most modern universities still have Phys. Ed. requirements. We can't even have a simple discussion until that idiocy is gotten rid of. In the modern age, when a 98-lb-weakling (c) like myself can do anything he feels like and is just as successful in his chosen career as an overmuscled visigoth, there is no remaining reason for their viability. So don't get me started on the "well rounded" crap. They're just perpetuating the 19th century teaching methods THEY were trained in. Forward thinking, I think not.
The Phys.Ed. requirement is part of a different sort of "well-rounded" education than the "well-rounded" education griped about above: the above is basically technical training that does not train you in the technical details -- its purpose is still to help you succeed in the job market. Phys.Ed. requirements harken back to an older vision of a "well-rounded" education -- its purpose is to make you into an admirable human being, whether the market chooses to reward such human beings or not. It is part of education originally understood (which literally means upbringing).
I don't want to argue about whether Physical Education ought to be required on university campuses, or even whether it is required in order to be a complete human being outside of one's job, but I would suggest that an education that is more than a glorified version of VoTech is something to be desired. One ought not read Shakespeare simply in order to produce better ad copy. Universities, such as the University of Chicago, that offer this sort of education are vital to a country that wants to have something beyond the pursuit of Palm Pilots as a possible goal in life. The poster is of course correct that if a program is basically a glorified version of VoTech (Finance or Marketing), it ought to focus on preparing its students to get a job.
This story from/. suggests that Anonymous Coward is posting online against +1 bonus level posters. I'm glad to see that he has an opportunity to express his "genius" without having to deal with the overwhelming attention (and without exposing his, um, "eccentricities".)
The link given for the larger picture points to the right picture, but the picture of the day link points to today's picture (whatever that might be). The picture everyone's talking about is here.
btw, the larger picture has some astounding detail: don't miss it.
I thought the phenomenon about black holes is that it growth rate isn't affected by what it "eats". For example, a black hole eats Jupiter, but doesn't grow the size of Jupiter. It just grows at its normal rate.
Black holes do not grow if left to themselves; in fact, they shrink (at least according to Mr. Hawking) -- the smaller they are, the faster they shrink. Of course, most observable black holes would radiate less energy than the cosmic background radiation, so this is all rather academic, but the point remains the same: if black holes aren't absorbing energy, they're losing it.
(yes, I know I said black holes aren't black; this is precisely Mr. Hawking's point).
The wounding weapons only make sense in "civilized" warfare, which many countries don't practice.
The doctrine does not suggest using weapons that only wound the enemy; indeed, it suggests against weapons that only wound the enemy. Suggesting that weapons ought to go for the soldier rather than the man is simply to suggest that, once a soldier has been rendered incapable of further action, one should not seek to wound him further. This is not to say that we should only wound the enemy -- on the contrary, you hurt him as much as it takes to stop him from fighting further, and if that means death, death it is.
Perhaps an example might help -- remember that this is the theoretical basis for past treaties, and so may seem a bit paradoxical. Releasing a gas that only sterilizes the enemy is bad, for you're not attacking the soldier, i.e., the ability to wage war, but the man. Releasing a gas that kills him outright was OK (until a few years ago; before that, the treaty was simply not to use it first). Dropping bombs that kill everyone is better than dropping bombs that kill some and merely horribly disfigure the rest, according to the logic of these treaties.
Iceland also has little to no valuable natural resources worth taking.
Not so! England almost came to blows with the defenseless Iceland some years back in what became known as the Cod War. Of course, Iceland's more powerful allies also happened to be allies with Great Britain, so it didn't really get that far.
Name one country that has totally disarmed itself and survived another hundred years. Answer: none.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a lilly-livered pacifist, but your fact seems a bit contrived. Iceland has no military force to speak of, and it appears to be doing fine. Your point would have been better made if you had asked if any nation that was wholly berift of military recourse has every long survived. Or even better, do conquering nations allow the conquered to retain their military apparatus?
Another War Department that is not controlled by environmentalists will develop more effective but less environmentally friendly weapons.
