The Upper Room - 2012-10-03

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2:36 AM

1

Q: What Christianity.StackExchange is (and more importantly, what it isn't)

Once again, we're seeing an influx of new talent, which is GREAT! A growing community means more people, sharing new perspectives, or perhaps bringing a clearer explanation of an already described perspective. In a few of these new contributors, I see a lot of potential, but I also seethe same ...

3:30 AM

-1

A: How do we know Paul wasn't a false Apostle?

I would recommend to all the writers and visitors her to spend just a little time on http://www.JesusWordsOnly.com site and maybe look at http://www.ProblemsWithApostlePaul.com to start.. Mostly on JWO site.. You all are using circular logic and forget that all these apostles where men... Made m...

So this answer came in on one of my older questions, and I'm not quite sure how to comment on what I think is wrong with it, or if there's any amount of editing that can clean it up. This just seems like it's pure hostility and disdain that doesn't really answer the question...

Oh, and while attempting to vote it down, I missed (stupid tablet) and accepted the answer, and I don't remember whose answer I originally accepted. So if you lost 15 points due to my mistake today, let me know and I'll correct it.

El'endia Starman

@DavidStratton a_hardin's answer still shows up as accepted and you have a comment on the question saying that you accepted his answer...last year.

Thanks. I must be tired. Brain not functioning at all.

I should've known I'd have left a comment, wordy as I am. ;-)

Any thoughts on improving that answer? I don't object to it because he believes differently. It's more in the way he presented his case.

El'endia Starman

@DavidStratton I don't think it's salvageable at all. 1) It's a rant, and 2) It doesn't answer the question, instead choosing to counter the given assumption. Unfortunately, it does have a couple references, so I couldn't add a 3)... :P

11 hours later…

2:51 PM

@Caleb I've taken a stab at rewriting @Chris's Sister's question... That makes two rewrites in just a few days. I'm getting soft on look out for my own rep :)

@AffableGeek lol :)

Maybe I just really liked @PeterTurner calling me "the" Affable Geek..

@AffableGeek lol, I reopened it, looks valid enough, the questioner's entire line of questions is something I'm keeping tabs on.

3:20 PM

Yeah, I'm conflicted. She is a she - and I really want more female voices here. But she is also not quite getting the scholarly pursuit thing, so...

I miss Monika Michael...

@AffableGeek not even a little bit

1 hour later…

4:35 PM

@AffableGeek Did we drive her away? If she just lost interest, she might be back.

4:46 PM

@JonEricson she was pretty busy last I talked to her

5:40 PM

El'endia Starman

@TRiG Saw that a couple days ago. Been making hexaflexagons for many years (since like 3rd grade, so about 10 years). They really are awesome. :D

I hadn't seen a trihexaflexagon in action before though.

@El'endiaStarman I'd never even heard of them before.

Must try making one.

(I also wonder what paper the lad was using. The UK now uses the rather clever metric sizes, but I imagine they didn't at the time.)

El'endia Starman

@TRiG Actually, in the past, I downloaded an image of a strip of 19 triangles and edited the numbers out in MS Paint. Then I duplicated it and printed it out. At that point, I could cut out the strip and fold along the lines. Vi Hart is basically folding them free-hand.

@TRiG Really cool. (Didn't know [or more likely remember] the bit about paper sizes being different in the US compared to Britain.)

8.5x11 vs A4 :)

5:54 PM

@waxeagle Having spent time with LaTeX (and dabbling in KOMA-Script), I definitely knew that difference. I guess I didn't make the jump that lined paper would follow suit.

> By 1975 so many countries were using the German system that it was established as an ISO standard, as well as the official United Nations document format. By 1977 A4 was the standard letter format in 88 of 148 countries. Today the standard has been adopted by all countries in the world except the United States and Canada. In Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and the Philippines the US letter format is still in common use, despite their official adoption of the ISO standard.

@TRiG lol we just have to be different, don't we :)

@waxeagle As usual. But it's not as bad as your volume measurements, where you've decided to semi-metricise the imperial system, while keeping the same names for maximum confusion.

