Please note that digital cable is not the same as DTV. It's NTSC video, digitized and compressed with MPEG of some form, and delivered over cable by QAM or something similar. Those Hauppage DTV cards do ATSC, which is the broadcast format for DTV. So, no dice.
At 1920x1080x24bit, a frame of HDTV is just under 6MB. 1TB should hold about 176000 frames. At 30fps that's about 98 minutes. That doesn't include audio, but 10 tracks of 24 bit 96kHz digital audio for 98 minutes will fit in about 16GB - less than 2% of the disk. Figure 95 minutes of audio/video, almost enough for an average length movie.
Of course, there's nothing stopping you from compressing the A/V between the DVI port and the disk. Even with lossless compression, you would be able to fit just about any movie on the disc.
Screw SACD. Don't you know what it really stands for? Sony's Anti-Consumer Device. It's not about greater sound quality, it's about obsoleting the standards-based CD and moving consumers to a controlled format. Note also that you can't digitally copy a SACD, the only way to make copies is cumbersome analog recording. I don't foresee this changing any time soon: Sony has learned from the mistakes of the CD, and they're not going to let the genie out of the bottle this time. Since they control the SACD format, they can make sure no one else does, either.
I think PCP is typically referred to as angel dust. I always figured the name Stardust was just to indicate extraterrestrial origin. Kinda like Luke Skywalker. The Ziggy part I did catch - that's what happens when you grow up with hippy parents.
And sometimes better, as early stereo mixes were often full of gimmicky "stereo effects" which distracted from, rather than enhancing, the music itself.
Just like modern DTS and DVD-Audio music, which end up using the surround channels for gimmicks and sticking instruments back there instead of using them to enhance the feeling of being at a live performance. Maybe this, too, will pass, and future surround music will be decent.
Well, I've never seen a PC tuner card that will receive digital cable channels, so you can't really build a homemade version of a digital cable box. If you know of one, please tell me!
Charter already has HDTV available in my area. Despite having an HDTV-ready set, I haven't signed up yet. They want $89 for installation, which means that a guy with pants that don't fit is going to crawl around in my home theater set-up, screw it all up, and them I'm still going to have to spend an hour fixing it after he leaves. I'd rather be able to install it myself (ooh, the difficulty - plug the coax into the box, run component video and digital audio cables into my receiver - I hope I can handle it). I don't mind if they want to send an installer, but I don't want to pay that much money for a service I don't need.
They also want $11/month extra for the HD service, on top of my already near-$100 bill (including internet and all the movie channels) and the only channels in HD are HBO and Showtime. When there are a few more channels on I might get it. It's not worth the hassle now.
The bad thing about multiple devices is the cost and efficiency factor. You need basically the same electronic parts in your cable box as your MP3 player and Tivo anyway, why not build the functionality in at a tiny incremental cost rather than building a whole separate redundant device?
Redundancy makes sense if you really need high availability, but entertainment isn't that important. On the other hand, I have three cable boxes, a cable modem, and a half-dozen computers around the house, so what do I know?;)
I am someone who has to know the truth about everything - so I search for answers. If that truth happens to be that God created the world merely 6,000 years ago, then so be it.
The only source of that truth is in a book, written by people who had virtually no scientific knowledge. Other books, some written before and some after Genesis, give different numbers. Traditional Hindu cosmology indicates that the universe is trillions of years old. Why should an impartial scientist give the Torah/Bible more credence than the Koran or the Rig Veda?
It is the truth, so it must be logical, and therefore we can study and learn the intricacies of the "watch" and appreciate the amazing work of God.
What happens when you study the watch and find contradictions? Ice cores indicate an Earth well over 100,000 years old at an absolute minimum.
Also, did you read my reference about proteins tending to break down into amino acids, the opposite of what is necessary for evolution?
Yes. Proteins were (probably) not formed before the first self-replicating molecules. No self-respecting scientist believes that all the proteins required for modern life spontaneously appeared before the earliest life forms. There are a few tidbits on abiogenesis probability calculations that you might find interesting.
God would have had to have performed a miracle a minute for billions of years for evolution to have occurred - that seems far less logical and unrealistic than the creation approach.
Actually, they both seem equally unrealistic, although good old Occam would prefer the 'couple miracles a day for six days' version. Neither is really necessary to explain the origins of life, and taking the miraculous aspect out of it in no way changes the true spiritual meaning of the first few chapters of Genesis. Anyway, I tend to believe God did have a hand in guiding the processes of evolution, just as I believe He has a hand in the events of everyday life. It's just that I think He works through the natural processes we study in science, rather than around them.
