Exactly! And when you "fill the gap" by finding a transitional form between two species, you immediately create two gaps where before there was only one (bigger) gap... creationists are never going to be satisfied with this, so it's a bit pointless playing this game with them.
Frank Layden, Utah Jazz president on a former player: "I told him, 'son,
what is it with you, ignorance or apathy?' He said 'Coach, I don't know
and I don't care.' "
And you know about the walking on water bit how? Or the plague bit, or the parting the sea bit? (I'll grant you the conquering bit, although I note that many regions have been conquered in history without it necessarily being a sign of divine favour.)
Speaking as an historian, you have very poor sources for these - the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts, the Synoptic ones disagree with John in important areas, and even if they were eyewitness accounts, why should they a priori be believed more than any other extraordinary claim (eg an alien floated through the walls of my bedroom last night and abducted me)? But at least they were just about written within living memory of Jesus's lifetime. Exodus was written down centuries after the events it describes. The Gospels and Exodus are not evidence for anything other than the beliefs of the people who wrote them. And that's not good enough for me, sorry, not by a long shot. If it's good enough for you, fine, but please stop pretending you've scored some kind of rim shot by citing this "evidence". It's not going to convince anyone who doesn't already believe.
Yes, that's all very nice and reasonable. But despite your confident tone, the fact remains that this is your own personal interpretation of God. You cannot deny that there are many other, mutually exclusive interpretations . You say he "can and does bend the rules", others might say no, vote Democrat (or whatever) and you burn in Hell forever. So why should I take your version of God over any other? Maybe the Democrat-hating God is the real one, maybe your tolerant one is. Maybe neither. What basis do I have for deciding?
Mendel is not a perfect example - literacy was hardly the sole preserve of the Church by the 19th century. Also, his
description of genetics was definitive for more like half a century, not a century, and was definitive because nobody took any notice of it for that period.
No one has bothered to even look to see if the rules by which our universe exists today are the same as a few million years ago, or a few billion years ago. How would you be able to tell that, say, the gravitational constant of the universe has been constant all along?
It's not true to say that no one has bothered to look. In general, we assume that the rules have not changed; if this assumption were erroneous, we would constantly get bizarre results when we applied this assumption the further backwards in time we look - eg distant galaxies, or very old geological strata. (Of course, one could argue that "bizarre results" in cosmology is exactly what we are talking about here.) And in particular, some physicists and astronomers have tried to excplicitly test these assumptions, as far as possible, and/or include variable "constants" in their models - Dirac was one who did this with the universal gravitational constant, that you mention.
Just to deal briefly with some other points you mention - I don't see how military tactics changing has any bearing on anything. This is a social/cultural/technological thing, it's got nothing to do with the possibilty of changing physical constants. And au contraire, continental drift is a gradual process... my fellow Australians and I are moving northwards at a measurable rate of 10mm per year. There will have been periods of faster movement, possibly even more catastrophic ones, but it is not true to say "It occurs one violent event at a time"; it's always occuring.
Why? Just attach a comparably-sized telescope to the ISS. I always wonder why they didn't do it already. Hubble is a pretty big chunk of metal for a stand-alone satellite, but it's no match for the ISS. And you wouldn't need separate positioning and attitude control, power generation and what else. And you could actually have astronomers go there and look through the damn thing it they wanted to.
This has disadvantages. The vibrations from the station would be hell with pointing and image stability, and the structure of the station would occlude a big chunk of sky, so you'd have much less pointing freedom, and it would also make it trickier to integrate on one area for long periods of time. A free-flying observatory is much better. As long as you are going to the effort to haul a big telescope up into orbit, why not do the job properly and not half-assed?
There are certainly good reasons to have space-based platforms for observing the non-visible spectrum--which is why NASA has other space telescopes beside HST and why it plans to launch JWST. None for those reasons have much to do with hubble, however.
Well, actually, they do, because Hubble does UV; nothing else up there does UV like Hubble does UV; and you can't do UV from the ground (except for near-UV).
Sorry, but I had to say that. I love the worldbuilding, the history, the tech, the societies. He has a real flair for that. And I can almost forgive the plot strangenesses and lack of
resolution of the things he builds up (eg going on and on about how it was nearly impossible to capture a lighthugger, then it becomes necessary for the pigs to do exactly that, then the action jumps forward a bit and someone says something to the effect of "hey, that was a pretty cool thing we did, capturing this lighthugger, hey?") - that's not to bad, because I find the ride enjoyable. But I find that his characters seem to do things not because it makes sense for them to do them, but because it advances the plot. Ie, there's no motivation for a lot of the important stuff that goes on. And that is really starting to bug me. I think he should slow down a bit, and not rush the books out so fast. Or something. Until then... "You're good, kid, but you're not the One."
