Fun In Oblivion

I just upgraded to a fast new computer this last week and am currently enjoying the wonders of a fast multi-core processor, a 2 Gigabyte NVidia graphics card, and 10 Gigabytes of RAM. It's been years since I bought a new computer so it was definitely time, and the improvements all around are great. Programs load so fast! But to really put my hardware to the test, I needed to play a high graphics intense game. And so, after much frustration installing probably a hundred user made modifications to the 2006 (I think) game Oblivion (which was notoerious for stomping flat computers of its day, even really good ones, on low graphics settings), I ventured into the fun and beauty...

I'm the king of the world!... Don't mind my rusty set of armour. I'm only Level 1.

After installing the best graphics mods (modifications) for Oblivion that are out there, I jumped into the game and was in awe. It is truly breath taking to behold... Well, the scenery is beautiful anyway. The people on the other hand, even with the best available mods installed...

"Hello Rona! Wait... You're a woman?"

Yes, sadly, no amount of exceptional talent and time contributed by Oblivion mod makers are able to improve the typical character in Oblivion beyond this. Their clothes can look awesome. The people in the clothes... Not so much.

And how can we forget the many pleasures (and frustrations) of Oblivion's numerous glitches and unusual oddities!

No 3D goat should have to suffer the indignity of consuming its own head.

Poor wild mountain goat. It was mindlessly chomping grass and suddenly was set upon by a traveling city guard. After coming across this unusual battle of life and death, the soldier mercilessly pummeling the helpless goat into submission, the goat finally succumbed to its injuries, and swallowed its own head. Note the horn sticking out of the top. That's where it's head is hiding. The goat probably couldn't stand the endless taunts from the armour clad soldier as the warrior shouted, "You're pathetic! Is that the best you've got!?" and so it did the only thing it could to escape. Mutate.


But the fun doesn't stop there!

Bring it on wolfy!

This wolf was an easy kill when it attacked me in the wild. However, the not so easy part was getting the wolf's pelt off the body as it tumbled endlessly down the mountain and refused to stop even as I went barreling down the hill after it. This is when I learned to be below a monster on a hill when you kill it, that way it lands on top of you and you break its fall so that gravity can't laugh in your face as your hard earned trophy falls down the mountainside for the next twenty minutes with you chasing after it like a desperate idiot. :-) Live and learn.


Meanwhile, something has gone very wrong with the sky...

Shhhh. Don't tell NASA. The sky is really made of giant triangles.

And I don't seem to be the only one that's noticed... Though this person was standing in the same spot for three days without moving. Maybe he knew the shattered sky was coming and was waiting in breathless anticipation.

I don't think it's supposed to do that...

When the sky decides to do crazy things like this, it's probably a good idea to save your game, because chances are that Oblivion is going to realize it's done something bad and will fix itself by ending it's existence completely and crashing you back to your Windows Desktop. "You want the sky fixed? Do ya? Really? *crash*"

Despite the many bugs (some major and many not so major), the game is beautiful with all the great mods added to it by talented people around the world who have too much time on their hands making a good looking game look incredible. It's a lot of effort to get it working right, but it sure is pretty.

Energy Conundrum - Political Fog

Last weekend I announced on Facebook that I was planning to write a few blog posts about energy and power plants to give people an idea of the issues involved in the debates over energy production over the next century. Great idea, right!? Everyone needs energy and has to pay for it, and with things like climate change and the burning of fossil fuels being considered such a big deal, understanding the costs to your wallet and the environment can only be a good thing...

But there’s a VERY big problem trying to put together a study like this. Politics!

I’m maybe half way done researching this stuff (power planets, cost of energy production, etc.), but thanks to the massive amount of politics and government interference (for better or worse) in the energy markets, this study has been an absolute nightmare to put together. None of the studies I’ve done so far (on my blog or otherwise, and I’ve done some seriously political studies in the past) have ever been so full of misdirection, dramatically different statistics and a huge amount of information “masking”. Pretty much everywhere you look the information is overflowing with politically motivated deception and bias. It’s very sad to see and very frustrating to try and get any sort of straight answers.

Government Subsidies, Fines And Taxes

One huge pain in trying to figure out the costs of various types of energy production (power plants) is that cost can change dramatically depending on how much and in what way the government has its fingers in the mix. “Green Alternative Energy”, instead of carbon fuel, is the supposed saviour of the planet because it severely reduces Carbon Dioxide emissions, as well as other expelled gas pollutants. Because of environmental lobbyists pushing hard for green energy to be the way of the future, there are MANY high subsidies on green energy and heavy fines and taxes (which seem to grow with each passing year) on fossil fuels.

Subsidies are massive government hand outs (from collected taxes) that are given to companies that promise to “go green”. It’s an incentive to push this technology forward, because otherwise this technology and source of energy production would be mostly ignored, being far too expensive. The extremely high cost of building such alternative energy power plants makes the business largely unviable, unless the government hands out money to push the industry along.

