......If you choose to imagine it happening in an instantaneous *poof* of evolution, then sure it doesn't make sense, but you can't even GRASP the concept of 300 million.........
You, like all the others who believe in the "Once upon a time, millions or billions of years ago" fairy tales have come up with that same tired argument of lots and lots of time. Not ONE of your so called "little jumps" has ever been observed in our day. Even a much "littler jump", such as the transformation of say a strepto-coccus type bacteria into a spirochete or other type has never been observed or even duplicated by intelligent researchers in a laboratory. Any of your "jumps" is enormous compared to the transformation of one kind of single cell creature into another kind of single celled creature. These things go though BILLIONS of generations in a short time. If your fairy tale were real science then we should observe and duplicate these jumps.
Science is observation of what is happening today or doing experiments, not conjecturing about what may have taken place million of years ago by processes we do not see anywhere today nor even by best effort can duplicate.
There are fossils, but nobody today has ever made one or see one form naturally. Today, whenever a living thing dies, it decays. To make a fossil, the living thing must be killed, buried and all decay causing organisms killed within hours. An unimaginably violent, world wide, sudden catastrophe, such as a flood could have made fossils and coal beds found all over the globe, not slow burial in sediments over immense periods of time. A geologic construct, such as the Grand Canyon could never be formed by a puny little Colorado River.
The more complex a system, the more information is needed to make such. The amount of information increase to go from a guppy to a marmot is vastly greater than the added information needed to transform a bicycle into an airliner. Believers in the "Once upon a million years" fairy tale have no idea as to where all that information came from in the first place. Mutations NEVER result in an increase of information, but always a decrease. Only by the activity of a mind can new information be added. By the activity of mind, the application of matter and energy, with the same elements we produce bicycles and airplanes.
All scientific actual facts, such as the fact that we do find fossils are INTERPRETED through the "There is no God" world view. You merely substitute the belief in lots and lots of time for a belief in a transcendent God. Both world views are beliefs however, religion if you will, but definitely NOT science. In addition, these fairy tale believers, such as you, resort to personal attacks on those who happen to believe differently.
.....Do you have an alternative explanation of all of the observed data.....
The observation that the redshift, like much else in nature is QUANTIZED, ie. occurs in tiny jumps shows that the doppler interpretation of the cause of the redshift is wrong. This doesn't mean we have a generally accepted new interpretation. What it does mean is that the stars and galaxies are NOT racing away from us or each other a significant percentages of the speed of light. This needs re-working of some of the aspects of the "big bang" theories. Reinterpreting the very real observed redshift to causes OTHER than doppler also removes the need for "dark energy" and "dark matter" to explain the motion of galaxies which the doppler idea requires. Neither dark matter nor energy has any physical evidence for their existence. If the galaxies & stars are not moving any where near as fast as the doppler effect explanation requires, a major reinterpretation of the existing data must be done. The facts of science never change, only our world-view filtered interpretations of the hard observed data.
Like so many supposed errors, this one is an example of a translation error. The word translated "corners" is a Greek navigational term from "gonia" which means quadrant. The earth is indeed divided into quadrants. Job tells us that God is above "the circle of the Earth" and the "earth is suspended upon nothing". It is a miracle that NONE, not one of the ancient wrong beliefs about scientific FACTS can be found in the original texts of the Bible. Interpretations of both science and the Bible have often conflicted however. There is no reason to correct the Bible because it is free of error. Any so called errors are either mistranslation or just plain old-fashioned unbelief of things beyond the human understanding. We humans would have to be God, in order to fully understand Him. Because we are not God, the only alternative left is to believe, or of course, as you seem to have chosen, not to.
It isn't that science is wrong, but beliefs and interpretations of science is wrong. Science is nothing more than thinking God's thoughts after Him. However, because God is so much greater and wiser than all humans put together, we often take quite a while to figure out what God actually did. I'm sure God doesn't mind that at all. What He doesn't like is when we mere humans attribute the things we discover about His handiwork to random, unintelligent processes. The Psalm writer David got it right: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the expanse proclaims His handiwork. Day by day they pour forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge." (Psalm 19) There never has been a conflict between the Bible text and scientific fact. There have been plenty of conflict between scientific interpretations of these facts and interpretations of the Bible text.
The issue is not where the church stands, but where YOU stand in relation to Jesus, who is God come in human form. He offers mercy to you now, but one day He will give you perfect justice instead. While you are still breathing, you may choose which of these two it shall be for you. What any church has or has not done is irrelevant and will not come up in the final judgment when YOU personally will appear before Him.
.....but all science these days is political,......
It isn't so much that science itself is political, but that the interpretations of scientific experiments and observations are done with certain world views. A group's politics is a subset of their world view.
If the world view is that there are no absolutes and no absolute God in charge of the Universe, then truth, including invariant scientific truth can never find room within such a world view and the attendant politics.
The truth of the Bible upon which the church is founded is as absolute as God is. That truth can only change if God Himself changes. We are told in scripture that God is not subject to change and variation. In the gospels we find Jesus uttering phrase "truly I say to you" 86 times. I believe that He spoke the truth that never changes.
