Me and Richard Dawkins

In the background signing books is renowned scientist Richard Dawkins (I'm in the center foreground). I think Richard Dawkins constitutes the perfect specimen of an intellectual, because he:

1. is brilliant
2. is a gentleman
3. has a great sense of humor
4. has a really crisp British accent

I really admire the guy.

Anchoring

A fascinating psychological phenomenon: Anchoring.

Base

My computer in my dorm is my base. Whenever I'm in my room without having decided exactly what to do next, I get in my computer and see what's up -- email, AIM, Facebook, reddit.com, my Google RSS feed aggregator, and my bittorrent downloads. Even though I'm on the computer more than average, I know most of the people I know have this "base" relationship with their computers.

What I'm wondering is, did people had an analogous base state in their homes before computers became ubiquitous? I guess in the last century it was in front of the TV. Before that, in front of the radio? In the easy chair with a newspaper? At the desk with a pen and paper?

I guess without an incredibly entertaining way to idle, people kind of had to move from one task to another. The "base" thing may be an unprecedented transformation of the American lifestyle.

Queerer Than We Suppose

Here is a video of a brilliant talk by Richard Dawkins entitled "Queerer Than We Suppose: The Strangeness of Science". Very good stuff.

Human Pheromones

I remember my introductory biology textbook said that the existence of human pheromones was still basically a mystery. Now researchers at Penn State claim that fathers emit pheremones that hold off their daughters' sexual maturity!

Read the article - it's pretty fascinating.

Atheism and Morality Revisited

I wrote some quick thoughts on this once, but here's a post that really nails it.

Piano

I've been playing piano for two years. I don't take lessons, I just practice harder and harder pieces, and I'm reading some of the theory as well. I practice regularly and quite a lot. I've consistently put in four hours a week, so by now I've had over 400 hours of practice.



The main thoughts I have about playing piano are:

• It's fun to play good music. I don't know why I can't get the same enjoyment from a good recording that I can from playing it. It seems a little irrational.
• It's really fun, and I have no trouble practicing consistently. I don't exercise nearly as regularly as I'd want to, or even read music theory that much, but I practice plenty. It's cool to have a random skill that's constantly developing like that.
• A lot of the best music I've heard is still too hard for me. Here are some targets I am shooting for in the next few years:
  • Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue (an advanced piano adaption)
  • Beethoven - Eroica Symphony, 1st movement (piano adaption by Liszt)
  • Chopin - Scherzo in Bb Minor
  • Chopin - Impromptu Fantasie
  • Bach - Well Tempered Clavier Book 2, Prelude #6

Incidentally, I am moving out of my apartment tomorrow, moving out of the bay area on Sept 10, and going back to UCI on Sept 20.

Bush is a Moron

During the 2004 election season, there was this idea that President Bush isn't as dumb as his words, actions and policies. It seemed plausible that Bush's image as an imbecile might be a misleading one.

Today I saw two pieces of evidence that helped me to finally make up my mind:
What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference! (Slate)
Your President, the Visionary Genius (Huffington Post)

I am forced to believe that the man is clearly too stupid to be the president. He is simply unqualified and incompetent. It really is that simple.

Biological Tape Recorder

This bird is an almost perfect biological tape recorder. Amazing.

God Is Imaginary

I must post this link to a new spinoff website by Marshall Brain: God Is Imaginary.

Atheism and Morality

I would like to resolve the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that atheists are often the most moral people you'll ever meet.

I am an atheist, but I have moral ideals for how society should function. The one I consider most fundamental is the assumption that the same moral ideals should apply to all humans.

Since I want society to function well, I make an effort to embody the same ideals I expect in others. I don't believe there is a "higher" meaning to life, I think we humans create our own. Improving society is a pursuit that I find worthwhile to pursue on this earth, and as a result I feel good about myself when I do my part by being a good person.

One interesting thing to consider is that it's always the religious people who accuse the atheists of not having real morals. But the reality is, when an atheist like me decides to act morally, it is out of pure idealism. When a religious person acts morally, they expect to get a reward from it -- heaven, karma, a better relationship with God, whatever.

So, it is really the atheists who have the upper hand on the morality issue!

Loose grip on reality

If you are not a scientist and you completely disagree with a fundamental theory of modern science, chances are you have what I call a loose grip on reality. I think the epitome of a modern loose-gripper is the young-earth creationist. Let's compare him with his historical analogue.

Yes, it's scary how many parallels you can draw between today's young-earth creationists, and the geocentric nuts of the 1600s. Consider:

1. How do you know the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa?


2. How do you know the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and not 6,000?

Which question do you think you can answer better? My guess is that most young-earth creationists have no idea how we know the earth revolves around the sun. And yet, everyone accepts this as fact. Why? Probably because their church gave up on fighting it!

