Uh, I think you need to check your facts. MySQL has had transactions, subqueries, and referential constraints for quite some time now. You do need to use the innodb engine to get transactions and referential integrity, but that's just a matter of specifying which engine you want to use. I have a pretty complex database that utilizes all these features in a production environment, and I've been doing it for about 2 years now.
Is mysql the best database out there? Certainly not, but it is the right tool for many projects. And in many cases it does a very good job of keeping up with the bigger and more established database systems.
You want misleading? My local newspaper, while reporting on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's arrival at Mars ran with the headline "The Orbiter Has Landed!"
Apparently the reporter didn't understand the difference between lithobraking and aerobraking.
You don't understand. I don't need to score any points against you. This isn't a debate. The points you bring up have been answered by others. Repeatedly. And you don't have to look very hard to find the responses. I'm not going to waste my time trying to educate you, when I'm fairly certain that you are fully capable of doing that yourself. I'm just trying to goad you into doing so.
Sigh. Abiogenesis is the logical precursor to evolution. "(New) novel traits passed from one organism to another" don't just happen when a bunch of chunks of granite are hanging out on a hillside chilling out.
That may be true. But abiogenesis is not evolution. It also raises the question of just exactly what constitutes life? Are self replicating molecules alive? Are viruses alive? And by the way, what claim am I making? I didn't say that everything was understood and that we know how it all works. I did say that we are starting get a picture of how it might have happened.
The difference between organic molecules and a single-celled organism is astronomical... a cell has working, complex infrastructures, working DNA/RNA, etc., as opposed to a dollop of amino acids which has... just about jack.
Yes, the difference between organic molecules and modern single celled organisms is very large. However, where is the requirement that the first single celled organism must have more in common with modern ones than something much more primitive? I didn't say that we were close to making a leap from molecules to modern bacteria. I'm talking about something that is much more primitive. Algae, the simplest celled organisms that we know of, are light years ahead of what I'm talking about. And yes, I admit that I don't know what this primitive single celled organism really looks like, however, I would bet big money that it won't look very much like modern single celled organisms.
Of course, getting the organic molecules from inorganic matter is quite a feat in and of itself, but not directly related.
Getting organic molecules is easy. You do realize that organic molecules are found everywhere. Not just here on earth, but throughout the universe. In addtion, we have already discovered molecules that could very well be precursors to DNA/RNA that are easy to make naturally, that can self replicate under the right conditions, and are susceptible to non-destructive mutations. Those are all pretty big jumps don't ya think? I find these findings to be pretty compelling, and they most certainly do lay the ground work for what comes next.
It's vain of you to claim that you know how I think. In fact, you don't know me, or my thoughts. Lumping me in with the stereotype in your head of thoughtless religious nuts is really pretty small minded of you as well.
Strike one. Your ad hominem response is typical. I'm not like those other ID/creationist proponents, how dare you lump me in with them. When you use the same logic and and misdirection as the usuall ID proponents, you are thinking just like the crowd. Further, by promoting a non-scientific claim promoted by a movement with a poor understanding of the nature of both science and religion, you are doing a disservice to both science and your religious beliefs.
Where did the first matter come from?
Strike two. Another typical reponse is to attempt to redirect the argument when things get sticky. Where did the first matter come from indeed. If you really knew any physics you'd know that this is a pretty rediculous question. Why not just ask what caused the big bang? At least then you would be asking a question that science hasn't answered to any satisfaction.
We're not mindless religious zealots. We have the same evidence you have, and have differing theories about the activities behind the evidence. You don't have to like it, but it's pretty thoughtless of you to generalize our worldview as the province of morons or the deluded.
Strike three. You're out. And finally the inferiority complex comes in. I didn't call you a mindless religious zealot. I said ID/creationism is an idiotic idea pushed by people that misunderstand both science and religion. That does not mean you are a mindless religious zealot. It doesn't even mean that you're stupid. Ignorant perhaps, but not stupid. I happen to think that William Dembski is a pretty bright guy. He's wrong on several levels, and I question his motivations, but he's not stupid.
As the previous poster said, you need to learn the difference between abiogenesis and evolution.
However, on the topic of abiogenesis, you should note that some very interesting findings have been made in the field over the last decade. Some very interesting findings. The groundwork for being able to make the leap from simple, self-replicating organic molecules to the first cell is making good progess. Mind you, there's still a big leap to be made and we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, but we're starting to get enough of the pieces together that we can begin to see how it might have happened.
And his post, more polite than yours, was modded flamebait but yours hasn't been yet.
If you think his post was more polite than mine, then you haven't had much contact with people that think like him. I didn't intend my response to be particularly polite in the first place. The original post was a feint, a bit of misdirection, intended to appear reasonable, when in fact it is nothing of the sort, and I called him on it.
As for where in his post did he blame others? He didn't, but it is implicit in the creationist/intelligent design school of thought. I've studied the way these guys operate for quite a while now, and I know how they think, and I know the sorts of games they try to play. The fact is, their misunderstandings go far beyond the realm of science, and into their own religion, and it is there that they are actually doing the most damage, which was the point I was making in my previous post.
Has it occurred to you that in making this very statement, that you are, in fact, doing exactly what you accuse your opponents of? You implore posters from taking cheap shots, and yet your first sentence is exactly that. Right off the bat you are assasinating the character of those who disagree with you with statements like this:
I can hear the naturalists clacking away at their keyboards in glee with the "smoking gun" that evolution has finally been "proven" and that the creationists will have to sit in stunned silence under the weight of the evidence finally presented.
As a scientist, creationism isn't on my radar at all, and quite frankly, I don't give a rat's ass whether or not you believe it. What I do care about, is people such as yourself misrepresenting both science and religion as something that they are not, claiming you know things that you clearly do not. And then blaming good scientists for your own ignorance and lack of insight.
The fact is, evolution has been satisfactorily proven to work. Creationism and intelligent design are DOA, and the only open question about these idiotic ideas, is how much damage are they going to do to both science and religion before they finally go down for good.
They will most certainly image Cydonia, but it doesn't matter what they find, because no amount of contrary evidence will convince Richard Hoagland and his woo-woo followers that its not a face. Your comment about material being heavily "edited" are exactly the kinds of things that Hoagland and his cohorts say to keep up the hoax. What Hoagland doesn't say is that his original pictures went throught far more processing than anything that the latest pictures have gone through. The modern cameras produce far better data, with the far less processing needed to create usable images than anything that Viking ever did.
