Can chance create meaningful information?
How would it be distinguished from meaningless garbage? To illustrate what I mean, consider the Library of Babel: Jean Luis Borges wrote a short story in which every possible book, ie every possible combination of letters, was contained in an infinite Library (which represents the Universe). Every truth was contained in the Library, but maddeningly the library is useless for finding truth.

This is because, in the extraordinary even you found a book that wasn’t filled with nonsense, it could just as well be garbage as truth (and statistically it’s a good deal more likely to be the former). It’s a great story, I recommend reading it.

My point is that even if chance could produce ‘information’ it would be indistinguishable from junk, and so would not be information. This would be so except when some other information was available for use as criteria – and, ironically, if and only if that other information did not arise by chance (because if it was produced by chance the other criteria would itself be indistinguishable from the myriad of other, similar but junk criteria. In fact, there would be infinite sets of junk ‘information’ and matching criteria, both for and against).

What do you think? If you can spot a hole in it, I’d love it if you pointed it out. (HH?)

Jokes are dead. The internet is responsible. Your job: to bring them back.

Has anyone else noticed the death of the Joke? Or am I just hanging around with the wrong crowd? I haven’t heard a solid shaggy dog story in months, maybe years; it seems to me the art of spinning a good joke is dead.

I blame the internet. (Blaming the net is all the rage these days)
Come back with me to a pub in an outback town, decades before ‘internet’ was even a word. What were jokes then? They were connections to other people, conversation starters, and entertainment.

But most importantly: they were jewels. Without online joke databases and email chain letters, jokes were passed through their telling. They were tested on new audiences; good ones remembered and retold complete with the teller’s signature exaggeration. A new joke might have crossed oceans, deserts, or mountain ranges, carried by the faithful word warriors in fishing boats, on horses, in pubs, camping, driving, or in trains.

Enter the internet. One of the first websites I ever visited was a joke site. On it you could read tens of thousands of jokes, rated, ranked, and categorized.

Now jokes could be mass-consumed m&m style, alone, one after the other, joke upon joke, without pause, until the reader had eaten enough. Jokes were cut off from the source of life supplied by a human speaker, whose timing, intonation, facial expressions, and all-important embellishment were the real origin of the humour. Removed from interesting environments, they also lost what made them meaningful: their ability to form connections between people.

And so, jokes stopped being funny. Still amusing, still entertaining, but now hardly able to bring more than a smile. And so also, jokes ceased to be remembered. Once we prized the ability to recall every detail of a dozen jokes, but now, who would need to, with such vast compilations at our fingertips?

But is it so far gone?

 In a world of ever expanding cities, of busy, faceless strangers, of stress and rush, people need to connect. We often share our busses, trainstations, Starbucks, bars, park benches and offices with the same people everyday, but remain trapped in our own world by our ipods and magazines. Jokes are perfect ice-breakers and ideal conversation-starters; comforting and entertaining. It’s time for the joke to make a comeback.

And the job falls to you. You will notice I have not linked to a single website in this article. Of course not. Jokes must be sought and collected, not searched and downloaded. This is what you must do: When you’re next on a bus, in a restaurant, at a sporting event, ask: “Do you know any good jokes?”. Or, better yet, tell one. But that’s only half the job. You’ve got to remember their joke, spread it, and, most importantly, improve it – add to it.

Corny as it sounds, how better to start a conversation and get people to open up than with a laugh? Try it, and, who knows, maybe the joke will be resurrected.

Now get out there! You’ve got a job to do!

Jesus is my homeboy. What does that mean? He’s my homie. We hang out everyday. He’s got my back. I listen to him. I speak to him. I love him. I worship him – for real! 2 He’s the best. I want my mates to be homies with him to. Jesus is my homeboy.

Do you agree? Head to iagreewithdale.com and leave a comment!

[Okay, okay, I promise never to resort to such low humour again, happy?]

This is the final installment of this series – I think its the weirdest of all. If you need any more proof that the world is weird, you need to spend more time on youtube.

