The book of Jonah is one of my favorites. Not because of the fish story. God tells Jonah that God is going to destroy Nineveh and Jonah needs to tell the people of Nineveh that God is going to destroy the city. The story is set around 750 B.C.
Jonah hangs out to watch the city be destroyed and the book of Jonah ends before Nineveh is destroyed about 610 B.C. Jonah becomes impatient with God not keeping his promises in Jonah's time frame.
People become obsessed with their own expectations, their own understanding of "truth" and "how things should be".
God did not tell the people of Nineveh that God would destroy the city UNLESS they got their act together. God did not give the people of Nineveh (or Jonah) a time frame for destruction. God just told people that God was going to destroy Nineveh and God did. God handed Nineveh into the hands of the Assyrians I believe, not that it matters.
We deal with a lot of falsehoods, many because of our own expectations of how "things should be". It took God about 150 years to destroy Nineveh. Did God let Jonah hang around until Nineveh was destroyed? The book doesn't tell us, the book doesn't even tell us Nineveh was destroyed. The book of Jonah ends with God rebuking Jonah because Jonah was upset with the way God did things.
Here we are, 2600 years later, Nineveh is gone and people are still expecting God to behave the way they think God should behave OR they don't believe in God because God does not behave the way they expect God to behave.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
pangeic stupidity
Ever hear of the theory of Pangea?
I was just reading about Pangea in a text book. The Pangea hypothesis tells us that at one time there was this big continental mass that over millions of years broke into smaller pieces that formed continents and these continents drifted apart until they formed the earth as we have it today starting about 65 million years ago.
I call Bullsh*t.
Spin an unbalanced ball in a zero G vacuum and see what happens.
That's tough, so just do something simple. Take a ball and weight one side, then spin that baby up. It will wobble and be totally crazy. It ain't going to spin regularly or follow a regular path. The wobble and path will be crazy, until it self balances by "moving" stuff around. Try driving with an unbalanced tire.
No way continental drift took millions of years. The continents had to have taken a relatively short time to balance the spinning ball or the insane wobble and resulting geophysical forces would have pretty much made life impossible until rotation stabilized. If the Earth were wobbling crazily for millions of years it probably would have ripped itself apart long before life appeared. We are talking about seasonal ice ages and days that vary in length ridiculously.
In order for the Earth to be millions of years old and for evolution to occur the spinning ball had to have a balanced rotation much earlier than the Pangea hypothesis would suggest.
The Pangea hypothesis is B.S. I can't visualize anything that would make the Pangea hypothesis work when I think about it.
That does not mean there couldn't have been something else helping to balance the ball. Another mass or some kind of displaced mass that balanced a single huge continent. This "displaced mass" could have moved also, maybe toward the center of the ball. It just means the physics as currently postulated are improbable.
So what did happen? I'm not sure, I would need to do a bunch of experiments on how unbalanced balls behave while rotating in a zero G vacuum. I could run simulations on a computer, but, they would require a lot of assumptions. Even running physical experiments would require a lot of assumptions that could be wrong.
That means I'm not sure. It means I know horse shit when I read it, but, that doesn't mean I know everything. What amazes me is that people lap this crap up. They spout out the Pangea hypothesis B.S. as if it were a documented and observed fact.
I doubt if I am the only person to have figured this out. I would bet some other person with an understanding of engineering simulation has actually done some computer simulations. The simulations don't support the hypothesis and most people, unlike me, don't want to risk ridicule by telling a bunch of academic authorities that they are full of shit.
The nice thing about being a high school drop out is that people expect me to be wrong and when I am right, as I often am, they are surprised and say stuff like "even a broken clock is right twice a day!"
Pseudo intellectual arrogance.
I'm not really worried about the ignorant crap people teach as fact because I am a creationist, so I just think "God made it work". But I am also obsessively curious so I want to know how God made it work, how did this spinning ball balance?
I was just reading about Pangea in a text book. The Pangea hypothesis tells us that at one time there was this big continental mass that over millions of years broke into smaller pieces that formed continents and these continents drifted apart until they formed the earth as we have it today starting about 65 million years ago.
I call Bullsh*t.
Spin an unbalanced ball in a zero G vacuum and see what happens.
