Yeah I was thinking the same thing... how, exactly, does a fictional character protect something? This is one of the shittiest, worst-written/. articles I've ever seen. I'm actually HOPING this one was a troll, because it pains me to believe someone could be this much of a 'tard.
Wow, make a gay joke instead of addressing anything I said - that's a great way to make your point seem more valid.
It's amazing the way some of these slashbots have been trolling me in this thread - I'm through with responding to them, let them say all the idiotic crap they want. It will be really funny if a few more accuse me of being a creationist.
until someone can provide a good chunk of evidence that it is, in fact, the same process, all you're doing is speculating.
For the record, I *DO* think it's the same process. But that's just my hunch. I wouldn't tell someone it *IS* the same, until I had reasonable scientific evidence. So far no one has produced conclusive evidence.
There's a difference between "spreading creationist crap" and being a thorough scientist.
Stop spreading creationist crapoloa and read a book. "Origin of Species" would be a good start.
Read some of my other posts sometime... I think creationists are a bunch of nutjobs and am not afraid to say it. The "men coming from monkeys" phrase is SUPPOSED to be a flippant quip. If anyone here is a dolt, it's you, for not understanding the sarcasm in my post. I even said at the beginning I'm not taking a side, but am simply saying that seeing evolution in a simple bacteria doesn't mean jack shit about evolution in mammals. You've managed to COMPLETELY miss the point of my post in your attempt to sound smarter than me and argue semantics about a generalization that's commonly used. Way to go, you're a pedantic jackass who couldn't find the point if it was rammed up your ass.
Micro-evolution and Macro-evolution are very very different things. I'm not arguing one side or the other, as both sides have some vaild points, but using the example of simple organisms in a petri dish in NO WAY proves that men came from monkeys.
Andre the giant suffered from a disease called acromegaly, which caused him to continually grow, such that the proportions of his body took a constant toll on it. Near his death he was in constant pain, and eventually died of heart failure because the muscle simply couldn't keep up with the size of his body. Most people who were diagnosed with the disease in his time didn't live to 40. Saying he was like a neanderthol just because he had a funny shaped head is incredibly stupid and closed minded. The man suffered from an illness which gave him a short, painful life. That he was able to capitolize on the outward appearance given to him by the disease to make his life into a positive one is a testament to Andre's spirit.
Re:Catching up using eye candy?
on
Longhorn Preview
·
· Score: 1
ALL windows on os X have drop shadows, not just the active one. IMHO the real reason for the addition of drop shadows is it gives a more intuitive visual cue on where window borders lie.
So, you've bought into the propaganda campaign of the **AA, forcing an inappropriate word to make a behavior seem more heinous than it is, and the guy who understands the REAL meaning of the word is the moron?
I never said it was creationist, I said it was being latched onto by creationists. Nutjobs of a feather flock together. Megalighting from space caused the Columbia crash? Yeah, that's extensive use of evidence. Right.
My undergrad school was a lot like that, they had a healthy computational physics group, and were pushing toward a cosmology group, again because of the low startup costs. Luckily for me, now I'm at a school where there are a lot of biophysicists bringing the big private funding dollars to the university, which trickles down to the rest of us in the way of notoriety and prestige.
Nowhere have I ever seen it written that newton claimed to have succesfully transmuted lead into gold. Indeed, he was very secretive about his alchemy research, rarely telling anyone what he was studying. You are making the most common argument I've ever seen by people who defend pseudo-science. It goes something like this: newton tried to transmute lead into gold, yet you all worship him, so clearly you are hypocrites.
Now's the part where I point out the fallacy of this argument. Newton discovered very real, very reproducible behaviors in dynamics, and was able to formulate a theory that described it. We, as scientists, give him credit for this incredible discovery. That he studied alchemy has no bearing on the import of his discoveries.
The difference between newton and today's pseudo-science whackjobs is, newton contributed something positive, they DID NOT. You can try to compare them to newton all you want, but at the end of the day, they have never produced any original thoughts which even come close to the realm of reality.
And while we're tearing your argument apart, lets also note that newton's study of alchemy wasn't all that crazy after all. The fundamental process of science is to build on the discoveries of those before you, to refine and revise their views. In newton's time, there was no tested theory as to the composition of matter. There was no understanding of how it worked. Therefore, he picked a very tantalizing possibility that was common in legends, and tried to explore its viability. Sometimes science is about exploring the wrong theory, as much as it the right one. You will never know something is incorrect, unless you try it.
