Depth Deception the Blog

New Song -- Star Wars: Battle of Tatooine [Now in handy Youtube form!]

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:35:00 +0000

Star Wars: Battle of Tatooine [Original Composition]

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:18:00 +0000

The challenge: while incorporating original motifs and melodies, how closely can I recreate and rearrange classic Star Wars themes from memory without using references, listening to recordings, or cross-checking sheet music?

"Star Wars: Battle of Tatooine" is my attempt to meet this challenge.

Let me know what you think!

Benjamin Franklin: An Animated Character

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:27:00 +0000

I've finished Philip Dray's biography of Benjamin Franklin, "Stealing God's Thunder," and while it could have used another round of editing [Dray seems to have a penchant for digression and repeating himself] over-all the book is exciting and deeply interesting. Of course, so is his subject, for whom my esteem has greatly increased. In many respects, Franklin's life of achievements parallels my other favorite scientist, Charles Darwin. And like so many great minds, his attitude toward religion and superstition is as illuminating as a lightning bolt. As he approached his death, he offered this witty observation:

To the clergyman Ezra Stiles, who queried him about his religious views, Franklin affirmed his faith in God but admitted to doubts about the divinity of Jesus, "tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."

What an agreeable old man. Cheers to you, Benjamin Franklin, scientist and founding [grand]father of the United States.

Benjamin Franklin is EVERYWHERE

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:56:00 +0000

The Fresh Air Fund

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Hey, check it out:

One out of four school children in the U.S. has vision problems, and 86% do not get their vision checked before age 12.

Many Fresh Air children do not have access to affordable vision care. Glasses break, are too expensive to replace, or are never prescribed in the first place. And often as a result, children's performance in academics, sports and activities suffers.

For the fifth summer in a row, OneSight offered to bring their traveling optical clinic to all five Fresh Air Fund camps.

Together with OneSight's Vision Vans – and a team of local doctors and volunteers, OneSight provides free eye exams and eyewear to thousands of children in need each year.

This summer at Fresh Air camp, OneSight's staff screened 3,295 children and counselors, gave 1,757 eye exams, and made 1,629 pairs of glasses, with 1,458 of them on-site and 171 specially driven in. The team stayed at Camp Hayden-Marks for two camp sessions, to make sure every child who needed the gift of sight was screened.

Childhood vision is a subject close to my heart for obvious reasons.
If you can help out, please do!

Fun With Bees

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:54:00 +0000

This is for Mike

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:05:00 +0000

Intelligence Squared Debate -- Is the Catholic Church a Force for Good in the World?

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:48:00 +0000

Speaking for the motion, conservative MP Ann Widdencombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan. Speaking against the motion, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry. This debate is what you might call a blood bath. Hitchens and Fry mop the floor with their opponents, so much so that even I blush with embarrassment for Widdencombe and Onaiyekan.

If only Fry and Hitchens would take this show on the road, the whole of the orthodoxy might be deconverted in only a few months!

For those who just want to cut to the chase, here's the public vote on the motion before and after the debate:

Benjamin Franklin Anecdotes

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:58:00 +0000

I've started reading Philip Dray's biography of Benjamin Franklin, "Stealing God's Thunder," which approaches Franklin as scientist first and statesman second. The book is full of interesting anecdotes, but I found one story of Benjamin Franklin's youth particularly humorous. One day, while assisting his father with a barrel of beef in the cellar, young Benjamin suggested blessing the unprepared food once so that they could save themselves from saying grace before every dinner. I love how the economical and bright thinking that would characterize Franklin's later life seems already present in his childhood and even foreshadows his eventual antagonism toward organized religion and authority.

Akira Kurosawa's Ran

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:07:00 +0000

"Ran (乱?, "chaos" or "revolt") is a 1985 film written and directed by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. It is a jidaigeki (Japanese period drama) depicting the fall of Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. The story is based on legends of the daimyo Mōri Motonari, as well as on the Shakespearean tragedy King Lear." [wiki]

I think if I were to teach a class on Shakespeare's King Lear, I would also make Ran required watching. It's magnificent and epic. The use of color is astounding. It's like watching a moving painting.

Heroes

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:15:00 +0000

I thought I'd make a list of historical figures who I consider to be personal heroes along with a list of sub-heroes or people who I admire but I either do not know enough about or, upon learning more, have discovered some disqualifying feature.

This will probably be an on-going project. Please include your own lists and suggestions in the comments.

Heroes

Charles Darwin
James Randi

Sub-Heroes

Daniel Dennett
Benjamin Franklin
Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
Alan Turing
Socrates
Epicurus
Harvey Milk
Kurt Vonnegut
Flannery O'Connor
Beethoven

Who is a hero? Someone who is predominately good, who may have some flaws, but is principled and intelligent, someone who has been tested by history and bruised by detractors and difficult times, but is nevertheless resilient, someone who improves life for us all, is interesting and becomes more interesting the more you delve into his or her past.

