Science the middleman

There is a war being fought this very day. It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, maybe even millions, but casualties aren't just measured in terms of fatal wounds. There is a war being fought on Earth today, and it has the potential to tear this very world apart. And in this war, I am a combatant.

This is not a war to be fought on battlefields (though it sometimes occurs). It is a war that is being fought in the hearts and minds (both are of course metaphors for the brain) of the people, the skirmishes takes place during conversations and debates and the battles have their venues in courthouses and universities. Conflicts of this sort spans over continents and oceans and disputes can take place regardless of language or race. This is a war of ideas, and the boundaries of the factions are poorly defined.

The world is polarised. On one side stands the proud conservatives, included are the fundamentalists and the self-appointed defenders of traditions. Their leaders prize stability above all else while the followers are content to be obedient servants listening to masters in the hope of receiving ultimate rewards. If they had their way, they would set up a state of theocratic absolutism of the Middle Ages.

The superpower on the other side are the fervent liberals. Theirs is a group of enormous diversity, including the animal rights movements, environmental activists, anti-GM, organic and vegetarian practitioners, the New Age con-artists and their believers, the postmodernists, the anti-corporations, to mention a few. The ideas they mostly embrace is a oneness with nature, calling themselves spiritual while not fond of traditional organised religion. These almost equally mindless supposedly peace-loving Hippies sometime see it fit to use violence to achieve the motives, while their leaders cling on to unrealistic causes.

Trapped in the midst of the crossfire are the repositories of the Enlightenment, the passionate but practical scientists. Although hard at work to achieve progress, they are hindered by policies from cranky people on both sides. Nuts on the right try to block any work from being done to their imaginary souls while similar people on the left block work that however slightly affects their mystical nature, both sides have factions that are indifferent to using guns and bombs to destroy institutions of research, yet Science never retaliates. And how can it? The manpower supporting Science is a small minority of mostly intellectuals, which uphold the principles of the Enlightenment such as free speech, unrestrained questioning, the value of life, among many others.

The power of this third group comes not in numbers but in the method of Science itself, of which is the best and most successful tool that humanity has ever produced. Despite this, the group still struggles for survival, its small size means that funds have to come from elsewhere, a particularly dangerous proposition. The small size also causes the realisation of a flaw in democracy, especially in an uneducated public. Science is not run democratically, neither is it run autocratically, from a system of peer reviews and open criticism, an entirely new political system have arisen, one that might have great potential yet to come. Deep within the scientific community lies the breeding ground for true atheism, a cosmological framework of absolutely no spirituality. For it is here, deep within Science, that claims need evidence to be supported and hence the default position is always non-belief, and it is also here where the a believe in the spiritual is clearly seen to be dangerous.

As a new generation of scientists carry on the war that started in the 16th century, it plays its next political move carefully, for if either side wins Science would wither and a new Dark Age might return, one that have the possibility of entirely wiping out humanity.

Take that Pascal

This is a response to Pascal's Wager. For those of you who don't know who Blaise Pascal is or why he is the subject of so much scorn, here's a quick write-up. Pascal is the French mathematician who brought you Pascal's triangle, although I could have made up that triangle in my dreams, and the guy who have the SI unit of pressure named after. Apparently he also had a knack for sticking he nose where it didn't belong, namely in reason.

Pascal's wager, if you didn't already know, is the bet that says if you bet on god and it turns out you're right, you go to heaven. While if you didn't bet on god, then you go to hell. Of course, his medieval mind would then associate heaven with infinite good and hell with infinite suffering. His point being that you have everything to gain by wagering that god exist, and nothing to lose, so just pray. Understandably, anyone who knows reason would know that that logic is simply flawed at best, or totally incoherent at its worst, of which the "nothing to lose" part have just been dismantled by the comic.

First one have to wonder why an omnipotent (all-present) and omniscient (all-knowing) god wouldn't see through your cheap bet. Why in the world would he let in those cunning, scheming people who go onto their knees just because they hope to make it into heaven, while leaving the sincere and honest atheists who proudly proclaim their disbelieve to go to hell. If that deity is even one bit as moral as all the sacred books and all his followers claim him to be, then he certainly would at least have it the other way.

The next thing is how do those faithful fanatics know which is the god that really exist of the so many that have been created from the dawn of civilisation? The Greeks had three different gods to democratically judge where you would go for an afterlife, and no, believing that they exist wasn't in the Greeks' criteria. Then there's the Babylonian, Egyptians, Romans, Norse and many, many other mythologies to pay attention to. Are we supposed to practise the rituals of every single culture, just so that we can negligibly raise the chances that we get to enjoy our afterlife? And how do they even know what the intention of those gods are anyway? People always like to say god works in mysterious ways when he kills thousands of people in floods and hurricanes, so how do we know he isn't doing one of those mysterious things again, and instead rewards atheists with the good afterlife instead?

Lastly, we can also break apart the links holding those many arguments in position, and question the whole "mathematical" model behind it. What if the chances of the existence of any gods at all is so small that it is negligible, so what happens when you put negligible chance together with infinite happiness? Huh, did Pascal ever thought about that? And what if the right way to calculate the value of life is in percentage, and if the atheists were right, then you have just wasted a significant portion of your only life into adhering to some of those absurd rituals, while if god did exist, you'll might not make up those percentage lost time, because you still carry on some stupid rituals in heaven?

The only thing Pascal's Wager is, is a scheme of a religious huckster. It's like a salesman trying to sell you a lousy piece of junk by giving it a fake gold coating. It amazes me how this crazy man could ever have been immortalised in Physics.

The rise of the British merchants

So seldom do so many of the topics I want to talk about converge on a single article, many people don't realise that this industrialised world we lived in had a bottleneck in history not too long ago. And that bottleneck was in 17-18th century Enlightened England. The legacy of it? The world domination of the British merchant class.

It all started when during some time in the Renaissance, about 1400s, the British merchants were living in the upper-middle class, and trade was making alot of money. In the studies done, the merchants were found to have the highest number of children as compared with the normal peasant, that is about 4 children per merchant to about 1.5 child per peasant. (Of course kings have more children, but their proportion in the country is so small that it didn't really matter) These children inherit the family fortune, as well as genetic traits and the upbringing of their wealthy families. However there were only a fixed amount of social positions in England, and naturally, the traits of the peasants get pushed out of the society (took a few hundred years for that to happen). So what happened is that England was the first to evolve and be dominated by merchants and the industry of trade.

Now, the first few things you need to know about merchants is that trade flourish in peaceful countries, so the large number of merchants in England pushed the government for a number of policies for a stable country, such as lowering crime. And of course everyone knows that England was situated on an island separated from Europe and so wasn't too affected by wars, especially when defended by the large Royal Navy. Together with flourishing trade was also flourishing Science, since Britain wasn't controlled by the Catholic Church and so scientific talents were free to publish. This then cumulated into the Industrial Revolution, and brought fourth every merchant's dream of capitalism.

And so there you have it, with the Industrial Revolution, the British merchants literally took over the world. The British East India Company was perhaps the largest trading company in the world, when assimilated by the British Empire, about a quarter of the world was under its rule, spreading the ideas of the Industrial Revolution like wildfire. Although Spain was large during that time, it was economically much poorer, so European competitors on seeing British lead also industrialised and practised capitalism. And that was enough to transform the world forever, even when Communism tried to overthrow capitalism, ultimately they failed.

It is stunning to think that just because of one group of people on one island off the coast of Europe living only a few centuries ago, the world was overran by British merchants and their ideas. And that the modern, industrialised, liberal global society is modelled from them.

Western Terrorism vs. Eastern Terrorism

I'm missing a number of updates due to a terrible strain on my head from trying to finish a couple of library books, so I'd thought I'll try my best to get to articles up today.

Terrorism is of course not a new idea, its history can be traced so far back into the dawn of civilisation that its really hard to tell where its origins lay. Is it from the raiding bands of barbarians living on the fringe of civilisation? Or did it arise from secret revolts plotted from the heart of isolated/unruly towns? Wherever it might have originated, among the last place you would expect to find it is in the army of an ancient civilisation. Great civilisations raised massive amounts of troops employing intricate formations and having generals leading them. In certain cases, you could almost say that there were rules in battle that the military powers observed.

Yet when facing the savages that lay outside military law, there was always the danger of being surprised. Some used unusual tactics due to the environment they lived in, others have well-developed ambush strategies like the Mongol horde, and even some fearless/suicidal ones who charged to their deaths. The last of course have been virtually stamped out in the West as gunpowder came along. The thing about dissidents in the West, like in the American Revolution, or in the northern Ireland conflict, is that they always leave, to their best efforts, an escape plan. After their sabotage, or even if their mission is unsuccessful, they really want to live to fight for another day. Maybe it's from a lack of manpower, which the East seems to be in no danger of running out, but I'd like to think that it is the result of the Enlightenment.

