Monday, January 28, 2013

Can science answer why?


while I was surfing the internet I come across following video by john Lennox and thought , it would be interesting to comment on it.

http://johnlennox.org/index.php/en/resource/limitations_of_science/
John Lennox
Well one of the best ways, I think of, seeing the limitations of science is to imagine a lady who I might call my aunt Meltada who've baked a beautiful cake and she is displaying it to the Nobel science prize winners of the world. And I asked them as master of the ceremony I suppose, to analyze the cake. And off course chemists will reduce it to elements and physicists to elementary particles and so on and we get a brilliant description of it. And then finally I say to them now thank you for the scientific descriptions and just got one last question, why did she make the cake. And off course the physicists can analyze it but the physicists clearly will not be able to tell me why she made the cake, in fact no scientist can, unless she reveals it to me. And the interesting thing about that is this, that when she reveals it and tells me it was made for her cousin, friend or something like this, that doesn't shut my reason off, I used my reason to see if her explanation make sense.Now, off course that raises very deep questions. It raises the question asked to whether there is a something or better someone is stand to the same relationship to the universe as Aunt Meltada does to the cake. And whether he has revealed anything and off course basic christian claim is that precisely what has happened. That the God who made the universe has revealed something. And that little illustration may be simple but it helps to explain another misapprehension that is very wide spread ,that revelation that is in terms of the bible revealing things is somehow against reason. that's nonsense, we used reason in all the areas even at understanding revelation. The point is there are different sources of information one of them is a study of nature and the other is as I believe the book of God's word. And when God reveal something in his word we don't shut our reason in fact we need our reason even to read it. But then we can see if what it says make sense and so that would be the approach to the question of the limits of the science that I would take.
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In my opinion John Lennox is saying two things. First science can't answer the why questions but revelations can.  Second science and revelations are different sources of information. Now the question is can science answer the '' Why'' qustions? To answer this question we need to know what are the ''Why'' questions. First type of why questions I can think of are questions like why is the sky blue. Why are the plants green? Why the rivers flow? Etc. I would like to call these questions causal why questions and I think science can answer them perfectly fine. Another type of why questions are those questions I would like to call purpose why questions. For e.g. why do we have legs. Why do the birds have wings. Why is the knife sharp etc. And again I think science can answer these questions reasonably well if not perfectly. And finally there are why questions that ask the motives of the agent. The questions like why did aunt Matelda baked the cake? Why am I writing this? Why are you reading this? Etc. I think this is where he means science can't answer the why questions. And I agree with him that science can't answer those type of questions with 100 percent accuracy. However I have to mention that there are branches of science that attempt to answer some of these questions to certain degree , for e.g. forensics etc.

So what about revelations? Can they answer the motive why questions as john Lennox suggests? The answer is yes they can however, it has to be said that revelations are only as good as their revealers. Meaning revealer himself can be lying outright or even if he is indeed sincere, the message could be misunderstood, or he himself could be deceived, or is delusional. These become more potent when the revelations are not first hand. Therefore I have to conclude that revelations alone can not answers the motives why questions and moreover they can't answer any questions. Finally though I concede that revelations coupled with evidence may be some other thing after all,

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Death and ressuration of my galaxy tab

