On a mission to refute ignorant crack-pottery, in the hopes that onlookers won't be bamboozled by bullshit, even if it is just an elaborate troll. But gutless? Please, bitch. You're the one dodging. Answer the Conservation of Energy question or shut the fuck up forever. May your rampant auto-fellation result in asphyxia.
No, I'm "not even" wrong, I'm experimentally verifiably right.
And you on the other hand are experimentally verifiably wrong.
It's sad that you think Newton endorses your viewpoint, because you don't understand that he's explaining a simple problem that the only force that the Laws of Motion define is the reactive force, so in a system with no initial movement, how is movement then imparted. The answer is that there must be some other force outside the Laws of Motion, and there is. Gravity, for instance. That's why Newton didn't spend a lot of time on the issue. You're just confused and ignorant enough that you misinterpret him horribly.
As Wolfgang Pauli would say "Who is this idiot quoting me in support of his crackpot theory? Hey kid: Take a real physics class, you might learn something."
Biologists don't. They consider them a relative of dinosaurs, but they are different for valid biological and phylogenic reasons. Dinosaurs and crocodilians are separate branches of archosaurs. Look it up.
given when they evolved as a definition of "dinosaur"- during the mid Triassic, much earlier than the Cretaceous era.
That's a pretty bad definition. Lots of things, including even more distant reptile relatives of dinosaurs such as Icthyosaurs, evolved during that era, and that's assuming you intended to restrict your definition to other reptiles and not, say, fish.
Thus they are an example of a non-avian dinosaur species that survived the Cretaceous -Tertiary extinction event.
Even granting that what you meant is simply that a creature that evolved in the Triassic survived to modern times... There's tremendous fossil evidence for the existence of crocodilians from that time through to current times. There's no evidence of "dragons" or any reptile that could be like them.
Take a 15 watt CFL with 0.5 PF which burns 30 volt-amps. Take a 30 watt traditional incandescent bulb. They both burn the same amount of coal in the factory.
No, they don't. The whole point of Power Factor is that the real energy consumed by the circuit in Watts is different than the apparent power in the circuit in volt-amps. That energy difference is not "burned", it's returned to the system. The power plant needs to supply more current, but the only extra energy that it needs to produce is for the resistive losses due to the extra current.
Since you don't seem to remember anything from your triple-EE degree beyond DC circuits and resistive loads, could you at least read the Wiki page on power factor and educate yourself before you continue spouting this ignorant FUD?!
Heat pumps don't work in colder environments which, coincidentally, are also, usually, the places with the longest winters and shortest summers.
It doesn't really matter. Resistive heaters are inefficient heaters. Just about anything else is better. They're great for certain uses, like portable space heaters, but a very poor choice for heating your home.
I'm not going to blame anyone living in a cold environment for not rushing out to buy CFLs when worrying about the overall efficiency of their heating solution (their heater + insulation) is vastly more important. But the argument that CFLs won't buy you anything because the wasted power of an incandescent is equal to the power that would be used heating the house is incorrect.
t doesn't matter. The point is that a 15 watt CFL is actually using 30 volt-amps, so it's only saving half as much energy as a 60 volt-amp traditional bulb
I'm a triple-degreed electrical engineer. Not an idiot.
You're a triple-degreed EE who doesn't know how power factor works, and yes that does make you an idiot. Idiots can get degrees, who would have thought?! If you didn't have the degrees, then you'd just be excusably ignorant (but in either case a jackass for talking like you weren't ignorant).
Cluephone: PF of 0.5 does not mean the CFL actually consumes twice as much energy. It consumes a somewhat larger amount of energy because of extra resistive losses in transmitting the extra current. The CFL itself consumes the same 15 W, and the power company needs to generate the same 15 W. They also need to cover the extra resistive losses, but that's not anywhere close to equal to the real power consumed by the bulb, and doesn't put a CFL anywhere near any kind of incandescent.
Careful now. If you start using arguments like that, I might ask you for evidence that "missing links" ever existed. We know they did, right?