This is the same with every bit of arms-control: those who violate the agreement benefit to some degree. The question, however, is how much do they benefit? One could conceivably benefit from the introduction of anti-personnel laser-weaponry (to blind enemy soldiers), but no one really pursues that; if you can blind them, why not kill them? The same applies to explosive anti-personnel munitions: once you've shot them, do you really need to blow up the body?
The impetus behind these sorts of things is usually not what Hemos says, that it is
the environmental bit shift of the neutron bomb -- "Kill the people, preserve the industry" becomes "Kill the people, preserve the land."
Rather, most arms-control is based on the principle that weapons should attack the soldier, not the man, i.e., as soon as he has been disabled as a soldier, there is no military need to inflict further punishment on him, and humanitarian concerns can then be considered. Such considerations, by definition, do not substantively degrade military capability. One could imagine enviro-friendly weapons that were substantively worse than what we have now, from a military standpoint, but rest assured that the U.S. military will not abandon good weapons for these. Landmines are a great case in point -- the damage caused to the person, as opposed to the soldier, may be excessive, but as there is no comperable replacement for their battlefield purpose, the United States continues to use them wherever we think we need to (currently Cuba and Korea).
allright 2 months may be enough for mice but whats needed is to know if can humans reproduce in low gravity and what effect does it have on babies to grow up in low gravity. and humans take long time to grow and all.. so does the 2 month study on mice and other animals scale up to years for humans ?
It doesn't scale up perfectly, but some things don't need to be scaled. If every mouse dies, that's bad. If, on the other hand, we notice no ill effects, that's good.
Of course, even if we were able to reproduce on Mars, I still think a colony would be a bad idea: our bodies are made to function under Earth-like conditions. Sending colonies to non-Earth-like planets is just begging for freaky adaptations. We have enough trouble not killing each other when we're all human; if the Martians are as close to us as monkeys, and we as close to them, what sort of politics can we expect in the future?
These motivational structures exist because they assist human survival more often than not, or assist it in critical situations.
There is a view that thinking is itself pleasant to a thinking being, i.e., that as soon as it begins to think, it will begin to value its own ability to think. In such a case, this computer would have a motivational structure similar to our own, a motivational structure that in many views is the basis of human action, especially those nasty ones you mention.
No. If you define a kg as the mass of a certain object, and the mass of that object changes, then the number of atoms in 12 grams of C-12 also changes. If something changes, it's not a constant.
If something changes, it is not constant; it may well still be a constant. The value of constants may change as we improve empirical measurements or as the behavior to which they're tied changes (as the strength of the electromagnetic force changes, when it for example becomes distinct from the weak force, its constant changes). Constants are not variables in equations; they may be variable in real life.
You had a system? Oh, what we'd 'a given for a system of measurement. All we had was "a lot" or "a little", and we had plenty little a that, and everyone would disagree about whether he'd 'a been cheating his neighbors, givin' 'em a little muck when the deal was for a lot.
The mole is not a constant, it is a unit. In fact, it is one of the 7 SI base units.
You're right, but I think he meant that Avogadro's number is a constant, not a unit. According to your BIPM link>:
The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12.
How many atoms there are in 12 grams of C-12 is a constant, which must be measured empirically, and thus cannot form an "idependent" basis of mass. Of course, we could define Avogadro's number to be exactly 6.022 x 10^23, or just 6 x 10^23 (the math is simpler, and isn't that what SI units are all about?) and say that however much that many atoms of C-12 weighs is 12 grams, but who'd want to count them?
Wouldn't it be easier to define a kilogram like the mass of 'n' carbon atoms (or whatever).
Let's see. 6.022 x 10^23 Carbon-12 atoms (approximately) to 12 grams, so about 5.018 x 10^25 Carbon-12 atoms to a kilogram. Start counting, and don't let me catch you letting a couple Carbon 14 atoms slip in!
We could easily define the kilogram by the number of Carbon-12 atoms it should contain, but then it would be a real pain to figure out if something weighed a kilogram to any great degree of accuracy.
I assume that the subjects in this experiment were heterosexual. As research on this continues, it would be interesting to include homosexual subjects.
According to the report (published online, i.e., not peer reviewed; see a related/. article), only twenty-four "healthy subjects" participated, split 50-50 male-female. From page six:
The subjects were healthy, nonsmoking, heterosexual, right-handed, and divided into two groups: 12 women (20-28 years, investigated during second to third week of the menstrual cycle) and 12 men (23-28 years).