Years ago I had an argument along somewhat similar lines with an educated man (well, half-educated, a physics PhD student as I was) and it pissed me off no end that he wouldn't concede that it was worth a lousy few million dollars a year to fund an asteroid search to properly assess the threat... he kept saying things like "there are more important things to spend the money on" and "if we get wiped out by an asteroid, so what? if it happens, it happens..." Just thinking back to this makes me want to track him down and beat some sense into him!
The question is, are you going to let the machines sit there on Mars for a year as your crew is trying to get there. Remember that the Martian environment is incredibly dusty, and that nothing from earth has spent more than 90 days up and running on Mars.
Not so. The Viking 1 lander was operational for over 6 years, while the Viking 2 lander lasted 3.5 years (see here). So, yes, I think we can manage a year or 18 months.
You've completely missed the point. He's not designing spacecraft, he is taking NASA's current plan for a manned Mars mission (ie Mars Semi-Direct) and trying to visualise it - either because he's thinking about filming a Mars movie or just for the heck of it. NASA didn't ask him to do this, nor will anybody be sending people to Mars in something Cameron came up with. So take a deep breath and relax...
Why does something have to be a prediction to be useful? It's called analysis - trying to work out what Apple was thinking when they set the price point. And given that when the price and specs were announced, everyone's first reaction was "Whaaaaaaa? It's only 50 bucks less than an iPod, that's crazy", it seems like a worthwhile exercise.
Maybe you like listening to music like this:
"We're Sgt. Pepper's CLICK lonely CLICK CLICK band. We hope you will CLICK the show."
but I'd perfer to hear my music instead.
You do realise you can turn the clicking off, don't you? It was one of the first things I did...
Case in point: Highlander 2: The Quickening, with its "everything you know about the origins of the Highlanders is wrong" plot. Scotland? Bah, laddie, they're from another planet, and one named for an optics company, at that!
Nooooo, it's the planet Zeist, not Zeiss... that would just be silly.
ObParodyTagline: "There should have been only one!"
As a moderate Tolkien geek who has read the LOTR about 8 times, The Hobbit about the the same, and The Silmarilion once, I have to say those are some pretty stupid titles.:)
Ummm... admittedly it's been a few years now since I got my astrophysics MSc, but when exactly did HST become a "turkey" and a "POS"? I seem to recall one or two notable discoveries made using Hubble data. The reaction to this announcement amongst astros I know hardly concurs with your opinion ("very depressing news" is one quote), and check this out, too. Of course, as you say, science will go on, and there lots of other great telescopes around or in the works. But that's no reason to rubbish the achievments of one of the truly great observatories. Besides which HST has unique capabilities, eg in UV, and the ability to observe one piece of sky for long durations, which cannot be duplicated from the ground.
Maybe it's because I'm not a US taxpayer, so it's not my money, but your opinion as an astronomer seems kinda odd.
Heh... I haven't seen the story in question nor read the novelisation, but reading the description of it on the BBC website did remind me of an even-more padded out version of The Chase, as you suggested, which I have seen now and didn't think very much of. But it would be almost worth seeing it just for that Christmas greeting!
No, it's a masterpiece I tell you! Just look at the cliffhanger ending from episode 7 (SPOILER WARNING):
The travellers journey on in the TARDIS. Realising that they never got a chance to celebrate Christmas during their recent visit to Earth, the Doctor produces a bottle of champagne and some glasses. He toasts Steven and Sara and then turns and wishes everyone at home a happy Christmas as well.
There is a schedule available which takes us to the end of 2004, though I think it is projected rather than confirmed (it still hasn't been updated for the week Who was off-air because of the tennis). On the other hand, it does say the ABC had confirmed the 2003 schedule, so maybe they have confirmation that it will be showing until the end of 2004. (From the original announcement, anyway, the ABC did say it was going to be showing ALL of Who...)
I agree with you - just adding my own little rant.
I've had to administer Macs from the days of System 7 (well, we still had some System 6 machines around when I started), and I couldn't stand the UI. It was never intuitive to me, as a (then) mostly unix/partly windows user. I could never understand what all the Mac fanatics in my workplace were on about - I'd just smile condescendingly at them and fix whatever luser problems they had at the moment.
