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| 12/25 |
| 2011/1/13-2/19 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:54009 Activity:nil |
1/13 34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive! (Still alive.)
http://www.csua.org/u/saj (news.yahoo.com) /
The cake is a lie. / |
| 2009/12/3-26 [Science/Biology] UID:53562 Activity:nil |
12/2 Small, fatherless mice live longer than other mice:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1202/1
\_ little Japanese men live longer than big barbarians. |
| 2009/4/22-28 [Science/Biology] UID:52893 Activity:nil |
4/22 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517466,00.html Another nail in the coffin of evolution objectionists who say that there are "too many missing links". Of course, objectionists will now just say that there are "two more missing links", i.e., intermediate forms between this newly found one and its evolutionary ancestor/descendant. \_ If they cared about facts, they wouldn't be evolution objectionists. -tom |
| 2009/2/12-16 [Science/Biology] UID:52561 Activity:low |
2/12 Happy Darwin Day!
\_ To you as well, Cousin Monkey!
\_ If you really think about it, we're monkey cousins even
with creationism. We're all "children of God" so to
speak, if you accept that we're all living creatures.
\_ Creationists don't think that way.
\_ Creationists don't think much in general.
\_ Nobody does, don't fool yourself |
| 2008/9/9-14 [Science/Biology] UID:51116 Activity:nil |
9/9 "Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life"
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html
And this is not synthetic biology.
\_ Comments are a rats nest of creationists. Why do these folks have
more credibility than, say, 911 truthers? |
| 12/25 |
| 2008/7/23-28 [Science/Biology] UID:50665 Activity:nil |
7/23 Dinosaur evolutionary tree:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6putsk [new scientist]
\_ You mean intelligently designed tree. |
| 2008/7/18-23 [Science/Biology] UID:50624 Activity:nil 100%like:50622 |
7/18 Krauthammer hammers Intelligent Design
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dvmk3 [wp] |
| 2008/7/18 [Science/Biology] UID:50622 Activity:nil 100%like:50624 |
7/18 Krauthammer hammers Intelligent Design
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701304.html |
| 2008/6/9-12 [Science/Biology] UID:50196 Activity:nil |
6/9 Evolution in E. Coli observed in the lab:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4kdx4b [new scientist]
\- The Finger of God! ... or at least the Middle Finger
to ID nutjobs.
\_ You mean God can't change His design on the fly? PMs in my
company do it all the time ...... -- grouching engineer
\_ Creationism holds that all things great and small were
created in their current forms without provision for
change.
\_ Some flavors do. Most creationists accept
micro-evolution, while rejecting macro-evolution. Some
accept both. "Young Earth" creationists believe the Earth
is no more than 6,000 years old. -emarkp
\_ you mean, "some creationists invented the concept of
'macro-evolution' as a way of maintaining the absurd
position that there is something fundamental to
object to in evolutionary theory." -tom
\_ Roughly, yes. Strictly they refer to
"macro-evolution" to mean speciation arising such
that the new species can't breed with another branch
of the evolutionary tree. So called
"micro-evolution" just means variations being
preferred inside the same species (the peppered moths
being the perfect example). -emarkp
\_ So do they think that lions and tigers have a
common ancestor? They can breed, but the
offspring generally can't.
\_ I'm not a spokesman of the ID community, and I
honestly don't know how they'd respond to that
question. -emarkp
\_ This is news why? There have been many observed examples
of evolution, and many observed examples of even speciation,
and ID-ers and creationists are happily ignoring all that
evidence. Why is this story special?
\_ we thought evolution took millions of years.. not days..
why did it take so long to create man from single celled
according to the new findings it should take at most
6 thousand years..
\_ I guess it's because as an organism becomes more complex, the
generation span becomes longer (around 25.2yrs in 2004 for US
humans ignoring age of fathers (http://www.csua.org/u/lqi
vs. minutes or hours or days for bacteria).
\_ The interesting thing to me is not the ID angle but the
way the researchers were able to figure out around which
generation the new mutation occured and how the research
shows that history dictates what abilities emerge.
\_ There is a group of ID people that can be reached by stories
like this. Some will ignore it, just like the global warming
believers. |
| 2008/5/16-23 [Science/Biology] UID:49966 Activity:nil |
5/16 Catholicism has no problem with evolution. Judaism
is down. Most of the mainstream Protestant denominations are
fine with it too. Dunno about Mormons. Why do the Christian
spinoffs in the USA hate science?
\_ None of the Dynasty spinoffs were very good.
\_ Catholicism *had* problem with evolution. They had to change their
view when faced with the facts in order to survive. I think the
Christian spinoffs will have to to change their views as well in
order to survive. It's just a matter of time. It's similar to the
Gallelio case.
Galileo case.
\_ Official LDS doctrine says precisely nothing about evolution.
Evolution is taught at the BYU biology department.
\_ LDS completely ignores the book of Genesis? |
| 2008/4/21-5/2 [Science/Biology] UID:49796 Activity:nil |
4/21 If he shot himself in the nuts, can we put him up for a Darwin award?
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9004996?source=rss
\_ Yes, I believe the Darwin awards count self-sterilizers as
canidates if they don't already have children. This guy failed
though. On the other hand, he did try to flee from the police
on foot with a bullet wound in the gut. Tough! |
| 2008/4/14-19 [Recreation/Activities, Science/Biology] UID:49746 Activity:nil |
4/14 'World peace' hitcher is murdered
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7344381.stm
She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in
the kindness of local people.
\_ "Think of it as evolution in action."
\_ is she up for a Darwin award yet?
\_ It's actually sort of dual evolution. She's not
going to breed now, and the murderer's ability
to continue to breed is about to get severely
curtailed. Thus, we can continue to purge the
gene pool of both victims and victimizers.
\_ Speaking of hitch-hiking, I saw a lot of hitch-hiking in old movies.
Was hitch-hiking in the US really that safe in the old days?
\_ My dad used to pick up hitchhikers all the time in the 1970s
and 1980s. I was with him a few times. I don't think it's
necessarily unsafe as most people are honest and have
integrity, however I wouldn't do it. I did used to hitch
rides in college to campus from other students (who I didn't
know) on their way in to school and I'm alive to tell about it.
\_ Cf. Casual Carpool these days. I've been using it both as
driver and passenger for three years. |
| 2008/4/9-16 [Science/Biology] UID:49707 Activity:nil |
4/9 "Australian man fathers a baby with daughter"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080407/wl_nm/australia_incest_dc_1
\_ "I've always admired Lot..."
\_ Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
\_ At least that is a much lower inbreeding coefficient than say,
two siblings of the same parents. Still safer, and actually
done very frequently in breeding of animals in order to
preserve certain characteristics (conformation competition
where duplicates, not diversity, is highly desired). Look up
COI or coefficient of inbreeding, linebreeding, etc. It's
done all the time, and when done well, your line of Championed
studs and bitches can earn you millions of dollars from breeding
programs, sponsorships, etc.
\_ Also, read Survival of the Sickest. Genetic disease, or
genetic "feature"? You decide.
\_ Purebred dogs and horses have numerous genetic problems. -tom
\_ Short version of below: pure bred dogs (I don't know anything
about horses) have genetic problems because the breeders will
destroy an entire species to win some lame dog show prize.
There is no natural reason for pure breed dogs to have so
many problems if they were left to choose their own mates from
a larger pool in the same way mutts can. The other problem
for pures (as mentioned) is they often keep a lesser animal
for breeding because it has the right look. The runts will
normally die off in a batch of mutts.
\_ The key then seems to be whether you kill and/or let die
the weak specimens. That's normally how nature works. But
We don't do that anymore: we save people as far as we are
able and develop technological remedies for weaknesses.
I don't think you can extrapolate purebred animal breeds
to a single case of incest; that case isn't part of some
orchestrated program.
\_ Hitler's super Ayran race is purebred.
\_ Aryan
\_ Purebred Aryan race is genetically predisposed
to 21st century obesity.
\_ No doubt, the potential for genetic related problems is
much much much greater in purebreds. Breeders need to take
in account of alleles and heterozygous individuals in
order to breed a stock that they think will give them
more advantages than genetic disadvantages. Case in point
a breeder breeds a Champion mustang that wins millions of
dollars on the horserace, but it may have a lot of skin
allergies and requires a lot of expensive vet treatments.
Purebreds are purely mankind's creations, and thus the
breeder needs to be very careful about genetic diseases.
In many cases a good breeder will breed stocks that are
much healthier than mutts. There's also a notion that
mutts are much healthier, and while that may be true, it
is really a result that mutt breeders tend to discard
(neuter, spay, destroy) stocks that are unhealthy, whereas
purebred breeders really want to preserve certain physical
attributes so they can compete in breed Conformations.
Unfortunately, 95% of the breeders out there are BACKYARD
breeders (you know, those ignorant neighbors in your backyard)
that don't know or care anything about genetics, and they
really mess up the gene pools of animals. |
| 2008/2/6-7 [Science/Biology] UID:49076 Activity:moderate |
2/5 Stop adopting Chinese kids! Their superior genes and our superior
environment will make them too strong. -freeper troller
\_ Is that you, Hoyt Sze?
\_ Hoyt never wrote about adoption. He ranted every week about
white guys dating asian girls but yes he did go off about
superior asian genes/culture/blood/etc.
\_ urlP
\_ Yeah, I knew Hoyt. He and I were RAs at the same time, and
he was in some of my English classes. Faulty comparison on
my part. --erikred |
| 2007/10/19-24 [Science/Biology] UID:48390 Activity:kinda low |
10/19 Watson's brilliant, simply brilliant. Just as Darwin did not want to
publish his theory of evolution until he was almost dead, old
Watson comes out of the closet and says something controversial.
Moral of the story: if you have a controversial theory that
you're absolutely convinced is a correct one, say it right before
you die. Afterall, no one says anything bad at your eulogy.
\- A good line:
"In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath." --SJOHNSON
\_ slight difference, in that Darwin spent many years researching and
providing proof for his theory, while Watson just had verbal
diharrea.
\_ What does this have to do with Watson's german shepherd anyway? |
| 2007/9/9-10 [Science/Biology, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:47959 Activity:nil |
9/8 Are Jews really smarter due to selective gene pool,
environmental pressures, and other factors? Find out here:
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002812.html
\_ Racist!!! All men are equal!!!
\_ Agreed. Damn race-based admission preferences.
\_ This is all nonsense. Everyone who really knows whats going on
in the world knows Jews are superior due to a thousand generations
of ZOGian breeding techniques. How else would we run the world,
control the US Govt, the US media, all the banks, and have the
finest piece of oil rich and fertile land in the entire middle
east? We even set you up the bomb and got you to attack Iraq,
help us oppress the entirely innocent and peace loving Palestinian
peoples, we control 4 of the 5 permanent security council seats
at the UN, constantly issue calls from the UN human rights
commission against our enemies, and we wrote all your christmas
songs. The Truth Is Out There!
\_ Which 4 of the 5 seats? |
| 2007/8/10-13 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:47580 Activity:nil |
8/10 Why some people resist science:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html |
| 2007/5/11-14 [Science/Biology] UID:46592 Activity:nil |
5/11 Evolution Stinks:
http://urltea.com/jb0 (chron.com) |
| 2007/4/17-19 [Science/Biology] UID:46332 Activity:nil |
4/17 Chimps might be more evolved than humans:
http://urltea.com/dux (discovery.com)
\_ Whatever that means.
\_ They shouldn't have used our chimp-in-chief as the baseline for
homo sapiens.
\_ You don't mess with perfection. I wonder how much sharks have
changed over the millenia. Same reason.
\_ We are still evolving though. We're getting taller, our brains
are increasing in size and our (well half of us) dicks are
getting bigger.
\_ I would guess almost none of that is genetic, most would be
environmental.
\_ I think one drawback of evolution by incremental changes is that
it's hard to get out of a "local maximum" once something is
evolving towards it or has evolved to it. It needs big
disturbance to jump out of the local maximum to go towards
another, possibly higher, local maximum.
\_ "This just shows us that we're ordinary animals," huh? I think it
shows the opposite. Most animals are under some sort of
evolutionary pressure.
\_ Generally the top predators face fewer evolutionary pressures,
e.g. sharks.
\_ It has yet to be proven that higher thought is a long-term
beneficial evolutionary adaptation. -tom |
| 2007/3/22-24 [Recreation/Dating, Science/Biology] UID:46056 Activity:nil 76%like:46053 |
3/22 Creatures found that have not had sex for 100m years OR
Divergent selection found in asexual reproducers
http://www.physorg.com/news93597385.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1539281.ece
Let the obligatory jokes about geeks and sex begin.
[ merged w/ thread originally posted below ]
\_ See yesterday's "Divergent selection found in asexual reproducers"
thread below.
\_ Ah, apologies for the repost. This title was more prurient.
\_ What does "species" mean when you're referring to
creatures which produce asexually?
\_ Reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species it's probably
still undefined.
\_ My HS Bio AP understanding of "species" is that all members of
the species are genetically similar enough to interbred. It is
conceivable that random mutations and errors in DNA replication
in asexual reproducers could produce members that are no longer
able to reproduce w/ the members of the species from which they
descended.
\_ The problem in your understanding is the word "interbreed".
Individuals of asexual "species" do not interbreed, so you
can't define asexual "species" that way. -- !PP
\_ I see what you mean. What I was getting at is that
in order to interbreed a pair of creatures must have
similar/compatible DNA. Thus similar/compatible DNA
could be a basis to assign a creature to a partiuclar
speicies.
Random mutations and errors in DNA replication in
asexual reproducers could produce creatures that
are not genetically similar to creatures from which
they descended. Therefore, comparing the DNA of two
different asexual reproducers to see if they are
similar could be used to determine if they should be
classified as one specie or two.
I have no idea how to quantify the level of genetic
dissimilarity necessary to classify two creatures as
members of different species. As a rough estimate,
perhaps any two creatures whose DNA differed by more
than 1-2% could be considered different species [b/c
I remember reading somewhere that human and chimp DNA
differs by only 2%].
\_ Except that there are species which can interbreed,
so that definition does not work anyway.
\_ Do you mean like horses and donkeys and humans
and vulcans :-)? Even so, similar DNA could be
a basis for classifying creatures into different
speicies. |
| 2007/3/22 [Recreation/Dating, Science/Biology] UID:46053 Activity:nil 76%like:46056 |
3/22 Divergent selection found in asexual reproducers OR Creatures
found that have not had sex for 100m years:
http://www.physorg.com/news93597385.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1539281.ece
Let the obligatory jokes about geeks and sex begin.
[ merged w/ thread originally posted below ]
\_ See yesterday's "Divergent selection found in asexual reproducers"
thread below.
\_ Ah, apologies for the repost. This title was more prurient.
\_ What does "species" mean when you're referring to
creatures which produce asexually?
\_ Reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species it's probably
still undefined.
\_ My HS Bio AP understanding of "species" is that all members of
the species are genetically similar enough to interbred. It is
conceivable that random mutations and errors in DNA replication
in asexual reproducers could produce members that are no longer
able to reproduce w/ the members of the species from which they
descended.
\_ The problem in your understanding is the word "interbreed".
Individuals of asexual "species" do not interbreed, so you
can't define asexual "species" that way. -- !PP
\_ I see what you mean. What I was getting at is that
in order to interbreed a pair of creatures must have
similar/compatible DNA. Thus similar/compatible DNA
could be a basis to assign a creature to a partiuclar
speicies.
Random mutations and errors in DNA replication in
asexual reproducers could produce creatures that
are not genetically similar to creatures from which
they descended. Therefore, comparing the DNA of two
different asexual reproducers to see if they are
similar could be used to determine if they should be
classified as one specie or two.
I have no idea how to quantify the level of genetic
dissimilarity necessary to classify two creatures as
members of different species. As a rough estimate,
perhaps any two creatures whose DNA differed by more
than 1-2% could be considered different species [b/c
I think I remember reading somewhere that the DNA of
humans and chimps, which are different species, differ
by only 2%]. |
| 2007/3/14-15 [Science/Biology, Science] UID:45971 Activity:nil |
3/14 Sprint announces new phone tracking
technology: http://www.phonetrace.org |
| 2006/10/11-12 [Science/Biology] UID:44765 Activity:nil |
10/10 http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/10/michigan.science.ap It's a dark dark day -conservative \_ conservative? uh huh. because all conservatives are anti-science idiots. if you're going to troll, do it right. \_ "Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who is Roman Catholic, said Michigan schools need to teach evolution in science classes and not include intelligent design." \_ This can be rewritten to say "Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm is not a total fucking idiot" with the same meaning. is not a total fucking idiot" with the same meaning. -!tom \_ Why do you feel the need to say !tom? \_ Because it sounds like something tom would put in the motd |
| 2006/9/7-12 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:44301 Activity:nil |
9/6 One of my profs is debating an ID proponent re the legality of
allowing ID to be taught in schools (ie whether Katzmiller was
decided correctly). Does anyone have pointers to good sites
where I can start looking for info?
[ I've already read a few law review articles, so I'm looking
for something a little less scholarly ]
\_ http://www.venganza.org
Seriously though, http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org might
be a good place to look for the kinds of points he's likely to
encounter. -John |
| 2006/8/2 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:43872 Activity:nil |
8/2 It's clear that GWB doesn't believe in global warming, but does he
believe in evolution? Are there indications that he supports the
Intelligent Design/Creationism theory? |
| 2006/7/19-20 [Science/Biology] UID:43725 Activity:nil |
7/19 Surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos not used by
other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children:
"[The stem cell bill] crosses a moral boundary that our decent society
needs to respect, so I vetoed it ...
Each of these children was still adopted while still an embryo ...
These boys and girls are not spare parts." -dubya! (in first veto)
http://adopting.adoption.com/child/embryo-adoption.html
\_ Ugh. This is so stupid. Why not adopt _real_ children are _are_
alive and need homes! (if you're busy being high and mighty about
it)
\_ Remember, Republicans and conservative Christians do not give
ONE FUCK about you once you're born. Before you're recognizable
as a human being, you're sacred.
\_ Who are these "Republicans and conservatives" you stereotype?
Met any?
\- until you become persistently vegetative, #ifdef WHITE
\- well until you become persistently vegetative and white
\_ Well yeah in their world view The Creator is the one
who owns your body, you're just a temporary tenant.
\_ "Their world view"? Who?
\_ You're Republican the moment dad came! |
| 2006/6/4-8 [Science/Biology] UID:43271 Activity:nil |
6/4 More Darwin Award winners:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060604/ap_on_re_us/brf_balloon_deaths |
| 2006/5/19-22 [Science/Biology] UID:43116 Activity:nil |
5/20 The evolution of dance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg
\_ not really. [long and dull] |
| 2006/3/28-30 [Science/Biology] UID:42499 Activity:nil |
3/28 On the 30th anniversary of _The Republican Gene_.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06_index.html |
| 2006/3/24-27 [Science/Biology] UID:42413 Activity:nil |
3/24 speaking of people who shouldn't be having
sex with 50 others:
http://tinyurl.com/kwds7
\_ We were?
\_ Huh? |
| 2006/3/10-13 [Science/Biology, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:42183 Activity:low |
3/10 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0308_060308_all_fours.html Hahaha what the fuck? \_ Seriously looks like something out of the Weekly World News. \_ "...*the* gene responsible for bipealism..." \_ "...*the* gene responsible for bipedalism..." singular? Somehow I rather doubt that. \_ it's worded poorly. better: the gene for upright balance. Except they do suggest that since they were never encouraged to stand upright by parents that it could still be behavioral. \_ Bet the girls are the life of the party. -John |
| 2006/2/28-3/2 [Science/Biology] UID:42035 Activity:nil |
2/28 Anti-Darwin Bill Fails in Utah. "[Republican majority whip Stephen
H. Urquhart] said he thought God did not have an argument with
science." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/national/28utah.html
\_ "life is too complicated to have evolved without an architect"
clearly, this is the Architect mentioned in Matrix Revolutions.
\_ This architect is clearly Einstein's god (re the universe and
dice) and predates the Matrix.
\_ Why oh why must everyone put this crap in terms of Darwin? Is an
attempted ban on dynamite "Anti-Nobel"? Evolution is an actual
science that has progressed far beyond the admittedly groundbreaking
work of one man many years ago. To ignore that and build its
credibility off of that one man is foolhardy.
\_ None of this has anything to do with evolution. It's an attack
on modernity.
\_ evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population
\- so is genocide
\_ I'm not talking about the attack itself, I'm talking about the
idiocy in reporting. -pp
\_ Reporters fuck up everything about science to a painful degree.
It's very annoying, but I wouldn't say that they single out
evolutionary biology in particular when they're deciding when
to be dumb and lazy. It may be that they're like this on all
subjects, but science is the one I know enough about to notice
it the most, and it's the only subject on which I've personally
dealt with reporters.
\_ It's everything. A friend of mine's little brother
was killed by a criminal, and the paper couldn't even
keep the names straight. I've seem similar stuff in
every article I've known something about. |
| 2006/2/6-7 [Science/Biology] UID:41731 Activity:nil |
2/6 Utah Mormon Republicans against Creationism (or whatever they're
calling it this week). http://tinyurl.com/c3x7h [nyt]
'"I don't think God has an argument with science," said Mr. Urquhart
[Republican majority whip]... Mr. Urquhart says he objects to the
bill [to require science teachers to offer a disclaimer on evolution]
in part because it raises questions about the validity of evolution,
and in part because the measure threatens traditional religious belief
by blurring the lines between faith and science.'
