The Independent Variable

House Update

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:45:00 +0000

There has been a lot of progress on the house since the last pictures. Here are a few from today:

Brent Venables Face Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:30:00 +0000

I've always thought OU's defensive coordinator Brent Venables makes the funniest faces on the sidelines during games. Here are a few examples from recent games:

Framed

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:36:00 +0000

The framing is now finished and it's starting to look like a real house now! I'm so excited!! Can't wait 'till January!!

Liberal Bias

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:48:00 +0000

I read a description for a conservative news web site that got me thinking. It called itself "an alternative to the liberal media". Seems ironic to me that the alternative to biased news is... biased news.

That got me thinking about if and why the media (mostly talking TV news here) has a liberal bias. I believe it does, but for a simple and innocent reason: people who have a liberal ideology tend to be more attracted to that kind of career.

I believe the same applies to public schools and universities. Liberals tend to want to change the world through social action. The media and schools are great avenues for that. Conservatives tend to be more into changing the world through religion and other things, which attracts them to other types of careers. They also tend to form their own news outlets, private schools, and home schooling, which further reduces the percentage of conservatives in the mainstream ones (and fights bias with more bias).

So if there is a liberal bias, and there probably is, conservatives shouldn't complain about it because they are partly responsible. And liberals should stop complaining about talk radio and conservative news, because they are partly responsible for creating the market for it.

I (and probably the majority of people?) see the most important dichotomy as not between liberal and conservative but between people who do have a political agenda and people who don't. But people who do have political agendas also have the most motivation to push their views through the media and schools.

I suppose there also could be such a thing as moderate bias...

NYC Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Here are some pictures from my recent trip to New York:

Renewable Energy Source

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:07:00 +0000

I think it would be great if prison inmates could be used to generate electricity. They are there all day without much to do but exercise. They could have stationary exercise bikes and other devices (maybe big hamster wheels?) attached to generators. That way they could stay in shape, have something to do, and give something back to society.

How much energy could they generate? According to this page, an average human can generate approximately 600 watts per day with a bike generator. According to the Department of Justice, the U.S. jail and prison population is approximately 2.3 million, which is enough to generate roughly 1.38 gigawatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, a typical large wind farm generates on the order of 0.1 gigawatts, and a typical nuclear power plant generates on the order of 1 gigawatt. 1.38 gigawatts is enough to power 500,000 to 1,500,000 homes, depending on the region.

Of course, it's unlikely that in practice it would be anywhere near the full 1.38 gigawatts. But even at 25% efficiency, the U.S. prison population should be able to power the equivalent of a medium-sized city.

Chicken McGrill

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:34:00 +0000

I was at the McDonald's drive-thru tonight and saw something on the screen that looked good (without all the green & white & red stuff of course): the Chicken McGrill.

But when I tried to order it, the lady on the speaker didn't understand me. I repeated it a few times and then described exactly what it was. She said she didn't know what I was talking about, so I ordered something else and took a picture of the screen with my phone:

When I got up to the window, I showed her the picture thinking it would clarify everything. But instead she got even more confused. She said they didn't have it and wanted to show my picture to the manager. A couple minutes later, she came back and said her co-workers and manager never heard of a Chicken McGrill and didn't recognize it in the picture!

There's not really a point to this, just that I think it's a little strange that McDonald's has an item on their screen that nobody who works there has ever heard of. But now that I think about it, after a lot of experience with fast-food places, maybe it shouldn't surprise me so much.

Floor Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:27:00 +0000

The floor plan for the new house is now finished! It's 3br 2.5ba plus a loft and a study. It was designed to maximize the views, with 4 upstairs windows overlooking Oklahoma City and any storm in northern or western Oklahoma.

(click to enlarge)
Construction should begin in a couple weeks and it should be finished early next year. I won't say the price, just that it's unbelievably low -- roughly the same payments as a 1br apartment back in San Jose. I love Oklahoma!

