Higher up yet are self-reproducing machines. Again we have not achieved this technology yet, but it is a very fundamental activity, if not the defining activity of what we call 'life".
With computer programs this is already possible. A compiler that can compile itself is an example (most compilers do that nowadays).
The question is if a lot of monkeys sitting at the keyboard entering random keystrokes can write a program that actually does something.
Some computer scientists have worked on a genetic algorithm modeled after evolution theory. The objective is to see if natural selection and mutation can produce desired computer functions. For a simple function, such as taking the average of two numbers, this can be done easily, but as function gets more complicated, its syntax tree deepens and causes exponential growth of the search space that is so large to yield any sensible functions at all even when you prune the searches using "natural selection."
And how do genes of any specie get into that particular alignment?
Suppose humans have 20,000 genes each carrying just one bit of information, then the number of searches to achieve that alignment is on the magnitude of 2^20,000. Try to punch that number on your calculator.
The reason why I quoted thermodynamics is because it has a probability cause. It is not impossible for a closed system to decrease entropy, just improbable. You mentioned that thermodynamics law can only apply to closed systems, but one must make an assumption somewhere to define closed system. Is the combustion engine a closed system? What about its exhaust? How can you ensure the universe is a closed system? Is God outside of this universe adding information into it?
For the sake of argument, I'm assuming that exchage of genetic sequences falls under a closed system because I don't want to involve "heat" or anything like that when I'm talking about "information." With that clarification, my argument should follow through as I originally planned.
It looks though we're both talking science, but our assumptions are different.
I'm sick and tired of evolutionists who just add more assumptions into the argument and claim that my reasoning is flawed, or that I'm stupid for not buying into their assumptions. Imagine that day I spent 6 straight hours just checking all the facts poured towards me and still found the whole evolution thing a hogwash.
What amazes me is the large amount of organized effort at talkorigins.org to "debunk" intelligent design, but talkdesign.org makes no comparable effort at all, which is really sad.
I believe you could have simply stated that GET should be idempotent and POST doesn't have to be. KISS.
It's not obvious for me at first thought how idempotence, e.g., A AND A = A in classical logic, is related to side effects, but it is interesting to note that Linear Logic, where none of the logical operators are idempotent, can be used to keep track of states. From there, we can go back to your remark saying GET should be idempotent (hence stateless) and POST doesn't have to be (hence stateful).
I guess you either jumped to the conclusion, which is indeed elegant, or you've implicitly worked out the details, which is not so simple IMHO.
Somehow I suspect that even hundreds and thousands of years from now much of our data will be avaible in some form.
Don't worry. The way Microsoft obsessively keeps backwards compatibility in their operating systems gives it a good chance that you'll be able to run DOS programs in hundreds and thousands of years.
Your remark really concludes this topic, and I think any further remarks are redundant. I just want to point out that in the HTTP specification (RFC 2616) section 13.9, it says the following about GET requests:
Unless the origin server explicitly prohibits the caching of their responses, the application of GET and HEAD methods to any resources SHOULD NOT have side effects that would lead to erroneous behavior if these responses are taken from a cache.
And in section 9.5, about POST requests:
Responses to this method are not cacheable, unless the response includes appropriate Cache-Control or Expires header fields.
Thus, the only semantic difference between GET and POST is only on side effects. There is no sense in saying one is more secure than another, or one is easier to fake than another.
If we think of a web server as a function, GET requests means that, let y1 = f(x1) and y2 = f(x2), then x1 = x2 implies y1 = y2. POST requests means there exists y1 and y2, y1 != y2, such that y1 = f(x) and y2 = f(x) for some two applications of f with x. Here y, y1 and y2 are the "web pages" (more generally, resources), and x1, x2, x are the HTTP requests.
Of course, for a practical, dynamic website, the functional property does not usually hold, and that's why we have "cahce control", which attempts to establish what functional property holds under certain conditions.
Evolutionists like to use the phrase "clearly debunked myth" to mock opposing arguments, but they're vulnerable to more debunks.