Looking at my list so far, you will notice a rather disturbing lack of women and religious people. I've thrown in Flannery O'Connor, one of my favorite writers, who was both a woman and a devout Catholic. But her inclusion is a stretch because I'm not particularly well-read of all her work and I know even less about her past. I'm tempted to add Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, which I still may do, but I'm not yet fascinated by these historical figures.

I would genuinely like to add some religious people, but knowing my interests, this is a tough proposition because religion is often a disqualifier. Anyone know anything about Rabbi Hillel? CS Lewis might have been a candidate, but after reading the first few pages of Mere Christianity, I'm afraid he's out the door. Saint Augustine perhaps?

One of the facts about myself that I have often wondered: Am I a skeptic because my heroes are skeptics or are my heroes skeptics because I am a skeptic? There is a subtle but important difference between those statements, the second being more egocentric than the first. I am fairly confident that I found my heroes first and their conduct and history led me to where I stand today. But it's difficult to escape the suspicion that maybe I've never been as free in my inquiries as I'd like to think.

Zionsville Boys Win State 2009!

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:32:00 +0000

The part you really want to see: My brother with the assist

Congratulations to the Zionsville High School Boys soccer team for winning the 2009 state championship! Video courtesy of the IHSAA Sports Youtube channel.

Brain Processes Facts and Beliefs Same Way

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:41:00 +0000

A new study was published recently by Jonas Kaplan and Sam Harris. Some interesting tidbits:

Up on a screen before them, participants would read declarative statements. Some were statements of religious belief, some of religious disbelief. Some were statements about more ordinary facts. Participants had to push buttons—indicating true or false—as the researchers watched their brains light up. Belief in God, disbelief in God, and belief in simple empirically verifiable facts all lit up the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that governs your sense of self. We are, in some sense, what we believe.

The fMRI experiments do not pertain to these largest questions, of course. But they do show (again) what neuroscientists already know. "Intuition" and "reason" are not two separate activities. They're interconnected. From the brain's point of view, religious belief and empirical data are the same.

What Harris, his fellow researcher Jonas Kaplan, and the other authors of the study want to address is the idea, which has been floating around in both scientific and religious circles, that our brains are doing something special when we believe in God—that religious belief is, neurologically speaking, an entirely different process from believing in things that are empirically and verifiably true (things that Harris endearingly refers to as "tables and chairs"). He says his results "cut against the quite prevalent notion that there's something else entirely going on in the case of religious belief."

"It is generally imagined," he wrote to me in an e-mail, "that scientific facts and human values represent distinct and incommensurable ways of speaking about the world. Consequently, most people assume that science will never be in a position to resolve ethical questions or to determine how human beings ought to live." Questions of gay marriage, the subjugation of women under the Taliban, a community's responsibility to its children: all these have been relegated to the realm of religion or "values." But, says Harris, the more we know, through science, about how people live—and how they think, and what makes them happy—the more real information we'll have about how best to live together on this planet.

To casual readers, this all may seem very obvious. Of course religious believers and disbelievers really do believe what they say! But it is not just interesting that we believe what we say, but that we believe what we say in the same way, neurologically speaking. Moreover, this study adds weight to the argument against the popular position espoused by such notables as Stephen J Gould that science and religion are somehow separate inquiries into "non-overlapping magisterium."

[Newsweek Article]

9 is a Magic Number

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:16:00 +0000

When it came to learning my multiplication tables back in grade school, rote memorization was the method most often employed. Multiples of 9, however, are quite magical and to this day, I still use a version of the following algorithm to determine and verify multiples of 9.

Solve for y
Where n = integers 1 through 10,
x = 9 + (1 - n)
y = (n - 1)10 + x

In other words, for every product of the nine multiplication table, the sum of the digits in the product adds up to 9. For example, if you are trying to find the multiple of 9 x 6, take 6 and subtract 1 so it becomes 5. This will be the first number in your answer, so place it in the tens place.

5_

Now ask yourself what number added to 5 equals 9? 4 of course! Put this number in the ones place and you have your answer.

54

9 x 6 = 54

Try it with other integers! I only ever use this method for simple multiplication, but 9 really is a magic number so you should read up on it. And I know what you're thinking: wouldn't it just be easier to memorize the answers? Well hey, do I look like someone who likes to do things the easy way?

Any other readers enjoy using the 9 trick or some variant?

A Teacher? HAHAHA!

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:49:00 +0000

Woman: Hello?
Me: Hi, is this Watertown Middle school?
Woman: Yes it is. How can I help you?
Me: Hi, I just wanted to look into how I might go about applying to work as a substitute teacher.
Woman: Oh, a substitute teacher! HAHAHAHA (additional laughing in background)...

------------

Why in the world were they laughing? Based on the intonation, I can think of two possible reasons. Either they were just talking about the need for substitute teachers and laughed because of my serendipitous phone call OR perhaps they heard in my voice the naive, unbroken spirit of a young soul about to be crushed by the reality of working in middle school education.

We shall see.

Monster Shark Bitten in Half By Bigger Monster Shark

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:32:00 +0000

Off the coast of Australia, a 10ft great white shark was nearly bitten in half by a larger great white estimated to be about 20ft long (that's just 5ft shy of the fictional Jaws shark!)

