tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55925422024-03-18T17:28:46.172-07:00Rondam RamblingsPreaching the gospel of evidence, experiment and reason since 2003.Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.comBlogger1485125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-37291407658159693782024-03-16T20:56:00.000-07:002024-03-16T20:56:40.720-07:00A Clean-Sheet Introduction to the Scientific Method About twenty years ago I inaugurated this blog by writing the following:"I guess I'll start with the basics: I am a scientist. That is intended to be not so much a description of my profession (though it is that too) as it is a statement about my religious beliefs."I want to re-visit that inaugural statement in light of what I've learned in the twenty years since I first wrote it. In Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-4657267702256789532024-02-03T21:30:00.000-08:002024-02-03T21:50:23.928-08:00Why I want to repeal the Second AmendmentAbout three years ago I wrote a blog post calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. I hope it goes without saying that I did not (and do not) harbor any illusions about this actually happening any time soon. I wrote it in a fit of frustration at having to watch over and over again the futile ritual that America goes through every time Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-58816033317788118382023-11-23T11:16:00.000-08:002023-11-23T11:20:42.141-08:00Why I Don't Believe in JesusMy old friend Publius posted a comment (which he has apparently since deleted) on my earlier essay about why I don't believe in God, saying "the God which Jesus revealed to us is nothing like [the God of the Old Testament]." Setting aside the fact that Jesus disagreed, I thought it would be worthwhile expanding specifically on why I don't believe in Jesus.Jesus is certainly nowhere near as Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com105tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-19886397680965236142023-11-11T15:22:00.007-08:002023-11-30T18:08:00.353-08:00Why I Don't Believe in GodPeople occasionally ask me why I don't believe in God. There are a lot of reasons, but I've never bothered to write them down before because most of my reasons are pretty basic and uninteresting: no evidence for God, lots of evidence against the Bible being divinely inspired, yada yada yada. But there is one argument I've started to articulate lately that I've not seen come up very Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-56464688673827532402023-05-02T16:16:00.006-07:002023-05-08T23:34:40.827-07:00How to explain cardinals vs ordinals to a six-year-oldThis discussion on Hacker News on whether infinity is odd or even got me to thinking about the right way to teach kids about infinity, and the difference between cardinals and ordinals. Here's what I came up with.It is important to realize that numbers can stand for two different kinds of ideas. Numbers can talk about "how many" but they can also talk about "what position". For Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-32815141812309775192023-04-23T18:58:00.001-07:002023-04-23T18:58:53.904-07:00All together now: the second amendment must be repealedIt has been two years since I first called for the repeal of the second amendment. (Someone has to be the first.) It seems like a complete no-brainer to me that we need to at least say the obvious truth that the second amendment is a relic of the past and has no place in a modern technological society, if for no other reason than to start moving the Overton window for future Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-47320009872580357342023-04-14T10:38:00.003-07:002023-04-14T10:42:37.627-07:00Bitcoin's value proposition: screwup postmortemA Blogger user going by the handle Satoshi [1] pointed out that I made a major mistake in my analysis of rental attacks on Bitcoin. The numbers I was using for the hash rate were off by six orders of magnitude. But that turns out not to matter because, by sheer luck, I made a second mistake that almost exactly offset the effect of my first mistake. I've since re-done the math, Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-40318251533874560532023-04-12T10:59:00.001-07:002023-04-12T10:59:34.597-07:00A systematic critique of Bitcoin's value proposition1. IntroductionThis essay was originally entitled "Bitcoin's design contains the seeds of its own destruction". The thesis was going to be that Bitcoin's security depends entirely on consuming vast quantities of energy, and so any value it might offer is outweighed by its inherent costs. But when I did the math, that turns out not to be true. Bitcoin does use a lot of energy, Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com41320 Spring Grove Rd, Hollister, CA 95023, USA36.9195583 -121.34571967.1129486412019354 -156.50196959999997 66.726167958798058 -86.189469600000024tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-18839627112163640442023-03-04T13:54:00.007-08:002023-03-05T09:28:45.950-08:00Uncomputable things: Chaitin's constant, Busy Beavers, and Kolmogorov complexity1. Introduction The other day I was watching this Numberphile video about (among other things) uncomputable numbers when I came across this section around the 6:50 mark where Matt Parker talks about Chaitin's constant. Strictly speaking, this is a whole family of constants, not a single number, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that Chatin's constants are rare examples Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-7614762031306534082023-01-28T05:17:00.004-08:002023-01-28T05:24:32.454-08:00Lisping at JPL RevisitedIt has been over 20 years since I wrote "Lisping at JPL", half memoir and half geeky screed (and all of it half-baked) about how an obscure programming language came to define my career. It was a borderline throwaway piece written as much to vent my spleen as to inform. In the intervening two decades it has gotten a lot more attention than I ever expected, becoming a perennial Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-60216261376455572522023-01-25T05:33:00.005-08:002023-03-05T09:40:36.003-08:00An intuitive counterexample to the Axiom of Choice: followup What was intended to be a short throwaway blog post about someone else's nifty idea regarding the Axiom of Choice (AoC) ended up getting a lot more attention and being much more widely misunderstood than I ever expected, so I decided to follow up with a more detailed explanation.Note that I deliberately chose the word "detailed" and not "rigorous". Although I am going to try to be a Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-5587083984475704862023-01-23T04:17:00.003-08:002023-01-23T04:22:19.683-08:00An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choiceTime for some hard-core geeking-out.This comment on HN by /u/jiggawatts struck me as a brilliant idea: it's an intuitive counter-example to the axiom of choice, which seem intuitively obvious, but leads to weird results like the Banach-Tarski paradox.For those of you who are not hard-core geeks, the axiom of choice says (more or less) that if you are given a collection of non-empty sets, you can Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-31452562266291447072023-01-12T00:07:00.003-08:002023-01-12T00:12:49.097-08:00I am offended by Muslims being offendedAn adjunct professor at Hamline University was fired for showing an historically significant painting of the prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him. (Note: I did not add PBUH to be facetious. PBUH is an honorific, like Ph.D. I added it to show respect to Muslims who believe that Mohamed was in fact a prophet, notwithstanding that I believe they are wrong.)This is the painting Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-6276263341610339452022-11-22T15:06:00.003-08:002022-11-22T15:10:39.113-08:00Ten things I grew up believing about the United States that turn out not to be trueA few days ago the Biden administration granted Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sovereign immunity over the brutal execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. If this had happened under the Trump administration I would have immediately listed it as yet another reason that Trump was unfit for office. So why should I not apply the same standard to Biden? The Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-16911758860218467942022-11-14T11:52:00.000-08:002022-11-14T11:52:25.885-08:00Send in the clownsThe papers are full of articles proclaiming that the mid-term election was a victory for democracy or some such similar nonsense. It was nothing of the sort. The Democrats hold the Senate by -- quite literally! -- the slimmest of possible margins, and as I write this the jury is still out on the House, with the Republicans favored to win a majority there. I was going to wait Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-37164201887779158992022-11-12T14:40:00.000-08:002022-11-12T14:40:42.120-08:00Ron descends from the mountainIt has been over a year since I wrote a real post here. The reason for my long absence is that I have been struggling with a number of existential crises. Three of them, in fact. The first is over climate change. The second is over the political situation in the U.S.The third is not so easy to distill into a slogan. It has to do with the idea that the kind of outcomeRonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-77718717512948466152022-04-23T09:09:00.007-07:002022-04-23T10:21:38.418-07:00Someone is impersonating me on FacebookThis (https://www.facebook.com/ron.garret.54/) is my profile on Facebook.This (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080342422733) is not my profile. It is someone trying to impersonate me. Apparently, at least six people I know have already fallen for this ruse.I've submitted a DMCA takedown request on the grounds that this person is violating my copyright on my avatar image, Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-46923229058790789332021-09-01T10:34:00.002-07:002021-09-01T10:34:26.917-07:00Game over for Roe v. Wade -- and constitutional rightsYou may not have heard, but the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade yesterday. They did it covertly, by failing to act on Texas's devilishly clever end-run around the Constitution. And in failing to act, they have effectively terminated the rule of law in the United States and opened a Pandora's box of vigilanteism powered by civil lawsuits, against which the Constitution can offer Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-71696911822012772412021-06-02T19:02:00.001-07:002021-06-02T19:02:22.244-07:00Conservatives Can't Handle the TruthWhen the truth is not on your side one thing you can do is to try to change it, and when that doesn't work, outlaw it:Under the culture war rallying cry of combating “critical race theory”
— an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic,
not just a collection of individual prejudices — [Republican] lawmakers have endorsed
an extraordinary intervention in classrooms across Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-45767079048675432502021-05-05T08:24:00.000-07:002021-05-05T08:24:07.468-07:00Republican Hypocrisy Watch: Cancel Culture is Bad -- Unless it's Republicans Doing the CancellingThe brazen shamelessness of Republican hypocrisy is on full display as they move to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position for daring to say that Donald Trump lost the election while at the same time whining about cancel culture.I am really beginning to wonder if there is anyone left in the Republican party who realizes that you can only act like the old Soviet politburo for so long Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-70656019488040475262021-03-23T12:31:00.001-07:002021-03-23T12:31:15.852-07:00Repeal the Second AmendmentIt has become repetitive to the point of being tiresome: a crazy person buys an automatic weapon and kills a bunch of innocent bystanders. TV "news" reporters gather like vultures on a carcass. Prayers are said. Hands are wrung. Soap boxes are scaled and calls for gun control are recited, which collide head-on with the second amendment and DC v. Heller. And then, a Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-73721082408942782602021-02-28T13:33:00.002-08:002021-02-28T21:35:50.037-08:00Ron's CommandmentsFor the last year and a half or so I have run a weekly Bible study which attracts a diverse group of believers and non-believers. On a semi-regular basis someone will challenge me by asking, essentially, could I do better than God, which is to say, better than the Ten Commandments, in coming up with a pithy set of rules to guide our behaviors and the structuring of our society. I Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-89219859430104569782021-01-13T10:09:00.000-08:002021-01-13T10:09:06.026-08:00PSA: I'm debating Matt Slick tonightFYI, I'm doing a YouTube debate this evening at 5:30 PST with Matt Slick on the topic of "Atheism, Christianity, and morality". It will also be recorded so you don't have to watch it live. Here is the link.Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-1115195831175457682021-01-10T12:02:00.003-08:002021-01-10T12:02:53.018-08:00The rats are finally begining to flee the SS TrumpFrom The Washington Post: Whether
President Trump is forced from office or serves out the remaining days
of his term, he is now destined to slink out of the White House
considerably diminished from the strapping, fearsome force he and his
advisers imagined he would be in his post-presidency.In
the wake of the mob attack on the Capitol that Trump incited, some
allies have abandoned him, manyRonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592542.post-8488148838895841572021-01-10T11:54:00.001-08:002021-01-10T11:54:39.382-08:00Arnold Schwarzenegger compares the Capitol attack to KristallnachtArnold Schwarzenegger just released a video in which he compares the Jan 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to Kristallnacht, and draws a straight line from the Proud Boys to the early Nazis by way of his own personal experience growing up in Austria in the long shadow of World War II. The video gets a little corny and treacly towards the end, but the analogy is apt and the warning is one we Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11752242624438232184noreply@blogger.com0