In the East however, suicidal attacks seem to have no end. Combining suicidal impulses together with modern armoury seems to be the cornerstone of military tactics in the East. These kind of terrorism have demonstrated its finest moments to the world in World War II, where the Japanese were notorious for their Kamikaze pilots in trying to sink Allied ships, as well as for their spectacular way of dying while refusing to be taken prisoners. Unfortunately the East have no lack of other examples, there is the Tamil Tiger bombings, as well as the Palestinian bombings, Indonesian bombings, and the latest craze the Iraqi bombings. All these plans seem to have only 3 options, hit-and-die, die trying and of course being captured when something screws up. Without an exit strategy also simplifies their assault plan, and they have almost no care about who goes down with them, making them frightfully dangerous.

And that's the problem with giving a couple of Bronze Age people modern weapons, just like giving them anything else, the mindset needed to use the technology isn't there.

The American Revolutionary War

It was once said by an American in the 1800s that they should not repeat the mistake that France had just made. That is to revolt against the authorities and put the powers into the hands of a military leader (Napoleon). Little did he realise that had already happened just a few years ago. Yes, they didn't put the powers into the hands of a person but a republic(and so did the French). What led one nation one way, but the other in another is quite an interesting phenomenon. So let us wind back the clock and return to The American Revolution.

North America just before the time of the American Revolution was under a two way power-sharing deal by the Europeans after kicking the French out, namely by the English and the Spanish. The English, of course being the most liberal of all three countries, and that perhaps is one of the reasons why the United States is the first of the colonies to revolt, and have perhaps the most successful one.

The most important factor that led to the revolution was the problem of representation of the American colonies, being British citizens, in the British government. Britain then further angered the colonies by passing more taxes. Years of friction later resulted in some outright demonstration against the government, like dumping tea into a harbour in the Boston Tea Party. A few more laws from the British and more militarization by the Americans soon led to war.

While both the American and French Revolution were both parts of the Enlightenment. whereby people basically freed themselves. What marked the differences between the Americans and French were enormous. First of all is that the Americans faced an external threat, which were the invading British. While the French was overthrowing an absolute monarchy in their own homes, that is until the Germans start retaliating. The Americans also seemed much more organised in their revolt, while most people remember the French revolution as an era of confusion. Perhaps the most telling signs of this is that the Americans all had clear and exceptional intellectual leaders, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hancock, Adams, ... yet in France, there were so much confusion that a number of their intellectuals and even revolutionary leaders were executed.

The success of the Americans must not be lightly dismissed. Many revolutions had occurred after that, but none had managed to churn out another country that serves as a model to the world. The creation of a government by a group of people who understood Enlightenment philosophy might have done the trick. It is said that trying times bring out the best in people, and it is certainly so for America. Perhaps the best government can only be found when the very survival of the nation is threaten.

You might have heard of the term "continuous revolution" from China's many Communist revolutions and that the idea had came from Communism. However, it had actually originated in America. Those founding fathers believed in the right for a people to overthrow their government whenever they want and preferably every 20 years. Maybe that is the whole idea of a good government, that each generation have to go through a trying event in their lives. Although the dream was never carried through, something similar again happened in the Civil War, and again it brought out one of the better presidents of the United States, Lincoln. It might just be the recent lack of an imminent threat to America's survival that have led to the recent string of unintellectual presidents that America once proudly boasted.

The true face of Islam

... and the courage of one female to challenge it. Born in Somalia and brought up to think that total submission of women was the right Muslim thing to do, like the majority of Muslim women are brought up, Ayaan once believed that genital mutilation was fine, heretics should be killed and one of her duty was to participate in Jihad. However her family went one forced marriage too far, and she fled and sought asylum in the Netherlands. There she met the Enlightenment for the first time and underwent liberation from Islamic laws. She have come to embrace the freedom of speech and thought of the Western world and fought for the liberation of women from religion. However she found that the Netherlands had undergo Islamic radicalism and was threatened with death from fellow Arabs, while witnessing the death of a colleague from once such murder. To protect herself, again she had to flee, this time to the US. Now the Dutch are withdrawing her protection, while the US is unable to provide that kind of security, in the light of this plight she still stands as the ex-Muslim who is staging a revolution against the force of subjugation.

For standing up for freedom even under the very real threat of death, Ayaan truly deserves the title of a hero. If the newspaper article in the link doesn't even bring a tear to your eye, then you have absolutely no feelings for humanity and the threat our freedoms are under.

In addition, there are other articles that show the religious insanity of Islam like the Sudanese government convicting a British teacher who allowed students to vote to name a teddy bear Muhammad for inciting hatred. As well as an article on the Saudi government sentencing the victim of a rape to punishment for not being with a male relative while being raped. And finally an article that sums up all these atrocities.

All these just goes to show that a majority of people in the world are utterly stupid and can't prioritise their actions, and that I have been right all along in entirely bashing those religions that have never underwent a Reformation. And also that we are too submissive to religion to publish any article like those in the British newspaper.

The British dinner

The British has a strange but intellectual habit every time they have a meal, one that even their closer descendants (relatives?) like the Americans feel uneasy about. It so happened that I was reading a British newspaper column and found that a commentator was having a dinner with some American friends and got stuck in a rather awkward situation, because he replied to a sentence a friend had just finished by saying that it is entirely illogical. Apparently the Americans took that as a personal offence, but for the British, it serves as a challenge to start a debate during a meal about a serious topic.

Perhaps it is time that we follow suit, in most countries the chance to start a real debate doesn't come very often, and no, I'm not referring to that kind of 5 minutes on each side debate. Often we find our times wasted by talking about the unimportant events we witness, or maybe passing on the other unimportant events that other people witness. Maybe there is some need to keep on talking that is wired into our brains, and I admit that when I'm with anyone, I feel a nagging feeling to talk about something, but at least we can change to topic of conversation. Perhaps it might feel weird having a structured argument in public, and maybe that's why the British like having them during meals, because there really isn't much of any other options. However by conducting serious discussions during meals, they are actually paving the way to make public discussion more socially accepted.

One other thing that we can learn from the British is that instead of feeling insulted by, well, insults, they actually are comfortable with having their arguments trashed and then improving on them. (Stupid Asian sense of dignity) In a time whereby insults can be hurled across the entire world, it really helps to be able to take others' insults logically and use it for self-improvement. They are admirably a people who have truly embraced and mastered the freedom of speech.

Submission

If you don't read the newspaper often, there is one article on the Sunday Times which shows some people getting unreasonably very angry over a packet of meat. And of course it all makes sense once you realise that the packet of meat contains pork. Apparently someone with some spare time on his hands bought a packet of pork from NTUC and either pasted a halal sticker on it or photoshoped it on and posted it on the internet and NTUC wants to bring that guy to "justice". Wow, I didn't know that you could still get into trouble for mislabelling a product after you bought it and have complete ownership over what you want to do with it.

Now, I have a few thoughts about this weird occurrence, first of course is that now that I know I'll get fined for doing such a thing, I'm not going to do it, of course that probably wouldn't happen anyway as I have no idea what a halal sticker looks like. Next is, you don't own that packet of meat anymore NTUC, it's not as if that the person is conducting a check on whether your packaging is accurately labelled and then falsely placed a tampered package on the shelve to instigate you, so stop trying to get it back and live with it! I know you're stingy with money (look at those overpriced batteries), but even that has its limits.

As for those religious people who have food restrictions imposed by a work of fiction, do what everyone else does - Read the labels on the packaging. I can think of some people who really have these special food needs, like lactose intolerant patients, but they still have to content with studying the contents of the packaging, what's more it is not as if eating that packet of meat is going to kill you, this is just another excuse to be lazy in the name of religious tolerance. And when this kind of joke come up ever so occasionally, don't you dare have the nerve to say that the action should be punished in the name of religious harmony, the only possible reason that action will go punished is for religious submission, namely to YOUR religion. In fact you should be glad that we have been submitting for much more than we should, because of you all my catered food have to be halal, just once I would like to see pork or at least pork oil during the lunch of a function I attend, but no, you must have it your way. Why don't you just do what anyone who have food preferences would do? That is, just don't eat the food.

That's it, the next time I invite anyone over to a meal, I'm sprinkling a little bit of all kinds of animal/plant extract that I can find (unless you have a condition) without telling the person, forcing the person to eat whatever banned substance imposed on him/her. And do you know what the result would be? Nothing of course, the person wouldn't even know that it was there. The reasonable vegetarians wouldn't mind it because they aren't trying to impose their diet on my food, would you?

