Bill Dembski

Freedom, Technology, Education

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Freedom, Technology, Education
Only the educated are free — Epictetus

Magnifying the Universe, version 2.0

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Scale the universe with your laptop at academicinfluence.com/ie/mtu

Back in 2012 I helped create a flash version of a dynamic infographic called “Magnifying the Universe” for a website called Numbersleuth.org, which is now defunct (click here for its Web Archive record).

This infographic was essentially an updated interactive rendition of the old “Powers of Ten” video from the 1970s:

A YouTube video of this earlier flash version of Magnifying the Universe is available here:

The purpose of this post is to alert readers of a new version of this infographic: Magnifying the Universe, version 2.0, which is now available here:

https://academicinfluence.com/ie/mtu/

It’s a lot more powerful and portable than the earlier version. Besides some additional and updated images, users can click on items to get information about them as well as drag images for better viewing.

Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be

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New York Times columnist Frank Bruni authored a book back in 2016 titled Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. I was alerted to the book today because Amazon tracks my interests, which include rankings of colleges and universities.

So, presumably, I’m one of the people Bruni needs to convince, as his self-explanatory title makes clear, that getting into an ultra-elite school is overrated and that other factors can allow you to succeed spectacularly in life even without a degree from such a school.* As far as this goes, I would agree: I personally know people who have succeeded at the highest level of the academy and business who did not go to ultra-elite schools.

Still, it seems that Bruni may be the wrong messenger for this news. Bruni went to the Ivy League Columbia for graduate school (ranked #2 nationally by AcademicInfluence.com) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergrad (ranked #26) [Read more…] about Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be

Julie Lythcott-Haim on College Rankings

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My youngest child is off to college in the fall. So it was with interest that I watched this brief interview with Julie Lythcott-Haim, previously an admissions officer at Stanford. She’s been hammering on the problem of overparenting for some years now (see her book HOW TO RAISE AN ADULT), and she speaks to this problem in the interview.

But her comments about college rankings are worth underscoring (the interview that follows begins at the point where she addresses college rankings):

Censorship of Books at Amazon

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Three days ago on this forum, I raised the question how long would it be before Amazon, which has now started banning videos skeptical of vaccines, starts banning books. I thought books would be safer.

But no. Tommy Robinson’s book Mohammed’s Koran has now been banned on Amazon. For the story, see here. For the Tommy Robinson page at Amazon showing that the book has indeed been removed (proof by absence), see here.

Barnes and Noble has likewise removed it. Here’s the old link that now doesn’t work. The page now reads:

Sorry, we couldn’t find what you’re looking for. Please try another search or browse our recommendations below.

I just bought the book here:

http://www.mohammeds-koran.com/store

This requires the book be shipped to me from the UK rather than from the U.S. It cost me £17.20 with shipping, or $23.41.

[Interesting piece added 3/18/19:] Amazon’s Digital Book Burning.

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IN RELATED ATTACKS ON FREE SPEECH:

https://www.news.com.au/travel/milo-yiannopoulos-banned-from-entering-australia/news-story/72fd38de1bb44bdccf0d37c4d6b9207e

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/03/06/the-5-best-moments-of-twitter-execs-squirming-over-questions-on-joe-rogan-experience/

Censorship at Amazon of Videos

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Amazon is now censoring videos, starting with those that raise questions about the risks of vaccines. Below is an email I sent to Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com). Regardless of your views about the safety, effectiveness, and risks of vaccines, the bigger question here is one of freedom of thought and expression. If what’s essentially a glorified book vendor can not only control the market for content but also decide what content to censor, then freedom of thought and expression takes a big hit.

Here’s what I wrote to Bezos:

Jeff Bezos,

I’ve given you my business for over 20 years now and always had the highest opinion of Amazon. But I’m really getting pissed off at how you are censoring videos.

Fortunately, I bought Vaxxed (https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B01LZPZJMC/) outright, and thus can still view it. But I see that Injecting Aluminum, though on my watchlist, is no longer available (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B071L8H4SY/). On the page (which is no longer searchable), it reads:

Our agreements with the content provider don’t allow purchases of this title at this time.

This title is currently unavailable

I wish you wouldn’t lie to your customers. The maker of this video would be only too happy to keep distributing through Amazon. You’ve purposely made it unavailable and unsearchable.

This is a pattern and it needs to stop. What’s next? Book banning?

I have loved Amazon over the years, but it’s going to be hard for you to recover my loyalty given the ill will your censorship has created with me. Your censorship needs to stop quickly and everything you’ve banned needs to be reinstated.

–Bill Dembski

The Paradoxes of Hell

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Note from author: The Bible’s teaching on hell often gets twisted so that many people dismiss both hell and the Judeo-Christian faith. Indeed, it’s common to see Christian college students struggle with the doctrine of hell almost as soon as they begin college and are confronted with non-Christian worldviews. Fundamentalism is often the problem here, promoting a doctrine of hell so extreme that no one deep down can believe it. This is not to say hell doesn’t exist. It does. But hell is also grossly abused by religious people intent on asserting religious control. Overhyped views of hell bring unnecessary scorn and embarrassment on Christianity.

 

1 Consigning People to Heaven and Hell

Actress Jessica Alba, in a 2015 Vanity Fair article, describes the loss of her faith at age seventeen when she “fell crazy in love with a cross-dressing ballet dancer who had a baby and was bisexual. I was like, ‘There’s just no way he’s going to hell!’” Alba, it seems, reasoned that Christianity consigns a lot of good people to hell, so Christianity must be false.

To Alba’s rejection of Christianity, the conventional Christian response is, “No one is really good. We’ve all sinned. It’s only by God’s grace that we can be saved. Given our present sinful state, hell is our natural destination. It doesn’t matter whether the cross-dressing ballet dancer is a really sweet guy. Without faith in Christ, he and all others are on their way to hell.”

Was Alba familiar with this explanation of hell? Growing up as a “devout born-again Christian,” she surely was. Did she previously accept this explanation? Probably so, since her cross-dressing friend confronted her with an impossible choice: either reject Christianity or think that her friend was on his way to hell?

But what does it even mean to say “someone is going to hell”? For years I’ve watched Christians and non-Christians discuss the topic of hell, and the one lesson I’ve drawn is that we are tempted to think we know far more about people’s ultimate destinies than we actually do, and that includes confidently consigning people to hell, heaven, or none of the above. [Read more…] about The Paradoxes of Hell