Sure, it's easy for us today, with an extra couple of hundred years of discoveries to build upon, to say newton was obviously wrong to try to transmute lead into gold, but at his time, working from the previous knowledge he had available, it wasn't at all clear that what he was trying was impossible.
If newton were alive today, he would most likely not be attempting his alchemy research. If he were, he WOULD be laughed at, as we now know much more than we did then.
Nowhere did I say I am pro-evolution. Creationists ARE crackpots, plain and simple. Every shred of scientific evidence ever discovered is completely opposed to the beliefs of creationists. As a scientist, I would be THRILLED for something to come along that completely revolutionizes the way we look at the world. However, I require some real science to be involved in this discovery. Creationists, and their ilk, have no sound grounding in science, and anyone with a fair bit of REAL scientific knowledge can completely debunk them by showing there are experimental results that do not agree with their views.
It's not name-calling if they genuinely ARE crackpots. And as far as your "holier than thou" nonsense about namecalling, I've had more than one creationist tell me I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity for not believing what they do. That seems a bit more extreme than calling someone a crackpot, to me.
Prejudiced? Lets look at a few ideas that have forced scientists to fundamentally change the way we look at the universe: Newtonian physics, special relativity, quantum mechanics, and just 30 or so years ago, nonlinear dynamics. Attached to our ideas we might be, but only because they provide the greatest understanding of the universe humankind has ever achieved. We change our view when we are provided with enough evidence to justify doing so. Organized religion, howver, clings to the same dogma for thousands of years, completely unwilling to yeild in the face of mountains of proof saying they got it wrong. Some even go so far as to persecute, violently, those who provide evidence against their views.
ESPECIALLY during the bush administration! I'm currently facing the hard reality of a shift in focus from computational physics (low cost due to using commodity hardware running linux) to experimental physics (high cost due to expensive instrumentation). I had originally wanted to go into a tenure-track program at some small college near my family's hometown, but as I become more interested in experimental work and shift away from computational, I'm realizing a small school might not be prestigious enough to get the kind of funding money I would need. In either case, the majority of the money we get goes towards equipment, not salary.
I think (hope?) you're kidding, but this seems like EXACTLY the kind of argument these nuts would make. As someone who personally knows quite a few cosmologists and astrophysicsts, I can tell you first-hand that the amount of money they make compared to the amount of work they do, and the amount of schooling they have, is TERRIBLE. My girlfriend is a nurse,,with a BS... she'll be making more than me when I have my PhD in physics.
As a followup to my previous post, I've done some more googling. I found one of the biggest proponents of this wackjob theory happens to be one Jim McCanney, whose other claims include such gems as "weather is being manipulated". For a good thorough debunking of this crackpot, you might want to check out one of my favorite sites, Bad Astronomy.
The best part about the internet is, it's given everyone a voice.
The worst part about the internet is, it's given people like this a voice.
I admit, I'm a materials guy, not an astrophysicist, but I found it odd that I'd never heard of this "electric universe" model, and the best reference the submittor could find was from "thunderbolt.info". I decided to google for it, and the first link that came up was this gem, which links the electric universe to geocentric, anti-evolutionary, creationist crap. I can't find a single reputable source describing this so-called theory, just a bunch of crackpot websites. I call bullshit.
These are fish you have experience with though. You said yourself you have caught plenty of fish in that range. Therefore you should have a pretty good idea what a fish with a weight in this range should look like. The twain fish was something far beyond anything in his experience, so I would say it would be a lot harder to tell its size. Also, he *saw* the fish, not caught it. He wouldn't have all the usual indicators you'd normally have when fishing, such as FEELING the fish when you pick it up out of the water, plus seeing it unobstructed out of the water. These are big differences.
As for your explanation about pounds, I completely agree with you. In normal discussion people understand pounds as "weight", even if the unit is defined in terms of mass. A person thinks about pounds being how tough it would be to lift something. I was merely trying to clarify the parent poster's statement that a pound is mass. The distinction is a moot point when talking to most people, as most don't know or care what mass means.
You just haven't had catfish prepared correctly. Sit back, kids, as I share with you an age-old family recipe, handed down to me by my great grandpappy, on how to cook the perfect catfish.
