Why Hermione Loves Ron

In the Harry Potter stories, Hermione falls in love with Ron and fans have repeatedly asked…why? Ron is dopey, unsure of himself, and nowhere near being in Hermione’s league. Still, she does fall for him…and here’s my take on why.

One, Hermione’s first emotional encounter with a boy was with Ron. In the first movie, Ron angers her after she tries to help him with his levitation spell. He makes a joke about her in front of other students and she overhears…storming off to cry in the girl’s bathroom. Although the she feels horrible, it is her first emotional connection with a boy.

Two, the first person to ever save her was also Ron. In the same bathroom, only a few hours later, Hermione confronts a troll that nearly smashes her to bits in the stalls. Harry and Ron enter and begin to do what they can to help. As Harry becomes captured, Ron pulls out his wand and, listening to Hermione’s advice, incapacitates the troll with his own club. In doing so, Ron shows that not only is he capable of being brave when he needs to be, for her, but also that the two of them can work together to surmount any danger.

From that point on, Hermione never looked at another boy.

Social Media Needs to Stay Social

I read an article this morning about a college in North Carolina that didn’t let one of its students walk at graduation because of a comment he posted on his Facebook account.

A tornado had hit the town a few weeks before and a college assembly was being arranged to discuss how best to handle the damage. The student, in an attempt to make sure his voice was heard, asked for a show of support from his friends. Here’s the comment:

Here it go!!!!! Students come correct, be prepared, and have supporting documents to back up your arguments bcuz SAC will come hard!!!! That is all.

Basically, he’s getting barred from graduation for telling his friends to “come prepared to debate your point of view.” Umm…isn’t that what we want people to learn in college?…how to be prepared and how to argue your point of view?

Although the student did have prior actions against him during his time as a student, this comment was not derogatory, threatening, or criminal. He was simply asking for support from friends.

Is it possible that he intended to make a scene? Yes. But you can’t punish a person for what you think they might do. This isn’t The Minority Report.

This leads to my main point: social media is just that…a social forum…a place to rant and vent and find others to share in your good times and bad…a place to say what you want to the world, even if no one is listening.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are not political campaign headquarters or company intranets or university bulletin boards. They consist of personal online accounts that are independent of your school, your employer, your church, or any other organization you belong to.

As such, companies (used here to mean schools, employers, etc.) have no legitimate grounds for using people’s social statements to discipline them in another arena. It doesn’t matter if it’s the company’s employee, student, or parishioner. A company has no business being in its employees’ social lives.
My employer doesn’t own me or my time off work. What I do in my spare time is my business. Period!

If I want to speak out against the President of the United States or the president of my employer, I have that right. It’s no different than teachers going to a bar on Friday nights and letting loose with a few drinks. People need to vent, socially, and this is what social forums are for. It is a sign of a healthy society.

So how far are we willing to let companies go?

They have started mandating that their employees lose weight and stop smoking in the name of cutting insurance costs. (That right there is a load of crap. Companies don’t want to subsidize health insurance, so they take it out on their employees. That’s passing the buck. Just because they have to abide by the laws of the land doesn’t mean that I have to change my lifestyle to please them.)

But now they can oversee what we write or post on the Internet? Horseshit!

What’s next? We can’t purchase Coke because they have a contract with Pepsi? Or perhaps vacations can only be taken in states with the appropriate pro-business tax credits.

Business needs to stay in the office. What I do in my own time is none of their…business.

My Gradual Acceptance of Star Wars

I have always been a late bloomer, socially and culturally speaking. I often find myself replaying events in my mind that happened years ago, only to say…oh, now I see what I missed.

For example, I often don’t like music until after years after it goes off the radio. My sense of fashion is at least five years behind. And I was the last person I knew to get a cellphone or send a text. I have yet to understand why Facebook and Twitter are so popular.

The same holds true for Star Wars. People have loved this movie for decades, organizing fan clubs, attending sci-fi conventions, and writing numerous fan fiction novels in honor of Lucas’s epic work. It is part of our culture.

But I never got it. I never understood why everyone was so impressed with Mark Hamill or cheesy special effects or a fairly weak story line. Star Trek, on the other hand, offered a much more developed writing style that yielded thought-provoking plots and characters that you could actually identify with. Why did everyone like Star Wars?

