Are Germans taller and blonder than Italians? Yes they are.
There are quite a few tall, blonde Italians (in parts of Italy they are even predominant) as well as a good many short, dark Germans. Anyway, the point of the original post, let me remind you, was that there is no such thing as "Semitic DNA" or "Caucasian DNA." It's going a long way from pointing out the prevalence of certain traits in a certain region to claiming that a gene carrying the blonde-haired trait is a "German gene."
all of which are genetic and all of which are associated with people originating from certain areas (not races, but a good proxy for it)
If you took a million Norwegians and moved them to an area where malaria was rampant and modern medicine was unavailable, within a few generations you would likely see many of them become succeptible to sickle cell anemia. This is because the same gene which carries the sickle cell trait also provides resistance to malaria, and is selected for in regions where malaria is rampant regardless of "race".
...start condiering South Carolinians to be humans in the first place?
"Condiering"? That there must be one 'o dem dang-ol' high-fallutin' cityfied words. Us stump-jumpin' knuckle-draggin' rednecks still use old-timey words like "considering."
For those of you who don't know, this poster was parodying the "warning labels" proposed for inclusion in biology textbooks in several states. I do not think this was intended as a flame. Mod it "Funny," not "Flamebait."
Given Mormonism's history of caving in to popular demands with regard to unpopular belief, we might see more revisionism. After all, God told them polygamy was acceptable up until Utah was in danger of not gaining statehood, at which point God apparently changed his mind and made it a sin. God also told them that black people bore the mark of Cain and were ineligible for priesthood, until the tax-free religious status of the LDS church was in danger of being revoked. Then apparently the President of the Church had a long heart-to-heart with God and convinced him to allow blacks to participate in the Church.
This can clearly be seen by the abundance of Semitic DNA in Native Americans and the fact that they celebrate Chanukah. Oh wait. Nevermind.
There is no such thing as Semitic DNA. Or Caucasian DNA, or Negro DNA, or Asian DNA. Those things you call "races" are artificial distinctions with no basis in biology. Basically, they're the result of saying "traits X and Y are more common in this area than they are in that one, so let's call the people over here 'race XY' for simplicity." There are no genes such that the possession of them constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in any "race".
Yeah, too bad fossil evidence is only one tiny piece of the total overwhelming evidence for evolution. Come back when you've actually read something about evolution written by actual evolutionists, as opposed to the straw man argument the creationists like to knock down.
Oh, bull. When I was a kid we had Mr. Wizard. Old, curmudgeonly, condescending, and didn't take any crap from the whiny little kids he had on his show. And yet you actually learned things; they'd do several actual experiments per show. Bill Nye, on the other hand, has a ridiculous variety show with MTV-style video effects and stupid songs and skits, and each show only makes a single blindingly obvious point like "water can be either a solid, liquid, or gas" or "there is such a thing as gravity". Chalk one up for style over substance. (Maybe he should be President. That's all they do.)
The New Testament supersedes the 10 commandments, that's the point of the NEW COVENEANT.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:17-19
Dictionary.com lists the following definition of "establish" wrt religion: "To make a state institution of (a church)." None of the religious institutions in the United states can be considered a state institution, in the sense that the Church of England is established in the United Kingdom, or the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece.
In addition, any democracy may be considered to have a state religion when its electoral majority votes in accordance with their clergy.
That doesn't make it a "state institution." The church and state are still free to operate entirely independently of one another, the fact that they may at times choose not to do so notwithstanding.
"This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it any time, by not fucking paying for it.
"So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger."
Those indigenous non-Celts are said in Irish folklore to have the psychic power, and for the ability to be passed in blodlines.
Since when does "said in Irish folklore" constitute any kind of reliable evidence?
Your arguement has logic flaws, it's the common:
1. My apple is green,
2. Therefore all apples are green.
You said, quote, "being a Celt, I've experienced psychic phenomena myself." What you're saying is that the fact that you're a Celt implies that you would experience psychic phenomena. And I was giving a counter-example.
