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Christmas Questions

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends. Feel free to join in if you need some blog inspiration! Thanks Tiffany!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I am a professional wrapper, thank you very much!

2. Real tree or artificial? Artificial, they got me at pre-lit.

3. When do you put up the tree? Before Thanksgiving

4. When do you take the tree down? In the new year

5. Do you like eggnog? not so much

6. Favorite gift received as a child? good question

7. Hardest person to buy for? My father-in-law

8. Easiest person to buy for? myself... err, I mean Tommy

9. Do you have a nativity scene? we have several, but I only put one out this year, and I'm not sure it's even my favorite

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail, I enjoy opening them

11.Worst Christmas gift you ever received? a re-gifted re-gift, with a card addressed to a person I'd never heard of from a person I'd never heard of enclosed

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Home Alone

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I never stop

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Yes, but I try to avoid what happened in #11

16. Lights on the tree? White

17. Favorite Christmas song? Handel's Messiah

18.Travel at Christmas or stay home? Travel

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Who?

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Nothing at the moment, our last angel was retired, and I haven't found any good replacement

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? with my family on Christmas Eve and Tommy's family Christmas morning
22. Most annoying thing about this time of year. The Christmas Shoes Song

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I have no theme

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Tamales

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? My advisor to email me and say "We reviewed your transcript, and you have enough credits for graduation, please reply with your address so we can mail your diploma."

Inside-Outside

Inside:










Outside:

















Daniel and Eleanor at 3 months.

Friday Funnies

A few things that make me smile:
-Tommy singing "Legalize It," "Hollaback Girl" or "Pink Triangle"
-Daniel playing in his crib in the morning and then stopping to smile when he sees me walk up.

Thankful (Part 3)

We are also thankful for Jesus. Before we were born he lived a sinless life on our behalf and took the wrath of God the Father against sin that should have been against us. Then he conquered death by rising again so that we too can have new lives.

When we were physically alive but spiritually dead in our sins, Jesus gave us new life. We received his life. He took our death. He is our redeemer, sustainer, savior, king, friend, and God.

Thank you Jesus!

Thankful (Part 2)

I am thankful for such good health. Just last night I finished the box of tissues I bought before Tommy and I got married (over 3 years ago).

I am thankful that Tommy and I both have such great jobs (that we like), and we actually like our bosses too.

I am thankful I can laugh with my husband at conversations like this:
me: I feel fat
him: your eyes are pretty

Thankful (Part 1)

After a long day of being at work with me, Daniel was ready to let loose and spend some time with his daddy.


I am thankful for such a healthy and wonderful baby, and his even more wonderful and engaged daddy.

Neurotic Computers?

Nick Carr:

Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom, of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, have published an in-depth roadmap for "whole brain emulation" - in other words, the replication of a fully functional human brain inside a computer. "The basic idea" for whole brain emulation (WBE), they write, "is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail, and construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain." It's virtualization, applied to our noggins.

The catch:

They deal with the problem of free will, or, as they term it, the possibility of a random or "physically indeterministic element" in the working of the human brain, by declaring it a non-problem. They suggest that it can be dealt with rather easily by "including sufficient noise in the simulation ... Randomness is therefore highly unlikely to pose a major obstacle to WBE." And anyway: "Hidden variables or indeterministic free will appear to have the same status as quantum consciousness: while not in any obvious way directly ruled out by current observations, there is no evidence that they occur or are necessary to explain observed phenomena."

Back in college I had once thought to build a “free will” machine. I was going to use the radioactive decay of an isotope as the source of what I thought would be a truly random number generator. But then I realized at some point that there really is nothing random. Even the “noise in the simulation” for the WBE is not random; it is just that the sources of such noise are sufficiently complex that we can’t predict what such noise would look like. But it is not random or chance. Everything is deterministic, whether we know the determiner or not. Our own thoughts and will are a complex of internal competing desires and outside stimuli which are well beyond our ability to grasp. But the choices we make are not random. Just imagine: could any person reasonably be held responsible for making choices that do not arise from their desires?

Further, could any random choice be thought to be rational or reasonable? In constructing a computer with seemingly random decisions, it seems far more likely that the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute would create a computer exhibiting all manner of mental disorders than to replicate a creative consciousness.

In constructing a “free will” machine my hope was to create a creative computer. But if human creativity is not the result of chance, where does creativity come from? Interestingly, in Exodus 28:2-3 and 31:1-6 we are told that the first person(s) to receive the Spirit of God were artists. They were given the spirit of skill to devise artistic designs, for glory and for beauty. Even our creativity finds its source in God, not indeterminate chance. Praise God!