Bill's Comments

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow." --Federalist No. 62

.....but we keep forgetting that lesson.

[We have to pay attention to whom we elect and what they are doing and why.]

Let's see, Brown wins in Massachusetts--the message is that government has to become more fiscally responsible. So President Obama comes on TV and announces that he will not let contractors that have not paid taxes bid on government jobs--it will recover $5 billion supposedly to enforce laws already on the books. Of course we are 12.8 Trillion (That's over 2000 times greater) in debt already and heading upwards. So where does the other 1999/2000 come from?

Gates of Vienna , which has specialized in blogging on the Islamist attempt to overtake the world, has reporting on the trial of Geert Wilders, a Dutch Parliamentarian, for remarks he made speaking as a member of Parliament. This is the final outcome of so-called Hate Speech Law, the suppression of honest discussion of issues important to the political health of a country. Go to the website and read the first few posts.

.........Be afraid, be very afraid.

The existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven. In a series of essays, I tried to show that whether the universe is deterministic or not also cannot be proven or disproven. Additionally, I showed that one could put constraints on the problem and reduce it to a question of whether the universe is infinitely continuous at any microscopic level, or not, if it were then it was deterministic. Analogously I can argue that though we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, we can put constraints on what His nature must be if he does exist, given the knowledge we have of the world today and our existing concepts of God.

Generally God is considered an immaterial being that lives somewhere called Heaven. As commonly conceived, He is the ultimate dualism problem, in that being immaterial, He can still affect the material world. One of the implications of my saying God only works through people, is that we can find a way around this dualistic problem. More on that below.

The first constraint that I would argue for is that God does not break the rules of nature. In another essay where I first stated this I discussed its implications on the possibility of miracles. That is outside this discussion but will be covered at another time. What is important, however, is the question of a friend of mine who is a Lutheran lay pastor. He and I had some interesting discussions, and when I said that God does not break the rules of nature, his response was, “Is it because He will not break them, or because He cannot break them?” Further on in this essay, we will see that this has a major impact on the theodicic question. For now let’s look at how traditional Christian belief approaches this.

According to the Biblical tradition, God created everything, the Heavens and the Earth. Today we would generalize this to the Universe. Accordingly then, He also had to have created the laws by which it operates. Since He created the Laws of Nature, then He should be able to use or not use them as he sees fit. Many Christians today, think that God is directly involved in all events on earth, both natural and human-caused. They truly believe that He controls the weather, or can if he wishes, and other natural disasters as well as human-caused evil. They ascribe to a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

This belief leads them into some very serious difficulties when faced with the apparent success of evil or a natural disaster. The immediate question is, “How can God let this happen?” This is often met with the response, “It is not for us to know God’s ways,” or some equivalent. According to an excellent book on the history of evil in philosophic thought, this question was first asked in a meaningful way after the great earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The answers all amount to, “I don’t know.”

No matter how we unpack the trio of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, it is internally self-contradictory. It’s like the old sales saying, “Faster, cheaper, better, pick two.” In this particular essay, we will approach the problem as if omniscience and omnibenevolence are valid.

To justify this choice we can point out that, if God exists, he should be in a position of being able to know so much more than us, that whether or not His knowledge is truly infinite (the ultimate meaning of omniscient), it is so far ahead of ours that we can take it as a working example of omniscience. How could His knowledge be greater than ours? This is another implied ability of God, to know all that we know and more. If we constrain His knowledge just to that which we as humans collectively know, it is much vaster than what any one person knows. This is not just academic knowledge but all knowledge of life under all circumstances of human living. It is fairly simple to assume that He is able to sort and analyze this knowledge, removing contradictions, recognizing similarities and patterns, and defining gaps, given that He is able to acquire it. Generally, God is given greater knowledge than this, so we can take as an operational definition that God is omniscient.

Also we can point out that if God is not omnibenevolent, then why should we worship Him or respect Him? If his motivation is not our best interests, then there is no reason to have Him as God, other than to bribe him to be nice to us, to bend His ends to ours, or at least let us survive and hopefully prosper. There are some other implications of this question when we consider omnipotence.

Let us first examine the consequences of true omnipotence. First of all, if God is truly omnipotent, then He must have omniscience. Otherwise, He has power that he cannot correctly apply or perhaps even use for a failure in the knowledge required to do so. Anything less than omniscience immediately implies less than omnipotence. But if he is omnipotent, then he has the ability to alter anything, change the forces of nature, even, in principle change time. If he can do this, then why do bad things happen to good people, to quote a book title? The problem is that by our moral standards, he is letting evil happen[1] when he could prevent it, and is therefore culpable of being a part of it. One might make a utilitarian argument that says more harm would occur if He did not let it happen, but considering we posit God as a deontological being not a utilitarian being, this is a contradiction of Christian belief. It also contradicts the omnibenevolence attribution, or rather reduces it to a utilitarian calculation as well.