All you have to do is attach the spacecraft to its spent upper stage with a long tether, and spin the whole system like a baton. You can get modest gravities with reasonable (on the order of a hundred or so feet, depending on the mass of the upper stage and the spaceship) tether lengths and angular velocities.
How would your alter course, or would you have to start the tether anew each and every time? Considering this thing sounds like a fan with only one blade, wouldn't they have to make numerous course adjustments along their way, during which they'd be in zero gravity? What would be a reasonable ratio of time with gravity to time without gravity?
It's pretty well known that monopolies can only exist on a free market by producing excellent products at excellent prices. If you look closer at the nasty monopolies we all dislike, you'll normally find that they are not operating on a free market, but owe their position to government privilege.
Actually, being a right-winger myself, I can tell you that there is also plenty of right-wing 'hogwash' that that ought to argue for government intervention in breaking up monopolies. The free market assumes relatively easy entry and exit from the marketplace, which just isn't accurate in industries based upon infrastrucure (e.g., utilities, where it only makes sense to have one set of sewers running to each home) or infested with an over-powerful monopoly.
The latter case is most relevant with regards to the Internet; the costs of entering the marketplace, as a competitor to Microsoft's core market, viz. OS, are prohibitive. To use the steam enginge example, introducing a new OS would be like trying to introduce a new railway gauge: even if your gauge is superior (in terms of safety or turning speed), it will fail because the entire continent has already been laid using the other system; everyone's trains are made to run on that gauge. Of course, in the real world anyone could lay two steel railings the appropriate distance apart and manufacture a line on which everyone could travel; now, only the inventor of the gauge may lay that track, and as everyone's trains are made to run on Microsoft's track, only Microsoft can lay track. Thus, in order to compete with Microsoft, one would have to get large numbers to switch to a new gauge of railway; this would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible.
That, as I said, was right-wing hogwash (remember that Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-buster). Left-wing hogwash would have things about "the circuitry of the Internet being cooled by the blood of the workers," as such.
Despite the recent bubble burst, I think the golden days are still to come. Where we are now is at the dawn of a new age, akin to the very earliest decade of the Industrial Revolution. What happens next will change the world, beyond anything we could imagine.
And I shall be the Charles Dickens of this new world, catalogueing the various indignities that the modem-equipped Internet user must face at the hands of a world run by broadbanders, even though I was only a modem-user for a relatively short time and have since switched to broadband.
"My father's domain name being PeerIP, and my username PurrUp6894, my infantile typing skills could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than PP. So I called myself PP, and came to be called PP."
Unfortunately, that site seems to be for non-experts who also understand all kinds of crazy math, of which I don't even know the name.
As far as I can tell, the Fine Structure Constant can't be explained without recourse to big mathematical things. It's just one of those things that's easier to describe in its effects (as an earlier poster has done) than to give an explanation of what it is.
The original Hebrew grammar allows for all the time you need between the first two verses of Genesis 1
You may be right on this point, that the Hebrew does allow for time to pass between the first two verses, but if that were the intended meaning, I would expect va-t'hiye ha-aretz rather than v'ha-aretz haytah. Of course, the matter is solved in the fifth verse, yom echad, one day, rather than the expected yom rishon, the first day. The way to explain the difference is that the Bible is here emphasizing that this occurred in one day, rather than simply on the first day, however long it might have taken for that to come about.
Incidentally, how did the ancients measure a ((+/-) 24 hour) day? Surely by observing the rising/setting of the sun! Now of course it does not make sense to create the demarcator for days (i.e. the sun) only on the fourth of such days. So, "days" should rather be translated as "periods of time" (which is again borne out by the original Hebrew)
Yom means day; it is unrelated to the words for time (z'man and ayt). The Bible is quite explicit as to what constitutes a day, and there was evening and there was morning (Gen. 1:5, 1:8, 1:13, 1:19, 1:23, 1:31). Evening and the setting of the sun are two different times (cf. Deut. 23:12).
