Quote: Preaching

When believers tell others about their ideas, it is 'preaching'. When nonbelievers do it, it is 'aggressive atheism'.

Richard Wiseman
(Twitter, 23/09/2010)

On Pope PR and Bad Journalism

Maybe some of you haven't noticed, but the leader of the Catholic Church visited England last week. Many considered it his most difficult trip so far - after all, it was England which is amongst the most secular countries in the world. With child abuse cases piling up, it also wasn't one of the easiest times to leave the safety of the Holy See. So many people were curiously looking forward on how the Pope would do on his trip, followers and opponents alike.

He didn't disappoint either when he gave his speech in Edinburgh! For somebody who was born 1927 and who had to join the Hitler Youth and serve in the Wehrmacht and who was already deeply involved in the Catholic church at that time, it is astonishing that he managed to suppress all memories about the deep links between Nazism and the church. How else can he say that it was "a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God" and that we should reflect on these "sobering lessons of the atheist extremism" which " let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society"? Maybe, just maybe, he should start remembering what other people (nowadays quite easily) can look up in history books? For example that Hitler was raised as a Catholic and saw his fight as acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator (from "Mein Kampf") and started sentences with "In boundless love as a Christian and as a man [...]" (Hitler speech 1922). That doesn't sound especially atheist to me! If you need more quotes to prove this point, check here.
Apart from the fact that Hitlers antisemitism grew from his Christian upbringing, a quick look at historic documents reveals that Nazism as a whole wasn't an atheistic movement either. Quite the contrary. In the attempt to keep German culture clean from destructive literature, blacklists were produced of books that had to be removed from libraries or burned. One of those lists on books to be removed, includes:

"All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk."

(Blacklist for Public Libraries and Commercial Lending Libraries)

Why should atheists burn their own books? In 1933, Hitler even proclaimed to have eradicated atheism!

I agree that the role of the churches under the Nazi government is a difficult one and its subject to much debate. The Nazis intended to take the power from the churches (as institutions) so that they won't pose a threat, but in the same turn destroyed atheist and freethinker movements. It is often mentioned that they tried to instantiate "Positive Christianity" with a bible purged from Jewish content. Hardly an atheist step!
Pope Benedikt XVI grew up in this environment! How he managed to completely forget these teachings, eludes me! A Pope surely wouldn't lie to us to just to cast a damning light on the growing atheistic and secular movements?

Moving away from the twisted history lesson, the Pope also speaks of the aggressive secularist movements. Doesn't he mean atheistic movements? There is quite a difference between believing there is no god and the wish to keep church and government separate! Identifying secularists as the opposition can mean that one strives for a more theocratic form of government. A thought that makes me cringe when looking at Islamic countries like Iran and Saudi-Arabia or at the fundamentalist tendencies in the American tea party movement. Again, history books can provide ample examples that theocratic tendencies are not the way forward. Look under "dark ages".

But enough about the Pope's speech. Somehow that was to be expected. Linking Hitler to atheism is a common attempt to demonise atheism and is often used by religious people who say that a real christian could not have done those things. Hearing this reasoning from a contemporary witness just proves that you can believe in everything if you just tell yourself a lie often enough. So I wasn't too surprised or upset after reading the speech. Business as usual.

Then the first articles in German newspapers appeared, commenting on the Pope's visit to the secular island. It was only then when my blood started boiling. I have to note that I so far thought that compared to American news, which is often clearly biased and quick to abandon journalistic principles in order to make their point (FOX news springs to mind), the big German newspapers, although of course also being biased, would adhere to somewhat higher journalistic standards. Apparently I was a bit too optimistic it seems.
In an article in Spiegel Online the author starts by elaborating on the difficulty that the Pope was facing during his visit to a country that is dominated by the protestant church. She then goes on to report about the march of the opponents. The people that came together to demonstrate against the policies of the Pope are described as "Eine unheilige, eine vergnügungssüchtige Koalition von Missbrauchsopfern, Frauenrechtlern, Homosexuellen, Abtreibungsbefürwortern und Kondom-Fans [...]" (Translation: "An unholy, a pleasure-seeking coalition of abuse victims, feminists, homosexuals, pro-abortionists and condom fans [...]"). Now I might be wrong but I have a hard time to imagine a pleasure seeking group of abuse victims marching against the Pope. I would have expected to read such sentences in a catholic church paper, but the Spiegel?
And it didn't get better when I browsed through other big papers! A political comment on Sueddeutsche.de first praised the humility that the Pope has shown in a country that is so anti-catholic, before going against the "allegedly enlightened, rational group which often lacks reason". The author picks out Richard Dawkins as the leader of that group whose criticism of the catholic church can be summarised as "arrogant, intolerant and ignorant" and first explains to the reader that Dawkins must have missed that the church has also learned "the virtue of humility" in its 2000 year history. I must have missed that as well within all the intolerant and ignorant things that happened! After again praising the words of the Pope (who humbly only wants for his church to be listened to) he then complains about the secular criticisms that are presented "with yapping eagerness" and are "at times filled with hate" and that they are only attacking the christian and catholic faith. The author reaches the climax of his reality escapism by proclaiming that "Aber wenn im Islam Frauen gesteinigt werden, schweigen Britanniens Atheisten" (Translation: "But when women are getting stoned in Islam, then Britain's atheists remain silent."). I always wonder whether they only get those authors out of their box once a year in which they could lead happy lives without knowing what happens outside in the world? Atheists around the world actively and loudly oppose every single stoning in the world (not only Iran). Google is your friend here!

