Oh please. It's hardly jerrymandering when an electoral system that benefited the Tories for twenty years temporarily benefits Labour instead (an advantage which is slowly being reversed as parliamentary boundaries move, and tactical anti-Tory voting diminishes).
The House of Lords is not doing a "thoughtful" job - it's opposing the Labour Party because that's what the House of Lords always does. They may sometimes be right, they are often wrong (e.g. Blair had to use the Parliament Act when the House of Lords blocked equalisation of the gay age of consent).
The House of Lord's love of liberty wasn't much in evidence during the Thatcher years - and Thatcher's attacks on liberty made Blair look like a libertarian.
It is nowadays a "convention" that the Prime Minister is an MP - a "convention" being a concept in British constitutional law that is generally observed but does not have force of law. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963 he was a member of the House of Lords - however, recognising the modern convention, he immediately renounced his peerage and won a parliamentary by-election.
None of this makes the parent correct: as a practical matter, Tony Blair has been elected by the people. Everybody voting for a Labour MP knew that they were, in effect, voting for Blair as a Labour Prime Minister. Pedantically focussing on the mechanics behind this is just as silly as claiming that the President is elected by the people because of the mechanics of the electoral college.
Under UK patent law there is no requirement that there be a prototype - the invention must be capable of industrial application but no prototype or working model is needed.
That said, the patent is plainly not capable of industrial application as it does not explain how the fusion drive would work. It should therefore not have been granted. The UK patent office is normally fairly good at spotting things like this.
It's most definitely not breaking news. I've no idea how educated you are, but if you'd read any decent undergraduate level biology text from the last thirty years, or even any of the popularisations by Gould, Dawkins, etc then you would know about this. If you haven't read any of this, then why on earth do you think you're in a position to comment on evolution?
When you say there is no record of evolution from one species to another you are simply incorrect - there are many well documented fossils showing the transition from from dinosaurs to birds, from reptiles to mammals, and from land animals to whales. When you make blunders like this, you can hardly complain at being ridiculed.
Name some working biologists at significant universities who don't believe in evolution and common descent. Can you name one? two? How many are called Steve? What about Nobel Prize winners? 38 just wrote to the Kansas State Board of Education supporting the teaching of evolution in schools. How many Nobel Prize winners can you find who believe the contrary?
And there are plenty of credible scientists that are Christian. Those I've worked with believe the theory of evolution to be correct. If your understanding of Christianity is so limited that it conflicts with the real world then that is your problem.
I think the problem is that the term "ID" is used by some in the manner you suggest, but by others as a catch-all code word for attacks on evolution. The version of ID proposed in Utah fell into this category.
Creationists are ridiculed because they typically don't understand the theories they're attacking, and use arguments which display spectacular ignorance of science (as a former physicist I'm particularly keen on the "second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution" argument).
I look forward to your list of the "so many scientists" who doubt the theory of evolution. Bonus points if the scientists are biologists.
And the argument that evolutionary change occurs within species and not between species can only be sustained if you can point to a mechanism that prevents successive infinitesimal changes from resulting in speciation. I doubt very much you'll be able to do this.
Some ID claims are indeed metaphysical in nature, for example that the fundamental physical constants were "designed" to facilitate life, or that the path of evolution was invisibly guided.
But other ID claims are different: e.g. the claims that evolution could not result in the development of various biochemical processes or that common descent is incorrect. These are physical and not metaphysical claims. They are also wrong.
Science does not provide "proof". That evolution occurred is well supported by evidence - particularly in the fossil record and the DNA of modern organisms. The vast majority of this evidence was not available to Darwin or the biologists who came after him. So it is not "convenient" that the facts fit the theory, but a hallmark of a good theory that it fits subsequently discovered facts. Religious creation myths do not fit subsequently discovered facts - quite the opposite.
Deceptive advertising isn't illegal in the UK; this was a decision by the Advertising Standards Authority, which is a body established by the advertising industry to regulate itself. This kind of self-regulation is very British.