Now, with OS X, I've become something of a Mac fanatic myself, for all the usual reasons - best of both worlds, GUI goodness with unix core, etc. I bought my first Mac ever a few months ago - a sweeeet 12" G4 PB. And I'm not alone, I see a lot of mostly unix/linux friends and co-workers playing with and switching to OS X. OS X has helped bring about a new golden age for Apple. And yet... instead of being grateful that Apple has a new lease on life, and that people are switching in droves, these old MacOS farts can't help but bitch and moan about how the dock doesn't do this or that, the Apple menu doesn't have applications in it, blah, blah. Get over it, people! Doesn't the very success of OS X tell you something? MacOS never acheived this level of popularity (well, except maybe in the early days) - so maybe MacOS wasn't as good as you think it was? I've heard near-MS zealots say "Wouldn't it be great if OS X could be ported to Intel, so we could have that great GUI on cheap, fast hardware?"... would anyone have thought that was worthwhile for MacOS?
OS X is by no means perfect, but MacOS is dead, and about time too. It's time to let it go...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly! And when you "fill the gap" by finding a transitional form between two species, you immediately create two gaps where before there was only one (bigger) gap ... creationists are never going to be satisfied with this, so it's a bit pointless playing this game with them.
And fair enough too!
Speaking as an historian, you have very poor sources for these - the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts, the Synoptic ones disagree with John in important areas, and even if they were eyewitness accounts, why should they a priori be believed more than any other extraordinary claim (eg an alien floated through the walls of my bedroom last night and abducted me)? But at least they were just about written within living memory of Jesus's lifetime. Exodus was written down centuries after the events it describes. The Gospels and Exodus are not evidence for anything other than the beliefs of the people who wrote them. And that's not good enough for me, sorry, not by a long shot. If it's good enough for you, fine, but please stop pretending you've scored some kind of rim shot by citing this "evidence". It's not going to convince anyone who doesn't already believe.
Yes, that's all very nice and reasonable. But despite your confident tone, the fact remains that this is your own personal interpretation of God. You cannot deny that there are many other, mutually exclusive interpretations . You say he "can and does bend the rules", others might say no, vote Democrat (or whatever) and you burn in Hell forever. So why should I take your version of God over any other? Maybe the Democrat-hating God is the real one, maybe your tolerant one is. Maybe neither. What basis do I have for deciding?
As for the rest I agree :)
It's not true to say that no one has bothered to look. In general, we assume that the rules have not changed; if this assumption were erroneous, we would constantly get bizarre results when we applied this assumption the further backwards in time we look - eg distant galaxies, or very old geological strata. (Of course, one could argue that "bizarre results" in cosmology is exactly what we are talking about here.) And in particular, some physicists and astronomers have tried to excplicitly test these assumptions, as far as possible, and/or include variable "constants" in their models - Dirac was one who did this with the universal gravitational constant, that you mention.
Just to deal briefly with some other points you mention - I don't see how military tactics changing has any bearing on anything. This is a social/cultural/technological thing, it's got nothing to do with the possibilty of changing physical constants. And au contraire, continental drift is a gradual process ... my fellow Australians and I are moving northwards at a measurable rate of 10mm per year. There will have been periods of faster movement, possibly even more catastrophic ones, but it is not true to say "It occurs one violent event at a time"; it's always occuring.
This has disadvantages. The vibrations from the station would be hell with pointing and image stability, and the structure of the station would occlude a big chunk of sky, so you'd have much less pointing freedom, and it would also make it trickier to integrate on one area for long periods of time. A free-flying observatory is much better. As long as you are going to the effort to haul a big telescope up into orbit, why not do the job properly and not half-assed?
Well, actually, they do, because Hubble does UV; nothing else up there does UV like Hubble does UV; and you can't do UV from the ground (except for near-UV).
Sorry, but I had to say that. I love the worldbuilding, the history, the tech, the societies. He has a real flair for that. And I can almost forgive the plot strangenesses and lack of resolution of the things he builds up (eg going on and on about how it was nearly impossible to capture a lighthugger, then it becomes necessary for the pigs to do exactly that, then the action jumps forward a bit and someone says something to the effect of "hey, that was a pretty cool thing we did, capturing this lighthugger, hey?") - that's not to bad, because I find the ride enjoyable. But I find that his characters seem to do things not because it makes sense for them to do them, but because it advances the plot. Ie, there's no motivation for a lot of the important stuff that goes on. And that is really starting to bug me. I think he should slow down a bit, and not rush the books out so fast. Or something. Until then ... "You're good, kid, but you're not the One."
