I couldn't agree more fully with your opening paragraphs stating what science is. Congratulations, you are one of the very few people who actually know what science is and what it is not. However, you don't seem to know what irreducible complexity means.
Irreducible complexity is applied to natural selection, not any physical process. For instance, without gears a watch is completely useless. Without hands, a watch is completely useless. Without the face, a watch is pretty much useless. Now, think about a watch as an eye or some other ridiculously complex organ (or molecular machine, such as ATP pumps - slightly more difficult to imagine). The individual parts of the whole are useless, in and of themselves. However, it is only when put together in a very specific and total way that any of the parts have value. There's no reason to have one without the other.
Irreducible complexity is simply the claim that evolution does not allow for the development of organs or molecular machines that are all or nothing. In evolution / natural selection, everything must be reducible in nature. It is intuitive for arms and fins and wings to behave under evolution / natural selection, but less so for parts of organs / molecular machines that are co-dependent and have no individual function.
It's a difficult topic to explain, hopefully that made a bit of sense.
This, my friend, is purely semantics. When I mutate a gene in yeast, I get a mutant strain back. The yeast are now mutants. I make mutations in genes that give mutant genes which give mutant yeast. So yes, there are mutated species just as there are mutated genes.
The mechanism by which they have come to vary is evolution, according to science.
The first point was semantics, this is just wrong. Genes don't varying by evolution. Genes varying by a number of mechanisms, spontaneous mutations, recombination, DNA strand breaks, etc etc etc. Evolution is the propagation of species with favorable mutations. Now we get into micro- and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is the favorable selection of mutated genes within a species. Macro-evolution is the speciation based on many genetic mutations and an incompatibility for inter-mating between the new organism and the previous organism. Macro-evolution / Speciation is where the debate lies.
Or, if it is "Intelligent Design," fine, but that is not science, it is magic by definition.
Finally, there is no magic by definition. ID has a number of different manifestations, but none claim magic. ID claims that there is a designer, a master engineer. Think about this:
You have a box with 100 round magnets all separated on the inside. You then shake the box and look inside. You see that the magnets have come together in the shape of a house complete with miniature chairs, tables, and beds on the inside. Do you assume that you just happened to luckily shake the bag up (even if you did this 10,000+ times) or do you assume that after you shook it up that someone snuck in and arranged everything all nice and neatly? Since science is, by definition, limited to materialism there is no way to postulate a creator and so the ONLY answer is that these species came about by chance. However, as fully functioning human beings we are not limited to strict materialism.
This will upset a lot of people, but some questions are out of the realm of science. Science is the proper tool for many questions and many problems, however there are a number of tools that science is not the answer for. An old boss of mine used to have a saying, "When you get a new hammer, everything looks like a nail." Now, molecular biology and genetics and biochemistry and all the tools we use to say that evolution is true are relatively new scientific fields. As such, we are pounding everything in sight and making all sorts of conclusions based on a very very very limited data set. We (scientists, I am one) are still making sense out of lots of things and it is way too premature to puff up our chests and claim that we have all the answers.
Sorry this got so long, at first I was only going to reply to your post but I think a lot of people forget about the limitations of science. Science itself is not "The Holy Grail" of knowledge. Science is a great tool and can tell us much about the world in which we live. Science, however, is not especially great at looking into the past because we have to base our understanding on a lot of assumptions. For example, has radioactive decay been constant for the last 5,000 years? How about the last 5 million years? We don't know this and so all assumptions based on these measurements are just that, assumptions. Be careful where you put your faith:)
Re:RNA is thought to be able to do this.
on
The Los Alamos Bug
·
· Score: 1
You're kind of right (good job, for a pre-med;) ).
The ribosome is a complex of both protein and RNA subunits. However, the interesting thing is that it's actually the RNA that has the catalytic activity. You were also right in that the RNA doesn't change into protein, but is the template upon which the ribosome connects different amino acids into a nascent protein molecule.