Now there are more examples but I guess I made my point here: I didn't expect German newspapers to write too openly against the Pope and his policies. Germany is a predominantly christian country after all. But that they would publish articles that so clearly lack journalistic standard surprised me. Everybody who knows how to use Google can debunk the claims made against the Pope's opponents in mere minutes and every journalist who did a bit of research and would have bothered to read a bit about Dawkins would know that the accusations made in the second article are ridiculous. This is not opinion in a political commentary. These are direct lies or a lack any form of journalistic inquiry - in any case a shame for serious journalism and what I thought those newspapers stand for.

I agree that Dawkins is one of the more aggressive atheists of our time but why should he be less passionate and aggressive than his opponents who also seem to forget that you should love thy neighbour and turn the other cheek? How can you fight against an opponent who can openly lie to the public just to get praised for his humility shortly after? How can you use reason against a Pope who cries in public when he meets abuse victims but who actively tried to ignore the issue for decades and even tried to cover it up until it became too big? Crying now does not help the victims who have suffered since Joseph Ratzinger received the first hints and chose to actively ignore them. You would expect that from a company that tries to save its shares by all means (don't even know where to start with examples) and the church tried to use the same PR tricks. But one thing you can't do afterwards is claiming moral high ground!

Maybe it needs people like Richard Dawkins and all those unholy, passion-seeking people to throw stones at the tower of cards the churches try to defend, to slowly get people thinking (and it seems to work when I look at the loss of members in the north-western churches). If I look at the pure idiocy in speeches of priests and bishops regarding the child abuse cases, I don't think knocking shyly at the door with reasonable arguments will work.

Quote: An Enemy of Humanity

Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity.

He is an enemy of children, whose bodies he has allowed to be raped and whose minds he has encouraged to be infected with guilt. It is embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with saving child bodies from rapists than with saving priestly souls from hell: and most concerned with saving the long-term reputation of the church itself.

He is an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the sort of bigotry that his church used to reserve for Jews.

He is an enemy of women – barring them from the priesthood as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties. What other employer is allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex, when filling a job that manifestly doesn’t require physical strength or some other quality that only males might be thought to have?

He is an enemy of truth, promoting barefaced lies about condoms not protecting against AIDS, especially in Africa.

He is an enemy of the poorest people on the planet, condemning them to inflated families that they cannot feed, and so keeping them in the bondage of perpetual poverty. A poverty that sits ill with the obscene riches of the Vatican.

He is an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem-cell research, on grounds not of morality but of pre-scientific superstition.

Less seriously from my point of view, Ratzinger is even an enemy of the Queen’s own church, arrogantly endorsing a predecessor's dissing of Anglican Orders as “absolutely null and utterly void”, while shamelessly trying to poach Anglican vicars to shore up his own pitifully declining priesthood.

Finally, perhaps of most personal concern to me, he is an enemy of education. Quite apart from the lifelong psychological damage caused by the guilt and fear that have made catholic education infamous throughout the world, he and his church foster the educationally pernicious doctrine that evidence is a less reliable basis for belief than faith, tradition, revelation and authority – his authority.

Richard Dawkins
(from speech given in Rally against the Pope, 18th September 2010)