To give you an example of how this system works, imagine two different companies competing for business. Company A sells chocolate bars and Company B sells health bars. Now let’s imagine that chocolate bars are cheap to make and cheap to sell, and a ton of people gleefully buy and consume them (not caring much that they’re unhealthy). Health bars, on the other hand (in this hypothetical example), are quite expensive to make, and so Company B must charge a lot of money for the health bars or else they can’t make any kind of profit. Unfortunately, the taste comparison between the two bars (chocolate vs health) and the cost to buy either of the bars means that there is very little competition between the two since most people consider the chocolate bar to be a much better value for their money.

The government decides to step in and fix this disparity between the two companies because clearly basic consumer-based capitalism is going to crush the healthy bars into non-existence. To solve this problem the government enacts subsidies and tax incentives because it considers the continued sales of health bars by Company B to be very important (it’s healthy!).

The government gives Company B millions of dollars to help build up its business in any way it can (advertising, stores, production, expansion, research, tax write offs, expenses, etc.) in order to make the business more profitable to keep Company B running. The chocolate bar company, Company A, complains that this isn’t fair because it doesn’t get “hand outs” from the government. The government argues that Company A doesn’t need the hand outs because they make money fine without needing government assistance. Then, to make matters worse for Company A, and to further “level the playing field” between Company A and Company B, the government hits Company A (the chocolate bar company) with fines and extra taxes for selling unhealthy junk food.

Is this fair? No. The idea is that the government knows best (it might, or it might not) and is looking out for everyone’s best interest (in this case, our health). To get what it wants, the government and the people behind the government manipulate the playing field.

These sorts of practices are very common in financial, investment, and government circles. Government often tries to influence how business operates. Sometimes it’s through giving tax breaks to certain types of business. Sometimes it’s done by passing laws and regulations that make it more difficult for businesses to operate as they wish. And sometimes the government hands out loans or even gifts of money to help increase the incentive for people to get into a business that the government deems to be beneficial to society. This can be a bad thing, but it can also be a very good thing. The outcome really depends on what the reasons for these measures are all about.

For example, governments often give tax breaks and money to farmers because the farming industry is crucial to society (producing food). Without these incentives and tax breaks, many farms could not turn any kind of profit, and would thus shut down, depriving us of much needed food. The alternative is for farmers to charge huge sums of money for the food they produce, making the cost of food far too high for most of the population to afford. To prevent that from happening, the government subsidizes the farming industry to help make sure the cost of food stays down.

Because energy is such an essential need and because environmental studies and lobbyists speak of dire consequences if we keep burning fossil fuels for energy, governments all over the world are playing a very difficult balancing act. They want to encourage long term energy security, affordable energy, and environmental care, but it’s not at all a simple matter of black and white or good and bad. It’s a lot more complicated and the politics surrounding the topic makes it that much worse.

What’s The Reality?

When trying to calculate the costs energy, all of the political and government interference contaminates and dramatically alters the picture. The information that’s out there is all over the map and hard to pin down. You might find one place that says that energy provided by coal power plants costs $50 per Megawatt per hour and somewhere else you might find a study that says it costs $300 per Megawatt per hour. Who’s telling the truth?

In their own way, everyone is telling the truth, and no one is. Most of these studies seem to be heavily biased for or against fossil fuels depending on who put the studies together. The more accurate and helpful studies will explain their methodology for calculating costs and expenses, while others will often ignore or gloss over very serious issues so that they can push and promote their political stance at the cost of factual accuracy or clarity.

What’s the lesson in all this? Take all the information, the studies, the research, the projections, the cost analysis and everything else with a massive helping of bitter salt instead of sweet tasting sugar. Don’t just swallow it blindly. Don’t trust the information until you test and really examine it because chances are good that what’s being presented is not entirely honest. Everyone has bias and personal opinion and it very easily clouds a person’s viewpoint on debatable topics. Read between the lines, analyze the sources, compare arguments and data sets, and try to put together the most accurate truthful picture of reality that you can.

Hopefully this week I’ll have it figured out enough to write a helpful blog post or two about power plants and energy so that you (the reader) can have an accurate and truthful understanding of how fossil fuels and green energy compare against each other. This is a very important topic as the costs of energy continue to rise and the debates over man-made climate change and pollution continue to rage.

Energy In The 21st Century (Part 1): Carbon And Energy Are Life

Energy. We all need it. We use it to power our modern technology, our transportation, give us light and heat our homes. Without it we’d be back to horse drawn carriages, candles as light sources, and wood burning stoves. Without it, we’d be back to the dark ages. In fact, without energy, no life on our planet would even be possible.

With electricity being such a crucial aspect of modern life, it’s critically important to know where all this energy is coming from, what it costs to produce, and the consequences around using it. Whether or not you believe that mankind is drastically altering the planet’s climate by burning fossil fuels, pretty much everyone can agree that heavy pollution is not a good thing for any environment. But is there a way to produce energy without harming the environment?

