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Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth. My sister has been in the hospital. Had heart surgery, things didn't go well. Life has been, well, touch and go to say the least lately. But hey, we do what we can, right? So here is a post I meant to put up a week ago...enjoy....
(insert time travel music here)

Well, my spring break is almost over. I can't believe its gone by this quickly. It shot by like a retarded bear on rocket skates (Smith, B. 2009 Journal of Inane but Quite Accurate Statements 3:101-103. I would like to take a moment to do something that I have not often done on this blog, a video game review.
Today's game: Wii Fit
Before getting into any specifics, let me give you a little background information. I have weighed 210lbs for as long as I can remember (ok, I can remember weighing significantly less when I was in middle school, but since high school). The only time I have ever been able to lose any significant amount of weight was when I had mono...not a good way to do this. About a month and a half ago my wife and I decided to get Wii Fit. We have been very diligent in playing, and have only missed a few days in this time span. I now weigh 194, and I have lost over two inches from my considerable waist line. Apparently there is something to be said for getting off the couch.
The game starts you out with an animate, somewhat anthropomorphic Wii Fit Board to guide you through your workouts. The first thing you do is take a body test, in which you discover your weight, BMI (body mass index), and your overall balance. If your BMI is too high, your character will proceed to blow up like a balloon on the screen, and the mostly cheerful childlike voice of the aforementioned Wii Fit board admonishes you for being obese. You then set a goal, and start with some training.
Four training categories are offered. Aerobics, Balance Games, Strength Training, and Yoga. Each of which has it's own strengths and weaknesses:
Aerobics- Strengths= running and seeing Admiral Akbar fall and bust his ass.
Weakness= redundant.
Strength Training- Strengths= can be a challenging workout if the right activities are chosen.
Weakness= can be a challenging workout if the right activities are chosen (is hard...)
As for the rest, the balance games are fun but mostly worthless, and the yoga is relaxing but not particularly challenging.
And now for the coolest feature of the entire game: Free Step.
No, seriously, stay with me here.
Free step allows you to do the step aerobics without watching the screen. The Wii remote plays a metronome for you, and occasionally gives you updates on how much time has gone by and how many steps you have done. Because of this, you can change the channel. Which means if you have another system, you can play TWO VIDEO GAMES AT ONCE! And one will help you lose weight! Personally, I enjoy playing KOTOR and Wii Fit together. They may clash thematically, but damn if the workout doesn't fly by.
So this is just a preliminary review. I will check back in again in about a month to see if I am continuing to lose weight. Nootch...

Origins

I just wanted to clear something up. My first "science vs. God" post had nothing to do with Kurt. It was actually a response to a conversation I overheard at school. But when Kurt jumped in and started debating I figured "What the hell, here's some free publicity". But I think for the past week or so I may have been debating and making some people mad without even realizing it, so I wanted to clear this up.

So why not more medical questions...that was entertaining...

Second law of thermodynamics

While this may not make for a very interesting debate, I agree fully with Kurt's assessment of the relationship between biological life and the second law of thermodynamics. I would, however, like to expand upon his original statements.

The second law of thermodynamics states that a reaction within a closed system which is not in equilibrium will progress in a manner which increases the entropy of the system. Mathematically, entropy is equal to the change in heat produced by a system at a given absolute temperature. In most chemical reactions, heat represents an amount of energy which is lost, and is unable to perform work. So, a simplified interpretation of this law can be stated "it is more favorable for a reaction to produce heat than to perform work". Once the concept of energy gradients is introduced (which would take far to long to explain so you will just have to believe me) this law can be read as "Reactions must proceed in an energetically favorable manner, and no reaction is perfect". This is a far cry from the common interpretation of "the universe moves towards chaos" that so many spew as known fact.

