I've had a doctor diagnose a broken rib as pancreatitis, spent over $10k paying for doctors to diagnose a problem that I eventually figured out MYSELF with just some research on the Web(verified by 2 other doctors afterwards) and had a doctor misdiagnose a problem, then make it worse by prescribing something that exacerbated the problem.
I think the moral of the story is don't get ill or injured and you won't have problems with doctors misdiagnosing you.
I suppose... but you aren't being very scientific in your analysis of the situation; seeing as how you are using anecdotes as evidence. That being said, if knowing and understanding organic chemistry is not a fundamental part of doctoring then it is a waste of time and money going through the process of studying it.
People will quickly forget much of what they have learned if they don't constantly re-enforce their memories. For this reason I am also dubious as to the fact that Engineers and IT people often have to take English and Social Science courses in college or university so that they can supposedly become better communicators, more logical, etc. I suppose I need to do some research as to the efficacy of teaching less relevant courses of a person's major. My own personal experience is that I have seen good quality IT people in school who weren't very logical when it came to understanding abstract logical concepts, English grammar, etc. They went through the motions of taking the course and they passed, but they didn't seem to get anything out of it.
I've never read any Dawkins, but from the few clips I've seen of him on TV he seems like a bit of an ass.
I have read a few of Dawkins books and they are very well written. I don't remember seeing or hearing him on TV or the radio however. He has obvious biases, but they do not detract from the logic (science) that he presents. He may very well sound like "an ass", but that is besides the point. People need to evaluate his opinions on merit, and not on how he sounds.
People who claim to believe in evolution on the internet have quite clearly never read any science and are behaving like some caricature of ignorant fundamentalists.
Unfortunately your responsive is both Ignorant and Dishonest. You have people as dishonest and ideological as yourself to promote your ideology as +Insightful.
Because you promote dishonesty I rate you as Evil.
Considering the fact that their server is based in Germany, and one of the "features" listed is
You can also easily share part of your files with friends, family, and co-workers.
I'm sure the government, police and the German version of the RIAA/MPAA could quickly make this site/server both less secure and less permanent.
My general advice would be not to store any important files online because being online is inherently insecure. Important files can be stored in a safety deposit box at a bank (a more traditional and secure approach). For temporary and remote access of files that one may not place a lot of importance on then Wuala and other such services may make sense.
My apologies; my above comment should have really been posted to the gp. Proving or disproving "large-scale evolution" in "three generations" is a bogus and self-contradictory question. It seems more of a Troll to me, but I shall not judge (and nor do I have the power to judge in this discussion like others have judged me).
One could observe and hence disprove that (for example) the archeological evidence of evolution is invalid by any number of means. Since radio carbon dating is an important tool of Geology, Anthropology, etc (and hence plays an important part in evolutionary theory), I will use this as an example. Lets say radio-carbon dating is proven to be completely wrong and inaccurate for example. By that matter radiocarbon dating is falsifiable in the sense that we can observe a deviation in the rate of radioactive decay of carbon-14. So if carbon-14 stopped decaying or reversed the decaying process then this would disprove at least one aspect of "large-scale evolution" (whatever that means).
We could also prove through observation that plants or humans do not adapt to their environment by, for example, sending people who live in warm tropical climates up to the arctic and see if they don't (over generations) develop shorter and huskier and fattier bodies with more blood cells in their extremities to help keep them warm. Both of these examples are falsifiable and will in turn help to disprove at least these two aspects of evolution. We could bring into account genetics, etc.
Of course there is no one variable that can completely disprove evolution, but if all the variables that are known and used to be in evolutionary theory are discounted then we can discount evolutionary theory. It is therefore falsifiable.
I hope that finally answers your question. Of course (and I hope this is not true) that if you are not really looking for an answer but merely asking a rhetorical question then no answer would likely be acceptable to you.
If you're going to quote, at least try someone or a source less slanted.
It doesn't matter what you personally think of my sources. Einstein's atheism, and my reference give numerous and lengthy quotes and references. You offer nothing. If I Googled and researched enough I'm sure I could find dozens of references, but this would be redundant. People will believe and propagate their ideologies no matter how illogical or dishonest they are. And I have no doubt whatsoever that you are being dishonest.
"http://failblog.org/" is a typical type of retort for people who can't except the truth.
