Back of the Envelope

"A Reluctant Alliance," the third part of A Phoenix in Darkness, is now online.

With the discovery of dark magic, the murder investigation has become something much more dangerous. Can Seth, a Guardsman with reason to distrust Domini, cooperate with Aulus and Nathan, two Domini keeping secrets from their own Order?

I hope you enjoy the third part of the story.

Update: Doc Rampage gives A Phoenix in Darkness a positive review. Thanks, Doc.

I meant to mention this as it happened, but earlier this week I passed 10,000 visitors as the total of both this site and the previous site. Now this isn't a big deal compared to blogs that get more than 10,000 visitors per day, but for me, it's more traffic than I reasonably expected to get when I started this blog five-and-a-half months ago. Granted, this isn't unique visitors, and most of my traffic comes from a much smaller core of regular visitors. While I'm glad for the people who only come once, it's the regulars whom I truly appreciate. Thank you for coming by.

On my About Me page, I describe myself as follows:

I'm an Evangelical Christian by faith, a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering by education, a Research Scientist by trade, and a skeptical cynic by nature.

I probably wouldn't comment on it, but Back of the Envelope has just been added to blogs4God, and that's the blurb they chose to describe me. It's not what I would have chosen, but I did write it, so I must have meant it, right? It wasn't just a clever turn of phrase which I didn't really mean, was it?

Well, yes, I meant it, but what did I mean by it? Evangelical Christian, Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, and Research Scientist are all pretty self-explanatory, but what about this skeptical and cynical stuff? I readily accept that these words are accurately applied to me, but can a Christian really be skeptical and cynical? Are these things I can change? Should I be trying to change them?

Let's start with skeptical. From the dictionary definition, skeptical means marked by or given to doubt; questioning. Doubt is the opposite of faith... isn't it? I'm not so sure. Doubt, at least as the term is commonly used, is more of an emotion than anything else, a sense of uncertainty. Emotions have power, but they don't control us. There are several ways to deal with doubt. One is to suppress it, praying that God will make it go away. Many Christians believe this is the only proper way to deal with it, but I believe this is wrong. Some of my worst problems with doubt came from doing this. Another way to deal with it is by looking at the source of the doubt, thinking through it, praying it over, and determining whether there is truly any reason to doubt. This I believe is the proper way to deal with doubt, and dealt with this way, doubt actually encourages faith. However, this is hard to do, and it's scary--what if looking at your doubt leads you to the conclusion that your doubt was right in the first place? Well, I suppose the question becomes whether you have enough faith to doubt.

I believe that Christianity is a very skeptical religion. Again and again, God tells us test the spirits, beware false prophets, believe only what is true. On some level, at least, we are called to be questioning and doubtful. Yet we're also called to have faith, "But when he asks [for wisdom], he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." (James 1:6) There are certain ways to look at the language in James to make it compatible with my views, but suffice it to say that there's enough in the Bible to make me doubt my beliefs about doubt.

Now, on to cynical, which has all sorts of definitions: Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others, or selfishly or callously calculating, or negative or pessimistic, as from world-weariness, or expressing jaded or scornful skepticism or negativity. Some of these are not very Christian attitudes, but then again some are. Christians believe in the fallenness of man, that people are indeed motivated by base or selfish concerns. We also believe in the ability of God to change our motives. What I think of as cynicism, what I mean when I use the word, isn't clearly spelled out in these definitions. [Maybe you're just using it wrong — Ed.] I think of cynicism as not taking things too seriously. "Huh?" you ask yourself. "What's that got to do with any of the things stated above?" Just this: most causes, movements, philosophies, and people like to present themselves as very important. The world depends on you using cloth diapers! Save the whales, or your descendants will spend their days and nights cursing you for your callousness! Few things are as important as they make themselves out to be. A Christian perspective puts God first, and your neighbor second. Everything else, even the Law and the Prophets, are judged by how they affect these two. While a cynical attitude towards everything isn't appropriate, a certain degree of cynicism does help to put all the things crying out for attention in perspective.

I said I was these things by nature. By which I mean they come natural to me. Are they intrinsic in my being, or did I develop them by the way I live? I don't know. Are they good things? I can think of plenty of times and situations where they aren't good at all. But then, I can also think of times when they helped me separate truth from falsehood, simple right and wrong from emotional sound-and-fury. Should I try to change them, or to use them? You tell me.

I started late, so I thought I might end up a little late this week, but I finished the third revision of Part III today, so it looks like Part III of A Phoenix in Darkness will go up on time.

The Christian Carnival is up at Fringe blog. Check it out.

Universal Press Syndicate has an ongoing re-run of Calvin and Hobbes strips from eleven years ago. I think this one is even more true today than it was eleven years ago. (Warning, the link will die in about a month.)

Mark Steyn has been saying this for a while, and he drives the point home in his latest column:

Crawling around on your stomach is a lousy way to hunt deer, but it's proved a smart way to campaign for president. For months now, George W Bush has been up there getting fired on from all directions. Meanwhile, down in the scrub, John Kerry was crawling forward on his stomach, a stealth candidate advancing slowly, off the radar, prone alone.

Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren't too sure Americans are going to like what they see.

If I were a mad scientist hired by Bush svengali Karl Rove to construct the most unelectable Democratic presidential candidate possible, I'd start with a load of big-government one-size-fits-all dependency-culture domestic policies. Next I'd throw in a consistent two-decade voting-record aversion to American military power. Then make him the kind of fellow whose stump speeches are always butt-numbingly ponderous and go on way too long because someone told him that if you intone a platitude slowly and sonorously enough it sounds like the Kennedy inaugural address.

That may explain this latest bit of news from the Kerry campaign:

John Kerry's election team is to suspend advertising during August, opening itself to what it expects will be a barrage of attacks from the Bush-Cheney campaign.

After a debate with his senior advisers, Mr Kerry has opted to "go dark" in the weeks after the Democratic National Convention to conserve limited federal funds for the weeks immediately before the November 2 election.

(From The Corner)

I'm not saying it won't work, but if stealth campaigning is your strategy, are you sure people are going to remember who they're supposed to vote for come November?

New Post: A commenter asks who these no-show Democrats are. I answer in a later post.

NOTICE: The Christian Carnival e-mail list got deleted, and Nick Queen's still in the process of re-building it. If you haven't gotten any of the e-mails today, go here to re-sign-up.

Here's the info on the upcoming carnival:

This coming Wednesday (7-28) the Christian Carnival will be hosted at Fringe. If you have a blog, this will be a great way to get read, and possibly pick up a few readers.

To enter, your post should be of a Christian nature, but this does not exclude ones that are political (or otherwise) in nature from a Christian point of view. Please send only one post dated since the last Christian Carnival. (7-22 or after) Then, do the following:

email me (Jeremiah Lewis) at [E-mail address redacted]

Please put "Christian Carnival" in the subject line so I don't delete it accidentally. Please provide the following:

Title of your Blog
URL of your Blog
Title of your post
URL linking to that post
Short description of the post

The cut off is Tuesday July 27 at 11PM Eastern Daylight Time.

Since I don't post people's e-mails on my blog for anti-spam purposes, you'll have to visit The Fringe for more on how to submit.

Doc Rampage has an interesting post on charity up:

Professional beggars in the US today create a moral dilemma for Christians (yes, I know the politically-correct term is "homeless person". I'm not politically correct). On the one hand, we are enjoined to help the poor. On the other hand, we are enjoined to love people. Giving money to an addict to help him buy drugs or alcohol is not an act of love, it's an act of "here's an insignificant bit of money, go away and leave me alone".