The application of this theory to biochemistry can be easily seen. Biochemical reactions always proceed in a manner which is energetically favorable. Organisms have three ways of dealing with energy: they can use it, store it, or transfer it from one carrier to another. Organisms also have the ability to accomplish non-energetically favorable reactions by coupling them with energetically favorable reactions. The best example of this is the reaction by which adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is made. ATP is the energy currency that organisms use to power almost all of their chemical reactions, because the phosphate bonds within the molecule contain an enormous amount of energy which is relatively easily release (usually via an enzyme called ATPase). But how do we make ATP? How do we organize and create these high energy bonds? By transferring the energy from one source to another. In order to produce ATP (this is the main mechanism, there are many others)organisms use a series of enzymes and transport proteins to pump protons from one side of a plasma membrane to another. This creates an electrochemical gradient (lots of positively charged protons on one side of the membrane want to come through to the other side to balance both the electrical charge and proton density across the membrane). Because the protons can not freely diffuse across the membrane, they have to return through a molecular machine known as ATP synthase (sometimes called ATP synthetase as well, biochemists are very creative in their naming). The ATP synthase utilizes the energy being disbursed as the protons move down their electrochemical gradient to package the constituent pieces of ATP together. The net result of this process is the creation of ATP and the generation of heat.
In this situation, the body has become more efficient at producing heat, and thus moving towards entropy, than a non-living object. It has taken a reaction which would normally not occur and allowed it to proceed in an energetically favorable manner.
More than this, however, the body has a mechanism which is designed purely to increase the heat(entropy) of the system without performing any meaningful work. This is the process of non-shivering thermoregulation. During this process, the body uncouples the proton transport system from ATP synthase, allowing the proton gradient to disburse without performing any work. Thus most of the energy produced is simply released as heat. While this serves the purpose of warming the person, chemically it does nothing but move the system towards equilibrium while increasing entropy. This makes the organism, at that given time, a very efficient (HA!) entropy machine.
Again I would like to point out that none of this is evidence for or against God, it simply shows that human understanding of one system does in fact coincide with the human interpretation of another system. Personally, I think it takes a good deal of faith to believe that these systems just randomly congealed out of a soup of chemical reactions. But hey, I'm not a doctor...

A quick response

I would like to write a quick response to a specific statement in Kurt's
post:"To be scientific is to keep asking questions. To have faith is to stop asking questions."

I disagree sir. The degree to which faith causes you to stop asking questions depends heavily on your specific faith. For example, the Greek Orthodox church encourages questioning of everything while southern evangelicals (again, Kansas seems a good mutual target) take you out back and beat the evil out of you with a literal interpretation of the Bible and an overhead projector normally used for music lyrics for asking questions.

Ultimately, if God is indeed powerful enough to create the universe, he should be able to handle a few questions.

Here is an interesting hypothetical situation: If we were to make contact with an alien civilization which had been completely isolated from our own, and they had the exact same Bible (or Torah, or "insert other Holy Book here") that we do, where would that fall in the hierarchy of evidence for the existence of God?

I will post a response to the specifics of biological thermodynamics(hooray for med school, I may be able to intelligently contribute to this part of the debate) later today. But for now, food!

God vs. Science

Lately I have heard many people debating the merits of faith versus scientific knowledge. Inevitable this conversation turns to "science proves that God did not create the universe, just look at evolution". This is absolutely bogus. While it is true that the theory of evolution puts a big fat hole in the idea that the universe and all its contents were created in seven revolutions of the earth, it says nothing about the potential existence of a creator. Evolutionary theory simply shows the progression of adaptations organisms have made in order to survive within their environment. The exact etiology of these organisms is not defined. The further one delves into biological sciences the more one will realize how little we actually know about the development of species.
There are two basic ways to observe the evolution of an organism. One is simply to look at the fossil record of a particular species, tracing back individual changes until you reach a whole new species. The second is to study how, in some organisms, embryological development recapitulates phylogeny (watch a dog develop and a person develop and you can't tell the difference until later development). Neither of these excludes the possibility of a creator, they simply examine a method by which it is believed the species developed into it's current state.
What bothers me about this argument is not, however, the fact that people try to use it to argue against the existence of God. What bothers me is that some who believe in God refuse to acknowledge that the scientific theories could be(read: "are") correct. Even more so, it is ridiculous that there is even a division between "scientific" theories and "God" theories.
Assume for a minute that God exists and created the universe. The universe is undeniably bound by certain physical laws which govern everything from planetary movement to individual molecular interactions. Assuming then that God created the universe, he would have also had to have created these physical laws. Why then is it that God, who created the system by which our universe operates, is forced to work outside of this system for us to believe He has done something?
This argument obviously does nothing to prove that God does exist. It simply is meant to demonstrate that science and God are not mutually exclusive.
As far as education goes, it is not possible to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God (barring God himself showing up for the experiment), so schools should stick to teaching what is scientifically verifiable. Is evolution empirically supported? Yes, so teach it. Is the origin of the big bang science or speculation at this point? If its speculation, don't teach it. If it can be experimentally verified, teach it. There is no reason these things should cause anyone religious problems. These are not contradictions of God, they are contradictions of a book written to be used as a a religious guide, not a literal manual. Speak with an old testament scholar sometime if you don't believe me.

Pot Logic

Looks like I am not the only person who thinks this could be of serious benefit to our economy. More later...

Get off my lawn!

From New Zealand, land of unruly teenagers and awesome movie sets, comes this incredible headline: "Mall wants Manilow music to drive out unruly teens."

Check out the second to last line of the article. Damn kids with their rock n roll music and their baggy parachute pants and their spiky hair and blatant disrespect for grass...

And so can you...

Here is a book that you most likely will never see on the shelves of your local bookstore...

1,25-Dihydroxycholecalciferol for Dummies!
How to control serum calcium levels for fun and profit.


I don't think I would read it....