[CC310] (1) It glossed over how the index fossils are dated. (2) Although the strati are dated before evolution, this does not mean the dating is accurate.
[CC102] Since great natural forces can alter the columns, why are you still saying geological column dating is feasible? How can one tell the few areas that are undisturbed represent repeatable finding?
[CC335] It describes a specific case, but it doesn't explain the standing trees phenomenon.
[CC332.2] I think the question is not whether the trees were transported by flood, but the fact that these trees grew across the layers.
[CH581] I can't refute this one, but this has little importance in the actual evolution argument.
[CB102] I have a short debunk of this debunk. The structure of living things are highly ordered (low entropy). By second law of thermodynamics, entropy in any system can only increase or stay the same over time. Mutation is a random process that corresponds to raise in entropy, and leads to destruction of living organisms.
[CB101_2] (1) The accumulation of traits is not the basis of evolution, since evolution does not produce a different kind. If so, it wouldn't survive since it cannot breed with existing kinds. This contradicts with (3). (2) the ability for a bacteria to digest nylon is either created by scientists or is already part of the biochemistry in that bacteria that wasn't obvious except in adverse conditions.
[CB902] This one claims that creationists don't have a definition for macroevolution, which looks like what I mean by evolution across a kind. However, unless we can agree on what it is, I do not see a need to argue with this.
[11] False can imply truth. It is truth that cannot imply falsehood.
[12] I agree, and I hesitated including that in the summary, but I decided it'd be more honest if I do. In any case, someone asked for a summary because they don't want to watch the hour long video, and that's a summary they get.
I didn't decide who Jesus is. It is clearly described in the bible that Jesus is a son of man, Joseph, whose ancestry traces to Abraham, yet he is the son of God.
I used to think genealogy in the bible is redundant, but now I clearly see its purpose.
I'm going to skip several points of yours because they're either well-made or that I don't personally know enough to argue about it.
A point well-made, and that I don't know enough about the other dating methods. By the way, can you show these methods are correct? How do you determine the half-life of something if it's several hundreds of thousands of years?
I'm not a geology expert either.
The roots of a tree should be distinguishable from the trunk. In the pictures he shows, the standing trees do have roots below, and the trunks are mostly buried across layers.
That is a theory, but it would be great to have supporting evidence too.
This is shown as one of the things that can be distorted by Evolutionists. Bear in mind his speech is to refute Evolutionism, so obviously his arguments are biased. Someone is biased doesn't mean his arguments are invalid.
I'll have to assume that Kent Hovind did some research on this and came up with that theory.
Meteorological data for geological layers are determined by a priori knowledge of the layer's age, so again, this leads to circular reasoning.
What are the conditions that favor two headed turtles? What about five legged boars? Chances are, since mutant species are distinctly different, they're shunned by their peers and have even less chance of breeding. Is it news that computer geeks can't find a girlfriend? (Yours truly is one of them.)
Selective breeding only works because the superior genes already exist somewhere in the gene pool, and such selection intends to make these genes more prominent. This is achieved by permuting the genes, not by mutating them. You selective breed a crop from a crop, not from a weed. Farmers are told not to mix crops when pollenating, because this reverses selective breeding.
Natural selection is defined by survival of the fittest. It is not a process that makes a change. It is a filter of the good changes to live. Natural selection is analogous to user base. If an open source project has a large user base but has no developers, can it progress? I recall an intrusion detection software had gone closed-source because of this but I forgot the name.
Despite the popularity of beastiality porn, there is no hybrid between human and goat. Why is that? Species that are not the same kind cannot breed. If mutation makes a specie of a different kind, it cannot breed with any existing specie and will die. By natural selection, it won't survive!
I don't see how you could dismiss his arguments altogether when there are obviously open issues. This is certainly not the scientific attitude cherished by Evolutionism.
I used to think Christianity equate to popular or mainstream belief in the United States, but once I really became one, I found out only a small minority is Christian in the following sense:
To integrate God, and prayer to both God and Jesus Christ, into one's own life.
To acknowledge one's own sins and ask for forgiveness from God---not from a priest, a pastor, a bishop, or the pope.
