It seems pretty reasonable to at least mention divisive talk show hosts who serve as vehicles for ignorance when talking about the decline of American innovation. He could have mentioned some Democrats who were dumb too, I suppose, but that doesn't mean Fox News is irrelevant here.
In that sense, what ISN'T a matter of faith? How do you know that Columbus sailed to America? I've read about it in a book, but have you ever met anyone who was actually on that boat? And if so, how do you know they weren't lying? You're just putting your faith in a bunch of books, just like in religion right? And in science, if you didn't personally conduct quantum mechanics research, how can you make any conclusions about anything without faith? Of course, you may have realized my point by now, which is that saying "X requires faith, and religion requires faith, thus X is no different from religion" is dumb.
Lysozyme is everywhere. You secrete it on every wet surface of your body. Bacteria have had plenty of time to get acquainted with it, so it is unlikely that putting the stuff in cows will create super bugs that will kill babies. However, this "human-like" milk will still be inferior to actual human milk, lysozyme or no, because it will lack maternal immunoglobulin to protect the kids against a variety of illnesses while their immune system is still developing.
If I pile a bunch of rocks high in the sky and call it a skyscraper, that's creating order from disorder, but isn't "negentropy." Similarly, the sun has been shining on our planet for at least as long as life has been on it, so invoking thermodynamics is kind of out. The question of why still remains, though. Presumably I built the skyscraper because someone paid me to do it, and if I get paid to do something then I can use that money to... see where I'm going? Anyway, it's perfectly reasonable to me to imagine that any replicatory process would generate better replicators, and DNA is quite good at what it does. There's no reason to assume that it popped out of nowhere, or was zapped into existence after a lightning strike - there is, as you point out, every reason to assume the opposite. None of this rules out the possibility of simple replicators leading inexorably to more complex and efficient replicators, but it's when we have no reason to believe that DNA was the start of everything, it's cheating to point to the middle of the process (DNA) and say, "How'd that get there?" (to quote an awe-inspiring man). Heck, I'd look to the RNA World before I asked that question, but I think there's probably something even simpler before that - that's the fun of science!
In the US, you have to be 16 to get into an R-rated movie. It's rated exactly the same. Moreover, it wasn't just a couple a boobs. There was also, rape, graphic violence with blood and gore, and (of course) a blue penis. Our rating system needs work (nipple = R, barring the Titanic exception, but show the Joker can jam pencils and explosive into people for a PG13), but Watchmen wasn't really borderline material.
Your assertion that vaccines would create super bugs has historically been proven false. Those outbreaks were in places where vaccination rates and standards of care are low, and there is no evidence that they were caused by your hypothetical "unvaccinable" bugs (also: currently no usable vaccine for Yersinia pestis). Moreover, why should the prospect of eventually creating resistance deter us from preventing or curing disease? There is no inherent reason why this should be true. With antibiotics, your option is to create resistance and save lives, or to not use antibiotics and have people die. Obviously it's not exactly that simple (option 3: use antibiotics responsibly and avoid selecting for resistance), but my point still stands. In conclusion: vaccines have not been shown to create super bugs, nor is obvious why this should be a deterrent to their use.
Just like the polio vaccine created super polio, and the smallpox vaccine created monstro-pox, which subsequently ravaged the greater Eurasian continent before - hey wait a minute! That's what I get for using Wikopedia instead of the real thing!
The government has not tried to legislate in evolution as a "strong" theory. There are thousands upon thousands of academic papers supporting it already; the legislation part is only to defend against those who reject said evidence. Without being a serious mental contortionist, nothing in biology makes sense except in the context of evolution.
Dude, vaccines aren't 100%. Not everyone who gets a shot is immune to the disease. For some diseases it's more variable than others (see: BCG vaccine for TB), and it's not always clear why, although HLA haplotypes have been put forward as a potential explanation. That pretty much counters every one of your arguments. So keep that in mind whenever you go to write another anti-vaccination rant and think first, "Hey, if vaccines - like virtually everything else in medicine - aren't 100% effective, how does this affect what I'm planning to say?"
