stoically to a (possibly ancient) arbitrary code of values. Perhaps not so arbitary sometimes.. after all, the Ten commandments *is* the perfect basis for a legal system… it covers all the bases. (*wink*)

Some Results, Finally!

I’m happy! I got to do some *science* today! Here’s the story:

I’ve been working with various people in the ISU SPS chapter on a solar panel research project for about a year and a half now, and we finally have some data to analyze! This project has been plagued with various institutional/procedural/equipment failure hang-ups that have kept us from getting anything done for months now, so it’s nice to see some numbers finally.

The basic idea behind it is to measure the atmospheric optical thickness by analyzing a full 24-hour cycle of the current output of a solar cell. In order to normalize the data, we have to calculate the vector normal to the surface of the solar panel and the vector position of the sun relative to the earth’s surface in order to figure out the sensor acceptance at different times of the day. This involves applying some Calc III and trig techniques that I learned last semester, which is pretty exciting since a lot of the stuff I (and students in general) learn in college doesn’t get to be used right away.

In any case, the professor that has been consulting with us on the project had a meeting with me and a friend today and told us a bit about sensor acceptance and the math involved, and sketched a graph of what the relationship should probably be for our solar panel. Lo and behold, when I got through inputting all the algorithms in excel to calculate it, the graph looked markedly similar to what he had predicted! This is probably super-nerdy to anyone outside of science, but for me it’s a rather exciting thing to have semi-crap data (we’ve had problems with cloud cover interfering) to play with and actually get some good results with the data analysis.

Check it out!

This is a full day’s cycle – sunrise to sunset with each data point a minute apart. The y-axis is computed as the current (I) divided by the cosine of the angle between the normal vector of the photovoltaic and the sun’s vector position – I/cos(theta).

Something Destructive!

The Idaho State University Society of Physics Students (ISU SPS) chapter did “Something Destructive” on Wednesday of this week (03-05-08). A legacy activity of the club that we decided to revive this year started off by soaking various things in liquid oxygen and then lighting them on fire!

I happened to have my Powershot A620 handy, so I took some footage. Check it out!

Here it is, edited down to the length of a Singing Science Records song “What is Chemical Energy?”:

Footage cut down to just before Dr. Steve lit something up (no music):

The uncut footage (several lulls/slightly boring parts between soaking something and lighting it):

My personal favorite is the unsuspecting care bear that went up in flames in about 0.2 seconds… ;)

Why is the Supernatural assumed to be Omnipotent?

I had a thought last night: why is it that the liberal christian explains God as a unifying force of the universe, and this is how he is omnipotent/present/scient? Why do we assume that something “super”-natural is necessarily powerful in our world, that such a thing is capable of large-scale effects?

Maybe this is just my own mistaken assumption of how the supernatural is usually thought about by religious folk. I should wonder what it would be like to have a religion where we believed in unseen forces of spirits that had as much power as a human being, and, perhaps, mortal in their own way as well – just existing in some in-between dimensional brane that makes them impossible to detect yet possible for them to interact with our universe?

Perhaps this is what the older pagan religions were really like. Spirits and gods fighting amongst each other, hierarchies and internal social orders of their own. And then came along Abraham, with a monotheistic religion that seems to be so attractive compared to this alternative for some reason… that I really can’t imagine. This puzzles me…

… and a healthy libido a plus!

Context: Greta’s article on the importance of your partner having a matching libido and expectations about sex.

Commentary: This is one of those articles where I almost constantly thought while reading it, “Gee, this is exactly what I think, I just haven’t been able to articulate it so clearly before!”

Anyway, the two basic premises that I completely agree with:

1) Waiting until marriage, or otherwise a very long time to have sex with someone that you want to be in an long term relationship with is probably a bad idea.

2) Waiting is not necessarily more “virtuous” than not waiting. Having sex within the first few weeks of a relationship isn’t a matter of promiscuity, it simply admits humans’ general horniness.. not to mention that finding out how well your sexual chemistry works with the other person is important if the relationship is to last in more than a platonic manner.

I think it is rather interesting that we have this almost universally held idea that anyone who wants sex early in a relationship is somehow a whore. Why is that? Isn’t it possible that someone could be interested in both your mind and body? Isn’t that the point of being more than platonic?

5 Unconvincing arguments against the Christian God

Ted @ notablogtm.com posted a list of bad arguments used by atheists against the christian version of God, similar to the list written by August Berkshire of bad arguments used by theists for God (PDF).

I love this kind of commentary that critiques our own ability to argue a point in the atheist-theist dialogue because it is rare and, in this case, poignant and useful. The list of arguments and accompanying analysis, however, only covers 5 main points.. and I’m sure there are more to be made if we were to sit down and try to write a comprehensive list that generalizes to all religions + pseudoscience + general superstition, etc. I think it would be an interesting project that atheists/theists could work on together that would really improve the quality of this conversation. It’d be nice to avoid rehashing old exchanges that led nowhere in the first place.

