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Yesterday evening, I told Li-Xia that I only knew a few people that were born on the same day. Then she told me that there are 5 people in Enschede born at the same date. She found this out during a visit to the town hall, where the birth date is used as an entry key. A birth date makes a very nice key: it is short (6 digits), and has a very uniform distribution. When she told me that there were 5 people, I remarked that this was a lot. Then I started thinking. There are 150.000 people living in Enschede. Divided by the average age (75) this gives 2000. If you divide this by 365 you arive at: 5.61797752. Thus, it is very close at the expected value.
I received several congratulations by email, I think, because it is on the World Birthday Web (WBW). They came from:
I got the impression that the writer of this essay, did not write diaries herself. It made me think about my reasons for writing diaries.
This morning I received a request from Sandrine Arons who is working on on a thesis about personal evolution though journal writing. He saw my home page, and would be very interested in interviewing me over internet.
In the coming weeks (time permitting), I will write something
about my experiences with diary writing, and add this to
my introduction.
Usage sort
(cont'd)
Both Jon Haugsand
and Peter Kirby have
written programs (Jon's program) to check the different algorithms proposed.
Both of them had difficulties with understanding my algorithm.
I have tried my algorithm in the program of Peter, and it turned
out that with my algorithm the books are sorted in an average
of 7.932293 moves (trying 10000 random experiments). It seems
as if my algorithm is better than all others proposed sofar.
The score function below, calculates the score of a certain ordering.
int score(int book[])
{ int a;
int sum = 0;
for (a = 1; a < 6; a++)
{ int b;
int s = 0;
for (b = 1; b < 6; b++)
s += in_correct_order(a, b, book);
sum += s * s;
}
return sum;
}
To determine whether two books are in the correct order in
the row of books (ignoring all other books for the moment)
the following function can be used:
int in_correct_order(int a, int b, int book[])
{ int i;
for (i = 0; i < 6; i++)
if (book[i] == a)
return a < b;
else if (book[i] == b)
return b < a;
}
Both programs are using a random generator. With some additional
bookkeeping it is possible to do without. You simply have to
keep an array of how likely a certain ordering can occur after
a certain number of moves. Initially, each ordering has the
same chance to occur. From this you can calculate for each
ordering the chance it will occur after one move. From this
you can calculate how often it occurs after any number of steps.
Based on the numbers for the correctly sorted order for any
number of steps, you can calculate the average number of
steps needed.
This very much depends on what you define as all powerful.
If you define `all powerful' as being able to do anything, than God is not all powerful, as is shown by the riddle: `can God create a rock He/She/It cannot lift?'. The Bible states very clearly that God cannot lie. The Biblical God cannot act against His moral character.
But if you define `all powerful' as being able to do everything you want, than God is all powerful. E.g., He ultimately holds all power in the Universe. He can remove the evil from the earth, and He will remove it in the (near) future. We should be happy that He has not removed all evil yet, as man him/herself is one of the (greatest) sources of evil.
w(b){return!(b&7&&b&56&&b&448&&b&73&&b&146&&b&292&&b&273&&b&84);}v(int a,int b,
int *m){int i=0,e,k,c=5,n;if(w(~a))c=4;else{for(;i<9;i++)if(!(a&(k=1<<i)||b&k)
&&c>(e=5-v(b|k,a,&n)))c=e,*m=i;if(c>4)c=3;c-=(c>1);}return c;}main(){int a=0,b=
0,d,l=0;for(;l<4;l++){a|=1<<(getchar()-'1');getchar();if(w(~a))break;v(a,b,&d);
printf("%d\n",d+1);b|=1<<d;if(w(~b))break;}}
(Shorter version)
The sun in the house makes me happy.
This morning, while scratching the ice of the windows of our car, I heared a constant noise of falling leaves from the Oak trees, and saw how the leaves completely covered the grass below the trees, which had turned white of frost. Within an hour the Oak trees must have lost most of their leaves. Is this caused by the sudden drop of temperature last night? But why did they only start falling off at day-time?
At present there is an e-mail petition being circulated on the Internet to keep Sesame Street from being canceled. That petition is seeking one million signatures, a good cause for a good educational program. This e-mail is asking that you become part of an e-mail petition to the God of the universe, on behalf of the Sleeping Giant, Japan.
Every morning over 10,000 Korean Believers face Japan and pray for the spiritual awakening of their one time oppressor. The largest church in the world is in Seoul, Korea--just over 750,000 members, around the same amount of believers in all of Japan--the Pastor of that church has said that God has given him a vision for ten million Christians in Japan by the year 2,000. Many Christian leaders around the world are sensing God's Spirit is preparing to move in Japan.
Imagine what kind of effect this could have on Asia, for that matter the World! It is reported that Japan has the largest number of missionaries in the world but still has one of the lowest percentages of believers of any country. Japan is in need of your prayers.
Today, please pray that Japan will begin to experience spiritual awakening and revival like never before. Ask God to bring Japanese to a saving knowledge of Himself through Jesus Christ. Please pray for Japanese believers. Asking God to help them share their faith with a new vigor and joy. Ask God to remove the spiritual strongholds and barriers to the Gospel that have been in place for 400 years.
Your Brother In Christ,
Eddie Marshall,
Missionary to Japan
But this all lasted only for a short time, as the snow was followed by rain, and other wet things. It's still to warm for snow, but it did snow this morning.
After some speakers had said what they wanted to say -- you know how this goes -- some drinks and snacks were served, and I ended up talking with Karin Bosch, who appeared to be one of the other persons who made a video presentation, which is going to be shown later this year (or maybe next year). While talking with her (she started the conversation by asking whether I was working in this building), it became clear that we came from a very different background, and that we did not have much in common. The conversion just died away -- not that I blame her at all.
Somehow, I find it interesting to talk to people who are from a very different background. But often it does not work out as I had expected. Then the gap is simply too wide to be overcome.
We know that His divine law, nations, like individuals are subject to punishments and chastisement in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of Civil War which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these may years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers wealth and power as no other nation has grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserves us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that the blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should solemnly, reverently acknowledge, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
Abraham Lincoln - signed October 3, 1863
It is amazing that a country that started out like this, now allows Dilation and Extraction abortions. I found this through the America's Christian Heritage page.
Today it did snow! But not as I had expected. It was all wet snow. I heard the noise of raining (from the melted snow falling down along the building) the whole day, while I saw the snow flakes fall down. Very depressing, when thinking of what I had been hoping for.
But when I left the shop, I noticed the stand, and wanted to get my umbrella, and immediately noticed there were two umbrellas of my type in it. One was much wetter than the other. The wet one also had the cloth torn a little, and although I could not remember whether mine was torn, I felt, I should take it, reasoning, then I would have left the better one of the other owner. But then I started doubting again. I really did not know what to do. Finally, I took the wet one with me, walked out of the shop, and while opening it, I was sure it was not mine. So, I walked back into the shop, and got mine, which when opening felt like mine.
Personally, I do not believe we cannot construct a machine which has the samekind of consciousness, which we experience. Although, I do believe we could construct a machine, (much like Lt. Data), which shows all signs of having self-consciousness. I also believe that the fact of him having a human form is the strongest factor in believing that he is self-conscious. If he would have been just a brain in a box, he might not have played such a prominent role in the program, although I think that a brain-in-a-box would have been a much better implementation of his mentail abilities. The computer used in the Enterprise seem to be rather inferior compared to Data's abilities. It surprises that never any of these computers would have become self-aware, as that seems far more reasonable to me.