*Update: I almost forgot to mention that the article posted a comment made by a Muslim which goes something like, this is totally unacceptable and the authorities should crack down on it in the name of promoting religious harmony. Wow, you're not even eating or buying that fictional product that someone posted on the web and you want that person to be punished? That's like not going to watch the movie The Golden Compass because YOU think that it contains anti-religious elements and then trying to get countries to ban the movie while letting your own religious movies have free passes. Wait a minute. What? The Christians are doing that? Damn, I've nothing else to say about that. Funny why there isn't a Muslim who say that he/she is okay we labelling your own can of food whatever you like in defence of free speech who get their comments published.

Clash of two civilisations 2

The Western world has a history of valuing individuals since Ancient Greece, but more particularly during the Enlightenment, the Eastern world on the other hand runs on aristocracy. Valuing individuals is not just important but vital for new discoveries, Science and the like can never be a government directed initiative for the reason that the government isn't as proficient as the scientists, and that's why Western universities come complete with funding where scientists can pursue whatever proposal they submitted when accepted. Much less can be said of the East before the idea of universities spread.

In addition the Western world has it's privacy straightened it out. Ever since the Reformation, beliefs have always became a private part of a person's life, no more Inquisition or Crusades, no more apostles or heretics, the Bible has been transformed into a metaphor book, and nothing within it has to be taken seriously, except for the fundamentalist minority. Unfortunately, beliefs in the East can be more or less summed up as being public, from the Taoist gods, to Hindu deities, the beliefs may have underwent splits in ideology but never a reformation where they are meant to be kept private. In Islam it's worst, there is only word of god that must be kept, apostles get stoned to death, and liberal Muslims are seen as deviating from the true face. Even in Britain, those prophets are unwilling to lift the death penalty from those "capital punishments" in their story book.

We stand here in a divided world, the choice is between a civilisation with infrastructure developed from the Enlightenment or a less civilised civilisation with a structure not suited to maintain the current social order.

The clash of two civilisations

Or rather one civilised and one not so civilised.

Ever since the dawn of civilisation, there was always the presence of assimilation between cultures. The Romans did it so well that even after their fall, the people that revolted still bear unmistakable traces of their Roman origins, in law, the sciences and even in naming conventions (the name Caesar has become and unmistakable sign of a ruler in many countries in all its different forms). In Europe three successive waves of assimilations swept through the continent from the 14th to 17th century, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. And today, we face perhaps the last possible assimilation yet due to globalisation, and that is the westernisation of the entire world, unfortunately we also face some of the greatest threats to its success, tolerance and the knack for preserving culture.

Perhaps the best examples of resistance to westernisation is shown in Afghanistan and Iraq, while examples of the threats are displayed in the Netherlands and to a lesser extent Britain.

(too lazy to continue today, have 2 enormous non-fiction book to finish)

Holiday Internet Movie Event

If you only have time to watch one movie this year, let it be this political-scientific documentary covering a case in Dover, Pennsylvania. The whole world was watching as the landmark decision was made by the judge, which ended up influencing the establishment of a law in the European Union also in this year. For a court case that caused international impact, it has surprisingly gain very little attention here in Singapore. The video documenting the conditions and the event in the trial is now available free on the Internet here.

If you only have time in your life to watch one documentary on evolution, let it be the 1991 Michael Faraday's Christmas Lecture conducted by Professor Richard Dawkins. It is a series of 5 one hour lectures hosted by the Royal Academy of Science in Britan, now available here on Google Video.

Rules of altruism

Argh, I'm kind of edgy after experiencing 6 consecutive days of renovation works in the apartment next to me, barring Thursday's holiday. It is so bad that my sister and I decided to come up with a sport to irritate them back, I won't say anything about it except that it has got to do with ice.

Society is established on the grounds of reciprocal altruism, which means "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" in monkey language or "you pick my ticks and I pick yours" in bird language. And for us humans, you don't operate that irritating drill in your house, and I won't operate mine, or find some other innovative way to irritate you. Of course, every now and then someone would like to cheat these unwritten rules, so others have to gang up to punish them so that others can enjoy a peace of mind. That's why there are written rules, and law enforcement agency to enforce the rules, and sometimes that gets out of control. Of course, that isn't the point, the point I'm going to talk about is about the unwritten rules.

Obviously, every now and then you might need a house renovation that needs a lot of drilling, so you're going to have to break the unwritten rules from time to time, so how should you do it? Well, first thing you should do is to inform anyone that it affects so that schedules could be rearranged and generally people aren't so mad at you, something my neighbour didn't do. That is one reason why most animals usually have courtship rituals before actually mating.

Second, you try to space out the time interval before breaking the rule again. For evolutionary reasons, all advanced animals have a tendency to forgive a rule breaker that occurs infrequently, since benefits probably outweigh costs, and as we all know, more benefits, more survival. Breaking a rule six consecutive times will put you into the bad books of any animal.

Third, you try to be smart at how you break the rule. For example, arranging the renovation once weekly. Or renovate opposites sites of the house on consecutive days, or putting the really irritating parts on alternate days. There is a wide variety of ways to break rules, so make sure you break yours correctly before someone gets mad at you and start shoving ice down your mouth (metaphorically of course).

The Vatican should consider relocation

I'm a little engrossed in something right now, so this article's going to be quite short. Let me direct you to another article first.

Yes people Europe have become the continent with the least religious people, just look at their polls. Well, to tell the truth since the Enlightenment, Europe have been pretty much holding that position (except for a brief period in the years following the declaration of independence of America, then something had to go wrong), but today, it's at an all time low. For Catholics, there seem to be only two major countries that seem to be fairly devout, Portugal and Italy, since Spain decided to leave the Catholic league. Of course we all know France is the European power with the highest level of non-believers, 70% of their population, courtesy of the French Revolution. Germany have been more open to non-belief and protestants since Hitler was removed, Eastern Europe is a legacy of communist and orthodox teachings and England has a long history Anglicanism.

There was once a time when Catholicism was rampant all over Europe, that time ended with the Reformation, today the power of the Roman Catholic Church has been removed far from the seat of Europe, maybe they should move to Latin America? Those people still don't use birth control, have high unemployment, hate gays, sponsor their churches, etc...

If there was one thing I could change in history...

History is in the dead past, never changing and so unforgivingly setting the conditions in the present. It doesn't repeats itself, and seldom resembles itself again in time, but it effects resonate far out into the future. There isn't any point putting the blame on events that happened, or to hope to be able to change them, we should just make the best out of it, but just because we shouldn't, doesn't mean we can't. It could be just for the sake of pointing out what went wrong, or perhaps to draw out a better plan for future actions, or even to warn people of things that have yet to occur. Whatever my intention is, here is my list of single events that I would like changed, in chronological order.

1. Have Alexander the Great live much longer. That guy was the Great, what else could I ask for? In only a few years, he carved out a huge empire, and his conquests began only at 16.

2. Have Archimedes do more experiments, I know we were all fascinated by the time Archimedes jumped into his bathtub and then ran round the city naked and shouted 'Eureka', but the beginning of real Science could actually have began from this guy and not Galileo 2 millennium later. Besides his displacement principle, he also discovered the Archimedes screw, the principles of levers, pulleys, and even make progress in Mathematics like pi, and the area of a sphere. Now only if he had a telescope, or did experiments with gravity like Galileo did, modern Science could have sprang up so much earlier. And of course, that would continue on into the Roman empire after Greece was assimilated.

3. Have Julius Caesar choose the next successor to the throne of the Roman Empire based on merit, and not set up a dynasty. If you don't know your history, Julius Caesar chose his stepson (he didn't have a son, so he figured he adopt one) Augustus to be the first Roman Emperor. Augustus wasn't the real problem, but his descendants were, creating some of the messiest problem the Empire had to face, and future weak emperors eventually help hasten the downfall of the Empire. Up till Caesar's time the Empire was the most secular state ever established (excluding some Greek city states, but come on, they were cities) containing people of many different cultures, and as history tells us, you don't get that very often.

4. Have Christians get persecuted more often in the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was peaceful enough with their secular state, Christians were rightly a threat to the Empire, there was no need to turn it into the Christian Roman Empire. One more thing, if Christianity didn't spring up, there wouldn't exist the most dangerous religion present today, Islam, the illegitimate child who share father Abraham with the Judo-Christians.

