I'm trying to use the slash code together an alternative site that will have a heavier science focus, I think that would be a nice thing to replace molbio.evol and might draw in more people with the advantage that graphics can be shared and everyone knows how to use a web browser. I've got a couple of other molbio people interested in this - interested?
Do we eventually get bought by Andover and make millions?;->
Seriously, I agree that/. should really stay focused on tech. When the discussion moves into sciences, its is likely to go downhill.
My background is Bio-pyschology. That means I can discect rats, tell you why your cat is peeing outside the litter box and crunch numbers like a badass. (Heavy emphasis on statistics, logical reasoning and proper experimental design.) You want someone to do a sniff test on psychological, medical, evolutionary and genetic findings and occasionally pontificate on the relevance of scientific thinking to politics, I'm your gender-neutral online entity of choice.
Honey, if someone said they were writing a book explaining all the unexplainable problems is astronomy by bringing out the new "cool circle" theory of quantum mechanics to solve the otherwise insurmountable problem of how planets got in their orbits, exactly how much more would you need to read to know it was utter tripe?
Unless the reviewer is simply flat out lying about the intent and direction of the books, we know its tripe, because it claims to solve a problem which does not exist, it attaches self determinism in a place it doesn't belong and tries to take quantum physics out of science and make it a magical anything-can-happen fairy.
All this argument does differently than the argument the earlier poster states is try to redefine "cause" for the special case of his god. In a word, "no." Throwing in the word "efficient" doesn't change the argument in the slightest, it still boils down to "everything has to have a cause, except God, and since I've defined God as the only thing that doesn't need a cause, it must be the first cause." It's a meaningless play on words, and nothing more.
As for who refuted it, I just did.;-> Unless you can do better than trying to prove a god by definition, it stands refuted by its own vacuous logic.
Also by Dawkins and something of a companion book. While they go over some of the same material, it seems that its material that some people need at least two shots of. Also they tackle the issue almost from two sides. Watchmaker adresses the "goodness of fit" sort of argument to eliminate the need for a consious designer, while Mount Improbable (as the name implies) explains how incredibly complicated and seemingly interdependant structures can be broken down into a smooth gradiation of tiny steps.
On Dawkins' other books, I'd hold off. Selfish Gene is more philosophical IMHO, and Unweaving the Rainbow is Dawkins trying to be Sagan and failing miserably (where Sagan made you inspired by science, Rainbow just tries to tear down humanities. (OK, I didn't really read much of it, that was a generalization from the introduction, I'm sorry. But it was strong enough in the intro that it turned me off FAST.)) Dawkins does a better job of inspiring when he just writes what he knows.
Quantum mechanics allows us an escape from this gloomy outlook.
Sure, but it's not necessary unless one accepts all the premises of the article. Is it all that gloomy anyway?
I'm glad someone but me and an AC has any bio and evolution knowledge arround here.
Indeed, there is nothing particularly gloomy about the current knowledge on evolution. It actually fits together quite nicely and makes plenty of sense. No need to introduce magical phase-shifting DNA strands to "explain" what already works.
So apparently when these DNA strands phase shift, they actually exist not just in a parrallel reality, but one where time moves much much faster than it does here. Then the DNA can observe (through spiritual DNA intelligence) what will happen to it's host cell when it mutates in a certain way, and the DNA which observes a long reproducive cycle jockies back into the herenow phase, pushing the other potential DNAs aside with the strength of its thousands of future copies. Yep, that sounds like a solid scientific theory to me. (and for those who accuse me of strawmanning, the tone was in jest, but you give me a better explination of what he could have meant by saying that the DNA would pick the best of the potential mutations. really.)
Does God Exist, by Hans Kung. As both the chief theological advisor for Vatican II, and an author with books on the Vatican's non grata list, he is a qualified and a open minded author.
Hmmmm.... well why didn't I think of that? When I'm looking for an openminded book on the subject of the existance of gods, I go straight to a theological advisor to the Catholic Church. Yep! Just can't beat a guy well up in the Catholic heirarchy for really seeing both sides of a faith issue.
I've gotta say, you got your faults, but you are great for a laugh.
For a well reasoned argument (or twenty) try the alt.atheism FAQ. Many of the people on that group were religious at some point in their lives and actually have a somewhat even handed veiw of both states.
Don't be an ass. We have the widely understood facts of biology that form the basis of much of our new medical advances vs a flat refusal to consider it. Your requests for "proof" in the face of easily understood references are just childish debating and would be moderated down as flame if they regarded any branch of science except this one. (Which says more about this group than it does about this branch of science unfortunately.)
If you want to understand the processes you are deriding, read any of the books that have been recomended here which make very clear how complex systems can arrise from simple ones and large changes can take place over large periods of time. Dawkins' "the blind watchmaker" and "climbing mount improbable" are good, layperson oriented starts as is the FAQ page and related info on talk.origens.
If you don't feel that these are really "proof" because you insist on misunderstanding the underlying processes, I suggest you go (back) to college and take, in order : Basic Chem, Bio 101, cell biology, developmental biology (also may be called embyotic biology) comparative vertabrate anatomy, invertabrate antomy, phisiology I and II, Genetics (with lab if possible), statistics and probablity, and an evolution semimar if its offered. Throw in some geology and paleantology while your at it to get some idea of time scale.
I am not going to attempt to recreate several good books and a major in Bio-psych on/. so that you can make some stupid ass comment back. I know when someone is playing "Argument from incredulity" and will keep playing it until the other person gets tired and gives up on him. (Giving up on you will of course be interpreted as "giving up" and you will go on saying that no one can give you any proof of evolution.)
;-> yeah, its BS, but what can you do besides sit around all morning in your bathrobe ranting with your NICOE on the phone and being competitive about which of you can find the most life-science illiterate part of it and posting flaming replies. Well, I could get a life I guess, but then I'd have to get dressed.