That's tough, so just do something simple. Take a ball and weight one side, then spin that baby up. It will wobble and be totally crazy. It ain't going to spin regularly or follow a regular path. The wobble and path will be crazy, until it self balances by "moving" stuff around. Try driving with an unbalanced tire.
No way continental drift took millions of years. The continents had to have taken a relatively short time to balance the spinning ball or the insane wobble and resulting geophysical forces would have pretty much made life impossible until rotation stabilized. If the Earth were wobbling crazily for millions of years it probably would have ripped itself apart long before life appeared. We are talking about seasonal ice ages and days that vary in length ridiculously.
In order for the Earth to be millions of years old and for evolution to occur the spinning ball had to have a balanced rotation much earlier than the Pangea hypothesis would suggest.
The Pangea hypothesis is B.S. I can't visualize anything that would make the Pangea hypothesis work when I think about it.
That does not mean there couldn't have been something else helping to balance the ball. Another mass or some kind of displaced mass that balanced a single huge continent. This "displaced mass" could have moved also, maybe toward the center of the ball. It just means the physics as currently postulated are improbable.
So what did happen? I'm not sure, I would need to do a bunch of experiments on how unbalanced balls behave while rotating in a zero G vacuum. I could run simulations on a computer, but, they would require a lot of assumptions. Even running physical experiments would require a lot of assumptions that could be wrong.
That means I'm not sure. It means I know horse shit when I read it, but, that doesn't mean I know everything. What amazes me is that people lap this crap up. They spout out the Pangea hypothesis B.S. as if it were a documented and observed fact.
I doubt if I am the only person to have figured this out. I would bet some other person with an understanding of engineering simulation has actually done some computer simulations. The simulations don't support the hypothesis and most people, unlike me, don't want to risk ridicule by telling a bunch of academic authorities that they are full of shit.
The nice thing about being a high school drop out is that people expect me to be wrong and when I am right, as I often am, they are surprised and say stuff like "even a broken clock is right twice a day!"
Pseudo intellectual arrogance.
I'm not really worried about the ignorant crap people teach as fact because I am a creationist, so I just think "God made it work". But I am also obsessively curious so I want to know how God made it work, how did this spinning ball balance?
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Pussy Fest
I started watching some of the re-runs of the "Sons of Anarchy" television show. It is kind of hokey and way over dramatic. These guys fight when they should lay low, lay low when they should fight and walk into ambushes as if they couldn't possibly happen. Hokey, but, what television isn't.
I started DVRing the show and I am watching the episode "savage". There is this scene where the kid running the club calls a meeting with everyone and literally tells the members of all the other chapters that they are going into business with pussy exclusively and that the other chapters couldn't run guns.
A bike club, like any other group, is just a bunch of people who do different things. There are some loyalty issues with bike clubs that do not exist in most other organizations. The guys do different things to make money and will either create partnerships and/or ask members to do stuff. It ain't club business. Club business is pretty much the same all over, paying dues, paying rent, organizing stuff, etc. Club business does not change just because the club is all about motorcycles.
So, business is business. People buy stuff, they add value and the sell stuff. It really doesn't matter what the stuff is, it could be construction where people buy the labor of others and the added value is a new roof which they sell to someone. The added value could be all B.S. like it is with some people who buy cheap jewelry and pretend it is good stuff and sell it out of high rent stores. Business is just business.
If someone's business brings heat down on a club, and I was always considered a wild cannon, unpredictable, so I know about this, they are told to cool the fu*k out or get lost. If things are bad enough other stuff can happen, but, everything has consequences so most people in business try not to over react and this includes bike clubs. The more likely someone is to hurt a club the worse the situation.
Some people liked keeping me at arms length and others thought I was too much trouble to have around. Yeah, I could be ruthless, but, I also pick and choose so no one could be sure if they called and told me to show up if I would be there. This is still true, I am nothing if not inconsistent enough in the minds of others that people who like to put other people into boxes don't like me. I am consistent, on my terms and no one else's. I am not about to be a patch holder, but, I know enough about how things work.
So I watched this kid on SOA whining about getting out of the gun business and literally thought to myself, this is a pussy fest. This guy is right, the future of this club is all in pussy.
I started DVRing the show and I am watching the episode "savage". There is this scene where the kid running the club calls a meeting with everyone and literally tells the members of all the other chapters that they are going into business with pussy exclusively and that the other chapters couldn't run guns.