To regularly study the bible, the words of God.
To spread the gospel to those who do not know God, and to support the faith for those who do.
To exercise devine rights as daughters and sons of God.
In general, I think the stereotype for Christians is now as dilute as water, religious wise. It is also a word commonly used to mean those who oppress or are against non-Christians. Nobody is trying to oppress anybody (except those who modded down my grandparent post because they want to retaliate Christians for any reason). To some people, Christians are blamed for the failure of their lives.
However, I also understand not everyone who believe in any religion to understand completely what they're believing in. I like to use the analogy of operating systems. Most computer users do not study OS design, and they end up using an OS because it's already given to them, or because it suits a certain purpose. That also includes most Linux advocates.
My primary OS is Mac OS X, but I regularly use Linux. I have only used Windows XP sparingly, say only 15 minutes in the last 3 months. I studied OS internals of DOS, Windows NT, and Linux. I don't know much about Mac OS X kernel besides the fact it's a microkernel with a BSD subsystem. You can also say I'm one of those computer users who do not understand the OS they're using.
Unfortunately this is the first mentioning of Cherubim in the whole bible. Since the context of Genesis predates the rest of bible, so unless the story is extended later on, I'll have to assume Cherubim are created and placed at the Garden of Eden.
I still haven't read most part of the bible, so I could definitely be wrong. If so, please refer me to a passage in the bible for the correction.
Here are some of his points, not necessarily in this order.
Geological layers and fossil age. He quotes directly from textbooks used at school exhibiting this circular reasoning. As his objective is to eliminate lies from textbooks, I think this point alone fulfills the thesis of his talk.
He argues that if geological layers are formed chronically, the same ordering of layers should be widely observable, but only a few sites today show the correct layer order.
He argues that geological layers can be formed in a matter of a few years due to relative particle density, similar to the way a stirred glass of mud water quickly settles down to layers. He uses the findings of standing trees that crosses geological layers to support this argument.
He argues that the Grand Canyon cannot result from Colorado river cutting the rocks slowly, since the peak of the rocks are much more elevated than the source of the river, and that water does not flow uphills.
He uses the Grand Canyon example to show how Evolutionism and Creationism can cause people to interpret natural phenomenon differently. Evolutionists would claim that Grand Canyon is formed over a long period of time even when the conjecture clearly violates laws of physics.
Furthermore, he argues that Grand Canyon was formed due to a large body of water breaking through the surrounding land that was what the canyon used to be. The outburst of water body etched the canyon in a short amount of time.
He argues that, since some fossilized ancient creatures, onced believed to be extinct, are still found alive today, it is generally not possible to identify the age of geological layers by the fossil it contains.
He argues that genetic mutation does not create new information. There are two headed turtles, but the heads are the same. The extra head isn't a new design.
He argues that genetic mutation generally loses functionality, resulting in a specie inferior to its ancestor. This is a finding of a US governemnt research.
He points out that natural selection does not create new genetic design (which should be obvious).
He argues that mutation has limits, and that it cannot create a new kind of specie.
He concludes that genetic mutation and natural selection is not the cause of diversity of kinds.
He points out the historical background of a few philosophers (including Charles Darwin) who opposed the teaching of the bible and claims that these philosophers have ulterior motive, but I don't remember much from that.
So what are angels then? Seems to me, non-human intelligent beings from the heavens is a fairly accurate term for both aliens and angels.
Sorry, I should be careful about what I mean by aliens.
(a) I do not mean by immigrants from another country. (b) I do not mean an outcast of a group.
By aliens, I do mean species from outerspace, those that SETI@HOME tries to find.
But angels are not aliens. According to the bible,
(1) Angels are created to guard the Eden---"After He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life." (Genesis 3:24). In the context, He refers to God, "the man" is Adam, and Cherubim are what Catholics called angels.
(2) And the Eden is on earth---"Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed." (Genesis 2:8)
Since angels are created for Eden and that Eden is on earth, angels are not extra-terrestrial creatures.
