Religion leads to war. Spirituality leads to peace.

Religion leads to war. Spirituality leads to peace.


It's an interesting statement. Granted, on some levels it is just another bumper sticker that can say a lot or say nothing at all depending on the reader. But take a minute and think about it. On your way, do a Google Images search for "religion war" and then do one for "spirituality war". Interesting, no? Almost 4 million violent images versus a hundred thousand images, many of which are artful.

I listened to a couple people speak this weekend on the difference between religion and spirituality. While I of course learned something about them, after the fact you start to learn something about yourself as well. I have said before that I like UU because one can receive a spiritual connection to the community without being religious, and this is a key point for me. My issues with organized religion are many but easily illustrated by a few uniquely Catholic issues like the Nicene Creed and the recent discussion of what happens to unbaptized babies. The specific challenges are that you've got a belief system literally configured and shaped my plain old men in fancy hats. Men of power surely, but no closer to God than the guy mopping their floors. Why is it up to them to tell me that an unbaptized baby spends eternity in limbo or they really can go to heaven? Instead of providing structure for one to realize their own personal spirituality, religious institutions dictate a belief system to their flocks. Free thinking is not allowed. The cynic in me says this should be OK for the average American given their typical intellectual capacity - but maybe people are narrow-minded and dim because they've never been forced to think for themselves in the first place? Cause rather than effect.

Forgive the rant. Think about the title.

New York, New York

I'll be heading up to New York tomorrow. I think it's been almost 6 months since my last visit there (maybe September?), so it's definitely been a while. I got out of a mid-February conference I usually attend (and I'm still happy about that since they got snowed in that week!). I'll be staying at one of my favorites - the W Hotel on Lexington. The conference I'm at is down at the Grand Hyatt, but that's an easy walk. Now that the weather has cleared up, I'm looking forward to the drive up mid-day tomorrow with the top down . The drive back on Thursday night might be less pleasant with some rain in the forecast, but it's always easier driving home.

And going home Thursday is really the sad part. For the first time in 6 years, I'll miss my son's birthday. To make things worse, his mom has to work late that day too, which means the whole thing will be a big confusing shuffle. I missed the morning of his birthday last year as I was coming home from this conference via a meeting in Jersey City, but was home by dinner time. I'll be leaving NY after dinner this trip, so might not see him at all. Next year I'll have to send a proxy to this conference. I had a chance to go to Seattle instead to spend Tuesday at Redmond and that would have probably gotten me home in time for his big day, but I really didn't want to fly across the country and back for a single day of meetings. Of course, I'll be calling into a couple of those meetings from my hotel room Tuesday evening anyway. Sometimes there's just no escape - but it sucks worse when you let down the people around you.

Half Pills

Every night I've been taking a half of a pill. They come in a typical little Nature Made bottle. My brain being as it is, each and every night I wonder if I'll tap out an already split pill or if I'll have to break another one in half. So I started thinking about the odds.

Clearly the first day by odds are 0% to pull out a half pill. I break one in half and return the other half to the bottle. On day #2, there is now 1 half pill and 49 whole pills, so my odds are exactly 2% in pulling a half pill. From here the numbers get non-deterministic because it depends on if I pulled the half pill or not. If I did on day #2, my odds drop back to 0% for day #3 since there are no more halves. If I had to split another one on day #2, then on day #3 there are 2 halves and 48 whole pills giving the odds of 4%. While running some simulations might be interesting to get some typical behaviors, the question that kept popping in my head is what do the odds really look like over time?

This is easily computed in a spreadsheet because the odds on the next day depend on the day before. While this isn't applicable to any particular day (since your particular observations depend on your current count of whole and half pills), it might make a pretty picture. Looking at the math, on day #1, there are 0 half pills and 50 whole pills. Given. On day #2 there is 1 half pill and 49 whole pills. Given. On day #3 you have a 2% chance of grabbing that half pill, and if you don't you add to the number of half pills by 1 (a 98% chance). Mathematically then the theoretical number of half pills on day #3 is the number on day #2 (1), plus a 98% chance of adding 1, minus a 2% chance of removing one. Or if p2 = percentage chance of pulling a half on day 2 and h2 = number of halves on day 2, then the number of half pills on day 3 is:

h3 = h2 + (1-p2) - p2

The number of whole pills on day 3 is the number on day 2 minus a 98% chance of pulling another whole one. Using 'w' to denote whole pills we have:

w3 = w2 - (1-p2)

Since we're interested at the percentage on day 3, we compute the quotient of the number of halves divided by the total of these two values, or:

p3 = h3/(h3 + w3)

Since this is too ugly to do in HTML, I'll leave it at that instead of building the whole equation. If you plug in the numbers for day #3, in general you have a 3.92% chance of getting a half pill since there are 1.96 half pills and 48.02 whole pills in the bottle. It's not obvious maybe, but there's a check you can do on the math. Consider that there are 100 total "doses" in the original bottle. After each day, the number of doses drops by 1, whether or not you had to break a pill. Therefor at any given day, mathematically the sum of 2*hN + wN = 101-N where N is the day#. Checking then, on day #3, 2*1.96 + 48.02 = 98 doses. The 101 is there instead of 100 because of where I started counting days (day #1 sees h1=0, w1=50, d=100)

You can write the equations recursively where you replace the '3's above with a subscripted "n" and replace the '2's with a subscripted "n-1". This lends itself nicely to a long column in a spreadsheet, computing the odds from day #1 through day #100. Because of the nature, we don't end up with exactly 1 half pill on day #100 and a 100% chance of getting it. But if we round to integers and step through the values, that is exactly what you will end up with of course.

