have we ever seen E. Coli (or other bacteria) become something other than E. Coli over many generations?
How different does a variation on an organism need to be before you'd call it "something other?"
Say, the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane? They're genetically one millimeter apart from one another, but with manifestions that make them hugely different from one another in real life. As different, say, as two bacteria that have adapted to tolerate different toxins. A Husky would not thrive in a tropical jungle, and a Doberman wouldn't make it over winter in the tundra. One strain of bacteria can survive in the presence of certain chemicals, and a variation on it - genetically having drifted only a little ways off - can (and obviously does).
Also, what is not "critically thinking" about pointing at a disparity and labeling it as such?
The same "not critically thinking" that you're doing, right now. There is no disparity, because creationism is not science. It's not characterized as science, the "information" presented by its proponents isn't even in the format to be weighed as if it were possibly just bad science that needed to be reveiewed. There's no disparity in not considering it in a science classroom. It's like complaining that there is a painful disparity seen in how few opportunities students in a classical music class have to learn about the history and use of clown cars in post-war circuses.
You're doing exactly what the creationist people always do: you're tap-dancing carefully around the actual issue and trying to change the subject by sounding huffy and indignant about being shortchanged in the science classroom. Never mind that you're not actually talking about science, and have nothing resembling science to discuss. That's the whole point, here. The creationism people have to keep flailing around and sounding maligned and playing the put-upon-Christian victim card as loudly and as often as possible so that no one notices the fact that they're completely BS-ing about their actual "complaint." They, of course, know that they're not really complaining about some branch of science being left out of the science classroom.
They're complaining because they can't seem to talk most people into using public schools as instruments of their fundamentalist churches. They're certainly miffed about that, and that pesky clause in the Constitution. But they're miffed, and frustrated, and stamping their feet with all of the childishness of any kid having a tantrum... it's transparent, it's embarassingly unsophisticated, and the attempt at deceit is plain to anybody (including their own adherents) who bother to actually look. "Labeling" the absence of creationism in a science classroom as some sort of unfairness is... deliberate, sustained lying. You know, bearing false witness. Isn't that one of them Big Ten oh-no-you-don't things published by Moses? I imagine that at least some True Believers would actually be a little ashamed about that. But then, what's a little more hypocrisy, right? Once you're in this deep, might as well go for broke.
No, he's just confused generally. If it didn't manifest itself at the level of public policy and in the voting booth, it would merely be pathetic. Instead, it's alarming.
For teaching kids not to 'engage in critical thinking' private religious schools in the US turn out graduates that are at least as good as their public school counterparts
You mean, those kids are able to ignore the mysticism that's taught in those schools' classrooms? Sure, that makes sense. At least some kids will always have enough native reason, and be able to resist the peer pressure that keeps religion alive, enough to come forth from a religious school able to see past the religion that runs it.
Or do you mean, kids come out of those schools with a decent command of grammar, the ability to do math, etc? Sure. But if they aren't shrugging off the creation myths thoroughly on their own, then they're also coming out of those schools having been trained to tolerate acute contradictions in thier observation and understanding of reality. And when you take a young mind and train it to tolerate contradictions, then you're also training it to tolerate (or even embrace) hypocrisy, deceit, and much of what else ails our culture. Trying to put MORE of that into public schools, on the premise that the additional discipline that's permitted in private schools happens to produce more literate or well-mannered students and thus everything else about religious education must also be better somehow, is not a solution. Introducing some discipline and the expectation of good manners ALONG WITH real science in public education is the appropriate course.
can it be observed? or is or is it the result of trying to rationalize what is? what species have we observed a metamorphosing due to environmental and natural selection methods in oh say the last hundred years?
How about in the last hundred months? I dare you to cut open your fingers and then use the stairway railings in your average hospital. You'll get a first-hand view of bacteria that have adapted nicely to almost all (or in some cases all) anti-biotics. These treatments, in some cases, are less than a few years old. They'd kill every bug at which they were aimed when they were firt used. Because of the short life cycle (and thus, very fast reproduction frequency) of these busy little examples, we're able to see genetic changes over very short periods of time. The result: Ten years ago, you had bacteria X, which would be die quickly in the presence of certain chemicals. Now, you have bacteria Y, which shrugs it off, no problem. That's mutation and naturial selection hard at work, right in front of your eyes, producing a new population of life forms that have adapted to a new pressure. Ask a hospital administrator if she finds natural selection, and the resulting new flavors of deadly creatures, to be an observable fact. Or, ask someone's widow.
it's supposed to be observed over millions of years
No, it can be observed hour by hour. If you'd like to do a little test, we can expose you to all sorts of little life forms that used to be easy to kill with simple anti-biotics, but which - in some cases, only months later - are now genetically different, and have adapted to survive that treatment. As those bacteria (and in some cases, parasites) reproduce, there are observable mutations involved. Some of those mutations result in an altered version of the critter that happens to tolerate things that might kill those versions that mutated in a different way. If the chief cause of end-of-the-line death in strains of bacteria happens to be anti-biotics, then we're watching that life form, via simple natural selection, adapt its way around that threat. If you don't have the patience to learn how to look at the longer-term histories of species, and can't muster the simple common sense to see how that would impact more complex organisms over time, then just ask any doctor to explain it to you. Hopefully, for your sake, that won't be in the context of actually having such an infection - because, unlike even just a few short years ago, when such bacteria didn't exist, it's getting very hard to kill them without also killing you. Just like everywhere else in nature, a new pressure must be brought to bear on a species that has evolved (rapidly, in this case) to overcome an older pressure.