Weirder than time, weirder than waves and particles, weirder even than Dr Quantum himself:
Its a poodle (human?) exercise video!

I love it that she acts like there is nothing strange going on at all!

What’s the weirdest video you’ve seen on youtube? Leave a comment! (Links are better than embedded players)

Luckily, we are only just scratching the surface of the stimulating weirdness that science offers. Yesterday we looked at Einstein’s Relativity. There’s heaps more to dig into in that area, but today we’re going to zoom in to the tiny world of Quantum mechanics (in a very basic way)

Are you made of particles or waves? Can something be both dead and alive at the same time? Why does it ‘pick’ a state when observed?
As with relativity, you’ll never need to understand this – but just imagine how cool and intelligent you could sound at a party. (“Oh yes, but as the concept of superposition tells us…”

These videos give a fun description of some weird quantum stuff (and the cartoon ‘professor’ might just be the weirdest of all).

Particles or waves? (This one gets weirder the further in you get) – 5mins

Is there space at all? -1min

Lastly, can a cat be both dead and alive at the same time?

“Schrödinger’s cat” is a kind of thought experiment. Imagine a cat is locked in a box (vegetarians: its ok, we’re just pretending) with a vial of acid and a radioactive atom. When the radioactive atom decays, it triggers a hammer that smashes the vial of acid – killing the cat.
The trick is this: when the atom decays is purely random. Say you left the box for an hour. When you came back, there would be a chance that the cat is dead, and a chance that it is still alive.
But according to quantum mechanics, the atom (until it is observed) has both decayed and not decayed. If you watched the first video above, this is like the electron passing through both slits.
So, until you open the box, the cat is both dead and alive. (more info)

Food for thought: To someone outside the room, even after the box has been opened, the whole room contains a cat that is both dead and alive. What about someone unaware of this person? When would this end? (Something omniscient?)

If you have some ‘dead time’ today (sitting on a bus, waiting for a friend, in the elevator of a very, very tall building), these could be interesting  things to throw around in your head.

The world is weird!
What is the weirdest thing about the world you can think of?

Two things that happen at the same time… happen at the same time, right?
Wrong (according to Einstein and most scientists today).
And if I drive past you, I see your time moving more slowly than mine… but you see my time flowing more slowly! What?

You will never need to understand Relativity. But if you enjoy trying to wrap your head around mind-blowing, confusing, and weird stuff, (and even if you don’t), then try to understand these:

Simultaneity:
 

Time:

If these have whet your appetite and you want to dig deeper into even weirder stuff, this site does a great job of explaining it. But keep this in mind:

Before leading an expedition to prove Einstein’s General Relativity, the physicist Sir Arthur Edington was asked “Is it true that only three people in the world understand relativity?”

Eddington reportedly responded, “Who’s the third?”

The world is weird!
What is the weirdest thing about the world you can think of? (Science or otherwise – maybe its your neighbours.)

 Is skateboarding for everyone?
Did Jesus die because I suck?

Do you agree with Dale?

I agree with him. I screw up every day. I lie, steal, cheat, hate, slander, lust, cuss, gossip, and idolise. I am arrogant, disobedient, greedy, selfish and lawless. In short, I suck.

There isn’t much hope in that picture – alone, I’m stuffed. Thanks to Jesus, we can have hope.  He took our place on the cross so we can be forgiven:

 ”For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Have you ever actually thought about what that means?

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

How good is that!

DO YOU AGREE??? Head here and say “I agree” in the comments… (or “I disagree”)

Are floaties sometimes just not enough?
Is it all about Jesus? 

Life. The Universe. Everything. It’s all about Jesus. We were made by Jesus. We were made for Jesus. If you know Jesus you know God. He lived a perfect life. Died a terrible death. Did the smack down on death and rose again. It’s all about him. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

DO YOU AGREE??? Head here and say “I agree” in the comments… (or “I disagree”)