Most beggars are beggars because they have a drug or alcohol problem that is so severe it prevents them from holding down a job. There are also some mentally ill beggars, but if you give them money, most of it gets stolen by the addicts. So what do we do? How can we help the poor and downtrodden while not aiding and abetting life-destroying activity?

Thanks to government programs to help these people, one possible choice is to just refuse them any help. Presumably, the government will give them enough help to keep them from starving to death. In San Francisco, the government used to not only give them food, it gave them $400 per month to support their habit. The cash payment has ended (at least temporarily, the beggar lobby is very strong in this city), but I can still tell myself that if anyone really needs help, they can get it elsewhere.

This isn't an entirely comfortable solution. In the first place, Jesus didn't command us to vote for government officials who would feed the hungry and clothe the naked, he commanded us to do it ourselves. And in the second place, I don't trust the government to do anything right. The incentives just aren't there. If a beggar freezes to death, what consequence is suffered by the city official who is supposed to prevent that? And what reward does he get for keeping it from happening? Yes, many government people do a good job just from good will. But it is foolish to rely on that.

He goes on to describe how he made a good faith effort to help someone who made it difficult to be helped.

It is not easy to help others in need. If it were, Jesus would not have made such a big deal out of it. In his time, even giving a few coins could be a considerable sacrifice for the giver, but these days giving a dollar or two to a beggar does not constitute a sacrifice for anyone who is not a beggar himself. I think Doc is right to identify this as the danger--our usual form of charity is more of a bribe. I've known many Christians who argue that "It doesn't really matter what he does with the money. God just cares that I was compassionate." While I've taken this attitude too often to allow me to comfortably criticize it, I do believe this is the wrong attitude, and that this behavior is not really compassionate. Compassion means to care about the other person (literally, it means to suffer with). If you're not concerned about what he's doing with your gift, you're not feeling compassion for him.

When it comes right down to it, money is the least helpful thing that you can give someone in need. Of more value by far is time. That's why I think that Doc Rampage's approach, as futile as it ultimately turned out to be, was better. I've been in a similar situation, where someone asked me for money and resisted my attempts to give alternative forms of help. In this case, I think it's safe to say that he doesn't really need the help. If he does need it, he should be not just willing to accept aid in this form, but appreciative of the concern that it shows on your part.

However, it's not just possible, but likely, that most of the people who ask of you simply want the cash and will be unwilling to accept any other form of assistance. This leads to a great deal of frustration and very little outlet for Christian charity, which is why I suggest becoming involved with an established charitable organization, such as the Salvation Army. Groups like the Salvation Army provide subsistence level help to anyone who needs it, which may mean as little as a meal and a bed, but may also include a free clinic and laundry and shower facilities, depending on the resources of the organization. Since the Salvation Army is a church, they address the spiritual needs of those who come as well as their physical needs, and they also work hard to provide a way out for those who are willing to take it--this means long-term housing, job placement, alcohol and drug recovery programs, et cetera. Becoming involved is more than just giving money to the Salvation Army. Working in the kitchen, cleaning up, taking part in a Bible study with the residents, etc., provides an opportunity to get to know the people the Salvation Army helps, to truly love them and suffer with them, and once again, gives you a chance to spend your time rather than your money.

This week, Dave Barry reminisces about his old college band, the Federal Duck:

I should explain that the Federal Duck was the band I belonged to when I was a student at Haverford College back in the '60s. We were originally called The Stomp Jackson Quintet, and then The Guides (don't ask) but we came up with our new and final name one night when we were lying on the bank of the Haverford campus duck pond, and some ducks started waddling toward us in what looked like a purposeful manner, and as we watched them with increasing alarm — an oncoming duck squadron in the moonlight — the thought struck us that these ducks might be working for the government. And if you are wondering why that particular thought would have struck us, you did not experience the '60s.

It's a fun read, but so is most of what Dave Barry writes. Last week's column was just as good, wherein he covered the war of the sexes in the realm of shopping:

I can't shop with my wife. The problem is that she almost never has a clear objective. I ALWAYS have a clear objective. Without a clear objective, you're just wandering randomly around a store, which is NOT the point of shopping.

This is not just my opinion: This is the opinion of literally thousands of Nobel-Prize-winning scientists whose names are available upon request. These scientists have traced the origins of shopping back to prehistoric times, when ''shopping'' was called ''hunting,'' and primitive man would make out his ''shopping list'' by drawing, on his cave wall, a picture of his objective, usually a large wad of meat in the form of, say, a yak. He would then go out into the wild, locate his objective, and make the ''purchase'' by whomping the yak on the head with a club.

Read them both. (Free registration required)

Sluggy Freelance — Oh no, Riff has been demonized! And Pete fast-forwards the story by three months to show us the demons implementing their plan for world conquest. Fortunately, Torg, Alt-Gwynn, Alt-Freaky Fred, and Alt-Bun-bun have formed an underground (literally) resistance. But where is Alt-Zoe?

Day by Day — One of the advantages of a webcomic is it can always be up-to-date. What other strip comments on Sandy Berger the day the news breaks?

It's Walky! — Jason takes charge, of SEMME and the Britjas. Obviously he's the best qualified of those remaining. Meanwhile, Jason and Sal discuss their relationship, such as it is.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Roger and Mike escape from the monkey and meet some centaurs. Dave hitches a ride on the Dragon's boat. And the mermaid starts her revolt.

General Protection Fault — Uh oh. Fooker may be back, but it doesn't look like his old job is available. Meanwhile, the evening with crazy Trish ends and she reports back to her mysterious boss. Alternate universes, anyone?

Schlock Mercenary — The mercenaries complete their takeover of the slavers' base. This allows them to put into practice the first rule: Pillage, then burn!

I have a question. When people turn up their car stereo volumes so that everyone in a one mile radius can hear it, what are they trying to accomplish? Is it

1. To share their particular musical taste with their unwilling audience.
2. To be rude and obnoxious as an act of rebellion.
3. To demonstrate how cool and tough they are by the lewd and violent music they listen to.

If it's the first, then I really don't care what music they listen to. I can find my own music. If it's the second, well, that's their choice, but I wish they'd just grow out of that phase. If it's the last, then I'd recommend that they be more careful about their song choice for their musical declarations than the guy who drove by me earlier today. "A Hardknock Life" from the musical Annie just doesn't convey the level of coolness and toughness that he apprently thinks it does.

La Shawn Barber has moved to a new blog with a gorgeous design, here. Her last post before she moved asked about how far people's family trees can be traced back. Her tree doesn't go back very far, which is a common problem for those whose families were brought here by the African slave trade. However, it's not that uncommon for other families who voluntarily immigrated either. Accurate record keeping just wasn't a high priority around the world in the 1800's, and those who re-located often don't even know where to look for those records. Two of my grandparents are immigrants. My maternal grandfather is a Kozik, and we're not even sure what country he's from. I don't think he knows more than his father's name, and I don't even know that. My maternal grandmother is an Adams, and that side of the family has been in America for a while, but I'm not sure anyone's really tried to trace it back very far. My paternal grandmother is an Olsen, and her parents immigrated from Norway. I'll have to ask whether we know anything about her ancestry, but I'm doubtful. That leaves the Crankshaw line, and here's where I actually know something. The combination of a not-too-common name and British ancestry helps a lot. My uncle's an amateur genealogist, and he's traced four distinct Crankshaw lines (which probably converge somewhere) as far back as the 1600s. Unfortunately, our particular line dead ends in the late 1700s with Moses Crankshaw, the first Crankshaw in America. We're not quite sure who his parents were, so we don't know his connection to the other three lines. Moses ran away from home to join the army, and fought against the colonies in the Revolutionary War. He was part of the surrendering forces in the Battle of Saratoga, and he wound up in Canada as part of a prisoner exchange. Around 1800 he immigrated to the nascent United States. I trace my lineage to him through his son Samuel W. Crankshaw, through his son Hazael, through his son Harvey C. Crankshaw, through his son Clinton W. Crankshaw, through his son Donald H. Crankshaw, my father. That's a total of six generations.

