Modern Art

Yet another swipe at modern art, this time from the always readable "Spengler" at Asia Times.

No more Mr. Noodles

I just found out that Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant noodles, recently died. Well, I guess we should peel off the lid, pour boiling water, and observe three minutes of silence.

Space Marines

For the last while, I've been painting my latest Warhammer 40k army, the Space Marines. They are the first human army I've painted for WH40k, although I haven't had the need to paint actual human features yet due to all of their power armour. I decided to collect an Ultramarines First Company army - this means that all of the space marine infantry wear Terminator armour, the super heavy powered armour used in the game Space Hulk. The only other units are vehicles. I made this decision because it keeps the number of models I need low, and reduces cost and painting time. :) Some of the miniatures I bought were already painted, others I stripped and repainted. The badly painted ones are mine. :) In keeping with the style of the game, I've named the squads and main characters in the army.

Librarian Docente (with power axe) and his command squad. I bought these all painted this way. The black ones are only undercoated and still need to be finished.

Chaplain Elysius. I stripped the original paint scheme and repainted him.

Two space marines with assault cannons that I stripped and repainted.

Squad Honorius with two Cyclone missile launchers. They all came painted.

Squad Valius with two assault cannons. I painted the assault cannon space marines (not the same ones as the picture earlier) but the others came painted.
Brother Irenaeus, a venerable dreadnought. His paint scheme is awesome, so definitely not painted by me. :)

Apocalypto

Hmm... Here's an actual good review of Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's new, ludicrously bloody film about Mayans. Maybe it could be worth a look.

World Map

This is a great game for you. Basically you have to click on the right country on the map when the country's name is given to you, and you have to do it before time runs out. Lets see how many you can get.

Cheshire Crossing

This is a great, if strangely drawn, web comic. It's about Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling, and Dorothy Gale getting sent to the same asylum for disassociative psychosis. (i.e. that they live in imaginary worlds in their own heads) Or is it a real asylum?

More on free will

The Maverick Philosopher, who I read occasionally, has some interesting posts on free will:

A whole chain of entries

Chess allegories

I'll have to read more of these arguments. As usual, I might have to change some of my views...

Free Will?

If you follow the Dilbert Blog at all, you'll know that Scott Adams has consistently denied the concept of free will. Here's the latest blog entry where he claims it's a superstition. See, this is where Carl Sagan's famous, and *very* subjective, statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" really shows its problems. To me, the claim that there is no free will is the extraordinary claim. (I will explain this later) However, to Scott Adams, obviously the claim that there is free will is the extraordinary claim.

Now see, I don't follow the strong form of free will as believed by, say libertarians, where an agent can always make a rational choice, any time, any where. (which would be an extraordinary claim indeed!) While I am a realist and believe that the number of choices can be constrained by prior conditions, I still do believe that there are choices to be made. To show me that free will doesn't exist will involve showing proof that no choices can be made, anywhere, any time, over the entire course of the universe. I believe that is the extraordinary claim. :)

Good(?) science, bad journalism

People reading Slashdot regularly would've no doubt seen this article, linked from this Slashdot entry, where Nature magazine talks about German scientists analyzing Wootz steel and finding carbon nanotubes. Now I'm not informed enough to talk about the idea of nanotubes in antique weapons - there are people who dispute that this finding is new. However, history-wise I found fishy stuff from the Nature article itself. For example:

The Crusaders felt the might of the tube when they fought against the Muslims and their distinctive, patterned Damascus blades.

Sabres from Damascus, now in Syria, date back as far as 900 AD. Strong and sharp, they are made from a type of steel called wootz.

Now I was surprised, since as far as I knew, the oldest known curved sword in the Islamic world is the sword of the (in)famous King Baybars, which dates from the 13th Century. So idea of "sabres" from 900 AD seems wrong. I found the original paper here, and finally figured out the truth:

The specimen used in the present investigation is a part of the genuine Damascus sabre produced by the famous blacksmith Assad Ullah in the 17th century.

Ah ha, so the Nature article was a bit muddled with their facts. Oh well at least it wasn't as bad as in this Royal Society of Chemistry article on the same paper:

To Europeans, Damascus steel blades seemed magical. Not only could they cut a piece of silk in half as it fell to the floor, they could cleave rocks and their own swords without losing sharpness.

Now seriously, I wonder about supposed scientific minds at the Royal Society who actually believe that swords can cut rock. (hint: which material is harder?) And of course, this article is titled "Carbon nanotubes: Saladin’s secret weapon." Saladin lived in the 12th Century!

What's the point of all this? Well, with journalism, even in fairly "respectable" papers, you have to take a "caveat emptor" attitude with the facts they present, and you should really dig a bit to get to the original sources.

The Renaissance Myth

An interesting (but old) article about how the idea that the Renaissance was a "great intellectual leap" is bunk. It's from an old (1980s) literary journal article so there are numerous transcribing errors. (many of them look like OCR problems.) It's a very interesting read.

New Blogger

Well, I've switched over from the old blogspot account to the new google account based one. The address and everything are still the same though. I'll see what new features this has.

The Logic Museum

I put in a new link to the right for the Logic Museum. This is an interesting website that has the online versions of a number of philosophical works that concern logic from ancient times to the time of Russell. It's currently fairly small, but is constantly growing.

Greatest Philosopher?

Holy crap! In a BBC poll on "the greatest philospher," Karl Marx actually got first place. Aristotle and Socrates each only got less than 5% of the votes. This is rather... disturbing.

Fun Math

Awesome solutions to math problems. I really like the first one. :)

Chad Vader

More adventures of Chad Vader. (Episode 4)

Thanksgiving Day

Wow... The official Thanksgiving Day in Canada has had a short but varied history.

Nietzsche Family Circus

This is a bizarre site that randomly combines a Family Circus cartoon with a Friedrich Nietzsche quote. Sometimes the combination seems to make a lot of sense...

3D Space Hulk

Remember the guy who cast his own 3D resin board for Space Hulk? He's finished painting enough for the first mission. Pretty impressive:

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup7.jpg

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup8.jpg

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup9.jpg

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup10.jpg

Compare to my much more pathetic card board ones :)

Full Map

Marines Entering the Hulk

Wow... This is interesting...

In yesterday's Scott Adams blog, in the "A philosophical question" post, he seems to be saying something under that silly allegory of his: Basically, "Muslims are irrational and violent." Hmm... interesting.

Churches in the West Bank

Well, in today's blog from Scott Adams, he asks the question "what the hell are churches doing in the West Bank?" Since I don't believe he's *that* ignorant, it must be another of his "yank people's chains" thing.

And of course, he accuses the Pope of calling Islam "evil and inhuman" indirectly through the East Roman Emperor's comments, even though the Pope was referring specifically to the practice of spreading religion by violence. Sometimes I think Scott Adams is just intentionally doing this stuff to see what kind of comments he gets.