OVO

The venus fly trap closes around its prey only when two of its triggers are touched; one trigger alone does not close the trap. In a sense, this plant can count. Some dogs and birds can be taught how to count. Children are able to count at a very early age. It seems that everyone can count except God, at least as far as the Bible is concerned. If the Bible is irredeemably incorrect in these relatively trivial matters, can the perfect Christian God really exist? And is the Bible a worthy guide for more complex issues such as morals and history when the authors clearly cannot even count the number of names in a list they just wrote? If these examples of Biblical innumeracy are as wrong as they appear to be, why aren’t they corrected?

36 ≠ 29
And the uttermost cities of the tribe of the children of Judah toward the coast of Edom southward were Kabzeel, and Eder, and Jagur, and Kinah, and Dimonah, and Adadah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Ithnan, Ziph, and Telem, and Bealoth, and Hazor, Hadattah, and Kerioth, and Hezron, which is Hazor, Amam, and Shema, and Moladah, and Hazargaddah, and Heshmon, and Bethpalet, and Hazarshual, and Beersheba, and Bizjothjah, Baalah, and Iim, and Azem, and Eltolad, and Chesil, and Hormah, and Ziklag, and Madmannah, and Sansannah, and Lebaoth, and Shilhim, and Ain, and Rimmon: all the cities are twenty and nine, with their villages. – Joshua 15:21-32

15 ≠ 14
And in the valley, Eshtaol, and Zoreah, and Ashnah, and Zanoah, and Engannim, Tappuah, and Enam, Jarmuth, and Adullam, Socoh, and Azekah, and Sharaim, and Adithaim, and Gederah, and Gederothaim; fourteen cities with their villages. – Joshua 15:33-36

14 ≠ 13
And they had in their inheritance Beersheba, and Sheba, and Moladah, and Hazarshual, and Balah, and Azem, and Eltolad, and Bethul, and Hormah, and Ziklag, and Bethmarcaboth, and Hazarsusah, and Bethlebaoth, and Sharuhen; thirteen cities and their villages. – Joshua 19:2-6

31.4 ≠ 30
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. – 1 Kings 7:23

5 ≠ 6
And the sons of Shemaiah; Hattush, and Igeal, and Bariah, and Neariah, and Shaphat, six. – 1 Chronicles 3:22

8 ≠ 5
And the sons of Pedaiah were, Zerubbabel, and Shimei: and the sons of Zerubbabel; Meshullam, and Hananiah, and Shelomith their sister: and Hashubah, and Ohel, and Berechiah, and Hasadiah, Jushabhesed, five. – 1 Chronicles 3:19-20

5 ≠ 6
Of Jeduthun: the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah, and Zeri, and Jeshaiah, Hashabiah, and Mattithiah, six, under the hands of their father Jeduthun, who prophesied with a harp, to give thanks and to praise the LORD. – 1 Chronicles 25:3

31.4 ≠ 30
Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. – 2 Chronicles 4:2

2,499 ≠ 5,400
And this is the number of them: thirty chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver, nine and twenty knives, thirty basons of gold, silver basons of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a thousand. All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up with them of the captivity that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem. – Ezra 1:9-11

(from OVO 16 ANTICHRIST January 2006)

Pi is the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet. It is also the symbol for the ratio between the circumference of a circle and the diameter of a circle. Diameter is the distance from one side of a circle to the other side of a circle. Circumference is the distance around the outside of a circle. If you multiply the diameter of a circle by the square of pi, you get the circumference. And if you divide the circumference of a circle by the square of pi, you get the diameter. This formula is called Archimedes’ Constant, named after Archimedes (who lived from circa 287 BCE to 212 BCE). Archimedes’ Constant is a simple equation, but there is a catch; pi is not a finite number such as 23 or 127. The first sixty four digits of pi are 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 592… and it just keeps going from there. So far, no one has demonstrated that there is a limit to how large a number pi is or that there is a pattern to the numbers in pi. Pi may be infinite.

You can ‘see infinity’ any time you want by measuring a circle’s diameter and then its circumference. Get a round plate and some string (the plate must be round and the string should not stretch when pulled). Lay the string across the plate from one side to the other, so that the string crosses over the middle of the plate. Mark the string at the point where it is the same diameter of the plate. Now take that length of string, multiply it by three, and wrap it around the outside of the plate. Three times the diameter will be pretty close to the circumference, but not exactly. You have just used simple tools to explore the relationship between diameter and circumference. Try it with any circle of any size; it always works. Maybe you don’t need to measure pi to sixty four (or a billion) digits, but you should now feel confident in stating that pi is not a finite, single-digit number. You should feel confident saying that because common sense, the evidence of your senses, and as many tests as you want to perform will confirm it every time. It works whether you measure in inches, centimeters, or even if you make up your own ‘plate units.’

