A valid scientific theory must be falsifiable -- it has to allow for some means for it to be proven false. Darwinism passes this test, Creationism does not. Your complaint that "Creationism has to be proven right" is because creationism does not allow for disproof -- any conflicting evidence is dismissed with the "it's that way because God made it that way" handwave.
A valid scientific theory must have predictive value. Darwinsim has predictive value, creationism does not.
Because creationism is not scientifically testable, it is not a scientific theory. You could call Creationism a hypothesis if you were feeling generous (and a fairytale if you are not). It's not a theory and never will be because it lacks the defining attributes of a scientific theory.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a boat in a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one floated. And that's what you're going to get, Son, the strongest boat in all of England
IIRC, Pope John Paul II publicly aknowledged the Big Bang as the moment of Creation.
Of course, this means nothing to fundie Protestants, because they all know that the reason the Pope wears long robes and funny hats is to hide his tail and horns.
Darwinism is a proper scientific theory because it has several key properies: it explains observable facts, can be used to predict future events, and can be proven false. Creationism is not a proper scientific theory because it has no predictive value and is not falsifiable.
You need to learn the difference between a theory, a hypothesis, and a fairy tale. You cannot pull any idea out of your ass and call it a theory -- until you have tested it and produced supporting experimental and/or observational evidence it's (at best) hypothesis.
There you go trying to bring facts into it again. People don't want to be told the real facts, they want to be told pleasant lies which support their preconcieved notions.
If people were swayed by facts, or were even capable of recognizing them, superstition would have died centuries ago and most politicians would be unsuccessfully trying to sell used cars instead of feeding at the public trough.
<oldfart>
You call that a ship? Hah, back in my day we built ships so good you could put it in a swamp for 150 years and it would still hold together.
</oldfart>
God is an asshole, or at least has a really sick sense of humor
Reading the Old Testament certianly leaves the non-believer with the impression that Yahweh has the attitudes and manners of a spoiled, sadistic child. Abraham & his son, Lot's wife, and Job (to name but a few) were all victims of his capricious and sadistic power games, and they were his loyal followers. Let's not even get into the genocide and torture inflicted by this "omnibenevolent" deity upon entire nations of his creations, nor the massacres and wholesale torture he encourages his followers to visit upon his disfavored creations.
Exactly. The only Christians who are threatened by evoloution are the ones who insist that the Bible is the literal and unadulterated word of God. Since they've rested their entire understanding of reality on a specific interpretation of a single book, and have convinced themselves that they are totally correct because of devine inspiration, the slightest indication that they might be wrong is either quietly ignored or actively denied. Show them any real-world evidince that contridicts their beliefs and they either stick their fingers in thier ears and say "LALALALA I can't hear you", or grab the torches & pitchforks.
It should be clear to any rational thinker that the most, if not all, of the Bible is intended to be metaphorical rather than literal. EG, the Book of Job is allegorical rather than a record of actual events. The basic problem with the literal interpretation theory is that even if you accept that the Bible is the result of Divine Inspiration, it is still a *human*, and therefore flawed, interpretation of God's word. (IIRC) According to (self-contridictory) Judeo-Christian tradition [Specifically Exodus 24:12-15], the only physical writing to come directly from God was on the first set of stone tables Moses carried down from the mountian.
It's a combination of the interaction of Kryptonite and solar radiation:
Red Sun + Kryptonite = No Powers
Yellow Sun + Kryptonite = Fatal
Yellow Sun - Kryptonite = Superpowers
Red Sun - Kryptonite = ?? (Probably no powers)
If you want to have a mind-bending experience, watch Superman II and follow that up with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, also starring Terence Stamp. Seeing him go from a macho evil villian to an ageing drag queen is enough to fry a few synapses. Just goes to show how well the man can act.