New Smoking Law

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Today I watched President Obama sign a law giving the FDA new authority in regulating cigarettes. As much as I generally dislike increasing regulations, I think this is a step in the right direction. However, I think there is a much better solution that would do a lot more with fewer new regulations: ban cigarettes completely.

I believe a complete ban on smoking would reduce poverty, increase productivity, improve public health, reduce health care costs, and reduce litter. I think it will happen some day. A Zogby poll found that 45% of Americans would support making cigarettes illegal in 5-10 years, including 57% of 18-29 year olds.

But it won't happen any time soon. For now, I can just hope more places will follow the lead of Calabasas, CA in banning smoking in ALL public places, indoors and out. Unfortunately, I live in one of the only places where that can't happen -- Oklahoma is the ONLY state that prohibits local governments from regulating smoking more strictly than the state. And there's not much at the state level. While in most states smoking is already banned in restaurants, Oklahoma will allow it until at least 2013.

iPhone 3G S Review

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:27:00 +0000

I've been a long-time user and lover of the original iPhone. But there's always been one thing that bugged me about it: it's slow. All of the applications take at least a couple seconds to load. Some take more like 5 or 10 and/or are slow enough that I avoided using them. Maybe I'm impatient, or just spoiled by my Core i7 computer with SSD. I'm used to everything loading instantly and being blazing fast, so it really bugs me to have to wait 4 seconds for a simple app to load.

The iPhone 3G never interested me. While the internet connection was faster, it didn't address the main issue: the CPU. It doesn't matter how fast the internet connection is if it takes forever to render web pages. I did want the GPS, but it wasn't worth having to pay $15/month more for 3G internet that the phone couldn't take much advantage of anyway. When I heard the new iPhone 3G S (S stands for "speed") would have a faster CPU, I couldn't resist getting it the day it was released.

Compared to the original iPhone, it is MUCH faster. Applications, even the slower ones, load almost instantly. Finally the browser can take advantage of faster (3G) internet connections and thus is a lot more usable/useful. The annoyingly slow apps are now very fast. I find myself using some of them a lot more now that they're not so slow. And now I can finally use the Google Earth app, which used to be so slow that it was useless. [by the way, I'm referring to the WiFi speed, not talking about 3G vs. EDGE]

Though most people probably don't care much about the built-in compass, I loved the idea for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem all that accurate and I can usually guess the direction a little better than it can. If I'm far away from any kind of interference, it does a lot better but still isn't always consistent. Maybe there's a trick to it that I haven't yet figured out?

I was a little disappointed by the accuracy of the GPS, but very impressed by the speed. I'm used to my old Garmin that is more accurate but takes a while to get a lock. Still, the accuracy is good enough that I won't have to carry around my Garmin to get the lat/lon when I deploy my sensors. I also found a free app that can instantly bookmark the lat/lons, so I no longer have to write them down! VERY handy, and will save me a LOT of time!

Overall, I am very happy with the 3G S so far.

Tornado hits Summit Lakes!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Last night, a tornado hit the Summit Lakes neighborhood. A house was severely damaged a few hundred feet from my lot, and a lot of fences and trees were down, but otherwise there was not much damage.

Earlier in the day, I set up 7 temperature sensors around Summit Lakes to study the microclimates of my new neighborhood. One of my sensors was in the direct path of the tornado! The timing was amazing, because I wasn't even expecting severe weather there that night, and the last time I set up these sensors was when I was in Puerto Rico.

Here is a picture of the tornado as seen from the National Weather Center, courtesy of Derek Stratman. I saw the same thing but it was almost on top of me and I didn't get a picture.

Here is a map of my sensors, the storm motion, and the location of the worst damage:

(by the way, Site #3 is in the back yard of my new lot)

And here is a picture of the worst damage:

Thankfully, my Site #1 was still there when I collected it today. There was tree damage all around it, so it might've taken a direct hit! I've just started looking at the data and it is pretty interesting! Unfortunately, I was only measuring temperature.