I’ll have to start thinking about what needs to be added to this list.

Sturgeon’s Law, Plausibility of Religious Stories, And Why I’m an Agnostic/Atheist

A momentary lament: I suck at writing introductions to what are essentially rants about religion and atheism. I pretty much write what I’m thinking as I go along, so there is no intended structure to this, nor an ultimate point sometimes. I’m just trying to get these thoughts in my head out in the world so new ones can fill in. I certainly wish the writing could be better, but I hope of what I write that at least someone will find it insightful and interesting…

I watch a lot of atheist vs. theist debates (via youtube or otherwise), and I’ve seen various cards pulled by both sides that are somewhat vacuous, or at least don’t have much visible, developed meat behind them (e.g., I hear the line… and it’s a good thought, but the thought is never developed further).

One of these lines is the Christian retort that being religious does not necessarily imply that a person is irrational. Or at least, they aren’t making an irrational decision to believe in their particular religion (they may be highly irrational in other areas of their life.. since we can all compartmentalize quite easily.. atheists do this too). In other words,They believe in their religion for perfectly rational, good reasons that convinced them. Shouldn’t they convince me too then?

I’m not really convinced of this idea that belief in a religion can be rational. But somehow, it seems wrong and insulting to say that all religious people are irrational in their belief. Nonetheless, I find the idea of a virgin birth or resurrection to be, frankly, ridiculous. I have no compulsion to respect someone’s belief in this, or other miracles. Occam’s razor quite easily excludes them from rationality. I’m not interested in the debate that easily ensues from this line of conversation however – what is good historical evidence, why one should believe writings that are 2000 years old and have been badly translated along the way, etc.., because it requires a vast amount of expertise in a broad array of historical information and analsyis and the debates that still rage over small phrases and quotes. It ends up being a hair-splitting contest that goes nowhere.

However, there are a few Christians who are willing to concede the point of historical accuracy or literalism, and are capable of discussing the more important metaphysical and sociological consequences. I can have a more interesting discussion about metaphors, theology, or why they even really believe in Christianity in particular… I consider them to be the real intellectuals of Christianity that deserve respect, because they face the fact that to anyone outside their religion, the evidence is really quite poor for a solid foundation of belief in their religion involving true supernatural intervention by God.

This type of Christian is rare, and as a consequence Sturgeon’s Law applies to the Atheist-Christian conversation going on: around 99% are about establishing the basic factual crap that should be resolved in 5 minutes with a literate, thinking person. About 1% is actually spent talking about the more interesting metaphysics. I think it’s disappointing that we remain at this level of sophistication in our debate, that we must still battle the idea that 2 millenia ago God incarnate came to earth to save us from ourselves by letting us murder him.

This also brings me to plausibility analysis of stories we tell. I’ve always found it to be a fun mind game to think more about the general plausibility of various aspects of religious stories in order to evaluate their truth content, as an alternative studying where the text came from, what original copies, we have, etc. etc.. mostly because this can all be done by thinking, and I’ve got plenty of spare processor cycles ;).

It makes me wonder why anyone really believes in the Adam & Eve / Garden of Eden story. I’ve hashed this out a few times before in a manner that could be rebutted rather easily (implausibility doesn’t necessarily mean disproof of a story’s historical accuracy, after all). It just seems inscrutable to me that someone could simultaneously believe in the “loving, caring, kind, fatherly” type God and that Eve *really* did eat that apple even though it obviously wasn’t in her best interest. Any way you hash it as far as how innocent she was (e.g., didn’t know what it would do), or whether she knew what would happen, God ends up being a rather cruel bastard overlord given our current situation.

It also makes me question God’s method of bring us back into his fold. Why couldn’t he have forgiven Adam and Eve, or perhaps allowed them to feel the consequences (child-birth pain, weeds, mosquitos, disease, injury, etc.) for a few years, and grant them the mercy to go back into Eden? Why the millenia of suffering and pain of generations of people who never did anything wrong but be the descendents of two phenomenally stupid humans? It makes me question the very humanity of Adam and Eve, and the very humaneness of God. Where is his infinite mercy? Why are there all these weird rules about how he can forgive us, and heal us of the wound we brought upon ourselves?

All these theoreticals I can play out in my mind quite easily… mindgames of pretend, of hypothetical cause and consequence predictions are something I have been playing out since I was a kid… a hobby of sorts. Of all the things that possibly could, I believe it is my imagination that has made me an atheist of the Christian God. He would seem to be a psychotic if He were real. And I have never had reason to think there is something supernatural to the world that matched with christianity, or any other religion… so I remain, fundamentally, an agnostic of spirituality. I simply don’t know how to explore this realm while holding onto rationality.