When Moses asked God at the burning bush the name of God, God replied "I AM". Jesus used this designation for Himself 112 times. He claimed to be God and the religious leader of the day understood that He was claiming deity. It is a very specific Greek language construction of the eternal self existing one, which is used in Hebrew also. He speaks truth, because He never changes, He just IS.
....Evolution is hard for people to grasp because they have a hard time grasping how combining very many simple things and processes can make something unimaginably complex.......
People rightly have a hard time with that because in our experience it ALWAYS takes the vital ingredient of intelligence to take a bunch of parts and make something complex. In our everyday experience, the journey from simple to complex NEVER happens without much planning and thought on part of intelligent humans. It is rightly hard to believe how something as complex as an eyeball could come into being WITHOUT careful planning and thought of a very intelligent person. Evolutionists of course have this magic thing called time. If enough of that is conjectured then even such complex structures "somehow" came into existence.
.....Here is widely agreed upon tenet of evolution that I think is easily falsifiable: "all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor"......
How about this one: "All life has a designer who used certain basic principles and design criteria in all of His designs".
We humans do this all the time in our designs. Motorcycles and automobiles have many things in common, but that doesn't mean that automobiles are the descended from motorcycles.
Common characteristics of organisms doesn't prove ancestry or descent of one from another. It could just as well be common designs of a very clever designer.
....whatever science is, it has nothing to do with anyone's intentions......
It also has nothing to do with their INTERPRETATIONS of observed phenomena or experimental results. Example: The Redshift. Astronomers observe that the light from galaxies and stars is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This has been INTERPRETED to be caused by the doppler effect. It is this interpretation of Hubble that has been a central assumption of present day cosmology. It is the sticking to this interpretation that has necessitated convoluted never observed constructs such as dark matter and energy in order to make some of the present data fit that interpretation. The presence and paths of comets has engendered the myth of something called the Oort Cloud where comets form. The immense ages conjecture doesn't allow for the fact that there should still be comets in existence today. So in order to make the fact that we still do observe comets after all these millions of years fit theory, a conjectured thing called the Oort cloud is postulated, where new comets are born. The only problem is that there is absolutely NO observational evidence for such a source of comets. Yet conjectures like this are passed of as science!
Science is experimentation in a laboratory or careful observations in the laboratory of nature. As soon as people get dogmatic about WHY certain results or observations are made, there enters a large dose of belief. Evolution, as defined by presently repeatable experiments of current observation of such evolutionary processes cannot be denied. However conjecturing about process in the past, that cannot be seen today, such as the making of fossils for example, are not science, but belief.
....The whole "disproving evolution" thing and claiming it is "not a scientific procecss" beacause we cannot actually take a clam and evolve it into a marmot in a lab setting is really really silly.......
No it isn't at all silly. True science is where repeatable experiments can be done. If it cannot be done in a laboratory or actually PRESENTLY OBSERVED in laboratory of nature, it is definitely not science, but faith and conjecture. The present huge variety of dogs all come from a pair of dogs. This can be and is being verified today by dog breeders. If this breeding process is called evolution, fine. However, to say that over enough time dogs have evolved from a microbe or even a rock is stretching the word "evolution" beyond its breaking point. There is no way, neither the origin of life itself nor the "evolution" of primitive creatures into complex ones, especially humans, can be shown to happen presently. People who believe in that kind of transformation, sadly, also called "evolution" KNOW that this doesn't happen today. Therefore they always come with the "time", the billions or millions of years, as if that were somehow magic in making something happen if you add lots of time.
Extrapolating from an amoeba to a dog and applying the same word "evolution" to that is a big stretch. Evolution, as defined by an organism having more resistance to a disease or poison is something that can be repeatably done and observed is therefore a hard science. If anyone COULD make a clam into a marmot, then that would scientifically expand the term evolution to include the process by which that was done. All demonstrated "evolutionary" processes involve the decrease of information in any organism thus "evolved". All transformational processes known, ALWAYS involve LOSS; loss of energy and loss of information or both. To turn a clam into a marmot would require a significant input of energy and a huge amount of new information.
.......indeed if e-bay is not acting like an employer for them.......
If your neighbor pays you for a service or some goods, he as the payer may be required to report that transaction to the IRS, giving them your tax ID and the amount paid. If he can be deemed your employer, he must even pay the IRS before you even get your paycheck.
However, the IRS requiring ebay or any other buyer-seller communication service to do this would be like that same neighbor being forced to tell the IRS the details of a transaction between you and someone else, where your neighbor also happens to have knowledge of. By this principle, every newspaper and other classified service could also be required to report all transactions between people who advertise. In the end, ebay is only a service that facilitates the bringing together of a buyer and a seller of a good or service. They do not participate in the transaction, other than charging a percentage of the final settlement price. I wonder if extending this snitching system would be doable by the IRS without Congressional action.
This is an attempt to catch sellers who are cheaters by not reporting their income. Forcing ebay and other third party buyer-seller go-betweens to become snitches for the government should not be the law in a country such as ours. People should be honest enough to pay their fair share of taxes.
