ken ham was recently thrown in jail over tax evasion, specifically because he made quite a chunk of change from selling ID promotional materials, books in particular. so yes, there's a lot of money to be made by outright lying.
You have a point, the actual science behind evolution isn't reaching people who are interested as well as it should be. thee's a lot of very interesting things being done that just don't make it into lectures very often outside of the occasional college lecture in the biology dept. like how chromosome 2 was formed from the fusion of two chromosomes which we found vestigial telomeres, which telomeres are normally found on the ends of chromosomes, in this case we found them buried in the chromosome as well as a second although vestigial centromere which is found only in chromosome fusion events. the subtelomeric duplications are located at base pairs 114,455,823-114,455,838 from the article in nature. which is located here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7034/full/nature03466.html as well as the wikipedia article on chromosome 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human) this explains why humans have 46 chromosome while the primates in general have 48. the chromosomes were not lost, two chomosomes fused into one, since each chromosome is paired, it went from 4=>2 [48-4+2=46]
correct. abiogenesis deals with the origin of life its self, evolution governs everything thereafter.
Why convolute the two ?
through ignorance or through malice. In the latter case it's used as the wedge [wedge document that is] to try to confuse the layman into thinking that evolution is by definition atheistic in nature. it doesn't in of its self explicitly exclude the idea of a god, it has nothng to say on the matter, it merely allows for disbelief, that is to say that the watchmaker is not required to form new species including humans and that is enough reason for people to outright ignore/willfully misunderstand the evidence in favor of evolutionary theory.
After all, you don't see people rebelling in schools against relativity and electromagnetism.
surely you've heard of big bang theory being attacked. although it's probably a big part of why people stubbornly adhere to logically inconsistent beliefs, it likely has a lot to do with the need to fit in a tight group- to belong somewhere and feel special and nothing does that better than believing that what you specifically believe is correct while mountains of evidence suggests otherwise. but back to your last point, there *is* opposition to core sciences even including relativity [relativity deniers, flat earthers etc.] the ID movement in particular is in great opposition to core fields of science. geology becuase of fossils and radionuclide dating methods, biology because of evolution, physics because of the fact that we *know* there are objects BILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY yet ID seems to think that this light somehow had to get here in a day's time [literal biblical account] or at the least in the last 10,000 years physics and relativity be damned... archeology becuase of some ideas thrown around that the stone age lasted less than 500 years make no mistakes, you hear about evolution being attacked in schools a lot but it isn't going to stop there- it's only the easiest one to turn the public against- it's easy to turn the public away by uttering idiocy like "monkeys are your grandfather" but it's harder to convince the public how evil relativity is because it forbids light from getting here in the time the bible says it did.
how about this: calibrate the total cost of maintaining the copyright for 20 years equal to the value/worth of the copyright owner at the time of creation and double it every year. eg. if some corp is worth 100 million at the time of the copyright's creation, they'd pay ~100million*2^-21 the first year [50$] 100$ the second... until year 20 when they're paying 50 million that year just to keep the copyright, next year 100 mill etc. until even bill gates can't hold the rights any more after about 28~29 years. the little guy who's worth 20k/year [call that his worth] is going to pay 20k over the 20 years, 1 penny the first year doubling every year, assuming he magically gets as rich as gates is, he'll get 12 full years more than gates himself could have. treat negative wealth as zero until estimated wealth is above povery level for example then start the clock there. it keeps the corps from buying their way out of this, encourages corps to drop useless copyrights, doesn't destroy the little guy and inherently limits copyrights to well below 50 years. how do we determine the wealth you say? taxes. if they lie the IRS will eat them alive. if companies down-play their total worth it's going to be the same one they're going to tell their investors and pay taxes on. they have no reason to lie about it because the investors will be seriously pissed at the idea of putting their cash into an un-productive company. problem solved.
wait what? so what you're pretty much implying is that the global warming "nut cases" as you call them advocate for alternative energy sources like nuclear power and it's all their fault this happened? wow...
what if a company such as Comcast were to offer two plans:
this is comcast, the same company advertising UNLIMITED use when it is very clearly not anything of the kind. There will be no such thing as option 1, only option 2 at #1's cost. Why would they lower their rates when they have a monopoly in many areas with the willingness and ability to shape, drop and/or outright abuse for their own purposes any data that you attempt to receive?
I know what you mean... It all depends on how you explain your research, going about it the same way you would when you publish your findings generally won't work with the public. [duh] start small, outline the basics first and work up from there answering any questions you get along the way.
is it ok to use such sensationalism even though it's based on good science? It seems to be the only way to get people to listen.