To get resolution that high, you would need a much larger mirror. The resolution is inversely proportional to the diameter of the mirror. Even though MRO will be in the lowest orbit of all the current orbiters, it would still need a much larger (and heavier) mirror to be able to resolve sub-centimeter features on the surface. Such a requirement would have made MRO much bigger, much heavier, and much more difficult to send out to Mars. I don't have the figures handy, but I'm guessing that the HiRISE camera would probably need about a 2 meter mirror to even begin to come close to this resolution, which is about 4 times larger than what it has.
Also, be wary of stuff that has been "declassified." The spy satellites can do some pretty amazing stuff to be sure, however I am a little skeptical of this claim. I've got a little experience with some of the people that do this work, and to be sure they can do some incredible stuff, but reading 1 inch tall lettering on the ground from space would be quite a stretch even now, and likely impossible back in 1980.
The msss specifications are a little misleading. They are sampling at 50 cm/pixel, but that isn't really the same as the resolving power. The actual resolving power is roughly twice the sampling rate, or 1 meter.
HiRISE, under the best of conditions, will do about 30 cm/pixel sampling, giving it a resolving power of just over half a meter. So it is indeed the most powerful camera in Mars Orbit.
You are getting the general gist of what he's saying, but you're still intentionally misinterpreting for your own ends. In Patterson's own comments about this, what he says that it is impossible to tell if modern birds are directly descended from archaeopteryx, or if archaeopteryx is a branch off of the line that did lead to modern birds. From the point of view of the theory, this is perfectly fine, because evolution predicts this should happen. It is also a good validation of the theory because it most definitely shows that such transitional creatures existed whether or not they are part of the main line of descendence is irrelevent. Is archaeopteryx all by itself an air tight case? I wouldn't say so, but when placed in the context of the much larger body of evidence we have, it is another compelling piece of the puzzle.
The Discovery Institute is the only place promoting intelligent design. Sure, there are other institutions that are more formally associated with creationism, but at this point they are all largely riding the coat tails of DI. The Discovery Institute is intelligent design, and anyone on the ID bandwagon is necessarily endorsing the majority of the Discovery Institute's agenda. Not to mention the fact that when you start digging into these other institutions, they also more or less said the same thing. Some of the things that Duane Gish used to say about what is motivating creation science are precisely the same things that the Discovery Institute has said, almost word for word. As someone that has been watching the activities of the Discovery Institute, and similar so-called think-tanks for over 10 years now, there is little doubt that they largely agree on nearly all of their underlying motivations. Perhaps you should look into the history of it.
You're also doing some very dodgy math in extrapolating 400 petition signers into "thousands." First of all, there really aren't that many scientists in the US. There really aren't, I don't know the exact figure, but in comparing the 10,000 signers on the side of evolution, it would be likely that I can extrapolate that number to 100,000 or so without too much trouble. That still makes your "thousands" of credentialed supporters a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Christian scientists think scriptures are literally true? False. Even the Discovery Institute says it doesn't believe all the scriptures are literally true. So you're playing games of semantics with your argument. And it doesn't hold up.
I would also like to point out that you never answered one of the questions that I deem the most important. If God created a universe specifically with physical laws capable of allowing life to arise spontaneously, is that not direction? And who are you to claim that it is not?
Your quote of Patterson is a false representation whether you know it or not. You don't have to look very hard to find reputable references that show Patterson completely disavowed such an interpretaion of his words.
The fossil record is nothing but transitional forms. You are a transitional form between your parents and your children. The fact that the differences between your parents, you, and your children (if you have any) are minute is precisely what evolution predicts we should see. There is no debate amoung biologists on this issue. You can claim that there is all that you want, but that doesn't make it true.
And as I attempted to illustrate in my previous post. What Kuhn is talking about bears little resemblence to the ID movement. What scientific revolution was ever brought about by a group of people lobbying school boards and politicians? Name just one.
As for there being as many scientists in favor of ID as evolution? You are absolutely kidding yourself. Why is it that it's taken the Discovery institute years to get just 400 people to sign their petition in support of ID, while it took less than a week during last October for a biology post doc to collect almost 10,000 signatures from scientists across all discplines in support of evolutionary theory, which were presented to the judge of the Dover trial? Such an event defies all credulity of your contention that the numbers could be close to 50-50
As for ID scientists not being concerned about science trumping faith... If this were so, then why do documents put out by the Discovery Institute and endorsed by it's scientific fellows specifically say that this is what they believe, and that they are out to restore faith to it's proper place? While I am sure there are ID proponents that might take issue with such a stance, it would seem that this is the opinion of the majority of the people standing behind it.
The evidence contradicts everything you've stated.
Just because the evidence is "unproven" and "questionable" doesn't mean scientists everywhere should have to ignore it or risk being ostracized, nor does it mean the evidence shouldn't be at the least discussed at the academic level if not investigated thoroughly.
But noone is being ostracized for questioning evolution. That is what evolutionary biologists do every day. If anyone is being ostracized it is for putting forward an ill considered and poorly founded hypothesis (intelligent design) and trying to fool people who don't know any better that it is on the same footing as evolutionary theory. That is what is raising the ire of scientists, not any questions being raised about evolution. The people that are playing this game are getting what they deserve.
I'd say the lack of transitional forms makes evolution "unproven" and even "questionable",...
On this we will have to agree to disagree. There are plenty of transitional fossils. For example, there are fossils that quite clearly show the formation of the mamalian ear from parts of the jaw bone. When I see such a progression, I am inclined to fit a line to the progression, and then try to find correlating factors that explain that progression. That is how all science works. Now if you are going to tell me that these fossils aren't transitional then you're going to have to explain why they are not. And why I'm wrong to fit that line to the data in the first place. No ID proponent has answered that question except by saying that there are more gaps. That's a bullshit argument that completely ignores how progress in all the sciences is made.
but that doesn't mean I think scientists shouldn't at least explore the theory. All ID proponents are saying is that the problems with evolutionary theory should be discussed openly with all options on the table... as scientific progress continues. None of them are saying scientific study should halt.