We predicted missing links, and absolutely yes we've found missing links, for an absolutely astounding number of cases in the last ~150 years. Even as the term "missing link" changes to mean the link between the last "missing link" subsequently found, and whatever it was supposed to be linking. Again and again. The gaps in the fossil record are ever-shrinking, and paint an absolutely clear picture.
So sure you can ask do we "know" that the 1/(Nth) yet undiscovered "missing link" down to the point where you're asking for the the specimen between a grandfather and grandchild, and of course we don't "know". But given the ridiculous amount of verified predictive power of the current evolutionary model, you would only ask that question as though it were meaningful due to obstinance or ignorance.
Comparing the "missing links" for which there are significant fossil evidence suggesting to a freaking dragon, which has zero evidence for hundreds of millions of years, is ludicrous. Surely you can comprehend the concept of "degrees of evidence" even for things that aren't "proven" (because science doesn't do that). "Missing links" -- enourmous evidence. Modern day dragons? No evidence whatsoever.
Find me any evidence that non-avian dinosaurs survived 50 million years ago, and while you'll still only be at a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the evidence for "missing links", you might at least have a basis for comparison. All the other ancient "living fossils" other posters mentioned have a huge and continuous fossil record. Your dragon? Zero. Even trying to compare this to the "missing links" is hilariously blind.
This is precisely this type of condescending, we-are-am-smater-than-you attitude that turns people off on science and scientists. Maybe physicists should concentrate on the foundational issues (e.g., the true nature of motion) first before they go chasing after gravity waves. You folks are not as smart as you think you are.
But of course you are as smart as you think, which is smarter than every other physicist alive or dead (while so pointedly stating that you aren't one), so this is the kind of condescending attitude we need. LOL.
Did you know that over 90% of physicists believe that matter can move in spacetime even though it is known that spacetime is frozen from the infinite past to the infinite future?
Spacetime isn't frozen. It's warped by mass and constantly expanding. "Did you know" indeed.:)
Did you know that most physicists believe that moving bodies remain in motion for no reason at all, as if by magic?
They also believe that bodies at rest remain at rest for no reason at all, as if by magic! This is no more mysterious.
Well, magic, and that and for it to do otherwise in either case would require an expenditure of energy and a transfer of momentum.
I'll admit, I bit and read the blog, and it was highly amusing. It was very humorous reading about how you agree with Aristotle* that there must be a "force" to make an object move at a constant velocity, and the object should instantly stop as soon as that "force" is removed. And therefore there must be "energy" around us to make this happen. As if "force" and "energy" are vague, mysterious entities, like a sci-fi writer referring to a "mysterious force" or "a being of pure energy".
But actually, force is a change in momentum. If there was a net force acting on a moving object, it would accelerate (or decelerate). If there's no force on an object, it can't accelerate or decelerate, i.e. its velocity must be constant. If the speed of the object changes, then there was a transfer of energy. Energy, by the way, is the principle Newton was looking for. It's the transfer and storage of energy in various forms that explains how objects can begin moving, and continue moving. Conservation of energy was formulated not too long after Newton's conservation of momentum and fills in what Newton couldn't.
The problem with upending physics is that you have to understand it first. This has been the case for all the great physicists, and it's the case today. And you don't understand causality. An object changing its speed, going from motion to no motion, is the effect, and for this to happen there must be a measurable cause, specifically a transfer of momentum and energy. So, please, Conservation of Energy demands an answer: in the absence of any outside force, why would an object moving at a constant velocity stop?
* Great thinker but lousy physicist -- thought his ideas were so good they didn't need testing**! Must be why you're drawn to him.;)
** Maybe if he had, he would have realized that he was close but off on his idea of an object's natural state in the absence of interference being one of rest, when it's really one of constancy, and we would have Aristotle's Laws of Motion.
Which is even farther from dinosaurs than the example of crocodilians given by the other poster.
Seriously, are you trying to show that there are creatures who date back hundreds of millions of years? So what? I know it's possible for a species to have survived that long, it's just that so far as we know dinosaurs aren't among them. Excepting birds of course.