More information can be found here and here.

There are all sorts of anecdotes about Moses Crankshaw, nicknamed Little Grandpa because he was so short (something we have in common). There's one story of how he was captured by Indians during the French and Indian War and later escaped. (This one is probably not true, since if our guess as to his birth year is correct, he would have been too young.) I've always thought that if I ever get a chance, I'll write a fictionalized biography about him, though.

Old Post: This is a continuation of a discussion of the Trinity here.

I was looking over some old e-mails, and I came across the original e-mail on which the previous post on the Trinity was based. The explanation of the Trinity was written in response to some questions my old fellowship, MIT's Graduate Christian Fellowship, received from a Muslim. (It turns out the questions weren't really asked in earnest--he had no interest in engaging us in conversation, just challenging us, which became clear once he began repeating his questions while refusing to explain why our previous answers were insufficient.) In any case, my original answer was even longer than what I posted, and portions of it got cut even before it got sent to our Muslim questioner. However, looking over it, I decided it'd be worth sharing. Our questioner was particularly interested in whether belief in the Trinity was a belief in three gods, and thus idolatry, which is what I address here. (I later decided that explaining what the Trinity is should suffice, and that I could cover the rest in the follow-up, which never really happened.) In any case, here it is:

How does one worship the Triune God? Doesn't the nature of God divide the commitment and obedience, the love and adoration we must give Him between three people rather than just one? Isn't this as bad as idolatry in any form, where idols were not condemned for their own power and influence (of which they had none), but rather for what they stole from the living God who deserved it all?

This is a serious charge, especially since it drives at the heart of something Jesus himself said, that "No man can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other." (Matt. 6:24) Consider, however, that God told Moses, "You will be God to Pharaoh." [Ex. 7:1] Moses was not God, and never claimed to be. But he acted as God's representative, and when he spoke to Pharaoh, he spoke with the authority of God. Jesus claims a much different relationship with God than Moses (Moses never would have said "I and the Father are one" or "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." He never even called God Father.). But this shows how one human can act as God toward another human, simply by acting on behalf of God. To disobey Moses was to disobey God, not because Moses was literally God, but because he spoke for God, acting not out of his own will but on behalf of God's will. Jesus's claim is stronger than that of Moses, since Moses still had his own will and often ran counter to God. Because Jesus and the Father are one being, their will is the same. Jesus cannot want anything other than what the Father wants. Thus when Jesus speaks, he carries the authority of the Father. To disobey one person of the Trinity is to disobey all three, whereas to obey one person of the Trinity is to obey all three. They are never in conflict, they always speak from the same will and for the same purpose, even if they speak in different ways and about different things.

This resolves the matter of divided loyalties, but does not address the matter of divided affections. How can the finite human being give all the adoration due to God to not one but three persons? The adoration due to God is to love him with all our heart and soul and mind and might. But if all our love goes to the Father, how can we love anyone else? Not just another person of the Trinity, but what affection could we possibly have left over for family, or friends, or country? The answer is that God commands us to surrender all our love to him not so that we can love no one else, but so we can love the things that he loves. To love God is to love what He loves. Our love for others is unsteady, fitful, and conditional. It varies depending on how we perceive and deal with a person on a day-to-day basis. God is the only being we can come close to loving consistently and completely, the only being who deserves that kind of love. When we give Him the love He deserves, He directs us to love those whom He loves, including those who cannot deserve that kind of love. So how can we talk of our love for God being divided among the three persons of the Trinity? If we love God we love what He loves, and the Trinity's love for one another is so complete, no person of it can begrudge love given to another of it. The Father is intent on glorifying the Son, and the Son is eager to glorify the Father. The Spirit receives their affection and works to glorify them both. Each works to direct the love given Him to the whole of the Trinity.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the matter.

New Post: In response to my commenter, I've written a post on the use of the phrase "Son of God."

Old Post: My previous post on the Sandy Berger story is below.

Captain Ed is following the Sandy Berger story in detail, and has been doing so since it broke. From the information he's collecting, it's sounding more and more like Berger is trying to hide something, rather than just showing blatant disregard for security:

According to this chronology, Berger took the missing documents at issue in September, not October, and returned to take even more documents after that security breach. Not only does this tend to indict NA security officers — who never should have let Berger back in after the first security lapse, but obviously politics played a part in that decision — but it demolishes any notion that Berger's supposedly legendary sloppiness led to an inadvertent theft, a notion ridiculous on its face. As I've described before, classified documents have brightly-colored covers indicating their level of classification, and in any case SCI-classified (codeword) material is never supposed to leave the Archives.
...
What exactly did Clinton Administration officials write on those after-action draft memos that Berger and others didn't want the 9/11 Commission to see?

We'll probably never know now, thanks to Berger's theft and the unwillingness of the National Archive's security staff to enforce its procedures.

I wonder. I'm still not clear on whether those copies were the only ones. I mean, if you suspected someone was stealing the documents, as the National Archives people clearly did, would you give him the only copies of a document you thought he might purloin as part of your sting, or would you make back-ups? I suppose making back-ups of secure documents may be problematic, but is it more problematic than letting a suspect get his hands on them?

Old Posts: In my previous posts on quantum computation, I explained what a qubit was and how you could use them for Quantum key distribution.

Entanglement is one of the keys to the power of quantum computation, and it is a very difficult concept to wrap your mind around. But I'll do my best to explain it in layman's terms.

Imagine you have a qubit that you put in the state a|0>+b|1>. Recall that a qubit can be in both the |0> and |1> state at the same time, but if measured, it will collapse to one state or the other, with a probability of |a|² that it will be measured in the 0 state and |b|² that it will be measured in the 1 state. Recall that both a and b are complex numbers, such that |a|²+|b|²=1. Now, let's say that we have another qubit, which is also in the a|0>+b|1> state, and we place them in a 2-bit register which can hold the values 00, 01, 10, or 11, where the first, higher-order bit is the value of the first qubit, and the second, lower-order bit is the value of the second qubit. Because both the bits in the register are really qubits, the register can hold all four values simultaneously, but when we measure it, we only get one value out. Which value? Well, it's a simple probability problem, where the probability of outcome A and outcome B equals the probability of A times the probability of B. The probability of the first qubit being measured as 0 is |a|², and the probability of the second qubit being measured as 0 is |a|², so the probability of measuring 00 is |a|²|a|². Then the probability of 01 is |a|²|b|², of 10 is |b|²|a|², and of 11 is |b|²|b|². This is the case as long as the two qubits are independent--they're not entangled.