The "A" at the end of that term stands for agreement. To have legally binding agreement, the parties thereto must be BOTH 1) unambiguously identifiable and 2) of legal age to enter into legally binding contracts. In the case of click or unwrap "EULAs" neither of these can be established. A six year old can unwrap a box or click a mouse. It cannot be established WHO clicked the mouse or ripped the wrappings off of the package either. Someone should write a program that automatically clicks "accept" or "agree" on software installs.
Valid agreements require a signature and if the contract is in any way important, an official witness, such as a notary. MS is dreaming if they can think they can in any way prevent people from installing VISTA in a virtual environment by merely stating this in their so called 14 page or more EULA which virtually nobody reads. Please raise your hand if you have EVER read any such lengthy legalese gobbeldygook before clicking "accept" in order to get on with your task. ALL such "EULAs" are a colossal joke.
What DRM is there in OSX? iTunes is the only DRM Apple makes, and that is ONLY because the recording companies demand it. Anyone can install OSX any number of times without having to type in a 25 digit code and then even after all that have it annoy the user to "activate" their OS or it will stop working. In the past Apple has sold OSX upgrades for $129 each or a 5 computer license for $200. Windows users complain often about the price of Apple systems, but the fact that retail Windows has ALWAYS cost more than OSX is seldom talked about.
...the underlying registry system of Windows is broken.....
Too bad that MS did not finally get rid of that registry albatross. Why is that needed? Other OS get along fine without such a monstrosity. If VISTA is not anything more than a warmed over version of XP, sort of like XP with SP 5 or 6, why did it take them so long? How do the OS such as OSX provide the functions that the registry does in Windows?
.....because hopefully it will mean developers write installers that only ask for the access level they need........
Why is it that in order to get a program into Windows it needs an installer in the first place? Why is it that Windows STILL needs this dumb thing called a registry? On OSX many programs (even MS office) only need the user to drag a folder from the CD or downloaded disk image to the desired folder. A limited user on OSX may then run any program. If such a program wants to alter system settings, only then does the user gets asked for a admin password. What is the main reason for having a registry in Windows? Other OS can work just fine without it. How do they accomplish whatever the registry does? In VISTA, if the registry gets corrupted, is it still possible for the computer to stop working entirely, as is the case with previous versions of Windows?
...or OSX, he wouldn't be able to do it at all -- unless he always logs in as root....
Not true. Any drive other than a bootable drive can be set up without paying attention to any permissions of any kind. Even a limited user then has full access to the entire drive. I have a drive with music and video which can be used on any Mac, even on one where I don't have any account at all. Any user on whatever Mac this drive is connected to may read and write anywhere on that device.
......HD video and surround sound in a book format? I'm not so sure about that......
That's only about the best we can do right now, but God records the entire brain activity of each person. This includes not only all sensory input, but the innermost thoughts as well. Talk about detail and huge amounts of data. Surely, if we can transmit data to a remote server, perhaps halfway around the world, the designer of the DNA information storage system can transmit our data to an enormous data retrieval system for later playback. Your DNA code is the unique identifier that keeps your data from being mixed up with anyone else's data. This is of course straight out of my imagination, but not totally implausible.
(....I would imagine the concept of recording your life is common in any religion which features some sort of end of the life judgment.....)
Of course it would have to be. But many of the posts here were concerned how a government and who knows else would use/abuse such life recordings. Still, if we are aware that such recording IS being done, most of us would behave ourselves better than we do. So how do we KNOW that what Jesus said is NOT true. We may not want to believe this, but it could still be true.
(....Islam tradition features a similar concept....)
The idea of judgment after death is not new to Islam nor even Christianity. The Jews also believed that there will be a judgment. Mohammed, living about 600 years later, knew about Jesus and His teachings and incorporated some of these into his teachings also. There are very few truly new ideas in philosophy and religion. The eastern ideas of "Karma" also incorporate this concept in a different way.
....Turn recording device off BEFORE committing crimes!.....
Now if you can persuade God to turn of HIS recording device you'll be all set.
Here is what Jesus said on the subject: "But I say to you that every idle word, whatever men may speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned". Matthew 12:36-37
To John the Apostle, it was also shown that detailed recordings are made of everything in everybody's life: "And I saw the dead, the small and the great, stand before God. And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead in it. And death and hell delivered up the dead in them. And each one of them was judged according to their works". Revelation 20:12-13
At some point all secrets, yours and mine will be made public. Jesus said: "For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor anything hidden that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light. And that which you have spoken in the ear in secret rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. Luke 12:2-3
Centuries before Jesus walked the earth, Daniel also was shown that records are kept, to be revealed for judgment. Daniel 7:10
I find it remarkable that such things are written in a book that many today dismiss as tales of fiction. Yet this was put in writing long before any such technology was even dreamed of by any human. I suspect God's recordings are at least in HD video and surround sound, maybe also 3D shot from various locations and angles.
....CF bulb already costs much less to run than the equivalent incandescents.......
True, but CFLs have infinitely more poisons in them than an incandescent bulb. I'll take CO2 over mercury any time. Mercury will KILL you over time, but CO2 is a NATURAL component of your breath.