5. Have people dig up fossils centuries earlier, again I would probably put this in the Roman Empire. Actually what I can't believe is that no one in the past actually stumbled across fossils, haven't anyone dig up a grave and saw that the skeleton was all that was left of a person? It really wasn't all that hard to find parts of a buried fossil exposed on the ground, why didn't any of the ancient people notice them? If someone had collected the fossils, then maybe someone could piece up the age of the Earth and evolution so much earlier that many superstitions of today would never have taken root.

6. Have Emperor Constantine killed. First he made Christianity the official Roman religion, which part of secular doesn't he get? Next, he split up the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western, sure let the West fall so that a new dynasty can sit on the throne of the newly built city of Constantinople. Do I need to say any more?

That's about it for the ancient world, now to move on to the Middle Ages. However, apparently I don't really have anything much to change except prevent some untimely deaths.

7. Maybe I played Age of Empires II too much, but I would like to have Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa not die. He died by drowning in a pool while trying to drink water, a pretty anti-climatic death. Without him, his army was devastated while fighting the Crusades, paving the way for the Turks to invade the remaining portion of the Roman Empire.

8. Joan of Arc was another untimely death, though France seem to manage just fine after her death.

Well, I'm pretty much contented with the situation in the Middles Ages because the tensions between countries pretty much ensure that everyone was up to date on technology, and how can I ever be angry with the Enlightenment. Now let us travel past the Industrial Revolution.

9. Have Charles Darwin find Gregor Mandel's work on genetics. The only problem with evolution at that time was that Darwin could find out what causes variation in animals and how it is passed on, something that Mandel had already worked on long before. If only they had met, then Science would have flourished.

10. Probably the last, have Britain step in when Hitler was trying to militarise Germany. All problems in the future could almost be certainly traced back to this single event. Had Britain put its foot down, there would never have been a World War II, and there are reasons to believe that the Hitler at 1933 wasn't as evil as the Hitler at 1939. In addition, Communism would never have spread so much, first of all, Hitler would allow his neighbours to be Communist, we have already seen how fast Communism was gone from Germany, and with Germany's help, from Spain too. The big difference between Communism and Fascism is that Communism has the power to last much longer, while Fascism collapse when their leaders die.

In addition, Japan would be under much more pressure to get out of China since the Allies are no longer occupied with Hitler. Korea probably wouldn't get split into 2, and would probably be democratic, since Russia have only a small border with it, and probably wouldn't invade Japan. There wouldn't be any North Korea to deal with today. Without a huge Communist threat there wouldn't be a Marshall plan which splurges money without care on any non-Communist country that existed, stopping a number of dictator from ever coming to power.

What's more is that the Europeans would still have their colonial empires and wouldn't start the whole lot of pity for their colonies. Their pity has caused them to be too tolerable to other people's believes, no matter how strange or dangerous they could be, leading to a whole lot of terrorist bombing, and the Netherlands are currently being so overrun by Muslims that Sharia law is being enforced in some places, the law that says chopping of hands is the punishment for robbery, that stoning is required when committing adultery and that women must cover all parts of their body and are not to leave house unless accompanied by a man. And of course the law which any civilised person is disgusted most at, death to any apostles.

Think, so much that we can do with just one change, yet that change was never made and we are set upon this course of history. Now, only the future can still be changed and its getting shorter all the time.

There isn't another line in life except the evolutionary imposed one

For centuries people have always asked themselves what is it to be human, and for centuries they have always been getting it wrong because of not having any good education in biology, so let's get out all the wrong definitions first.

Wrong
1. A human is a cell after fertilisation from human parents
Well, first of all, a human is not just made of solely cells, also present are various chemicals, as well as proteins, antibodies, water, and lots of many other components. Also when considering what a cell really is, what happens when a cell divides and reproduces 2 cells? Is each one a separate human? Or are they together considered one human? If we were to split up the two cells, they can become two humans can't they (identical twins)? How do we draw the line between one human or many humans? All these questions would perhaps never be answered, not because biology can't answer them, but because biology describes the process, but doesn't distinguish anything along the way.

2. A human is a being shaped like a human
Obviously this definition have a huge problem, not considering robots and all other fanciful things we can make up, in a life cycle of a person, the person takes on many different shapes and sizes. While on the other hand a person can die of permanent vegetative state, and we wouldn't want to call that human. No, a human must carry the essence of what it means to be alive.

3. A human is whatever has the potential to be a human
This is perhaps the most ridiculous definition that I have ever came across. First of which, almost anything has the potential to be human, including cells of any species of mammals, through a process of transplanting the nucleus. Perhaps the worst way to argue this is to say that a cell has the potential to become a great person, and so we can't kill it. Well, many other cells have that same potential and they die by the trillions, perhaps even magnitude more, each day. Anyway, doesn't all the cells have the same potential to be a, hmm, lion or tiger?

4. A human is a person capable of reproducing with a human
This is the standard biological/taxonomical definition of what a species is. To biologists, Homo sapient as a species is just a linage that have branched out from chimps and early Homo ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago and have the property to interbreed with one another, but not with other animals. One of the great drawbacks of this method is that any person have to first reach reproductive age and then attempt reproduction for the standard to be ascertained.

One thing that the above definitions all share is there is no standard to compare what a human is in the first place. They assume that there have never been a first human, in effect comparing humans with, well humans. For all purposes, the term human that we should use, should be one that can be practically put into use in game theory, that means discarding the notion of biological appearances and description, and work at a whole different level of biology.

Therefore, the new candidates for qualities of humans as far as I can come up with are:

1. Able to hold responsibility
Responsibility is perhaps one of the greatest contributing factor to living in society, a quality even chimps understand, but not foetuses. Any animal taking at least a minimal personal responsibility can be considered human, at that point in time. The title of human however is not permanent and can be easily lost any time.

2. Able to reciprocate to an action made by anyone else
Another property of a society is that individuals can have a certain developed way of depending on others, necessary for survival. A human must be able to have the intention of repaying or retaliating to either a friendly or hostile response made by, not just individuals in one's own species, but by any other thing.

So evolution have forced us to draw lines to judge what qualifies to be human, in the end all these lines are just arbitrary. In the eyes of nature, no divisions exist between any species of life, but due to the need for survival, the products of nature are required by the mechanical forces of nature, namely survival, to draw up the lines for themselves.

Martial dud

Ok, I'm feeling kind of lazy so I'm not creating any original work today.

I've always have been waiting for an article like this.

Read it before moving on.

Well, it certainly is quite idiotic for that person to willingly cut his own hand (in the video). I mean, by spitting salted water around in a circle around yourself you can enhance the tensile strength of your arm? That's plain crazy. One curious thing is that why do these kind of people keep on claiming that they have performed their magic many times before but whenever the camera comes along, their magic disappears? What's with a camera? It just captures reflected light, and maybe project an extremely weak electro-magnetic field if it runs on electricity, which is still weaker than the Earth's field. How does that in anyway affects us? We aren't magnetic as far as I can tell, and whatever small electricity running through our bodies are well insulated.

Anyway, I've been waiting for a scientific article like this to come up for quite some time (probably because I haven't been actively searching, accidentally stumbled upon this one). I was always a critic of martial arts, wu shu, if you like. It's a mystery why they included it as a school activity, there's nothing special about it that any other kinds of exercise can't do. And it certainly isn't very practical, at a time where guns is used in warfare and guided missiles for even further but still accurate warfare, what good will a sword and spear do? And have you noticed the amount of students falling asleep whenever they do a demonstration? At least sports don't trigger that kind of reflexes, not that I would attend sport events. Yes, I know that some people are amazed by people twirling swords and spears and who know what other fake weapons around arms and hands, and by people raising their legs quite high. Well then go do that in your own spare time, you don't see us being forced to watch a soccer match, do you?

To get people to teach and learn these kind of traditional things in the name of preserving culture is just asking for too much. Let me tell you a secret, if these things really work, they wouldn't be called traditional anymore, it would be mainstream. That goes the same for traditional medicine, and traditional practices, traditional explanations, traditional superstition, traditional astronomy even traditional clothing. Any tradition that wastes my time is one tradition too many.

Finally, stop believing in tradition, and stop believing that it works either. It might be sad (not for me, I'm happy) to lose some culture, but it's much better that way.

P.S. Things from the ancient world that works aren't called traditional, they're called classical.

And I'm shocked, that stupid martial artist instructor didn't know about evaporation/condensation! By his logic the outlet hose of my clothe dryer is strong in CHI because it radiates droplets of condensed water on tiles away from itself.

P.P.S. I hate that statue guy for killing Magellan, that man deeply wanted to go back to Europe to prove the world wrong that the world is flat, instead he was killed and most of his expedition was sunk.

