> Please be careful with AD&D, people. I used to play AD&D - it completely consumed me, even to the point of losing my own identity... my world became one of the occult, I was awash in Satanism and witchcraft.
Well, if you had more Wis you would have known to play a Paladin rather than a mage, so that when the chips were down you could dice Satan up with your +19 Holy Sword of Demon Slicing, and thus not succumbed to evil.
Also, girls greatly prefer us manly Fighter types to you nerdy Wizard types, so there.
> I don't know if there is a conspiracy or not...but I would like to inform you that global warming isn't "a reality." Most of the data collected comes from cities, which will have a higher temperature simply because of people and that the materials used for building/roads/sidewalks/etc. retain heat better.
Including all the measurements in the arctic?
Are all the glaciers in Glacier National Park melting because of all the cities there?
> Frankly, I don't think that us humans have enough power to change what's going on in a large scale.
Do you also deny the existence of harmful levels of mercury in deep sea fish?
> so will string theory finally be falsifiable and be more than a religion?
Do you know of anyone teaching their children that they will go to Hell if they don't believe in string theory?
And if the day ever comes that we get observations that conflict with the claims of string theory, will physicists dismiss the observations as manifestations of God's inscrutable will?
Even the most speculative branches of science very different from religion.
> The most correct plural is octopodes, but I've never heard anyone use it.
Yes. The -us isn't the familiar Latin ending. It's the Latinized form of Greek okto-pous "eightfoot".
The root of pous is ped- or pod-, familiar in such terms as orthopedics, "foot straightening"; tetrapod, "fourfoot"; Oedipus (Greek Oidipous), "Clubfoot".
The seemingly strange pous from pod- is an example of the common linguistic phenomenon called compensatory lengthening, the result of the nominative singular derivation pod- + -s. The Greek nominitive plural would be pod- + -es, hence "octopodes".
I now return you to our slightly less anal retentive context...
> From a secular, liberal Arabic point of view Al Jazeera kicks much ass. This is what we are saying we'd like to encourage over there, and I'm totally baffled that people over here dislike it.
I suppose it's kind of like the way we want them to have democracies - only so long as they elect the people we want.
> If piracy is still rampant on P2P networks, and music sales are still down... doesn't that mean that more people are not buying the music that they claim on slashdot and elsewhere that they'd buy to support the band?
Possibly there are other people who don't make that claim on Slashdot.
> So then, seriously my question is... is there any way that evolution can now be falsified?
That's like asking whether the existence of atoms can now be falsified. In principle the answer is 'yes' for both questions. But it's going to take more than a silly argument to unseat either view.
It's also like asking whether the next genome we sequence could be grossly out of place in the tree of life. Can you find even a creationist who would predict such a thing?
> In my reckoning, the primary difference between creationism and "intelligent design" is the attitudes of the people who actually study it. Intelligent Design researchers accept the findings of modern science while rejecting some of the conclusions reached by the mainstream scientific community.
a) There aren't any "Intelligent Design researchers". It's advocates have been pushing a handful of lame arguments for the existence of "somebody" . They haven't been doing any research.
b) As the Texas textbook hearings revealed last year, a lot of the proponents of ID don't accept the findings of modern science.
> I have a great deal more respect for Intelligent Design than I do for "Creation Science".
Wny? Creation Science at least had the guts to go out on a limb with some specific claims and be shown wrong. ID is just an attempt to avoid that mistake. It's propaganda in a labcoat, and deserves no respect whatoever.
> He didn't say evolutionists should listen to IDers. He said that evolutionists tend to misrepresent ID arguments, so it's hard for an average Joe to find a credible source for evolutionist debunking of ID arguments--one that actually deals with ID arguments as they're stated, and not with strawmen.
So, what is the "real" ID argument that scientists haven't debunked?
> The difference is in common ancestry and the ages of the earth & universe.
Yes, ID is "big tent" creationism, which tries to avoid splitting the ranks by being pinned down on such details. Some IDers accept common ancestry and the old earth/universe, and others don't. (The variety was brought out in the Texas schoolbook hearings last year, when the lawyer bluntly asked the 'experts' who were there to testify in favor of ID. Some of them were YECs, and they really squirmed to avoid the question. You can find transcripts on the net, if you're interested.)
> "Creationism" generally refers to Young Earth Creationism.
Generally, perhaps, but not exclusively.
You can't show that ID isn't creationism by showing that it doesn't specify what a subset of creationism specifies.
> ID is about saying that there are features of the life we see that point to design, generally by saying that the features are too complex. This can include Theistic Evolutionists, if they believe that God stepped in to tweak the evolutionary process in key places. ID says nothing about common ancestry or the ages of the earth & universe.
