Show me anywhere that evolution (that is, where one species changes into another, one of many definitions) has ever been readily observable.
Evolution has been readily observed in microorganisms, which is quite easy to see because they reproduce so quickly. Speciation has also been observed in at least one type of bird, a pheasant, I think, though one gets into arguments about the exact definition of the term "species", because the new species can still breed with the old one, though it almost never does. Is a polar bear a different species from a grizzly?
Natural selection does not produce this effect.
It did with polar bears and grizzlies.
Out of curiosity, are you a Bible thumper or a scientist? I can't imagine a scientist making such bold and absolute pronouncements about science.
You think Brutus killed Ceaser 'cause he didn't like him (just to bring fiction in for variety)?
Um, Brutus was one of Caesar's assassins (I'll use that term since I don't believe it is possible to "murder" a dictator; you can only commit an act of "public service" against one) IRL, and Brutus was part of the conspiracy because he didn't like Caesar, in part because Brutus' ancestors had fought to rid Rome of its last dynasty of kings, and here's Caesar, another king.
(RIPA) that came into force in 2000, which makes it a criminal act to refuse to decrypt files on a computer
If such a thing is really constitutional, then it should also be constitutional to demand that anyone accused of murder turn over the body or imprision them forever in contempt of court. You'd just better pray that you actually did commit the murder, or you may never get out.
Whether or not there was a holocaust is wholly dependent on the "number" of Jews killed. That's the whole point.
I think you need to weight in 'quality' as well as 'quantity'. The mere existence of concentration camps with mass-killing chambers demonstrates that the Nazis implemented and utilized a system specifically to carry out genocide, and their extreme rhetoric demonstrates the specific target of the genocide. Now, if they had only managed to kill six Jews with this machine, it would be a pretty paltry genocide. But, IMHO, the systematic killing of as few as 10,000 Jews would definitely be a genocide. Are any of the holocaust deniers claiming lower numbers than this? It's interesting that Ahmadinejad is at the center of the Nazism of the 21st century.
To produce decimal output from a 'double' value, I have written a function that printf()s it to 16 significant digits and if it has a decimal and the last two digits are "01" or "99", I reprint it with 15 digits and use that string. This gives strings that are ususally 16 digits in precision to avoid unnecessary truncation when converting the numbers back into doubles, and also avoids ugly eye sores when printing out common short decimal numbers.
Unfortunately, I'm a pragmatist rather than a pedantic theoretician.
Terrorists are people who specifically target civilians for mass death.
If the Israelis were really terrorists, the number of Lebanese dead would be in
the millions. Terrorists don't wear uniforms when they are fighting an
blend in with and hide behind civilians and launch attacks from civilian
areas from behind human shields. All of these tactics are banned by the
Geneva conventions, BTW, though no Slashdotters ever seem to criticize
them for it. They locate their bases and weapons caches in churches,
hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings.
Legitimate militaries dress and fight in uniforms. They go to great
pains to avoid civilian casualties, but they are unavoidable because of
the nature of war and especially the (illegal) tactics of terrorists.
Terrorists strap on suicide vests and blow up crowded restaurants, busses,
and airliners. They fire unguided rockets into civilian centers hoping
to kill as many civilians as possible. Hamas and Hezbollah have done and
continue to do all of these things. However, when a terrorist organization
is either the de jure government (Hamas) or the de facto government within
an area (Hezbollah), their actions are acts of war, and one can hardly
be surprised when they receive what they are begging for. Of course, they always go crying to mommy when they get spanked for the wars that they start.
Some militant groups can claim to be insurgents if they only attack
military targets. I don't know of any such groups off hand. The people
blowing up 50 Iraqi civilians a day are not "Freedom fighters" (unless
you interpret the term literally). How many crowded restaurants have
Hamas and Hezbollah specifically targeted?
Really, I have a hard time understanding the love affair that liberal-minded people have for terrorists and dictators and the seething hatred they have for first-world democracies. Terrorists and dictators really don't espouse the liberal ideals as far as I can tell.
the more it costs and the quicker the US goes bankrupt,
I don't think the US is in any danger of going bankrupt, at least not because of Iraq.
thanks to a hubristic leader who flat-out refuses to withdraw troops.
Bad things happen after a US withdrawal. The Vietnamese communists slaughtered millions of civilians after the US withdrew from there. (It's funny how the social activists who pressured the US into not committing to the fight and then withdrawing don't talk much about that.) Iraq would need to be re-invaded five years down the road if the US handed it over to Iran and the jihadists.
they're trying to use the same playbook they used against the soviets way back when.
My memory may not be perfect since I was young back then, but I don't recall the US invading the Soviet Union.
Your argument falls down due to the fact that we also support terrorist organisations and governments.
It seems like you are arguing the definition of the term "terrorist". Many people will argue that the only terrorists in the world are the western democracies, but I use a more classic definition of the term.
So as far as the people are concered they would rather have a terrorist organisation with popular support in control as opposed to one installed by a foreign power. Not all that unreasonable wouldn't you say?
