Unleashing the geek

With the DVD release of the HHGttG movie imminent, I thought I'd say a few things.

I saw this movie with Philip, Thomas, and Caleb (we couldn't justify leaving him behind).

Overall, I enjoyed it. That may be because I went in determined to do so.

But I did have some issues.

Marvin. At first I hated the way Marvin was designed. After a while I got used to it, and decided it was okay.

Zaphod. I hated the stupid “pez-dispenser” head thing. I still do. Given today's CGI technology, would it have really been that hard to give him two heads he could bang together?

Ford. Mos Def was okay, I guess, but he's certainly no Geoffrey McGivern.

The Vogons. Actually they looked pretty good, but they should have been green.

I read some reviews that complained that the story just ended, with unresolved plot points. To them I say, “Ever hear of a sequel, dumbass.”

Philip hated it. Halfway through the movie he said, “Disney must have had Douglas Adams killed to get this piece of crap made.” That's hard to misinterpret.

Thomas said it was okay.

I don't really care what Caleb thought.

Moving on...

By general consensus (that is to say, I was outvoted) the radio at work is usually kept on a country station, and I want to gripe a bit.

It claims to be a mix station, but really it's a top twenty station that occasionally plays some other songs.

I work from 5am to 3pm, Monday through Thursday. I hear the same songs at least two, sometimes three, times each day, everyday that song is in the top twenty.

I want to say something about a few of them.

Nothing About Love Makes Sense – Leeann Rimes.
Jayzeez Chroist, this song is dumb!
"Like an ocean liner shouldn't float on the sea" - Archimedes' Principle?
"That big Italian tower, well how does it lean?" - no mystery there either.
"or a bumblebee fly" - okay, I used to hear this one a lot from people trying to defend the "mystery of the universe." The claim is that, according to physics, bumblebees should not be able to fly. This is bullplop. BULLPLOP! I am not a physicist, but I can explain how bumblebees fly. It certainly does not defy science. If you want an explanation, just ask. I will happily bore you to tears.
There are other lines like this, but I want to move on to another song.

Goodbye Time – Blake Shelton
This has got to be the whiniest crap I have ever heard. Grow a pair!

Angels – Randy Travis.
Ok. Randy Travis has some songs that I like. This is not one of them. The song starts with a discussion about the literal existence of angels. One guy says that he has never seen one. The rest of the song is about a mother's love, which is a wondrous thing and certainly a worthy subject of song. But what does it have to do with the literal existence of angels?

You'll be There – George Strait
This song begins by comparing life to a ship on the ocean. How very original. I don't think I've heard that more than a dozen times. Other than that, it was okay the first couple of times, but it got really old really fast. There's a line in the chorus: "I want to go where the streets are gold, 'cause you'll be there." Every time I hear that I think, "He wants to go to Rigel?"
(I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't get that joke. If I explain it, it won't be funny anymore.)

And the not-in-the-current-top-20 songs they play.
By all means, play Reba. But she has more songs than "Fancy." (at least once a week) And is it just me, or is that song actually about a mother pushing her daughter into prostitution?
There are some others that crop up pretty often, too.
I almost passed out with shock a few months ago when they played "Poncho and Lefty" (the Willie Nelson – Waylon Jennings version).

Later.

to Milton

Please don't think I was ridiculing you about "it's self." I am a geek and have been for many, many years. Correcting other people's English is an almost Pavlovian response. I can't help it.

I visited your blog. I didn't have time to read much, but I will when I can. It looked pretty good.

Anyone else - check out Milton's blog: thoughtsfromchemistry.blogspot.com

Later.

on Editing

I read my posts several times before and after I post them.

I re-edited "more on EvC" several times after I posted it, because I missed some typos beforehand. This one, too.

Please, at the very least, re-read your comments to see that they make sense. If you aren't sure how to spell a word, do what I do, copy it into a word-processor (I use OpenOffice) and spellcheck it.

Later.

Reply to a Reply to a Reply

"my quarrel with evolution is not so much that things can not become more complex, but rather that complexity it’s self leads to life"

it's = it is
?
"itself" is one word

Just because you are incredulous about something does not mean it can't be true. You are free to believe or not as you will, but incredulity is not an argument. It is a statement of disbelief.