Furthermore, my own speculation about the nature of heaven is that, it is not a place where man can find using technology. Outerspace is not heaven. If you can find text in the bible that contradicts me, you are most welcome to do so.
If your brain cells committed suicide because of the annoying way Kent Hovind talks, I agree with you. I find his accent extremely annoying. But how does it have to do with his actual argument? Does his accent make his argument automatically wrong?
How can I be trolling when I'm presenting only the facts? I'm only saying Wikipedia says so and so, and Kent Hovind says so and so. I'm not even giving out my personal opinion about this matter.
Moderators: if you disagree with me, please just leave me alone. Why are you suppressing a legitimate voice to be heard by modding me overrated? There is no way I can fight with a crowd of fools, and I hope you're not one of them.
(1) Residual magnetism---"Magnetism remaining in the core of an electromagnet after the coil current is removed" from Answers.com. Can you explain more? I don't see how this can be applied to dating geological artifects.
(2) Why don't you list the isotopes, the half-lives, and their current dating limits, and we can talk about it more?
(4) The point is the article does not specify how. One should not automatically assume for them their dating is legitimate.
(5) Seasonal growth pattern applies to living things, but other things are not reliable. Can you tell the age of a brownstone building by the layers of dust on it, or by the stone carving that says MCMXXVIII?
(6) Relative distribution requires a priori knowledge of the age of layers and fossils, which you don't have.
Christians do not believe in aliens. Some do believe that ghosts (also evil spirits and satan in the bible) are the reason to suffering, illness, and pain, but you must be a lucky one if you never had to deal with them.
Those who believe that Jesus Christ is an alien are cultists. Their beliefs are radical and have no factual basis. Do not confuse them with Christians.
Just go to church once and get to know the people there. Don't be hostile. You'll find that most people will like you.
In particular, you should watch the Kent Hovind video that I referenced. Not every Christians are able to refute Evolutionism at this depth and breadth, but at least you gain some idea of your preposterous mocking of church-goers.
This article doesn't tell you how the fossils are dated. As the result, the meaning of that skull can be seen to be entirely fabricated.
People usually believe that you can carbon date a piece of fossil and make a statement that it is 250,000 years old, but it is not the case. Radiocarbon dating only works up to about 50,000 years.
If you think about it, the half-life of Carbon-14 is 5000 years, which means dating for every 5000 years requires two times the precision to detect the amount of Carbon-14. The precision required is inversely exponential to the years to date.
If fossils cannot generally be carbon dated, how do you tell the age of it? We can also date fossils by geological layers in which the fossils are found. But how are geological layers dated? By the fossils that are found in them! This is circular reasoning!
I don't rely on the computer for anything analog at all; it's connected to the stereo with an SPDIF optical cable.
That's precisely why most high-end sound interfaces are external (and the one I linked to is an external device). Besides those devices that take up 1U or 2U rack space, some of the smaller ones can still sound great and be easily used with a laptop because they're portable. My impression is that laptops are nowadays popular among musicians and sound engineers because of this.
SPDIF is great if you're transfering digital to digital (say making a digital recording on a minidisc, CD-R, or iPod). But if the final destination is analog, it doesn't matter that much as long as you have good DAC, cabling, etc. from that point on.
The audio format 24-bit 96 KHz is only useful if you produce recordings. One reason is that you want to preserve the dynamic range (avoid clipping) by recording cold, but you want the mix to be hot. Signal processing path (sound effects) could also use the extra precision, both sample-wise and temporal-wise. This is done so when you mix down a master at 16-bits 44.1KHz, it will exploit the full fidelity of the format, and that audiophiles are happy with the sound.
As you can see, 24-bit 96KHz was introduced not because some people can really hear sounds above 22.1KHz.
The same idea applies for anti-aliased font. You can either have insanely high screen resolution (300 dpi) and see great bitmapped font, or upsample fonts then downsample with smoothing and see pretty anti-aliased fonts on a normal (72 dpi to 96 dpi) screen.
Even fairly mundane sound cards support 24 bit samples at 96 KHz and 7 channels. That puts CD audio (16 bit/44.1 KHz/2 channel) to shame...
