Most were looking for a required arts elective I think, after already having taken the "technical writing" english course (I took a more than the required minimums and took and SF English course as one of them). That said, I don't believe they wanted to be told what to think, they simply thought that ethics of science would be more interesting and more relevant to their careers. After all, it is a big issue with cloning, stem cells, and genetic engineering of mice with human ears and brain cells.
Epistomology was certainly part of it but also the nature of experiments, the tools created for experiments, logic, scientific method, and other areas were covered, Kuhn, et al. It has been a while since I took the course and unfortunately, I don't have cause to use it every day, thus it fades with time.
In university I took a Philosphy of Science course from Eduardo Wilner and it was really well done. The class wasn't getting it, most thought they'd signed up for an ethics course, "should we do genetic engineering or not?" sort of thing, and instead got a course about "what we can know, how we know we can know it," and so on. At one point Eduardo challenged us to prove that astrology ISN'T science; he said otherwise he wouldn't continue. It was harder than I thought it would be, yet simpler at the same time and requires the use of logic which most average people lack. Don't knock it until you try it.
Astrology hasn't lasted until today, indeed may be more popular than ever, just because of supermarket tabloids and it isn't just science that has tried to get rid of it: Christian religion doesn't like it either. Why does it have such staying power? What does it offer that most religions do not? The ability to predict the future, which turns out to be it's weak point but you have to know how to use that against it.
By the eye, what do you mean? A device to detect light? Or a device with an iris, cornea and retina? Light-sensitive cells exist in many simple forms and have evolved to more and more efficient versions of vision. There exist forms of life with simple and complex vision today. See this article about a PBS show on the subject. "The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch."
Here is more at this press release about the evolution of the human eye. '"It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhythms of activity," explains Wittbrodt. "Quite possibly, the human eye has originated from light-sensitive cells in the brain. Only later in evolution would such brain cells have relocated into an eye and gained the potential to confer vision."'
And lots more links here. so please let's stop using the eye as an example. What next, bacterial flagella? That one is explained too. Next question?
Is it all figured out? No, but in science when we don't know it all we say that we are still looking, we don't say things we don't know must be explained by supernatural means, which is what ID does. It cops out with, "it must be something intelligent that designed it" instead of trying to understand the real reasons. Science may never find all the answers, it doesn't promise that it will but at least it doesn't have the answers BEFORE it has the QUESTIONS.
Just to be clear, you're apologizing to the wrong guy. I didn't post what you replied to above. I was just replying to yours but have no connection with the other guy.
Was the stinky container returnable or reusable?
on
Ask The Mythbusters
·
· Score: 1
In the myth of the stinky, unsaleable car in which a person had died, you let a couple of pigs rot in a Chevrolet Corvette for a couple of months and then succeeded in selling the car, even though it still stank and had no seats, etc. What happened to the shipping container you used to house it? Was it a rental? If so, were you able to return it? If not, were you able to reuse it yourself or was it so stinky that it went to the scrapyard?
It doesn't form part of his evolutionary work per se but he _did_ write about this. In his autobiography, he mentions things which are included in an excerpt. He began as an orthodox christian but was agnostic by the end. I still don't feel he had an agenda about it and can find no evidence of such a thing but only he really knew for sure.
Re:I agree! Throw the Sony execs in Jail!
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 1
One was available which could be downloaded itself, rather than downloading the downloader which leaves the holes open. The first day the story broke, the advice was to run the uninstaller. Now they say the uninstaller is worse than the problem... ug. Will someone please throw these guys in jail, or to the lions or something?
I agree! Throw the Sony execs in Jail!
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why reserve jail for just script kiddies?
Luckily my tastes in music do not run parallel to the crap Sony pushes these days. I ran the rootkit remover and was pleased to see there was nothing to uninstall. But can I trust it? Hmm....
Actually, they did let some vacuum in once
on
Space Lichens
·
· Score: 1
Remember when the cargo ship crashed into Mir, causing partial depressurization they even considered fixing? Michael Foale certainly remembers. Any mold still growing in the Spektr module would have been exposed to vacuum and maybe even some UV if the ruptures were large enough.
Additionally, the orbit is being raise for the purpose of the December docking with the next Progress ship. With a lower orbit, the docking is made more complicated.