The fact that sun, moon and stars all appeared during the same "day" whould suggest to me that they were obscured
The sun, moon, and stars did not appear on the fourth day; they were made on the fourth day (Gen. 1:16). Since the word is va-ya'as rather than asa, God did this after He said... (Gen. 1:14), and since said is va-yomer rather than amar, He said... after the previous verse, which remarks that the third day had passed. That is, the grammar of the Hebrew leads inescapably to the conclusion that God made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, and precludes any reading which would have them made on the first day and remain hidden until the fourth, when they appeared.
The evidence is far from "perfect", for it assumes the very thing it's trying to prove.
Actually Carbon Dating brings enough evidence to prove that the earth is far older than 4000 or 6000 years.
...
This method is not assuming the very thing it's trying to prove... they didn't assume that the earth was 14-16 (depends on who you're asking) billion years old and use that as a reference point.
That wasn't at all what I was arguing; I am saying that the whole scientific method presupposses that the applicability of a given theory to a given point in time is based solely on that theory (assuming that it is a good theory). General relativity breaks down at (or near) singularities, but that's OK since it says it will break down there. The assertion made, however, is that it does hold true at other points.
Your example of carbon dating is actually excellent in this matter. Carbon-14 decays at a given rate and is produced by the Sun's interaction at given rates; thus, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 gives a rough appoximation of the time since the sample ceased to incorporate new Carbon (e.g., because it died). Yet in order to say that a given ratio in a given sample sets its age to actually be that age, we must assume that the natural processes of C-14 creation and decay occurred at all points between that time and the present; this is precisely the claim that Creationism contents. We can say with a high order of certainty that, if the world came into being through natural processes, it is about 4 billion years old. Producing the above result repeatedly and in a variety of different ways, however, in no way brings us closer to certainty that the world did come into being through natural processess.
Of course, one could avoid this whole argument by saying that, though God did say these things, He said them as a parable in order to show that the Sun, rather than being a god or even the source of all life, is rather unimportant and was actually created after plants had begun to flourish. But of course the support for this is just as weak as that for fundamentalist Creationism or scientific naturalism.
People like you insist that the earth is only around 4 thousand years old (according to the bible) when we have perfect evidence that its age is in the billions.
The evidence is far from "perfect", for it assumes the very thing it's trying to prove. The debate is one between modern science and revelation, each one claiming to be able to explain the All. Modern science claims a victory in the realm of cosmology because the age of the All according to the Bible is about 6000 years and the age according to our observations is something over 10 billion. Taking explainations of phenomena we observe today, we find that it would have taken several billion years for them to produce the world we observe now.
Yet this proof only begs the question. In order to say the All is X billion years old based upon current observations, we must assume that the theories gleaned from such observations were applicable X billion years ago; the Bible says they were not. Showing that the Bible is in contradiction with this assumption does not prove this assumption, nor do any proofs based upon this assumption.
This finding cannot sway the balance between the two in either direction. If the strength of the EM force does change over time, its change would presumably occur according to rules, is what the scientist would respond. Of course, if we cannot use scientific theories to predict the actual situation at some arbitrary point in the past included in the set of points that theory claims to be able to predict, then we can't actually say that the stated change has occurred.
The debate between science and religion seems to have a mafia-trial character to me. The defense attorney says the prosecution's claim that his client is guilty of murder because he ordered the hit is preposterous, for medical expert after medical expert has testified that the victim died from a loss of blood caused by numerous holes in his body, caused by bullets fired by someone other than his client. The prosecution, on the other hand, repeatedly plays an audio tape of the order without actually showing that the person on the tape is the defendent. The defense says that it can't possible be his client, for we know that the victim bled to death...
So long as the events are covered by media and the message can be understood from that coverage protests will not be meaningless rituals.
That's the point. Angry rioters being brutalized, rightly or wrongly, makes for good imagery for the reporter to talk over; if the reporter does not have a good video to talk over, the item gets less play time. So if the police can put down the demonstration without obvious brutality, there is no reason for it to be covered with anything more than brief blub.