Or is it just that this ancient reptile is from NZ?:)
Archosaurs includes dinosaurs and crocodilians, but crocodilians are not dinosaurs. Trilobites aren't even close to dinosaurs.:P
But be that as it may, I'm still not seeing your point. Crocodiles are alive today, so maybe some non-avian dinosaurs are too, but we just haven't found them yet? What? Throw me a bone here.
I agree that we should be funding the tracking of NEOs more, but remember that the money for these two projects isn't coming from the same pool. One is a NASA sub-project, the other is an international project conducted by a variety of observatories and funded by a variety of organizations. So it's not as simple as "do this instead of that".
Judging by his links to thunderbolts.info, what I think he means is "I'm a crazy idiot who doesn't understand anything, and think this is a sound foundation to question the work of scientists everywhere. Solar wind is caused by an electric field! What do you mean it's a plasma with equal amounts of positive and negative charges, and a field can't move opposite charges in the same direction? No really, I have no idea what you're talking about because I never too physics in school! But my theories are right anyway!"
What about them? So there are ancient creatures that survive in some form today. Sharks are another example. None of those are dinosaurs, and also unlike dinosaurs there is ample evidence of their survival into modern times.
I had in mind a creature which was slightly less ferocious, and significantly less noticeable, which is probably why it wasn't hunted to extinction.
But that is still a fire-breathing dinosaur in modern times that explains middle-ages dragon myths. A combination of something that there is no evidence of having existed in the last hundred million years, and something that there is no evidence of having existed ever. Hell, as long as this is still strictly in your mind, why not add in that it can turn invisible at will, and that when it dies its body turns to ash? At least then you have a nice tidy answer for why there's no evidence for this.
It wouldn't be the first time a "long-extinct" creature had been discovered to be not quite so long-extinct as we'd thought.
Have any of these been ones that allegedly terrorized the populace only a few hundred years ago? I'd think something as conspicuous as a dragon would be easier to find evidence for. I thought most of the creatures that were thought to be extinct but weren't tended to have survived somewhere that people didn't frequent, rather than say mainland England.
Anyway, it would be hypothetically interesting, but a hypothetical it remains.
we're not allowed to entertain notions of dinosaurs coexisting with humans in the time-line of biological evolution.
You can entertain any notion you want. Don't expect anyone to consider your ideas anything more than entertainment until there's some evidence.
As far as the evolutionary time line, it's not a matter of "you're not allowed" so much as "there's a gap of hundreds of millions of years between the youngest known (non-bird) dinosaur fossil and the earliest known primate fossil." Call me when you find a dinosaur fossil from 100k years ago. Until then, I think I'll refrain from subscribing to your newsletter.
Dead on. The only reason the buffalo was still around in huge quantities was because native americans didn't have rifles, or horses for that matter.
Nonsense. The only reason there aren't still huge quantities of bison is because of a deliberate campaign to drive them extinct in order to deprive the natives of food. Before they had rifles and horses the natives were still able to kill large numbers of bison, but because they were only killing to meet their needs, this was no threat to the bison population at large. This didn't change even after they got guns and horses, so there's no basis for your statement whatsoever.
They were just people. Some were good. Some were bad. Every one of them left an environmental mark on the world around them.
That's basically true. Every human settlement has an environmental impact. That doesn't mean the scales are the same, or that there is never any thought as to controlling that impact. Some peoples were quite conscious about sustainable living. It was hardly a universal trait of indigenous peoples, but not non-existent. You say some were good, some were bad, but your example with native americans seems to imply that you think they are all basically equal, and that European industrial-era lack of concern for balance with the environment is a universal human constant and the only difference was the means. I'm with you on not idealizing the cultures that we destroyed, especially not out of guilt, but I think you picked a terrible example because it shows the opposite of what you intended it to.