Yes, but they are divided popularly, though not scientificly, by time scale. "Microevolution" are things that happen on a time scale people understand. "A long long time ago all dogs were kinda wolf-like, but through concentrated efforts at breeding throughout human history, we got different strains of dog." What people don't think about is that "throughout human history" is an evolutionary blink. Hell, its practically an evolutionary screen refresh.
People just can't deal with things on certain scales unless they really work on it. It is, ironicly, evolution. Scientists try all sorts of examples (time since earth cooled on your outstretched arm, human civilization is a dust mote almost falling off the end of your fingernail, etc.) But the truth is that even people who understand it intellectually usually don't have a good emotional grasp of it. Thats why arguments from incredulity work so well in this debate.
-Kahuna Burger
OT, I thought about writing a science fiction story about a world with two independant forms of life - silicon and carbon. The silicon form would be so much slower than the carbon based that instead of developing tool use, they just evolve plants and animals into what they need with selective pressure. Need a knife? Sure you can learn to smelt metals (but now that I think about it, that might actually not be posible since the melting point would be reached so "fast") but why not just spend a few hundred generations eliminating the 90 dullest percent of a field of grass until you have a field of razors? As a hobby you could improve the stem at the base into a handle. The story most likely would be about the carbon based life, but I don't really have the time or energy for good fiction writing these days. *sigh*.
Sorry to be so inflamatory, but as even an amature biologist, I am insulted that this is being referenced in/. as if its anything but tripe. Not only is the theory rediculous (the existance of bad mutations is only one of the clues that the mutation but not selection process is random) its unneccassary. This old "747 in a junkyard" line is one of the most dishonest creationist arguments used, and has been refuted numerous times by different writers. It depends purely on picking an advanced form of "life" and pretending that it had to start there. Its simply lying about the oposition and selective denying of facts.
The current theory of random* mutation and directed selection adequetly explains every question that has been set to it and honestly investigated. Individual cells or organisms simply don't need to be able to pre-consider the results of a mutation for evolution to do everything we know it does.
My advice is, before you even consider such a nonsense "solution" to the problems in the evolutionary theory, read some real evolution writing and see if there are any problems that need fixing. I recommend either "The Blind Watchmaker", or "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Dawkins. Mount Improbable in particular helps with some of the more silly "747" type objections.
I also recommend that you get at least one moderator with some biological background, or refrain from posting biological news. Anyone with a college level biology or genetics course under her belt can tell you this is crap and treat it as such.
-Kahuna Burger
*there are certain ways in which mutation is non-random, but they do not bear on the "good" or "bad" issue. Dawkins covers this technicality in Mount Improbable.
I'm expereincing serious cognitive dissonance here. Grassroots? This isn't?:)
Being politically active in the Boston area, I can tell you that in this town, a 35 dollar minimum donation is grassroots. ACLU dinners cost 100 to 150 per plate, plus they expect you to make a donation. Fenway community health, anything major is the same. I'm working on a first time dinner dance for my group, and was told that more poeople would want to come if it was 50 dollars instead of 35 (my recommended ticket price). Its crazy when you move out of the grassroots.
Part of this is because there is just such a big population out here, you can apeal only to those who can spend a lot and still fill a room. The other thing is that the cost of living is so high, your veiw of money just changes. I pay 350 a month in rent, no utilities and I have a great deal on an apartment I share with others. $35 is going to this instead of catching a movie and dinner that weekend. A choice I'm fine making.
Jeesh, you guys want high society goldbricks, try getting an invite to a $150 a plate black tie dinner when you only work part time. And then considering scraping together the money to go because you need to make contacts in the political action world. ugh.
And as for the tie (I don't own one but that won't be a problem) Most computer geeks in boston have at least one "interview" outfit that will work. And thats what this is really. If these guys have brains, they will be contacting the press, and they want geeks in suits to say "yeah I work for a software startup and code Linux on the side. This thing is blown way out of proportion. I mean, Pirates! *laughs* Its so silly." Its just a different kind of interview.
So, any boston geeks who want to go but don't own the clothes, let me know and we'll take a field trip down to the big Goodwill Bargin Basement. We'll get ya a blazer, a pair of pants that are supposed to be creased and a tie. Then I'll throw them in my drier with my "home dry-cleaning kit" to freshen them up and wa-la instant respectibilty, 10 to 25 dollars.
i wonder if the true meaning of "innocent until proven guilty" actually registers with some people...
Er, which people would those be? The "true meaning" of the phrase is a reference to criminal court proceedings and nothing else. It is a legal principle in some countries that in cases of ambiguous evidence, the defendant shall not be considered guilty. In the real world outside the courts, its no better an assumption than any other.
A random wild plant that someone says "hey maybe we can eat this" is considered guilty until proven innocent - I won't eat it without evidence that it won't harm me. A stray cat is considered innocent until proven guilty - I don't assume it has rabies and will lunge towards me to bite when I say "hey kitty kitty." Large corporate entities which buy news and discussion media devoted to their area of investment are considered guilty until proven innocent - there is just no good reason to assume that a company would let one of it's investments endanger the others.
The legal principles of one system do not a global philosophy make.
What if I got a DVD player with my Video Card (more and more common), or got a DVD player with an MPEG card? That player must have a key, and that would theoretically give me at least one licensed 'Player Key' that I have paid for and received. Would using DeCSS be 'legal' using that key?