SOLD!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:20:00 +0000

It's now official! I signed the contract yesterday. Construction is scheduled to begin in July and finish around the middle of January. The floor plan is still being drawn up, but I may post it here when it's finished.

Tower Takedown

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:29:00 +0000

I've had several meteorological towers on my land for the past 4-5 years. Recently, the owner of the tallest tower asked me to take it down so they could set it up on the OU campus for a field project.

It's not too hard for one person to take down a 50 foot tower. But doing it without damaging the tower, yourself, or the instruments at the top of it... that's a challenge! I don't even remember how I was able to get it to hang upside-down from a tree, but it worked! The tower and I escaped with only minor scratches.

The Crazy Lady

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:10:00 +0000

As many of you know, a very disturbed person (possibly a paranoid schizophrenic) in another state has been harassing a friend of mine and his wife, family, friends, and church (including me). I posted the whole story here so my friends & family would be aware of the situation in case she tried to harass them too.

She seems to feed on attention, even negative attention, so I removed the story from my blog [if you'd like to read it, email me]. I'm not gonna supply her with any more attention. Besides, I have much more important things to discuss here, such as delivering sandwiches, God's college football skills, and the lack of twistie ties on bread packages in Britain.

April 25 Storm Chase

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:55:00 +0000

Here are some pictures of a storm near Clinton, OK, looking west from Weatherford. It had a very low wall cloud, but only lasted for a few minutes.

Summit Lakes

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:09:00 +0000

I currently live about a mile from the highest point in Norman. For the past 8 years, I've walked up to the top of the hill hoping that some day I could live there. That may happen soon!! Summit Lakes, one of my favorite neighborhoods in Norman, recently expanded to the top of the hill with home sites now available.

One of the lots is now reserved for me!!! It's at the top of a street called Horizon View Ct. It's about 2 feet lower than the highest point in Norman. Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan, this will be the view from my front yard in about 9 months:

The lights on the far left are buildings in downtown Oklahoma City, 25 miles north. Some of the towers on the right are over 30 miles away. It's an awesome place to watch storms, which I used to do there before any houses were built.

The neighborhood has several lakes with walking trails around them, and most of the houses are part brick and part stone (my favorite!). And it's only 2 minutes from where I live now, which will be handy if I rent out my current house. The main cross street, 36th Ave, happens to be the street that country singer Toby Keith lives on.

Here are a few more pictures either from "my" street or the next street over:

Puerto Rico Sensor Network

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:25:00 +0000

I am now back from Puerto Rico. I was able to find some awesome locations for setting up my temperature sensors. They are extremely diverse and include a rainforest, a parking lot, a beach, a baseball field, mountains, valleys, and plains.

I made a web page with maps and photos of the sites. It is available HERE.

The data I retrieved was wonderful! It gave very valuable information about the microclimates of each location, information that I can incorporate into my forecast model to further improve weather forecasts in remote areas.

I may post some additional pictures later (of other places I visited).

Puerto Rico Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:13:00 +0000

I will be going to Puerto Rico very soon! The National Weather Service in San Juan invited me to conduct a seminar/workshop to help the forecasters improve their forecasts, particularly in areas with complex terrain and unique microclimates.

I'll be setting up temperature sensors around the island, most likely in mountainous rainforest areas where forecasting is most difficult. Part of my teaching will include a forecasting lab where they'll forecast for these locations, and the data I collect will be used to verify their forecasts.

I'll post pictures here when I get back.

24 Hour Days

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:01:00 +0000

I think I belong on a different planet, one where days are several hours longer than 24 hours. It's 3:00 AM and I'm not the slightest bit tired. It feels like 3:00 in the afternoon. This is pretty much how I always feel. I don't understand how people can be tired after a long day and want to sleep. Days are too short for that. I think earth would be ideal if there were about 30 hours in a day instead of 24.

