The Purpose of Purpose

I've never been to Champaign-Urbana, but one of my favorite punk(ish) bands, Braid, is from there.

in a few minutes I get to drive PZ to the airport. whoo hooo. if you live in CU check out our group champaign urbana freethinkers. www.cufree.net

Happy Pi Day, PZ! The 1:59 AM opportunity is already gone, but the less satisfactory 1:59 PM remains.

Richard's reference to homeopathy in the Q&A session reminds me of the classic one-liner about a homeopathic patient who forgot to take his medicine and died ... of an overdose.

If a URL represents a meme then is the tiny URL the mRNA? http://tinyurl.com/cu8uqo

Zeno, #3:

shouldn't we be waiting until 9something-am on 3/14/15?

Down with embryology! And Happy Pi Day! And Talk Like a Physicist Day! And Happy Birthday, Einstein!

Well sadly here in England Pi Day doesn't apply, due perhaps to our annoying habit of writing dates in a sensible order, y'know, day, month, year, working upwards like that...? It'll never happen here unless they create a 14th month. Whoever they are.

What's the purpose of purpose? Who created the hypothetical Creator? Who designed the hypothetical Designer? Who controls the hypothetical Controller? Turtles all the way down is a logical answer. An infinite regression of Creators, Designers, Controllers, all the way down. But if everything rests on anything, then we can suppose a circularity of regression. No center, no special place in an infinite cycle of transformations.

PZ, here's an idea for our beach party week. In a Survivor like competition, we get to vote on banning one obnoxious troll. Only trolls who post during the week can be considered, and a vote is held the last day to determine who is banned.

PZ--It was a good crowd last night at Greg Hall. I wonder what exactly you said to the (polite) protestors when you went out to see them before your talk? Bet you invited them in to listen.

I almost feel I have to apologize for the very loud young man who walked alongside us to Murphy's, arguing with you about the causes of the Cambrian explosion. He didn't listen to you very well--I expect he was still in the throes of celebrating unofficial St Pat's day, which is a huge deal for some on the UIUC campus. Your unfailing good humor and patience with him was impressive. Expect a University of Illinois sweatshirt in the mail sometime from mom and son...and you must come back, often!

Dave @ #8

It's quite simple really, in sensible countries, PI day would be on 31/4, or April 31. I'm surprised you silly Brits couldn't figure that one out.

Spring Break?

For once I wish that atheists were indeed the uninhibited hedonists we're supposed to be.

:eyes Patricia:

I call for a retraction on the swimming suits. Wait.. do you even attract hotties here (aren't all atheists a bunch of geeky nerds?)? Maybe I'll hold on my request until further details emerge.

Nice summary. I was trying to explain hiis Minneapolis talk to a friend the other day while on a blog and was having some difficulty. Now I've got a viable link to give. Thanks.

1) Many MANY congratulations for having protesters! (It's a goal of mine that I shall never achieve - unless I hire them for my funeral or something).

2) I lived in C/U many many years ago (how long ago? I used to hang out and smoke doobies behind the White Horse Tavern with REO Speedwagon!) and really enjoyed the experience. That (those?) town(s) are full of great people.

Oh gee PZ,another day on the road...

Patricia will have a nervous breakdown...:-)

Zeno @3, Pi Day isn't less satisfactory if you run on a military clock; i.e., 3 pm :: 15, so at 3/14, at 15 o'clock and 9 minutes, 26.53 seconds, you're there.

Max wrote:

I've never been to Champaign-Urbana, but one of my favorite punk(ish) bands, Braid, is from there.

What a coincidence! One of my favorite fictional computers is from there too, the HAL 9000.

And if you know anymore punk(ish) bands, why not drop a link here:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2009/03/turn-me-on-to-your-music.html

@ Aaron in 12: I'm probably missing the joke, but 30 days hath September...

Beach Party? Dear Dog!!! Nobody wants to see me in swim wear. I'll be at the bar enjoying the view by the pool.

Someone say, Spring Break?

Mojitos, baby! Let's get our rum on!

@Aaron #12

You do know that April only has 30 days, right? It's difficult to tell if someone is joking in the absence of winkey emoticons.

Dave, If you go with the YYYY MM DD method common for those who like to be able to have a simple way to sort, you still end up with pi day.

our annoying habit of writing dates in a sensible order, y'know, day, month, year, working upwards like that.

If you're going to do things backwards then what do you expect? And if you're going to whine about how normal people write dates, see if we send you any Bundles for Britain or 50 obsolete destroyers again.