The first rule is, you use nothing but natural, untreated, chemical free hickory. You build up a nice big roaring fire with the hickory and let it burn down until all that's left is red hot smoldering coals.
While the fire is burning down, gut the fish, leaving the skin and bones in, and pack it in ice to keep it nice and fresh. Once the fire is ready, take a fresh cut hickory plank, and nail the catfish to it, with a single nail between the eyes. Wrap the fish and board up in aluminum foil, and bury it down in the smoldering embers.
Allow the fish to cook down in the embers for at least an hour, letting the meat get so tender it begins to fall into pieces. Unwrap the foil, pull out the nail, dump the fish in the river, and eat the board. There you go, the best catfish you'll ever have!
Pound measures mass, not weight. An experienced river traveller can probably infer the mass correctly.
This is a dangerous assumption to be making. The truth is, the meaning of the pound is somewhat arbitrary still today. You can get different answers when talking to engineers vs physicists, for example. The pound is officially defined in terms of the kilogram, so you would think mass. But then you look at something such as PSI (pounds per square inch) which is a measure of pressure, being force per area, making pounds in that instance a force, and therefore a weight. You can read plenty about the ambiguity at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound#Force.2C_weight.2C_and_mass
Another thing to consider is that mark twain did his most productive writing between ~1870-1890. The pound wasn't defined in the US in terms of the kilogram until 1893, according to the NGS at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/FedRegister/FRdoc 59-5442.pdf
I'm guessing that mark twain didn't have the grounding in physics to understand the difference between the two. Also, I'd be very interested to hear an explanation on how an experienced river traveler can infer the mass of an object that he saw underwater with anything even remotely better than a wild guess. Considering the crazy effects one can get from refraction, I'd say it would even be tough to give an accurate value for the LENGTH of the fish.
Blizzard has always been really kickass about supporting Mac games. That's one thing I love about them. I still quite regularly fire up WC3 and do a little LAN gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
The moderation on /. never ceases to amaze me.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing... how, exactly, does a fictional character protect something? This is one of the shittiest, worst-written /. articles I've ever seen. I'm actually HOPING this one was a troll, because it pains me to believe someone could be this much of a 'tard.
In japan... only americans drive fuel efficient cars?
Wait... the americans are the ones going to gas-alternatives?
I'm very, very scared... hold me.
Wow, make a gay joke instead of addressing anything I said - that's a great way to make your point seem more valid.
It's amazing the way some of these slashbots have been trolling me in this thread - I'm through with responding to them, let them say all the idiotic crap they want. It will be really funny if a few more accuse me of being a creationist.
until someone can provide a good chunk of evidence that it is, in fact, the same process, all you're doing is speculating.
For the record, I *DO* think it's the same process. But that's just my hunch. I wouldn't tell someone it *IS* the same, until I had reasonable scientific evidence. So far no one has produced conclusive evidence.
There's a difference between "spreading creationist crap" and being a thorough scientist.
Stop spreading creationist crapoloa and read a book. "Origin of Species" would be a good start.
Read some of my other posts sometime... I think creationists are a bunch of nutjobs and am not afraid to say it. The "men coming from monkeys" phrase is SUPPOSED to be a flippant quip. If anyone here is a dolt, it's you, for not understanding the sarcasm in my post. I even said at the beginning I'm not taking a side, but am simply saying that seeing evolution in a simple bacteria doesn't mean jack shit about evolution in mammals. You've managed to COMPLETELY miss the point of my post in your attempt to sound smarter than me and argue semantics about a generalization that's commonly used. Way to go, you're a pedantic jackass who couldn't find the point if it was rammed up your ass.
Micro-evolution and Macro-evolution are very very different things. I'm not arguing one side or the other, as both sides have some vaild points, but using the example of simple organisms in a petri dish in NO WAY proves that men came from monkeys.
Actually, it was surgery on his pitulitary gland which halted his condition, not horomone treatment.
Andre the giant suffered from a disease called acromegaly, which caused him to continually grow, such that the proportions of his body took a constant toll on it. Near his death he was in constant pain, and eventually died of heart failure because the muscle simply couldn't keep up with the size of his body. Most people who were diagnosed with the disease in his time didn't live to 40. Saying he was like a neanderthol just because he had a funny shaped head is incredibly stupid and closed minded. The man suffered from an illness which gave him a short, painful life. That he was able to capitolize on the outward appearance given to him by the disease to make his life into a positive one is a testament to Andre's spirit.
