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jack"A proof of the Riemann hypothesis"
Linked from God plays dice blog, a putative paper on the Riemann hypothesis. I can't read it, I never was plugged into the mathematical grapevine. But it would feel remiss in the extreme not to pass on the comment.
For non-mathematicians, the Riemann hypothesis refers to a simple formula f(z), where z is a complex number. It is zero at z=-2, z=-4, z=-6, etc. It is also zero for many complex numbers z=0.5+it, ie. with real part 1/2, and some imaginary part. The hypothesis is that these are the only complex numbers with f(z)=0.
This is explained in more detail in the comments below, directly after "unnecessarily confusing, you should have..." and before "not entirely accurate because...".
The Riemann hypothesis is interesting because it ties into all sorts of different maths (eg. primes), and everyone's sure it's true, and people have had computers checking millions of solutions and seeing that they do conform, and there's lots of maths proved on the assumption that it's true. If it were proved, it would be the most famous result in maths in the last, um, ten years :)
ETA: The result is from a stable that does work on the Riemann Hypothesis, but has had several flawed proofs published before. This was flawed, and maybe patched already.
Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab
Evolution , with the magic of stop-motion fridges. (Also: Dumbasses put hands over their ears and say "la la la, can't hear you". Original scientist sends long, thoughtful reply saying "Pull your fucking heads out of your asses, already. Duh.") Disclaimer: people who believe in the absence of any sort of evolution are not automatically dumbasses. Really.
God hates FAQs
A friend recently linked to a service which, when you're raptured, can send a last message to a loved one. There are two basic approaches. You've been left behind .com is run by Christians, and employs an ingenious dead-man's-handle.
Post Rapture Post .com is run by atheists. Post Rapture Post is a lot funnier.
Q. How Do We Know that You Will Not Ascend To Heaven with Us?
A. The Bible says that only those that repent of their sins and accept Jesus as the True Son of God will be saved. We do neither. Some of our personal sins include: drunkenness, heresy, sacrilige/blasphemy, gluttony, laciviousness, and sloth. There is no way we are going to disappear into Heaven any time soon.
Q. Aren't You Afraid of God's Wrath?
A. We don't believe in God, remember? In the event that the Rapture actually occurs, we will go to Plan B: "Lifetime of Sin Followed by Deathbed Repentance."
FWIW, I think both sites, whatever their personal beliefs, genuinely offer the service, but don't hold me to that.
Linked from God plays dice blog, a putative paper on the Riemann hypothesis. I can't read it, I never was plugged into the mathematical grapevine. But it would feel remiss in the extreme not to pass on the comment.
For non-mathematicians, the Riemann hypothesis refers to a simple formula f(z), where z is a complex number. It is zero at z=-2, z=-4, z=-6, etc. It is also zero for many complex numbers z=0.5+it, ie. with real part 1/2, and some imaginary part. The hypothesis is that these are the only complex numbers with f(z)=0.
This is explained in more detail in the comments below, directly after "unnecessarily confusing, you should have..." and before "not entirely accurate because...".
The Riemann hypothesis is interesting because it ties into all sorts of different maths (eg. primes), and everyone's sure it's true, and people have had computers checking millions of solutions and seeing that they do conform, and there's lots of maths proved on the assumption that it's true. If it were proved, it would be the most famous result in maths in the last, um, ten years :)
ETA: The result is from a stable that does work on the Riemann Hypothesis, but has had several flawed proofs published before. This was flawed, and maybe patched already.
Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab
Evolution , with the magic of stop-motion fridges. (Also: Dumbasses put hands over their ears and say "la la la, can't hear you". Original scientist sends long, thoughtful reply saying "Pull your fucking heads out of your asses, already. Duh.") Disclaimer: people who believe in the absence of any sort of evolution are not automatically dumbasses. Really.
God hates FAQs
A friend recently linked to a service which, when you're raptured, can send a last message to a loved one. There are two basic approaches. You've been left behind .com is run by Christians, and employs an ingenious dead-man's-handle.
Post Rapture Post .com is run by atheists. Post Rapture Post is a lot funnier.
Q. How Do We Know that You Will Not Ascend To Heaven with Us?
A. The Bible says that only those that repent of their sins and accept Jesus as the True Son of God will be saved. We do neither. Some of our personal sins include: drunkenness, heresy, sacrilige/blasphemy, gluttony, laciviousness, and sloth. There is no way we are going to disappear into Heaven any time soon.
Q. Aren't You Afraid of God's Wrath?
A. We don't believe in God, remember? In the event that the Rapture actually occurs, we will go to Plan B: "Lifetime of Sin Followed by Deathbed Repentance."
FWIW, I think both sites, whatever their personal beliefs, genuinely offer the service, but don't hold me to that.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 03:36 pm (UTC)I think a more serious question is why the creator (in their 6,000 year old world model) would intentionally put such features in to viruses and bacteria at all. They assume that these things originally served some useful purpose, but that a consequence of the fall was that as the world was corrupted by sin, all these things that had a good purpose before now do bad things.
I can kind of see how that would work for some things, but not everything, and it's a very hand wavy explanation that works if you already believe in creationism and have no scientific background, but if you understand something of biology it's a lot harder to swallow. Of course it could be that the world is like that, I just don't see that the empirical evidence really supports statements like that, and I don't see that the Bible requires one to believe them either.