If you follow the argument of another person who said that audio only sounds as good as the weakest link, then I hope this makes sense for you: in many sound cards, their sampling rate isn't the weakest link, but it's the digital-analog conversion or the circuit design.
Let me know if you are lucky enough to get your hands on one of those kinds, then you can tell me how great 24-bits at 96 KHz sounds (assuming you would also take the pain to find a good matching pair of studio monitors for it).
For me, although I have never heard true 24-bit 96 KHz sound, there have been several occasions that the infamous MP3 rattling has disturbed me, enough to make me committed to uncompressed music.
Now as for music CDs, those may be heading for a downward trend.
When I was young and long before the time of Napster, MP3 used to be the only way I get new music. It was a time when you could find Spice Girls MP3s openly on some web sites and nobody cared. It was a time that it took a Pentium 100Mhz computer 70% of CPU time to play MP3s. The computer I used was hooked up with some crappy speakers, and I couldn't care less.
Nowadays I pretty much have disowned my MP3 collection, and I prefer buying physical CD to get new music. There are two reasons.
I now have a much better pair of speakers that allow me to hear rattle in a poorly compressed MP3, which was common in my old MP3 collection.
I now have my own income that I can buy whatever I want without asking my parents for the money.
Although WMV and AAC are so good that you don't hear the rattle, it is sad the vendors try to show superiority of their formats by encouraging the use of low bitrates (less than or equal to 128kbps). Ogg Vorbis also does a good job. Nowadays it's hard to identify compression artifects, but to my ears compressed music just sounds shallow, especially pay attention to cymbal and snare drums. I also find it more difficult to identify what instrument is playing what part by ear, when the music is compressed.
Well, this is not surprising, since lossy audio compression by design removes the sounds that you don't consciously hear. When you consciously try to hear it, it's just not there. It's like trying to zoom in to a JPEG compressed image and examine the texture, only to find the texture is lost.
In general, I think a music CD priced at $15 is still worth the additional amount of information that you retain uncompressed.
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Higher up yet are self-reproducing machines. Again we have not achieved this technology yet, but it is a very fundamental activity, if not the defining activity of what we call 'life".
With computer programs this is already possible. A compiler that can compile itself is an example (most compilers do that nowadays).
The question is if a lot of monkeys sitting at the keyboard entering random keystrokes can write a program that actually does something.
Sorry, I don't understand your question.
Some computer scientists have worked on a genetic algorithm modeled after evolution theory. The objective is to see if natural selection and mutation can produce desired computer functions. For a simple function, such as taking the average of two numbers, this can be done easily, but as function gets more complicated, its syntax tree deepens and causes exponential growth of the search space that is so large to yield any sensible functions at all even when you prune the searches using "natural selection."
And how do genes of any specie get into that particular alignment?
Suppose humans have 20,000 genes each carrying just one bit of information, then the number of searches to achieve that alignment is on the magnitude of 2^20,000. Try to punch that number on your calculator.
The reason why I quoted thermodynamics is because it has a probability cause. It is not impossible for a closed system to decrease entropy, just improbable. You mentioned that thermodynamics law can only apply to closed systems, but one must make an assumption somewhere to define closed system. Is the combustion engine a closed system? What about its exhaust? How can you ensure the universe is a closed system? Is God outside of this universe adding information into it?
For the sake of argument, I'm assuming that exchage of genetic sequences falls under a closed system because I don't want to involve "heat" or anything like that when I'm talking about "information." With that clarification, my argument should follow through as I originally planned.
It looks though we're both talking science, but our assumptions are different.
I'm sick and tired of evolutionists who just add more assumptions into the argument and claim that my reasoning is flawed, or that I'm stupid for not buying into their assumptions. Imagine that day I spent 6 straight hours just checking all the facts poured towards me and still found the whole evolution thing a hogwash.
What amazes me is the large amount of organized effort at talkorigins.org to "debunk" intelligent design, but talkdesign.org makes no comparable effort at all, which is really sad.
I believe you could have simply stated that GET should be idempotent and POST doesn't have to be. KISS.