So why isn't the Discovery Institute funding actual research instead of playing games of sophistry with school boards, politicians, and the general public? They have money, and they have scientists working there, why aren't they doing the research? Why aren't they trying to fix the well known flaws in their arguments? Much is being said about scientific progress, but DI isn't doing anything about it. Why?
Let me say it this way, if one acknowledges a personal God as directing the creation of life and also trys to acknowledge Darwin's evolution he is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
I disagree. What does it mean to say that God is directing the creation of life? Do you really know? Because I haven't slightest idea what that means. For example, most theories of abiogenesis are a far cry from what I would call "random chance," and in some cases, our theories have come a lot further. It would seem that the laws of the universe make the formation of prebiotic materials inevitable. Doesn't that possibly qualify as directing the creation of life? I don't know if that qualifies, but I don't think you know either. If you don't think it qualifies, then why, and how can you possibly make the judgement that it doesn't? God created the laws of the universe to suit whatever his specific intent was. Life on earth may very well have been one of them according to the bible, but it is not your place to say what it means for God to be involved. This is why I say your requirements are completely arbitrary. You don't know God's purpose, and you don't know that God is not uninvolved regardless of His methods. This is what having faith is all about, and it's also why I think Intelligent Design proponents are off their rocker.
They have forgotten what it means to have faith, and are worried that science has somehow usurped their faith, so in an effort to regain their position, they want to use "scientific" means to justify that faith. Except, that that in doing so what they are dealing is no longer faith anymo
Behe hasn't shown jack. Both Dembski and Behe have admitted that there are major holes in their ideas. Behe even admitted it under oath. The holes in these ideas were pointed out to them shortly after they originally voiced them. And yet, instead of trying to spend time shoring them up as any good scientist should do, they continue to trot out the same flawed ideas over and over.
There are a great many open questions and things we flat out don't know about how life came to be on this planet, but at least the currently accepted theory doesn't have logical flaws in it the size of planets. A lack of knowlege is not an adequate excuse to invoke an almighty influence, to do so is completely arbitrary, and is indicative of someone who is more interested in "knowing" the answers than in actually doing the hard work that's involved in really finding them. It is also indicative of a person who has an agenda that has nothing to do with science at all. The Discovery Institute and the people behind it have made it clear that they have no desire nor inclination to do any science at all.
Finally your conception of evolution is flawed. Evolution doesn't predict that bacteria will magically turn into another lifeform. Evolution predicts that, over time, different groups of the same bacteria that are placed under different pressures will eventually become so disconnected from one another as to be distinguishable. It comes down to the silly argument over micro vs. macro evolution. Just what do you think that macro evolution is? All it is, is a bunch of "microevolutionary" events built up over time. That's it. And we've seen enough of this to detect strong evolutionary patterns in the fossil record, in modern life forms, and in genetics.
The "anomalies" you point at are nothing of the sort. The advent of quantum mechanics came about not because of "anomalies," but because experiments were being done whose results flat out contradicted a classical interpretation. We had definitive knowledge that things did not work as we expected at the atomic level. We have no such evidence against evolution aside from the unproven and questionable conjecture that certain biological systems are "irreducibly complex."
Finally, you have no idea what you are talking about with regard to undirected evolution. You're creating a strawman. Random mutation is a factor for creating variation, but selection pressures direct evolution and which variations survive. You are mischaraterizing the process. Do you not see how you are arbitrarily attaching "Purpose" to the things you think are important while disregarding the rest?
But science does pose a danger to their beliefs. The scientific attitude is that the world operates as a simple machine following deterministic laws. The basic equation is F = ma, not F = ma + the will of God. And the more fundamentalist of the religious rather see this as F = the will of God, with the mass and acceleration bit at best being so much inconsequential flippancy, and at worst the very presence of the Great Deciever.
And if one's faith is based on such a flimsy and fickle thing, then that faith is on the path to self distruction, which is exactly what we are seeing.
Many religious people want to see their religion placed on the same footing as science, because they perceive that their faith has some how lost out to science. This is a false perception. What has happened is that science has, in many respects, refined what religious faith is, and what it should be, but many raligions, including most branches of Christianity haven't caught up yet. They are mired in a faith that was good enough 400 years ago, but it hasn't grown up or matured since then. The time of sun gods, earth gods, water gods, etc, have passed, yet religion has not been able to completely wrest itself away from these primitive ideas. In asserting that God must act on the universe in certain observable ways, this does not put God or religion on equal footing with science. It makes religion dependent upon and subservient to science. Precisely the opposite of what is intended.
Science is only antithetical to religious belief, when religious "faith" is substituted for bad logic, poor reasoning, and questionable evidence. In such a circumstance, the believer really doesn't have faith, they have bad logic, poor reasoning, and questionable evidence. Given this, it's small wonder that we have this silly "culture war" going on. It's just a symptom of a faithless religion lashing out at the world trying to prove to itself that it still believes, while hoping that true faith will drop out of the sky and hit them in the head. Unfortunately, for a lot of religious people, they wouldn't recognize true faith if it dropped out of the sky and hit them on the head.
While you are right that there is a significant amount of inertia involved in getting anyone to switch from another OS, you're argument against it is a little flimsy. I use Solaris, Linux, and OS X at work and I use linux at home. I don't use windows. Ever. I have plenty of other things to do with my free time.
Meanwhile, I don't care wtf the other 90% of users are doing. Probably trying to find drivers for their hardware that didn't come with their OS. I don't have time for that.
But in evolution there is no such thing as "macroevolution" as ID proponents usually want to define it. Macroevolution in the evolutionary theory sense is just a lot of microevolutationary events built up over time.
ID proponents all too often interpret macroevolution to mean monkeys giving birth to human babies as part of their usual sophistry of creating false dicotomies. But that is not what evolution predicts. Common descent does not mean that one species gives birth to another in a flash. It does mean that the line between separated species can get kind of fuzzy at the time of a speciation event, but that is exactly what you would expect to see if speciation events are actually the result of the build up of a lot of micro-mutations. And these kinds of events speciation events *have* been observed in various stages through out the world.