On the website link you provided, a little bit through it talks about handedness of amino acids, so you may be interested in this.
From the site: No known natural process can isolate either the left-handed or right-handed variety. The mathematical probability that chance processes could produce merely one tiny protein molecule with only left-handed amino acids is virtually zero.
True. But, scientific abiogenesis theories don't require chance generation of complex proteins. The earliest self-replicating molecules were probably simple peptides. Incidentally, the ideas of natural selection can explain pretty well why everything is right-handed now - all it takes is for the right-handed peptides to outnumber the left-handed by a small margin, and their offspring will eventually drastically outnumber the lefties and drive them to extinction by competition for resources.
Because evolution favors slight variations that enhance survivability and produce more offspring, consider how advantageous a mutation might be that switched (or inverted) a plant's handedness.
The right-handed DNA of the parent plant couldn't replicate into a left-handed version of itself even if the left-handed nucleotides were present, which they aren't. That's not exactly a 'slight variation', it is complete restructuring.
Totally off the topic of evolution, but interesting nonetheless: There are a few molecules that exist in both left and right handed versions in life forms. Limonene is one of them. The left-handed version is found in oranges, the right-handed version in lemons. Have you ever had an artifical lemon flavored tea that had a bit of an orange taste? It's because you can't separate the two molecules chemically or mechanically. Good artificial lemon flavor must be derived, or at least filtered, by a process similar to the way taste receptors work, involving molecules of a specific handedness.
Amino acids look pretty simple, and that improbability statement I showed you, when you are doing something a billion times a second for 20 billion years, I think that amino acids would be formed more than once:)
Of course, that isn't an issue anyway, amino acids can form far more rapidly than that, even in the constraints of a lab experiment, let alone the oceans of Earth or however other similar planets exist. Only one planet in the universe has to end up with life for that life to then wonder how it got there, right? Hey, I managed to get this post back on-topic for the original thread, sort of.
I think if we considered that amino acids naturally formed into that equation (if it wasn't already) then the chances would probably still be insanely high.
It's not just the formation of amino acids, it's the formation of any organic molecules. If all the interactions were random, life would be impossible. The interactions are not random though - thanks to the structure of the atoms involved, fairly complex carbon-based molecules are inevitable. Over enough time, more complex molecules can form which start acting as catalysts which cause copies of themselves to form. Once this happens, any idea that all the interactions are 'random' in the sense of probability calculations have to be thrown out. Also, there are innumerable different sets of proteins, nucleotides, etcetera that could have wound up as the basis for life. Only one had to evolve for life to exist, and to point out its improbability after the fact is meaningless. Like in poker - the odds of drawing any particular set of cards are very poor, but the odds of drawing a 'winning hand' are not.
To my mind, it's the ability of the simple carbon atom to form such complex structures that points to a Designer. Deeper than that, the interactions between subatomic particles and the relationships in strength between the four forces of nature seem to be perfectly laid out for life to exist(I'm really more a physics person than a molecular biology person). I'll also agree that the complex organs in modern life form do seem to me to be evidence of Design. It's just that I believe the design process was guided, not 'miracled', and that it took place in a natural, physical way that we can understand if we study it.
One other quote from the page you linked to that caught my eye: Similarly, why are there not more poisonous plants?
The best answer is, most plants don't need to be poisonous, they survive to reproduce just fine without it. A plant which mutated to become poisonous is at a disadvantage due to the metabolic energy spent to produce the poison. Since a plant can still reproduce after being half-eaten (or more), most of them gain little to no advantage by being poisonous to predators.
Asking 'why' to evolution almost always yields the answer 'because it helps them reproduce'. Asking 'why' about creation almost always yields the answer 'because it is part of God's plan'. That's just the different nature of scientific reasoning versus religious reasoning.
'Why' isn't really a question that science is equipped to answer, because there's always another level. Why do things fall? Because of gravity. Why is there gravity? It's produced by massive objects. Why is there mass? Well, it might have something to do with the Higgs boson, but physicists don't have the tools to explore that currently.
That's what the purpose of religion is - to give an answer to the 'why' we all have asked since we could speak. For Christians, John 3:16 is a nice summary, and the rest of the Bible provides the background of the story of salvation. Treating it as a science textbook, when that is obviously not its purpose, seems unwise.
For instance, the Bible tells us what rainbows are, but I haven't seen anyone trying to debunk the sciences of optics and meteorolgy that explain it in more detail. Optics, you'd obviously have a lot of trouble with, because it's easy to experimentally verify and reproduce. Meterology is more akin to evolutionary biology in that you can't reproduce, you can only observe the evidence and build a theory that explains it. Still, no one seems to dispute that the weather has scientific explanations beyond 'God made it'.
