Post 187

Well, number 187 is not prime - I'll say it out right.  The square root is > 14, so 13 is the largest prime to test.  Turns out 11*17 = 187, so there you go.  But it is our little primality test to kick things off.  On a brighter and more personal note, I made it to the gym today, after many abortive attempts.  Hopefully I will make it tomorrow and things will be good.  Not going is easy, but after going I always feel so much better and I wonder why I don't go.  It is very weird.  Must be kind of like smoking - many people say they know that smoking isn't good for them, but they keep doing it.  When they finally quite for a few weeks, they see how much better they feel and wonder why they didn't quit before.  The reason is a little more obvious for smoking - there is a physical addiction component.  I'd think that the gym-attendance would be more along the physical addiction track but laziness is obviously the stronger factor.  It's like we say at my house - greed and laziness are the mothers of invention.

Always confused me that "necessity is the mother of invention" because it is so obviously wrong.  When people are in real need, they grab whatever they find at hand and adapt it to the need, kind of like using a hammer to drive screws through the plywood to seal your house before the hurricane.  Innovation requires persistence, like when a better version of an existing tool is created.  If you needed that better tool to operate, you couldn't have started!  Instead, you use what you have and the irritation at the fact whatever you're doing could be easier grows until you create the thing that will make your life easier - the invention!  Think of Thomas Edison, who worked his lab mercilessly and used the media to crush his opponents - that's greed.  He wouldn't go to that trouble just because he could make new things - those new things were sold for money that he could use!

Well, there's the mid-post rant - here's the political one.  President Obama announced that the US government will now sponsor embryonic stem-cell research.  I think it is a good thing to pursue research.  What Bush specified was very limiting, not allowing for much variance at all.  I heard some comments from people opposed to this research, all talking about the dangerous moral and ethical grounds.  I think such research needs ethical guidelines, but some of the reasoning didn't sit well with me.  For example, the claim that such research could result in more abortions.  Linking the embryonic stem cell research with abortion is attempt to create moral outrage where simple guidelines would suffice.  I wonder if the same people that are opposed to abortion are opposed to all other fertility protocols, because they have more abortions and ethics to worry about in that area.  Anyway, I think that this current path is better than what came before.