An interesting side note is that much of the cells ability to make proteins happens in an RNA dependent way. tRNAs are used to bring the correct amino acid into the ribosome. The tRNAs are processed by another enzyme (besides the ribosome) that is conserved from bacteria to humans and has a catalytically active RNA subunit, RNase P. In addition to that, the RNA subunits of the ribosome are modified and processed by enzymes with essential RNAs, both snoRNAs and RNase MRP (which is the sister enzyme to RNase P, they're nearly identical). It's really quite amazing. We are now finding out more and more about the functions of RNA in a cell which include translation, RNA modification, transcriptional and translational regulation, histone composition, endonucleolytic function, and who knows what else.
Hopefully some of that made sense, I have to go check a couple northern blots...
And did you read the comment about how it will work better than iTunes? That amused me. I couldn't even figure out what was going on with the media play via the winsite images, but how about the control panel/system panel. Here's a comparison:
Non-volatile protein? What does that mean? Does it not trigger the immune system or is it not prone to explosion? Seriously, I'm a biochemist PhD student (I work with nucleic acids mostly...but still) and I've never heard that term.
How, exactly, do you propose that I identify this perfect chromosome from among the population in my (absolutely enormous) sample?
It's really simple actually. It's the same way we sequence genomes. Shotgun style. You have a whole bunch of samples and they all degrade in different ways. As long as most of your breaks are overlapping you can piece everything back together.
----X----X----
--X---X----X--
In this simple diagram you can see how I wouldpast together the overlapping regions.
There are 6 billion people in the world and only 300 million in the US -- this means that 95% of the smartest people in the world aren't born in the US.
Wow, I'd love to see the study that proves that the 'smartest people' are born completely randomly and intelligence has nothing to do with parents or schooling or environment. Smart people aren't just born, they're reared and trained to be intelligent and creative by parents and community. Are there exceptions to this theory? Yup, but they're the exception and not the rule.
Well, I go to church so hopefully I can answer some of your questions, at least from an apostolic Christian church viewpoint since there, unfortunately, isn't a universal Christian church.
Like after someone shoots an abortion doctor in the name of "unborn children", or a gang beats a gay guy to death: do Christian preachers immediately denounce the perpetrators as perverted sinners, "taking the lord's name in vain" or somesuch?
Matthew 5:43-44 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; So Christians are taught (from the Bible and from any pulpit that preaches from the Bible) that you are to love they enemy. All the people who laugh at creationism, pray for them and love them. All those who have and perform abortions, love and pray for them. All those who live homosexual lifestyles, pray for them and love them. This is terribly important, we should pray and love for them because God is the righteous Judge.
Do Christian priests teach their congregations that the killing in war is evil, that killers go to hell?
Yes, as a matter of fact. And the military has the option for convicted Christians to serve as conscientious (sp?) objectors. Most serve in medical or other support areas and do not carry a weapon. This is one area that many Christians don't agree on, but there is a lot of scripture pointing to non-violence (love thy enemy, not shoot them. As well as the turn the other cheek when struck).
Finally, I've never heard a preacher teach specifically on torture, but that logically follows from the previous two areas and if it came up it would definitely be addressed as against God's will. Hopefully that helps clear things up? The big problem with modern Christianity (there are many) is that many many people call themselves Christians but don't 'walk the walk'.
I truly believe that if we left Iraq tomorrow, the insurgency would collapse in a short time because they'd have no real reason to exist.
I truly believe that you are short sighted. They would have no reason to exist? How about taking power in Iraq over a barely established government. Have you read anything about the Iraq security force? While there is on going training, they are certainly not up to the task of defending themselves alone yet.
The true terrorists would have no freedom fighter status in which to cloak themselves, and the nationalist insurgents would likely turn against the terrorists.
Except they would attack the democratic government that has been placed, using the same logic and only slightly altered rhetoric.
Related? Maybe. Just in case you understand, I'll give you a biological example (I'm a biochemist, sue me). If you look at steady state RNA levels you can't tell if you're seeing an increase in transcription vs a decrease in RNA turn over. Understand?
Here's another example, if you had Car A that people drove to 100,000 miles and you had Car B that people drove 200,000 miles and they all drove the same amount each year and sold equal numbers of both cars, how many more of A would you have on the road than B?