Life on a 4-Dimensional Doughnut

Sometimes a simple idea or assumption can lead to an interesting chain of thoughts. I've just watched an educational prime-time program about maths and they ended the episode with one of these ideas, deducted from the maths they were talking about earlier. The program was about dimensions, in particular the 4th dimension.
Imagine you are playing a computer game on your screen. An interesting feature of these games often is that you can walk off one side of the screen and you appear again on the opposite one, e.g. leaving the screen on the left and appearing again on the right. We normally don't think about this very much and just continue with the game. But what does that mean in terms of surface structure if this virtual, 2-dimensional world? How does the world have to be shaped to allow for that to happen?
An intuitive answer of many people would be that it has to have the shape of a sphere. Let's imagine our small 2D walker would stand on a sphere. He could go in any direction and, by walking straight, would reach the point he started from again from exactly the other side. So far so good. But now, think about distances travelled by our small guy. On a sphere, no matter which direction he chooses, the distance to the point of origin is always the same. How about the distances he has to travel in our 2-dimensional world? Even if we imagine the screen to be square, the distance is different for different starting angles (imagine going through one of the corners to appear on the opposite one). So it can't be a sphere!
Let's shape the 2-dimensional world in order to have the desired features. Think of the screen as a piece of paper of the same size. To be able to get to the bottom end by going "off paper" on the top end, we have to bend the paper to form a cylinder. By connecting top and bottom side we enabled our little walker to go back to his point of origin when walking north or south. Now we have to connect left and right by forming a doughnut shape (or more mathematical: a torus), voila! A never ending world for our little wanderer.
Now what have we done? From the viewpoint of our (still) 2-dimensional wanderer, this is a normal 2-dimensional landscape. He just knows that if he walks straight on in his perfectly flat world, he comes back to where he started. Remember: He never experiences up or down (therefore he never thinks of it as a flat world! What else could there be?).
What we (as 3D people) have done is to shape the 2-dimensional world in the 3rd dimension to a 3-dimensional object to do, what the small guy can only think of as magic.

Now let him walk his new world for a while and think about what the 4th dimension could be. To answer this question we can look at the dimensions we already know. To get from dimension 0 (a dot) to the 1st dimension, we can imagine two dots and connect them. Now I can get from one dot to the other by walking along the 1st dimension, passing many other dots on the way. We can do the same to get from the 1st to the 2nd dimension: Every 1-dimensional object is a line. If we draw two lines (imagine parallel ones for simplicity), we can connect them by drawing other lines in between till we filled the space. All these lines are in a 2-dimensional landscape of 1-dimensional lines. The step to the 3rd dimension is equally easy by connecting 2 planes by other planes. If you need a visual aid, you can watch this movie and stop when your head starts hurting (usually around dimension 6 ;-) ).

Suddenly the step from the 3rd to the 4th dimension is easy: We just take two 3-dimensional objects (e.g. yourself) and connect them by other 3D objects going slowly along a line of objects. Think about that for a while and you will see that this is what we normally refer to as time. Just imagine a red cube and a yellow cube and imagine a line of cubes in between slowly changing colour. We can see that all the time in movies! So a 3D-movie as a whole is just a 4-dimensional object, a dot in the 4th dimension, connecting two sets of 3D objects (start and end set of the movie...and before anybody destroys this nice metaphor in a comment, no cuts are allowed!)

Let's go back to where we started with our walker: Now imagine yourself being the wanderer. You walk through a 3-dimensional space. What would it mean to "walk-off the screen"? The space in which we walk a straight line has to be bent in the 4th dimension. From what we did with the piece of paper, this sounds easy! Then we can walk straight and come back to the place we started from. Remember, you would still be walking in the 3rd dimension just like the 2D guy who never left the 2nd dimension on his journeys. (we neglect that it would take time for us to walk there, therefore also moving in the 4th, just imagine you can walk really fast!). What else does that mean?
Some people think that our universe has a toroidal shape (i.e a gigantic doughnut) in the 4th dimension (whatever that looks like). Since light travels in a straight line, if you look really far into the universe, you should be able to see yourself standing there, looking away! But wait, travel needs time (what we've neglected before)! So e.g. the picture of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system, is what it looked like 4.3 years ago. What does that mean in a toroidal universe? One of the stars we can see is our own sun from millions of years ago? What happens if you travel there? If we could travel faster than light, could be arrive on our own planet in the past? Does "beaming" somebody from point A to point B just mean to bend our dimension so that these to points touch through the 4th and push the guy a bit?

So many questions, a long post, and just because I watched a program on TV. And so many more questions to think about.....

Quote: National Security

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."

***

"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"

Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th President of the United States
14.10.1890 - 28.03.1969

A new star in comedy heaven

I'm watching American TV quite often because they have good comedy shows. For a few weeks now I'm following the shows of a new comedian. She is really funny! And the media seem to like her, too! I didn't see a comedian getting more airtime and being more discussed in the news. Her name is Sarah Palin.
In her shows and interviews she pretends to be a running mate for McCain and tries to show American voters the pitfalls in conservative politics. With her excessive standpoint she points out where stupidity, narrow-mindedness and fundamentalist viewpoints could lead, when combined in an influential political person.

If only the majority of Americans would see it that way. Let's come back into the real world. Unfortunately roughly 133791000 Americans (21.10) see it differently. For them, Sarah Palin is no reason to vote against McCain as president. Lately, not a single day passed where I didn't ask myself: Why?
American media and conservative politicians deliberately create a culture of fear which, as a new study suggests, might play into the Republican's hands. But that doesn't explain why conservative voters would vote for somebody who is clearly incapable of running a country.

