Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Embarassed Into Paying Taxes
An interesting video on a different tax culture than our own. One of the state officials who tried to pay his taxes, got his check returned, which I thought was a little different from the US.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Who Doesn't Like YouTube?
Free is never really free. An important, universal (?) fact to keep in mind.
This dude talks about how YouTube consumes a ton of money in order to keep up with the servers required for it to stay in operation. "Free" is dependent upon some company's willingness to subsidize what is offered. It has changed our perception of internet videos, but it's not resting upon an unshakable foundation.
I tried to find out who the guy is, but I assume he is not a loon, since Steve Forbes is interviewing him. Also, on principal I agree with him. We have all placed our expectations on the fact that internet videos will always be free. But that could easily change depending on rising costs of bandwidth, the business environment, and effective competition/undercutting with Google, for instance.
This dude talks about how YouTube consumes a ton of money in order to keep up with the servers required for it to stay in operation. "Free" is dependent upon some company's willingness to subsidize what is offered. It has changed our perception of internet videos, but it's not resting upon an unshakable foundation.
I tried to find out who the guy is, but I assume he is not a loon, since Steve Forbes is interviewing him. Also, on principal I agree with him. We have all placed our expectations on the fact that internet videos will always be free. But that could easily change depending on rising costs of bandwidth, the business environment, and effective competition/undercutting with Google, for instance.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Well Rounded Truths
Recently, I was reawakened to the practicality and greatness of two books of the Bible: Ecclesiastes and Job. No matter what your notions of the existence of God or whatever are, they address real topics of life that we all face sometime in our lives.
Ecclesiastes asks the question: What's the point of it all? A very worthy question. After all, we are each fleeting flashes of creation in a vast cosmos with little to no hope of being remembered more than one generation out. But wait! There is a God who Cares. It's an especially poignant book because it was written by a man who had literally done it all and life still felt hollow until he came to his conclusion about what life is about.
Job clearly presents the problem of evil, with relevant, commonly asked questions throughout about why suffering exists and what can be done to end it. Then, towards the end of the book, God answers Job's questions. Hasn't everyone wanted the answer to the why's of life? Well, there it is in Job. God puts the universe into perspective for Job, citing the created order primarily, emphasizing His care for us as His creation despite evil in the world.
I like both books a lot because they emphasize the contradiction of our worthy puniness. Absent the supernatural, the books are excellent examples of the existential crisis, which is reality, but only part of the reality. While we are teenier beings on a teeny planet, we are also loved by an infinite God who made Himself manifest in history through Christ. It's the complete package.
Ecclesiastes asks the question: What's the point of it all? A very worthy question. After all, we are each fleeting flashes of creation in a vast cosmos with little to no hope of being remembered more than one generation out. But wait! There is a God who Cares. It's an especially poignant book because it was written by a man who had literally done it all and life still felt hollow until he came to his conclusion about what life is about.
Job clearly presents the problem of evil, with relevant, commonly asked questions throughout about why suffering exists and what can be done to end it. Then, towards the end of the book, God answers Job's questions. Hasn't everyone wanted the answer to the why's of life? Well, there it is in Job. God puts the universe into perspective for Job, citing the created order primarily, emphasizing His care for us as His creation despite evil in the world.
I like both books a lot because they emphasize the contradiction of our worthy puniness. Absent the supernatural, the books are excellent examples of the existential crisis, which is reality, but only part of the reality. While we are teenier beings on a teeny planet, we are also loved by an infinite God who made Himself manifest in history through Christ. It's the complete package.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Clinton Knows Best
RealClearPolitics - Video - Clinton Defends Byrd's KKK Ties: "He Was Trying To Get Elected"
"There are certainly no perfect politicians." Well said, President Clinton, well said.
If you're on the right side, all can be forgiven.
"There are certainly no perfect politicians." Well said, President Clinton, well said.
If you're on the right side, all can be forgiven.
The Monkey Theorem
I recently read a very good book by Antony Flew (who passed away this April) called "There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind."
Flew was a foundational thinker for modern atheism but in 2004 became a deist. His book is an excellent overview of atheism and even philosophy for a non-philosophy student like myself, I thought. There were some new angles to the argument for the existence of God that I hadn't thought of before. Some criticized the book saying Flew was too old when he wrote it (81) and therefore his mind was molded by Christian thinkers. Perhaps, but Flew acknowledged those arguments as mere ad hominem, and I think the same.
One of the highlights of the book for me was an expounding on the "monkey theorem." You know, that famous hypothetical situation that if you left a roomful of monkeys with a typewriter, eventually the works of Shakespeare would show up, thus emphasizing the point that given enough time and random events, order can come from chaos. Like, the universe and us for example.
In Flew's book, he tells of this situation being experimented by the British National Council of Arts. Six monkeys were left in a room for a month with a typewriter and produced 50 pages but not one word. Words even include "a" and "I", which need spaces on either side of them to be considered words. In another example, the Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder crunches the numbers for the odds of monkeys typing out "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and it comes out to 26^488th power or 10 to the 690th. As a matter of scale, there are 1 to the 80th particles in the universe-electrons, protons, neutrons. 1 to the 80th has 80 zeros after the 1 and 1 to the 690th has 690 zeroes after the 1. Huge numbers. Imagine picking the right particle out of the universe at random. What are the odds you'll get the right one? 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
Those numbers right there got me. Of course, to read the whole explanation, get the book. Or find Schroeder's numbers online regarding the monkey theorem. It goes to show, random chance is not on the side of created order, let alone conscious life.
Flew was a foundational thinker for modern atheism but in 2004 became a deist. His book is an excellent overview of atheism and even philosophy for a non-philosophy student like myself, I thought. There were some new angles to the argument for the existence of God that I hadn't thought of before. Some criticized the book saying Flew was too old when he wrote it (81) and therefore his mind was molded by Christian thinkers. Perhaps, but Flew acknowledged those arguments as mere ad hominem, and I think the same.
One of the highlights of the book for me was an expounding on the "monkey theorem." You know, that famous hypothetical situation that if you left a roomful of monkeys with a typewriter, eventually the works of Shakespeare would show up, thus emphasizing the point that given enough time and random events, order can come from chaos. Like, the universe and us for example.
In Flew's book, he tells of this situation being experimented by the British National Council of Arts. Six monkeys were left in a room for a month with a typewriter and produced 50 pages but not one word. Words even include "a" and "I", which need spaces on either side of them to be considered words. In another example, the Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder crunches the numbers for the odds of monkeys typing out "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and it comes out to 26^488th power or 10 to the 690th. As a matter of scale, there are 1 to the 80th particles in the universe-electrons, protons, neutrons. 1 to the 80th has 80 zeros after the 1 and 1 to the 690th has 690 zeroes after the 1. Huge numbers. Imagine picking the right particle out of the universe at random. What are the odds you'll get the right one? 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
Those numbers right there got me. Of course, to read the whole explanation, get the book. Or find Schroeder's numbers online regarding the monkey theorem. It goes to show, random chance is not on the side of created order, let alone conscious life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)