How 9/11 Triggered a Resurgence of Atheism In America

This Sunday is the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and as with many historical events, the role religion played in helping people recover from is a lively topic of discussion. Part of that discussion has revolved around the 9/11 cross, with Christians  defending the placement of it at ground zero as a symbol of hope and atheists criticizing it as a sectarian religious symbol at what should be a secular place for remembering the victims of a faith based terrorist attack.

The group calling for the removal of the cross has been viciously criticized by many including Jon Stewart who ridiculed the suggestion that non-religious Americans be given the opportunity to have a symbol at the ground zero memorial. Although it is easy to make fun of the idea that Atheists be allowed to place some sort of symbol to represent them at ground zero, an examination of the last ten years as well as the events of 9/11 shows that an Atheist symbol deserves to be placed at ground zero far more than any cross.

From 2001 to 2008, the amount of Americans claiming to be non-religious increased by 15% but more importantly, the number of Americans calling themselves Atheist increased 91% in the 7 years after 9/11. There are probably complex reasons why millions of Americans would choose to abandon the faiths they grew up in in response to 9/11 but there are some obvious ones that can clearly be identified.

For many, 9/11 was a graphic reminder of the Epicurean Paradox, more commonly known as the Problem of Evil. If God did exist, then He would have had the capacity to prevent those planes from crashing into the World Trade Center buildings and killing 3,000 people. If anybody were in a position to prevent the attacks but did not take action to prevent them, we would call that person evil for not intervening. There is simply no way of arguing your way out of this logical dilemma and millions of Americans realized that their belief in God could not be defended after what they had witnessed.

As we learned afterwards, (setting aside historical, political and economic motivations), the 9/11 hijackers were primarily motivated by their religious faith. The image of religious fundamentalists yelling “Allahu Akbar” moments before killing thousands of innocent people was a powerful one. For many Americans who grew up in the 80′s and 90′s, the idea that religion was a force for good in the world was one we grew up with. Even if we didn’t share it, we were told religiosity should be admired since it leads people to commit acts of compassion and charity. 9/11 shattered that illusion when we realized that not only can religion inspire people to commit attrocites, but that there are actions so vile and morally evil that they can only be perpetrated by someone motivated by his religious convictions.

The reaction to 9/11 by the religious right and their actions in the years following 9/11 no doubt contributed to many people re-examining their beliefs. Here we found ourselves, recovering from an act of terrorism carried out by religious fundamentalists while at the same time finding religious fundamentalists taking over our government and our civil institutions. We had the Dover Trial, where we were reminded that we had Christians trying to push creationism into our public schools and committing perjury during the trial to cover up their actions. We had a national debate about stem cells, which resulted in research that could save countless lives being put on hold because of religious objections. We had religious leaders claiming not only that 9/11 and hurricane Katrina were punishment from God for homosexuality. We had religious groups succesfully vote to outlaw gay marriage. We found out about the Catholic church covering up the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children.

During the years after 9/11, we were constantly reminded of case after case of the real harm that religion was causing in our country. It simply wasn’t possible to criticize Islam for inspiring the attacks of 9/11 while simultaneously ignoring the fact that Christianity was a negative force in America.

There’s a full decade of news and events to think about this Sunday and I hope people use the opportunity to reflect.

Elevatorgate Highlights an Ineffable Flaw in the Atheist Community

Elevatorgate, an incident described here is the latest faux controversy to rock the Atheist Community. I had already written about similar situations that had arisen among this group of loosely affiliated individuals.

My understanding of the events is the following: guy hits on female blogger in an elevator asking if she wants some coffee, next day she is scheduled to speak and says that what that person did was inappropriate and asks other men in the audience not to do the same, this causes all hell to break loose dividing camps into those who defend the female blogger and those defending the right to ask women if they want to have coffee.

My opinion on the matter is irrelevant but I’m going to mention it anyways. If you reverse the genders, a girl asks a guy if he wants some coffee in an elevator, and the next day the guy tells the girls attending that that is inappropriate and asks other females not to make advances towards him and other men attending, then he’d be laughed at and ridiculed. So absolutely I’m with Team Dawkins.

But the point isn’t which side is right, it’s that it highlights something deeply wrong with the New Atheism and the community that can’t be explained in words. That tendency for high school drama being elevated and amplified to a point of absurdity. A lack of adultness, seriousness or maturity. It’s not possible for me to identify exactly what that problem is and fix it.

In the wake of the Anders Brevik shooting rampage, an act of terrorism clearly influenced by faith and irrationality, I’m reminded of the desperate need for the use of reason and rationality. We need people to be strong advocates for this secular humanist worldview and as it stands these people are busy arguing about elevators.