Here in Arizona we have an excellent example of squirrel speciation where different populations of ground squirrels have been divided by geologic evolution of different mountain peaks. The different populations have been separated long enough that speciation events are occuring almost right before our eyes. And there are even intermediary events where we can see how different populations were cut off from the main branch at different times and you can see the linear correlation between the genetic code differences and the time at which they were seperated. You can't really get any better direct evidence of "macro-evolution" than that.
Uh, you're misreading RMS. RMS doesn't think business is bad. But when a business becomes so powerful that it enjoins one's personal freedoms. That is a bad thing.
Put a slightly different way. If you're storing your data on hardware that you purchased with your hard earned cash, and that data is stored in a proprietary vendor specific format, who is really in control of your data?
From hard earned experience, I've learned that it isn't necessarily you. Opensource gives you control over your data, and your software, and your hardware. On top of that you may have some custom software that you might wish to keep private. That's your perogative, and I have no problem with this. As someone that runs a small side business, I do this myself, and on occaision, I do contribute small fixes to the opensource software that I use, when appropriate, and I get a better product in the next release. My business software is still my own, and is kept private, but that doesn't mean that there are parts of my business that can't also benefit significantly from the use of open source.
I have literally saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees and vendor support fees over the years by avoiding the use of proprietary software for everyday work. Your claims that this only makes sense on an academic level have no merit, and they miss the point entirely.
What you are referring to is a nova. Not a supernova. White dwarfs can in fact go through several nova events, as long as their total mass remains below the limit. A nova explosion is usually fueled by nuclear reactions in the outer portion of the star, in the accretted material. As the material acretes recurring nova can happen almost periodicaly. However, a Type I supernova is a different beast entirely, and results from the amount of acreted material raising the density and pressure in the core of the white dwarf enough to reinitiate nuclear fusion in the core. When this happens, the reaction is catastrophic and blows the star apart.
1. I agree with the basic premiss but there are extenuating issues. Most people don't have a few million dollars to throw at politicians every election season. Business backed PACS and lobbying organizations do. What gives these guys the right to have a louder voice in the process than I do? Just because they have more money than I do is not sufficient justification.
I understand where you are coming from, and I don't really like the message that restrictions send, but the effect without them is that people or groups with money get a louder voice while people who don't have the finances are never allowed to enter the debate. That's not a good thing either. Of course the real affect of the restrictions is that the people with money find more covert ways to buy their politicians, but that gets into a whole different but related subject....
2. Contradiction. In our society, having money grants you a great deal of power. The linkage that money=power isn't exactly a 1 to 1 relation, but you're fooling yourself when you deny the connection. In addition, it is impossible for our government to run completely underneath the "bounds of the constitution." Why? The govenment is run by people, some good, some bad, but most aren't going to balk at using a loop hole to get something done whether it is in the best interest of the country or for themselves. It's human nature, you try to control the negative aspects as best you can, but there will always be people that will find ways to subvert the rules.
3. Perhaps. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think the issue may be beyond the scope of what is taught in schools. For example, I think my school actually did a pretty good job of teaching the constitution, there's only one problem: It was over twenty years ago, and the memory tends to get a little fuzzy about those kinds of things if it isn't exercised.
4. Completely disagree. Just because you can write down the name of a candidate doesn't necessarily mean you know anything about them. Are you suggesting voters be quized about their knowledge of candidates before voting for them? Interesting idea, but I don't think it's really practical for a great many reasons.
5. I have no argument there.
6. Completely agree.
7. The relationship between the public at large with media and politics is quite a bit more complex than your description. Your suggestion that voting is wrong (and your justification for it) is interesting, but I don't think it's workable. A more likely way of removing the idea of a mandate from the minds of politicians and the public, is to more carefully examine why half of our voting population refuses to participate in the process in the first place. Doesn't that statistic in and of itself raise a number of red flags that are down played by the media and political establishment?
I disagree, the professor may be perfectly well qualified to teach that class. His expertise is in comparative religion, and as such he has all the qualifications needed to teach such a course.
If a physicist is biased against a particular theory, is he unqualified to teach physics? If a philosopher is biased against a particular philosophical view is he unqualified to teach philosophy?
An expert in a field of study, will always have biases of one kind or another about things in their field. If you've never met a religious studies scholar that doesn't have biases, then you've never met a religious studies scholar.
The only thing that this professor really did wrong was to honestly express his opinion in a very politically incorrect fashion. He could've said exactly the same thing while omitting the references to "fundies" and checking his anger at the door and he wouldn't have raised the ire of anyone.
I agree that the whack jobs probably weren't doing anyone else's bidding, but they are most certainly representative of certain elements within the Christian umbrella. Certainly not Chrisianity in it's entirety, but there most definitely are segments within the religion that think this behavior is, if not ok, it's tacitly condoned by silence. They are not too far removed from the same group of people that murder or harrass doctors that perform abortions.
They just don't care enough about issues of science to take the initiative to understand what's really going on. This makes them susceptible to people that are just out to make a name for themselves or an agenda to push, regardless of whether or not they have anything relavent to say.
It also allows them to be easily swayed by anyone that can make a technical sounding argument that is based more on an emotional appeal, "We need to take a balanced approach, because of (insert technical sounding jargon here)" or "If this is put in your backyard, your kids will sprout six arms and all your boys will develop penis cancer."
To make matters worse, the news media all too often plays right into the hands of the fear-mongers. In an effort to be "balanced" and "letting the viewers decide" the news media will give a voice to any yahoo that will provide a counterpoint to any statement made by the proponent of anything.
Most people are capable of learning to think critically, and be able to see through this kind of bullshit. But few of them are taught the skill.
I more or less agree with your point, but I don't think that is the issue here. The schools seem to be trying to control what students are doing outside of the classroom, off-campus, and in the sanctity of their own homes. I think this may go well beyond simple free speech rights.
I have no problem with school districts putting restrictions on student activities within the educational environment, that's just common sense. However, the school's jurisdiction ends when my child leaves the educational environment of the school.
School administrators have absolutely no right to do go beyond this line, and if I were a parent of a student attending one of these schools I would be making a very big stink about this. How dare these school administrators try to tell me what I should or should not be allowing my kid to do off campus! This isn't just an abridgement to these kids' free speech rights in the educational context, it's an abridgement of my right to tell my kids what I think is ok, and what is not. Even if I might happen to agree with it, school administrators have no right to be putting restrictions on the behaviour of students outside of school.
