In a few minutes I am out the door to wing me way to DC for the meeting on Separation of Church and State. Don’t forget about the Pharyngula/Bad Astronomy meetup tonight!
I note that on the right side of this blog, where I have my site meter, you may see that sometime today or possibly tomorrow it will tip over to 5 million visits. Wow. It was at half a million in March 2006, two million in January of this year, and then three million in June. If this keeps up, it will hit a bazillion by 2009. Cool. I appreciate all the people who come here and read what I have to say, even (sometimes especially) those who disagree. All I ask is that people keep thinking.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:51 am
4,966,102
November 10th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Oops, typo
4,996,102
November 10th, 2007 at 9:15 am
4,996,219
It’s a pretty number.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:11 am
4,996,587
Sorry Dan, mine’s prettier!
November 10th, 2007 at 10:15 am
4,996,620!
November 10th, 2007 at 10:19 am
The || looks like “logical or” to C programmers, i.e. one, the other *or both*. My immediate thought was it should be xor, but there isn’t a logical xor operator and one has to sloppily use bitwise xor (^), but then it also looks like online shorthand for “Church to the power of State”, which is even worse, or if one is a bit more standards complient implement ones own xor, (Church && !State) || (!Church && State) for instance, but then it just look inelegant. Meh.
Good luck with the meeting though.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Hey! It’s not nice to hit Brazilians! (Whether in 2009 or before).
November 10th, 2007 at 10:32 am
I wonder what the graph would look like. Any more data, Phil?
November 10th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Great job, BA.
Which got me to thinking, how long would it take for my blog to get to a bazillion. My brain started to smoke at about 1 gadzillion years, which is a lot longer than it will take yours.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:52 am
I was thinking “If Church is false, evaluate State.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t make much sense.
November 10th, 2007 at 11:46 am
4,997,290!
November 10th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Pharyngula’s counter will roll over to 19 million round about Monday…
November 10th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Been an AU member for years. Barry likes to keep things interesting.
Have fun.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Oh, PZ pining for your youth again are you?
November 10th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Church or state? How about:
(church && state) ? church = !(State) : church = NULL;
November 10th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
LarrySDonald, why not just use the binary xor then?
church ^= state
November 10th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
church != state
4,998,217
November 10th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Cosmic Tentacular Goodness…
With Phil and PZ together in the same place, it’s only fitting that today’s Astronomy Picture has placed cephalopods in the heavens:
A beautiful blue ion tail has become visible in deep telescopic images of Comet Holmes. Pointing generally…
November 10th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Countdown to 5M: 888 remaining.
(Oh, if only I can hit when it’s 4,999,334!)
J/P=?
November 10th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
What ever happened to “Church / State”. Did I miss the memo?
4,999,236
I’ve come here for a couple of years for not just the Bad Astronomy but for you coverage of any and all Bad Science.
Keep On Debunkin’
November 10th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Five million visits is rather spectacular. Good going– and good luck with your book and future book sales.
November 10th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
#5,000,000!!!!!!!!!!!!
What do I win?
Thanks for all the debunking and skepticism.
And thanks for leading me to this: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2335#more-2335
I love it when people are exposed for being full of hot air.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Jim P: I would think you win a years supply of nothing, just to celebrate the vast emptiness of space.
November 11th, 2007 at 1:33 am
5,001,768
Wow. Quite an accomplishment, even if SiteMeter is inaccurate. Great work, Phil! SiteMeter is usually on the conservative side (I know — not your favorite word, or mine). Your best results would come from your server’s stats, and would probably indicate that you hit 5 M some time ago.
Congratulations!
Please keep us posted on the conference re: Science and Religion. I hope it’s not held to bash one or the other. I hope it’s an authentic attempt to really delineate the place of each in our democratic society.
Looking forward to reading your posts.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:04 am
I realized what I had to say:
State &= ~Church;
(Basically, turn off everything in State that belongs to Church.)
