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11 Responses to “ Daily Breakfast 488 - Black Holes ”

1. 
   Jeff Miller May 28th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

   By the way Family Guy and Robot Chicken were created by the same person - Seth McFarlane.

   I have a love/hate relationship with Seth McFarlane. Family Guy, American Dad, and Robot Chicken can at times be really funny, while at other times edgy just for the sake of edginess. Highly creative, but missing a moral component.

2. 
   Mardel May 29th, 2008 at 10:02 am

   In relation to the “Peculiar Bunch” segment of this show, I just recently finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia series with my two daughters. In the last (seventh) book, the characters go through a “door” to another world (ie heaven) and there are some dwarves who refuse to believe that there is any such place and as a result they cannot see the beauty & splendor of the place (they did not want to be “fooled” by anyone and therefore, closed their minds to the others). It is in Chapter 13 “How the Dwarves Refused to Be Taken In”. Lucy’s character really wants to help them and she asks Aslan to help them. He says, “Dearest, I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do”. And on a later page, Aslan says, “You see, they will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

   I know you have mentioned that you have read the entire series, but as you know CS Lewis put a lot of theology into these books and this portion seemed to relate well with the dicussion of faith on this episode. Thanks for your shows, I really enjoy listening.

3. 
   Fr. Roderick May 29th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

   @Jeff: I agree, sometimes the jokes are brilliant, sometimes the desire to ’shock’ seems to get confused with humor. Good comedy shouldn’t need it. Oh well..

   @Mardel: interesting.. I haven’t read the full series yet, haven’t had time unfortunately. But your quotes make me curious!

4. 
   Bonita May 30th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

   Hi, Fr.! I meant to tell you that the problem with the web page has been fixed-no more “black hole”-the videos, etc.. are all there!;-)
   Have a good weekend!
   Bonita

5. 
   Fr. Tomkirch May 31st, 2008 at 2:31 am

   Regarding Francis’ (Washington, DC) comments about the faith with Scientists, I would recommend the Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason)

   http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

   Fr. Tom

6. 
   Gerran May 31st, 2008 at 4:20 pm

   I have a line of thought that is similar to the ‘black-hole’ story of Fr Roderick in this episode that I would like to post here:
   In the same way that one can argument that a black hole doesn’t exist because one cannot see it, I argue that the physical term energy doesn’t exist (or better, is just an invention of scientists). One cannot measure energy. There is not one single device on this entire planet that does so. All we can measure is the result of energy being released or used. (Temperature changes, electrical power during a period of time, speed and mass combined etc). Also energy cannot be seen. Only the result of energy can be experienced through for example light, heat or movement / force.
   Knowing this, I ask you to think about this question: What is energy?

7. 
   Dave Jun 1st, 2008 at 7:41 am

   Fr. Roderick,

   You are right on about problems with sleeping.

   In the US, they sell what are called “blackout drapes”, which do a great job of keeping out the light early in the morning.
   If noises are a problem, you might also consider some very soft ear plugs.

   Best wishes and keep up the great work,
   Dave

8. 
   John C. The Frugal Audio Guy Jun 1st, 2008 at 10:28 am

   Hi Father,
   Just caught the comments about RAID arrays in DB488. The simplest, imo, is RAID 1. Just a simple mirror. This gives you two complete duplicate drives that can be pulled an installed in any machine outside the array if needed. It does cost a bit more (a second drive for no greater capacity) but disk space is pretty cheap these days. RAID 0+1 gets you striping for improved performance plus mirroring for security. My gut feeling is that RAID 5 with its parity scheme spread across multiple drives may be less reliable and harder to reconstruct in another machine if your whole PC goes down. The hardcore IT guys out there may be able to alleviate my concerns though.
   John

   PS-
   It was great to hear a caller from Warsaw, NY out in the country just a little way from us here in Buffalo!

9. 
   John C. The Frugal Audio Guy Jun 1st, 2008 at 11:17 am

   Just found this RAID tutorial that does a nice job of explaining the advantages/disadvantages of various levels.
   http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

10. 
    Michael C Jun 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    Thanks for the comment & info John C.

    I also agree that for Fr. Roderick that using a Mirrored Raid 1 would probably fit with what he is currently using with the only additional cost being that of a second external firewire hard drive. Although when setting up a Mirrored Raid it would reformat both drives so any data on a single drive needing to be saved would have to be copied first.

    In fact as part of the bundled software included with every Mac there is a program called Disc Utility which allows one to set up a couple of drives as a Mirrored Set. In the version 10.5.8 version of Disc Utility I looked at there is no provision for a 0 + 1 Mirrored Raid.

    There also is a neat little low cost Mac program called Soft Raid that gives you more features than Apples Disc Utility.

    Personally what I would do is get a double hard drive case or two single cases with firewire interfasces that have removable drive sleds so that one could swap out mirrored sets of 2 hard drives. Granite Digital is one company that has those and I know others also do(possibly macsales.com -> Other World Computing might too.

    Once you do set up a mirrored raid I would strongly suggest that one test it well, say with several video & audio layers in an editing program. It should work fine but I’m a strong believer in hard testing a new setup.

11. 
    Jim in Columbus, Ohio Jun 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Thanks John C. and Michael C.,

    What would you recommend if we were trying to share one set of data with three computers and wanted to back it up?

    Mirrored RAID? Internet? LAN? Server? Western Digital?

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