Well, good for them for choosing their representatives, but if they think that a terrorist organization will bring them peace, they are being unreasonable. Fortunately, they inevitably suffer greatly for making their poor choice. Really, it's almost comical. They will throw much greater support behind terrorist organizations in the future because they have brought such great misery in the past. This pattern doesn't seem entirely sane to me.
One problem: Europeans usually aren't the targets because Europeans usually don't fuck with other countries.
I'm sure a lot of Jihadists would disagree with you. They have attacked London and Madrid recently. Strangely, they haven't attacked American soil. Looks like Europe is in much greater danger, whether or not they "fuck" with other countries (which they do).
I assume your reffering to the current conflict between lebanon and isreal. That doesn't really make sense considering the united states is providing arms to israel as we speak. The invasion has only been possible due to US complicity.
And Hezbollah is only able to fight because of Iranian, Syrian, and Russian complicity.
is the fact that we won't permit any state to democratically elect a regime that disagrees with privatisation of the local industry
I think that the beefs you are referring to is that the West takes a dim view of a government that is a terrorist organization (Hamas) or one that is in bed with a terrorist organization (Lebanon). Strangely, being democratically elected does not make a terrorist organization no longer a terrorist organization. The people who keep thumping "But they were elected!" fail to consider this. Being elected merely indicates that the voters rather deserve the inevitable, one-and-only possible outcome of their choice: War.
Calling it a "war" was one of the worst things the governments could have done because people automatically associate war with soldiers.
People called the "Cold War" a war, and there were no battles or soldiers. I would call it WW3. The nature of war is evolving with the global reach of the world powers. At least this war, WW4 (The western democracies vs. Radical Islamists), has soldiers and battles.
We lose 15 or 20 planes in the free-for-all before it gets boring for them, and obviously that can't happen. So we're screwed.
I don't think the Jihadists would ever get tired of blowing up airplanes if it were easy. The A380 will be a very tempting target—kill 800 people at a time in a brand-new very expensive aircraft that is a symbol of European technology.
I pity them, as I would pity anyone who is suffering from a developmental disorder.
Come now, they're not 'tardos; they're schizophrenics. (Well, some of them are both.) Schizophrenia: "Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances." [reference.com] You should instead pity them as nut bars.
The religious side wants to hobble science because it might contradict their faith.
The religous side needs to cut a hasty retreat back to the Planck interval after the Big Bang and hang a "God did it!" sign on it. Any other course of action will result in faith repeatedly having its ass handed to it by science.
The secular side often discards or ignores certain avenues of science because it might validate something the religious side believes and give credence to other beliefs that may be more irrational. Both sides are censoring science in the name of truth.
This is utterly false. Science and scientists seek to find the rational truth. There would be no holding back a scientist who could produce any rational proof about any metaphysical issue. He would quickly run out of shelf space as he racked up awards and boatloads of cash. He might even get a few babes!
The Flying Spahetti Monster isn't about evidence. It's about faith. But you don't get anything by taking FSMism down, all you do is look petty. So can we please move on from being as mature as 2nd graders and just accept that everyone has different beliefs?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft used IE as damage control against Netscape.
But don't forget your SPF-500,000 suntan lotion.
I think they'd be called "Warrior Princesses".
There are many specific examples in Wikipedia under Speciation.
Evolution has been readily observed in microorganisms, which is quite easy to see because they reproduce so quickly. Speciation has also been observed in at least one type of bird, a pheasant, I think, though one gets into arguments about the exact definition of the term "species", because the new species can still breed with the old one, though it almost never does. Is a polar bear a different species from a grizzly?
It did with polar bears and grizzlies.
Out of curiosity, are you a Bible thumper or a scientist? I can't imagine a scientist making such bold and absolute pronouncements about science.
Um, Brutus was one of Caesar's assassins (I'll use that term since I don't believe it is possible to "murder" a dictator; you can only commit an act of "public service" against one) IRL, and Brutus was part of the conspiracy because he didn't like Caesar, in part because Brutus' ancestors had fought to rid Rome of its last dynasty of kings, and here's Caesar, another king.
If such a thing is really constitutional, then it should also be constitutional to demand that anyone accused of murder turn over the body or imprision them forever in contempt of court. You'd just better pray that you actually did commit the murder, or you may never get out.
I think you need to weight in 'quality' as well as 'quantity'. The mere existence of concentration camps with mass-killing chambers demonstrates that the Nazis implemented and utilized a system specifically to carry out genocide, and their extreme rhetoric demonstrates the specific target of the genocide. Now, if they had only managed to kill six Jews with this machine, it would be a pretty paltry genocide. But, IMHO, the systematic killing of as few as 10,000 Jews would definitely be a genocide. Are any of the holocaust deniers claiming lower numbers than this? It's interesting that Ahmadinejad is at the center of the Nazism of the 21st century.
Similarly, Khrushchev didn't say "We will bury you"; he said "We will outlive you". Not that he was correct in either case.