November 11th, 2007 at 7:54 am
The meetup was a lot of fun and it was great meeting you Phil! Thanks for hosting
November 11th, 2007 at 8:16 am
How the hell did you manage to share a room with that insufferable PZ?
November 11th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Thanks Bad Astronomer my congrats.
In answer to GK’s :
“Please keep us posted on the conference re: Science and Religion. I hope it’s not held to bash one or the other. I hope it’s an authentic attempt to really delineate the place of each in our democratic society.”
Galileo sorta did that 500 (~ish?) years ago, mate with his line :
“The Church tells us how to go to Heaven NOT how the heavens go.”
Or something very similar quoting off top of cranium …
In My Humble Opinion Naturally :
In essence, science tells us facts or at least ever improving theories and understandings about nature, the cosmos, the what and how of things whereas religion (or philosophy or metaphysics if y’prefer) gives us ethical guidelines and a spiritual / supernatural (again, if you choose to think spiritual supernatural~wise) perspective that may not not make sense in scientific terms and which may be outside of scientific purview and testing. (ie. non-reproducible results, non-verifiable theories.) But may at a .. deeper ( …or okay _different_ ) level still make sense to folks on an emotional or spiritual /belief level. Or the why and this is ethical / unethical~ness of things.
Where they conflict in matters of fact – (eg. geological timeline versus 6,000 yr old Earth, Human genetic relationship with chimps etc ..) science is 99.99999999999999999999999999999999 % of the time correct.
Where they clash on ethics, it is equally valid to say the vast majority of the time, science should cede way to respecting ethics / religion although this is complicated by the conflicting religions and religious interpretations. (Eg. destructive or painful or dangerous testing on human or animal subjects, say conducting sexual experiments on breeding broher-sister, mother-son or the Nazi Dr Menegle’s twin’s experiments.)
I think, however, there is a place for both aspects of life and they need not conflcit
November 11th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Having said all that I’ll add one more point – a lot of the problems and areas of conflict here NOT about either religion or sceince but instead about POLITICS – and that’s where things get really messed up.
Unfortunately, all three aspects of life – and understanding & participating in the cosmos – are inextricable.
Politics blights both religion and science whilst both scientists and the religious seek to have their views accounted for within the political sphere.
Again, there are balances and areas where input from each is useful and necessary and where it is harmful or superflous.
Ethical or religious input in politics is good and necesary where it dermands compassion, inclusion and equality; eg. the Rev. Martin Luther King or the abolition of slavery or concepts of social justice and everyone having the right to worship as they choose – or not if they choose that.
Ethical or religious input in politics is harmful and unnecesary where it dictates cruelty, exclusion and ignorance as in enforcing creationism / ID as science, imposing one religion at the expense of all others, forbidding people the right to choose euthanasia or abortion or discriminating against folks based on sexual orientation or politico-religious views (eg. Islamic laws on Muslims imposed by force, Christian supremacy and 10 Commandments-prayers shoved in everyone elses faces.Or with Israeli immigration & infrastructure restricted to Jews only and NOT non-Jews esp. Palestineans, etc ..)
Scientific input in politics is good and necessary where it enables us to fight serious global problems such as the greenhouse global warming or drives exporation and peaceful expansion, such as NASA’s work, the HST and the Apolo Moon landings. It is also necesary in education for building our future and this includes debunking politics in the guise of religion imposing “creationism” at schools etc ..
Scientific input in politics is harmful and unnecesary where it creates problems or dangers if allowed unchecked by compassion; eg. nuclear
M(utually) A(ssured) D(estruction)~ness , the potential for cloning and “Frankenfood” GM disasters and the sort of ‘science’ practiced by the Nazis and the US (eg. using Hiroshima as test bed for nuclear apocalypse, useof “agent Orange” in Vietnam and Depleted Uranium shells in Iraq etc…)
Politics is generally unhelpful _everywhere_ but, unfortunately, again an aspect of life that can not easily ( if at all) be avoided.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Well, let’s get the hardware engineers represented with the VHDL version:
Church /= State
> “All I ask is that people keep thinking.”
