Intuitive Science

Faith

2006-09-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Faith is like dividing by zero, if you divide by zero you can
get any number out of an infinite number of answers.
Likewise, if you use faith, you can justify an infinite
number of beliefs. If by faith you believe in one god,
then there are an infinite number of gods.
The only thing that faith can do, is be one of the memes
in the religious meme complex that is used to avoid the
use of thought and reason.

Last political post

2006-02-23T11:08:00.000-08:00

I've been disgusted lately, yellin' at the T.V. , mumbling to myself,
just plain disgruntled all the time. I'm disgusted with the U.S.
government, disgusted with the media, and disgusted with the
unthinking portion of the American people who support this
administration, no matter what they do.
This administration has been called-out on: torture, selectively
leaking secret material for political purposes, political corruption,
incompetence, and above all, warrantless spying in the U.S. Now,
when we should have the administration on the defensive and
should be working toward impeachment of the president, what
does the media do?, I spends two entire weeks covering totally
meaningless crap. The Dick Cheney accident and the
transfer of port management from one company to another are
not issues of importance. What is important is domestic spying
and the president thumbing his nose at the constitution of the
United States.
The president signed the bill against torture and then promptly
said that he would only follow the law when it suited him. When
he was caught spying in the U.S. with out oversight, he said that,
he would continue to do warentless wire tapes as long as it suited
him. Where is the outcry for impeachment?, It has been covered
up by two weeks of meaningless crap in the news.

Posting on politics is just to aggravating. From now on,
I will do intermittent posts on intuitive science, and leave
the politics to the Rude Pundit.

My next post will be under the category of, the origin of life.

Voice of Reason

2006-02-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was watching the coverage of the Olympics, when a news clip
came on about the muslim rioting over the release of the cartoon
with Muhammad wearing a bomb hat, I suddenly had a thought
that the world would be much better off if there was no religion
at all.
Soon after the news clip, when John Lennon's song "imagine" was
played as part of the opening cerimonies, and the thought fresh
on my mind, I became conscious of the anti-religious message
in the lyrics. I would like to post parts here.

Imagine
by John Lennon:

imagine there's no heaven,
it's easy to do,
no hell below us,
above only sky,

imagine there's no countries,
it isn't hard to do,
nothing to kill or die for,
no religion too,

1776

2006-01-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

I was to blog on my topic number four, but the spying case is still in
the news and I have to speak to the obvious.
President Bush during his back-pedaling news conference yesterday,
stated that FISA was an old and obsolete law, made, way back, in
1976. None of the news people had the sense to point out that the
constitution was written in 1776, and did he think that the
constitution was also outdated?
During their justification of torture, the administration said that
the Geneva convention was quaint and outdated. They, the present
administration must think that all laws pre-911 are outdated and
can be ignored or revised in private.
Does president Bush actually believe he can ignor the constitution
because he, "answers to a higher power"?

He must be impeached to stop this obvious power grab

Brain functions & Bush

2006-01-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

"Bush says U.S. policy on Hamas unchanged" ABC News.

When the Isrialites took the city of Jericho, They killed every:
man, woman, child and all their amimals. If Bush can respect
the Isrialites, he can recognize the government elected by the
Palestinian people.

Why is the brain susceptable to religion?

The brain is seperated into three levels: the lower reptilian brain
that we share with the reptiles, the mid level brain that we share
with the mammals, and the higher cortex which, in its full
development, only humans have. The lowest level controls our
basic drives: sex, thirst, and hunger; the mid-brain provides
emotion and rudimentary social behavior; while the higher cortex
provides logic, language and reason, the human qualities. The
brain has developed from the bottom up, each level intern
developing its own emergent properties.