@TRiG lol, I really do wish we'd just bite the bullet and switch. It'd be expensive, but we'd thank ourselves in the long run

although, oddly, it would make for an interesting issue in construction

7

Q: What are framing dimensions like in the metric world?

I was always curious about this. In the states we have: Lumber - Comes most commonly in 2 inch (2x4,6,8,10,12,16) and 4 inch (4x4,4x6) varieties. Plywood - Almost always 4x8 feet Drywall/Plasterboard - Various 4 foot varieties (4x8,10,12) and sometimes 5 foot. Walls are typically framed wi...

The A paper sizes are actually very clever.

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 0.5em; text-align: center;" |+ ISO 269 sizes(mm × mm) |- !colspan="2"| C Series |- | C0 || 917 × 1297 |- | C1 || 648 × 917 |- | C2 || 458 × 648 |- | C3 || 324 × 458 |- | C4 || 229 × 324 |- | C5 || 162 × 229 |- | C6 || 114 × 162 |- | C7/6 || 81 × 162 |- | C7 || 81 × 114 |- | C8 || 57 × 81 |- | C9 || 40 × 57 |- | C10 || 28 × 40 |- | DL || 110 × 220 |} {| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 0.5em; text-align: center;" |+ ISO 216 sizes(mm × mm) |- !colspan="2"| A Series !!rowspan="12" style="border-top: 1px solid white; bor...

6:01 PM

@TRiG that's really cool (even though onebox mangles it :P)

also A10 is really really small

@waxeagle I've never used the B series. But A paper and C envelopes work well together.

@waxeagle A4, A5 and DL are the only sizes in common use. DL is one third of an A4 sheet, and is used for information flyers: festivals, tourist sites, that kind of thing.

@TRiG gotcha

> You are in a library and want to copy an article out of a journal that has A4 format. In order to save paper, you want copy two journal pages onto each sheet of A4 paper. If you open the journal, the two A4 pages that you will now see together have A3 format. By ... pressing the A3→A4 button ..., both A4 pages of the journal article together will fill exactly the A4 page produced by the copying machine. One reproduced A4 page will now have A5 format.

> No wasted paper margins appear, no text has been cut off, and no experiments for finding the appropriate magnification factor are necessary. The same principle works for books in B5 or A5 format.

cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

that's very clever, I like it

@waxeagle There must somewhere be a chat room where this would be on topic.

6:09 PM

@TRiG you could add one :) call it "metric propaganda" :)

is a firm believer that not all propaganda is negative

El'endia Starman

@TRiG Since there (currently) isn't, I'm gonna go ahead and keep using this room. :P

@El'endiaStarman I'm a big fan of 2^.5

@waxeagle As long as we don't accept the abomination of Celsius, I'd be ok with that.

@JonEricson metric means Kelvin, you're good

reprogramming the entire earth to Kelvin would be a trick

El'endia Starman

@waxeagle Except that you have this problem:

user image

6:15 PM

@El'endiaStarman lol, not a problem :P. The only real problem I see is that useful scale of weather temps would shrink dramatically

which the rest of the world already does, they just have to remember that a nice day is now ~300K instead of 27 degC

@waxeagle That's why we need to adopt a Fahrenheit/Rankine system:

Rankine is a thermodynamic (absolute) temperature scale named after the Glasgow University engineer and physicist William John Macquorn Rankine, who proposed it in 1859. (The Kelvin scale was first proposed in 1848.) The symbol for degrees Rankine is °R (or °Ra if necessary to distinguish it from the Rømer and Réaumur scales). Zero on both the Kelvin and Rankine scales is absolute zero, but the Rankine degree is defined as equal to one degree Fahrenheit, rather than the one degree Celsius used by the Kelvin scale. A temperature of −459.67 °F is exactly equal to 0 °R. Some engineering ...

El'endia Starman

@waxeagle "Three hundred degrees?!? In my day, we cooked cakes at that temperature!"