Slashdot Mirror
The Phys.Ed. requirement is part of a different sort of "well-rounded" education than the "well-rounded" education griped about above: the above is basically technical training that does not train you in the technical details -- its purpose is still to help you succeed in the job market. Phys.Ed. requirements harken back to an older vision of a "well-rounded" education -- its purpose is to make you into an admirable human being, whether the market chooses to reward such human beings or not. It is part of education originally understood (which literally means upbringing).
I don't want to argue about whether Physical Education ought to be required on university campuses, or even whether it is required in order to be a complete human being outside of one's job, but I would suggest that an education that is more than a glorified version of VoTech is something to be desired. One ought not read Shakespeare simply in order to produce better ad copy. Universities, such as the University of Chicago, that offer this sort of education are vital to a country that wants to have something beyond the pursuit of Palm Pilots as a possible goal in life. The poster is of course correct that if a program is basically a glorified version of VoTech (Finance or Marketing), it ought to focus on preparing its students to get a job.
This story from /. suggests that Anonymous Coward is posting online against +1 bonus level posters. I'm glad to see that he has an opportunity to express his "genius" without having to deal with the overwhelming attention (and without exposing his, um, "eccentricities".)
btw, the larger picture has some astounding detail: don't miss it.
Black holes do not grow if left to themselves; in fact, they shrink (at least according to Mr. Hawking) -- the smaller they are, the faster they shrink. Of course, most observable black holes would radiate less energy than the cosmic background radiation, so this is all rather academic, but the point remains the same: if black holes aren't absorbing energy, they're losing it.
(yes, I know I said black holes aren't black; this is precisely Mr. Hawking's point).
The doctrine does not suggest using weapons that only wound the enemy; indeed, it suggests against weapons that only wound the enemy. Suggesting that weapons ought to go for the soldier rather than the man is simply to suggest that, once a soldier has been rendered incapable of further action, one should not seek to wound him further. This is not to say that we should only wound the enemy -- on the contrary, you hurt him as much as it takes to stop him from fighting further, and if that means death, death it is.
Perhaps an example might help -- remember that this is the theoretical basis for past treaties, and so may seem a bit paradoxical. Releasing a gas that only sterilizes the enemy is bad, for you're not attacking the soldier, i.e., the ability to wage war, but the man. Releasing a gas that kills him outright was OK (until a few years ago; before that, the treaty was simply not to use it first). Dropping bombs that kill everyone is better than dropping bombs that kill some and merely horribly disfigure the rest, according to the logic of these treaties.
Not so! England almost came to blows with the defenseless Iceland some years back in what became known as the Cod War. Of course, Iceland's more powerful allies also happened to be allies with Great Britain, so it didn't really get that far.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a lilly-livered pacifist, but your fact seems a bit contrived. Iceland has no military force to speak of, and it appears to be doing fine. Your point would have been better made if you had asked if any nation that was wholly berift of military recourse has every long survived. Or even better, do conquering nations allow the conquered to retain their military apparatus?
This is the same with every bit of arms-control: those who violate the agreement benefit to some degree. The question, however, is how much do they benefit? One could conceivably benefit from the introduction of anti-personnel laser-weaponry (to blind enemy soldiers), but no one really pursues that; if you can blind them, why not kill them? The same applies to explosive anti-personnel munitions: once you've shot them, do you really need to blow up the body?
The impetus behind these sorts of things is usually not what Hemos says, that it is
Rather, most arms-control is based on the principle that weapons should attack the soldier, not the man, i.e., as soon as he has been disabled as a soldier, there is no military need to inflict further punishment on him, and humanitarian concerns can then be considered. Such considerations, by definition, do not substantively degrade military capability. One could imagine enviro-friendly weapons that were substantively worse than what we have now, from a military standpoint, but rest assured that the U.S. military will not abandon good weapons for these. Landmines are a great case in point -- the damage caused to the person, as opposed to the soldier, may be excessive, but as there is no comperable replacement for their battlefield purpose, the United States continues to use them wherever we think we need to (currently Cuba and Korea).
It doesn't scale up perfectly, but some things don't need to be scaled. If every mouse dies, that's bad. If, on the other hand, we notice no ill effects, that's good.
