From the article: "Examples are as plentiful as they are sad: Consider the virus that brought on the Irish potato famine".
*Viruses* had nothing to do with the Irish potato famine. While there were many factors for the famine, many of them political, the pathological reason was the *fungus* Phytophthora infestans.
The other alternative is to get away from the atomistic PC and its webs and find others in the section of the city that you live in who are also downloading their entertainment. Then pool your downloads together into a community library
When I was a kid in the 8-bit days that's pretty much how pirating happened. Sure some people had modems and downloaded stuff from BBSes (at an amazing 300 baud or at most 1200 baud -- of course, most games were only a few hundred kilobytes back then), but in general, you found kids at school that had the same type of computer you had and traded stuff in person.
Doesn't anyone remember Bertrand's rant against Stallman and the GPL in 2000? It is pretty amusing that he finally chose the GPL -- I would have thought he would have gone for a BSD License just to save face.
Venter's scientific enemies (like Lander and Sulston) have tried to convince the public that Venter aims to be the Bill Gates of biology. That isn't, and never was, true. You need to understand the history of Craig. He started out at NIH and then started the non-profit institute TIGR (where I work today) when the NIH was too shortsighted to support sequencing in the early 1990's. He joined Celera when it was clear the public effort wasn't using modern methods and would take forever to complete. Take a look at the public database Genbank. Do you know what person has the record for largest total contribution by nucleotide? Craig -- and even before the recent Celera genome deposit. For all their talk, neither Lander nor Sulston comes close. Do you know what Craig is doing now? He's running the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, another non-profit institute similar to TIGR. (his ex-wife Claire Fraser is the current head of TIGR).
Venter can be a jerk sometimes (and is egotistical; who else would name their science foundation after themselves?) but look at the facts -- he gives data to the public, and is hardly the only scientist who has worked in both the private and public sectors.
Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.
Maybe if you only read articles from couple of popular journals, but *every single day* I run into articles from journals that my library doesn't subscribe to (but then, I'm a genomicist and probably have to read more widely than a physicist, as one day I may be working on the genome of a bug that lives in the Dead Sea and the next day I may be working on the genomes of bacteria that live in hot springs in Yellowstone Park). Then some crap announcement comes up where the publishers have the arrogance to charge me $40 or so to read an article (which may or may not be useful) that *another scientist* (not the publisher!) wrote, and other scientists (again not the publisher) reviewed. It's a real barrier to doing science, particularly in biology. That's probably why the major open access journal sites like BMC and PLoS are mostly biologically oriented.
How has evolution been repeatedly tested? Is there a theorem, mathmatical model that can describe evolution?
Yes. Ever since the 1930s people like JBS Haldane have developed quite detailed mathematical models of evolution. Evolutionists aren't just people looking at animals frolicking around anymore. The whole field of "Evolutionary Genetics" is extremely mathematical. Take a look at some lecture notes here
Darwin in no way had an anti-religous agenda. He even considered becoming an Anglican priest when he was younger. Sure, after he developed the theory of natural selection he became an agnostic, as many (but not all), people who really understand the theory since also have, but he didn't discover natural selection as part of any agenda other than the furthering of biology
Why do people willingly put crap like this into their bodies? Caffeine isn't good for you. Neither is alcohol. Combine the two and you're not helping yourself.
As many people have said, "Ever notice that people who don't drink are generally the people you wouldn't *want* to drink with if they did?"
Indeed, many of the best programmers I ever worked with were strictly against the use of caffeine and alcohol. Why is that?
Because their mommies and daddies and preachers said they'd go to to hell if they drank the stuff?
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Not in general. No TV is old enough to enter the public domain naturally. What happened with some programs and movies (even such famous movies as the original "Night of the Living Dead") is that they were never officially copyrighted or were incorrectly copywrited during the time when copyright was not automatically granted.
I realize in pop culture, Zombies are supposed to say "Braiins", etc., but in what movies do they actually do that? I mean, that pop culture meme had to come from somewhere -- the zombies from the "Night of the Living Dead" and similar movies generally don't speak at all.
Yes and no. In the classical Popperian sense, observations and theories are quite different things and a contrary observation can falsify a theory. But in reality science doesn't quite work like that. For example, the classic example is the orbit of Neptune. If science worked the way Popper said, the instant people realized that Neptune's orbit didn't match what would be expected by Newton's theory, that theory would be falsified. Instead, people said "Newton's theory has overwhelming support; there must be a reason within the theory that explains the aberration". And so people looked and looked and found Pluto, and later other objects in the Kuiper belt which affected Neptune's orbit.