Yet on the other hand, actual wild animals often completely fail to achieve balance in nature. Quite often "balance" is simply that the animal will die off when it destroys too much of its environment. A herd of African elephants will completely destroy a stand of trees, and then simply move on. Wolves will happily eat the very last deer and rabbit in the forest, and then the wolves die due to lack of food. Rats -- geeze, forget about it.
Humans are, as far as we know, unique among animals in that we can/will actually consider whether our lifestyle is sustainable, and if it isn't, change it. Arguments about whether exploiting the environment is "natural" is just an excuse not to exercise that ability. Arguing that even those people we idealize as being in touch with nature never did or never would exercise this ability is simply wrong. Many did. You don't have to idealize them to recognize this fact. It's not about them being "much better than us". They are just people. So are we. We have the same ability to consider our environment. Use it, don't disclaim it.
They are images or a probability distribution in abstract space... So I am deeply suspicious of the picture, because there is no physical object of that shape to image.
Of course there is! There's the electron, whose location is a probability function that looks like the picture in the article. So if you're trying to take an image of the atom, and since obviously you aren't going to take a picture of something using a single sample (photon, or in this case emitted electron), you're going to "see" the electron cloud as an average that matches the probability. It's not supposed to be a picture of the electron at one "instant" in time. That would be difficult, and not very informative.
Electrons are not clouds or points, they are things we don't really understand but describe by means of quantum mechanics.
Kinda. An electron isn't the same as an electron orbital, and not all electrons are bound in orbitals. We know they are particles, we know their mass and their charge and can both predict and track their movements through electric fields... That's the very basis for the electron microscope used to take this image! It's the electrons themselves that the microscope is detecting!
Yeah if instead of volume it was knowing what you're talking about. You're the one who is holding on to any thread you can of an outdated unscientific dogma. Only that unlike creationists, you are old hands at wielding scientific nonsense to further your ends. I actually understand the math behind intelligence testing. I understand the statistical validity of using the g factor as a predictor of things we commonly call "intelligence". I also know the experts can't completely compensate for culture, and don't try to. A biological basis isn't a biological certainty. Fundamentalists like you transform that into absolute unchangeable statements of biology. But preparation makes a demonstrable difference, the averages and rankings vary by country, and over time periods that are significant culturally but not genetically.
But, of course, your prejudices, or at least those particular prejudices that have survived in people like you for hundreds of years and more back into the pre-scientific ignorant darkness, are actually scientific facts! And I'm the creationist. It is too laugh.
Sure. But that's not the point. A random process is observed. Is it correct to therefore conclude that the process is unguided/blind?
It is the point in so much as contradictory statements by scientists was your point, since they were not contradictory.
But to answer your question, no it is not logically proper to conclude that the process is unguided. Scientifically speaking, though, if you were trying to create a model for that process, then in the absence of any evidence suggesting a designer, and without any need for a designer to explain the evidence you do have, it would be correct not to include one. In every case of a random process with a known designer, there is ample evidence of said designer. There is no scientific evidence of a designer behind 'natural' random processes. In fact, in the case of the most common and popular hypothetical designers, said hypothesis is untestable and thus improper to ever include in a scientific theory.
I think you may be confusing "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo I choose not to believe in one" with "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo we have proven that one does not exist."
You can't prove God doesn't exist. However you can disprove the argument by the IDers that He must exist.
another implies that randomness can be evidence of design.
No he does not. He says that randomness can be a useful tool for a designer. That was not meant to imply, nor does it imply, that randomness is evidence of design.
Too many auto-immune disorders are still considered to be "all in the head". Hopefully this helps bring them more mainstream attention.
I once had a brain tumor. My insurance denied me coverage because they said it was all in my head.:(
With that out of my system (my insurance doesn't cover bad jokes either), I'm totally with you. This is going to be great just from the standpoint of studying our immune system, that amazing thing that can be our best friend or worst enemy.
Slashdot Mirror
On a mission to refute ignorant crack-pottery, in the hopes that onlookers won't be bamboozled by bullshit, even if it is just an elaborate troll. But gutless? Please, bitch. You're the one dodging. Answer the Conservation of Energy question or shut the fuck up forever. May your rampant auto-fellation result in asphyxia.