I just got back from a two week work trip in the middle of nowhere (rural New England), so I’m on a thinking hiatus today. Is it fitting that it’s a Sunday, America’s tradition day of superstition?
Maybe I’ll do something really brainless like watch football or play Guitar Hero or something.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:50 am
> “The Church tells us how to go to Heaven NOT how the heavens go.â€
We’re you watching History Channel yesterday? They used that quote.
Good show on how the Big Bang theory came into being raher than the theory itself. I already have read about it endlessly, but it was the only thing worth watching at 35,000 feet.
A lot of the graphics on these shows are sloppy, though. There was one point where they talked about Venus, but the CGI was clearly of Mars, and they keep depicting the BB as a literal explosion (complete with BOOM! sound).
November 11th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I much prefer the Big Condensation Theory, wherein the False Vacuum precipitates matter as a condensate. This eliminates the Singularity and a whole bunch of infinities. It also implies that we’re a universe in a (Klien) bottle, with an entry point but no exit, ie, a black hole,,,which doesn’t really matter, it’s all big enough for us.
GAry 7
November 11th, 2007 at 11:54 am
5,000,000 plus, plus, plus
November 11th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
c’mon phil, you know that little function that allows you to “change” your site visit numbers.. maybe your finger slipped and added a few zeros..
heh, j/k congratulations 5,000,000! ;^)
So what’s your technique? Pavlovian maybe? Give the mice a nice “doomed” photoshop of a mouse every once and a while and they’ll keep coming back.. lol
Have you ever stepped back and read your loquacious diatribes from an objective point of view? You’d be surprised to see that many of your writings actually turn out to be verbal forms of the “Rorschach inkblot test” .. heh
Sincerely,
mike j.
November 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
This is a parenthetical aside, but partially on topic: on Tuesday, 11/13 at 8:00 p.m. on Nova will be a two hour DOC – “Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.” The Dover, PA ID lawsuit brought by the ACLU and 10 parents of the Dover School District. Reality TV, for sure!
November 11th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Weird, I didn’t see anyone mention Carl Sagan’s birthday.
November 11th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Crux Australis says: “Weird, I didn’t see anyone mention Carl Sagan’s birthday.”
I did.
- Jack
November 11th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
5,005,861.
Proud to be one of them, BA.
Here’s to a Noted Scam Aborter.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Congrats on the HUGH number of hits!
November 12th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Phil:
The 5,000,000 count is low – I hardly EVER hit your bablog web site where the counter hits, but instead I read the email version (each and every one!), which won’t be reflected in the count. I also follow links from the email, which again won’t reflect in the count.
Your success is even bigger than than 5,000,000 suggests!
Kevin
November 14th, 2007 at 9:08 am
>LarrySDonald, why not just use the binary xor then?
Been a while and I’m sorry for not saying anything. According to ANSI, True doesn’t have to be one, but just non-zero. It very much usually is (i.e. !!5==1) but it isn’t guaranteed and there are situations where it isn’t, especially in minimal implementations for odd embedded-aimed CPUs where it’s an advantage hardware wise to use something other then 1. Thus, true in one case could be 2 in one case and 1 in another, making 2^1==3 => True – not a correct logical xor situation as both are True by logic. Thus, the logic operators, which isn’t doing bitwise but actually logical comarison. But the logical xor (what one would expect to be ^^) wasn’t implemented. Not sure why, possibly because it was at the time rarely implemented in hardware so it would have boiled down to logical and/or anyhow, might as well give the programmer a shot at how he/she/it wants it implemented.
I’m glad to hear it wasn’t just me that had feelings about it. I just mentioned it because it was honestly my first thought. Many of the ideas would make great geek shirts/slogans though. I doubt it matters in the scheme of things, just one of those slight cringe moments due to associating || so hard with “or”.