A bike club, like any other group, is just a bunch of people who do different things. There are some loyalty issues with bike clubs that do not exist in most other organizations. The guys do different things to make money and will either create partnerships and/or ask members to do stuff. It ain't club business. Club business is pretty much the same all over, paying dues, paying rent, organizing stuff, etc. Club business does not change just because the club is all about motorcycles.
So, business is business. People buy stuff, they add value and the sell stuff. It really doesn't matter what the stuff is, it could be construction where people buy the labor of others and the added value is a new roof which they sell to someone. The added value could be all B.S. like it is with some people who buy cheap jewelry and pretend it is good stuff and sell it out of high rent stores. Business is just business.
If someone's business brings heat down on a club, and I was always considered a wild cannon, unpredictable, so I know about this, they are told to cool the fu*k out or get lost. If things are bad enough other stuff can happen, but, everything has consequences so most people in business try not to over react and this includes bike clubs. The more likely someone is to hurt a club the worse the situation.
Some people liked keeping me at arms length and others thought I was too much trouble to have around. Yeah, I could be ruthless, but, I also pick and choose so no one could be sure if they called and told me to show up if I would be there. This is still true, I am nothing if not inconsistent enough in the minds of others that people who like to put other people into boxes don't like me. I am consistent, on my terms and no one else's. I am not about to be a patch holder, but, I know enough about how things work.
So I watched this kid on SOA whining about getting out of the gun business and literally thought to myself, this is a pussy fest. This guy is right, the future of this club is all in pussy.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
IQ and common sense and standard deviation.
You have probably heard of IQ. Personally I think IQ is over rated and mostly crap, but, I like the fact that I am in the top 2%. Anyone with an IQ of over 150 is. So lets think about that. I am going to use some basic ballparks here, but, you are welcome to check out my data.
Every normal distribution is going to have a mean, modality and a median and they are all going to be the same number, or about the same number.
If an IQ of over 150 is in the top 2% that means the standard deviation (std dev) is about 25. Huh?
This is statistics hocus pocus and you can check it out on wikipedia or some other more reasonable source. There is a chart that will show you the idea how a standard deviation works in a normal distribution.
There is a problem with that concept. If the standard deviation in IQ is 25 then about 15% of people have an IQ of below 75. About 68% of people have an IQ of between 75 and 125, about 13% have an IQ of between 125 and 150 and 2% have an IQ of over 150.
An IQ of below 75 is special needs. That means out of 100 kids 15 should be special needs. I don't see that in my experience. Maybe, but, I don't think there are that many special needs people. I think the standard deviation is probably lower or the mean is higher or both.
I went looking for more input and found this quote:
"If a person scores below 70 on a properly administered and scored I.Q. test, he or she is in the bottom 2 percent of the American population10 and meets the first condition necessary to be defined as having mental retardation."
at this website:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/ustat/ustat0301-01.htm
Okay, WTF, below 70 is in the bottom 2% and above 150 is in the top 2%. That doesn't make sense if the average IQ is 100. The standard deviation changes to 15 on the low side.
So the range between 70 and 150 is 80 and this range is covered by 4 standard deviations so the std dev should be 20. 70 plus 40 (2 std dev) is 110. 150 minus 40 is 110.
Okay, so the IQ data only makes sense if the mean is 110. In a Gausian or normal distribution, a Bell Curve, the mean, the median, the middle and the mode are all about the same.
Okay, so the middle is 110 and the average or mean is 100. This suggests that the majority of people have an I.Q. of under 100.
Suppose we have two people with an IQ of 90 and one person with an IQ of 120. We have three people with a mean IQ of 100, but, the modality is 90. More people with an IQ below the mean than above the mean.
We can suggest that this is probable based on the distribution, 4 sigma between 70 and 150 with a middle of 110 and a mean of 100. These number suggest a skewed distribution with a modality of about 90.
I found a study once that documented the IQ of teachers and the std dev was really small, around 2 and the average was 112. This means 68% of teachers have an IQ of between 110 and 114. 13% had an IQ of 114 to 116 and 2% had an IQ of 116 to 118.
How good was the study? No clue. From the teachers I had in school I would say it is pretty accurate, but, from teachers I have met socially I would say it is low. Thinking about it though, I like hanging with smarter people so ...
