On “Digging to China”

Posted on 4 August 2014 by RobertLovesPi

When I was a little kid, my sister and I dug a big hole, in our front yard, and simply called it “the digging-hole.” It looked a lot like the hole shown above, except for the fact that, during daylight hours, our digging-hole usually included two small, dirt-covered, determined children, armed with plastic shovels. We tried, for years, to dig that hole as deep as possible. My personal goal, of course, was the Earth’s molten core, not India, and certainly not China.

Why do Americans so often talk about digging a hole straight down to China, anyway? Even if the Earth were solid all the way through its interior, digging straight down, from almost anywhere in the contiguous 48 states of the USA, would not put you in China, nor even India (which is, at least, closer to being correct than is China), but at the bottom of the Southern Indian Ocean. Salty water would suddenly rush into your newly-dug tunnel, killing you instantly, as soon as you got close to enough to the other side for the extreme water-pressure there to finish your digging project for you. The only exceptions to this watery doom would be coming out of the tunnel on one of the islands in that ocean, which would require great precision to hit deliberately.

Also, the fact that China and the USA are both Northern-hemisphere nations easily rules China out as the hypothetical “solid-earth” destination for Americans who dig straight down, and all the way through. If you could go through the center of the earth from North of the equator, you’d have to end up South of the equator. Isn’t that obvious? Don’t people look at globes?

One of Many Possible Facetings of the Rhombicosidodecahedron

Posted on 4 August 2014 by RobertLovesPi

I created this using Stella 4d: Polyhedron Navigator, available at www.software3d.com/Stella.php. Faceting involves connecting different sets of vertices (relative to the original polyhedron) to form new edges and faces. The new edges and faces, both, typically intersect each other, although often not as many times as in this particular example of a faceted polyhedron.

“Evolution is just a theory.” Please STOP saying this!

Posted on 4 August 2014 by RobertLovesPi

Why?

Well, just to get started, these three things are also “just” theories:

1. Germs are the cause of many diseases.
2. Everything you have ever touched is made of atoms.
3. The spinning earth doesn’t fling us into outer space because of gravity.

Would any reasonable person actually think the phrase “just a theory” makes sense for any of these three things? Use of this phrase, for evolution, the Big Bang, or anything else, indicates one thing: the person talking does not understand the meaning of the word “theory.” Theories are the best science has to offer, and science is the foundation of modern civilization. These theories are based on the repeated testing of hypotheses, using experiment, to explain what we observe — so they are evidence-based explanations, not mere guesses, as the annoying phrase “just a theory” implies.

Evolution is every bit as well-established a theory as the three examples cited above. All theories are subject to further testing, which is an important self-correcting mechanism in science. No theory is beyond revision or replacement, if new experimental evidence calls for it. However, that fact doesn’t make any particular theory invalid — it simply helps explain why science works. It also works just as well whether people believe in it, or approve of it, or agree with it — or not.

If you want to disprove the theory of evolution, just find a fossilized rabbit in a one-billion-year-old rock, as J.M.S. Haldane famously observed. It will only take one such finding to accomplish your goal, and you can publish your results, and become famous – if you can find such a fossil. For your own safety, though, please do not hold your breath while looking.

A Quote from Voltaire, on Absurdities and Atrocities

Posted on 4 August 2014 by RobertLovesPi

Examples abound. Here are two:

Absurdity #1: Pure human races exist.

A resulting atrocity: the Holocaust (~20 million people, including ~6 million Jews, killed by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s).

Absurdity #2: Acts which are both suicidal and homicidal can be wonderful things, and can earn a person an eternal reward in paradise after death.

A resulting atrocity: the destruction of the World Trade Center, and attacks on other targets, on September 11, 2001, which killed over three thousand people, including the hijackers themselves.

Please note that this list is far from complete. A complete list would fill several very large books. Beware of absurdities in your thinking, for they can actually be fatal.