he does not in any way put forward an argument for evolution or against creationism in this video.
There is plenty of evidence already available for evolution, and addressing creationism is a fool's errand.
He simply waves his hand and says - without offering a logical, this 'leads-to-that' argument - that by not believing in evolution your world view is inconsistent.
That's because your world view diverges utterly with reality. It actively rejects the mountains of archaeological evidence, the diversity of species we have, and the fact that bacteria grow resistant to our antibiotics damn near as we watch.
yet my world view is 100% functional and, I believe, logical.
Only insofar as you don't actually wander down into scientific fields that completely break without the concept of evolution. Sadly, your worldview is not logical.
1) The idea that the denial of evolution is unique to the US - which I very much doubt, as both Christians and some other religions (Islam, in particular) tend to hold views that contradict with macro evolution.
He's focusing on the US because that's where he lives. He also realizes that there's a destructive campaign to get Creationism, wrapped up under the false banner of "Intelligent Design," put into science classes. And I suspect he feels that he has a duty to speak out against such nonsense and to admonish people not to deliberately withhold knowledge from their children because it possibly contradicts their beliefs. And even if those other countries and religions reject evolution, it only means that they too are wrong.
2) That not believing in evolution - which we cannot measure and observe in a lab - is comparable to not believing in plate tectonics (which we can observe and measure).
He's right. You can measure evolution in a lab. Like plate tectonics, sometimes that lab is out in the world.
3) That we need good scientists and engineers, and therefore should not teach our children creationism.
Correct. Literal creationism is used as an anti-scientific weapon by christian fundamentalists in the US.
These things all disparage creationist viewpoints, without any actual argument from logic about why evolution is right.
There is zero evidence for creationism. There are mountains of evidence for evolution. The only side here that actually needs to defend themselves are the creationists.
I have not yet heard back from him again.
Because as I foolishly attempt to here, arguing with a creationist as to why their deeply held beliefs contradict reality is often a frustrating, fruitless exercise.
Bill Nye is in a position to get laws passed that favor his viewpoint
No more than anyone else. Whereas the Religious Right has actual politicians in office pushing woman-hating laws.
(force children to abandon god, allah, yahweh, Reincarnation, etc).
While I have no love for such fairy tales, the First Amendment guarantees that won't happen.
He's not a tyrant himself but he's friends with those who are tyrants in the CA Legislature and Congress. As for why I'm "tired" of being bossed around?
Yeah but he's not nearly as powerful as the Religious Right is.
Mainly because I'm tired of people telling what to do. "Don't smoke weed". Really? Who the hell am I hurting if I'm just sitting here watching Star Trek? If I am DUI then sure: Arrest me and throw me in jail with the alcohol drunks, but not when I'm just sitting at home not hurting anybody.
I'd argue that, far and away, deliberately keeping children ignorant by giving them tightly controlled, fundamentalist christian approved "educations" rife with nontheories like intelligent design is an actual threat to this nation.
And what's the deal with forcing me to buy hospital insurance.
Agreed. We should just cut the insurance companies completely and go single payer.
At least with car insurance I can opt out (don't drive a car; walk. Or use a horse. Or take the train).
Indeed. And when it comes to health, when you have an emergency you can just die!
Except in a civilized world, we work to prevent people from dying needlessly. Even when idiots like Jenny McCarthy and the Anti-vaxxers push to allow communicable diseases to spread, and "christian scientists" convince their children that they really do want to die from their treatable ailment.
So what's next? Congress mandates we all must drive hybrid cars? We all must install solar panels on our roofs? We all must buy CFLs or LED bulbs? Being forced to buy something you don't want to buy.
No, but they can certainly subsidize those terrible, cleaner options. Or we could go the other way and cut oil subsidies.
That my friend is the opposite of liberty. It's tyranny.
No, tyrrany is something else entirely. Go ahead though, let the Religious Right get real power. That will show you tyrrany.
I will teach my kids whatever I want to teach them.
Yes, teach them silly things that contradict reality and to be willfully ignorant.
I am sick of tyrants bossing me around as if I was one of my ancestors.