A whole lot of superpowers can be explained as specialized or limited forms of telekinesis. Super-strength can be explained as a telekinetic field which only extends to things the user is touching. Flight can be explained as limited telekinesis which allows the user to push his body off the ground. Powers like flame jets can also be considered as telekenetic -- the user is telekineticly manipulating air molecules to create the heat via molecular friction. Body modifications (like wings, shapeshifting, or a body of stone) are created by subconcious telekinetic manipulation of the user's own DNA and cellular mechanics
The premise of the Wild Cards series of novels is superpowers in the real world. They use exactly this explanation for superpowers. The series postulates that the psychological limits on powers are very deeply rooted and almost impossible to overcome.
Re:Say it Ain't so!
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WB Cancels Angel
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Hmmm, I thought that was one of the more creative episodes. Given the set-up, it worked in the context of the Buffy universe. A demon that makes everyone sing is no wierder or less believable than any of a dozen other hokey plot devices they used. Was it fan service? Yep, you bet. But it was well done fan service.
I can't say that Buffy ever "jumped the shark". Ending the show when they did was probably a good thing. There's something to be said about going out on top. Buffy and Angel both had a good long run; there's nothing to be sad about. If you want to mourn the passing of a TV show, mourn shows like Firefly and Farscape, which died in their infancy and never had the chance to live up to their full potential.
Alyson Hannigan is hotter than the 3 Charmed chicks combined.
Re:Look at the bright side...
on
Cyberchondria
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· Score: 1
IIRC, travel expenses related to health care (over a certian threshhold) are tax-deductable as a medical expense.
Re:Spotting a natural diamond is possible
on
Diamond Age Coming Soon
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Also the flaws are noticably different -- synthetic gemstone flaws are usually symmetrical bubbles, whereas natural stones have different kinds of flaws which look more, well, natural.
The gold industry is not a monopoly; it's a commodity metal available from dozens, if not hundreds, of sources. The vast majority of diamond production & distribution is controlled by a single company -- the DeBeers organization. Also, while the purity (and therefore value) of gold can be easily determined with a chemical test, diamond valuation is very difficult -- even experts can have very different opinions as to the value of a given stone.
It doesn't. I took the numbers from the grandparent poster, applied my personal knowledge and experience of brewing and distillation, and then used some basic physics. This is called a "back of the envelope" calculation, not an in-depth analysis. The idea isn't to get a precise answer but rather to come up with a reasonable educated guess.
It may well be better to cut the corn like you would for silage and use the entire plant for mash, then use the increased energy production to heat to mix. I'm just speculating though, I haven't fact one to back up that guess
I may not know much about growing grain, but I do know a thing or three about fermenting it:-) As an educated guess, I'm going to say that corn cobs, leaves, and stalks are going to have about as much sugar content as a pile of lawn clippings. Lawn clippings are not noted for thier fermentability:-) My guess is that chopping it into silage is going to be a waste of energy. You might be able to extract methanol from the stalks via destructive distillation but this would not give you a positive energy yield unless you're using solar power to do it. Your best bet is probably to sun-dry the waste and burn it to fuel the mashing and distallation processes.
So, now the question is, how much alcohol can we get out of a bushel of corn. I've never brewed with corn, but I'll assume it's going to work about the same way as brewing with barley.
The first step is to malt the grain -- allow it to start to germinate and then dry it out. We'll assume that the energy cost for malting is negligible since we'll be using sun-drying. The germination process releases enzymes which starts to break the unfermentable starches down into fermentable sugars. Once we have our malt we crush it in a mill. You're going to need some energy to run the mill, but not a huge amount. Since what we need is kinetic energy, we can power the mill the old-fashioned way: with wind or water.