If the science says that what is likely to happen is sensational then yes, it is not only ok but necessary to convey this to the public. In short, if you over-hype the problem what you're effectively doing is: 1) distorting the science making it a pointless ignorance perpetuating lie 2) making it even less likely the public will listen to real science ever again. The problem is that the real science is heavily entangled with politics on both sides. That should never ever be the case but that's the system our little dysfunctional society created.
the only way we're going to see the public at large be able to evaluate claims and discard the "bad scinece"/pseudoscience is by starting in the schools. As long as there is a problem conveying basic science concepts to the younger members of our population, there is no hope of solving the problem in adults. Dover, Florida, Kansas etc. all examples where science was dumbed down, misrepresented or ignored entirely in favor of teaching pseudoscience that contributes nothing to the understanding of the world around people. It's terribly disturbing as a biologist to see that the educational system is as it stands, a complete and utter failure especially in regard to the major sciences and that there are little or no plans to remedy the situation.
not directly, space can "bend" and light traveling straight through curved space will curve as well. secondly, photons, the particles that light is composed of has a rest mass of zero although because light carries energy and energy has mass light also has a mass because of the energy it is carrying.
don't you see! without serving these ads we would not have enough money to maintain the tubes! we may even need to raise prices without them... the simplist solution for them is to keep prices the same or even raise them and claim the prices would be higher without them. perhaps even offer a higher priced ad-free version of their services.
"Digital artists have created a humanoid robot which uses brainwave activity recorded during sleep to playback an interpretation of your dreams.
I don't think they'd actually allow the robot a chance to do anything illegal or otherwise harmful. but if they for whatever reason allowed this and the robot did do something illegal [strangled your boss for example] what evidence could be brought forward that you did or did not intend for it to happen, after all it was in your dreams or was it? what if the robot is incorrect? how would you prove otherwise? granted we're no where near needing to test any of these and they likely wouldn't be stupid enough to give the robot the ability to break any laws but it brings up questions.
there's nothing saying we couldn't use energy from nuclear plants to electrolyze water but considering the sheer amount of energy in the form of sunlight that is available, ignoring it is not an option. as you said, storing hydrogen is the problem although we have catalysts to react carbon dioxide and hydrogen to form numerous compounds, hydrocarbons, misc carbohydrates, even plastics. imagine it, using sunlight or nuclear power to reduce and remove carbon dioxide from the air while simultaneously making more plastics, the more plastic produced, the more CO2 is removed from the air- harnessing consumerism to help the environment!
The water splitting requires 1.23 volts, and the current experimental configuration cannot quite achieve that level so the researchers add about 0.3 volts from an outside source. Their current system achieves an efficiency of about 0.3 percent.
perhaps they should take a lesson from real photosynthesis and use an equivalent of a second photosystem. in photosynthesis,photosystem II is excited to a higher state followed by an electron transport system producing ATP then with a second photon to excite photosystem I which produces the reducing equivalent required for further reactions.
This will fail the first time anyone encrypts their traffic. Therefore, either someone reminds them of the foolishness of their plan, they actually carry out their plan and it not surprisingly fails miserably or the worst scenario- they actually include encrypted traffic along with illegal p2p traffic regardless of whether it is actually legal or not.
How many planes can get off the runway powered only by some seeds, and self repair?
self-repair is on its way [materials that can do this are already in development] but...
there is no need for birds to fly at 40,000 feet.
there is no need for airplanes to be powered by an inferior fuel such as seeds either. btw, do you know any birds that use gasoline rather than seeds? can a bird haul thousands of pounds of cargo? at mach 1? birds are interesting but don't think for a moment that their "design" is any better- in fact it's in many ways a lot worse than anything we've come up with so far. we can alter bird genes to allow them to metabolize other fuels [even hydrocarbons] if we wanted, maybe even strengthen their bones etc. but there probably isn't going to be a bird cruising at 400 mph for hours at a time running off jet fuel... ever. planes on the other hand, can be scaled from commercial jet size down to bird size with a corresponding increase in maneuverability at or better than birds. new materials can self-heal using liquid monomers and catalysts imbedded in the material as well as shape memory alloys and plastics that can be bent into absurd shapes while being simple to return them back to their original shape with heat/electric fields. know any birds that can essentially have their bones broken and actually contort themselves in such a way that the bone is healed? no? oops. I guess birds aren't so great after all.
glad you brought that up, there are organisms on earth that can survive hellish conditions and in fact are thought to have existed on early earth. extreme saltiness, acidity, cold, heat, pressure, radiation etc... we have organisms living happily in all of them. there's bacteria that survived being autoclaved, found in acids nearly 0 in ph, radiation levels 3,000 times what it would take to kill humans and microbes that survived being frozen in ice for 8 million years. life can be pretty stubborn and frankly, I wouldn't count life on Mars as an impossibility even today as microbes have been found over a kilometer underground.
and all the other scores of terrorist attacks that happened back when we were leaving Iraq alone?