This is a weird area in other copyrighted media. When I was in the campus film series, we would get 16mm movies shipped to us by a distribution company. The rental of the film included renting the right to show it to a mass audience and charge. One time there was a shipping problem that prevented the film from being delivered, and apparently, the company just faxed us a copy of our rental agreement and told us to rent the video like we would to view it privately and just do a mass showing of it (the company also rented videos, and we had access to a room with an overhead video projecter, so it worked.) Point is that even though the physical tape we had rented had copyright protection warnings all over it, we were legally allowed to mass view that copy because we had legal permission to mass veiw "a" copy of that film. Weird.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I'm plenty worried by this. A lot of people have been assuming that this ruling was based on the judge not understanding the point of DeCSS. Instead he's saying that the point doesn't matter. You can't bring your own 3-D glasses to the theater to avoid paying extra. No longer does purchase of a media give you a right to view the media - you have to view it in a specific way controlled by the media producer to give them more money.
I wish it wasn't tax season. My day job is in the tax department of a large comany so I may not be able to take the time to work on writing about this issue in a way that makes sense to non-techies.
It amazes me that people would complain at a mere 1700 words.
You are easily amazed.;) And I am a person, not a people. The length is a symptom, not the problem. Katz does not trim for clarity and information.
It worries me that people believe 700 words (for example) is always enough to clearly state a complex thought.
But it usually is. I have communicated on issues that were very complex and layered in an editorial. And Katz's thoughts are rarely complex enough to need anywhere near the length he uses.
As for articles that are too long, well, I do not need to read all of them. Skimming is an important part of literacy.
The ability to write well is a more important part. An editorial should not need to be skimmed. And that is what Katz writes. He doesn't write tech articles, he editorializes about tech. And in this format, there is no excuse not to make things concise and add lnks to additional detailed info for people who do no have as full a background on the subject as they might like.
It has been my observation that when asked to make something shorter, most people do not really try to revise it; they just find things to rip out until they are below the length limit.
To be entirely egotistical, you have not been observing writers. And Katz puts himself forth as a professional writer. If he is such, he should be held to certain standands, including the ability to edit intelligently. If he isn't he should not be given an open forum here.
I do often feel that Katz needs to put his articles through more re-read, get a second opinion, edit, cycles, but I do not think a draconian length limit will improve this.
If he can write, he's being lazy and a length limit will help. If he really just can't write, what is the point?
I could take almost any of Katz's collumns that I have read and edit them to under 650 words without losing any content. For the love of ferrets, the man spent over 900 words on "Y2K wasn't as big a deal as we thought, lets talk about it". So for everyone who has to respond to criticism with "could you do it better?" yes as a matter of fact I could.
That is the length of this particular discussion of privacy. Now let me put that in perspective. When I write editorials to submit to my local paper, I have to hold myself under 700 words max to even be considered. This is to a general forum, pehaps on a subject that the readers I am trying to reach have very little background on. I have 700 words to frame a subject, give some backround, state an opinion, defend the opinion and conclude. In letters to the editor, one paper sets a limit of 200 words, another 400. In all cases, shorter is considered better.
These sort of limits on print pontificating may be dismissed in the elecronic media. But we need to remember why they're there. It's not about page space. If 1700 word opinion collumns were more informative and enjoyable, the papers would simply devote twice as many pages - letters to the editor and opinion collumns are amoung the most heavily read portions of any paper. The limits on length are about clarity of thought and effectiveness of communication. My first draft of an opinion collumn is always too long. So I go through and I clarify. I decide which examples are for show, not for education. I consider shorter ways of describing situations, which usually turn out to be more understandable as well. I eliminate every "of course" and "naturally" that my ego-centric writer's voice throws in to make itself feel more right. The shorter version is almost always better, and in those rare cases where I feel that I cannot shorten the piece to the extent required without sacrificing meaning, I often discover that I really have two different collumns I want to write.
It is obvious in Jon Katz's collumns (and in other opinion pieces which have appeared on/.) that this editing process does not take place. And it is unlikely to happen unless it is required. If/. wants to get clear, understandable collumns that will elicit constructive discussion from any caliber of writer, they need to set limits. Length limits of even a thousand words would improve the level of communication taking place.
-Kahuna Burger
PS, this is a recommendation for the submission of stories, not the comments. Comments take on more of a conversational tone and will lose much of their spontaneous value if people are re-writing for an afternoon before pressing "submit". But the main page fare, especially if it is not particularly timely, deserves more work.
Wrong. I scored in the top percentile on both the SAT and ACT, but complain loudly about the unfairness and inaccuracy of both tests.
I have blown every standardized test I've ever taken out of the water, right up through the GREs a couple of years ago. And that includes subject tests on subjects I knew I wasn't in the 99th percentile in knowledge of. I bubble test real good and I too complain about the pedestal that these tests are being placed on.
*gratuitous slam on earlier poster's SAT scores avoided*
There are huge problems with basing school entrance on test scores - the one that bugs me the most is when someone who scored 5 points higher is claiming to be "more qualified" on a test that has an internal margin of error of 40 points. But in any case, attempting to shut down the messenger with insults won't make it go away.
I was kind of under the impression that one of the points of science fiction was to have some sort of moral relevance.
Well, it may be descriptive to say that sci fi often does have moral (I would be more likely to say socio-political) relevance, and its a very easy genre to stick that sort of thing into. But to say that it is the point is (IMHO) putting an unnecassary prescriptive burden on what is considerd "real" sci fi. And it certainly isn't where I would draw the line between sci fi and fantasy.
My favorite grouping of sci fi is into "Hard sci fi" soft sci fi" and "science fantasy" based on the extent to which the science, even if beyond our current means, makes sense and how much of it is hand waving. Micheal Criton (sp?) writes hard sci fi, because he usually is expanding on current science trends. Soft sci fi is when there are a few specific advances (a new source of energy, a specific way of traveling faster than light) that may not make sense, but everything else follows fairly logically from that. Science fantasy is like star trek - basically anything can happen and a wave of the hand makes it tech instead of magic.