There's another thing that strikes me as odd about the really vocal creationists. If they spent as much energy trying to live according to the teachings of Jesus as they do trying to prove science wrong, imagine the positive impact they could have on people's lives. Don't take that the wrong way; there's a big difference between discussing creationism and evolution on Slashdot during lunch hour, and making a life's work out of attacking science.
I've enjoyed the site you provided - I think I've seen it before but never explored in great detail. I wish they had a search function, because I couldn't find an answer to the ice cores there. If you know where it is, let me know.
I've found some other interesting tidbits on there. Some really aren't good arguments, or are based on theories or measurements that the scientific community has already revised or discarded. Some of them raise legitimate questions, for which I am still trying to find answers. I hope you find the site I linked to every bit as fascinating.
What's that most universally observed and verified law? I think it's the law of biogenesis: "Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the law of biogenesis."
To the best of my knowledge, God has never been observed popping planets into existence either.
Before you answer that we weren't there to see it, remember that we weren't there to see the origins of life on earth either.
As far as I was aware, life has NEVER been created, even in a laboratory. Life always comes from life - this is universally observed and has never been proven false.
No, but then again, most laboratories are much smaller than the planet Earth, and most experiments have much less than a billion years in which to produce results. Probably the closest is the polio virus thing, but of course synthesizing DNA and RNA isn't really life from lifelessness because the reagents involved have to be obtained by biological processes, as well as the other proteins and such to complete the virus. It's something like the old quip about a scientist finally shouting to the heavens "I've discovered the secrets of life! Take that, God! I can create a man from dust just like you now." To which God replies, "Ok, but you'll have to make your own dust, you can't use mine."
Concerning amino acids, I was of course referring to the Urey-Miller experiments as well as some others. Here is an interesting tidbit concerning the possible formation of amino acids in deep space ice. There's even a bit of discussion of handedness, one of the major problems creationists have with any of these sorts of experiments. See, I read your link, even though I had to cut and paste and remove the space.
I don't like God being constrained by the simplistic fables of today - evolution.
First, evolutionary theory is hardly in the same category as creation mythology. There is a large amount of evidence that indicates it gives a reasonable explanation of the origins of life. From it, you can make general predictions about the fossil record which observations have agreed with many times. Reference the near-complete fossil record of whale evolution, the diversification of reptiles and mammals, the progress from Eohippus to the modern horse. Even humankind has an ancestral record - I'm sure if you're at all interested in the topic you know of the recent find in Kenya. It probably raises more questions than it answers, but that is the nature of science.
Sure, you can explain all the fossil evidence by saying "God did it", and answer the following "Why?" with "Because he wanted to." But, you haven't explained anything by that. Scientists can't use that kind of explanation to do any real work. Without some sort of testable theories that make useful predictions, we would never have had modern medicines, pesticides, or any sort of biotechnology (yes, some is good and some bad).
The same can be said of any sort of advance. If humans had just taken for granted that God created lightning, we'd never have harnessed electricity. In the process of understanding electricity, we've discovered the electron and come to a theory of how static electricity builds up in clouds and discharges. In the process, we've had to discard the idea that Thor throws his hammer down, or God creates it to strike down sinners. But, we've come to a new understanding of His universe that we can put to great use. I think the tradeoff is worthwhile. The same sort of tradeoffs are being made in biology. I can still say "God created life on earth" just as surely as I can say "God creates lightning", it's just that we now have a greater understanding of the process by which He did/does it.
Evolution is not a new idea. It has been around as long as the hills, I think, and will always exist in some form.
Well, even according to Genesis the hills existed before Adam did, so that can't be true.;)
There are so many amazing things to be observed and contemplated, especially under a creationist model. It is useless to say what you just said - it's merely the subjective emotions of one man/woman.
When do you really appreciate a fine watch? Watching the hands go around the face is pretty, but you really have respect for the designer when you open it up and look at the finely crafted gears. But you're right, that's sort of an opinion thing. It's pretty undeniable, though, that if you want to learn anything about watch-making, you have to open the watch. This is why scientists tend towards evolutionary theory - it's not because they want to disprove God, but because the information they need to do their work just isn't in Genesis.
I think this has turned into the longest post I've ever put up here, and I've probably rambled far too much. I hope you don't get too bored reading it to give it a bit of thought.
From another perspective, suppose we packed the entire visible universe with a "simple" form of life, such as bacteria. Next, we broke all their chemical bonds, mixed all atoms, then let them form new links. If this were repeated a billion times a second for 20 billion years under the most favorable temperature and pressure conditions throughout the visible universe, would one bacterium of any type reemerge? The oddsb are much less than one chance in 10^99,999,999,873.
