Quantum Levitation

I feel like hover boards are almost here:

And for a more detailed video of the science behind it as well as some double levitation demonstrations go here to watch it.



(Via)

Darwinian Theory of Beauty

I really enjoyed this presentation by Mr. Dutton.  He is taking beauty seriously by recognizing the concept of beauty as being hardwired into the human heart (and dismissing the whole ‘eye of the beholder’ notion).  Of course, we disagree about how that hardwiring came about…  

Tis the Season for Microbiology

So this year we really tried hard to geek out with the Christmas tree decorations (not that we haven’t done this before).  We went with a 'microscopic universe' theme complete with DNA garland (made from pipe cleaners), micro-organism ornaments (made with the laser cutter), and a lithium atom tree topper.  We also threw in some glass globe ornaments filled with the biodiversity of our backyard.  Some pics:

The tree in its full glory.

A neuron cell.

A plant stem section.

Some pampas grass.

Microscopic wood grain.

Amoeba!

Beware the bacteriophage!

A cross section of an animal cell.

Even the tree skirt resembled phyto plankton

The tree topper was a Lithium atom (because of its star like appearance and Trinitarian theme)

The micro-organisms ornaments

The first round of backyard terrariums.

The second round of backyard terrariums.

The first round of petri dish ornaments.

The second round of petri dish ornaments.

Transformer 03 1982 DeLorean (including the flux capacitor)

"Roads. Where we're going we don't need roads."

So with today’s transformer I am really showing my roots as a child of the eighties. I also have the perfect name for him: “Great Scott”.

And while I am on the subject of time travel here is a great poster for your time machine created by Ryan North:

And an XKCD:

Note: I probably shouldn’t watch Primer and Lost within a week of one another.

Sense of Scale

A great website zooming from galaxies to atoms:

http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/index_f.htm

Undoubtedly inspired by the Powers of Ten; a 1968 short film by the architects Charles and Ray Eames.

Giant Crystals

Cool Article over at National Geographic:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/crystal-giants/shea-text

Another Picture Link: Animals This Time

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/world_animal_day.html

This last one is indeed a boy petting a capybara in the Amazon.

Environmentalism

If you were a cartoon watching child in the 90’s, you probably had more then your fair share of environmental propaganda (mixed in with all the “Just Say No” anti-drug stuff). My personal favorite was Captain Planet who saved the world from evil polluting super villains. This, along with a kid who was absolutely nuts about animals, probably drove my parents insane on many occasions. Especially my dad, whose job at the time was a government trapper. I remember asking him why he had to kill animals when in my mind they were the innocent bystanders of invasive humans.

When I got a little older I eventually embraced my redneck roots and have been hunting many times with my father. I learned the gravity of killing, and had a very good example in my dad of a proper hunter. We killed for meat not for trophy, cleaning the animal ourselves, and this really impressed upon me a respect of the cycle of life and death.

I have found myself turning back to my tree hugging tendencies in the past few years, and feeling like I am coming to it with a much more mature attitude. In my humble opinion, the conservative right has completely butchered the Christian position on the environment; a large part in reaction to the left’s extreme view on it. Liberals would have us completely cut off from nature, stating that the natural state of the world is humanless. But conservatives would have nature destroyed for the sake of our progress, negligence, or apathy. Neither has a balance view.

Our relationship to the Earth is one of stewardship; God gave us the job of looking after it in Genesis. The picture of a steward is one who greatly trusted by the king is given the power to rule the kingdom until the king returns. This job should rank up there on our list, for it was the very first job given to man. Ideally this would encompass two things.

1. We should be a gathering and passing on intelligence about the natural cycles of the world. This shows us the importance of science and the importance of education; passing on a knowledge base to the next generation. It also shows the importance of being closely acquainted with nature; whether that be hunting, camping, hiking, gardening, getting outside, etc.

2. We should be interacting with our environment in a positive way as to develop a symbiotic relationship with nature. This can only be done when the first is properly executed. In contrast to the humanless nature, humans should pursue a very active role in the natural world. We should be making an earth that benefits both people and the environment.

This is all ideal of course; man has had a dysfunctional relationship with the natural world since we left the garden. As a whole we tear things up for our selfish benefit. But I don’t think that the church should forget what we are striving for.

Determinism (Part 3)

Psychology

What difference does determinism make, how does it effect the way we perceive ourselves?