A quick search of the net shows that a bushel of corn weighs 47 lbs. To make mash, we have to add (room-temperature) grain to hot (but not boiling) water, so we'll either need a solar hot water heater or we'll need to burn some of our dried waste. Cooking the mash is going to require several stages of heating & cooling in order to extract and convert as much of the starch & sugar as possible, so we're going to need an energy source for this too, but to make it easy let's say we'll need to hold the mash at an average of 150F for 4 hours. We're going to lose about 2 gallons of our mash (evaporation and absorption by the grain), but then add in about another 6 to rinse (sparge) the spent grain hulls, so our final product here is going to be about 16 gallons of raw wort. Since we don't care what it tastes like, we can skip some steps and save some energy, but still the mashing process is fairly energy intensive.
We pitch some yeast into our 16 gallons of wart and let it do it's thing. Let's assume that our final product after fermentation is going to be 14 gallons (after losses for sediment & evaporation) at a concentration of 8% alcohol. We'll have to boil all this liquid off in our still -- very expensive energy-wise. If we figure we want our end product at 160 proof (80% alcohol), our maximum theoretical yield is going to be 1.4 gallons per bushel; real-world yield would probably be closer to 1.3. I could be way off on my calculations, but I'd bet even money that you'll get at least 1 gallon per bushel.
So, given these (admittedly rough) calculations, at 125 bu/acre yield of corn, we'll be able to produce about 163 gallons of alcohol per acre. If we assume alcohol is 2/3 as efficient as diesel, given your figures we'll need at least 10 gallons of alcohol per acre to run the tractor -- call it 13, so our net yield is 150 gallons. To produce this we'll have had to have vaporized about 1,800 gallons (6800 litres) of water. Since vaporizing water takes 2260 Joules/gram (2.2 MJoules/litre), we've expended about 15,000 megajoules of energy just in the mashing and distallation processes to produce 150 gallons of usable fuel; this gives us 100 MJou
I assume you mean 125-150 bushels per acre? Not being of an agricultural bent, I don't know if this is a realistic yield or not.
Is this measured on the cob or off? For each bushel, how much waste (stalks & cobs, etc) is produced? Would burning 150 bushels' worth of (sun-dried) waste produce enough heat to distil 150 bushels' worth of mash? How much gas does your tractor take to plant & harvest a 1 acre cornfield?
Brew your own beer. You get better beer for far less money. You can brew it exactly to your tastes in terms of flavor, color, and alcohol content. With a little practice you can brew something that's indistinguishable from your favorate commercial beer.
Even using malt extract (which is the expensive way to do it) you can brew a 5 gallon batch of REALLY GOOD beer for less than $25. Even counting one-time equipment costs you'll break even after 2 or 3 batches. If you go for whole-grain brewing you can do a batch for $5 or less. As long as grain is cheap & plentiful, there's no reason beer needs to be expensive.
As has been noted elsewhere, that's wrong -- you aren't using less fossil fuel; you're actually using more, you're just hiding where it's being consumed. Instead of putting it into your tank directly, you're putting it into the tank of the tractor used to plant & harvest the corn, in the boiler used to distill the alcohol, and so forth. It takes much more energy (26% to 70%, depending on who you believe) to grow an acre of corn and turn it into fuel alcohol than you get out of the resulting fuel.
In order to make alcohol fuel (or biodiesel) a reality you need to have much more energy efficient processes for producing it. This means tractors that are several times more fuel efficient than current ones; stills that don't consume fossil fuels or alcohol, and more efficient methods of distributing the fuel.
This isn't to say that we should give up on alcohol and biodiesel; to the contrary they make good energy *distribution* mechanisms. But ultimately we need some source of energy to make up for the inefficiencies. If we're lucky that source of energy will be nuclear or solar, if not we'll be back to using animal power in a few generations.
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- A valid scientific theory must be falsifiable -- it has to allow for some means for it to be proven false. Darwinism passes this test, Creationism does not. Your complaint that "Creationism has to be proven right" is because creationism does not allow for disproof -- any conflicting evidence is dismissed with the "it's that way because God made it that way" handwave.
- A valid scientific theory must have predictive value. Darwinsim has predictive value, creationism does not.