10 Reasons why I am an Atheist: #1

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:42:00 +0000

"We have no certain record of any god having appeared before a public audience in all the history of the world. Such scanty records (e.g., the supposed appearance of Yahweh, tribal hill god adopted by the Jews, before the people during the Exodus) as are produced to support such claims are, on analysis, seen to have no validity whatever."

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. There has never been a verifiable public appearance of God.
2. If God existed, he would want to be seen by public audiences.

VERDICT:
False assumption

DISCUSSION:
The obvious temptation is to argue with Assumption #1, but that's the trap. One could easily get drawn into an argument about whether God has appeared, and the reliability of various sources including the Bible. But neither side will get anywhere doing that. But this discussion is a lot simpler than it appears.

The argument really only applies to one very specific type of God: a God who wants to be seen by lots of people throughout history. Since I don't believe in such a God, the author's argument is useless, even if he is right. The Bible never describes God as wanting to appear to public audiences throughout history. If it did, the author would have a very good argument against it. At that point, we could debate Assumption #1. But since it doesn't, that discussion is a waste of time.

Now that I think about it, a lot of these 10 arguments are like that -- if you only look at the surface, they can spark endless debates about things that are nearly impossible to prove or disprove. But after carefully examining them and the assumptions behind them, most of them easily fall apart. Maybe there are better arguments out there for atheism?

In the near future, I may do a similar review of reasons why someone believes in God / Christianity. I know from experience that there are a lot of bad arguments for that too. But that gets back to the purpose of this whole review: to weed out the bad arguments and find out what the best ones are.

10 Reasons why I am an Atheist: #2

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:48:00 +0000

"All information concerning the gods comes to us through intermediaries, self-elected 'prophets' who claim to have been favoured with secret 'revelations' which they then proceed, magnanimously, to pass on to the rest of us. (Examples: Zarathustra, Paul, the Buddha, Joseph Smith, Muhammad.)"

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. Everything we know about God comes from human so-called 'prophets'.
2. If all the information we have about God comes from man, God must not exist.

VERDICT:
False assumption, but better than most of the previous arguments

DISCUSSION:
I pretty much agree with the spirit of this argument. Most people who've claimed to be prophets do not have much credibility, including at least one or two that the author mentioned. As a scientist, it's goes against my conscience to believe something just because someone said so long ago. That doesn't mean the claims/testimonies in the Bible doesn't count at all as evidence. But I would need more, a lot more, in order to believe in the God it describes.

But there is more. A lot more. And that's the problem with this argument. It's simply incorrect to say that everything (or even the majority of what) we know about God comes from 'prophets'. If God is the one who designed/created the universe, than it would make sense that the majority of what we know about him is communicated through nature. A case could even be made that the Bible, fundamentally, is more a description of nature than it is a revelation by prophets. And nature, as it is understood by current science, is remarkably consistent with it.

The debate really shouldn't be about whether there is a God. If we define "God" loosely enough, (e.g., God = whatever caused the big bang to occur), we can then have a more meaningful about about the characteristics of God, and whether it/he is personal or not. At that point, arguing for a personal "God / whatever caused the big bang" as described in the Bible, most of the evidence I'd bring up would be from nature/science/history rather than Biblical prophets. That's not to say this is the best way to make a case for the existence of God, or that such evidence would be convincing or conclusive. But the fact that I can make such a case at all suggests that human prophets are not the only source of information about God.

10 Reasons why I am an Atheist: #3

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:56:00 +0000

"By whatever standards we define the concept of evil, the very existence of evil negates the idea of deity, unless, that is, deity itself is evil! Perhaps it is!"

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. A non-evil God would not allow evil to occur.

VERDICT:
False assumption

DISCUSSION:
This is a very common argument, also known as "the problem of evil." Entire books have been written about this. There's no way I can completely address it in a couple paragraphs. But the issue may be simpler than it appears.

This really isn't an argument at all against the Christian God, who allows evil and has a purpose for it. Instead, it is an argument against a particular concept of God that conforms to what the author thinks a God should be.

