ChadMaestro

Archive for the ‘Industry’ Category

Einstein once showed, through his theories of relativity, that time and space have no bearing on what a person thinks he or she sees. He also did a number of other things, such as clarified how gravity works, and is not merely a force which pulls things toward each other; he also showed that energy can be converted into matter with one of the most famous equations of all time, being e=mc² – now the basis for the idea of nuclear fusion.

One of the interesting concepts beside space and time, however how the human mind perceives something that is not mathematical. Bear in mind that relativity was not a new concept when Einstein was around, classical relativity had been around for centuries, and is merely the idea that what you see is relative to the position you’re in at that given moment in time. A practical example of this would be seeing a car driving past at a constant speed of 100km/h. To a person outside of the car, the car is moving at 100km/h, but to the person inside the car, the car is practically stationary because he or she is moving at 100km/h as well. If the person inside the car threw a ball in a forward direction at 50km/h, the respectful speed of the ball is 150km/h, however only the person outside of the car would see this. The person inside the car would see the ball travelling at 50km/h because, as we said, he is perceivably stationary as he’s moving at 100km/h with the car.

That’s a basic explanation of classical relativity. Einstein took this further and showed that time is relative, as well. That is to say, if the speed of light is constant and therefore all observers must agree that light travels at a constant speed, then the time measured for the distance travelled is arguable. Slightly confusing? Basically, using the previous example, if a stationary spaceship and a moving spaceship shot a laser, the speed of the laser would not change for the moving person, because light travels at a constant speed. But if the laser of the moving ship and the stationary ship is in the same position, and the ships are at different positions, doesn’t that mean the distance of the laser travelled away from the moving spaceship is less than that of the stationary one? Yes and no. Yes in the classical sense, but no in Einstein’s sense, as the measure of time taken for the distance travelled will be different. That is to say that the time taken for the movement will differ because time is relative to the person observing it.

Physics aside, this is not what the blog is about. What I’m actually interested and curious about is how the human mind interprets data if their given circumstances are different.

Understanding the idea that something is relative to something else is a real world idea that almost falls under common sense for most people. It’s quite obvious to most people that the reaction of a person is relative to the action imposed on him or her. But is it really? Imagine a person who is abusive toward their partner because he or she spent money that they do not have. In this case, is the reaction completely relative to the action? That is to say, is the abuse justified because of the woman’s initial actions?

Most people will say “no”. But if this is the case, then reactions of people are not merely relative to the actions igniting the emotional response. To understand the way a person behaves (and reacts) there must be something that another person can quanitify and relate to. Perhaps we are looking at the wrong idea, then. Perhaps we should not be looking for the relativistic action to the reaction, but rather looking for the relativistic emotional response; what is the emotional response relative to?

Human beings are indeed all different, and this is why the reaction of one person to the same action is different to another person, therefore reaction is most certainly not relative to action, but rather, relative to emotional intelligence. This doesn’t get us very far though, to say that emotional intelligence is the basis for how a person reacts. To fully understand this we must find what emotional intelligence is relative to.

And it’s very clear, actually. Emotional intelligence and responses are relative to understanding of the environment and world around us. This understanding is, however, based on upbringing and environment of the particular person. Right from the moment the person is born, the environment plays its toll. This is not merely the idea that abusive parents will bring up children who are worse off than other children, but rather analysing why the person’s parents are abusive. To understand this, we come to the conclusion that a person’s life does not start when he or she is born, but rather at the beginning, to when the environment started (the beginning of time).

This could almost absolve any human being of morally and ethically unjust actions, because those actions are not only a reaction of the present moment surrounding them, but the reaction of their parents upbringing, and their parents’ upbringing, and their parents. There is no end to the idea because everybody’s actions has a reaction, and those reactions are almost never directed at the initial person, therefore it’s past on.

Apologies for this blog entry, it’s a quick one and a lot of ideas coming out in one go.

What is Endnote?

Wikipedia describes Endnote as a program which “groups citations into “libraries” with the file extension *.enl and a corresponding *.data folder”. What I would describe it as is the most useful tool in any university course to-date. It basically allows the user to input data into fields (such as Title, Author, Date, etc) and get an output of a professional looking reference. The program also integrates with Microsoft Word which then enables the user to input the list of references into their assignment directly.

Sounds pretty fancy, yeah?

It is a small learning curve to learn and master, though. This is the reason for this tutorial which will enable anyone interested in doing professional-looking references in a fraction of the time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Dawkins is a man who firmly believes in a set of principles, philosophies and understandings which are based on science, facts and understandings from many, many writings. Personally I’ve always seen his work approached with an open mind and objection in how the scientific understanding can be “proven”. There is an interview with himself and Wendy Wright where he makes points for Evolution and how it should be taught in schools over Creationism as a theory as to the state of the human race it’s currently in.