ALL windows on os X have drop shadows, not just the active one. IMHO the real reason for the addition of drop shadows is it gives a more intuitive visual cue on where window borders lie.
So, you've bought into the propaganda campaign of the **AA, forcing an inappropriate word to make a behavior seem more heinous than it is, and the guy who understands the REAL meaning of the word is the moron?
We need to top piracy
Yeah, we should start stealing babies! That's much worse than "stealing" software and music. That would top piracy for sure!
I never said it was creationist, I said it was being latched onto by creationists. Nutjobs of a feather flock together. Megalighting from space caused the Columbia crash? Yeah, that's extensive use of evidence. Right.
My undergrad school was a lot like that, they had a healthy computational physics group, and were pushing toward a cosmology group, again because of the low startup costs. Luckily for me, now I'm at a school where there are a lot of biophysicists bringing the big private funding dollars to the university, which trickles down to the rest of us in the way of notoriety and prestige.
Nowhere have I ever seen it written that newton claimed to have succesfully transmuted lead into gold. Indeed, he was very secretive about his alchemy research, rarely telling anyone what he was studying. You are making the most common argument I've ever seen by people who defend pseudo-science. It goes something like this: newton tried to transmute lead into gold, yet you all worship him, so clearly you are hypocrites.
Now's the part where I point out the fallacy of this argument. Newton discovered very real, very reproducible behaviors in dynamics, and was able to formulate a theory that described it. We, as scientists, give him credit for this incredible discovery. That he studied alchemy has no bearing on the import of his discoveries.
The difference between newton and today's pseudo-science whackjobs is, newton contributed something positive, they DID NOT. You can try to compare them to newton all you want, but at the end of the day, they have never produced any original thoughts which even come close to the realm of reality.
And while we're tearing your argument apart, lets also note that newton's study of alchemy wasn't all that crazy after all. The fundamental process of science is to build on the discoveries of those before you, to refine and revise their views. In newton's time, there was no tested theory as to the composition of matter. There was no understanding of how it worked. Therefore, he picked a very tantalizing possibility that was common in legends, and tried to explore its viability. Sometimes science is about exploring the wrong theory, as much as it the right one. You will never know something is incorrect, unless you try it.
Sure, it's easy for us today, with an extra couple of hundred years of discoveries to build upon, to say newton was obviously wrong to try to transmute lead into gold, but at his time, working from the previous knowledge he had available, it wasn't at all clear that what he was trying was impossible.
If newton were alive today, he would most likely not be attempting his alchemy research. If he were, he WOULD be laughed at, as we now know much more than we did then.
Nowhere did I say I am pro-evolution. Creationists ARE crackpots, plain and simple. Every shred of scientific evidence ever discovered is completely opposed to the beliefs of creationists. As a scientist, I would be THRILLED for something to come along that completely revolutionizes the way we look at the world. However, I require some real science to be involved in this discovery. Creationists, and their ilk, have no sound grounding in science, and anyone with a fair bit of REAL scientific knowledge can completely debunk them by showing there are experimental results that do not agree with their views.
It's not name-calling if they genuinely ARE crackpots. And as far as your "holier than thou" nonsense about namecalling, I've had more than one creationist tell me I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity for not believing what they do. That seems a bit more extreme than calling someone a crackpot, to me.
Prejudiced? Lets look at a few ideas that have forced scientists to fundamentally change the way we look at the universe: Newtonian physics, special relativity, quantum mechanics, and just 30 or so years ago, nonlinear dynamics. Attached to our ideas we might be, but only because they provide the greatest understanding of the universe humankind has ever achieved. We change our view when we are provided with enough evidence to justify doing so. Organized religion, howver, clings to the same dogma for thousands of years, completely unwilling to yeild in the face of mountains of proof saying they got it wrong. Some even go so far as to persecute, violently, those who provide evidence against their views.
ESPECIALLY during the bush administration! I'm currently facing the hard reality of a shift in focus from computational physics (low cost due to using commodity hardware running linux) to experimental physics (high cost due to expensive instrumentation). I had originally wanted to go into a tenure-track program at some small college near my family's hometown, but as I become more interested in experimental work and shift away from computational, I'm realizing a small school might not be prestigious enough to get the kind of funding money I would need. In either case, the majority of the money we get goes towards equipment, not salary.