Oddly enough, there are some people in the world who do not believe pi is 3.14159 26535… (and so on). They believe that pi equals three. Who believes that? Christians believe pi equals three. The Christians use a book named the Bible as the foundation for their beliefs, and the Bible says pi equals three. Not all Christians have the same interpretation of the Bible, and some of them disagree quite strongly about how it should be interpreted. But all of them, every one, use the Bible.

Long ago, the Christian Bible says, a man named King Solomon built a temple. He hired a man named Hiram to work on the temple. Hiram made all sorts of additions to the temple, including a sculpture described as a ‘molten sea.’ The molten sea was apparently some sort of large, round container of liquid. It was measured in cubits, which is believed to be the distance between the elbow and the middle finger of an adult male. The construction work of King Solomon and the work Hiram did for King Solomon are described twice in the Bible. The first time in a section of the Bible called 1 Kings (written about 586 BCE) and the second time in a section called 2 Chronicles (written about 450 – 400 BCE). Both times the Bible uses the same words to describe the molten sea. Here’s what the Christian Bible has to say about pi…

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 1 Kings 7:23

Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 2 Chronicles 4:2

The Bible says that a circle ten cubits in diameter measured thirty cubits in circumference. The Bible does not say that the molten sea was close to a circle, but that it was a circle. It does not say that it was close to ten cubits from brim to brim, or that it was close to thirty cubits round about, but that it was ten cubits from brim to brim and it was thirty cubits round about. The Bible gives these measurements once and then gives them again, using the same measurements both times. There is no way to say the Bible meant something other than pi equals three. Christians have been presented with these measurements for thousands of years, and Christians have known about Archimedes’ Constant for thousands of years. Even if you give Christians a few hundred years between when Kings and Chronicles were written and the discovery of Archimedes’ Constant, the Christians have known for thousands of years that the measurements of the molten sea are mistaken. Knowing that pi does not equal three doesn’t require modern complex mathematics or equipment: a piece of string will do. At any point over the past two thousand years, Christians could have decided to follow common sense, the evidence of their senses, and simple tests to change the Bible to make it match real life. But they never have. Why don’t the Christians change the Bible?

Because Christians believe that the Bible is not wrong. Christians believe the Bible is right. Not just close to right, or only right sometimes, but right all the time and in every way. Right in a way that no human can be right, right in a supernatural, divine way. Christians believe that God inspired the people who wrote the Bible; since God cannot make mistakes and since God knows everything, everything in the Bible is correct. The Bible is correct about the past, the present and the future: it is eternally true. How do they know the Bible is inspired by God and eternally true? Because the Bible tells them so! Read for yourself where the Bible tells Christians that it is a book authored by God and eternally true: Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel.15:29; Ezekiel 24:14; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17; Exodus 12:14, 17, 24; Leviticus 23:14,21,31; Psalms 119:151-2, 160; John 1:1,14, 8:58, 10:30-31, 10:38-39, 16:30, 20:28, 21:17; Colossians 2:2-3, 2:8-9; Acts 5:29; Titus 2:13; Philippians 2:6; Hebrews 1:8; Revelations 1:17, 22:13. And there are other verses, many others, that say the same.

Some Christians believe that one of the characters in the Bible, Jesus Christ, made changes to one part (the Old Testament, where Kings and Chronicles are found) by his appearance in another part (the New Testament). But here’s what Jesus himself had to say about that…

Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:18-19

It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. Luke 16:17

Jesus said that every part of the Old Testament was just as true and eternal as the New Testament. So there you have it. The Bible says, and Jesus confirms, that pi equals three. It doesn’t matter if you measured something different with your plate and string; pi equals three. What a silly, stubborn thing for Christians to keep in their Bible when common sense, the evidence of our senses, and simple tests will demonstrate that it is not true. Why do Christians keep this easily-corrected falsehood in the Bible? Would it really change the ethics, morals and values of the Bible to make this small change? Why don’t they come clean in this least important of ways? Because for a Christian to admit that there is even one error in the Bible would mean that the Bible is not the eternally true work of God. And since all Christians, every one, use the Bible, it would mean that their religion is based on falsehoods.