Interestingly, I think fantasy has "hard" and "soft" sides as well, based on how bound the magic is. Barbara Hambly writes pretty good hard fantasy, Piers Anthony writes fantasy so soft you worry about stepping in it.
Certainly Sci Fi can be divided allong a socio-political axis as well (Babylon 5, while cool in many ways envisioned basically no major changes in society, government or religon in 300 years, while heinlein is all about social change.) But I would hesitate to use that axis to exclude works from sci fi entirely.
One response to this is to consider issues in which you have a limited interest, but I have a great one. I would say that your representitive works for you first but by no means exclusively. A conservation bill, for example, which effects people outside his state more than those in it would be one situation where I think a rep should pay at least as much attention to "outside" voices as constituents.
Another issue is informational rather than opinonated contact. If there is a debate on bilingual education, and I just happened to be a teacher in a heavily bilingual school district (I'm not) I might be concerned that actual teaching and learning expereince was being largely ignored in the debate, in favor of ideological rants. If I want to try to insert my long expereince with what I've seen work or not work into the debate, I would not simply write my reps and hope on of them became a champion for my point of veiw. I would write all of the congressional reps I could and try to insert some added information into the overall consideration. You may have more right to express an opinon to your rep, but we have equal rights to attempt to influence her with information. IMHO of course.;/
Just like Terry Pratchett is not really a fantasy writer, Adams is not really about SF. I disagree. Sci fi and fantasy are settings, as well as genres. You can have a fantasy romance, a sci fi political rant, Comedy in either, adventure in another setting entirely. Galaxy Quest is both a comedy and a sci fi movie and it does both fairly well. So back off on the funny british guys, huh?
Ugh - I though Bio of Space Tyrant was to mature for me in college.
If it follow some of his more nasty trends, you were probably too mature for it, not the other way around.
I used to be a big fan of Anthony, but when I got older and reread some of his books, I realized that they had been sending me seriously warped massages about sex. It's not that his book have sex in them, its that many contain at least the threat of sexual violence, sexually charged torture, and coercive sexual relationships. The female charecters I remeber in his books were incredibly passive, even when they were the main charecter. (Being a Green Mother is the worst case of this.)
Sci Fi is an outside genre to begin with, so I think this gives authors less compunctions about including such material. I would exercise your judgement a great deal and make sure your daughter is comfortable discussing parts of any book that disturb her. And don't be afraid to say "well, so and so seems to have some neat ideas and good plots, but he's kinda a jerk when it comes to women, isn't he?"
I would much rather my representitives had no email access and I knew that, than have them use a sorting and auto-response program. There is a group marketing email sorting software for legislaters now which will supposedly identify the topic and a yes/no from each letter and then just tell her that her constituent mail for the day had 8 in favor of the death penalty and 10 against. As a political activist, I have to say that this SUCKS.
When I was helping fight a mini DOMA here in MA, my group set up a page on our web site to enable people to email or fax their state reps (along with the governer and the heads of both houses) on the issue. There was a very short subject statement (mostly to make sure that our opposition didn't use the setup to write things in favor of the bill) and then people wrote personal additions. These personal statements were great. People talked about their lives, about how this legislation would effect them, how their crrent legal status effected them, real information, not just a "please vote no". As a result of the volume of email, but also in response to the content of it, we had legislaters who normally would have ignored the issue testifying with us at the committee hearing, and one committee member who we had previously had no contact with cutting through the vauge "family values" talk and asking witnesses in favor of the bill hard questions about the real people involved.
Now this story shows that email advocacy can work, if its implemented well. But it also shows how "improvements" to that technology can make the political process worse. We won new people over to us because we gave them information they didn't have before, and showed them a personal, real life side of the issue that they may not have considered. An auto-response system or content sorter telling them "53 constituent emails opposing H472" would be unlikely to have the same effect.
If you have it right, why would they put phone calls above email rather than below it?
If there is a vote coming up soon, and I want to communicate with my congressman on it, it makes sense to use a instantaneous message rather than getting it in the mail the next day (because all my local pickups are at 1pm), having it take 1 to 2 days to get to the statehouse, another day to be sorted, etc. If I have points to make, rather than a "please vote yes, please vote no" mentality (which, if I was in congress, I would give less weight to) then a phone call will get across only what the person listening chooses to write down and understands. Email is the best way to respond, and not always the easiest, in those circumstances.
PS, who you calling lazy? If I write (for example) a letter to the editor by email, I type and edit it extensively in a word proccessing program. Its just that then instead of hitting print, I cut and paste into an email program. Do you really think that 33 cents and dropping it in a box on the way to work makes me a better person? Get real.
A good collection of much the same points as I was going to make after I read through what had gone before, so let me just add a few comments and related thoughts.
A clan is small enough that everybody knows each other and can agree on mores, but not big enough that a separation needs to be made between the "people" and "government".
Well, in a group of any size that has generational divides, there will be leaders and followers, though a follower could reasonably expect to be a leader some day if he/she lived long enough. An important point however, is that the change in group size has been technologically driven from the very earliest increases. "Clans" are groups that have enough people to take care of each other and few enough to move around as hunter-gatherers without destroying the area they move through. "camps" have a fairly reliable water source and rudimentary argiculture. "Villages" have a well and established crops allong with some form of storage. "cities" have plumbing of a sort (or at least a protocol) and a way to transport crops from outlying farms. Modern cities have water filtration and delivery systems, massive transports of food every day and a plumbing system we'd all be dead without.
In a clan, the person to person connection is tight because there are a small number of people. Technology is enabling, and/forcing/ us to increase our number of connections. I think this is having the effect of making each connection less meaningful.