I think, and this is totally conjecture, that people utilize the
different levels of the brain in varying amounts. If a person uses
pridominately the mid-brain, they will tend toward being selfish,
clannish and more susceptible to the influences of religion. If they
use there higher cortex more they will tend to be more logical,
resonable, and altruistic, while being less susceptible to the
religious meme complex. The fact that all arguments for the
existence of God are fallacious, and that the exceptence of religion
takes an unreasonable denial of reality, points to a dominance
of the mid-brain functions. As for fundamentalist religion,
I think that it has its origin also in the reptilian brain. The
evidence is that they seem to be more concerned with embryos
and a brain-dead woman then they are in hungry and abused
children

There is no God

2006-01-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

I know what you are going to say, "you can't say that", "you can't
say that." I hear that all the time. Well, how I can say that there is
no God?, by the fact that I am a reasonable person.
Jurors in the courts don't have absolute knowledge, the courts use
the test of, what would a reasonable person say or do?
So, I am a reasonable person and I say that the sun will come up
tomorrow and I don't have to say, maybe or probably it will rise.
If the goal of the lotto was to be correct instead of guessing a
particular number, the most logical bet would be to bet that you
will lose when you bet one dollar. The average person who bets
a dollar each week will probably never win the top prise. So a
reasonable person can say that they will never win the lotto.
Now, as to there being a God: there is no evidence, prayer doesn't
work, and according to the laws of physics, nothing can control the
entire universe and effect anything with out an equal and opposite
reaction. Therefore, I will say it again, God does not exist.

That was topic 6 on my list. Tomorrow:
We know religion is a dilusional psychosis and the product of a
meme complex, but why is the brain susceptible to a psychosis or a
meme virus?

Bush spying

2006-01-24T13:11:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in about a month, a lot of personal things
have happened. My mother has passed and an other
relationship is ending. I have been thinking of topics but
haven't bothered to develope them.
I have listed eight topics and hope to post a short comment
on one of these topics each day.

Today is Bush and spying:
I've heard in the news that over 40% of the voters think that
the president has the right to spy, and has done nothing wrong.
I'm wonding what the pole results would be if the question
was stated in terms of: do you think the president ( not
Bush the fundamentalist and anti-abortion president, but
any president) has the right to intercept all communications,
enter spy ware on anyones computer, and look at everyones
personal records, with out reporting what they have done to
the judiciary?
President Bush is thumbing this nose at our constitutional
rights, he is endangering our constitutional form of government
and has put all of our freedoms at risk.
Government without oversight is tyranney, president Bush
should be impeached for this arrogance as will as his crimes.

That was topic three on my list.

To the point

2005-12-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

President Bush is absolutely wrong, If the domestic spying
documentation is not shown too the judiciary for oversight,
what is stopping them from spying on; homosexuals, atheists,
abortion doctors and all Democrats. Oversight protects us
all from dictators. Domestic spying without oversight is a
tool of a secret police force.
George Bush has his right too faith-based religion but
not faith-based government.
The current administration wants:
Faith-based religion
Faith-based charity
Faith-based science
Faith-based government

I don't want any of it.

Weight lifting for old folks

2005-12-07T13:04:00.000-08:00

Today I would like to indulge myself a little by talking about
weight lifting, and bench-pressing in particular.

This Christmas will mark the 50th anniversay of receiving my
first 110 lb set of weights, I was 12 years old then and am
now 62 years old. When I was 52 I bench pressed 240 lb after
some moderate training, ( my best ever was 300 lb at the age of
37) more then moderate training is required when someone is
62, so after 3 months of regular training I had some aching in
my shoulders and could do a single with 215 lb.

(I'm, basically, a 165 lb weight lifter who weighs
180 lb, a little out of shape)

I decided that I had to take a weeks rest and redesign my
program to make it a little more age-appropriate. I rested the
week and came up with, what I think is the best bench press
routine that I've ever seen for old people, and maybe anyone.

