Proof that God does not exist

There is no room for God. There are things we do not know in the world, but there are no mysteries only a god could explain. As science potentially could explain everything, there is no purpose with a god, and a god without purpose does not exist.

That's a pretty good proof, isn't it?

Luckily my faith is strong, and I believe in God, even though I have proof he does not exist.

Resistance is Futile

Certain victories stand out. Today I have seen two dozen things on the internet that were blatantly wrong, and I resisted the temptation to answer any single one of them.

Will power!

More Regulation or Less?

Funny how many people simplify the economy to just two options: Regulations are "good" or "bad".

A more realistic list of our options would be:

1. Idiotic regulations.
2. Idiotic deregulations.
3. Clever well thought through regulations.
4. Clever well thought through deregulations.

A large number of people clearly choose 1 over 4. And a similarly large number of people choose 2 over 3.


Personally, I pick both 3 and 4 over both 1 and 2.

Amazon's Business Model - Eternal Debt

What is the realistic business model for the e-Book market? Let's say I pay $10 to Amazon for a book for my Kindle. For that price, I can read it on all my Kindle-devices: a Mac, a PC, an iPhone, an iPad, and so on. I can remove it from those devices and download it again a few months later. Or a few years later. Or a few decades later. Or a few centuries later. Or millennia.

Clearly there is no time when we customers expect to be cut off from books we paid for. That means that we expect Amazon to provide a server for all future, with all our books downloadable to all Kindle-enabled devices we or our descendants may have available. And that without having to pay another cent. Ever.

How does Amazon's balance sheet handle this eternal debt? Let's say that it costs them 0.001 cent to keep a book available on their servers for one hundred years. Then the cost to keep that book available for eternity is 0.001 time infinity, which is... Let's see... It is an infinity cents, which means roughly one infinity dollars, or if you are European, converted to Euro: one infinity Euro in debt for all eternity.

It does not seem like a great business to me.

Grandma Duck's Electric Car

Today I learnt that Granma Duck's car is electric. It turns out that it is based on a Detroit Electric, an electric car that was produced 1907-1939. This goes to prove that there is nothing new with electric cars.

The picture above is a 1915 model at Tekniska Museet in Stockholm.

I knew that Tintin's cars mostly were based on real cars, but it was news to me that members of the Donald Duck family had real cars as well.

Promises Frighten Me

The state of the world economy frightens me after all. First the Federal Reserve says it does not expect to raise rates until 2013. Then US vice president Joe Biden says that the US will never default. How can they possibly know that?

If the economy had really been in any kind of acceptable shape, they could have given figures instead of verbal promises. The more frequent promises are, the more likely it is that they cannot be backed up by facts.

Downhill to a refreshing bath

Last time there was turmoil on the stock exchanges in the world in 2008, I was deeply worried. Now, when the DAX has gone down 30%, it simply feels like business as usual. We are having a really cold shower, and that can be refreshing.

Period!

Whenever I read a posting on the web that contains the single-word sentence "Period.", I stop reading and go elsewhere. The phrase is an excellent indication that the author is too lazy or daft to apply logical reasoning, and that he is delusional enough to believe that other people would be interested in his unfounded assertions. Reading such an entry is always a complete waste of time. Exclamation mark!

One Past - Many Futures

There is only one past but there are an infinite number of futures.

Isn't that unfair?

The Story of a Picture in Public Domain

About five years ago, I submitted a photo of an orca to Wikipedia, suggesting that someone might want to add it to the English page about orcas. No one did, as far as I could tell. I forgot all about the picture, until today, when the owner of the site Animalandia sent me a nice mail thanking me for having released the photo to public domain.

I then accessed the photo's page at Mediawiki  and discovered that the photo actually is used in Wikipedia articles in Arabic, Breton, Spanish, Hungarian, Korean, New Norwegian, Norwegian, Polish, Slovak, Swahili, Vietnamese and Chinese. It is also used in some articles in English, but not the one about orcas, which I had intended it for. In the Spanish Wikipedia, it is even used as a "Medalla de Orca saltarina" for editors who have made important contributions to Wikipedia.

What about the rest of the internet? I googled around and quickly found several pages where the picture is used:

• http://drumm.wikispaces.com/TandavaJ+-+SelinaF 
• http://www.xray-mag.com/node/42 
• http://nellybarbe.blogspot.com/2009/12/orca.html 
• http://www.herradurasport.net/2008/12/la-orcaballena-asesina.html 
• http://www.marefa.org/index.php/%D9%85%D9%84%D9%81:JumpingOrca.jpg 
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Orca/110393985655465?sk=wall#!/pages/Orca/110393985655465?sk=info 
• http://lasaventurasdevitinho.blogspot.com/2009/08/tecnicas-de-caza-de-las-orcas.html 
• http://babybel.over-blog.com/article-29016565.html 
• http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=han1344&logNo=120126839994 
• http://wiadomosci.ekologia.pl/ciekawostki/Orki-inteligentni-lowcy-dziesiatkuja-wieloryby,13888.html 
• http://www.gofeminin.de/my-world/silver21031/comment-1.html 
• http://meeres-bucht.over-blog.de/article-31746356.html 
• http://herramientas.educa.madrid.org/animalandia/imagen.php?id=29988

To me this, is how public domain should work. A simple picture is released and dozens of people who happen to need such a photo simply use it. No hassle. Just use it.