\_ Why are you posting articles from that crap paper?
\_ Your comments make me understand what it must be like listening
to Scott McClellan in the WH press briefings. |
| 2006/2/1-3 [Science/Biology] UID:41655 Activity:nil |
2/1 http://tinyurl.com/89o3f (scienceblogs.com) What excatly Bush meant by campaigning against human chimeras. \_ What is the law? No spill blood. |
| 2006/1/12-17 [Science/Biology, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Taiwan] UID:41358 Activity:nil |
1/12 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060112/sc_nm/taiwan_pig_dc I am all in favor of genetic research, but this just seems wrong to me. \_ Mmmm... How long till I can get some green bacon? \_ I will not eat green eggs and ham. \_ Looks like sales of glowing condoms will drop in the future. |
| 2005/12/23-28 [Science/Biology] UID:41132 Activity:moderate |
12/23 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051222/ts_nm/science_evolution_dc Damnit! The ultra left liberals are fighting back again. We gotta fight back and show them how mighty God is. -ID \_ Troll. \_ The article is actually somewhat interesting. -mice \- Hello. If I'd only seen the headline "Evolution named 2005's top scientific breakthrough" I'd have assumed it was a ONGION article. BTW, the "don kennedy" in the article is a former chief of the 'Fraud. \_ Well, to be honest, the most interesting part of the article for me consisted of the last two paragraphs. I'll have to spend a little more time with Yahoo search when I have the time to spare. (Naming evolution as the 'top breakthrough' seems to be aimed more at the religious right proponenting ID than the scientific community) -mice \_ Well, if you think that's cool you should check out other stuff like nuclear fission, the expansion of the universe, quantum mechanics, genetics. Heck, I even heard that this Einstein fellah discovered something called "relativity." \_ *shrug* I have. I've even studied some of those in college. What's your point? \_ ONGION? Is that "G" some sort of in-joke humor? \_ Yeah, they call it a "typo" in some circles. |
| 2005/12/20-22 [Science/Biology] UID:41087 Activity:nil |
12/20 Dover judge tosses intelligent design.
http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/12/win_in_dover.php
Text of decision:
http://www.stcynic.com/kitzmiller_342.pdf
\_ Science: 1 Pseudo-scientific, religious quackery: 0 |
| 2005/11/20-22 [Politics/Domestic/Crime, Science/Biology] UID:40662 Activity:kinda low |
11/20 Krauthammer also hates ID
http://csua.org/u/e16
\_ What I don't understand is why this is even up for debate. I mean,
it's the fuckin' 21st Century. Get with it, people. Aren't we
done having the Scopes Monkey Trial? BTW, Wikipedia, for all its
\_ Errr.. You do realize Scopes lost, right?
\_ Indeed. And from what I understand of the facts of the _real_
trial, if Scopes were trying to teach today what he was trying
to teach back then, he'd lose again.
\_ What was he teaching?
\_ Above poster is being disengenuous. He's probably
referring to the fact that the textbook Scopes was
using contained references to eugenics and the
"superiority of the white race." However, the
Tennessee law he was accused of violating read:
"That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of
the Universities, Normals and all other public schools
of the State which are supported in whole or in part by
the public school funds of the State, to teach any
theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of
man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that
man has descended from a lower order of animals"
faults, has a nice summary of ID and its gaping logical and
empirical holes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
\_ George Will doesn't like it either:
\_ George Will can't stand it either:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will111705.asp |
| 2005/11/18-19 [Science/Biology] UID:40642 Activity:kinda low |
11/18 British MP: Stop the inbreeding!
http://csua.org/u/e18
\_ Charles Darwin, the Evolution guy and a Brit, married his first
cousin Emma Wedgwood.
cousin Emma Wedgwood. Queen Elizabeth II married her third cousin
Prince Philip.
\_ and?
\_ "First cousins face lower risk of having children with genetic
conditions than is widely perceived"
http://csua.org/u/e19 (http://www.washington.edu
\_ Critics calling for legal incest in Germany:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C13509-1867271%2C00.html
\_ I should move there with my sister.
\_ Did you see that guy had 4 kids with his sister. Would you
risk that, incestguy?
\_ The pill these days is very effective. There are also
condoms. |
| 2005/11/15 [Science/Biology] UID:40593 Activity:very high |
11/15 "Some well-respected scientists have fostered the spread of
intelligent design. Henry F. Schaefer, director of the Center
for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of
Georgia, has written or co-authored 1,082 scientific papers
and is one of the world's most widely cited chemists by other
researchers.
Mr. Schaefer teaches a freshman seminar at Georgia entitled:
"Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?" He has
spoken on religion and science at many American universities,
and gave the "John M. Templeton Lecture" -- funded by the
foundation -- at Case Western Reserve in 1992, Montana State
in 1999, and Princeton and Carnegie Mellon in 2004. "Those
who favor the standard evolutionary model are in a state of
panic," he says. "Intelligent design truly terrorizes them."
This past April, the school of science at Duquesne University,
a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, abruptly canceled its
sponsorship of a lecture by Mr. Schaefer in its distinguished
scientist series. According to David Seybert, dean of the
Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences,
Mr. Schaefer was invited at the suggestion of a faculty member
belonging to a Christian fellowship group on campus. The
invitation was withdrawn after several biology professors
complained that Mr. Schaefer planned to speak in favor of
intelligent design. The school wanted to avoid "legitimizing
intelligent design from a scientific perspective," Mr. Seybert
said. Faculty members were also concerned that top students
might not apply to Duquesne if they thought it endorsed
intelligent design. Mr. Schaefer gave his lecture -- entitled
"The Big Bang, Stephen Hawking, and God" -- to a packed hall at
Duquesne under the auspices of a Christian group instead."
From yesterday's WSJ article "Darwinian Struggle At Some
Colleges, Classes Questioning Evolution Take Hold":
http://tinyurl.com/aq2qp (if you have subscription)
Huh? How come top scientists can believe in such ridiculous
theories?
\_ Please use a link to a file or accessible URL if you
are going to quote large blocks of text. That makes
the motd works better for us all.
\_ You are welcomed to put the text in a file with
a link, and then you can delete it from the motd.
Huh? How come top scientists can believe in such ridiculous
theories?
\_ How can motd posters post with such horrible formatting?
\_ Obviously the OP wasn't designed intelligently.
\_ Actually, I am more of an evolutionary dead end.
\_ Pause and pull back. ID, as a philosophy or extension of theology,
has been embraced by a number of gifted scientists (including
Newton). The trick is where people take this out of the realm of
theology or philosophy and instead attempt to present it to the
exclusion of actual science, i.e., evolution. In other words, if
you believe that G_d created everything through the Big Bang and
you believe that **God** created everything through the Big Bang and
created life (and us) through evolution, there's no conflict
between ID and science. It's when you start to say that the
Bible must be taken literally instead of allegorically that the
whole thing becomes ridiculous.
\_ Newton was pre-Darwin, when there was no Theory of Evolution yet
to explain things.
\_ Darwin's theory doesn't really explain very much. That
doesn't mean the alternative is that God created
everything, but why do people always treat evolution as
case closed? There are still many more questions than
answers.
\_ "why do people always treat evolution as case closed?"
Another attempt to tweak facts to discredit TE.
\_ Not tweaking any facts, but biologists almost
universally believe TE explains all life as we know
it while making some really big leaps of faith
themselves. Unlike, say, QM, there isn't even
really any math to lay a groundwork with. Just some
observations and a giant leap.
\- there isnt a complete theory of
turbulence either. do you fly in
planes?
\_ Airflow around my spherical plane is
perfectly laminar. -physicist
\- that's no moon
\_ No. I ride a mule myself.
\_ No bestiality on motd please.
\_ Yes, sometimes it seems to be that the assumptions
and reasoning are as follows:
(1) we have to come from somewhere.
(2) it has to be a natural process.
(3) TE fits (1) and (2) so we really like it, and
will consider case closed even though it has
some holes.
\_ "people always treat evolution as case closed?" Another
fact-tweaking by the ID people?
\_ but I think the ID under discussion is the one that
espouses "reducible complexity".
\_ I think the biggest problem with ID is that it is a "scientific
theory" that says "there's no need for further science because of
<magic thing X>" What's advanced science since the dawn of time
are the people who say "no, that's not magic, how does it work/
how did it happen?" If we accept any type of supernatural effect
as a complete scientific explanation for something, we're greatly
hurting the cause. I think even people who believe in a creator
should see this.
\_ I don't think this is true, at least according to my
understanding. If so, then I think different people have
different ideas about ID.
\_ You're right. There are currents among the ID that are
young-earth creationists, and some that aren't. They all,
however, are trying to codify their religion into science.
Which is never a good idea. -emarkp
\_ You're like a communist who champions property rights.
It's nice to see anyone supporting property rights, but
a communist is still a communist. Likewise with a
religious conservative who does not want to destroy
American science.
\_ I agree with you that ID cannot stand as a scientific theory,
but is "irrreducible complexity" valid as a critique of
the evolution theory?
\_ I think it's something we don't understand, like how black
holes are generally accepted, but we don't understand the
physics of an actual singularity, IIRC.
\_ hmm .. but in the case of "irreducibly complex", TE
is directly challenged, while in the case of the
blackhole, it's just that the math breaks down, and
we can't understand things once that happens.
\_ But in the case of evolution, we've encountered
"irreducable" complexity before, and then later we figure
out how it could have happened. (e.g. eye lens
evolution) What makes the current "irreducable"
wall any more certain?
\_ Did you find the explanation on how it could've
happened convincing?
\_ I did. Read "The Blind Watchmaker." --PeterM
\_ what do you think of this:
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9203/watchmkr.html
\_ I don't think so. It ignores the possibility of an
intermediate form which wasn't irreducible, which then
simplified into the now-irreducible form. It also assumes
that current biological structures/organisms labelled as
irreducible have been labelled correctly. -emarkp
\_ that's the whole point right? you need to chart a
path of small evolutionary steps to arrive at the
complex structure, with each of the intermediate form
making evolutinary sense (i.e. each step a positive
improvement).
\_ The whole point? I don't quite understand what you mean
by that, but /my/ point is that something that is
irriducible now may have evolved from something that
wasn't irriducible. -emarkp
\_ Am I missing something? You are not making sense.
\_ Evolution means things change over time. One form
that's an advantage but more complex could evolve
to something that's an advantage but is simpler
(more efficient). There's nothing about evolution
that declares that every step is more complex or
has a purpose easy to identify. -emarkp
\_ We should have stopped at atoms. Everything
on the quantum level is too complex. |
| 2005/11/10-13 [Science/Biology] UID:40538 Activity:low |
11/10 The Vatican taking a pro-evolution stance?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-1860310,00.html
\_ The Vatican has a much more rational attitude toward science
than they had during the time of Galileo. --PM
\_ I think it's actually really cool that the Vatican has an
astronomical observatory in Arizona:
http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/VO.html
\_ Catholics and evolution:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp
\_ How many more times do we have to prove that the Church is wrong
before it stops changing its version of eternal truth?
\_ I wonder if you read the http://catholic.com link above. I found it
very interesting. |
| 2005/11/8-9 [Science/Biology] UID:40499 Activity:nil |
11/8 What's the matter with Kansas, indeed:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/11/08/evolution.debate.ap/index.html
\_ Can someone please tell me what the BIG problem is w/ evolution
that is somehow not present w/ GR or QM? It seems to me that if
you accept GR/QM, you have to accept evolution.
\_ GR/QM don't contradict thw WORD OF GOD.
\_ "Intelligent Design" won the nomenclature war. For instance, I
believe life was designed by a Creator. However, when I looked into
the details of ID, I was stunned by how it basically says "this
stuff doesn't make sense, doesn't it make more sense that God^H^H^H
an intelligent agent designed it?" Seriously, that's their whole
argument. -emarkp
\_ ID works on the "N+1" theory. If our level of technological
understanding is "N", then anything with a technological
complexity of "N+1" MUST be divinely inspired. I work in
Kansas, and live next door in Missouri, and half of the
people on both sides (smart, educated, earnest) believe in
some form of N+1ism. Even those people who understand that
the whole thing is political posturing in the part of the
Kansas (Republican, grass-roots) political establishment still
also, somewhere in the back of their minds, believe that,
yes, Evolution is real, but underlying evolution is some
divinely-inspired impetus. --coganman
\_ my foot up their asses is divinely-inspired
\_ And they haven't tarred & feathered you yet? -John
\_ Say we accept for the sake of argument that life on earth
was designed by an intelligent agent. I do not see how
this refutes or disproves natural selection b/c (1) the
intelligent agent could have used natural selection as
the mechanism to create life and (2) the intelligent
agent itself may have arose due to natural selection
operating in a different environment.
\_ I agree. ID proponents however paint evolution as requiring
evolution to be a random process--explicitly forbidding a
creator. Thus setting up the straw man. -emarkp |
| 2005/11/8-9 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:40498 Activity:moderate |
11/8 Kansas school board approves change to definition of science to permit
teaching of intelligent design alongside theory of evolution
Old text: "Science is the human activity of seeking natural
explanations for what we observe in the world around us ..."
New text: "Science is the human activity of seeking logical
explanations for what we observe in the world around us ..."
\_ I don't see how that really changes anything. ID is no more logical
than it is natural. -tom
\_ 2006 State of Kansas Science Textbook:
Chapter 1: The Flat Earth
Chapter 2: The Earth-revolving Sun
Chapter 3: Seven Days of Creation
Chapter 4: Logical vs Natural: 3 Steps to Bring you Closer to God
\_ Chapter 5: Atheist Scentists Go to Hell
\_ Chapter 5: Aetheist Scentists Go to Hell
\_ Chapter 6: Faith-Based Science and Engineering: Power of Prayer
\_ 2006 State of Kansas Health Textbook:
Chapter 1: Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head About It
\- so are parents goign to be allowed to have their kids opt out of
the fruitcake stuff?
\_ Great phrase by Kansas ID board member: "Darwin Fundamentalist"
\_ FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER WILL GET THE INFIDELS! -John
\_ Flying Spaghetti Monster can't keep flying forever! Thanks to
Intelligent Falling. |
| 2005/8/27-29 [Science/Biology, Health/Women] UID:39300 Activity:nil |
8/26 Smallest free-living cell SAR11:
http://www.terradaily.com/news/life-05zzzz.html |
| 2005/8/19-22 [Science/Biology, Science/Physics] UID:39188 Activity:moderate |
8/19 Hey Emarkp. Re: Religion. Please prove that there is God. For
extra credit prove Joseph Smith was telling the truth.
\_ Someone deleted this along with a post about ID. I'll note that I'm
not presenting God or Joseph Smith as a falsifiable scientific
theory. ID proponents /are/ claiming their theory as science.
-emarkp
\_ We had a long discussion about this already. In the narrow
sense of
\_ Please prove there is no god. For extra credit prove Joseph Smith
was not telling the truth.
\_ The burden of proof is on someone who claims God exists. (Just
like the burden of proof of evolution being on someone who claims
evolution is real.)
\_ Absence of proof is not proof of absence ;-)
\_ yup, Rumsfeld can tell you that it worked well with
Iraq.
\_ You are confusing a syntactic distinction with a semantic one.
You seem to be saying that existence statements are 'special'
and require more proof than their negations. But almost
anything can be phrased as an existence statement (e.g.
there exists a sequence of physical events giving rise to
a bacterium while starting from raw chemicals).
\_ What about "One can't prove a negative."?
\_ I don't understand what this means. In mathematics,
as in empirical science, 'a negative' is just a
syntactic distinction. In math what you can prove
usually has little relation to its syntactic form.
In empirical science you can prove nothing.
\_ Apparently you flunked Science. The central tenet
of science is that if you can't empirically prove
that it does exist, we will assume that it
doesn't. Science has traditionally followed
such principals as Occam's Razor, in which
the simplist explanation (we assume that
things do not exist until they are empirically
proven to be as such) is usually the most
\_ Uh no, science says that if something cannot be
empirically proven, it means that it cannot be
empirically proven. Whether that implies "yet" or
"at all" is up to the observer. Last I checked,
science made allowance for, say, circumstantial or
observational evidence not obtained through proper
empirical experimentation, even though you wouldn't
necessarily rely on these as proof. Note that I'm
not implying that ID and friends are complete and
not implying that ID and friends aren't complete,
utter intellectually dishonest bunkum, I would
just like to point out the flaw here. -John
likeliest. Also, in science, it's not merely
a syntactic distinction, that's why it's referred
to as empirical science vs. religious wizardry.
And math != science, because yes, math IS
pure syntatics.
\_ 'Empirically prove'? 'Pure syntatics?'
'Simplist'? 'Likeliest'? You such at science,
you suck at English, you suck at trolling, and you
suck at life.
\_ Since Science can't explain the change from
"nothing" to "something" in the universe should
we assume that Science doesn't exist or that
the universe doesn't exist? Please explain
further. ;-)
\_ Science CAN explain how the universe could
have come from nothing:
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=541
\_ Nonsense. Did you even read your own link?
It not only doesn't attempt to explain how
the universe was created. It makes it
quite clear that we have no idea and
presents a bunch of ideas that don't rise
above the level of hypothesis. These
non-explanations are no better than "God
did it" or "it fell out of a magic hat with
a rabbit". By the standards mentioned
earlier in this thread not only does
science not exist, but the universe doesn't
either. Your link (that you apparently
didn't read or expected others not to) says
something entirely different from what you
claim it says.
\_ Alexander Vilenkin (mentioned in the
link above) has written many papers
about this. You can google for more
detailed info.
\_ Well the universe does exist to
science since we observe it.
\_ http://www.yfiles.com/y3nf.html |
| 2005/8/15-17 [Science/Biology] UID:39125 Activity:moderate |
8/15 One more player in the ID debate.
"Harvard to Investigate Origins of Life":
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050815/ap_on_sc/harvard_evolution
\_ It's probably a good idea. Someone needs to peel away the polemic
of ID and clearly highlight the evidence for or against evolution.
I think most people who distrust evolution do so because they don't
understand it. -emarkp
\_ The best evidence against evolution is the Second Coming of
Christ, unaided human levitation, reading of minds, or the
demonstration of anything else which a credible scientist would
classify as supernatural.
\_ Classification of something as 'supernatural' follows the
same pattern as classification of something as 'requiring
intelligence.' -- ilyas
\_ Someone levitate! Please! Use your own psychic energy!
\_ ilyas, tell us about the stars.
\_ Any sufficiently developed theory has evidence against it, but
the confirming evidence is greater. Just because there may be
points of evidence contradicting evolution doesn't mean I
advocate tossing it out or not teaching it in schools. And
the things you list don't necessarily contradict evolution.
I'm mostly interested in any postulated mechanism in which an
organism with X genes can evolve to have X+n genes. -emarkp
\_ Nah, I was just talking about the most direct path.
All it takes is just one levitating person, or one person
who can predict card sequences without cheating, and
that's the game!
To answer your last comment, bacterial resistance to
antibiotics via plasmids. PLEASE don't tell me: "I
meant mammals!"
\_ I didn't mean mammals--I'm not trying to trap anyone,
I'm genuinely interested in the research. A quick
google search doesn't help me understand how that's a
proof of what I'm looking for. Specifically, I'm not as
interested in speciation as I am in how an organism can
have more genes (not just different ones) than its
parents. Can you point me to a specific URL? -emarkp
\_ Does this help?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid
If you really want to learn, buy Biology by
Campbell and Reece, 7th Ed.
\_ not how, but existence proof: every down's syndrome
child of non-down's syndrome parents. or have i mixed
that up?
\_ No, you've go it right. Every Down's syndrome
child's got an extra chromosome. Incidentally
also showing that most mutations are BAD.
\_ For a perfectly normal (and more extreme) version,
see 'the haploid/diploid life cycle.' -- ilyas
\_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_duplication
\- this book is very good:
http://csua.org/u/d28 |
| 2005/8/12-15 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:39106 Activity:high |
8/12 I'm not sure I understand the ID argument. Here is the way that I
see the argument: at the moment of the big bang the fundamental
constants could have taken on any set of values, however the vast
majority of these sets would not give rise to life, so the prob.
that the constants have the values necessary for life is so small
that it couldn't have occurred w/o intelligent intervention.
Isn't this the same as saying that the odds that I have the winning
lotto ticket is so small that if I were to win the lottery it was
b/c my mom rigged it for me?
I don't understand why it is more plausible that there was intelligent
design than the fact that we just got lucky?
\_ ID is a crock of shit. Why it should be discussed at all is merely
an indication of how pervasive religion still is in modern U.S.
society. It's a waste of everyone's time, especially the
scientific community if they have to address it, and it causes
the general populace to ignore more important issues like
health care, social security, stem cell research, and who's
going to win the World Series. To discuss ID or any other half-baked
psuedo-science crap is just a waste of everyone's time. It has
nothing to do with science, and everything to do with pushing
a political and religious agenda. If this topic were to be
brought up in any other developed country, the proponents would
be laughed off the stage. None of what ID says is new, it's merely
rehash of the same old arguments that religious zealots have
been proposing ever since the Scopes trial.