How about the simple fact that the theory of evolution is taught as fact in many, many schools from elementary to the university level (this is certainly true in the schools in my neck of the woods). In fact it appears that in every post regarding evolution that appears here in/., many people are constantly posting about just how factual evolution is.
Everything in science is technically a theory -- there's the theory of gravitation, the atomic theory, etc. A fact is simply a theory with overwhelming support. Evolution has long ago joined the other major theories in having such support.
Give some logical, scientific explanation as to why a theory is taught as fact, and it is rare that any opposing theory is taught in parallel.
If there are serious differences of opinion among scientists, certainly multiple theories are taught in parallel. For example, both in high school and in my undergrad years, there was serious debate about the nature of prions. Some people thought they were viruses with a nucleic acid component nobody had yet detected, and others believed, as we do now, that prions are simply pathogenic proteins. Both theories were taught in parallel. There is no such debate about evolution, just as nobody seriously doubts the atomic theory. The only people who doubt evolution these days are born-again Christians like Behe and Johnson. They have a right to teach their religious dogma of ID in their churches, while speaking in tongues (which might make ID more comprehensible, actually) and handling snakes if they so choose, but it is simply dishonest to claim that it is anything but warmed over Genesis with the serial numbers filed off. They even admit it themselves in their "wedge document".
Also explain to me why it is that many teenagers (and I have 3, and speaking to them and their friends I know this to be true at least in our school district) don't know the difference between evolution and natural selection. I'd also like to know how evolution has anything to do with a virus (reference the avian flu mentioned in another post) changing the way it survives according to its environment. That's natural selection, not evolution. I haven't yet seen proof that it's mutated into an actual bird yet. The confusion furthers my point about the rampant confusion and misleading of students with regard to what's evolution, what's not, what is theory, and what is fact.
While there are indeed other causes of evolution besides natural selection, it makes no sense to say "That's natural selection, not evolution" -- that's like saying "That's an automobile, not a vehicle". And your idea that evolution means that viruses turn into birds also makes no sense.
You sir are a bigoted asshole and yes, I will stand behind that statement and would be happy to tell it to your face.
No, I merely asked you if you were a Mormon. All you had to say is no. You made a disparaging comment in a recent article about evolution, which may have been made in jest, and may not have related to your Wikipedia activities, but it did make me curious about your religious background, living in Utah and all. It's not "bigoted" to want to know this. We live in a world in which, sadly, even scientists make claims based on their religious beliefs rather than on reason. As an molecular evolutionist these sorts of things impinge on my own research -- as things like the Dover Panda trial sadly shows to the amusement of the rest of world, where even practicing religious people have long ago made their peace with Darwin.
The problem that I have had with Wikipedia is that in editing articles on which I am a recognized expert, I have had my edits and entries entirely removed by others who "feel" that these edits were somehow inappropriate, even when I referenced those entries along with results from peer reviewed journals.
Care to back this up with some examples? No offense, but considering you are in Utah, most famous for a certain religion that holds certain viewpoints quite at odds with mainstream scientific thought, it is within the realm of possibility that the others were correct... As for being in peer reviewed journals, well, there's quite a range of quality there. Were the references from something on the order of _Science_ or _Nature_? Technically, the "Journal of Mormon Thought" is a peer reviewed journal, as it the post-modernist "Social Text".
Well, I'm a genomicist myself, and feel I have more in common with biochemists than I do with chemists -- it's not that I don't feel respect for biochemistry -- but to me chenistry is about general principles of chemical reactions, just like physics is about general principles of matter and energy. Of course, things like proteins certainly need to obey physical and chemical laws, but discoveries of how proteins work, as in last year's chemistry nobel, while certainly of great importance, don't really tell us any new basic facts about chemistry itself.
Sorry, I know it's OT but I gotta hear your explaination on how the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to defend the documents america was founded on (the constitution and the bill of rights), is un-american?