Like most creationists, you assume that atoms form molecules completely randomly. However, this is most definitely not the case. Basic organic chemistry, the seeds of life, has been seen throughout the cosmos - vast clouds of acetic acid, alcohol, and of course water vapor have been detected in outer space. These don't form randomly; they are an inevitable result of the atomic structures of the basic elements.
More complex things like amino acids also appear to be readily formed when their constituents are put together and energy is added. And, the recent synthetic polio virus experiment seems to indicate that very simple life forms just naturally fall into place. If atoms truly arranged themselves randomly, the experimenters would not have gotten a complete functioning virus.
The "tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747" argument is one tht creationists pop up quite often, but it simply doesn't hold water. All the parts of the 747 of life seem to fit together only in a few ways, and automatically snap together correctly when two parts came close to each other. Correct your analogy for this fact, and remember that there are trillions of trillions of junkyards and trillions of trillions of tornadoes. Life might or might not be common in the cosmos, but it's not the impossible event creationists make it out to be.
Besides, to me, the idea of a God who intricately designed all these individual parts and set up the parameters and laws of the universe in such a way that life was inevitable, is far more awe-inspiring than the idea of God just saying "poof" and the universe popping up in six days. Maxwell's electromagnetic field equations seem a far cry more stunning testament to a Creator than a simple "let there be light". Don't constrain God and His Creation to the simplistic fables of people thousands of years ago.
Re:I would get one but...
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It must be a reference to this article. "A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb". Sheesh.
I don't like bleeding to death through my eyeballs so much.
Aw, come on - you've never tried it! How do you know you don't like it?
Re:Killing the host is usually subdued in nature
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Well, are "fast killers" possible? If they are, even if rare, could offer sinister ideas for terrorists to combine the killing aspect of those viruses with the easy-to-spread aspects of say cold viruses.
How about Ebola? Ebola takes a week or two to kill a human, and does it in a quite gruesome fashion. If it could be spread airborne like a cold or flu, it could be the bio-terrorist's Holy Grail.
Interesting note: The Ebola virus's exreme lethality in primates is probably somewhat of an accident - as was being discussed, killing your host too quickly is an evolutionary disadvantage. Thus, it is assumed that the virus has evolved to inhabit a different host, although this true host is unknown currenrly. There is some speculation that it may be a bat.
Most computer retaillers effectively give the boxes away, then gouge on the extras and consumables.
Before anyone disputes this, I remember a while back a friend of mine went to work for CompUSA for a while. He got an employee discount on everything - I think it was like cost + 5% or something. On a pre-built PC, his 'discount' price would ususally be above the sticker price. He could get components pretty cheap though.
This has been several years though, so it might be a bit different now that PC's are getting so dirt cheap.
I don't think I've ever seen a demo computer with a password set to 'password'. Believe me, I've tried that. As well as the store name, slogan, and other obvious phrases. Of course, since all the demo computers run Windows, all you have to do is reboot to get out of the screensaver. I guess now that everyone's moving to XP that trick won't work anymore.
On the positive side, I was able to find a transistor that needed replacing on my Gorf machine's amplifier board at Radio Hack. So, keep it in mind as the place to go for 20+ year old technology.
Agreed - since there is nothing that Wal-Mart sells that can't be bought elsewhere, in theory the market should do the job of the union. If employees are being treated poorly, they are free to talk about it. If enough of them voice enough complaints, there will be a financial impact on Wal-Mart (due to boycotts or the like) and they'll be forced to reexamine their policies.
Unfortunately, in some places Wal-Mart is beginning to reach a quasi-monopoly status because their prices are so much lower and they are so much more convenient that other grocers and retailers are being squeezed out. I wonder how many Wal-Mart employees in a typical store are there precisely because their last place of employment was forced to shut down or downsize as a result of Wal-Mart coming to town?
Even the poorly-scripted Cochrane in First Contact seemed to have thought his project through a bit more carefully than Rocket Guy. He also admitted to both being scared shitless to fly in it, and having built it solely for personal gain.
Perhaps the poster who asked about the cowboy hat should instead have asked him if he intended to listen to "Magic Carpet Ride" on the way up.
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Great post. You must work for Minitrue.
Just for fun, here's Another prophetic warning about the year 2084.
Please note that digital cable is not the same as DTV. It's NTSC video, digitized and compressed with MPEG of some form, and delivered over cable by QAM or something similar. Those Hauppage DTV cards do ATSC, which is the broadcast format for DTV. So, no dice.