Recently I did the factory data reset on my original Samsung Galaxy tab (GT-P1000). After the reset I found out that The market app that comes with the factory image did not work any more. It took me to the terms and conditions page of the play store with no way of accepting it. I tried to login to the play store using web browser and download something to force update the market app. I can login but play store did not recognized my galaxy tab , so I can't download anything.My next attempt is to update the firmware through Samsung kies hoping market app updates along with it. As I have upgraded my PC to windows 8 recently I need to download and install the kies from Galaxy tab support site. After installation it asked me to do an update cause there is newer version, so I did. But when I connect my tab , it was not recognized giving the error that says Device not recognized by Kies 2. I thought it was the update, so I uninstalled it then redownload and install now without updating when prompted and get the same error. Then I look for installer for older version of Kies especially 1. Something. Official Samsung site doesn't have it but I found it on some forum. After installation it detected my Galaxy tab but UI is old and doesn't support firmware updates for android device s. I let it update to latest version and this time it still recognized my Galaxy tab' however the firmware update option is grayed out. Either my Galaxy tab is up to date or Samsung does not support it any more, I was run out of official ways to get the market app updates to play store. So I decided to side load the play store app directly from unofficial sources. I googled for play store apk and I found it easily enough. I side loaded the apk and voilà! I now have the play store on my tab and can download apps from it. Then it occur to me that since I have gone unofficial, why not go all the way to install a custom ROM so that I can have the latest Android version. I looked for the latest stable custom ROM for my Galaxy tab and found instruction s for Sapir-CM10Based-20120925-NIGHTLY-p1-erezak.zip at http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-tab-gt-p1000-gsm-android-4-1-1-cyanogenmod-10-cm10-nightly-unofficial-112424/ . The instructions say that I need to have clockworkmod recovery installed but no instructions as to how. I googled for it and found form the clockworkmod site that I can install it from the app called ROM manager. So I look at the help and found out that the app does not support the original galaxy tab. The only way to install the clockworkmod recovery on P1 galaxy tab is through Odin. So I followed the instructions found here http://theunlockr.com/2012/05/07/how-to-root-and-flash-the-clockworkmod-recovery-on-the-galaxy-tab-p1000-running-gingerbread/ to get the clockworkmod installed. As the instructions mentioned I maked sure that repartition check box is unchecked. It work as expected and now I got the rooted galaxy tab with clockwork mod recovery installed, a prerequisites for installing custom ROM. The ease of the process encouraged me. I proceed to download the ROM and the Google apps, but the links are dead. I googled for another and found cm-10-20120829-EXPERIMENTAL-p1-PREVIEW.zip for a ROM and gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip and now all per requisite are met I am ready.I copied the download files into the internal SD card and reboot the tab into recovery mode as per instructions. Here I remembered to make the nandriod backup of the current ROM just in case something goes wrong. I then reboot into clockworkmod recovery again and followed the instructions to flash the custom ROM. All seems well but after reboot it was stuck in a boot loop. At first I did not panic as I have made the backup earlier. I power off the galaxy tab and reboot into clcokworkmod recovery mode and tried to restore the backup. After reboot it now stuck at galaxy tab logo. I tried to flash the ROM again but now it says the signatures verification fails. I tried to download the official ROM and flash it. But the ROM I found was in PIT format and I can't flash it from the clockworkmod. The only way to flash it is from Odin so I search for the instructions and followed it. The instructions say if I am running custom ROM I should check repartition check box. I did and it failed half way giving E:failed to mount data, and after reboot struck at Samsung logo. From now on whatever I tried give the same error. I tried flashing the custom ROM. Flash the pit from Odin again. Clear cache. Factory reset all failed with same error. I googled the web for the symptoms and what I found on the forums are not encouraging. They say that my data partition has become corrupted and since all my tools can only access system partition there is nothing I can do. All I can do is bring it to the Samsung service center I have bricked my tab. I kept on looking and at last I found some glimmer of hope in one forum saying the adb and the fastboot can be use to format the data partition. I decided to let it rest or some days since I've become too emotionally involved and tired. So next holiday on chirstmas I tied to test the theory. So I downloaded and install the android sdk and sdk tools. After Installation I tried to connect my tab in fastboot mode to no avail. I tried to list the devices in both adb and fastboot but my device is not recognized. Then I tried to see if it is recognized in kies and odin, kies recognized the device but odin doesn't. Later it turns out the problem with the odin was that I am now using a different usb port then before.. I tired to use the same usb port and odin recognized the device but not fastboot or adb. Now I am at my wit's end. In my desperation I did a lot of things with Odin that I don't exactly remember basically flashing ROM and pit together and all sort of combinations I tried to redo everything from the start. So first I flashed the clockworkmod kernel again, but the problem seems to exist. Nothing I tried worked then I noticed that the error message has changed back to invalid signature when I tried to flash the custom ROM. So I thought my rom image was corrupted and tried to find another rom. I found aokp_sgt7-p1-jb_20121122.zip from aokp site. Tried to flash this rom and stil got the boot loop
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Unfortunately my original post somehow lost and I am too lazy to retype :) the gist is you have to flash the image twice if you run into boot loop because the file system changed. Have fun

Friday, January 29, 2010

:D

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Thursday, December 24, 2009

24 dec 2009

nothing special today I got bored at playing force unleashed and watched some japanese horror and chinese movies. i found I google to be a useful tool. tomorrow I'll look at c graphic libary for pic with ko myauk.

C Graphic Libary for PIC

Today I tried to look at the C Graphic Libary for Ko myauk. However there seems to be something wrong with the integration of the Graphic designer with the MPLAB IDE. The menu in the tool dropdown is still dimmed. I've to wait for ko myauk till tomorrow

Sunday, December 20, 2009

20th dec 2009

Oddly enough I found my self writing again,
I really don't know what to write but there is this blog post Lynn Ei want me to read is still on my mind
http://ritako.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-post.html
In the blog post the writer present the mindset of the average Engineering graduate from Myanmar who work outside on Burmese Politics with herself as the reference.

Interestingly although she write in Burmese , most of the readers (who make comments) don't get her message. They only focus on one or two passages and based on that they form opinions about her. Why is this happen? Is her writing skills terrible? Or the readers Burmese language are so lousy? None of these seems to be the case but almost all the comments are based on these wrong opinion about the writer's view on Burmese politics. My be the topic is sensitive enough or the audience is wrong.

Although I am not sure my interpretation of her post is what she intended. I find myself agreeing with her. This make the probability of Lynn Ei's prediction that after I read this post she and I will have to argue come true. Because from what we talked I guess that Lynn Ei also don't get the message of the post.

I'll have to wait for her to return to argue later