Let's see which traits Sarah Palin has: She likes hunting, is fundamentalist christian (or close), "hockey-mum" and follows small-town values.
This is not a post against religious views, but is somebody who labelled the war in Iraq a "task that is from God" and wants to teach creationism in biology class able to make decisions on a global scale? Who does God want us to attack next? Iran? Pakistan? I think that history has shown that we don't want one of the biggest military forces on the planet in the hands of a (quasi-)theocratic government.
So what else do we have? I googled for small-town values. I wanted to know what exactly they are, but there seems to be a bit of confusion online. I couldn't find a comprehensive list! What comes to my mind when I'm talking about small-town values is narrow-mindedness, babbitts, often subliminal racism and cronyism.
If I look at that list, Sarah Palin apparently really would bring small-town values to Washington. After all, she managed to put those values to good use as major and governor. "She has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance." (NYT). This often happens on a local scale, but are 8 years of small-town values in the White House not enough? Do we really have to push it to the next level?
Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to vote in the USA. But I really beg the American voters to think before making that cross in 2 weeks. A president doesn't need small town-values, but the ability to solve global problems. A president has to be able to make informed decisions which are not dictated by the oil industry and religious fanatics. Science, almost forgotten as a source of information in the last 8 years, can help there if it is not suppressed by political and/or religious agendas. In a global economy, one of the most important issues is an intelligent foreign policy. And being able to see foreign countries from your porch doesn't improve these abilities. It only means you have a property with a good view.

So to all the "real" Americans: Stop being pro-American and start being pro-intelligence and pro-skepticism. America has lost a lot of credibility the last years. You can make a change!

Quote: Web of Discourses

"The strangest and most wonderful construction in the whole animal world are the amazing, intricate constructions made by the primate, Homo sapiens. Each normal individual of this species makes a self. Out of its brain, it spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn't have to know what it's doing; it just does it. The web protects it, just like the snail's shell, and provides it livelihood, just like the spider's web, and advances its prospects for sex, just like the bowerbird's bower. Unlike a spider, an individual human doesn't just exude its web; more like a beaver, it works hard to gather the materials out of which it builds it's protective fortress. Like a bowerbird, it appropriates many found objects which happen to delight it - or its mate - including many that have been designed by others for other purposes.
[...]
So wonderful is the organisation of a termite colony that it seemed to some observers that each termite colony had to have a soul (Marais, 1937). We now understand that its organisation is simply the result of a million semi-independent little agents, each itself an automaton, doing its thing. So wonderful is the organisation of a human self that to many observers it has seemed that each human being had a soul, too: a benevolent Dictator ruling from Headquarters."

Daniel C. Dennett
(in "Conciousness Explained", 1991)

Speaking English

Traveling was different when I was younger. You decided where to go and then prepared by learning enough of the language to survive the most important everyday situations. I always had a small guide book with me with the most important sentences and was proud, when I was able to order my food without having to open it. Of course I knew English at the time (although admittedly, I was far from fluent), but often the people I spoke to didn't know it or were only as good as I was.
So the natural thing to do was to learn as much native language as possible.

Times have changed.
Living in England has improved my ability to speak English by a lot and suddenly, I expect all people in the world to understand and speak it as well. I became as arrogant as many American or English people when it is about traveling. Having English as the world's language doesn't necessarily mean that everybody is able to speak it. Of course this slowly changes. I recently visited Finland and even in the countryside, almost everybody spoke clear English. But does that mean I don't have to learn foreign languages any more? What am I going to miss?

Language evolved alongside with the culture of an area and therefore can be a mirror which reflects many cultural aspects and differences. The way natives use the language and how it differs from your own can hint to cultural conventions and attitudes. Learning a language shows people that you respect and are interested in their culture and their way of living. In many countries (there are exceptions, e.g. France) people are genuinely pleased when you try to speak to them in their tongue and make an effort, even if it is far from being perfect. They often help and correct you and many times it can be the start of an interesting conversation.

Living in an English-speaking world should not be an excuse for not making the effort. If you really want to experience a country, there is no better way than learning its language and trying to speak to its people. And I know that it's often not possible, because the visit is to short or on short notice (e.g. business meetings). But especially in these situations we should always remember, that we are the guests in this country. We should never expect the natives to understand us if we didn't make the effort. It makes things easier for us if they do, but if there are language barriers, we are the ones who have to apologise

Quotes: George Carlin

"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
***
“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist”
***
"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."
***
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
***
“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.”
***
“If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little”
***
(more, more and even more!)

George Carlin

Final Curtain

"Hey, did you hear? George Carlin died!"
"George Carlin? I just saw him yesterday!"
"Yeah.......didn't help! He died anyway!"
Unfortunately this conversation was bound to take place two days ago. George Carlin, one of the greatest stand-up comedians of our time, died of heart failure in Santa Monica, California. And although it is all but impossible to write an obituary for every great person that passes away, I have to write one for him before his friends delete his entry from their address books in 6 weeks.