Understanding what energy is, how it works, and how it is used must be at the start of all such discussions because without this foundation it is impossible to have a truthful and realistic perspective.

Energy In All Things

Energy is all about physics and chemistry. All matter is made up of and built by energy, but not all the energy contained within matter is easily accessed or unleashed. Essentially, if the cost of tapping a source of energy requires more energy and effort than is produced, then the effort is a waste because it creates an energy negative. There is no such thing as “creating energy”, only storing energy, releasing energy, and making use of the released energy.

The sun, a burning ball of gas far away in space, produces all kinds of energy in many different forms and sends that energy hurtling out into space. The intense gravity of the huge star crushes and rips apart various gas molecules, destroying and burning them up. This energy passes over our planet and gives us natural heat and light, allowing for the existence of life itself. All the excess "pollution" (unwanted "left overs") that also belches out of the sun disappears into space. This “pollution” in the form of harmful energy (gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet light, etc.) is mostly blocked from reaching us thanks to our planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field (think of them like our planet’s invisible shield).

Life itself (ALL life), is constantly harnessing, storing and using up energy in order to survive and power itself. Life uses sugar as its main energy source. You may have heard that carbon-based fuels are “evil” because they cause pollution, but the reality is that carbon-based energy is at the heart of all life on earth. Without it, nothing could live or survive. Plants suck in carbon dioxide and with it (as well as other materials) create glucose, a complex sugar (a carbon-based fuel/energy source). Plants then spit out the left over oxygen that was produced in the conversion. Humans breath in oxygen, to help chop apart glucose (sugar) that we digest by eating those plants, and this powers all the cells in our bodies. Then we breath out the left overs of the chemical reactions involved, carbon dioxide, which plants breath in to help them form glucose… And so on.

It is ESSENTIAL that you understand this simple fact. ALL life requires and uses energy! Most life uses a combination of carbon and oxygen to help harvest, store and utilize energy. Life then burns this energy (stored in sugars) to power itself. Life uses special enzymes (and acids) to split sugar, ripping it apart and burning it up to generate our required heat and electricity.

Energy is a result of a usually destructive chemical reaction. The easier it is to release that energy (as well as store it safely for later), the better and more effective the energy-use system will be.

Harnessing Energy For Technology

Our technology requires energy to function just like our bodies and all life requires energy to live. Because of this constant need for energy, mankind has to have a way of generating or harnessing vast amounts of energy to power our cities.

There are generally two main ways of producing electrical energy in large enough quantities for people to use.

Releasing Energy From Fossil Fuels: Ever since the industrial revolution, energy produced (released) by the burning of materials such as fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas, etc.) have been the mainstays of modern energy. This is how our cars run, our planes fly, and how most of our power plants/stations work. They burn up carbon-based fossil fuels because the vast amounts of easily accessible energy released when these materials are heated up is exactly what our technology needs to work. Note that these carbon-based fuels are usually made by life as a means of storing energy for later. When a living organism dies, the energy it stored up in its body gets left behind, to be used by other living organisms (such as us).

Harnessing Already Active Energy: More advanced methods of harnessing energy attempt to do away with the requirement of burning fossil fuels, since burning fossil fuels tend to cause a lot of pollution. Instead, these other methods try to capture and use some of the naturally occurring energy in the environment around us (heat, light, the sun, weather, wind, rivers, moving objects, etc.). For instance, wind turbines generate their electricity by strong winds turning propeller-like blades, hydro dams generate electricity by the movement of water, and solar panels collect the heat and light from the sun.

Carbon Dioxide Is Not A Pollutant

If you know anything at all about physics and chemistry, you’ll know that energy always costs something. Energy requires the destruction and ripping apart of molecules. There’s no way around that, no escaping that hard fact. This means that there will ALWAYS be left over by-products produced by such molecule-sized violence no matter what anyone does. It’s part of the very laws built into our universe, and part of life itself.

Carbon Dioxide is not an evil pollutant. Carbon dioxide is plant food, and it’s what humans and other creatures exhale from our lungs as a by-product of the energy we use in the form of sugar. Carbon dioxide is not only entirely natural, it’s essential! To label Carbon Dioxide a pollutant would by like labeling water a pollutant. However, too much of anything, even a good thing, can be harmful. THAT is what everyone needs to understand, and keep in mind.

The trick is to meet our energy needs without costing us an arm and a leg and without severely damaging the planet beyond repair in the process.

Conclusion

All energy is born of violent chemical reactions somewhere, whether way out in space (as is the case with our sun), within our own bodies (sugar), or the burning of fossil fuels in a power station or fireplace. Active energy can be generated by heating materials that easily and consistently release energy or it can be harnessed from the environment around us in the forms of heat, light, and motion (wind, rivers, tides, etc.). But no matter what your energy source, it always comes from the destruction of molecules somewhere. It’s simple physics and chemistry, the laws at the heart of our universe.