At 1920x1080x24bit, a frame of HDTV is just under 6MB. 1TB should hold about 176000 frames. At 30fps that's about 98 minutes. That doesn't include audio, but 10 tracks of 24 bit 96kHz digital audio for 98 minutes will fit in about 16GB - less than 2% of the disk. Figure 95 minutes of audio/video, almost enough for an average length movie.
Of course, there's nothing stopping you from compressing the A/V between the DVI port and the disk. Even with lossless compression, you would be able to fit just about any movie on the disc.
Screw SACD. Don't you know what it really stands for? Sony's Anti-Consumer Device. It's not about greater sound quality, it's about obsoleting the standards-based CD and moving consumers to a controlled format. Note also that you can't digitally copy a SACD, the only way to make copies is cumbersome analog recording. I don't foresee this changing any time soon: Sony has learned from the mistakes of the CD, and they're not going to let the genie out of the bottle this time. Since they control the SACD format, they can make sure no one else does, either.
I think PCP is typically referred to as angel dust. I always figured the name Stardust was just to indicate extraterrestrial origin. Kinda like Luke Skywalker. The Ziggy part I did catch - that's what happens when you grow up with hippy parents.
And sometimes better, as early stereo mixes were often full of gimmicky "stereo effects" which distracted from, rather than enhancing, the music itself.
Just like modern DTS and DVD-Audio music, which end up using the surround channels for gimmicks and sticking instruments back there instead of using them to enhance the feeling of being at a live performance. Maybe this, too, will pass, and future surround music will be decent.
Probably because they were. It was around the same time that they were supposedly caught in bed together.
Well, I've never seen a PC tuner card that will receive digital cable channels, so you can't really build a homemade version of a digital cable box. If you know of one, please tell me!
Charter already has HDTV available in my area. Despite having an HDTV-ready set, I haven't signed up yet. They want $89 for installation, which means that a guy with pants that don't fit is going to crawl around in my home theater set-up, screw it all up, and them I'm still going to have to spend an hour fixing it after he leaves. I'd rather be able to install it myself (ooh, the difficulty - plug the coax into the box, run component video and digital audio cables into my receiver - I hope I can handle it). I don't mind if they want to send an installer, but I don't want to pay that much money for a service I don't need.
They also want $11/month extra for the HD service, on top of my already near-$100 bill (including internet and all the movie channels) and the only channels in HD are HBO and Showtime. When there are a few more channels on I might get it. It's not worth the hassle now.
The bad thing about multiple devices is the cost and efficiency factor. You need basically the same electronic parts in your cable box as your MP3 player and Tivo anyway, why not build the functionality in at a tiny incremental cost rather than building a whole separate redundant device?
;)
Redundancy makes sense if you really need high availability, but entertainment isn't that important. On the other hand, I have three cable boxes, a cable modem, and a half-dozen computers around the house, so what do I know?
I am someone who has to know the truth about everything - so I search for answers. If that truth happens to be that God created the world merely 6,000 years ago, then so be it.
:)
:)
The only source of that truth is in a book, written by people who had virtually no scientific knowledge. Other books, some written before and some after Genesis, give different numbers. Traditional Hindu cosmology indicates that the universe is trillions of years old. Why should an impartial scientist give the Torah/Bible more credence than the Koran or the Rig Veda?
It is the truth, so it must be logical, and therefore we can study and learn the intricacies of the "watch" and appreciate the amazing work of God.
What happens when you study the watch and find contradictions? Ice cores indicate an Earth well over 100,000 years old at an absolute minimum.
Also, did you read my reference about proteins tending to break down into amino acids, the opposite of what is necessary for evolution?
Yes. Proteins were (probably) not formed before the first self-replicating molecules. No self-respecting scientist believes that all the proteins required for modern life spontaneously appeared before the earliest life forms. There are a few tidbits on abiogenesis probability calculations that you might find interesting.
God would have had to have performed a miracle a minute for billions of years for evolution to have occurred - that seems far less logical and unrealistic than the creation approach.
Actually, they both seem equally unrealistic, although good old Occam would prefer the 'couple miracles a day for six days' version. Neither is really necessary to explain the origins of life, and taking the miraculous aspect out of it in no way changes the true spiritual meaning of the first few chapters of Genesis. Anyway, I tend to believe God did have a hand in guiding the processes of evolution, just as I believe He has a hand in the events of everyday life. It's just that I think He works through the natural processes we study in science, rather than around them.
On the website link you provided, a little bit through it talks about handedness of amino acids, so you may be interested in this.