I assume you include Albert Einstein (who believed in a creator or "God") among the unscrupulous exploiters of people's scientific ignorance.
It's actually the ignorance, propaganda and outright lies amongst the religious that have caused me to loose my faith over the years. What you say is complete nonsense, and has been commented upon by well known scientists (and atheists) such as Richard Dawkins .
Actually, the people who are critical of being lead like sheep into believing current estimates on the age of the earth (whether intelligent design proponents or simply intelligent critical thinkers) have been citing flaws in carbon dating for years.
Radiocarbon dating isn't used to determine the age of the Earth:
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years... One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites.
For dating the age of the Earth or anything in the billions of years one is not going to use carbon-14, but rather something like uranium because "Uranium and thorium have long half-lives, and so persist in Earth's crust..." (Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Modern_radiometric_dating).
Your quote:
Presently there are too many circular arguments in so-called scientific theories on the age of the earth which cannot be independently or repeatably tested for me to throw any weight behind the random numbers I saw in my text books.
I've personally never seen any "circular arguments" or any "random numbers" in the text books that I was assigned to read.
You said:
...you don't want to be confronted with others' beliefs.
I don't think anybody likes confrontation. The debate is really about religious beliefs being passed off as science, and more importantly (to the gp at least) the potential FUD that almost always seems to arrive from ideologues when scientists improve their theories or observations.
Why are there so many people in this thread worried about what other people are going to think about this?
It matters because any FUD (apparent or real) about science will be exploited by those whose political ideologies diverge with scientific findings. For political ideologues, any apparent negative-sounding news means exploitable FUD. This can effect how education is funded and mandated, among other things. Science unfortunately is not an Ivory Tower sheltered from politicians.
It sure is fun to huh-huh-guffaw about ID... until you realize, after some reflection, that evolution is, at root, just a theory.
You know, as in... not fact and all.
And the general scientific consensus:
In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation. For the scientist, "theory" is not in any way an antonym of "fact".
- Wikipedia
Well anything based on a scientific method is good enough for me. Some people just get their "facts" from a Bible.
I'm sure the carbon dating will prove that the Earth was created 6000 years ago as scienticians re-evaluate the alchemy involved in the study of Earths history. Me and my buddies at the NRA were waiting for the Truth to come out and hit Humanist reality with a 45 caliber hollow point bullet. Now hopefully we can bring FUD to conspiracy of Ape-man Darwinism and relish in the biblical Truth that the big bang happened before the domestication of dogs. If you believe in Science then you have little faith.
Your question is at least a Troll, and probably intended to be Flaimbait as well. If you have a glance at the Web Site it is obvious that the distro is based on an artistic style. Unlike Christian etc commodities it does not appear to try and evangelize nor criticize religious belief systems. Christian distros are much more offensive and offer far more Flaimbait opportunity do to the nature and history of its religion.
There was no one search engine that I used until somebody at work told me about Google (early 2001). Lycos, Dogpile, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc and so on all come to mind. There was no "loyalty" until Google. Google set the standard. Let's hope it doesn't grow too big for it's breeches.
I think more likely they are doing it to stir up FUD in the Linux distro community. They are beating their chest and seeing how many dogs put their tails between their legs.
It seems more like the dubious world of high finance and banking than anything high tech. Microsoft is buying and selling Linux vouchers? Well they could just as easily be selling Indulgences.
And BTW my eyes happened to glance at the top of Slashdot, I thought it read "Don't feed the penguins".
They don't act on an individual complaint, but they compile them and if a company gets a number of them, the FTC goes after them.
That's pretty much what I was (finally) told (after calling back and forth between Bell Canada and the police) by the police. This means that I will continue to get automated robotic calls from the same companies (it has been happening for a few years already) until enough people decide to complain about it.
It's not a criminal issue, it is a civil.regulatory issue. So the police aren't involved.
According to what I was told by Bell Canada, it is a police issue. I agree however that the police should not have to get involved. I received no help or advice from either institution. I remember one time complaining to the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent to the American FCC) on another matter and they referred me to another department which referred me to another department. Eventually I gave up on that issue as I have given up on the robotic phone call issue (which I have complained about more than once; if at first you don't succeed, try try again).
I think these companies probably know the law enforcement issues (civil or otherwise) better than me and try to keep their call volume under the radar.
