Literalista

How literally do you take it?

POM wonderful

After a tasty, tasty dinner of roast turkey and cranberry sauce, stuffing, three cheese potatoes au gratin, and roast green beans, followed by a dessert of maple-walnut pie and blueberry cobbler with an oatmeal raisin cookie crust, we opened up a pomegranate. Definitely the highlight of the meal for the two kids. Here's Sylvia covered in juice:



And here's the tasty maple-walnut pie we made:


(next time I'll stick with the Kentucky pecan, though!)

black or white

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of the Species"--a book that changed the world, changed our understanding of our place. And I've never actually read it. I should, but it's one of those books I've just never gotten around to reading. I've buckets of other evolutionary research, but have never taken the time to read more than a few excerpts of the books upon which that other research is based. (That may sound bad, but it's really surprisingly common--it's usually faster and easier to learn the conclusions of basic research from textbooks and reviews than it is to go read all the basic literature yourself.)

Over at BCC, there are a series of posts on the relationship between evolution and faith, particularly Mormonism. In this post, SteveP argues the God of the gaps embraced by ID (and by too many Mormons who want to embrace ID) is not just bad science, it's bad theology.

I have to agree. If you assume God is in the gaps, science truly is constantly pushing God into a smaller and smaller space. Which it's not.

I don't know what God is, other than my creator, but I do believe s/he/it exits. My religion says God is a man who was once as we are, who created us, who had a literal son who died and in so doing atoned for my sins. That teaching, as many others, resonates in my being in a way that makes me believe it is true. But it could be wrong. The teachings of the temple resonate in a way that makes be believe them. But it too, could be wrong. Other stuff I think could as easily be made up as true. Even the stuff I believe I acknowledge could be made up or wishful thinking (though that's as much the doubt of a scientist speaking as anything else).

Even with that uncertainty, I'm okay having faith, understanding what I believe may be very different from the truth. I don't think that uncertainty means there is no God, only that we humans have an incredibly incomplete understanding of God, and since we don't like uncertainty, we've filled in the gaps in our understanding with stories that sound good--at least until some evidence comes along that contradicts the story, forcing a re-examination of beliefs. I would rather hold to the stories, acknowledging their potential weakness, than hold to an either-or philosophy that claims either we have it all right (which is highly doubtful) or it's all wrong (which is unsatisfactory).

Uncle Philip's wedding

In spite of Sylvia getting sick Friday and loosing her lunch on the way to the rehearsal, and then me coming down with whatever she had on Saturday (though sans puking), I think we all managed to have fun at Philip and Kelly's wedding. I didn't take nearly enough pictures, especially before the wedding itself. I'll let the ones I did take speak for themselves.

Fairness

CEO's make a lot of money. Really, it's understandable--the top dog should get paid the highest wage. Top management decisions are very important to the proper functioning of a company and I'm sure the job of a CEO is very time consuming and high pressure.

But is it really fair that a CEO makes more than 100 times the salary of the lowest paid employee? Are they really working THAT much harder; are they really worth THAT much more?

Free market economists would probably say sure. The free market (as free as it is) values them that highly, so that must be what they're worth.

This paper argues differently. Using thermodynamics as a base and equating fairness with entropy, it estimates a CEO is worth about 8 to 16 times what the least valuable employee is, and so should be paid accordingly.

It's nice to know the outrage so many have expressed at the magnitude of CEO pay packages is based on sound principles of fairness. It's also really cool fairness in an economic system can be expressed mathematically.

Evils of the dole

There are some weeks when I am incredibly grateful to not have to teach Sunday school. Not that there's really any probability of me ever teaching in church--my one RS lesson was a bit of a mess. Anyway, this week I'm rather glad I didn't have to find a way to teach the SS lesson. Welfare is a thorny subject to begin with and trying to figure out how to teach a lesson when most of the quotes talk about the "evils of the dole" would be more of a challenge than I'd want to tackle, especially in a ward full of people utilizing government programs to make their and their children's lives better.

Here's the problem: I don't think welfare, or going on welfare, is evil. I don't think it's a bad decision for most people who make it. I don't think those who go on welfare for a period of time are in any way taking from the rest of us. Most people who utilize government assistance are women with children, typically divorced or widowed (though most often divorced). Most women who go onto welfare are off within 4 years, many far earlier. Basically, welfare acts as a bridge during a period of financial distress, allowing recipients to enjoy a reasonable standard of living while they retrain, find a new/better paying job, or get remarried. Because the main benefit of welfare goes to women and to the children they care for, the anti-welfare rhetoric, both from the church and from the republican party, feels very anti-woman and very anti-family to me.

I realize most of the quotes for the lesson came from the depression, but again, I find it terribly anti-family to speak so ill of programs that literally kept families from starving to death. It's one thing to tell people to stay off the dole in a farming community, where there is a possibility of a community coming together to keep people fed and sheltered at least during times of financial stress; it's quite another when your communities are urban and the best, most efficient way of taking care of people is to pay for it.

I think the "evils of the dole" rhetoric stems from a lack of trust and respect for those utilizing those resources. An idea that if you are utilizing welfare it's because you're lazy and if you just worked harder at a worthy job you wouldn't need to be on the dole. It's a belief that "I'll never need this" and a lack of recognition that those who do need welfare could be those close to us (or even us, given the wrong circumstances).

I for one am glad welfare exists and blesses the lives of those who are in need of it. I'm happy that small percentage of the tax money I pay to my government goes to keeping people from falling into destitution. As I'm sure I've said before, I'm glad my country takes care of its less fortunate citizens, recognizing those who are less fortunate today may very well become the leaders and innovators of tomorrow, if they just have a chance.

Mass wasting

Inspired by a story I heard on Radiowest about the Extreme Ice Survey, I baked this cake:






I call it the mass-wasting cake. It's very tasty--pumpkin spice cake sliding around on cream-cheese frosting. I keep thinking there's got to be a lab in here somewhere--something about viscosities and angles of repose. Mmm, yummy science.