Energy is essential, and it’s messy. The trick is to use it as efficiently and make it as clean as possible, while also making it affordable and stable.

Stay tuned for my next article about…

Power Stations we use to generate heat and electricity for our modern civilization. The costs and energy output of these necessary services are crucial to the future of mankind and our technology as we push forward into the 21^st century.

Not Junk DNA

Roughly 2% of our human DNA codes for Proteins (think of Proteins like the microscopic parts that are bodies are made of) and the other 98% of our DNA has often casually been called “Junk DNA”, or “non-functional DNA”. Evolutionists for a long time have considered this 98% to be unimportant evolutionary left-overs, so called “Junk DNA”, that has accumulated across hundreds of millions of years of evolution, but is now, for the most part, garbage and unimportant. This belief, however, is being absolutely destroyed by modern genetics.

There’s a very common myth out there that the human genome (genetic code) is 98% similar to that of Chimpanzee monkeys, which according to evolutionists is a huge proof that humans evolved from monkeys. What usually gets left out of such statements is that the 98% similarity is only a miniscule section of the human and chimpanzee DNA. Basically, scientists have run the genetic sequences of about 2% of the human and chimpanzee genome, the part of the genome that codes for Proteins. That’s only 2%! Then scientists have taken the genetic sequences of that 2% and re-arranged the genes (chunks of DNA) because the chimp and human genomes are in a very different order. Without this purposeful re-arrangement by scientist, the genes simply would not match up side by side. Then the scientists chopped away the parts of this 2% that do not match, and compared only the parts that do closely match each other, and declared that human and chimpanzee DNA is 98% the same between us and them…

Darwinian Logic: The Latest on Chimp and Human DNA  (by Jonathan Wells, October 27 2011)

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/the_latest_on_chimp_and_human052291.html

www.EvolutionNews.org

But why only compare the 2% (or so) of the genome that specifically codes for Proteins? What about the other 98%? That’s what is off-handedly called “Junk DNA”. It’s DNA that does not code specifically for Proteins, and thus, has been considered “junk” or genetic garbage. Remember folks, this is 98% of our DNA! Over the last 20 years (and especially the last 10 years), scientists are discovering that this “junk DNA” is actually vital to exactly how our genes are expressed, how our cells do what they do. “Junk DNA”, by and large, seems to actually tell the Protein coding genes how to function (what to do), when to do it, how long to do it for, how and when to change things up, and how best to use what has been built off the blue print of our DNA. Basically, as it’s turning out, the “junk DNA” is the bulk of our genetic code. More and more signs and studies are showing us that most of it has important, even critically important, functions and purpose. It is NOT junk or left-over evolutionary garbage, as some of the most enthusiastic atheistic apologists have claimed over the years.

“If Junk DNA Is Useful, Why Is It Not Shared More Equally?”

ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2011)

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110131133137.htm

“DNA was originally thought to have a single function: to help cells make the proteins they need. Any DNA that is not immediately required to produce proteins was written off as "junk" and deemed unworthy of study. Recently, however, it has become clear that junk DNA performs a wide range of important tasks.”

Evgeniy S. Balakirev, and Francisco J. Ayala, Pseudogenes, "Are They "Junk" or Functional DNA?," Annual Review of Genetics, Vol. 37:123--51 (2003)

“pseudogenes that have been suitably investigated often exhibit functional roles.”

THEY MISSED THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!

One of my many hobbies is computer programming. DNA is very similar to a computer programming language, one that is highly complex and sophisticated unlike anything mankind has ever programmed before. It puts our most incredible complicated computer programs to shame. There is a very serious flaw in the assumption that the “Junk DNA” (98% of our DNA) is not really that important. To show exactly what I mean when I say that “They Missed The Most Important Part”, I want to describe this scenario by using a few metaphorical examples to help get the point across.

The Food Recipe

Imagine that the 2% of DNA that codes for Proteins in our bodies is a rather non-specific set of ingredients for making a particular meal for supper. You’ve got beef, a bunch of spices, a bunch of vegetables, and a few other ingredients. Now you’re told to cook a very specific kind of meal with these ingredients, but not given any instructions on how to do it. No specific portion sizes, no instructions on the order in which the ingredients should be added, the timing of adding each ingredient, how they are to be cooked, prepared or combined… Nothing! To make matters worse, the person who is cooking this meal has no cooking experience or knowledge at all. All of the instructions, experience and knowledge that goes into making the meal is equivalent to the 98% of our DNA that does not code for Proteins. That’s pretty important stuff, isn’t it?

The Math Equation

How about another example, this time one from math. Let’s say that X = 5 and Y = 4. Those are two set values and they won’t change no matter what we do with them. But here comes the important part. How are those variables (X and Y) arranged in a math equation? Does it make any different to the answer you get, the end result? Do the instructions (the equation) matter?