In my experience the smartest group of people I ever worked with are skilled trades. Good money, less formal education, lot of smarts.
Computer geeks usually don't rate high in my estimation, although, I have met some really smart guys into computers. I think computer geeks might rate as well as skilled trades, but, a lot of geeks are way too closed minded and focused on propaganda for me to draw a straight line between them. Some of the self styled "hackers" I have met actually think Europeans thought the Earth was flat before Columbus and that the Church tried to squash science. To much crap, not enough brains.
Edit: By the way, this seems incredibly obvious to me, but, it might not be obvious to others. If the median is 110, and the mean is 100, the modality should actually be 90, which would mean that more than half of everyone you meet is below average IQ.
Every normal distribution is going to have a mean, modality and a median and they are all going to be the same number, or about the same number.
If an IQ of over 150 is in the top 2% that means the standard deviation (std dev) is about 25. Huh?
This is statistics hocus pocus and you can check it out on wikipedia or some other more reasonable source. There is a chart that will show you the idea how a standard deviation works in a normal distribution.
There is a problem with that concept. If the standard deviation in IQ is 25 then about 15% of people have an IQ of below 75. About 68% of people have an IQ of between 75 and 125, about 13% have an IQ of between 125 and 150 and 2% have an IQ of over 150.
An IQ of below 75 is special needs. That means out of 100 kids 15 should be special needs. I don't see that in my experience. Maybe, but, I don't think there are that many special needs people. I think the standard deviation is probably lower or the mean is higher or both.
I went looking for more input and found this quote:
"If a person scores below 70 on a properly administered and scored I.Q. test, he or she is in the bottom 2 percent of the American population10 and meets the first condition necessary to be defined as having mental retardation."
at this website:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/ustat/ustat0301-01.htm
Okay, WTF, below 70 is in the bottom 2% and above 150 is in the top 2%. That doesn't make sense if the average IQ is 100. The standard deviation changes to 15 on the low side.
So the range between 70 and 150 is 80 and this range is covered by 4 standard deviations so the std dev should be 20. 70 plus 40 (2 std dev) is 110. 150 minus 40 is 110.
Okay, so the IQ data only makes sense if the mean is 110. In a Gausian or normal distribution, a Bell Curve, the mean, the median, the middle and the mode are all about the same.
Okay, so the middle is 110 and the average or mean is 100. This suggests that the majority of people have an I.Q. of under 100.
Suppose we have two people with an IQ of 90 and one person with an IQ of 120. We have three people with a mean IQ of 100, but, the modality is 90. More people with an IQ below the mean than above the mean.
We can suggest that this is probable based on the distribution, 4 sigma between 70 and 150 with a middle of 110 and a mean of 100. These number suggest a skewed distribution with a modality of about 90.
I found a study once that documented the IQ of teachers and the std dev was really small, around 2 and the average was 112. This means 68% of teachers have an IQ of between 110 and 114. 13% had an IQ of 114 to 116 and 2% had an IQ of 116 to 118.
How good was the study? No clue. From the teachers I had in school I would say it is pretty accurate, but, from teachers I have met socially I would say it is low. Thinking about it though, I like hanging with smarter people so ...
In my experience the smartest group of people I ever worked with are skilled trades. Good money, less formal education, lot of smarts.
Computer geeks usually don't rate high in my estimation, although, I have met some really smart guys into computers. I think computer geeks might rate as well as skilled trades, but, a lot of geeks are way too closed minded and focused on propaganda for me to draw a straight line between them. Some of the self styled "hackers" I have met actually think Europeans thought the Earth was flat before Columbus and that the Church tried to squash science. To much crap, not enough brains.
Edit: By the way, this seems incredibly obvious to me, but, it might not be obvious to others. If the median is 110, and the mean is 100, the modality should actually be 90, which would mean that more than half of everyone you meet is below average IQ.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Science and Creation
So the scientific method is basically,
1: think up an idea
2: test that idea
3: repeat the test over and over with different researchers
4: repeat this process with different tests and different researchers
5: declare the idea a well documented theory or even a scientific law.
6: keep testing the idea against newly available data.
In science nothing is ever proved or disproved, just more or less probable. A Null Result or an idea that fails a scientific test makes the idea less probable. Now scientists are people and they don't have unlimited knowledge. Like most people they often just parrot crap they heard someone else say and when I hear people parrot ridiculous crap it bugs me to no end.