Here is the routine and a few concepts behind the training:
Warm up with military presses, French presses, and lateral
raises with very light weights, I do sets of 3 with an
empty Olympic bar, 15 lb dumbells, and 5 lb dumbells.
I also do some work on the lat machine to warm up the
whole shoulder.
Here is the heart of the workout:
Do sets of bench presses with a pause of five breaths
between each set. I do 2 sets of 3, 1 set of 4, and 10 sets
of 6 reps with 100 lb. All sets are done at the some time with
5 breath plauses. The set of 4 is to make the reps come out to
an even 70, which is 7000 lb in all. The Idea here, is that work
makes muscle, remember the football players who work
construction in the summer and the stories of strong men who
delivered ice to homes.
This 7000 lb warm up with a light 100 lb will leave you
with a good pump and ready for only 4 remaining reps.
I do 4 single reps with 20 lb jumps, the last is a negative
rep, or what is known as an eccentric contraction. The
negative rep is done with a weight that is over your
maximum, it is held for a short time then lowered as
slowly as possible to the chest.
I have good safety boxes on each side of the bench, they
catch the weight when I move the bar from my chest
to over my neck at the end of the negative rep.
The height of the boxes is adjusted so I can turn my
head to the side and slid out from under the bar,
the weight remains on the safety boxes and has to
be partially unloaded and the bar placed back on the rack.
Recently I improved my best single to 220 lb, here is
the routine I used on that day:
Light shoulder warm up, 7000 lb work with 100 lb,
1 rep with 180 lb, 200 lb, 220 lb, and a 240 lb negitive.
I finished with 24 reps of 100 lb each and no pause, this
pumps the muscles at the end of the workout.

Finally this routine is done on a 10 day cycle.
Two light workouts with below-maximum attempts, after
two days of rest and a maxumum attempt workout after
three days of rest. The rest is important, you must allways
recuperate and give the muscles time to grow before
the next workout. This is even more important
for old-people like me.

Primitive Pleasure

2005-11-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

I started to think of this post while reading in my "tree-house",
it was once a real tree-house, a 8 foot square, 12 feet high deck,
build under a Texas native pecan tree. The tree’s roots grew and
pushed on the gas service so I had to cut it down, now it’s a deck
in the air with out a tree. From the "tree-house", I could see a
pit-bull two yards over. He was on a back yard trampoline enjoying
the beautiful fall day by rolling over and squirming on his back,
letting the sun warm his belly. An obvious primitive pleasure.
I have a hobby who’s appeal are its primitive pleasures, the hobby
is treasure hunting and I do it every Sunday early and when ever
I’m out and about. I tried a metal detector but it isn’t much fun,
I just walk and see what I can find. Where is the primitive pleasure?
It’s in the searching. Have you ever watched a chicken scratching
for insects or a squirrel searching the grass for pecans, they look
like they enjoying the process. Another pleasure, of course is in
the finding, who likes to go fishing and not catch fish? The final
pleasure, like the dog above, is being out early in the fresh air,
listening to birds and other early morning sounds.
I had a job testing a tank at a fiberglass tank company, maybe, 10
years ago. The company was located in the country near a small
town, about 75 miles west of Houston. We arrived at the tank, to
be tested, early in the morning, the sun was shining and there was
a pleasant cool breeze. I climbed a ladder on the far side of the
tank and looked over into an adjacent pasture, where, I saw a
horse standing alert, facing into the breeze, with a big hard-on.
I got my coworkers attention, motioned toward the horse with my
head and said, wouldn’t you love to be a horse on a day like this?

Ability to Learn

2005-10-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a characteristic people have that hinders their
ability to get an education more than any other thing.
Some People who have never graduated form high school
have it in common with, many people with advanced degrees.
The characteristic is the ability to realize or intuit what
they don't know. What is knowable is vast compared to
what can be known by one person, and the variety of the
universe is incomprehensible.

If you have the time, look in the archives for my world view,
reality, time, infinite direction, Big-bang, ......etc.