Does He follow the laws of nature out of the respect for our intellectual strivings to understand them? After all, if He changes and alters them willy-nilly, we would never understand them. But then again, why should it be in His interests for us to do so? Why should He want humans to be the cantankerous, ego-driven, independent creatures, that we are? For that matter why should he want us to have free will? These last two questions are obviously rhetorical, but they touch on much of the mystery that comes with the omni-triad.

From my perspective, the idea that God is not omnipotent is the easiest way to deal with the contradiction. God follows the laws of nature, because He cannot do other. At the same time this absolves Him of the problems of theodicy. He allows evil to happen only because He cannot prevent it. But what does that leave us then? He can still be omniscient and omnibenevolent and be unable to do all that He wants to help us.

But if He cannot disobey the laws of nature, just as we cannot, what is His value? What can he do? After all we define him as not material in our world. For that matter, if He is not all powerful, how do we know He is there to start with? Why should we have any belief in Him or His efficacy? If we expect physical demonstration of Him, there is no reason. The example of the professor that says, “If there is a God, let Him strike me dead in the next 20 seconds,” and twenty seconds later says, “I’m still alive, there is no God,” is cheap theatrics not valid philosophy or theology. It also happens to be massive arrogance to consider oneself so important among all the people of the world that God would take the time to strike one person dead just to show His existence. For that matter, it also runs against the omnibenevolence idea, because God is not benevolent to just believers, but to all.

There is a means by which God can be effective on earth, people. God communicates with people.[2] In the Old Testament it was often in dreams or visions. There are stories of direct conversation, e.g. Abram and God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. My own thoughts are that it can be dreams or visions but also something known in a moment of quiet openness. It is not necessarily a voice or vision, but knowledge, and it is conveyed as a choice. In one sense this seems more impotent than potent, but humans are the biggest show on the planet for better or for worse. And regardless of the historical theories that times make the man, history is full of people that single-handedly made a difference either by their own efforts or by recruiting people to help.

We as humans effect the world around us by creating physical objects to change it. We become more effective by recruiting other people to help us do this. From this activity come our societies and cultures. It is not a far stretch to consider that God would do the same thing by asking people to do things that they might not think of themselves, but once having considered it, subscribe to the effort with all their will. And yes, one can look at it like a numbers game just as sales people do, out of so many candidates will come prospects, and out of so many prospects will come closures. The only thing I would think is that with God’s greater knowledge, He has a higher success ratio.

Again however we still must consider that using people is not perfectly efficient. Some evil is so great that only large groups of powerfully motivated people can overcome it. Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, and Mao’s Red China come to mind. The first fell by the force of the Allied Armies. The other two fell from the combined Cold War efforts and their own internal contradictions. Also not all good seems to be rewarded, but that is another topic.

After first admitting our ignorance of whether God exists or not for certain, if we accept His existence as a belief, then what value is that belief? First it is the North of our moral compass. All morality to theists, at least those that believe that God is more than the First Watchmaker of the Universe, starts with what they think God wants as moral standards. (It is not the place to discuss here that most of those standards can be arrived at from non-theistic belief systems.) Most Christians take it much further, ascribing to Him all the power we discussed above, and then asking for various blessings, assistance, and forgiveness. That discussion is for another time. Second, it may be a source of comfort in times of trouble—God is watching out and will help as He is able. Third, He may indeed “talk” to people when they are open to it and He needs their assistance. It is not a forceful “Du wilst,” but “I would like you to….,” or “Have you considered….”

[1]It is evil as opposed to bad because having the power to control it makes Him responsible for it, therefore it can be considered intentional.
[2]It becomes highly speculative physics, but gets around the problem, if we hypothesize that God exists as some sort of field complex in the dimensions other than our own three. Since speculative physics now hypothesizes that the universe is composed of many dimensions, then all things may inhabit more than just the three dimensions we are used to. God would interact with humans through their nervous system’s electrical fields, via the non-spacial dimensions.

Gates of Vienna is following the trial of Geert Wilders on hate speech grounds closely. Go read their posts and see what happens to free speech when hate speech becomes a criminal offense.

.....is the suppression of free speech. It sounds so good on the surface until you look at what it is used for.

One of my favorite cooking activities is making stock. Let's be very clear, stock is NOT broth. Broth comes from cooking meat and is primarily the juices from the meat in the cooking water. Broth is often delicate and has salt in it. Stock on the other hand has been to body-building school and has taken steroids. Stock requires bones, some fresh meat, and vegetables. The techniques and principles of making stock can be adapted to enrich the flavor of many things, including giblet gravy.