Iraq wasn't involved in 9/11. there were however a few attacks after the invasion- just not here. before 9/11 people were told that they should cooperate w/ hijackers to avoid getting hurt as the hicker(s) wanted a destination. after 9/11 people thought differently here- you're not going to see any of that again. people now realize that the hijacker might not be interested in getting anyone to their destination alive and as such, they aren't going to just sit there and let the hicker do what they please any more. it's no longer an effective weapon. it's far more efficient to kill troops in Iraq... 20x more and likely with the support of at least some of the locals. rather than being relegated as being the bat shit insane extremists that they are, they're now often times looked upon as freedom fighters. I don't think they could have planned this any better. they get a chance to hone their skills, support from the locals and a growing number of new recruits pissed off about their country being blown to hell.
to your other point- what caused 9/11- take a look at the history of that place and our involvement- including the nice warm welcome the soviets got when they tried to invade. how we constantly meddle in the affairs of these countries- countries with large numbers of power hungry, religious hatred harnessing extremists who at first attacked the forces we had in those countries [cole for one] and figured that attacking us on our own soil might be more efficient.
you're assuming that the current administration doesn't realize current protocols do nothing. It's security theatre not security. Had they actually wanted to prevent the kind of threats they claim are the most serious, they'd do well by scraping the police state they've set up and get out of Iraq. Here's a hint: you don't need a supercomputer with advanced algorithms to figure out that you can't lessen terrorism by invading countries for little or no reason, blowing up all their infrastructure and torturing people.
then again, some models predict that it had little effect on the number of asteroid/comet impacts. The reason we see a lot of systems with large, close orbiting jovian [gas giants] worlds is because they are much easier to spot- that may change in a few years with better techniques/telescopes.
exactly. for that matter why is it that copyrights can exceed the life-time of the content creator? have they explained how it benefits the artist if the copyright outlives the artist?
in secret, although I really doubt that would make much sense here then again Lucas will find some way to "make it work"... *shudder* this can only end badly.
Then you may be splitting hairs on your definition of "pirated".
+1 Irony. there is a *big* difference between downloading a copy of something for which you did not actually buy and ripping a backup copy of a cd that you legally bought. the first is very much under the definition of piracy, the second is fair use. after all isn't it the RIAA making the claim that you don't own the cd, just the right to use it? If they're going to make the point that you only own the right to use it, then it follows that you should be able to have a backup in case the physical disk is damaged as to make it impossible to listen/watch the content that you bought the right to use.
Are you ready to tell kids, without qualifying any of your statements, that they should thumb their noses at the DMCA, regardless of the consequences?
beign a typical slashdotter, I don't have kids... yet but when I do, I'll teach them what they can do under fair use, not regardless of the consequences, no more or less than what fair use allows up until the day all of these rights are made illegal by a corrupt monopolistic set of companies hiding behind the RIAA. By the time that day comes if it does, they will also know of alternatives that are not so draconian- either that or a fondness for Canada or some other country that hasn't yet adopted these kind of idiotic laws like the US has.
Slashdot Mirror
ken ham was recently thrown in jail over tax evasion, specifically because he made quite a chunk of change from selling ID promotional materials, books in particular. so yes, there's a lot of money to be made by outright lying.
You have a point, the actual science behind evolution isn't reaching people who are interested as well as it should be. thee's a lot of very interesting things being done that just don't make it into lectures very often outside of the occasional college lecture in the biology dept. like how chromosome 2 was formed from the fusion of two chromosomes which we found vestigial telomeres, which telomeres are normally found on the ends of chromosomes, in this case we found them buried in the chromosome as well as a second although vestigial centromere which is found only in chromosome fusion events. the subtelomeric duplications are located at base pairs 114,455,823-114,455,838 from the article in nature. which is located here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7034/full/nature03466.html as well as the wikipedia article on chromosome 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human) this explains why humans have 46 chromosome while the primates in general have 48. the chromosomes were not lost, two chomosomes fused into one, since each chromosome is paired, it went from 4=>2 [48-4+2=46]
how about this: calibrate the total cost of maintaining the copyright for 20 years equal to the value/worth of the copyright owner at the time of creation and double it every year. eg. if some corp is worth 100 million at the time of the copyright's creation, they'd pay ~100million*2^-21 the first year [50$] 100$ the second... until year 20 when they're paying 50 million that year just to keep the copyright, next year 100 mill etc. until even bill gates can't hold the rights any more after about 28~29 years. the little guy who's worth 20k/year [call that his worth] is going to pay 20k over the 20 years, 1 penny the first year doubling every year, assuming he magically gets as rich as gates is, he'll get 12 full years more than gates himself could have. treat negative wealth as zero until estimated wealth is above povery level for example then start the clock there. it keeps the corps from buying their way out of this, encourages corps to drop useless copyrights, doesn't destroy the little guy and inherently limits copyrights to well below 50 years. how do we determine the wealth you say? taxes. if they lie the IRS will eat them alive. if companies down-play their total worth it's going to be the same one they're going to tell their investors and pay taxes on. they have no reason to lie about it because the investors will be seriously pissed at the idea of putting their cash into an un-productive company. problem solved.