He's no tyrant. However, there are more than a few wannabe tyrants among the US Christian community who feel they are charged by God to be a tyrant over others. And there are many, particularly those that push Intelligent Design, that don't want people to be capable of arguing in their own defense or contradicting the weak arguments of those they support.
Belief in a creator does not negate thescientific endeavor.
No, but if you're willing to reject evolution in favor of irrational beliefs then your ability as a scientist cannot help but be compromised.
Um... yeah no one is even trying to take away those liberties on your computer.
Yes they are. What do you think platforms like iOS and Windows RT are centered around? Control centered in the hands of the platform vendor.
However just like maintaining your own car you need to learn the function of the whole system, and have the correct tools.
I only need to know how the whole car works if I want to tear the entire thing down and rebuild it. Otherwise I can focus on small parts at one time. But hey, we're wandering down into the area where the car analogy goes sour as computers generally provide their own tools (compiler, linker, etc.) and (until recently) didn't fight the user over running arbitrary software.
"Oh but you can just not buy those" - what about people who decide, after the fact, that they want to do X, Y, or Z but can't because the platform is crippled? I know for a fact that many, many people got more involved with programming and related projects precisely because they could without any additional investment and at a young age when buying additional computers and software and yearly permission slips was impossible. On these platforms, they're explicitly denied the ability to do so.
For computers if you want to completely maintain your own, you're going to have to do the same. That includes breaking out the soldering iron sometimes.
You can't get around AES signatures with a soldering iron on modern equipment unless you have schematics and a SMD rework system. And such an immensely high bar should not be forcibly put in place.
But go ahead, continue being an apologist for abusive shifts in technology.
You don't see Apple suing Amazon over the Kindle Fire
Yet. If this verdict stands I could easily see Apple attacking every Android-using company in the mobile space.
or Nokia over the Lumia.
Apple has already lost to Nokia.
Of far more concern are how blindly the utility patents were upheld. An animated spring simulation, that doesn't even include code, is not worth giving Apple 20 years of protection.
I am not expected to be a professional mechanic in order to drive a car, and no one sane would suggest I should need to be. Rather, cars are manufactured in such a way that they are expected to be inherently reliable to operate.
But should you want to, you can maintain your own car. Efforts in the auto industry to make that impossible have been defeated legally, many times. Cars still fail, I am not forced to go to the dealership for maintenance, spare parts, or fuel.
I want the same liberties, at minimum, with my computers.
Indeed, they want TV 2.0. And Apple/Microsoft are more than happy to give it to them. The RIAA and MPAA are cheering them on.
Those of us who want/need to do software have a wide variety of CPUs and hardware (and software) to do it with. I don't know that it's more or less choice than ever before, but certainly we have lots of options.
We do now. But with the push towards more and more walled gardens I can see what we want falling by the wayside. It's already being attacked.
Obviously those people are professionals and can spend thousands on the hardware. Also, since they're professionals they'll either need to be licensed or work for a licensed corporation/institution.
I suspect that any significant regulatory forcing in this ecology would affect scientific and engineering innovation to such a degree that any nation implementing draconian technology restrictions would soon find itself at the bottom of the heap.
Well the US is already on its way there anyway, I don't see why more laws favoring large corporations would hurt.
That does not negate his more valid point, that if you could turn it off there would be little fuss. They don't because the walled garden bolsters their bottom line and gives them more power over both users and developers.
Yup. Exploiting the ignorance of others is the best way to take power for oneself. Just look at the modern US political process. Exact same thing, and just as much if not a bigger disaster.
you need look no further than the Obama administration, which leaked information about the Osama bin Laden raid to try and shore up support for his reelection.
Sources, please. You're an AC making a statement point blank.
Compared to what's out there, it's rather non-standard. It doesn't use uClibc or glibc, it's got a custom IPC method nothing else uses, a wonky filesystem layout, etc.
It's basically just got a custom UI instead of X11.
There are many, many more differences.
From the command-line, you wouldn't know the difference
Yes you would. I've had to wander around the Android filesystem and wonder where the hell they put things. But that's what happens when a platform is built from the start to be proprietary and uses the open parts solely as a means to an end.