None of those examples was meant to defend Evolution, just to point out that 2LoT does not prevent spontaneous order. Evolution says, "It could have happened without design." Some people take that as, "It happened without design, therefore there is no God." That's their personal belief. Some people say, "That's preposterous, there must be a God." They're entitled to their beliefs as well. I personally do not believe ID, please allow me my own beliefs. But the question of how everything began doesn't really interest me. Things are. That's enough for me.
(Note the correct use of "there," "their," and "they're.")

Science does not answer "Why?" Science answers "How?"
"Why?" is a philosophical question.
Science doesn't stick its nose into philosophy.

Science does not preclude the existence of God.
Also, it is hubris beyond belief to say why God would, or should, have done things.
Especially if you believe in God.

Some scientists are atheists (i.e. Richard Dawkins) and are very outspoken (i.e. Richard Dawkins).
Some are not.
Scientists are human. Like most anyone else, when their beliefs are (sometimes viciously) belittled as ridiculous, they feel attacked. When attacked, some people try to defend themselves. Some are good at it. Some are not.

And for any evangelical Christians who think everyone must believe as they do, read Matthew 10:14.

What I'd like to know is, why aren't Creationists as rabid about, say, Hindu creation beliefs?

Later.

More on EvC.

Consider this:

"Darwin himself cannot understand how there could be a good purpose for the existence of the Ichneumonidae, yet the Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "the group [Ichneumonidae] as a whole is beneficial to man because it parasitizes many insect pests"⁶. It turns out that when the caterpillars eat corn seedlings, a hormone is released by the plant which attracts the wasps which destroys the caterpillar, ultimately saving the corn plant⁷. Thus while on the surface it appears that the wasps weren’t designed with the well-being of the caterpillars in mind (i.e. it appears to have sub-optimal design), from a higher order perspective we see that their purpose is not only beneficial to corn plants, but also to humans and the ecosystem as a whole! Without the wasps, the caterpillars might endlessly reproduce, thus destroying any chance for corn to grow, human to eat the crops, and in the end, for the caterpillars themselves to survive." http://acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/badtheolgooddesn.htm

This may be great hubris, especially since I dropped out of the College of Engineering at Penn State, but it seems to me that God (or whoever, since ID proponents claim repeatedly that the designer is not necessarily God. "Just someone with the basic skill set to create an entire working universe." - Jon Stewart, the Daily Show) could just have made caterpillars not eat corn. If the existance of the caterpillar is important for some reason (which I can't see, if, as ID seems to imply, humans are the whole point of the universe). But I'm just a not-Engineer, what do I know?

I think I see another problem. It's a "top down" vs. "bottom up" way of seeing things.
The above quote takes the "top down" or "after the fact" view. The wasp has a purpose. The corn has a purpose. And, by implication, the caterpillar probably has a purpose. Looking at what is already there seems to imply purpose. Purpose implies design.
Evolution is "bottom up." Wasps that were attracted to the hormone found more caterpillars to host their eggs. Corn that secreted the hormone survived to produce seeds. For a more cogent explanation, read Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene."

Here's a thought. What if ants are the whole reason for everything, and humans were created solely for the purpose of providing them a challenge to overcome?

Later.

Reply to a comment

Ok. Unless you are the person who left this comment, you will probably need to go read it.

Also, show a little backbone. Don't post anonymously. Your comments won't hurt my feelings or piss me off - unless they're poorly spelled. On that note, please edit your comments. "wher", "accidentilly", "be go by." Come on!

Now, my response.

If God is all-powerful, time and His perception thereof are whatever He wants them to be.
By definition, an all-powerful God has no limitations, and you are metaphorically shooting yourself in the foot if you try to impose them.

And besides, Lisa did not create the life in her petri dish. A spark of static electricity did. Although the people that evolved believed she was God, she had nothing to do with their development, aside from being visible occasionally. And she was powerless when they pulled her into their world. A strong case, however, could be made for Bart-as-Devil.

Later.

Spam

I've been getting spam comments, so I have word verification active.
Bastards.