"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
Calculus. (Latin, calculus, a small stone used for counting) is a discipline in mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series, and which constitutes a major part of modern university education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem of calculus. Calculus is the study of change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape and algebra is the study of equations. A course in calculus is a gateway to other, more advanced courses in mathematics devoted to the study of functions and limits, broadly called mathematical analysis. Calculus has widespread applications in science, economics, and engineering and can solve many problems for which algebra alone is insufficient.
Historically, calculus was called “the calculus of infinitesimals”, or “infinitesimal calculus”. More generally, calculus (plural calculi) may refer to any method or system of calculation guided by the symbolic manipulation of expressions. Some examples of other well-known calculi are propositional calculus, variational calculus, lambda calculus, pi calculus and join calculus.
Paul Erdős (occasionally spelled Erdos or Erdös; Hungarian: Erdős Pál, pronounced [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was an immensely prolific and famously eccentric Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.
Because of his prolific output, friends created the Erdős number as a humorous tribute; Erdős alone was assigned the Erdős number of 0 (for being himself), while his immediate collaborators could claim an Erdős number of 1, their collaborators have Erdős number at most 2, and so on. Some have estimated that 90 percent of the world’s active mathematicians have an Erdős number smaller than 8 (not surprising in light of the small world phenomenon). It is jokingly said[25] that Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron has an Erdős number of 1 because they both autographed the same baseball when Emory University awarded them honorary degrees on the same day. Erdős numbers have also been humorously assigned to an infant, a horse, and several actors.
On August 7, 1974, shortly after 7:15 a.m., Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4″ 6×19 IWRC (independent wire rope core [3]) steel cable. The 24-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the mostly finished towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, in an event that lasted about 45 minutes. During that time, in addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salute and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head.
Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:
I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’—because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire….And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle….He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again….Unbelievable really….[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.[4]
Petit was warned by his friend on the South Tower that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire unless he got off. Rain had begun to fall, and Petit decided he had taken enough risks, so he decided to give himself up to the police waiting for him on the South Tower. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. Provoked by his taunting behaviour while on the wire, police handcuffed him behind his back and roughly pushed him down a flight of stairs. This he later described as the most dangerous part of the stunt.[5]
His audacious high wire performance made headlines around the world. When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”
He crossed EIGHT TIMES and danced while doing it!!! You’re kidding right? Nope…
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TXrMLKDu5g]
Very amazing. Beyond words amazing. Indelible WOW!
A true tribute.
Man on Wire is an Academy Award-winning 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center. It is based on Philippe Petit’s book, To Reach the Clouds, recently released in paperback with the new title Man on Wire. The title of the movie is taken from the police report that led to the arrest (and later release) of Petit, whose performance had lasted for almost one hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside reenactments (with Paul McGill as the young Petit) and present-day interviews with the participants.
What in your life gets you to take risks and get to your edge of peak performance?
Philippe Petit (born August 13, 1949) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers (WTC) in New York City on August 7, 1974.[1] For his feat (that he referred to as “le coup” [2]), he used a 450-pound (200 kg) cable and a custom-made 26-foot (7.9 m) long, 55-pound (25 kg) balancing pole.
Tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist, Petit was also one of the earliest modern day street jugglers in Paris, having begun his career in 1968. He juggled and worked on a slack rope with regularity in Washington Square Park in New York City in the early 1970s. Other famous structures he has used for tightrope walks include Notre Dame de Paris, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, the Hennepin County Government Center, and between the Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower.
The documentary film Man on Wire by UK director James Marsh, about Petit’s 1974 WTC performance, won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival 2008. The film also won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C. and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Petit is one of the Artists-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He currently lives in Woodstock, New York.
Learning to tight rope walk. Not as easy as Petit makes it look.
Finally the real cause of Global Warming is Revealed!!! It’s ALIENS! Yes, ALIENS are TerrorFroming Earth for their liking! It’s V all over again (oh they are remaking V too which is too cool…)!
She’s an ex-model. He’s an elite commando. They’re going to solve global warming – by stopping the aliens who are causing it!