Let's not tolerate creationism but at least consider intelligent design
They are the same thing - both suggest the hand of an all-powerful imaginary magic super being with a sick sense of humor.
If you look at the genetic code, the similarities the re-use of design patterns
Don't you see? Of course commonly useful bits of DNA are commonly found. The stuff that works, at the basic level of providing for things like nerve growth, or respiration, or enzyme production, doesn't need to be evolved away from... mutations that shut down things like that tend to kill the offspring, and thus don't get passed along. The stuff that works, stays, and stuff that works better becomes more prominent through simple natural selection. If your ability to live long enough to reproduce depended on your ability to sprint to the nearest tree to avoid being eaten, then a mutation in your DNA that happens to produce a fractionally greater dose of adrenaline when you sense danger will give you an advantage over your brother, who might have a different, but less (for the circumstancecs) useful mutation. Guess who passes along the DNA after the predatory animals have come through your part of the woods? Mr. Faster Tree Climber. It might be a hundred generations before something even slightly as useful crops up again in that particular part of your clan's DNA, but as long as it's an advantage, it gets passed down the line. If its a liability (say, it also happens to increase your sensitivty to the sun, and thus causes early cancer), then it dies off. Of course, you know all of this. You're just invested, for social reasons, in the mythology side of things, and it's awkward for you to admit it.
In truth, I think scientists are afraid. They're afraid that if they admit there are aspects and evidence of design that they will be condoning creation as a whole rather than the simple design aspect.
No, they're just afraid of an entire new generation of kids growing up thinking that supersition, and belief if supernatural cause and effect might endanger our culture's ability to produce rational thinkers. You know, the sort of rationality that allowed us to build the systems over which you're reading this message, right now. You're proposing that we embrace a world view more or less like that which fueled the Dark Ages, or which applauded the burning alive of women, as witches, who knew that willow bark contains aspirin or who gave birth on the wrong day of the week, when it happened to rain really hard an
Stein does not reject Darwinism for the evolution of individual species. He rejects that it is the answer for why life exists and why the universe works that way that it does.
So, he doesn't reject evolution except for the part that really undermines his personal choice of mythologies. And he doesn't like university science curriculums because they... don't confuse mythologies with science? There are entire coures of university study dedicated to mythology, and indeed there are entire universities that are all about training people to be good religious Borg units. The views he holds on this subject are talked about and celebrated at such places every single day. What he wants to do is remove the scientific method and critical thinking from the science classroom.
If he has a point in this area, it has far more to do with liberal arts and poli-sci type educations, where far more subjective and debatable things are quashed in the classroom every day. Is he bothered by the way science is twisted in some classrooms? Then he should start with the professors who think that the World Trade Center was blown up by an army of stealthy NSA demolotion experts because - lacking some basic science education - they can't get their heads around the difference between "melted" steel and "weakened" steel. There's plenty of things to examine in the classroom without debating whether or not you can become infected by a bacteria today that didn't exist yesterday (since, you can).
Meh... As long as both are prefixed with "theory of", who cares?
Um... because evolution can be observed, and any rational mind can understand the mechanisms by which it works, and the magic-man-in-the-sky "theory" make no provision for testing, cannot be evaluated as anything other than wishful thinking, and teaches kids not to engage in critical thinking.
Your willingness to tolerate creationism in school as long as they call it a theory is actually worse than the delusions of the people who put it forward in the first place, because - by themselves - they come across as ignorant loons. You're giving them credibility.
No, you've got your tinfoil hat on too tight. This has nothing to do with private internet access. This is about the IT systems used by the federal government, which currently connect to the internet on 4000 wildly disparate gateways. It's very hard to keep track of that, and to consistently handle the attacks that come in on a regular basis. So, they're very wisely tightening things up. Your comment is just another example of shrill, uninformed, ideallogically fragile whiny nonsense. But thanks for reminding everyone that there are people like you out there. It helps focus the mind on the upcoming election cycle.
I ask CNN not to look for a scapegoat on this issue... Knowing how US companies have exhibited incompetence in the past, I will not be surprised if it is the case this time round
Right! Who needs a scapegoat? Obviously this is likely the fault of US companies. There's no point blaming someone when we can blame someone that it's more slashdot-friendly to blame. The man! Teh evil corporations!