....But unfortunatly, little draw backs like these with cause some people to leave lights on when they would normaly be turned off.......
CFLs also die quickly if used in places where they are cycled on and off frequently. Halogen bulbs produce the purest whitest light and are also more efficient than ordinary incandescent bulbs. The heat generated by light bulbs is not total energy lost, at least not in the winter. This heat contributes to the heat in the house. In the not too distant future, LED and OLED technology will replace light bulbs in many situations. LED flashlights are already used in many places. LEDs are even more efficient than CFLs and don't contain mercury, a very toxic heavy metal.
....Modern CFLs do not oscillate at anything nearly as slow as 60Hz.......
There are two big problems with CFLs. One is that they do not work with dimmers. We have a number of lamps which are controlled by dimmers. These are especially valuable in connection with watching movies.
A worse problem is that CFLs lifetime is much less than a normal bulb in situations where the lights are turned on an off often. These CFLs die very quickly under such service. They are also much more vulnerable to instantaneous power surges and drops. The solid state devices in them silently die and the mercury containing bulb is then trash which needs special treatment.
They also take a while, (about 30 sec. to a minute) to reach full brightness and some of them flicker or pulsate until they get fully warmed up. So it is best to use them in situations where the light is left on for most of the 24 hour day. They have their uses and encouraging their use is one thing, but across the board banning of normal light bulbs is not a good idea. The color balance of the cheaper ones also leaves much to be desired. Some of them make people look like death warmed over.
.....If they could apply the same method to analogue with the same sucess.....
Analog success? I remember making a simple one transistor sync restoration circuit to circumvent the Macrovision VHS "protection" scheme. Other than the normal generation loss from the analog process, the VHS copies were just fine.
Indeed true! However, the biggest difference is the fact that most people can and do listen to good music over and over again. Truly good music, memorable tunes, just don't get tiresome very fast. There are good movies, such as the Star Wars series Lord of the Rings and the many entertaining comedies and dramas. However, how many repeat plays will such a movie get compared to some of the Beatle songs or the classics? Another big difference is that music can accompany other activities, such as driving a car, working in the shop or office. These are major reasons why people are not willing to rent music.
DRM, whether rented or purchased is a dumb idea whose time has passed. The content makers have been duped by Macrovision and their ilk. These are ONLY ones who benefit from DRM. Not the labels, the sellers and least of all the consumers. Maybe the **AA lawyers are a group that are also beneficiaries of DRM.
DVD sales and rentals are brisk, despite the fact that anyone who really wants to can copy any so called "protected" DVD. The music companies could simply try an experiment. Sell DRM free music on the iTunes and other music stores for a year, but don't advertise the fact that they've made a limited time agreement to do so. A year or so ought to be enough time for them to tell whether the lack of DRM has reduced their income and whether "piracy" as skyrocketed. If the bottom line results and surveys reflect badly, they can just go back to the DRM as it is now or tell Apple "Hey Steve you have to let others use your DRM system so the market as a whole can prosper." If however, the labels make more money, then Steve can tell them "See I told you so." However the extra cash would likely assuage the label's wounded pride.
.....There is no appreciable statistical correlation.......
There is one combination though that is unique to US and Canada. Land line telephones. The basic purpose of the Internet is to allow people to be able to communicate, both for personal an business use. Universal telephone service has existed in this country far longer, cheaper and more widespread than in other nations. Only since the advent of the Internet has telephone communication become too slow for the amount and kind of stuff that many people need/want to communicate. Even now, the phone still meets the needs of most people. The fact that phones have become personal and wireless is not the important thing. If the Internet disappeared today, the country could continue pretty well, but if all phones, including cell phones stopped, we'd be in big trouble. Even in say 1960, the sudden loss of phones would have had a devastating impact on the US and Canada as a whole. This would not have been true then of any of the places now being touted as "advanced" in broadband service. Ubiquitous communication via telephone has been with us for a long time. In contrast, in any of the place where broadband is now touted, where there were no phones at all, especially for private people. For example, none of my parent's friends in Germany, in the 1950s could afford their own phone. Phones were only for businesses who really needed them. Only the richest 1-2% of the people had a phone in their dwelling. We moved to the USA during that time. Even though we were a poor immigrant family, we had our own phone on a private line. Still today, Germans have to pay per minute, even to call across the street.
.... But given that, the models still get the general trends correct even if they can't predict it will rain 2" on Tuesday Feb. 14 2010 in Seattle....
I agree of course that the models might not be able to predict such detail. However, if the models are any good, the predictions they make from earlier data ought to match the general predicted trends to what was actually observed later. Initial conditions have nothing to do with this. The aim is to simply test how well the predictions of the models working with earlier data match up with real observations. If there is a good match for historical data, then there is a high probability that predictions these models make for the future are also correct. Present, dire global warming predictions are based on these models that AKAIK have never been tested with historical data and compared to what was actually observed. From what I could glean from the links you gave, the goal of the reanalysis project isn't quite what I described in my post.
Slashdot Mirror
......If you choose to imagine it happening in an instantaneous *poof* of evolution, then sure it doesn't make sense, but you can't even GRASP the concept of 300 million.........