From the site:
No known natural process can isolate either the left-handed or right-handed variety. The mathematical probability that chance processes could produce merely one tiny protein molecule with only left-handed amino acids is virtually zero.
True. But, scientific abiogenesis theories don't require chance generation of complex proteins. The earliest self-replicating molecules were probably simple peptides. Incidentally, the ideas of natural selection can explain pretty well why everything is right-handed now - all it takes is for the right-handed peptides to outnumber the left-handed by a small margin, and their offspring will eventually drastically outnumber the lefties and drive them to extinction by competition for resources.
Because evolution favors slight variations that enhance survivability and produce more offspring, consider how advantageous a mutation might be that switched (or inverted) a plant's handedness.
The right-handed DNA of the parent plant couldn't replicate into a left-handed version of itself even if the left-handed nucleotides were present, which they aren't. That's not exactly a 'slight variation', it is complete restructuring.
Totally off the topic of evolution, but interesting nonetheless: There are a few molecules that exist in both left and right handed versions in life forms. Limonene is one of them. The left-handed version is found in oranges, the right-handed version in lemons. Have you ever had an artifical lemon flavored tea that had a bit of an orange taste? It's because you can't separate the two molecules chemically or mechanically. Good artificial lemon flavor must be derived, or at least filtered, by a process similar to the way taste receptors work, involving molecules of a specific handedness.
Amino acids look pretty simple, and that improbability statement I showed you, when you are doing something a billion times a second for 20 billion years, I think that amino acids would be formed more than once
Of course, that isn't an issue anyway, amino acids can form far more rapidly than that, even in the constraints of a lab experiment, let alone the oceans of Earth or however other similar planets exist. Only one planet in the universe has to end up with life for that life to then wonder how it got there, right? Hey, I managed to get this post back on-topic for the original thread, sort of.
I think if we considered that amino acids naturally formed into that equation (if it wasn't already) then the chances would probably still be insanely high.
It's not just the formation of amino acids, it's the formation of any organic molecules. If all the interactions were random, life would be impossible. The interactions are not random though - thanks to the structure of the atoms involved, fairly complex carbon-based molecules are inevitable. Over enough time, more complex molecules can form which start acting as catalysts which cause copies of themselves to form. Once this happens, any idea that all the interactions are 'random' in the sense of probability calculations have to be thrown out. Also, there are innumerable different sets of proteins, nucleotides, etcetera that could have wound up as the basis for life. Only one had to evolve for life to exist, and to point out its improbability after the fact is meaningless. Like in poker - the odds of drawing any particular set of cards are very poor, but the odds of drawing a 'winning hand' are not.
To my mind, it's the ability of the simple carbon atom to form such complex structures that points to a Designer. Deeper than that, the interactions between subatomic particles and the relationships in strength between the four forces of nature seem to be perfectly laid out for life to exist(I'm really more a physics person than a molecular biology person). I'll also agree that the complex organs in modern life form do seem to me to be evidence of Design. It's just that I believe the design process was guided, not 'miracled', and that it took place in a natural, physical way that we can understand if we study it.
One other quote from the page you linked to that caught my eye:
Similarly, why are there not more poisonous plants?
The best answer is, most plants don't need to be poisonous, they survive to reproduce just fine without it. A plant which mutated to become poisonous is at a disadvantage due to the metabolic energy spent to produce the poison. Since a plant can still reproduce after being half-eaten (or more), most of them gain little to no advantage by being poisonous to predators.
Asking 'why' to evolution almost always yields the answer 'because it helps them reproduce'. Asking 'why' about creation almost always yields the answer 'because it is part of God's plan'. That's just the different nature of scientific reasoning versus religious reasoning.
'Why' isn't really a question that science is equipped to answer, because there's always another level. Why do things fall? Because of gravity. Why is there gravity? It's produced by massive objects. Why is there mass? Well, it might have something to do with the Higgs boson, but physicists don't have the tools to explore that currently.
That's what the purpose of religion is - to give an answer to the 'why' we all have asked since we could speak. For Christians, John 3:16 is a nice summary, and the rest of the Bible provides the background of the story of salvation. Treating it as a science textbook, when that is obviously not its purpose, seems unwise.
For instance, the Bible tells us what rainbows are, but I haven't seen anyone trying to debunk the sciences of optics and meteorolgy that explain it in more detail. Optics, you'd obviously have a lot of trouble with, because it's easy to experimentally verify and reproduce. Meterology is more akin to evolutionary biology in that you can't reproduce, you can only observe the evidence and build a theory that explains it. Still, no one seems to dispute that the weather has scientific explanations beyond 'God made it'.