That is correct. However, if you visit talk.origins you'll find that the theistic evolutionists unanimously reject the sort of ID that has become popular in the USA over the past couple of decades as a result of the "missionary work" of the Discovery Institute. It's nothing but pseudoscience to make creationists feel like science supports their views (whatever variety they may be).
> > The fact is that evolution flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, which makes it very much unlike any other accepted area of science.
> No, it doesn't. The Second Law of Thermodynamics only applies to closed systems, which life clearly isn't.
Actually it applies to opens systems as well; there's a term for what crosses the boundary of the system.
> While I don't particularly relish the prospect of eavesdropping without warrants, the fact is that warrants take a gigundous mountain of paperwork to get
No, the FISA law set up a secret court that issues secret warrants, after the fact, and for all practical purposes rubber-stamps the requests. IIRC it has only rejected one request for a warrant in its history.
> Everyone in this thread, including the editor, convienently leaves out the "half", as in "half domestic surveilance". When a known Al-Q person outside the USA calls or contacts someone inside, the NSA tries to listen in. So how exactly is it a huge problem that one person in the US is being spied upon because a known terrorist on a short list calls him? Tell me with a straight face anyone seriously expects the NSA get a warrant ahead of time in a world of disposable cell phones.
That's just the thing. The FISA law lets them get secret post hoc warrants from a court that's a virtual rubber stamp. Breaking the law buys them nothing.
> A bill cannot be used to declare the beginning or the ending of a war because the president can veto a bill. The constitution does not give the president the power to veto the beginning or ending of war.
For all practical purposes they handed over their constitutional responsibility for declarations of war to the executive branch.
Illegal as hell, but that's the way they do things these days.
Slashdot Mirror
> Please be careful with AD&D, people. I used to play AD&D - it completely consumed me, even to the point of losing my own identity... my world became one of the occult, I was awash in Satanism and witchcraft.
Well, if you had more Wis you would have known to play a Paladin rather than a mage, so that when the chips were down you could dice Satan up with your +19 Holy Sword of Demon Slicing, and thus not succumbed to evil.
Also, girls greatly prefer us manly Fighter types to you nerdy Wizard types, so there.
> What about the mexicans? What exactly do they wear in the "other" dimension?
Sombreros.
> I will however point out the hypocrisy inherent in demonizing America while ignoring the acts of much worse offenders.
I guess you're not a fan of the quaint notion that "a better world starts with me".
You can justify anything, if all it requires is finding someone doing worse.
> I don't know if there is a conspiracy or not...but I would like to inform you that global warming isn't "a reality." Most of the data collected comes from cities, which will have a higher temperature simply because of people and that the materials used for building/roads/sidewalks/etc. retain heat better.
Including all the measurements in the arctic?
Are all the glaciers in Glacier National Park melting because of all the cities there?
> Frankly, I don't think that us humans have enough power to change what's going on in a large scale.
Do you also deny the existence of harmful levels of mercury in deep sea fish?
I agree that it isn't insightful. Anyone with two neurons to rub together should have already figured it out for themself.
> so will string theory finally be falsifiable and be more than a religion?
Do you know of anyone teaching their children that they will go to Hell if they don't believe in string theory?
And if the day ever comes that we get observations that conflict with the claims of string theory, will physicists dismiss the observations as manifestations of God's inscrutable will?
Even the most speculative branches of science very different from religion.
> The most correct plural is octopodes, but I've never heard anyone use it.
Yes. The -us isn't the familiar Latin ending. It's the Latinized form of Greek okto-pous "eightfoot".
The root of pous is ped- or pod-, familiar in such terms as orthopedics, "foot straightening"; tetrapod, "fourfoot"; Oedipus (Greek Oidipous), "Clubfoot".
The seemingly strange pous from pod- is an example of the common linguistic phenomenon called compensatory lengthening, the result of the nominative singular derivation pod- + -s. The Greek nominitive plural would be pod- + -es, hence "octopodes".
I now return you to our slightly less anal retentive context...
> From a secular, liberal Arabic point of view Al Jazeera kicks much ass. This is what we are saying we'd like to encourage over there, and I'm totally baffled that people over here dislike it.
I suppose it's kind of like the way we want them to have democracies - only so long as they elect the people we want.
> Men simply don't make good decisions about what links to click when they have gone into pr0n mode.
Yes, it's called "letting your little head do the thinking".
> i've worked with two late 20s female coworkers (one a PhD, one a PhD candidate) in the last year
Tell us more about this 'female' thing you mentioned.
> If piracy is still rampant on P2P networks, and music sales are still down... doesn't that mean that more people are not buying the music that they claim on slashdot and elsewhere that they'd buy to support the band?
Possibly there are other people who don't make that claim on Slashdot.
> Did I just see Satan go to his work on a snowscooter?
Yeah, but only because he needs to make a winter trip to Canada to straighten these people out.
> So then, seriously my question is... is there any way that evolution can now be falsified?