I think (hope?) you're kidding, but this seems like EXACTLY the kind of argument these nuts would make. As someone who personally knows quite a few cosmologists and astrophysicsts, I can tell you first-hand that the amount of money they make compared to the amount of work they do, and the amount of schooling they have, is TERRIBLE. My girlfriend is a nurse, ,with a BS... she'll be making more than me when I have my PhD in physics.
As a followup to my previous post, I've done some more googling. I found one of the biggest proponents of this wackjob theory happens to be one Jim McCanney, whose other claims include such gems as "weather is being manipulated". For a good thorough debunking of this crackpot, you might want to check out one of my favorite sites, Bad Astronomy.
The best part about the internet is, it's given everyone a voice.
The worst part about the internet is, it's given people like this a voice.
I admit, I'm a materials guy, not an astrophysicist, but I found it odd that I'd never heard of this "electric universe" model, and the best reference the submittor could find was from "thunderbolt.info". I decided to google for it, and the first link that came up was this gem, which links the electric universe to geocentric, anti-evolutionary, creationist crap. I can't find a single reputable source describing this so-called theory, just a bunch of crackpot websites. I call bullshit.
So wait, you're going to replace a toslink cable with a coat hanger?
...
You're going to replace a toslink.... fiber optic... cable, with a.. coat hanger?
*head explodes*
These are fish you have experience with though. You said yourself you have caught plenty of fish in that range. Therefore you should have a pretty good idea what a fish with a weight in this range should look like. The twain fish was something far beyond anything in his experience, so I would say it would be a lot harder to tell its size. Also, he *saw* the fish, not caught it. He wouldn't have all the usual indicators you'd normally have when fishing, such as FEELING the fish when you pick it up out of the water, plus seeing it unobstructed out of the water. These are big differences.
As for your explanation about pounds, I completely agree with you. In normal discussion people understand pounds as "weight", even if the unit is defined in terms of mass. A person thinks about pounds being how tough it would be to lift something. I was merely trying to clarify the parent poster's statement that a pound is mass. The distinction is a moot point when talking to most people, as most don't know or care what mass means.
You just haven't had catfish prepared correctly. Sit back, kids, as I share with you an age-old family recipe, handed down to me by my great grandpappy, on how to cook the perfect catfish.
The first rule is, you use nothing but natural, untreated, chemical free hickory. You build up a nice big roaring fire with the hickory and let it burn down until all that's left is red hot smoldering coals.
While the fire is burning down, gut the fish, leaving the skin and bones in, and pack it in ice to keep it nice and fresh. Once the fire is ready, take a fresh cut hickory plank, and nail the catfish to it, with a single nail between the eyes. Wrap the fish and board up in aluminum foil, and bury it down in the smoldering embers.
Allow the fish to cook down in the embers for at least an hour, letting the meat get so tender it begins to fall into pieces. Unwrap the foil, pull out the nail, dump the fish in the river, and eat the board. There you go, the best catfish you'll ever have!
Pound measures mass, not weight. An experienced river traveller can probably infer the mass correctly.
t .2C_and_mass
c 59-5442.pdf
This is a dangerous assumption to be making. The truth is, the meaning of the pound is somewhat arbitrary still today. You can get different answers when talking to engineers vs physicists, for example. The pound is officially defined in terms of the kilogram, so you would think mass. But then you look at something such as PSI (pounds per square inch) which is a measure of pressure, being force per area, making pounds in that instance a force, and therefore a weight. You can read plenty about the ambiguity at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound#Force.2C_weigh
Another thing to consider is that mark twain did his most productive writing between ~1870-1890. The pound wasn't defined in the US in terms of the kilogram until 1893, according to the NGS at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/FedRegister/FRdo
I'm guessing that mark twain didn't have the grounding in physics to understand the difference between the two. Also, I'd be very interested to hear an explanation on how an experienced river traveler can infer the mass of an object that he saw underwater with anything even remotely better than a wild guess. Considering the crazy effects one can get from refraction, I'd say it would even be tough to give an accurate value for the LENGTH of the fish.
Blizzard has always been really kickass about supporting Mac games. That's one thing I love about them. I still quite regularly fire up WC3 and do a little LAN gaming.