Since I submitted the article, another report has said this morning's emergency is not a problem, and they may attempt another orbit raising burn today. There is lots of time to make a correction and the orbit is OK for now.
Astronomy texts as recent as 40 years old still mention the Marias on the Moon to be ancient seas (though some scoff at the idea that they currently hold water, how preposterous); how the dark areas on Mars are the result of vegetation, and yet made humour about how people used to think there was intelligent life there; green stars, especially the green companion of Antares when there are no green stars; etc. Interestingly they DO mention planet X since they were still searching for it while most recent astronomy books had given up on the search for planet X. Now it seems we've found planet X after all, and even bigger than we thought after we discovered the IR telescope had the wrong target.
Going back further, astronomy books thought galaxies were nebulae, just puffs of gas and dust within our galaxy. Just like we originally thought that ours was the only solar system, it was not that long ago that we thought our galaxy was the only one. Soon perhaps the idea of just one universe will sound silly to us...
The James Webb telescope is not even on the drawing board yet and will not work in visual wavelengths so any spare HST hardware would only be useful if it were designed for IR. What space telescope are you going to launch by 2008 when the HST will fail? The JWST isn't going up until around 2015 (originally expected to launch in 2011 but now very unlikely). Do we want to go 3-7 years without a good space telescope? I know of no other plans for a telescope to go up using those HST parts. By the time you design one, build it and launch it I'm not sure it will have been worth it. Expensive or not, fixing the HST with astronauts and the space shuttle is the fastest (and probably the only real) solution to keeping a space telescope working continuously in the near future.
Safety-wise, the capsule has many advantages to an orbiter. The shuttle is not at the top so parts of the craft may hit it. Getting the Soyuz capsule away from its booster is fairly simple. It can land ballistically which means aborts don't need to worry about landing strips. The new Crew Vehicle being worked on is another capsule on top of the rocket, like they should have continued using after Apollo, instead of the shuttle programme which has been flawed from the start.
Slashdot Mirror
They're just doing backups for us, that's all...
Ein Penny für Ihre Gedanken...
Sci Fi is not owned by Fox, it is owned by NBC.
Most were looking for a required arts elective I think, after already having taken the "technical writing" english course (I took a more than the required minimums and took and SF English course as one of them). That said, I don't believe they wanted to be told what to think, they simply thought that ethics of science would be more interesting and more relevant to their careers. After all, it is a big issue with cloning, stem cells, and genetic engineering of mice with human ears and brain cells.
Epistomology was certainly part of it but also the nature of experiments, the tools created for experiments, logic, scientific method, and other areas were covered, Kuhn, et al. It has been a while since I took the course and unfortunately, I don't have cause to use it every day, thus it fades with time.
In university I took a Philosphy of Science course from Eduardo Wilner and it was really well done. The class wasn't getting it, most thought they'd signed up for an ethics course, "should we do genetic engineering or not?" sort of thing, and instead got a course about "what we can know, how we know we can know it," and so on. At one point Eduardo challenged us to prove that astrology ISN'T science; he said otherwise he wouldn't continue. It was harder than I thought it would be, yet simpler at the same time and requires the use of logic which most average people lack. Don't knock it until you try it.
Astrology hasn't lasted until today, indeed may be more popular than ever, just because of supermarket tabloids and it isn't just science that has tried to get rid of it: Christian religion doesn't like it either. Why does it have such staying power? What does it offer that most religions do not? The ability to predict the future, which turns out to be it's weak point but you have to know how to use that against it.
By the eye, what do you mean? A device to detect light? Or a device with an iris, cornea and retina? Light-sensitive cells exist in many simple forms and have evolved to more and more efficient versions of vision. There exist forms of life with simple and complex vision today. See this article about a PBS show on the subject. "The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch."
Here is more at this press release about the evolution of the human eye. '"It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhythms of activity," explains Wittbrodt. "Quite possibly, the human eye has originated from light-sensitive cells in the brain. Only later in evolution would such brain cells have relocated into an eye and gained the potential to confer vision."'
And lots more links here. so please let's stop using the eye as an example. What next, bacterial flagella? That one is explained too. Next question?
Is it all figured out? No, but in science when we don't know it all we say that we are still looking, we don't say things we don't know must be explained by supernatural means, which is what ID does. It cops out with, "it must be something intelligent that designed it" instead of trying to understand the real reasons. Science may never find all the answers, it doesn't promise that it will but at least it doesn't have the answers BEFORE it has the QUESTIONS.