Now let's do this a little differently. We'll start with the first qubit in a|0>+b|1>, and the second qubit in |0>. Then we'll apply an operation called CNOT. In classical language, CNOT, the controlled-not gate, inverts a target bit if and only if the control bit is in the 1 state. In quantum language, it's a bit more complicated, since the control qubit can be partially in the 1 state. So, it partially inverts the target qubit, right? Well, sort of. What it does is merge the two independent quantum systems into a single quantum system--what's called entangling the qubits. So let's consider our register again, and use the higher-order bit, which is in the a|0>+b|1> state, as the control qubit, and the lower-order bit, which is in the |0> state, as the target qubit, so the register begins in the state a|00>+b|10>. When we apply the CNOT, the state of the register becomes a|00>+b|11>. Measured independently, each qubit is in the state a|0>+b|1>. However, once you've measured one qubit, you've determined the state of the other, because the register is now one quantum system rather than two, so measuring a single qubit collapses the entire system. So your probability of measuring 00 is |a|², your probability of measuring 11 is |b|², and your probability of measuring 01 or 10 is 0. This is entanglement, and it should be obvious why it is useful. Without entanglement, you can create a superposition of one qubit, so it can be in both 0 and 1, but when it comes to two qubits, you're out of luck. You can place both of them in superpositions, but there's no way to have a superposition of 00 and 11 without also having a superposition of 01 and 10.

Entanglement gives rise to all sorts of interesting quantum behaviors, including what's called "spooky action-at-a-distance," which completely freaked Einstein out. Let's say that you have two entangled qubits, and you separate them by a distance of miles--heck, let's separate them by lightyears. Now you measure one, and at the same instance you make your measurement, you collapse the state of the other one as well, because they are still one quantum system. "Hey, wait a minute!" you say. "Einstein's theory of relativity won't let any effect take place faster than the speed of light." Funny, that's just what Einstein said. He came up with this theory, called EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen), precisely to show that quantum mechanics conflicted with special relativity and thus had to be wrong. He was the one who was wrong in this case, since it turns out that EPR works and can be tested in the laboratory. Fortunately, it turns out that EPR doesn't conflict with special relativity. Here's how you can do the experiment: In this case, our qubits are photons, whose states are represented by different linear polarizations. When you measure the state of one, you determine the state of the other as well, which collapses to a state orthogonal to the original. (Why orthogonal? It turns out that certain atoms, when they decay from a high energy state, naturally emit two photons in opposite directions with orthogonal polarizations.) Now, if you measure the two qubits at a reasonable distance apart, you can have electronics good enough to measure them more or less simultaneously (such that the time between the measurement of each qubit is less than the time it takes light to travel between the two experimental apparati), and then compare your answers, and determine that they are indeed orthogonal every time. Now at this point, you may be wondering whether you can be sure that you are indeed collapsing qubit states rather than just measuring some classical polarizations which just happen to be orthogonal every time. This is the "hidden variable" interpretation. The answer is you can be sure that the "hidden variable" interpretation doesn't work if your measurement apparati are set to measure not quite orthogonal states, so that your collapsed state is a superposition of two other states, and then you compare your statistical measurements with rules known as Bell's inequalities, but frankly, it's rather complicated and I'd have to look it up to make sure I've explained it right, and I'd rather not. So I'll just say that we do know we're collapsing superpositions.

So if this effect travels faster than light, how can it not conflict with special relativity? Well, when it comes right down to it, "effect" is probably the wrong word. When you measure one photon, there's really no way to tell whether the other photon has collapsed already, or whether you're just now causing it to collapse. All you know is that you measure it in a certain state which you knew there was some probability you'd measure it in anyway. Go back to our original CNOT operation and our a|00>+b|11> register. When you measure one, you get 0 with probability |a|² and 1 with probability |b|², the same as if they weren't entangled. You don't get any new information out due to their entanglement until you can compare them, and you can only compare them at the speed of light. And thus Einstein's special relativity remains intact, because there's no cause and effect taking place faster than the speed of light.

If this justification leaves you queasy, you're not the only one. I've been thinking about this for years and wondering whether there's some clever way to use this to communicate faster than the speed of light. It shouldn't be possible, not if special relativity remains intact, and lots of physicists smarter and more experienced than I have told me that again and again, but I can't help feeling that there's a violation going on someplace. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to prove either Einstein or quantum physics wrong.

As of now, most of the sites which blogroll me have updated their blogrolls to the new address. Those of you who are visiting me for the first time since the move may notice that Back of the Envelope looks a little different. I've moved to a new website and a new host, and I've made some changes to how the site looks and feels in the process. Don't worry, my writing is the same as always. Feel free to poke around the new site and discover the new and interesting stuff.

Update: One thing I'm going to miss about my old site is my number two Google ranking for a search for Back of the Envelope. I couldn't even find this site in the rankings. If you're curious, the first ranked site for the Back of the Envelope search is this one, and it richly deserves the ranking. Check it out.

As you probably already know, Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor and a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry, is under criminal investigation for removing classified documents from the National Archives. From the AP report:

Sandy Berger, former President Clinton's national security adviser, is under criminal investigation by the Justice Department after highly classified terrorism documents disappeared while he was reviewing what should be turned over to the Sept. 11 commission.

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI agents armed with warrants after the former Clinton adviser voluntarily returned some sensitive documents to the National Archives and admitted he also removed handwritten notes he had made while reviewing the sensitive documents.

However, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers told The Associated Press.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket and pants, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.
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The Archives, which is the nation's repository for presidential papers, is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents. [Emphasis added.]
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Breuer said Berger believed he was looking at copies of the classified documents, not originals. [Which implies that they were originals.]
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Gergen said he thought that "it is suspicious" that word of the investigation of Berger would emerge just as the Sept. 11 commission is about to release its report, since "this investigation started months ago." [As usual, blame the messenger.]
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The missing documents involve two or three draft versions of the report as it was evolving and being refined by the Clinton administration, according to officials and lawyers.
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Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said.

Officials familiar with the investigation said Archive staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archive officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey to raise concerns.

Is this a big deal? Yes, and no. He broke the law, and he admits that he deliberately took the handwritten notes out without submitting them to the proper review process. The inadvertant removal of drafts of highly classified documents is suspicious, although I expect it's not so easy to prove that it wasn't inadvertant. (I'm still not clear whether there are other copies. There are quite a few copies floating around in the story, and I don't think AP was particularly clear on what's really missing and what are only missing copies. I take it that the truly missing documents are drafts of a later report, of which there are plenty of copies, but as I know from writing papers that sometimes require five to ten revisions, sometimes there's information in the draft that doesn't make the final report.) So legally, there's a case against him.

Is Berger trying to cover-up something? That I'm not so certain about. The notes were notes he was making for himself while reading over the classified documents in preparation for the 9/11 Commission interview. You can make an argument that he was just avoiding the inconvenience by slipping them out unnoticed. And as I said earlier, the inadvertant removal of other documents might really be inadvertant. So I'm not convinced it's a cover-up, and if they are mistakes, or can be made to seem mistakes, it's the sort of thing the public might let slide. The unquestionable scandal, as Instapundit has pointed out already, is his blatant disregard for the security measures to protect classified documents. Sandy Berger was the National Security Advisor, and it's simply atrocious that he would show so little concern for security. For that reason, although I won't cry cover-up and try to implicate the Clinton administration and the Kerry campaign in this, I do want to see Berger prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Update: Captain Ed smells a cover-up. As I said before: Criminal negligence, certainly. Malicious intent, I'm not so certain. That's a pretty good description of the entire Clinton White House.