For what it's worth, I spent most of my day yesterday in rent-a-brain mode mopping up after a web site defacement that was attempted from half a dozen Chinese IP addresses, succeeded from another one, and which was throwing JS-based redirects at browsers so they'd wind up on web sites hosted in China, where trojan-flavored malware was being served up. There's no way that a country with Draconian content sniffing and a country-wide firewall like China's doesn't know when operations like that are flourishing. FWIW, the demographics targeted in this case were mil/defense types, and the visible content on the redirected target was meant to momentarily confuse people expecting that the specific content they'd have been expecting. Year Of The Rat, indeed.
the US has seldom encouraged "constitutional democracy" anywhere in the world
You mean, like in the rebuilding of Europe after WWII? We occupied Germany long enough to make it stick. We out-spent the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, and now Eastern Europe, with much US support (and shockingly little from elsewhere) is a booming spot for constitutional democracies. Ask the Romanians, or the folks in Poland if you think the US hasn't supported getting them to where they are now. How about South Korea? Or that other tiny little Asian country... what was it. Oh, right, Japan. Coming to the aid of little places like England, or France so that they stay democracies would count too, since you mention reviewing history. Resisting the spread of totalitarian-minded cancers like Hugo Chavez is another way to support his neighbors against the erosion of democracy that he's trying to accelerate.
the Taliban is not liberating the people of Afghanistan but they surely do not agree with you
Who cares if the Taliban agrees with me? They are objectively wrong in their actions. Period. They are cruel deniers of liberty and murderous oppressors of free thinkers and those that don't want to live under the theocratic, mysoginistic, medieval thumb of retrograde Islam. They, or you, can use the phrase "freedom fighters" or "liberators" just as I do, about different movements. But all you have to do is look at the actual objectives and results. Can we deal with people who chop heads off of political prisoners specifically to terrorize other people by not coddling them, and stay on this side of actual torture while trying to get information about where they are holding other prisoners, or how they are getting cash from Iran? Sure. Torture - the infliction of permanent, debilitating injury - isn't necesary when you can use sleep deprivation and other tactics to get immediately needed, vital information. You want to talk torture? Tune into what people like the Taliban do. Or the foreigners that make up Al Queda in Iraq. They rip people apart alive in front of their families, or pluck their kids' eyes out in front of them to simply send a message. Taking a guy that you caught in a house full of bomb-making supplies, right after he's attempted to blow up an Iraqi police station, and shocking him into the awareness that he's NOT going to be able to simply hold his breath and not talk about the other three places in Basra that he's got stashes of shaped-charge vehicle-killer explosives and training material imported from Iran... that's not torture. That's a wake up call, and he gets to wake up the next morning not missing any limbs, eyes, skin, teeth, or children... which his supporters do all the time given the opportunity to reverse the roles. US military people, trying to get to the bottom of what guys like that do, plan, and operate, have to show enormous restraint. The good news is that the suicide bombers and civilian slaughterers are finally being treated by Iraqi citizens with the loathing they deserve. It's put a lot of pressure on AQ in Iraq, and their middle management rarely surives a month on the job... because now people give them up. They're tired of being "liberated" by militant Islamists that want to turn Iraq into another Taliban-style paradise.
even though there are foreigners in Iraq, most people fighting are Iraqis
This is actually, simply not true. The Iraqis that are caught actually having a hand in this stuff tend to be on the cash-and-carry payroll of Iranian-backed insurgents. The organized militias that sometimes fight it out with Iraqi police are much more like the local Mafia, duking it out over local muscle-flexing and power issues, then they are actually trying to kill civilians in an attempt to terrorize people out of forming a stable govenment. The roadside bombers, the market-bombers... the terrorists, those are the folks who are buying tickets out of other countries to go have an adventure fighting modernization. They don't want to see pictures of women in their own countries holding up the ink-stained finger showing that they've just voted for the first time in their lives, and Iraq is a toxic example to them, already, of liberty in that form.
if they had a country they would not be killing US soldiers in Iraq
What the hell are you talking about? The people in question are Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Syrians, Morrocans, Iranians... these ARE countries. These people weren't big fans of of Saddam, but they especially don't want a constitutional democracy setting up shop in that part of the world, and not having mullahs directing lives by edict.
you just described any and all of liberation movements in history
Wow, that's really quite spectacularly wrong, unless you're an Orwell sort of guy. People like the Taliban (mostly Pakistanis) aren't "liberating" the people of Afghanistan when they move into towns, kill the teachers, and shoot women in the town square for daring to teach their daughters to read. Idealogies that make a reduction in your liberty a specific and explicit objective and foundation of their beliefs, and use it as a purpose for sending mentally retarded young women into markets with bombs strapped to them in order to kill other women and children... those are not "liberators." That you would confuse the totalitarian, militant Islamists with those that would pursue liberty doesn't say much about your take on everything else, that's for sure.
the doublethink used to consider the prisoners NOT POWs would make the signers of the declaration of independence spin in their graves
Think again.
