The Atheist Blogger

I haven’t blogged about the upcoming US Presidential election for various reasons, mainly because I’m in no way involved with it (being English and all), and because I really don’t know enough about American politics to say anything of value. However, I have been watching perhaps more closely than most people in England, because the outcome of this election will affect me personally in the future.

It has always been my plan to emigrate to the USA once I finish my degree, and when I look forward 10 years, I really can’t see myself living anywhere else. Despite the differences in cultures (religion being the big example), I like the idea of certain freedoms being instilled into a constitution. Over here, “freedom of speech” is a very loose term, and there are certain articles that suit my sense of humour that could easily find me prosecuted under incitement to racial or religious hatred.

So the question that is important to me in this election is, “Do I want to live in Obama’s America, or McCain’s?”. Thus I started watching debates, speeches, reading up on the candidates, and tried to approach the question from an open-minded view. It is clear that John McCain had more “experience” time-wise, but Obama is so calm and collected, and I can see the obvious similarities between him and JFK, both being young revolutionary people.

Of course, slowly McCain’s campaign has deteriorated, starting of course with his vice presidential nominee, and for me ending with his complete turn-around on Obama, saying that we should “be respectful” and “not be scared” of an Obama presidency. I don’t think much of the world has any doubts about who will win this election, and Obama is clearly the right man for the job.

There are, in my experience, two types of coursework. The first type is the one actually set by lecturers, which you hand in and get marked. Sometimes this coursework actually counts towards your degree, sometimes not. More often in Computer Science, the coursework counts for about 10% of the final grade, which I think is a ridiculous amount considering the amount of coding that goes into them. The second type of coursework is the one that isn’t specifically set by the lecturer, but which they hint at and make you think “holy shit, I’d better actually do try this out”.

Recently I’ve been doing a bit of both, and so I now present to you, second year “coursework” for Computer Science:

Robotics

Possibly my favourite part of the course is when I get to mess around for hours in labs with Lego NXT robots. Last year we had to get them to do simple things like collision detection (making them run around the room without banging into anything), but this year we are expanding into the realms of sensor calibration and maze-solving. Our current team robot is the most compact we’ve built so far,with a footprint of 130mm x 120mm. The maze walls are very low, so all three sensors had to be very low down on the robot, and the two wheels at the front are as close together as we can possibly get them. We went through several different methods when creating the rear pivot, first using a flywheel, then a small ball, before finally using a flexible prong that both supports the robot and gives it much needed suspension. The final robot looks like this:

Our robot, affectionately named "Cockmuncher"

The robot currently solves mazes using the Left Hand Rule, and will soon use Tremaux’s algorithm and the ever popular A*.

Algorithms & Complexity

“Algorithms: Yay! Complexity: Boo!” is how I sum up this course, because although we learn about the implementation of a load of useful algorithms for sorting and searching, we also learn about their complexity and the horrible calculations you have to do to find them. Eurgh.

Nevertheless, I decided it would be fun to program some of these algorithms in Java. I used a custom made random number generator to produce various files containing comma-separated unsorted random numbers. I then used various sorting algorithms to sort the numbers into numerical order. So far I’ve coded versions of Bubble Sort, Merge Sort 0, Insertion Sort, and Heap Sort. Once I’ve got the programs to a workable condition I’ll release the source code online for people to play about with. I also need to code Quick Sort and a few searching algorithms.

Update: Here is a screenshot of my implementation of Heap Sort, sorting a random array of 1,000,000 integers:

6.60 seconds...bitches.

Until I implement Quick Sort nothing else has even come close to beating (or indeed actually finishing within 10 minutes) Heap Sort in this test. It is legendary :D

Information Security

For my specialisation, I’m doing Information Security, which involves lots of cryptography (code breaking), and looking into security of systems. Currently we’re going through keystreams and hashing functions, and we’ll be programming implementations of those next term.

For now however, I need to get on with my work! :D

For those who haven’t been following the “Coveted Golden Crocoduck” awards on YouTube, you may wish to have a look at some of the entries. Voting started about a month ago and “Dr” Kent Hovind won in a landslide:

Total Votes: 1061

Kent Hovind: 575

Ben Stein: 160

VenomFangX: 78

Kirk Cameron: 68

NephilimFree: 48

(For full list see the awards video below)

“Would You Like to Know the Truth?” is the title of a Jehovah’s Witness leaflet that was given to me the other day. I was in a hurry to my friends house, and a guy stopped me and told me that “there are some questions that people have tried to answer over the years but never got a good response to. This leaflet explains some of them”.

I took one look at the document in my hand and saw the word “God” mentioned a couple of times. Together with the picture of the sunset, I knew I was dealing with a religious guy. My mind worked through several scenarios; I could stay and talk to the man, telling him I don’t believe, and be late for my friends, or I could go be sociable. I chose the latter (mainly because of the aforementioned rush I was in), thanked the man, and went on my way.

Of course, I’m not going to let the questions in the document go unanswered…

Does God really care about us?

No, because there probably isn’t a God, and if there were, does it really look like it gives a shit?

Will war and suffering end?

No; humans are very social creatures, but we tend to subscribe to different types of society. Unfortunately, these societies do not like each other very much. Major suffering might end when we cure all major illnesses, but that doesn’t stop new illnesses, inflicted wounds, etc.

What happens to us when we die?

We rot in the ground, although I personally want my body donated to medical science and then the remains cremated and scattered somewhere (waste not people).

Is there any hope for the dead?

Is there any hope for other inanimate objects like spoons? No.

How can I pray and be heard by God?

Once you accept that you are talking to yourself, I’m certain you’ll be able to hear.

How can I find happiness in life?

Try new things, find out what makes you happy. Pursue it.

You might also notice none of my answers involve believing in a ridiculous doctrine made up by men thousands of years ago who thought the sun was magic. It’s a slight bonus.

I do hope the Jehovah’s Witnesses come round again; I’ll be able to give them my answers!

Due to the overwhelming success of the “Atheist Bus” campaign, the British Humanist Association (BHA) have started a new campaign against faith schools in the UK. They are asking for only £30,000, and judging by the response of the last campaign, they will probably get a lot more! The money will be used to hire more staff for campaigning, as well as support movements through parliament.

The BHA released a newsletter thanking those who donated to the original campaign:

We have been overwhelmed with the support given to this campaign, and so the first thing to say is thanks to all of you! Many of you have been emailing or calling us, or leaving comments on the Just Giving site to say that you want a way to continue supporting our efforts and so we are emailing now with two suggestions: joining the BHA and donating to the campaign against faith schools.

The British Humanist Association is the national charity supporting and representing non-religious people. We promote humanism, and campaign for a secular state with an end to religious privilege and discrimination. Our campaigns include promoting an inclusive education system with no religious discrimination in admissions, balanced beliefs and values education, and an end to faith schools; removing Bishops from the House of Lords; opposing the contracting out of public services to religious organisations.

We realise many of you have already donated an extraordinary amount, but judging from your comments to us so far, many of you are keen to donate to the campaign against faith schools in particular (which is in fact one of our biggest campaigns) - and we certainly need the funding! Even if everyone who has given to the Atheist Bus Campaign so far gave only £10 to the campaign against faith schools, it would boost our campaign in the coming year to an incredible extent. At the moment our faith schools campaigner is only on a short term contract and we would love to raise the £30,000 needed to keep the post for another year!

So next year we can expect two things; buses and trains across the country with atheist slogans, and fewer faith schools (we hope).

Who says atheists don’t donate to charity now eh?