Philosophy: Free Will

I've expanded my repertoire of Philosophy podcasts to include Wrestle That Shark and A Christian and an Atheist, in addition to Todd Park Mohr's Philosphy Podcast, which I've mentioned before.

Wrestle That Shark is one half part Tiki Bar TV and two parts philosophy. These two guys (there was a girl involved in the first couple of episodes, but she apparently decided she had better things to do) drink beer and converse about philosophy. They mostly agree with each other, so there isn't really a debate element, and they spend a lot of time trying "not to get political", which is just annoying. Guys: be political or don't but don't spend time telling me what you're trying not to do (and failing, by the way). The thing is, that I actually like this show -- it's sort of like sitting behinds a pair of slightly drunk guys on the SkyTrain while they discuss something unusual. It may not be the most insightful thing going, but it beats that magazine you brought to read -- and most reality TV. If you listen, though, skip the "drunkcast" episode. It's even lamer than it sounds.

A Christian and an Atheist is just that, a couple of friends on opposite side of the "god exists" question having a civil discussion about the matter. I've only just started listening to the first episode this week. I'm rooting for the atheist, but it doesn't look good so far.

Anyway, all of this in preface to this notion that occurred to me the other day, which is simply that the only interesting question in Philosophy is the one about Free Will. I mean, isn't it? If we don't have free will, then don't all the other questions in philosophy become sort of irrelevant?

FuzzyClock

I just found something that suits my personal sense of irony: BoingBoing has a post about the Talus About Time watch and that linked to NSLog(@"Guido's blog"); which contains a posting for FuzzyClock, which is a menubar clock replacement that tells you the approximate time (i.e. all the accuracy that you really need).

I've recently been working on a little utility that deals with time (it's a little reminder app) and in the course of researching some stuff, I read all about ISO time formats and convinced myself that I should be using a 24h clock, because that's what the rest of the world does -- never mind that nobody else in North America outside of the military really ever uses a 24h clock. So, I set my computer's clock and my watch to a 24 hour clock and I've been trying to adapt to the new way of thinking, like "Pick Lisa up before 1800". It reminds me of way back when swatch created "internet time" and for six months or so you could see displays of the current internet time displayed on web sites as @575 or whatever. I wish I had one of the watches they sold, because I'll bet it'd be worth something some day, to someone. Ahh internet fads.

Anyway, when I saw FuzzyClock, I realized that I had to have it. Who needs sub-minute accuracy in your day-to-day life anyway? Whoops. I'd better go. It's ten past one and I need to meet a friend for lunch in about five minutes.

Pixar Buys Disney for -$7.4 Billion

I'm getting some deja vu.

Moving Day

Well, it was about two and a half years ago that I started experimenting with blogging by installing Movable Type on my web host. During that time I've blogged intermittently on a variety of topics, mostly to try out the technology and play with some tools. It's fun having your own blog/website, so I've mostly enjoyed it. Of course, the downside is having to administer the system.

Especially the comment/trackback spam. I wanted to upgrade to a version of MT that would be a little better at dealing with it (or at least one that didn't have bugs that would let the spammers hack the system and destroy my posts), but later versions of MT required payment for the kind of thing that I was doing (I was hosting three blogs with a total of two authors) and I didn't feel like shelling out for something that I considered a minor experiment. So, I turned off comments, but I really wished that I had them again. Especially when I became aware that some folks were actually reading my blog.

When MarsEdit recently got revved with slightly better Blogger support, I made a snap decision to move my blog over to Blogger and let them deal with the hosting part of it. So, I've spent some time this evening moving the last year or so's posts over to my Blogger account. For future reference you can find my periodic scribbles over at Brent's Two Cents at Blogspot. So, please visit me over there/here and leave a comment to say hi if you like.

Don't forget to update your RSS readers! (What? You don't use an RSS reader?!)

The Root of all evil?

