The Lumpy Universe

Posts on a variety of topics of interest, including current events, politics, economics, technology, science, religion, philosophy, and whatever else comes to mind. Not affiliated with The Lumpy Universe at NASA/Goddard (sorry--I just happen to like the name).

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Location: United States

31 December 2005

Nasty Virus

There are some nasty viruses going around. Some of them infect humans, and others infect computers. I've spent all my spare time the last couple of days trying to get rid of a virus of the computer variety, while family members visiting from afar have been struggling with the other.

We caught a case of Look2Me on one of our computers, and it's hard to eliminate. When you mark its executing file for deletion on the next startup, it renames itself and escapes the executioner. I've found some tools on the Internet that are supposed to help. Wish me luck!

The irritating thing is that my security software, which shall for now go unnamed, doesn't offer any help. It attempts to delete the files, but when you visit their website for more information on this specific parasite they claim it isn't a parasite and so they won't help you get rid of it.

Hellooo! If it wasn't installed intentionally, downloads other parasites, and consumes 100% of your CPU, it's BAAD, and they ought to help out.

How do non-computer-geeks deal with this kind of stuff, anyway?

27 December 2005

Intelligent Design and Creationism

The most common argument against intelligent design is that it is just the Biblical account of the creation in disguise. Having read Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box, I am surprised at the claim. The point of intelligent design, as I read it, is not that God created life. The point is that it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that life evolved unaided from inorganic materials.

If any group wishes to characterize the intelligent design folks as Biblical creationists pretending to engage in science, then that group really ought to provide some evidence that the motives of the intelligent designers are different from what they have stated them to be.

25 December 2005

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all!

Today we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who came to earth two millenia ago to do the will of the Father. He played an indispensable role in the conflict between good and evil.

What is good? A few of the characteristics of good are truth, light, beauty, peace, joy, power, and freedom. Evil is the opposite, with error, darkness, ugliness, conflict, misery, weakness, and bondage.

Beware the counterfeits of good. Error may sound like truth, may be presented as truth, but yet is still error. Dim light may be used to advance evil, but it fades to nothing in the presence of the true and glorious light. Beauty is simulated with pretty, peace with compulsion, joy with pleasure, power with tyranny, and freedom with license.

Without Jesus and the role he played, we would be forever trapped by evil, we would be resigned to dwell eternally with it.

But Christ fulfilled his mission, and did so gloriously. He bridged the bottomless pit that we may safely cross into his presence.

Gloria in excelsis deo!

23 December 2005

Quantum Mechanics II

One good example of how statistics comes into play in quantum mechanics is with the famous dual-slit experiment that we've all done in high-school physics.

I remember Mr. Van Orden trying to set up the experiment for us. The primary challenge for us was creating the dual slits through which to shine the red light. The idea was to hold two razor blades together to scribe two very fine and closely-spaced lines through the carbon on a soot-blackened microscope slide. As I recall (and you know how poor recollections can be after so many years), he finally offered an A grade to anyone who could succeed in making the slits on the slide. Well, that was motivation enough for us, and I was the fortunate one who finally succeeded.

Once we had the slide, we shined a red light through the slide, and observed an interference pattern created by the interaction of light waves after passing through the two closely-spaced slits.

This experiment can also be duplicated using electrons instead of photons.

The curious thing is that if you send one electron or photon at a time through the the apparatus, you still get an interference pattern that builds up over time. That doesn't seem right, since photons and electrons are so small that they must go through either one slit or the other, not both. The accumulated result over time should be two bright lines on the detector (photographic film, for example).

One of the theories proposed to explain this is that the entity (photon or electron) takes all possible paths through space between the emitter and the detector, and where it shows up on the detector is based on the statistical probabilities of the infinite paths it has simultaneously taken.

To the average man on the street, this is nonsense. Same thing for women and children.

What I think is really happening is that the photon or electron grows in size when it leaves the emitter. Think of it as a spherical blob of jello. If there is nothing between the emitter and the detector, the blob is consumed by a single molecule of the detector upon first contact with the detector, which will be on the straight line between the emitter and the detector. Think of a tennis ball hitting the wall, and which piece of fuzz on the ball makes first contact with the wall.

The blob cannot be detected by more than one molecule of the detector, because the act of detection requires the whole blob--this is a basic limitation of measurement. So the first detector molecule contacted by the blob, being thirsty for jello, sucks in the whole blob and you end up with a tiny point on the detector.

Now, send the blob through the two slits. Think of the blob squeezing through both slits. It doesn't need to ever really separate into two pieces, because the front part can rejoin on the back side before the back of the blob has gone through. Or perhaps the blob is a five-dimensional blob (more on this some other time), and it may appear to split in our four dimensions but really doesn't. Anyway, the act of passing through the slits causes it to become misshapen have strange undulations going on.