I now believe that it’s something they all saw that I did not.

A few years ago I purchased the Star Wars DVD box set (Episodes I-VI) and have watched them all many times. At first it was just for the sounds and visual effects (which have been seriously upgraded over the last 30 years). After all, Skywalker Studios is almost unbeatable when it comes to audio-video editing. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t love the sound of a light-saber? But I quickly realized that there is a much deeper story than what I initially gleaned.

The first movie back in 1977 took a chance with the American audience. Star Wars was really the first sci-fi movie to make a serious profit in theaters. There was a delicate balance that Lucas had to walk between action, story, and audiences not steeped in sci-fi culture. How far could Lucas go before he lost the audience’s interest?

As such, the first movie was shy on plot details and back story, which is why I was never impressed. When the second and third installments came out, Lucas delivered more depth to the characters, but by that time I had lost my appreciation.

Since then, Lucas has become a legend and audiences have become experts in sci-fi lore. If movies like The Matrix and Jurassic Park could boast massive box office numbers, Lucas should have no qualms about how far he could go with Star Wars.

And he didn’t. In Episodes I-III, Lucas finally provides the entire story…and something at the core was revealed to me. This movie is not about Luke…not at all. It’s about Anakin/Vader. It always has been.

This sits well with me. Not only is Anakin a much more interesting character (compared to Luke, the whiny little farmboy), but Hayden Christensen is a much better actor than Mark Hamill. You can really see the inner turmoil on Hayden’s face in Episodes II and III. Hamill never showed a single emotion in IV, V, or VI. I’m sure he tried, but he failed miserably.

We see Anakin go from momma’s little boy, to husband and father-to-be, to dark evil overlord, and back to proud papa. What did Luke do during his trilogy? He went from cocky little know-it-all to cocky older know-it-all. Not a great transformation.

In the end, Star Wars is really a tragic love story. Despite all that happens throughout the six movies, it really boils down to this…all Anakin ever wanted was his mother and a girl who loved him. Everything wrong he did, he did for them…out of love. His path to the Dark Side was solely caused by the death of his mother and the fear of losing his wife. His love caused his agony. And in the end, it was his love for his son that turned him back.

I can now truly appreciate Lucas’s genius in transforming a Greek tragedy into a modern, action-packed sci-fi film. I can’t wait until the Blu-ray box set arrives in September (which I already have on pre-order).

Thanks, George!

Hawking’s Morals

In a recent news article from Reuters, Stephen Hawking stated that heaven is a “fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” He believes that the human mind is nothing more than a complex computer that stops working upon death. He also argues that science is increasingly able to explain our origins and, as such, there is no need for a divine force in the creation of the universe. I agree with him on all points.

However, comments posted after the article lash out against his position and attack his moral character, questioning how “he would know right from wrong.” (What that has to do with the article is beyond me.)

As an atheist myself, I find this to be a curious, yet common statement. Until a few years ago, it never occurred to me that people associate morals solely with religion. But indeed they do. They also hold that atheists must be immoral, criminal people with no foundation to their character.

I suppose it was naïve of me to believe that people used more than religious texts as a standard of measure for their actions. I mean, you can certainly find moral teachings in the Bible, Qur’an, Vedas, Tao Te Ching, Book of Shadows, and even Dianetics. But you can also find moral guidance in War and Peace, Hamlet, Marley and Me, The Da Vinci Code, and Harry Potter. Why limit yourself to just one book…or to just a single source?

Morals are both innate and synthesized; but they are not delivered from above. Basic moral actions are a genetic result of being social creatures. We must innately know how to work towards the survival of our species. Advanced morals are developed over a lifetime from many sources, such as our experiences, our education, our family and friends, the things we watch and read, the law, our survival and protection, our internal logic, and so forth.

So when people ask how Hawking knows right from wrong, I say…smack!! Being an atheist has nothing to do with morals.

As for being criminal, I can say that social statistics show no correlation between spirituality and criminal behavior. This means that faithful believers are criminals just as often as atheists. Or put another way, given that about 10% of Americans are atheist (Wikipedia, 2011), 90% of American criminals are Christian.

You Know You’re a Christian If…

Okay, this one’s a little mean.

I know I said that I would approach religious topics with respect, but this one is worded too perfectly to pass up. Someone posted this in a comment list and I find almost all of these points to be true. I get slammed all the time for being an atheist. So every once in a while, it’s nice to fire a shot back.