There is no line in life but the evolutionary imposed one

"Science care nothing of the way it is being used"

There's just one problem in the sentence above, what should be added is "...except when taking into consideration the Science of how evolution shapes us to think in terms of intentions (ie. morality) and categories." Yes, Science still doesn't feel anything about actions that we do, but it can tell how people will feel about it, how people will differentiate stuff, and how all these is related to evolution.

Hmm, it took me quite some time to research more about this topic and hence the delay in completing, so let's start from the top, that is the fundamental properties of DNA. As we all know, DNA is self replicating for billions of years, and what's more is that it replicates in an environment of limited resources. You don't do that for so many years and don't develop some properties of your own.

First property of DNA is of course the property to try to replicate more copies than rival DNAs. Obviously due to the limited resources, the slightest advantage any DNA has over its opponents would favour an exponential growth, while the other dies off. Property is then passed on to the next replication.

Second property of DNA is to try to not compete as much as possible with copies that are very similar to itself. Internal competition is always bad for survival, therefore DNA that are similar would try to gang up and compete with a more different strand. Again, the property is then passed on to the next replication.

Third property of DNA is that to be able to take advantage of other DNA as much as possible without being punished in any way. Not taking the advantage would lower survival, being punished will also lower survival. Again we see the property passed down to the next replication.

So what does all these means? Well first of all, it means that DNA are usually locked in a position with a low possibility of applying these three properties. For the first property, rivals will also try to out-replicate the DNA, and both are sort of stuck in the middle. In the second property rivals will also tend to gang up, again creating a stand-off situation. For the third property, with DNA taking advantage, other can either follow suit, or create defences to prevent the practice, again neutralising the treat in stability. The only occasion when the properties are shown is when a new innovative DNA strand appears produces some novel changes, which can be quite rare indeed.

So what of these three properties you ask, what has the DNA got to do with humans? Well, DNA express its effect physically on us humans. It might well be the 3rd property of DNA that makes us so resistant to change, while the 2nd property of DNA is a catalyst for sectarian problems.

It is because of the needs of the self replicating DNA molecules that we are programmed to have morality. A DNA molecule needs to be able to tell which other kinds of DNA can it trust, and which others that it cannot, according to the 3rd property. The effects seen in humans is of course the differentiation between good and bad actions. What good and bad in actual fact are is arbitrary categories that is in place to foster cooperation and punishment.

Of course what we put into those categories are also important, and some (many) stupid liberals put equality into the category of good. What we put in there is essential for the stability of social structure. Equality is one of the poorest choice because it is a reinforcement of the result of the 3rd property of DNA, that is being resistant to change at the individual level. A good defined as "equality" provides no differences on which DNA can act. On the other hand sectarian people define good as themselves and their practices, this is then a reinforcement of the result of the 2nd property of DNA (to gang up), again another set that is resistant to change, this time it is resistant to change of the will of the majority powers.

If you're wondering why the 1st property doesn't get mentioned, it is because advanced DNA had placed much less emphasis on the 1st property ever since they grouped up into multicellular organisms.

The key to all these is that we must learn that progress can only be brought through change. By taking into account that we cannot just draw a line to split up the good from the bad, and that again good and bad is evolutionary imposed on us through history, we must be careful in choosing what we want to categorise as good or bad.

All these time keeping in mind that Science doesn't care what we choose, but can tell us how people would care about the choices made, on which side of the evolutionary imposed line will the choices fall under, and what it takes to shift that freaking line.

Signs of decline

This is out, churches are adopting video games, to lure unsuspecting teenagers. The reason behind this is simply, of course. With teenagers stuck at home playing video games, why not get stuck in churches playing video games instead? Of course this tactic is fairly common in religion, when rock music became popular, religion started making its own rock albums, when cartoons were what kids like to watch, religion also had to have their own cartoons. Unfortunately, we can't just help wondering that churches have really gone to an all time low, especially when the video games doesn't have the slightest bit to do with any gods. (Halo 3)

Of course religious video game don't fair very well, just look at Left Behind: Eternal Forces a game that requires the player to kill or convert every single person on the map to Christianity including the UN workers who are trying to "stop" the player. Naturally it would disgust anyone, but apparently not the game designers, they sent it to every soldier in Iraq, it is really no wonder why the Muslims there want to kill them so much.

As much as I would like to criticise popular culture, I would refrain from doing so and give some more examples in history. During the middle ages, whenever a good king arises, the church has no reservations about saying how fortunate that god had made him, but they will always distance themselves from poor kings, brainwashing sll the people along the way. One of the reasons why the English king founded the Anglican church is because the church stop giving into his demands and sing praises of him, and so he needed to make another so that people wouldn't turn against him. Of course the most popular example of this kind of holy favouritism comes in the form of Hitler. Being a charismatic anti-communist Catholic, the Vatican love to give him their full support in his rise to power. Even when he started invading Poland, the church was not willing to criticise him, thanks to him spreading Catholicism in Germany.

This is horribly outrageous, ideologies should be able to stand and fall based on themselves without requiring to lure people in by associating themselves with items of popular appeal, same goes with politics. The fact that they are turning to video games just show how desperate they are in trying to keep a hold on to their memberships. If this keeps up, in a few more years, churches will either have very low memberships, or divorce from religion all together and form a society for popular entertainment, or perhaps a mixture of both. Oh glorious technology, you have humiliated religion so much that pathetic houses of gods now need to pay homage to you!

With this I shall conclude with a message to religions from modern society, "Get secular or get lost! Just don't waste our time on any day of the week."

A race's afoot

The latest craze in Science is to solve 2 problem, the energy crisis and global warming. Usually in the domain of physics and chemistry, we now have a new contestant in the race - biology.

The physics head start on the race is obvious, it's position is that energy solves everything, although we agree on that, the question of where to get the energy keeps popping up. Knowing that uranium will deplete someday in the future, research is being done on a virtually unlimited fusion supply source, other methods also include harnessing more energy from the sun, but that's about it for energy supplies that last for at least 5 billion years.

Chemistry's slogan is prevention is better than cure, while physics sought to use energy to cure all these problems, chemistry seek to explore new substance to use that would reduce/eliminate the problem. Although this doesn't help much in the energy crisis, it is effective for combating, or rather preventing, global warming. Plastics have been replaced time and time again we new better materials, and greenhouse gases can be absorbed before they escape.

So what does biology have to contribute to solving these problems? Here comes the latest news. We are finally able to engineer artificial life. How this helps is that we can manipulate bacteria so that they can be able to eat greenhouse gases, and maybe transform the waste product into renewable sources of energy, which the waste originally came from. Raw resources will then be able to be replenished at speeds so fast that they become renewable.

Who will win the race? Only time will tell, or maybe it won't if we're all dead if problems are not solved. (I really hope it's the first one)

But the big question is, why is there a race in the first place? Yes, the planet is dying and all that, yadah, yadah... but then the race should be Science against time, and not among the components of Science.

Well, the whole reason is because there's a flaw in the way Science is funded. (As the cold war ended, interest in Science dropped, because of lack of Russian threat) Money is kept by universities unless research can be justified, and what other better way can it be justified than saving the entire human race. However that goes entirely against the ideals of free Science, Science shouldn't be just constrained by the government to practicality, Science should be able to practice freely, explore whatever it can explore just for the sake of discovery. By limiting science, governments are just dooming themselves to the chances of failure when something big crops out.

The whole idea of a race is due to the fact that whoever wins it will also receive prestige. There exist a competition between Sciences for the winning over of the public. If any one of them manages to save the world, the goodwill earned by it will be enormous. Goodwill then translate into more students and more funding. Of course if more resources was allocated to the Sciences, there would probably be no need for competition.

Science shouldn't be an enterprise, it should be something that can be done as freely as speaking, and not just subjected to allocated funding. Yes, research is expansive, but gone are the days where people can just sit at home and devise theories. Modern theories requiring extensive experiments to back them up, not just some thought experiment, if we want to get anymore new Einsteins, we will need to give promising people the chance to experiment freely. Just like how you can't get free lunches, you can't expect to get free theories to be ready whenever you need them. To limit scientists' pursuit of their dreams is in the end just self-defeating in the race against time.

All good things have no end

Mountains thrust up and then crumble, species evolves and get extinct, civilisation rise and fall, lives appears and are extinguished before your very eyes. It almost seems as if nature obeys the phrase "Everything that has a beginning, has an end" or should it be "Life is a cycle"? Or maybe it's just the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that in a closed system, disorder always increases.

What I'm going to do here is not to argue about what the definition of good is, I'm not that petty as certain philosophers that have nothing better to do. I'm going to introduce to you what might seem as a completely unrelated topic, determinism, the hypotheses that at any particular time, there is only one physically possible state of the universe.