Big Book

2005-10-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

I like the feel of a big book in my lap, it reminds me of the Andy
Divine T.V. show 50 years ago. Andy would start the show siting
in a chair with a big book open in his lap, His magic frog would,
"plunk his magic twanger", and the story would start.
This summer I read a big book, a bio-chemistry text book that
was copyrighted in 1995, the book I used when I took bio-chem
in the 70's was probably copyrighted in 1975. (I may be the only
person in the world who, two months from retirement, read an
entire bio-chem test, cover to cover). Much of it read like science
fiction, it has been 25 years since I took bio-chem in collage and
much has changed.I did not read it just to catch up on current
science, I also read it to see how it would change my world view,
as stated in the archives of this blog.
One of the changes was in the ultimate complexity of proteins,
20 raised to the power of the number of amino acids is only part
of the total variation in proteins. Variation is increased by: post
translation modifications, as in glycoproteins, and side chain
additions; also the incorporation of organic molecules and
metallic ions increases the complexity of final conformations.
There was also a reduction in complexity because, two proteins
can have similar conformations and functions with only 20% of
there amino acid sequences being similar. The change that I
enjoyed the most in this newer addition were the many
references to evolution, especially the references to an RNA
world which preceded our present DNA world. One striking
example of self-splicing RNA, was a ribosomal RNA precursor
that could prune and splice itself to its final form.

Well, I’ve started another big book, I’m reading,
Stephen Wolfram’s book "A New Kind of Science", again,
1197 pages in all.

Oak Tree

2005-10-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

I like to sit out front and watch my new oak tree grow.
It’s amazing, it’s grown from a one-year-old twig to an eight
foot tree in only eight months. It was planted in a special planter
by squirrels that live in the yard, the planter was
special because it contained mothers-day flowers that were
given to my wife by a friend of her sons, after the son was
arrested for murder. I cared for the flowers over the next two
years while her son waited trial, because the flowers were
special to her and she can not do anything on a regular basis,
they surly would have died if I had not.
In the fall of the third year, after her son was convicted and
sentenced to 40 years, I convinced my wife to let me plant
the flowers and the one-year-old tree in the front yard.
Over the winter it stood as only a twig with one dormant
terminal bud, but when spring arrived the bud exploded
both vertically and horizontally . I have applied miracle-grow
ever two weeks and watered with rain water or air conditioner
condensate most days sense.
The tree now has gone through at least five growth cycles
with only two major problems. First, the terminal bud did not
form at about the third growth cycle and two lateral limbs formed,
when one of these limbs bifurcated in the some way I cut
it off and pulled the other limb into a vertical position
with a five foot tall stake in the ground. The second problem
happened when a caterpillar ate the terminal bud as the
new leaves started to unfold, I quickly trimmed what was
left and pulled the nearest lateral growth vertical with another
stick attached to the first.
The tree is doing fine now, eight feet tall ready to shed its
leaves for winter. Once it becomes dormant I will trim six
lower limbs so that it will eventually have a trunk at least seven
feet high before the first side limb.
What is the moral to this story?
If you raise children with the same care and training as
a tree they will not end up in prison.

Spider

2005-10-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

I have a crab-back spider at the front of my house that came naturally.
If I don't have one I will move one to the front, but this one just showed
up as a tiny spider and will probably stay for a couple months.
It's big and fat now and has been there about three weeks. They spin
beautiful orb webs early in the morning.
But, this is not the spider that started me thinking about posting today.
I was packing some books, because I may move in the next six months,
when I looked in the front of a book called "Fuzzy Logic" by:
Daniel Mcneill and Paul Freiberger and found a thought followed by my
name written in Japanese characters. It alluded to the fact that I kill
cockroaches in the house but not spiders. As a side comment, I did
work in pest control while attending a tech school fifteen years ago.
For what it's worth, here it is:

Spiders I like- but that does them no good, though I let them in the
house, there food I don't.