Yeah I know the issues; "it's not my aisle" and I should stop pestering law enforcement to enforce the law and the phone company can't control their own phone network.
Yes we've had laws against pre-recorded robotic marketing in Canada for decades. The problem is that neither the government nor the police are willing to enforce the law. When I get robots calling me up I make a complaint to the phone company and the phone company says they can't do anything about it because it is a police issue. When I phone the police up they tell me that they won't do anything about it because it is the phone company's responsibility to stop the illegal practice.
BTW, when I said It has a very intuitive interface and is easily customizable. I was really talking about NoScript. I should have worded that better. Yes I remember Zone alarm being fairly straightforward as well with these things.
Also, NoScript blocks Flash as well. I've never tried FlashBlock, but I think it would probably be redundant if you use NoScript.
According to the NoScript Web Site: "Supported browsers: Firefox 1.5.0.6 and above, SeaMonkey 1.0.5 and above, Flock, IceWeasel, Minefield...". I was using FF 2 until a few weeks ago and it worked fine. It works just as good now that I'm using FF 3. At any rate it's easy enough to uninstall or disable if you don't like it or there are any problems.
NoScript sounds like something that you need. I used to have ZoneAlarm as well. IMHO it is much better at configuring things like JavaScript access, etc. It has a very intuitive interface and is easily customizable.
JavaScript, for example, can be turned on temporarily by a click of a button in the status bar when you logon to Webmail. You can also have white lists of sites. It protects against Flash and even XSS and other nuisances. The developers are constantly updating the program based on newly found vulnerabilities, etc.
I only have local links on my NoScript whitelist. If I do decide to use JavaScript (it helps when reading the FireHose on Slash for example), I will temporarily enable it. It should be emphasized that I'm talking about consumer choice here; these technologies may and sometimes even do offer added value to the Web experience.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had a doctor diagnose a broken rib as pancreatitis, spent over $10k paying for doctors to diagnose a problem that I eventually figured out MYSELF with just some research on the Web(verified by 2 other doctors afterwards) and had a doctor misdiagnose a problem, then make it worse by prescribing something that exacerbated the problem.
I think the moral of the story is don't get ill or injured and you won't have problems with doctors misdiagnosing you.
I suppose... but you aren't being very scientific in your analysis of the situation; seeing as how you are using anecdotes as evidence. That being said, if knowing and understanding organic chemistry is not a fundamental part of doctoring then it is a waste of time and money going through the process of studying it.
People will quickly forget much of what they have learned if they don't constantly re-enforce their memories. For this reason I am also dubious as to the fact that Engineers and IT people often have to take English and Social Science courses in college or university so that they can supposedly become better communicators, more logical, etc. I suppose I need to do some research as to the efficacy of teaching less relevant courses of a person's major. My own personal experience is that I have seen good quality IT people in school who weren't very logical when it came to understanding abstract logical concepts, English grammar, etc. They went through the motions of taking the course and they passed, but they didn't seem to get anything out of it.
It's one thing to read some Dawkins
I've never read any Dawkins, but from the few clips I've seen of him on TV he seems like a bit of an ass.
I have read a few of Dawkins books and they are very well written. I don't remember seeing or hearing him on TV or the radio however. He has obvious biases, but they do not detract from the logic (science) that he presents. He may very well sound like "an ass", but that is besides the point. People need to evaluate his opinions on merit, and not on how he sounds.
People who claim to believe in evolution on the internet have quite clearly never read any science and are behaving like some caricature of ignorant fundamentalists.
Unfortunately your responsive is both Ignorant and Dishonest. You have people as dishonest and ideological as yourself to promote your ideology as +Insightful.
Because you promote dishonesty I rate you as Evil.
Considering the fact that their server is based in Germany, and one of the "features" listed is
You can also easily share part of your files with friends, family, and co-workers.
I'm sure the government, police and the German version of the RIAA/MPAA could quickly make this site/server both less secure and less permanent.
My general advice would be not to store any important files online because being online is inherently insecure. Important files can be stored in a safety deposit box at a bank (a more traditional and secure approach). For temporary and remote access of files that one may not place a lot of importance on then Wuala and other such services may make sense.
There are a lot of creationists who have changed their opinion, it just happens gradually...
You mean through the process of evolution?