In addition to the people we connect to, we are also inundated with information about people. Oh, my neighbor's dog got hit by a car. I feel sad. A storekeeper on the other end of town was shot to death. I'm shocked and think thats too bad. A fire in a nearby state killed eleven people. Its a tradgedy and yet I feel... less. 20,000 people have been killed in an earthquake and thats just the starting numbers. I can't think about them as people. If I tried to take even the empathy I would feel for my neighbor's dog and apply it to that large a human tradgedy, I would have a nervous breakdown. But does the buffer we have to put up to protect ourselves desensitise us to the closer matters that we can make a difference in? Cases of bystander apathy are too common to make big news in boston. A schoolgirl was sexually assaulted on a subway car in front of numerous witnesses, and they all looked away even when she asked for help. Has the world gotten too big for us?
You walk accross a street downtown and may see hundreds of people...but you know not one...they are just a few faces out of billions....
There is so much that you are unable to make use of it. I also think it may be having an effect physically. Animals need space. We are imbued with a sense of our range and a sense of how much space, either physical or emotional, that we need.
I consider population density very important. I have observed the changes in my own behaviors and feelings since I came to Boston, and frankly, some of them frighten me. I pass amoung probably a thousand people by the time I make it to my office in the morning, and I deal with them as obstacles. Things in my way that I have to say "excuse me" if I touch. Someone says something to me and my first reaction is warriness. Last time I tried to help someone who got my attention on the street it turned into a bizzarre scene of him hasseling me for money. I don't respond as much anymore if someone asks "can you help me". But I don't want to be like that.
I don't think the increases in communication are entirely a good thing. They can help, but they can desensitize. General worries, no good way to end this off.
I don't think one day counts as a boycott. Its more like the annual Smoke-out or Peta's Meat-out day. Or maybe the "buy nothing" day that people were trying to get going the day after thanksgiving.
Yeah, definitly not a boyctt. call it a protest day. *end nitpick*
Slashdot Mirror
Do we eventually get bought by Andover and make millions? ;->
Seriously, I agree that /. should really stay focused on tech. When the discussion moves into sciences, its is likely to go downhill.
My background is Bio-pyschology. That means I can discect rats, tell you why your cat is peeing outside the litter box and crunch numbers like a badass. (Heavy emphasis on statistics, logical reasoning and proper experimental design.) You want someone to do a sniff test on psychological, medical, evolutionary and genetic findings and occasionally pontificate on the relevance of scientific thinking to politics, I'm your gender-neutral online entity of choice.
-Kahuna Burger
Unless the reviewer is simply flat out lying about the intent and direction of the books, we know its tripe, because it claims to solve a problem which does not exist, it attaches self determinism in a place it doesn't belong and tries to take quantum physics out of science and make it a magical anything-can-happen fairy.
Kahuna Burger
As for who refuted it, I just did. ;-> Unless you can do better than trying to prove a god by definition, it stands refuted by its own vacuous logic.
-Kahuna Burger
On Dawkins' other books, I'd hold off. Selfish Gene is more philosophical IMHO, and Unweaving the Rainbow is Dawkins trying to be Sagan and failing miserably (where Sagan made you inspired by science, Rainbow just tries to tear down humanities. (OK, I didn't really read much of it, that was a generalization from the introduction, I'm sorry. But it was strong enough in the intro that it turned me off FAST.)) Dawkins does a better job of inspiring when he just writes what he knows.
-Kahuna Burger
Sure, but it's not necessary unless one accepts all the premises of the article. Is it all that gloomy anyway?
I'm glad someone but me and an AC has any bio and evolution knowledge arround here.
Indeed, there is nothing particularly gloomy about the current knowledge on evolution. It actually fits together quite nicely and makes plenty of sense. No need to introduce magical phase-shifting DNA strands to "explain" what already works.
So apparently when these DNA strands phase shift, they actually exist not just in a parrallel reality, but one where time moves much much faster than it does here. Then the DNA can observe (through spiritual DNA intelligence) what will happen to it's host cell when it mutates in a certain way, and the DNA which observes a long reproducive cycle jockies back into the herenow phase, pushing the other potential DNAs aside with the strength of its thousands of future copies. Yep, that sounds like a solid scientific theory to me. (and for those who accuse me of strawmanning, the tone was in jest, but you give me a better explination of what he could have meant by saying that the DNA would pick the best of the potential mutations. really.)
Hmmmm.... well why didn't I think of that? When I'm looking for an openminded book on the subject of the existance of gods, I go straight to a theological advisor to the Catholic Church. Yep! Just can't beat a guy well up in the Catholic heirarchy for really seeing both sides of a faith issue.
I've gotta say, you got your faults, but you are great for a laugh.
For a well reasoned argument (or twenty) try the alt.atheism FAQ. Many of the people on that group were religious at some point in their lives and actually have a somewhat even handed veiw of both states.
Don't be an ass. We have the widely understood facts of biology that form the basis of much of our new medical advances vs a flat refusal to consider it. Your requests for "proof" in the face of easily understood references are just childish debating and would be moderated down as flame if they regarded any branch of science except this one. (Which says more about this group than it does about this branch of science unfortunately.)
If you want to understand the processes you are deriding, read any of the books that have been recomended here which make very clear how complex systems can arrise from simple ones and large changes can take place over large periods of time. Dawkins' "the blind watchmaker" and "climbing mount improbable" are good, layperson oriented starts as is the FAQ page and related info on talk.origens.
If you don't feel that these are really "proof" because you insist on misunderstanding the underlying processes, I suggest you go (back) to college and take, in order : Basic Chem, Bio 101, cell biology, developmental biology (also may be called embyotic biology) comparative vertabrate anatomy, invertabrate antomy, phisiology I and II, Genetics (with lab if possible), statistics and probablity, and an evolution semimar if its offered. Throw in some geology and paleantology while your at it to get some idea of time scale.