The little Christian mistakes such as pi equals three don’t matter much in the day-to-day world; Christianity would not collapse if that one small change was made. But if that one small change was made, then it would be an admission that the Bible is not the eternally true work of God. And that would lead to the collapse of Christianity. That is why Christians believe pi equals three. Because to admit otherwise would be to admit much, much more. It would be to admit that perhaps the ethics, morals and values of the Bible are not what they’re cracked up to be. It would be to admit that it’s not right to oppress women (Colossians 3:18), to own slaves (Hosea 3:2), to kill people just because they follow a different religion (Deuteronomy 6:15, 13:6-10), to kill homosexuals (Romans 1:31-32), to kill children (Exodus 21:15, 17), to kill (Mark 7:9-13) and kill (Romans 5:9) and kill (Hebrews 10:28-29). Christianity has to preserve its little mistakes, such as pi equals three, so that it can perpetuate its bigger, uglier “mistakes.”

(from OVO 16 ANTICHRIST January 2006)

Sky News: Banned Man Utd Shirts ‘Promote The Devil’

Manchester United shirts have been banned in Malaysia after the red devil crest was labelled “dangerous and un-Islamic”. Thousands of fans have reacted angrily to the decision by Muslim clerics – with some accusing them of supporting Premier League arch-rivals Liverpool. Despite the Old Trafford side having an estimated 81 million followers in Asia, one senior cleric said: “You are only promoting the devil.” “This is very dangerous. As a Muslim we should not worship the symbols of other religions or the devils,” another added. “It will erode our belief in Islam. There is no reason why we as Muslims should wear such jerseys, either for sports or fashion reasons.”

muslimdebate.com: Indonesian Muslim Groups Consider Fatwa on World’s Most Expensive Coffee

Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization is considering whether or not to slap a fatwa on the nation’s famed kopi luwak. Two of Indonesia’s main Muslim organizations are to meet to decide whether or not to issue a fatwa against “kopi luwak,” a famed and highly prized coffee bean that has passed through the digestive tract of a civet cat before it is retrieved and roasted. Ma’aruf Amin, chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI), said it would meet with Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, on Tuesday night to discuss issuing a ban against the flourishing industry. “A fatwa will hopefully put an end to the growing concerns about kopi luwak,” Ma’aruf said. Kopi Luwak is eaten by a civet cat and expelled in its feces before being roasted. Highly prized for its flavor, kopi luwak is known as the world’s most expensive coffee, commanding more than $600 per kilogram from online shops.

Robert Spencer: Muslim Husband Rapes Wife, Judge Sees No Sexual Assault Because Islam Forbids Wives to Refuse Sex

Muhammad said: “If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning” (Bukhari 4.54.460). He also said: “By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel’s saddle” (Ibn Majah 1854).

And now a New Jersey judge sees no evidence that a Muslim committed sexual assault of his wife — not because he didn’t do it, but because he was acting on his Islamic beliefs: “This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.” Luckily, the appellate court overturned this decision, and a Sharia ruling by an American court has not been allowed to stand. This time.

Bernie: The Arab Contribution to Civilization? Nothing Lately

When Arabs are asked to recount great periods of Arab scholarship and learning they can only point to a brief and quickly extinguished burst of light; in the book Le Soleil d’Allah brille sur l’Occident : Notre héritage arabe we read (translated):

Might I invite you to have something with me in this café? Take off your jacket and sit down here on this sofa, unless you would rather sit on the divan with the crimson mattress, of course. Would you like a cup of coffee – with one sugar lump or two? Or perhaps a nice cool carafe of lemonade, or even something alcoholic?  But of course! Let me buy you lunch! I think artichokes would be a lovely starter, don’t you? And how about capon with rice and spinach to follow? For dessert, what would you say to a piece of apricot tart, or an orange sorbet? And at the end of the meal we’ll have a cup of mocha.  There is no reason, of course, for any of these things to appear in any way strange or exotic to you – they have been part of our daily life for such a long time. But did you know that they were all borrowed from a foreign culture, namely Arab culture? This café and the demitasses of coffee they serve, the sugar without which any menu would be almost unimaginable, the lemonade and the carafe, the jacket and the mattress, we owe them all to the Arabs. And it doesn’t stop there: in most European countries, these things are known by their Arabic names! And the same goes for candy, bergamot, oranges, sherbet and many other good things besides.

So here we learn of great literature and poetry the story of ‘a thousand and one nights’: a thousand years ago.

The contributions to mathematics and physics? A thousand years ago. And even here, we often see Muslims pointing to Arabic numerals as some sort of proof that Arab Muslims made some significant advances in mathematics. Arabic numeral is a misnomer, in actual fact they should be called Hindu numerals.

We learn that Ibn Muqla, Vizir at Baghdad and the “prince of calligraphers”, codified the proportions of letters to be respected in handwriting and calligraphy, a thousand years ago.

We learn of the architectural advances such as The Great Mosque of Cordova where we discover its gabled roofs are Syrian. Byzantium provided the mosaics. The vaults are of Tunisian inspiration and the arches Iranian, while the alternation of stone and brick is a Roman invention. Again, a thousand years ago.