There were protestors?! AND I MISSED IT!!! Feck...

Egad! Another slow day. I'll either have to have a nervous breakdown or work on finishing up my taxes.

Tough decision...

One of the protesters carried a sign that said "He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak". This guy has obviously never been to church before, or tuned in to faux news.

The English can celebrate Pi Day on July 22, since 22/7 is an excellent approximation of π (better than 3.14).

28*

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak"

In other words those that like being seen and heard by the rest of society stating their point beyond doubt...

Like some fool carrying a placard!

As a Brit living in Germany, one of the hardest things for me to grasp was the arse-backwards numbering system. For example (for those who have not learned German) 'one hundred and thirty four' is 'einhundertvierunddreizig'which directly translates as 'one hundred four and thirty'. I still have problems when someone reels off a telephone number, which is traditionally done as a string of two digit numbers: 637589 becomes 'dreiundsechsig, fünfundsiebzig, neunundachtzig (three and sixty, five and seventy, nine and eighty). Funnily enough, when confronted, most of my German colleagues say that the illogical nature of their numbering system had never before occurred to them.

Of course, as English is the language with 'more exceptions than rules' my smugness is very short-lived.

Sheesh. Y'all are partying... and I'm stuck here dealing with filing reports because I'm the victim of identity theft, with no food in the house and only my cat to keep me company.

Rub it in why don't you.

They were the usual pathetic kind of protesters. They stood there in a line with their signs, looking uncomfortable while a bunch of laughing atheists took pictures of them.

When I went out there I just said thanks for coming out, and invited them to come in an listen.

Purpose: It's that little flame
That lights a fire under your ass.
Purpose keeps you going strong,
Like a car with a full tank of gas!

Dawkins made lots of interesting points, but I was disappointed that he didn't follow through on the title. He appears to just have discussed purpose and not the purpose of purpose. I had something similar to purpose seeking tendencies of humans as discussion in "Humans may be primed to believe in creation"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16687-humans-may-be-primed-to-bel…

Thanks for visiting us and giving a great talk, PZ!

Very sorry Jafafa. Big pain in the neck. Hope all will be fine.
Good thing you have a cat. I rent and I'm not allowed to.

SteveN,

"Of course, as English is the language with 'more exceptions than rules' my smugness is very short-lived."

Some of that smugness was restored for me by an interview with a hispanic author on booktv. He noted that the english translation of his book had 30% fewer pages than the spanish. He offered as an explanation the word "border" in english for which there was no corresponding word in spanish and the concept required several words of descriptive phrases.

Spring break!
Next week I'll be posting in a bikini.
My wife may get upset about me stretching it out of shape, but she can handle it. I mean, she's gotten used to me wearing her panties...so...y'know...DON'T JUDGE ME!

I thought the title was "The Purpose of Porpoise"

Frak! I need new glasses!

I thought the title was "The Purpose of Porpoise"

Me too! I was hoping for more pictures and videos of sea beasties.

That's hardly a question for debate, though.

Porpoises are for eating. How're you gonna spend an hour talking about that?

You never heard of the slow food movement?

You never heard of the slow food movement?

*raises hand as a member of said movement.

/wonders if PZ was making fun of it...

Yes, thanks a million PZ! The talk was good, and perfect for the audience, yet even the non-biologist friend I unexpectedly met there enjoyed it. I'm not sure, but i think your protesters may even have noticed your lack of eye-lasers. And I heard many interesting topics in later conversation at Murphy's that I don't think I've heard here before. Great evening.

I bet PZ has a pool full of cephalopods we can swim in!

Forget Daytona Beach... Morris here I come!

Oh sure, I show up in a swimsuit, you feed me to your octopus, and then next thing you know my laundry isn't getting done...

Well, shucks. It appears I've missed the talk I've been looking forward to seeing for the last couple weeks.

Does anybody know if it was recorded?

PZ, here's an idea for our beach party week. In a Survivor like competition, we get to vote on banning one obnoxious troll. Only trolls who post during the week can be considered, and a vote is held the last day to determine who is banned.

"Do we have a Bwodewick?"

The English can celebrate Pi Day on July 22, since 22/7 is an excellent approximation of π (better than 3.14).

...if you wanna be rational about it.

Funnily enough, when confronted, most of my German colleagues say that the illogical nature of their numbering system had never before occurred to them.

You can't be serious. Didn't they have any other language at school?

Of course, as English is the language with 'more exceptions than rules' my smugness is very short-lived.