Because creationism is not scientifically testable, it is not a scientific theory. You could call Creationism a hypothesis if you were feeling generous (and a fairytale if you are not). It's not a theory and never will be because it lacks the defining attributes of a scientific theory.When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a boat in a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one floated. And that's what you're going to get, Son, the strongest boat in all of England
Of course, this means nothing to fundie Protestants, because they all know that the reason the Pope wears long robes and funny hats is to hide his tail and horns.
You need to learn the difference between a theory, a hypothesis, and a fairy tale. You cannot pull any idea out of your ass and call it a theory -- until you have tested it and produced supporting experimental and/or observational evidence it's (at best) hypothesis.
Many browsers fail to correctly render the tag, hence it frequently goes unrecognized on /.
If people were swayed by facts, or were even capable of recognizing them, superstition would have died centuries ago and most politicians would be unsuccessfully trying to sell used cars instead of feeding at the public trough.
<oldfart>
You call that a ship? Hah, back in my day we built ships so good you could put it in a swamp for 150 years and it would still hold together. </oldfart>
It should be clear to any rational thinker that the most, if not all, of the Bible is intended to be metaphorical rather than literal. EG, the Book of Job is allegorical rather than a record of actual events. The basic problem with the literal interpretation theory is that even if you accept that the Bible is the result of Divine Inspiration, it is still a *human*, and therefore flawed, interpretation of God's word. (IIRC) According to (self-contridictory) Judeo-Christian tradition [Specifically Exodus 24:12-15], the only physical writing to come directly from God was on the first set of stone tables Moses carried down from the mountian.
It's a combination of the interaction of Kryptonite and solar radiation:
Red Sun + Kryptonite = No Powers
Yellow Sun + Kryptonite = Fatal
Yellow Sun - Kryptonite = Superpowers
Red Sun - Kryptonite = ?? (Probably no powers)
If you want to have a mind-bending experience, watch Superman II and follow that up with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, also starring Terence Stamp. Seeing him go from a macho evil villian to an ageing drag queen is enough to fry a few synapses. Just goes to show how well the man can act.
The premise of the Wild Cards series of novels is superpowers in the real world. They use exactly this explanation for superpowers. The series postulates that the psychological limits on powers are very deeply rooted and almost impossible to overcome.
I can't say that Buffy ever "jumped the shark". Ending the show when they did was probably a good thing. There's something to be said about going out on top. Buffy and Angel both had a good long run; there's nothing to be sad about. If you want to mourn the passing of a TV show, mourn shows like Firefly and Farscape, which died in their infancy and never had the chance to live up to their full potential.
Alyson Hannigan is hotter than the 3 Charmed chicks combined.
IIRC, travel expenses related to health care (over a certian threshhold) are tax-deductable as a medical expense.
The gold industry is not a monopoly; it's a commodity metal available from dozens, if not hundreds, of sources. The vast majority of diamond production & distribution is controlled by a single company -- the DeBeers organization. Also, while the purity (and therefore value) of gold can be easily determined with a chemical test, diamond valuation is very difficult -- even experts can have very different opinions as to the value of a given stone.
Very true. Prior to the 20th century, white diamonds were not nearly as highly prized as colored gemstones.
It doesn't. I took the numbers from the grandparent poster, applied my personal knowledge and experience of brewing and distillation, and then used some basic physics. This is called a "back of the envelope" calculation, not an in-depth analysis. The idea isn't to get a precise answer but rather to come up with a reasonable educated guess.
I may not know much about growing grain, but I do know a thing or three about fermenting it :-) As an educated guess, I'm going to say that corn cobs, leaves, and stalks are going to have about as much sugar content as a pile of lawn clippings. Lawn clippings are not noted for thier fermentability :-) My guess is that chopping it into silage is going to be a waste of energy. You might be able to extract methanol from the stalks via destructive distillation but this would not give you a positive energy yield unless you're using solar power to do it. Your best bet is probably to sun-dry the waste and burn it to fuel the mashing and distallation processes.