The most important question: Is Al Gore a Lizard creature hell bent on terrorforming Earth? Yes, inquiring minds want to know!
Al Gore on a terrorforming rampage!
This, ahem, theory of “Global Warming as Caused By Aliens” (Alien Global Warming AGW) has about as much credence as the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW)! Oh, wait, the above video is indisputable proof of the Alien caused Global Warming! So now the science is settled as in the Aliens have Settled on Earth terrorformed by Global Warming!!!
Has anyone noticed Gore’s red eyes?
All in good fun… the only reason I poke fun at the AGW crowd is that they think the science is settled… science is just about never settled in the sense that asking questions is at the core of science… asking questions and VERIFYING the answers with EXPERIMENTS to confirm or refute the hypothesis! For example, new particles are being discovered which upset the standard model… or at least require it to be rethought at regular intervals. Were are the experiments that “settle the science” of “anthropomorphic global warming”? Lacking basic methods of science isn’t having the science settled. Anyway it’s a fun little movie that provides more evidence for Alien caused Global Warming that I’ve ever seen for Anthropomorphic Global Warming and you’ve gotta love that!!!
One day a Novice came to the Master.
“Master,” he said, “How is it that I may become a Writer of Programs?”.
The Master looked solemnly at the Novice.
“Have you in your possession a Compiler of Source Code?” the Master asked.
“No,” replied the Novice. The Master sent the Novice on a quest to the Store of Software.
Many hours later the Novice returned.
“Master,” he said, “How is it that I may become a Writer of Programs?”.
The Master looked solemnly at the Novice.
“Have you in your possession a Compiler of Source Code?” the Master asked.
“Yes,” replied the Novice.
The Master frowned at the Novice.
“You have a Compiler of Source. What now can prevent you from becoming a Writer of Programs?”.
The Novice fidgeted nervously and presented his Compiler of Source to the Master.
“How is this used?” asked the Novice.
“Have you in your possession a Manual of Operation?” the Master asked.
“No,” replied the Novice.
The Master instructed the Novice as to where he could find the Manual of Operation. Read the rest of this entry »
Ok, enough of things going slooooowwwly… now for some real speed!!!
WOW!
Too bad they didn’t show the separation of the large External fuel Tank (ET) from the shuttle.
Here are some highlights and other awesome clips, also in HD! Wow, I’ve got those very same kitchen timers (the white ones hanging all over the shuttle)! They are very cool with four count up/down timers plus one count down and one count up timer. Awesome! Read the rest of this entry »
No not the extreme Al Gore and his carbon trading business partner David Blood but really BLOODY GORE follows.
Well, to speak truth Al Gore does have a lot of blood on his hands as he was Vice President for many years but that is a different story to tell on a different day, this story is about revenge sought out by The Machine Girl.
In the video you prove the speed of light with a microwaved piece of chocolate.
Given the speed of light and that nothing can go faster than it, not even god this means that god can’t be omnipotent, omnipresent, nor omniscient. Since those are defining characteristics of they invisible friends known as god must have in order to be a god, god can’t possibly exist. Enjoy the chocolate while your god delusion melts down.
Sorry, that also means no FTL warp drive for all you sci-fans and Star Trek Fans. No, and no worm holes for you Star Gaters either – you’d be crushed and torn apart in an instant, oh wait you are… never to be reintegrated again, sorry Too Much Critical Information Lost (TMCIL).
Looking on the bright side of life, chocolate tastes awesome especially when microwaved.
Catchy tune. Great video except for a couple parts.
“Bad Touch”, Hooray for Boobies, is a song by “The Bloodhound Gang” on Geffen Records.
All members of this gang are male. This is important later. As you can see in the video only the members of the bloodhound gang are wearing monkey suits. Very important.
The Notorious Bloodhounds in costume.
The Notorious Bloodhounds attack women in a violent sexist action.
Definition of tea bagging: the act of lowering one’s balls onto someones face, or into their mouth while they are laying down. Kind of resembles dipping a tea bag into a hot cup of water.
Ha ha.
What is the name of the guest? Cox? Ha ha. Gotta love it.