That's like asking whether the existence of atoms can now be falsified. In principle the answer is 'yes' for both questions. But it's going to take more than a silly argument to unseat either view.
It's also like asking whether the next genome we sequence could be grossly out of place in the tree of life. Can you find even a creationist who would predict such a thing?
> In my reckoning, the primary difference between creationism and "intelligent design" is the attitudes of the people who actually study it. Intelligent Design researchers accept the findings of modern science while rejecting some of the conclusions reached by the mainstream scientific community.
a) There aren't any "Intelligent Design researchers". It's advocates have been pushing a handful of lame arguments for the existence of "somebody" . They haven't been doing any research.
b) As the Texas textbook hearings revealed last year, a lot of the proponents of ID don't accept the findings of modern science.
> I have a great deal more respect for Intelligent Design than I do for "Creation Science".
Wny? Creation Science at least had the guts to go out on a limb with some specific claims and be shown wrong. ID is just an attempt to avoid that mistake. It's propaganda in a labcoat, and deserves no respect whatoever.
> He didn't say evolutionists should listen to IDers. He said that evolutionists tend to misrepresent ID arguments, so it's hard for an average Joe to find a credible source for evolutionist debunking of ID arguments--one that actually deals with ID arguments as they're stated, and not with strawmen.
So, what is the "real" ID argument that scientists haven't debunked?
> The difference is in common ancestry and the ages of the earth & universe.
Yes, ID is "big tent" creationism, which tries to avoid splitting the ranks by being pinned down on such details. Some IDers accept common ancestry and the old earth/universe, and others don't. (The variety was brought out in the Texas schoolbook hearings last year, when the lawyer bluntly asked the 'experts' who were there to testify in favor of ID. Some of them were YECs, and they really squirmed to avoid the question. You can find transcripts on the net, if you're interested.)
> "Creationism" generally refers to Young Earth Creationism.
Generally, perhaps, but not exclusively.
You can't show that ID isn't creationism by showing that it doesn't specify what a subset of creationism specifies.
> ID is about saying that there are features of the life we see that point to design, generally by saying that the features are too complex. This can include Theistic Evolutionists, if they believe that God stepped in to tweak the evolutionary process in key places. ID says nothing about common ancestry or the ages of the earth & universe.
That is correct. However, if you visit talk.origins you'll find that the theistic evolutionists unanimously reject the sort of ID that has become popular in the USA over the past couple of decades as a result of the "missionary work" of the Discovery Institute. It's nothing but pseudoscience to make creationists feel like science supports their views (whatever variety they may be).
> > The fact is that evolution flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, which makes it very much unlike any other accepted area of science.
> No, it doesn't. The Second Law of Thermodynamics only applies to closed systems, which life clearly isn't.
Actually it applies to opens systems as well; there's a term for what crosses the boundary of the system.
> So even though the average temp is increasing, the amplitude is increasing even faster.
Global warming ==> more thermal energy in the atmosphere ==> more stuff like that.
> The gov't should shut MS down for ten days. Then allow them to reopen. Christ, what's it take to get their effing attention?
Well, after letting them off with a wristslap in a slam-dunk high profile case, they can hardle expect to be taken seriously anymore.
The only surprise is that they are pestering MS about it anymore at all.
> While I don't particularly relish the prospect of eavesdropping without warrants, the fact is that warrants take a gigundous mountain of paperwork to get
No, the FISA law set up a secret court that issues secret warrants, after the fact, and for all practical purposes rubber-stamps the requests. IIRC it has only rejected one request for a warrant in its history.
> Everyone in this thread, including the editor, convienently leaves out the "half", as in "half domestic surveilance". When a known Al-Q person outside the USA calls or contacts someone inside, the NSA tries to listen in. So how exactly is it a huge problem that one person in the US is being spied upon because a known terrorist on a short list calls him? Tell me with a straight face anyone seriously expects the NSA get a warrant ahead of time in a world of disposable cell phones.
That's just the thing. The FISA law lets them get secret post hoc warrants from a court that's a virtual rubber stamp. Breaking the law buys them nothing.
> A bill cannot be used to declare the beginning or the ending of a war because the president can veto a bill. The constitution does not give the president the power to veto the beginning or ending of war.
For all practical purposes they handed over their constitutional responsibility for declarations of war to the executive branch.
Illegal as hell, but that's the way they do things these days.
> Logically, this means that they believe the President should always have absolute power. ...so long as their party holds the office.
> So... how long before the forces of ennui at Disney get to Steve and John, driving them out like Roy?
How long before we should care?
> How long before Pixar films are littered with the dumb, ultra-hip Disney characters populate the films?
Heh. So hip they're square...
> How will history remember him is a small consolation for those of us concerned about our liberty.
What concerns me almost as much as his behavior is how little public outcry there has been over it.