If they captured numbers of people who had been shooting at US soldiers (miltia, what have you, considering the times), and then said to them, "So, who do you work for... France? England? Spain?"... and were told, "None of the above. We're part of a loosely organized, cell-based multi-national idealogical group that are united by a more or less common theological desire to see your influence in the world, culturally, die," well... they'd probably not really know WHAT to do about that. They'd have no chain of command with which to come to an understanding, no state or head of state to hold accountable (except those that perhaps chip in some funding and support such people, like Iran), no entity with whom any conventions have been signed or with whom any sort of reciprocal behavior can be possibly expected (though I'm not sure what the baroque equivalent would be of an internet-posted video clip of your captives' affiliates hacking the heads off of prisoners with a knife while invoking their peaceful god's name). No, our founding fathers would have had to really think that one through, especially when confronted with reports of continuous attacks or attempts at more, and the promises of more - and not from some head of state with a standing army. The Barbary Pirates might have been a better example. And I don't believe they treated them like they did British POWs.
It's pretty clear that Apartheid wouldn't have ended as quickly as it did if it were not for the ANC's terrorist tactics. Because of that, the ANC's terrorism was justified
Well, then, it would have ended even more quickly if they had simply slaughtered all of the white people in the country, right? That would have changed the political landscape pretty much instantly. And since you think speed is good, isn't even more speed better? Better yet, why discriminate? Just move a few people you like outide of the borders, and then kill everyone in the country, so you can move back in and enjoy a blank slate. Totally justified, since it's so quick, right? Do you even listen to yourself?
On the presumption that you don't think the Taliban was a really swell regime to have running Afghanistan, would you have supported simply nuking the country? So what if civilians are killed without any attempt whatsoever to control such damage... gets the job done more quickly, right?
Those kinds of things (and just the sheer odds) don't happen all in a week.
Read the damn information. These things do happen every week. Often MORE than once a week. That's the whole point, here. You're just really, really desparate to find a villain where you really want to find one. Just because the facts of the matter, and the statistical history of these very common failures and damage events don't end up fueling the narrative you prefer doesn't mean you should still be leaning towards the conclusion you're drawing. If you're not going to take basic facts into account, then why is your urge to synthesize a conspiracy any more rational than someone else's urge to say that you, personally did the deed? Or that it's guerilla marketing for the upcoming episodes of Lost? Yeesh.
I paid for a 6mbit connection, and now I have to pay again if I want to actually use my 6mbit connection for more than a few seconds at a time?
We're not talking about your peronal deal with your personal ISP. The whole topic - and the post to which I responded - is about the wider infrastructure. Regardless, there's still some valid analogy. One COULD pay to build a nice road on which you, at the time you paid for it, could drive 60mph. Now the traffic has gone up by 10000%, wildly out of porportion with the growth in actual paying customers. It's as if your neighborhood road that used to be easy to drive on now has 10 times the people using it... but each of them is also driving a three-section tractor trailer instead of a passenger car. And they all want to pay passenger car rates, and still act like they're the only ones on the road.
Actually, you are trolling. Being right-winged loser how lives in your moms basement
I keep looking at your reply, knowing that somewhere in there you'll point to how exactly President Gore would have had us on Mars by now. You must be really, really subtle, because I'm not seeing it. Or, maybe you're just full of crap on that subject, and were making a comment that is the very definition of a troll. Now, which part was I wrong about? Afghanistan? The recession that started in 1999? See, I can point at your BS about Mars, but you're just making odd mom's-basement comments rather than actually talking about history. Which makes you a whiny troll.
Bush wasn't president of the U.S and we now have people on Mars and so on. That universe had Al Gore as president.
Ah, I see. Because... when Gore and Clinton were in charge of NASA, there were plans in place and programs under way to have people on Mars by now, only 7 years later, and that got stopped cold by Teh Evil Bush. I wonder what else was under way while Clinton and Gore were running the executive branch? Say, the rapid build up of Al Queda tranining camps in Afghanistan, and the launching of plans to re-attack the WTC? The recession we were in as they left office? The changes in your alternate universe have to go back a lot farther than Gore not getting selective votes counted just the way he wanted in Florida in order to have people on Mars now, as we're talking. Of course, you know that, and you're just trolling.
Yeah, I paid for a car, and now I want a faster car that can carry 100 people, and I have to pay again?
I paid taxes, and that money was used to build a local road, and now more people live in town and we need another lane on the road, and we have to pay more? What a rip-off.
Compare how much ISPs charge and how much power and water companies charge, and what you get for it. While small ISPs have to pay per bit (like water and power companies which have to pay per unit of gas/coal/water), AFAIK large ISPs have cushier arrangements with each other, since the incremental costs of sending bits isn't high once the network capacity is paid for - if nobody uses the bandwidth, the ISP still has to pay about the same for the network.
Can you get a few other fruits in there to compare with your apples and oranges?