Many people install Debian on their Android phones...
They do... in a chroot with its own libraries and filesystem, sharing only the kernel with Android.
Plus Android is a well known and understood platform that is easy to develop for, providing standard APIs for things like gyroscopes which raw Linux does not.
Please. Sensors like that are exported via/sys nodes. If accessing those scares you then you probably shouldn't be writing software for satellites. Android adds nothing except a layer of complexity.
I see people keep throwing the list at me, without looking at the tiers.
Simply sorting it for "software developers" is one thing, ignoring the membership level is another thing entirely. Microsoft is the only pure software firm in the Promoters group, who far and away pay the most for their involvement in UEFI.
this is clearly a joint effort across the industry to replace a two decade-old invention whose time has come
It is, but that does not say anything about the security mechanisms other than that the Contributors saw what was coming. I don't believe that they did nothing, but I suspect they were unable to change anything.
And as far as I know, the largest installed base of UEFI firmware—albeit an older version of the standard—is Apple, a company not precisely known for having a cordial relationship with Microsoft.
Which means nothing. Apple adopted EFI back when the first x86 Macs hit the shelves, and these days Microsoft and Apple seem to be more like foils for each other rather than actual competitors.
I know that it was built originally by Intel. They did it more than 10 years ago when Itanium came out. But the security infrastructure didn't exist until UEFI 2.31. That is what I suspect was designed by Microsoft. Your link doesn't say anything to that respect.
that should be a big hint about what UEFI is all about.
No, I can see the value in replacing the BIOS with something newer. EFI existed at all because Intel was silly NIH.
The problem is that the security architecture that was added to UEFI was designed by Microsoft and (obviously) favors them completely. Unfortunately, they're the only OS level software developer in the UEFI Promoters group so they pretty much get whatever they want and, I suspect, can overrule complaints from "Contributors."
A real fair solution would have had such keys administered by the UEFI Foundation and included the ability to auto-add keys from read-only media.
Do you have any evidence that arbitration actually biases it in their favor?
Virtually all of these agreements explicitly specify the company that will handle the arbitration and from the ones that I've seen have the company being challenged paying for it. Thus, it's in the arbitrator's interests to find for the defendant so that they keep coming back. They'll be dropped in a heartbeat if they find for the plaintiff.
if it actually is biased for the companies, they could be sued over that for violating the law.
And you'd have to prove that well enough to get the Federal Government to pursue the case.
I imagine it's already appearing on many more transitory agreements. Corporations now have an out, thanks to Scalia and his buddies, that protects them from the possibility that they'll ever get hit with a lawsuit big enough to actually threaten them. It puts each and every person that they fuck over out on their own and arbitration biases everything in their favor.
I await the inclusion of anti-class action language in virtually all individual-facing contracts. It's virtually guaranteed to happen as there's no downside whatsoever for the corporations.
Link to the NRC transcripts. And "many people" is not exactly a reliable source.
until the Japanese show the lid of #3 reactor an impartial observer cannot exclude the possibility of reactor itself blowing sky high.
If the reactor core had exploded there would be no way in hell for them to hide it. Impartial observers would exclude it by the fact that there were no radiation readings anywhere near intense enough to indicate that as a possibility. On the other hand, anti-nuke fearmongers would suggest this to be a possibility and prey on people's ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
Some responses to your points:
There is plenty of evidence already available for evolution, and addressing creationism is a fool's errand.
That's because your world view diverges utterly with reality. It actively rejects the mountains of archaeological evidence, the diversity of species we have, and the fact that bacteria grow resistant to our antibiotics damn near as we watch.
Only insofar as you don't actually wander down into scientific fields that completely break without the concept of evolution. Sadly, your worldview is not logical.
He's focusing on the US because that's where he lives. He also realizes that there's a destructive campaign to get Creationism, wrapped up under the false banner of "Intelligent Design," put into science classes. And I suspect he feels that he has a duty to speak out against such nonsense and to admonish people not to deliberately withhold knowledge from their children because it possibly contradicts their beliefs. And even if those other countries and religions reject evolution, it only means that they too are wrong.