You, like all the others who believe in the "Once upon a time, millions or billions of years ago" fairy tales have come up with that same tired argument of lots and lots of time. Not ONE of your so called "little jumps" has ever been observed in our day. Even a much "littler jump", such as the transformation of say a strepto-coccus type bacteria into a spirochete or other type has never been observed or even duplicated by intelligent researchers in a laboratory. Any of your "jumps" is enormous compared to the transformation of one kind of single cell creature into another kind of single celled creature. These things go though BILLIONS of generations in a short time. If your fairy tale were real science then we should observe and duplicate these jumps.
Science is observation of what is happening today or doing experiments, not conjecturing about what may have taken place million of years ago by processes we do not see anywhere today nor even by best effort can duplicate.
There are fossils, but nobody today has ever made one or see one form naturally. Today, whenever a living thing dies, it decays. To make a fossil, the living thing must be killed, buried and all decay causing organisms killed within hours. An unimaginably violent, world wide, sudden catastrophe, such as a flood could have made fossils and coal beds found all over the globe, not slow burial in sediments over immense periods of time. A geologic construct, such as the Grand Canyon could never be formed by a puny little Colorado River.
The more complex a system, the more information is needed to make such. The amount of information increase to go from a guppy to a marmot is vastly greater than the added information needed to transform a bicycle into an airliner. Believers in the "Once upon a million years" fairy tale have no idea as to where all that information came from in the first place. Mutations NEVER result in an increase of information, but always a decrease. Only by the activity of a mind can new information be added. By the activity of mind, the application of matter and energy, with the same elements we produce bicycles and airplanes.
All scientific actual facts, such as the fact that we do find fossils are INTERPRETED through the "There is no God" world view. You merely substitute the belief in lots and lots of time for a belief in a transcendent God. Both world views are beliefs however, religion if you will, but definitely NOT science. In addition, these fairy tale believers, such as you, resort to personal attacks on those who happen to believe differently.
.....Do you have an alternative explanation of all of the observed data.....
The observation that the redshift, like much else in nature is QUANTIZED, ie. occurs in tiny jumps shows that the doppler interpretation of the cause of the redshift is wrong. This doesn't mean we have a generally accepted new interpretation. What it does mean is that the stars and galaxies are NOT racing away from us or each other a significant percentages of the speed of light. This needs re-working of some of the aspects of the "big bang" theories. Reinterpreting the very real observed redshift to causes OTHER than doppler also removes the need for "dark energy" and "dark matter" to explain the motion of galaxies which the doppler idea requires. Neither dark matter nor energy has any physical evidence for their existence. If the galaxies & stars are not moving any where near as fast as the doppler effect explanation requires, a major reinterpretation of the existing data must be done. The facts of science never change, only our world-view filtered interpretations of the hard observed data.
.....there are four corners of the earth.......
Like so many supposed errors, this one is an example of a translation error. The word translated "corners" is a Greek navigational term from "gonia" which means quadrant. The earth is indeed divided into quadrants. Job tells us that God is above "the circle of the Earth" and the "earth is suspended upon nothing". It is a miracle that NONE, not one of the ancient wrong beliefs about scientific FACTS can be found in the original texts of the Bible. Interpretations of both science and the Bible have often conflicted however. There is no reason to correct the Bible because it is free of error. Any so called errors are either mistranslation or just plain old-fashioned unbelief of things beyond the human understanding. We humans would have to be God, in order to fully understand Him. Because we are not God, the only alternative left is to believe, or of course, as you seem to have chosen, not to.
....when science is wrong....
It isn't that science is wrong, but beliefs and interpretations of science is wrong. Science is nothing more than thinking God's thoughts after Him. However, because God is so much greater and wiser than all humans put together, we often take quite a while to figure out what God actually did. I'm sure God doesn't mind that at all. What He doesn't like is when we mere humans attribute the things we discover about His handiwork to random, unintelligent processes. The Psalm writer David got it right: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the expanse proclaims His handiwork. Day by day they pour forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge." (Psalm 19) There never has been a conflict between the Bible text and scientific fact. There have been plenty of conflict between scientific interpretations of these facts and interpretations of the Bible text.
.....where does the church stand today.....
The issue is not where the church stands, but where YOU stand in relation to Jesus, who is God come in human form. He offers mercy to you now, but one day He will give you perfect justice instead. While you are still breathing, you may choose which of these two it shall be for you. What any church has or has not done is irrelevant and will not come up in the final judgment when YOU personally will appear before Him.
.....but all science these days is political,......
It isn't so much that science itself is political, but that the interpretations of scientific experiments and observations are done with certain world views. A group's politics is a subset of their world view.
If the world view is that there are no absolutes and no absolute God in charge of the Universe, then truth, including invariant scientific truth can never find room within such a world view and the attendant politics.
The truth of the Bible upon which the church is founded is as absolute as God is. That truth can only change if God Himself changes. We are told in scripture that God is not subject to change and variation. In the gospels we find Jesus uttering phrase "truly I say to you" 86 times. I believe that He spoke the truth that never changes.
