Liberals believe in paying for budget priorities (the "tax" part). Pseudocons believe China will pay for them forever, thus borrow-and-spend "conservatives". Someone has said that current Republicans take the worst of conservatism (if any big corporation benefits it must be good, fanatical nationalism) with the worst of liberalism (enormous government, government-by-feelings [cf. No Teacher Left Alone^W^W^WChild Left Behind]).
Of course, this points to a deeper problem in the modern university -- PhD students (who later become professors) have no formal training in how to teach. None at all. Some pick up techniques by watching others (who may have been just as ignorant in this way as the student), some just decide if they say stuff their students are responsible for getting it or asking questions themselves. Solve this problem and a lot of the legitimate problems go away.
Let's consider what will happen. There is nowhere near enough capacity to teach all (or even the majority) of schoolchildren among private schools. Moreover, private schools will almost certainly have the right to choose who they admit. Result? The children who test in the top 1-5% get a free exclusive education, and they will get proportionate money for the special needs children they don't have. The rest will be consigned to an even worse education than they would have now. Afterwards, universities will admit all of the students from these exclusive schools, leaving few if any slots for the others. If you like aristocracy, this is the way to do it.
Both Viacom and Time Warner have the distribution networks to handle Pixar. Why would Pixar agree to be acquired for such a nominal premium with other potential bidders?
Even if the genetic translation process actuates the copied gene as well as the original, no new function can occur without a corresponding random change in the translator and in all related systems.
Huh? I'm assuming the first part is referring to the control gene (so both of the copies will be switched on), and yes that must be done (it's adjacent to the gene itself, so it's not an unlikely event). I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'the translator.' There is only one mechanism for protein formation: DNA -> mRNA (+ tRNA) -> ribosome -> protein. No change in that process is required at all. The "switches" are almost fully independent, so there's not another simultaneous mutation required. And duplication is a very common mutation and is only rarely deleterious.
[T]he duplication of DNA does not add any new information.... Wrong. In terms of information science, xx DOES contain more information than x (incidentally, willful confusion of information theory "entropy" and thermodynamic entropy is a frequent bullshit technique by ICR and Discovery Institute hacks -- they have opposite meanings!). It also provides a locus for new mutation while preserving the old information (in the other formerly identical strand).
At most universities, only 30 papers (especially since in virtually all of them he is not the lead) in 25 years will lose you tenure, particularly if they are in secondary and tertiary journals.
Your first statement, about selection being "an eliminator" suffers from being the second step in the process (this is why I changed the order of your two points in my prior post). One of the common mutations is duplication of the same DNA sequence, which doubles the number of places mutation can occur. Many examples of these can be found, and the entire Y chromosome seems to be a multiple palindrome of this type. When you do have a duplication, depending on where it occurs, it may have no effect, a harmful effect or a beneficial effect (the recent evolution of a nylon-consuming enzyme in a bacterium is notable in this regard -- it was a gene that duplicated harmlessly, then mutated in decendants to add a new function without eliminating the old). Since the "chip" has a variable amount of "RAM", your analogy is invalid. In fact, the number of memory slots (chromosomes) can change as well: the two major differences between humans and chimpanzees genetically are that in humans some of the "switches" are turned off(!) and one of the chromosomes got stuck to another without changing its content. (This kind of mutation can also be neutral.)
One of the other common errors is explained in your statement: The same principles apply at lower or higher levels of evolutionary development. The problem is that there exists no biological metric to describe what these are! Humans have rather average numbers of genes compared to other mammals, more than some types of bacteria, less than others, more than some types of plants, MUCH less than some others (one species of bean has about 1000 times as many base pairs as humans IIRC). The number of generations is similar as well.
Granted, I might not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, but then, I'm not keen on believing it is 6 billion years old, either.
[snark]Fortunately it's only 4.5 billion years old, so that will set your mind at ease.
Yes, if continental drift, atomic decay, etc, were constant throughout the ages, we may be able to safely conclude that the earth is more than 6000 years old. Problem is, we can't prove this. Actually, we can. We look for the Earth's entire surface melting within the last 6 kyr or so -- friction produces a LOT of heat, and there's nowhere else for it to go than out. Oh, and if U-235 decay was about 1e6 more... KABOOM!