Now just one thing to take note, Science does in no ways at all refute determinism, not even from neuroscience to quantum mechanics. A line, albeit a fine one to most people, separates the unpredictable from the random. Science has in no way discovered anything random, all that there has been is unpredictable till today's present technology. Even in quantum mechanics, what has once been unpredictable has become certain (velocity), using Schrödinger's equation.

What in Science supports determinism is reductionism, everything discovered be Science so far can be explain at a more fundamental level (except for the most fundamental one, which till today remains to be general relativity and quantum mechanics). Biology can be explained in terms of atom, although with lengthy explanations, but the main thing is that it can be explained. Why this supports determinism is because determinism predicts each event and interaction have the same root causes. The hypothesis has thus far never been proved wrong, making it probable that determinism is true.

What we must then wonder about is whether or not the universe has a fixed number of states, or an infinite number of states. Simply put, whether the universe is digital(with lots of parameters) or analogue. The point is that in a finite state universe, there is a 100% certainty that the universe would repeat itself again and again once stuck in a certain loop (and maybe we are already stuck in such a loop), while in an infinite state universe, it may or may not.

The difference lies here. If we are stuck in a loop, all things that happen will only perpetuate the loop, so all things have no end, duh! If we aren't stuck in a loop, all things that will affect future things that will happen although product of past things that have already happened. Therefore all things that happen would 'live' on in the future by the way it has influenced the future from the past. Either way, all things, whether good or bad, have no end.

Once again, eugenics is coming back

Many people don't know it, but eugenics is back.

So what is eugenics anyway? It is the policy of selectively reproducing so as to maintain a better standard in the gene pool. How this can be done is numerous, but how it had been done pragmatically have been few. One such example lay back in the 1930s, where America began restricting births between socially disadvantaged people (the poor, the homeless, the unemployed) in favour for the intelligent and wealthy. In practice, it can be no different from another form of birth control, seeking to prevent the spread of the disabled (mostly intellectually disabled) within the population.

Now, if you were to ask me why this works. It is because within all organisms lie what we would call genes. Different genes can express their effects as traits on humans, less noticeable are those that carry certain tendency and disposition to act in a certain manner.

Eugenics is of a statistical nature and would work where many people are concerned, as would be the case in any country. There's absolutely no point in arguing about eugenics in terms of mathematics, statistics fully support the claims made by eugenics. Statistics will even show you that if we were to give everyone equal chances of living, humanity will become degenerate someday. So let us see the pros and cons of implementing such a policy

Pros:
1. Humanity gets smarter
2. Dangerous inheritable diseases occur less frequently
3. A form of population control so that we would not run out of natural resources
4. Ensure the survival of the human species

Cons:
1. People arguing that it's not natural (but then again, electricity usage isn't more natural than evolution)
Hmm, that's about all I can think off.

Now, I'm sure a number of you are going to say "Hitler did it and is inhuman". Well first of all, Hitler mainly committed racial genocide when making his Nazi policy. There was nothing scientific with the way he killed people to get a "pure Aryan race". As for the times that he killed the handicapped, that is only one way to practice eugenics, a more subtle approach is simply to not let them breed.

Perhaps the best example I can give of eugenics being practised is in Isaac Asimov's Robots Series. In the story, all 50 colonial worlds practised eugenics and to a smaller extent Earth itself. How this is implemented is by allocating each couple only two children maximum. Only when a person proves to be highly accomplished can he apply for a third child. In addition, only in the colonies, the foetus will be subjected to genetic testing before even getting the chance to live. Since Earth adopted eugenics a little late, its population had exploded to over 15 billion, and everyone on Earth had to eat from yeast farms. (Apparently yeast grows quite fast) The colonies on the other hand lived in luxury.

Then you ask me, where in the world is eugenics back? Well look no further than to society. We are all now more open to homosexuals. How is the eugenics? Now homosexuals no longer need to adhere to the stupid traditional values that a successful person requires a family. They no longer have kids of their own, if they want, they adopt kids, which is an entirely different thing. The point is that you can't help practising eugenics in any free society, the two of them are quite inseparable, where there exist freedom, there exist a choice, genes tends to alters the choice of a person, and because of that, the gene which cause people to make the better choice survives and gets passed on.

And that my friends is eugenics in a nutshell, that it should be used when practising population control, and that it is always present in truly free societies.

Who needs to go to Iraq to see a war unfold?

For centuries battles have been fought. Over time the casualty tolls have risen to the billions. Ideas rose, spread and fell, one by one. Huge armies have been raised by both fanatics and the passionate alike. Ideologies have been carved and forged out of gigantic blocks of land. It is the epic struggle of humanity of all time.

It is now time for the latest report of the Intellectual War *da-da-da-dum*

(Ok, I didn't want to wind up starting from scratch so I decided to borrow the Earth. This map does not represent actual geographic locations, besides fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, which I specially catered for. You'll get a larger size with clearer details if you click it)

Now, I'm sure most of you will agree with me that there exist a huge conflict along the lines as shown by the map above. This question will then come to mind: What in the world do you call those two large factions?! Well, personally I had tried giving them different names such as coherence vs. non-coherence, as shown in the upper left portion in the map, but if I do that, it will only divide the world into two super blocks, only red and blue with nothing in between. I have also tried practical/non-practical with the same result. Therefore I ended up with naming them evidence before reason(blue)/reason before evidence(red), if you have any better suggestions, you can always tell me, though I'm not too keen on changing the map. If you're wondering why maths is being partially divided between the two, it's because evidence and reason are more or less the same thing for maths. No doubt most people should easily identify those yellow spheres of influence (fundamentalism). In addition the white coloured/uncoloured portions represent a wide variety of independents that doesn't fall into either side.

So how did the world get to be this way? Let us journey far back into history to the birth of civilisation. As we all know the earliest civilisation began in Mesopotamia (Babylon/Iraq) and spread to Egypt, but that's about where the similarities end. Soul psychology arise as a yellow blob in Mesopotamia, while Mathematics started off in Egypt as a blue blob because people needed to count stuff. (Remember, regions do not represent actually geographic locations, only pure coincidence.) As civilisation grow, Mathematics spread westward across the coast of the Mediterranean, unable to pass through the denser part within the Sahara, turning redder as it goes along as people just do mathematics for fun. Meanwhile, souls and religion spread upwards to Europe.

Now onwards to the classical ages. The ancient Greeks were one of the greatest explorers of their time who really turned the world red. From their islands in the Mediterranean they proposed a whole set of ideas about the mind, then they establish colonies in Africa, with Euclid compiling the largest book on mathematics in history at that time. Next they discovered Brazil by setting sail from Africa, and thus becoming one of the largest empire the world have ever seen, although getting almost all of it wrong. As we all know, Aristotle proposed an extremely poor four element system (Earth, Fire, Wood, Air), bad kinetics (Force is required to keep object in motion), and some other crazy stuff. Moving down South America, the Greeks discovered some natives who have already been using astronomy to do astrology. The Greeks assimilated them and began constructing an entire universe of circles. Although credit must be given to them for discovering the Earth was a sphere. Travelling further south, the Greeks discovered Antarctica and colonised it too, giving rise to a great many philosophers from that settlement, from Thales to Socrates, Plato to Epicurus. The Greeks also expanded towards governance within sociology in Asia, being the first to try out democracy and city states.

The Greeks however also made a few blue discoveries, one of them due to a dissident group of doctors not contented with the current path of medicine. They left on a voyage up north towards North America to settle in anatomy and medicine, and displacing the witchdoctor and clergy population found there, their results of their medical studies extended the lives of the average Greek, just look at all the old people they managed to bring about way down in the south. Another blue region carved out by the Greeks was in a section Physics (mechanics), made famous by Archimedes running down naked in the street during a bath. In addition, Archimedes constructed levers and pulleys, and various mechanisms to defeat the enemies of Greece, such as a Roman naval invasion. He burned down all the ships just by reflecting and concentrating sunlight.

The Romans were the inheritors to the Greek Empire, they used the Greeks exploration of Physics to develop a whole new system of Engineering, from complex architecture to ingenious war machine, turning the ancient world blue with envy. Unfortunately much was undone when Christianity was adopted as the religion in the once diverse Roman Empire, taking over literature (Bible) and art. The Greeks population within the Empire were persecuted. Christians burned down entire Greek schools of thought, philosophers died and were never replaced. The world entered a really yellow Dark Ages as the Christians could not hold onto the ancient knowledge, and the Empire collapsed upon itself, leaving yellow blobs all over.