I know it's very hard to look past all the evil and suffering in the world. And obviously there is no God, if "God" means one who makes the world exactly how we would want it to be. So we're left with 3 options: no God at all, an evil God, or a God who has a purpose for all this evil and suffering. Apparently, the author never considered the third option.

10 Reasons why I am an Atheist: #4

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:27:00 +0000

"The conflicting claims put forward in the name of the thousands of deities only serve to indicate that all such claims are false. If not, which do we believe and which reject? We are confronted with the incredible spectacle of RIVAL GODS! Yahweh v. Allah, Christ v. Krishna, et al."

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. Different religions each have their own God.
2. The beliefs of these religions are mutually exclusive.
3. If some claims about God are false, all are false.

VERDICT:
Multiple fallacies and false assumptions

DISCUSSION:
This is a very common argument, but is probably the worst so far, for a variety of reasons. First, it is absurd to assume that if various claims are mutually exclusive, ALL must be wrong. While it's true that they can't all be right about the nature of God (in cases where they contradict each other), this in no way implies that God does not exist. Religions make contradictory claims about all kinds of things (e.g., marriage, war, sex, food, ...). Does that mean those things don't exist?

The characterization of religion in the world is either ignorant or dishonest. The author paints a picture of thousands of religions each believing in a completely different deity. But according to the statistics I found (on Adherents.com), over 75% of theists* in the world are either Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. These three all claim to believe in the SAME God (Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Moses, etc.). Another 19% are Hindu, and the rest are indigenous beliefs.

So rather than a choice between "thousands" of religions/deities, it's more like a choice between Yahweh, the Gods of Hinduism, and the Gods of various tribes. And for the vast majority outside of India and Africa, it's not much of a choice at all. "incredible spectacle of RIVAL GODS"? Hardly.

* Note: I defined "theists" as anyone who is not atheist, agnostic, secular, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, or Sikh -- the latter 4 religions are not based on belief in a deity.

10 Reasons why I am an Atheist: #5

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:54:00 +0000

"Children entering the world through birth have no concept of the existence of any god. It would be reasonable to suppose that the deity would implant within the human being knowledge of his existence. But no, children have to learn religion from those around them. And, curiously, they learn different religions in each different culture!"

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. If there was a God, he would implant knowledge of his existence into everyone from birth.
2. Children are not born with knowledge of God -- they have to learn it.

VERDICT:
False assumption

DISCUSSION:
Assumption #1 is pure speculation, and silly speculation at that. Children are not implanted with knowledge of anything, so why would God have to make an exception for this? Why can't the existence of God be something people learn as they grow up (just like the existence of, well, everything else in the universe)?

And if any of you see any merit in Assumption #1, I suggest you read "The 'God' Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper -- although usually used against religion, it would turn this particular atheist argument upside-down.

10 Reasons why I am an Atheist: #6

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:59:00 +0000

"All holy books (and especially the Jewish-Christian Bible) are, upon careful examination, found to be full of error, conflict, superstition, repetition, and general nonsense."

ASSUMPTIONS:
1. If the Bible is found to be in error on some things, it should not be trusted regarding the existence of God.
2. The Bible is full of errors.

VERDICT:
Compelling reason

DISCUSSION:
I could try to challenge Assumption #2, but there's no way I could resolve that here. I'm tempted to say "man-made religious books are irrelevant to the existence of God". But since I defined these discussions as about the Christian God, the accuracy of Bible is certainly important. Errors in the Bible would call into question its teachings about who God is and even whether he exists at all. So unless Assumption #2 is disproved (and I have not disproved it here), this is a compelling reason not to believe in the Christian God. It's not conclusive (lots of people would take issue with Assumption #2 and even #1), but it warrants further examination and should not be dismissed.

So in the bottom 5, we had 3 red herrings, one based on a false assumption, and one compelling reason. The top 5 should be better.