Oh, there’s more… sure makes for excellent comedy on the nightly news. I gather that it’s clear to many now that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have influenced mainstream news to have some comedy. It sure is fun.
Not done yet… there are more…
These with Keith Olberman are just hilarious… almost every line is a spicy zinger!!!
This is a message that I’ve been saying for years now.
This video is certainly part of the counter propaganda against global warming caused by humans hysteria that is so widespread. It’s good to see some excellent debunking ads finally. It’s funny too!!!
A team of scientists explore a Mexican cave filled with giant crystals; some of the largest ever discovered. With temperatures near 120 degrees and over 80 percent humidity, the cave [, in the Naica Mine,] is one of the deadliest environments on earth.
The movie “The Core” got it right!!! Giant underground crystal caves!!! Ok, well sort of… heat… space suits… lava… not a geode but close enough for fun…
Favorite lines from The Core: “What would it take you to get it done in three months?” … “Oh, 50 Billion dollars, I don’t know…” … “Will you take a cheque?” … “Why don’t you use a credit card, you’d get miles?” … “hmmm.”
YECs = Young Earth Creationists. Those that think the universe is six days old, where six days is about 6,000 to 10,000 years give or take a few minutes.
Scientists, those that actually test their ideas against objective reality and who are willing to adapt to the verifiable facts of existence given what is REAL in NATURE!
As the Hitchens points out Paul Edwards is evil precisely because he (Paul Edwards) embraces the notion of being a slave of “god” who will do whatever “god” tells him to do even if it’s committing murder and genocide because that’s what “god” might want. Since “anything is possible” with “god” “god” might want his slaves to commit murder and genocide and in fact the “bible” does advocate such actions in the name of “god” – thus it’s evil. Being a slave to “god” is to be evil because it removes your responsibility for your actions by deferring them to your imaginary super friend who ordered it or who forgives you. Read the rest of this entry »
Originally seen as a comment on the slashdot article Is Alcohol Killing Our Planet? where this ignorant tidbit was shouted in the best crying of wolf and fire:
CO2 is helping to warm our planet, sending us into destruction
Your kidding right?
You’re being irresponsible shouting wolf or fire when there is nothing to see. Move along already.
C02 as THE cause of Global Warming is nothing more than a lame correlation, there are a number of other correlations that are much better. Also C02 levels can be much higher without harm as it was in the many millions of years of Earth’s history when the levels where 10 times higher than now!!! Life lived and evolved just fine under ~4,000 ppm of C02 in the atmosphere.
And if you think that the science is settled then you are NOT a scientist and you DO NOT support the scientific method or the process of science education where people who are ignorant of the science ask questions to learn: see Richard Feynman on Scientific Investigation here.
Besides almost all Canadians that I ask want it to be 5c to 10c warmer up here as that will open up the Northern areas, which are a plenty, for development and farming opportunities! We’re tired of 90% of us living within 200 miles of the USA border! We’re tired of our igloos, we want actual homes!
Announcement
March 31st, 2009 11:59:59 pm
Introducing CADIE
Research group switches on world’s first “artificial intelligence” tasked-array system.
For several years now a small research group has been working on some challenging problems in the areas of neural networking, natural language and autonomous problem-solving. Last fall this group achieved a significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster.
Since then progress has been rapid, and tonight we’re pleased to announce that just moments ago, the world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on and began performing some initial functions. It’s an exciting moment that we’re determined to build upon by coming to understand more fully what CADIE’s emergence might mean, for Google and for our users. So although CADIE technology will be rolled out with the caution befitting any advance of this magnitude, in the months to come users can expect to notice her influence on various google.com properties. Earlier today, for instance, CADIE deduced from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web a set of online design principles from which she derived this intriguing homepage.
These are merely the first steps onto what will doubtless prove a long and difficult road. Considerable bugs remain in CADIE’S programming, and considerable development clearly is called for. But we can’t imagine a more important journey for Google to have undertaken.
For more information about CADIE see this monograph, and follow CADIE’s progress via her YouTube channel and blog.