New Post: The malicious intent is looking more likely, above.

Doc Rampage defends the contents of the memos from John Moody, the news chief at Fox News, that purportedly show partisanship. Wonkette has the complete memos on her website. Doc says:

I read the entire thing and couldn't find anything that I would remotely describe as "bending the rules" unless by "the rules", they mean things like "Rule 1: hurt George Bush. Rule 2: The US is a cruel imperialistic bully." There was also no sign of "twisting the rules" or partisanship.

Yes, there are some editorial directions in the comments. He is the news chief after all. And yes, he wants the Iraq war portrayed in a positive light for the US, but this makes him patriotic, not partisan. And there is no reason to think that he is any more positive about the war than the other news channels are negative about it. Being pro-US is no more (and no less) "twisting the news" than being anti-US.

To be honest, I have no idea what newsroom directives are usually like, so I don't know exactly how to take these. There are a few which do sound over the top, such as this:

Into Fallujah: It's called Operation Vigilant Resolve and it began Monday morning (NY time) with the US and Iraqi military surrounding Fallujah. We will cover this hour by hour today, explaining repeatedly why it is happening. It won't be long before some people start to decry the use of "excessive force." We won't be among that group.

The continuing carnage in Iraq -- mostly the deaths of seven US troops in Sadr City -- is leaving the American military little choice but to punish perpetrators. When this happens, we should be ready to put in context the events that led to it. More than 600 US military dead, attacks on the UN headquarters last year, assassination of Irai officials who work with the coalition, the deaths of Spanish troops last fall, the outrage in Fallujah: whatever happens, it is richly deserved.

How are those in the newsroom trenches supposed to take this? Is this the boss's opinion, explaining why Fox won't be decrying excessive force (which would, after all, be editorializing)? Or is this the information and attitude they're supposed to convey? It's probably something in between. And I can't argue with putting the story into context as to why it is happening.

Another one I find partisan:

For our purposes, as a story, it's very important to know whether ETA or Al Qaeda was responsible for the Madrid bombings. For the victims the distinction is minimal. Terrorism is international, and the United States is the leader of the coalition to stamp it out. That's the tone we want to impart throughout the day. We are beefing up our staffing there and will stay with the story through the weekend.

Here, there's a clear attitude to be conveyed. I don't find this attitude particularly offensive, and I think it's true, but yeah, I wish Moody didn't push it so hard. But, reading the memos, I find plenty to demonstrate a more even keel:

We have competing speeches from the candidates for president. George Bush speaks on home ownership in New Mexico. John Kerry gives an economic policy address in Detroit. We'll take whichever one starts first, time how long we stay with it, then give the same time to the other. Try not to get caught in the ritual "thank you's" that usually precede the meat of the speech.

What do I think? It'd be nice if Moody didn't offer so much instruction to his employees in how he wants the news reported--it'd be nice if the news could speak for itself, but how often does that happen? Having looked at his memos, it seems that most of his supposed partisanship stems from annoyance at the partisanship he sees coming from other sources. At the end of the day, I'll take the same position as Doc Rampage:

Even if it were true that Moody "cleaves so tightly and uninquisitively to the GOP/administration talking points" (and this isn't clear from the memos), what harm would it do if the GOP to had one news channel in its pocket? It's not like the whole news industry is wedded to a specific platform. Now that would be harmful, right Nick? Were you complaining about that when the entire news industry was a part of the Democrat political machine during the Reagan years?

That's the fun part about the free market. If you don't like one news source, you can always try another. I haven't seen anything to indicate that Fox News is any more partisan than The New York Times and its efforts to make news.

This is my first weekday at the new site. I was curious about what my traffic would look like today; since it's always a bit low on the weekends, I needed to see the weekdays to be certain. As I pretty much expected, the traffic is lower than usual. This isn't too surprising, as not everyone has updated their blogroll yet, and I'm especially missing the traffic from Blogs for Bush's rolling blogroll. Hopefully, this will be fixed later this week, and my traffic will be back to its normal low number rather than this extra low number.

Other than that, I'm enjoying the new blog, and I'm beginning to get a handle on its features.

Hugh Hewitt has a new book out, called If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It. I don't have a copy yet, so I haven't read it. The title sounds rather extreme, doesn't it? However, I read Hugh's blog regularly, and he is always calm and well-reasoned, so I expect his book to be also. It's one of the books I'd like to read when I get a chance, along with Zell Miller's A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat.

Part of the reason is that I have a theory I'd like to do a bit of research on. I believe that the Democratic party is on the verge of collapse. The reason I think this is that the party doesn't have any sort of unified vision, but is instead cobbled together from dozens of special interest groups who have no fundamental common ground. The gay rights' lobby, the working class, the unions, the ethnic minorities, the abortion rights' lobby, the transnationalists, etc. The core of the Democratic party used to be the working class and the unions, which formed a natural alliance with the ethnic minorities, since most of them were working class. This is what led to the big Democratic initiatives of the past, such as The New Deal and The Great Society. It wasn't a perfect fit, but it worked for a time. However, these groups have no natural affinity for the likes of the gay rights' lobby, the abortion rights' lobby, the anti-war transnationalists, etc. More and more, the Democratic party seems under the power of these latter groups, whose values are not only alien, but oftentimes anti-thetical to the old core of the party. As a result, the core has begun slipping away, first among the religious, white working class, but you can see the gap beginning to form with the ethnic minorities as well. Once again the religious are most likely to disagree with Democratic policy, and both the Hispanic and Black communities are largely religious. The beginnings of such a split can be seen in things like the Black community's opposition toward gay marriage and support for school vouchers. The Democratic party's hold does not come from representing the values of these groups, but from the groups' historic loyalty backed up by pure demagoguery. While the working class Democrats may not be for gay marriage, the Democratic party tries to convince them that the Republicans want to round up gays and put them in concentration camps. While Blacks may want school vouchers, the Democrats try to convince them that the Republicans are racists who want to re-enact Jim Crow laws. This may work for a while, but I'm a firm believer that the truth will win out, and that eventually the demagoguery will fail. Once that happens, the Democratic party will collapse.

Of course, there is a chance the Democratic party will manage to re-invent itself before that happens. It's also possible that there will be a split between the libertarians and the social conservatives in the Republican party. But I expect to see the Democratic party go before the Republican.

Now this is just a theory, and as always, I'm just an Electrical Engineer typing up my observations. This sort of thing requires the research of a Ph.D. thesis in Political Science. It's also not something I expect to happen for a couple of decades, so in that time period, anything can happen. It's not a cause for panic, either. It wouldn't be the first time in US history that a political party has collapsed, only for a new one to rise from its ashes.

Dean Esmay is advocating federalized health care. No, really. It's not a very libertarian thing to do, and Dean always struck me as pretty libertarian.

Anyway, here's what he says:

I've long thought is that the best approach is one where every individual state is treated as a single medical group for insurance purposes. If you're in the insurance business, then any citizen of your state or recent migrant into your state from another state is automatically a member of that group.

From there, every existing medical insurer in that state may compete for offering their services to that state's citizens. The state will pay a flat rate to insure every citizen, and every citizen merely has to choose which private insurance carrier they want, whether it's Blue Cross, M-Care, HAPP, or whatever other insurer is currently active in that state.