Set up your lawn chairs and enjoy the show, folks...
Argh, sorry for the dupe... only two hours later.
Anyone else think that shadow looks like a TIE Fighter? No ion engines on that probe, right? Just checking...
Just to be clear, you're apologizing to the wrong guy. I didn't post what you replied to above. I was just replying to yours but have no connection with the other guy.
In the myth of the stinky, unsaleable car in which a person had died, you let a couple of pigs rot in a Chevrolet Corvette for a couple of months and then succeeded in selling the car, even though it still stank and had no seats, etc. What happened to the shipping container you used to house it? Was it a rental? If so, were you able to return it? If not, were you able to reuse it yourself or was it so stinky that it went to the scrapyard?
It doesn't form part of his evolutionary work per se but he _did_ write about this. In his autobiography, he mentions things which are included in an excerpt. He began as an orthodox christian but was agnostic by the end. I still don't feel he had an agenda about it and can find no evidence of such a thing but only he really knew for sure.
One was available which could be downloaded itself, rather than downloading the downloader which leaves the holes open. The first day the story broke, the advice was to run the uninstaller. Now they say the uninstaller is worse than the problem... ug. Will someone please throw these guys in jail, or to the lions or something?
Why reserve jail for just script kiddies?
Luckily my tastes in music do not run parallel to the crap Sony pushes these days. I ran the rootkit remover and was pleased to see there was nothing to uninstall. But can I trust it? Hmm....
Remember when the cargo ship crashed into Mir, causing partial depressurization they even considered fixing? Michael Foale certainly remembers. Any mold still growing in the Spektr module would have been exposed to vacuum and maybe even some UV if the ruptures were large enough.
Additionally, the orbit is being raise for the purpose of the December docking with the next Progress ship. With a lower orbit, the docking is made more complicated.
Both are true but the original submission was based upon an article ten hours older than the new one. It takes a while for submissions to show up.
Since I submitted the article, another report has said this morning's emergency is not a problem, and they may attempt another orbit raising burn today. There is lots of time to make a correction and the orbit is OK for now.
Astronomy texts as recent as 40 years old still mention the Marias on the Moon to be ancient seas (though some scoff at the idea that they currently hold water, how preposterous); how the dark areas on Mars are the result of vegetation, and yet made humour about how people used to think there was intelligent life there; green stars, especially the green companion of Antares when there are no green stars; etc. Interestingly they DO mention planet X since they were still searching for it while most recent astronomy books had given up on the search for planet X. Now it seems we've found planet X after all, and even bigger than we thought after we discovered the IR telescope had the wrong target.
Going back further, astronomy books thought galaxies were nebulae, just puffs of gas and dust within our galaxy. Just like we originally thought that ours was the only solar system, it was not that long ago that we thought our galaxy was the only one. Soon perhaps the idea of just one universe will sound silly to us...
Yes, they're making a new Smurfs movie: New Smurfs Movie Announced -- From the article, assuming it is successful, two sequels are also planned.
Entered the United States lately from a country not on the A-list? It's just your fingerprint, why are you worried?
The James Webb telescope is not even on the drawing board yet and will not work in visual wavelengths so any spare HST hardware would only be useful if it were designed for IR. What space telescope are you going to launch by 2008 when the HST will fail? The JWST isn't going up until around 2015 (originally expected to launch in 2011 but now very unlikely). Do we want to go 3-7 years without a good space telescope? I know of no other plans for a telescope to go up using those HST parts. By the time you design one, build it and launch it I'm not sure it will have been worth it. Expensive or not, fixing the HST with astronauts and the space shuttle is the fastest (and probably the only real) solution to keeping a space telescope working continuously in the near future.
Safety-wise, the capsule has many advantages to an orbiter. The shuttle is not at the top so parts of the craft may hit it. Getting the Soyuz capsule away from its booster is fairly simple. It can land ballistically which means aborts don't need to worry about landing strips. The new Crew Vehicle being worked on is another capsule on top of the rocket, like they should have continued using after Apollo, instead of the shuttle programme which has been flawed from the start.
BBC coverage of the year 2000 Concorde crash most likely caused by rubber tire fragments (from tire blown by part which fell off another aircraft) rupturing the fuel tank.