When it hits the detector, the first part of the blob to hit the detector, as before, causes the whole blob to be sucked into a single detector molecule, again making a point on the detector. But now the shape of the blob is strange. In fact, the shape of the blob is probably pretty much the same as the interference pattern that results after many blobs have been through the two slits.

If we could know precisely the shape of the blob at every instant in time, we could with precision tell where each photon or electron would strike the detector. But since we can't know that--it's far too small--we use statistics to establish the probability that it will hit the detector at any given point. So, we are using statistics to desribe the action of something that is too small to measure. It isn't the case that the reality at really small scales is a basket full of statistical probabilities.

The Barrett Report

One of the most astonishing cover-ups by our federal government is happening as I write this. Here's my summary. (I believe the first article on the subject was here at the Wall Street Journal; see also Tony Snow's piece here.)

Independent Counsel David Barrett was given the task of investigating a case of possible tax fraud agains Henry Cisneros, a Clinton cabinet member. Along the way, he discovered evidence of two very disturbing activities of the Clinton administration:
  1. The Clinton Department of Justice was actively interfering with the investigation, including spying on the activities of Barrett.
  2. The Clinton administration was using the IRS to harrass political opponents. The victims of these attacks fell roughly into two categories: women who "had the goods" on Bill Clinton as a result of his philandering (e.g. Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, etc), and conservative foundations and think-tanks that opposed policies and philosophies of the Clinton administration (e.g. the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, etc).
The Barrett Report is finished and ready for release. However, several Senate Democrats are making sure that nobody ever sees the finished product. They've hammered out a deal with a few naive Republicans that ends up redacting all of the incriminating evidence against the Clinton administration.

Maybe we should contact our representatives in Washington and insist that the American people have a right to know exactly what it was that David Barrett uncovered.

PS If the MainStream Media weren't biased, this would be front-page news every day until the full release of the Barret Report. Unfortunately, they're too busy concocting absurd schemes with which to attack the Bush administration.

PS2 Given the role John Kerry has played in the cover-up, we should be (more) grateful he is not now the President of the United States.

22 December 2005

On Quantum Mechanics

No, "Quantum Mechanics" is not the name of a reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh.

A lot of people get a thrill out of quantum mechanics because it violates so many common-sense notions that seem to hold true in the "big" world. I've never really liked it, however. And lately I've done some reading that makes me think we got it wrong.

The aspect of quantum mechanics I don't like is the idea that sub-atomic particles don't possess definite states, such as energy and position, but instead possess probability distributions of state.

After reading some of the ideas of Carver Mead, I'm of the disposition that perhaps the use of statistics is a response to the physical limits of measurement. That is, the nature of matter imposes a size threshold below which we cannot measure. It may be a good method for making predictions about sub-atomic behavior, but it probably doesn't represent physical reality.

[And I may be simply re-stating what Mead has written, but without the math. I tend more toward the philosophical approach.]

My suspicions are somewhat corroborated by the idea that statistics are employed at the macro level not to describe specific mechanisms or facts, but rather to bound or contain them. It could be that the use of statistics to describe sub-atomic behavior is a way to bound or enclose the behavior that we can measure, but it really doesn't tell us what is going on inside the black box, or beyond the limits of detection.

I just don't like the assertion that probability is reality at the sub-atomic level.

More later...

The Attack Media

The current coverage by the Main Stream Media (MSM) of the NSA spying on international telephone calls is shocking and alarming. Not because of the spying, mind you. Every president in recent history has conducted warrantless electronic surveillance of international communications for the purpose of national security. And well they should. More on that later.

What is alarming and shocking is the pretense by the MSM that this is something new and disturbing, and that laws have been broken and impeachment is next. It's as if they feel some obligation to see Bush impeached because Clinton was impeached, thinking that a strange sort of moral equivalency will thereby be obtained.

I'm not a lawyer (IANAL), but my first impression on the subject is that of course it is legal and prudent for the United States to monitor communications that cross our borders. Do we not maintain the right to inspect all other traffic that crosses our borders?

There are plenty of posts out there detailing the history of this type of spying: Jimmy Carter's Executive Order on the subject is here, and Bill Clinton's on warrantless physical searches is here. Check out the Powerline for a rational discussion of the subject.

21 December 2005

Death Penalty Logic

Is the death penalty wrong? Some say it is, asserting that it lowers the State to the level of the criminal. In other words, when the State executes a murderer, it is committing murder.

That assertion opposes not just the death penalty, but any punishment that might be imposed by the State.

Let's say a person is guilty of embezzling money from his employer. What punishment should he receive from the State? Perhaps he should be fined. But wouldn't that be the same as the original theft? Okay, so throw him into prison. But wouldn't that be the same as kidnapping?

What they are really saying is that the State has no authority to dispense justice.

13 December 2005

Crank It Up

It's time to start blogging!