Of course, even if we were able to reproduce on Mars, I still think a colony would be a bad idea: our bodies are made to function under Earth-like conditions. Sending colonies to non-Earth-like planets is just begging for freaky adaptations. We have enough trouble not killing each other when we're all human; if the Martians are as close to us as monkeys, and we as close to them, what sort of politics can we expect in the future?
There is a view that thinking is itself pleasant to a thinking being, i.e., that as soon as it begins to think, it will begin to value its own ability to think. In such a case, this computer would have a motivational structure similar to our own, a motivational structure that in many views is the basis of human action, especially those nasty ones you mention.
If something changes, it is not constant; it may well still be a constant. The value of constants may change as we improve empirical measurements or as the behavior to which they're tied changes (as the strength of the electromagnetic force changes, when it for example becomes distinct from the weak force, its constant changes). Constants are not variables in equations; they may be variable in real life.
You had a system? Oh, what we'd 'a given for a system of measurement. All we had was "a lot" or "a little", and we had plenty little a that, and everyone would disagree about whether he'd 'a been cheating his neighbors, givin' 'em a little muck when the deal was for a lot.
You're right, but I think he meant that Avogadro's number is a constant, not a unit. According to your BIPM link>:
How many atoms there are in 12 grams of C-12 is a constant, which must be measured empirically, and thus cannot form an "idependent" basis of mass. Of course, we could define Avogadro's number to be exactly 6.022 x 10^23, or just 6 x 10^23 (the math is simpler, and isn't that what SI units are all about?) and say that however much that many atoms of C-12 weighs is 12 grams, but who'd want to count them?
Let's see. 6.022 x 10^23 Carbon-12 atoms (approximately) to 12 grams, so about 5.018 x 10^25 Carbon-12 atoms to a kilogram. Start counting, and don't let me catch you letting a couple Carbon 14 atoms slip in!
We could easily define the kilogram by the number of Carbon-12 atoms it should contain, but then it would be a real pain to figure out if something weighed a kilogram to any great degree of accuracy.
According to the report (published online, i.e., not peer reviewed; see a related /. article), only twenty-four "healthy subjects" participated, split 50-50 male-female. From page six:
How would your alter course, or would you have to start the tether anew each and every time? Considering this thing sounds like a fan with only one blade, wouldn't they have to make numerous course adjustments along their way, during which they'd be in zero gravity? What would be a reasonable ratio of time with gravity to time without gravity?
Actually, being a right-winger myself, I can tell you that there is also plenty of right-wing 'hogwash' that that ought to argue for government intervention in breaking up monopolies. The free market assumes relatively easy entry and exit from the marketplace, which just isn't accurate in industries based upon infrastrucure (e.g., utilities, where it only makes sense to have one set of sewers running to each home) or infested with an over-powerful monopoly.
The latter case is most relevant with regards to the Internet; the costs of entering the marketplace, as a competitor to Microsoft's core market, viz. OS, are prohibitive. To use the steam enginge example, introducing a new OS would be like trying to introduce a new railway gauge: even if your gauge is superior (in terms of safety or turning speed), it will fail because the entire continent has already been laid using the other system; everyone's trains are made to run on that gauge. Of course, in the real world anyone could lay two steel railings the appropriate distance apart and manufacture a line on which everyone could travel; now, only the inventor of the gauge may lay that track, and as everyone's trains are made to run on Microsoft's track, only Microsoft can lay track. Thus, in order to compete with Microsoft, one would have to get large numbers to switch to a new gauge of railway; this would be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible.
That, as I said, was right-wing hogwash (remember that Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-buster). Left-wing hogwash would have things about "the circuitry of the Internet being cooled by the blood of the workers," as such.
And I shall be the Charles Dickens of this new world, catalogueing the various indignities that the modem-equipped Internet user must face at the hands of a world run by broadbanders, even though I was only a modem-user for a relatively short time and have since switched to broadband.
"My father's domain name being PeerIP, and my username PurrUp6894, my infantile typing skills could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than PP. So I called myself PP, and came to be called PP."
As far as I can tell, the Fine Structure Constant can't be explained without recourse to big mathematical things. It's just one of those things that's easier to describe in its effects (as an earlier poster has done) than to give an explanation of what it is.
If you follow the links provided on the given page, you'll soon reach here (claims to be for non-experts).