When Moses asked God at the burning bush the name of God, God replied "I AM". Jesus used this designation for Himself 112 times. He claimed to be God and the religious leader of the day understood that He was claiming deity. It is a very specific Greek language construction of the eternal self existing one, which is used in Hebrew also. He speaks truth, because He never changes, He just IS.
....Evolution is hard for people to grasp because they have a hard time grasping how combining very many simple things and processes can make something unimaginably complex.......
People rightly have a hard time with that because in our experience it ALWAYS takes the vital ingredient of intelligence to take a bunch of parts and make something complex. In our everyday experience, the journey from simple to complex NEVER happens without much planning and thought on part of intelligent humans. It is rightly hard to believe how something as complex as an eyeball could come into being WITHOUT careful planning and thought of a very intelligent person. Evolutionists of course have this magic thing called time. If enough of that is conjectured then even such complex structures "somehow" came into existence.
.....Here is widely agreed upon tenet of evolution that I think is easily falsifiable: "all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor"......
How about this one: "All life has a designer who used certain basic principles and design criteria in all of His designs".
We humans do this all the time in our designs. Motorcycles and automobiles have many things in common, but that doesn't mean that automobiles are the descended from motorcycles.
Common characteristics of organisms doesn't prove ancestry or descent of one from another. It could just as well be common designs of a very clever designer.
....whatever science is, it has nothing to do with anyone's intentions......
It also has nothing to do with their INTERPRETATIONS of observed phenomena or experimental results. Example: The Redshift. Astronomers observe that the light from galaxies and stars is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This has been INTERPRETED to be caused by the doppler effect. It is this interpretation of Hubble that has been a central assumption of present day cosmology. It is the sticking to this interpretation that has necessitated convoluted never observed constructs such as dark matter and energy in order to make some of the present data fit that interpretation. The presence and paths of comets has engendered the myth of something called the Oort Cloud where comets form. The immense ages conjecture doesn't allow for the fact that there should still be comets in existence today. So in order to make the fact that we still do observe comets after all these millions of years fit theory, a conjectured thing called the Oort cloud is postulated, where new comets are born. The only problem is that there is absolutely NO observational evidence for such a source of comets. Yet conjectures like this are passed of as science!
Science is experimentation in a laboratory or careful observations in the laboratory of nature. As soon as people get dogmatic about WHY certain results or observations are made, there enters a large dose of belief. Evolution, as defined by presently repeatable experiments of current observation of such evolutionary processes cannot be denied. However conjecturing about process in the past, that cannot be seen today, such as the making of fossils for example, are not science, but belief.
....The whole "disproving evolution" thing and claiming it is "not a scientific procecss" beacause we cannot actually take a clam and evolve it into a marmot in a lab setting is really really silly.......
No it isn't at all silly. True science is where repeatable experiments can be done. If it cannot be done in a laboratory or actually PRESENTLY OBSERVED in laboratory of nature, it is definitely not science, but faith and conjecture. The present huge variety of dogs all come from a pair of dogs. This can be and is being verified today by dog breeders. If this breeding process is called evolution, fine. However, to say that over enough time dogs have evolved from a microbe or even a rock is stretching the word "evolution" beyond its breaking point. There is no way, neither the origin of life itself nor the "evolution" of primitive creatures into complex ones, especially humans, can be shown to happen presently.
People who believe in that kind of transformation, sadly, also called "evolution" KNOW that this doesn't happen today. Therefore they always come with the "time", the billions or millions of years, as if that were somehow magic in making something happen if you add lots of time.
Extrapolating from an amoeba to a dog and applying the same word "evolution" to that is a big stretch. Evolution, as defined by an organism having more resistance to a disease or poison is something that can be repeatably done and observed is therefore a hard science. If anyone COULD make a clam into a marmot, then that would scientifically expand the term evolution to include the process by which that was done. All demonstrated "evolutionary" processes involve the decrease of information in any organism thus "evolved". All transformational processes known, ALWAYS involve LOSS; loss of energy and loss of information or both. To turn a clam into a marmot would require a significant input of energy and a huge amount of new information.
.......indeed if e-bay is not acting like an employer for them.......
If your neighbor pays you for a service or some goods, he as the payer may be required to report that transaction to the IRS, giving them your tax ID and the amount paid. If he can be deemed your employer, he must even pay the IRS before you even get your paycheck.
However, the IRS requiring ebay or any other buyer-seller communication service to do this would be like that same neighbor being forced to tell the IRS the details of a transaction between you and someone else, where your neighbor also happens to have knowledge of. By this principle, every newspaper and other classified service could also be required to report all transactions between people who advertise. In the end, ebay is only a service that facilitates the bringing together of a buyer and a seller of a good or service. They do not participate in the transaction, other than charging a percentage of the final settlement price. I wonder if extending this snitching system would be doable by the IRS without Congressional action.
This is an attempt to catch sellers who are cheaters by not reporting their income. Forcing ebay and other third party buyer-seller go-betweens to become snitches for the government should not be the law in a country such as ours. People should be honest enough to pay their fair share of taxes.
