A Universe From Nothing

by Marcus on July 21, 2010

If you have an hour to spare, you should really watch this talk on our current picture of the universe. It is very fascinating, and I’ll leave this quote here to reel you in:

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Mini-review of Sniper: Ghost Warrior

by Marcus on June 28, 2010

I rarely write about games in here, but when I do it’s usually because I’ve been annoyed by one, and that is also the case today. I got interested in this game after watching the E3 walkthrough video, so I decided to give it a go. Now, when I think “sniper game” the gameplay element “stealth” comes to mind. I would expect a game where full frontal assaults are not advisable, where you get in, take out your target, and get out. Well, that is not the case in Sniper: Ghost Warrior. In your first mission you are supposed to take out a general, you line up your shot, shoot, and for some reason you don’t hit and everything goes to hell. The general escapes, and now you have to hunt him down. And this is where it starts go down hill, because instead of chasing the guy by hiding in the jungle, you’re told to assault the base he’s no longer in. With a sniper rifle. First I thought I’d just stay in my position and take out all of the enemies, but for some reason they have no problem hitting you from across the base, while you’re hiding in the mountains, with regular, unscoped assault rifles. So yes, you’re forced to jump into the base and try to gun down everyone, not very sniper-like.

And on top of that the game is littered with annoying design decisions and bad implementations of these. For example, if you choose the hard difficulty, you have to account for wind and distance to your target. This intrigued me and looked interesting in the mentioned video, but the problem is that you are not told how to properly do this. You can see the distance to your target and the wind strength, but there is no way to know how much you’re supposed to move your crosshair, you simply have to guess. When playing on easy and medium you get a small, red dot, which indicates where the bullet actually hits, but I’ve found this dot to be very imprecise.

Udmeldelse af folkekirken

by Marcus on June 10, 2010

Jeg har altid troet, at en udmeldelse af folkekirken bl.a. krævede medsendt fødsels- og dåbsattest. Ikke nok med at det ikke er tilfældet; du behøver ikke engang sende et brev. Her følger en 3-trinsguide til udmeldelse af folkekirken.

  1. Find dit kirke- eller degnekontor. Brug eventuelt dette opslagsværktøj.
  2. Find kirkekontoret eller kirkebogsførerens e-mail-adresse.
  3. Angiv flg. i en e-mail:
    • At der er tale om en udmeldelse.
    • Dit fulde navn.
    • Din folkeregisteradresse.
    • Dit CPR-nummer eller dåbssted og -dato.

Konsekvenser for udmeldelse kan læses på ateist.dk.

I found something to love about Windows 7

by Marcus on May 31, 2010

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks now, and I don’t want to sound like an angry Apple fanboy, but I’m really not that happy with it. It all seems nice on the surface, but if you scratch it a bit you find the same old problems. Regardless, I found one feature today that I absolutely love. It’s very simple, when you’re copying or moving file(s), the progress is shown on the icon for Windows Explorer, like this:

Genius.

I Talked to a Creationist on an American Radio Show

by Marcus on May 17, 2010

I stumbled upon a Reddit about some guy who was about to ask a Creationist (David Van Koevering) some questions on an American radio show. I listened in, via Skype, and had a small debate in the Reddit comments about how utterly retarded this Creationist was. Amongst a lot of babble he was using the anthropic principle as proof for intelligent design, so I happened to be reading about it while listening. Suddenly the host said, “Okay, the next caller, ‘fookhar’, could you identify yourself?”, and then I was on the air … I managed to spurt out some points, which you can hear in the sound clip below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Since I was rambling, I’d like to make my points clear here instead. As mentioned, David was using the anthropic principle which states that the cosmos is fine-tuned to permit human life. If any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different, life would be impossible, therefore the cosmos is designed by a god. I was trying to make the following points:

  1. The claim assumes life in its present form is a given; it applies not to life but to life only as we know it. The same outcome results if life is fine-tuned to the cosmos.
  2. If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it. There is nothing to rule out the possibility of multiple universes, most of which would be unsuitable for life. We happen to find ourselves in one where life is conveniently possible because we cannot very well be anywhere else.
  3. If the universe is fine-tuned for life, why is life such an extremely rare part of it?
  4. Intelligent design is not a logical conclusion of fine tuning. Fine tuning says nothing about motives or methods, which is how design is defined.
  5. The anthropic principle is an argument against an omnipotent creator. If God can do anything, he could create life in a universe whose conditions do not allow for it.

I kind of got point 4 and 5 mixed together, point 5 arguing that the anthropic principle is actually an argument against an omnipotent creator, and point 4 arguing that intelligent design is not a logical conclusion of fine tuning. Unfortunately David did not really respond to any of my points (he starts talking about how there’s much of the universe we can’t see, I don’t know how that’s relevant), but that was still quite an interesting experience. I was not allowed to respond to his comments.