In that case I'll go for more name calling: you are an idiot, as it's clear from the quote I gave you earlier that he is claiming an efficiency of over 100%.
I have a degree in physics, which doesn't mean much, but certainly gives me the right to dismiss claims of machines that break the law of thermodynamics invented by people who don't understand the difference between force and energy. As someone once said, completely fucking incredible claims require completely fucking incredible evidence. Claims that someone from Boeing has said this or that do not amount to said evidence.
You are not reading my responses. You are confusing force and energy. There is insufficient energy stored in permanent magnets to do anything useful. The guy is a con artist or a fool, and if you want to avoid being a shill you need to develop your critical faculties.
He admits it violates conservation of energy, but claims this is a "traditional view point". He doesn't give an alternative viewpoint, beyond a reference to force that shows he doesn't understand the difference between force and energy.
His FAQ states explicitly that the magnets are not used up, so he clearly isn't buying your explanation. And, in any case, if you do the math (as a previous poster did) you see that magnets hold a very small amount of energy, far too little to be of practical use.
Either this is another free energy con, or the "inventor" is so clueless about basic principles of physics that he's deceiving himself.
Explain how you get more than 100% efficiency from a motor without breaching the conservation of energy. Bonus points if you don't use the word "paradigm".
"All of a sudden"? Are you reading what I say? There is nothing "sudden" about ten million years.
"And then no macroevolution takes place after that"? So, by your definition of "macroevolution", evolution from Cambrian organisms to modern organisms didn't involve "macroevolution"? Impressive.
You can cut the relativism crap. There aren't two comparable sides. There are scientists: Christian, Jewish, agnostic, atheist or whatever, investigating the world to the best of their ability, and developing theories which change as more is discovered about the world. And there are a few well funded outfits of religious zealots, mostly non-scientists, doing no research and publishing the same old crap year after year, knowing that it's false but not giving a toss.
It says the Cambrian explosion was "sudden". This is either a lie or a deliberate attempt to mislead. The Cambrian period was at least ten million years long. During the Cambrian we see a slow increase in diversity and complexity, with species evolving millions of years apart.
And the Cambrian is not the only period of significant diversification. The first fossils of many important groups (e.g. plants!) appear in the Ordovician period.
Ask yourself why this article is saying things that simply aren't true.
The Cambrian explosion *was* gradual. It took place over at least 10 million years, and quite possibly longer. And remember we're dealing with organisms that will go through many generations within a year.
It's called an "explosion" because this is much smaller timescale than most other evolutionary changes preserved in the fossil record. But it's not even remotely a small timescale by our standards. No scientist has ever thought it "turns Darwin's tree of life upside-down", whatever that means.
Where are you getting this crap? Aren't you even slightly worried by the fact that someone has spoon-fed you stuff that's completely untrue?
"To counteract entropy always requires two elements. One is the input of energy and the other is the adding of information".
This is completely baloney - where are you getting this stuff from? The second law of thermodynamics relates entropy to heat/energy and time - information is not part of the second law of thermodynamics.
But nobody believes that evolution works by one animal giving birth to another, completely different, animal. Evolution is about about gradual change over many thousands of years: thousands of tiny changes, over tens of thousands of generations. There are numerous examples of this in the fossil record.
If you don't accept "macro-evolution" then you must believe there is something that prevents these thousands of small changes causing significant change over geological timescale. What on earth do you think this something is?
And it's pointless asking what "ID" thinks or acknowledges: some ID proponents (e.g. Behe) accept macro-evolution and common descent but believe there are certain features which were designed. Other ID proponents seem to be nothing more than old fashioned creationists wearing new clothes.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please. It's hardly jerrymandering when an electoral system that benefited the Tories for twenty years temporarily benefits Labour instead (an advantage which is slowly being reversed as parliamentary boundaries move, and tactical anti-Tory voting diminishes).