Now have a look at the graphic for today's blog. This is a chart tracking various values from Day #1 through #100 on the x-axis. Counts of the number of half pills (red line, left y-axis) and the number of whole pills (green line, left y-axis) flow smoothly and as you might expect. The number of whole pills steadily decrease over time, flattening out a bit as the number of halves and wholes get closer past day #50 or so. The number of half pills increases quickly at first, then slows as they become numerous before the odds catch up and they also decrease at an ever increasing rate. The odds of pulling out a half pill (blue line, right y-axis) starts very low but increases continuously. Again, it should be 100% for all real-world cases on day #100, but here it ends at about 87%.

There are some assumptions in this graph:

• The bottle is perfectly well mixed (half pills don't settle at the bottom)
  
• You tap out only a single pill each time
• If you do pull out multiples you randomly pick (which is impossible, so see previous)
  
• You take the pill that you tapped out instead of looking for a half because you're too tired and lazy to break one that night

But I think to illustrate the point, these assumptions are all OK. I'm not trying to simulate human behavior here, but just figure out what my probable odds are of pulling out a half pill. I've verified for myself that after day #45 I'm more likely to pull a half pill while before then I should be prepared to always have to break one.

Violent Games and TV

Article: Study: Violent Video Games Only Affect Unstable Youth

Interesting, but not surprising. It's good to see that someone is actually looking into this. I'm pretty tired of reading how evil violent games are whenever some idiot goes off half-cocked and hurts himself or someone else. Reminds me of all the heavy metal things back in the 80s with Ozzy and Judas Priest. And probably similar to the whole "rock 'n' roll" thing in the 50s. It will always be something with these people.

This reminds me of something a colleague said when I was in Colorado recently. He was discussing his kids (about 8 and 12 I believe) and their parental controls in what TV and movies they are allowed to watch. He commented at one point that anything rated 'R' for nudity or language they are very careful about. Then almost as an aside he says, "but I guess they can watch all the violence they want." This is pretty consistent with most parents I think. There may be levels of violence (e.g., staying away from horror and gore), but the general premise is that we're desensitized to violence but won't let our kids see boobs or heavy petting.

That brings up a pretty cool experiment. (Well, a thought experiment anyway since you don't really want to warp innocent kids just to prove a point). But what if you take two sets of kids and control what they're watching on TV and movies at a level consistent with normal parenting. So they will be exposed at some level to everything (commercials, friends, etc.) but you strongly guide their regular and repeated exposure. For one group, you avoid all sexually explicit materials and movies but let violence slide. For the other group, you avoid all violent shows but let the nudity and sexuality go. You should also have 2 more groups -- one that can see anything (sex and violence) and one that doesn't see anything. I'll let bad language go here because I think that's really just a side note and not related to potential future behavioral problems.

Here's the thought: raise these kids like this throughout their childhood, then release them into the wild at 18. Who will be the better adjusted? Is there any correlation to their exposure and future behavior? Specifically, do kids who have seen R rated violence grow up to be violent people? Or do they abhor violence? Do kids who have group up with sexually explicit scenes and nudity grow up treating women as objects and become introverted perverts? Of the last two groups, who is more ready for modern Western society? The ones who have seen it all before or the ones who believe life is all Charlotte's Web and Judy Blume novels?

I have my own gut feelings here, but to tweak the question more: Do you want your kids exposed to sex and violence through their friends on the 'playground' or would you like to be present while they're being exposed to this on TV (or in real life) so that you can help explain the nuances and how these things fit into real life. In the end, I won't argue for either side but will argue that parental involvement is the key to a healthy childhood.

Americans

When I travel, I spend a lot of time in airports and restaurants (or worse airport restaurants). Recently we ended up at the local mall on a Saturday. I like to observe people in these places - a general cross section of the American public.*

What I have seen the last couple weeks is interesting. Primarily I'll review some observed eating habits. Looking across the mall tables in the food court is very revealing. The ages represented vary from high-school kids to elderly but one thing was consistent. If you were thinly built you were eating sveltely - often Subway, but possibly Chinese or some other small meal. On the other hand, if you were of a 'robust' build you were eating much differently: super-sized McDonalds, two huge slices of stacked Sbarro pizzas, huge steak sandwiches. At restaurants, it's similar. Those who least 'need' a dessert are the most likely to order one (along with appetizers!) while those on the thinner side will have a salad and entree and still leave feeling stuffed because the portions are so large.

I don't have enough evidence to draw the logical conclusion. Are people fat because they eat like this? Are people thin because they don't? What if all the chubby people of America started eating salads and a single meal for dinner? What if all the skinny people had a fried appetizer, a salad with fatty dressing, a full entree of red meat and then some obscene dessert?

Spending three days in a row eating hotel breakfast, deli sandwich lunches and typical restaurant meals (no desserts) and I really felt like crap. A bloated pig. I would have been embarrassed to take my shirt off at the beach after the trip. And really, nobody but me would probably have noticed the difference. How can people rationally walk around with 30 pounds of fat hanging off their gut? Or 80 pounds?

Obesity is a real problem. Except for the 1% of the population with a real health condition, the rest of these people are just lazy. Too lazy to exercise. Too lazy to eat right. Too lazy to care. Then again, I've never seen an obese 65 year old....


* I know it's not a perfect cross section because you're narrowing the field to people who travel by plane, eat out at restaurants or visit malls. This excludes certainly the poor and to a lesser extent the very wealthy. But I'll submit that it is a 'decent' cross section of middle-of-the-road Americans.