Basic stock is very simple, but requires time. I have made ham, chicken, and turkey stock. They all have the same basic approach with some refinements as desired. Bones, onions, celery, carrots, bay leaves, thyme stems, peppercorns and water are the basics. Generally I make between 3 and 6 quarts of stock in a 10 quart stock pot.

For the bones from two hams or the carcass of a 10+ lb turkey, I use two large onions, peeled and cut in half, four large carrots in 3 inchs pieces, four or five stalks of celery in 3 in pieces. I then take cheese cloth and wrap 3 bay leaves, several stems of fresh thyme, and 10-15 peppercorns inside and tie it securely. That makes the spices easy to remove later. I put it all in the stock pot, and if the bones have already been cooked once, cover with hot water with two inches or so above the starting surface. I bring it to a boil and simmer gently, uncovered or partly covered, adding boiling water as necessary to keep everything covered. Skim the foam as it forms. For ham and turkey there won't be much. I boil turkey about three hours, and ham about four to five. When you are through boiling, take it off and filter it through two layers of cheese cloth in a colander. Chill or freeze as soon as possible, stock is a great medium for bacteria. Remove the fat from the stock after it is cold and settled.

If you want to save the meat from the ham or turkey bones, (which has little or no flavor, but still has texture) then pick out the spice bag and the pieces of vegetable. Remove as many bones as possible, then start filtering the stock. You will have to pick the meat from the remaining bones. This is very tedious for turkey, as the necks and backs disintegrate, and there are many fine bony leaders in the remaining leg muscle material. Note: Turkey skin adds nothing to the stock, so discard it with as much fat as possible before making the stock. The same for any skin or fat on the ham.

Though the principles are the same, there is some variation in the chicken stock I make. I use fresh bones if I can get them, and never the bones from cooked chicken. If I know I will be making stock in the future, I will buy breasts with bone in, or whole chickens and bone them, freezing the bones until I want them. Along with the chicken bones, I will add a package of necks and backs and a package of legs with thighs. Usually I take a cleaver and cut the necks, backs, thighs, and legs in half. I want to expose more bone in the fresh chicken. I may use relatively more thyme with chicken, though that is optional. Again, don't use the skin from chicken in the stock. It doesn't help and can add an off flavor to it. I only cook chicken stock about two to three hours. I filter chicken stock and never save the meat--it has no flavor; it is all in the stock.

NEVER put salt in stock. Often stock is concentrated for sauces and the salt will concentrate with it. Only add salt at serving time, or after any reductions.

If you read major cookbooks on stock, they will all have their own variants on the basic. This is where stock is so much fun. You can vary the proportions, or add other flavors to it. Most professional cook books make very basic stocks, reduce them and then make sauces. The variations are at the sauce level not the stock level.

Common stocks include fish (a very fragile stock, only cooks for an hour, and fish bones are hard to find) chicken, veal, lamb, beef, and vegetable. This latter apparently takes some skill and effort to produce a flavorful brown stock, starting with roasting the vegetables. I have not tried it, though it is on the list of to dos sometime.

For making soups, stock is essential to many recipes, and chicken stock shows up in places I never realized.

I think the reason I like making stock is that it is like a large-scale organic synthesis, and much of the operation is like large-scale chemistry. It is also a very free-form event. Within very large ranges, you have a lot of freedom to change the proportions of ingredients and still have a good-tasting product. However, if you want consistency, it is best to write down what you put in by weight, e.g., five pounds of bones, a pound of onions, 1/4 lb each carrots and celery, etc.

If you haven't tried stock and consider yourself a serious cook, then do so. The results are the foundation of many wonderful dishes.

I have been playing three games in FaceBook, FarmVille, Treasure Madness, and Castle Age. In each case one of my friends, a different one in each case, got me interested and started. In effect, they are electronic board games in the way they are played, only more complex in the rule and interaction sets. All have some limiting item to be obtained that can be obtained over time, or by purchasing it via a third-party financier, eg. PayPal. I have read that these games are actually excellent money-makers for their originators. A few dollars gets considerable advancement, and with millions of players, only a few dollars per player are needed to create considerable cash flow.

FarmVille is the simplest of all, plant and harvest crops and interact with neighbors, giving them gifts, receiving gifts, visting their farms and helping out. The result is a monotonic advance in status. It requires both earning dollars and experience in planting and harvesting crops to advance. Buying things with dollars provides experience, planting and harvesting require the investment of dollars followed by at least a doubling with the harvest in a few hours to a few days, real time. In addition to crops, one can plant and harvest trees, raise animals, build buildings, and decorate with hedges, fences, lawn ornaments, etc. One builds a farm in the image one wants. Actually, it is a fair amount of fun, just about what a board game would produce, only protracted over weeks and months with an indefinite number of players. The key here is it is non-competitive, only cooperative. In addition, it is continually enhanced with new reward ribbons, new crops, new gifts to give one another, and new decorations to purchase, mostly with the dollars you can buy not the coins you earn in the game.