Basically, you have to look at turnover as well as sales in order to understand how many users you have. Or you could just measure how many users there are through something like a survey or using hits to an unbiased website.
This cartoon reminded me of back 10 years ago when I thought I was cool on AOL. It was great to jump into a chat room and offer people free software (most didn't even know what warez was) and when they jumped at the opportunity tell them, "All you have to do is push the Alt key + F4 and you'll start the transfer".
Ah...those were the good ol' days.
Re:Not exactly a Treatise
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And your statement microscopic examination in critical reading should be applied a bit more sparingly is almost exactly what is wrong with science, that combined with Harpaz's commentary on why scientists are so conservative (in their science, not in the politics). Another interesting tidbit is his commentary on popular science (both books and news media) that take advantage of 'effectively lying by implication'.
Not that I'm saying I agree with everything Harpaz says...but I don't think he should immediately be written off as a crackpot. Quite a few of his points seem valid.
Anyone who mentions dark energy or matter automatically gets put on my "quack" list. Not to mention people who submit them to slashdot.
This isn't someone who submitted an article to/. (although it eventually got here), these scientists submitted their article to Nature. Maybe you've heard of it? Peer reviewed journal, one of the most sought after journals for publication by scientsits the world over...This isn't 'just a slashdot article'. I'm sure you would have argued that there was no need to 'invent' protons and electrons or subatomic particles in general before they were 'discovered'. You need to get your mind out of the rut that it's in! This, I would argue, is one of the main problems with modern science...people fall in love with their theories and their understanding and lash out (like you did) against contrary theories. You did the math, eh? Let's see the math then and not just your useless rant.
Re:We know quarks, but not this...
on
Bang But No Splash
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This doesn't seem that counter-intuitive though...High viscosity liquids have a greater molecular attraction to one another than low viscosity liquids. They would therefore show a resistance to spreading out on the glass. This would give them more solid-like properties and therefore would be more like a ball hitting a wall, where energy is transfered in a rebound. The lower viscosity liquids would not be held tightly together and would therefore spread out easier.
To test this it seems like you could perform the experiment at higher temperatures. The hypothesis would be that the higher temps overcome the molecular interactions and decrease the viscosity.
I just looked at the pictures and am a biochemist so take this analysis, like everything else on/., with a grain of salt. But this seems to make sense to me.
I have a friend who uses Flickr but I personally use Pbase.com which I absolutely love and can't believe it wasn't mentioned here. From the standpoint of accessing photos, it can't be beat. $23/year for 200MB of storage space. You upload individual images or Zip files and Pbase makes thumbnails and other smaller sizes, as well as allows you access to the original image. In the last two months they have transitioned to new servers/hosting so the service hasn't been great...but they comp'd those two months for subscribers. They also allow you direct linking to images.
. But of course, you can't be truly scientific if you believe in a god
Just because you limit your mind to materialism doesn't mean that I have to as well. Have you ever thought or imagined in four-dimensions? Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or isn't possible. The unobservable can tell us a lot about ourself and the world we live in even if the world that we live in can't tell us much about the unobservable.
You don't have to believe in god(s) to value friends/family/other things in life.
I hope I didn't imply this...I just meant that people in the National Academy of Science tend to be very job oriented. In general, exeptions definitely exist, people who strive to be the top of anything tend to neglect other parts of their life. It's more of a time/energy/priority thing than a belief/religion issue.
No truly scientific person can believe in a god or gods because such gods are generally defined to be undetectable.
This is inane. Just because a person is a scientist doesn't mean they can never have a non-scientific thought. Science is limited to materialism, "the empirical procedure of exploration and verification is the only known reliable method of discovering truth." (Smith, 1952) Ok, true...but when a scientist goes home from work he is certainly not limited to this artificial constraint. Even when I'm at work, biochemistry lab, I know that there is a Truth that exceeds what I'm currently studying. Will I be publishing it in a scientific journal? Nope;) But just like love, trust, and beauty...some things are not limited by 'exploration and verification'.
