Thursday, June 29, 2006

Not so boring

Today I signed up with technorati and found the blogs linked to this one.... There is one called Red Confectionery which I have no idea how I got linked in, but I am. Anyways, this post was marked as boring. I don't think so :-)

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Fatherhood

Frank said he'd be interested in my thoughts on this...

One thing that struck me about becoming father for the first time was "fear". This was oddly surprising. When you realise this new baby is your responsibility, that they can't fend for themselves, that there are LOTS of things that could go wrong and you only have limited control on preventing some of the things that can go wrong. You realise you need to provide, protect, and nurture. I had to love this kid, in the verb sense. It's not enough to feel love for your kid, but you have to actively love your kid, demonstrate love, etc. For me this was a big learning process. This all hit me in the face as a "realisation" when my first child was born. I "knew" these things in someway before my son was born but it really hits home when the reality was there. Basically I became a lot more vulnerable than I was previously comfortable with and that was scary. I realised I lost some of my independence.

When my second child arrived, the big thing that shocked me is that I had to suddenly share my love with my son and my new daughter. This felt a bit like cheating on my son. But it didnt take too long to adjust.

Now I pretty much feel, whatever happens, it is most important to make the most of the time you have with your kids, love them as much as you can, share as much of yourself with them as possible, and enjoy them. You have to remind yourself, there are ups and downs, you'll make mistakes, you can't be the perfect parent, you shouldn't even try to be, you should be yourself.

Monday, June 26, 2006

World science community speaks out against creationisim

This is interesting, considering the HUGE number of national science acadamies it represents! This includes New Zealands RSNZ ( http://www.rsnz.org/members/academy/ )

http://www.interacademies.net/CMS/6159.aspx

and the pdf statement

I hope this encourages christians who believe in creationisim to re-evaluate that their faith is not tied to the creation story. That the bible needs to be read in different ways depending on the book of the bible. However, I pretty much figure many will try to dig in deeper and hold on to the creation story as literal fact. I also figure there will be many people that will pander to this audience with vauge theories and books.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

If your smart enough, making a million dollars is easy

Getting a little bored of suduko? Want to get paid for your problem solving skills?

http://www.claymath.org/millennium/


if you are going to have a crack at one, please do "P vs NP", and if you are going to solve it, make sure P=NP

Thanks :-)

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Who are you?

This question came up at my philosophy group this evening, I thought I'd jot down my answer.

I am a result of my physical constitution and the physical effects that act upon my physical being. My mind is an emergent phenomenon due to the complex physical makeup of my brain. What is perceived as a soul is a function of this emergent phenomenon.

This mainly represents my current thinking, I don't think its the final answer. But the question is quite good because it gives you a pretty good idea what kind of metaphysics I believe in. One of the things I'm interested in is finding questions that require me to further define my existence or completely redefine my existence. What I like about this answer is that as you go through the consequences of this answer it quite elegantly explains all religion, customs, myths, social structures, etc. What it doesn’t answer is "where do we come from?" or "why do we exist?". But nothing I've come across seems to answer these questions particularly well. For example, if you introduce a god, it simply shifts the question to "where does god come from?" "why does god exist?". There is a good chance that its quite impossible for us to explain the reason for our existence.