Wow — I didn’t know you could get these.
What’s that Elder on the left doing? Ah, he’s expounding.
I think the other one is dusting off his feet. Watch out — that’s like a level 3 Harm spell when they do that. I think you can only recover from that if you’re a Mage.
A linguistic tidbit from the ‘Obvious in Retrospect’ file:
A recent study of the speech information rate of seven languages concludes that there is considerable variation in the speed at which languages are spoken, but much less variation in how efficiently languages communicate the same information.
…
Dr. Pellegrino outlined the major findings of the team’s research: “Languages do need more or less time to tell the same story – for instance in our study, the texts spoken in English are much shorter than their Japanese counterparts. Despite those variations, there is a tendency to regulate the information rate, as shown by a strong negative correlation between the syllabic rate and the information density.” In other words, languages that are spoken faster (i.e., that have a higher syllabic rate) tend to pack less information into each individual syllable (i.e. have a lower information density).
In other other words, the more information packed into each syllable, the slower those syllables have to be delivered. Across languages, those two factors balance each other.
It makes sense because human brains have a cognitive limit, and they’ll only put up with so much throughput. Still, nice to see this result in black and white.
I recently learned of L’Anse aux Meadows. It’s a place in Newfoundland, Canada where Vikings settled about 1,000 years ago. It’s the oldest European settlement in the Americas. The Vikings didn’t live there very long — only about 10 years — and it seems that there weren’t that many of them. It’s only a small site — no stables, no burials.
Yet for that small a group in so short a time, they left enough artifacts to fill a small museum.
Long-time readers will see where I’m going with this. The Book of Mormon claims to be the history of a group of people who lived in the Americas for about a thousand years, numbering in the millions. The book discusses their metalwork, their swords, their coins, their money, and much more — no evidence of which occurs in the archaeological record. And they didn’t dwindle down slowly — they were supposedly killed off quickly in wars of extinction. You’d think that something would have survived, but no.
Maybe the Nephites and Lamanites just didn’t build stuff as well as the Vikings. Or else fictional people don’t leave archaeological traces.
Everybody knows not to play Three Card Monte, right? It’s an old scam that relies on a little sleight of hand and a lot of psychology.
It’s not just one operator, but a whole team, including confederates who make winning look easy, and blockers who separate you from your more sensible friends. And if you do manage to pick the Ace, a shill will bet more on the wrong card so the dealer will take their fake bet instead. There will even be some ‘muscle’ on hand to give you a few broken ribs if you make trouble.
It’s fascinating to watch, but it’s a dangerous game, and you always lose. Don’t play.
People are talking about this article by Bill Keller in the NYT about religion in politics.
Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith
If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions. Like, where does he get his information? Does he talk to the aliens? Do they have an economic plan?
Hal Boyd of the Deseret News gives a roundup of writers who are shocked — shocked! — at the impertinence of asking candidates about their religious beliefs. After all, isn’t that personal? Well, it could be, if the candidate makes it private. Colbert I. King thinks faith is no big deal, but he makes an exception for candidates who make a big deal out of it. Sounds fair, but it doesn’t go far enough for me.
I’d say that a candidate’s faith is fair game for a much more pragmatic reason. Let me start with evolution. If someone doesn’t accept evolution as true (as all but a few Republican candidates don’t), I won’t vote for them. That’s because this person is going to be making decisions on my behalf, and by rejecting evolution, they’re showing me that they don’t know how to tell if something’s true. They’re not good at making decisions based on evidence. And there’s a high probability that their thinking is compromised by undue influence from the religious sector. Those are all very worrying tendencies in a leader.
And that’s just evolution. I’d say the same goes for Mitt Romney’s underwear, Michele Bachmann’s superstition about a god controlling the weather, Rick Perry’s belief in ritual starving to attract the attention of his god, or anyone else’s beliefs in magical nonsense. Delusion is delusion.
Of course, even if someone is an atheist, they can still be a disappointing leader; check Australian PM Julia Gillard, an atheist who shows a bewildering opposition to gay marriage, and an unaccountable fondness for distributing federal dollars to Christian chaplains in high schools. Nor are religious beliefs the only ones to watch out for. There are also irrational and dangerous secular beliefs involving climate change denialism or free-market fundamentalism. For me, the key is: does this person know how to use science and evidence to find out what’s true? If not, keep them away from the levers of power. Ignorant people should be represented in government, but not by ignorant people.