Celtic mythology and stories of Celtic psychic ability are older than the American and British Empire.
Belief in a flat Earth is older than the Egyptians. It still doesn't make it true.
you can read about W.B. Yeats, the mystic, poet and a member of the Golden Dawn
I have. Just because a bunch of upper-class Victorian lunatics decided to sit around and cobble together some mystical system from a bunch of apocryphal texts and engage in ridiculous ceremonies doesn't mean they were psychic.
or perhaps about the Druids in Ireland
I know a lot of New Age types like to claim the Druids had amazing supernatural powers, but the evidence is wanting.
but being a Celt, I've experienced psychic phenomena myself.
This is one of the more ridiculous statements I've seen on slashdot, which is no small feat. You mean that all decendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the British Isles experience psychic phenomena? My grandmother was Irish. I must not have inherited her Celtic mutant gene, though, because I haven't had any psychic experiences.
Just more of this neo-pagan "all Celts are these wise spiritual mystic Stevie Nicks types" bullshit.
Eastern culture has always been based more on spiritual guidelines than hard doctrine and made many technilogical advances long before western society.
I think you're buying into broad cultural stereotypes about "Western" and "Eastern" culture which don't hold up to close scrutiny. First of all, there is no line between East and West. Those cultures we consider Western have had extensive cultural interaction with those we call Eastern: Buddhism, for example, was influenced to a large degree by "Western" philosophy as far back as the first century C.E., when a syncretic "Greco-Buddhism" emerged in central Asia; likewise, early Christian mysticism borrowed from Hindu religious practices. There's not even any clear consensus as to who is Western and who is Eastern: Islam is considered "Eastern" by Christians and "Western" by Hindus, and in the Balkans various religious and ethnic groups have seen Russia's influence as an example of both the "decadent West" and the "primitive East."
As for the claim that "hard doctrines" are easier to find in the West than in the East, history disagrees. China gave us both the extremely rigid social organization of Confucianism and the easygoing individualism of Taoism, at times recognizing both doctrines simultaneously; while here in the "West" we've seen everything from Catholics to Wiccans, businessmen to hippies.
As a slashdotter, I think we have the responsibility to actually listen to "Mosh" and act responsibly.
Damn, when I signed up for slashdot I guess I didn't read the part about a responsibility to listen to a crappy gay-bashing white rapper.
He's right too, the coming of the King of Terror began in a schoolroom, it's reign should end there too,
Along with the teaching of proper punctuation?
Leading Hindu astrologers and a noted Hindu mystic believe that Kerry is going to win, Bush will never again be president, and Kerry will end terrorism and bring world peace! The sun and the moon have even endorsed Kerry.
So let me get this straight-- if the sun and the moon had wanted Bush (or Nader or Cobb or Badanarik) to win, they would have given both Newtonian physics and general and special relativity a miss and altered their trajectories to spell out defeat for Kerry? I, for one, am outraged. These celestial bodies are neither U.S. citizens nor registered voters, and I resent their attempts to use their outside influence on this election.
Then again, maybe you and your Hindu astrologers just pulled it out Uranus.
Artificial selection can put breeding pressure on animals that would never occur in nature,
Again, where is this "nature" thing that is completely separate and antithetical to the world of Man? I always thought human beings were part of nature and a product of natural evolution. Why is our culture, behavior, and technology somehow not part of nature?
and cause much, much faster changes, and yield varieties that would never survive on their own, without the continued intervention of humans.
Name any organism (with the possible exception of some of the simplest single-celled creatures) which can survive "on its own." All species evolve in an environment which includes other organisms, and almost every single organism would not survive without some other species providing it with food, oxygen, shelter, or some other necessity. I don't see why it should be a special, "unnatural" case when the species on which an organism is dependent happens to be Homo sapiens.