The assumption that rock melts at the same temperature now as then. If it ever moved anywhere near fast enough, the friction against the aesthenosphere would liquify the continents. (Hint: Young Earth Creationists SUCK at thermodynamics.)
What does "being created" mean? What did They/She/It/He/??? use to "create"? What process was used? When are things "created"? Unless any of those subsidiary questions are answerable, there are an infinite regress of WAGs of the creation of life.
Yep. Late last year the first species of bacteria was found to have "gained" the ability (albeit rather inefficient) to eat nylon. There is no natural source for it, and the progression of the genome was entirely stochastic.
As I mentioned above, get a pickaxe and head to an outcrop! Find a fossil that is far outside its position on the family tree of life and you have disproven evolution.
I also cannot prove the absence of invisible, ethereal, weightless pink unicorns in my backyard. But explicitly saying "we can't know for sure!" is silliness.
So how does the "creation theory" explain the CMB? Did God hiccup when he said "Let there be light" so it wasn't uniform?
You can always dig somewhere else. Really. There are no rabbit fossils in Precambrian rock. Evolution would predict that the next one uncovered will not have any either. And the next one after that. You won't find primate fossils there either. In fact, you won't find any mammal at all there. Any one of those would immediately cause a serious crisis for the theory of evolution -- there certainly would be skepticism to begin with (there are crackpots aplenty, after all), but if this were definitively demonstrated, evolution would be disproven.
First error: DNA mutations can cause evolution, is more likely, but in most known cases, it actually causes "devolution". The reality is that the drastic majority of mutations are NEUTRAL, neither improving nor harming the next generation of cells (including cells formed meiotically). If this weren't so, you would've died of cancer long before you came out of your mother.
Second error: natural selection can[not] cause evolution. Natural selection can only (as the name would indicate) choose among existing genetic material.The big problem with this is explained in the prior graf: genetic material is slowly changing. The change isn't sufficient, for a number of reasons, to result in new species very often for large animals (though it occurs regularly with bacteria, given their shorter life cycle), but it is observable. Your DNA is not exactly half that of the fertilized cells that became your mother plus your father -- but it's drastically closer than with any other pair of people, unless you have an identical twin.
The third one is deceptive: In fact, even the cases which seem to provide benefits to the offspring can be shown to be a loss of genetic information. How do you calculate "genetic information"? If the progenitors of the mutated offspring are called your baseline, then it is a tautology that some of the "information" is lost, but it is replaced by new information.
Number 4: scientific sources who aren't blatantly anti-creationist, and give both sides a fair hearing. This is a contradiction in terms. There are people in non-biological specialties who stumble across some bullshit that confirms their preconceived notions. There is absolutely no controversy whatsoever in the biology community on the accuracy of evolution in general. Certainly there is work done on specifics -- developmental evolution in particular is a hot field -- but descent with modification is not controversial in the field.
If 1e8 Americans decided to revolt, they wouldn't need one bullet. All that is required is a sufficiently massive work stoppage. There is a real reason that sympathy strikes are illegal in the US: they get stuff accomplished.
The Jewish scriptures (the "Old Testament" to Christians) are consistent with a local flood, though it was not historically interpreted that way. The passage in 2 Peter, however, indicates that aside from the 8 alleged ark inhabitants no other human life survived. Based on DNA convergence, there is a bottleneck at around 70 kyr ago, but there were about 5000 H. sapiens who successfully parented children then -- 60,000 years before the Black Sea/Arabian flood. The site cherry-picks data to make it less implausible, but it still fails scientifically.
New Scientist has about as much credibility as the National Enquirer. Both of them sometimes report accurate information, but it's surrounded by enormous amounts of bullshit.
Some people, myself included, grew up in wacko fundamentalist Christian families, who did "hate people... for [their] belie[fs]." Unfortunately, it's very difficult to completely deprogram yourself. Thus a lot of us tend to be aggressive against (usually fundie) religion out of a combination of anger at our own childhood experience and fear for others having to undergo what we endured.
Secondly, a lot of fundies try to codify their religion into the public sphere (e.g., installing creationism/IDiocy and coercive and semi-coercive prayer in public schools). Especially those of us who are "recovering fundies" find this to harmful, particularly when imposed on children at young ages (before they have the mental development to make up their own minds).
Folks who get bent out of shape with liberal Christianity (and other religions) deserve to be considered trolls. Those who fight the Falwellization of the US are of an entirely different class in my opinion.