Now, in the case of private schools, I think the issue is a little more murky. The example of the BYU student getting kicked out over being with her alcohol consuming parents is pretty damned silly, however, it's a private university, and the student agreed to those conditions when she decided to attend that school. The student also had the choice of not going there, so I think the situation is a little different. Even though I completely disagree with the decision, I think that BYU it was within thier rights to do that. But in doing so, they are also shooting themselves in the foot, because future students will certainly think twice about attending there.
On the other hand, I do think there are some open questions about the school's right to impose restrictions off campus. I think there are some privacy issues issues that could certainly be brought up about this. The situation lends itself to all kinds of ways the policy can be abused, and I'm almost certain that it is, which, at minimum, would open the school up to all kinds of potential civil suits.
I would say that if these events have happened twice in two years and again in another 13, from a time sample of 60,000years, then the orbit is rather unstable. Unless, it's normal for planets to just all of a suddent shift orbit like that.
Well, either that, or certain people are hyping up a fairly common event to make it sound more novel than it really is. To put it in a slightly different perspective, this "story" has been trotted out every two years for about as long as I've had a telescope which is over 25 years at least. The only people that seem to remember this same story being reported every other year are those of us who have gone out every other year to see it. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a pretty cool event, an opportunity to get a new "close up" view of Mars is always interesting, however it is also misleading to imply that this is some kind of once in a lifetime event, because it isn't.
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Uh, I think you need to check your facts. MySQL has had transactions, subqueries, and referential constraints for quite some time now. You do need to use the innodb engine to get transactions and referential integrity, but that's just a matter of specifying which engine you want to use. I have a pretty complex database that utilizes all these features in a production environment, and I've been doing it for about 2 years now.
Is mysql the best database out there? Certainly not, but it is the right tool for many projects. And in many cases it does a very good job of keeping up with the bigger and more established database systems.
Apparently the reporter didn't understand the difference between lithobraking and aerobraking.
You don't understand. I don't need to score any points against you. This isn't a debate. The points you bring up have been answered by others. Repeatedly. And you don't have to look very hard to find the responses. I'm not going to waste my time trying to educate you, when I'm fairly certain that you are fully capable of doing that yourself. I'm just trying to goad you into doing so.
Sigh. Abiogenesis is the logical precursor to evolution. "(New) novel traits passed from one organism to another" don't just happen when a bunch of chunks of granite are hanging out on a hillside chilling out.
That may be true. But abiogenesis is not evolution. It also raises the question of just exactly what constitutes life? Are self replicating molecules alive? Are viruses alive? And by the way, what claim am I making? I didn't say that everything was understood and that we know how it all works. I did say that we are starting get a picture of how it might have happened.
The difference between organic molecules and a single-celled organism is astronomical... a cell has working, complex infrastructures, working DNA/RNA, etc., as opposed to a dollop of amino acids which has... just about jack.
Yes, the difference between organic molecules and modern single celled organisms is very large. However, where is the requirement that the first single celled organism must have more in common with modern ones than something much more primitive? I didn't say that we were close to making a leap from molecules to modern bacteria. I'm talking about something that is much more primitive. Algae, the simplest celled organisms that we know of, are light years ahead of what I'm talking about. And yes, I admit that I don't know what this primitive single celled organism really looks like, however, I would bet big money that it won't look very much like modern single celled organisms.
Of course, getting the organic molecules from inorganic matter is quite a feat in and of itself, but not directly related.
Getting organic molecules is easy. You do realize that organic molecules are found everywhere. Not just here on earth, but throughout the universe. In addtion, we have already discovered molecules that could very well be precursors to DNA/RNA that are easy to make naturally, that can self replicate under the right conditions, and are susceptible to non-destructive mutations. Those are all pretty big jumps don't ya think? I find these findings to be pretty compelling, and they most certainly do lay the ground work for what comes next.
It's vain of you to claim that you know how I think. In fact, you don't know me, or my thoughts. Lumping me in with the stereotype in your head of thoughtless religious nuts is really pretty small minded of you as well.
Strike one. Your ad hominem response is typical. I'm not like those other ID/creationist proponents, how dare you lump me in with them. When you use the same logic and and misdirection as the usuall ID proponents, you are thinking just like the crowd. Further, by promoting a non-scientific claim promoted by a movement with a poor understanding of the nature of both science and religion, you are doing a disservice to both science and your religious beliefs.
Where did the first matter come from?
Strike two. Another typical reponse is to attempt to redirect the argument when things get sticky. Where did the first matter come from indeed. If you really knew any physics you'd know that this is a pretty rediculous question. Why not just ask what caused the big bang? At least then you would be asking a question that science hasn't answered to any satisfaction.
We're not mindless religious zealots. We have the same evidence you have, and have differing theories about the activities behind the evidence. You don't have to like it, but it's pretty thoughtless of you to generalize our worldview as the province of morons or the deluded.
Strike three. You're out. And finally the inferiority complex comes in. I didn't call you a mindless religious zealot. I said ID/creationism is an idiotic idea pushed by people that misunderstand both science and religion. That does not mean you are a mindless religious zealot. It doesn't even mean that you're stupid. Ignorant perhaps, but not stupid. I happen to think that William Dembski is a pretty bright guy. He's wrong on several levels, and I question his motivations, but he's not stupid.
However, on the topic of abiogenesis, you should note that some very interesting findings have been made in the field over the last decade. Some very interesting findings. The groundwork for being able to make the leap from simple, self-replicating organic molecules to the first cell is making good progess. Mind you, there's still a big leap to be made and we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, but we're starting to get enough of the pieces together that we can begin to see how it might have happened.
And his post, more polite than yours, was modded flamebait but yours hasn't been yet.
If you think his post was more polite than mine, then you haven't had much contact with people that think like him. I didn't intend my response to be particularly polite in the first place. The original post was a feint, a bit of misdirection, intended to appear reasonable, when in fact it is nothing of the sort, and I called him on it.
As for where in his post did he blame others? He didn't, but it is implicit in the creationist/intelligent design school of thought. I've studied the way these guys operate for quite a while now, and I know how they think, and I know the sorts of games they try to play. The fact is, their misunderstandings go far beyond the realm of science, and into their own religion, and it is there that they are actually doing the most damage, which was the point I was making in my previous post.