You may be right on this point, that the Hebrew does allow for time to pass between the first two verses, but if that were the intended meaning, I would expect va-t'hiye ha-aretz rather than v'ha-aretz haytah. Of course, the matter is solved in the fifth verse, yom echad, one day, rather than the expected yom rishon, the first day. The way to explain the difference is that the Bible is here emphasizing that this occurred in one day, rather than simply on the first day, however long it might have taken for that to come about.
Yom means day; it is unrelated to the words for time (z'man and ayt). The Bible is quite explicit as to what constitutes a day, and there was evening and there was morning (Gen. 1:5, 1:8, 1:13, 1:19, 1:23, 1:31). Evening and the setting of the sun are two different times (cf. Deut. 23:12).
The sun, moon, and stars did not appear on the fourth day; they were made on the fourth day (Gen. 1:16). Since the word is va-ya'as rather than asa, God did this after He said ... (Gen. 1:14), and since said is va-yomer rather than amar, He said ... after the previous verse, which remarks that the third day had passed. That is, the grammar of the Hebrew leads inescapably to the conclusion that God made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, and precludes any reading which would have them made on the first day and remain hidden until the fourth, when they appeared.
That wasn't at all what I was arguing; I am saying that the whole scientific method presupposses that the applicability of a given theory to a given point in time is based solely on that theory (assuming that it is a good theory). General relativity breaks down at (or near) singularities, but that's OK since it says it will break down there. The assertion made, however, is that it does hold true at other points.
Your example of carbon dating is actually excellent in this matter. Carbon-14 decays at a given rate and is produced by the Sun's interaction at given rates; thus, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 gives a rough appoximation of the time since the sample ceased to incorporate new Carbon (e.g., because it died). Yet in order to say that a given ratio in a given sample sets its age to actually be that age, we must assume that the natural processes of C-14 creation and decay occurred at all points between that time and the present; this is precisely the claim that Creationism contents. We can say with a high order of certainty that, if the world came into being through natural processes, it is about 4 billion years old. Producing the above result repeatedly and in a variety of different ways, however, in no way brings us closer to certainty that the world did come into being through natural processess.
Of course, one could avoid this whole argument by saying that, though God did say these things, He said them as a parable in order to show that the Sun, rather than being a god or even the source of all life, is rather unimportant and was actually created after plants had begun to flourish. But of course the support for this is just as weak as that for fundamentalist Creationism or scientific naturalism.
The evidence is far from "perfect", for it assumes the very thing it's trying to prove. The debate is one between modern science and revelation, each one claiming to be able to explain the All. Modern science claims a victory in the realm of cosmology because the age of the All according to the Bible is about 6000 years and the age according to our observations is something over 10 billion. Taking explainations of phenomena we observe today, we find that it would have taken several billion years for them to produce the world we observe now.
Yet this proof only begs the question. In order to say the All is X billion years old based upon current observations, we must assume that the theories gleaned from such observations were applicable X billion years ago; the Bible says they were not. Showing that the Bible is in contradiction with this assumption does not prove this assumption, nor do any proofs based upon this assumption.
This finding cannot sway the balance between the two in either direction. If the strength of the EM force does change over time, its change would presumably occur according to rules, is what the scientist would respond. Of course, if we cannot use scientific theories to predict the actual situation at some arbitrary point in the past included in the set of points that theory claims to be able to predict, then we can't actually say that the stated change has occurred.
The debate between science and religion seems to have a mafia-trial character to me. The defense attorney says the prosecution's claim that his client is guilty of murder because he ordered the hit is preposterous, for medical expert after medical expert has testified that the victim died from a loss of blood caused by numerous holes in his body, caused by bullets fired by someone other than his client. The prosecution, on the other hand, repeatedly plays an audio tape of the order without actually showing that the person on the tape is the defendent. The defense says that it can't possible be his client, for we know that the victim bled to death...
That's the point. Angry rioters being brutalized, rightly or wrongly, makes for good imagery for the reporter to talk over; if the reporter does not have a good video to talk over, the item gets less play time. So if the police can put down the demonstration without obvious brutality, there is no reason for it to be covered with anything more than brief blub.