We start by trying to understand several factors that shape us as individuals. Psychology puts forth several, the most popular being the nature vs nurture debate. Both are deterministic scenarios, nature claiming that our genetics shapes our personality, motivations, outlook, and choices. Nurture claiming our environment (parents, climate, society, income, etc.) directs us. The response to both of these positions is one of individual will and decision to choose to squander or to make the most of one’s position in life.


Choice (whether we like it or not) is a big part of determinism on a human scale for it drives much of our current understanding of responsibility and motivation. If a murderer had no choice, if he killed because of a long string of prior events inevitably led to his crime, how can society hold him to justice for a crime that was in the works from the beginning of creation? An even bigger obstacle is apathy or fatalism in which determinism kills any motivation in an individual. Why do anything if your personal actions matter not?


On the other hand, if all of the power of the future lay in the choices of individuals, we arrive in a very chaotic world. When one man has the power to start a nuclear war with a choice, the future becomes a frightening and a very uncertain place. Also in this category lies the theory of multiple universes. It states that for every choice (whether it be an electrons divergent path or your decision to go buy a donut on your way to work) there is a different universe. Therefore every universe is determined, set in stone, but every choice gets made. This is the logic behind movies such as Back to the Future, which shift between universes through time. It is one of those fishy theories that can never be proved or disproved.


Choice, responsibility, and our own will seem minute details when studying the heavens but it is difficult to operate in our would at any other scale than the human one. Shifting from a universal perspective to a human perspective is important in understanding how we function. But just because we operate in the cause and effect, past present future time doesn't mean the larger functions of the universe don't effect how we are to live. Next, the ethics of determinsm through the lens of theology. God vs humanity! Look forward to it!

Determinism (Part 2)

Science


The material sciences will begin to give a hard definition to determinism through tangible applications. Newtonian physics set the stage (though the original idea is at least as old as the Greek Atomists) for science to take its turn at bringing order to the chaos. It starts with individual objects that are on the move, and predicts their future movements based on universal laws, like billiard balls on a pool table. If a player is precise enough (knows enough about his situation) then he can accurately understand where the balls will end up in the future. Any unpredictability arises from lack of knowledge not from inherent chaos.

The "billiard ball" hypothesis argues that once the stage of the universe has been set the rest of history follows inevitably from a series of cause and effect events. Ultimately there is order though it is hidden behind the great complexity of the universe. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur. The Deists would exalt causality, stating that everything is a result of the cause in front of it and attributing the first cause, the primary mover, as God.

Einstein would further the model of the deterministic universe by identifying time as a dimension with much of the same properties as space. This meant that my perception of a past, present, and future is an illusion. Time is a block, to be warped by gravity and speed to be sure, but a physical presence that assured that the future was as set in stone as the past. Think of it like a movie, the individual frames contain no motion, but when viewed in sequence the illusion of motion appears. This is a similar view that many Christians will make of time, especially Augustine, stating that God is outside the flow of time as its creator.

Quantum mechanics was the first major rival to both Newton and Einstein. When looking at the behavior extreme small scale particles, scientists started to discover a lack of predictability when applying traditional physics. As the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states, at atomic scales the paths of objects can only be predicted in a probabilistic way. In other words, chance governs the underlying foundation of our world. It is still a deterministic model, but one with a lot more uncertainty built in then in previous theories.

Science puts some meat on the bones of philosophy, offering a variety of theories grounded in experimentation and observation. Unfortunately it is still offers a remote view; there is nothing about neutrinos that will affect our behavior as an individual.

Thinking about Thinking

When I was a kid I used to associate colors with certain objects or ideas. For example, I always associated left with green and right with red. About a couple of months ago I found a name for this: Synesthesia. Apparently there are enough people in the world who do this that an entire branch cognitive science has sprung up to research it. Anyway, it’s a very broad term and usually fades as a person grows older (it has for me in any case) but it got me to thinking about how little we understand our own minds.

The mind is a marvel of human physiology; it contains memory, perception, emotion, personality, and control over the rest of the body. It is the link between the reality of ideas and the reality of the material flesh. It also continues to link Philosophy and Science (in the field of Psychology) despite modern man’s best attempts to separate everything. According to Descartes it is our relation both to our own existence and to the existence of God.

For a look at someone who is a living example of the potential that is contained within our heads, look over at Stephen Wiltshire’s site. Especially his drawings of Tokyo and Rome both completed all from memory after a short helicopter fly by over the city.