Bollocks. Medicine as practiced until WWI was almost purely folklore and (sometimes) thinly-veiled religion. The doctors of the era specifically were following the logical conclusion of this combination of Galen and religious horseshit:
The life is in the blood.
The Spirit is life.
Spirit is another name for air. (Gr. pneuma)
Air/spirit comes into the blood through the lungs.
According to the Bible, there are evil spirits.
Sickness comes from the Devil.
Since the lungs weren't releasing the evil spirit, it had to come out somewhere.
It had absolutely nothing to do with science in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we really afford another CEO President?
that frst pst is worth +5, insightful in New Zealand?
Liberals believe in paying for budget priorities (the "tax" part). Pseudocons believe China will pay for them forever, thus borrow-and-spend "conservatives". Someone has said that current Republicans take the worst of conservatism (if any big corporation benefits it must be good, fanatical nationalism) with the worst of liberalism (enormous government, government-by-feelings [cf. No Teacher Left Alone^W^W^WChild Left Behind]).
Of course, this points to a deeper problem in the modern university -- PhD students (who later become professors) have no formal training in how to teach. None at all. Some pick up techniques by watching others (who may have been just as ignorant in this way as the student), some just decide if they say stuff their students are responsible for getting it or asking questions themselves. Solve this problem and a lot of the legitimate problems go away.
Let's consider what will happen. There is nowhere near enough capacity to teach all (or even the majority) of schoolchildren among private schools. Moreover, private schools will almost certainly have the right to choose who they admit. Result? The children who test in the top 1-5% get a free exclusive education, and they will get proportionate money for the special needs children they don't have. The rest will be consigned to an even worse education than they would have now. Afterwards, universities will admit all of the students from these exclusive schools, leaving few if any slots for the others. If you like aristocracy, this is the way to do it.
Both Viacom and Time Warner have the distribution networks to handle Pixar. Why would Pixar agree to be acquired for such a nominal premium with other potential bidders?
Huh? I'm assuming the first part is referring to the control gene (so both of the copies will be switched on), and yes that must be done (it's adjacent to the gene itself, so it's not an unlikely event). I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'the translator.' There is only one mechanism for protein formation: DNA -> mRNA (+ tRNA) -> ribosome -> protein. No change in that process is required at all. The "switches" are almost fully independent, so there's not another simultaneous mutation required. And duplication is a very common mutation and is only rarely deleterious.
[T]he duplication of DNA does not add any new information.... Wrong. In terms of information science, xx DOES contain more information than x (incidentally, willful confusion of information theory "entropy" and thermodynamic entropy is a frequent bullshit technique by ICR and Discovery Institute hacks -- they have opposite meanings!). It also provides a locus for new mutation while preserving the old information (in the other formerly identical strand).
At most universities, only 30 papers (especially since in virtually all of them he is not the lead) in 25 years will lose you tenure, particularly if they are in secondary and tertiary journals.
One of the other common errors is explained in your statement: The same principles apply at lower or higher levels of evolutionary development. The problem is that there exists no biological metric to describe what these are! Humans have rather average numbers of genes compared to other mammals, more than some types of bacteria, less than others, more than some types of plants, MUCH less than some others (one species of bean has about 1000 times as many base pairs as humans IIRC). The number of generations is similar as well.
The only thing I have been able to find that this Dr. Veith has ever done is health quakery and a handful of forgettable papers.
[snark]Fortunately it's only 4.5 billion years old, so that will set your mind at ease.
Yes, if continental drift, atomic decay, etc, were constant throughout the ages, we may be able to safely conclude that the earth is more than 6000 years old. Problem is, we can't prove this. Actually, we can. We look for the Earth's entire surface melting within the last 6 kyr or so -- friction produces a LOT of heat, and there's nowhere else for it to go than out. Oh, and if U-235 decay was about 1e6 more... KABOOM!
The assumption that rock melts at the same temperature now as then. If it ever moved anywhere near fast enough, the friction against the aesthenosphere would liquify the continents. (Hint: Young Earth Creationists SUCK at thermodynamics.)
What does "being created" mean? What did They/She/It/He/??? use to "create"? What process was used? When are things "created"? Unless any of those subsidiary questions are answerable, there are an infinite regress of WAGs of the creation of life.