It's not obvious for me at first thought how idempotence, e.g., A AND A = A in classical logic, is related to side effects, but it is interesting to note that Linear Logic, where none of the logical operators are idempotent, can be used to keep track of states. From there, we can go back to your remark saying GET should be idempotent (hence stateless) and POST doesn't have to be (hence stateful).
I guess you either jumped to the conclusion, which is indeed elegant, or you've implicitly worked out the details, which is not so simple IMHO.
Somehow I suspect that even hundreds and thousands of years from now much of our data will be avaible in some form.
Don't worry. The way Microsoft obsessively keeps backwards compatibility in their operating systems gives it a good chance that you'll be able to run DOS programs in hundreds and thousands of years.
Your remark really concludes this topic, and I think any further remarks are redundant. I just want to point out that in the HTTP specification (RFC 2616) section 13.9, it says the following about GET requests:
And in section 9.5, about POST requests:
Thus, the only semantic difference between GET and POST is only on side effects. There is no sense in saying one is more secure than another, or one is easier to fake than another.
If we think of a web server as a function, GET requests means that, let y1 = f(x1) and y2 = f(x2), then x1 = x2 implies y1 = y2. POST requests means there exists y1 and y2, y1 != y2, such that y1 = f(x) and y2 = f(x) for some two applications of f with x. Here y, y1 and y2 are the "web pages" (more generally, resources), and x1, x2, x are the HTTP requests.
Of course, for a practical, dynamic website, the functional property does not usually hold, and that's why we have "cahce control", which attempts to establish what functional property holds under certain conditions.
Oh no, my soul mate is 404 Not Found.
Evolutionists like to use the phrase "clearly debunked myth" to mock opposing arguments, but they're vulnerable to more debunks.
[CC310] (1) It glossed over how the index fossils are dated. (2) Although the strati are dated before evolution, this does not mean the dating is accurate.
[CC102] Since great natural forces can alter the columns, why are you still saying geological column dating is feasible? How can one tell the few areas that are undisturbed represent repeatable finding?
[CC335] It describes a specific case, but it doesn't explain the standing trees phenomenon.
[CC332.2] I think the question is not whether the trees were transported by flood, but the fact that these trees grew across the layers.
[CH581] I can't refute this one, but this has little importance in the actual evolution argument.
[CB102] I have a short debunk of this debunk. The structure of living things are highly ordered (low entropy). By second law of thermodynamics, entropy in any system can only increase or stay the same over time. Mutation is a random process that corresponds to raise in entropy, and leads to destruction of living organisms.
[CB101_2] (1) The accumulation of traits is not the basis of evolution, since evolution does not produce a different kind. If so, it wouldn't survive since it cannot breed with existing kinds. This contradicts with (3). (2) the ability for a bacteria to digest nylon is either created by scientists or is already part of the biochemistry in that bacteria that wasn't obvious except in adverse conditions.
[CB902] This one claims that creationists don't have a definition for macroevolution, which looks like what I mean by evolution across a kind. However, unless we can agree on what it is, I do not see a need to argue with this.
[11] False can imply truth. It is truth that cannot imply falsehood.
[12] I agree, and I hesitated including that in the summary, but I decided it'd be more honest if I do. In any case, someone asked for a summary because they don't want to watch the hour long video, and that's a summary they get.
Thank you, I appreciate the help.
I didn't decide who Jesus is. It is clearly described in the bible that Jesus is a son of man, Joseph, whose ancestry traces to Abraham, yet he is the son of God.
I used to think genealogy in the bible is redundant, but now I clearly see its purpose.
I'm going to skip several points of yours because they're either well-made or that I don't personally know enough to argue about it.
I don't see how you could dismiss his arguments altogether when there are obviously open issues. This is certainly not the scientific attitude cherished by Evolutionism.
I used to think Christianity equate to popular or mainstream belief in the United States, but once I really became one, I found out only a small minority is Christian in the following sense:
In general, I think the stereotype for Christians is now as dilute as water, religious wise. It is also a word commonly used to mean those who oppress or are against non-Christians. Nobody is trying to oppress anybody (except those who modded down my grandparent post because they want to retaliate Christians for any reason). To some people, Christians are blamed for the failure of their lives.