TOP 10 SIGNS YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN…

You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
You feel insulted and de-humanized when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
Your face turns purple when you hear of the atrocities attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in Exodus and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in Joshua including women, children, and trees.
You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who was killed, came back to life, and then ascended into the sky.
You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes to discredit the scientifically established age of Earth (4.7 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is only a few generations old.
You believe that the entire population of this planet, with the exception of those who share your denomination’s beliefs, will spend eternity in an infinite hell of suffering, but you consider your religion to be the most tolerant and loving.
While modern chemistry, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in tongues may be all the evidence you need to prove Christianity.
You define a 0.01% success rate to be evidence that prayer works and believe that the remaining 99.99% of the time they go unanswered because it is the will of God.
You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history – but still call yourself a Christian.

Atheism vs. Agnosticism

I have re-written this post many times. This is a tricky topic to discuss because of people’s misunderstanding of these labels and the subtlety of their definitions. It is commonly held that there are three approaches to religion:

Theism – the belief in a god(s)
Atheism – the disbelief in a god(s)
Agnosticism – the uncertainty of a god(s)

However, this is not the case. While theism and atheism are about belief, agnosticism is about knowledge, or more specifically, the lack of knowledge. Both theists and atheists can be agnostic.

The word ‘agnostic’ simply means that a person’s belief is not based on knowledge. It is possible that a person may not know something to be true, yet believe it just the same. Let me provide a completely fictitious example.

Suppose your dishonest wife dies in a bus crash and a friend tells you at the funeral that your wife had an affair with someone else on that bus. Although you may never know the truth, you would likely believe it to be the case. You knew her well and could easily imagine that she would have done that. This would be a case of agnostic belief. Her mother, on the other hand, who always thinks the best of her child, refuses to believe this story. This would be a case of agnostic disbelief.

Neither you nor her mother knows the truth, but you both have beliefs about it just the same. That is agnosticism.

Concerning religion, everyone is agnostic. There is no proof, one way or another, yet theists believe and atheists disbelieve. If proof existed, the discussions would end. Verification would eventually turn even the hardest skeptic.

And therein lies the dilemma. For theists, finding proof may be just around the corner. Proof of existence, proof of life, is possible if you believe God exists. You just have to look hard enough. This is the reason we continually see shows about people finding the nails that were used to crucify Jesus or secret societies that continue to look for the Holy Grail. If you believe, then proof is ever possible.

For atheists, however, there is no way to play that game. You cannot find proof of non-existence. Let me state that again, because it is the very crux of the argument for atheists — you cannot prove non-existence.

How do you prove something doesn’t exist? Do you find a footprint that isn’t there? Or a fossil from a creature that was never born? Perhaps a missing document that doesn’t contain a name? It’s a logical impossibility. It’s like the old joke, “Raise your hand if you’re not here.”

There’s no such thing as non-existent proof. As such, atheists cannot take up this debate. How do you argue a non-issue?

Keep in mind, though, that lack of non-evidence isn’t proof of existence. Just because atheists are not able to disprove God doesn’t mean that theists are correct. If that were the case, then everything imaginary would necessarily exist for the same reason, such as the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Sasquatch, chupacabras, jackalopes, etc. Just because I can’t prove leprechauns don’t exist doesn’t mean they do.

The burden of proof is on those who believe, not those who don’t. If you want to convince me that there is a god, then you need to provide evidence. So far, I haven’t seen any…and neither has any other atheist.

Intelligent Life in the Universe

Why do I believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Pure numbers. There are an estimated 500 billion galaxies estimated to be in the observable universe. In each one of those galaxies, there are an estimated 200 billion stars. If you multiply that out using low-end numbers you get 100,000 billion billion (or 100 sextillion) stars.

A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them [stars], or three times as many as scientists previously calculated.

Associated Press
December 1, 2010

If only 1 in a million have at least 1 planet, that gives us 300 quadrillion planets. If only 1 in a million of those have life, that leaves 300 billion planets with life. If only 1 in a million of those have intelligent life, that leaves 300,000 planets with intelligent life.