My apologies; my above comment should have really been posted to the gp. Proving or disproving "large-scale evolution" in "three generations" is a bogus and self-contradictory question. It seems more of a Troll to me, but I shall not judge (and nor do I have the power to judge in this discussion like others have judged me).
One could observe and hence disprove that (for example) the archeological evidence of evolution is invalid by any number of means. Since radio carbon dating is an important tool of Geology, Anthropology, etc (and hence plays an important part in evolutionary theory), I will use this as an example. Lets say radio-carbon dating is proven to be completely wrong and inaccurate for example. By that matter radiocarbon dating is falsifiable in the sense that we can observe a deviation in the rate of radioactive decay of carbon-14. So if carbon-14 stopped decaying or reversed the decaying process then this would disprove at least one aspect of "large-scale evolution" (whatever that means).
We could also prove through observation that plants or humans do not adapt to their environment by, for example, sending people who live in warm tropical climates up to the arctic and see if they don't (over generations) develop shorter and huskier and fattier bodies with more blood cells in their extremities to help keep them warm. Both of these examples are falsifiable and will in turn help to disprove at least these two aspects of evolution. We could bring into account genetics, etc.
Of course there is no one variable that can completely disprove evolution, but if all the variables that are known and used to be in evolutionary theory are discounted then we can discount evolutionary theory. It is therefore falsifiable.
I hope that finally answers your question. Of course (and I hope this is not true) that if you are not really looking for an answer but merely asking a rhetorical question then no answer would likely be acceptable to you.
Best regards,
UTW
However, I'm doubtful if that could work since in theory just about any theory is disprovable...
I think it may just be the wording here (and hence the logic). A theory doesn't have to be disprovable, but it does have to be falsifiable.
If you're going to quote, at least try someone or a source less slanted.
It doesn't matter what you personally think of my sources. Einstein's atheism, and my reference give numerous and lengthy quotes and references. You offer nothing. If I Googled and researched enough I'm sure I could find dozens of references, but this would be redundant. People will believe and propagate their ideologies no matter how illogical or dishonest they are. And I have no doubt whatsoever that you are being dishonest.
"http://failblog.org/" is a typical type of retort for people who can't except the truth.
I have nothing more to say.
You said:
I assume you include Albert Einstein (who believed in a creator or "God") among the unscrupulous exploiters of people's scientific ignorance.
It's actually the ignorance, propaganda and outright lies amongst the religious that have caused me to loose my faith over the years. What you say is complete nonsense, and has been commented upon by well known scientists (and atheists) such as Richard Dawkins .
Here's a reference (pertaining to Einstein's "Faith") for good measure:
- http://skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id8.html
Your quote:
Actually, the people who are critical of being lead like sheep into believing current estimates on the age of the earth (whether intelligent design proponents or simply intelligent critical thinkers) have been citing flaws in carbon dating for years.
Radiocarbon dating isn't used to determine the age of the Earth:
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years... One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
For dating the age of the Earth or anything in the billions of years one is not going to use carbon-14, but rather something like uranium because "Uranium and thorium have long half-lives, and so persist in Earth's crust..." (Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Modern_radiometric_dating).
Your quote:
Presently there are too many circular arguments in so-called scientific theories on the age of the earth which cannot be independently or repeatably tested for me to throw any weight behind the random numbers I saw in my text books.
I've personally never seen any "circular arguments" or any "random numbers" in the text books that I was assigned to read.
You said:
...you don't want to be confronted with others' beliefs.
I don't think anybody likes confrontation. The debate is really about religious beliefs being passed off as science, and more importantly (to the gp at least) the potential FUD that almost always seems to arrive from ideologues when scientists improve their theories or observations.
Why are there so many people in this thread worried about what other people are going to think about this?
It matters because any FUD (apparent or real) about science will be exploited by those whose political ideologies diverge with scientific findings. For political ideologues, any apparent negative-sounding news means exploitable FUD. This can effect how education is funded and mandated, among other things. Science unfortunately is not an Ivory Tower sheltered from politicians.
You said:
It sure is fun to huh-huh-guffaw about ID ... until you realize, after some reflection, that evolution is, at root, just a theory.
You know, as in ... not fact and all.
And the general scientific consensus:
In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation. For the scientist, "theory" is not in any way an antonym of "fact".
- Wikipedia
Well anything based on a scientific method is good enough for me. Some people just get their "facts" from a Bible.