A completely undetectable supreme being is exactly equivalent to no supreme being at all
This is contrary to what we call science. No proof of existence is NOT equivalent to proof of non-existence.
insisting belief in that which cannot be demonstrated is completely and totally contrary to what we call Science.
Correct, which just shows the limitations of science...nothing else.
I am a graduate student working in a biochemistry research lab (getting my PhD) attached to a medical school/hospital (University of Michigan). I know plenty of med students who have great scientific minds and a great grasp on scientific literature. I will give you that they are usually not the best researchers, though.
you're probably not one of those oppressive types - after all that type of religious person doesn't read/. for instance, and cannot use a computer, but by even allowing yourself to be associated with them by saying you're a christian, you're lending validity to their oppression.
I am 100% a Christian. I don't know what connotation you bring to the table when I say 'Christian' but a true Christian is not oppresive in the slightest. Sit yourself down and read the New Testament and you'll see that for the last 2000 years this has been the case. For example, Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return. Christians are instructed to not only love their family and friends but also their enemies; and not just love them, but to do good onto them and lend, expecting no reciprocity. Now, I will I fear you are associating the actions of non-Christians who call themselves Christians onto Christianity. These people are like vegetarians who eat meat or democrats who voted for Bush, is that person really a vegetarian or a democrat? I would say no. The Bible says no as well, as the Bible says that you will know of a person's faith by the fruits of his labor. I'd love to introduce you to some real Christians. They are not perfect people, but you can tell them apart from these oppressive types. And just as a side note, I know plenty of Christians who can use a computer quite well, from programmers, to sys admins, to repair guys.
So religious believers have strength in numbers the world over - what does that mean?? The number of people believing in something has no bearing on it's validity either way.
And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that numbers meant truth. I was mearly trying to argue that other scientifically intelligent individuals have faith. I don't know how you define rationality or madness, but you might mean living by faith in something unknown. Have you ever loved or trusted someone? Doesn't that make you do things that would be viewed as irrational to someone who didn't understand that love or trust? Take the simple case of the prisoners dilemna (just 'cause I'm reading a book on that subject right now), if you trusted that person completely you would never dissent...but to someone who didn't understand love/trust it would seem ridiculous.
While researchers views might be that depressing, the beliefs of medical doctors is quite encouraging. Take a look at this survey.
72% believe that religion provides a reliable and necessary guide to life. 58%attend church once a month. 58% believe the Bible was inspired by God.
So while your article implies intelligent and influential scientists don't believe in God, a number I personally hope to decrease, the study of medical doctors shows a strong number of people with faith. I would say that medical doctors have 'scientific minds', which would dispute your second to last line.
On a related note, I don't think that it's fair to use the National Academy of Science as the survey pool. People who have made it into the NAS have devoted at least 90% of their waking energy to the scientific fields are not consistent with most kinds of faith anyways. As a Christian, there are things more important to me than scientific success. I have had dinner with many biochemists in the academy and family/friends/life/etc comes a distant second to their career. So I would suggest that these results are completely consistent with their life style. I would like to see a survey of PhD scientists or professors at a variety of universities, those results would be much more of a mixed bag.
I also hope that you don't take this as confirmation that education and faith are not compatible. I know plenty of PhD students who are practicing Christians.
Haha...yeah, I completely agree. I won't attribute my photographic growth soley to having a digital SLR but when I look back at my old shots *shudder*, though they were fun. For example:
'nough said. As long as I'm posting, I have to give a plug for PBase. It's a great site for uploading and sharing photos. I have been a member for three years now and I have gotten great feedback and the list of features just keeps growing. Try them out and enjoy!
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't agree more fully with your opening paragraphs stating what science is. Congratulations, you are one of the very few people who actually know what science is and what it is not. However, you don't seem to know what irreducible complexity means.
Irreducible complexity is applied to natural selection, not any physical process. For instance, without gears a watch is completely useless. Without hands, a watch is completely useless. Without the face, a watch is pretty much useless. Now, think about a watch as an eye or some other ridiculously complex organ (or molecular machine, such as ATP pumps - slightly more difficult to imagine). The individual parts of the whole are useless, in and of themselves. However, it is only when put together in a very specific and total way that any of the parts have value. There's no reason to have one without the other.