I don't want to carry an AK47 on the way to the supermarket and you do, now just who is being rational. Your (non-sic) mental landscape must be a very scary place..:)
The difference between us is that you're painting a picture of me in your mental landscape that includes me carrying a rifle to work. I don't feel that need to. I don't even feel the need to have a handgun, 99.9% of the time. It's about having the option to defend myself if I feel the circumstances warrant it. If I'm carrying a vehicle full of expensive gear into rather dicey territory, I don't like the idea that the only deterrent I have against being roughed up or killed and having my stuff stolen is a 911 call on a cell phone, and the minutes or hours it might take to get a useful response. There's a place I go to do some dog training, but an incident a few years ago on a neighboring farm means that, now, there are feral hogs loose on the adjoining few thousand acres. I don't have any particular interest in hunting them, but they are absolutely scary several-hundred-pound animals that can kill you or your dogs if they're in the wrong mood. A magnum handgun is a convenient tool to have, just in case. And I can't get from home to where I'm going (where I might want to actually have one on my hip while in the field) without having it with me in the vehicle on my way through several jurisdictions, all with a patchwork of varying laws on the subject. On such a round trip, I would go from being a free citizen, to a felon, and back to being legal again in the space of 15 minutes and three zip codes. None of those geographic changes alter my mindset (or my aim!).
This isn't about carrying a piece into the grocery store every day, or expecting that somehow I'm going to be the one to shoot some imagined terrorist before he Tom Clancy-ifies a shopping mall. It's about not being a felon for choosing the option when it seems appropriate. Likewise, I have no problem with far more draconian use of the law when it comes to people who DO decide that shooting in the street is a normal part of business. Most such people are repeat offenders, and are tied to gangs and other habitual crime. They need to go far, far away for a long time. In your jungle-instinct-driven behavior model, of course, we'd all just kill them on the spot for acting so stupidly or aggressively. But we don't do that, generally, do we?
it's you walking down the street carrying one that scares me..:)
Why? I'm rational. Crazy people/criminals are the ones you need to worry about, as they're more likely to be willing and able to do something dangerous whether or not you have a law that says otherwise. Statistically, you should be more worried about the thousands of people driving cars around you. Out of malice or poor judgement, they are far more likely to hurt or kill you or someone you care about than a person who legally owns and know how to use a gun. At least with your car, you have some experience, and the capability to be relatively protected in your own car - at least against some misuses by other people. What defense do you have against someone who comes after you and your car in a parking lot? Or who is breaking into your house, knowing that you're at home?
your [sic] still driven by the same basic instincts that allowed humanity to be a successful hunter/gatherer on the African planes millennia ago
And you aren't? Not nearly enough time has passed for evolution to make you not aware of, and not care if you are threatened, or not care if someone is threatening or injuring someone you care about. And such an evolutionary trend would be short lived, of course, because people who don't feel the need to preserve their lives or those of their families and friends aren't as likely to survive and reproduce.
it is a weapon, completely unnecessary for a citizen in a modern society
I'm really curious which modern society you live in (a very creepy one, apparently) that there is a cop handy for every household, only moments away, 24 hours a day. Or do you actually live in a place where there are no breakins, no robberies, no crazies, no rapes, no gangs? I live in a large metropolitan area. We have a huge gang problem, carjackings, home invasions, strong-arm robberies, etc., at fairly high rates. I've had someone trying to beat down my door in the middle of night with a pipe, screaming and dangerous. Took police a long time to arrive, but the guy (whom they eventually apprehended, and was in a very bad way on a cocktail including PCP) did finally give it up and move off when confronted with a gun in his face. It took three officers to constrain him. I'm very glad I didn't have to shoot, but I'm also very glad that I wasn't risking my life waiting for the cops. If I'm away, and my wife is home alone, what's she supposed to do with someone like that? Let him break down the door because you don't think it's civilized for her to be able to defend herself? I'm sure nothing TOO bad could happen to her in 15 minutes anyway, right?
escalations in violence
As mentioned, I used one to de-escalate violence. Guns are used that way all the time. The prospect of a gun being available to a homeowner, business owner, or (where it's allowed) someone going to or from work absolutely reduces the rates of violent crime. It wasn't very long ago you could walk into a hardware store and purchase a handgun along with other tools. Sears sold shotguns over the counter and by mail order. There weren't epidemics of shootings. You can't (for now) own a gun in DC. Unless, of course, you're a criminal. Great recipe, there.
violence that would never be as severe or harm as many innocent bystanders as gun violence does.
Except, of course, for things like motor vehicles. Crazy people, drunks, and just plain bad drivers kill a lot more people than people with guns do. People with knives, machetes, gasoline, fists, and plenty of other methods also kill people. In the meantime, I've used a gun to put a stop to a violent encounter, and have used guns many, many times to put food on the table (food that doesn't spend its life on a factory farm, full of drugs). I realize that you're happy enough having other people kill the leather for your shoes or clear the varmits from the soya fields for your tofu. How tidy for you!
