Rant

Anti-Christian?

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According to Howard Kurtz, Newt Gingrich’s reaction to Charles Gibson’s interview of Sarah Palin included calling it “a sad commentary on the growing anti-religious hostility of the news media.”  And McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis claims that the media treatment of Palin is an “attack on Christianity”. I just can’t believe the Republicans have gone this route.  In a country where the majority of people believe in Creationism over Evolution, which necessarily has to include a good number of Independents and Democrats, how can Republicans hijack Christianity?  When every candidate for president and vice-president is an avowed Christian, how can Republicans claim some special relationship with Christianity?

I ask anyone who considers themselves Christian to really think about this question:  Based upon his teachings in the Bible, about judging not lest you be judged, turning the other cheek, about treating others as you would be treated, how do you honestly think Jesus would vote?  Which party better embodies the teachings of Jesus? Not the Old Testament, but the actual words of Jesus.

I have no problem with people voting Republican.  I just don’t understand, however, how a devote Christian thinks the Republican party better represents the teachings of Jesus.  In my view, the Democratic party is the one that more completely embodies the teachings of Jesus.

Just to clarify my position, I myself was raised Catholic, but do not practice and do not believe in religion.  My worldview is based on scientific inquiry.

Science

LHC!

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Yesterday, while riding to work, I heard the NPR story on the testing of the Large Hadron Collider.  The purpose of this massive machine (though still about 3 times smaller than the Superconducting Super Collider would have been…) is to probe the basic building blocks of the universe.  The subatomic world made up of bosons, quarks, and so on.  The particles that carry mass, for instance, that give the bigger particles (protons, electrons, neutrons) their mass.

I’ll be honest, this sort of physics isn’t exactly my cup of tea.  I’m not much into the string theory part of physics.  I personally find the self-organization and collective phenomena that occur in materials much more interesting.  But, I also think this stuff is important and is the most successful example of the predictive power of physics.

So, it was a bit unexpected, but I was very proud, as a physicist, to hear about this story.  And excited.  It was very nice to hear such a prominent story about science.  Both on NPR and on Google, the two places I get most of my news, this was a feature story.  And, for just a moment, politics was pushed aside for something bigger and grander than any political story.  It was very cool.

Then, I also read about the people who are scared that the LHC will create black holes that will then swallow the Earth.  They think the experiments should stop, just in case.  I’m glad they aren’t getting their way, since science shouldn’t be controlled or determined by people who are afraid of things they don’t understand.  I don’t think science should necessarily go unchecked, but I do think that the vast majority of scientists are very responsible people who aren’t going to do something they think has significant danger associated with it.  I also wouldn’t be surprised if these people are the same that think Global Warming is a hoax perpetuated by elitist scientists and that we don’t have to do anything about it, even just in case.

Sports

The Fantasy has Returned!

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Another NFL season has started, which means another Fantasy season is underway!  Team Blasphemy made it through the first week in the middle of the pack, at 4th out of 8.  Michael Turner was the savior this week, as next to no one else on my team did anything worth mentioning (not even the vaunted Peyton!).  Larry Johnson is still struggling, Larry Fitzgerald is stuck with a system that doesn’t have a good offense, and Santonio Holmes seems to not be in Big Ben’s radar.  However, it is just the first game, and there are many more to come.  At least I don’t have the misfortune that struck my brother, having Brady fall in the first game, out for the entire season.

Anyways, it was nice to have some football to distract from all the other things going on with work.

Beasts and Numbers

Beastly Number

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Excerpted from A Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts, by Richard Barber and Anne Riches and Numbers, by David Wells.

Number: 1.61803 39887 49894 84820 45868 34365 63811 77203 09179 80576…

The Divine Proportion

The Divine Proportion or the Golden Ratio, equal to (sqrt(5)+1)/2.

In the pentagram, which the Pythagoreans regarded as a symbol of health, the ratio of AB to BC is the Golden Ratio.

Euclid in his Elements calls this division ‘in the extreme and mean ratio’ and used it to construct first a regular pentagon, then the two most complex Platonic solids, the dodecahedron, which has 12 pentagonal faces, and the icosahedron, which is its dual.  The mystical significance of these beautiful polyhedra to the Greeks was naturally transferred to the Golden Ratio.

If a rectangle is drawn whose sides are in the Golden Ratio, it may be divided into a square and another, similar, rectangle.  This process may be repeated ad infinitum. It is possible to draw an equiangular spiral through successive vertices of the sequence of rectangles.

The Golden Ratio, Φ, itself is intimately related to the Fibonacci sequence.  Like Φ², the higher powers of Φ can all be expressed very simply in terms of Φ.  Each power is the sum of the 2 previous powers, and the coefficiencts form the Fibonacci sequence over again, as do the integer parts of the powers.

(The Golden Ratio is often found in nature, in the spiral structure of sea shells and in the branches of plants and trees.  See this Wikipedia article for more information.)

Beast: Anaye

The Anaye or Alien Gods of Navaho Indian myth are giants and monsters born of women without intervention of men.  They include Thelgeth, who was headless and hairy, Tsanahale, harpy-like with feathered back, the Binaye Ahani, twins without legs or arms who slew with their eyes, and a nameless monster whose hair grew into the rock so that it could not fall from the cliff where it lived, and which preyed on travellers.  They were all slain by the son of the water and the son of the sun, except for Old Age, Cold, Poverty, and Famine; these were allowed to live on, lest men should cease to honour the gods who protected them against these woes.

Rant

More about Palin

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A letter about Palin, supposedly written by someone who knew her in Wasilla, is currently circulating.  My sister-in-law pointed me to it.  It describes one person’s views of Palin’s work as Mayor of Wasilla and then Governor of Alaska.  It isn’t very flattering.  It turns out that the letter is real, see http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/kilkenny.asp for both the original letter and Snopes’ diagnosis of it as real.  It is only one person’s opinion, but this is a person that witnessed Palin first-hand.  The points made in the letter are very disturbing, including Palin trying to ban books from the library in Wasilla and then trying to fire the librarian when the librarian refused.  Not what I want in my federal government.

Blah, blah, blah… I've got the blahs.