So, now the question is, how much alcohol can we get out of a bushel of corn. I've never brewed with corn, but I'll assume it's going to work about the same way as brewing with barley.
The first step is to malt the grain -- allow it to start to germinate and then dry it out. We'll assume that the energy cost for malting is negligible since we'll be using sun-drying. The germination process releases enzymes which starts to break the unfermentable starches down into fermentable sugars. Once we have our malt we crush it in a mill. You're going to need some energy to run the mill, but not a huge amount. Since what we need is kinetic energy, we can power the mill the old-fashioned way: with wind or water.
A quick search of the net shows that a bushel of corn weighs 47 lbs. To make mash, we have to add (room-temperature) grain to hot (but not boiling) water, so we'll either need a solar hot water heater or we'll need to burn some of our dried waste. Cooking the mash is going to require several stages of heating & cooling in order to extract and convert as much of the starch & sugar as possible, so we're going to need an energy source for this too, but to make it easy let's say we'll need to hold the mash at an average of 150F for 4 hours. We're going to lose about 2 gallons of our mash (evaporation and absorption by the grain), but then add in about another 6 to rinse (sparge) the spent grain hulls, so our final product here is going to be about 16 gallons of raw wort. Since we don't care what it tastes like, we can skip some steps and save some energy, but still the mashing process is fairly energy intensive.
We pitch some yeast into our 16 gallons of wart and let it do it's thing. Let's assume that our final product after fermentation is going to be 14 gallons (after losses for sediment & evaporation) at a concentration of 8% alcohol. We'll have to boil all this liquid off in our still -- very expensive energy-wise. If we figure we want our end product at 160 proof (80% alcohol), our maximum theoretical yield is going to be 1.4 gallons per bushel; real-world yield would probably be closer to 1.3. I could be way off on my calculations, but I'd bet even money that you'll get at least 1 gallon per bushel.
So, given these (admittedly rough) calculations, at 125 bu/acre yield of corn, we'll be able to produce about 163 gallons of alcohol per acre. If we assume alcohol is 2/3 as efficient as diesel, given your figures we'll need at least 10 gallons of alcohol per acre to run the tractor -- call it 13, so our net yield is 150 gallons. To produce this we'll have had to have vaporized about 1,800 gallons (6800 litres) of water. Since vaporizing water takes 2260 Joules/gram (2.2 MJoules/litre), we've expended about 15,000 megajoules of energy just in the mashing and distallation processes to produce 150 gallons of usable fuel; this gives us 100 MJou
As to the Mongels, all I can say is that a recent genetic study proved that Genghis Kahn has more decendants than any other known person in history.
Is this measured on the cob or off? For each bushel, how much waste (stalks & cobs, etc) is produced? Would burning 150 bushels' worth of (sun-dried) waste produce enough heat to distil 150 bushels' worth of mash? How much gas does your tractor take to plant & harvest a 1 acre cornfield?
Even using malt extract (which is the expensive way to do it) you can brew a 5 gallon batch of REALLY GOOD beer for less than $25. Even counting one-time equipment costs you'll break even after 2 or 3 batches. If you go for whole-grain brewing you can do a batch for $5 or less. As long as grain is cheap & plentiful, there's no reason beer needs to be expensive.
In order to make alcohol fuel (or biodiesel) a reality you need to have much more energy efficient processes for producing it. This means tractors that are several times more fuel efficient than current ones; stills that don't consume fossil fuels or alcohol, and more efficient methods of distributing the fuel.
This isn't to say that we should give up on alcohol and biodiesel; to the contrary they make good energy *distribution* mechanisms. But ultimately we need some source of energy to make up for the inefficiencies. If we're lucky that source of energy will be nuclear or solar, if not we'll be back to using animal power in a few generations.
- Pat Robertson & Jerry Fallwell
- George Bush & Dick Cheney
- John Ashcroft & Donald Rumsfeld
I wish someone would get those boobs of my TV .