Slashdot Mirror
have we ever seen E. Coli (or other bacteria) become something other than E. Coli over many generations?
How different does a variation on an organism need to be before you'd call it "something other?"
Say, the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane? They're genetically one millimeter apart from one another, but with manifestions that make them hugely different from one another in real life. As different, say, as two bacteria that have adapted to tolerate different toxins. A Husky would not thrive in a tropical jungle, and a Doberman wouldn't make it over winter in the tundra. One strain of bacteria can survive in the presence of certain chemicals, and a variation on it - genetically having drifted only a little ways off - can (and obviously does).
Also, what is not "critically thinking" about pointing at a disparity and labeling it as such?
... deliberate, sustained lying. You know, bearing false witness. Isn't that one of them Big Ten oh-no-you-don't things published by Moses? I imagine that at least some True Believers would actually be a little ashamed about that. But then, what's a little more hypocrisy, right? Once you're in this deep, might as well go for broke.
The same "not critically thinking" that you're doing, right now. There is no disparity, because creationism is not science. It's not characterized as science, the "information" presented by its proponents isn't even in the format to be weighed as if it were possibly just bad science that needed to be reveiewed. There's no disparity in not considering it in a science classroom. It's like complaining that there is a painful disparity seen in how few opportunities students in a classical music class have to learn about the history and use of clown cars in post-war circuses.
You're doing exactly what the creationist people always do: you're tap-dancing carefully around the actual issue and trying to change the subject by sounding huffy and indignant about being shortchanged in the science classroom. Never mind that you're not actually talking about science, and have nothing resembling science to discuss. That's the whole point, here. The creationism people have to keep flailing around and sounding maligned and playing the put-upon-Christian victim card as loudly and as often as possible so that no one notices the fact that they're completely BS-ing about their actual "complaint." They, of course, know that they're not really complaining about some branch of science being left out of the science classroom.
They're complaining because they can't seem to talk most people into using public schools as instruments of their fundamentalist churches. They're certainly miffed about that, and that pesky clause in the Constitution. But they're miffed, and frustrated, and stamping their feet with all of the childishness of any kid having a tantrum... it's transparent, it's embarassingly unsophisticated, and the attempt at deceit is plain to anybody (including their own adherents) who bother to actually look. "Labeling" the absence of creationism in a science classroom as some sort of unfairness is
or are you confusing evolution and abiogenesis
No, he's just confused generally. If it didn't manifest itself at the level of public policy and in the voting booth, it would merely be pathetic. Instead, it's alarming.
For teaching kids not to 'engage in critical thinking' private religious schools in the US turn out graduates that are at least as good as their public school counterparts
You mean, those kids are able to ignore the mysticism that's taught in those schools' classrooms? Sure, that makes sense. At least some kids will always have enough native reason, and be able to resist the peer pressure that keeps religion alive, enough to come forth from a religious school able to see past the religion that runs it.
Or do you mean, kids come out of those schools with a decent command of grammar, the ability to do math, etc? Sure. But if they aren't shrugging off the creation myths thoroughly on their own, then they're also coming out of those schools having been trained to tolerate acute contradictions in thier observation and understanding of reality. And when you take a young mind and train it to tolerate contradictions, then you're also training it to tolerate (or even embrace) hypocrisy, deceit, and much of what else ails our culture. Trying to put MORE of that into public schools, on the premise that the additional discipline that's permitted in private schools happens to produce more literate or well-mannered students and thus everything else about religious education must also be better somehow, is not a solution. Introducing some discipline and the expectation of good manners ALONG WITH real science in public education is the appropriate course.
can it be observed? or is or is it the result of trying to rationalize what is? what species have we observed a metamorphosing due to environmental and natural selection methods in oh say the last hundred years?
How about in the last hundred months? I dare you to cut open your fingers and then use the stairway railings in your average hospital. You'll get a first-hand view of bacteria that have adapted nicely to almost all (or in some cases all) anti-biotics. These treatments, in some cases, are less than a few years old. They'd kill every bug at which they were aimed when they were firt used. Because of the short life cycle (and thus, very fast reproduction frequency) of these busy little examples, we're able to see genetic changes over very short periods of time. The result: Ten years ago, you had bacteria X, which would be die quickly in the presence of certain chemicals. Now, you have bacteria Y, which shrugs it off, no problem. That's mutation and naturial selection hard at work, right in front of your eyes, producing a new population of life forms that have adapted to a new pressure. Ask a hospital administrator if she finds natural selection, and the resulting new flavors of deadly creatures, to be an observable fact. Or, ask someone's widow.
it's supposed to be observed over millions of years
No, it can be observed hour by hour. If you'd like to do a little test, we can expose you to all sorts of little life forms that used to be easy to kill with simple anti-biotics, but which - in some cases, only months later - are now genetically different, and have adapted to survive that treatment. As those bacteria (and in some cases, parasites) reproduce, there are observable mutations involved. Some of those mutations result in an altered version of the critter that happens to tolerate things that might kill those versions that mutated in a different way. If the chief cause of end-of-the-line death in strains of bacteria happens to be anti-biotics, then we're watching that life form, via simple natural selection, adapt its way around that threat. If you don't have the patience to learn how to look at the longer-term histories of species, and can't muster the simple common sense to see how that would impact more complex organisms over time, then just ask any doctor to explain it to you. Hopefully, for your sake, that won't be in the context of actually having such an infection - because, unlike even just a few short years ago, when such bacteria didn't exist, it's getting very hard to kill them without also killing you. Just like everywhere else in nature, a new pressure must be brought to bear on a species that has evolved (rapidly, in this case) to overcome an older pressure.