Presumably, the state-provided medical coverage will cover only basic services: emergency room care, basic doctor visits, vaccinations, antibiotics, childbirth, and a few other services. But every citizen gets that basic medical insurance.

Beyond that, for higher levels of service, insurance companies may charge premiums for extra levels of service, so an employer who wants to offer supplemental insurance, or a self-employed person who wants to pay for supplemental insurance, may do that.

Dean points out, correctly, that federal money is already going into health care, and it may be possible to streamline things while keeping competition. I've never seen the federal government streamline anything, so I'm skeptical. The thing which I do like about Dean's plan is that it may be possible to implement it for individual states without immediately nationalizing it. You know, make some use of that Federal system and see if it can work in some states before forcing it on the entire nation. The problem is that only the most liberal states would be willing to try it, and they are the worst equipped to actually manage a system like this, since they would, as a matter of course, weigh it down with PC measures so that the "minimum coverage" which everyone gets includes treatment for mild obesity and gender re-assignment and psychological treatment for ABBD (anyone-but-Bush dementia). If Massachusetts or California were to implement this, they'd only prove that it couldn't work. Now if Texas were to try a state-wide healthcare program, they'd probably make sure that minimum meant minimum and get it right, but it's hard to imagine Texas deciding to get coverage for the entire state.

Letters from Babylon has an interesting quote from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. The best part:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

Nice, very nice.

Last night, the Sci Fi channel premiered Stargate Atlantis, a spin-off of the show Stargate SG-1. I'll give my thoughts on the show, but in order to do so, I'm going to give a lot of spoilers, so don't read if you don't want to find out too much.

The series, Stargate SG-1, is a spin-off of the movie, Stargate. In the movie, archeologists discover a large ring, the Stargate, buried in the Egyptian desert. The US military takes charge of it, and in the 1990's (just in time for the movie), a young archeologist named Daniel Jackson discovers how to make it work. The ring creates an artificial wormhole between worlds, if you have the address of the world you're going to. The archeologist travels to the world for which he has the address, Abydos, with a military team led by Colonel Jack O'Neill. There they discover humans who have been displaced from earth to work as slave labor for an alien overlord, posing as the sun-god, Ra. It turns out Ra had once ruled on Earth, but the people of Earth rebelled, defeating his troops and burying their Stargate so Ra couldn't return. Needless to say, the good guys defeat Ra and go back home. Well, except for Daniel, who decides to stay with the people of that planet.

Stargate SG-1 picks up where the movie left off. It turns out Ra wasn't the only alien of his race, the gou'ald, and Abydos wasn't the only planet to which the gate connected, despite what the original movie said. Now the the people of Earth have unburied their Stargate, these aliens can dial them in any time, and they send a small team there to gather hosts. It turns out that the aliens are actually parasites that need human hosts, which they inhabit and control (rather standard sci-fi fare, that). So the Earth team travels to yet another world to rescue those who were taken. Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill are back, played by new actors. They are joined by Samantha Carter, who plays the role of tech guru for figuring out alien technology, and Teal'c, a rebel Jaffa, aliens who serve as soldiers for the gou'ald. Once the stargate is back in operation, these four serve as SG-1, the lead team out of about 20 whose mission it is to explore other worlds and bring back alien technology. Of course, the gou'ald are around too, and they now have their eyes on Earth. Fortunately, there are ways to seal the Stargate (more or less), and most fortunately modern-day Earth technology is pretty effective against these "highly advanced" aliens. (This second part is partially explained by the fact that the gou'ald are scavengers--they steal technology rather than developing it themselves--and thus their technology is a mishmash of highly advanced and not so highly advanced pieces, and they don't really use it very effectively.)

In any case, SG-1 travels to other planets, attempting to gain advanced technology, and forming alliances with technologically advanced species, who are never as much help as you'd expect them to be. One of the most important things they discover is the identity of the race who built the Stargates, the Ancients, whose technology is still more advanced tha any other race, even though they vanished thousands of years ago. It turns out that the ancients were more or less human, originally inhabiting Earth. They later left, and Stargate Atlantis begins when SG-1 discovers where they went in their flying city. So far, the set-up's longer than most of my post.

The world the Ancients went to ends up being in another galaxy (Pegasus), such that traveling there takes an enormous amount of energy. So much that there's no guarantee they'll be able to find the power to travel back once they get there. However, gaining access to the tecnology of the ancients is worth the risk, and Stargate Command decides to send a team. The team which goes does not include any of the original cast members (although Daniel Jackson has to be ordered not to go). The only team member whom we've met before is Dr. Weir, who had a brief stint as head of the SGC (for a total of maybe 5 episodes). Everyone else is brand new. Including Dr. Beckett, the medical doctor, Dr. McKay, the science officer, and Major Shepherd, a hotshot pilot whose genetics give him an affinity to Ancient technology, and Lieutenant Ford, a Marine. My best guess is that these are going to be the central characters, but it's kind of early to be certain.

When they get to the planet, they find that the city is intact but underwater, and the energy drain to keep the water out of the city has lowered its energy reserves to a minimum. When the Ancients came to this galaxy, they discovered an aggressive alien race as powerful as they were, if not more so, and they lost the battle. They sank their city beneath the ocean to protect it, then used their Stargate to return to Earth, where they interbred with the native population and presumably died out as a people and a culture. Thus the city is the source of the myths about the lost city of Atlantis (in SF, the lost city of Atlantis has hundreds of origins). The genetic marker that gives some people enhanced access to Ancient technology presumably comes from being a direct descendant of the Ancients. Of course, since the city is almost drained of energy, there's no way to open a wormhole back home, but the team can try traveling to other worlds in this galaxy to see if they can find a lead on some energy source. On their first mission they encounter people who are probably descendants of the Ancients, as they look human, but who seem to have devolved culturally and technologically. They also encounter the Wraiths, the enemy of the Ancients, who are using the planet as a kind of reserve, where they harvest humans for food. After a rescue mission, they return to Atlantis with several mission objectives: investigate the city and learn from the technology, survive any attacks from the Wraiths, who will now be after them, and find an energy source sufficient to open a wormhole back to Earth.

So that's the basic synopsis--what do I think? First of all, the power level is much higher than in SG-1. There, Ancient technology is the holy grail, and humans and gou'ald are racing to attain it. Here, the good guys have a city full of Ancient technology, most of which works despite the low energy reserves, while their enemy actually defeated the Ancients. Once the Atlantis team comes home, the war with the Gou'ald will be won. Second, while the Atlantis team seem to have the science types and the military types, they are missing any archeologist types. Daniel Jackson is integral to SG-1 for his ability to speak ancient languages and decipher ancient mysteries, which is a large part of what SG-1 is about. You get the distinct impression that there'll be a lot less of that in Atlantis. Not only do they not have anyone who seems likely to fill that role, they just came out and told us what happened to the Ancients within the first hour of the premiere. If they were to do things SG-1 style, we'd still be wondering what the heck happened to the Ancients and why those spaceships were kidnapping humans. So I think a lot of what made SG-1 different from a Star Trek-type show is gone. They did keep some of the technological disadvantage--sure, the Earth folks have Atlantis, but they don't know how the technology works, so for the most part they still use P90s and C4 to get the job done.