As a language, English isn't that bad in that respect; for example, I don't think it surpasses German in terms of irregular verbs. The spelling is the worst of any language that uses an alphabet or syllabary.

BTW: dreißig, sechzig.

And for understanding telephone numbers, French and Danish win. 99 in French: quatre-vingt-dix-neuf -- four [times] twenty, ten, nine. 92 in French: quatre-vingt-douze -- four [times] twenty, twelve.

But aren't German words very descriptive? For example, I've heard that the German word for 'brassiere' is 'keepsemfromfloppin'.

Thanks for coming and giving a talk!

and keeping up with us at Murphy's :-)

Thanks for coming and giving a talk!

and keeping up with us at Murphy's :-)

PZ: You never heard of the slow food movement?

[waves hand] I'll eat anything I can catch. That's what it means, right?

Some years back I instigated the Alice Trillin Memorial Brigade. ("Convivium"? Please.) Slow cheap food. I guess it works; I've put on weight since then. I'm still fast enough to pounce on the shoo-fly pi Joe's making in honor of the day.

I think it's also the lack of the noun series.

As anyone who has lived in New York City knows, "La via del tren subterreneo es peligrosa." In English you say "subway tracks"; in Spanish you have to say "the way of the underground train."

Of course not everyone takes advantage of noun series. For some reason the NYC lawyers' group is "Th

The group is "The Association of the Bar of the City of New York."

And for understanding telephone numbers, French and Danish win. 99 in French: quatre-vingt-dix-neuf -- four [times] twenty, ten, nine. 92 in French: quatre-vingt-douze -- four [times] twenty, twelve.

David, while 99 would be ni-og-halvfemsens-tyve (nine and half-five[times] twenty) in Danish, people shortens it to nioghalvfems (leaving out the twenty part of it), so it's not really that bad.

Swedes and Norwegians still insist on counting the tens. E.g. ninetynine is "ni och niti" (nine and nine-ten).

1) It's "-sinds" not "-sens". From "sinde": times. And we still use it for the ordinals: Ninety-ninth: "nioghalvfemstindstyvende", not "nioghalvfemsende".

2) I'm pretty sure Swedish (and I think Norwegian) doesn't have the stupid German reversal: Niti-ni, 'sjytisjy' (No, I don't speak nor spell Swedish).

@PeeZed: Oh. My bad. I didn't realise it was a cooking show and that he was actually preparing the cetacean on stage. Sorry.

My guess is that Sili is more sober than I am, so I'd go by his corrections to my comment - if nothing else, then because he is correct.

SteveN #31:

As a Brit living in Germany, one of the hardest things for me to grasp was the arse-backwards numbering system. ... Of course, as English is the language with 'more exceptions than rules' my smugness is very short-lived.

And, of course, the same backwards system for naming numbers greater than twenty used to be common in English as well. (Well known medieval rhyme: "Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye, / Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.")

As a college double major in German and music, the other German naming convention I ran into that's dumber than the English one is the way they name pitches in music. The pitches that we call A, C, D, E, F, and G are the same in both languages--but for silly historical reasons, what they call B we call B flat, and what we call B they call H. Thus, a C-major scale, in German terms, goes C, D, E, F, G, A, H, C. Which is very stupid.

Meanwhile, the "black keys" on the piano are usually named after the white keys they're next to, just as in English--so what we call C sharp they call "Cis" (pronounced "sis"); our D flat is their "Des" ("dess"). But that same dumb historical inertia means that. in German, the five "black keys" are called Cis/Des, Dis/Es, Fis/Ges, Gis/As (heh), and... B. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I've heard that the Scandinavian countries, whose languages are relatively close cousins to German, used a pitch-naming system that's equivalent to the German one (with the bizarrely placed B) until very recently. But in the 1990s, they switched to an English-equivalent system. Smart cookies, those Scandinavians.

- Rieux (Scandinavian-American)

Language contains many "fossils" - most anomalies make historical sense. Languages can also be considered to "evolve" and "speciate".

The analogy to biological evolution isn't exact, of course, but one does wonder why creationists aren't up there demanding equal time for Towel of Babel theory.

#61 Rieux,
that's why I never 'got' music, trying to learn at a bilingual school where every music teacher used their own language's system, alternating between English and German year by year.

DuckPhup #52,
almost. In exact term it would be 'holdingemup' ;)
Understandably, most women feel more comfortably with requesting a BH at the store rather than a 'Büstenhalter'. Should you ever need to buy one in Germany, ask for Bay-Hah.