\_ I don't believe in ID, but if it science had all the answers,
there wouldn't be an ID. When your religion of science has
all the answers, you'll be in a better position to call people
names. If this topic were to be brought up in any other
developed country, they'd shoot it down in favor of their
local version of Creationism. Give a definition of "developed"
that doesn't directly include "doesn't believe in ID" and
we'll go from there. A real scientist should welcome a debate
like this. Real scientists question everything. Real scientists
can back up their claims and aren't afraid to drop the false
ones. There is no such thing as wasting the time of the
general population. That is why we have things like the World
Series in the first place. Bread and circuses.
\_ Science will never have all the answers; science is a
continual process of discovering new questions. Physics,
for example, was once believed to be nearing completeness,
with only a few minor problems like black-body radiation to
work out; those problems led directly to quantum mechanics
and the realization that we may never know what's really
going on.
But ID has no place in a scientific debate. Essentially,
ID is "well, science hasn't answered all the questions
about evolution, so it must be magic!" -tom
\_ Maybe science won't have all the answers because there
really is some sort of Divinity? Maybe there really is
magic. Until proven otherwise, magic is just as good
an answer as "well there is a scientific explanation,
but...." That's no different than Faith. And frankly,
who cares what the general population thinks anyway?
Quantum mechanics *is* magic as far as 99.99% of people
are concerned. An explanation people can't understand
is no different than telling them "its magic, read this
book about this carpenter and don't worry about it".
\_ It depends on what your definition of magic is. If
the population at large thinks that today's curable
diseases are cured because God wants them cured, they'll
wonder why we need to support the NIH. If they think
that they're cured by magic, but all magic is discovered
by magicians who have phd's in subfields of magic like
biochemistry, and who need to do magic research that
has to be well-funded, that wouldn't be so bad.
It is, as you say, roughly the current situation.
All this is orthogonal to the ID "debate", however,
since ID has nothing to do with either science or
philosophy. It's politics, pure and simple.
\_ I think you're a good argument against Intelligent
Design. -tom
\_ Thanks for participating. You added so much to
this. I'm not sure why you bothered posting. I'm
sorry if my offhand thoughts were too deep for you
to respond with anything more than a personal
attack. Perhaps we should discuss biking for you
instead?
\_ The problem for me is that there are some answers
\_ The problem for me is that maybe there is an answer
out there waiting to be discovered. Putting every-
thing down to a rigged deck and leaving it at that
seems lazy to me; if you stop asking questions before
even beginning to look at the problem, there's no way
you're ever going to find any of the answers. There
may be other things at work in the creation of the
universe than an all or nothing "the physical constants
allow for life" or they don't. Perhaps, as someone
mentioned a couple days ago, the constants change over
time. Perhaps if one changes, the others change to
compensate. Or perhaps there are processes involved
in the big bang that push the constants into certain
patterns, and in the creation of any universe they will
always wind up creating conditions conducive to life.
This science is so young, there's so much more room for
new things to discovered.
If we automatically assume a guiding hand and stop
there, there's no way we'll ever find real evidence of
that guiding hand. -sax
\_ I find it a bit odd to have a changing constant.
I don't automatically assume a guiding hand. As I
said, I don't believe in ID, but there remains no
disproof or proof of Divinity as yet. Going back
further than the origin on life on this planet to
the origin of the universe itself (since you mention
that), I find the Big Bang no more convincing than
"God did it in 7 days", or "it was magic" or "it was
always just there". What preceeded the Big Bang?
Where'd all that energy/stuff come from? How long
was it there? What is "time"? The Big Bang sounds
just like "it was magic" to me.
\_ There seems to be some amt of proof that the
speed of light and the fine structure constant
are changing:
http://tinyurl.com/c64o4 (space.com)
There is at least 1 theory that says that nothing
preceded the big bang. The big bang was a quantum
tunneling event where the void tunneled into
something.
The big bang isn't magic - it is based on
observations re the rate of expansion of the
universe and on the cosmic background radiation
for a start. My understanding is that GR also
requires it.
\_ Why do you want Baby Jesus to cry?
\_ ID does not address big bang, or the origin of life. ID only
talks about refuting evolution. So, I can understand why
you are confused.
\_ Not it's not the same. -- ilyas
\_ No it's not the same. In order to avoid having to assume God you
would have to assume an infinite number of completely unobservable
entities (parallel Universes). God is a pretty expensive assumption,
but at some point you have to wonder if the cure is worse than
the disease. -- ilyas
\_ This is the dumbest and most specious argument ever proposed.
The next thing you're going to tell me is that in order to
avoid believing that Crusty the Clown exists the bumble bee
must would have to be aerodynamically desgned in order to
fly. I mean, seriously, if you want to pick a philosophy to
dick around with, try Liebnitzian monadism before going back
to a Judeo-Christian monotheistic doctrine which doesn't even
have a fun and whacky premise that you can chew the fat on
during lunch breaks.
\_ I think it's spelled 'Krusty the Klown', williamc. -- ilyas
\_ (Q1) Is the argument something like:
(a) The set of values a given constant can take is an
infinite set AND
(b) ONLY 1 particular set of values of the constants
gives rise to life as we know it THUS
(c) The overall probably of this particular set occuring
is basically 0 THEREFORE
(c) ONLY external intervension could result in this
(d) ONLY external intervention could result in this
particular set.
But this is based on at least 2 unproven (afaik)
assumptions:
(1) that the set of values that a given constant can
take are infinite and unchanging AND
(2) ONLY 1 particular set determined at the outset
can give rise to life
I sucked at math, but I remember that stuff gets really
wacky when you are dealing with infinities - couldn't
there be an infinite set of values for which life could
occur?
\_ I don't assume (b). I merely assume the set which
gives rise to life is much smaller than the general set,
which is reasonable, I think. Most constants will not
even give rise to chemistry let alone life. If two
sets are infinite, there is a well defined way to talk
about their sizes, developed by set theorists.
-- ilyas
\_ If you don't assume (b), then I don't get it at
all. If there might be more than 1 arrangement
of the values that the constants could take in
order to give rise to life, why is intelligence
required to chose our set?
It seems more (or at least equally) plausible
that the values randomly happened to be ones
that gave rise to life.
Any books/urls you might recommend re infinite
sets comprehensible to a total dumbass?
\_ Well, you need to learn about 2 separate issues.
The first is how one infinite set can be 'smaller'
than another infinite set. For instance the set
of all natural numbers is smaller than the set of
all reals. Mathematicians say that a set A is
smaller than set B if there exists a 1-1 function
from A to B. Actually there are 2 generalizations
of the conventional notion of 'less than' for
infinite sets. The first I just discussed, the
second says A is smaller than B if 'you can add
1 a bunch of times to A to get B.' Any basic set
theory book will discuss this. The other issue is
how to spread a 'finite amount of butter'
(probability mass) over an 'infinite amount of
bread' (infinite set). For this, you need to
understand measure theory. That is a little
harder because you also need some real analysis.
-- ilyas
(Q2) Why do we need an infinite number of parallel universes
in order to explain the values of the fundamental
constants? (Please see below)
(Q1.1) Even if you play exactly 1 game of lotto, the game
has to have a result right (ie each ball has to
take on a value)?
(Q1.2) The prob. that a particular arrangement will
result is VERY small, BUT non-zero correct (we
are here, thus it has to be non-zero)?
(Q1.3) If the prob. is non-zero then this particular
arrangement could have occurred naturally right
(ie the product of pure chance rather than by
design)?
(Q1.4) So why is it more likely than not that the outcome
was b/c of selection rather than pure chance?
\_ Well, even if there is only one Universe, and even if
there is no 'intention' involved at all, and even if
there aren't any parallel Universes at all, then the
there is no 'intention' involved at all then the
constants we have could certainly have arisen by blind
chance. However, this is even harder to swallow than
the similar claim that something like a bacterium can
arise from chemistry given a long enough span of time.
With the constants, they would have to have assumed their
values 'instantaneously' before time even existed per se.
-- ilyas
\_ There could also be some reason why the constants
are the way they are, that has nothing to do with
the idea of a creator; there may be meta-forces
which tend to cause the constants to be the way
they are in our experiential Universe.
In any case, positing a creator does not solve
the problem of why the universe is the way it is;
it only begs the question, why is the creator
what he is? -tom
\_ There could be. There could be 'meta-forces.'
At this point though, you are countering one
unfalsifiable claim with another. Didn't you
just say science was just a way of discovering
more questions? So now you say positing a
creator 'begs more questions,' as if that was
a bad thing. -- ilyas
\_ The difference between tom's meta-forces
and the old one is that you might actually
figure out whether they exists and why.
With the old one you are left with nothing
useful. You can never figure out what he/it
is made of or why something is the way that
it is or what made him.
\_ A rose by any other name. Tom's
meta-forces is just another label slapped
onto something we fundamentally do not
understand, and never will. How do you
know those 'meta forces' lack intention?
Intention obviously exists in the world
(us), why the strong bias against it on
'larger scales.'? -- ilyas
\_ Maybe because every mysterious force
that people once thought was caused
by the intention of some deity turned
out to have a scientific explanation
instead. The god-worshipers have never
once been right in thousands of years
of human history; why should we assume
they're right now? -tom
\_ Well, we are now talking not about
'God' per se, but whether some force
has intention or not. Science has an
extremely poor track record of
showing intention in _anything_ by
experiment
\_ I think scientific explanations by
necessity will not involve
consciousness or intentionality
because those phenomena seem poorly
understood, and difficult, maybe
impossible, to approach empirically.
So of course scientific explanations
will not involve 'minds.' Whether
'minds' actually exist in the world
is a question I am not sure how to
approach. Saying things like
'science never came up with a 'minds'
explanation, so 'minds' do not exist!'
is silly. An emerging theory of
intention and consciousness from
empirical science is something I am
looking forward to. So far, I have
seen things like 'reductive
materialism' which don't really
address any of the mystery of minds.
There are some 'descriptive' things
being tossed around, like 'the
neural correlates of consciousness.'
Again, cataloguing physical events
that correspond to internal events
is both plagued with difficulties,
and leaves many things unexplained.
-- ilyas
\_ A mind is a processor of sensory
information (and emotions/feelings
that may be generated by non-
conscious coprocessors), that
makes decisions. I don't really
see huge issues with the theory
of conciousness; to me it's a
matter of scale. It does get
confusing trying to pin down the
physical aspects. But I don't
see any fundamental problem that
would require supernatural
explanations. As for intention
applied to the universe at large,
again I don't see the reason to
suppose that is true given how
little we understand about it.
As Tom points out, this kind of
assumption generally turns out
to be wrong. And since it raises
more questions about the nature of
that intention it is a more
"expensive" theory to assume. (I
know you probably disagree there
but I'm not as skeptical about
the "unsolved problems" as you
appear to be.)
\_ I disagree with the "never will." It's
possible that at some point people will
be able to examine the conditions which
gave rise to the big bang. Or create
other universes to see how they work.
In the long term this continuing
scientific examination will have a
positive influence on human quality of
life. cf. Pasteur questioning
assumptions about illness and creating
vaccines. cf. Einstein challenging
Newtonian physics, leading to quantum
mechanics and all sorts of helpful
technological innovations. Cutting the
funding at "we can't explain it yet, so
there must be a benevolent higher being"
is in the long term hurtful to humanity
at large.
\_ What do you mean by intention?
Do you mean that there is some
intention behind the current
state of affairs OR that each
person acts out of his/her
own intention?
I'm not sure I can buy either
claim. I don't really see any
proof of either.
\_ So you think humans lack intention?
Do you yourself lack intention?
-- ilyas
\_ I can't really convince myself
that there is anything more than
chemical/mechanical stimulus
response involved in what is
generally termed intention.
I also can't convince myself
that something intended for us
to be here - the dinosaurs
would probably still be "ruling"
the earth if not for a big rock
falling out of the sky. If we
were supposed to be here, why
let the dinosaurs have at it
for millions of years? Just so
we could have some nice birds
and gas for our hummers? Surely
there is a more efficient way.
\_ There could very well be
nothing more than chemical
mechanical stimulus response
involved. This does not mean
intention does not exist, it
obviously exists. You are
equating a physical
implementation of intention
with the impossibility of
intention. Or, to put it
another way, you are
concentrating on describing
physical events and making
an intuitive argument that
there can be no 'floating
ghost' associated with these
events somehow. I am fairly
convinced of the existence of
the 'floating ghost'
corresponding to myself.
-- ilyas
\_ I don't get it. If it
is all just some chemicals
moving around in my head,
then where the heck is the
"floating ghost"?
The sense of "I" seems to
me an illusion created by
the chemical rxns in my
head that makes it easier
for the body to survive.
\_ "If the functioning of
the computer is just
semi-conductor
electronics, then where
the heck is software?"
See Goedel/Escher/Bach
for the relevant
discussion. -- ilyas
\_ There's a nice discussion.
Why would you think there is
a "floating ghost" there? The
idea appears to be absurd.
Clearly people and animal
minds are affected by brain
alterations.
\_ There clearly _is_ a
floating ghost. I don't
really understand what
you mean by 'consciousness
is an illusion.' It has
none of the properties of
an illusion, it's more
correct to say we don't
understand what
relationship exists
between physical events
and qualia. I should
clarify that when I say
'floating ghost' I do
not mean that I am
a Cartesian dualist,
merely that the human
internal world is a real
thing, just like software
state is a real thing.
-- ilyas
\_ software state isn't
a magical ghost. I
don't know what you're
going on about.
\_ I see, this is just an application to science of the
general trend to equate improbability with God. Oh
thank God, by a miracle I survived this plane crash!
\_ People don't have good intuitions about very
small probabilities. I think the way quantum
mechanics works, pretty much _anything_ can happen
with some positive probability. However, if you
look at our macroscoping world, it's very
predictable, and random things don't happen.
Improbability always leaves you some wiggle room
to say things 'just happen,' but given the way
low probability events work in practice, you still
have some explaining to do. Surviving a plane
crash is not even in the same ballpark as
instantaneous bacterial self-assembly. -- ilyas
\_ Who is claiming that a bateria self
\_ In the world of living things, random things
seem to happen all the time. Meteors hit,
storms arise, water pools in some cave giving
rise to a unique creature, etc. Your existence
as opposed to some other combination of egg
and sperm is almost impossibly unlikely if
you look at what had to happen from even that
first "magic bacteria". And even though
crash survival isn't all that low probability,
or winning the lotto, there are loads of
examples of people believing it was divine.
I was just pointing out the fallacious mode
of thought. I think it's pretty safe to
assume that bacteria didn't spring into
existence fully-formed. As for the constants,
well they are observed. It would be like
using the improbability of events leading up
to your birth as proof that someone designed
you to happen, to say that someone had to
design the constants to support life. Maybe
there are many universes and life is in the
one that supports it.
\_ Sigh. You didn't even read this entire
thread, did you? Anyways, there is so
much circularity and repeated arguments
here that I am stopping, I think. -- ilyas
\_ Who is claiming that a bacteria self
assembled? AFAIK, the components of
bacteria came from even simpler forms
of "life" like rna or its precursors
which may self assemble.
Also, my understanding is that given
enough time every improbable event
can occur, so something like rna could
have come into being on its own given
several hundred million years.
\_ No simpler form of of independently
replicating life than a bacterium is either
known or postulated. The claim about
constants spontaneously taking on 'nice
values' is even less probable than the
bacterium-from-nothing claim, which is why
I brought it up. If you claim there is
something between bacterium and nothing
I invite you to tell me what that something
is and how it reproduces. -- ilyas
\_ Your claim is false. Other reproducing
things as simple as molecules have not
only been postulated, but have been
shown to exist. In your brain, it's
possible for a protein to spontaneously
fold in a certain undesirable way.
This protein can then catalyze other
proteins to fold in the same undesirable
way, in the environment of your brain.
Similarly, molecule chains which self
replicate in the "primordial soup" of
the early Earth have been postulated.
\_ A prion isn't alive, and a prion is
almost certainly not on the
evolutionary path between nothing
and bacteria. Read what I actually
said. -- ilyas
\_ What about (s/r)RNA?
\_ RNA is a molecule that can reproduce
in the right chemical environment.
So is the claim nothing -> RNA ->
bacterium? -- ilyas
\_ The way I understand it it is:
basic elements -> organic non-
replicating molecules -> RNA ->
DNA -> protocells -> { Bacteria,
Eukaryotes, Archaebacteria }
Something had to come before
bacteria b/c mitochondria (which
is present in all bacteria iirc)
\_ False. Mitochondria are
not present in all bacteria.
Mostly (exclusively?) in
Eukaryotes.
were originally a separate form
of life.
\_ The problem with this picture
is that:
(a) at the RNA/DNA stage,
things don't 'eat' each other,
so there is no natural
selection. This means, things
had to get pretty complex in
a random way without the
shielding of a cell wall.
(b) Nobody knows what
protocells look like, even
without any burden of
falsifying evidence. -- ilyas
\_ RNA/DNA don't have to eat
each other for NS to work.
If one form of RNA replicates
faster or is more robust
to environmental conditions
than other forms its copies
will gradually win out over
other versions.
I agree re proto-cells, BUT
clearly a bacterica is not
the simplest form of life
b/c it is an amalgam of at
least two separate more
primitive life forms:
some sort of cell and what-
ever mitochondira was before
it was incorporated into
a bacteria. And even mito-
chondria is pretty complex,
meaning it came from something
more basic.
The problem w/ going back
that far is that anything
that primative probably
(1) didn't get fossilized
or (2) got killed by newer
forms of life and isn't
around anymore.
My problem w/ saying that
the big guy just put it
together, is that it tells
you nothing. You can't/don't
know why he did it, or how
or how he knew how to do it,
&c. It also leaves open the
question of where the big
guy came from and who made
him.
\_ You're seriously saying that there isn't
even a hypothesis about life simpler
than a bacteria? Have you read Paul
Davies' "The Fifth Miracle"? -emarkp
\_ I am sorry, I haven't read Davies'
book. What is his theory, other than
'life came from archaea deep
underground.' -- ilyas
\_ and then I want to ask what this has to do with evolution?
It's like saying, "I don't know whether my car was made in
Detroit or not, therefor I shouldn't eat any sandwiches
today." Regardless of whether there was any higher power
at work in the creation of the universe, evolution is a
theory whose tenets are demonstrable.
\_ If the debate is soley over evolution/natural selection
then I don't understand why there is a debate at all b/c
natural selection has been demonstrated.
