Various and sundry items that don't quite rate a post of their own.
I was astonished to learn on Pardon the Interruption that today is Gene Hackman's birthday. Not so much that it's his birthday, as that it's his 77th birthday. He doesn't seem like he should be that old.
Then again, he's looked about sixty for the last twenty years, so I guess that's about right...
Elsewhere, the Little Professor dabbles in Live-Action Role-Playing. I need to get me one of those grimoires....
And, via Eurekalert a book I'm sure we'll hear more about:
In God: The Failed Hypothesis, physicist Victor Stenger argues that science has advanced sufficiently to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. He invites readers to put their minds--and the scientific method--to work to test this claim.
After evaluating all the scientific evidence--the studies done by reputable institutions on the power of prayer; the writings of philosophers who have puzzled over the problem of God and of good and evil; the efforts of biblical scholars to prove the accuracy of holy scriptures; and the work of biologists, geologists, and astronomers looking for clues to a creator on Earth and in the cosmos--Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. He convincingly shows that not only is there no evidence for the existence of God, but scientific observations actually point to his nonexistence.
Oh, good. I'm sure that will settle the question once and for all...
Finally, James Nicoll notes that David Eddings lost his office to a fire when he attempted to determine whether a fluid leaking from his car was gasoline by touching it with a burning piece of paper. It's sort of funny, but mostly kind of sad...
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As for the god thing, the question won't be settle until we're all dead. Personally, I'm hoping we will have evolved into something more pleasant by then.
I disagree, Hackman also looked sixty 35 years ago in "The Conversation".
Hmm, as for the Eddings thing, that really sounds like something that would happen to James rather than something he'd merely be passing along.
I continue to be amused by people, scientists or otherwise, who think that by using things within this universe, we should be able to determine whether or not this universe was created by something outside this universe. It's a fundamentally unsolvable problem.
My laughing to myself on this topic dates back at least to when I first read Hawking's Brief History of Time, in which he argues quite convincingly that physics cannot be used to prove or disprove the existence of God (or anything outside/before the universe as we know it) and then Carl Sagan, in his introduction to the book, says words to the effect that "this book proves that God doesn't exist". Dr. Sagan was a very smart man, but in this area he totally missed the point.
--sdc