Department of Transportation owes Puerto Rico $300 Million in Highway Funding

And Here’s How to  Get it

In 2009 as part of President Obama’s stimulus program, Puerto Rico received $105 million dollars for highway construction. Since then, concrete sales have remained roughly flat or decreased, depending on how you read the data. Cement sales are used as a rough indicator of how much construction is taking place on the island. Based on the combination of cement sale data, home sales and new home constructions it’s generally accepted that the construction industry in PR is in big trouble.

To get an idea of how much of a boost in funding $105 million is, Puerto Rico’s allocation for 2009 was $150 million. The stimulus funding roughly doubled the amount of money that could be spent on highway construction for 2009; $300 million would be a huge increase allowing for a major overhaul of Puerto Rico’s aging highway system, contractors could hire new workers, massive increase in concrete sales, in short a major and much needed economic boost.

In 1984 Congress passed the Federal Minimum Age act seeking to set a minimum drinking age of 21 across all states. Since Congress does not have the power to enforce a minimum drinking age of 21, the act merely “encourages” states to set a drinking age of 21 by withholding 5% (raised to 10% in 1988) of federal highway funding to states that have a drinking age below 21.

Puerto Rico currently has a drinking age of 18 for a number of reasons, it’s often argued that the reduced drinking age is a boon to tourism. As a result, since 1984, the amount of funding that Puerto Rico would otherwise have received for highway construction has been reduced by 10%. Based on some simple estimates over the last 27 years, this has cost Puerto Rico over $300 million in federal funding.

In 1987 the constitutionality of this law was contested in South Dakota v. Dole in it, in their decision, the Court decided that the act was constitutional as the federal government funded the Interstate Highway system and there was a possibility of minors crossing state lines to a state with a drinking age of 18, driving drunk across state lines back to a state with a drinking age of 21 therefore there was a justification for the federal government to enforce uniform drinking age laws.

A Presidential commission appointed to study alcohol-related accidents and fatalities on the Nation’s highways concluded that the lack of uniformity in the States’ drinking ages created “an incentive to drink and drive” because “young persons commut[e] to border States where the drinking age is lower.”

This exposes one simple problem, in the case of Puerto Rico it is simply impossible for young people to drive across state lines in order to purchase alcohol. Florida, the closest state is 1,000 miles away. Despite this simple geographical fact, Puerto Rico has been deprived of hundreds of millions in federal funds for no justifiable reason.

If Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands (who is also penalized for their drinking age of 18) were to challenge the constitutionality of this act, they would finally receive the full federal funding which they are entitled to as well as almost 3 decades worth of funds which were unconstitutionally withheld from them.

University of Puerto Rico Student Protests Part 2

The last time I wrote about the Student protests taking place at the University of Puerto Rico it  was day 24 of all 11 University precincts being shut down by student protesters. It’s been about 9 months since that and it’s probably time for an update.

A quick introduction however.

The current situation at the University of Puerto Rico begins in 2006 when Puerto Rico passes a law switching from an import tax to a sales tax. As a result of the language of the tax bill, the University lost around $100 million in funding per year. In 2009, University funding was further reduced by $144 million as a result of Law #7.

In reaction to this significant reduction in the University budget (nearly 25% less), the Administration proposed a number of measures including eliminating scholarships for those with high GPA’s, athletes and students from low income families and an $800 tuition increase.

However, with around 70,000 students, the $800 tuition increase could not possible cover the $250 million yearly budget deficit. Instead these $800 are for a $200 million loan to cover operation costs for an additional year while further cost reductions take place, including closing down University Campuses, reducing the number of students enrolled, reducing the number of classes offered and professors, and eliminating student grants and scholarships.

Before the end of the Spring semester, students took over all 11 campuses for 30 days until the Administration agreed to not put those measures into effect. The University was essentially run by a Board consisting of 13 members, an agreement was finally reached because 7 of the 13 members were sympathetic to the students’ demands.

The day after an agreement was reached between the students and the administration, the Legislature passed a bill which was immediately signed into law by Gov. Luis Fortuño (R), which increased the number of board members from 13 to 17, guaranteeing a majority in the board. With this new majority, the board rescinded all the agreements reached with the student body and announced plans to continue with their proposed measures.

In December, police entered University campuses, to prevent further student protests. For nearly 2 decades no police had entered the campus following the murder of a young college student by a police officer at a demonstration. As a result, the administration was able to implement the $800 tuition increase.

This Monday, the Spring semester began with police at every corner of the University, a situation which led to violent confrontation between students and police officers yesterday.

The current situation is extremely worrying and probably best summarized in this open letter by Judith Berkan:

I see repression reaching levels which are frightening. I see the breakdown of the few remaining democratic institutions.

With a Governor, Legislature and University Administration who are hellbent on dismantling the University of Puerto Rico, one of the few tools of upward social mobility in the island is in danger of being lost. The reality is that there is little chance that the demands the students are making will be satisfied.