\_ this debate is kind of like those mysterious circular patterns
that appear overnight in cornfields. some people tried to find
the answer to what created them in some natural phenomenon,
while others tried to find out if it's some jokers who created
them. |
| 2005/8/9-13 [Science/Physics, Science/Biology] UID:39076 Activity:moderate |
8/9 http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=pub \_ this link doesn't work anymore I haven't been paying attention to the ID vs. Evolution discussion but I read this in the Merc and I was a bit surprised by the arguments made in favor of ID. Do the ID folks really think that the universe has more order now than at some point in the past when all the forces were unified (more entropy/disorder now right?) Also I'm confused by the assertion that the laws of nature imply ID. Isn't is equally plausible that the laws of nature are the result of (1) random chance or (2) the result of a natural process (such as collisions of branes in higher dimensional space) that creates an infinite number of universes so all possible laws of physics are expressed? \_ Well, I don't know about most of the arguments presented, but it is a little puzzling that the fundamental constants would arrange themselves randomly into an interesting looking universe that we have. If things were a little off, the universe would be it is a little puzzling that the fundamental constants would arrange themselves randomly into an interesting looking universe that we have. If things were a little off, the universe would be very boring indeed. -- ilyas \_ But there is a small but finite probability that the came about by random chance right? And by boring you mean boring to people right? Some other arrangement might give rise to a universe that is interesting to different form of "life". What I don't understand about ID is that there does not appear to be a way to show that ID is more likely than the theory that branes are/have been colliding in higher dimensional space for an infinite amt of time thus making possible every arrangement of the fundamental constants. How can one accept a theory which is by definition un- proveable? \_ By 'boring' I mean you can't have life as we understand it -- low entropy entities that use energy to maintain their state, or for that matter planets, stars and galaxies -- things needed to support life. -- ilyas \_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle \_ The only way we can even talk about this is if we happen to have the conditions for life. So, just out luck that we happen to have these conditions, however small the chance. It really doesn't prove anything. \_ And this is called the "weak anthropic" principle. For some strange reason, I can't find anything in ID addressing it (which I'd think would be important). -emarkp \_ You don't understand. This isn't meant to be a proof of anything, but something requiring an explanation. -- ilyas \_ The point you're missing is that if there are an infinite number of universes, only in the ones where the physical laws are conducive to the rise of intelligent life will there ever be anyone to notice that the physical laws are conducive to the rise of intelligent life. -tom \_ And what if there isn't an infinite number of universes? Occam's razor says to assume the least. Why is it more 'expensive' to assume intelligent design than to assume infinitely many universes? -- ilyas \_ Because intelligent design still presupposes a creator, which just pushes the question up a level; who created the creator? It's a lot easier to assume an infinitude of universes than to assume that an intelligent being somehow sprang into existence before the universe did. -tom \_ So you would rather postulate an infinitude of worlds than suspend for a moment your intuitions borne of your linear perception of time? Seems like people suspend intuitions a lot when looking at fundamental things -- consider quantum mechanics. I should mention that 'created' is a causal notion, and causality is an illusion, a way our brain organizes information. There is no causality in physics. -- ilyas 'created' is a causal notion, and causality is an illusion, a way our brain organizes information. There is no causality in physics. -- ilyas \_ Wikipedia on "Causality (physics)": "special relativity has shown that it is not only impossible to influence the past" "Despite these subtleties, causality remains an important and valid concept in physical theories." \_ This is one of those cases where I know more about the subject matter than wikipedia. There is no causality in physics, only in physicists. The standing of causality in modern physics is so weak that even my advisor, a fairly influential causality guy, concedes that it's all likely an artifact of the human brain, and not an objective feature of reality. On a slightly unrelated note, I wish people would stop quoting wikipedia as an authoritative source. I read some of their 'contention' pages, and wasn't really impressed. You don't have to look far to find wikipedia blatantly being wrong -- in the general Causality article, Pearl and Spirtes are listed under 'Probabilistic Causality,' which is untrue, proponents of that area include Good, Cartwright, etc. Pearl/Spirtes are in 'Structural Causality.' Wikipedia is trash. -- ilyas the human brain, and not an objective feature of reality. On a slightly unrelated note, I wish people would stop quoting wikipedia as an authoritative source. I read some of their 'contention' pages, and wasn't really impressed. You don't have to look far to find wikipedia blatantly being wrong -- in the general Causality article, Pearl and Spirtes are listed under 'Probabilistic Causality,' which is untrue, proponents of that area include Good, Cartwright, etc. Pearl/Spirtes are in 'Structural Causality.' Wikipedia is trash. -- ilyas \_ I support quoting of Wikipedia as an authoritative source, with disagreements with Wikipedia well disagreements with Wikipedia documented on motd for any sodan to evaluate. -jctwu to evaluate. Wikipedia's usefulness significantly outweighs its negatives when used in this way. -jctwu \_ What usefulness? It's an encyclopedia and it's WRONG. A lot. Do you really want me to look through the causality article and list all things it got wrong? Wikipedia's 'usefulness' is misleading people into thinking they know something. -- ilyas \_ Then fix it man -- you're extremely lucid in your writing when you set your mind to it. That's one of the nice things about Wikipedia -- I assume that people with brains and enough confidence in their knowledge go in and remove blatant inaccuracies, so as time goes on, the overall quality of the information gets better. Don't get me wrong -- it's still a source of info which resides in the internet and therefore is deserving of a little skepticism, but it's still a damned handy reference. -mice \_ It's a Wiki-based encyclopedia, not a traditional encyclopedia. In your opinion, Wikipedia is trash; I already stated my opinion. You could also submit a change, but that's your prerogative whether you do or do not and why you wouldn't. I don't think we can get any farther than this. any farther on this. One more thing you can do: We can avoid the subjective question of whether Wikipedia is useful or not, and you can instead explain calmly and succinctly why there is no causality in physics, and/or post a URL which says so. Pretend you're Feynman lecturing to a freshman physics class. -jctwu \_ This logic appeals to me, but many find it deficient. Of course, if things weren't conducive to us being here, we wouldn't be here.... Those who have the most trouble with this usually cite the incredible odds against it. However, with possibly a trillion "trial" locations, over a span of billions of years, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that life would somewhere arise and ponder the unlikelyhood of it all.... But the pondering would 100% take place in those lucky, rare locations that "won". Like here. \-there is a good paper that assess the amount of "tolerance" we can have in various "free parameters" [i.e. the fundamental physical constants] in light of the anthropomorphic principle [the idea that we have to be here to to ask the questions] ... i can dig up the reference if there is interest. if you are interested in this you may want to review first review the list of free parameters ... some of them are pretty technical but you need some knowledge of what the are to see how things fit in terms of "dependencies". there are many good discussions of this. \_ Who says there are "trials" or they take any "time"? Why not "every possible existence that could be, is"? And maybe that means there are an infinite number of existences, and maybe that means there are a finite but greater than one number and maybe that means this is it and the only it. It's all just freshman lounge chat anyway since we can't ever know but this is better than a lot of the other motd/wall posts. \_ Hey ilyas, tell us about the stars. -aspo \_ Aspolito is a meme's way of making another meme. -- ilyas \_ ID is intellectual fraud. It presents strawman arguments about evolution and largely consists of handwaving. I can't distinguish between it and more sophisticated moon-hoaxers. -emarkp \_ Do other religious conservatives give you a lot of shit for being such a decent, rational person on science issues? I think it's fantastic to see someone who self identifies as a religious conservative speak out against these people. You can probably get a lot more traction stopping them from destroying American science than us liberal jewish athiest scientists. can probably get a lot more traction stopping them from destroying American science than us liberal jewish athiest scientists. \_ I've never been criticized for it. I point it out misrepresentations of science when I see them, and misrepresentations of religion when I see /them/. I'm particularly annoyed about ID because it is an attempt to misrepresent science to defend the author of physical law, and I just read a 30-page article this weekend from ID that read like an anti-religion tract but was basically anti-Evolution. -emarkp \_ ID isn't really about the universe and physical laws, but more about: Goddamn, can you believe a tiny sperm and a tiny egg can combine and grow into one new human being, without anything else going wrong? GAWD or ALIENS must have been involved! \- a fairly cool book on weird examples and corner cases in biology is THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE by EO WILSON. I found this quite readable and interesting and I have a fairly limited bio background. http://csua.org/u/czi \_ Cf. a good deal of Stephen Jay Gould's work on evolution. \- isnt SJG soft on ID? \_ No. Read Bully for Brontosaurus. \- Some comments: the ID vs Evolution debate is somewhat interesting for various reasons but it mainly has to do with politics when hitting a low [like BUSH weighing in about it] or philosophy of science [what is a theory vs a collection of fact, what are standards of proof, causality in an empirical or observational science]. if you are interested in actual debates on evolution, those dont really concern the teleological or "invisible hand" aspect of ID but other "legitimate" issues with the various competing evolution theories. dawkins and gould are the populerizers, but you can also look at wilson, mayr [died recently too], this fellow H. Orr, Stevene Pinker, matt ridley, and r lewontin [recently gave a talk at berkeley] and daniel dennet. a lot of these guys have secondary agendas and strong personalities so it makes for an interesting story/debate to follow. \_ The problems with ID are twofold: 1) It is not science, it is philosophy. Don't teach philosophy in science classes. And 2) As soon as you use the "The Wizard Did It" type of logic to explain the world then it's religion, not knowledge, and you can go to church to become indoctrinated in such a fashion. |
| 2005/8/9-11 [Science/Biology] UID:39061 Activity:kinda low |
8/9 Some news on evolution:
"Convergent Evolution in Poison Frogs"
http://csua.org/u/cyz (Yahoo! News)
\_ That evolution crap is just a "theory". In fact, God made
the world in 7 days, just like it says in Genesis. And I
challenge anyone to prove to me different. (I'll just deny
all the evidence you present.)
\_ actually, bible says he laid it to waste and remade it
in 6 days and 1 day of rest
\_ My book is holy! Yours isn't! And only I am qualified
to interpret my Holy Book!
\_ I read this article, but what it does not make clear is how it is
known that the frogs are not related. Geography doesn't tell the
story. Could they have evolved from the same frog ancestor?
\_ The article did not say the frogs are not related. In fact the
article calls the two frog species in the two continents
"cousins".
\_ Then, excuse this question from a non-bio guy, how is it
known to be a case of convergent evolution?
\_ Then there are three possibilities that it is not a case of
convergent evolution. #1: they did not evolve, ie. God
\_ Then there are two possibilities that it is not a case of
convergent evolution. #1: they did not not evolve, ie. God
is involved; #2: they did not evolve in separate
ecosystems, ie. they evolved in the same ecosystem, and
ecosystems, ie. they evolved in the same ecosystems, and
one species somehow traveled or were transported across the
Atlantic Ocean to the other continent and settled down.
#3: they did not evolve in separate ecosystems, ie. they
evolved in the same ecosystem, and the continents of Africa
and America separated only relatively recently instead of
millions (or whatever) of years ago as found by geologists.
Atlantic ocean to the other continent and settled down.
Take your pick.
\_ I am asking why they think that it *is*. I can think of
reasons why it might not be.
\_ Their reasons are that they think none of the
possible alternatives are true: #1 is not true
because species do evolve and God did not create them
in their present forms. (This is debatable.) #2
is not true because they think poison frogs and ants
can't swim across the Atlantic and nobody
transported huge population of poison frogs and ants
across the Atlantic recently. (I think this is
accepted.) #3 is not true because geologists says
so. (I think this is accepted.) So, what remains
on thir table is their original claim that "these are
two instances of convergent evolution". What remains
on our table is their claim and alternative #1.
millions (or whatever) of years ago as found by geological
scientists. Take your pick.
because species do evolve as other evidences suggest,
and God did not create them in their present forms.
(This is debated.) #2 is not true because they think
poison frogs and ants can't swim across the Atlantic
and nobody transported huge population of poison
frogs and ants across the Atlantic recently. (I
think this is accepted.) #3 is not true because
geologists says so. (This is accepted.) So, what
remains on their table is their original claim that
"these are two instances of convergent evolution".
What remains on our table is their claim and
alternative #1.
\_ Who said that the continents had to separate
recently? How do they know this adaptation is
recent? There are also lots of cases of animals
(especially frogs) being deposited in other
places by storms.
\_ There is a very easy method to determine
speciation, one only has to examine the
DNA, either mDNA or nuclear. One can
simply pick certain markers, something as
simple as a a RFLP, and determine how closely
a species is related. There is no need
to conjecture on the macroscopic since
we have had modern techniques to explore
evolution for well over fifty years now
in vitro.
\_ If they are related then I say it's not
convergent evolution.
\_ Convergent evolution, as stated in the
article, is "the process in which
organisms not closely related ......".
So the two poison frog species can be
related, and so are the two ant species.
They just need to not be closely related.
\_ Who defines how close? I mean,
they are both frogs so of course
they are related in some way.
\_ Hmm, good point that the adaptation might not
be recent. Let's see what proof they have in
the full report in the upcoming issue of
Proceedings.
\_ it's stupid, one frog in 22 eats a cigarette some lame
scientist dropped and now they are evolving some new type
of nicotine defense mechanism?
\_ i agree. doesn't explain that ants eat plants..
ants eat insects, honeydew and fruits.. and leafcutter
ants cut leaves for storage (heating up their home)
but not food.. this article blows..
\_ Where in the article does it say anything about nicotine defense
mechanism? The mechanism in the article is about alkaloids.
\_ nicotine is an alkaloid
\_ Yes, but not all alkaloids are nicotine.
\_ can you read "However, this is some of the most
convincing evidence that plant-insect-frog toxin food
chains do exist"
\_ Yes I saw that, but please read the whole article. Ths
observation on nicotine, and its suggestion of
plant-insect-frog toxin food chains, are separate from
the obesrvation on alkaloid defense mechanism.
\_ but half the article is on this. and the
most direct quotes from the scientist are about
this and not the alkaloid defense mechanism..
\_ yeah, but it shows how stupid these scientists
are... "most convincing" evidence but no facts
or evidence to be found .. so they claim
it as fact.. a lot of this bs is pervasive
among evolutionary scientist who forget to use
the scientific method and keep making theories
into facts..
\_ Why did you say they found "most convincing"
evidence and then say they found no evidence? If
you meant no conclusive evidence, that's true and
the article never claims that there is conclusive
evidence. Also, you said the article claim the
toxin food chain as a fact. The article never
claims that either. It stated that "they are not
sure how the chemical enters the frog's system.",
and that they only have convincing evidence, not
conclusive evidence.
\_ i agree, isn't it better that animals would
prefer to eat the nicotine laden frogs because
they'll get addicted to nicotine? and get
a good buzz out of it.. .. ? hehe
\_ that's a lot of faith.. a plant that has no
nicotine to be found anywhere, yet they
use this as the "most convincing" evidence?
sounds like bad science and blind faith.
\_ This is not bad science, because they are only using it
as convincing evidence, not conclusive evidence, and
they are not drawing any conclusion out of it. Also,
they are not concluding whether there is or is not any
nicotine-producing plants, because "Our team has not
yet conducted a survey of possible nicotine containing
in the area where the nicotine-frog was found". |
| 2005/8/2-4 [Science/Biology, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:38949 Activity:high |
8/2 Bush comes out in support of teaching "intelligent design":
http://csua.org/u/cwg (yahoo! news)
\_ "People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be
totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale
education."
\_ It's those damned C students!
\_ 55% of Americans (including 47% of Kerry voters) believe "God
created humans in present form". 27% believe "humans evolved, God
guided the process". A mere 13% believe "humans evolved, God did
not guide process". About 2/3 of Americans want creationism taught
along with evolution. "Intelligent design" is solidly in the
mainstream of American thought.
\_ It's safe to say that Bay Area is the opposite of mainstream.
I'm not sure if this is anything to be proud of anymore.
\_ We shouldn't be proud of teaching our students um, science in
science classes?
\_ 95% of Americans don't know what "Intelligent Design" means.
\_ Yes, I lent her my assault rifle? Sorry, did I miss something?
\_ Creationism IS taught alongside evolution, just not in the same
school.
\_ The ironic part is that most Protestant denominations,
the Catholic Church, and a fair chunk of Judaism have
accepted evolution as part of God's plan.
\_ What's amusing is that, when I was at a fairly religious
(protestant) jr. high school, the biology teacher, who was
an extremely religious man, made it clear that he felt it
was his duty that we were taught evolution even if he
himself believed otherwise (he never ever said this in the
context of a class, and even outside of class only when we
pressed him on the matter.) We had to take religion
classes, but even then they made very sure to only present
creationism and its ilk as "something some people believe
in". -John
\_ Wouldn't that make it "Intelligent Design"?
\_ No. Intelligent Design is a creationist critique of
evolutionary theory. It has nothing to do with
science, and everything to do with Biblical literalism.
\_ Huh, well, stick me in with the other 95% of
Americans I guess. According to Wikipedia, I
was thinking of Theistic evolution.
\_ Um, ID is formulated as a scientific hypothesis, from
what I understand of it. There was a long ass motd
what I understand of it. There was a long motd
discussion about it a while ago, complete with tom
making an ass of himself and everything. -- ilyas |
| 2005/7/18 [Science/Biology] UID:38672 Activity:low |
7/16 Darwin Stickers
http://tinyurl.com/6y62o (swarthmore.edu)
\_ It's a bit late now. This is the trend of America:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/17/mega.church.ap
\_ Nothing in that article says that the members of that church
are opposed to evolution, but I generally agree w/ your sentiment
that we are stuck in a strange society that embraces all the
benefits of science while refusing to acknowledge the true nature
of the world as revealed by science.
\- parenthetically, society has now and then gone too far
in the other direction. see e.g. "positivism". but i
agree if i would king you would have to take pledge
renouncing creationism if you wanted antibiotics.
\_ Or using coal or oil.
\_ Not to mention the fact that the current status of America
as a world superpower was fueled by our technical superiority
and leadership in the sciences in the 50s and 60s.
\_ Best quote in that story "It was almost surreal"
\_ I don't get the joke. Are these a parody of some gangsta thing
I've never seen?
\_ I assume it's a parody of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_the_Giant_Has_a_Posse |
| 2005/5/28-31 [Science/Biology] UID:37876 Activity:high |
5/27 Smithsonian will show an 'Intelligent Design' movie:
http://tinyurl.com/dx3v9 (nytimes.com)
\_ http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact is
something on 'intelligent design' in this week's New
Yorker. I had never heard of the No Free Lunch theorem
before. - danh
\_ One thing that's somewhat embarassing for the classical
\_ you go wrong right here
Darwinian evolution is that scientists have been unable,
despite being unburdened with ANY pieces of falsifying evidence
(all such evidence presumably got eaten),
to construct a compelling story for how bacteria came to be.
In other words, you can make up any story whatsoever, and as long
as the steps work, you have a theory! No such story has been
forthcoming, despite best efforts to the contrary.
I am also a little iffy on the way this article talks about
'good science.' There's good science in the sense that lets you
make predictions and get grants and explain the world, and
there's good science in the sense of its explanation being true.
Newtonian physics is good in the former sense (on the macro
scales), Einstein physics is good in the latter sense (again, on
the macro scales only). I think the best response Darwinists
can make is to redouble their efforts to explain the origin
of life, and sudden complexity shifts in life's past, rather than
try to discredit the movement from which some intelligent
criticisms of their theory have emerged. -- ilyas
\_ Is Darwinism really about the origins of life or about how
it evolved throught the time? I thought it was about
the later.
\_ I think the 'official' Darwinist position on the origin
of life precludes a 'designer,' which means Darwinists have
the burden of constructing a story of how it happened.
-- ilyas
\_ You're an idiot. If you can't make comprehensive posts
that aren't filled with factual errors and moronic
suppositions please refrain from posting about
science in general. "Einstein" physics indeed...
\_ evolution is a theory about a process by which
life changes. It makes no claims about the existence
or non-existence of a creator.
\_ In which case, proponents of evolution should leave
ID people alone, since they don't even contest any
evolutionary claims. In practice, of course,
the theory of evolution and the theory of a
'mechanical' origin of life go hand in hand.
Also, some ID people contest certain dramatic
shifts being evolutionary, even after life has
existed. -- ilyas
\_ I don't think that's really the case--at least I wasn't
taught that in school. The New Yorker article points
out disagreements among ID. One person saying evolution
may have produced current life once there was a cell,
another disagreeing. It also points out that ID hasn't
produced a single prediction that can be verified by
experiment. As such, it isn't science. Really it
sounds like a bunch of whiners to me. -emarkp
\_ I am not defending ID as a scientific movement, I
merely point out it's not in good taste for
Darwinists to be attacking it on grounds other than
'your argument is bollocks.' Some of ID arguments
are NOT. Also, ID of course does make falsifiable
predictions about the world. -- ilyas
\_ I haven't seen any. Can you point to them?
-emarkp
\_ Um. The central claim that life cannot arise
by a blind process is falsifiable. If
Darwinists succeed in creating a plausible
(or better yet, reproducible) story for life's
creation that will falsify the claim. The
argument that something that doesn't make
experimentally falsifiable claims is not
science is extremely weak. It's certainly
true, but many things that aren't science
make falsifiable claims. -- ilyas
\_ I don't remember much about AP Bio, but I remember being
taught that two strands of rna became dna at some point
and eventually dna figured out how to make cells (ie
bacteria).
\_ Not that I follow the field, but I find it doubtful that
"no such story has been forthcoming". You might not find
them plausible but surely various people have offered
conjectures.
\_ Exactly. Stanley Miller did a number of experiments in
which he filled chambers with the mix of elements generally
thought to coincide with early earth composition,
discharged an electrical spark and produced simple RNA.
There are a lot of assumptions involved, but it implies
that the process is possible.
\_ Stanley Miller did not produce a bacterium in a tube.
There is a huge jump in complexity between simple RNA,
which is, after all, just a big molecule, and a working,
reproductive cell.
I will find a story 'plausible' if it can be recreated
in laboratory conditions today, or, if it takes too long,
to be simulated by a computer. -- ilyas
\_ Maybe we're all just simulations. |
| 2005/4/29-5/1 [Science/Biology] UID:37423 Activity:low |
04/29 New stem-cell procedure restore sight:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1589642,00.html
\_ sight at the cost of dead babies? it shall be evil sight.
\_ Did you read the article? The stem cells uses are
adult stem cells taken from the patients themselves.
\_ Did you read the article?
"Tests on the patients after a year revealed no trace of the
DNA of the stem-cell donor" |
| 2005/3/23-24 [Science/Biology] UID:36826 Activity:high |
3/26 Wow, religion is getting stronger and stronger every day:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/23/volcano.movie.ap
\_ Don't you mean "ignorance of science?"
\_ Is it ignorance or denial?
\_ Given the state of our educational system, I'm much more
inclined to believe it is ignorance. I think the number
of people who are just ignorant of biological science
far outweighs the number that actively deny its
underpinnings.
\_ um, no. People just want to hear what they like to hear.
Just look at the 2 Mormons on motd. They are well
educated but they choose to believe in something else.
It's their right, they can believe whatever they want.
\_ Wrong! People don't even know what they like to hear.
They just don't want to think, so they want to be told
what to do and think.
\_ It's scary thinking on your own. What if you're
wrong? More importantly, what if it's different than
what your peers think? Then you might be mocked or
insulted.
\_ I don't think jrleek and emarkp are really a
representative slice of the general population.
Are you really trying to say that?
\_ I think the theaters are stupid for not showing the
movies. I think evolution should be taught (and taught
/well/) in schools. -emarkp
\_ I am *SHOCKED* to hear this. I guess it's a good
and pleasant kind of shock, but still, a shock. I
guess when liberal news portray Religious folks
as supporters of "Intelligent Design", it's just
liberal trash news.