One of the first statements made from Wendy Wright is that “if we believe that human beings were made by a loving Creator, we are more likely to treat other people with respect and dignity.” Dawkins, from here progresses to talk about evolution and the facts of evolution. But what I’m concerned with is this philosophy that believing in a being – believing that a being created us with a spirit, should I say – provokes us to be good to each other. Is this true, though? From my understanding the sanctity of human life comes about from the upbringing and the values instilled upon us from our parents. And, if for example, we are taught these values from parents who believe in a Creator, you could leave out the idea of such a being and still get the same message across.

This is one of the fundamental problems I have with Religion, as a whole, is that it teaches the right principles for the wrong reasons. And, as the saying goes, a good decision, made for wrong reasons, can be a wrong decision – because good, bad, right and wrong are subjective to the human mind. So what you find is that once you start including a 3^rd party source for reasoning as to do and not to do, once you gain the ability to think for yourself (that is to say not have a Creator think for you), reasoning for actions done will drastically change and that could change the actions themselves. The reasoning for people to treat other people with respect and kindness, in this case, is that we are from the same Creator and as such we should all respect each other. Personally, I think a better reason would be “would you like it if that was done to you?”

Another issue with this idea is that Creationism itself is an ideology from the old testament of the Bible. The idea of “Love thy neighbour as thy love thy self comes” is a New Testament ideology. I have no idea where the idea of respecting each other comes from in this context because this is the same Jewish Testament that states to kill a woman if she is not a virgin when she marries [Exodus 35:2] and the same Testament that preaches to kill disobedient teenagers [Deuteronomy 21:18-21]. The idea of respecting a point of view and respecting each other as human beings completely contradicts so many matters in the Bible where God demands the death of Thousands simply because they don’t share the same view point – this doesn’t sound like a high respect for one another to me.

The next point she makes is to teach the controversy. The problem I can see straight away with this idea is that one theory is heavily supported, while the other is not. For the purpose of this article it’s meaningless to state what I, personally, believe – but looking at it from a logical point of view, when you want to teach ideas that are formed on a single story in a single book throughout the history of time, versus the many scientific discoveries about a particular theory, that’s not completely fair, is it? I would teach such controversy is a social studies class or a Bible class where matters of the Bible can be established – not in a science class, purely because science builds is statements on the fundamental idea of evidence supporting a view point to such a degree that it is deemed fact.

Wendy Wright seems to be an intelligent woman, however continually pointed out evidence for evolution not being a feasible idea – the first of which she mentions the pig’s tooth which ended up not being the tooth of a man, but really was just a pig’s tooth. These contesting ideas are not the basis to prove a theory, it is simply to disprove a theory – which is fine for debate against and for evolution, but if you’re going to have a hypothesis of your own, it’s suggested that you actually have an amount of evidence that backs up your claim, rather than continuously picking on someone else’s.

Further in the interview, Dawkins’s asks Wendy Wright where she studied science. Her response is “That’s the point; scientists are claiming they are the only ones who can speak on this issue.” – She didn’t study science anywhere, and this is where her entire argument and anything she states falls apart. By this, she’s stating that she’s not studied science. Hence, she’s arguing a deeply scientific point from the basis of a single chapter, in a single book, written 1600 odd years ago.

The final point about Wendy Wright’s argument is that we all have a spirit and/or a soul. She states that we as Human Beings are different from the rest of the Animal Kingdom because we have spirits and souls. She then goes on to say that she has a mentally disabled niece, but her disabled niece has a spirit. “That is the difference between Humans and Animals, is that we have spirits.” She then argues that Darwinism forms a hierarchy of people based on what they can contribute to society who think they are better than other people, and forms systems such as communism. I’m not arguing that we and animals do or do not have souls, but to state that we as humans have a soul simply because we are human, and that an animal who does provide for us in its meat, in its connection to the food chain, etc. does not have a spirit is completely arrogant, ignorant and biased to human. This is what Darwinism itself is conveying, that we are intelligent, supposedly, hence we are better. That in itself is a complete contradiction because on one hand she’s stating that Darwinism is bad because of the hierarchical system it forms, but on the other hand she’s forming another hierarchical system in which human beings, themselves, are above all others.

We are not. We are simply another species in this world and universe which play a part in the continuous cycle that is life. We are no more important than any other species, for without them, life could not exist. Funny enough, though, without “us” life would go on very easily.