Being too close

I'd like everything in my life to go perfectly. Smooth. No bad surprises. It just doesn't happen that way very often. So I had a big training thing I've been working to arrange since March that I thought I had all ironed out until yesterday when one of our finance folks said I have to file something that will take a couple days. It felt like my world was collapsing. All the little things I'd arranged were just undone, and I ended up having to postpone the class at the very last minute. It was hard not being frustrated and embarrassed, but it seemed like the whole thing was no big deal to anyone else. I think most people realize that stuff happens, plans change, and they're pretty forgiving as long as you're not trying to jerk them around. I was just too close to all of this to see it earlier.

Science, evolution, debate

Last week my friends Clare and Roger took me to a debate between these folks and Michael Schermer. Listening to the logical contortions the Reasons to Believe folks went through to try to explain their case was physically painful. It was like watching someone try to explain a geocentric universe. They threw in a little crappy math and some very fuzzy bible references to try to complete the snow job. Schermer for the most part was straight forward, simple, and consistent. He had a few moments of smugness and grandstanding, and he tried to connect some disparate ideas which just don't belong in the same bucket. But he just made more sense.
Don't get me wrong, I respect folks with faith- my wife's Catholic, and I have friends who are Mormons, Jews, Anglicans etc. But subverting the bible and using junk science to try to deny evolution is deplorable. Questioning is good- especially questioning scientific data. Making up crap and passing it off as truth, not so much.
I used to believe that having the right facts was all that mattered. If you're right, you're just right and the debate should end. For things that can't be proven I don't see a lot of reason for debate- speculating over a beer and a camp fire maybe, but there aren't any concrete points to argue. But it seems that there are lot of folks who just believe what they want to believe about the universe and people. There are a lot of methods of argument that don't rely on truth- they just bulldoze their way through and beat you into submission by repetition, confusion, volume, anger, or plain wearing you down. The funny thing is, if you have to use any of those to make your point it almost seems like an implicit admission that you're wrong, or that your audience isn't listening.

Numbers

How we tell time pisses me off, and not just because Zoe's in the midst of learning it. If you think about it, the system is insanely complicated and despite me being an engineer I'm constantly tripping on the stupidity of the system. Let's look at time: 12:35. The first digit is base ten. I like that. Most numbers most people work with are base ten. The 3 is really a base 6 number, since when we get to 59 it rolls over to 00. The next number is base 3, and the highest number is binary, or base 2. So there are four numbers and each of them has a different base? Seriously what the hell were they thinking? Then there's the 24 hour system- in some ways it's easier since there's less wrapping and carrying numbers to figure out what time it is in other zones during the day but it uses a base 3 number in a new position and brings in a base 5 number.

How about this: we have 100, or maybe 10 hours in a day with 100 minutes each in them. Each minute has 100 seconds. The length of a second would have to adjust to make that fit into a day and a night. It would take some getting used to for sure, but you could still divide up hours into half hours, or convenient 10ths of an hour. Decimals are just easier than the fractions the 24 hour system seems to be all about. I'd like to see the 24 hour clock go the way of the British shilling/tuppence debacle. Their whole imperial measurement system is also on my list to be destroyed. It's antiquated, bad, and makes me have way more wrenches than anyone needs to own.
It feels better getting that off my chest.

Purpose

I've created this to store things that don't fit into my Burgundian hours blog. I want to keep that focused on making stuff and research and uncluttered with my random thoughts, goals and personal life.