\_ That's probably what emarkp means by
"taught well" -tom
\_ In as much detail as possible. I didn't have
much more in high school than survival of the
fittest + handwaving. I would like to see
what current theory is about how an organism
of more chromosomes can evolve from one of
fewer, examples of complex structures evolving
from simpler ones, etc. We're homeschooling
our kids and I'm actually looking for a good
primer on modern evolutionary theory. -emarkp
\_ You're better off finding a field biologist
who'll let your kids tag along and learn
by assisting. I was homeschooled, and
that's what I did. It was awesome.
\_ Intelligent design and "creationist science" are
junk science. They're science with an agenda,
which is bad bad bad. -emarkp
\_ you know, I'm beginning to feel bad for
making fun of you... it's now more clear
that you're not one of them.
\_ I never understood what conservative/religious
has to do w/ evolution. Sure there are some
lunatics out there who think that god made the
world in 6 days (or whatever) but there are
plenty of conservatives who accept evolution
as generally true.
\_ You misunderestimate the american public.
http://gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=14107
\_ And God created Weapons of Mass Destruction
in Iraq, and He was pleased with what he
created.
\_ And God said, "Let there be Weapons of
Mass Destruction in Iraq", and He was
pleased with what he created.
\_ I Buh-LEEVE!!1! |
| 2005/3/21-23 [Science/Biology] UID:36799 Activity:nil |
3/21 An evolutionary basis for altruism
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18524901.600
\_ see also http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/pdf_files/Nature04a.pdf |
| 2005/3/3-4 [Science/Biology, Reference/Religion] UID:36501 Activity:moderate |
3/2 To the person defending LDS, where's your Mormon Christain wingman
like jrleek? Don't you guys always work in a pair? Why isn't he
helping you out? I'm asking because the motd today reminds me of
my undergrad experience. Everyday, I'd walk alone to/from Dwinelle,
Wheeler, and Le Conte and I'm always approached by two well groomed,
happy and occasionally attractive looking people asking me if I
would be interested in joining them, and it always turns out to be
something related to God, Church and Bible Study.
Secretly I've always had this dream of pairing up with an athiest
wingman in say, Jesuit School School of Theology. We would walk
around and ask students if they'd be interested in joining our
organization, and we would tell them that it's something related to
Science, University, and Evolutionary Study. I wonder how many
students would actually join us. Maybe we can even get enough
people to fund a church where devouts can worship Science and maybe
even start missionaries abroad.
\_ If I ever move back to the bay area, I'll be a wingman for that.
\_ jrleek is changing his own baby's diapers right now, just like
BY had to do. long live jrleek. -vallard
\_ Oh, I'm pretty lazy. I'll post a response when some one states
something untrue about the church, but emarkp started that
argument and he can keep it. -jrleek |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Recreation/Humor, Reference/Religion, Science/Biology] UID:36366 Activity:very high Cat_by:auto |
2/22 Dear motd conservatives, what do you have to say about this:
http://tinyurl.com/45m4w (Scientific American on evolution).
We know who you are, please answer.
\_ Read this and then maybe you can start to reconsider some of
the assumptions implicit in your question:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/gw20050106.shtml
\_ Einstein meant he wasn't an atheist in the crusading sense, but
he was an atheist in the essential, didn't believe in God sense:
"From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and
have always been an atheist ... I have repeatedly said that in
my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You
may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading
spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due
to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our being."
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do
not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be
called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the
structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
\_ Einstein is going to hell! -Christian
\_ People are dumb, they believe all sorts of weird crap. Even on
the MOTD, Berkeley, etc. I've encountered people who believe
that evolution isn't a proven theory, or that quantum mechanics
is wrong, or that classical mechanics is wrong and therefore
invalid, or that a so-called "red state" is completely republican
or a so-called "blue state" is completely democratic, or that
tsunamis shouldn't cause deaths because people should be able
to swim out of it, etc. etc. Trying to convince them otherwise
is just a futile exercise in frustration because after a certain
age people's minds just calcify. I mean, if you think about it
seriously, doesn't the concept of a guy who can tell what's going
on 24/7 on a planet with over six billion people seem a bit
ridiculous? Or the fact that a bunch of migrant Jews would know
better than anyone else that their version of god is the true
version vs. all the others? If you think about it, it's somewhat
ironic that a minor cultish sect of judaism took over the
Western world. I bet if you were living back then in Roman times
you'd bet the farm that we'd all still be praying to Jupiter in
the next couple of milleniums. Of course, if you were talking to
a Born Again Christian they'd say it proves their faith. What
it really proves is that you can fool a lot of people a lot of
the time, and we as a human species like to be fooled a lot.
\_ See, I am not religious but I have a lot of problems with
evolution. For one thing, some evolution 'defenders' (it's very
odd that a theory would need defenders in the first place) have
taken on decidedly militant tones lately. It's very misleading
to talk about evolution as a 'proven theory,' firstly because
evolution is an empirical claim and as such isn't something you
prove, and secondly because there is no single 'theory of
evolution.' The theory, like many mature theories, undergone
evolution.' The theory, like many mature theories, has undergone
several revisions because it disagreed with the data, and as
such had to be fixed. Evolution as a theory has a lot of problems
that need fixing. I wish people would stop wasting time with
the fundies, and similarly stopped treating evolution itself in a
fundy way, and started fixing problems with it. Or finding new
ways to hunt fossils. On a related topic, I am very interested
in the current state of the art on the origins of life question,
which is the big unsolved gorilla you need to tackle if you
accept the 'western secular' interpretation of life. I would
also like to add my extreme scepticism towards current
explanations for certain events in the Earth's past, like the
advent of multicellularity, and the Cambrian explosion. -- ilyas
\_ I postulate God created the Universe! and left all those
fossils to lead the heathens to Satan
\_ You seem to have confused "conservatives" with "young-earth
creationists". I'm the former, but not the latter. (And Scientific
American proved itself as a rag in its attack on "The Skeptical
Environmentalist") -emarkp
\_ I really don't understand why people (on both sides) think
evolution contradicts God/relligion. What if God desgined
the principle of evolution?
\_ because the Bible is the "word of god", and evolution
directly contradicts most of the Bible's creation story. -tom
\_ Some people (why, it's beyond me) interpret the Hebrew word
'yom' which was translated to English 'day' to mean a
literal 24-hour period in the highly symbolic account in
Genesis. -emarkp
\_ Even if you accept the idea that Genesis doesn't
represent literal days, it is still completely wrong.
And things like the Great Flood clearly never happened.
-tom
\_ There's no historical evidence of the exodus, yet I
accept that as history. Some people argue for a
limited geography flood (rather than global) which
I'm objecting to less than previously. I know that
the scientific evidence strongly contradicts the
flood--but then it also strongly contradicts the
resurrection, walking on water, etc. I don't know
where dinosaurs figure in (or early hominids) but I
don't reject the scientific evidence, nor do I
dismiss the teachings of scripture. -emarkp
\_ yes, we're well aware of your ability to believe
mutually contradictory things. My original point
was just that people who are not so good at that
find science to be threatening, since the
implication is that their "Word of God" is just
a bunch of made-up stories. -tom
\_ It shouldn't be surprising that people can feel
threatened when their beliefs are attacked
on a regular basis by fallacious logic. The
hard part is separating the reasonable
arguments (no scientific evidence for global
flood) vs. the fallacious assertions (Jesus
wasn't resurrected) vs. fallacious logic (God
can't create a rock too big to lift, so he must
not be omnipotent!). -emarkp
\_ Well, it's not that hard; you can do what
you just did, which is put two red
herrings out there to deflect from the
fact that you've already lost the
argument. -tom
\_ Hewbrew? Some fundies have problems accepting the idea
that the King James version isn't the pure translation.
\_ There are problematic issues when you accept evolution and try
to reconcile it with Adam and Eve. Like, who were the birth
parents of Adam & Eve? Did they have souls, etc.? -emarkp
\_ what if the birth parents of adam&eve had slightly
different mitochondrial dna and rna.. the mutation in
eve's mitochondrial dna and/or rna resulted in a new
species (since mitochondrial dna and rna is only passed
down maternally.) (of course, this is assuming that
it was not literally adam's rib that resulted in eve.)
\_ That's the trouble with religion. You never know which
bits of nonsense are 'highly symbolic' (i.e. 'yom') and
which are literal truth (i.e. Adam and Eve). It's fairly
obviously to me Adam and Eve were not literally first
obvious to me Adam and Eve were not literally first
humans. -- ilyas
\_ But they appear to have been real individuals who made
an important decision. But then I believe that prophets
today clairfy sticky issues like that. -emarkp
\_ Wow. That's really cool. In my religion, prophets
get like, nailed to crosses, or beheaded or end up
wandering aimlessly in deserts for 40 years. What's
your current prophet's name? I'd like to send him an
email and get some clarifications. thanks.
\_ What makes you think they were real? Just because
there's a legend about them? Don't you see how
fucking retarded that is?
\_ I accept the Bible as a record of revelations. I
don't claim it to be perfect/inerrant, etc.
Reading that record strongly indicates there were
two people named Adam and Eve in Genesis. -emarkp
\_ You don't address my question. I ask you why
accept that. There's no basis for accepting it.
\_ You asked if I believed that Adam and Eve
were real just because there's a legend
about them. Reparsing that, my answer is:
no. -emarkp
\_ Well my further question is why you
accept the bible as a record when there
are obvious problems with that. Just
taking the Mormon stuff separately, you
are basing a huge set of beliefs on the
mere assertion of one man. I find that
to be ridiculous. And absurd that God
would operate in such a feeble fashion.
(Although I believe the same basically
goes for Christ, at least the claim there
is that various miracles were witnessed
by multitudes.)
\_ Along this thread, i've wondered why
the Stargate series hasn't touched on
christianity. seems a logical plot
path.
\_ One man? How's that? There were 11
witnesses of the golden plates that
the BoM was translated from. -emarkp
\_ Oh 11? I wasn't aware of that. See,
God's not too good at getting His
message across. Since 11 people
saw it I'll believe it now.
\_ Glad I could help.
\_ What would you do if somehow
something came up that proved
Mormonism was untrue? Would
be willing to accept that or
just have faith that it's
true anyway? I guess I'm
thinking like a verifiable
diary of the dude admitting
he cooked it all up in order
to reap the benefits of
ruling a cult.
\_"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by
rulers as useful." -- Seneca
by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." -- Seneca
\_ Great quote, thanks. I also found this quote by the
same: "I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives".
Heh.
\_ http://www.skinnypanda.com/pastepisodes/2005/05-02-21.gif
\_ This is hilarious!!! Best jotd, thanks for sharing this.
\_ how many death threats did the author get from this?
\_ Crap I laughed my ass off -- One of the more brilliant things
I've seen on the internet so far -- much better than "tubgirl"
\_ 1. Conservative != Religious. I'm sure there are plenty of
atheist conservatives. 2. You cannot reason with religious people
about their religion, especially if it's Christianity/Islam/
Mormonism, etc., religions that say "This is the way the Universe
works exactly even if your own eyes say otherwise", as opposed to
other religions that don't try to tell you exactly how the Universe
works but just try to give people a moral framework and some
philosophical insight. Like Governor Jesse Ventura said, religion
is mostly for people who cannot deal with the philosophical
implications of what happens when you die, when did the Universe
begin/was it always here/how will it end, etc. If you cannot
figure it out yourself, life becomes hard because it makes reality
harder to cope with. So you turn to religion to give you answers.
Or, you've been brought up with it or your country/community
encourages/forces it.
But trying to "reason" with religious people is hopeless since they
have already accepted conflicting information in order to gain the
above answers to the difficult questions of life, even if it does
seem silly to some to base your understanding of reality on texts
writting 2000+ years ago. Would you trust a surgeon from 2000 years
ago to operate on you? |
| 2005/2/12-14 [Science/Biology] UID:36152 Activity:very high |
2/12 Informal poll: who is your favorite philosopher and why (if the
explanation can be short)? -- ilyas
\_ Squashed philosophers:
http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed -John
\_ I kant pick just one!
\_ We should locke you out of the motd for that.
\_ Die both of you.
\_ No chance of that, marx my words.
\_ Scheler you can't be serious.
\_ Are you mach-ing me?
\_ That's sarte-nly a possibility, isn't it?
\_ And a hume-ongous one at that.
\_ I really hobbes so
\_ Jesus, guys.
\_ Foucault of you. -- ilyas
\_ They haven't really abused the
names, just bentham a bit...
\_ Alright, will you guys
stop milling around and get
back to the topic at hand?
Seconded. There must be better things _/
to do than russell-ing with these
awful puns.
\_ Stop it, you're confuciusing me
\_ yes these are weber-low expectations.
\_ Dewey stop, or dewey continue?
\_ Dude, this rawls!
\_ I think this thread reached a
new Plato of pain. -- ilyas
\_ I think this thread has
pretty thoreau-ly covered the
subject.
\_ Occam on. There's probably
some life still left.
-- ilyas
\_ Hobbes (the tiger)
\_ Sarte . Life is meaningless
\_ You misspelled Sartre.
\_ This is meaningless
\_ speaking of philosophers, can someone explain which philosophers
would agree more with different ideologies? For example, Marx
would agree more with Communism, Darwin would agree with more
with say, libertarians (every man for himself, survival of the
fittest), etc etc.
\_ I don't know much about Darwin's philosophical ideas, so maybe
he actually did believe in that, but in general the "survival
of the fittest" stuff is a scientific observation. I don't see
any reason why he couldn't be a complete communist. Just because
one observes a certain facet nature doesn't mean one has to
believe in that as a philosophy. I also admit to being rather
illiterate on most of this stuff but I doubt Marx would have
approved of the form that communism has taken... how did the
classic socialist/communist writers propose leadership to be
designated? I was under the impression that they simply
overlooked that aspect.
\_ Well answered. Being Darwin wouldn't necessarily make
Darwin a Darwinist.
\_ "Darwinism" is a scientific term. "Social Darwinism"
is a political term that has little to do with the man.
\_ You're right, I mistook "Darwinist" as equivalent to
"Social Darwinist". According to webster, they're not.
Thanks for the correction.
\_ Jesus - GWB
\_ Berkeley
\- aka Ride Bike Drive Hybrid Use Linux Go Vegan Homo Loving
Anti Nuclear Left Wing Nuts
\_ Hey, don't dis the hybrids man -- they're pretty sweet. You
can pretty keep or toss the rest, though.
can pretty much keep or toss the rest, though.
\_ You left out free pot and mumia
\_ Nice zeugma there.
\_ Berkeley is the name of a philosopher, dipwads
\_ Here he is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
\_ Someone can't take a joke. |
| 2004/12/25-27 [Science/Biology] UID:35438 Activity:insanely high |
12/25 Why don't religious types who hate the theory of evolution cry about
gravity being taught in high school physics?
\_ Because 'theory' or not, gravity does not contradict anything in
the bible.
\_ Because they have about an 8th grade level education and it
never occurred to them.
\_ natural law was created by god
\_ Because Newton was a devout Christian?
\_ I'll vote for an overturn of gravity. Gravity sucks.
\_ It's hard to argue with 9.8m/s^2 in the here and now.
it's verfiable, repeatable, and subject to continual experiments
that can be completed within ones lifttime.
\_ Just like evolution, gravity is a *theory* and not a *fact*.
Schools should be emphasizing this and not teaching gravity
as a universal truth.
\_ Actually, Newton's gravitational theory is known to be wrong,
thanks to the accurate predictions of general relativity. I
don't think any effort is made to hide this fact. Of course,
at some level GR has to be wrong because of its inconsistincies
with quantum mechanics, which in turn could only be an absolute
truth if God is a sick bastard.
\_ Newton's gravitational theory is NOT wrong. It is merely
incomplete. It's a great fallacy of the layperson who
has an incomplete understanding of classical mechanics
to believe that it is "wrong". If you were to argue
that classical mechanics is "wrong" then you'd have to
assume that 90% of science is "wrong" in the sense
that we utilize approximations for almost everything.
In fact, Newton's gravitational theory is what general
relativity approximates to in day-to-day observation.
Your definition of what "wrong" is is plainly idiotic.
-williamc
\_ I can't believe I'm being called a layperson by a
fucking sysadmin. Newtwon's laws of gravitation
predict, among other things, an incorrect result
for the precession of the perihellion of Mercury.
GR gets the right answer, Newton's laws don't.
\-GR gets a "better" answer.
Period. The sense in which it is wrong is exactly
the sense in which creationists and their ilk are
claiming that evolution is not "right" as an absolute
truth. I agree that that is a red herring which would
render most science wrong in some sense, but I think
that is precisely the point. It is yet another way
for the right to try to not just fight a specific
scientific/political battle but to try to undermine
the very essence of science.
\_ QM has fully deterministic interpretations. -- ilyas
\_ Which almost no one believe.
\_ Which almost no one believe. I'm not saying they're
wrong. I have no opinion one way or the other, but
these fundamental philosophical questions about QM
are awfuly hard to resolve experimentally.
\_ On the contrary, if no one believed in QM then
we wouldn't be sitting here typing to each other
on MOSFET driven devices, idiot. -williamc
\_ re-read the fucking post, idiot. I meant the
deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics.
The philosophical interpretations of quantum
mechanics have no bearing on practical predictions
or applications like MOSFET design.
\_ Your brain has been classified as: small.
\- you must pay me 5cents.
\_ ?
\_ it is far more testable and verifiable via experiment than
evolution is (at the moment).
\_ Biogenesis evolution is equivalent to a religious cult for
secular extremists.
\_ I think the appropraite response to this is "fuck you and die."
\_ this is perfect example of cult behavior.
\- the comparison between the "evolution debate" and the
physics theories arent really comparable because the
anti-evolution crowd is not attacking they evolution
theory scientifically but are affimatively pushing a
crazy and non-scientific "explanation" [sic]. it's like
saying "newton's theory is wrong because it doenst
explain clairvoyance or telekinetic motion." something
like refining evolution from the crude species theory
to something more sophisticated on genes may be more
comparable to the "upgrade" to relativisitic theory. --psb
\_ from wikipedia: Since the emergence of modern
genetics in the 1940s, evolution has been
defined more specifically as a change in the
frequency of alleles from one generation to the next. |
| 2004/10/12-13 [Politics/Domestic/California, Science/Biology, Health/Disease/General] UID:34070 Activity:very high |
10/12 "We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. America just
lost a great champion for this cause in Christopher Reeve.
People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs
and walk again with stem cell research."
-John Edwards. Hallelujah!
\_ Let me guess, you have a problem with that. Would you
be more satisfied if he said he plans to leave everyone
with those diseases to suffer while we spend our money
on other things?
\_ I have a problem with Edwards promising millions of sick
people something he can't deliver in a cynical attemp to
get votes from the desperately ill. You're ok with that.
\_ We need less Homer Simpsons, and more money for public schools!
\_ But what does Bud Day think about this???
\_ Why do you hate Bud Day? |
| 2004/9/8 [Science/Biology, Reference/Religion] UID:33411 Activity:high |
9/7 It is time for MOTD's monthly evolution vs creationism debate:
Serbia strikes blow against evolution,
Creationism put on equal footing with Darwinism.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5932128
\_ here's a challenge to you religious people. which is more
impressively godly, a god who has to construct everything in
the universe individually, or a god who can write down a simple
set of physical laws and then sit back and watch for several
billion years as intelligent life evolves according to His
plan? do you worship brute force?
\_ False dichotomy. The really big problem with this whole
discussion is that many religious people see their beliefs
threatened by agenda driven research, or anti-religion spin put
on science (and there is some truth to that--there are some
atheists who will do anything to spin research). Atheists cringe
at any effort to "prove" god, since in their opinion he obviously
doesn't exist and anyone who disagrees is just deluding himself.
*Real* scientists shouldn't care one way or another unless claims
(pro- or anti-religion) are testable and falsifiable. Then there
are believers who try to show other believers that science is not
a threat to *good* religion and wish both sides would stop
misrepresenting the other.
\_ false dichotomy! agenda-driven science! consensus science!
activist judges! liberal homosexual agenda! w00t!
\_ I would support it if only they would also give equal footing
to the study of witchcraft. No one has disproved witchcraft.
http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/part_I/mm01_toc.html |
| 2004/8/29-30 [Science/Biology, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:33205 Activity:nil |
8/29 The re-animator: http://tinyurl.com/538aa |
| 2004/8/12 [Science/Biology, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA] UID:32870 Activity:high |
8/12 On a related note, how to turn lazy, procrastinating soda users
into productive people:
http://csua.org/u/8kr (longer LA Times article)
\_ Great. Tack that onto my speed habit and I might as well be
surgically grafted into my office chair.
\_ Speed habit? Did sky and muchandr suddenly relapse?
\_ That just makes confirms that laziness is a sign of higher brain
function. |
| 2004/6/9 [Science/Biology] UID:30699 Activity:high |
6/9 To those people who don't believe that "evolution is set in stone,"
what exactly is it that you don't "believe"? Evolution through natural
selection is a process, much like how a quicksort would work. What
arguments would you have against evolution? I find it puzzling that
people would accept that a quicksort would work without question but
question naturally selective [formatd. learn 80 columns]
\_ I personally find 'macro-evolution' if not necessarily 'wrong,'
then extremely counterintuitive. My main problem is the origin
of bacterial life, which, as people below noted, is not evolution's
department per se. -- ilyas
\_ quicksort-- seeing is believing. You can observe quicksort and
see that the algorithm works by trial and error, and by induction,
proof, etc. Evolution-- can't observe it. You can make convincing
arguments based on solid facts and theory, and you can prove
it via small examples (British butterfly evolve to match the
color of the pollution) but you can't prove the entire history
of evolution, and you certainly can't prove it by via induction
or any other method.