.....validating the legality of EULA's?......
The "A" at the end of that term stands for agreement. To have legally binding agreement, the parties thereto must be BOTH 1) unambiguously identifiable and 2) of legal age to enter into legally binding contracts. In the case of click or unwrap "EULAs" neither of these can be established. A six year old can unwrap a box or click a mouse. It cannot be established WHO clicked the mouse or ripped the wrappings off of the package either. Someone should write a program that automatically clicks "accept" or "agree" on software installs.
Valid agreements require a signature and if the contract is in any way important, an official witness, such as a notary. MS is dreaming if they can think they can in any way prevent people from installing VISTA in a virtual environment by merely stating this in their so called 14 page or more EULA which virtually nobody reads. Please raise your hand if you have EVER read any such lengthy legalese gobbeldygook before clicking "accept" in order to get on with your task. ALL such "EULAs" are a colossal joke.
....in XP or OSX......
What DRM is there in OSX? iTunes is the only DRM Apple makes, and that is ONLY because the recording companies demand it. Anyone can install OSX any number of times without having to type in a 25 digit code and then even after all that have it annoy the user to "activate" their OS or it will stop working. In the past Apple has sold OSX upgrades for $129 each or a 5 computer license for $200. Windows users complain often about the price of Apple systems, but the fact that retail Windows has ALWAYS cost more than OSX is seldom talked about.
...the underlying registry system of Windows is broken.....
Too bad that MS did not finally get rid of that registry albatross. Why is that needed? Other OS get along fine without such a monstrosity. If VISTA is not anything more than a warmed over version of XP, sort of like XP with SP 5 or 6, why did it take them so long? How do the OS such as OSX provide the functions that the registry does in Windows?
.....because hopefully it will mean developers write installers that only ask for the access level they need........
Why is it that in order to get a program into Windows it needs an installer in the first place? Why is it that Windows STILL needs this dumb thing called a registry? On OSX many programs (even MS office) only need the user to drag a folder from the CD or downloaded disk image to the desired folder. A limited user on OSX may then run any program. If such a program wants to alter system settings, only then does the user gets asked for a admin password. What is the main reason for having a registry in Windows? Other OS can work just fine without it. How do they accomplish whatever the registry does? In VISTA, if the registry gets corrupted, is it still possible for the computer to stop working entirely, as is the case with previous versions of Windows?
...or OSX, he wouldn't be able to do it at all -- unless he always logs in as root....
Not true. Any drive other than a bootable drive can be set up without paying attention to any permissions of any kind. Even a limited user then has full access to the entire drive. I have a drive with music and video which can be used on any Mac, even on one where I don't have any account at all. Any user on whatever Mac this drive is connected to may read and write anywhere on that device.
......HD video and surround sound in a book format? I'm not so sure about that......
....)
....)
That's only about the best we can do right now, but God records the entire brain activity of each person. This includes not only all sensory input, but the innermost thoughts as well. Talk about detail and huge amounts of data. Surely, if we can transmit data to a remote server, perhaps halfway around the world, the designer of the DNA information storage system can transmit our data to an enormous data retrieval system for later playback. Your DNA code is the unique identifier that keeps your data from being mixed up with anyone else's data. This is of course straight out of my imagination, but not totally implausible.
(....I would imagine the concept of recording your life is common in any religion which features some sort of end of the life judgment.
Of course it would have to be. But many of the posts here were concerned how a government and who knows else would use/abuse such life recordings. Still, if we are aware that such recording IS being done, most of us would behave ourselves better than we do. So how do we KNOW that what Jesus said is NOT true. We may not want to believe this, but it could still be true.
(....Islam tradition features a similar concept
The idea of judgment after death is not new to Islam nor even Christianity. The Jews also believed that there will be a judgment. Mohammed, living about 600 years later, knew about Jesus and His teachings and incorporated some of these into his teachings also. There are very few truly new ideas in philosophy and religion. The eastern ideas of "Karma" also incorporate this concept in a different way.
....Turn recording device off BEFORE committing crimes!.....
Now if you can persuade God to turn of HIS recording device you'll be all set.
Here is what Jesus said on the subject: "But I say to you that every idle word, whatever men may speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned". Matthew 12:36-37
To John the Apostle, it was also shown that detailed recordings are made of everything in everybody's life: "And I saw the dead, the small and the great, stand before God. And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead in it. And death and hell delivered up the dead in them. And each one of them was judged according to their works". Revelation 20:12-13
At some point all secrets, yours and mine will be made public. Jesus said: "For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor anything hidden that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light. And that which you have spoken in the ear in secret rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. Luke 12:2-3
Centuries before Jesus walked the earth, Daniel also was shown that records are kept, to be revealed for judgment. Daniel 7:10
I find it remarkable that such things are written in a book that many today dismiss as tales of fiction. Yet this was put in writing long before any such technology was even dreamed of by any human. I suspect God's recordings are at least in HD video and surround sound, maybe also 3D shot from various locations and angles.
....CF bulb already costs much less to run than the equivalent incandescents.......