Intelligent Design

2005-09-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

Well, intelligent design is in the news again.
What is intelligent design?, I say, something that is designed
intelligently. If you design a car intelligently you should be able
to use it for 10 to 20 years safely without a recall, a baby bed
designed intelligently will be used and will not harm babies.
These people who promote intelligent design say that the earth
and life are evidence of intelligent design.
Are: hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, earthquakes, volcanos and
killer asteroids evidence of intelligent design? Where is the future
safe use?, I think this world is in need of an eminent recall.
But then life is so complicated that it must be the product of
intelligent design. Here we go again: Thousands of genetic disorders,
viruses, prions, pathogenic bacteria, meltal illness, war, hate,
bigotry, need I say more. Life has as many problems as the earth.
You will probably have design problems your entire life.
( I've had a bad back for 45 years)
Obviously there is no evidence here of intelligent design because
there is no evidence of planning for safe future use, and definitely
no evidence of an infallible super being.

Evolution vs ID and Hurricane

2005-09-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting reductio ad absurdum I thought of while
reading a Bio-chemistry book yesterday:

I once read, in an Ecology book, of a species of fish where the
female of the species had to mate with a male of another species
before it could be receptive to a male of its own species.

In an evolutionary world the explanation would be: At some time
in the past this strategy enhanced the survival of this species and
the practice has survived.

In an Intelligent Design world the explanation would be:
The 11th Commandment; Woman, lie ye with thy neighbor and
return receptive to your husband's seed.

A few comments about the hurricane, more latter about the sorry
news media with there defferential reporting and self importance.

Before talking of rebuilding New Orleans talk of protecting
New Orleans. The probability of a category 4 or 5 storm hitting
the city has not changed, it is still the same as it was when the
storm hit. There is no guarantee that another storm will not hit
latter this month.

Fire the levee board, the political hacks said: that the levee is
world class and only broke in two places. This is like a doctor
saying that my patient is fine, only his heart and lungs have
stopped working. One levee brake that floods the city is total
failure.

Mayor should be fired, he said this is a party town. Well party
people are basically not responsible, they need a responsible
mayor and city.

News media think they make news instead of reporting the
news. They were very disappointed when they pointed there
cameras and no one came. They're very spoiled.

First responders and volunteers were GREAT ,
political hacks should be fired.

Religious Insanity

2005-08-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

During the coverage of the hurricane in New Orleans, A reporter
was directed to the side of a church yard to see something special.
The reporter directed the camera to a view of a very large
tree that had fallen and not touched a white statue of Jesus.
Was this coverage suppose to prove the existence of an evil
miniacal God who does over 25 billion dollars in damage, and
kills over a hundred people while at the same time saving
a satue of his son?

These religious people are insane!

You would think, with all the death and distruction, they would
keep the mouths shut.

What's wrong with this?

2005-08-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

I went to Wal*Mart the other day, eggs were 98 cents for a
dozen and half and Miller lite was 4.76 a six-pack.
That means you can buy 7 and one quarter dozen eggs
for the price of one six-pack of beer.

While you are here, have a look at my early acchives.
This site is all about my world view.

The meaning of life?

2005-05-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

Just because a question is asked, does not mean there is an answer.
There is not a one to one correspondence between questions and
answers, some questions do not have answers and some should not
have been asked in the first place. If you do presently exist and
are alive, you have a probability of one of existing and
you should be here, so enjoy your life!

What if?

2005-05-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

The religious right came out to try and save a brain-dead Terry
schiavo and recently tried to save a terminally ill little girl
with leukemia and flesh-eating bacteria in Houston, but what if?
there was a proposal to finance universal health care and really
same lives, would they come out? Hell no!

Fear!

2005-04-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much time to post, busy renovating the house:
refinished some floors, tile on the kitchen floor, removed two
walls and a counter, painted etc...

This morning I was watching CNN, recently the channel of the
Pope, and a story came on about a stain on the wall of an
underpass in Chicago that looks like the Madonna, I suddenly
had a feeling of fear pass over me. Fear of living in a country
with people that ignorant. Haven't they been watching the news
about likenesses of religious icons being sold on Ebay and all the
other Madonnas and Ladies of Guadalupe that seem to regularly
appear? How can something be a miracle when it happens all
the time? Here is a link to Gestalt Psychology, if anyone is
interested in an explanation of these Madonna sitings.