As George, I don't believe in an almighty, invisible GOD and therefore not in an afterlife, heaven or hell. But I do believe that people live on after their deaths: In the minds and the memories of people who knew them. And nowadays technology can help a little bit as YouTube, Wikipedia and other pages in the internet can act as external memories.
And lucky for us, George left us many there that can help, big time!
I only saw the first video of him on the web a few months ago and hardly ever enjoyed a video that much! Perhaps that's the reason why the news of his death hit me hard. I know that there a no more new shows coming!

Now that he gives less than a shit about the sanctity of life let's see who this comedian was:
His life is well documented on Wikipedia and I don't have to repeat that here, so let's look at his shows!
He said the seven words you can't say and even things no one ever said before. He had a lot of good business ideas worth looking at! He knew, he was ahead of his time, unfortunately only 1.5 hours. He knew we can't save this planet and was asking about the difference between abortion and an omelette.
He was also very efficient! He managed to slash the 10 commandments down to 3 by removing unnecessary redundancy. On the other hand, he was very confused about phrases and words constantly changing!
Google for videos of his shows and you find many more. Whenever I go to YouTube I find new ones that I don't know yet. Take the chance to get to know him and make sure the memory lives on!

Now on the off-chance that there is a heaven and a God, I can only hope this God has more humour than his self-appointed clerical workers down here who didn't get the best of the bargain in Carlin's shows. But anyway, if Carlin really went to heaven, let's go to the topless bar near the airport and bow to the man who said the things many of us should say more often!

You've been labelled!

If we look at a scenery, all that our eyes deliver are colours and intensities. But what we consciously see are trees, bushes, fields, cars, and so on.
Our brain extracts features in real time from the eye's input and matches it with objects in its database. This matching process is amazingly fast and efficient. We recognize an object as tree even if we've never seen a tree with this exact structure before. The brain tries to match anything to something it knows.
This ability is vital for us. If we face a tiger in the jungle, we are dependent on the speed our brain recognizes the animal as "Tiger". "Animal" or "Cat" would not be enough for some people, as trying to feed it wouldn't go as expected.

So we can roughly say (many scientists and philosopher will hate me for that) that the eyes deliver a picture and the brain labels everything it can find. What reaches our consciousness, is a picture with a lot of post-it notes on.
But it doesn't stop there! These post-it notes not only tell us the name for this object, they also tell us everything we know about this object. So if we can see "Chair" with the property "brown" and "grained" attached to it, we might also find "hard", "able to hold average person", "not painted" and "uncomfortable". Our brain matched the picture with "wooden chair" and gave us all the information we can remember from past encounters. This works with everything. We see a glass and know it breaks easily, we see a keyboard and know we can type on it, we see a stranger and know he's an idiot .... ok, I'll come back to that later.

One interesting observation is that the more familiar the object is, the less we question these post-it notes. Or to be more precise, the better an object is defined in our brains, the more we trust the attributes. Is that a problem?
Just before World Cup 2006 in Germany, an artist placed footballs all over Berlin. The balls were chained to nearby walls and looked exactly like footballs. Except for the fact that they were made from concrete. People who passed by, got the note "football" with the attributes "round", "leather" and fatally "can be kicked".
The artist was arrested after countless broken feet.
This is just one example were this labelling goes wrong. By changing the attributes of a familiar object we can easily trick the process. The more familiar, the easier.
Just imagine a chair made out of foam but covered with paint to make it look like wood. Would you test the attribute "able to hold average person" before sitting down?

So we know we constantly get post-its that are generally correct but can contain wrong information. In everyday life (except you live together with a clown or a Youtube lover with a camera) this doesn't matter as we very rarely encounter foam chairs.
But we should keep in mind, that we have to reassess these attributes as things change constantly. So should our post-its.

Now let's come back to the special object mentioned above: Humans. Our labeling machine labels everything, also humans. What is on these labels? If it is a friend for example, this could include name, job, history, wife's name, connection to other friends and so on. This is ok, but think about the "closest match" process. If we see a stranger, this process also tries to find as many attributes as possible. And there, things go wrong. We immediately label people as soon as we see them. But you might add, if we get to know them, we change the labels and keep them up to date, don't we? Do we? Here the fact that we don't constantly test attributes traps us! And things do go wrong.

The process that is vital to us in so many situations, gets in our way. It is sometimes really difficult to change the image we have of somebody. They are labeled. And the fact that human-to-human contact is a mutual process reinforces our dilemma. If we react strangely because of an overhasty label, they label us differently in return.
Many of you just thought "Oh, I'm not that bad". Really? If you see somebody with a beard and a turban, do you thing "Ah, muslim" or "Hmm, perhaps muslim"?
If you see somebody with a suit, do you think "Could be a hippie on the way to work"?