Someone on Twitter has created Markov Bible.
We’ve had fun with Markov chains on the blog before. They’re really quite simple: just take a big file full of text, and pick any two adjacent words at random (let’s say it’s ‘in the’). Then, find every occurrence of the words ‘in the’, and make a list of every word that occurs right after them. Pick one of those at random, and that’s word number 3. Now repeat with your word number 2 and 3 to get a word 4, and so on for as long as you want.
It’s fun to mess around with the Bible, but my favourite thing is to do mashups. Here’s the Bible combined with George Orwell’s 1984.
They say unto you, Ye shall worship at his saying, and nipped off to Canada like cattle. They could do nothing against the children of the same: but the one end of three years old when he would have cast upon a pole, and it was too late–no such thought occurred to me, and on the north corner, he made windows of agates, and thy master’s son? And Ziba said unto Onan, Go in this book.
That last part is funnier if you know who Onan is.
And here’s some of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, mixed in with Franz Kafka’s The Penal Colony.
CHAPTER XI Who Stole the Tarts? The King laid his head and, feeling behind him with his face to the Bed. First, I’ll describe the apparatus to you.” The Traveller acted as if a dish or kettle had been asked to attend the execution of a bottle. They all came different!’ the Mock Turtle replied; ‘and then the execution is a very grave voice, ‘until all the players, except the King, who had been sleeping on duty. For his task is to give the prizes?’ quite a chorus of ‘There goes Bill!’ then the other, and making quite a long time together.’ ‘Which is just the case might be, if he had neglected to look down and appeared peaceful. The Soldier showed the Traveller and laid his head sadly. ‘Do I look like one, but it is.’
The longer the sentence, the less likely it is to be coherent, since Markov chaining doesn’t preserve the long-range structure of a sentence. But still, it’s surprising when it works.
Starting out with “Who likes white people?” seemed a little out there, even for Michele Bachmann.
Language Log has done a convincing job of demonstrating that she really said, “Who likes wet people?”, which you can prove to yourself by closing your eyes and listening. You know what it is — it’s those damn subtitles (or are they supertitles?). When you see the words up there, it sure sounds like “white”, even when you know it’s “wet”.
I like this as an example of the suggestibility of perception. Could this be the Benny Lava of American politics?
No, maybe not.
Aren’t you glad you’re not a kid going to a private Christian school in Perth, Australia? Because if you were, you’d have assignments like this:
Gay sex ‘sickest of sins’
CHILDREN have been asked whether homosexuality is “the sickest sin” in a school assignment.
The homework given to 14 and 15-year-olds at Armadale Christian College, also also points them to bible quotes describing homosexuality as an “abomination”, and describes “coming out of the closet” as “open sinning”.
Way to go, Christians. Imagine you’re 15, trying to figure out what your sexuality is, and you get handed that as homework. High school students are already cruel enough about ferreting out the gay kids in their midst, without the teachers piling on.
Another question asked what God said about homosexuality and pointed to Bible quotes for the answer, which called it an “abomination”.
The assignment also stated that homosexuality was a “compromise for the need to be loved and accepted”, resulting for many from “low self-esteem (and) gender emptiness”.
Also on the assignment was: “Many people say that homosexuality is an inborn trait. Is a person born greedy, jealous, malicious, gossiper, slanderer, thief, child abuser, serial killer?”
Because being gay is just like all those other things.
I managed to procure a copy of the actual assignment (PDF), and yeah, it’s pretty much the standard anti-gay stuff that gives Christians a hate-on, plus Bible scriptures.
Homosexuality
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites…” (1 Corinthians 6:9)Preliminary Thoughts
1) What is homosexuality?
2) Is homosexuality a new practice? Why do we hear so much about it now?
3) What are some reasons people give to justify homosexual practices?
a)
b)
c)4) Why are some people tempted with homosexual feelings and others are not?
5) Are feeling and temptations wrong, or do they become wrong when we do something about them (James 1:12–15)?
6) Is there a limit to the power of any temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13)?
7) The subject of homosexuality is confusing because everyone calls it something different.