I hate "scientists" who talk in absolutes, although I should actually love them. I built a career out of doing the impossible because people were closed minded, believed in absolutes and so they believed stuff was impossible, until I went and did it.
The link I am publishing addresses evidence for a Young Earth.
None of these ideas in this list of evidence for a Young Earth prove a Young Earth, they simply cast doubt on other ideas. Evidence for a Young Earth would be something like "If the Earth is X years old then we should find Carbon 14 in quantities ranging between Y and Z in archaeological organic matter."
Failing this test I propose does not eliminate the possibility of a Young Earth, but, it makes the concept of a Young Earth less probable. Carbon 14 content establishes that either the world is at least 50,000 years old OR that God created the Earth with decayed organics having a variable carbon 14 content that were contained in layered strata congruent with natural aging.
Being both a Christian and a scientist this annoys the crap out of me. To me the "God Hypothesis", the idea or concept of a true and living God who created the universe is a valid hypothesis that I accept on Faith, but, that requires rigorous testing using the scientific method before it becomes a scientifically valid theory or law.
How can we test the "God Hypothesis"? Even if we figure out how to test the "God Hypothesis" and establish the probability that there is One True God as a scientific law how do we test the hypothesis of Creationism?
Wasting our time casting doubt on other ideas does not prove our ideas.
We need to push for science education and that means studying how science develops and tests ideas. As far as I am concerned we need to teach:
"While the Hypothesis of Creation is a scientifically valid hypothesis we have no way of testing the Creation Hypothesis at this time. In science education we study how scientists have identified and tested scientific hypotheses. If or when someone comes up with valid, peer reviewed and accepted, testing of the Creation Hypothesis it can and should be taught in science education. Until then we should teach scientific theories and the processes under which they have been tested and either accepted or rejected"
http://www.creationtoday.org/evidence-for-a-young-earth/
1: think up an idea
2: test that idea
3: repeat the test over and over with different researchers
4: repeat this process with different tests and different researchers
5: declare the idea a well documented theory or even a scientific law.
6: keep testing the idea against newly available data.
In science nothing is ever proved or disproved, just more or less probable. A Null Result or an idea that fails a scientific test makes the idea less probable. Now scientists are people and they don't have unlimited knowledge. Like most people they often just parrot crap they heard someone else say and when I hear people parrot ridiculous crap it bugs me to no end.
I hate "scientists" who talk in absolutes, although I should actually love them. I built a career out of doing the impossible because people were closed minded, believed in absolutes and so they believed stuff was impossible, until I went and did it.
The link I am publishing addresses evidence for a Young Earth.
None of these ideas in this list of evidence for a Young Earth prove a Young Earth, they simply cast doubt on other ideas. Evidence for a Young Earth would be something like "If the Earth is X years old then we should find Carbon 14 in quantities ranging between Y and Z in archaeological organic matter."
Failing this test I propose does not eliminate the possibility of a Young Earth, but, it makes the concept of a Young Earth less probable. Carbon 14 content establishes that either the world is at least 50,000 years old OR that God created the Earth with decayed organics having a variable carbon 14 content that were contained in layered strata congruent with natural aging.
Being both a Christian and a scientist this annoys the crap out of me. To me the "God Hypothesis", the idea or concept of a true and living God who created the universe is a valid hypothesis that I accept on Faith, but, that requires rigorous testing using the scientific method before it becomes a scientifically valid theory or law.
How can we test the "God Hypothesis"? Even if we figure out how to test the "God Hypothesis" and establish the probability that there is One True God as a scientific law how do we test the hypothesis of Creationism?
Wasting our time casting doubt on other ideas does not prove our ideas.
We need to push for science education and that means studying how science develops and tests ideas. As far as I am concerned we need to teach:
"While the Hypothesis of Creation is a scientifically valid hypothesis we have no way of testing the Creation Hypothesis at this time. In science education we study how scientists have identified and tested scientific hypotheses. If or when someone comes up with valid, peer reviewed and accepted, testing of the Creation Hypothesis it can and should be taught in science education. Until then we should teach scientific theories and the processes under which they have been tested and either accepted or rejected"
http://www.creationtoday.org/evidence-for-a-young-earth/
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