@El'endiaStarman not degrees. Kelvin :P

and that's the fun part

El'endia Starman

@waxeagle Technically, yes, but still...

@El'endiaStarman yeah a nice day would be food cooking temps in F, and broiling temps in C

6:18 PM

@waxeagle SO means Kelvin. I think metric means Celsius.

@TRiG good point, you're right

El'endia Starman

Oh, has anyone had to deal with room temperature being 298 K, a measly 2 degrees away from a nice, round number?

@El'endiaStarman Roundness is overrated. ;)

On a different topic, I think this question needs to be closed soonish:

El'endia Starman

@JonEricson Not in all cases. ;)

0

Q: Does Christianity have any other books besides the Bible that the disciples use for following?

Does Christianity have any other book beside Bible which narrate stories of the Jesus and Moses and is considered auspicious or sacred? Are there any other such books other than Bible which kind of augments/completes the Bible? In Islam there is the Quran (Bible) and then hadith books which narra...

bible global-christianity

It's going to keep gathering answers less useful than Narnian's until it's closed.

6:24 PM

@El'endiaStarman That was really interesting. I didn't actually know the proof by contradiction that root two was irrational.

El'endia Starman

@TRiG Really? That was like the first and only proof of irrationality that I learned.

@TRiG What proof did you learn?

@El'endiaStarman Maybe I'd been taught it, but forgotten. I don't recall any other proof. Possibly I wasn't taught it at all.

I used to be good at maths, but I've forgotten a lot.

@TRiG My sixth grade teacher used to say, "Knowledge is that which remains when what is learned is forgotten." All that mathematics is still there, it just comes out as logical inferences applied to something other than numbers. ;-)

@waxeagle One of the confusions between the SI and metric is that the standard SI weight is the kilogram, not the gram. That had me quite confused till I realised that SI doesn't take prefixes. There is no centimetre in the SI. Centimetres are purely metric. And the gram is the base unit of weight in the metric scale, but not in the SI.

@JonEricson Yes, the maths can come back to me when I look for it, but it's a lot less instinctual than it used to be.

@TRiG that is really confusing, but yeah when you realize that SI just uses the unit and doesn't try to go for metric prefixes things start to make more sense

El'endia Starman

6:38 PM

@JonEricson Hey @wax, I'm leaning towards closure. What do you think?

@JonEricson I was thinking a "no, the disciples spread the Gospel by word of mouth" might put the finishing touches on that question. However, there is the curious case of St. Jude and the Book of Enoch.

@El'endiaStarman go for it

@PeterTurner there was tons of flux in the early church because there wasn't an official cannon. Not sure what more to say on that one

@PeterTurner Sounds like a good answer. Maybe we can come up with a question worthy of it. ;-)

9

Q: Why is the Book of Enoch not regarded as canonical?

A short section of 1 Enoch (1 En 1:9) is quoted in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14-15), and is there attributed to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8). It is argued that all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it and were influenced by it in thought and dic...

El'endia Starman

@JonEricson Maybe you could ask a question like "What did the early church use/do when they didn't have a canonized Bible?"...?

I've fallen down the rabbit hole.

6:50 PM

@TRiG Looks like I fell down one next door.

@JonEricson Hmm. I recall a fairly long discussion once with a friend about of one of his textbooks. He was complaining about the overall layout of the page: he said it was ugly. I couldn't really see the problem, but looking at the actual type set my teeth on edge. The dots of i's were rubbing up against the curls of f's. And that was just the most obvious problem. Yet he hadn't noticed that. Odd how different things jump out at different people.

Anyway, we both agreed the book was poorly typeset.

@TRiG Yep. Lack of ligatures is one sure sign the book was not properly typeset.

@JonEricson And once again I feel that I really should learn TeX. But I'm not producing much writing these days.

@TRiG That rabbit hole is not very fun after all. So the folks who developed the paper standards are... um, inspired by the Bible? Anti-christs? Ugh.