The House of Lords is not doing a "thoughtful" job - it's opposing the Labour Party because that's what the House of Lords always does. They may sometimes be right, they are often wrong (e.g. Blair had to use the Parliament Act when the House of Lords blocked equalisation of the gay age of consent).
The House of Lord's love of liberty wasn't much in evidence during the Thatcher years - and Thatcher's attacks on liberty made Blair look like a libertarian.
It is nowadays a "convention" that the Prime Minister is an MP - a "convention" being a concept in British constitutional law that is generally observed but does not have force of law. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963 he was a member of the House of Lords - however, recognising the modern convention, he immediately renounced his peerage and won a parliamentary by-election.
None of this makes the parent correct: as a practical matter, Tony Blair has been elected by the people. Everybody voting for a Labour MP knew that they were, in effect, voting for Blair as a Labour Prime Minister. Pedantically focussing on the mechanics behind this is just as silly as claiming that the President is elected by the people because of the mechanics of the electoral college.
The difference is that anybody putting material on the web is doing so in the knowledge that others will be accessing the material.
I've changed my motherboard three times and the re-activation has gone smoothly and automatically each time. Was I just lucky?
Under UK patent law there is no requirement that there be a prototype - the invention must be capable of industrial application but no prototype or working model is needed.
That said, the patent is plainly not capable of industrial application as it does not explain how the fusion drive would work. It should therefore not have been granted. The UK patent office is normally fairly good at spotting things like this.
It's most definitely not breaking news. I've no idea how educated you are, but if you'd read any decent undergraduate level biology text from the last thirty years, or even any of the popularisations by Gould, Dawkins, etc then you would know about this. If you haven't read any of this, then why on earth do you think you're in a position to comment on evolution?
h tml#pred4 is a great introduction, although the primary literature is pretty accessible too.
If you are genuinely interested, the FAQ at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.
When you say there is no record of evolution from one species to another you are simply incorrect - there are many well documented fossils showing the transition from from dinosaurs to birds, from reptiles to mammals, and from land animals to whales. When you make blunders like this, you can hardly complain at being ridiculed.
Name some working biologists at significant universities who don't believe in evolution and common descent. Can you name one? two? How many are called Steve? What about Nobel Prize winners? 38 just wrote to the Kansas State Board of Education supporting the teaching of evolution in schools. How many Nobel Prize winners can you find who believe the contrary?
And there are plenty of credible scientists that are Christian. Those I've worked with believe the theory of evolution to be correct. If your understanding of Christianity is so limited that it conflicts with the real world then that is your problem.
I think the problem is that the term "ID" is used by some in the manner you suggest, but by others as a catch-all code word for attacks on evolution. The version of ID proposed in Utah fell into this category.
Creationists are ridiculed because they typically don't understand the theories they're attacking, and use arguments which display spectacular ignorance of science (as a former physicist I'm particularly keen on the "second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution" argument).
I look forward to your list of the "so many scientists" who doubt the theory of evolution. Bonus points if the scientists are biologists.
And the argument that evolutionary change occurs within species and not between species can only be sustained if you can point to a mechanism that prevents successive infinitesimal changes from resulting in speciation. I doubt very much you'll be able to do this.
Some ID claims are indeed metaphysical in nature, for example that the fundamental physical constants were "designed" to facilitate life, or that the path of evolution was invisibly guided.
But other ID claims are different: e.g. the claims that evolution could not result in the development of various biochemical processes or that common descent is incorrect. These are physical and not metaphysical claims. They are also wrong.
Science does not provide "proof". That evolution occurred is well supported by evidence - particularly in the fossil record and the DNA of modern organisms. The vast majority of this evidence was not available to Darwin or the biologists who came after him. So it is not "convenient" that the facts fit the theory, but a hallmark of a good theory that it fits subsequently discovered facts. Religious creation myths do not fit subsequently discovered facts - quite the opposite.
Deceptive advertising isn't illegal in the UK; this was a decision by the Advertising Standards Authority, which is a body established by the advertising industry to regulate itself. This kind of self-regulation is very British.