Irreducible complexity is simply the claim that evolution does not allow for the development of organs or molecular machines that are all or nothing. In evolution / natural selection, everything must be reducible in nature. It is intuitive for arms and fins and wings to behave under evolution / natural selection, but less so for parts of organs / molecular machines that are co-dependent and have no individual function.
It's a difficult topic to explain, hopefully that made a bit of sense.
There are no mutated species, just mutated genes.
:)
This, my friend, is purely semantics. When I mutate a gene in yeast, I get a mutant strain back. The yeast are now mutants. I make mutations in genes that give mutant genes which give mutant yeast. So yes, there are mutated species just as there are mutated genes.
The mechanism by which they have come to vary is evolution, according to science.
The first point was semantics, this is just wrong. Genes don't varying by evolution. Genes varying by a number of mechanisms, spontaneous mutations, recombination, DNA strand breaks, etc etc etc. Evolution is the propagation of species with favorable mutations. Now we get into micro- and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is the favorable selection of mutated genes within a species. Macro-evolution is the speciation based on many genetic mutations and an incompatibility for inter-mating between the new organism and the previous organism. Macro-evolution / Speciation is where the debate lies.
Or, if it is "Intelligent Design," fine, but that is not science, it is magic by definition.
Finally, there is no magic by definition. ID has a number of different manifestations, but none claim magic. ID claims that there is a designer, a master engineer. Think about this:
You have a box with 100 round magnets all separated on the inside. You then shake the box and look inside. You see that the magnets have come together in the shape of a house complete with miniature chairs, tables, and beds on the inside. Do you assume that you just happened to luckily shake the bag up (even if you did this 10,000+ times) or do you assume that after you shook it up that someone snuck in and arranged everything all nice and neatly?
Since science is, by definition, limited to materialism there is no way to postulate a creator and so the ONLY answer is that these species came about by chance. However, as fully functioning human beings we are not limited to strict materialism.
This will upset a lot of people, but some questions are out of the realm of science. Science is the proper tool for many questions and many problems, however there are a number of tools that science is not the answer for. An old boss of mine used to have a saying, "When you get a new hammer, everything looks like a nail." Now, molecular biology and genetics and biochemistry and all the tools we use to say that evolution is true are relatively new scientific fields. As such, we are pounding everything in sight and making all sorts of conclusions based on a very very very limited data set. We (scientists, I am one) are still making sense out of lots of things and it is way too premature to puff up our chests and claim that we have all the answers.
Sorry this got so long, at first I was only going to reply to your post but I think a lot of people forget about the limitations of science. Science itself is not "The Holy Grail" of knowledge. Science is a great tool and can tell us much about the world in which we live. Science, however, is not especially great at looking into the past because we have to base our understanding on a lot of assumptions. For example, has radioactive decay been constant for the last 5,000 years? How about the last 5 million years? We don't know this and so all assumptions based on these measurements are just that, assumptions. Be careful where you put your faith
You're kind of right (good job, for a pre-med ;) ).
The ribosome is a complex of both protein and RNA subunits. However, the interesting thing is that it's actually the RNA that has the catalytic activity. You were also right in that the RNA doesn't change into protein, but is the template upon which the ribosome connects different amino acids into a nascent protein molecule.
An interesting side note is that much of the cells ability to make proteins happens in an RNA dependent way. tRNAs are used to bring the correct amino acid into the ribosome. The tRNAs are processed by another enzyme (besides the ribosome) that is conserved from bacteria to humans and has a catalytically active RNA subunit, RNase P. In addition to that, the RNA subunits of the ribosome are modified and processed by enzymes with essential RNAs, both snoRNAs and RNase MRP (which is the sister enzyme to RNase P, they're nearly identical). It's really quite amazing. We are now finding out more and more about the functions of RNA in a cell which include translation, RNA modification, transcriptional and translational regulation, histone composition, endonucleolytic function, and who knows what else.