I'll bet, that if any of these people were handed a dollor that
looked like a dollor, as this stain looks like the
Madonna, they wouldn't take it!

The Pope

2005-04-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

John Paul II, I am sure was sincere, and maybe right for the job.
But I can not help but think of the great good that he could
have done in the world, if he had brought birth control to the poor
of in third-world.

Hitchhiker's guide

2005-04-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

"Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy"- the movie- will be coming to
theaters on April 29th.
Douglas Adams not only writes good humor,
but also good intuitive science. I was first introduced to the ideas
of fractals and complexity while watching the British theatrical version
of "Hitchherker Guide" on PBS. The idea of designing coastlines
(fractals) and running a computer for hundreds of years to get the
answer to complex questions, was enlightening; the earth being
created by the "mice" to answer the question of " life the universe
and everything", was brilliant.
Now what we need is another good "Doctor Who" movie.

Lies

2005-03-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

After following the Terry Schiavo drama play out on TV, I only
have an open question to post today.

How do you reason with the unreasonable, and how do you argue
with liars?

The power? of prayer

2005-03-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

The resent news stories: Terry Schiavo, the young girl
killed in Florida, and the school murders have brought
requests for prayers, and prayers themselves,to
television newscasts in numbers greater then normal.
So, let's ask the obvious questions: what are prayers?
and do they work? Lately, I've been working on a
practical meme map of religion, in general, so at first
I naturally thought of prayer as a meme. A meme in the
religious meme complex, doing several jobs: providing a
means for the faithful to communicate with their deity,
relieving personal anxiety, promoting community among
the faithful, and above all, reinforcing the hold of
the religious meme complex and promoting it's
replication.Then I thought, there is another prayer,
the magic prayer: words uttered around an ancient
campfire to promote the success of an up-coming hunt,
or over a sick child or companion, maybe to control
the weather. This prayer does not have a mediator or
deity, just a wish, like a Las Vegas gambler, wishing
for better luck.
Do all of these prayers and wishes work? No, they never
have and never will work, Why do people believe that
prays do work? In the meme complex, people are
told, by authority that prays do work.
They have faith that this represents the truth.
Now, faith and truth block independent
thought and reason by the faithful while sacred
also prevents outside inquiry. Further, sacred is
protected by, blaspheme and heresy which
implies threat to the faithful; ultimately hell for
the believer and bodily harm for the none-believer. Then
again, if the public-heat becomes to much for prayer,
the faithful can fall back on persecution.

Out side the meme complex people believe prayer works
because they fall victim to antidotal evidence and
fallacious logic. After the fact, when something happens
people will claim that they prayed before it happened,
of course this is lying, which is quite common. Then there
is the case of differential reporting, only the ones that
experience a positive outcome will report that they prayed.
Another example is: there are one hundred people involved
in a train accident and the fifty that survive say that God
saved them, while the other fifty casualties must remain
silent.

Here are three reasons why prayer does not work:
One: there is no force carrier between prayer and effect,
What causes the effect? Photons? or gravity?, what
actually moves the movable and saves the lives?

Two: there is just a lot of inappropriate prayer.
All twelve boxers in a contest pray to win,
prayer works one time and does not work eleven times.
Football teams pray to win, 50% here. People pray for
a hurricane to not hit their city, but refuse to pay
damages when it hits another city.

Three: actuarial tables. Believers and none-believers
have the some mortality rates. Believers do not get
reduced rates on: life insurance, health insurance,
home owners insurance, or car insurance. They are also
not given reduced amounts on social security because
the live longer.

How here is the final rub, If there is a God and a
Christian prays to God to save his life or his child’s
life, and God answers his payers, then God must Kill
another Christian or child for the actuarial tables
to remain unbiased, otherwise God would revel himself
by the change in the actuarial tables.