A boy and his computer

I've got a bunch of little things to mention that I jotted down on the back of an envelope today so I wouldn't forget. First of all, I forgot to say that I went to the college group Bible study last night. It's kind of odd that I'm a visitor in a way, since I started out there the first two weeks of this semester. Anyway, the discussion was very good, led by Mr. S about apologetics and basically how a humanist/evolutionist doesn't have a consistent world view. I have often confronted people online with questions about that, not in a haughty manner of course but just posing the question. If you believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, then what is wrong with Hitler slaughtering the Jews? He was just eliminating those who were not surviving. Why was he "evil" and what is your definition of evil if you believe that? If a pride of lions could eliminate their weaker members and we think nothing of it, then why do we become outraged when something like September 11th happens? All of that seems very hard to rationalize (?) if you don't have a biblical world view. In fact, the biblical view is the only one that makes any sense at all! The Bible reveals man for what he truly is, a fallen sinner whose only thoughts are evil.

One guy on a message board a few years ago (back between September 11th, 2001 and the war in Iraq) said that he thought that if there was no religion in the world then we wouldn't have all of these religious fanatics trying to convert everyone and everyone would be a whole lot happier. That was so far off I didn't know where to begin! I started by saying that without religion (or Christianity specifically) there would be absolutely not basis for morals! What is to prevent me from taking another person's property if it makes me happier? Well, he said that everyone would live by the "Golden Rule" and treat others how you would want to be treated and only seek your own pleasure as far as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Well, I guess all business is out the door, we'll all just sit in our huts and hope no one bothers us and we'll try not to bother anyone else either, we'll starve (because gathering food might hurt some other animal who needs it) and die and the world might be better off anyway.

Mr. S pointed made a good point, that when someone dies, even the staunchest athiest will mourn if it is a close relative. To the evolutionist though, that is inconsistent since their belief is that that person was just an animated mass of atoms that really had no ultimate purpose and was hurting the ecological system of the world so good riddance. To me, the path down that type of logic (?) is very scary, yet one would have to accept that to be consistent. Suffice it to say that last night's discussion was interesting and one that I've often contemplated.

Another inconsistency that I see is the horrible wholesale slaughter of human babies that goes on in this country and around the world, but if you even talk about tying kittens in a bag and drowning them, the animal rights people are on your back and the entire country is in an uproar. I just don't understand and I don't think most people even think of their inconsistencies. They would rather deceive themselves and live in their imaginary world than accept the truth: they are WRONG!

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
- Laurens Van der Post

Oh! Here's an interesting link,
http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/01/0042204.shtml?tid=99&tid=14
(you may have to run your mouse out past the margin of the blog to get it all, it ends in "14") about how scientists are afraid that Europe might experience a small ice age because of decreasing currents in the ocean! Oh my goodness! And here I thought global warming was supposed to be taking place. To the believer, nothing like this is in the slightest scary. People always talking about wars and rumours of wars and how we're going to blow ourselves up or fall into the sun or freeze, or overheat with green-house gases or something. But we know it will be here until the Lord's return and that's the important thing. It can blow up after that.

If your post looks too short, throw in a couple of random quotes. They always make good filler space and keep the reader on their toes trying to find the train of thought in the multiple places it derailed.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
- George Bernard Shaw

I forgot to mention yesterday that we also made some soap in the chemistry lab! It was made with some sort of surfactanct and then lard, so it was supposed to be something like lye soap I think but it didn't work too well. Believe me, I tried and my hands were very greasy afterward.

For some reason today I was thinking of a story I read a long time ago, when a man was pulled over by the highway patrol and given a ticket.... for practicing his flute while driving! Apparently it got boring driving back and forth and he didn't want to waste all that time so he was using his knees to steer while practicing playing his flute. Hey! You could clip a sheet of music to the steering wheel with a clothes pin and there you go! It just MIGHT be a little dangerous though, not only is your concentration going elsewhere (like all those crazy people constantly on the cell phones) but if something happened in front of you, a car swerves or something, you'd have to put the instrument down and get your hands on the steering wheel fast, no matter how talented your knees are. So don't try it F.B.

In California, where there were a lot of working ladies and we were building a house for some people who lived near Santa Barbara, my dad would comment on how they would be driving, with a cell phone between their shoulder and ear, a cup of coffee, and putting on lipstick all at the same time! Quite a feat if you ask me (or feet, which they must be using to drive with).

I had my early morning class and then after that about a four hour span in between in which I worked on my Java lab (I did it early instead of in the afternoon) and worked on my program that was due Midnight this Friday. It was a very difficult assignment and I puzzled over it for a long time and after three hours had gone by I still wasn't quite there. I went to the Java class and then came back to the lab afterwards to try some more and I don't know, but sometimes if you leave something and come back to it with a fresh outlook, you see things you didn't before. I had made an error in the logic of my for loops in combination with my while loop which wasn't allowing the proper data to be written to the array, instead it was just replacing the first field in the array with the data that was entered next time, so the rest of the array wasn't being used at all! That's pretty bad isn't it?

So I finally got that fixed, cleaned up, and submitted so I'm done with that. Now all I've got left is the Calculus and Economics tests tomorrow and one section of Calculus homework and then fix up my projectile for Monday! Wow! This week has been flying by so fast and yet things are getting done thankfully.

While working on my program (and already slightly frustrated at my own lack of skill) a guy behind me started "rapping." Yikes! It nearly drove me nuts! He went on for about ten minutes while I tried to drown him out but it was very annoying. Thankfully I couldn't understand any words because it sure sounded like there may have been some bad ones. I wanted to ask him to pipe down but I don't know, he may have perceived that as racist or something, he's one of the lolly-gaggers in the class who never seems to finish the labs and goofs off the whole time. When I stood up to leave a guy asked me if I remembered what I did for my "for" loop on the lab. I said not exactly but went over to his computer and took a look. He pointed to it:
for(numCar ...
And I (smiling inwardly) said, well, first you have to declare your counter, or where your loop is going to start to increment, such as
for(int j = 0; .....
And he said Oh! Like this loop here then? And scrolled down to another one. I said yes and he said "thanks man."
I mean, we're supposed to have mastered loops before the LAST exam, all the "for" loops we have been working ALL started with declaring where your counter was going to start. It's like saying "Oh, you mean THAT sentence starts with a capital letter too? You mean like this one here? Okay, I see, thanks man."

As I was leaving I noticed how cool it was outside, though it was about 2:30 or 3:00, the air outside was still piercingly cold but not too cold to require a jacket. I walked back down the two blocks to my car and when about halfway there I passed by my Calculus teacher! I was surprised because I actually (from the back) didn't think it was her. So I slowed down (yes, I passed but she was going the same way) and we chatted a little while on the way to the vehicles, she parks very close to me in the mornings. There wasn't really anything of major note, just talking about classes and how she's going to be taking Economics since that's her brother's major and she wants to be able to understand him a little when he's talking and things like that. I started thinking that actually, I think all of my teachers this semester know my name, which is actually pretty amazing considering that I have 2 classes with over 200 people in each (they are in auditoriums) and then the other three.... It's just interesting. It's not as though I am constantly in their offices asking for help, I actually don't know why they know my name. Curious.

As a closing note, I turned on the TV for a few minutes today and saw another one of those Trix commercials. I don't personally like Trix cereal but I have to feel sorry for that rabbit. Those kids are ALWAYS taking his cereal and saying "Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!" Same thing with Lucky Charms. The poor Leprechaun is always trying to escape those voracious kids who are after his cereal and then they end up catching him and taking it for themselves. It makes me sad.

Sort of.... ;)