However, I also understand not everyone who believe in any religion to understand completely what they're believing in. I like to use the analogy of operating systems. Most computer users do not study OS design, and they end up using an OS because it's already given to them, or because it suits a certain purpose. That also includes most Linux advocates.
My primary OS is Mac OS X, but I regularly use Linux. I have only used Windows XP sparingly, say only 15 minutes in the last 3 months. I studied OS internals of DOS, Windows NT, and Linux. I don't know much about Mac OS X kernel besides the fact it's a microkernel with a BSD subsystem. You can also say I'm one of those computer users who do not understand the OS they're using.
Unfortunately this is the first mentioning of Cherubim in the whole bible. Since the context of Genesis predates the rest of bible, so unless the story is extended later on, I'll have to assume Cherubim are created and placed at the Garden of Eden.
I still haven't read most part of the bible, so I could definitely be wrong. If so, please refer me to a passage in the bible for the correction.
Here are some of his points, not necessarily in this order.
So what are angels then? Seems to me, non-human intelligent beings from the heavens is a fairly accurate term for both aliens and angels.
Sorry, I should be careful about what I mean by aliens.
(a) I do not mean by immigrants from another country.
(b) I do not mean an outcast of a group.
By aliens, I do mean species from outerspace, those that SETI@HOME tries to find.
But angels are not aliens. According to the bible,
(1) Angels are created to guard the Eden---"After He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life." (Genesis 3:24). In the context, He refers to God, "the man" is Adam, and Cherubim are what Catholics called angels.
(2) And the Eden is on earth---"Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed." (Genesis 2:8)
Since angels are created for Eden and that Eden is on earth, angels are not extra-terrestrial creatures.
Furthermore, my own speculation about the nature of heaven is that, it is not a place where man can find using technology. Outerspace is not heaven. If you can find text in the bible that contradicts me, you are most welcome to do so.
If your brain cells committed suicide because of the annoying way Kent Hovind talks, I agree with you. I find his accent extremely annoying. But how does it have to do with his actual argument? Does his accent make his argument automatically wrong?
I know you're just trolling
How can I be trolling when I'm presenting only the facts? I'm only saying Wikipedia says so and so, and Kent Hovind says so and so. I'm not even giving out my personal opinion about this matter.
Moderators: if you disagree with me, please just leave me alone. Why are you suppressing a legitimate voice to be heard by modding me overrated? There is no way I can fight with a crowd of fools, and I hope you're not one of them.
(1) Residual magnetism---"Magnetism remaining in the core of an electromagnet after the coil current is removed" from Answers.com. Can you explain more? I don't see how this can be applied to dating geological artifects.
(2) Why don't you list the isotopes, the half-lives, and their current dating limits, and we can talk about it more?
(4) The point is the article does not specify how. One should not automatically assume for them their dating is legitimate.
(5) Seasonal growth pattern applies to living things, but other things are not reliable. Can you tell the age of a brownstone building by the layers of dust on it, or by the stone carving that says MCMXXVIII?
(6) Relative distribution requires a priori knowledge of the age of layers and fossils, which you don't have.
Christians do not believe in aliens. Some do believe that ghosts (also evil spirits and satan in the bible) are the reason to suffering, illness, and pain, but you must be a lucky one if you never had to deal with them.
Those who believe that Jesus Christ is an alien are cultists. Their beliefs are radical and have no factual basis. Do not confuse them with Christians.
Just go to church once and get to know the people there. Don't be hostile. You'll find that most people will like you.
Please see my other post in this article: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181321 &cid=14997725
In particular, you should watch the Kent Hovind video that I referenced. Not every Christians are able to refute Evolutionism at this depth and breadth, but at least you gain some idea of your preposterous mocking of church-goers.
People usually believe that you can carbon date a piece of fossil and make a statement that it is 250,000 years old, but it is not the case. Radiocarbon dating only works up to about 50,000 years.