I can hear the naturalists clacking away at their keyboards in glee with the "smoking gun" that evolution has finally been "proven" and that the creationists will have to sit in stunned silence under the weight of the evidence finally presented.
As a scientist, creationism isn't on my radar at all, and quite frankly, I don't give a rat's ass whether or not you believe it. What I do care about, is people such as yourself misrepresenting both science and religion as something that they are not, claiming you know things that you clearly do not. And then blaming good scientists for your own ignorance and lack of insight.
The fact is, evolution has been satisfactorily proven to work. Creationism and intelligent design are DOA, and the only open question about these idiotic ideas, is how much damage are they going to do to both science and religion before they finally go down for good.
They will most certainly image Cydonia, but it doesn't matter what they find, because no amount of contrary evidence will convince Richard Hoagland and his woo-woo followers that its not a face. Your comment about material being heavily "edited" are exactly the kinds of things that Hoagland and his cohorts say to keep up the hoax. What Hoagland doesn't say is that his original pictures went throught far more processing than anything that the latest pictures have gone through. The modern cameras produce far better data, with the far less processing needed to create usable images than anything that Viking ever did.
Also, be wary of stuff that has been "declassified." The spy satellites can do some pretty amazing stuff to be sure, however I am a little skeptical of this claim. I've got a little experience with some of the people that do this work, and to be sure they can do some incredible stuff, but reading 1 inch tall lettering on the ground from space would be quite a stretch even now, and likely impossible back in 1980.
HiRISE, under the best of conditions, will do about 30 cm/pixel sampling, giving it a resolving power of just over half a meter. So it is indeed the most powerful camera in Mars Orbit.
You are getting the general gist of what he's saying, but you're still intentionally misinterpreting for your own ends. In Patterson's own comments about this, what he says that it is impossible to tell if modern birds are directly descended from archaeopteryx, or if archaeopteryx is a branch off of the line that did lead to modern birds. From the point of view of the theory, this is perfectly fine, because evolution predicts this should happen. It is also a good validation of the theory because it most definitely shows that such transitional creatures existed whether or not they are part of the main line of descendence is irrelevent. Is archaeopteryx all by itself an air tight case? I wouldn't say so, but when placed in the context of the much larger body of evidence we have, it is another compelling piece of the puzzle.
The Discovery Institute is the only place promoting intelligent design. Sure, there are other institutions that are more formally associated with creationism, but at this point they are all largely riding the coat tails of DI. The Discovery Institute is intelligent design, and anyone on the ID bandwagon is necessarily endorsing the majority of the Discovery Institute's agenda. Not to mention the fact that when you start digging into these other institutions, they also more or less said the same thing. Some of the things that Duane Gish used to say about what is motivating creation science are precisely the same things that the Discovery Institute has said, almost word for word. As someone that has been watching the activities of the Discovery Institute, and similar so-called think-tanks for over 10 years now, there is little doubt that they largely agree on nearly all of their underlying motivations. Perhaps you should look into the history of it.
You're also doing some very dodgy math in extrapolating 400 petition signers into "thousands." First of all, there really aren't that many scientists in the US. There really aren't, I don't know the exact figure, but in comparing the 10,000 signers on the side of evolution, it would be likely that I can extrapolate that number to 100,000 or so without too much trouble. That still makes your "thousands" of credentialed supporters a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Christian scientists think scriptures are literally true? False. Even the Discovery Institute says it doesn't believe all the scriptures are literally true. So you're playing games of semantics with your argument. And it doesn't hold up.
I would also like to point out that you never answered one of the questions that I deem the most important. If God created a universe specifically with physical laws capable of allowing life to arise spontaneously, is that not direction? And who are you to claim that it is not?
Your quote of Patterson is a false representation whether you know it or not. You don't have to look very hard to find reputable references that show Patterson completely disavowed such an interpretaion of his words.
The fossil record is nothing but transitional forms. You are a transitional form between your parents and your children. The fact that the differences between your parents, you, and your children (if you have any) are minute is precisely what evolution predicts we should see. There is no debate amoung biologists on this issue. You can claim that there is all that you want, but that doesn't make it true.
And as I attempted to illustrate in my previous post. What Kuhn is talking about bears little resemblence to the ID movement. What scientific revolution was ever brought about by a group of people lobbying school boards and politicians? Name just one.
As for there being as many scientists in favor of ID as evolution? You are absolutely kidding yourself. Why is it that it's taken the Discovery institute years to get just 400 people to sign their petition in support of ID, while it took less than a week during last October for a biology post doc to collect almost 10,000 signatures from scientists across all discplines in support of evolutionary theory, which were presented to the judge of the Dover trial? Such an event defies all credulity of your contention that the numbers could be close to 50-50
As for ID scientists not being concerned about science trumping faith... If this were so, then why do documents put out by the Discovery Institute and endorsed by it's scientific fellows specifically say that this is what they believe, and that they are out to restore faith to it's proper place? While I am sure there are ID proponents that might take issue with such a stance, it would seem that this is the opinion of the majority of the people standing behind it.
The evidence contradicts everything you've stated.
Just because the evidence is "unproven" and "questionable" doesn't mean scientists everywhere should have to ignore it or risk being ostracized, nor does it mean the evidence shouldn't be at the least discussed at the academic level if not investigated thoroughly.
But noone is being ostracized for questioning evolution. That is what evolutionary biologists do every day. If anyone is being ostracized it is for putting forward an ill considered and poorly founded hypothesis (intelligent design) and trying to fool people who don't know any better that it is on the same footing as evolutionary theory. That is what is raising the ire of scientists, not any questions being raised about evolution. The people that are playing this game are getting what they deserve.
I'd say the lack of transitional forms makes evolution "unproven" and even "questionable",...
On this we will have to agree to disagree. There are plenty of transitional fossils. For example, there are fossils that quite clearly show the formation of the mamalian ear from parts of the jaw bone. When I see such a progression, I am inclined to fit a line to the progression, and then try to find correlating factors that explain that progression. That is how all science works. Now if you are going to tell me that these fossils aren't transitional then you're going to have to explain why they are not. And why I'm wrong to fit that line to the data in the first place. No ID proponent has answered that question except by saying that there are more gaps. That's a bullshit argument that completely ignores how progress in all the sciences is made.
but that doesn't mean I think scientists shouldn't at least explore the theory. All ID proponents are saying is that the problems with evolutionary theory should be discussed openly with all options on the table... as scientific progress continues. None of them are saying scientific study should halt.