To produce decimal output from a 'double' value, I have written a function that printf()s it to 16 significant digits and if it has a decimal and the last two digits are "01" or "99", I reprint it with 15 digits and use that string. This gives strings that are ususally 16 digits in precision to avoid unnecessary truncation when converting the numbers back into doubles, and also avoids ugly eye sores when printing out common short decimal numbers.
Unfortunately, I'm a pragmatist rather than a pedantic theoretician. Terrorists are people who specifically target civilians for mass death. If the Israelis were really terrorists, the number of Lebanese dead would be in the millions. Terrorists don't wear uniforms when they are fighting an blend in with and hide behind civilians and launch attacks from civilian areas from behind human shields. All of these tactics are banned by the Geneva conventions, BTW, though no Slashdotters ever seem to criticize them for it. They locate their bases and weapons caches in churches, hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings.
Legitimate militaries dress and fight in uniforms. They go to great pains to avoid civilian casualties, but they are unavoidable because of the nature of war and especially the (illegal) tactics of terrorists. Terrorists strap on suicide vests and blow up crowded restaurants, busses, and airliners. They fire unguided rockets into civilian centers hoping to kill as many civilians as possible. Hamas and Hezbollah have done and continue to do all of these things. However, when a terrorist organization is either the de jure government (Hamas) or the de facto government within an area (Hezbollah), their actions are acts of war, and one can hardly be surprised when they receive what they are begging for. Of course, they always go crying to mommy when they get spanked for the wars that they start.
Some militant groups can claim to be insurgents if they only attack military targets. I don't know of any such groups off hand. The people blowing up 50 Iraqi civilians a day are not "Freedom fighters" (unless you interpret the term literally). How many crowded restaurants have Hamas and Hezbollah specifically targeted?
Really, I have a hard time understanding the love affair that liberal-minded people have for terrorists and dictators and the seething hatred they have for first-world democracies. Terrorists and dictators really don't espouse the liberal ideals as far as I can tell.
I don't think the US is in any danger of going bankrupt, at least not because of Iraq.
Bad things happen after a US withdrawal. The Vietnamese communists slaughtered millions of civilians after the US withdrew from there. (It's funny how the social activists who pressured the US into not committing to the fight and then withdrawing don't talk much about that.) Iraq would need to be re-invaded five years down the road if the US handed it over to Iran and the jihadists.
My memory may not be perfect since I was young back then, but I don't recall the US invading the Soviet Union.
It seems like you are arguing the definition of the term "terrorist". Many people will argue that the only terrorists in the world are the western democracies, but I use a more classic definition of the term.
Well, good for them for choosing their representatives, but if they think that a terrorist organization will bring them peace, they are being unreasonable. Fortunately, they inevitably suffer greatly for making their poor choice. Really, it's almost comical. They will throw much greater support behind terrorist organizations in the future because they have brought such great misery in the past. This pattern doesn't seem entirely sane to me.
I'm sure a lot of Jihadists would disagree with you. They have attacked London and Madrid recently. Strangely, they haven't attacked American soil. Looks like Europe is in much greater danger, whether or not they "fuck" with other countries (which they do).
And Hezbollah is only able to fight because of Iranian, Syrian, and Russian complicity.
I think that the beefs you are referring to is that the West takes a dim view of a government that is a terrorist organization (Hamas) or one that is in bed with a terrorist organization (Lebanon). Strangely, being democratically elected does not make a terrorist organization no longer a terrorist organization. The people who keep thumping "But they were elected!" fail to consider this. Being elected merely indicates that the voters rather deserve the inevitable, one-and-only possible outcome of their choice: War.
People called the "Cold War" a war, and there were no battles or soldiers. I would call it WW3. The nature of war is evolving with the global reach of the world powers. At least this war, WW4 (The western democracies vs. Radical Islamists), has soldiers and battles.
I don't think the Jihadists would ever get tired of blowing up airplanes if it were easy. The A380 will be a very tempting target—kill 800 people at a time in a brand-new very expensive aircraft that is a symbol of European technology.
The July 7th London bombers weren't very sophistocated, either. Nor were the Columbine shooters.
Well, you might give them a few days to deliver the details. Of course, then, I suppose you can just say the evidence was all planted when they do.
Come now, they're not 'tardos; they're schizophrenics. (Well, some of them are both.) Schizophrenia: "Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances." [reference.com] You should instead pity them as nut bars.
The religous side needs to cut a hasty retreat back to the Planck interval after the Big Bang and hang a "God did it!" sign on it. Any other course of action will result in faith repeatedly having its ass handed to it by science.
This is utterly false. Science and scientists seek to find the rational truth. There would be no holding back a scientist who could produce any rational proof about any metaphysical issue. He would quickly run out of shelf space as he racked up awards and boatloads of cash. He might even get a few babes!
The Flying Spahetti Monster isn't about evidence. It's about faith. But you don't get anything by taking FSMism down, all you do is look petty. So can we please move on from being as mature as 2nd graders and just accept that everyone has different beliefs?
It usually takes three or four.
Embrace, extend, extinquish. Microsoft switching to Linux would totally be in line with their method of gaining and maintaining marketshare.