\_ I believe you can evolve to using 80 character columns.
genetic algorithms. -williamc
\_ Your rationale is terribly flawed. One can say the same thing
about physics. Just because we have done a lot of experiments
proving that there is a gravitational constant doesn't mean
that G is the same everywhere if we were to follow that line
of thinking. The same can be said for quicksort, you have a
certain "faith" in your inductive process that it works. If
you posit that your inductive method for mathematically proving
quicksort works is valid you have to give the same credence
to something like a genetic algorithm, which has been also
mathematically proven. If that's the case then you
will have to agree that inductively we can apply
such an algorithm to biology. If biology were to follow
a quicksort algorithm vs. that of a genetic algorithm
then you would have to come to the conclusion evolution
occurs through quicksort. There is ample evidence that
biology follows a genetic algorithm, and you can actually
observe evolution at work on a small scale on a daily basis.
In fact, we use it everyday in recombinant DNA and in dog
breeding. There is also unequivocal evidence that all
life forms of significance pass their genes to subsequent
generation. In other words, the only way you can "doubt" that
evolution occurs through the process of genetic algorithms is if
you A) Reject inheritable traits B) reject the concept that things
change over time (in other words evolution) C) Reject the cellular
you A) Reject inheritable traits B) reject the concept that things
change over time (in other words evolution) C) Reject the cellular
basis for life D) Reject genetic algorithms as a valid algorithm.
In addition if you follow the conventional wisdom of
"seeing is believing" then I suppose you believe in magic,
little green men from mars, and that hobbits really do exist on
Middle Earth. -williamc
\_ I think that science and belief are simply independent.
Most of the scientists I know (including me, probably) have
at least one kooky belief within the realm of the unproven
and non-disproven. How is believing in hobbits going to
stop me from advancing science by, say, trying to measure
k_B better?
\_ It's not, until you start demanding that we teach hobbits
to 6th graders, to the exclusion of real science.
\_ I suppose that someone could decide that evolution happens
but reject the idea that a new species can occur, i.e. lose
the ability to interbreed... but this is a stupid notion
because there is evidence and observation of this too.
\_ The arguments I've heard is that there are two things:
micro-evolution and macro-evolution. micro-evolution is
accepted by all scientists but not macro-evolution. There
is also the question of why we aren't seeing a continuous
spectrum of living things as opposed to say lion and leopard,
evolution is supposed to happen through these accumulated
tiny genetic changes, but why does it often result in these
very distinctive species? I read some answer somewhere
but it wasn't very convincing at all.
\_ It looks like you're looking for an explanation of
"speciation". I think the accepted argument is that if
you start with a homogenous population, and provide 2
different ecological niches (either habitats, food sources
or lifestyles). Members of the homogenous population will
go into one niche or the other. Animals in niche 1 will
tend to interbreed with others in niche 1 and will have
fewer chances to breed with those in niche 2. If an
adaptation favorable to those in niche 1 occurs, it will
spread throughout animals in niche 1 due to "survival of
the fittest". That adaptation will not have much chance to
spread to niche 2 because of limited interbreeding, and the
adaptation might be unfavorable to those living in niche 2.
As animals in the different niches accumulate more
different changes, they become less likely (or able) to
interbreed, and so the rate of differentiation accelerates.
\_ A similar problem appears in the fossil record.
Basically, you don't see slow changes though history,
you see large sudden changes. For example, For
millions of years you have fossils of the same kinds
of fish. Then, all of a sudden, all those fish are
gone, and it's a completely new set of fish in the
record.
\_ You can selectively breed a hairless chihuahua from a
wolf in under 10,000 years.
\_ I heard that's more because of some unique
characteristic of dogs than anything else.
all cats look more or less the same for example.
\_ Do tell...
\_ don't remember. heard from a friend.
something to do with the unique way dogs grow
such that one can arrest their growth, thus
making dogs like chihuahua, which essentially
never grew up.
\_ The fossil record has a relatively coarse time
resolution. If there was some event to cause a major
change in climate/habitat/food sources, it might cause
everything to evolve to adapt or die out within only
a few hundreds or thousands of generations, but for
most animals, that would mean completely new species
appear in only 10-100 thousand years. The fossil record
would completele miss that change unless it was fairly
recent. After all, maybe only 1 in a million animals
get fossilized.
\_ All correct, but in order to adapt, you either
need a whole lot of mutation, or the genes have
to already exist. (As in the London moth case.)
This evolution seems to be happening on a much
larger scale, and faster than predicted.
\_ In just a few decades a Soviet scientist trying to
breed less viscous minks created a breed that has
floppy ears, spotted coats and 'barks'; 3 things
never seen in wild minks. Where did these new
genes come from? It turned out they were all side
effects of having the adrenaline system become
underactive. Turning one gene off produced a wide
range of seemingly unrelated effects.
\_ The whole debate about any scientific theory being "set in stone"
or a matter of belief is a reflection of both sides' lack of
understanding of science or of what the point of science education
is. The loudest people on both sides of this issue are generally
not scientists...besides, given that only about a week of a
typical yearlong course on biology is devoted to evolution,
and that it's not really important to major political issues
or technology, it's unclear to me why people care so much.
\_ natural selection has huge consequences for technology as well
as implications for politics. http://www.nonzero.org evolution
is a powerful model.
\_ Why bother to find out? It's already set in stone. Whether you
understand it or not is predetermined. You either do, or you don't.
\_ how about asking this question to the undergrads at Texas,
Tennessee, and South Carolina? Soda is not exactly the right
place to ask this question. Also, learn to obey 80 columns!!!
\_ Learn to not be so annally retentive.
\_ I think that creationists (some anyway) accept natural
selection. They can understand how one species can acquire
traits that eventually turn it into another. The issue is
whether an amoeba can turn into an elephant. That process is
not clear at all. Worse still, how can a soup of primordial
chemicals turn into the amoeba to begin with?
\_ Creationists don't even bother to learn what they're arguing
against. Is it easier to start from fish? How about fish to
elephants? Evolution (genetic processes) isn't incompatible
with an idea of a more limited creation.
\_ I view it as not more limited, but more elegant.
\_ Evolution doesn't explain how primordial chemicals turn into
amoeba nor does it say that it's not possible for God to
have created the first amoebas from which everything else
evolved. Why can't people just accept that the Bible or
any religion for that matter are all human constructs?
--jeffwong
\_ You are both describing "scientific creationism" which
sounds reasonable but which is rejected by science simply
because science often despises religion. Evolution is a
gospel to some.
\_ Science seeks to explain phenomena through verifiable
facts. Since a true "act of God" is not a testable
hypothesis, it is almost by definition outside of science.
For a field of science to include as a premise an act of
God is essentially to hang the whole logical construct on
an unverifiable assumption. It would be like a theorem
in math saying "1+1=2, except when God changes it."
\_ It is more philosophy than science, but rather than
allowing for the possibility that evolution did not
create all life as we know it it is taken as fact.
1+1=2 for given assumptions. Evolution is just a
theory.
\_ I asked God. He proved to me scientifically that he
created both the amoeba and the elephant. Adam named
them, though. God wasn't much on naming things after
the first few days.
\_ Two kinds of scientific creationism: 1) God created all
of this through the engine of natural selection; works
because the acceptance of God as creator does not impede
accepting the most rational explanation, but simply adds
a layer of faith the to mix. 2) God created all of this
as described in the Bible, subject to a few tricks of
physics but without resorting to evolution; doesn't work
because it requires the substitiution of faith for good
old scientific reasoning. The latter tends to get scoffed
at by scientists; the former tends to be incomprehensible
to atheist scientists but doesn't elucidate the same sense
of scorn. |
| 2004/6/9 [Science/Biology] UID:30696 Activity:very high |
6/9 He gets a little crazy at the end, but he's got a point.
Religious Zealots in schools:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38861
\_ Yeah, and what's the deal with gravity anyway? I have no
conclusive evidence that it exists. Back in my day, we didn't
have no fancy "science" to teach us about the world. We had
the Bible, and dagnabit, it was good enough for us!
\_ They're only religious zealots if you consider science a religion,
which some (mostly nonscientists) do. Schools don't teach any
science other than the generally-accepted theory. You have to go
to college if you want to learn about fringe theories. Since
schools have to teach such a broad curriculum, I don't have a
problem with them teaching only the most popular theories.
\_ I only consider science a religion when people treat it as
religion. This point is made in the editorial, but it's
somewhat obsured by his retoric. Most people I know treat
somewhat obscured by his rhetoric. Most people I know treat
evolution as religion, not science. In science it's ok to
know the problems with your theories. Not so with most
evolution advocates. To them it's like the bible, "It's the
TRUTH, it is the WORD. Evolution is FACT!" That makes it a
religion. You don't need craky theories to point out
problems in evolution's case, it's full of them.
\_ I don't know a single person who treats evolution as a fact
or unassailable truth. The strongest defence of it I've seen
is someone saying that it's an accepted theory.
\_ Man, you should get out more.
\_ When your viewpoint IS a religion, it's natural to assume
everyone with an opposing view has religious-like faith
in their viewpoint.
\_ Nah, I think it's just the self-rightousness that
reminds me of religion.
\_ How about this quote from my High School Bio teacher?
"Yeah, it's sceince so we call evolution a theory, but
it's really fact." (Ok, it's paraphrased, it was 7
years ago.)
\_ Theory doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
Perhaps you should have listened better or asked more
questions at the time.
\_ You're letting the right-wing anti-intellectuals define the
debate again. Evolution is the most widely accepted scientific
explanation of the facts and, as such, deserves its place as the
theory of choice in educating the youth. The "growing minority
of scientists" who challenge evolution are growing because it
would be impossible for their number to shrink without swiftly
approaching zero. Darrow made it impossible for the fundies to
do away with evolution altogether, so they're trying instead to
insinuate their fictions into the debate through pseudo-
reasonable discourse, but before you know it, they're showing off
pictures of dinosaurs standing with neanderthals and voting to
standardize pi as 3.
\_ I also find it amusing that the religious nuts don't feel the
need to go after the physics and math curriculum(except for
the pi thing.) To me, e^(i*theta)=cos(theta) + i*sin(theta)
is much more indication of a god than anything in biology...
And what about all the time spent on Newton's law of
gravitation which is *known* to be wrong?
\_ Because it's right 99% of the time, and the 1% where it's
wrong is too complicated for high-school kids.
\_ right, and that sounds really reasonable to me, since
i'm a scientist, but that's not the point. predictions
of how biology works based on evolution are also right
>99% of the time, but for some reason the religious nuts
want people to make a big deal out of that in spite of
the fact that all the science taught in school, and even
a lot of the math has some problems if you really
look deeply at the Truth of the matter. It shows a
basic failure to understand how science works. The job
of a science teacher is not to teach truth in some
absolute sense, it's to teach what works, which includes
both evolution and newtonian gravitation.
\_ You all realize the Pi thing is a myth, right?
\_ sounds reasonable except the "predictions of
how biology works based on evolution are also
right > 99% of the time" part. evolution nuts
want people to believe evolution is like set
in stone. it's not.
\_ Could you describe what you mean by 99% of
experiments, and maybe a few example links?
\_ You all realize the story about religious nuts
legislating Pi to 3 is an urban ledgend, right?
http://www.snopes.com/religion/pi.htm
Snopes doesn't meantion that the value they wanted
to legislate was 16/5 or 3.2. This was in 1897.
The bill was not religiously modivated, as I recall,
it had something to do with standardizing
mesurements. Not that this makes it ok, but it does
make you stupid.
\_ I could see some value in a commerce-based standard
for Pi. If some commodity is commonly sold by the
barrel, and you want to translate that into some other
volume, there might be value in a law saying "You can
use Pi=3.2 in your conversion and the other guy can't
sue you for cheating him."
\_ no way. the same could be said then for 1/3, 2/3,
etc., but it's not relevant. The uncertanty will
always be limited by the rest of the problem, and
the number of digits of pi used will depend on
the precision to which the diameter is known and
the precision to which you need to know the
circumference. This will never be more than, say
10 digits or so at the *absolute* maximum, and
since we know millions of digits, its just not
relevant.
\_ Sorry, looks like I was wrong about the reason
being standarization, it had something to do
with a math crank. link:
http://www.daft.com/~rab/liberty/Miscellaneous/Pi-bill-Indiana
\_ Catch this part?:
Fortunately, Indiana has, or had, a bicameral legislature. The bill
came up for first reading in the Senate on Thursday, February 11.
Apparently deciding to have some fun, they referred it to the Committee
on Temperance. The Committee reported back on Friday, February 12,
approving the bill, which then had its second reading.
\_ Pi is 22/7ths, just as Jesus intended.
\_ If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
me.
\_ If God had meant man to fly, he wouldn't have invented
trains. |
| 2004/6/3-4 [Science/Biology, Reference/History/WW2/Germany] UID:30584 Activity:high |
6/3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2284783.stm Hitler would have killed himself after seeing this report. \_ On of the princes of Denmark is married to an asian... \_ Yes, we Danes have always been advanced in choosing mates for personality, looks, and intelligence. It's what's kept us beautiful all these centuries. Oh, and helped spread our seed all over the world. \_ Teutonic knight, +4 hitpoint +4 armor +1 range +1 maneuver \_ Those were Germans. \_ nah, in this case it's the asians who are spreading their genes to far flung corners of the world. |
| 2004/4/1-2 [Science/Biology] UID:12969 Activity:low |
4/1 HAHAHAHAHA OOPS. Another Darwin award winner:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/04/01/rape.fantasy.reut/index.html
\_ he didn't kill himself.
\_ Okay, potential Darwin award nominee then.
\_ The article says she attacked his testicles. If he can't
reproduce, he's a legitimate candiate.
\_ At least his mind was cool enough to stop and ask, instead of
overwhalmed by the consensual sex he thought he was about the get
and went ahead and raped the woman anyway.
\_ Yeah, he's not that dumb/evil. He made a simple mistake under
highly unusual and salacious circumstances. |
| 2004/2/6-7 [Science/Biology, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:12140 Activity:nil |
2/6 In biology, how is a species classified as Old World or New World?
\_ http://csua.org/u/5vp
\_ yer mom - old world. |
| 2004/1/30-31 [Science/Biology] UID:12040 Activity:insanely high |
1/30 Speaking of liberal vs. conservative, what's with conservatives and
biology education?
http://csua.org/u/5s0
\_ It's not even really "conservatives". It's the fucking
evangelicals.
\_ The Republican party is at their beck and call. Change that or
stop pretending there's a difference.
\_ Who are a huge power base in the Republican party, and voted for
Bush in record numbers, so he definitely owes them (84% of
evangelicals voted for Bush in 2000, as opposed to 75% for
Reagan).
\_ I'm a conservative (not the libertarian kind). Evolution can
be explained, IMHO, but not as gospel truth as it is told
today. Offering other theories as very good alternatives is
a great idea (it doesn't have to be the strict creationist view).
\_ I demand equal time for my religious creation theory,
namely, that I created everything and therefore, you
are all my property and owe me homage and service.
\_ creationism in any degree of strictness is a faith, not a theory.
\_ earth created in 7 days is a strict view of creationism
(versus earth created over many many years)
\_ Any view of creationism is based on faith.
A view that doesn't hold God to 7 literal days might
at least be compatible with the physical evidence,
but that doesn't make it a theory. -tom
\_ Accepting evolution with the kind of defensive
vehemence I commonly see among bio types has to
be based on faith too. Where do bacteria
come from? I don't have to be a religious nut
to be a creationist, nor do I have to be a
creationist to be sceptical about evolution.
I can postulate some hitherto unknown
mechanism for the creation of 'bacterial
nanobots' without invoking the ugly F
word.
-- ilyas
\_ tell us about the stars, ilyas
\_ Being skeptical and flat out rejecting are
(obviously) two very different behaviors.
--scotsman
\_ I was addressing Tom's claim that any view
of creationism is based on faith, which is
a false claim. -- ilyas
\_ Then you haven't made the point. Do you
have emperical evidence to base some view
of creationism upon? Or is this one of those
"unknown unknowns" discussions? Also, as
the person below pointed out, evolution doesn't
even attempt to explain the origin of life.
\_ by the way, "jove /etc/motd.public"
also doesn't provide privacy
protection, gmartin. -tom
--scotsman
\_ How is "some hitherto unknown mechanism"
different from God? Unless you're talking
about a physical process we don't understand
yet. There are plenty of plausible theories
as to how protein structures first started
replicating themselves which don't require
a deus ex machina. -tom
\_ I am not aware of any theory which presents
an unbroken line which starts with chemicals
and ends with bacteria (the simplest form
of life not counting oddly devolved
borderline cases like viruses). There is
also no evidence for any such chain to give
us hints. Currently, I conclude that either
life arose somewhere where such a record
does exist (Mars?) and moved here via
spores, or we got pollinated by ET or God or
something like that. I don't reject the
existence of God, so having to fall back
on something like that as a possibility
doesn't bother me, except in a sense that
it makes a hypothesis inelegant (but not
unfalsifiable, necessarily). -- ilyas
\_ OK, fair enough--you can believe
absurd things without believing in
creationism. Is that your point? -tom
\_ It's not "based on faith". Evolution doesn't
specifically cover the origin of the first life.
It's about *evolution*. We obviously don't have
a lot of evidence about the earliest life, or
how similar that was to bacteria.
\_ possible theories/views:
a. earth created in 7 days
b. Evolution
c. certainly there should be many other theories
not covering a) or b)
\_ There's also the "aged earth" theory. Similar to
how Adam was created with the appearance of a
grown man, rather than an infant, so too the earth
was created with the appearance of age.
\_ That's not a theory--it's completely
tautological. "The physical world was created
by God exactly the way it is now." It's
impossible to prove or disprove, because
it doesn't do anything at all to attempt
to *explain* the physical world, which is what
a theory does. -tom
\_ 'Theories which can not be tested are
critical
examination. They should be
taught to examine everything
philosophies.'
thumpers
with mentioning its
are the only ones trying to
suppress knowledge.
\_ And the dinosaur bones were planted by god to
tempt the weak of faith.... If we're going to
go down this route, let's remember the good
Bishop Berkeley who wrote that we are all but
thoughts in the mind of god; there's as much
evidence for that as there is for creationism.
\_ you overwrote my post. use motdedit.
\_ sorry. but motdedit has no privacy protections
\_ why does it have any less privacy protection
than "jove /etc/motd.public". It doesn't
log accesses, and if you don't want to
wait in queue, then use motdedit -n
\_ where is motdedit?
/csua/bin/motdedit
/csua/bin/motdedit -h for help
\_ and when you're a complete moron, you need
privacy protections, eh?
"earth created in 7 days" is not a theory.
It's not supported by a single observable
fact. It might have been a hypothesis at one
point, and now it's been shown to be false
by the vast preponderance of physical
evidence. -tom
\_ look. I'm not a supporter of a.
I'm thinking more about the lines of
b) and c) above. Schools tend to
teach b) as gospel truth.
\_ yes, tom found me out.
\_ They also teach Physics as gospel
truth. There's about as much
evidence for evolution as for
reason.
\_ I think you don't realize
how much our understanding
that model, so why do conservatives
suddenly start hedging their bets
when the subject of biology comes up?
we should teach the first tier
theories first.
- yet another poster
of the laws of physics
changes all the time. Does
the discovery of a new type
of quark invalidate GR?
\_ There is a theory that
birds are descendants of
dinosaurs. It is a low
tier theory because while
there are evidence supporting
it and evidence countering
it. Macro evolution is
lower tier than our many
laws of physics for the same
that model, so why do conservatives
suddenly start hedging their bets
when the subject of biology comes up?
\_ not all conservatives believe
in 7 day creationism.
\_ they teach evolution just like they
teach any other scientific theory.
Why should it be singled out?
\_ There are many tiers of
theories based on how strong
the evidence is. theory of
gravity is first tier. theory
of evolution is second tier
or third tier depending on
which part of this complex
theory you are talking about.
In particular, macroevolution
is much weaker than micro-
evolution. I am not against
teaching evolution but we need
to mention the holes in it
when teaching it. And all
other factors being equal,
we should teach the first tier
theories first.
- yet another poster
\_ I agree.
\_ Why don't they teach the holes in
Christianity? Actually, they're not
"holes" so much as "tenets incon-
sistent with scientific facts".
Evolutionary theory is pretty well
established. There isn't any theory
that is 100% known and hole-free.
\_ Christianity does not claim
that it could be empirically
proven. Yea, I agree that
a woman giving birth without
having sex is inconsistent
with scientific facts. Is
that your point?
\_ Are you interested in
teaching our kids to
examine evolutionary theory
critically, or are you more
interested in covering up
its holes so as to use it
to advance your anti-
Christianity agenda?
\_ Science is all about
critical examination.