We label all the time and this is good and often vital for us. But we have to learn to constantly reassess the attributes we gave to objects. Especially to humans. Attributes for people we just met is a good starting point for that. Apart from the attribute "holds gun" perhaps.

Quote: Only a few decades

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?”

Richard Dawkins
(in "Unweaving the Rainbow", 1998)

Alice in Wonderland

I'm sure if you look straight over the screen, you can see a wall. It looks (depending on the office you sit in) more or less solid, has a certain colour and you just start asking yourself why the heck this wall could be interesting! Think about the things you know about this wall: We all know this wall consists of different molecules and if we look even closer, atoms. For the sake of simplicity, let's think of atoms as spheres made of tiny electrons circling around a core (called nucleus). The size of the atom or it's nucleus depends on its type. Carbon for example has a atom size of 70 picometres (=0.00000000007 metres) and a nucleus diameter of about 2 femtometres (=0.00000000000002 metres). That means the carbon atom is about 35000 times wider than it's nucleus. If you imagine the nucleus to be the size of a football, the electrons would circle in a distance of roughly 4025 metres (=2.5 miles) around it. This means a lot of empty space! To emphasize this point a bit more: The volume of the whole atom is about 42875000000000 times bigger than the volume of the core!! So if we could look inside an atom, we wouldn't see much, would we?
Let's come back to our wall! The wall consists of many different atoms with different sizes. For this thought experiment, we assume for simplicity that the atoms in the wall are stuck together like a lot of small balls. We are looking at an awful lot of balls here! But we just calculated that an atom is mostly empty space, so a lot of atoms together (with small spaces in between them) are just more empty space dotted by very small nuclei.
So why do we see a solid wall? We are also made of atoms, so if we are only considering cores and electrons, I should be able to walk straight through! With the odd wall electron bouncing into one of my nuclei or electrons and vice versa! A bit of wiggling should do, to resolve this.
But I can't.
Why not? As it's mostly empty space, what keeps me from seeing through? As the atoms themselves have no colour, where does it come from? Why do the materials have different properties? They all consist of atoms, don't they? Ok, different types different properties, but diamonds and charcoal are made of exactly the same type! Would you put a piece of charcoal on a ring?

Even the most boring thing in the world (and I guess most people would consider a standard wall pretty boring) holds enough open questions for us to make it appear magical. We just stopped looking at items that we can see around us all the time . If you take the time and look closely at them, they all hold a door ready that leads into a magical world.

There are always more questions and there always will be. Don't stop asking them!
You might not find speaking white rabbits or hookah smoking caterpillars, but it is going to be a mind-opening and magical journey for sure!

Sven

P.S: I found the same idea in "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. It seems I'm not the only one looking at walls in a strange way..... ;-)

Quote: Small Lies

'Thank you. Now...tell me...'
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?
'Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?'
NO
'Oh come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact!'
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
She turned on him.
'It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!'
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
'Really? Then what would have happened, pray?'
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
They walked in silence for a moment.
'Ah,' said Susan dully. 'Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that.'
I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.
'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable.'
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little--'
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
'So we can believe the big ones?'
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
'They're not the same at all!'
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET-- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
'Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--'
MY POINT EXACTLY.

Terry Pratchett
(in "Hogfather", 1996)

Last Thoughts of 2007

Many people celebrated Christmas a short while ago (or other religious festivities) and refer to it as a special time of year, often mentioning a "Christmas mood" - time to spend with your family, time to relax, sit together in the warmth, escaping the problems of the outside world. It's only a few days, but people are looking forward to it for a long time. It's a time when people behave differently. For some people it is a depressing time, mostly because they see other people enjoying it and get even more depressed than normal.
I'm an atheist. I don't believe in the story of the birth of Christ. For me Christmas has lost it's religious background, but is still a special time which I spend with my family. A time where I can relax, meet friends and exchange gifts. For me Christmas is a family celebration. It hasn't lost any importance just because I don't believe in the religious bits and pieces. It is still a special time, but, to be honest, it could be any time of year.

Tomorrow the year 2007 ends. But what does that mean? We think of the new year as a new start, an opportunity to change things, to do things better than last year. Many of us have New Year's resolutions to exactly specify what they want to change; like a tick-list. We think of it as a new white sheet of paper which is waiting to be filled, a white canvas we can paint on. Are we really able to look at the sheet of last year, think about it, reset our life and draw it differently this time?
From a scientific point of view all that happens is the date changes. We have the calendar to count time and for reasons of convenience we use different units which enable us to speak about fixed periods of time: a month, a year, days, seconds. So all that happens is that the last chunk, the portion of the date called "year", gets incremented by one.
Time is flowing continuously and as time flows, so do our lives. Scientifically there is no resetting our lives at New Year's Eve, no new start. It just goes on. All that really changes is a number.