Wakefield has been widely discredited for quite some time. His results have never been duplicated, studies have failed to demonstrate a link between vaccines and autism, and the scapegoat additive thiomersal (or thimerosal) was taken out of vaccines in 2001 to no effect.
It's still a shortcut, and it still piggybacks on Google's superior engine. Whereas Google would be able to figure out that "torsoraphy" is a misspelled "tarsorrhaphy," Microsoft - rather than figuring this out - looks at Google to see what they corrected it to be, and then gives the user that search result. Bottom line: wherever they are deficient they use Google to fill in, and that means Bing is worse (and they realize it).
It's cheating because instead of generating good search results, they look at someone else's search results and output those. It's not theft, it's not illegal, but it is kind of a shitty thing to do. Or, here's how the guy interviewed in TFA said it (pretty well if you ask me):
“It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work,” said Singhal. “I don’t know how else to call it but plain and simple cheating. Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.”
You expected a deeply philosophical movie from Inception? Based on what? It was hyped for its stunning special effects and action sequences and directed by the guy who had just done two Batman movies. Inception delivers unless you went into it with ridiculous expectations.
Then there is a big difference between speculative fiction and science fiction. I know which one Fringe is, mostly because there's never been a speculative fiction TV show, so what's the big deal? If you will only tolerate speculative fiction then don't get all worked up when you don't like science fiction (hint: some of the science is fictitious).
That's a terrible analogy. Consider instead: There is a lottery to determine whether or not the human race lives or dies. We wouldn't be around to comprehend any losing draws, so we make the (flawed) conclusion that we were always bound to have won.
Of course your explanation may differ from the one given, but (again) as you may have guessed, they aren't going to put forward "we messed up" as an explanation, so something considerably more complicated must be invoked.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but which job position is more likely to start the zombie apocalypse?
It seems pretty reasonable to at least mention divisive talk show hosts who serve as vehicles for ignorance when talking about the decline of American innovation. He could have mentioned some Democrats who were dumb too, I suppose, but that doesn't mean Fox News is irrelevant here.
In that sense, what ISN'T a matter of faith? How do you know that Columbus sailed to America? I've read about it in a book, but have you ever met anyone who was actually on that boat? And if so, how do you know they weren't lying? You're just putting your faith in a bunch of books, just like in religion right? And in science, if you didn't personally conduct quantum mechanics research, how can you make any conclusions about anything without faith? Of course, you may have realized my point by now, which is that saying "X requires faith, and religion requires faith, thus X is no different from religion" is dumb.
Lysozyme is everywhere. You secrete it on every wet surface of your body. Bacteria have had plenty of time to get acquainted with it, so it is unlikely that putting the stuff in cows will create super bugs that will kill babies. However, this "human-like" milk will still be inferior to actual human milk, lysozyme or no, because it will lack maternal immunoglobulin to protect the kids against a variety of illnesses while their immune system is still developing.
If I pile a bunch of rocks high in the sky and call it a skyscraper, that's creating order from disorder, but isn't "negentropy." Similarly, the sun has been shining on our planet for at least as long as life has been on it, so invoking thermodynamics is kind of out. The question of why still remains, though. Presumably I built the skyscraper because someone paid me to do it, and if I get paid to do something then I can use that money to... see where I'm going? Anyway, it's perfectly reasonable to me to imagine that any replicatory process would generate better replicators, and DNA is quite good at what it does. There's no reason to assume that it popped out of nowhere, or was zapped into existence after a lightning strike - there is, as you point out, every reason to assume the opposite. None of this rules out the possibility of simple replicators leading inexorably to more complex and efficient replicators, but it's when we have no reason to believe that DNA was the start of everything, it's cheating to point to the middle of the process (DNA) and say, "How'd that get there?" (to quote an awe-inspiring man). Heck, I'd look to the RNA World before I asked that question, but I think there's probably something even simpler before that - that's the fun of science!