The Arabs however took over some of the Roman-Greek holdings where the Romans retreated, such as the library of Alexandria. As well as preserving the Greek works, the develop astronomy from where the Greeks left of, naming over two-thirds of the stars known today, but still doing nothing to improve on the 'Earth is centre of universe' idea. In the 10th century, European scholars travelling to the Arab world managed to reacquire much of the knowledge lost in the Dark Ages, red as it is. Free trade spread, leading to exploration towards South Africa in business and capitalism. No long after, the Arabs turned from being an open society into fundamentalist and executing dissident scholars, spreading yellow blobs on all Arab knowledge, fortunately, Europe already owned a copy of them.

The renaissance finally saw a rise in blue discoveries again. Galileo is most remembered for the way he does his daring experiment, like the story that he drop cannon balls from the tower of Pisa (though it probably didn't happen) and of course his telescope. Word that the Earth revolve round the Sun started to spread all across Europe, leading to Galileo's house arrest. Bolder ideas that have been put forth even met the death penalty by the church. Towards the end, Physics turned from yellow (flat Earth, revolving Sun) to blue. The Enlightenment saw a rise in science literacy as well as exploration into the new world of chemistry, thanks to Antoine who discovered a few of the gases, and Humphrey Davy, who got laughing gas and some others. To the south, Newton revolutionised Physics and Astronomy into entirely blue domains, and kicked astrology out completely. Religion seeing itself lose so much ground so fast still kept a stronghold in the Americas in creation myths.

People seeing the Natural Science giving so much practical uses seek to do the same for other fields, and so born the social sciences, discovering the rest of Asia. Unfortunately it took less than a decade to have it all turn red. Social Sciences turned out to be entirely useless but for writing long manuscripts of theories that can't be tested like that Communist Manifesto by Marx. However, at that same time, an expedition was launched to chart the rest of Northwest America. Geography became the study of the Earth, and how natural features form. Then, within the rocks unexpected discoveries were made, fossils were found. With the help of radioactivity from Physics and anatomy in Biology, the fossils could be dated and ancestors traced. In a separate but closely related story, Englishman Darwin set sail for the Galapagos and wrote the theory of evolution. The yellow blob last stronghold in America was under assault.

With the invention of the microscope, the very small can now be explored, clearing new lands for physics, chemistry and biology. What they found astounded them, result in more modern fields such as Bacteriology, Virology and Neuroscience, computers only sped things up and pretty soon both evolution and neuroscience were entering the field of psychology, and philosophers armed with the new knowledge also travelled south to invade Antarctica. The red blob, having been pretty much preoccupied by internal dissent was shocked at the expansion of the blue region, try as they might all they could do was to play defensive, forming an alliance with fundamentalist by saying that the soul cannot be analysed. Except for some pathetic sting from the philosophy section that was largely destroyed before it had a chance to land on the Americas, the army of the blue, consisting of scientists to teachers, psychologists to doctors, marches on. As of today, land is still being ceded to the blue regions due to being practical and representative of reality. A scientific literate population within the humanities have also revolted to form a more coherent field of study.

As we look towards the future, only time can tell how long this war will last.

Work in Progress

Ok, I've been working on a couple of things after promotional exams ended, including a map using photoshop entitled "Intellectual Wars" to be used for a new post (go figure). Unfortunately it's still under construction, so I guess this is all I can show yet:















Stay tune for invasion tactics!

After this, expect a new entry every 2-3 days.

It has been a cruel world

There's one thing that always bothers me, (Actually, there are a few, this is just one of them), and that's what is the meaning of being equal and being fair, and where and when did those concepts had arisen.

I'm quite sure that its history has stretched far beyond the Roman empire as the Greek philosopher Socrates had once asked his student how the student learnt the idea of being fair, while laws have been passed even further back that called on people to be equal, such as the code of Hammurabi.

The meaning of equal is quite easy to grasp, it is to treat someone the same way as you would treat anyone else, the word "equal" just says it all. But what about fair? It seems that what it means to be fair is not that simple. Some dictionaries does a splendid job at explaining it: Fair - being just, Just - treating each person in a fair way, while others relate it to being reasonably equal. I'm quite curious as to why no dictionary mention that one definition that is most obvious to everyone: "No Cheating". Maybe its because cheating is to break a law, and a law is suppose to be fair, which just repeats the loop again.

Whatever fair means, it's almost as if that our brains sort of know that being fair is something that should be strived for, making it quite humiliating to show someone that he/she is being unfair (and perhaps making the phrase "No Fair!" such a popular sign in a demostration). The strange thing is that there seems to be almost no middle ground between being fair and not being fair. An animal activist can tell you that it's unfair to kill animals for food, while everyone else can say that is fair, but there wouldn't be anyone who will say it's both fair and unfair. It's almost as if should one situation of the whole is unfair, then the whole is unfair too. There doesn't seem to be a case where we can say this judge is more fair than the other judge, if someone is less fair, it's is the analogous to being unfair, giving the other the title of just "fair". All this seems to make "fair" a standard that we can't improve on.

So just some interesting questions to ask:
Does being fair means being equal? Or is being equal being unfair?
Is nature equal, fair, both or neither?
Does it takes a human to be equal or fair?
If fair isn't equal, which should we choose?
Should a good society be fair or equal? Should a good law be fair or equal?


I've got to sleep so think about these questions for a while, be back tomorrow.

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4 Sep
Hmm, apparently tomorrow didn't mean the next day from the time of the post above.
Ok, now to answer the question I had written.

Being fair doesn't mean being equal nor vice versa. However, to give a more in-depth explanation, let's have a look at the standard view of these two concepts. First of all, to the layman, equal has a sense of being more objective than fair. After all, everyone knows what the meaning of the same is, and perceive human equality to be treating everyone the same. However this is quite wrong, both equal and fair are about the same in terms of objectivity, which is quite little. Equal can mean equal with respect to different conditions, equal living standards, equal salary, equal vote, equal treatment, equal benefits, ... Now the problem with creating and equal society is that the people inside the society aren't equal to begin with, to treat them all like equals is to do a huge injustice.

So what about fair? Like equal, it is also subjective, being fair in an argument is the idea that we must look at both sides of the story before coming to a conclusion (it's not merely enough to give each side equal time, and that's the worse way this is shown is in a debate). Being fair as an employer is to recognise the achievements of more productive workers. We don't say that these actions are equal for the reason that such actions are not equal at all. However, all hope of using the concept of fairness in society is not lost, there still happens to be some objective way of being fair. For example we can be fair according to ability, in which those who contribute/have the potential to contribute the most to the society will have a higher say in what decisions the society makes. But we can also be fair by letting the more well-informed people have a higher say in making decisions. In fact the number of possible ways of being fair is so vast that I couldn't possibly list them all out here. However, is there a right way of being fair? I believe there is, and it must take a lot of factors into account, and not turn up into a system where the scientists and teachers get less say in what to include in Science education than the parents (unless they're the same person).

The problem with democracy is that it is communism practised in voting. It treats everyone as equals, and not treat everyone fairly. Different issues concern different people, and different people have a different degree of awareness in different issues. I'm okay with putting issues to a vote, not an equal vote, but a fair vote. If such a political situation can be made possible, then all others would become obsolete for they have truly made the world a cruel place to be in. It is only in a fair system of government that there will truly be the fair say of the people.

Urgh, it's tiring to think, I'm going to leave the fairness of nature for another post.

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole

"The sum of the value of parts is less than the value of a whole"

This is what systems scientists (or should I call them philosophers) would wants you to think. To give an analogy, what they're trying to say is that if we were to study a cat, should we take it apart, the first thing we're going to get is a dead cat. Surely this must means that a cat is more than all the parts of a cat added together? Well, before coming to any conclusions yet, lets take a better look at the cat.

A cat is basically an organism made up of billions upon billions of cells. Each cell being quite alive, each cell growing and reproducing, interacting and manufacturing, all these when zoomed out, creating what you see in cat. What systems scientist/philosophers will have you believe is that the cat is all these cells, and more. Together the cells does something that each individual cell can't do alone, they can make the cat see and breathe, allow it to eat or sleep, surely by looking at individual cells we can't work out these characteristics when we put them all together, then doesn't that means the cat is more than cells put together?

Well, what these people doesn't seem to realise is that in every single cell of the cat (except red blood cells), stores the entire set of a genetic library of what it means to be that particular cat in question. This library is found within the nucleus of the cell, in the sequence of DNA itself. The most amazing thing is that this library is ready to become an entirely new cat at any time. If we were to take the nucleus of any cell of the cat out, and implant it into an embryonic cell in the womb of a cat (could be the same one, if female), what we would get is an identical copy of the cat, and if we were to closely observe the stages of development of the cat, we can see specifically how the DNA cause the different features of the cat to appear. So if we were to look at a cat again, one cat is actually equivalent to a million, million potential copies of that same cat. Is the sum of the parts still less than the whole?

