geoff – Page 11 – Geoff Arnold's Blog

The week's twitterings – 2011-03-06

Geithner’s Gamble by Simon Johnson – Project Syndicate http://t.co/baoY4GN via @ProSyn #
At the Frans de Waal "Morality before Religion: Empathy, Fairness and Prosocial Primates" #stanfordevent http://t.co/L69BkAt #
XCP 1.0 finally arrives: http://www.openstack.org/blog/2011/03/building-the-complete-open-source-cloud-with-xen-org-and-openstack/ #
An impassioned plea for getting rid of pompous bureaucratic jargon, as a matter of life and death. About time too. #
OS X 10.7 Lion Preview via NewsGrange http://t.co/9zXfjNE – I'm running it on my new MacBook Air #
“@timhaines: If evolution was real, kids would have a mute switch by now.” < Au contraire, that's a good argument against intelligent design #

The week's twitterings – 2011-02-27

“@Herbez32: Are agnostics atheists? NO. The atheists are BELIEVERS, just like the Christians are.” < What an utter crock… #
“@timhaines: Fruit trees and lease comes with a gardener. Woot!”< Why does the lease need a gardener? #confused #
“@furrygirl: YOU PEOPLE NEGLECTED TO MENTION ITS SUPERFLUOUS CAPYBARA! http://t.co/PfJ0k4x” <A capybara is NEVER superfluous! #
For some reason, hearing Captain Beefheart playing in Starbucks struck me as particularly bizarre… #
Amazing essay from TAM London. http://t.co/rkUZixQ #
“@wattersjames: @geoffarnold You're saying that arguing about the validity of homeopathy is merely tribal? What an odd epistemology. #
The wisdom of Ike: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/quote-9.html #
“@thinguy: (I'm still here)” Good. Now what? #
Local forecast for Palo Alto this Friday night/Saturday morning: "Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and snow showers. Low 27F." REALLY?!?! #
Why are UK Muslims homophobic? 58% of Brits are OK with gays, but among British Muslims it's 0%. ZERO! Unacceptable. http://t.co/Zx79GoZ #
Just replaced my 1st gen MacBook Air with a new 11.6" MBA (4GB/128GB/1.6GHz). Like my 12" PB G4 from 2004, except faster and half the weight #

Must-read piece on Massively Scalable Data Center networking

Like Ivan Pepelnjak, I agree that the must-read piece of the moment is Brad Hedlund’s Emergence of the Massively Scalable Data Center. Yes, it’s more about the questions than the answers, but even that’s a step forward. And as a bonus, this led to me browsing Ivan’s blog, where I came across this excellent piece on how we got into the present L2 v. L3 mess (including the impact of what Ivan calls “the elephant in the data center”).

The week's twitterings – 2011-02-20

Finally saw Rob Hirschfeld's OpenStack talk http://www.openstack.org/blog/2011/02/rob-hirschfeld-bootstrapping-hyperscale-openstack-clouds/ #
"Which two nations still reserve places in their parliaments for unelected religious clerics? Iran… and Britain" http://t.co/VuVaSBi #
We're at the Aquarius in Palo Alto for a showing of all the Oscar-nominated animated shorts. Last year we saw the brilliant "Logorama" here #

The week's twitterings – 2011-02-13

This explanation of atheism is simply beautiful. It's close to what I came to 45 years ago, but expressed much better. http://t.co/2WRzxxM #
Tantalizing suggestion: Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs coming in June? If so… http://reg.cx/1MLn #

The week's twitterings – 2011-02-06

I'm really fed up with the new @skype UI on the Mac. Lots of gratuitous white space and flashy coverflow, but no compact view. Frustrating. #
“@aaronpaxson: It astounds me that scientists don't believe in God. Who else can make things so perfect and "in balance"?” <Gotta be a troll #
“@stevel: @geoffarnold http://t.co/A0q7yTH” < Helps a bit, but still terribly wasteful of screen real estate. #
“@GeorgeReese: I don't believe in string theory.” <Of course, the universe is indifferent to your opinion. #
“@craigmorgan: @geoffarnold @stevel front it with Adium" < But I mostly use Skype for video chat 🙁 #
“@adrianco: @GeorgeReese @geoffarnold E8 theory is more elegant than string theory” < Surely the E8 *model* – lots to do to make it a theory #
Great piece by Julia Galef on the epistemological status of "intuition". http://t.co/t2Z3fnd #
Hitchens is devastating on why The King's Speech is a gross falsification http://t.co/nYx3IKR via @guardian. Loved the film, but he's right. #
Today is a day for weak tea, dry toast, and sleep. #delhibelly #
Corvid savants: http://t.co/xFafX7Y – check out the video clips! Crows (and rooks, and ravens) rule! #
Catholic priest/exorcist: "We have a rite that’s recognized, even by the demons, as legitimate." Lawful evil demons? http://t.co/qfbaySY #
Somehow I wound up pulling an all-nighter last night. This can't end well. (Though today ends with me getting on a plane, so….) #
11:25PM – time to check out and head to the airport for my BLR-FRA-SFO flights home. (How come I only ever see Indian airports at 2-3AM?) #
And here I am, back at the Tower Lounge at Frankfurt. I have a 3+ hour layover, then I'm heading home to SFO. #
My Yahoo-supplied 15" MBP is gorgeous & fast, but just too big and heavy for a road warrior. Switch to 13"?
Or is a new MBA in my future? #
Back home: I just watched Wolves beat ManUtd. Not what I expected. Good match, though. #