If you think about it, the half-life of Carbon-14 is 5000 years, which means dating for every 5000 years requires two times the precision to detect the amount of Carbon-14. The precision required is inversely exponential to the years to date.
If fossils cannot generally be carbon dated, how do you tell the age of it? We can also date fossils by geological layers in which the fossils are found. But how are geological layers dated? By the fossils that are found in them! This is circular reasoning!
See also:
I don't rely on the computer for anything analog at all; it's connected to the stereo with an SPDIF optical cable.
That's precisely why most high-end sound interfaces are external (and the one I linked to is an external device). Besides those devices that take up 1U or 2U rack space, some of the smaller ones can still sound great and be easily used with a laptop because they're portable. My impression is that laptops are nowadays popular among musicians and sound engineers because of this.
SPDIF is great if you're transfering digital to digital (say making a digital recording on a minidisc, CD-R, or iPod). But if the final destination is analog, it doesn't matter that much as long as you have good DAC, cabling, etc. from that point on.
The audio format 24-bit 96 KHz is only useful if you produce recordings. One reason is that you want to preserve the dynamic range (avoid clipping) by recording cold, but you want the mix to be hot. Signal processing path (sound effects) could also use the extra precision, both sample-wise and temporal-wise. This is done so when you mix down a master at 16-bits 44.1KHz, it will exploit the full fidelity of the format, and that audiophiles are happy with the sound.
As you can see, 24-bit 96KHz was introduced not because some people can really hear sounds above 22.1KHz.
The same idea applies for anti-aliased font. You can either have insanely high screen resolution (300 dpi) and see great bitmapped font, or upsample fonts then downsample with smoothing and see pretty anti-aliased fonts on a normal (72 dpi to 96 dpi) screen.
Even fairly mundane sound cards support 24 bit samples at 96 KHz and 7 channels. That puts CD audio (16 bit/44.1 KHz/2 channel) to shame...
If you follow the argument of another person who said that audio only sounds as good as the weakest link, then I hope this makes sense for you: in many sound cards, their sampling rate isn't the weakest link, but it's the digital-analog conversion or the circuit design.
Let me know if you are lucky enough to get your hands on one of those kinds, then you can tell me how great 24-bits at 96 KHz sounds (assuming you would also take the pain to find a good matching pair of studio monitors for it).
For me, although I have never heard true 24-bit 96 KHz sound, there have been several occasions that the infamous MP3 rattling has disturbed me, enough to make me committed to uncompressed music.
CD is outdated? I would gladly buy vinyl if I have the space for a turntable and that I can actually afford it.
Since when did all technophiles become snobs? Yes, you, snob.
And these are the obligatory coral cached pictures of that guy whirling in mid air, in case if anyone is interested:
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http://macslow.thepimp.net.nyud.net:8090/images/W
http://macslow.thepimp.net.nyud.net:8090/images/W
http://macslow.thepimp.net.nyud.net:8090/images/s
When I was young and long before the time of Napster, MP3 used to be the only way I get new music. It was a time when you could find Spice Girls MP3s openly on some web sites and nobody cared. It was a time that it took a Pentium 100Mhz computer 70% of CPU time to play MP3s. The computer I used was hooked up with some crappy speakers, and I couldn't care less.
Nowadays I pretty much have disowned my MP3 collection, and I prefer buying physical CD to get new music. There are two reasons.
Although WMV and AAC are so good that you don't hear the rattle, it is sad the vendors try to show superiority of their formats by encouraging the use of low bitrates (less than or equal to 128kbps). Ogg Vorbis also does a good job. Nowadays it's hard to identify compression artifects, but to my ears compressed music just sounds shallow, especially pay attention to cymbal and snare drums. I also find it more difficult to identify what instrument is playing what part by ear, when the music is compressed.
Well, this is not surprising, since lossy audio compression by design removes the sounds that you don't consciously hear. When you consciously try to hear it, it's just not there. It's like trying to zoom in to a JPEG compressed image and examine the texture, only to find the texture is lost.
In general, I think a music CD priced at $15 is still worth the additional amount of information that you retain uncompressed.