Of course some unbelievably stubborn philosophers will try to tell you that the cloned cat would never be the same as the real cat itself. At the very least its personality would be different, even if it isn't so, it would be impossible to have 2 cats with exactly the same arrangement of cells at the microscopic level. I would reply that if we were to specify the word 'parts', then it must also include the past of the cat. Where and when the cat have been in its life and the events that have taken placed during that time must be accounted for as parts of the cat. As for the second problem, I suspect that this is probably also the result that 'parts' has not been specified. DNA gives cells rules to follow, and not the exact location of where to place the next cell. As a result, if we really want to compare, we must also take into account that 'parts of the cat' includes all the different environmental factors that affects the development of the cat, from radiation in the surroundings, to the protein composition present in the mother's milk. (To keep all of them in control is almost impossible)

If we have to take everything that affects a cat into account, then surely the sum of the value of the parts of the cat is greater than the value of the whole, after all, it is quite conceivable for a different order of the influences to cause the cat to develop in an entirely different way. With the order of events fixed, then the possibility of other ways of development now becomes more limited. Therefore, the sum of the parts allows a wide range of possibilities, but the whole would drastically restrict that. Hence shouldn't it mean that the parts are of greater worth than the whole?

God, get out! Defence of pro-atheism

For too long moderates all over the world have held on to the position of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), what this means is that the world of Science cannot comment on the world of faith. This takes places after Darwin's evolutionary theory, which threw the world of faith into disarray. While these people may appear to be very friendly (almost like some mediator who steps into the conflict and tries to divide everything into half), do we really want to hold such a position? Do we really want to absolutely say that any statement based on faith, no matter how stupid/wrong/fanatical it seems, there is no way for Science to comment?

If someone was about to push a person off a building because he thinks that a god is keeping us to the floor, and that if he really prays hard enough then the god will stop that person from falling, do we want to say that we can in no way use our knowledge that gravity will pull people towards Earth, to save that guy? That the only possible way to save that person is only to have a stronger faith to counter the other guy's faith? Are you going to tell me that Science can in no way judge that the faithful person is not just wrong, but dead wrong? (Of course you can contrast this story to the one found in the bible where the devil tries to get Jesus to jump of the cliff and have god save him, maybe the lesson to be learnt is not so much as not to test god, but not to test gravity.)

No! Science should have a say in that, and faith must have none at all. By definition faith is something we believe that is not based on evidence, how does that in any ways apply to the real world? Without evidence how can we claim that our statement made based on faith are true and apply to the world we live in?

Now, most people see the problems that this causes (if you can't, you must be quite thick) and so changes NOMA such that Science gets the entire domain of the real world, leaving faith to before time exist, after death, morality and other subjective matters. Well, this division still seems a little to kind, giving Science access to only things that can be reasoned out from evidence, while faith takes everything else. Again we ask the question do we really want such a situation to exist? No doubt if Science starts approaching these areas, as psychology is doing, faith is expected to retreat. If this is the case, then why did we even give faith any concession at all in the first place? Why do we allow faith to explain everything wrong first, and only as Science catches up, then attempt to correct it?

So where do gods come in? Well...

"...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." - Douglas Adams

Gods are humanity's first attempt at understanding the world, and quite a bad one at it too. If humans did not live in a world where some complex things exist because we invented them, then there's no reason at all to suggested that anything else of complexity must be invented by some kind of very smart(-ass) guy, and all for the benefit of humans. Why? Because we are able to use the things around us so well. The trees can be used for wood, animals are food, rock and stones can be made into tools. Wow! Someone all-powerful must have put all these things here especially for me! It is a huge inferential step, and it always has been so, now only more obvious since evolution can explain that away.

Now some people tells us that we shouldn't get rid of gods since they allow us to die in peace knowing that there's an afterlife of reward, or that families need it for occasions such as funerals, and the priest locked up in the confession box makes a very good listener. However, maybe it just doesn't occur to them that what is consoling doesn't make it all the more true, and if that's the case, then what we should have done is investigate the causes of these consolations and reproduce them with greater effectiveness. In fact, I don't know which is worse, that people would endorse something fake just because it consoles them, or that they don't ever want to subject what they endorse to a test.

The most irritating thing about religion and NOMA is that these people says that there is no way to ever prove or disprove that there is a god. Well, maybe there isn't, except maybe if some giant guy float down from outer space and starts bringing the dead back to life. However just because there isn't any way to prove the existence of gods doesn't mean that the chances of it is exactly 50-50! If I were to tell you that there exist a dragon in my room that is invisible, able to pass through solid objects, and breathes fire at exactly the same temperature as the room, would you believe me and say that the chances of it existing is exactly 50-50? Or would you be inclined to believe that the dragon does not exist at all? Now, why are gods any different from my unobservable dragon? With the exception that they are believed based on faith by millions of people all over the world. But just because everyone believes in it doesn't make it any more true. We have found out long ago that the universe stopped revolving round us, it's time to apply the same standard to religion.

God, get out!

Help! My biology teacher's a Creationist

Well, technically she calls herself an "intelligent designist". Ah, but "to-mah-to"/"to-mae-to", what's the difference?

I don't really have to go through what's wrong with the creationist's picture even if they don't leave out god(s), do I? Oh come on, surely you have heard of the arguments? What you haven't? Which year have you been living in, don't you know the evidence that you came from a monkey? Oh, all right already, let me spell out what's wrong with creationism.

1. Evolution is the process of genetic mutation producing difference between species, and natural selection action as the judge to see who survives, those with good mutations have a higher tendency to survive, while the others die (duh!). So what happens is that populations pretty soon get filled up with the animals better adapted to survive in the environment.

- (Here comes the creationist big mouth) Creationism argues that random mutations can't give rise to new species just like that, some supernatural entity must help do so.
Answer: Wrong! Didn't you read what I wrote? I said natural selection chooses who live and who doesn't, of course mutations at random can't produce anything, but with selection, the better mutations become cumulative, and adds to the progress of the organism.

- Creationism argues that there is not enough time for living things to evolve.
Answer: Wrong again! Of course if those idiots think that the Earth was only 6000 years old, living things can't evolve, the point is that it isn't (geology points the other way with radioactive dating, and no radioactive decay doesn't change speed), the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. It took only about 50,000 years for Homo sapient (us) to evolve. And after you finished counting in thousands, don't forget you still have to deal with millions.

- Creationism argues that evolution can't be right because at some point, life will have to be created.
Answer: Evolution doesn't tell us anything about life being created, its just explains how humans and other complex living things can be formed from simpler things like bacteria (technically, we're still clumps of bacteria, but you do see the difference between us and them, right?) For a description of how life started, look up for abiogenesis, and don't disturb evolution.

- Creationism argues that there is no evidence of evolution in action
Answer: Well just because you didn't see them doesn't mean that those events didn't occur. Usually they require much patience to be observe, and a little luck. The most famous example is the butterflies during the industrial revolution turned black in colour due to the sootier environment (no, no one painted them, neither did the soot made them black), but after some environmental efforts, the air was cleared and they became mostly white again. However a more recent example is that of a butterfly being parasited by a bacteria, killing most of its male population, leaving the sex ratio 99 female: 1 male (lucky guys!), but suddenly a mutation occur, and the butterfly became immune to it. In just one year, the sex ratio returned to 50-50.

2. A conclusion of evolution is that we evolved from apes, that evolved from monkeys
- Creationism argues that if we evolve from them, why are they still there?
Answer: Wow, this is a no-brainer question. Simple, because we did not compete with the apes and monkey for survival, for example a group of monkeys might be isolated from one another, one group then evolving into apes.

3. Evolution is based on fossils dug up from up till 500 million years ago, dated by radioactive dating of many different radioactive isotopes, confirmed by plate tectonics, embryonic development (babies in mother's stomach start of just like fish with gills in first few weeks after fertilisation), DNA mapping, and possibly common sense.
- Creationism argues that it is more true as it has evidence from a book written about 2000 years ago
Answer: I don't think I need to say anything.

So what did I do? I asked the teacher to stop saying the word 'assume' when talking about the proofs of evolution, after all she doesn't give a better suggestion of a proof (scientists can all agree on what will it take to change their minds, and nothing tested so far have done so), surprisingly she agreed. Although she still doesn't think that humans came from monkeys.

However, what she doesn't realise is that evolution, though having gaps here and there in fossils (you can't really expect every animal to fossilise right? If just ever single person ever lived was fossilised, we would need a space larger than the thickness of the Earth's crust), gives the only workable solution for life, all other explanations have so far been empty of evidence and hence are not Science.