They should be taught
to examine everything
critically. The bible-
thumpers are the only
ones trying to suppress
knowledge.
\_ don't forget the
anti-Christian fanatics
who want to teach
evolution theory
without mentioning its
flaws.
\_ I haven't seen any
evidence that anyone
wants to hide "flaws"
in evolution. -tom
\_
Really? I have.
let's put it this way,
I won't tell my kids birds
are descended from dinosaurs
and I don't feel
that our educational system
should tell my kids that
humans are descended
from amoeba without
presenting it as a theory
with very significant holes.
\_ you haven't specified any
of the holes.
\_ well, I haven't
heard anyone say
why it is a good
theory either. Go
pick up a book or
stfw if you want to
go into the details.
\_ Sounds like you're
the one who needs to
pick up a book.
\_ I see what your issue is,
now. The fact that *you*
don't understand something
doesn't mean that the
theory is bad. -tom
\_ Do *you* understand
everything about it?
If not, how did you
conclude that the
theory is good?
\_ All the evidence so far
indicates that birds are
descended from dinos. While
I agree that we need to
teach children to question
I think it's pigheadedness
to deny that the argument
for birds being descended
from dinos is strong.
\_ I don't think you can say that
the Theory of Gravity (do you
really mean to say General
Relativity?) is any stronger or
weaker than the Theory of
Evolution. Both are subject
to modification in light of
new information. Both have
a tremendous body of evidence
supporting them. If anything,
The Theory of Evolution is
more important because of its
larger impact on societies
view of itself and probably
it is more important to teach
it. -biophysics grad
\_ There is a theory that
birds are descendants of
dinosaurs. It is a low
tier theory because while
there are evidence supporting
it and evidence countering
it. Macro evolution is
lower tier than our many
laws of physics for the same
reason. As for importance,
sure (that's why I said
"all other factors being
equal" above), but we need
to becareful here because
its very importance makes
its teaching subject to
non-science related pressures
from all sides.
\_ I think you don't realize
how much our understanding
of the laws of physics
changes all the time. Does
the discovery of a new type
of quark invalidate GR?
\_ You miss the point.
Let me ask you this:
Do you agree that some
theories are stronger
than others? If you
do, we have no
disagreement. If your
point is that your
knowledge of physics
is better than mine,
I agree with you.
\_ If you're not going to use motdedit, at least
have the courtesy to run an editor that can
tell you when changes have been made to the
file, then copy your work, exit w/o saving,
reopen the file, and paste your work. I don't
use motdedit, but I don't overwrite other
people's posts, either.
\_ is there such a thing as a Jewish Creationist?
\_ http://www.orot.com/ec.html#Anchor-19500
\_ http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/evotmline.html
there are darwinians, neo-darwinians, and non-darwinians. |
| 2004/1/30-31 [Science/Biology] UID:12035 Activity:nil |
1/30 Georgia School Official Wants No 'Evolution'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109939,00.html |
| 2003/12/3 [Science/Biology, Science/Physics] UID:11286 Activity:nil |
12/2 FYI, after the APA Board of Trustees removed homosexuality as a
disorder from DSM-II in 1973, there was a big uproar from
psychiatrists. The issue was brought to a referendum, and out of
~ 10,000 votes, 58% voted that it should be removed from DSM-II.
http://www.worldandi.com/public/1997/april/ar5.cfm
\_ Wow. Science by vote.
\_ of course. it's fundamental principle which democracy
is build upon. We can not allow few elites hijack
the reality and the truth. Science should belong to the
oridinary people.
\_ In a qualitative science, could you do any better?
\_ Wtf is a qualitatiave science?
\_ One that relies on qualitative data. I.e. "He was
diagnosed as crazy" vs. "He is 73.2% crazy"
\_ Contrast with quantitative. It's fuzzy science, if it is
science at all.
\_ That was sort of my point. There are no fuzzy sciences.
There are analytic sciences (mathematics), and
empirical sciences (biology, physics, etc.).
\_ then, there is Chemistry. you can argue that it's
not a science at all. -- ex Chem Eng major |
| 2003/10/30-31 [Science/Biology, Computer/Theory] UID:10878 Activity:nil |
10/30 Yahoo! News - Robots to Gain Eyes in the Back of Their Heads
htt://csua.org/u/4um
It reads " But as computer scientists at the University of Maryland
proved mathematically in 1998, if robots could see in all directions
they would not need any other sensors." What kind of mathematical
proof would that be? How do you go about proving something like this
mathematically?
\_ why doesn't evolution favor eyes at the back of animals heads?
\_ Prey animals usually have very widely-spaced eyes and can see
in almost 360-degrees. Predators (and humans) have forward
facing eyes which give good depth perception. Why do no
vertebrates have more than 2 eyes?
\_ The fundamental answer guiding all evolutionary processes:
efficiency.
\_ only able to last 15 seconds in the sack, eh?
\_ How is turning the head to look behind more efficient than
procesing more signals from more eyes in the brain?
\_ You save the energy needed to grow more eyes and the
brain structures needed to process the extra input.
\_ But you need to grow the muscles to turn the head,
and for some mammals, even part of the body.
\_ good point.
\_ Eyes have a lot of muscles and things, at least our full
functioned ones do. Also, head movement is needed anyway
for eating (maybe not for humans, but for prey animals).
Since prey animal eyes and hearing suffices, more eyes
probably cause more problems than they help. They might
also be vulnerable to injuries. Head movement is also used
for smelling.
\_ You might also want to take into account that more
eyes also translates to more brain mass/complexity
to process the information.
\_ Flies have many eyes in two groups.
\_ I said VERTEBRATES.
\_ and mammals (and many verterbrates) have many rods/cones
in two groups.
\_ But flies have many separate lenses whereas mammals have
only two.
\_ The article explains it pretty well:
"The ability to navigate was the lowest level of capability
needed by a robot to work in an unknown environment, she said."
"Providing a robot with "omni-directional" vision could vastly
improve its navigational skills, ..."
Thus, you make the assumption that navigation is needed, then
you prove that 360-degree eyes are sufficient for navigation,
thus it doesn't "need any other sensors." |
| 2003/8/4-5 [Science/Biology, Computer/SW/OS/OsX] UID:29231 Activity:very high |
8/3 http://objective.jesussave.us/propaganda.html \_how many times are you planning to post this? \_ How many times have you seen it on the motd? \_ this is the second. \_ Is this serious or a parody? \_ parody \_ It's not parody. It's the truth. \_ You can't handle the truth! \_ Qusay's childrn are humilited by this rights of Americans in Iraq space! \_ Can't we all just get along?? \_ Hey look, Mr. Perfect English is back! |
| 2003/7/16-17 [Science/Biology, Science/Space] UID:29062 Activity:kinda low |
7/16 Wednesday Funnies
1. Men hunting nekkid women:
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1356380&nav=168XGqk0
\_ " Video for this story is no longer available."
2. Creationist Science Fair:
http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html |
| 2003/6/19 [Science/Biology] UID:28773 Activity:very high |
6/19 Some places still live in the 10th century not the 21st:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030619_535.html#
\_ At least she doesn't have to consummate the marriage.
\_ now I wish I had a good link to a school board fighting
the teaching of godless evolution in our schools.
\_ Why do you call it godless evolution? In what
ways does evolution invalidate the concept of
supreme divinity?
\_ Evolution is in Genesis, unfortuately, after each
of these verses, the bible contradicts itself and says
that God created this stuff, but that's to be expected
from a work that was complied from many different oral
sources:
And he said: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and
such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after
its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And
it was so done.
And the earth brought forth the green herb, and such as
yieldeth seed according to its kind, and the tree that
beareth fruit having seed each one according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good.
God also said: Let the waters bring forth the creeping
creature having life, and the fowl that may fly over the
earth under the firmament of heaven.
And God created the great whales, and every living and
moving creature, which the waters brought forth, according
to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to its
kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living
creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and
beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was
so done.
\_ All that's saying is that ducks will give birth to more
ducks and not to trees or monkeys. It has not in any way
contradicted itself.
\_ What is needed is a definition of creation (as performed
by a supreme divinity) before we can argue whether there
are contradictions.
\_ You forgot about the part where it says God did it all
in seven days. This is what gets most of the holy rollers
in conflict with science.
indeterminate amount of time. so 7 days is not necessarily
7 of our days.
\_ actually, a jewish science teacher explains his
reconciliation like this: apparently, the word "day"
used in the original hebrew or whatever is sort of an
indeterminate amount of time. so 7 days is not
necessarily 7 of our days.
to evolution while theology pointed away from it. Over time
I've come to conclude that evolution is really orthogonal to
creation, and while I still have my questions about evolution
(macro evolution and abiogenesis primarily--though evolution
proper doesn't address abiogenesis) I don't really doubt it
anymore. It doesn't affect the core issues of Christianity.
-emarkp
\_ sure, redefine the terms whenever things don't
work out...
\_ I'm sure that all historical documents were
written in the past with an understanding of how
the meaning of words would change in the future so
they'd have our modern meaning. Makes sense.
\_ Are there cultures or peoples whose definition
of the period of time encompassed by a day is
grossly different than ours?
\_ I meant linguistically not culturally.
\_ in addition to the above post, God allegedly created
the sun on what, like the 5th or 6th day or something?
So how could you even hope to meassure the notion of a
day before this unless you use some rationale like the
above. - ! religious
\_ funny how he said "let there be light" several
"days" before he created the sun.
\_ It is possible to have light without the sun.
\_ yep. the 3K blackbody radiation is
technically light. in the young days
of the universe, that would have to have
been alot hotter, and hence a much
higher peak frequency.
\_ when you have your head up your ass, is
there light up there?
\_ I take it this means you can't dispute
my claim that the sun is not strictly
required for there to be light.
\_ That's unfair! How dare you point out
his stupidity and ignorance in
response to his meaningless reply to
your post? Another few empty headed
snide remarks should put you in your
place.
\_ Well, we can be assured that the
sun isn't shining in his ass.
\_ Just because a thing was done before a standard
was adopted, it does not mean that one is not allowed
to go back to measure the thing based on the
subsequently adopted standard.
\_ In this case how could they have known how many
days had passed with no way to measure time?
\_ Witness to the creation would know the length
of a day after the creation of the sun. Such
person or persons would then approximate the
passage of time pre creation of sun based on
the later established day standard. Granted,
this estimate would not be precise, but it
would not likely be off by (say) more than
an order of magnitude either. This implies
reasonably that the period of creation pre-sun
might have taken longer than a few days, but
it would not likely have taken years let alone
millions of years.
\_ A good guess but you only get a C because
you make gross assumptions about the nature
of both time and the creator.
\_ One's explanation is likely the simplest
that fits the offered facts.
\_ The big theological issue even the most liberal Christians
have with evolution is the transition from man=animal to
man=child of God, with soul, morals, etc. For the longest
time I believed that science (that is, beliefs derived from
observation and the scientific method) pointed conclusively
to evolution while theology pointed away from it. Over
time I've come to conclude that evolution is really
orthogonal to creation, and while I still have my questions
about evolution (macro evolution and abiogenesis
primarily--though evolution proper doesn't address
abiogenesis) I don't really doubt it anymore. It doesn't
affect the core issues of Christianity. -emarkp
\_ cool way to be a rational person with irrational beliefs.
glad you resolved that. |
| 2003/6/19 [Science/Biology] UID:28765 Activity:nil |
6/18 "The scientists found 78 genes in total on the Y, ..."
|_http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3000742.stm |
| 2003/5/3 [Recreation/Dating, Science/Biology] UID:28317 Activity:nil |
5/2 Bonobos!
http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html
\_ Don't feed the bonobos! How many times do I have to tell you that!? |
| 2003/4/11-13 [Science/GlobalWarming, Science/Biology] UID:28091 Activity:very high |
4/11 This might sound trollish, but I'm curious about the
explanation. In cold places people evolved to have more body
hair. Northern europe for example. While people in the
tropics like hawaii or the amazon have little facial or body
hair. Make sense? So what explanation can there be for
middle eastern people having a lot of body hair? This goes for
Jews/Arabs/Persian/etc alike. How does living in the desert
evolved into growing so much body hair?
\_ Most of the people living in Europe, the near East
and India are descendents of the same group of
Indo-Europeans who left central asia less than 10K
yrs ago.
\_Actually, variations in body height, amount of hair, breast size,
penis size, etc. has nothing to do with natural selection but more
to do with founder effects. The human race, once they moved out of
the central African continent, has not evolved on the genetic level.
The variations you see in the world are because all "races" of humanity
(with the possible exception of certain african tribes) were founded
on an exceedingly small population of humans, somewhere on the order
of no more than 20-30 individuals. What you see is therefore more of
an effect of in-breeding than environmental factors. The only exception
to this is skin color, because the amount of sun one receives can
not be easily controlled by technology (cold can be controlled by
wearing clothes, height can be overcome by using certain tools, etc.)
In fact, the widest variation of genetics occurs in Africa. so that
populations within africa which are not seperated by more than a couple
km might exhibit more genetic variation than between an east asian and
a caucasian from Europe.
\_ We only have more facial hair than the indolent little brown
brothers so that we may grow cool goatees and make supervillains
worthy of our superior genetic heritage, to oppress and enslave
the lesser hairless or pelted peoples of the world. After all
what's a real supervillain without a blond Vandyke. -John
\_ Actually, variations in body height, amount of hair, breast
size, penis size, etc. has nothing to do with natural
selection but more to do with founder effects. The human
race, once they moved out of the central African continent,
has not evolved on the genetic level. The variations you
see in the world are because all "races" of humanity (with
the possible exception of certain african tribes) were
founded on an exceedingly small population of humans,
somewhere on the order of no more than 20-30
individuals. What you see is therefore more of an effect of
in-breeding than environmental factors. The only exception
to this is skin color, because the amount of sun one
receives can not be easily controlled by technology (cold
can be controlled by wearing clothes, height can be
overcome by using certain tools, etc.) In fact, the widest
variation of genetics occurs in Africa. so that populations
within africa which are not seperated by more than a couple
km might exhibit more genetic variation than between an
east asian and a caucasian from Europe.
\_ Wow, this is so wrong I'm not even sure where to begin.
\_ He is not completely wrong. In reality there is
very little genetic different between humans on
any continent.
\_ We only have more facial hair than the indolent little
brown brothers so that we may grow cool goatees and make
supervillains worthy of our superior genetic heritage, to
oppress and enslave the lesser hairless or pelted peoples
of the world. After all what's a real supervillain without
a blond Vandyke. -John
\_ Ooh... Almost forgot! Progress report: Everything is fine.
Nothing is ruined. Eagle flies at 0640. --qz42
\_ your premise is incorrect.
\_ Maybe it is to protect against sunburns.
\_ http://www.kithrup.com/brin/neotenyarticle1.html
\_ I liked this article.
\_ It's pretty plausible, isn't it? And it explains a lot
of things that wouldn't make sense otherwise!
\_ (east) asians are basically hairless. it gets hot in asia.
\_ tell that to my bunghole
\_ and it snows in korea, japan, and parts of china. makes
sense to me. have you published yet?
\_ I thought hair acts as an insulant -- cooling in hot environments,
and heating in cold.
\_ Swedes don't have a lot of hair. --dim
\_ neither do eskimos.
\_ The more evolved you are, the less hair. Japanese are the most
evolved, followed by other Asians, Amerindians, Northern
Europeans, then Aficans with Slavs and other Middle Eastern
people at the bottom.
\_ are you sure that isn't the smaller the penis, the less hair?
\_ How do you explain me then? I am very hairy but has very small
penis.
\_ all of you are wrong. Ask yourself, why are women less hairy?
\_ because they shave their legs off.
\_ but they don't shave their chests and backs, do they?
\_ smaller penises?
\_ Because they float like a duck! Burn her! Burn her!
\_ who are you who, are so wise in the ways of science?
\_ It shall be greater than two but less than four!
\_ Because they are more highly evolved?
\_ hair is no longer strongly correlated to survival (aka, passing
on your DNA to children). |
| 2003/2/26 [Science/Biology] UID:27536 Activity:kinda low |
2/25 Darwin/MacOS X questions: What is the equivalent of ldd on darwin?
And what is the equivalent of LD_LIBRARY_PATH on darwin?
I have a pgm that uses shared libraries and I want to make sure that
the right libs are being picked up.
\_ man ld and dyld
\_ thanks dyld(1) had the info I was looking for. In case anyone
else is interested otool -L ~ ldd and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH ~
LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
\_ "Given enough time a pixie will get you so confused that you'll
start looking for happiness in all the wrong places."
\_ Wookin pa nub... |
| 2003/2/17 [Science/Biology] UID:27437 Activity:nil |
2.01 roF .ffuts siht fo emos nekorb/devomer evah ot smees 2.01 .gninnur ffuts cisab emos ot esu dluoc uoy taht ffuts SIN emos dedulcni reilrae dna 1.01 .X SO fo noisrev eht no sdnepeD _\ .si ti mialc yeht tub nevam elppa na ton m'I _\ ?X SO ni ffuts ofniten eht htiw elbaitapmoc sin sI _\ sin _\ .erawtfos artxe gniyub ro tros fo nimda sys emoh a emoceb ot sgniht gniod ro gninrael emit hcum oot dneps ot tnaw od dna resu emoh a tsuj ma I tub boj nimda sys cisab yrev a si siht wonk I ?siht etamotua I od woH .sdneirf dna ylimaf ym fo srebmem rof stnuocca resu dna .gifnoc metsys cisab emas eht evah ot meht ekil dluow I .)srettam siht fi xunil + X SO 2( xin* emos gninnur lla ,emoh ta sretupmoc eerht evah I 51/2 )borp eht s'tahT .lles ot ytiliba tsuJ .deriuqer ton eerged ecnaniF( rosivdA laicnaniF remroF - .erutluc "yletal enil mottob eht rof enod uoy evah tahw" eht morf noitcafsitas naelg nac uoy fi I naht nam reggib a er'uoy tub ,elpoep gnipleh tuoba stnemitnes ruoy derahs I .rotces laicnanif eht ni tuoba serac enoyna lla s'ti ,dne eht nI .yenom yb derusaem si ecnamrofrep ruoY _\ koocc- .ti tuoba klat ot ekil d'uoy fi liam em dneS .ysae eb thgim gnihctiws ,rof gnikool er'uoy boj fo epyt tahw no gnidnepeD .boj laicnanif a dna eerged SC a evah I_\ .otni og ot ediced uoy aera revehcihw otni hctiws a rof emuser ruoy pu dliub dna tseretni ruoy mrifnoc ll'tI .detseretni er'uoy saera eht ni krow reetnulov emos yrT_\ ?sreenigne WS gnirih spuorg latnemnorivne yna era tub dleif wen eht ni reenigne WS a sa gnikrow fo aedi eht ekil I ?taht ekil gnihtemos ot gnihctiws tuoba og dluow I woh no sretniop ynA .)snamuh su spleh nrut ni hcihw( tnemnorivne eht gnipleh s'taht gnihtemos gniod ma I taht wonk ot tnaw I ?puorg noitavresnoc/latnemnorivne emos tuoba tahW .dleif taht ot hcitws ot eerged laicnanif a deen ylbaborp I wonk I tub tuo gnipleh ma I taht gniwonk sdneirf ym ot ecivda laicnanif tuo gnivig yojne I .puorg noitavresnoc/latnemnorivne fo tros emos dna ecivres laicnanif :otni og ot ekil dluow I saera cificeps owt yllautca era ereht...woleb detsop I daerht dleif wen a ot gnihctiws no eroM 61/2 noitca evitamriffa setah bwg hcum woh wonk ew ecnis tirem reh no yletelpmoc derih saw ehs taht derussa tser nac ew tsael ta _\ ?hsuB .W.G dna ,yenehC ,dlefsmuR ta kool a nekat uoy evah ,rettam taht roF ?qarI htiw raw ot og ot deen eht tuoba su llet tsovorp/forp icSiloP drofnatS a gnittel ew era yhW 71/2 |
| 2002/11/11-12 [Science/Biology] UID:26513 Activity:high |
11/11 Darwin at work. Gotta love basic science at work....
http://csua.org/u/52d -from http://heraldtribune.com -urld
\_ That comment sure sounded stupid.
\_ Thank you for participating. Your comments
will be retained for 6 months on file.
\_ Huh? How does a suicide have anything to do with basic science?
\_ Darwin = basic science.
\_ Issac Newton would disagree. Issac Newton >> you
\_ A unauthorized plane flew over the MacDill AFB control tower only
months after 9/11 and didn't get shot down? What lax security!
\_ You believe that's what really happened? |
| 2002/9/29-30 [Science/Biology] UID:26045 Activity:high |
09/29 Couple weeks ago, I told you blondes were genetically inferior.
They are dye-ing out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2284783.stm
\_ what a waste of 60 seconds of my life.
\_ We need more misleading descriptions of URLs on the motd. This
article says nothing about genetic inferiority. It has quotes that
say blonde hair is not a genetic inferiority. Please read your
own articles before posting. Thanks.
\_ They are losingout to fake blondes, does this mean fake blondes
also age faster?