Since the conflict began the University has lost nearly 20,000 students or about a third of those who were once enrolled. It’s not clear what the long term impact of the conflict will be or whether a resolution can be reached which will benefit everyone involved. Only time will tell.

SemiAccurate engages in Historical Revisionism

Charlie Demerjian is up to his old tricks lately; it seems that with the release of the 6000 series he’s looking to cash in on some extra page views.

This week he brought readers quite the doozy; claiming the problems faced by the Fermi line of Nvidia GPUs were Nvidia fault and not TSMC’s:

This is not to say that the characterization problems mentioned by Jen-Hsun were not real, but if they were the fault of faulty fab data, then everyone out there would have been affected. ATI wasn’t.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were an interview with AMD/ATI engineers on the internet from a reliable source where we could verify whether what Demerjian wrote was true? Well it just so happens there is such an interview courtesy of Anandtech.com

In February of this year, the ATI engineers behind the RV870 GPU gave a lengthy interview to Anand about the design and manufacturing process.

The relevant section is at page 9 (italics added for emphasis):

TSMC led ATI to believe that the variation in channel length was going to be relatively small. Carrell and crew were nervous, but there’s nothing that could be done.

The problem with vias was easy (but costly) to get around. David Wang decided to double up on vias with the RV740.

Engineering eventually figured a way to fix most of the leakage problem through some changes to the RV740 design.

TSMC went off to fab the initial RV740s. When the chips came back, they were running hotter than ATI expected them to run. They were also leaking more current than ATI expected.

Engineering went to work, tearing the chips apart, looking at them one by one. It didn’t take long to figure out that transistor channel length varied much more than the initial tolerance specs. If you get a certain degree of channel length variance some parts will run slower than expected, while others would leak tons of current.

So to paraphrase, Charlie’s assertion that ATI was not affected by TSMC’s fabrication process is a complete falsehood.

The current leakage and thermal problems that face GF100 are directly a result of TSMC’s shoddy 40nm fabrication process as stated by ATI themselves.

Unlike ATI which had the RV740 / 4770 to experiment on before designing the 5870, Nvidia jumped straight to 40nm believing that TSMC’s 40nm node was up to spec and the result was the GF100 consuming 300W+ and running at up to 90 degrees Celsius.

It’s only until GF104 that Nvidia was able to apply the same workarounds to their chips and thus why we see the 460 having significantly better power efficiency despite being essentially the same architecture.

Disturbingly, Charlie is still pushing the lie that Nvidia had 1.7% yields on the first batch of Fermi chips; a lie that was debunked as soon as he published it over a year ago.

One can only imagine why SemiAccurate would flat out lie to yet again slander Nvidia, but it seems publishing lies is a hard habit to break.

Can AMD fool Consumers again with Southern Islands?

Almost a year ago, GPU manufacturer ATI/AMD launched the 5xxx or Evergreen line of desktop video cards to consumers. If rumors hold true, this October will see the launch of the 6xxx or Southern Islands lineup, the successor to last years product line; so it’s as good a time as any to look back on the last 12 months of GPU news to see whether consumers should put their trust in AMD once again.

The 5870 was released on September 23rd of 2009 to generally positive reviews, the extremely low power consumption and strong performance were highlighted by most reviewers. However with few DX11 titles available at launch, the possibility of Nvidia’s Fermi GPU’s being released, and the cards being generally sold out, many potential buyers instead preferred to wait.

On April 12, the GTX480 was released by Nvidia. Reviewers noted the strong performance of the product but concerns about the cards extremely high power consumption and operating temperature caused most reviewers to not recommend the GPU.

At this point, based on the available information from reviewers the best GPU then available was a 5870. At the time I was using a three year old 8600 bought at a discount when a local electronics store had a closeout sale. Based on reading multiple reviews I opted for a Powercolor PCS 5870 which according to techPowerUp was the quietest they had reviewed.

It is at this point that like many consumers who purchased a 5xxx/Evergreen GPU I immediately began to wonder if I had made the wrong choice.

Going back to the original launch of Evergreen in September, at launch there was a rapidly growing chorus of complaints among early adopters. It seems a significant portion of people had installed their brand new $400 video cards only to find that the cards would crash with a characteristic Grey Screen of Death. It was later recognized by AMD/ATI that the issue was caused with a flaw with the GDDR5 memory controller.

Among the dozens of reviews published at launch, not one mentioned the GSOD issue  to potential consumers; either because they felt it wasn’t relevant or because they did not run into the problem while testing the GPU.

When I received my GPU, I only suffered ~5 GSOD’s, with the then new drivers, the bug was pretty rare to run into; however I learned that was the least of my problems. The Evergreen family is built to support 3 monitors simultaneously. I currently use dual monitors on my computer so the added functionality was useful.