PZ Meyers is gloating, and rightly so. Not only does he have one of the best science-and-rationality themed blogs on the internet, he also seems to have luminaries like Richard Dawkins as occasional readers. I doubt that Dr. Dawkins is reading my blog, but then that's not surprising since I spend most of my time talking about what I had for breakfast and other such earth-shattering mundane things.

(Aside: I am continually amazed when I hear -- as I did again the other day -- that people actually do read my blog, even if its only people that know me. Hi everyone!)

The reason PZ is gloating is because out of the blue, Dr. Dawkins' sent him an autographed DVD copy of The Root of All Evil?, Dawkins' two-part documentary/rant about his concerns about religious faith gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth based on evidence. I was equally thrilled to find that Dawkins had made such a film, and recently managed to lay hands on it myself.

I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed. While my opinions on this matter are certainly exactly in line with Dr. Dawkins, the film just didn't have the sort of 'oomph' that I was hoping for. Overall, the narrative parts of the show are fine and work well, but the segments where Dawkins confronts various pastors, rabbis and imams are... well... weak. Dawkins may be "Darwin's Rottweiler" on paper, but he's nowhere near as fierce in person, certainly not as effective as the moniker would suggest. I think this is because he cares so passionately about the issue and he permits himself to get actually angry when, for example, a fundamentalist pastor makes ridiculous claims about evolution -- a subject upon which there are few more qualified experts than Dawkins himself. In his anger, his verbal arguments are less effective and come off a little trite.

Still, I will recommend the show if you're a Dawkins fanboy like myself (there's no better science writer alive, IMHO), or if you're interested in the subject matter. Don't go looking for "fairness" though. Dawkins doesn't waste his time giving a 'balanced' presentation of the issue. There is no balance: the Scientific Method is an overwhelmingly successful means for determining the truth, and the only truths that religion can offer are made-up, illogical, inconsistent, and require "faith", a dangerous process of non-thinking that -- especially in this day and age -- is putting our society in jeopardy.

Movies We'd Like To See

So Mike Davidson had a great idea. Get people to Photoshop pictures of Steve Jobs into movie posters and then post them to his weblog. The result is pretty amusing. Check it out.

My personal favourites? The one to the right is pretty good, but there are a bunch that feature a Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs theme. "Kill Bill", "Windows Crashers", "Enemy of Bill Gates", etc. The "iPodfather" poster is well done, although obvious. And you just have to love "The CEO Who Shagged Me".

McGriddles

I realize I'm a little late to the party with this. Chalk it up to my non-consumer habits and relative media isolation, since I don't watch much TV any more.

I'm not a frequent consumer of fast foods, but the other day in the haze of no sleep and the rush to get Lisa to daycare and me to work, I left the house without realizing that I hadn't eaten any breakfast. I soon realized it though, as hunger pangs threatened to consume me. (Actually, come to think of it, it's 11:15 right now, and I haven't eaten today yet either.) I had to eat something soon.

At any rate, there's a McDonalds Express at Library Square so I popped in for a quick bite, and I grabbed a "McGriddles" sandwich. I had heard the name before, but didn't really know how they were different from an egg McMuffin. As I walked to work eating, I realized the difference: The 'bread' part of the sandwich was a pancake -- including syrup. I have to say that I was very impressed with McDonald's ability to put two pancakes with syrup, an egg, sausage and cheese into my stomach without the requirement for cutlery. Mmmm. 550 calories. And I had two of them. Ouch.

(And by the way, did you know people actually write reviews of breakfast foods?)

Google Earth

I accidentally ran across a post that mentioned that Google Earth was now available on the Mac. I remember having read about it when the PC version became available last year so I decided to take a look.

I used to work for a company that did computer mapping software (Geographical Information Systems), but it's been a very long time since I worked with that sort of thing. Google Earth just blew my socks off. Back in '93 when I started working in the GIS field there is no way I would have believed something like Google Earth could even exist, let alone be picked up off the internet for free.

My only complaint was that it seemed a little light on place names in Italy -- I couldn't find the exact cottage in Tuscany that we stayed in on our trip to that country a few years ago, which was slightly disappointing. Some of the data is extremely high resolution though. I did a 'flyover' of an area on the Peloponnesus that felt like I was really there (a quarter mile up).