There's another thing that strikes me as odd about the really vocal creationists. If they spent as much energy trying to live according to the teachings of Jesus as they do trying to prove science wrong, imagine the positive impact they could have on people's lives. Don't take that the wrong way; there's a big difference between discussing creationism and evolution on Slashdot during lunch hour, and making a life's work out of attacking science.
I've enjoyed the site you provided - I think I've seen it before but never explored in great detail. I wish they had a search function, because I couldn't find an answer to the ice cores there. If you know where it is, let me know.
I've found some other interesting tidbits on there. Some really aren't good arguments, or are based on theories or measurements that the scientific community has already revised or discarded. Some of them raise legitimate questions, for which I am still trying to find answers. I hope you find the site I linked to every bit as fascinating.
Gee, looks like I've rambled on too much again.
What's that most universally observed and verified law? I think it's the law of biogenesis:
;)
"Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the law of biogenesis."
To the best of my knowledge, God has never been observed popping planets into existence either.
Before you answer that we weren't there to see it, remember that we weren't there to see the origins of life on earth either.
As far as I was aware, life has NEVER been created, even in a laboratory. Life always comes from life - this is universally observed and has never been proven false.
No, but then again, most laboratories are much smaller than the planet Earth, and most experiments have much less than a billion years in which to produce results. Probably the closest is the polio virus thing, but of course synthesizing DNA and RNA isn't really life from lifelessness because the reagents involved have to be obtained by biological processes, as well as the other proteins and such to complete the virus. It's something like the old quip about a scientist finally shouting to the heavens "I've discovered the secrets of life! Take that, God! I can create a man from dust just like you now." To which God replies, "Ok, but you'll have to make your own dust, you can't use mine."
Concerning amino acids, I was of course referring to the Urey-Miller experiments as well as some others. Here is an interesting tidbit concerning the possible formation of amino acids in deep space ice. There's even a bit of discussion of handedness, one of the major problems creationists have with any of these sorts of experiments. See, I read your link, even though I had to cut and paste and remove the space.
I don't like God being constrained by the simplistic fables of today - evolution.
First, evolutionary theory is hardly in the same category as creation mythology. There is a large amount of evidence that indicates it gives a reasonable explanation of the origins of life. From it, you can make general predictions about the fossil record which observations have agreed with many times. Reference the near-complete fossil record of whale evolution, the diversification of reptiles and mammals, the progress from Eohippus to the modern horse. Even humankind has an ancestral record - I'm sure if you're at all interested in the topic you know of the recent find in Kenya. It probably raises more questions than it answers, but that is the nature of science.
Sure, you can explain all the fossil evidence by saying "God did it", and answer the following "Why?" with "Because he wanted to." But, you haven't explained anything by that. Scientists can't use that kind of explanation to do any real work. Without some sort of testable theories that make useful predictions, we would never have had modern medicines, pesticides, or any sort of biotechnology (yes, some is good and some bad).
The same can be said of any sort of advance. If humans had just taken for granted that God created lightning, we'd never have harnessed electricity. In the process of understanding electricity, we've discovered the electron and come to a theory of how static electricity builds up in clouds and discharges. In the process, we've had to discard the idea that Thor throws his hammer down, or God creates it to strike down sinners. But, we've come to a new understanding of His universe that we can put to great use. I think the tradeoff is worthwhile. The same sort of tradeoffs are being made in biology. I can still say "God created life on earth" just as surely as I can say "God creates lightning", it's just that we now have a greater understanding of the process by which He did/does it.
Evolution is not a new idea. It has been around as long as the hills, I think, and will always exist in some form.
Well, even according to Genesis the hills existed before Adam did, so that can't be true.
There are so many amazing things to be observed and contemplated, especially under a creationist model. It is useless to say what you just said - it's merely the subjective emotions of one man/woman.
When do you really appreciate a fine watch? Watching the hands go around the face is pretty, but you really have respect for the designer when you open it up and look at the finely crafted gears. But you're right, that's sort of an opinion thing. It's pretty undeniable, though, that if you want to learn anything about watch-making, you have to open the watch. This is why scientists tend towards evolutionary theory - it's not because they want to disprove God, but because the information they need to do their work just isn't in Genesis.
I think this has turned into the longest post I've ever put up here, and I've probably rambled far too much. I hope you don't get too bored reading it to give it a bit of thought.
From another perspective, suppose we packed the entire visible universe with a "simple" form of life, such as bacteria. Next, we broke all their chemical bonds, mixed all atoms, then let them form new links. If this were repeated a billion times a second for 20 billion years under the most favorable temperature and pressure conditions throughout the visible universe, would one bacterium of any type reemerge? The oddsb are much less than one chance in 10^99,999,999,873.