What I believe he means is that dogs are not the product of natural selection, but rather a product of artificial selection.
I know what he meant. And I'm saying that the distinction between natural and artificial selection is specious.
This situation is fundimentally different from the evolution of dogs because there was no 3rd party species to artificially select for traits in humans.
Humans didn't evolve in a vacuum. We are what we are today because of the ways in which our ancestors were affected by their environment, which includes all the other species with which they had to live.
I suppose the distinction you're trying to make is that humans intentionally bred animals for certain traits, whereas, unless Lamarck was right about the giraffes, there's no intentional change in so-called natural evolution. I'm not sure you can really draw this line. For example, humans aren't the only animals who cultivate other organisms; there are ants who raise aphids and farm fungus for food, and I'm sure both the aphids and the fungus have been changed somewhat by that process in ways that were mutually benificial. Was this intentional or not, natural or artificial?
Now consider the way the wheat plant has changed due to humans. It used to be the case that most grains of wheat were loose and would fall off at the slightest breeze-- this is how the plant would reproduce. When humans developed agriculture, they would cut stalks of wheat in the fields and carry them back to their granaries. Those wheat grains which were not firmly attached fell off, leaving only the more secure grains in the hands of humans. It didn't take long before most of the wheat grown by humans had grains which were hard to detach, requiring people to do a lot more work to separate them. This was selection due to human activity (hence "artificial"), yet was almost certainly unintended.
Slashdot Mirror
Are Germans taller and blonder than Italians? Yes they are.
There are quite a few tall, blonde Italians (in parts of Italy they are even predominant) as well as a good many short, dark Germans. Anyway, the point of the original post, let me remind you, was that there is no such thing as "Semitic DNA" or "Caucasian DNA." It's going a long way from pointing out the prevalence of certain traits in a certain region to claiming that a gene carrying the blonde-haired trait is a "German gene."
all of which are genetic and all of which are associated with people originating from certain areas (not races, but a good proxy for it)
If you took a million Norwegians and moved them to an area where malaria was rampant and modern medicine was unavailable, within a few generations you would likely see many of them become succeptible to sickle cell anemia. This is because the same gene which carries the sickle cell trait also provides resistance to malaria, and is selected for in regions where malaria is rampant regardless of "race".
"Condiering"? That there must be one 'o dem dang-ol' high-fallutin' cityfied words. Us stump-jumpin' knuckle-draggin' rednecks still use old-timey words like "considering."
For those of you who don't know, this poster was parodying the "warning labels" proposed for inclusion in biology textbooks in several states. I do not think this was intended as a flame. Mod it "Funny," not "Flamebait."
Given Mormonism's history of caving in to popular demands with regard to unpopular belief, we might see more revisionism. After all, God told them polygamy was acceptable up until Utah was in danger of not gaining statehood, at which point God apparently changed his mind and made it a sin. God also told them that black people bore the mark of Cain and were ineligible for priesthood, until the tax-free religious status of the LDS church was in danger of being revoked. Then apparently the President of the Church had a long heart-to-heart with God and convinced him to allow blacks to participate in the Church.
This can clearly be seen by the abundance of Semitic DNA in Native Americans and the fact that they celebrate Chanukah. Oh wait. Nevermind.
There is no such thing as Semitic DNA. Or Caucasian DNA, or Negro DNA, or Asian DNA. Those things you call "races" are artificial distinctions with no basis in biology. Basically, they're the result of saying "traits X and Y are more common in this area than they are in that one, so let's call the people over here 'race XY' for simplicity." There are no genes such that the possession of them constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in any "race".
Yeah, too bad fossil evidence is only one tiny piece of the total overwhelming evidence for evolution. Come back when you've actually read something about evolution written by actual evolutionists, as opposed to the straw man argument the creationists like to knock down.
but it'll never have the same feel that Netscape had.
God be praised.
I'm pretty sure there are international treaties banning any country from claiming extraterrestrial land for their country.