If we make the equation X + Y = Z, we know that it’ll turn out like this: 5 + 4 = 9. But if you change that “+” operator to a “-“, the equation becomes 5 – 4 = 1, a completely different answer. And what if you make it a big long equation but still only using the X and Y variables? How about, X(Y) + (X / Y) – (Y^X) = Z … Yikes, that’s getting kind of complicated isn’t it?

The point I’m trying to make is this. The instructions or operational actions (or controls) are what give you the answers. Different instructions (layouts and equations) will give you different results, different answers. So if X and Y, which represent 5 and 4, are the Protein coding part of our DNA, then the other 98% of the DNA is telling the cells of our body exactly how to use and handle X and Y. These instructions, these operators, are essential to everything working like it’s supposed to. The slightest change and the answer in the equation can be VERY different, despite using the exact same numbers (5 and 4).

The Computer Code

All computer programs are essentially made up of the exact same things, variables and computer code. Let’s imagine that the 2% of our DNA that codes for Proteins are variables. Now, knowing this, that all computer programs use variables and programming language instructions to make them work the way they’re supposed to, you brazenly announce to the world that, “All computer programs are 98% the same!”… Such an exclamation is of course ridiculous, right? Because you’re only comparing one very general aspects of what a program is and has within it. You’re completely ignoring exactly what those variables contain, how many variables there are, and ALL of the instructions or code that makes each program do what it does. You see, the instructions are the difference between a computer program used for reading your email or playing a fast paced 3D game where you blow away fictional bad guys with guns. Both use variables, probably even the same kinds of variables (numbers, strings of text) but HOW they are used makes ALL the difference.

CONCLUSION

The Protein Coding part of our DNA (2% of our DNA) is basically the tiny set of instructions for building the little bits and pieces that our body uses to do most of what it does. They are the “Lego blocks”, the “ingredients”, the materials, the tools. The other 98% is the instructions for how to use those parts and tools. That 98% controls how much of this stuff works, when it works, in what way it works, and has tons of important (even critical) information within it to make sure the whole complicated system works like it’s supposed to. That 98% of our DNA (the so called “Junk DNA”) runs and controls the whole show! These instructions are the key to what makes the vast majority of life forms on our planet so incredibly different and unique from each other, and yet so much of this DNA was until recently shrugged off as “not that important”.

To ignore this fact is like claiming that volleyball and ballet are essentially the exact same thing because both are a physical work out. No, they’re not anywhere close to being “the same thing”. You’re ignoring the huge amount of details that make them so different from each other!

The “human and chimp DNA almost identical comparison” is basically a massive case of extreme selective statistics filtering, especially when every day we’re discovering more and more about that other 98% of the genome that was ignored in that study. As more and more of the incredible importance of this “Junk DNA” is coming into the light of cutting edge modern science, scientists are finally discovering just how very different and unique we are. It’s blowing a lot of evolutionary thought and assumptions right out of the water. This, however, is no surprise at all to people who believe that God created, designed and wrote this genetic code into all living things, and that except for parts of it that have broken down over the many centuries since creation, it’s all functional and important.

The Changing Face of Pseudo Genes

http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/index.php/component/content/article/277.html

Quick Extra Points:  Why "Junk DNA"?

Part of the reason for the myth of “Junk DNA” is that some of this “Junk” looks almost identical to actual Protein coding genes, yet scientists found that this DNA (often called Pseudo Genes) was not being coded into Proteins. Since the belief was that Protein Coding genes are the important part, the fact that these other genes were not being used that way made the scientists think they were broken duplicates of the working genes, evolutionary screw ups. Though some of these Pseudo Genes could very well be no longer fully functional broken genes, scientists are now finding that many of these “Pseudo Genes” are actually being used in connection with the Protein coding genes that look so similar to them. So what’s going on here? It’s becoming clear that these “Pseudo Genes” are like identifiers, a bit like a website’s URL address. They basically contain the instructions for how to use the target gene. In other words, the part of these genes that look so similar to the functional protein coding genes are actually saying, “Do this with this target DNA.”

Why the quickly shifting perspective on Pseudo Genes and “Junk DNA”? One reason is the many studies that are discovering important functions for this DNA that were never tested or recognized before. Our modern technology allows us to study all this stuff in far more detail. The second big reason is that it makes absolutely no sense at all for biological life forms to hold onto (store and continue to pass along through successive generations) all of this genetic data if it’s “evolutionary garbage”. The amount of energy and resources it takes to keep this genetic library going is huge, and there would be no reason for life to hold onto it all if it were simply completely broken, non-functional, or junk. The fact that life does go through so much effort to preserve this vast amount of DNA (98% in humans compared to the 2% that codes for Proteins), even under pressure to get rid of it, strongly indicates that this DNA is very important and functional after all.