He's right. You can measure evolution in a lab. Like plate tectonics, sometimes that lab is out in the world.
Correct. Literal creationism is used as an anti-scientific weapon by christian fundamentalists in the US.
There is zero evidence for creationism. There are mountains of evidence for evolution. The only side here that actually needs to defend themselves are the creationists.
Because as I foolishly attempt to here, arguing with a creationist as to why their deeply held beliefs contradict reality is often a frustrating, fruitless exercise.
No more than anyone else. Whereas the Religious Right has actual politicians in office pushing woman-hating laws.
While I have no love for such fairy tales, the First Amendment guarantees that won't happen.
Yeah but he's not nearly as powerful as the Religious Right is.
I'd argue that, far and away, deliberately keeping children ignorant by giving them tightly controlled, fundamentalist christian approved "educations" rife with nontheories like intelligent design is an actual threat to this nation.
Agreed. We should just cut the insurance companies completely and go single payer.
Indeed. And when it comes to health, when you have an emergency you can just die!
Except in a civilized world, we work to prevent people from dying needlessly. Even when idiots like Jenny McCarthy and the Anti-vaxxers push to allow communicable diseases to spread, and "christian scientists" convince their children that they really do want to die from their treatable ailment.
No, but they can certainly subsidize those terrible, cleaner options. Or we could go the other way and cut oil subsidies.
No, tyrrany is something else entirely. Go ahead though, let the Religious Right get real power. That will show you tyrrany.
Yes! Stand up for ignorance!
Yes, teach them silly things that contradict reality and to be willfully ignorant.
He's no tyrant. However, there are more than a few wannabe tyrants among the US Christian community who feel they are charged by God to be a tyrant over others. And there are many, particularly those that push Intelligent Design, that don't want people to be capable of arguing in their own defense or contradicting the weak arguments of those they support.
No, but if you're willing to reject evolution in favor of irrational beliefs then your ability as a scientist cannot help but be compromised.
Yes they are. What do you think platforms like iOS and Windows RT are centered around? Control centered in the hands of the platform vendor.
I only need to know how the whole car works if I want to tear the entire thing down and rebuild it. Otherwise I can focus on small parts at one time. But hey, we're wandering down into the area where the car analogy goes sour as computers generally provide their own tools (compiler, linker, etc.) and (until recently) didn't fight the user over running arbitrary software.
"Oh but you can just not buy those" - what about people who decide, after the fact, that they want to do X, Y, or Z but can't because the platform is crippled? I know for a fact that many, many people got more involved with programming and related projects precisely because they could without any additional investment and at a young age when buying additional computers and software and yearly permission slips was impossible. On these platforms, they're explicitly denied the ability to do so.
You can't get around AES signatures with a soldering iron on modern equipment unless you have schematics and a SMD rework system. And such an immensely high bar should not be forcibly put in place.
But go ahead, continue being an apologist for abusive shifts in technology.
Yet. If this verdict stands I could easily see Apple attacking every Android-using company in the mobile space.
Apple has already lost to Nokia.
Of far more concern are how blindly the utility patents were upheld. An animated spring simulation, that doesn't even include code, is not worth giving Apple 20 years of protection.
Do you vote the same way?
Or you just end up less free and no more secure.
insert invalid car analogy
Aha, so you are in fact a "if you aren't guilty of something what do you have to hide" type of person. Good to know.
But should you want to, you can maintain your own car. Efforts in the auto industry to make that impossible have been defeated legally, many times. Cars still fail, I am not forced to go to the dealership for maintenance, spare parts, or fuel.
I want the same liberties, at minimum, with my computers.
Indeed, they want TV 2.0. And Apple/Microsoft are more than happy to give it to them. The RIAA and MPAA are cheering them on.
We do now. But with the push towards more and more walled gardens I can see what we want falling by the wayside. It's already being attacked.
Obviously those people are professionals and can spend thousands on the hardware. Also, since they're professionals they'll either need to be licensed or work for a licensed corporation/institution.