International treaties? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
...that's a space station!
Hart t at the end. In German: Mandel=almond Brot=bread
So you would pronounce his name, were he German. However, Benoit was raised in France, and uses the French pronunciation Mandelbro.
The scientist's job is to discover *FACTS* about the natural world, not truth.
"Fact": from Latin factum, neuter past participle of facere "to make; to do". Facts are created, not discovered.
Oh, bull. When I was a kid we had Mr. Wizard. Old, curmudgeonly, condescending, and didn't take any crap from the whiny little kids he had on his show. And yet you actually learned things; they'd do several actual experiments per show. Bill Nye, on the other hand, has a ridiculous variety show with MTV-style video effects and stupid songs and skits, and each show only makes a single blindingly obvious point like "water can be either a solid, liquid, or gas" or "there is such a thing as gravity". Chalk one up for style over substance. (Maybe he should be President. That's all they do.)
Balance doesn't mean that if one person speaks the truth for 10 minutes, you have to have another person to lie for 10 minutes.
Reminds me of this.
The New Testament supersedes the 10 commandments, that's the point of the NEW COVENEANT.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:17-19
It has many, many established churches.
Dictionary.com lists the following definition of "establish" wrt religion: "To make a state institution of (a church)." None of the religious institutions in the United states can be considered a state institution, in the sense that the Church of England is established in the United Kingdom, or the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece.
In addition, any democracy may be considered to have a state religion when its electoral majority votes in accordance with their clergy.
That doesn't make it a "state institution." The church and state are still free to operate entirely independently of one another, the fact that they may at times choose not to do so notwithstanding.
"This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it any time, by not fucking paying for it.
"So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger."
Those indigenous non-Celts are said in Irish folklore to have the psychic power, and for the ability to be passed in blodlines.
Since when does "said in Irish folklore" constitute any kind of reliable evidence?
Your arguement has logic flaws, it's the common: 1. My apple is green, 2. Therefore all apples are green.
You said, quote, "being a Celt, I've experienced psychic phenomena myself." What you're saying is that the fact that you're a Celt implies that you would experience psychic phenomena. And I was giving a counter-example.
Celtic mythology and stories of Celtic psychic ability are older than the American and British Empire.
Belief in a flat Earth is older than the Egyptians. It still doesn't make it true.
you can read about W.B. Yeats, the mystic, poet and a member of the Golden Dawn
I have. Just because a bunch of upper-class Victorian lunatics decided to sit around and cobble together some mystical system from a bunch of apocryphal texts and engage in ridiculous ceremonies doesn't mean they were psychic.
or perhaps about the Druids in Ireland
I know a lot of New Age types like to claim the Druids had amazing supernatural powers, but the evidence is wanting.
but being a Celt, I've experienced psychic phenomena myself.
This is one of the more ridiculous statements I've seen on slashdot, which is no small feat. You mean that all decendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the British Isles experience psychic phenomena? My grandmother was Irish. I must not have inherited her Celtic mutant gene, though, because I haven't had any psychic experiences.
Just more of this neo-pagan "all Celts are these wise spiritual mystic Stevie Nicks types" bullshit.
and every patron of the "Psychic Powers Center" down the street from me look like they just stepped out of a Kerry fundraiser,
Wow! You can tell someone's politics just by looking at them? You must be psychic too!
Hey, compared to the billions (with a B)
Is that American billions (10^9) or everyone else's billions (10^12)?
Eastern culture has always been based more on spiritual guidelines than hard doctrine and made many technilogical advances long before western society.
I think you're buying into broad cultural stereotypes about "Western" and "Eastern" culture which don't hold up to close scrutiny. First of all, there is no line between East and West. Those cultures we consider Western have had extensive cultural interaction with those we call Eastern: Buddhism, for example, was influenced to a large degree by "Western" philosophy as far back as the first century C.E., when a syncretic "Greco-Buddhism" emerged in central Asia; likewise, early Christian mysticism borrowed from Hindu religious practices. There's not even any clear consensus as to who is Western and who is Eastern: Islam is considered "Eastern" by Christians and "Western" by Hindus, and in the Balkans various religious and ethnic groups have seen Russia's influence as an example of both the "decadent West" and the "primitive East."