wait what? so what you're pretty much implying is that the global warming "nut cases" as you call them advocate for alternative energy sources like nuclear power and it's all their fault this happened? wow...
I know what you mean... It all depends on how you explain your research, going about it the same way you would when you publish your findings generally won't work with the public. [duh] start small, outline the basics first and work up from there answering any questions you get along the way.
the only way we're going to see the public at large be able to evaluate claims and discard the "bad scinece"/pseudoscience is by starting in the schools. As long as there is a problem conveying basic science concepts to the younger members of our population, there is no hope of solving the problem in adults. Dover, Florida, Kansas etc. all examples where science was dumbed down, misrepresented or ignored entirely in favor of teaching pseudoscience that contributes nothing to the understanding of the world around people. It's terribly disturbing as a biologist to see that the educational system is as it stands, a complete and utter failure especially in regard to the major sciences and that there are little or no plans to remedy the situation.
not directly, space can "bend" and light traveling straight through curved space will curve as well. secondly, photons, the particles that light is composed of has a rest mass of zero although because light carries energy and energy has mass light also has a mass because of the energy it is carrying.
don't you see! without serving these ads we would not have enough money to maintain the tubes! we may even need to raise prices without them... the simplist solution for them is to keep prices the same or even raise them and claim the prices would be higher without them. perhaps even offer a higher priced ad-free version of their services.
there's nothing saying we couldn't use energy from nuclear plants to electrolyze water but considering the sheer amount of energy in the form of sunlight that is available, ignoring it is not an option. as you said, storing hydrogen is the problem although we have catalysts to react carbon dioxide and hydrogen to form numerous compounds, hydrocarbons, misc carbohydrates, even plastics. imagine it, using sunlight or nuclear power to reduce and remove carbon dioxide from the air while simultaneously making more plastics, the more plastic produced, the more CO2 is removed from the air- harnessing consumerism to help the environment!
This will fail the first time anyone encrypts their traffic. Therefore, either someone reminds them of the foolishness of their plan, they actually carry out their plan and it not surprisingly fails miserably or the worst scenario- they actually include encrypted traffic along with illegal p2p traffic regardless of whether it is actually legal or not.
glad you brought that up, there are organisms on earth that can survive hellish conditions and in fact are thought to have existed on early earth. extreme saltiness, acidity, cold, heat, pressure, radiation etc... we have organisms living happily in all of them. there's bacteria that survived being autoclaved, found in acids nearly 0 in ph, radiation levels 3,000 times what it would take to kill humans and microbes that survived being frozen in ice for 8 million years. life can be pretty stubborn and frankly, I wouldn't count life on Mars as an impossibility even today as microbes have been found over a kilometer underground.
to your other point- what caused 9/11- take a look at the history of that place and our involvement- including the nice warm welcome the soviets got when they tried to invade. how we constantly meddle in the affairs of these countries- countries with large numbers of power hungry, religious hatred harnessing extremists who at first attacked the forces we had in those countries [cole for one] and figured that attacking us on our own soil might be more efficient.
you're assuming that the current administration doesn't realize current protocols do nothing. It's security theatre not security. Had they actually wanted to prevent the kind of threats they claim are the most serious, they'd do well by scraping the police state they've set up and get out of Iraq. Here's a hint: you don't need a supercomputer with advanced algorithms to figure out that you can't lessen terrorism by invading countries for little or no reason, blowing up all their infrastructure and torturing people.
then again, some models predict that it had little effect on the number of asteroid/comet impacts. The reason we see a lot of systems with large, close orbiting jovian [gas giants] worlds is because they are much easier to spot- that may change in a few years with better techniques/telescopes.
exactly. for that matter why is it that copyrights can exceed the life-time of the content creator? have they explained how it benefits the artist if the copyright outlives the artist?