Let's not tolerate creationism but at least consider intelligent design
They are the same thing - both suggest the hand of an all-powerful imaginary magic super being with a sick sense of humor.
If you look at the genetic code, the similarities the re-use of design patterns
Don't you see? Of course commonly useful bits of DNA are commonly found. The stuff that works, at the basic level of providing for things like nerve growth, or respiration, or enzyme production, doesn't need to be evolved away from... mutations that shut down things like that tend to kill the offspring, and thus don't get passed along. The stuff that works, stays, and stuff that works better becomes more prominent through simple natural selection. If your ability to live long enough to reproduce depended on your ability to sprint to the nearest tree to avoid being eaten, then a mutation in your DNA that happens to produce a fractionally greater dose of adrenaline when you sense danger will give you an advantage over your brother, who might have a different, but less (for the circumstancecs) useful mutation. Guess who passes along the DNA after the predatory animals have come through your part of the woods? Mr. Faster Tree Climber. It might be a hundred generations before something even slightly as useful crops up again in that particular part of your clan's DNA, but as long as it's an advantage, it gets passed down the line. If its a liability (say, it also happens to increase your sensitivty to the sun, and thus causes early cancer), then it dies off. Of course, you know all of this. You're just invested, for social reasons, in the mythology side of things, and it's awkward for you to admit it.
In truth, I think scientists are afraid. They're afraid that if they admit there are aspects and evidence of design that they will be condoning creation as a whole rather than the simple design aspect.
No, they're just afraid of an entire new generation of kids growing up thinking that supersition, and belief if supernatural cause and effect might endanger our culture's ability to produce rational thinkers. You know, the sort of rationality that allowed us to build the systems over which you're reading this message, right now. You're proposing that we embrace a world view more or less like that which fueled the Dark Ages, or which applauded the burning alive of women, as witches, who knew that willow bark contains aspirin or who gave birth on the wrong day of the week, when it happened to rain really hard an
You have to be a troll.
Well, that or a well-caffeinated satirist. That, I can appreciate.
Stein does not reject Darwinism for the evolution of individual species. He rejects that it is the answer for why life exists and why the universe works that way that it does.
... don't confuse mythologies with science? There are entire coures of university study dedicated to mythology, and indeed there are entire universities that are all about training people to be good religious Borg units. The views he holds on this subject are talked about and celebrated at such places every single day. What he wants to do is remove the scientific method and critical thinking from the science classroom.
So, he doesn't reject evolution except for the part that really undermines his personal choice of mythologies. And he doesn't like university science curriculums because they
If he has a point in this area, it has far more to do with liberal arts and poli-sci type educations, where far more subjective and debatable things are quashed in the classroom every day. Is he bothered by the way science is twisted in some classrooms? Then he should start with the professors who think that the World Trade Center was blown up by an army of stealthy NSA demolotion experts because - lacking some basic science education - they can't get their heads around the difference between "melted" steel and "weakened" steel. There's plenty of things to examine in the classroom without debating whether or not you can become infected by a bacteria today that didn't exist yesterday (since, you can).
So, Jesus was an integer-only sort of guy? No ability or willingness to grasp the importance of ratios?
You're either the best troll of the day, or... no. You have to be a troll. There's no other explanation.
Meh... As long as both are prefixed with "theory of", who cares?
Um... because evolution can be observed, and any rational mind can understand the mechanisms by which it works, and the magic-man-in-the-sky "theory" make no provision for testing, cannot be evaluated as anything other than wishful thinking, and teaches kids not to engage in critical thinking.
Your willingness to tolerate creationism in school as long as they call it a theory is actually worse than the delusions of the people who put it forward in the first place, because - by themselves - they come across as ignorant loons. You're giving them credibility.
Yes I got it wrong... but you could have pointed that out less enthusiastically
I would have done so very simply, had you not so enthusiastically piled on the Orwellian melodrama in the first place yourself.
They got the title wrong.
No, you've got your tinfoil hat on too tight. This has nothing to do with private internet access. This is about the IT systems used by the federal government, which currently connect to the internet on 4000 wildly disparate gateways. It's very hard to keep track of that, and to consistently handle the attacks that come in on a regular basis. So, they're very wisely tightening things up. Your comment is just another example of shrill, uninformed, ideallogically fragile whiny nonsense. But thanks for reminding everyone that there are people like you out there. It helps focus the mind on the upcoming election cycle.