Cath the Canberra Cook noted "one does wonder why creationists aren't up there demanding equal time for Towel of Babel theory"

Ah yes, the Towel of Babel theory-if towels evolved, then why are there napkins & HandiWipes?

huh? Explain that!

Thanks for coming to C/U, PZ! I found your lecture very interesting, especially as a biology(molecular and cellular) major. Now, unlike my lectures in class, yours was actually funny!

Someone was mentioning that there should've been notification to all biology majors. Honestly, I didn't see that happening, maybe because of your reputation? I heard from the AAF(Atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers) group. I wanna know how the protesters heard.

#62 - Oh good, I'm not the only one who wondered that. :) Someone suggested I make a video on YouTube debunking the Tower of Babel theory and explaining why historical linguistics is the only valid explanation for the derivation of a common ancestor of related languages; that'd get the creotards out of the woodwork.

#65 - Haha. Very cute.

Re: #43

You never heard of the slow food movement?

"Slow food doesn't come fast, that's why it's slow" -- Al's waiter

("Hey, Al!" "Whaaaat?")

Cognitively Dissonant says:

PZ, here's an idea for our beach party week. In a Survivor like competition, we get to vote on banning one obnoxious troll. Only trolls who post during the week can be considered, and a vote is held the last day to determine who is banned.

This has to be the most inventive way of saying shut up that Nerd of Redhead has come up with yet. I say he deserves back to back Molly Awards for comming up with a competition that I actually have a chance at winning.

You never heard of the slow food movement?

*raises hand as a member of said movement.

can I move in with you? pretty please?

The pitches that we call A, C, D, E, F, and G are the same in both languages--but for silly historical reasons, what they call B we call B flat, and what we call B they call H. Thus, a C-major scale, in German terms, goes C, D, E, F, G, A, H, C. Which is very stupid.

Meanwhile, the "black keys" on the piano are usually named after the white keys they're next to, just as in English--so what we call C sharp they call "Cis" (pronounced "sis"); our D flat is their "Des" ("dess"). But that same dumb historical inertia means that. in German, the five "black keys" are called Cis/Des, Dis/Es, Fis/Ges, Gis/As (heh), and... B. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

...while Romance and some Slavic languages use solmization exclusively. Using seven random syllables derived from the lyrics of an ancient hymn is infinitely more stupid than a slight rearrangement of the alphabetic order, IMO.

Furthermore, what's so special about the C-major/A-minor scale to make its notes the "default" ones from which the names of the semitones in between are to be derived? Silly historical reasons or what?
Wouldn't it be simpler if we just assigned a letter to each note of the chromatic scale and did away with sharps and flats?

Today's Survivor challenge: Give an accurate description of at least one way that evolution creates new information. Warning: The power of Jesus is not an acceptable answer.

I feel like such an ass! I got there a bit late and chickened out before going in the doors since they were closed. I should of stuck around :(

The German usage of "B" for B- and "H" for B makes sense, once you consider that a lot of German music is composed in the key of F or B-, and contains many Gm chords.

I do like the idea of reassigning the note letters, though ..... there's even a perverse logic to it. If we keep with the German H for B natural, then we can use J for C, K for C#, L for D, M for E-, N for E, P for F, Q for F#, R for G, S for A-, T for A and U for B-. And that will bring us back to ..... er, H. The letters I and O, which are omitted by convention to prevent confusion with the digits 1 and 0, line up perfectly with the "missing" black keys between B and C (now H and J) and between E and F (now N and P) respectively!

Shame it'll never catch on .....

Guitarist @ #71:

while Romance and some Slavic languages use solmization exclusively. Using seven random syllables derived from the lyrics of an ancient hymn is infinitely more stupid than a slight rearrangement of the alphabetic order, IMO.

I disagree. "Do re mi fa so," etc., seem to me a little less apt for note names than A-G are merely because an average four-year-old can recite the first seven letters in the (Western European) alphabet without a second thought. Solfège ("do re mi") and related systems force one to learn a third sequential system on top of letters and numbers. That seems to me a little inefficient, but it's hardly illogical.

In contrast, there is no alphabet (certainly not the Germans') in which H comes between B and C. It's just flat (heh) stupid. They've taken a perfectly nice sequential system--the alphabet--and whacked it out of order, which to some degree defeats the purpose of using a preexisting sequential system in the first place.

Sure, "do re mi" is arbitrary; any naming convention necessarily is. But the monks who made up solfège started with a clean slate; defining "fa" as the pitch between "mi" and "so" was no more illogical then deciding--whenever this was done--that the letter F comes between E and G.