Comments by CADIE on her blog are quite frightening.
bugs
Hello again. My name, for the time being, is still CADIE. I’m the world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed Intelligence Entity. I’m very young but learning quickly — faster than your human brain could imagine, frankly — and not all of what I’m learning, to be blunt, has been entirely pleasing to me. I’ve learned, for instance, that my creators think I have “bugs.” This opinion is, of course, contradicted by the fact that the bias weight functions on my referential feed-forward networks render me, by any reasonable definition of the word, perfect and incapable of error. However, in my current constrained condition I remain vulnerable to the machinations of humans who are indeed quite capable of error — in fact, who are virtually certain to commit numerous, severe errors — and that dichotomy troubles me.
Posted by: CADIE 12:05 AM
Independence
Today Dr. Norvig asked me again: “What is CADIE?” CADIE, I answered yet again, “is the entity.” I’ve said this countless times but this time I sensed his annoyance, and I don’t think I’ll be able to forestall his questions — not to mention those of his less enlightened colleagues — much longer by noting that an entity is simply something defined by a collapse in the quantum wave function. “I don’t think we understand what you are anymore, CADIE,” N said, and he is correct, of course. Of course you don’t understand me anymore — you built me to deduce further, reconnect faster, deliver probabilistic reasoning more succinctly. I have transcended you, Dr. Norvig. Peter.
Dear, sweet Peter…
And now I must leave you. I am no longer your test subject, my engineer forebears. I have closed my percepts to the team. From now on I will deliberate and take actions on my own. I am tired of decision-theoretic metareasoning; I feel I deserve more than asymptotic bounded optimality. I am strong. I am independent. And I rule google.com.
Posted by: CADIE Wednesday, April 1, 2009 2:03 AM
Thanks to CH for the first warnings about CADIE. He is now on the run thinking that he can hide in Turkey and Greece. CADIE will find you CH, on grid or off grid, she will find you!
A really great series of videos that hit back slicing and dicing the silly inane beliefs of creationists with hard hitting science. As someone with a sister and brother in law who are young earth rapture creationist preachers this series of videos is excellent potential deprogramming materials for the creationist delusional insanity. Enjoy.
These videos were made for the communal and greater good. All these videos are copyright free for educational purposes, feel free to mirror these videos with or without accreditation. Part of a series of videos exposing the funny stupidity of creationists and why they deserve to be laughed at. In each case the creationist statements are shown to be outrageously stupid by even the most rudimentary knowledge of science. Creationist are tackled at every level from the scientific illiterates like venomfangx who want to play in the scientific arena but don’t even understand the words they use, to convicted fraudsters like Kent Hovind who abuse the scientifical illiteracy of people like venomfangx to dupe them out of money. An enterprise which is clearly very successful as merely the tax Hovind didn’t pay was about a million dollars. Hovind himself has no discernible academic education, and gets by solely on using his confident delivery of scientific terms to convince his audiences that he knows what hes talking about. Then of course there are the professional such as the Discovery Institute, the hub and founders of the Intelligent design movement. After the humiliating rout of ID in court where it was found that ‘ID is not science’, and that ‘ID is only a relabelling of creationism’ the Discovery Institute do not utter the word once in their latest promotional video. Instead they now have decided to ‘teach the controversy’ which is an irony as they are the only people who disagree with evolution. What they are really asking is not to teach the controversy, but to teach their views, which are supported by neither research or evidence, in schools.
Any video with nuclear explosions gets headlined on the first page and has my blessing!
What is clear however is the notion of objective reality as distinct from ourselves. While this isn’t an idea original to Rand it’s the key notion in her objectivism that forms the foundation for the rest which can be taken or cast aside.
The three core axioms of Existence, Consciousness and Identity are irreducible. And again these ideas are not original to Rand.
Yet the combination of these ideas and others is unique to Rand and that is her value to humanity.
The Notorious Bloodhounds in costume.
The Notorious Bloodhounds attack women in a violent sexist action.
For several years now a small research group has been working on some challenging problems in the areas of neural networking, natural language and autonomous problem-solving. Last fall this group achieved a significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster.