Hopefully some of that made sense, I have to go check a couple northern blots...
And did you read the comment about how it will work better than iTunes? That amused me. I couldn't even figure out what was going on with the media play via the winsite images, but how about the control panel/system panel. Here's a comparison:
Windows' Vista Control Panel OS X's System Panel
Which would you prefer to use?
Non-volatile protein? What does that mean? Does it not trigger the immune system or is it not prone to explosion? Seriously, I'm a biochemist PhD student (I work with nucleic acids mostly...but still) and I've never heard that term.
How, exactly, do you propose that I identify this perfect chromosome from among the population in my (absolutely enormous) sample?
It's really simple actually. It's the same way we sequence genomes. Shotgun style. You have a whole bunch of samples and they all degrade in different ways. As long as most of your breaks are overlapping you can piece everything back together.
----X----X----
--X---X----X--
In this simple diagram you can see how I wouldpast together the overlapping regions.
There are 6 billion people in the world and only 300 million in the US -- this means that 95% of the smartest people in the world aren't born in the US.
Wow, I'd love to see the study that proves that the 'smartest people' are born completely randomly and intelligence has nothing to do with parents or schooling or environment. Smart people aren't just born, they're reared and trained to be intelligent and creative by parents and community. Are there exceptions to this theory? Yup, but they're the exception and not the rule.
This made me curious exactly how ugly the early versions of windows were...check out:
w indowshistory_screenshots.html
http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2001/10/a251001
Wow, that's some kind of ugly.
Well, I go to church so hopefully I can answer some of your questions, at least from an apostolic Christian church viewpoint since there, unfortunately, isn't a universal Christian church.
Like after someone shoots an abortion doctor in the name of "unborn children", or a gang beats a gay guy to death: do Christian preachers immediately denounce the perpetrators as perverted sinners, "taking the lord's name in vain" or somesuch?
Matthew 5:43-44 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; So Christians are taught (from the Bible and from any pulpit that preaches from the Bible) that you are to love they enemy. All the people who laugh at creationism, pray for them and love them. All those who have and perform abortions, love and pray for them. All those who live homosexual lifestyles, pray for them and love them. This is terribly important, we should pray and love for them because God is the righteous Judge.
Do Christian priests teach their congregations that the killing in war is evil, that killers go to hell?
Yes, as a matter of fact. And the military has the option for convicted Christians to serve as conscientious (sp?) objectors. Most serve in medical or other support areas and do not carry a weapon. This is one area that many Christians don't agree on, but there is a lot of scripture pointing to non-violence (love thy enemy, not shoot them. As well as the turn the other cheek when struck).
Finally, I've never heard a preacher teach specifically on torture, but that logically follows from the previous two areas and if it came up it would definitely be addressed as against God's will. Hopefully that helps clear things up? The big problem with modern Christianity (there are many) is that many many people call themselves Christians but don't 'walk the walk'.
Seriously, someone should tell this guy about the iMac. It's like Apple did all the work for him.
I truly believe that if we left Iraq tomorrow, the insurgency would collapse in a short time because they'd have no real reason to exist.
I truly believe that you are short sighted. They would have no reason to exist? How about taking power in Iraq over a barely established government. Have you read anything about the Iraq security force? While there is on going training, they are certainly not up to the task of defending themselves alone yet.
The true terrorists would have no freedom fighter status in which to cloak themselves, and the nationalist insurgents would likely turn against the terrorists.
Except they would attack the democratic government that has been placed, using the same logic and only slightly altered rhetoric.
Related? Maybe. Just in case you understand, I'll give you a biological example (I'm a biochemist, sue me). If you look at steady state RNA levels you can't tell if you're seeing an increase in transcription vs a decrease in RNA turn over. Understand? Here's another example, if you had Car A that people drove to 100,000 miles and you had Car B that people drove 200,000 miles and they all drove the same amount each year and sold equal numbers of both cars, how many more of A would you have on the road than B? Basically, you have to look at turnover as well as sales in order to understand how many users you have. Or you could just measure how many users there are through something like a survey or using hits to an unbiased website.