I do hang out on the TeX site, though. Fascinating.

@JonEricson I really don't know what they're trying to say.

6:59 PM

@TRiG I'm humbled every time I run across a post there. Amazing.

El'endia Starman

@JonEricson I'm actually wondering about what inspired the Hebrews to choose/construct words the way they did. After all, sqrt(2) is a timeless mathematical entity...

@JonEricson He seems to take as one of his assumptions that the metre itself is meaningful. He says it's "a unit of length derived directly from terrestial measurement". This is true. He neglects to mention that the original measurement was inaccurate.

@TRiG I believe the current definition is defined by the distance a beam of light can travel in some fraction of a second, which is in turn defined by the vibration of a particular atom. So yeah.

El'endia Starman

@JonEricson They did choose the particular fractions to make it close to the original length of the meter.

@JonEricson Se right?

7:12 PM

@JonEricson Basically, he's a mathematical crank. We had one on h2g2 who was, by dint of much effort, finding strange coincidences in his phone number, and interpreting this as a message from God that he was something special. On any other subject, he was perfectly rational.

El'endia Starman

@TRiG It is relatively significant that his additions and subtractions are all one-off. Then again, rare things happen frequently. And I mean that quite seriously. :P

@El'endiaStarman Yes. People win the lotto, for example.

El'endia Starman

@TRiG And rare once-in-a-lifetime astronomical events happen every year.

@El'endiaStarman yes, it's really interesting to see what insanely long odds provide given enough iterations :) (if you buy 1000 lotto tickets you're a lot more likely to win than if you buy a single ticket)

El'endia Starman

@waxeagle There's also that while the chance of any one person winning is practically nil, the chance of some person winning is high.

7:21 PM

@waxeagle And, paradoxically, more likely to lose as well.

@El'endiaStarman right and that goes up as the pot gets bigger in something like powerball because the # of tickets sold goes up

@JonEricson lose 999 times and win once :)

7:48 PM

Moral breakthrough: Burning kittens is wrong (in case you hadn't realised that).

@TRiG Live kittens? I think you might be onto something if so. ;)

@TRiG Excellent article. (And it's quite likely I was swayed by the Mere Christianity quote.)

8:11 PM

@JonEricson But of course live kittens.

(Should I edit to clarify?)

@TRiG No. The quote you pulled was sufficiently descriptive. I was just reacting to the phrase on chat, not your article.

@JonEricson My previous theme for that blog didn't really show much difference between blockquotes and normal text. Since I quote a lot on that blog, I had to change it. I'm quite happy with my current theme, even if it is a fairly boring WordPress default.

El'endia Starman

8:28 PM

@JonEricson That's only a paradox because there is ambiguity in whether you can lose more than once. If win/lose is a binary state, then your chances of losing go down with more tickets as P(lose) = 1-P(win). If there's a difference between losing twice and losing three times on the same event, then yes, you are more likely to lose given the more tickets you buy. Actually, the increasing probability of loss is guaranteed to rise. :P

@El'endiaStarman All paradoxes depend on a shifting frame of reference in my opinion. ;)

El'endia Starman

@JonEricson How about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem? >:D

@El'endiaStarman Funny you should ask:

31

Q: Is Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem a "cheap trick"?

I found a throw-away critique of Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem in an essay about Deconstruction: The basic enterprise of contemporary literary criticism is actually quite simple. It is based on the observation that with a sufficient amount of clever handwaving and artful verbiage, you can...

logic postmodernism godel deconstruction

El'endia Starman

8:43 PM

@JonEricson I loved GEB when I read it five years ago. I should probably go find the copy in my college's library...

Anyway, interesting. Never thought of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem as having anything to do with philosophy despite the small gap between math and philosophy.

8:54 PM

@El'endiaStarman Technically, everything is relevant to philosophy. The only thing is professional philosophers lose interest in subjects that are well understood. Incompleteness is perfect philosopher fodder. ;)

El'endia Starman

@JonEricson Haha, true.

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