I C (and most other languages) you can enter a value like thirty-two using many different number bases: ‘ ‘ as a char, 32 in decimal, 0x20 is hex, 040 in octal or 0b00010000. All of these mean thirty-two, just written differently using different characters.

Note that each of these representations use different digits and/or letters to specify the same number - the mathematical entity thirty-two. These letters and digits are characters stored as numbers, eg the digit zero (0) is coded in ASCII as 48.

In the end, the C compiler will compile the text ‘32’, ‘0x40’ or ‘0b00010000’ into binary and store it in memory the single byte where the 5th bit set to 1 and the others to 0. This is the way computer memory is used to represent the number, and it’s linked to the way the electric circuits do things like add numbers together.

The compiler is the thing that understands that the characters like ‘3’, ‘+’ or ‘F’ and works out what they represent (a number, a variable name or a sum). When it understands that, it will turn the code into bits that the CPU can work with, for example passing it to the compare instruction CMP used to test whether the input is less than the number thirty-two.

This is very meta, and I hope this clarifies rather than confuses. Compilers are notoriously confusing, such as the thought ‘the compiler compiles the compiler code into an executable that can compile itself’.

There’s another factor - days where thr earth is orbiting faster, eg on the closer side of the ellipse - are a different length midday to midday from when we are on the far side of the ellipse.

You can convince yourself of this when you consider that the area of the arc we traverse each day is the same (Kepler’s law). On the short side of our eliptical orbit, since the orbital distance is shorter, the arc must have a larger angle that we travel. That means the amount a point on the earth rotates to have the sun come back directly overhead must be different in different parts of the year.

This difference, summed day over day, results in a +/- 20 min movement of actual midday to 12pm. The ‘mean’ in Greenwich Mean Time refers to averaging this difference over the whole orbit.

The ladder was the first step on the way to civilisation.

BASIC DATA statement? Wow you were so lucky. On my ZX81 we had to enter them as characters in a REM statement that was the first line of code so we knew their address so that we could execute it. Address Space Layout Randomization? Couldn’t work on the ZX81!

That looked like machine code on a 8-bit micro, perhaps the Commodore 64 or VIC-20 (based on the screenshot and 40x20 text). So that would be the 6502. Child’s play compared to what you’d need to do on a modern chip.

You had 100% of my attention with the cat and mouse game.

History is often much more interesting looking up from the average guy than looking down with all the majesty (and bureaucracy) of the nobles. This card has great insight into the common man.

they appear to presuppose a humanized God, who follows a similar thought process which is expected to be understandable to us

The core of the argument arises from the hellenistic idea of god being a perfect being. Perfection requires omnipotence, omniscience omnibenevolence (and some other characteristics that we can ignore right now). Philosophers could demonstrate that these ideas are in contradiction of what we see in our world. All of this was well known before Christianity developed which is why they bear the name of the greek philosopher Epicurus.

Christianity arose in Israel and the hellenistic near east in both philosophical traditions. For example Paul who was of Jewish ancestry, grew up in a Roman city and spoke Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. He had both a formal Jewish and Greek education and was clearly understood Stoic philosophy. Later, the church fathers shaped christian doctrine with their knowledge of philosophy, in particular St Augustine introduced many neo-Platonist ideas in which the idea of god is ‘perfect’.

The idea of perfection immediately leads to the omni-powers discussed above. It also leads god to existing outside time (for if you are in time, you change. If you change you must either become better (i.e. you were not perfect) or worse (i.e. you are now not perfect)). It also allows god to be the prime mover or original cause of the universe recapitulating well rehearsed Greek philosophy of the previous centuries.

Again, all these arguments are pure logic exploring what perfect knowledge, perfect power and perfect goodness mean, and comparing this to the state of the world and how the world was brought into being. They don’t require anything of god except to be perfect.

In May, Vice thinks they had 20k unsold cybers - that’s 40% of the number they had sold. Amazing fail!

You’re in luck!

Why would you carry an Axe over the should opposite the hand you’re holding it with?

That’s not an axe, it’s a bindle - exactly what a fool (in french, le fou) would carry.

What is up with his pants

He’s wearing medieval trousers - that is in fact two ‘hose’

These trousers, which we would today call tights but which were still called hose or sometimes joined hose at the time, emerged late in the fifteenth century and were conspicuous by their open crotch which was covered by an independently fastening front panel, the codpiece.

