Dedwarmo

Some people believe that in the beginning there was nothing except God. Then God created everything. Other people say God had nothing to do with it, that there was a big bang which resulted in the universe in which we live. But what was there before the Big Bang? Has matter existed forever? The people who say that God created everything believe that matter does not have the power of self-existence, matter cannot create itself. If matter can only exist as the result of a creative act of God, then could matter continue to exist if God ceased to exist? In response to my “It was an act of God” post, Perry said, “A creator can make something but then not be involved in what happens with the invention. For example, I could sew up some juggling bean bags, sell them and not be involved in their subsequent juggling.” But there is a crucial difference. Perry did not cause the materials to come into existence that the bean bags are made of. Perry can take preexisting items and cut, sew and glue them, but he cannot cause them to exist out of nothing. No one knows what it means to be able to create something out of nothing. The pyramids continue to exist even though the Pharoahs are long gone. But how do we know if matter would continue to exist if God could somehow cease to exist? On the other hand, if matter has always existed and never had a beginning and will never have an end, then it seems to me that there is no need for a creator.

If God created the Universe then he must have created everything in it. Creationists use things like the eyeball to show that life could not have happened by accident. But why do you need God only in the case of eyeballs and not in the case of even the simplest biological forms? Even the simplest living cell is so complicated that scientists do not understand all its workings. If the act of creation was a miracle, then every time a lamb is born is also a miracle. Every time hydrogen and oxygen join to form water is a miracle. Every time a photon of light travels from a firefly to a frog’s eye is a miracle. If God created the Universe then nothing can exist without God’s continuous intervention. He is someone who is continuously spinning plates. If he takes his attention away the plates come crashing down. But a God that can create a universe is all powerful and can keep all those plates spinning with ease. Every time a raindrop falls from the sky you have witnessed an act of God.

When a nail rusts, when iron oxidizes, this is an act of God. How can it be otherwise? Did the iron oxide choose to form itself out of oxygen and iron? How can anything happen without the Creator’s immediate involvement? That is if there is a Creator.

Portal was a game released in 2007 by Valve Corporation and “received praise for its unique gameplay and darkly humorous story.”¹ I like the way Ben Gelinas puts it, “In Portal, your ‘gun’ isn’t really a gun at all, it’s a tool used to create doors (portals) in walls to [other locations]. Shoot a wall and it makes a portal. Placing these portals at key points inside rooms that otherwise hold you captive is essential for your escape into the more difficult room ahead.” I’ve only played partially through the game, but so far I have been able to create an orange portal and a blue portal. When you go in the blue portal you come out the orange portal and vice versa. Depending on where you place the portals you can be transported around obstacles or from room to room.

If you fall into a portal from a high ledge your momentum carries you out the second portal at the same acceleration. If you place one portal on the floor and the other on a wall this will convert your vertical movement into horizontal movement and allow you to jump large gaps.

One side effect of being able to place portals almost anywhere is the creation of infinite loops. If you place two portals opposite each other in a hallway you will see an infinite regression of yourself as you look through one portal into the other. If you place a portal on the floor directly under a portal on the ceiling you have set up a similar kind of situation. When you step into the portal on the floor you fall out of the portal on the ceiling and back into the portal on the floor. This will continue until your computer dies or until you push your joystick to one side and cause yourself you miss hitting the portal as you fall.

Valve Corporation has announced that Portal 2 will be released in 2011. The new game features the ability to direct tractor beams, laser beams and liquids through portals. Watch the videos at ThinkWithPortals.com.

¹Wikipedia

I created this video using Blender. The shape of the tree was made using Inkscape. Video was edited with iMovie.

In a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996, Carl Sagan spoke about a photograph of Earth as seen from the Voyager spacecraft from 3 billion miles away.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

My nephew has started a blog at joshlukenichols.blogspot.com. He says,

My name is Josh Nichols. I love the God of the Bible, golf, my supportive family, my iPhone, John Piper, Coldplay, David Crowder Band, Kernersville, and most things Tiger Woods does.

I posted this YouTube video before using the standard method. This time I’m attempting to post it using Vladimir Prelovac’s plug-in. He claims it will make the video viewable on iPhones and iPads.

Update: I just checked it on my iPhone and it worked.

I bought an iPhone in October 2007 and today it is still working, albeit with a cracked screen. When I saw the new iPhone 4 presented I got the itch to get a new phone. I could wait a few weeks and pay $200 USD for the latest iPhone, but I decided to buy the iPhone 3GS now for $150. I held on to my old first generation iPhone for more than two years. I hope I can do the same with my this one.

Typically when you play a puzzle game, you are given an objective and perhaps a few different ways that you can accomplish this task. However, you’re not frequently asked to readjust the reality of the world simply by manipulating the camera to close gaps between platforms. The same could be said about erasing pitfalls by changing a camera angle so a column appears to cover a hole. These optical illusions form the basis behind Sony’s latest PSN title, echochrome, which asks players to constantly tweak, bend and change their perceptions to solve deceptive puzzles. While the choice to use optical illusions is a unique one, the decision to focus upon a simple wireframe presentation adds a surprising amount of depth to this spatial puzzle title. – IGN.com

For PlayStation 3 ($10 US) and PSP