That said, I like Star Trek, and this show reminds me a lot of my favorite Star Trek series, Deep Space 9. Part of that is simply that it is a spin-off, with new characters, running concurrently with the old show, so there is some distant possibility of cross-over. Unlikely, but possible. But part of it is that it does have the same feel, with a central base of operations, far from home, and a mission to explore from out of that base. Plus, the episode was a lot of fun, with a good sense of action, and a sense of humor which helps alleviate some of the strong tension created when facing a powerful, malevolent enemy. I'll continue watching it for the time being, at least.

Update: Jeremy Pierce posts some good thoughts and corrects some of my mistakes in the comments. Be sure to check it out.

Sluggy Freelance — Alt-Gwynn betrays Torg?! I mean, opposition to violence is one thing, but this is taking it to extremes. Fortunately, Torg survives, which is good, because it looks like Alt-Zoe really likes him. Too bad our Zoe doesn't feel that way. Too bad Mosp does. Doesn't Torg have enough crazy women after him already?

Day by Day — Joe Wilson, Whoopi Goldberg, and John Kerry are mocked, along with the IRS and single guys.

It's Walky! — It turns out the talking car was modified, by who else, Joe. Danny convinces Joe to take him along in his mission to head off the Martians.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — We learn more about the wings--are they a mutation? It sure looks that way. But maybe... And Roger pushes the big red button to unleash the most terrible sectret of Dun-dun island!

General Protection Fault — Trish shows a disturbing interest in, and knowledge of, Nick's lab, while Nick finally realizes that schizophrenia is not the same as dissociative identity disorder. Something's up with Trish, and Nick gets suspicious while Ki worries she misjudged her.

Schlock Mercenary — Schlock's team learns the terrible secret--those horrible slavers who are selling Kreelies as pets are Kreelies!

The second part of A Phoenix in Darkness is now available:

The murder of a Dominus should cause grave concern, but both the Order and the City Guard would rather pretend it never happened. Instead, it is left to two junior Domini and a young Guardsman to look into the matter. But they are dangerously unprepared for the true threat behind the murder.

I am publishing this story serially, and while Part I is free, the remaining four parts will cost a nominal fee. As I said before, this is something of an experiment, less to raise money than to see whether I can sell my writing. To whet your appetite, here is an excerpt from Part I:

A woman of indeterminate age, wearing a bonnet and a dark brown dress with a once-white bodice, stepped inside the emptiness around the man in black, approaching him from behind. The Dominus continued toward the gate, walking neither fast nor show, oblivious to the woman's hurried approach even when she produced a dagger from within the folds of her skirt. She held the dagger with expert ease, positioned for an upward thrust. It was no carving knife, but a narrow, sturdy weapon with a needle-sharp point, a stiletto such as an assassin might use. Seth pushed himself away from the wall he leaned against, shouting "Stop!" The Dominus paused and turned his head in the direction of the cry, but Seth's concern was for the clearly suicidal woman rather than the Dominus.

She didn't seem to notice Seth, who had closed half the distance at a dead run which set his armor to rattling as she positioned her knife behind the Dominus's head, hardly needing to compensate for his reaction to Seth. At the same moment, the Dominus lifted his arm, his deep sleeve falling back to reveal a dark hand pointing in Seth's direction, and Seth knew he was going to die by some arcane magic. He opened his mouth to yell "Wait!" even though he was certain he'd be dead before he could offer an explanation, but he never got the word out. The Dominus went rigid, his outstretched hand--the only visible part of his body--splaying open, then collapsed without a sound, pulling free of the dagger which the woman had driven into the back of his neck. In his surprise, Seth stumbled and went sprawling in the mud, his wind leaving him in a great burst.

He looked up, spitting dirt from his mouth, to see the woman holding a dagger now smeared with blood. Without a trace of hesitation, she lifted the dagger to her neck and pressed the hard edge against the side of her throat. In one fluid motion she pulled it down and across. The dagger cut the artery cleanly, and blood spewed out in a spray, followed by another, and another, as her heart continued to pump, heedless of the fact that it now expelled the useless blood from her body. She stood wobbling on her feet for a few moments, the knife still gripped tightly in a hand which had dropped to her side. Then, even as Seth pulled himself to his feet against the drag of his chain armor, the woman's legs folded and she went to her knees. A moment more there, with the blood turning the front of her dress an ugly shade of crimson, and then she fell to her left, where Seth caught her. By this time the blood had begun to slow, the supply depleted, and Seth just knelt in the red mud as he helplessly held the dying woman. He thought she might have been attractive once, although hard times had worn much of the flesh from her face. Her light brown hair, still unstreaked by grey, was surprisingly free of blood, with only the tips of the longest strands which had escaped the bonnet turned red. Seth watched her as she died, eyelids drooping closed over blank eyes and a last breath sighing from her lips. He gently laid her down in the mud and stood up, barely sparing a glance for his stained surcoat, where the red hawk's tail now merged with a larger red splotch. Seth wiped off his bloody hands on the clean upper part of his surcoat, leaving ruddy hand-shaped smears, trying to control his rising gorge. The stunning manner of the woman's death made him feel nauseous. His heart continued to race, uncertain that the horrible incident was over.

To read more, you can download the story here.

Well, this is it, Back of the Envelope's new home. I made the decision to move my blog here after a particularly difficult week with Blogspot, and the strong urging of Dean Esmay. I also thought that I should make the change since I'll be leaving the University of Rochester soon, and my homepage's account will disappear at that point. Thus I wanted some place where I could put the material from my homepage as well as my blog. Well, this is it.

If you're familiar with Back of the Envelope, this shouldn't look too weird. Some of the fonts are different, the color scheme's been adjusted, and the sidebar re-ordered, but everything is basically in the same place it was before. The main difference is that my homepage is here as well, in the form of the menu bar across the top. Have a look at some of the material I keep there. I've put a good bit of effort to produce a consistent look and feel between all the pages.

The archives have been successfully transferred here, but there are a few things I dislike. First, the links to other posts on Back of the Envelope all point to the old blog. I'm not sure I'll ever get around to updating them all. Second, the archives are supposedly by week, but more accurately they're by 7 day intervals, starting on the first of each month. These are minor glitches, however, and overall I like the new blog and its design. I'll let you know more as I figure it all out.

Let me know what you think.

Old Post: My last post on the Federal Marriage Amendment is here.

As you probably already know, the Federal Marriage Amendment failed to pass yesterday. To be honest, I was never a big fan of this version of the FMA. I much preferred Hatch's version, which I think could have passed with the proper politicking. My guess is that the Republican leadership thought it was more important to force a vote on the issue than to actually pass an amendment. That was a mistake.

First, although a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, most won't go as far as an amendment. Dean Esmay says it's because there's not enough hostility toward gays. I think he's being unfair, as he seems to assume that the only reason to oppose changing the earliest known social unit would be hostility towards homosexuals. I think it's more likely that an amendment is considered a very strong step, one that once made cannot be easily undone, and people are reluctant to go that far.

And they're becoming more reluctant. Opposition to gay marriage is decreasing as people become more used to the idea. Part of that is a natural reluctance in this country to deny people what they want. It's the same reluctance that gives us redistributionist policies. If it benefits one group a lot, but hurts everyone else only a little, then it's not worth opposing--not for the majority of the population, and certainly not in the Congress. Especially when the accusation of bigotry is all you get for your attempts. But even more important is that prior to the existence of gay marriage, you would be opposing giving people something that did not yet have. Now that it exists in Massachusetts, this federal marriage amendment would take something away from people. If the populace is reluctant to withhold from a special interest, they're even more reluctant to take away. Waiting longer, to bring it up for another vote, will only make it harder to pass the amendment.