So why isn't the Discovery Institute funding actual research instead of playing games of sophistry with school boards, politicians, and the general public? They have money, and they have scientists working there, why aren't they doing the research? Why aren't they trying to fix the well known flaws in their arguments? Much is being said about scientific progress, but DI isn't doing anything about it. Why?
Let me say it this way, if one acknowledges a personal God as directing the creation of life and also trys to acknowledge Darwin's evolution he is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
I disagree. What does it mean to say that God is directing the creation of life? Do you really know? Because I haven't slightest idea what that means. For example, most theories of abiogenesis are a far cry from what I would call "random chance," and in some cases, our theories have come a lot further. It would seem that the laws of the universe make the formation of prebiotic materials inevitable. Doesn't that possibly qualify as directing the creation of life? I don't know if that qualifies, but I don't think you know either. If you don't think it qualifies, then why, and how can you possibly make the judgement that it doesn't? God created the laws of the universe to suit whatever his specific intent was. Life on earth may very well have been one of them according to the bible, but it is not your place to say what it means for God to be involved. This is why I say your requirements are completely arbitrary. You don't know God's purpose, and you don't know that God is not uninvolved regardless of His methods. This is what having faith is all about, and it's also why I think Intelligent Design proponents are off their rocker.
They have forgotten what it means to have faith, and are worried that science has somehow usurped their faith, so in an effort to regain their position, they want to use "scientific" means to justify that faith. Except, that that in doing so what they are dealing is no longer faith anymo
There are a great many open questions and things we flat out don't know about how life came to be on this planet, but at least the currently accepted theory doesn't have logical flaws in it the size of planets. A lack of knowlege is not an adequate excuse to invoke an almighty influence, to do so is completely arbitrary, and is indicative of someone who is more interested in "knowing" the answers than in actually doing the hard work that's involved in really finding them. It is also indicative of a person who has an agenda that has nothing to do with science at all. The Discovery Institute and the people behind it have made it clear that they have no desire nor inclination to do any science at all.
Finally your conception of evolution is flawed. Evolution doesn't predict that bacteria will magically turn into another lifeform. Evolution predicts that, over time, different groups of the same bacteria that are placed under different pressures will eventually become so disconnected from one another as to be distinguishable. It comes down to the silly argument over micro vs. macro evolution. Just what do you think that macro evolution is? All it is, is a bunch of "microevolutionary" events built up over time. That's it. And we've seen enough of this to detect strong evolutionary patterns in the fossil record, in modern life forms, and in genetics.
The "anomalies" you point at are nothing of the sort. The advent of quantum mechanics came about not because of "anomalies," but because experiments were being done whose results flat out contradicted a classical interpretation. We had definitive knowledge that things did not work as we expected at the atomic level. We have no such evidence against evolution aside from the unproven and questionable conjecture that certain biological systems are "irreducibly complex."
Finally, you have no idea what you are talking about with regard to undirected evolution. You're creating a strawman. Random mutation is a factor for creating variation, but selection pressures direct evolution and which variations survive. You are mischaraterizing the process. Do you not see how you are arbitrarily attaching "Purpose" to the things you think are important while disregarding the rest?
But science does pose a danger to their beliefs. The scientific attitude is that the world operates as a simple machine following deterministic laws. The basic equation is F = ma, not F = ma + the will of God. And the more fundamentalist of the religious rather see this as F = the will of God, with the mass and acceleration bit at best being so much inconsequential flippancy, and at worst the very presence of the Great Deciever.
And if one's faith is based on such a flimsy and fickle thing, then that faith is on the path to self distruction, which is exactly what we are seeing.
Many religious people want to see their religion placed on the same footing as science, because they perceive that their faith has some how lost out to science. This is a false perception. What has happened is that science has, in many respects, refined what religious faith is, and what it should be, but many raligions, including most branches of Christianity haven't caught up yet. They are mired in a faith that was good enough 400 years ago, but it hasn't grown up or matured since then. The time of sun gods, earth gods, water gods, etc, have passed, yet religion has not been able to completely wrest itself away from these primitive ideas. In asserting that God must act on the universe in certain observable ways, this does not put God or religion on equal footing with science. It makes religion dependent upon and subservient to science. Precisely the opposite of what is intended.
Science is only antithetical to religious belief, when religious "faith" is substituted for bad logic, poor reasoning, and questionable evidence. In such a circumstance, the believer really doesn't have faith, they have bad logic, poor reasoning, and questionable evidence. Given this, it's small wonder that we have this silly "culture war" going on. It's just a symptom of a faithless religion lashing out at the world trying to prove to itself that it still believes, while hoping that true faith will drop out of the sky and hit them in the head. Unfortunately, for a lot of religious people, they wouldn't recognize true faith if it dropped out of the sky and hit them on the head.
While you are right that there is a significant amount of inertia involved in getting anyone to switch from another OS, you're argument against it is a little flimsy. I use Solaris, Linux, and OS X at work and I use linux at home. I don't use windows. Ever. I have plenty of other things to do with my free time. Meanwhile, I don't care wtf the other 90% of users are doing. Probably trying to find drivers for their hardware that didn't come with their OS. I don't have time for that.
ID proponents all too often interpret macroevolution to mean monkeys giving birth to human babies as part of their usual sophistry of creating false dicotomies. But that is not what evolution predicts. Common descent does not mean that one species gives birth to another in a flash. It does mean that the line between separated species can get kind of fuzzy at the time of a speciation event, but that is exactly what you would expect to see if speciation events are actually the result of the build up of a lot of micro-mutations. And these kinds of events speciation events *have* been observed in various stages through out the world.
Here in Arizona we have an excellent example of squirrel speciation where different populations of ground squirrels have been divided by geologic evolution of different mountain peaks. The different populations have been separated long enough that speciation events are occuring almost right before our eyes. And there are even intermediary events where we can see how different populations were cut off from the main branch at different times and you can see the linear correlation between the genetic code differences and the time at which they were seperated. You can't really get any better direct evidence of "macro-evolution" than that.