No, I'm "not even" wrong, I'm experimentally verifiably right.
And you on the other hand are experimentally verifiably wrong.
It's sad that you think Newton endorses your viewpoint, because you don't understand that he's explaining a simple problem that the only force that the Laws of Motion define is the reactive force, so in a system with no initial movement, how is movement then imparted. The answer is that there must be some other force outside the Laws of Motion, and there is. Gravity, for instance. That's why Newton didn't spend a lot of time on the issue. You're just confused and ignorant enough that you misinterpret him horribly.
As Wolfgang Pauli would say "Who is this idiot quoting me in support of his crackpot theory? Hey kid: Take a real physics class, you might learn something."
I see crocodiles as a subspecies of dinosaur
Biologists don't. They consider them a relative of dinosaurs, but they are different for valid biological and phylogenic reasons. Dinosaurs and crocodilians are separate branches of archosaurs. Look it up.
given when they evolved as a definition of "dinosaur"- during the mid Triassic, much earlier than the Cretaceous era.
That's a pretty bad definition. Lots of things, including even more distant reptile relatives of dinosaurs such as Icthyosaurs, evolved during that era, and that's assuming you intended to restrict your definition to other reptiles and not, say, fish.
Thus they are an example of a non-avian dinosaur species that survived the Cretaceous -Tertiary extinction event.
Even granting that what you meant is simply that a creature that evolved in the Triassic survived to modern times... There's tremendous fossil evidence for the existence of crocodilians from that time through to current times. There's no evidence of "dragons" or any reptile that could be like them.
Take a 15 watt CFL with 0.5 PF which burns 30 volt-amps.
Take a 30 watt traditional incandescent bulb.
They both burn the same amount of coal in the factory.
No, they don't. The whole point of Power Factor is that the real energy consumed by the circuit in Watts is different than the apparent power in the circuit in volt-amps. That energy difference is not "burned", it's returned to the system. The power plant needs to supply more current, but the only extra energy that it needs to produce is for the resistive losses due to the extra current.
Since you don't seem to remember anything from your triple-EE degree beyond DC circuits and resistive loads, could you at least read the Wiki page on power factor and educate yourself before you continue spouting this ignorant FUD?!
Heat pumps don't work in colder environments which, coincidentally, are also, usually, the places with the longest winters and shortest summers.
It doesn't really matter. Resistive heaters are inefficient heaters. Just about anything else is better. They're great for certain uses, like portable space heaters, but a very poor choice for heating your home.
I'm not going to blame anyone living in a cold environment for not rushing out to buy CFLs when worrying about the overall efficiency of their heating solution (their heater + insulation) is vastly more important. But the argument that CFLs won't buy you anything because the wasted power of an incandescent is equal to the power that would be used heating the house is incorrect.
t doesn't matter. The point is that a 15 watt CFL is actually using 30 volt-amps, so it's only saving half as much energy as a 60 volt-amp traditional bulb
I'm a triple-degreed electrical engineer. Not an idiot.
You're a triple-degreed EE who doesn't know how power factor works, and yes that does make you an idiot. Idiots can get degrees, who would have thought?! If you didn't have the degrees, then you'd just be excusably ignorant (but in either case a jackass for talking like you weren't ignorant).
Cluephone: PF of 0.5 does not mean the CFL actually consumes twice as much energy. It consumes a somewhat larger amount of energy because of extra resistive losses in transmitting the extra current. The CFL itself consumes the same 15 W, and the power company needs to generate the same 15 W. They also need to cover the extra resistive losses, but that's not anywhere close to equal to the real power consumed by the bulb, and doesn't put a CFL anywhere near any kind of incandescent.
Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes... and the resulting children are fucking messed up, man.
Careful now. If you start using arguments like that, I might ask you for evidence that "missing links" ever existed. We know they did, right?