Of course the earth's place in the universe is central to modern astronomy, so to speak. But then again, the earth's age is fundamental to modern geology, paleontology, molecular biology, dendrochronology, genomics, physical anthropology, astronomy, physics and archaeology, amongst other sciences. And that is why I think young-earth creationists have a loose grip on reality.

Visual Basic Self-Replicator

I am reading Introduction to the Theory of Computation. In the chapter about advanced topics in computability theory, it mentioned a technique for building a self-replicating Turing machine (a Turing machine that writes its own description on its tape). I have implemented this basic technique to write a self-replicating program using Visual Basic 6 (a program that outputs its own code). [In the form designer, create one TextBox called Text1 and set its Multiline property to True.]

Private Sub Form_Load(): Text1.Text = "Private Sub X(): Text1.Text = ""Private Sub Form_Load(): Text1.Text = """""" + Replace(Text1.Text, """""""", """""""""""") + """""": X: End Sub"" + vbCrLf + vbCrLf + Text1.Text: End Sub": X: End Sub

Private Sub X(): Text1.Text = "Private Sub Form_Load(): Text1.Text = """ + Replace(Text1.Text, """", """""") + """: X: End Sub" + vbCrLf + vbCrLf + Text1.Text: End Sub

Here is a rough overview of how it works. X() is just a subroutine to take the contents of Text1, and output the code for a Form_Load function that would write those contents to Text1, followed by a blank line, followed by the previous contents of Text1. Form_Load() is the block that executes first. It simply transcribes the code of X() into Text1, then calls X(). I have a hard time keeping this all in my head at once.

This took me an hour to write, and had many more complications than I expected. It was difficult to accurately reproduce the double-quote character (") as it is used in the code. The syntax for escaping the double-quote in a string literal is to write two consecutive double quotes (""). Notice that at one point, I have written twelve consecutive double-quote characters. That was probably the highlight.

Whistling

Here is another dorm observation: a lot of people in my dorm whistle a lot. They whistle loudly and for a long time. But there is no tune! They are whistling musical gibberish. And it's pretty annoying. What the hell?

Quadratic Formula

ax^2 + bx + c = 0
Solve for x.

Obviously, x is equal to the quadratic formula. Can you derive it? Hint: the most important technique is completing the square.

The quadratic formula is fundamental for even the most basic algebra, and it only takes five or ten steps to derive. I think it should be on any high school algebra final exam.

Hair Dryers

I hate hair dryers so much! They make a terribly loud and annoying noise for about two minutes straight, and piss off dorm-mates like me. The point of all that is drying your hair? Are you kidding me? You can dry your hair with a towel. It's fine, really. Why do these things sell? A hair dryer is basically a rube goldberg for drying your hair.

Some asshole in my hall has been drying his or her hair since before I started writing this post. Fucking unbelievable.

Learning can be fun

Look at these fascinating facts about the 1500s.

Two ears and one mouth

"Listening is more important than talking. That is why God has given us two ears and only one mouth."

So what's the alternative, one ear and two mouths? It makes sense that two ears were naturally selected because they allow our brain to triangulate the location of a sound source. There is no significant advantage a second mouth would offer that would compensate for the complexity of maintaining it.

I don't think it should be socially acceptable to spout those stupid cliches about how your anatomy supposedly corresponds to God's will. What kind of a sick joke would that be?

Argument from Design

Does anyone else think it's ridiculous that creationists are still using the argument from design? I believe the person who first invalidated that argument was... Charles Darwin!

I'm guessing the conversation must have gone something like this:

Creationist: Look at all this complex life around us. It was clearly designed by an intelligent designer. There is simply no other conceivable way!
Darwin: Actually, I've thought of one, because I am brilliant. I submit that complexity can emerge from the passive process of random mutation and natural selection, given sufficient time.
Creationist: Uh huh, I see... interesting.
Creationist: Soooooooooo, how do you explain the fact that the organisms we see around us are so complex that they could only have come about as the result of an intelligent designer's design?

How can anyone claim that the central argument of ID is a modern development in science!?

Reading off a Screen

I have to read some tedious stuff for Humanities class, both online and off, and I noticed something odd: it's a lot easier for me to read (boring) text from the web than from a physical book. I read so much online, that I'm used to the physical experience of sitting in that position. It's harder for me to stay comfortable and focused reading a book. Case in point: I stopped to write this blog post.

Also, I like scrolling the page up with the mouse more than turning pages. It's all part of my assimilation into the 21st century.