As for the claim that "hard doctrines" are easier to find in the West than in the East, history disagrees. China gave us both the extremely rigid social organization of Confucianism and the easygoing individualism of Taoism, at times recognizing both doctrines simultaneously; while here in the "West" we've seen everything from Catholics to Wiccans, businessmen to hippies.
the simple fact is that Bush moved the front lines on the war on terror out of here and over there.
Reminds me of the drunk who dropped his keys in a dark alley but looks for them under the streetlight because it's easier to see there.
As a slashdotter, I think we have the responsibility to actually listen to "Mosh" and act responsibly.
Damn, when I signed up for slashdot I guess I didn't read the part about a responsibility to listen to a crappy gay-bashing white rapper.
He's right too, the coming of the King of Terror began in a schoolroom, it's reign should end there too,
Along with the teaching of proper punctuation?
Leading Hindu astrologers and a noted Hindu mystic believe that Kerry is going to win, Bush will never again be president, and Kerry will end terrorism and bring world peace! The sun and the moon have even endorsed Kerry.
So let me get this straight-- if the sun and the moon had wanted Bush (or Nader or Cobb or Badanarik) to win, they would have given both Newtonian physics and general and special relativity a miss and altered their trajectories to spell out defeat for Kerry? I, for one, am outraged. These celestial bodies are neither U.S. citizens nor registered voters, and I resent their attempts to use their outside influence on this election.
Then again, maybe you and your Hindu astrologers just pulled it out Uranus.
Artificial selection can put breeding pressure on animals that would never occur in nature,
Again, where is this "nature" thing that is completely separate and antithetical to the world of Man? I always thought human beings were part of nature and a product of natural evolution. Why is our culture, behavior, and technology somehow not part of nature?
and cause much, much faster changes, and yield varieties that would never survive on their own, without the continued intervention of humans.
Name any organism (with the possible exception of some of the simplest single-celled creatures) which can survive "on its own." All species evolve in an environment which includes other organisms, and almost every single organism would not survive without some other species providing it with food, oxygen, shelter, or some other necessity. I don't see why it should be a special, "unnatural" case when the species on which an organism is dependent happens to be Homo sapiens.
What I believe he means is that dogs are not the product of natural selection, but rather a product of artificial selection.
I know what he meant. And I'm saying that the distinction between natural and artificial selection is specious.
This situation is fundimentally different from the evolution of dogs because there was no 3rd party species to artificially select for traits in humans.
Humans didn't evolve in a vacuum. We are what we are today because of the ways in which our ancestors were affected by their environment, which includes all the other species with which they had to live.
I suppose the distinction you're trying to make is that humans intentionally bred animals for certain traits, whereas, unless Lamarck was right about the giraffes, there's no intentional change in so-called natural evolution. I'm not sure you can really draw this line. For example, humans aren't the only animals who cultivate other organisms; there are ants who raise aphids and farm fungus for food, and I'm sure both the aphids and the fungus have been changed somewhat by that process in ways that were mutually benificial. Was this intentional or not, natural or artificial?
Now consider the way the wheat plant has changed due to humans. It used to be the case that most grains of wheat were loose and would fall off at the slightest breeze-- this is how the plant would reproduce. When humans developed agriculture, they would cut stalks of wheat in the fields and carry them back to their granaries. Those wheat grains which were not firmly attached fell off, leaving only the more secure grains in the hands of humans. It didn't take long before most of the wheat grown by humans had grains which were hard to detach, requiring people to do a lot more work to separate them. This was selection due to human activity (hence "artificial"), yet was almost certainly unintended.