This cartoon reminded me of back 10 years ago when I thought I was cool on AOL. It was great to jump into a chat room and offer people free software (most didn't even know what warez was) and when they jumped at the opportunity tell them, "All you have to do is push the Alt key + F4 and you'll start the transfer".
Ah...those were the good ol' days.
And your statement microscopic examination in critical reading should be applied a bit more sparingly is almost exactly what is wrong with science, that combined with Harpaz's commentary on why scientists are so conservative (in their science, not in the politics). Another interesting tidbit is his commentary on popular science (both books and news media) that take advantage of 'effectively lying by implication'.
Additionally, here are some papers by a Y Harpaz found on pubmed (which he doesn't like, apparently):
---Direct observation of better hydration at the N terminus of an alpha-helix with glycine rather than alanine as the N-cap residue.
---Many of the immunoglobulin superfamily domains in cell adhesion molecules and surface receptors belong to a new structural set which is close to that containing variable domains.
---Volume changes on protein folding.
Not that I'm saying I agree with everything Harpaz says...but I don't think he should immediately be written off as a crackpot. Quite a few of his points seem valid.
Anyone who mentions dark energy or matter automatically gets put on my "quack" list. Not to mention people who submit them to slashdot.
/. (although it eventually got here), these scientists submitted their article to Nature. Maybe you've heard of it? Peer reviewed journal, one of the most sought after journals for publication by scientsits the world over...This isn't 'just a slashdot article'. I'm sure you would have argued that there was no need to 'invent' protons and electrons or subatomic particles in general before they were 'discovered'. You need to get your mind out of the rut that it's in! This, I would argue, is one of the main problems with modern science...people fall in love with their theories and their understanding and lash out (like you did) against contrary theories. You did the math, eh? Let's see the math then and not just your useless rant.
This isn't someone who submitted an article to
This doesn't seem that counter-intuitive though...High viscosity liquids have a greater molecular attraction to one another than low viscosity liquids. They would therefore show a resistance to spreading out on the glass. This would give them more solid-like properties and therefore would be more like a ball hitting a wall, where energy is transfered in a rebound. The lower viscosity liquids would not be held tightly together and would therefore spread out easier.
/., with a grain of salt. But this seems to make sense to me.
To test this it seems like you could perform the experiment at higher temperatures. The hypothesis would be that the higher temps overcome the molecular interactions and decrease the viscosity.
I just looked at the pictures and am a biochemist so take this analysis, like everything else on
---
Daniel Coughlin's Photographs
What games? What games are worth it? Let's see some links!
I have a friend who uses Flickr but I personally use Pbase.com which I absolutely love and can't believe it wasn't mentioned here. From the standpoint of accessing photos, it can't be beat. $23/year for 200MB of storage space. You upload individual images or Zip files and Pbase makes thumbnails and other smaller sizes, as well as allows you access to the original image. In the last two months they have transitioned to new servers/hosting so the service hasn't been great...but they comp'd those two months for subscribers. They also allow you direct linking to images.
There are some amazing photographers on Pbase as well.
Here's my collection of photos.
. But of course, you can't be truly scientific if you believe in a god
Just because you limit your mind to materialism doesn't mean that I have to as well. Have you ever thought or imagined in four-dimensions? Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or isn't possible. The unobservable can tell us a lot about ourself and the world we live in even if the world that we live in can't tell us much about the unobservable.
You don't have to believe in god(s) to value friends/family/other things in life.
I hope I didn't imply this...I just meant that people in the National Academy of Science tend to be very job oriented. In general, exeptions definitely exist, people who strive to be the top of anything tend to neglect other parts of their life. It's more of a time/energy/priority thing than a belief/religion issue.
No truly scientific person can believe in a god or gods because such gods are generally defined to be undetectable.
;) But just like love, trust, and beauty...some things are not limited by 'exploration and verification'.