Put a slightly different way. If you're storing your data on hardware that you purchased with your hard earned cash, and that data is stored in a proprietary vendor specific format, who is really in control of your data?
From hard earned experience, I've learned that it isn't necessarily you. Opensource gives you control over your data, and your software, and your hardware. On top of that you may have some custom software that you might wish to keep private. That's your perogative, and I have no problem with this. As someone that runs a small side business, I do this myself, and on occaision, I do contribute small fixes to the opensource software that I use, when appropriate, and I get a better product in the next release. My business software is still my own, and is kept private, but that doesn't mean that there are parts of my business that can't also benefit significantly from the use of open source.
I have literally saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees and vendor support fees over the years by avoiding the use of proprietary software for everyday work. Your claims that this only makes sense on an academic level have no merit, and they miss the point entirely.
What you are referring to is a nova. Not a supernova. White dwarfs can in fact go through several nova events, as long as their total mass remains below the limit. A nova explosion is usually fueled by nuclear reactions in the outer portion of the star, in the accretted material. As the material acretes recurring nova can happen almost periodicaly. However, a Type I supernova is a different beast entirely, and results from the amount of acreted material raising the density and pressure in the core of the white dwarf enough to reinitiate nuclear fusion in the core. When this happens, the reaction is catastrophic and blows the star apart.
I understand where you are coming from, and I don't really like the message that restrictions send, but the effect without them is that people or groups with money get a louder voice while people who don't have the finances are never allowed to enter the debate. That's not a good thing either. Of course the real affect of the restrictions is that the people with money find more covert ways to buy their politicians, but that gets into a whole different but related subject....
2. Contradiction. In our society, having money grants you a great deal of power. The linkage that money=power isn't exactly a 1 to 1 relation, but you're fooling yourself when you deny the connection. In addition, it is impossible for our government to run completely underneath the "bounds of the constitution." Why? The govenment is run by people, some good, some bad, but most aren't going to balk at using a loop hole to get something done whether it is in the best interest of the country or for themselves. It's human nature, you try to control the negative aspects as best you can, but there will always be people that will find ways to subvert the rules.
3. Perhaps. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think the issue may be beyond the scope of what is taught in schools. For example, I think my school actually did a pretty good job of teaching the constitution, there's only one problem: It was over twenty years ago, and the memory tends to get a little fuzzy about those kinds of things if it isn't exercised.
4. Completely disagree. Just because you can write down the name of a candidate doesn't necessarily mean you know anything about them. Are you suggesting voters be quized about their knowledge of candidates before voting for them? Interesting idea, but I don't think it's really practical for a great many reasons.
5. I have no argument there.
6. Completely agree.
7. The relationship between the public at large with media and politics is quite a bit more complex than your description. Your suggestion that voting is wrong (and your justification for it) is interesting, but I don't think it's workable. A more likely way of removing the idea of a mandate from the minds of politicians and the public, is to more carefully examine why half of our voting population refuses to participate in the process in the first place. Doesn't that statistic in and of itself raise a number of red flags that are down played by the media and political establishment?
If a physicist is biased against a particular theory, is he unqualified to teach physics? If a philosopher is biased against a particular philosophical view is he unqualified to teach philosophy?
An expert in a field of study, will always have biases of one kind or another about things in their field. If you've never met a religious studies scholar that doesn't have biases, then you've never met a religious studies scholar.
The only thing that this professor really did wrong was to honestly express his opinion in a very politically incorrect fashion. He could've said exactly the same thing while omitting the references to "fundies" and checking his anger at the door and he wouldn't have raised the ire of anyone.
I agree that the whack jobs probably weren't doing anyone else's bidding, but they are most certainly representative of certain elements within the Christian umbrella. Certainly not Chrisianity in it's entirety, but there most definitely are segments within the religion that think this behavior is, if not ok, it's tacitly condoned by silence. They are not too far removed from the same group of people that murder or harrass doctors that perform abortions.
It also allows them to be easily swayed by anyone that can make a technical sounding argument that is based more on an emotional appeal, "We need to take a balanced approach, because of (insert technical sounding jargon here)" or "If this is put in your backyard, your kids will sprout six arms and all your boys will develop penis cancer."
To make matters worse, the news media all too often plays right into the hands of the fear-mongers. In an effort to be "balanced" and "letting the viewers decide" the news media will give a voice to any yahoo that will provide a counterpoint to any statement made by the proponent of anything.
Most people are capable of learning to think critically, and be able to see through this kind of bullshit. But few of them are taught the skill.
I have no problem with school districts putting restrictions on student activities within the educational environment, that's just common sense. However, the school's jurisdiction ends when my child leaves the educational environment of the school.
School administrators have absolutely no right to do go beyond this line, and if I were a parent of a student attending one of these schools I would be making a very big stink about this. How dare these school administrators try to tell me what I should or should not be allowing my kid to do off campus! This isn't just an abridgement to these kids' free speech rights in the educational context, it's an abridgement of my right to tell my kids what I think is ok, and what is not. Even if I might happen to agree with it, school administrators have no right to be putting restrictions on the behaviour of students outside of school.
Now, in the case of private schools, I think the issue is a little more murky. The example of the BYU student getting kicked out over being with her alcohol consuming parents is pretty damned silly, however, it's a private university, and the student agreed to those conditions when she decided to attend that school. The student also had the choice of not going there, so I think the situation is a little different. Even though I completely disagree with the decision, I think that BYU it was within thier rights to do that. But in doing so, they are also shooting themselves in the foot, because future students will certainly think twice about attending there.
On the other hand, I do think there are some open questions about the school's right to impose restrictions off campus. I think there are some privacy issues issues that could certainly be brought up about this. The situation lends itself to all kinds of ways the policy can be abused, and I'm almost certain that it is, which, at minimum, would open the school up to all kinds of potential civil suits.
Well, either that, or certain people are hyping up a fairly common event to make it sound more novel than it really is. To put it in a slightly different perspective, this "story" has been trotted out every two years for about as long as I've had a telescope which is over 25 years at least. The only people that seem to remember this same story being reported every other year are those of us who have gone out every other year to see it. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a pretty cool event, an opportunity to get a new "close up" view of Mars is always interesting, however it is also misleading to imply that this is some kind of once in a lifetime event, because it isn't.