We predicted missing links, and absolutely yes we've found missing links, for an absolutely astounding number of cases in the last ~150 years. Even as the term "missing link" changes to mean the link between the last "missing link" subsequently found, and whatever it was supposed to be linking. Again and again. The gaps in the fossil record are ever-shrinking, and paint an absolutely clear picture.
So sure you can ask do we "know" that the 1/(Nth) yet undiscovered "missing link" down to the point where you're asking for the the specimen between a grandfather and grandchild, and of course we don't "know". But given the ridiculous amount of verified predictive power of the current evolutionary model, you would only ask that question as though it were meaningful due to obstinance or ignorance.
Comparing the "missing links" for which there are significant fossil evidence suggesting to a freaking dragon, which has zero evidence for hundreds of millions of years, is ludicrous. Surely you can comprehend the concept of "degrees of evidence" even for things that aren't "proven" (because science doesn't do that). "Missing links" -- enourmous evidence. Modern day dragons? No evidence whatsoever.
Find me any evidence that non-avian dinosaurs survived 50 million years ago, and while you'll still only be at a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the evidence for "missing links", you might at least have a basis for comparison. All the other ancient "living fossils" other posters mentioned have a huge and continuous fossil record. Your dragon? Zero. Even trying to compare this to the "missing links" is hilariously blind.
This is precisely this type of condescending, we-are-am-smater-than-you attitude that turns people off on science and scientists. Maybe physicists should concentrate on the foundational issues (e.g., the true nature of motion) first before they go chasing after gravity waves. You folks are not as smart as you think you are.
But of course you are as smart as you think, which is smarter than every other physicist alive or dead (while so pointedly stating that you aren't one), so this is the kind of condescending attitude we need. LOL.
Did you know that over 90% of physicists believe that matter can move in spacetime even though it is known that spacetime is frozen from the infinite past to the infinite future?
Spacetime isn't frozen. It's warped by mass and constantly expanding. "Did you know" indeed. :)
Did you know that most physicists believe that moving bodies remain in motion for no reason at all, as if by magic?
They also believe that bodies at rest remain at rest for no reason at all, as if by magic! This is no more mysterious.
Well, magic, and that and for it to do otherwise in either case would require an expenditure of energy and a transfer of momentum.
I'll admit, I bit and read the blog, and it was highly amusing. It was very humorous reading about how you agree with Aristotle* that there must be a "force" to make an object move at a constant velocity, and the object should instantly stop as soon as that "force" is removed. And therefore there must be "energy" around us to make this happen. As if "force" and "energy" are vague, mysterious entities, like a sci-fi writer referring to a "mysterious force" or "a being of pure energy".
But actually, force is a change in momentum. If there was a net force acting on a moving object, it would accelerate (or decelerate). If there's no force on an object, it can't accelerate or decelerate, i.e. its velocity must be constant. If the speed of the object changes, then there was a transfer of energy. Energy, by the way, is the principle Newton was looking for. It's the transfer and storage of energy in various forms that explains how objects can begin moving, and continue moving. Conservation of energy was formulated not too long after Newton's conservation of momentum and fills in what Newton couldn't.
The problem with upending physics is that you have to understand it first. This has been the case for all the great physicists, and it's the case today. And you don't understand causality. An object changing its speed, going from motion to no motion, is the effect, and for this to happen there must be a measurable cause, specifically a transfer of momentum and energy. So, please, Conservation of Energy demands an answer: in the absence of any outside force, why would an object moving at a constant velocity stop?
* Great thinker but lousy physicist -- thought his ideas were so good they didn't need testing**! Must be why you're drawn to him. ;)
** Maybe if he had, he would have realized that he was close but off on his idea of an object's natural state in the absence of interference being one of rest, when it's really one of constancy, and we would have Aristotle's Laws of Motion.
Which is even farther from dinosaurs than the example of crocodilians given by the other poster.
Seriously, are you trying to show that there are creatures who date back hundreds of millions of years? So what? I know it's possible for a species to have survived that long, it's just that so far as we know dinosaurs aren't among them. Excepting birds of course.