Stunning work, Google. I'm impressed.

No Way

What he said. (More here.)

plcat

Speaking of working with property lists, I've recently been working on a little utility that uses them for storing preferences and I've been tripped up by the fact that Tiger now stores preference plists in a binary format. This led me to write plcat, which dumps a plist file to standard output, but converts it from binary to XML if necessary.

Polar Bear! Polar Bear!

I don't know why, but I've always wanted to do a Polar Bear Swim. Every year after Christmas, I sort of half-heartedly tell myself that I'll do it, but then I forget or decide not to. Well, this year it was going to be different. I went around telling people that I was going to do it, making it harder to back out. And then this afternoon Stella and I bundled Lisa up in the stroller for a nap and we walked down to English Bay to watch the festivities. I had my swim trunks under my jeans and brought a towel and other stuff I'd need in case I decided to go in. I was still pretty tentative. At the end of my shower this morning I'd turned the hot water off and stood there under the cold spray for a brief moment. It was horrible, I didn't think I could actually submerge myself in water that cold.

It was a beautiful day for a Polar Bear Swim: 9°C, windy and raining lightly. Just the kind of day you'd like to toss off your warm clothes and dive into the frigid ocean. Of course, if there's any place in Canada where you'd want to go swimming on New Year's day, Vancouver is probably it. We arrived at the beach and there were throngs of people -- mostly spectators. People were dressed up in costumes, had their entire bodies painted blue (I think it was paint), one guy was wearing a ripped T-shirt with a picture of a custom BC license plate that said "ICEMAN". While Stella waited, I went and registered (it's free). The rules? At 2:15 you enter the "pen" which is an area of beach reserved for swimmers. At 2:30, you enter the water, then come back to the registration desk wet and get your button (pictured above). That's it.

We were there a little early, so we stood around after registering and watched the crowd. People were having fun, many were still drinking or drunk from the night before. The Master of Ceremonies with the bullhorn was shouting out useful tips, such as "don't drink before entering the water" and "hypothermia is bad for you". At 2:15 I stripped to my shorts and sandals and moved into the "pen". It started to rain harder. I found myself a spot in the crowd about fifteen meters from the beach. Three guys ran by carrying a large Mexican flag -- I'm not sure what the significance of that was, but it was nice because the flag briefly shielded me from the rain. It was 2:20, and all of sudden people ahead of me are screaming and rushing into the water. I didn't hear a siren or see a flag, but people were moving. Perhaps my watch was wrong; perhaps someone decided to get things started a little early. I didn't care. I doffed my sandals and made for the water.

As I approached the beach, the view ahead changed abruptly from a huge crowd of people rushing into the water, to a huge crowd of people rushing back out. A Polar Bear Swim is apparently not a lengthy procedure. My foot hit the water. I suppose the water was cold -- I'd heard on the radio the night before that the water temperature would be about 8°C -- but frankly I'd been standing in the wind and rain in my bathing suit for long enough that the temperature difference didn't seem so bad. Certainly not as bad as the cold shower. I kept on going, heartened that it didn't seem too cold, and also wanting to avoid getting trampled. Knee deep. Waist deep. Commit. I lunged forward, hitting my goal of "swimming" (i.e. being buoyant for a moment or two and submerged up to my neck). A moment later, I joined the crowd headed for the beach. Elapsed time: maybe 20 seconds between my foot hitting the water and it hitting the sand again.

Once out of the water, I was struck by how cold I wasn't. I was standing there, dripping wet and naked in the rain, and I felt pretty good. I felt like I could have walked home like that -- it just didn't seem that cold out anymore. I picked up my souvenir button, got changed into my clothes and we walked home.

So, now I can say that I've done a Polar Bear Swim. I'm a member of the club. I've got the button. Would I do it again? I think so. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined, and it was pretty fun. Next time I'll have to talk/cajole a friend or two into coming along.