Yep. Late last year the first species of bacteria was found to have "gained" the ability (albeit rather inefficient) to eat nylon. There is no natural source for it, and the progression of the genome was entirely stochastic.
I also cannot prove the absence of invisible, ethereal, weightless pink unicorns in my backyard. But explicitly saying "we can't know for sure!" is silliness.
So how does the "creation theory" explain the CMB? Did God hiccup when he said "Let there be light" so it wasn't uniform?
You can always dig somewhere else. Really. There are no rabbit fossils in Precambrian rock. Evolution would predict that the next one uncovered will not have any either. And the next one after that. You won't find primate fossils there either. In fact, you won't find any mammal at all there. Any one of those would immediately cause a serious crisis for the theory of evolution -- there certainly would be skepticism to begin with (there are crackpots aplenty, after all), but if this were definitively demonstrated, evolution would be disproven.
First error: DNA mutations can cause evolution, is more likely, but in most known cases, it actually causes "devolution". The reality is that the drastic majority of mutations are NEUTRAL, neither improving nor harming the next generation of cells (including cells formed meiotically). If this weren't so, you would've died of cancer long before you came out of your mother.
Second error: natural selection can[not] cause evolution. Natural selection can only (as the name would indicate) choose among existing genetic material.The big problem with this is explained in the prior graf: genetic material is slowly changing. The change isn't sufficient, for a number of reasons, to result in new species very often for large animals (though it occurs regularly with bacteria, given their shorter life cycle), but it is observable. Your DNA is not exactly half that of the fertilized cells that became your mother plus your father -- but it's drastically closer than with any other pair of people, unless you have an identical twin.
The third one is deceptive: In fact, even the cases which seem to provide benefits to the offspring can be shown to be a loss of genetic information. How do you calculate "genetic information"? If the progenitors of the mutated offspring are called your baseline, then it is a tautology that some of the "information" is lost, but it is replaced by new information.
Number 4: scientific sources who aren't blatantly anti-creationist, and give both sides a fair hearing. This is a contradiction in terms. There are people in non-biological specialties who stumble across some bullshit that confirms their preconceived notions. There is absolutely no controversy whatsoever in the biology community on the accuracy of evolution in general. Certainly there is work done on specifics -- developmental evolution in particular is a hot field -- but descent with modification is not controversial in the field.
If 1e8 Americans decided to revolt, they wouldn't need one bullet. All that is required is a sufficiently massive work stoppage. There is a real reason that sympathy strikes are illegal in the US: they get stuff accomplished.
The Jewish scriptures (the "Old Testament" to Christians) are consistent with a local flood, though it was not historically interpreted that way. The passage in 2 Peter, however, indicates that aside from the 8 alleged ark inhabitants no other human life survived. Based on DNA convergence, there is a bottleneck at around 70 kyr ago, but there were about 5000 H. sapiens who successfully parented children then -- 60,000 years before the Black Sea/Arabian flood. The site cherry-picks data to make it less implausible, but it still fails scientifically.
New Scientist has about as much credibility as the National Enquirer. Both of them sometimes report accurate information, but it's surrounded by enormous amounts of bullshit.
Ocean levels will rise, of course, but primarily due to thermal expansion of ocean water rather than melting of the ice caps.
The critical temperature of sulfur is 1041 C, which is the highest temperature sulfur could be in a truly liquid state.
Let's just hope Mahdi comes at the same time. All the nutters gone in one fell swoop!
Some people, myself included, grew up in wacko fundamentalist Christian families, who did "hate people... for [their] belie[fs]." Unfortunately, it's very difficult to completely deprogram yourself. Thus a lot of us tend to be aggressive against (usually fundie) religion out of a combination of anger at our own childhood experience and fear for others having to undergo what we endured.
Secondly, a lot of fundies try to codify their religion into the public sphere (e.g., installing creationism/IDiocy and coercive and semi-coercive prayer in public schools). Especially those of us who are "recovering fundies" find this to harmful, particularly when imposed on children at young ages (before they have the mental development to make up their own minds).
Folks who get bent out of shape with liberal Christianity (and other religions) deserve to be considered trolls. Those who fight the Falwellization of the US are of an entirely different class in my opinion.
Joe Lieberman is about as liberal as Rush Limbaugh.
It had absolutely nothing to do with science in any way.