Or is it just that this ancient reptile is from NZ? :)
Archosaurs includes dinosaurs and crocodilians, but crocodilians are not dinosaurs. Trilobites aren't even close to dinosaurs. :P
But be that as it may, I'm still not seeing your point. Crocodiles are alive today, so maybe some non-avian dinosaurs are too, but we just haven't found them yet? What? Throw me a bone here.
I agree that we should be funding the tracking of NEOs more, but remember that the money for these two projects isn't coming from the same pool. One is a NASA sub-project, the other is an international project conducted by a variety of observatories and funded by a variety of organizations. So it's not as simple as "do this instead of that".
What do you mean finding absolutely nothing?
Judging by his links to thunderbolts.info, what I think he means is "I'm a crazy idiot who doesn't understand anything, and think this is a sound foundation to question the work of scientists everywhere. Solar wind is caused by an electric field! What do you mean it's a plasma with equal amounts of positive and negative charges, and a field can't move opposite charges in the same direction? No really, I have no idea what you're talking about because I never too physics in school! But my theories are right anyway!"
What about them? So there are ancient creatures that survive in some form today. Sharks are another example. None of those are dinosaurs, and also unlike dinosaurs there is ample evidence of their survival into modern times.
I had in mind a creature which was slightly less ferocious, and significantly less noticeable, which is probably why it wasn't hunted to extinction.
But that is still a fire-breathing dinosaur in modern times that explains middle-ages dragon myths. A combination of something that there is no evidence of having existed in the last hundred million years, and something that there is no evidence of having existed ever. Hell, as long as this is still strictly in your mind, why not add in that it can turn invisible at will, and that when it dies its body turns to ash? At least then you have a nice tidy answer for why there's no evidence for this.
Polly wants a cracker. NOW. And a couple of llamas. And a six pack of assorted primates, starting with you.
Well if that's the way you're going to be, then I'm not getting you a cracker! Or a llama!
It wouldn't be the first time a "long-extinct" creature had been discovered to be not quite so long-extinct as we'd thought.
Have any of these been ones that allegedly terrorized the populace only a few hundred years ago? I'd think something as conspicuous as a dragon would be easier to find evidence for. I thought most of the creatures that were thought to be extinct but weren't tended to have survived somewhere that people didn't frequent, rather than say mainland England.
Anyway, it would be hypothetically interesting, but a hypothetical it remains.
we're not allowed to entertain notions of dinosaurs coexisting with humans in the time-line of biological evolution.
You can entertain any notion you want. Don't expect anyone to consider your ideas anything more than entertainment until there's some evidence.
As far as the evolutionary time line, it's not a matter of "you're not allowed" so much as "there's a gap of hundreds of millions of years between the youngest known (non-bird) dinosaur fossil and the earliest known primate fossil." Call me when you find a dinosaur fossil from 100k years ago. Until then, I think I'll refrain from subscribing to your newsletter.
Dead on. The only reason the buffalo was still around in huge quantities was because native americans didn't have rifles, or horses for that matter.
Nonsense. The only reason there aren't still huge quantities of bison is because of a deliberate campaign to drive them extinct in order to deprive the natives of food. Before they had rifles and horses the natives were still able to kill large numbers of bison, but because they were only killing to meet their needs, this was no threat to the bison population at large. This didn't change even after they got guns and horses, so there's no basis for your statement whatsoever.
They were just people. Some were good. Some were bad. Every one of them left an environmental mark on the world around them.
That's basically true. Every human settlement has an environmental impact. That doesn't mean the scales are the same, or that there is never any thought as to controlling that impact. Some peoples were quite conscious about sustainable living. It was hardly a universal trait of indigenous peoples, but not non-existent. You say some were good, some were bad, but your example with native americans seems to imply that you think they are all basically equal, and that European industrial-era lack of concern for balance with the environment is a universal human constant and the only difference was the means. I'm with you on not idealizing the cultures that we destroyed, especially not out of guilt, but I think you picked a terrible example because it shows the opposite of what you intended it to.
