måndag 22 december 2008

Men huvva se kallt!

Vi har använt vår hot tub några gånger i veckan, även när det varit kallt. I går kväll uptäckte vi att det finns en gräns, och vid 13 minusgrader har den gränsen passerats. När det blöta håret förvandlas till istappar, gör huvet efter ett tag riktigt ont av kylan. Vi tog i alla fall en bild innan vi sprang tillbaka inomhus.
 
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lördag 13 december 2008

Nikita

 

En av favoritsovplatserna
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Stör mej inte! Jag kollar in fåglarna.

 
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Du skrämde bort fågeln!

Trip till Cleveland

Gårdagen var inte så dålig. Ingen värre trafik, och snöyran blev inte alltför farlig. Stannade i Columbus på vägen till Cleveland, och lämnade in en högtalare för reparation. Tänkte inte ens på att fråga om dom kunde ha den färdig senare på dagen så vi kunde hämta den på hemvägen. Döm om min förvåning när telefonen ringde strax innan vi passerade Columbus på tillbakavägen. Nu behöver jag inte ta en extratur till Columbus.

Åt en jättefin lunch på Pier W i Cleveland. Utsikt över Lake Erie, fin mat, snygg restaurant, och fantastiskt sällskap (frugan).

Det enda problemet är att det är nåt fel på passet jag hämtade på svenska konsulatet. Dom har satt in ett foto på nån gammal gubbe som jag inte känner igen. Nåja, kanske passmyndigheterna inte kollar så noga.


 
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fredag 12 december 2008

Biltur

I dag sitter vi i bilen hela dagen. Kör fram och tillbaka till Cleveland för att hämta mitt pass.

lördag 6 december 2008

Guds existens kan inte bevisas

Min äldre son bloggar inte så ofta. Det blir några inlägg, och sen händer inget på en lång tid. Han började ju nyss igen, och jag trodde han var klar till nästa år. När jag kollade i morse fanns där ett nytt kåseri om religion. Tycker att hans skrivande är läsvärt både vad gäller skrivstil och innehåll, så jag delar med mej. Om ni inte har nåt emot all läsa lite engelska, förstås.

Well, you can’t prove there is no god
And that’s exactly the problem. Theories should not be judged by whether or not they have been disproven. There are a plethora of theories deemed too silly to bother with disproof. This is not a sign of their value. However, if a theory is subject to constant potential disproof, and still remains, and as well, makes valuable predictions, which are later verified, that is a sign of its value.

Throughout history, ‘God’ has been ascribed a lot of predictive power. The movement of the heavenly bodies, thunder and lightning, natural disasters, etc… And most of that predictive power has slowly(and not so slowly, from the 19th century on) been subsumed into one or more simple, predictive theory. And so it becomes easy to see the pattern. One starts with a hypothesis with many extra assumptions, and instead of losing the hypothesis, one discards the ancillary assumptions, one, by one, by one, until nothing remains but The God Hypothesis, with little to no predictive power, and thus value as a theory.

People often say something like ‘well, you can’t disprove the existence of God’. And this is precisely the problem. One can go from Belief1+Jesus to Belief2+Jesus to Belief3+Jesus, because while some types of beliefs progress with evidence, deities are not among that group. Ask the typical fundamentalist what would disprove the existence of god, and my guess is there would be nothing. So of course the existence of God hasn’t been disproven, because there is very little, possibly even nothing that would disprove it.

This doesn’t just apply to theories with deities, but rather, any pseudoscientific venture. Again, I mean to impress upon you that there is no clear distinction between science and pseudoscience. But vague distinctions are distinctions nonetheless.

For example, I do not know at exactly what point I would consider somebody naked. Let us, for example, consider somebody with solely a hat on. Are they naked? Would they be arrested for indecent exposure, depending on where that hat is? On the one hand, somebody in full skiing gear is clearly not naked, and somebody fully unclothed in an open area is clearly naked. But what for somebody with one sock half on their foot? It could easily be a vague distinction. I do not know at what point in putting clothes on a person becomes clothed. But I do have clear examples of both, and thus the distinction is valid, if vague.

The same is for science and pseudoscience.

The reason gravity is a good theory, is it would be so easy to disprove. It has very specific predictions. And yet it has not been falsified. All I have to do is to document dropping one object and have it be moved towards other masses at a rate of GM1M2/(r^2). Obviously there are other factors to take into account, such as wind resistance, but if I were to drop one bowling ball under normal circumstances and instead of it dropping, it just floated in the air, science would need to either come up with a compelling explanation, or think up a new theory.

Under the ‘web of belief’ which is made up of assumptions formed around a hypothesis, you can always strip away hypotheses. However, what differentiates science from pseudoscience is the rate at which this happens. There is no cut off at which point one more ad hoc assumption makes something pseudoscientific. Some scientists held onto their theories long after they should have discarded them, and some have been right to. But with the God Hypothesis, there have been nothing but ad hoc assumptions. So, of course, if your definition of God, or the way you treat your God Hypothesis, is that it can’t be proven false, of course it shan’t. But how useful of a theory is that?

Science has built skyscrapers, sent us to the moon, given us cars and computers and refrigerator and airplanes and all sorts of advances.

Religion has given us…seven new deadly sins? Bans on stem cell research? Anti-gay propaganda? And nearly all explanatory power it once had has been stripped away and handed unceremoniously over to Science.

Science is clad in the discoveries of the past 4-5 centuries.

As for Religion? Well, the Emperor’s new clothes are looking a bit revealing…

onsdag 3 december 2008

Progressiv revolution

Känner inte för att skriva ett inlägg, så jag fuskar och lägger in nåt från min sons blogg.

Progressive Revolution
I’ve noticed something a bit magical, both from news/blogs from around the nation, and at my rather liberal college. Progressives everywhere feel empowered. For four years we watched our country head in the wrong direction entirely, attacking foreign countries, destroying freedoms and social equalities. And when the chance came to fix it all, it was snatched away at the last moment, by 9 proverbial old men in smoke filled rooms. And when it seemed that we were at the brink of something worse happening, of the continuation of our government being run by business elites and conservative religious hate-mongers, something changed. Two new campaigns arose, funded, not by large grants from companies, not by public funds from the government, but in donations of $5, $10, $25 dollars, creating the first two candidates in a long time that truly were OF the people, Ron Paul and Barack Obama. Like so many Americans, when I cast my ballot, I felt like I was voting for a legitimate candidate, not the lesser of two evils. I had not come to this conclusion as quickly as many, and I wavered between independent candidate support(Dennis Kucinich) and Barack Obama, even after it would have to have been a write-in, and right up until a few days before I cast my ballot. And this grassroots campaign that so inspired a nation was behind an educated, black northerner.

And I think this will have an effect everywhere. Government will step on people, and people will step back. Not in the tens, or the hundreds, but in the thousands, until government fears to inflict even the slightest wrong upon the people they are designed to serve.