And that is how I know...when I try to get through on the telephone to you...There'll be nobody home

There was a brief period when I was first introduced to Slashdot, the web's leading technology news source, when I used to leave comments. I soon realized it was pretty useless, given the general chaos in their comments, which span the full range between insightful points and babbling idiocy, with very few people aware of the difference in spite of their extremely complicated comment moderation system. Still, it should be pointed out that there are precious few stories about anything technical that escape their attention, and three from tonight really made that clear. I'll skip straight to the linked articles, since that is where the real interest lies.

First, a quickie about a mission to go sample the Earth's mantle with a deep sea mission. MSNBC reports that the exposed mantle is located near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where matter is upwelling, slowly pushing America and Europe apart, though nowhere near as fast as our President has been doing so. No one is quite sure exactly why the crust seems to have ripped open in this one spot, according to the article, though they seem to think the crust above fractured and was more tightly bound to itself than to the mantle below, leading to fissures. Given the huge uncertainties we have with respect to the physics of what happens underfoot, especially compared to the ease with which we study the stuff above, I'm sure that anything they find will be more than interesting. Heck, just last week they announced that a big chunk of the mantle beneath China contains as much water as the Arctic Ocean, though no one has much of an idea how to access it anytime soon.

Switching over to matters above, if you will, the NYTimes has an article about our evolutionary conditioning to believe in God. Just to set up the basic parameters:

About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”

The article mentions several interesting psychological studies, demonstrating that as young children we first believe that everyone thinks exactly the same (i.e., exactly like us), and later that we still seem to believe in omniscience, especially with regard to our parents until about age 5 or 6, and essentially suggests that God may be the residual of this belief.

Now, I might be genetically predisposed to be a non-believer, since neither of my parents are believers, but I am wary of the "nature instead of nurture" tone of the article. There is a strong social component to religion, especially given the role played by parents in teaching religion to their children (you have no idea how hard it was not to use the word "brainwash" there). Also, there is a bizarre tendency in humanity to believe completely random crap about just about anything, no matter how contradictory those beliefs may be, rather than admit to not knowing. Ask people if there is gravity on the moon, and more people will tell you "no" than "I don't know" (the answer is yes, of course, since mass is a source of gravitation and the moon has quite a bit of it). For reasons beyond me, people would rather believe their lives have an inherent point, even if we can't really define it, rather than admit we have no idea if we do or not. Most of it comes down to a sense of perspective: people ignore the fact of just how small and insignificant we are on the global scale, much less an astronomical ones. Maybe this is the byproduct of evolution: we specialize in explaining things, with very little regard to whether or not the explanations are correct, and uncertainty just flusters our well-evolved brains. Then again, I really don't know.

Finally, having looked up and down, let's just look all around at the invisible things all around us, in this case Wi-Fi networks. John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine, who is a very good writer, suggests that cellphone companies will try to kill off citywide WiFi projects, which would compete with their overpriced, tortoise-paced cell-based internet networks. He's certainly right about the telephone companies, who like just about all media/communication companies are fundamentally shortsighted about literally every technological issue with which they have to deal. I just wonder whether he fully understands kids these days. To anyone used to Hi-speed internet (let's say 10 Mbps or so), dial-up speed is physically painful. So long as there are restaurants and coffeeshops with free Wi-Fi, I'll blissfully ignore the existence of slower connections. If trapped at an airport without Hi-speed, I'll watch a DVD or read a book. I doubt I'm alone in this, it's just that a slow connection seems like a waste of time in the end. Outside of an airport, where exactly can one not find a coffeeshop these days? I would certainly look at paying for city-wide WiFi , but anything else is just a bit too close to the telegraph and the Pony Express. Thankfully, the cellphone companies don't have time on their side: free municipal WiFi may be hard to get implemented, but once in place it's hard to see what could make it go away. Besides, once Apple takes over the market with the iPhone, and then switches over to a WiFi/VoiP basis rather than cell when possible, how much longer will the cell phone industry be around, anyway?