Evolution: King of Contradictory, Inconsistent Logic

I read an interesting little blog article today about the fact that the famous "evolutionary tree of life" so often found in biology text books doesn't really exist in nature and that even modern scientists are finally starting to admit this. The idea of the "biological tree of life" is that you can map similarities between living organisms and fossils into a branching "tree" of evolutionary progress and/or dead ends. It's the idea of common ancestry, everything is connected way back in the past and has branched off from the same ancient common ancestors. The responses to the blog post I read were quite fascinating and are a great example of an astounding flaw in evolutionist apologetics thinking.

Blog Post this article is related to: The Evolutionary Tree Failed But Evolutionists Still Insist Evolution is a Fact

When Creationists or people that believe in Intelligent Design (and not Darwinistic evolution or all-encompassing common ancestry) point this major failure of Darwinism out (the classic "tree of life"), a common response by pro-evolutionists is to argue that clearly evolution is much more complex and variable than was assumed. The "tree of life" is much more like a "very tangled bush" instead, but they still argue that there's enough of a "core tree-like structure" to life that the proof of common ancestry IS there.

The problems of so many instances of life supposedly being along the same branch (due to apparent similarity), and then the genetic studies on these organisms revealing vast differences between them far beyond what should exist when compared against the famous "tree of life", is a nasty punch to Neo-Darwinism. The same is true for organisms that are highly separated on the "biological tree of life" but turn out to have vast genetic similarities despite being physically very different. It boggles the mind and destroys the tidy concept of the biological tree of life (which was always an entirely assumption-based (instead of fact-based) belief anyway). The evolutionists, however, continue to argue that there's still enough "good and accurate structure" to the "tree of life" model that it's a mathematically valid and very probable reality.

But this is a classic case of contradictory logic. As I've debated with some atheists and evolutionists online over the last half year or so, I've found that this kind of "stance-jumping" is extremely common among them. They'll argue one point in defense of evolution and then completely disregard that exact same logical point at another. It's, "win in any way you can, even if we constantly disobey our own previously stated logical and factual stances." There's very little consistency in their position. They contradict themselves all over the place.

Case in point...

Mathematical statistics and probability are used to defend the crumbling "biological and historical tree of life". They say that there's enough mathematical probability and similarity in the structure of the tree to still be considered a valid belief/fact. However when the math does NOT support evolution at all, they say math, statistics and probability has nothing to do with it, or is not relevant. Why? Because they only like the math when it agrees with them.

The probability of life arising from non-living molecules is astronomically impossible. The probability is trillions of times beyond what's mathematically possible, let alone actually plausible. It is absolutely impossible for a simple protein to form in nature except by way of life building it on purpose. The odds for just ONE such simple Protein forming in nature is 1 in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (etc.). It's simply not mathematically possible. In fact, there isn't even enough matter and energy (probabilistic resources) in the entire universe to get anywhere close to giving this equation a chance. And yet these scientists claim that this exact event (a protein forming with no help from life or intelligence) happened MANY times.

But the math just doesn't work! The entire universe has no way of producing a single protein without life intentionally building it from an already existing blue print. When such things are pointed out to evolutionists and scientists, they shrug it off and say that, "Clearly life happened, since life is here, so the odds and statistics don't really matter." This is a VERY common argument by evolutionists and atheists.

Note the completely contradictory statement and stance compared to their arguments regarding math, statistics and probability when it comes to the biological tree of life. It's completely illogical to consider "the math" to be a valid proof or evidence defending your stance (belief) in one related instance but to ignore it completely with regards to another aspect of your worldview (beliefs). There's no consistency of stance and position there, which throws your entire structure of supposed logical reasoning out the window.

Either probability, statistics and math ARE a valid proof of something's reality (in this case, Darwinistic Evolution) or they are not. You can't have it both ways, as the evolutionists clearly desire.
 

For more on the numerous problems with the "evolutionary tree of life" check out this 5 part entry at EvolutionNews.com. A Primer on the Tree of Life

Diablo 3 Copy Protection And Server Hell

The much anticipated game Diablo 3 was just released yesterday at midnight and though many people have managed to play it, there's also a great number of people that have not, despite having purchased the game at midnight launch parties or pre-ordered the game through various online vendors (the game hit a record for pre-orders on Amazon.com). Some customers are extremely ticked off, and it all comes down to the copy protection (or DRM, Digital Rights Management) built into the blockbuster game.

The game requires that you always be connected and signed in to the game company's online servers to play, even if you're playing the game by yourself, single-player. Back in the "good old days", if you bought a single player computer game, you could take it home, install it, and then play it. Now, you have to jump through all kinds of hoops in order to prove that the game is a real purchased copy of the game before (and while) you play, otherwise the game locks you out.

I ran into this very same problem just last week when I bought a cheap computer game and spent days messing around with it and my computer system to try and get the stupid thing to work. My final fix was to do EXACTLY what the game company was trying to stop. I downloaded a hack that blocked all the copy protection and constant (as you play) online server verifications. The game then ran like a dream, instead of stuttering all over the place and freezing up every 10 minutes. The problem? Excessive copy protection and constant online authentication.