Do you even know what a fascist is? (Hint: it's not merely somebody who you find offensive in some way.)
Years ago I had an argument along somewhat similar lines with an educated man (well, half-educated, a physics PhD student as I was) and it pissed me off no end that he wouldn't concede that it was worth a lousy few million dollars a year to fund an asteroid search to properly assess the threat ... he kept saying things like "there are more important things to spend the money on" and "if we get wiped out by an asteroid, so what? if it happens, it happens ..." Just thinking back to this makes me want to track him down and beat some sense into him!
Not so. The Viking 1 lander was operational for over 6 years, while the Viking 2 lander lasted 3.5 years (see here). So, yes, I think we can manage a year or 18 months.
Read The Case for Mars . Zubrin has covered your objections there.
You've completely missed the point. He's not designing spacecraft, he is taking NASA's current plan for a manned Mars mission (ie Mars Semi-Direct) and trying to visualise it - either because he's thinking about filming a Mars movie or just for the heck of it. NASA didn't ask him to do this, nor will anybody be sending people to Mars in something Cameron came up with. So take a deep breath and relax ...
And this is different to most of recorded history in what way, exactly?
Why does something have to be a prediction to be useful? It's called analysis - trying to work out what Apple was thinking when they set the price point. And given that when the price and specs were announced, everyone's first reaction was "Whaaaaaaa? It's only 50 bucks less than an iPod, that's crazy", it seems like a worthwhile exercise.
You do realise you can turn the clicking off, don't you? It was one of the first things I did ...
My kingdom, my kingdom for a mod point!
Nooooo, it's the planet Zeist , not Zeiss ... that would just be silly.
ObParodyTagline: "There should have been only one!"
As a moderate Tolkien geek who has read the LOTR about 8 times, The Hobbit about the the same, and The Silmarilion once, I have to say those are some pretty stupid titles. :)
Maybe it's because I'm not a US taxpayer, so it's not my money, but your opinion as an astronomer seems kinda odd.
Heh ... I haven't seen the story in question nor read the novelisation, but reading the description of it on the BBC website did remind me of an even-more padded out version of The Chase, as you suggested, which I have seen now and didn't think very much of. But it would be almost worth seeing it just for that Christmas greeting!
The travellers journey on in the TARDIS. Realising that they never got a chance to celebrate Christmas during their recent visit to Earth, the Doctor produces a bottle of champagne and some glasses. He toasts Steven and Sara and then turns and wishes everyone at home a happy Christmas as well.
Gripping stuff!
There is a schedule available which takes us to the end of 2004, though I think it is projected rather than confirmed (it still hasn't been updated for the week Who was off-air because of the tennis). On the other hand, it does say the ABC had confirmed the 2003 schedule, so maybe they have confirmation that it will be showing until the end of 2004. (From the original announcement, anyway, the ABC did say it was going to be showing ALL of Who ...)
I've had to administer Macs from the days of System 7 (well, we still had some System 6 machines around when I started), and I couldn't stand the UI. It was never intuitive to me, as a (then) mostly unix/partly windows user. I could never understand what all the Mac fanatics in my workplace were on about - I'd just smile condescendingly at them and fix whatever luser problems they had at the moment.
Now, with OS X, I've become something of a Mac fanatic myself, for all the usual reasons - best of both worlds, GUI goodness with unix core, etc. I bought my first Mac ever a few months ago - a sweeeet 12" G4 PB. And I'm not alone, I see a lot of mostly unix/linux friends and co-workers playing with and switching to OS X. OS X has helped bring about a new golden age for Apple. And yet ... instead of being grateful that Apple has a new lease on life, and that people are switching in droves, these old MacOS farts can't help but bitch and moan about how the dock doesn't do this or that, the Apple menu doesn't have applications in it, blah, blah. Get over it, people! Doesn't the very success of OS X tell you something? MacOS never acheived this level of popularity (well, except maybe in the early days) - so maybe MacOS wasn't as good as you think it was? I've heard near-MS zealots say "Wouldn't it be great if OS X could be ported to Intel, so we could have that great GUI on cheap, fast hardware?" ... would anyone have thought that was worthwhile for MacOS?
OS X is by no means perfect, but MacOS is dead, and about time too. It's time to let it go ...
Hmmm, but expensive CGI in 1993 is surely not nearly so expensive in 2004?