In that case I'll go for more name calling: you are an idiot, as it's clear from the quote I gave you earlier that he is claiming an efficiency of over 100%.
I have a degree in physics, which doesn't mean much, but certainly gives me the right to dismiss claims of machines that break the law of thermodynamics invented by people who don't understand the difference between force and energy. As someone once said, completely fucking incredible claims require completely fucking incredible evidence. Claims that someone from Boeing has said this or that do not amount to said evidence.
You are not reading my responses. You are confusing force and energy. There is insufficient energy stored in permanent magnets to do anything useful. The guy is a con artist or a fool, and if you want to avoid being a shill you need to develop your critical faculties.
He admits it violates conservation of energy, but claims this is a "traditional view point". He doesn't give an alternative viewpoint, beyond a reference to force that shows he doesn't understand the difference between force and energy.
His FAQ states explicitly that the magnets are not used up, so he clearly isn't buying your explanation. And, in any case, if you do the math (as a previous poster did) you see that magnets hold a very small amount of energy, far too little to be of practical use.
Either this is another free energy con, or the "inventor" is so clueless about basic principles of physics that he's deceiving himself.
Nonsense. The inventor clearly claims that the motor produces more energy than is supplied - see http://flynnresearch.net/tests_%26_results.htm
Given that the same page confuses force and energy, there's no reason on earth why anyone should take this seriously.
Explain how you get more than 100% efficiency from a motor without breaching the conservation of energy. Bonus points if you don't use the word "paradigm".
Try responding to one of my posts.
"All of a sudden"? Are you reading what I say? There is nothing "sudden" about ten million years.
"And then no macroevolution takes place after that"? So, by your definition of "macroevolution", evolution from Cambrian organisms to modern organisms didn't involve "macroevolution"? Impressive.
You can cut the relativism crap. There aren't two comparable sides. There are scientists: Christian, Jewish, agnostic, atheist or whatever, investigating the world to the best of their ability, and developing theories which change as more is discovered about the world. And there are a few well funded outfits of religious zealots, mostly non-scientists, doing no research and publishing the same old crap year after year, knowing that it's false but not giving a toss.
But this is just based on lies.
It says the Cambrian explosion was "sudden". This is either a lie or a deliberate attempt to mislead. The Cambrian period was at least ten million years long. During the Cambrian we see a slow increase in diversity and complexity, with species evolving millions of years apart.
And the Cambrian is not the only period of significant diversification. The first fossils of many important groups (e.g. plants!) appear in the Ordovician period.
Ask yourself why this article is saying things that simply aren't true.
The Cambrian explosion *was* gradual. It took place over at least 10 million years, and quite possibly longer. And remember we're dealing with organisms that will go through many generations within a year.
It's called an "explosion" because this is much smaller timescale than most other evolutionary changes preserved in the fossil record. But it's not even remotely a small timescale by our standards. No scientist has ever thought it "turns Darwin's tree of life upside-down", whatever that means.
Where are you getting this crap? Aren't you even slightly worried by the fact that someone has spoon-fed you stuff that's completely untrue?
"To counteract entropy always requires two elements. One is the input of energy and the other is the adding of information".
This is completely baloney - where are you getting this stuff from? The second law of thermodynamics relates entropy to heat/energy and time - information is not part of the second law of thermodynamics.
But nobody believes that evolution works by one animal giving birth to another, completely different, animal. Evolution is about about gradual change over many thousands of years: thousands of tiny changes, over tens of thousands of generations. There are numerous examples of this in the fossil record.
If you don't accept "macro-evolution" then you must believe there is something that prevents these thousands of small changes causing significant change over geological timescale. What on earth do you think this something is?
And it's pointless asking what "ID" thinks or acknowledges: some ID proponents (e.g. Behe) accept macro-evolution and common descent but believe there are certain features which were designed. Other ID proponents seem to be nothing more than old fashioned creationists wearing new clothes.
Are you thinking of another film? Logan's run is about a post-apocalyptic city where everyone is killed when they reach 30.