Yet on the other hand, actual wild animals often completely fail to achieve balance in nature. Quite often "balance" is simply that the animal will die off when it destroys too much of its environment. A herd of African elephants will completely destroy a stand of trees, and then simply move on. Wolves will happily eat the very last deer and rabbit in the forest, and then the wolves die due to lack of food. Rats -- geeze, forget about it.
Humans are, as far as we know, unique among animals in that we can/will actually consider whether our lifestyle is sustainable, and if it isn't, change it. Arguments about whether exploiting the environment is "natural" is just an excuse not to exercise that ability. Arguing that even those people we idealize as being in touch with nature never did or never would exercise this ability is simply wrong. Many did. You don't have to idealize them to recognize this fact. It's not about them being "much better than us". They are just people. So are we. We have the same ability to consider our environment. Use it, don't disclaim it.
They are images or a probability distribution in abstract space... So I am deeply suspicious of the picture, because there is no physical object of that shape to image.
Of course there is! There's the electron, whose location is a probability function that looks like the picture in the article. So if you're trying to take an image of the atom, and since obviously you aren't going to take a picture of something using a single sample (photon, or in this case emitted electron), you're going to "see" the electron cloud as an average that matches the probability. It's not supposed to be a picture of the electron at one "instant" in time. That would be difficult, and not very informative.
Electrons are not clouds or points, they are things we don't really understand but describe by means of quantum mechanics.
Kinda. An electron isn't the same as an electron orbital, and not all electrons are bound in orbitals. We know they are particles, we know their mass and their charge and can both predict and track their movements through electric fields... That's the very basis for the electron microscope used to take this image! It's the electrons themselves that the microscope is detecting!
Yeah if instead of volume it was knowing what you're talking about. You're the one who is holding on to any thread you can of an outdated unscientific dogma. Only that unlike creationists, you are old hands at wielding scientific nonsense to further your ends. I actually understand the math behind intelligence testing. I understand the statistical validity of using the g factor as a predictor of things we commonly call "intelligence". I also know the experts can't completely compensate for culture, and don't try to. A biological basis isn't a biological certainty. Fundamentalists like you transform that into absolute unchangeable statements of biology. But preparation makes a demonstrable difference, the averages and rankings vary by country, and over time periods that are significant culturally but not genetically.
But, of course, your prejudices, or at least those particular prejudices that have survived in people like you for hundreds of years and more back into the pre-scientific ignorant darkness, are actually scientific facts! And I'm the creationist. It is too laugh.
Sure. But that's not the point. A random process is observed. Is it correct to therefore conclude that the process is unguided/blind?
It is the point in so much as contradictory statements by scientists was your point, since they were not contradictory.
But to answer your question, no it is not logically proper to conclude that the process is unguided. Scientifically speaking, though, if you were trying to create a model for that process, then in the absence of any evidence suggesting a designer, and without any need for a designer to explain the evidence you do have, it would be correct not to include one. In every case of a random process with a known designer, there is ample evidence of said designer. There is no scientific evidence of a designer behind 'natural' random processes. In fact, in the case of the most common and popular hypothetical designers, said hypothesis is untestable and thus improper to ever include in a scientific theory.
I think you may be confusing "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo I choose not to believe in one" with "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo we have proven that one does not exist."
You can't prove God doesn't exist. However you can disprove the argument by the IDers that He must exist.
So if something is random, there is never any design behind it? It's always the case that when randomness is observed that it's unguided?
No. "Randomness does not imply a designer" is not the same as "Randomness implies no designer".
another implies that randomness can be evidence of design.
No he does not. He says that randomness can be a useful tool for a designer. That was not meant to imply, nor does it imply, that randomness is evidence of design.
Too many auto-immune disorders are still considered to be "all in the head".
Hopefully this helps bring them more mainstream attention.
I once had a brain tumor. My insurance denied me coverage because they said it was all in my head. :(
With that out of my system (my insurance doesn't cover bad jokes either), I'm totally with you. This is going to be great just from the standpoint of studying our immune system, that amazing thing that can be our best friend or worst enemy.