True, but CFLs have infinitely more poisons in them than an incandescent bulb. I'll take CO2 over mercury any time. Mercury will KILL you over time, but CO2 is a NATURAL component of your breath.
....But unfortunatly, little draw backs like these with cause some people to leave lights on when they would normaly be turned off.......
CFLs also die quickly if used in places where they are cycled on and off frequently. Halogen bulbs produce the purest whitest light and are also more efficient than ordinary incandescent bulbs. The heat generated by light bulbs is not total energy lost, at least not in the winter. This heat contributes to the heat in the house. In the not too distant future, LED and OLED technology will replace light bulbs in many situations. LED flashlights are already used in many places. LEDs are even more efficient than CFLs and don't contain mercury, a very toxic heavy metal.
....Modern CFLs do not oscillate at anything nearly as slow as 60Hz.......
There are two big problems with CFLs. One is that they do not work with dimmers. We have a number of lamps which are controlled by dimmers. These are especially valuable in connection with watching movies.
A worse problem is that CFLs lifetime is much less than a normal bulb in situations where the lights are turned on an off often. These CFLs die very quickly under such service. They are also much more vulnerable to instantaneous power surges and drops. The solid state devices in them silently die and the mercury containing bulb is then trash which needs special treatment.
They also take a while, (about 30 sec. to a minute) to reach full brightness and some of them flicker or pulsate until they get fully warmed up. So it is best to use them in situations where the light is left on for most of the 24 hour day. They have their uses and encouraging their use is one thing, but across the board banning of normal light bulbs is not a good idea. The color balance of the cheaper ones also leaves much to be desired. Some of them make people look like death warmed over.
.....If they could apply the same method to analogue with the same sucess.....
Analog success? I remember making a simple one transistor sync restoration circuit to circumvent the Macrovision VHS "protection" scheme. Other than the normal generation loss from the analog process, the VHS copies were just fine.
.....Music is different than film.....
Indeed true! However, the biggest difference is the fact that most people can and do listen to good music over and over again. Truly good music, memorable tunes, just don't get tiresome very fast. There are good movies, such as the Star Wars series Lord of the Rings and the many entertaining comedies and dramas. However, how many repeat plays will such a movie get compared to some of the Beatle songs or the classics? Another big difference is that music can accompany other activities, such as driving a car, working in the shop or office. These are major reasons why people are not willing to rent music.
DRM, whether rented or purchased is a dumb idea whose time has passed. The content makers have been duped by Macrovision and their ilk. These are ONLY ones who benefit from DRM. Not the labels, the sellers and least of all the consumers. Maybe the **AA lawyers are a group that are also beneficiaries of DRM.
DVD sales and rentals are brisk, despite the fact that anyone who really wants to can copy any so called "protected" DVD. The music companies could simply try an experiment. Sell DRM free music on the iTunes and other music stores for a year, but don't advertise the fact that they've made a limited time agreement to do so. A year or so ought to be enough time for them to tell whether the lack of DRM has reduced their income and whether "piracy" as skyrocketed. If the bottom line results and surveys reflect badly, they can just go back to the DRM as it is now or tell Apple "Hey Steve you have to let others use your DRM system so the market as a whole can prosper." If however, the labels make more money, then Steve can tell them "See I told you so." However the extra cash would likely assuage the label's wounded pride.
.....There is no appreciable statistical correlation.......
There is one combination though that is unique to US and Canada. Land line telephones. The basic purpose of the Internet is to allow people to be able to communicate, both for personal an business use. Universal telephone service has existed in this country far longer, cheaper and more widespread than in other nations. Only since the advent of the Internet has telephone communication become too slow for the amount and kind of stuff that many people need/want to communicate. Even now, the phone still meets the needs of most people. The fact that phones have become personal and wireless is not the important thing. If the Internet disappeared today, the country could continue pretty well, but if all phones, including cell phones stopped, we'd be in big trouble. Even in say 1960, the sudden loss of phones would have had a devastating impact on the US and Canada as a whole. This would not have been true then of any of the places now being touted as "advanced" in broadband service. Ubiquitous communication via telephone has been with us for a long time. In contrast, in any of the place where broadband is now touted, where there were no phones at all, especially for private people. For example, none of my parent's friends in Germany, in the 1950s could afford their own phone. Phones were only for businesses who really needed them. Only the richest 1-2% of the people had a phone in their dwelling. We moved to the USA during that time. Even though we were a poor immigrant family, we had our own phone on a private line. Still today, Germans have to pay per minute, even to call across the street.
.... But given that, the models still get the general trends correct even if they can't predict it will rain 2" on Tuesday Feb. 14 2010 in Seattle....
I agree of course that the models might not be able to predict such detail. However, if the models are any good, the predictions they make from earlier data ought to match the general predicted trends to what was actually observed later. Initial conditions have nothing to do with this. The aim is to simply test how well the predictions of the models working with earlier data match up with real observations. If there is a good match for historical data, then there is a high probability that predictions these models make for the future are also correct. Present, dire global warming predictions are based on these models that AKAIK have never been tested with historical data and compared to what was actually observed. From what I could glean from the links you gave, the goal of the reanalysis project isn't quite what I described in my post.