I am not going to attempt to recreate several good books and a major in Bio-psych on /. so that you can make some stupid ass comment back. I know when someone is playing "Argument from incredulity" and will keep playing it until the other person gets tired and gives up on him. (Giving up on you will of course be interpreted as "giving up" and you will go on saying that no one can give you any proof of evolution.)
-Kahuna Burger
Yes, but they are divided popularly, though not scientificly, by time scale. "Microevolution" are things that happen on a time scale people understand. "A long long time ago all dogs were kinda wolf-like, but through concentrated efforts at breeding throughout human history, we got different strains of dog." What people don't think about is that "throughout human history" is an evolutionary blink. Hell, its practically an evolutionary screen refresh.
People just can't deal with things on certain scales unless they really work on it. It is, ironicly, evolution. Scientists try all sorts of examples (time since earth cooled on your outstretched arm, human civilization is a dust mote almost falling off the end of your fingernail, etc.) But the truth is that even people who understand it intellectually usually don't have a good emotional grasp of it. Thats why arguments from incredulity work so well in this debate.
-Kahuna Burger
OT, I thought about writing a science fiction story about a world with two independant forms of life - silicon and carbon. The silicon form would be so much slower than the carbon based that instead of developing tool use, they just evolve plants and animals into what they need with selective pressure. Need a knife? Sure you can learn to smelt metals (but now that I think about it, that might actually not be posible since the melting point would be reached so "fast") but why not just spend a few hundred generations eliminating the 90 dullest percent of a field of grass until you have a field of razors? As a hobby you could improve the stem at the base into a handle. The story most likely would be about the carbon based life, but I don't really have the time or energy for good fiction writing these days. *sigh*.
Sorry to be so inflamatory, but as even an amature biologist, I am insulted that this is being referenced in /. as if its anything but tripe. Not only is the theory rediculous (the existance of bad mutations is only one of the clues that the mutation but not selection process is random) its unneccassary. This old "747 in a junkyard" line is one of the most dishonest creationist arguments used, and has been refuted numerous times by different writers. It depends purely on picking an advanced form of "life" and pretending that it had to start there. Its simply lying about the oposition and selective denying of facts.
The current theory of random* mutation and directed selection adequetly explains every question that has been set to it and honestly investigated. Individual cells or organisms simply don't need to be able to pre-consider the results of a mutation for evolution to do everything we know it does.
My advice is, before you even consider such a nonsense "solution" to the problems in the evolutionary theory, read some real evolution writing and see if there are any problems that need fixing. I recommend either "The Blind Watchmaker", or "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Dawkins. Mount Improbable in particular helps with some of the more silly "747" type objections.
I also recommend that you get at least one moderator with some biological background, or refrain from posting biological news. Anyone with a college level biology or genetics course under her belt can tell you this is crap and treat it as such.
-Kahuna Burger
*there are certain ways in which mutation is non-random, but they do not bear on the "good" or "bad" issue. Dawkins covers this technicality in Mount Improbable.
Being politically active in the Boston area, I can tell you that in this town, a 35 dollar minimum donation is grassroots. ACLU dinners cost 100 to 150 per plate, plus they expect you to make a donation. Fenway community health, anything major is the same. I'm working on a first time dinner dance for my group, and was told that more poeople would want to come if it was 50 dollars instead of 35 (my recommended ticket price). Its crazy when you move out of the grassroots.
Part of this is because there is just such a big population out here, you can apeal only to those who can spend a lot and still fill a room. The other thing is that the cost of living is so high, your veiw of money just changes. I pay 350 a month in rent, no utilities and I have a great deal on an apartment I share with others. $35 is going to this instead of catching a movie and dinner that weekend. A choice I'm fine making.
Jeesh, you guys want high society goldbricks, try getting an invite to a $150 a plate black tie dinner when you only work part time. And then considering scraping together the money to go because you need to make contacts in the political action world. ugh.
And as for the tie (I don't own one but that won't be a problem) Most computer geeks in boston have at least one "interview" outfit that will work. And thats what this is really. If these guys have brains, they will be contacting the press, and they want geeks in suits to say "yeah I work for a software startup and code Linux on the side. This thing is blown way out of proportion. I mean, Pirates! *laughs* Its so silly." Its just a different kind of interview.
So, any boston geeks who want to go but don't own the clothes, let me know and we'll take a field trip down to the big Goodwill Bargin Basement. We'll get ya a blazer, a pair of pants that are supposed to be creased and a tie. Then I'll throw them in my drier with my "home dry-cleaning kit" to freshen them up and wa-la instant respectibilty, 10 to 25 dollars.
-Kahuna Burger
Er, which people would those be? The "true meaning" of the phrase is a reference to criminal court proceedings and nothing else. It is a legal principle in some countries that in cases of ambiguous evidence, the defendant shall not be considered guilty. In the real world outside the courts, its no better an assumption than any other.
A random wild plant that someone says "hey maybe we can eat this" is considered guilty until proven innocent - I won't eat it without evidence that it won't harm me. A stray cat is considered innocent until proven guilty - I don't assume it has rabies and will lunge towards me to bite when I say "hey kitty kitty." Large corporate entities which buy news and discussion media devoted to their area of investment are considered guilty until proven innocent - there is just no good reason to assume that a company would let one of it's investments endanger the others.
The legal principles of one system do not a global philosophy make.
