On the Eternal Battle between Science and Religion
August 12th, 2008 Filed Under saulism, science, writing
Math is science’s search for God. Science always begins, “We have constructed assumptions which predict results, but what is the basis for those assumptions?” So it delves deeper. It says, “If we assume these assumptions are ‘God’, then our search is effectively over, so we assume there is a more basic explanation.” At some point, even if there is a grand unified theory whereupon a SU(7) gauge space with these constraints and such and thus would in all probability of eternity spring forth universes…still, why is it SU(7) at all? What is special about that?
We already have so many pieces of the puzzle, but even if the puzzle is ever completely solved and all the scientists become specialized mathematicians, there will still be the question, “why anything at all?” On one side will be the ones who say it must be constructed, and on the other side will be the ones who say it doesn’t have to be, that every time so far we’ve thought it was impenetrable, someone has shown that we can see even deeper. This debate will never cease, and unless some incontrovertible evidence comes along, I don’t think it ever should.
Religions worship Gods, Science worships Math.
Stumble it!Can you name the elements?
July 6th, 2008 Filed Under fun, games, science
This can you name the elements game from Sporcle is extremely simple, but well done and actually kinda fun, at least the first two or three times. Accepting the input instantly is a nice touch.
Their geographic tests (like how many countries in Europe can you name) are even harder, at least for me.
I got 71 elements. When you try your hand at it, leave a comment with how many you could name, and which one you were pissed that you missed.
Most Science Games Suck
January 29th, 2008 Filed Under games, science
In my quest to create fun games that actually teach some science, I’ve been researching existing science games, and I’ve definitely learned something: most science games suck. Even the ones that aren’t Trivia or Bingo or Bingo Trivia are pretty bad.
For instance, check out Acideroids, which wants to teach you the structures of the biological amino acids. The concept just doesn’t fit: take an established game, remove all the fun aspects, and slap some science terms on it. In this case, if you don’t know already know what you’re supposed to learn, good luck either learning it or having any fun. It’s more of a test which the teacher won’t accept for a grade.
As a counterexample, It’s Just a Phase (click “Play Online”, then go to the Space Center and choose the game–too bad each individual game can’t be linked to directly) is actually kinda cool: a character has taken outdoor pictures and wants to figure out what day of the month and time of the day they were taken. It’s a little tedious and not very game-y, but I fiddled with it for 10 minutes and actually learned something. The other 5 games in the collection, however, are just some clickety schtick with better graphics.
Project: Nuclear Paddle
January 23rd, 2008 Filed Under activeprojects, games, ideas, science
This is a skeleton design for an action science game in Flash, which teaches the atomic particles and elements of the periodic table, and implements basic concepts of nuclear interactions and decay.
OLPC XO Laptop Review
December 30th, 2007 Filed Under awesome, featured, news, science
“The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” — William Gibson
Today, December 31st 2007, is the last day of the Give-1-Get-1 (G1G1) campaign for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, where you donate $400 to the OLPC, and one child in Peru, Mongolia, Cambodia, or Nigeria gets an XO laptop, and you get one too. This is the only way right now for anyone reading this to get one at all, so until further notice today is the last day to get one of these laptops. Even developers on the project have to return theirs when they’re done. Many people, including myself, think that OLPC should continue the G1G1 campaign indefinitely: this is a great way to help make their project economically sustainable.
I donated on the first day, partly because I believe in their mission, but also because the machine itself is so neat and I wanted to play with it. My XO laptop arrived a week ago in one small box with only three parts inside: the laptop, the power cord, and the battery. I was looking forward to the hand-crank, but they canned it for an unspecified reason. A pull cord generator is due out “in developed markets by late summer 2008″.
I pulled it out and it looks like a green Speak n’ Spell, what with the handle. I spent, honestly, at least 5 minutes trying to figure out how to open it–it’s an alien puzzlebox. I put the battery in, opened the port covers, fiddled with every button and crevice I could find. Turns out those “port covers” are also latches for the screen, and also they function as wireless antennae. You can’t open the laptop without putting up the antennae. Very clever.
The keyboard is really tiny, just barely enough space for my fat American fingers to function. I pushed the button with the power symbol on it and it booted instantly with a full battery. I was annoyed by the touchpad constantly resetting the cursor to the sides, but a quick visit to the troubleshooting page showed me how to open the device, and at the bottom, that the touchpad issue is a known bug and I should try the four-fingered salute. I did, and the problem was solved.
It was a little difficult at first for a veteran computer user like myself, due to extra keys with new symbols, but I found my way around. I clicked on the Eye icon and there I was on the screen! I didn’t know it had a webcam, and I made a 10-second video lickety-split. I got on our wireless network (WEP), downloaded an mp3, and a few clicks later it was playing. I swear, I almost cried thinking about what some lucky Peruvian dirt farmer’s kid was going to get, compared to the monochrome textpunk 300 baud cassette beast I had.
Of course, knowing it runs Linux, I just had to get to a terminal and futz around. There’s actually a Terminal Activity, and it’s a standard shell; no root password either. I wanted to install one of my favorite games, NetHack, and my first try (’apt-get install nethack’) didn’t work; but it’s using components from Fedora Core 6, so my second try (’yum install nethack’) did. With these specs–a 400MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, 1GB of flash for hard disk (75% available out-of-the-box), webcam, wireless mesh networking, microphone and speakers–it’s literally, almost to the point of mockery, a hundred times more powerful than the computers I grew up with. And it’s a laptop, and it only consumes 2 watts of power.
After playing with it for day, I knew this laptop was made for a child, and even though I wanted to, I couldn’t let it collect dust on a shelf to show to friends once every few months. So I gave the laptop to my nephews, who are 6 and 10, and from the photos it looks like they’re going to get lots of good use out of it. I’ve been so lucky to have been born in the time and place that I was, and I’ve spent many hours in complete rapture surfing the Internet with free software running on cheap hardware. The future is indeed here; now let’s distribute it more evenly!
