News - Neil Armstrong, Lions, Car security

[jack]

Neil Armstrong got it right

I'm sure most of you have come across this by now. A scientist has examined the recording of Neil Armstrong and concluded he *did* say "One small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind". The Language Log has an extended discussion about how accurate it is -- I didn't bother to read it, but they're probably right whatever they said.

Of course, I was brought up with the "Small step for man" phrase, so in my head it's firmly lodged as an idiom no more strange than many others dotting English. Mankind lands on the moon for the first time exactly once ever -- whatever you said then is just what you always say in that circumstance, by definition :)

De Bruijn sequences

There was a short flurry a week or so ago with several people rederiving De Bruijn sequences. Ie. the shortest sequence of digits (or set of M characters) that contain every possible sequence of four (or N) digits. It's easy to show this length is 10^4+3, but not so easy to prove that.

And apparently, people are still producing locks to which this is a good attack, link borrowed from Schneier. It's good, because if you get the first digit wrong you don't have to work out how to reset it, an annoying feature of some combination door locks. But bad if someone can hold the sequence in their head and divide the length of a brute force attack by N.

Pride of lions discover they can hunt elephants

The office kitchen has the Times, amongst others, mysteriously appearing every day. I was heartened to see the front page pictures were from an article in one of the supplements that I found interesting, but didn't think anyone else considered front page news.

Black and white infra-red pictures of a pride of lions bringing down an elephant. They are disturbing but evocative.

The front page (and front website) also had a couple of other articles worth commenting on:

EU court upholds right of employers to base pay on length of employment, indirectly paying less to mothers who take maternity leaves

I'm sure some people will have strong opinions about this. I'm not sure what to say. I automatically feel I'm supposed to disagree with it. But paying based on experience at all is probably too entrenched to overturn so easily, and isn't an unreasonable approximation, other metrics have great problems too. And if so, then you see the point.

Of course, preemptively not hiring women, or preemptively paying women less, or denying pay/opportunities to returning mothers more than the time they *have* worked, understandable or not, *should* be classed as discrimination and protected against.

And of course, we all think in terms of our lives. My mother really started her career after I was at school, when computers had conveniently become ubiquitous :)

One quote made the nice point, if only men took equal paternity leave, everything would be hunky-dory :)

Pope oxmoronically abolishes limbo

Pope officially rejects limbo. Specifically for unbaptised babies, who are now supposed to go to heaven -- the official fate of noble savages may be unclear.

People who know my interaction with religion will be unsurprised to realise I'm disappointed in the uncertainty surrounding such things, and I always feel everyone should have had a clear idea of if there is such a thing or not, and why they think that, and what might persuade them to change their mind.

Comments

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

You can't just reject limbo, that's ridiculous, that means all the other popes were wrong but surely they were infallible too.

Stupid ex-nazi.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It's not my fault! :) But I thought it was only infallible if he specifically said so, in latin. I don't know to what extent limbo was officially adopted, as opposed to accepted because that's what everyone was saying.

I have just thought of one problem.

Pope: Unbaptised (and, indeed, baptised) babies go straight to heaven.
Opus Dei: Wait, does that mean we could kill everyone when they're a baby, so they go to heaven without risking hell, in exchange only for our own soul? *pumps shotgun*
Pope: Uh, hold on a sec...

Stupid ex-nazi.

On the one hand, yeah. On the other, if people are nazis, or have catholic beliefs I disagree with, I don't want to discourage them from changing their minds... :)

[mair_in_grenderich]

when do they stop being babies?

does this cover abortions too?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

At baptism/confirmation? When they accept Jesus into their heart? When they sin? Maybe it's an weighing scale between accepting Jesus and sinning. I mean, *I* don't know.

PS. And, in my previous comment, please insert "if they die"... :)

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

1) When they reach the age of reason, i.e. "the time of life at which a person is morally responsible and able to distinguish between right and wrong."

2) Yes.

[chess]

Under a similar argument, we should pre-emptively end the world now (by, like, blowing it up or otherwise destroying all human life) because the exponential growth of population means more people will go to hell in the future than would possibly be saved in the rest of their lives if the people currently alive were given the chance to live out their full lives. An even better move would be to cause worldwide infertility, ensuring everyone can live out their natural lives and no-one can create any more lives.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

But more people would have gone to heaven too, who then won't. To me, an even trade might seen reasonable, but I guess many people disagree.

It's a very interesting point; I don't know how close people have come to doing this.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I disagree very strongly. From my POV, notihing, absolutely nothing, justifies a single soul in hell[1].

[1] defined as eternal, a negative infinity that swallows any good that is set against it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, I would tend to agree with you. But:

1. I feel I don't really understand people's conceptions of hell, which I feel I'm supposed to: often it seems almost defined as "something which it's ok to happen".

I don't understand how, but for instance, the "this is the natural state of existence, for which hellfire is only a metaphor, but from which God can lift us, only with our cooperation" is a concept I sometimes hear.

2. If it's an infinite negative, can it be weighed against an infinite good? Well, maybe not, but it's hard to explain why not. Are two infinite negatives worse than one? Most people would say there is no good answer in that situation, but they'd *probably* have to go with the one only.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the catechism covers that one (by saying it's never right to sin in order to prevent others from sinning or something.)

The risk of hell is very slight in Roman Catholicism. All Christians are safe, and, "the non-Christian may not be blamed for his ignorance of Christ and his Church; salvation is open to him also, if he seeks God sincerely and if he follows the commands of his conscience, for through this means the Holy Ghost acts upon all men; this divine action is not confined within the limited boundaries of the visible Church."

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

And I'm sorry for not taking the issue frivolously :)

However, "it's never right to sin in order to prevent others from sinning" is certainly a good thing to preach, but only applies to people following the rules in the first place. If I believed in the existence of God and afterlife as described by a certain (possibly Catholic) position, but rejected God's arbitration of right and wrong, then I've already thrown away my allegence.

The risk of hell is very slight in Roman Catholicism.

Good point. Thank you. Though I do wonder how many people may think differently -- I'm afraid I don't know.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

"Papal infallibility" does not mean "all Popes are incapable of error at all times".

[senji.livejournal.com]

Umm, wasn't the ruling the other way around?
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1886954,00.html

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'm sorry, now I'm puzzled. The article I saw just concentrated on the maternity thing, and I didn't research, that is more broad ranging than I expected! But does seem to be *except* maternity leave, which now seems to make no sense at all...?

[passage.livejournal.com]

"if only men took equal paternity leave, everything would be hunky-dory :)"

Wouldn't this do nasty things to the economy? Especially as a significant number of mother's reasonably take many years off to raise their kids.

[chess]

If men and women were equally likely to take 'looking-after-baby' leave, though, it would cease to be an issue of gender equality.

[passage.livejournal.com]

This would work better if men could lactate as well as women, but it's almost as if their bodies are specialised for different roles.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Indeed, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's best not to. Are men specialised for hunting? It seems likely. Yet nowadays we find programming a more useful persuit overall anyway. We might well find many advantages to sharing childcare more, even if women still do the feeding before weaning.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

In theory, people might take the same amount of total leave as now, but divided more equally. Contrariwise, maybe there are jobs which could cope with less total work spent on them, but that no-one ever does at less than 130% commitment, otherwise it looks like you're not taking it seriously so never get kept on.