This is inane. Just because a person is a scientist doesn't mean they can never have a non-scientific thought. Science is limited to materialism, "the empirical procedure of exploration and verification is the only known reliable method of discovering truth." (Smith, 1952) Ok, true...but when a scientist goes home from work he is certainly not limited to this artificial constraint. Even when I'm at work, biochemistry lab, I know that there is a Truth that exceeds what I'm currently studying. Will I be publishing it in a scientific journal? Nope
A completely undetectable supreme being is exactly equivalent to no supreme being at all
This is contrary to what we call science. No proof of existence is NOT equivalent to proof of non-existence.
insisting belief in that which cannot be demonstrated is completely and totally contrary to what we call Science.
Correct, which just shows the limitations of science...nothing else.
I am a graduate student working in a biochemistry research lab (getting my PhD) attached to a medical school/hospital (University of Michigan). I know plenty of med students who have great scientific minds and a great grasp on scientific literature. I will give you that they are usually not the best researchers, though.
Now I'm certain you're not a christian
/. for instance, and cannot use a computer, but by even allowing yourself to be associated with them by saying you're a christian, you're lending validity to their oppression.
I'd appreciate it if you let me define myself.
you're probably not one of those oppressive types - after all that type of religious person doesn't read
I am 100% a Christian. I don't know what connotation you bring to the table when I say 'Christian' but a true Christian is not oppresive in the slightest. Sit yourself down and read the New Testament and you'll see that for the last 2000 years this has been the case. For example, Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return. Christians are instructed to not only love their family and friends but also their enemies; and not just love them, but to do good onto them and lend, expecting no reciprocity. Now, I will I fear you are associating the actions of non-Christians who call themselves Christians onto Christianity. These people are like vegetarians who eat meat or democrats who voted for Bush, is that person really a vegetarian or a democrat? I would say no. The Bible says no as well, as the Bible says that you will know of a person's faith by the fruits of his labor. I'd love to introduce you to some real Christians. They are not perfect people, but you can tell them apart from these oppressive types. And just as a side note, I know plenty of Christians who can use a computer quite well, from programmers, to sys admins, to repair guys.
So religious believers have strength in numbers the world over - what does that mean?? The number of people believing in something has no bearing on it's validity either way.
And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that numbers meant truth. I was mearly trying to argue that other scientifically intelligent individuals have faith. I don't know how you define rationality or madness, but you might mean living by faith in something unknown. Have you ever loved or trusted someone? Doesn't that make you do things that would be viewed as irrational to someone who didn't understand that love or trust? Take the simple case of the prisoners dilemna (just 'cause I'm reading a book on that subject right now), if you trusted that person completely you would never dissent...but to someone who didn't understand love/trust it would seem ridiculous.
While researchers views might be that depressing, the beliefs of medical doctors is quite encouraging. Take a look at this survey.
72% believe that religion provides a reliable and necessary guide to life.
58% attend church once a month.
58% believe the Bible was inspired by God.
So while your article implies intelligent and influential scientists don't believe in God, a number I personally hope to decrease, the study of medical doctors shows a strong number of people with faith. I would say that medical doctors have 'scientific minds', which would dispute your second to last line.
On a related note, I don't think that it's fair to use the National Academy of Science as the survey pool. People who have made it into the NAS have devoted at least 90% of their waking energy to the scientific fields are not consistent with most kinds of faith anyways. As a Christian, there are things more important to me than scientific success. I have had dinner with many biochemists in the academy and family/friends/life/etc comes a distant second to their career. So I would suggest that these results are completely consistent with their life style. I would like to see a survey of PhD scientists or professors at a variety of universities, those results would be much more of a mixed bag.
I also hope that you don't take this as confirmation that education and faith are not compatible. I know plenty of PhD students who are practicing Christians.
~Dan
Haha...yeah, I completely agree. I won't attribute my photographic growth soley to having a digital SLR but when I look back at my old shots *shudder*, though they were fun. For example:
old
new
'nough said. As long as I'm posting, I have to give a plug for PBase. It's a great site for uploading and sharing photos. I have been a member for three years now and I have gotten great feedback and the list of features just keeps growing. Try them out and enjoy!
~Dan