Oh, the idea is that right wingers don't like the fact that the ACLU finds lawyers for people who have been accused of terrorism (clearly, if they have been accused, they *must* be guilty -- especially if they are arabs, right?), and they don't like the fact that they find lawyers that help defend the constitutional separation of church and state by keeping Creationism out of science classes. Additionally, they like to run a quote by Baldwin (the founder of the ACLU) where he says he is a communist. Not only is the quote never attributed to a verifiable source and it varies in wording from citation to citation, (good evidence that it is manufactured), the right-wingers never explain how that would be un-American even if true -- surely, in America, people have the right to be communists if they want to, just like they have the right to be fascists (and anyone who thinks that the ACLU only supports left-wing causes needs to consider that they have also supported the right of neo-Nazis to hold demonstrations, so long as they were peaceful)
LIT files are just html -- use a tool like http://www.convertlit.com/index.php. That's why I actually prefer Microsoft e-books to. say, Adobe, even though I don't even use Microsoft Reader on my PDA (I use uBook)
Er, "said store's average patrons"?
on
The Slurpee at 40
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Are you claiming that individual persons or ethnic groups that go to 7-11 tend to be dirtier than average?
I don't have statistics on the matter, but most of the times I know of people reading a horroscope it is for amusement and entertainment, gossipy stuff. I think you're the one here reading too much into it.
It would be nice to think so, but take a look at your local Barnes & Noble -- chances are you'll find that the New Age section is larger than the Science section. People unfortunately take astrology and things like that seriously.
Look. Tianamen was in 1989. It was bad. Democracy activists were killed. Falung Gong has nothing to do with democracy -- it is no different than any other cult -- the leaders are out to make lots of money by tricking the gullible peasants into joining. Crap about the "third eye" is not something anyone with any knowledge of biology is going to fooled by. I also doubt that many people who believe in third eyes are likely to be computer users.
Could this be used in conjunction with other gene therapy to reverse birth defects in people like ectrodactyl hands. Cut them off and make them regenerate as a normal hand? Or entire new arms for Thalidomide babies?
In theory yes -- most birth defects have no genetic basis (that's why "thalidomide babies" have perfectly normal children themselves) -- it isn't the information in their DNA that is damaged but rather the fact that their cells were misassembled during development in the womb.
Slashdot Mirror
[shallow and pedantic]
*Fungi* had nothing to do with the Irish potato famine. Phytophtora is an oomycete, not a fungus.
[/shallow and pedantic]
Cool. You're right -- according to Riethmueller (2002), it's been reclassified out of the fungal kingdom. Molecular systematics is fun.
From the article: "Examples are as plentiful as they are sad: Consider the virus that brought on the Irish potato famine".
*Viruses* had nothing to do with the Irish potato famine. While there were many factors for the famine, many of them political, the pathological reason was the *fungus* Phytophthora infestans.
Does RMS allow anyone to copy and modify those autographs?
You take vacation days. Obviously, an employer can't complain about what employees do on their free time.
The other alternative is to get away from the atomistic PC and its webs and find others in the section of the city that you live in who are also downloading their entertainment. Then pool your downloads together into a community library
When I was a kid in the 8-bit days that's pretty much how pirating happened. Sure some people had modems and downloaded stuff from BBSes (at an amazing 300 baud or at most 1200 baud -- of course, most games were only a few hundred kilobytes back then), but in general, you found kids at school that had the same type of computer you had and traded stuff in person.
Doesn't anyone remember Bertrand's rant against Stallman and the GPL in 2000? It is pretty amusing that he finally chose the GPL -- I would have thought he would have gone for a BSD License just to save face.
Venter's scientific enemies (like Lander and Sulston) have tried to convince the public that Venter aims to be the Bill Gates of biology. That isn't, and never was, true. You need to understand the history of Craig. He started out at NIH and then started the non-profit institute TIGR (where I work today) when the NIH was too shortsighted to support sequencing in the early 1990's. He joined Celera when it was clear the public effort wasn't using modern methods and would take forever to complete. Take a look at the public database Genbank. Do you know what person has the record for largest total contribution by nucleotide? Craig -- and even before the recent Celera genome deposit. For all their talk, neither Lander nor Sulston comes close. Do you know what Craig is doing now? He's running the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, another non-profit institute similar to TIGR. (his ex-wife Claire Fraser is the current head of TIGR).
Venter can be a jerk sometimes (and is egotistical; who else would name their science foundation after themselves?) but look at the facts -- he gives data to the public, and is hardly the only scientist who has worked in both the private and public sectors.
Nah, don't bother, since just about everyone who has a need for journal access already has it either through their employment, university, or library.