Diablo 3's user review average score on Metacritic is currently running at 3.6 out of 10. That's horrible. Many people were super excited about Diablo 3 coming out and when they went to play this greatly anticipated game that they'd purchased, they were locked out of the game by the now infamous "Error 37".

Diablo 3 User Reviews at Metacritic:  3.6 / 10
Metacritic Diablo 3 User Reviews

At VentureBeat someone created a Day 1 game review. The reviewer's final conclusion?
VentureBeat: World exclusive Diablo III review!!!!

Overall, I am impressed by the production values and execution of Diablo III’s main menu. It’s admittedly a very slick menu...

Yup, the main menu title screen was as far as the reviewer got. Thanks to Error 37.

It's been so bad that "Error 37" has actually been trending high on Twitter all day and internet meme websites are filling with Error 37 jokes. IGN: Diablo 3's Best Error 37 Jokes

GamesRadar has this to say about it all...
GamesRadar: Diablo III error 37 causing a great wailing and gnashing of teeth as players worldwide fail to log in.

What's galling in this case though is that the log-in failures currently being suffered by a large number of aspiring players block the single-player game as well as multiplayer. Yay online authentication.

Consider the online DRM arguement well-and-truly cracked open once again. Can of worms, ACTIVATE! 

Over at IGN, their "review in progress" of the game was off to a rough start.
IGN: Diablo III Review in Progress

Diablo III has all the launch problems of a major MMO. Blizzard’s action-RPG requires you to connect to their proprietary gaming network, Battle.net, if you want to play, but since its launch it’s been an aggravating slog to log on. It’s annoying enough that you can’t play without an Internet connection, but it’s even worse that the company that runs the biggest MMO in the world, and who no doubt had a good idea of how well Diablo III was selling, couldn't make the first day run smoother. Even now, at the time this is being written, the whole system has been shut down for server maintenance. Thankfully I’m playing it from my office, since I can only imagine how irate people who took the day off to enjoy one of the biggest game launches all year must be feeling right now.

Even when I managed to successfully log in and Diablo III running things didn’t go well as far as user experience is concerned. Regularly my friends and I would have multiple minutes go by between messages we sent one another, only to have an error code pop up and a wall of text spam through the chat. Or there was the point when early on in Act I my game simply crashed, prior to which half the world disappeared along with my character’s spell effects. The best part? After forcing my way out of Diablo III I logged back in only to find that my items and progress from the previous few minutes had disappeared. Goodbye, shiny new helmet. This didn’t bother me too much since I was so early in the campaign that I hadn’t found anything special, but if I lost a rare or special item due to their server issues you could bet I’d be on the phone with someone in customer service. Items can now net real money, so its inexcusable to lose them due to problems with Blizzard's servers.

 UPDATE:

Here's a few more meme pics related to the problem. :-)
 

Copy Protection Nightmare

Just the other day I bought a new computer game that came out in 2011 published by the company Kalypso, and created by RealmForge. The game was on a clearance sale for only $10 brand new. It was a strategy RPG game and I like that style of game, so I picked it up. Then the nightmare began.

I spent two days messing around with the game and my computer trying to get the game to work until I finally realized what the root of the problem was. Copy protection. The game was crammed full of copy protection to make sure that I had actually paid for the game.

When I first installed the game, it asked me for the Product Key included inside on the game's instruction manual. This kind of copy protection has been common for a LONG time (at least since the 1990s, and probably before). Basically, you can't install the program unless you type in a real product key. The product key is usually something like 15 to 20 characters (letters and numbers) long.

After I entered the product key and the game installed, it then asked me to register an account with Kalypso (the publisher of the game). I had to give them an email address (as a unique user name) and a password so that I could log in. The game can be played online with other people, but it can also be played on your own (single player). Keep that in mind...

I registered a new account with an email address that I use for almost all "sign ups" in order to keep mountains of spam and junk mail from clogging my regular email inbox. Then I'm told that I have to activate my account before I can play the game at all (single player or multi-player). So I fire up my web browser, sign into that junk email address, find the email they auto-sent me, and click on the activation URL. Now my account is activated! I've proven that my email account is a real email account. For those of you counting at home, that's 3 separate copy protection checks to make sure that I'm not a game pirate and that I actually bought the game. A product key, registering an account with them, and verifying the email account I used was real.

Great! So now I can finally play my purchased game! I close extra programs that I don't need running while I play (to improve game performance) like I usually do when I play games. I open the game up, and am asked to sign into my account. Here's verification #4. Each and every time I want to play the game, I must sign in with my created account (email address and password) in order to play. Well that kind of sucks. Usually such things are standard on multi-player only games and optional on single-player games (for extra features). But to play this game at all, you MUST sign in and you MUST be connected to the internet when you sign in so that the game can verify that you've used a proper account that really exists. So I do that, now getting a little ticked off. This is starting to get a little ridiculous. I don't even want to play online and the case the game comes in says nothing about requiring an internet connection except for playing multi-player.