Think about that…300,000 other earths. And that’s if we use very conservative numbers. The numbers are probably (in my opinion) much higher. If we use a higher ratio, like 1 in a 1,000 instead of 1 in a million, the final number would be 300,000,000,000,000 (300 trillion) earths. My guess (somewhere in the middle) is that there are millions, if not billions, of intelligent life civilizations in the universe.

But the truth is that we really don’t know the ratios. We have only started discovering other planets and we have no idea if any of them have life. We just recently found out they exist. It’s frustrating to hear people say that since we haven’t found any evidence of life beyond earth so far, there must not be any.

To that I say…smack! We’ve only been looking for about 50 years, only 20-25 with any real technology. So, 20-25 out of 13.7 billion years that the universe has been in existence. And we’ve found, what…500 planets so far? How many of those have we actually sent probes to? Five? Six? How many of those have we studied closely? One? Two? (All within our Solar System.)

Heck, we’re still discovering things about our moon. We have yet to step foot on another planet. How can we possibly know that there’s no life elsewhere in our galaxy, let alone the universe? We have only seen a speck of what’s out there, one grain of sand from an entire coastline of beach…a mere sliver of possibilities. It would be like collecting an eye dropper of water from the ocean and from that determining that there’s no fish in the sea.

There’s a philosophical notion (I forget the name) that says if we are the only life in the universe, then we must be special, and hence, our part of the universe must be special as well. But that’s not what we see. The universe everywhere is very similar to what we have here.

So why do we believe ourselves to be special? Hubris. People want to believe that we humans are special, divine, the pinnacle of creation.

Balderdash, codswallop, wishful thinking I say. Delusions of granduer that arise from a mixture of mortality and abstract thought. It is likely that intelligent life elsewhere feels that they are special and divine, that they have a unique place among the stars, that they are their creator’s chosen ones (assuming they have religions), just as we humans do.

Having said that…

There is a more realistic question of whether we will ever contact another intelligent lifeform. While there may be millions or even billions of other civilizations in the universe, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. So it is possible that there are not that many, if any others, within our own galaxy.

When we achieve efficient means of inter-stellar travel (yes, I said when), it is possible that we could travel our own galaxy for many lifetimes without bumping into any other beings. It’s that big. And at the moment, inter-galactic travel is so far beyond inter-stellar travel that civilizations in other galaxies don’t even merit consideration.

Even more, there is an element of time to consider. What’s to say that all civilizations are developing at the same point in history?

If an alien civilization did try to contact us at anytime in the past 4.5 billion years (other than right now), they would have found nothing here on this planet. We have only had the technology to send and receive communication signals from space for about 50 years (advent of communication satellites). Reversing that, what are the odds that we will be able to contact another planet during the exact time period that intelligent life exists there as well? Slim, very slim.

If we do ever contact intelligent alien life, it will truly be one of the greatest moments in human history. And we’ll probably have to reconsider how common life really is.

But to assume that we are the only ones in the entire universe is just absurd. Life is part of nature and there’s just too much nature for there not to be more.

Scales of the Universe

Most people have a decent understanding of commonly used scales and measurements. If you ask someone to show you a foot, they will generally spread their hands out about 10-15 inches; close enough. But when people start talking about extremely large or small amounts, they become confused and often use the wrong words in their conversations.

For example, when talking about government spending it is not uncommon for people to mistake million with billion or trillion. Probably not important for the conversation at hand, because we know that what they really mean is “a large amount.” But in reality there is a huge difference between these numbers. A trillion is a million times more than a million. Big, big difference.

The same holds true when people talk about space. I have watched sci-fi TV shows that don’t know the difference between a galaxy and the universe. I think hearing and seeing these perpetual mix ups contribute to a communal misunderstanding of our universe.

So I have created a list below as a chart of how big or small things are and how they fit together.