-Kahuna Burger
This is a weird area in other copyrighted media. When I was in the campus film series, we would get 16mm movies shipped to us by a distribution company. The rental of the film included renting the right to show it to a mass audience and charge. One time there was a shipping problem that prevented the film from being delivered, and apparently, the company just faxed us a copy of our rental agreement and told us to rent the video like we would to view it privately and just do a mass showing of it (the company also rented videos, and we had access to a room with an overhead video projecter, so it worked.) Point is that even though the physical tape we had rented had copyright protection warnings all over it, we were legally allowed to mass view that copy because we had legal permission to mass veiw "a" copy of that film. Weird.
I wish it wasn't tax season. My day job is in the tax department of a large comany so I may not be able to take the time to work on writing about this issue in a way that makes sense to non-techies.
You are easily amazed. ;) And I am a person, not a people. The length is a symptom, not the problem. Katz does not trim for clarity and information.
It worries me that people believe 700 words (for example) is always enough to clearly state a complex thought.
But it usually is. I have communicated on issues that were very complex and layered in an editorial. And Katz's thoughts are rarely complex enough to need anywhere near the length he uses.
As for articles that are too long, well, I do not need to read all of them. Skimming is an important part of literacy.
The ability to write well is a more important part. An editorial should not need to be skimmed. And that is what Katz writes. He doesn't write tech articles, he editorializes about tech. And in this format, there is no excuse not to make things concise and add lnks to additional detailed info for people who do no have as full a background on the subject as they might like.
It has been my observation that when asked to make something shorter, most people do not really try to revise it; they just find things to rip out until they are below the length limit.
To be entirely egotistical, you have not been observing writers. And Katz puts himself forth as a professional writer. If he is such, he should be held to certain standands, including the ability to edit intelligently. If he isn't he should not be given an open forum here.
I do often feel that Katz needs to put his articles through more re-read, get a second opinion, edit, cycles, but I do not think a draconian length limit will improve this.
If he can write, he's being lazy and a length limit will help. If he really just can't write, what is the point?
I could take almost any of Katz's collumns that I have read and edit them to under 650 words without losing any content. For the love of ferrets, the man spent over 900 words on "Y2K wasn't as big a deal as we thought, lets talk about it". So for everyone who has to respond to criticism with "could you do it better?" yes as a matter of fact I could.
These sort of limits on print pontificating may be dismissed in the elecronic media. But we need to remember why they're there. It's not about page space. If 1700 word opinion collumns were more informative and enjoyable, the papers would simply devote twice as many pages - letters to the editor and opinion collumns are amoung the most heavily read portions of any paper. The limits on length are about clarity of thought and effectiveness of communication. My first draft of an opinion collumn is always too long. So I go through and I clarify. I decide which examples are for show, not for education. I consider shorter ways of describing situations, which usually turn out to be more understandable as well. I eliminate every "of course" and "naturally" that my ego-centric writer's voice throws in to make itself feel more right. The shorter version is almost always better, and in those rare cases where I feel that I cannot shorten the piece to the extent required without sacrificing meaning, I often discover that I really have two different collumns I want to write.
It is obvious in Jon Katz's collumns (and in other opinion pieces which have appeared on /.) that this editing process does not take place. And it is unlikely to happen unless it is required. If /. wants to get clear, understandable collumns that will elicit constructive discussion from any caliber of writer, they need to set limits. Length limits of even a thousand words would improve the level of communication taking place.
-Kahuna Burger
PS, this is a recommendation for the submission of stories, not the comments. Comments take on more of a conversational tone and will lose much of their spontaneous value if people are re-writing for an afternoon before pressing "submit". But the main page fare, especially if it is not particularly timely, deserves more work.
I have blown every standardized test I've ever taken out of the water, right up through the GREs a couple of years ago. And that includes subject tests on subjects I knew I wasn't in the 99th percentile in knowledge of. I bubble test real good and I too complain about the pedestal that these tests are being placed on.
*gratuitous slam on earlier poster's SAT scores avoided*
There are huge problems with basing school entrance on test scores - the one that bugs me the most is when someone who scored 5 points higher is claiming to be "more qualified" on a test that has an internal margin of error of 40 points. But in any case, attempting to shut down the messenger with insults won't make it go away.
Well, it may be descriptive to say that sci fi often does have moral (I would be more likely to say socio-political) relevance, and its a very easy genre to stick that sort of thing into. But to say that it is the point is (IMHO) putting an unnecassary prescriptive burden on what is considerd "real" sci fi. And it certainly isn't where I would draw the line between sci fi and fantasy.
My favorite grouping of sci fi is into "Hard sci fi" soft sci fi" and "science fantasy" based on the extent to which the science, even if beyond our current means, makes sense and how much of it is hand waving. Micheal Criton (sp?) writes hard sci fi, because he usually is expanding on current science trends. Soft sci fi is when there are a few specific advances (a new source of energy, a specific way of traveling faster than light) that may not make sense, but everything else follows fairly logically from that. Science fantasy is like star trek - basically anything can happen and a wave of the hand makes it tech instead of magic.
Interestingly, I think fantasy has "hard" and "soft" sides as well, based on how bound the magic is. Barbara Hambly writes pretty good hard fantasy, Piers Anthony writes fantasy so soft you worry about stepping in it.
Certainly Sci Fi can be divided allong a socio-political axis as well (Babylon 5, while cool in many ways envisioned basically no major changes in society, government or religon in 300 years, while heinlein is all about social change.) But I would hesitate to use that axis to exclude works from sci fi entirely.
Another issue is informational rather than opinonated contact. If there is a debate on bilingual education, and I just happened to be a teacher in a heavily bilingual school district (I'm not) I might be concerned that actual teaching and learning expereince was being largely ignored in the debate, in favor of ideological rants. If I want to try to insert my long expereince with what I've seen work or not work into the debate, I would not simply write my reps and hope on of them became a champion for my point of veiw. I would write all of the congressional reps I could and try to insert some added information into the overall consideration. You may have more right to express an opinon to your rep, but we have equal rights to attempt to influence her with information. IMHO of course. ;/
Kahuna Burger
Just like Terry Pratchett is not really a fantasy writer, Adams is not really about SF. I disagree. Sci fi and fantasy are settings, as well as genres. You can have a fantasy romance, a sci fi political rant, Comedy in either, adventure in another setting entirely. Galaxy Quest is both a comedy and a sci fi movie and it does both fairly well. So back off on the funny british guys, huh?