The harm from allowing gay marriage is subtle and long-term, the benefit is clear and immediate. If in the end the harm is more than the gain, as it seems to have been in the Netherlands, by that point it will be too late.

So is there a solution? Gay marriage may be gaining acceptance, but not so much that it can be legislatively enacted into law in any state. In every instance, it's been enacted by activist judges. While I oppose gay marriage, I would not protest as loudly if an orderly decision were made by the general populace to accept it. In that case I could believe that, at the least, it had been debated, the advantages and disadvantages weighed, and the decision made with a willingness to accept the consequences. I cannot accept it being foisted on the nation by activist judges who make their decision in a matter of weeks without significant input from all sides of the debate.

I think that Senate should have gone with the Orrin Hatch amendment, which reads:

Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman.

This has a much greater chance of passing, now, and as I said, the longer we wait, the harder it will be to pass any amendment. This would have forced the issue into the state legislatures, and presumably removed the courts, state and federal, from the equation. By doing so, it would have ensured that gay marriage would be debated and enacted or denied by the will of the people.

Right now, it would take a supermajority of the people to stop gay marriage, since it seems that nothing short of a constitutional amendment, on the state or federal levels, can stop the courts from enacting it. The amendment would change the equation, so that it would take a majority (but not a supermajority) of the people to enact gay marriage. I take it as obvious that this is the way it should be, and it frustrates me that it will take a Constitutional Amendment to make it so.

I don't know whether Pete Abrams, the artist behind Sluggy Freelance, is a hawk or a dove, a liberal or a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat, but I do like the way he thinks. You get the impression that his head's on straight when it comes to the War on Terror, at least.

Take for instance today's comic. For a bit of background, the Dimension of Pain (represented by the ugly guys in the first couple of panels) has invaded the Dimension of Lame (the happy, peaceful dimension that has no concept of violence or good food). Torg--the blond guy with the sword--is from our dimension, and finds the whole DoL annoying. He's also the guy the DoP invaders came to the DoL to find, mistaking it for his dimension. It's all very confusing, but you can get most of it by starting at the beginning of this storyline. Or you could just start reading the archives from the beginning.

What I find most telling, however, are the first few panels, where Psyk (the pinkish cyclops) says, "I observed over time that most of these mortals seek peace out of fear, not honor or hope." He then proceeds to tell Horribus, his boss, about his plan to take over the entire world.

Now maybe I'm just reading too much into a webcomic, but you can see that the attitude that Pete is slamming as both dishonorable and ineffective is alive and well in the world. For instance, read what La Shawn Barber has to say here about how the Philippines are giving in to terrorists.

The twenty-sixth Christian Carnival is up at From the Anchor Hold. Check out what other Christian bloggers are saying.

If you're wondering why the blogging has been slow today, it's because I've been working on finishing the third revision of Part II of A Phoenix in Darkness. Well, it's done now, and after some significant work, I've got all the necessary web resources needed to make the story available up and running. In the meantime, Part I is available and free, so enjoy.

The Carnival of the Bush Bloggers is up at Blogs for Bush. It's a day late, but check it out. You may notice my post on Kerry's inability to understand the separation of Church and State, along with other posts on politics.

You may notice that I'm only really good at linking to carnivals when I have a post in there. I'm just better at remembering when I'm in the carnival. Sorry about that.

In case you're curious, I am still looking for a position once the funding runs out for my Postdoc, which will be happening in just a couple of months. While it's certainly frightening, it's also exciting to consider new job possibilities. I've been doing most of my searching online, using various internet job posting sites, such as Monster, Careerbuilder, and BostonWorks. I have each of them mailing me daily with job possibilities that meet my criteria. For the remainder of this month, I plan to complete one serious job application each day--a serious job application being one where I think I'm well qualified and that I would enjoy the work. That doesn't preclude additional applications to jobs that I think I would enjoy but where my qualifications are iffy, such as the Bioware job, but I want to make sure I have plenty of applications out for those jobs for which I think I have a good chance. As always, if you know of any leads, please let me know. And your prayers are always appreciated.

Serge at Imago Dei has some thoughts on in vitro fertilization in a series of posts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I first thought seriously about in vitro fertilization when I was leading the Responsible Technology discussion group at MIT. At the time, I thought that while there is nothing inherently wrong with in vitro fertilization, there is something truly abhorrent in its wastefulness. Many more embryos are produced than are ever used, and this practice should be an outrage to those who believe life begins at conception. The sad truth is that the pro-life movement, while opposing the deliberate destruction of the embryos, makes little effort to address the practices that lead to it. And I cannot say that I myself have done any better, since I saw the practice as terrible, but at the time it was easier just not to think about it too much: I had more than enough things to become outraged about already. I'm glad to see that Serge has put some serious thought into the matter, going so far as to offer practical advice to thoughtful Christian couples whose fertility problems lead them to consider in vitro fertilization:

My advice for those who are having fertility problems would be the following:
1. Talk about how far you are willing to go for infertility treatments PRIOR to attempting to conceive a child. Clear thinking and a plan is important.
2. Clearly indicate your beliefs to the IVF clinic and ensure that they understand that you do not wish to have embryos killed in this process. If they do not want to play ball, go somewhere else.
3. Prayerfully determine whether you want to go through all of this, or to adopt a child that needs a loving Christian home.

In addition, you may have noticed that I've added Imago Dei to the blogroll. Serge's thoughtful essays on bioethics make him a must-read. Plus I noticed that I was on his blogroll. (While I do not have a reciprocity policy, I do tend to check out blogs that link to me, and I'll add them if I like what I see.)

I've been told that the archives from the old blog should have been transferred here by Friday. It's a bit slower than I had hoped, but overall, not too bad (plus Powerblogs is giving me a discount for the delay). The ability to transfer the archives is one of the main reasons I chose to move my blog to Powerblogs. Once that happens, I'll make the transfer official, moving my Sitemeter and Blogrolling accounts here and asking people to update their blogrolls. The Blogspot site will remain open for the foreseeable future, since there's no way to redirect the permalinks from other people, but from there on out, all new posts will be going here.

Update: This is a quick test. I'm still figuring out how all these things work.

Joe Carter has a post up about Galileo, going over the history which I've covered before. The comments on his posts have degenerated into name-calling right now, but before they did, someone did bring up the question of what all this history proves. That the church wasn't quite so narrow-minded as they were thought to be? They still punished him for his heresy.

I think what it proves is that, as in any story, we have a tendency to find both heroes and villains, and we tend to simplify the story until the villains are truly villainous and the heroes are truly heroic, ignoring the inconvenient contradictions. Heh, I'm sounding like a post-modernist. The Church did not handle Galileo well, but they did not mishandle his case as badly as they are accused. By simplifying the story into a myth, we do a disservice both to the Church and to Galileo. The Galileo story is used to turn the religion into a villain and science into a hero, fueling contempt for religion by turning science into something it's not: a clear truth that is obvious to anyone with an open mind. Science is never obvious--it is difficult and murky and a lot of hard work separating the wheat from the chaff. We scientists are done a disservice by those who want to turn science into a quick and easy answer. Society as a whole is done a disservice when science is no longer considered debatable, where all ethical considerations are swept aside in the breakneck race for scientific progress. Laying the Galileo myth to rest would do a lot to curb this attitude.

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