\_ sure, whatever you want to believe |
| 2002/9/18 [Science/Biology] UID:25929 Activity:nil |
9.17 gayness gene discovered: http://csua.org/u/2b8 \_ It says the gene was introduced into the flies. \_ gayness induced! \_ So can it be cured through gene therapy? |
| 2002/7/25-26 [Science/Biology, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA] UID:25423 Activity:high |
7/25 I didn't know Gene Kan was UCB Alumni:
link:www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/3729883.htm
\_ Duh. He was a CSUA & XCF member, which is why his death
was discussed to death when it happened.
\_ Duh. Most of the articles that discussed his death mentioned
that he was a Berkeley alumnus.
\_ He was a sodan, even. Was that last contact they refer to in
the article here?
\_ Hell he was even in my cs186 class. |
| 2002/7/8-10 [Health/Disease/AIDS, Science/Biology] UID:25306 Activity:insanely high 50%like:25845 |
7/8 A moment of silence for Gene Kan. RIP.
\_ who?
\_ how did he die?
\_ Care to provide more info?
\_ the one who wrote the open source Gnutella?
\_ (URL inserted at top so out of chronological order:). DETAILS:
Gene Kan
Summary:
Better human being than most.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=581&e=4&cid=581&u=/nm/20020710/tc_nm/people_kan_dc_5
\_ http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942180.html?tag=fd_top
\_ Sun PR says it was an accident:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/020708/us_obit_kan_1.html
\_ Does anyone know if there will be a public service?
Gene will be very missed, even by those that haven't seen
him for a while. -randal
\_ a new Wired news writeup indicates suicide.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53704-2,00.html
\_ anyone archive his resume?
\_ no duh!!! When a Chinese family shuts up about the method of
death it's almost always a suicide because there's suppose to
be a mark of shame for the family. If it's heart attack or
cancer they'd have nothing to hide.
\_ is this type of thinking documented somewhere? Url?
Because if it ain't on the Internet, _/
it can't be true
Just culturally curious and trying to keep you honest.
The other sources said it was an "accident".
\_ one of the Buddists' rules says that you'll
go to hell if you commit suicide. Another common
saying is "It's better to live like a dog than
to die like a king." It's a Chinese thing.
\_ When the "quote" gets so specific I suspect
you do know what you wrote is incorrect.
Suicide's paving the road to hell has been a
long held belief of Catholics, and possibly
other religions also consider it as self-murder.
But buddhism is conspicuously not in that group.
Indeed buddHists monks routinely, though not on
large scale, commit suicide. Most families
feel uneasy about the suicide of a member, in
addition to pain. It's of course possible that
your family doesn't, if you have one, and they
will go to Jerry's show over your body. Asian
families, and to some extent every group that
in general have more "family values" than trailer
tribes tend to prefer to keep such thing private,
which I like, and lean toward denial, which
than die well." There is neither dog
nor king, and it is an attitude usually ascribed
to the lower classes who supposedly have no
shame. There are many more sayings to the
contrary for the self-respecting ones, so you
I don't. BTW, the saying you quoted literally
translates to "it's better to live marginally
than die well." There is neither dog nor king,
and it is an attitude usually ascribed to those
who have no shame and will do or say anything to
get by. There are many more sayings to the
contrary for the self-respecting ones, but you
don't have to know them.
\_ same with many christian families. like my folks did
when my brother did it. berkeley gets another...
\_ Doubt it. If he died of AIDS or Bob Crane-style, they'd
shut up about it.
\_ yeah, Chinese families--"what? you only sold InfraSearch for
$10 million!?" too much pressure. |
| 2002/7/2 [Science/Biology] UID:25258 Activity:kinda low |
7/1 This is your brain. This is your brain on pot. Pot is harmless. Use it.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=01072002-113615-3662r
\_ well the Japs are skitzo to begin with, so the data may be skewed.
\________\_ the educated response... |
| 2002/7/1 [Science/Biology, Computer/SW/OS/OsX] UID:25247 Activity:high |
6/28 Should I install apple's open-darwin or gnu's gnu-darwin?
\_ What do you want to do? Why do you want to install darwin
instead of Mac OS X? --twohey
\_ to annoy you. |
| 2002/2/9 [Science/Biology] UID:23825 Activity:high 66%like:23824 |
2/8 OMG, evolution is true! what will the creationists do?
http://www.dms100.org/worksucks
\_ So this shows that it is possible for a simple mutation to
change the numbers of legs in arthropods. It does NOT show
how simple mutations can cause:
multicellularity,
complex sensory organs like eyes,
sexual reproduction,
the cell nucleus of the eucaryotes,
etc.
-- sceptical of evolution
\_ Since we can't travel back in time to see how it really
happened we can't ever really be certain so it must be God.
\_ Simple mutations have never accounted for true genetic
variance. Recombination during meiosis plays a much more
prevalent role in variations in a population. In other words
sex is what drives evolution, not simple mutation. If you
need a refresher course on how evolution actually works,
take an intro course on genetics. williamc
\_ Aren't you being a little bit presumptuous, williamc?
I don't need a refresher course on how evolution 'works,'
I simply don't have a lot of faith in it 'working.'
\_No, I'm not, because faith has nothing to do with how
biology "works". It doesn't care about your faith, it doesn't
even know the concept of faith.
\_ My friend, you are making a tacit assumption that biology,
and more specifically the development of complex life,
in fact does work according to the theory of evolution
which it may or may not do. Assuming that biology 'works'
according to what is currently fashionable in academia
is silly dogmatism.
\_ But before sexual reproduction could exist we needed some
very complex mutation for asexual organisms to evolve into
sexual organisms. Chicken-and-egg problem.
\_Hardly, all sex essentially is is sharing of genetic data.
Before sex as we know it existed there were probably already
\_ probably?
things like transposons which juggle genetic data around.
Also, you forget that life has had billions of years to
develop complex chemistries to handle such things like
\_ handle?
reproduction.
-williamc
\_ You sound a lot less certain than you did a paragraph ago,
williamc. Why not admit that you simply don't know how
life and sexual reproduction originated? No one really
knows.
\_ But what kind of environmental pressure would in fact
produce two genders?
\_ But the creationists can still ask how was it possible that "life"
came from random chemical reactions of clouds of atoms and
molecules.
\_ ask the abiogenesists.
\_ Macroevolution still has too many holes.
\_ So does your head, but we're not complaining. |
| 2002/2/9 [Science/Biology] UID:23824 Activity:very high 66%like:23825 |
2/8 OMG, evolution is true! what will the creationists do?
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mchox.htm
\_ So this shows that it is possible for a simple mutation to
change the numbers of legs in arthropods. It does NOT show
how simple mutations can cause:
multicellularity,
complex sensory organs like eyes,
sexual reproduction,
the cell nucleus of the eucaryotes,
etc.
-- sceptical of evolution
\_ Simple mutations have never accounted for true genetic
variance. Recombination during meiosis plays a much more
prevalent role in variations in a population. In other words
sex is what drives evolution, not simple mutation. If you
need a refresher course on how evolution actually works,
take an intro course on genetics. williamc
\_ Aren't you being a little bit presumptuous, williamc?
I don't need a refresher course on how evolution 'works,'
I simply don't have a lot of faith in it 'working.'
\_ But before sexual reproduction could happen we needed some
\_No, I'm not, because faith has nothing to do with how
biology "works". It doesn't care about your faith, it doesn't
even know the concept of faith.
\_ But before sexual reproduction could exist we needed some
very complex mutation for asexual organisms to evolve into
sexual organisms. Chicken-and-egg problem.
\_Hardly, all sex essentially is is sharing of genetic data.
Before sex as we know it existed there were probably already
things like transposons which juggle genetic data around.
Also, you forget that life has had billions of years to
develop complex chemistries to handle such things like
reproduction.
-williamc
\_ But the creationists can still ask how was it possible that "life"
came from random chemical reactions of clouds of atoms and
molecules. |
| 2000/12/12-13 [Science/Electric, Science/Biology] UID:20080 Activity:moderate |
12/11 after numerous "Last renewal notice", hopefully, i don't hear from
newsweek anymore. anyway, what is a good general science periodic
for subscription? your comment is appreciated.
\_ Science (http://www.aaas.org - tends to be a little bit biology heavy,
but never content-free. -brg
\- you were subscribing to newsweek as a "general science periodic"?
the economist is a far superior substitude for newsweek, with pretty
good science coverage. --psb
\_ no, just that i realized i mostly read the articles about
science and technology most of the time... anyhow, i am
looking for science journal that covers a board range of
topics.
\_ What's with psb and his Economist?
\_Scientific American is a good starting point (yes, I know it is a
monthly mag); if you're ready, you can also subscribe to Nature.
\_ I agree SA is pretty good. Another decent one is Science News.
Nature has always been too bio/chem related for me. ----ranga
\_ I agree, Science News is good. It's kind of thin,
but it gives a good overview of current science news.
\_ Its weekly (or used to be) and I could usually read
it in one or two sittings. Another good one was Science
Digest, but I think it is defunct now.
\_ Science and Nature are the only ways to go. Science
I think is a little better for news/tech. SA is way
too delayed to be a useful news service.
\_ There's a huge *leap* from reading science articles in newsweek to
reading Science or Nature. The former is a pathetic distillation
for the general public, the latter are peer-reviewed(kinda) scientific
journals, often reporting experiments, methods, raw data, etc. Read
them before you decide to subscribe. Science, btw, is non-profit,
Nature, is for profit. If you want a simple upgrade from Newsweek,
Discover might be the better way to go, intellectually.
\_ Yeah. Discover is not bad, its better than say Popular Science
and Popular Mechanics. |
| 2000/8/6-7 [Science/Biology, Computer/SW/Languages] UID:18895 Activity:nil |
8/5 Any recommendations on a good book/website on the topic of genetic
programming and genetic algorithms? |
| 2000/6/30-7/3 [Science/Biology, Computer/Theory] UID:18573 Activity:very high |
6/30 Now that the human genome appears to be all but decoded. Is
there any method to measure the number of bits that are encoded
in the genome. IE how does it compare to a modern operating system.
\_ Well, the encoding system is using a power of two, so there is
a very easy conversion. The problem is that it's not always
easy to see where code ends and garbage begins in DNA.
\_ ONE HUMAN ~ 4 TERABYTES
\_ Uh, I don't have my biochem text with me (on vacation),
but I seem to recall the human genome being 2,000,000 kbp
(kilobase pairs), or 4 Gbits of data (2 bits/bp). -nweaver
\_ That's just the program text. The Interesting Question(tm)
is How much does it take at runtime?
\_ The number is actually much less than that, since the
bitstring is EXTREMELY structured. Which means less bits. If
I were to guess, you're off by a factor of 100-1000. Maybe
worse. That doesn't mean anything however, since we know next
to nothing about the structure, and won't for quite a while
\_ ONE HUMAN ~ 4 TERABYTES NO COMPRESSION, PUNY HUMAN
\_ once the genome is there, the interesting stuff begins. For the
next 30-50 years, I think scientists will be working on the grand
\_ try 300-500; popular press is just listening to what the
funding proposals are babbling; anyone actually writing
them makes sure the timespan predicted is long enough
"so that i won't be around to be held responsible" but
short enough as to not to discourage investment. sad,
but true.
unification theory of DNA. A physical/biology/mathetical model
of the interaction of the different genes. Imagine running a
simulation of a new lifeform created by artifically pieceing
different genes! The complexity of such a simulation is beyond
anything we've done. Today's supercomputers used to simulate
nuclear explosions will look like toys next to computers
simulating artificial lifeforms. Who wants to guess on the
computational power needed to run a simulation of a single cell?
\_This is the typical clueless CompSci answer to biochemical
problems. I remember once one of my advisors said that the
problem with working with computer scientists on biological
simulation in actual living cells. Just pick your favority
problems was that they just didn't get it. I guess he had a
point. Why waste your time trying simulate a complete cell at
such a granular level on a computer? We can simply run the
simulation in actual living cells.
\_ Why bother running simulations of rockets, and atomic
bombs? Oh yeah, that's right, if you find something
*really* interesting, **THOUSANDS/MILLIONS** OF PEOPLE
**DIE**.
Apparrently, its true that those who can't do, teach.
\_ What are you trying to say? This makes no sense.
Just pick your favorite
organism and transform them. DNA is cheap and plentiful to
reproduce with a little lambda phage, plasmid, and PCR. Also,
simulation of a single cell, albeit interesting, isn't exactly
\_ >80 column idiocy fixed. Get a clue. -tom
completely useful. Since we are mainly interested in
multicellular organisms, a simulation of intercellular
interactions would be much more valuable. i.e. what exactly is
involved in the complex interaction of cell signalling during
embryonic growth, and how that interrelates to differentiated
cells. A more realistic goal is to use pattern recognition
techniques to be able to predict tertiary/quarternary structure
of proteins and enzymes from DNA, and probably one which is much
more profitable than trying to simulate organisms when the
actual organisms can be produced cheaply. Go buy yourself a copy
of Maniatis. -williamc.
\_ If you take a pure scientific view, there is lots of value
to understanding how cellular processes work, and being able
to model them means a huge step toward fully understanding
the schemes (algorithms if you will) nature has come up with.
From a practical viewpoint, you want to be able to model
a cell so you can design your own cellular signalling pathways
What you're saying, William, is that there is no value in
understanding the inner working of cells, that nuclear
transport, mRNA regulation, vessicle trafficking is not impt.
Thats a very narrow minded view.
\_ What he's saying is that full simulation is infeasible,
and suggesting a viable alternative. Get a clue.
\_ see below
\_ More than Moore's law can produce for you even if it lasts
through 2500 A.D.. Without a new computational paradigm, or a
better abstraction than sheer chemistry, this will not be
practical (in all likelihood) until well past the predicted
lifespan of the Homo sapiens species, or even genus Homo.
\_ Dude. Do you realize how LARGE the number
current_computational_speeds * 2 ^ (500 / 1.5) is?
\_ Yes I do. Do you realize that modeling a physical
system on quantum level is considered non-polytime on
a classical computer? And do you realize how many atoms
a cell contains?
\_ In something like 8 iterations of Moore's Law
(12 years) you'll be able to read 4 terabytes
(the DNA sequence) into RAM. The rest of the
cell structure is simple relative to DNA and
doesn't need to be fully modeled. By the time
you can read DNA into RAM, processors will be
running at 256 Ghz, with who knows how many
instructions per cycle. That's far more
processing power than a cell has. The only
computational barrier at that point will be
writing the code to model it correctly; that's
hard for a cell and much harder for a full
organism. -tom
\_ "The rest of the cell structure is simple
relative to DNA"? Get a clue, cs boy. You
can read the damn bytes into RAM, but you won't
know what the fuck to do with them. Predicting
"everything" from DNA, or even a small subset
of it such as the general protein problem
(folding, interaction, binding sites, etc), may
easily, to the best of mankind's current
knowledge, turn out to be, oh, say,
EXPSPACE-hard. All your Moore's law ramblings
aren't worth crap until we know SOME fully
encapsulated localization structure in the
problem (be it DNA, protein, life, etc). Which
doesn't seem too plausible.
\_ It would be stupid and _unnecessary_ to model the
individual atoms to model a cell or dna. For example,
weather modeling gets better everyday and they're
certainly not modeling every atom in a storm.
\_ See above.
\_ And do you honestly think we'll still be computing on
silicon then?
\_ The above was predicated on "no change of paradigm"
\_ But can distributed computer help, like what SETI@home does?
-- yuen
\_ Probably not; seti@home relies on the fact that an
arbitrarily large amount of computation can be done by
any node without needing input from any other ongoing
calculations; a cellular model would be much more
interactive. Still, I think the assertion that we'll
never have enough computing power to model a cell is
silly and unfounded. -tom
\_ 3 words for you -- "think avogadro's number"
\_ "No one would ever need more than 640k".
\_ I have to agree with william. You don't start a
computationally intensive calculation at the lowest
possible level of understanding. For instance, if you
ever want to see a result, you would not start a model
of even a modest polypeptide by doing ab intitio
calculations on the interactions between individual
electrons and nuclei. Modeling an entire cell based on
molecular interactions is similarly too complex and
really unnecessary.
\_I dont understand this fixation with atoms. You dont
need to model atoms, just the kinetics and thermodynamics
of interactions. Duh, anyone thats knows anything knows
theyre not going to figure out interactions in the cell
from scratch. We have 100+ years of abstraction to work
with.
\_ Nobody is talking about simulating cells at the atomic
level, dumbass. As for "why not try it on a real cell?"
It's a stupid question. It's always more economical to
simulate something first rather than try it first. You
can change your simulation parameters faster than you can
change your real-world experiment.
\_ this is utterly false. -tom
\_ this is the first intelligent thing you've
said in this thread, tom
How do you think we
build cars and airplains and computers? We break it down
into components, build models in computers, simulate them,
and then build small scale models. Drugs can be synthesized
in a computer faster than in real life. I'd love to see
how a particular drug will affect a cell even before
the drug exit in real life. Science fiction? maybe. But
then again, who would have thought of the internet 100
years ago?
\_ what is human gnome, and is it better than kde?
\_ alot of you missed a point made above, DNA isn't enough! The cell
itself carries much info that isn't in the DNA (via already synthed
proteins, sugars, biochemical microenvironents, mitochondria and
their DNA, imprinting (which the genome project is ignoring), as
well as other molecules that we probably don't realize are
necessary in a model). Yes, much will be able to be done, but the
necessary in a model).
\_ the total amount of cell information not contained in DNA
is almost certainly less than the amount of information
contained in the DNA. So call it 8 terabytes and 13
iterations of Moore's Law. -tom
Yes, much will be able to be done, but the
system will have holes and leave a lot to interpretation. That's
not to say that phages, bacterial sims, YACS, . . . are the answer,
they also have many, many flaws, but we are getting closer. And
it is probably the marriage of the techniques that will produce
the answers we are stiving for, with the great aid of human
intuition and analytical skills.
Anyhow, the 4TB, GB, whatever, of DNA isn't enough. Just
imprinting alone would add 2 bits to every base pair (methylated or
glycosylated), now add on everything else you forgot to consider.
Oh, and don't forget you need the environments of all surrounding
systems, i.e. in birth you need the mother, her DNA, and so forth
to get it all right. Bottom line, an approximation is better than
nothing, but don't get your hopes up too high!
\_ The first challenge is simulating an amoeba. -tom |
| 2000/5/22-24 [Science/Biology] UID:18314 Activity:high |
5/23 Please don't pet the tigers:
http://www.denver-rmn.com/news/0521tigr3.shtml
Every day in small ways Darwin brings a smile to my face.
\_ This is so tragic!
How can you find this
humorous?!?
You sound young, spawn. Soon you will _/
understand our ways and become stronger.
\_ No. Darwinism would've killed the woman. She can still reproduce
and propagate her stupidity.
\_ Regardless, she's less likely to reproduce.
\_ You don't understand how it works. It's not black and
white like that. It's about the odds and long term chances.
With only one arm, she's _less likely_ to reproduce. If
she does, her children are _less likely_ to survive to do
their own reproduction. Her mate is _less likely_ to have
pro-survival genes as well, since only a loser would have
a woman like this. Her children, having been born to two
stupid people, may manage to spawn, but then _those_
children are less likely to improve the tree, either. It
will work out fine in the long run. Darwin is alive and
well.
\_ You don't understand how it works. Stupid genes
sometimes result in disaster like above. However,
sometimes is
\_ I stand corrected.
\_ Why does someone keep deleting this? This is a
simplified but factual statement about how
Darwinism works in the real world as applied to
human beings. This is not a troll and this is not
the typical mindless motd drivel, nor is it an
inappropriate topic for the motd. If this is some
religious fish-on-bumper whacko deleting this, then
seek your church's assistance for your weak faith,
don't mindlessly censor the ideas of others. |
| 1999/8/11 [Science/Biology] UID:16286 Activity:kinda low |
8/10 http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~vic/faceprints/female_study.html \_ Yeah? So what? Some idiot is selling a book based on bad research with highly questinable conclusions. Why should we care? |
| 1999/2/20-21 [Science/Biology] UID:15455 Activity:kinda low |
2/20 Rest in peace, Gene Siskel.
\_ Say what? URL?
\_ http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9902/20/siskel.obit
-- jsjacob |
| 1999/2/9 [Science/Biology] UID:15378 Activity:nil |
2/8 Last night's PBS educational program shows that in order for species
to survive, they must have a wide range of bio-diversity. The male
specie usually try to spread their "seed" as far as possible, and as
diverse as possible. Could this explain Asian Fetishness (creating
genetic diversity) and high rate of marriage/divorse (genetic volume)?
\_ Human beings do the same thing that any other species do, but at a
much longer extended time.
\_ fool. It has more to do with "obedient asian women" stereotypes,
and being sick of putting up with white bitch feminazi crap. |
| 1998/8/25 [Science/Biology, Health/Disease/General] UID:14503 Activity:nil |
8/23 The Diamond Age is coming:
http://www.businessweek.com/1998/35/b3593015.htm
\_ One problem with molecular systems and coopting the biological
mechanisms for computation and manufacture: bacteria can
eat your work! And I doubt we will ever be sophisticated enough
to design "from scratch" systems of the complexity of an E Coli
(Which has 4Mb of storage, can perform 2000 bit copies just in
replication, essentially serially, all in .07 cubic microns!) |
| 12/25 |