And again le fou is so stupid, his junk is out and all over the place.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trousers

Where else could the energy go?

It could be absorbed by the material and converted to either

• a lower wavelength (i.e. uv fluorescence) or
• heat (eg black cars are hotter than white cars in the sun)

In both cases the wearer is protected from uv, but the the spf will be found to be artificially low.

Many people do not hear as they read. In fact the skill of speed-reading depends on turning the auditory experience off:

There are three types of reading:

• Subvocalization: sounding out each word internally, as reading to oneself. This is the slowest form of reading.
• Auditory reading: hearing out the read words. This is a faster process.
• Visual reading: understanding the meaning of the word, rather than sounding or hearing. This is the fastest process.

Subvocalization readers (Mental readers) generally read at approximately 250 words per minute, auditory readers at approximately 450 words per minute and visual readers at approximately 700 words per minute. Proficient readers are able to read 280–350 wpm without compromising comprehension.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading

I don’t remember anything in the Bible about God being omnibenevolent. That seems to have been added to Christian doctrine by later religious philosophers.

These properties were indeed added but it was by the church fathers very early in church history when christianity was very different in belief and form compared with today.

At this time the early church interacted with greek and roman ideas to create a new religion to differentiate it from Judaism from which it was born - you can see some of this debate in the new testament between the traditional jewish pov (such as in Matthew in the sermon on the mount) and different laws for non-jews such as circumcision not being needed in Paul’s letters.

In exactly the same way, it’s impossible to find the doctrine of the trinity in the bible. And yet the trinity is declared in the nicene creed and is the keystone to christian identity

Sad things, tragedy, and death are not the same as evil

Agreed.

Evil is a moral judgement describing a motive or agent (in the sense of something with agency, something that causes something to happen). Sad things, tragedy and death are not in and of themselves evil, they are the result of evil.

When a person does things that directly cause immense suffering on purpose, we can say the evil came from a human.

Now on to god. God is normally ascribed the properties of omniscience, omnipotence and all omnibenevolence. In addition God caused the universe to come into being.

As he is omniscient he knew the world he created would cause untold suffering and so either he is not omnipotent (i e. Could not create a world without suffering) or omnibenevolent (i.e. is fine with a world where the innocent suffers. (The comments have several versions of this argument done better than I could).

If we argue that it’s impossible to create a world without suffering, then what is heaven?

You’re talking about ‘the problem of suffering’ not ‘the problem of evil’

No, I’m highlighting the real problem of evil - that it seems inherent to the world that an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent created.

What about all those non-human evils like earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, tsunamis, wildfires, parasites and disease? They cause immense suffering and death, even of innocents such as the newly-born.

If god can stop these, why won’t he?

(Edit: misspelling)

That’s 2376 barleycorns, or a small bag of grain if you will.

Or a barleycorn that’s one barleycorn long? Or a really large foot that’s a foot long. Or a chain that’s a chain long?

Islam, just like Christianity, has many different groups that believe the same basic doctrine but disagree on many points. The main splits in Islam (that echo some aspects of the Catholic vs. Protestant split) as Sunni and Shia. Each divides and divides again into small communities centred on one mosque (just as, eg, Protestantism divides and divides down to individual congregations).

The big question is: how do groups of people decide which parts of the religious documents, history and practice are more relevant or even correct?

Some groups are quite ‘secular’ (like the Church of England) while others are quite ‘fundamental’, meaning that they much more strictly follow whatever the group decides are the foundation of the religion.

Is it possible to be able so say which of these groups is right? It seems to me that we have been fighting over this since before records began, so we most definitely do not have a way to do this that any majority agrees with. I don’t think anyone can say:

Islamist groups purposely … twist actual Islamic ideology while the Christian Right just doesn’t understand the religious text they claim to follow.

Danny Boyd wrote an excellent video essay on A Knight’s Tale. I too always wonder why there’s always someone cutting onions when I choose to watch.

Who’s the biggest dick. Sorry, I meant who has the biggest dick.

Remember the incident at the docks when the revolutionaries threw the T-Mobile imports into the harbour? Talk about high tariffs!