I'm sure the carbon dating will prove that the Earth was created 6000 years ago as scienticians re-evaluate the alchemy involved in the study of Earths history. Me and my buddies at the NRA were waiting for the Truth to come out and hit Humanist reality with a 45 caliber hollow point bullet. Now hopefully we can bring FUD to conspiracy of Ape-man Darwinism and relish in the biblical Truth that the big bang happened before the domestication of dogs. If you believe in Science then you have little faith.
Because the name is juvenile flamebait?
Your question is at least a Troll, and probably intended to be Flaimbait as well. If you have a glance at the Web Site it is obvious that the distro is based on an artistic style. Unlike Christian etc commodities it does not appear to try and evangelize nor criticize religious belief systems. Christian distros are much more offensive and offer far more Flaimbait opportunity do to the nature and history of its religion.
There was no one search engine that I used until somebody at work told me about Google (early 2001). Lycos, Dogpile, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc and so on all come to mind. There was no "loyalty" until Google. Google set the standard. Let's hope it doesn't grow too big for it's breeches.
Touch screens should re-vitalize computer based porn. Think of the possibilities.
I think more likely they are doing it to stir up FUD in the Linux distro community. They are beating their chest and seeing how many dogs put their tails between their legs.
It seems more like the dubious world of high finance and banking than anything high tech. Microsoft is buying and selling Linux vouchers? Well they could just as easily be selling Indulgences.
And BTW my eyes happened to glance at the top of Slashdot, I thought it read "Don't feed the penguins".
They don't act on an individual complaint, but they compile them and if a company gets a number of them, the FTC goes after them.
That's pretty much what I was (finally) told (after calling back and forth between Bell Canada and the police) by the police. This means that I will continue to get automated robotic calls from the same companies (it has been happening for a few years already) until enough people decide to complain about it.
It's not a criminal issue, it is a civil.regulatory issue. So the police aren't involved.
According to what I was told by Bell Canada, it is a police issue. I agree however that the police should not have to get involved. I received no help or advice from either institution. I remember one time complaining to the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent to the American FCC) on another matter and they referred me to another department which referred me to another department. Eventually I gave up on that issue as I have given up on the robotic phone call issue (which I have complained about more than once; if at first you don't succeed, try try again).
I think these companies probably know the law enforcement issues (civil or otherwise) better than me and try to keep their call volume under the radar.
Yeah I know the issues; "it's not my aisle" and I should stop pestering law enforcement to enforce the law and the phone company can't control their own phone network.
Yes we've had laws against pre-recorded robotic marketing in Canada for decades. The problem is that neither the government nor the police are willing to enforce the law. When I get robots calling me up I make a complaint to the phone company and the phone company says they can't do anything about it because it is a police issue. When I phone the police up they tell me that they won't do anything about it because it is the phone company's responsibility to stop the illegal practice.
BTW, when I said It has a very intuitive interface and is easily customizable. I was really talking about NoScript. I should have worded that better. Yes I remember Zone alarm being fairly straightforward as well with these things.
Also, NoScript blocks Flash as well. I've never tried FlashBlock, but I think it would probably be redundant if you use NoScript.
According to the NoScript Web Site: "Supported browsers: Firefox 1.5.0.6 and above, SeaMonkey 1.0.5 and above, Flock, IceWeasel, Minefield...". I was using FF 2 until a few weeks ago and it worked fine. It works just as good now that I'm using FF 3. At any rate it's easy enough to uninstall or disable if you don't like it or there are any problems.
The main link:
http://noscript.net/
The program link:
http://noscript.net/getit
NoScript sounds like something that you need. I used to have ZoneAlarm as well. IMHO it is much better at configuring things like JavaScript access, etc. It has a very intuitive interface and is easily customizable.
JavaScript, for example, can be turned on temporarily by a click of a button in the status bar when you logon to Webmail. You can also have white lists of sites. It protects against Flash and even XSS and other nuisances. The developers are constantly updating the program based on newly found vulnerabilities, etc.
It is highly recommended.
I only have local links on my NoScript whitelist. If I do decide to use JavaScript (it helps when reading the FireHose on Slash for example), I will temporarily enable it. It should be emphasized that I'm talking about consumer choice here; these technologies may and sometimes even do offer added value to the Web experience.