On the age of the universe . . .

If one posits a sufficiently omnipotent deity then that deity could have created the universe in a week and that week could have unfolded 6,000 years ago. It would have been quite the accomplishment as it would have included

• photons already heading our way with the correct red-shift from stars and galaxies over 6,000 light years away
• photons also already heading all sorts of other ways so that the light from stars which are within 6,000 light years illuminates nearby dust clouds and such in just the right way
• the cosmic rays and all sorts of other electromagnetic radiation coming our way that scientists have detected or will someday detect
• the rocks, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and whatever in our Solar system all carefully arranged and constructed to look just the right age both at a distance and upon close inspection for when we send unmanned spacecraft like Voyager I & II and New Horizons and when we someday send manned missions to explore them
• the stars that are within 6,000 light years in sufficient detail (size, makeup, velocity, gravitational effect on nearby objects, etc) to look the right age to our telescopes
• the various planets which we have already detected and which we have yet to detect orbiting other stars, each positioned and constructed to fit a coherent scientific explanation of how they came to be
• layers of fake evidence of the unfolding of the Earth's ecosystem all the way from when our Solar system was a dust cloud through to today with everything properly arranged and composed right down to the molecular level to show a process that appears to have taken billions of years
• include the evidence which scientists have collected to demonstrate the existence of "dark matter". Whatever it appears to be, it appears to be far further away than 6,000 light years so again we are dealing with evidence that has been faked by said deity in just such a way to allow scientists to conclude that "dark matter" exists. While still not well understood, scientists are clearly making progress and will learn more and more about this "dark matter" that the evidence that we are collecting about it needs to be just as robust as the evidence that said deity has created to fool us into believing that galaxies and such exist
• the evidence to support an astonishing range of other "discoveries" regarding how the universe operates on an apparent scale of many many millions of light years (billions of them actually) even though all of that evidence was faked 6,000 years ago in just such a way that it fools astronomers completely and consistently. Think of the Hubble photos of galaxies interacting gravitationally, colliding or just being there and doing the galaxy thing each in their own corner of the universe. Now contemplate the level of detail that said deity had to attend to in order to make even a single galactic collision or other event "look real" at the distance we see it from; once you have that pictured in your mind, multiply it by the millions and billions of galaxies out there where some of them are colliding while others are forming and others are just doing the galaxy thing, etc.
• throw in all of the other things that said deity had to attend to in order to get the Earth looking ancient in just the right way to fool evolutionary biologists, palaeontologists, nuclear physicists, chemists, geologists (whether dealing with layers of stuff that make up the Earth or the continental drift phenomenon that brought the continents to their current configuration), etc, etc, etc.

Is it possible? Actually, that's a silly question since if one posits a sufficiently omnipotent deity then anything is possible . . .

. . . and yet . . . somehow . . . such an explanation for the universe that we see around us is really quite unsatisfying to me.

I really have to ask why any deity would bother to go to all that trouble just to fool a bunch of mere humans. No - it makes far more sense to me to look at the still unfolding scientific process during the last few hundred years and to contemplate what it has discovered about the universe that we actually live in. To take one tiny little aspect of what science has found - that our galaxy really is over 100,000 light years across (i.e. that it takes light over 100,000 years to get from one side of the galaxy to the other) just makes sense. For that matter, Darwin's theory of evolution just makes sense. The amount of knowledge that scientists have uncovered since the dawning of the age of science not all that many centuries ago and the fact that this knowledge, for the most part, hangs together so well is all the evidence that I need to be not only comfortable but truly thrilled to be living in a universe that really is billions of years old, is billions of light years across, contains billions of galaxies, many of which contain billions if not trillions of stars, etc, etc, etc.

Lest anyone focus in on the places where bits and pieces of the scientific knowledge base do not happen to fit together all that well, I suggest that you contemplate the incredible scientific process that has been unfolding for the past few centuries and the extent to which said process has produced a body of knowledge that does, for the most part, fit together. I contemplate that and am forced to conclude that betting against science's ability to eventually "clear up the confusion" is a mug's game.