Maybe if you only read articles from couple of popular journals, but *every single day* I run into articles from journals that my library doesn't subscribe to (but then, I'm a genomicist and probably have to read more widely than a physicist, as one day I may be working on the genome of a bug that lives in the Dead Sea and the next day I may be working on the genomes of bacteria that live in hot springs in Yellowstone Park). Then some crap announcement comes up where the publishers have the arrogance to charge me $40 or so to read an article (which may or may not be useful) that *another scientist* (not the publisher!) wrote, and other scientists (again not the publisher) reviewed. It's a real barrier to doing science, particularly in biology. That's probably why the major open access journal sites like BMC and PLoS are mostly biologically oriented.
How has evolution been repeatedly tested? Is there a theorem, mathmatical model that can describe evolution?
Yes. Ever since the 1930s people like JBS Haldane have developed quite detailed mathematical models of evolution. Evolutionists aren't just people looking at animals frolicking around anymore. The whole field of "Evolutionary Genetics" is extremely mathematical. Take a look at some lecture notes here
Darwin in no way had an anti-religous agenda. He even considered becoming an Anglican priest when he was younger. Sure, after he developed the theory of natural selection he became an agnostic, as many (but not all), people who really understand the theory since also have, but he didn't discover natural selection as part of any agenda other than the furthering of biology
Why do people willingly put crap like this into their bodies? Caffeine isn't good for you. Neither is alcohol. Combine the two and you're not helping yourself.
As many people have said, "Ever notice that people who don't drink are generally the people you wouldn't *want* to drink with if they did?"
Indeed, many of the best programmers I ever worked with were strictly against the use of caffeine and alcohol. Why is that?
Because their mommies and daddies and preachers said they'd go to to hell if they drank the stuff?
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Not in general. No TV is old enough to enter the public domain naturally. What happened with some programs and movies (even such famous movies as the original "Night of the Living Dead") is that they were never officially copyrighted or were incorrectly copywrited during the time when copyright was not automatically granted.
I realize in pop culture, Zombies are supposed to say "Braiins", etc., but in what movies do they actually do that? I mean, that pop culture meme had to come from somewhere -- the zombies from the "Night of the Living Dead" and similar movies generally don't speak at all.
Yes and no. In the classical Popperian sense, observations and theories are quite different things and a contrary observation can falsify a theory. But in reality science doesn't quite work like that. For example, the classic example is the orbit of Neptune. If science worked the way Popper said, the instant people realized that Neptune's orbit didn't match what would be expected by Newton's theory, that theory would be falsified. Instead, people said "Newton's theory has overwhelming support; there must be a reason within the theory that explains the aberration". And so people looked and looked and found Pluto, and later other objects in the Kuiper belt which affected Neptune's orbit.
How about the simple fact that the theory of evolution is taught as fact in many, many schools from elementary to the university level (this is certainly true in the schools in my neck of the woods). In fact it appears that in every post regarding evolution that appears here in /., many people are constantly posting about just how factual evolution is.
Everything in science is technically a theory -- there's the theory of gravitation, the atomic theory, etc. A fact is simply a theory with overwhelming support. Evolution has long ago joined the other major theories in having such support.
Give some logical, scientific explanation as to why a theory is taught as fact, and it is rare that any opposing theory is taught in parallel.
If there are serious differences of opinion among scientists, certainly multiple theories are taught in parallel. For example, both in high school and in my undergrad years, there was serious debate about the nature of prions. Some people thought they were viruses with a nucleic acid component nobody had yet detected, and others believed, as we do now, that prions are simply pathogenic proteins. Both theories were taught in parallel. There is no such debate about evolution, just as nobody seriously doubts the atomic theory. The only people who doubt evolution these days are born-again Christians like Behe and Johnson. They have a right to teach their religious dogma of ID in their churches, while speaking in tongues (which might make ID more comprehensible, actually) and handling snakes if they so choose, but it is simply dishonest to claim that it is anything but warmed over Genesis with the serial numbers filed off. They even admit it themselves in their "wedge document".
Also explain to me why it is that many teenagers (and I have 3, and speaking to them and their friends I know this to be true at least in our school district) don't know the difference between evolution and natural selection. I'd also like to know how evolution has anything to do with a virus (reference the avian flu mentioned in another post) changing the way it survives according to its environment. That's natural selection, not evolution. I haven't yet seen proof that it's mutated into an actual bird yet. The confusion furthers my point about the rampant confusion and misleading of students with regard to what's evolution, what's not, what is theory, and what is fact.