In the US, you have to be 16 to get into an R-rated movie. It's rated exactly the same. Moreover, it wasn't just a couple a boobs. There was also, rape, graphic violence with blood and gore, and (of course) a blue penis. Our rating system needs work (nipple = R, barring the Titanic exception, but show the Joker can jam pencils and explosive into people for a PG13), but Watchmen wasn't really borderline material.
Your assertion that vaccines would create super bugs has historically been proven false. Those outbreaks were in places where vaccination rates and standards of care are low, and there is no evidence that they were caused by your hypothetical "unvaccinable" bugs (also: currently no usable vaccine for Yersinia pestis). Moreover, why should the prospect of eventually creating resistance deter us from preventing or curing disease? There is no inherent reason why this should be true. With antibiotics, your option is to create resistance and save lives, or to not use antibiotics and have people die. Obviously it's not exactly that simple (option 3: use antibiotics responsibly and avoid selecting for resistance), but my point still stands. In conclusion: vaccines have not been shown to create super bugs, nor is obvious why this should be a deterrent to their use.
Just like the polio vaccine created super polio, and the smallpox vaccine created monstro-pox, which subsequently ravaged the greater Eurasian continent before - hey wait a minute! That's what I get for using Wikopedia instead of the real thing!
Well yes maybe you would prefer that, but unfortunately it is much harder to make a vaccine against traffic.
The government has not tried to legislate in evolution as a "strong" theory. There are thousands upon thousands of academic papers supporting it already; the legislation part is only to defend against those who reject said evidence. Without being a serious mental contortionist, nothing in biology makes sense except in the context of evolution.
Dude, vaccines aren't 100%. Not everyone who gets a shot is immune to the disease. For some diseases it's more variable than others (see: BCG vaccine for TB), and it's not always clear why, although HLA haplotypes have been put forward as a potential explanation. That pretty much counters every one of your arguments. So keep that in mind whenever you go to write another anti-vaccination rant and think first, "Hey, if vaccines - like virtually everything else in medicine - aren't 100% effective, how does this affect what I'm planning to say?"
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754.pdf
Wakefield has been widely discredited for quite some time. His results have never been duplicated, studies have failed to demonstrate a link between vaccines and autism, and the scapegoat additive thiomersal (or thimerosal) was taken out of vaccines in 2001 to no effect.
What research, exactly?
It's still a shortcut, and it still piggybacks on Google's superior engine. Whereas Google would be able to figure out that "torsoraphy" is a misspelled "tarsorrhaphy," Microsoft - rather than figuring this out - looks at Google to see what they corrected it to be, and then gives the user that search result. Bottom line: wherever they are deficient they use Google to fill in, and that means Bing is worse (and they realize it).
I can't help but think I can only benefit from Google and Microsoft fighting.
“It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work,” said Singhal. “I don’t know how else to call it but plain and simple cheating. Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.”
You expected a deeply philosophical movie from Inception? Based on what? It was hyped for its stunning special effects and action sequences and directed by the guy who had just done two Batman movies. Inception delivers unless you went into it with ridiculous expectations.
If you don't understand celebrity worship, you've basically missed a huge chunk of human history.
Then there is a big difference between speculative fiction and science fiction. I know which one Fringe is, mostly because there's never been a speculative fiction TV show, so what's the big deal? If you will only tolerate speculative fiction then don't get all worked up when you don't like science fiction (hint: some of the science is fictitious).
That's a terrible analogy. Consider instead: There is a lottery to determine whether or not the human race lives or dies. We wouldn't be around to comprehend any losing draws, so we make the (flawed) conclusion that we were always bound to have won.
Yes. I can see the rebuttal now: "How can you say the universe is not fine-tuned for us? We're here, aren't we?"
Yes, typo on my part.
Helium-2, rare earths, and who says we necessarily need to send everything back to Earth?
Man can surely destroy man though.
Of course your explanation may differ from the one given, but (again) as you may have guessed, they aren't going to put forward "we messed up" as an explanation, so something considerably more complicated must be invoked.