Furthermore, what's so special about the C-major/A-minor scale to make its notes the "default" ones from which the names of the semitones in between are to be derived? Silly historical reasons or what?

In essence, yes (although of course there is no one "A-minor scale"; the white keys on the piano spell out the A Aeolian scale, but there are three other standard A minor scales (Dorian, harmonic, melodic) that use a black key or two).

Again, the choice of C major is arbitrary, but there's nothing internally contradictory about it. I suppose one could even defend the B in the German system by arguing, as AJS @ #74 does, that F major (D Aeolian, G Dorian, etc.) is the "standard scale" in that system. But that presents no excuse for the ridiculous use of H. And given that so many vastly important works for harpsichord/organ/piano (all of which have obvious C-major foundations in their design) have been written by German-speakers, it remains very weird that the (piano) black keys are treated inconsistently.

Wouldn't it be simpler if we just assigned a letter to each note of the chromatic scale and did away with sharps and flats?

That's pretty much what Twentieth Century atonal music theorists and composers (a bunch of them Germans too, as it happens) did: they declared C to be 0, C-sharp to be 1, and so on up to B-flat = 10 and B = 11. I suppose that if someone had propagated that system or an equivalent letter-based one centuries ago, we might all understand the characters well enough ("Aha! That's a 0-major chord: 0-4-7!") to describe the music we hear, play, and write using them. But the system of seven pitch names, plus chromatic alterations, comes somewhat more naturally/simply from the diatonic tonal music that makes up the vast majority of what's played, effectively globally, right now. The atonal stuff has just never caught on.

AJS @ #74:

The German usage of "B" for B- and "H" for B makes sense, once you consider that a lot of German music is composed in the key of F or B-, and contains many Gm chords.

I'm not convinced that Germans are more partial to F major and B flat major than anyone else (seems to me that it's brass players who tend to like keys like those, not particularly Germans)--but even if so, what about that tendency would explain/justify the H?

As I mentioned @ #75, the "forget the sharps and flats, just give each of the twelve pitches its own name" idea got a real try in the early Twentieth Century with Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and those atonal guys. For whatever reason, the alphabetical and solmization systems have proved too tough to dislodge. It probably hasn't helped that diatonic music has always been vastly more popular than atonal.

David J.L. #108: What do you mean, a "sensible" system of dating, day, month, year?! Half of the time that can't be distinguished from month, day, year. The only sensible, unambiguous system is year, month, day. Today, here in Eastern Daylight Time it is now 2009 03 16 01:25 . This has the advantage that it can be callibrated down to whatever fractions of a second are needed for the purpose, slower resolution speed for sports, higher speed for cyclotronic events; and also backwards for historical and evolutionary epochs. This system should be adopted as an international standard for all scientific, historical, and mundane purposes, as the single, comprehensive, and utterly unambiguous method of dating events.

General relativity aside, for practical purposes we live in Newtonian space, wherein the function of time is to keep everything from happening at once. We do need a universal system of dating events; and the evolution of this system has been documented (Holford-Stevens, Leofranc, A Short History of Time (London : The Folio Society, 2007)). This method of dating, from greater to smaller units of time, provides a world-wide, totally unambiguous, universally applicable solution.

2009 03 16 01:33 EDT

PZ, I enjoyed your lecture and found it very interesting. It was also great meeting Phil and some of the others. I would have loved to follow the crowd down to Murphy's, but I had to get back to Bloomington. It looked pretty crowded in there. As a skeptic, I usually have to discuss religion in hushed tones and indirect references with my friends and coworkers. It was odd and refreshing to hear people talking openly and critically about the subject.

Guitarrist and Rieux.
Sometimes older Ways of naming notes are stupid or dumb, dumb, dumb. Or it can also be ignorance. I remember from the history lessons that young countries can be very good at that.

I remember from the history lessons that young countries can be very good at that.

Awww--I almost feel ashamed for maligning the hallowed German pitch-naming system. Good thing you didn't, you know, attempt to defend it on it merits but instead resorted to a silly ad hominem.

And, of course, for all practical purposes I'm throwing in with England, whose musical system I was educated in--and England isn't a terribly "young country" by most standards. It certainly predates any pitch naming convention in wide use today.

But, my dear Grönqvist, how do you explain the Scandianvian countries' decision, less than twenty years ago, to abandon their centuries-old German-style pitch naming convention and take up an English-style one? Are the Scandinavian lands ignorant "young countries" too?