Arab contributions to medical science were legion, encouraged by the construction of hospitals in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Samarkand and elsewhere, over a thousand years ago.

Advances and discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, and philosophy from Bagdad to Cordova, all over a thousand years ago.

These are all wondrous and marvelous, but, under Islam, Arabs have not advanced for the past one thousand years. See my previous articles on the paucity of Nobel Prize winners in a world filled with 1.5 billion Muslims ( of which over 300 million are Arabs).

All articles continue at links. Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and etc.  Why might a numerous and varied people such as the Arabic world be held back for one thousand years?  Why, instead of building up their own or anyone else, would a group instead issue death warrants for wearing the wrong kind of shirt or drinking the wrong kind of coffee?  How is it possible to prioritize the trivial and trivialize the highest priorities?  Where does slavery still exist in the year 2010, and why?  What sort of mental poison makes rape part of the multicultural rainbow?  Islam.  It’s holding us all back.  Don’t ban it, and neither should Muslim crimes and atrocities be forgiven.  Don’t force it on others, just keep what is worthy or at least harmless and drop the rest.

The television program LOST (first broadcast on the United States channel ABC between 2004-2010) includes a geodesic dome.  I do not intend to say much here about the show other than I have enjoyed it tremendously.  The sixth and final season of LOST begins in February 2010.  This essay will discuss the geodesic domes appearing in LOST.

Article continues.

Tom Lechner’s Art

Researchers have engineered the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria, creating bacterial computers capable of solving a classic mathematical problem known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem.

‘Bacterial Computers’: Genetically Engineered Bacteria Have Potential To Solve Complicated Mathematical Problems

Pi Approximation Day (22/7 is approximately equal to pi) is a Day of Disappearance…

July 22 1376 – The Pied Piper of Hamelin makes off with the town’s rats and children.
July 22 1587 – Roanoke, the colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, is found to be missing.
July 22 1676 – Pope Clement X dies.
July 22 1932 – Errico Malatesta dies.
July 22 1934 – John Dillinger dies.
July 22 1942 – the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
July 22 1962 – Mariner program: Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.
July 22 1983 – Martial law in Poland is officially revoked.
July 22 1992 – Near Medellin, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison fearing extradition to the United States.
July 22 1992 – Wayne McLaren (The Marlboro Man) dies.
July 22 1993 – Levees near Kaskaskia, Illinois rupture, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barges operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Horror of horrors, the practitioners’ simple, boss-pleasing techniques turned out to be more accurate than the statisticians’ clever, statistically sophisticated methods.

Overcoming Bias : Simple Forecasts Best

By Rand Corporation

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

Kotschick has solved Hirzebruch’s problem.

Mathematical Problem Solved After More Than 50 Years: Chern Numbers Of Algebraic Varieties

Stanislaw Ulam discovered his spiral in 1963 and it was featured on the cover of Scientific American in 1964.

Visualizations – 3D Ulam’s Spiral

EXAMPLES OF CARTOONS BASED ON RULES 1-4

New Pattern Found in Prime Numbers

I now have completed a set of the five regular polyhedra in light bulbs. Here are the photos. It is not very easy to get a good photo of these things.

J. Mike Rollins: bulb

Students who take more advanced math courses in middle school lengthen their lead over time, and the positive school-related behaviors developed in those advanced courses lead to even higher achievement.

Middle-school Math Classes Are Key To Closing Racial Academic Achievement Gap

control experiments showed that the volunteers weren’t responding first to whole numbers, and then calculating the ratio, but were reacting to the fraction itself (The Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0651-09.2009).

‘Fraction cells’ found in human brain – life – 21 April 2009 – New Scientist

“Teaching children the basic concept behind math problems was more useful than teaching children a procedure for solving the problems – these children gave better explanations and learned more,” Rittle-Johnson said.

You Do The Math: Explaining Basic Concepts Behind Math Problems Improves Children’s Learning

He rediscovered the Descartes’ theorem in 1936 and published it as a poem. The kissing circles in this problem are sometimes known as Soddy circles. The lunar crater Soddy is named after him. [Eh, just another forgotten awesome guy. Throw him in the pile.]

Frederick Soddy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

three hundred sixteen quattuormilliamilliatrecensexviginmilliaunsexagintillion, four hundred seventy quattuormilliamilliatrecensexviginmilliasexagintillion, two hundred sixty nine quattuormilliamilliatrecensexviginmillianovemquinquagintillion, [etc]

2^43112609-1 is prime

A fresh, astonishing revelation about the ‘numeracy’ of insects

Honey Bees Can Tell The Difference Between Different Numbers At A Glance