So, as an atheist, although Christmas has no background I still don't want to miss the time with my family. I just call it Christmas so everybody knows what I'm talking about. It's just a concept everybody knows. But, it doesn't have to be on the 25th of December, I could do the same things any other time. It's nice it's in winter (at least here!) but it doesn't have to be. As long as it is at least once a year! ;-)
As a scientist, I know that nothing changes on New Year's Eve but a number. Still, I think about a new year as a chance to do things differently than last year, to try new ideas. As with Christmas, New Year's Eve is also an abstract concept. Everything we associate with it just exists in our heads. Does this make it less important? I don't think so! Humans need concepts, sometimes more and sometimes less abstract. We use them to organise our world, to make it easier to understand and have gotten used to so many of them, we sometimes forget they are just concepts. But, concepts can be changed and should be questioned from time to time.

We need a time like Christmas so we don't forget the importance of a few relaxing days or the importance of family. We use the concept "year" and need New Year's Eve to partition the time given to us into chunks we can handle. But, many people forget the things we do in these times could be done all the time. I can change things in my life all the time, can spend time with my family all the time and can relax as often as I think is necessary. Christmas and New Year's Eve are concepts which help us remember, but we should not narrow it down to these few days only.

I hope you all had a nice few days over Christmas and have the list with resolutions ready for tomorrow. My only resolution is to celebrate "New Year's Eve" every day next year. Thinking about the last ones, perhaps I should omit the alcohol and only think about changes and opportunities! :)

Happy New Year everyone!

Sven

Quote: Freedom to doubt

"The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and, I believe, in other fields. It was born of a struggle. It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt, to be unsure. And I do not want us to forget the importance of the struggle and, by default, to let the thing fall away. I feel a responsibility as a scientist who knows the great value of satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, and the progress made possible by such a philosophy, progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought. I feel a responsibility to proclaim the value of this freedom and to teach that doubt is not to be feared, but that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations."

Richard P. Feynman
(in "The Meaning of It All", Lecture 1, 1998)

Think before forwarding!

Chain-letters were already around on paper before the internet started (we all remember the "Send this on and you will find luck the next day" letters). Although money (postage) and work (making paper copies) was involved, the chain letters still found enough gullible people to be able to spread. With the start of electronic mail and the possibility to copy and forward hundreds of emails within seconds, the chain letter had its time of prosperity. Hoaxes and chain letters became a real threat to every mail server as they got flooded with millions of copies within minutes.

I couldn't understand why it worked before the internet at all, I understood why it flourished in the early days of the world wide web, as people just sent on everything they got if it sounded a bit reasonable (and it was just too easy to do!), but in the time of online viruses, worms and spam, I really thought people would start to think before they press the forward button!!

Most of the hoaxes and chain letters are easy to spot. If you are not sure, a simple search on google normally reveals their true nature. So why do people still believe that they can get anything for free if they send an email to all their friends?? In the beginning I was annoyed when I got the same email 20 times a day from friends....nowadays I'm almost getting angry! Somehow I have this strange opinion that people could spot and delete them themselves.

I have to be honest, I didn't get one for a while and there was a sprout of hope that we've reached a critical mass of people who are aware of them to kill them once and for all. But how wrong I was! Two days ago I saw the walls in Facebook filled with this message:

Attention all Facebook membeRs.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg

It has all features of a standard chain letter: It gives you a nice story about a problem (which is not there in the first place), threatens the receiver by telling you that something is going to happen to you if you don't forward it and askes you to send it to all your friends, pets, toys and future children! There are immideately several questions which should come up:

• Why can't Facebook check my activity within the system?
• Why don't they just send a message to everybody themselves?
• Would Facebook really delete accounts without hesitation?
• Why can't Mark Zuckerberg write "members" correctly???

So why don't people ask these questions, think about them, have a laugh and delete the post?
Facebook had to react (as walls filled up with millions of stupid chain letters) and delete them!

I hope everybody who read this post is going to think twice everytime a child wants a liver by email, some account is going to be closed down, Microsoft wants to send you money or the world can only be saved by sending on a message! It will never be true and I'm going to hate you for having to delete the emails/posts that reach me! And believe me, only one in a hundred is going to get a different reaction, like the mother of all chain letters or the anti-letter. So if you are not absolutely sure, don't try! ;-)

In hope to have changed the world again with this post,
Sven

Is this the right name for brakes?

I saw these brakes today on a bike. They look like really good brakes, but the name confused me a little bit! Is "Hope" really the right name for a company producing brakes? :) I can only hope it's well used irony or you never seriously have to brake :-D
(I don't want to comment on the quality of the product itself, as I've never tested them!)