Upon installing the card and fooling around with the settings, I soon learned that trying to overclock the GPU while using dual monitors resulted in the secondary display flickering. This meant that overclocking on dual monitors was impossible.

When was this bug fixed? On the 23rd of May with the release of the Catalyst 10.5 drivers (pdf link). What does that mean? That for 9 whole months, anyone who purchased an Evergreen GPU with the intent of using it with more than one display was unable to overclock his GPU.

Again, go back to the original reviews of the 5870. Many reviewers tested these cards on multiple displays and nearly all reviewers attempted to overclock the cards. Most reviewers should have run into this bug immediately, yet no review mentions this bug.

This is not the worst bug to afflict multiple display users with Evergreen GPUs. After using my 5870 for a few hours it became apparent that every so often my mouse cursor would become corrupted and the pixels would become garbled occasionally ending with my system crashing. Simple googling found that many other people had identified this bug. The culprit was found to be that, if perchance, a user wanted to move his mouse cursor from one screen to another, this would trigger the cursor bug and system crash.

How long did it take for a bug that would crash your system, and in my case caused a system crash about once a day for the last 6 months? Believe it or not it took AMD/ATI until August 25th, 2010 to fix a problem that had been crashing users computers for 11 months with the release of Catalyst 10.8 drivers. More disturbing however is that the bug wasn’t even recognized as a known issue in any of the previous driver release notes.

Again, go back to the original 5870 reviews. In order to run into this bug, a reviewer had to have his card connected to two or more displays and simply move his mouse cursor from one screen to another to run into the bug. Many reviewers spent weeks with their cards before publishing their reviews. It is simply impossible that not one reviewer noticed this bug meaning many reviewers were aware of the bug and simply chose not to inform their readers of a serious and crippling bug.

Using this 5870, every day you find a new bug, another feature that’s broken. Most games suffer from horrible screen tearing because Vsync simply does not work with most games including Bad Company 2, the best selling DX11 title released so far having sold 5 million copies. Anti-Aliasing is hit and miss. To quote one techPowerUp member who has tested his 5870 with more games than me:

no in-game AA setting changes actually enables AA in about 30 apps I’ve tested so far… V-Sync, another member here has mentioned as well. Easy to test…again, broken.

So now next month AMD/ATI is expected to release the Southern Islands series of GPUs and looking back on the last year of the Evergreen series I have to ask. Can consumers really trust them to release a GPU worth buying  after all we’ve had to put up with and still have to put up with? Can consumers really be expected to trust reviewers again after being misled into buying broken and malfunctioning GPUs?

These are video cards that cost hundreds of dollars, a significant amount of money all things considered. If we’re going to give that much money to a company we should have some assurance that the product we receive will work as advertised. Reviewers failed to inform consumers of some extremely obvious flaws in the products they were reviewing and thus either intentionally or unintentionally led millions to buy a product that they probably would not have bought if they had been fully informed.

To me the answer is clear. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Refutando el Argumento de la Administracion UPR

Esta semana vi en el periodicu un anuncio muy interesante en el Periodico. En el, la administracion de la UPR compara el costo de matricula de la UPR con el de otras Universidades en los Estados Unidos. Algo parecido asi:

El argumento es sencillo. Como la UPR cuesta menos que ir a estudiar en Luisiana o Rhode Island, se debe aumentar la matricula. Pero vamos a comparar el ingreso promedio de Luisiana, Puerto Rico y Rhode Island; informacion que se puede obtener online.

Frankamente es una falta de respeto comparar costos de Matricula cuando una familia promedio en Rhode Island se gana tres veces mas que una familia promedio en Puerto
Rico. Pero porque decide usar la administracion Luisiana y Rhode Island de 50 estados?

Si se compara el Presupuesto que tiene la UPR por estudiante, los numeros son depresivos. La UPR tiene que operar con solo $17,000 por estudiante. Compare eso con presupuestos de sobre $80,000 por estudiante en Mississippi y sobre $60,000 por estudiante en Texas. Luisiana y Rhode Island son excepciones por sus bajos niveles presupuestarios. Pero compare la cantidad de dinero que se otorga en comparacion con otros estados:

En Puerto Rico solo se le da a la UPR 9.6% del presupuesto estatal a la UPR. En Luisiana es 13%, Texas 14%, Mississippi 21%, California 14.3%. Aumentar la beca seria imoral dada la situacion economica de Puertorriqueño promedio. El gobernador y la Legislatura le tienen que dar un presupuesto apropiado a la UPR, no se puede operar una Universidad con solo 9% del presupuesto y solo $17,000 por estudiante.

Aquellos que por décadas pudieron convertirse en profesionales, médicos, abogados, ingenieros gracias a la UPR tienen que pagar un mayor porcentaje de sus contribuciones a la UPR. Es mejor que la UPR se pague por sus alumnos una vez tengan y fuentes de ingreso, que cuando son estudiantes.