The notion that our universe was created by a sufficiently omnipotent deity at some point in the past, whether it be 6,000 years or whatever, just doesn't hold much that attracts me in comparison.

"The Singular Mind of Terry Tao" and choosing a career . . .

The New York Times published the following really quite fascinating article today:

The Singular Mind of Terry Tao
by Gareth Cook
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html

I particularly like the article's description of the game of devil's chess - an imaginary game which not only really seems to get at how a mathematician works but also captures some of what it takes to be a successful mathematician.

From a personal perspective, I really liked what I thought mathematics was in high school and it turned out that I was quite good at it. By the start of my last year of high school, I had decided that I would pursue a career in pure mathematics. Fortunately, at about that time my sister Colette arranged for me to meet a University of Alberta mathematics professor for an hour or so. This turned out to be one of the best spent hours of my career as I not only got a tiny sense of what pure mathematics actually was but I figured out that it was not the aspect of mathematics that I was actually interested in*. The professor figured this out as well and suggested that I consider going into applied mathematics or possibly even computing science. I had read one or two books on computer programming but this discussion with the math prof is what really crystallized my interest in computing. In hindsight, it turned out to be one of the best spent hours of my career.

* Once I actually started university, I quickly learned a bit more of what mathematics is and soon developed a constructive proof that I wasn't actually all that good at most of it. Going into pure mathematics would have been a real fiasco!

10 Reasons Why Hidden Cancer Cure Conspiracy Theories Fail

The truth of the situation is really quite simple. The scientists, not to mention the corporations and the institutions that they work for, are even more motivated to find and make available a "cure for cancer" as you are to see such a cure available.

10 Reasons Why Hidden Cancer Cure Conspiracy Theories Fail

The list, in abbreviated form, is reproduced here just in case the link goes dead. You really want to click through the link to get the details presented there.

1. Not all organizations involved in medical research are for-profit
2. Medical researchers and their families are just as susceptible to cancer and other diseases as anyone else
3. Even the CEOs of companies won’t be able to utilize their billions if they’re dead from something their companies could have cured
4. Many if not most researchers are more likely to value fame, prestige and personal achievement over sheer quantity of money
5. While all governments would have to be in on it, not all would make money
6. Pushback from insurance companies (they make money by reducing the amount that they pay to "big pharma")
7. Actually, companies WOULD make a lot of money from cures
8. Companies are already choosing cure or prevention over profit
9. There’s more than one for-profit company out there, which means competition
10. Hiding the cure would cost more

Nuf said!

Knowledge is better than ignorance . . .

There is precisely one sense in which it is possible for me to "like" a news article that explains how the massacre at Srebrenica was, through at best wilful blindness and at worst malice aforethought, allowed to occur by the UN in general and the UK and the US in particular. Namely that it is better to know than to remain in doubt.

It was clear at the time that the UN "safe areas" had become nothing of the sort. It was also soon clear that "something bad" had happened when Srebrenica had been overrun by the Serbs. The magnitude of what happened has become clear over the years as the count of recovered bodies of the victims have mounted. Now, the long suspected if not understood but relatively unspoken "why" has been laid out for all to read.

It is good to see comprehensive descriptions and analyses of what and why Srebrenica was allowed to occur. It is even better that confirmation of what was often "wondered at" by many has been published while many of those involved in the decision making process are still alive.

How Britain and the US decided to abandon Srebrenica to its fate (article by Florence Hartmann and Ed Vulliamy in The Guardian July 4, 2015)

Le sang de la realpolitik - L'affaire Srebrenica (about to be published eBook by Florence Hartmann; referenced in the above referenced article)

FLORENCE HARTMANN GUILTY FOR TELLING THE TRUTH (as if the world needed it, yet another demonstration of what happens to whistleblowers)

Srebrenica_massacre (Wikipedia's article on the Srebrenica massacre)

Srebrenica massacre (Encyclopaedia Britannica article on the Srebrenica massacre)

Serbia asks Russia to veto UN resolution that calls Srebrenica massacre ‘genocide’ (article by "Staff" on the GlobalNews.ca site July 4, 2015)