If it follow some of his more nasty trends, you were probably too mature for it, not the other way around.
I used to be a big fan of Anthony, but when I got older and reread some of his books, I realized that they had been sending me seriously warped massages about sex. It's not that his book have sex in them, its that many contain at least the threat of sexual violence, sexually charged torture, and coercive sexual relationships. The female charecters I remeber in his books were incredibly passive, even when they were the main charecter. (Being a Green Mother is the worst case of this.)
Sci Fi is an outside genre to begin with, so I think this gives authors less compunctions about including such material. I would exercise your judgement a great deal and make sure your daughter is comfortable discussing parts of any book that disturb her. And don't be afraid to say "well, so and so seems to have some neat ideas and good plots, but he's kinda a jerk when it comes to women, isn't he?"
When I was helping fight a mini DOMA here in MA, my group set up a page on our web site to enable people to email or fax their state reps (along with the governer and the heads of both houses) on the issue. There was a very short subject statement (mostly to make sure that our opposition didn't use the setup to write things in favor of the bill) and then people wrote personal additions. These personal statements were great. People talked about their lives, about how this legislation would effect them, how their crrent legal status effected them, real information, not just a "please vote no". As a result of the volume of email, but also in response to the content of it, we had legislaters who normally would have ignored the issue testifying with us at the committee hearing, and one committee member who we had previously had no contact with cutting through the vauge "family values" talk and asking witnesses in favor of the bill hard questions about the real people involved.
Now this story shows that email advocacy can work, if its implemented well. But it also shows how "improvements" to that technology can make the political process worse. We won new people over to us because we gave them information they didn't have before, and showed them a personal, real life side of the issue that they may not have considered. An auto-response system or content sorter telling them "53 constituent emails opposing H472" would be unlikely to have the same effect.
If there is a vote coming up soon, and I want to communicate with my congressman on it, it makes sense to use a instantaneous message rather than getting it in the mail the next day (because all my local pickups are at 1pm), having it take 1 to 2 days to get to the statehouse, another day to be sorted, etc. If I have points to make, rather than a "please vote yes, please vote no" mentality (which, if I was in congress, I would give less weight to) then a phone call will get across only what the person listening chooses to write down and understands. Email is the best way to respond, and not always the easiest, in those circumstances.
PS, who you calling lazy? If I write (for example) a letter to the editor by email, I type and edit it extensively in a word proccessing program. Its just that then instead of hitting print, I cut and paste into an email program. Do you really think that 33 cents and dropping it in a box on the way to work makes me a better person? Get real.
-Kahuna Burger
A clan is small enough that everybody knows each other and can agree on mores, but not big enough that a separation needs to be made between the "people" and "government".
Well, in a group of any size that has generational divides, there will be leaders and followers, though a follower could reasonably expect to be a leader some day if he/she lived long enough. An important point however, is that the change in group size has been technologically driven from the very earliest increases. "Clans" are groups that have enough people to take care of each other and few enough to move around as hunter-gatherers without destroying the area they move through. "camps" have a fairly reliable water source and rudimentary argiculture. "Villages" have a well and established crops allong with some form of storage. "cities" have plumbing of a sort (or at least a protocol) and a way to transport crops from outlying farms. Modern cities have water filtration and delivery systems, massive transports of food every day and a plumbing system we'd all be dead without.
In a clan, the person to person connection is tight because there are a small number of people. Technology is enabling, and /forcing/ us to increase our number of connections. I think this is having the effect of making each connection less meaningful.
In addition to the people we connect to, we are also inundated with information about people. Oh, my neighbor's dog got hit by a car. I feel sad. A storekeeper on the other end of town was shot to death. I'm shocked and think thats too bad. A fire in a nearby state killed eleven people. Its a tradgedy and yet I feel... less. 20,000 people have been killed in an earthquake and thats just the starting numbers. I can't think about them as people. If I tried to take even the empathy I would feel for my neighbor's dog and apply it to that large a human tradgedy, I would have a nervous breakdown. But does the buffer we have to put up to protect ourselves desensitise us to the closer matters that we can make a difference in? Cases of bystander apathy are too common to make big news in boston. A schoolgirl was sexually assaulted on a subway car in front of numerous witnesses, and they all looked away even when she asked for help. Has the world gotten too big for us?
You walk accross a street downtown and may see hundreds of people...but you know not one...they are just a few faces out of billions. ...
There is so much that you are unable to make use of it. I also think it may be having an effect physically. Animals need space. We are imbued with a sense of our range and a sense of how much space, either physical or emotional, that we need.
I consider population density very important. I have observed the changes in my own behaviors and feelings since I came to Boston, and frankly, some of them frighten me. I pass amoung probably a thousand people by the time I make it to my office in the morning, and I deal with them as obstacles. Things in my way that I have to say "excuse me" if I touch. Someone says something to me and my first reaction is warriness. Last time I tried to help someone who got my attention on the street it turned into a bizzarre scene of him hasseling me for money. I don't respond as much anymore if someone asks "can you help me". But I don't want to be like that.
I don't think the increases in communication are entirely a good thing. They can help, but they can desensitize. General worries, no good way to end this off.
-Kahuna Burger
Yeah, definitly not a boyctt. call it a protest day. *end nitpick*
Off topic, bad Kahuna, no Karma!