I finally get into the game! And I grimace. The opening intro mini-movie clips showing you the name of the publisher and company that created the game (also very common at the start of movies) are stuttering like crazy. They're videos! They shouldn't stutter! Almost NOTHING is happening here. All that's happening is the very basic start up of the program and playing a couple quick low resolution logo clips.

I get to the game's title screen and main menu. I start a new game. I get another intro movie giving an overview of the game's opening plot. Again, it stutters a lot. Then the game play starts and it's surprisingly laggy the jittery (like the videos, though not as bad). So I go into game options, drop all the graphics settings down to the lowest settings and get told that for the settings to take effect I must restart the game. That's VERY common in most computer games, so I save the game, exit the game, and log back in.

This time, I turn off my internet connection after logging in (something I usually do when I play games that I'm not planning to play online) in hopes of squeezing a little more performance out of them. The same stuttering problem as before. I load up my game and the game runs a little more smoothly, but not much. Then the game completely freezes 10 minutes in.

By this point I'm getting annoyed, but I only paid $10 for it. I do the old CTRL+ALT+DEL trick and end the game in the Windows Task Manager. Then I notice a 2nd program also running in the task manager with a very similar name to the game itself and it includes the word "server" in the name. Ok, so the game runs two programs at a time. A little unusual, but not unheard of. Maybe it has something to do with how the game handles multi-player. I close that second program too, then run it all again. I have to log in. Right! I turn my internet back on. Log in. Turn my internet off. And play the game. All the same problems and again it freezes, exactly 10 minutes in. Now THAT is strangely consistent!

I force close the program and the second "server" program and try it again. Again it freezes almost exactly 10 minutes in. Very strange. Maybe it requires my internet connection to remain online when the game fully starts up. That'd be a bit stupid after it's already verified all that other stuff, especially if I'm NOT playing multi-player, but whatever. So I play the game with my internet turned on. The choppiness improves noticeably in the videos and though the game plays more smoothly than before, it's still not great. 20 minutes later, it freezes again. I'm getting very ticked now.

I realized pretty quick what might be happening here, but I wanted to test a few other theories first. I played around with the settings in the game and my computer, testing different options and running the game with each new set up a number of times, but the game still kept freezing (always about 10 minutes in). My first suspicion looked to be the right one.

The game was trying to check back with servers online every 10 minutes or so to make sure that I was playing a proper bought version of the game. That's copy protection #5. The game MUST constantly contact the publisher's online servers and verify that it is a properly purchased copy. If that fails for some reason (any reason), or something else goes wrong with the copy protection, the game locks up.

Quite ticked off that the game is STILL constantly trying to make sure that I'm not a thief or pirate, ON TOP of the other 4 security protocols I already passed, I decided to try something. I download a hack for the game used by people who pirated the game. Many computer games have different types of copy protection and people who pirate the games have to circumvent these systems (hack and break or stop them) in order to play an illegal copy of the game. So I downloaded the hack, used it, and ran the game.

Worked like a charm! NO constant freezing and better yet, the movies didn't stutter at all and the game played VERY smooth without ANY slow down like it should. I cranked up the graphics settings to the maximum and restarted the game and still it ran like a dream. In other words, not only was the game constantly having to verify it's authenticity with computer servers online (even when I played all by myself and NOT online), but all the extra internal copy protection in the game was also making it crawl and stutter as if my computer system were some ancient dinosaur from before the year 2000.

Folks, that is the absolute WRONG way to create a happy satisfied loyal customer. Requiring a long list of verifications when I've purchased your game, making me jump through a bunch of hoops before I even START playing the game, and then constantly spying on me and my game as I'm playing it on my own, resulting in the game lagging terribly AND freezing every 10 minutes, is just plain ridiculous. I bought your game. I registered it. I verified it and continued to verify it every single time I tried to play the game. And then to make matters worse, your game's performance is going to be awful and it'll constantly freeze because while playing, it's regularly checking back with the publisher online to make sure I'm still using a valid copy of the game.

How do you AVOID all that hassle and head ache from a game you bought? Easy. Don't buy it. Pirate the game! Play a hacked illegal copy. This is the height of stupidity on the part of the game publisher. Making it a royal pain to play your game and then making the game play horribly (or freeze, or crash) because of even MORE copy protection built into it is a sure fire way to alienate paying customers. I want to play a game that works and doesn't put me through the ringer because its publisher doesn't trust that anyone actually bought the game.

And how did all this copy protection stop the game from being pirated? It didn't. It's out there free for anyone who knows anything at all about torrent websites to find and download (including the crack that removes or blocks all the many problematic layers of copy protection). The only way the game is even playable for me is to use the hack. A game I paid for (on sale, mind you), and I had to download the very thing the game company was trying to stop, just to get it to work. What a joke!