Well the US is already on its way there anyway, I don't see why more laws favoring large corporations would hurt.
That does not negate his more valid point, that if you could turn it off there would be little fuss. They don't because the walled garden bolsters their bottom line and gives them more power over both users and developers.
Yup. Exploiting the ignorance of others is the best way to take power for oneself. Just look at the modern US political process. Exact same thing, and just as much if not a bigger disaster.
And even that's not real treason.
Sources, please. You're an AC making a statement point blank.
Compared to what's out there, it's rather non-standard. It doesn't use uClibc or glibc, it's got a custom IPC method nothing else uses, a wonky filesystem layout, etc.
There are many, many more differences.
Yes you would. I've had to wander around the Android filesystem and wonder where the hell they put things. But that's what happens when a platform is built from the start to be proprietary and uses the open parts solely as a means to an end.
They do... in a chroot with its own libraries and filesystem, sharing only the kernel with Android.
Please. Sensors like that are exported via /sys nodes. If accessing those scares you then you probably shouldn't be writing software for satellites. Android adds nothing except a layer of complexity.
I see people keep throwing the list at me, without looking at the tiers.
Simply sorting it for "software developers" is one thing, ignoring the membership level is another thing entirely. Microsoft is the only pure software firm in the Promoters group, who far and away pay the most for their involvement in UEFI.
It is, but that does not say anything about the security mechanisms other than that the Contributors saw what was coming. I don't believe that they did nothing, but I suspect they were unable to change anything.
Which means nothing. Apple adopted EFI back when the first x86 Macs hit the shelves, and these days Microsoft and Apple seem to be more like foils for each other rather than actual competitors.
I know that it was built originally by Intel. They did it more than 10 years ago when Itanium came out. But the security infrastructure didn't exist until UEFI 2.31. That is what I suspect was designed by Microsoft. Your link doesn't say anything to that respect.
No, I can see the value in replacing the BIOS with something newer. EFI existed at all because Intel was silly NIH.
Source of some sort?
UEFI is not the problem.
The problem is that the security architecture that was added to UEFI was designed by Microsoft and (obviously) favors them completely. Unfortunately, they're the only OS level software developer in the UEFI Promoters group so they pretty much get whatever they want and, I suspect, can overrule complaints from "Contributors."
A real fair solution would have had such keys administered by the UEFI Foundation and included the ability to auto-add keys from read-only media.
Really? What blob is that?
I know of the big blob for the GPU, which isn't in the kernel, but maybe you know something I don't.
Why'd you have to link to the AP article via that (dead) troll Breitbart?
Here are some other sources, thanks Google:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19377261
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577609810658082898.html
I'm sure the AP article can be found via a more... reputable site.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to don a biohazard suit and hide from all the Apple fanboys masturbating wildly to the news.
Virtually all of these agreements explicitly specify the company that will handle the arbitration and from the ones that I've seen have the company being challenged paying for it. Thus, it's in the arbitrator's interests to find for the defendant so that they keep coming back. They'll be dropped in a heartbeat if they find for the plaintiff.
And you'd have to prove that well enough to get the Federal Government to pursue the case.
And thanks to the Supreme Court, it actually has teeth. That's why every company out there is adding it to their consumer-facing agreements.
I imagine it's already appearing on many more transitory agreements. Corporations now have an out, thanks to Scalia and his buddies, that protects them from the possibility that they'll ever get hit with a lawsuit big enough to actually threaten them. It puts each and every person that they fuck over out on their own and arbitration biases everything in their favor.
I await the inclusion of anti-class action language in virtually all individual-facing contracts. It's virtually guaranteed to happen as there's no downside whatsoever for the corporations.
That's not the core exploding. But go ahead, leave offtopic things behind.
Link to the NRC transcripts. And "many people" is not exactly a reliable source.
If the reactor core had exploded there would be no way in hell for them to hide it. Impartial observers would exclude it by the fact that there were no radiation readings anywhere near intense enough to indicate that as a possibility. On the other hand, anti-nuke fearmongers would suggest this to be a possibility and prey on people's ignorance.