From largest to smallest:

Object	Size Across	Comment
Multiverse	??	Theoretical. Contains multiple universes
Universe	93,000,000,000 (93 billion) light years	Everything there is. All of space.
Universe, Observable	14,000,000,000 (14 billion) light years	Everything we can see. The universe is estimated to be 14 billion years old. The light from an object more than 14 billion light years away would take longer to get to us than the universe has existed. As such, these objects are beyond our ability to observe.
Galactic Supercluster	150,000,000 (150 million) light years	A collection of galactic groups (or clusters). Ours is called the Local Supercluster.
Galactic Group	10,000,000 (10 million) light years	Groups of galaxies. Our Local Group includes our Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 others. The next closest group is called the Virgo Group.
Galaxy	120,000 light years	Current estimates put the number of galaxies in the observable universe to be 500 billion. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way. Other galaxies include the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and Virgo A (M87).
Nebula	1-25 light years	Well-known nebulae in our Milky Way Galaxy are the Crab Nebula, Orion Nebula, and Eagle Nebula (which contains the recently famous Pillars of Creation).
Planetary System	0.15 light years (1.5 trillion kilometers)	Planets and other gravitationally bound objects orbiting a star. Ours, the Solar System, contains the Sun, the Earth, the other planets, many moons, an asteroid belt, and some other objects.
Star	1,400,000 kilometers	Current estimates put the number of stars per galaxy to be 200 billion. Our star is called Sol, which is why we call it the Sol-ar System.
Earth	12,700 kilometers	You are here.
United States	4,200 kilometers	Wider than our moon (3,500 km) and Pluto (2,300 km). Almost as wide as Mercury (4,900 km).
Marathon	42 kilometers (26 miles)	All true marathons are 26 miles in length, including the annual Boston Marathon.
Mariana Trench	11 kilometers	Lowest recorded point on our planet (Pacific Ocean).
Mt. Everest	8.8 kilometers	Highest record point on our planet (Nepal)
Eiffel Tower	320 meters	Viva La Paris
Oak Tree	20 meters	Typical height
Human	1.7 meters	Typical height
Microwave wavelength	1 centimeter	Cooks your food fast
Ant	4 millimeters	But a lot of them add up quickly!
Human Eyelid	0.5 millimeter	Thinnest skin on your body
Dot	0.1 millimeter	Smallest size observable to the naked eye.
Pollen	50 micrometers	You can’t see individual pollen particles, only clumps of pollen.
Red Blood Cell	7 micrometers	Average human has 25 quadrillion RBC’s. That’s 25,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Bacteria, Average	1-2 micrometers	Smaller than blood cells, but larger than viruses
HIV Virus	90 nanometers	Slightly smaller than the grooves of information on a CD or DVD.
DNA	3 nanometers	Thickness of a DNA strand
Computer Transistor	2 nanometers	1-2 billion transistors on a typical computer processor chip.
Water Molecule	280 picometers	You can see that computer transistors are getting down to the molecular level.
Hydrogen Atom	25 picometers	Smallest atom
X-Rays	5 picometers	Not the smallest wavelength, but getting there.
Proton	1 femtometer	Neutron is about the same size. Proton and neutron together make up nucleus of an atom.
Quark	1 attometer	Quarks are particles that make up protons and neutrons.
Preon	1 zeptometer	Building blocks of quarks.
Neutrino	1 yoctometer	Pass through solid objects undetected.
Superstrings	Planck Length (0.0000000001 yoctometers)	1-dimensional strings of energy that make up the all matter and energy in the universe. There is no shorter length, even theoretically. This is also called quantum foam; the fabric of spacetime.

I also found a very cool visual display of this chart from Primax Studio.

Legalized Marijuana

We knew it was coming.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes legalization of marijuana for recreational use, has approved legislation downgrading possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor to an infraction.

Supporters say the change will keep marijuana-related cases from becoming court-clogging jury trials, even though the penalty will remain a fine of up to $100, with no jail time. Violations will not go on a person’s record as a crime.

“I am signing this measure because possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name,” Schwarzenegger wrote in a message released after he signed the bill. “In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket.”

Los Angeles Times 
October 2, 2010

While I haven’t given this full thought yet, I agree with it on the surface. Not because the drug is harmless and should be legalized, but because the courts need to be freed up from minor transgressions that choke the system and allowed to focus on bigger cases.

It is apparent that the threat of jail time hasn’t stopped anyone from smoking pot in the past. So why the pretense? It would be like flooding the precincts and courts with jaywalkers. This is probably one less nuisance that the California cops have to worry about.

Interesting Propeller Effect

Check out this picture I took with my iPhone while flying up to a FSU football game. I assume that this is due to the rotation speed of the propeller being out of sync with the refresh rate of my cell phone camera lens.

Bottom right corner is a double reflection of my watch from the cockpit window.

Scophi.com

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