The week's twitterings – 2011-01-30

Early to bed (10:30PM); I've got a limo coming for me tomorrow morning at 3:25AM. First Boston, then on Thursday I fly to Bangalore. #
Waiting in the LH lounge to board my BOS-FRA flight. I'll have a couple of hours in FRA, then on to BLR, arriving in the middle of the night #
“@GeorgeReese: @vambenepe SOAP must die.” < Big +1 to that! #
“@longword: hmm, wooden stake, garlic, or silver bullet? <Not silver bullet – try searching for "lifecycle silver bullet". Great paper! #
“@GeorgeReese: I guess I did just advocate violence against SOAP.” < Actually well-informed indifference is doing the job pretty well! #
At the LH Lounge in Frankfurt for 6 hour layover. (@united PremEx = Star Alliance Gold). Good food&drink… but WiFi is 8 Euros for an hour! #
Uneventful flight from FRA to BLR on LH, in a antiquated 747-400 with overhead TVs and no personal IFE. Only @United and LH, I guess… #
Anyone know of a Firefox plugin to facilitate the creation of a "tab sweep" blog post? Build a page of linked tab titles, ready for editing? #
Got to Bangalore hotel at 3am, slept until 9, intending to have breakfast. It's now 11:50am, so I guess I'll call it lunch. #fightingjetlag #

The week's twitterings – 2011-01-23

Setting up S11 zone on new server to host my friends+family domains. Yesterday DNS+certs. Today Apache. Tomorrow email. Test. Then migrate. #
Brooks on consciousness: – but the key point is that there is no place for the supernatural in this. We are material. #
Vatican edict in 1997 rejected calls to report priests who abused: from @the_irish_times #
Esquire on "Will We Remember Tucson? Was It Enough? Is Anything?", remembering Oklahoma City – http://shar.es/XMyMK #
Now here's a political realignment I can endorse: replace Left/Right (Dem/Rep, Lab/Con) with Modernist/Regressive. http://shar.es/XMS5T #
Just discovered Google Sketchup – http://t.co/g8m9Lws This is a very cool toy^H^H^H tool. My colleagues can expect lots of 3D in emails. #
music so excellent i just happily paid 8 clams for it @bandcamp: http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/amanda-palmer-goes-down-under #

What makes you feel good is not necessarily effective

A code to yesterday’s piece: Some of the Christian bloggers asserted that “What is needed in the face of all this is a more assertive proclamation of the value of our faith than many Episcopalians, especially clergy are comfortable giving.” To this, I would point to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and in particular:

It is not clear that arguments against atheism that appeal to faith have any prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence do. The general evidentialist view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound that imposes an epistemic obligation on her to accept the conclusion. Insofar as having faith that a claim is true amounts to believing contrary to or despite a lack of evidence, one person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective, epistemological implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable.

So while it may make you feel better, it’s unclear that such proclamations will actually make a dent in secularism…..
Tip o’the hat to John Loftus.

The fear of irrelevancy

After reading a few Christian blog and Facebook pieces today, I just had to vent. Please excuse.
Please forgive this atheist if he finds it hard to take US Christians seriously when they talk about experiencing “hostility” and worry about possible irrelevance. Christianity remains the dominant culture of the USA, even if its adherents are better at talking the talk than walking the walk. As we saw in Tucson, the president of the country is comfortable using language which completely excludes non-believers, and many other national leaders are unhesitant in describing the US as a Christian country.
Even though 6% of the country may describe themselves as atheist, how many of our representatives do so? Not only could an atheist not be elected to the Presidency; even the deist Thomas Jefferson would be unelectable today.
So when a (very few) atheists voice the kind of sentiment that Christians have been dishing out for years, it seems disproportionate for Christians to complain. OK, vilification of atheists rarely comes from the Anglicans or the Methodists, but why should atheists have to sort out the distinctions between the many different groups that all describe themselves as Christian?
It seems to me that the problems faced by religious moderates have little do do with atheists. There have always been atheists and agnostics in the US, and if they are more visible today it is because modern communications technology is giving them a voice and a community. Secularism may provide a convenient windmill at which to tilt, but in the long term fighting that battle seems futile. Surely TEC and CofE should be trying to figure out how to reach those who are inclined to belief, including other Christians. If you’re trying to sell more wine, your new customers are probably going to be beer-drinkers – not teetotalers.
PS Please drop the term “militant atheist“. In matters of religion, militancy is what we’re seeing in Nigeria or Pakistan today. Publishing a book is not an act of militancy.