Climate sins and absolution

I booked a flight for Christmas a few days ago with EasyJet. After fighting my way through all the rental car , hotel and insurance offers, deciding about number of bags and priority boarding, I suddenly found a new tick-box: Carbon Offsetting. Intrigued by this new option, I took the time to find out what this new check box was about. On the "Fly Greener Environment" page I found out that, by clicking the box (and spending a few pounds more), you

"[...]balance the effect of the carbon emitted from your flight by supporting UN certified projects like Perlabi Hydroelectric in Ecuador."
(from: EasyJet)

It seems that the opportunities to save the world are rapidly increasing! That means that the world should be save! Or not? Somehow the whole thing reminds me of the absolution practice in medieval times. You could buy a letter of absolution from the church to save your soul and be free from the sins you've committed. Great!
One can't help to see parallels to the emission trade and the carbon offsetting options these days. If I tick the box, does the plane I plan to board blow less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Unfortunately not! Although it's good to invest money into "green" projects, it doesn't solve the problem itself, it just tries to counter the effects of flying (which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong!). But it seems to make people feel better about polluting our world! I can't help thinking that a lot of people seem to feel too good about it and just found a good excuse for not doing anything that really cuts down pollution. Something along the lines of: "I can drive the 5mins to the shops as I paid 5 pounds yesterday for the Brazilian rain forest!".

People always ask how I can cycle 20mins every day to my office and back. That's miles away!! Yes, it is! But only a few. And I can also stop at the shops on the way home. It really isn't difficult and one can avoid taking the car most of the time. I agree, there are times where you have to use one. But if we are honest, there are many times we could walk or cycle and therefore produce less carbon dioxide and even live more healthy (fresh air and so on!).

There are also many other little things we can do:

• Bring a reusable bag when shopping! Billions of plastic bags are used every day and this the most unnecessary waste of resources of all times! There are folding boxes you can put in your car, backpacks (if you are cycling ;-) ), jute bags that can be used for ages,..... the list of "green" alternatives is long!

• Try to buy goods that come in a recyclable container. Why does milk have to come in plastic containers? Glass bottles are reusable! In many countries now you can leave unnecessary packaging at the shops to force them to use less and recyclable packaging.

• Use public transport! It's a lot less stressful most of the times compared to driving at rush hour and it's a good alternative to cycling if the weather is bad.

• You can even save the world while jogging and become an Eco-Runner :)

I could go on for a long time! There are so many little things everybody can do without much change to our lifestyle. And you don't have to buy your peace of conscience by paying more and more for carbon offsetting. Paying for our climate sins seems to be the easy way out, but we can't buy a new earth if we've finally destroyed this one. And the "I'm only one individual in 6 billion, I can't change anything"-excuse doesn't apply here! If everybody is contributing even a little bit, the overall changes are huge! To say it with the words of a german punk band: "It's not your fault that the world is like it is, it only would be your fault if it stays like that!"

Ok, so...
recyclable bag with me? ...tick
cycled to university today? ...tick
£ 2.95 for a better conscience when flying home over Christmas??.....ah, whatever: TICK!

Take care!
Sven

Where should we teach?

I'm doing a course right now on teaching in higher education where I'm supposed to learn how to teach students at a university. When I started the course, I thought we would be taught how to teach students in a classroom (the way most of us were taught!). After watching some videos on Youtube I'm asking myself if the term "classroom" is still appropriate in this sentence?
In times of Web 2.0 with it's Youtube, blogs, Wikipedia and many others, is the way we still teach really the best or do we also have to move on to Academia 2.0?

Before the web was there, going to a university was the way to study because the information was there: In form of teachers and libraries. With the internet this suddenly changed. Information is everywhere. We can access libraries online, find thousands of journal articles, ask the world if we have a question and can answer questions if we know the answer. Information can be broadcasted in many ways: It's not bound to be in books anymore, it can be found in videos, podcasts, online discussion forums and many more. All there on our screen within seconds. So why should students attend lectures any more if they can access all the information online from home?

From a constructivists point of view, this is a dream come true: The teacher can act as facilitator who helps students to find the information they need, organize it into comprehensible chunks and build up their knowledge by linking these chunks. The students can learn the way that they choose is best for them (and that itself is a learning experience) and can be spread over the whole planet. The knowledge can still be assessed at the end to obtain different university degrees.
Teachers have to let loose of their classic views on learning and teaching. They are not longer in front of their class. The teacher is now faced with a distributed learning community in which he has the role of a guide. The information doesn't necessarily have to be prepared in a lecture because it is already out there, but the students have to learn how to use and evaluate it.

Nowadays, students already know how to use modern technology. They most likely already had to learn that information has different degrees of reliability and use multiple references to verify it. They grew up in a different environment than most of their teachers and we shouldn't ignore that. The world is constantly changing, so why should we stick to classical teaching styles? Just because they worked for centuries doesn't mean we can't improve them.

The world changes faster and faster. Perhaps teaching should, too!

Here are the videos:

• The machine is Us/ing us
• Information R/Evolution
• A Vision of Students Today
• Rethinking US (a students answer to the first one)
• and a quite famous one: Did you know?

Thanks for reading,
Sven