While there are indeed other causes of evolution besides natural selection, it makes no sense to say "That's natural selection, not evolution" -- that's like saying "That's an automobile, not a vehicle". And your idea that evolution means that viruses turn into birds also makes no sense.
You sir are a bigoted asshole and yes, I will stand behind that statement and would be happy to tell it to your face.
No, I merely asked you if you were a Mormon. All you had to say is no. You made a disparaging comment in a recent article about evolution, which may have been made in jest, and may not have related to your Wikipedia activities, but it did make me curious about your religious background, living in Utah and all. It's not "bigoted" to want to know this. We live in a world in which, sadly, even scientists make claims based on their religious beliefs rather than on reason. As an molecular evolutionist these sorts of things impinge on my own research -- as things like the Dover Panda trial sadly shows to the amusement of the rest of world, where even practicing religious people have long ago made their peace with Darwin.
The problem that I have had with Wikipedia is that in editing articles on which I am a recognized expert, I have had my edits and entries entirely removed by others who "feel" that these edits were somehow inappropriate, even when I referenced those entries along with results from peer reviewed journals.
Care to back this up with some examples? No offense, but considering you are in Utah, most famous for a certain religion that holds certain viewpoints quite at odds with mainstream scientific thought, it is within the realm of possibility that the others were correct... As for being in peer reviewed journals, well, there's quite a range of quality there. Were the references from something on the order of _Science_ or _Nature_? Technically, the "Journal of Mormon Thought" is a peer reviewed journal, as it the post-modernist "Social Text".
Well, I'm a genomicist myself, and feel I have more in common with biochemists than I do with chemists -- it's not that I don't feel respect for biochemistry -- but to me chenistry is about general principles of chemical reactions, just like physics is about general principles of matter and energy. Of course, things like proteins certainly need to obey physical and chemical laws, but discoveries of how proteins work, as in last year's chemistry nobel, while certainly of great importance, don't really tell us any new basic facts about chemistry itself.
It's interesting that this year the chemistry nobel prize actually goes to chemists this year -- the last two years it went to molecular biologists...
Sorry, I know it's OT but I gotta hear your explaination on how the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to defend the documents america was founded on (the constitution and the bill of rights), is un-american?
Oh, the idea is that right wingers don't like the fact that the ACLU finds lawyers for people who have been accused of terrorism (clearly, if they have been accused, they *must* be guilty -- especially if they are arabs, right?), and they don't like the fact that they find lawyers that help defend the constitutional separation of church and state by keeping Creationism out of science classes. Additionally, they like to run a quote by Baldwin (the founder of the ACLU) where he says he is a communist. Not only is the quote never attributed to a verifiable source and it varies in wording from citation to citation, (good evidence that it is manufactured), the right-wingers never explain how that would be un-American even if true -- surely, in America, people have the right to be communists if they want to, just like they have the right to be fascists (and anyone who thinks that the ACLU only supports left-wing causes needs to consider that they have also supported the right of neo-Nazis to hold demonstrations, so long as they were peaceful)
LIT files are just html -- use a tool like http://www.convertlit.com/index.php. That's why I actually prefer Microsoft e-books to. say, Adobe, even though I don't even use Microsoft Reader on my PDA (I use uBook)
Are you claiming that individual persons or ethnic groups that go to 7-11 tend to be dirtier than average?
I don't have statistics on the matter, but most of the times I know of people reading a horroscope it is for amusement and entertainment, gossipy stuff. I think you're the one here reading too much into it.
It would be nice to think so, but take a look at your local Barnes & Noble -- chances are you'll find that the New Age section is larger than the Science section. People unfortunately take astrology and things like that seriously.
Look. Tianamen was in 1989. It was bad. Democracy activists were killed. Falung Gong has nothing to do with democracy -- it is no different than any other cult -- the leaders are out to make lots of money by tricking the gullible peasants into joining. Crap about the "third eye" is not something anyone with any knowledge of biology is going to fooled by. I also doubt that many people who believe in third eyes are likely to be computer users.
Could this be used in conjunction with other gene therapy to reverse birth defects in people like ectrodactyl hands. Cut them off and make them regenerate as a normal hand? Or entire new arms for Thalidomide babies?
In theory yes -- most birth defects have no genetic basis (that's why "thalidomide babies" have perfectly normal children themselves) -- it isn't the information in their DNA that is damaged but rather the fact that their cells were misassembled during development in the womb.