Treasure Madness is also monotonically increasing, but in a different way. It is built around an archeological theme, excavate and find the treasures of past civilizations. It is the perfect game for someone slightly obsessive like myself. One can systematically work through the maps, which are imaginary islands laid out on a grid, either finding nothing, finding coins, gold, or jewels, all worth Gold Points, finding food items, bananas, kiwis, coconuts, or melons, or finding an archeological treasure. If it is an archeological treasure, then it is necessary to win a simple game first to obtain it. Games include two versions of Tetras, a couple of different tile movement games, a memory game, and what is called pearl drop, which I usually avoid by paying the price of one Health Point and switching games. Time is more generous in this game than in the next in rewarding Health Points, which can also be purchased. The goal is to complete maps and complete collections of five related artifacts. The developers also offer "crates" which have undisclosed contents that can be purchased to complete collections.

It appears that the overall discovery of treasures is controlled by random number generation. At thirty-five seconds recovery of a health point, it only takes about an hour to recover a very significant number of health points, and one expends ten to thirteen HPs for each tile on the grid that is explored. Thus for a dedicated player, the largest of maps may be completely explored in a few hours. Besides HPs the limiting factor is Gold Points, and these can only be obtained from the game. It is sometimes necessary to discontinue the exploration of one island for want of gold, and go to another one with more than average gold to obtain the necessary funds to purchase things like anti-venom, bat nets, anteaters (yes, anteaters, and they are very expensive.), and dynamite. Again, for board gamers this can be a fun game.

The most complex of the lot is Castle Age. Based on a Dungeons and Dragons like environment, one pursues quests with game characters as generals, hires various mercinaries, purchases weapons and land. One advances by experience points, and these are obtained on quests and by battle.

This latter means requires a certain ruthlessness. One selects unknown players of similar skill and battles them. The results are controlled by the program's calculation of relative strength, and some randomness. The winner receives battle points, maybe dollars, if they are not stashed in the keep, and experience points. At particular levels of total battle points, one receives game-valuable awards, and rank. At particular level of experience points one moves up a level. The key is to find an enemy to do battle with that one can beat and then fighting until one has either run out of stamina, or has completely defeated the character. A completely defeated character will simply wait and have all the health restored or else purchase it with stored income.

The game requires the constant exercise of judgment for success, as well as careful tactics and strategies. One learns to time level advances because they completely replenish health, energy, and stamina. Health is required in battle, as is stamina. Energy is required in questing as well as dollars to purchase the needed mercenaries. This latter becomes very expensive, and early investments in land are quite useful later, as many of the necessary mercenaries and weapons have on-going upkeep that requires constant income, which is provided by the purchase of land.

There is one feature of Castle Age that bemuses me. All the male characters are dressed in massive armor and carry large weapons in their pictures. All the female characters are in their early twenties, and are dressed relatively seductively, certainly not for battle. Yet the game rules require the leading of troops as generals by these female characters on given quests. It is almost as if they are a version of Stupifyin' Jones in the old comic strip, Li'l Abner. One look at her and men were paralyzed.

Regardless, of the visuals, it is possible to develop an approach that is limited only by time to recover energy and stamina. Once one has a reasonable treasury, health is recovered simply by spending dollars. When one has used up all ones energy on questing, one can still go battling with stamina. It is in the battling that the ruthlessness comes out. One can beat up on one opponent until they are "killed" or reduced to too low a strength to fight. At the same time one takes available money from the victim. It is the ultimate Might Makes Right. I have discovered that I am not as ruthless as I could be, generally quitting sooner on a victim when they are losing dollars than if all they are losing is health. Knowing the value of the dollars to me, I get sympathetic of the victim somewhere during the battle and ease off.

Because of its complexity, Castle Age is my favorite of the three. However, it is also the most time limited. It takes five minutes to recover a unit of energy, and the same for a unit of stamina. Generally, stamina is less limiting in the game. It is possible to indirectly purchase either energy or stamina with real money. Once one has over 100 units of energy, it takes all night or all day to replenish it completely unless one gets a level upgrade. That can make a significant bottleneck for someone who is impatient. Like the old song says, "My God, how the money rolls in."

So that is the somewhat dissociative world of FaceBook games, where I play and have fun and at the same time observe and analyze.