• Is homosexuality a physical or genetic disease?
• Is homosexuality “the sickest sin there is?“
• Is homosexuality “natural” for some people, being an inborn trait (Romans 1:26–27)?
• Is homosexuality a legitimate “alternative lifestyle” (Genesis 2:24; Hebrews 13:4)?8) Most people seem to have no idea how homosexuality can be a temptation to anyone. Therefore we are not very helpful to a person who is struggling with the temptation (cf. Galatians 6:1–2; Jude 22–23). Maybe that can change if we understand a few general things about homosexuality.
• God makes every person unique (Psalm 139:13–16; 1 Corinthains 12:12–27). He may be different, but God does not make him “gay” (James 1:13).
• Homosexuality generally has little to do with sex. The sexual involvement with another person of the same sex, is a compromise for the need to be loved and accepted.
• Some inborn factors may contribute to the development of homosexual attractions, but these are not sufficient to make a person homosexual (James 1:14–15; 1 Corinthians 10:13).
• Factors which lead to each person’s struggle with homosexual attraction are different, but certain stages are common to many—low self-esteem, gender emptiness, gender attraction, sexual attraction, homosexual reinforcement, homosexual identity.What Does The Bible Say?
1) Is homosexuality a new practice (Genesis 19:1–29; Judges 19:1–28; 1 Kings 14:24; 15–12; 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7)” Is there anything new (Ecclesiastes 1:9–10)?
2) What did God say about homosexuality under the Law of Moses (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13)?
3) Many people say homosexuality is an inborn trait. Is a person born greedy, jealous, malicious, gossiper, slanderer, thief, child abuser, serial killer (Mark 7:20–23)? Why would people say that homosexuality is inborn?
4) Is homosexuality a “natural” practice (Romans 1:26–27)?
5) Is homosexuality against God’s law or sanctioned by it (1 Timothy 1:8–10)?
6) Homosexuals advocate “coming out of the closet” and being open with their lifestyle. What does the Bible say about such open sinning (Isaiah 3:9)?
7) Men try to lessen the severity of sin by softening its description. The Bible does not describe homosexuals/lesbians as “gay” or living an “alternative lifestyle“. How does the Bible describe such people?
• 1 Kings 14:24—
• 1 Corinthians 6:9—
• Colossians 3:5—
• Jude 7—8) What two things does 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 teach us about homosexuality?
9) Those who oppose homosexuality are often called “homophobes” or “gay bashers“. Some people really are—but how would you desribe a caring, concerned Christian who wants to help a person overcome his struggle with homosexuality (1 Corinthians 13:4–7; James 5:19–20)?
Practical Solutions
1) Can a person who is engaged in homosexual practices remain in that condition? What much he/she do (Ephesians 5:1–14)?
2) Does God care about our struggle? What are some practical ways that God gives to overcome this temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13)?
• How did Jesus overcome temptation (Matthew 4:1–11)?
• Who can we turn to for help (Philippians 4:13; 1 John 4:4)?
• How must we respond to the devil’s temptation (James 4:7)?
• What activity helps us as much as anything (Philippians 4:6–7)?
• What do we need to try and master (Philippians 4:8; 2 Corinthians 10:5)?3) After you rid yourself of this practice, what must you do to keep worse sins from returning (Luke 11:24–26)?
4) How is the church to respond to a practicing homosexual who repents (2 Corinthians 2:3–11)?
5) Do you have a closing thought?
Maybe some parents at ACC wouldn’t mind having this assignment plopped down on their child’s desk, but I suspect more than a couple would. And people in the wider community should definitely be concerned that high schoolers are being exposed to the hateful teachings of the Christian bible — subsidised by tax dollars, no less. Remember, this is happening not in the American South, but in good old secular Perth WA, today. It can happen here.
If you want to write your own answers for this assignment, give it a go in comments.
Here’s an interesting application for Natural Language Processing. How do you know if a review for a hotel or a business is real, or just a spammy one written by someone who’s never even seen the place?
Computers can do it. Just get people to write a ton of spammy reviews, then get some reviews that (you suspect) are real, and compare the patterns.
Can’t read the text? Fake reviews were more likely to use “I” and “me”, adverbs like “really”, and explanation points.
Here’s a PDF of the authors’ ACL presentation.
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