Like most creationists, you assume that atoms form molecules completely randomly. However, this is most definitely not the case. Basic organic chemistry, the seeds of life, has been seen throughout the cosmos - vast clouds of acetic acid, alcohol, and of course water vapor have been detected in outer space. These don't form randomly; they are an inevitable result of the atomic structures of the basic elements.
More complex things like amino acids also appear to be readily formed when their constituents are put together and energy is added. And, the recent synthetic polio virus experiment seems to indicate that very simple life forms just naturally fall into place. If atoms truly arranged themselves randomly, the experimenters would not have gotten a complete functioning virus.
The "tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747" argument is one tht creationists pop up quite often, but it simply doesn't hold water. All the parts of the 747 of life seem to fit together only in a few ways, and automatically snap together correctly when two parts came close to each other. Correct your analogy for this fact, and remember that there are trillions of trillions of junkyards and trillions of trillions of tornadoes. Life might or might not be common in the cosmos, but it's not the impossible event creationists make it out to be.
Besides, to me, the idea of a God who intricately designed all these individual parts and set up the parameters and laws of the universe in such a way that life was inevitable, is far more awe-inspiring than the idea of God just saying "poof" and the universe popping up in six days. Maxwell's electromagnetic field equations seem a far cry more stunning testament to a Creator than a simple "let there be light". Don't constrain God and His Creation to the simplistic fables of people thousands of years ago.
It must be a reference to this article. "A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb". Sheesh.
I don't like bleeding to death through my eyeballs so much.
Aw, come on - you've never tried it! How do you know you don't like it?
Well, are "fast killers" possible? If they are, even if rare, could offer sinister ideas for terrorists to combine the killing aspect of those viruses with the easy-to-spread aspects of say cold viruses.
How about Ebola? Ebola takes a week or two to kill a human, and does it in a quite gruesome fashion. If it could be spread airborne like a cold or flu, it could be the bio-terrorist's Holy Grail.
Interesting note: The Ebola virus's exreme lethality in primates is probably somewhat of an accident - as was being discussed, killing your host too quickly is an evolutionary disadvantage. Thus, it is assumed that the virus has evolved to inhabit a different host, although this true host is unknown currenrly. There is some speculation that it may be a bat.
If they would only have hired the Rocket Man, who doesn't bother with those things, then everything would have been OK.
How would Elton John have helped them?
Most computer retaillers effectively give the boxes away, then gouge on the extras and consumables.
Before anyone disputes this, I remember a while back a friend of mine went to work for CompUSA for a while. He got an employee discount on everything - I think it was like cost + 5% or something. On a pre-built PC, his 'discount' price would ususally be above the sticker price. He could get components pretty cheap though.
This has been several years though, so it might be a bit different now that PC's are getting so dirt cheap.
I don't think I've ever seen a demo computer with a password set to 'password'. Believe me, I've tried that. As well as the store name, slogan, and other obvious phrases. Of course, since all the demo computers run Windows, all you have to do is reboot to get out of the screensaver. I guess now that everyone's moving to XP that trick won't work anymore.
I actually think that they'll just try and tighten their grip....
The more they tighten their grip, the more users will slip through their fingers.
Ahh, if only there were dialog that good in the new Star Wars movies.
I believe the Unisys LZW patent runs out sometime next year (2003) anyway.
And we complain about software patents. Geez, I wish I could look forward to some copyrights expiring in my lifetime.
On the positive side, I was able to find a transistor that needed replacing on my Gorf machine's amplifier board at Radio Hack. So, keep it in mind as the place to go for 20+ year old technology.
Agreed - since there is nothing that Wal-Mart sells that can't be bought elsewhere, in theory the market should do the job of the union. If employees are being treated poorly, they are free to talk about it. If enough of them voice enough complaints, there will be a financial impact on Wal-Mart (due to boycotts or the like) and they'll be forced to reexamine their policies.
Unfortunately, in some places Wal-Mart is beginning to reach a quasi-monopoly status because their prices are so much lower and they are so much more convenient that other grocers and retailers are being squeezed out. I wonder how many Wal-Mart employees in a typical store are there precisely because their last place of employment was forced to shut down or downsize as a result of Wal-Mart coming to town?
The website now points to Everguard Patch Management System.
Even the poorly-scripted Cochrane in First Contact seemed to have thought his project through a bit more carefully than Rocket Guy. He also admitted to both being scared shitless to fly in it, and having built it solely for personal gain.
Perhaps the poster who asked about the cowboy hat should instead have asked him if he intended to listen to "Magic Carpet Ride" on the way up.