Stephen Fry in America

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:20:00 +0000

Part I: New World:

The lovely Stephen Fry goes on a tour of all 50 American states in this excellent BBC documentary series. First up, the states that make up my favorite part of the nation, New England. I can't help but swell with pride and joy at this very loving portrait of the American character. Be sure to check it out!

For those just looking to see their own state's cameo:

Part II: The Deep South
Part III: Mississippi
Part IV: Mountains and Plains
Part V: True West
Part VI: Pacific

Hitchens Brings the Laughs Down Under

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:06:00 +0000

Those Aussies are really eating it up. I've seen Christopher Hitchens make a version of this argument several times, but never have I seen it elicit quite so many laughs! And I can't help but laugh along with them.

Which brings me to an interesting point that recently flared up on a friend's discussion board. Is it okay to laugh at religious beliefs? Generally, I think laughter and derision are perfectly appropriate responses, especially for some of the more outlandish claims, but even I wonder sometimes: Where do you draw the line? When is a belief fodder for comedians and when is a belief too sacred to touch?

Of course, I don't think a belief is ever too sacred to be touched, but for the sake of cultural sensitivities, what are the guidelines? In the quest for truth, is it better to throw political correctness and social niceties out the window? Or must we be more strategic if we are to win the hearts and minds of others? I think science offers a good role model here. Strive for skepticism and impartiality and if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

There's another good rule of thumb: if you want to laugh, just laugh and let the rest sort itself out.

"A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Science is exciting and astounding. Put the time aside and watch this lecture.

"No God" Trending War on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:33:00 +0000

In an amusing piece of Twitter history, the topic "No God" started trending today when tech savvy Christians (apparently led by @RevRunWisdom) began re-tweeting the old phrase, "Know God, Know Peace. No God, No Peace." Then, as atheists, agnostics, and secularists poked fun by retweeting just "No God" or "Know God, No Peace. No God, Know Peace," the topic became the most popular trending phrase of the day. So popular, in fact, that Twitter has been unable to cope with the increase in traffic. In an unfortunate effort to maintain the site, Twitter moderators have censored the offending topic. However, this act has only exacerbated the problem, igniting a firestorm of twittering protests from irreligious and free speech proponents alike.

Has Twitter acted responsibly or is the social networking site headed toward a potential PR disaster? Be sure to leave a comment below!

Related Articles:
"No God #1 Trending Topic on Twitter"
PZ Myers "Fun with Twitter"
"On Twitter, War Waged Over 'No God, No Peace'"
Trendistic "No God vs Know God"

Video Game History: Tertis Song Type A

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:57:00 +0000

New Song -- Sunrise, Sunset

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:43:00 +0000

One late night, not too long ago in fact, I was so depressed that I started to cry and as I cried, I started to hum a tune. I tried to capture my sadness through the music, imitating the gentle cascade of tears by keeping the melody simple and melancholic, moving up and down. I wrote the opening that night and named the piece, "Crying."

However, as I began to expand the piece, I noticed that a hopeful tone started to infiltrate the music. Before long, the whole reasoning behind the song had transformed. A new theme was dawning. Sunrise, sunset. Despite it's tumultuous origins, the song had become somewhat peaceful and contemplative with just a hint of its melancholic past.

It's finally finished and I'm ready to share. I hope my readers and listeners like it. It's become a very personal piece. I think you'll hear shades of Aaron Copland, Elmer Bernstein and even Mr. James Horner. Be sure to give me your thoughts!

Update-A-Rooni

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:05:00 +0000

So, I'm back in Boston. I moved out on something of an impulse, with the naive hope that I would land the internship with the mobile game start-up SCVNGR and avoid the shame of living at home as I turned 25. I'm 1 for 1. Unfortunately, I was not awarded the internship, but I have managed to hold on to the last lingering scraps of my pride.

Of course, those scraps are now blowing violently in the cold Boston wind. The job search is becoming somewhat desperate. I've visited with several staffing agencies, applied to numerous positions, and hoofed it through BU's fall job fair, but still I have not been able to arrange one single interview. It's a scary time, to say the least.

But there are rays of hope. I have some tantalizing leads to pursue next week and some new strategies for contacting BU alumni and lengthening the reach of my social networks. It is also helpful to remind myself that I've only lived in Boston now for 2 weeks. Landing a job takes time and patience. I will get there soon enough.

In the meantime, I'm having a lovely time meeting up with old friends and reacquainting myself with the city. Thanks to all my friends for their incredible help with the job search, settling down, and making me feel welcome. Especial thanks to Adam, Mike, and Mike's family. Their graciousness is unbounded and greatly appreciated!

Oh, and the offer still stands: the first one to help me get a good job gets a fruit basket! A whole fruit basket, guys! Can you believe it?

Ukulele Song -- Please Stay Here with Me

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:06:00 +0000

Now in Youtube form:

* please note, this ukulele song is an equal opportunity love ballad.

Sell the Vatican, Feed the World

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:39:00 +0000