The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

GO!

What does fyo stand for?

Fried Yams Organization?

he's actually answered that question before, but I'll let him answer it again.

My turn:
What is your professional training?  I sometimes thing you're in the tech field but you seem to have knowledge about lots of subjects.  What's the deal?

Married, two young children.

Quick recap of the "fyo" nick: I started using it online WAY back... comes from the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which is not only feels rather presumptuous today, but is also ironic, in that I don't really like most of his writing. I guess I just started using it and it stuck.

Professional training... I'm a physicist, but no longer work professionally in that field. In many ways I'm a prototypical polymath, especially in the "jack of all trades, master of none" sense. I work in IT development today, but I wouldn't bet too much on that sticking for too long (even though I'm slowly nearing 40).

I love reading and learning new things often to a degree that can get annoying for the people around me (mainly my wife). When people introduce me to new subjects somehow, it often winds up costing me a lot of free time, because I get an urge to know more (Jim's "house of straw" only cost me a couple evenings of researching various building materials). There's no real structure or pattern to the things I find interesting. Some examples from the past few months: City growth in medieval times. Primitive mining techniques. Fluid modelling techniques (the physicist in me will never die). Wood acetylation (e.g. Accoya) and wood with amorphous glass (e.g. TimerSIL) -- these two an offshoot from Jim's straw house, so that's all his fault ;)

Are you from Portland, or somewhere on the west coast? I know you've mentioned it before, but can't recall where from (planning my "Philly across the nation, meeting the members of TDMMC tour"). I know someone is from Portland...

Glad I could help.  I share your sense of curiosity, and spend hours reading about some unusual subject that I come across.  Usually, it's science or history; but right now, I'm more focused on things that will be useful when I move into my new place - bee keeping, making cheese, thermophilic composting and the impact of heat on pathogens, native plants, etc.   My biggest problem is that I'll look up something about virtualized IO subsystems and find some reference to something more interesting, follow that and find something even better.......before I know it, I've gone down a rat hole and instead of answering my original question, I'm reading about how top Nazi escaped from Germany after WWII. 

Either one of you ever just pull up the main page of Wikipedia and start reading? I will do that from time to time as they often highlight some very interesting topics. If the main page doesn't do anything for me, then I'll start looking at the sub categories of Math, Science, History etc and see if I find anything interesting there. Wikipedia has a vast amount of information. You may have to take a bit of it with a grain of salt, but they do a pretty good job of getting rid of erroneous or questionable information.

Also, if you haven't checked it out, all Wikipedia pages have a "discussion" page that goes along with it (there's a tab in the upper left hand corner of the page) that will sometimes have some very good discussions on the topic especially if it's a bit controversial. Those are sometime for fun to read as well. Anytime someone questions the veracity of the information on a particular topic, it's usually moved to the discussion page to be discussed until a consensus can be reached about the information and put back on the topic page.

Wikipedia has a little bit of bad rep as I really do think that most of the information is pretty accurate and verified. Anyone can be setup with an account to "edit" the information as well. I've done it, it's really easy.

Philly, no, I'm not from Portland. We moved a lot when I was growing up, so I'm from "all over". I've never actually lived in Florida (although I do have family there now) and started following the Dolphins while living close to DC, in Virginia -- about at the same time that Marino started playing, actually ;).

I'm amazed at how many people say they started watching the Dolphins and became a fan by watching Marino.

What other sports/teams do you follow?

It wasn't just Marino (and the way the Dolphins played). I went to Florida for the first time and really liked it. Like I said, we travelled a lot and I've managed to visit every state but Alaska and Hawaii (and those two probably count as my top vacation wishes).


None.

I used to watch tennis and various forms of motor sports, but ultimately decided that it was all boring. I love PLAYING most sports, but watching them on TV is another matter.

There are some other NFL teams that I have a soft spot for... I lived right outside Denver when Elway won his first SB, but that soft spot has faded quite a bit over the past decade.

My uncle is a physicist.  He was always a guy that seemed driven by reason when he was younger.  He worked on some giant laser at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California. 

He was kind of an odd duck when it came to things that were appropriate for kids -- he made a comment once when I was watching The Empire Strikes Back when Han Solo said "...then I'll see you in Hell!"  I was like 15.  Meanwhile, his kids were social deviants and drug addicts.

When he retired from being a scientist, it was a snowball of religion, where I never saw that side of him before.  He pretty much turned into Ned Flanders, openly quoting the bible, altering his political views to fit his religion, and becoming a fanatic.  It was strange to see that from a physicist.  This was all while his family dynamic became more and more in shambles, and the rest of us (even my other religious family members) were thinking "Dude....forget about God for a sec and look at your own house".  Then he got really sick with cancer and when it went into remission, he was even more fanatical.

So, my question for you is: What is the general consensus and thought of religion in a science-based workplace.  Do you see these views change when people leave the business?  And how do those that are religious and their views conflict with their work -- how do they reconcile this?

Given where he worked, do you think may have been a result of his job? Do you think his work led him to "pray for forgiveness"?

^ I don't think so.  He was always kind of a weird dude.  It was like he buried his head in the sand.  He would pretend that he had this great family structure, while his kids were all screwed up -- drugs, sex, white-collar crime, even.  Yet, like I said, he would be offended if he heard "Damn" on TV.  I was like "really? -- shouldn't you be more concerned about your daughter doing Meth?"  I imagine that most of that lay dormant because he had a job to do.  With all that extra free time, I think his brain needed to fill the gaps, and he used the bible for it.

I'm not saying that he was a bad guy or a bad parent or anything like that.  I always liked (and still like) the guy.  He is nice and open to discussing religion and political stuff in a respectful way.  And he's smart.  It was just really weird to see someone so seemingly detached from reality, where the house was on fire and he was concerned about a spot on the rug.

Then, he had a series of traumatic events all in a row -- family drama, cancer, etc -- I think it just flipped a switch.

I've worked with people of many different religions (as well as atheists and agnostics) and I've never seen any conflict with their scientific work in any way, nor have I noticed any change in beliefs by people who have "left" the field. In my experience, modern physics just doesn't inspire that kind of "clash" with core principles of major religions. Perhaps if I had worked in the field of biology, my experience would have been different. These days, even the Vatican has a "modern" view of physics.

Even with respect to biology, it's not my experience that there's any sort of clash. No major religion believes in "creationism" as it's used by a few people in Arkansas. The Vatican, for example, completely refutes the idea of "Young Earth" or "direct" creationism. For those interested in going down THAT particular rabbit hole, let me recommend a talk given by the Vatican's top researcher in (of all places) Florida almost exactly 5 years ago. The text can be found here:

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=18504

The bottom line is that the Catholic Church believes firmly in things like evolution, even if that sentiment is not shared by all its members (perhaps most notably a contingent from Arkansas). The idea that the solar system (to get back to physics) was created "as is" by God (in 6 days -- or whatever) is also not something that the Vatican subscribes to.

In my experience, the coverage of "religion vs science" in the popular press has absolutely nothing to do with reality.

Ever see the movie Mindwalk?  It touches on some of these types of questions, not really from a religious slant, but more from just a do we really understand our world at all approach.  Very enlightening.  It's exactly what it's title says it is, a mind walk.  I highly recommend it if you don't mind 2 hours of intelligent conversation as a movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100151/

Pappy, it sounds very Plato-inspired... Hadn't heard of it. Might have to give it a shot one of these days.

Sorry just found this thread while looking for another,and this must have gotten posted while I was gone.....Are you talking like Realflow water simulation program?

Sorry for the Bump....