Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Stephen Colbert roasts George Bush

Have you guys seen this? The funny part is really the Stephen Colbert speech & stuff. Oh, man! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879&q=owner%3Acspan

What are your reactions?

oil poster

Here's an interesting poster about the world's consumption of oil all throughout time. http://www.oilposter.org/posterlarge-x.html

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Crazy UNC Rampage

You guys probably already heard about the incident at UNC on Friday at the Pit. But how do you label it?

http://www.ibiblio.org/wunc_archives/news/index.php?p=445

Monday, March 06, 2006

Power of the courts

Bush's has pushed through his nominees for the Supreme Court, and with Sam Alito, the court is seen as possibly overturning the decision of Roe vs. Wade to at least some extent. What really interested me is the notion that the Supreme Court is like a "back-door" to establishing laws. It is (perhaps ?) easier to bring a case through the court system and have the SC issue its intepretation, which is binding, than having legislators pass or amend laws. Examples for this are Brown vs. Board of Education during Segregation, or Roe vs. Wade when there may not have been enough popular support for women's reproductive rights. This notion was alluded to in a way during Bush's SC nomination process such as 'restoring the court to its constitutional origins' and the SC is 'overstepping its bounds' as a 'rogue court'.

Reading this expert from To Kill a Mockingbird makes me think, though, that the Supreme Court's "power" acting as it has is nothing beyond its mandate.

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States of the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."
(Finch defending Tom Robinson)


What do you think the future of the court will be? do you think there will be any chance of the SC making a ruling on same-sex marriage as has been done in Canada and Spain? And randomly, what are your thoughts on restrictions on abortion?

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Occam's Razor and Bob

Phil got me thinking about my agnosticism the other day. Occam's Razor & Bob's Corollary are commonly invoked in atheist arguments; I've provided short spiels on both below. I've started looking for arguments against both; if you know of any feel free to post them.


Occam's Razor is a logical principle that holds that one should should not make more assumptions than is needed. In other words, the best explanations are the simplest ones. E.g. if we were modeling a few datapoints on a graph, it would make sense to find the simplest curve that encompasses them all, rather than some convoluted curve that fits the data just as well.

Occam's Razor is often invoked by the atheist argument that we can explain everything without introducing metaphysical concepts such as God; bringing God into the picture adds unnecessary complexity.


Bob's Corollary
The more powerful the entity, the less likely it is to exist.
-Bob
Explanations that attribute 'everything' to the existance of a God are suspect because they are untestable. E.g. If I had a scientific test for the existance of God like a litmus slip that turned red to indicate that God did not exist and the slip showed red, this result could be explained away by arguing "God changed the rules so now red means God exists".

Strong theories make testable predictions that have proven true time after time. A theory that invokes an all-powerful God that can change the laws of universe at any moment escapes falsibility. So, in other words Bob's Corollary says that theories that rely on omnipotent beings are weakened by the fact they potentially can never be refuted.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Red Ink

The White House has just released the budget for 2007. If approved by Congress, this budget would increase defense spending by 6.9%, cut money from healthcare, education, and the environment all while adding another $354 billion to the U.S. debt. (NPR analysis).

At the end of FY2000, the U.S. debt - the accumulation of the deficit spending of all previous 42 U.S. Presidents - was $5,674,178,209,886.86. Today it is $8,195,544,127,376.07. Bush took office with a budget surplus and a forecast of a cumulative 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. In just 6 years, the party of tax cuts and balanced budgets, under the steady leadership of President number 43 has added 45% to the Ú.S. national debt.

(from a MetaFilter post by threeblindmice)

My take on the debt is that it is bad because it is financed mostly by foreign nations like China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc... As these are our potential rivals/enemies, they may find reason in the future to stop financing our debt and could wreck our economy by selling off their US bond holdings.

The debt is possibly good if our borrowed money is invested wisely. Since much of our budget is dedicated to waging war, the future economic success or failure of America in part seems to hinge on whether or wars in Iraq & Afgahnistan pay off (by giving us control of the energy resources in the Middle East I presume).

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Kung Hei Fat Choy for the Cantonese speakers, and for Vietnamese, happy Tet!

Let us hail in the Year of the Dog with longevity, prosperity, peace and happiness, and hope that we have rid ourselves of all ghosts and evil spirits.


On another note, I was out partying last night in Chapel Hill until 7am, sorry I didn't have time to get in touch with most of the people here. It makes me a little sad that I haven't made any friends up in Richmond as great as you all or the other friends I hung out with this weekend, but things can always change.

Happy Lunar New Year

Monday, January 23, 2006

What's wrong with our country?

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans. Amusing stuff, here's a preview:

5. Tom Delay

Charges: A politician so horrible, his prior career as an exterminator constitutes fratricide. Smiled for his mug shot like it was a campaign poster. Asked three young Katrina evacuees, “Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?” One of an elite handful of white Americans still engaged in the time-honored tradition of screwing over Indians. Responding to a request he extinguish his cigar in a restaurant in accordance with federal regulations, Delay replied, “I AM the federal government.” Claimed that there was “no fat left to cut” from the federal budget to offset New Orleans reconstruction costs. So arrogant in abuse of power that he doesn’t even take time to construct plausible lies.

Exhibit A: Explaining his failure to enlist during Vietnam: “So many minority youths had volunteered…that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”

Sentence: Bashed to death with hammer.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

censorship

Microsoft is now shutting down blogs (written in Chinese) on its Microsoft Network (MSN) blogging service that are critical of the Chinese government. This isn't the first time that Microsoft's compliance to China's policies has been in the news. If this is the first time you've heard of this, here's a quick rundown: in the past few years, the complicity of Microsoft and other US companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco with the Chinese Communist Party in helping them to construct the "Great Firewall of China" has made possible the censorship of Internet sites and searches related to 'freedom', 'human rights', or 'democracy' within China.

What's worrying about this latest incident is that the censorship is 'global' and not limited to within China. The sites MSN now censors are being taken down from their servers and not merely firewalled by the Chinese government. For example, had I originally created 'An Unnamed Syposium' on MSN and one of us published the words "Tibetian Independence" or "Falun Dong", our blog would shortly thereafter be deleted off MSN's server because of their compliance to China's wishes; (this is also assuming we knew and were blogging in Chinese).

It's not illegal for Microsoft or any other private company to censor a blog that they operate; however this censorship, though limited to Chinese blogs, still seems to reek of evilness... or maybe it doesn't? Do you believe that Microsoft and other American companies' complicity in China's political censorship is wrong?

Monday, January 02, 2006

What's in a name?

Lisen to this story about the 1898 Race Riot in Wilmington, NC.

So it's one thing that this is the only overthrow of an elected government in US history. It's another thing that White people did it at a time and place when Blacks were prosperous and influential. What do you make of one of the words used to describe the actions of the riot instigators -- "terrorist"? Fair/unfair? Weird? Appropriate?