I ask CNN not to look for a scapegoat on this issue ... Knowing how US companies have exhibited incompetence in the past, I will not be surprised if it is the case this time round
Right! Who needs a scapegoat? Obviously this is likely the fault of US companies. There's no point blaming someone when we can blame someone that it's more slashdot-friendly to blame. The man! Teh evil corporations!
For what it's worth, I spent most of my day yesterday in rent-a-brain mode mopping up after a web site defacement that was attempted from half a dozen Chinese IP addresses, succeeded from another one, and which was throwing JS-based redirects at browsers so they'd wind up on web sites hosted in China, where trojan-flavored malware was being served up. There's no way that a country with Draconian content sniffing and a country-wide firewall like China's doesn't know when operations like that are flourishing. FWIW, the demographics targeted in this case were mil/defense types, and the visible content on the redirected target was meant to momentarily confuse people expecting that the specific content they'd have been expecting. Year Of The Rat, indeed.
the US has seldom encouraged "constitutional democracy" anywhere in the world
... that's not torture. That's a wake up call, and he gets to wake up the next morning not missing any limbs, eyes, skin, teeth, or children... which his supporters do all the time given the opportunity to reverse the roles. US military people, trying to get to the bottom of what guys like that do, plan, and operate, have to show enormous restraint. The good news is that the suicide bombers and civilian slaughterers are finally being treated by Iraqi citizens with the loathing they deserve. It's put a lot of pressure on AQ in Iraq, and their middle management rarely surives a month on the job... because now people give them up. They're tired of being "liberated" by militant Islamists that want to turn Iraq into another Taliban-style paradise.
You mean, like in the rebuilding of Europe after WWII? We occupied Germany long enough to make it stick. We out-spent the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, and now Eastern Europe, with much US support (and shockingly little from elsewhere) is a booming spot for constitutional democracies. Ask the Romanians, or the folks in Poland if you think the US hasn't supported getting them to where they are now. How about South Korea? Or that other tiny little Asian country... what was it. Oh, right, Japan. Coming to the aid of little places like England, or France so that they stay democracies would count too, since you mention reviewing history. Resisting the spread of totalitarian-minded cancers like Hugo Chavez is another way to support his neighbors against the erosion of democracy that he's trying to accelerate.
the Taliban is not liberating the people of Afghanistan but they surely do not agree with you
Who cares if the Taliban agrees with me? They are objectively wrong in their actions. Period. They are cruel deniers of liberty and murderous oppressors of free thinkers and those that don't want to live under the theocratic, mysoginistic, medieval thumb of retrograde Islam. They, or you, can use the phrase "freedom fighters" or "liberators" just as I do, about different movements. But all you have to do is look at the actual objectives and results. Can we deal with people who chop heads off of political prisoners specifically to terrorize other people by not coddling them, and stay on this side of actual torture while trying to get information about where they are holding other prisoners, or how they are getting cash from Iran? Sure. Torture - the infliction of permanent, debilitating injury - isn't necesary when you can use sleep deprivation and other tactics to get immediately needed, vital information. You want to talk torture? Tune into what people like the Taliban do. Or the foreigners that make up Al Queda in Iraq. They rip people apart alive in front of their families, or pluck their kids' eyes out in front of them to simply send a message. Taking a guy that you caught in a house full of bomb-making supplies, right after he's attempted to blow up an Iraqi police station, and shocking him into the awareness that he's NOT going to be able to simply hold his breath and not talk about the other three places in Basra that he's got stashes of shaped-charge vehicle-killer explosives and training material imported from Iran
even though there are foreigners in Iraq, most people fighting are Iraqis
This is actually, simply not true. The Iraqis that are caught actually having a hand in this stuff tend to be on the cash-and-carry payroll of Iranian-backed insurgents. The organized militias that sometimes fight it out with Iraqi police are much more like the local Mafia, duking it out over local muscle-flexing and power issues, then they are actually trying to kill civilians in an attempt to terrorize people out of forming a stable govenment. The roadside bombers, the market-bombers... the terrorists, those are the folks who are buying tickets out of other countries to go have an adventure fighting modernization. They don't want to see pictures of women in their own countries holding up the ink-stained finger showing that they've just voted for the first time in their lives, and Iraq is a toxic example to them, already, of liberty in that form.
if they had a country they would not be killing US soldiers in Iraq
What the hell are you talking about? The people in question are Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Syrians, Morrocans, Iranians... these ARE countries. These people weren't big fans of of Saddam, but they especially don't want a constitutional democracy setting up shop in that part of the world, and not having mullahs directing lives by edict.
you just described any and all of liberation movements in history
Wow, that's really quite spectacularly wrong, unless you're an Orwell sort of guy. People like the Taliban (mostly Pakistanis) aren't "liberating" the people of Afghanistan when they move into towns, kill the teachers, and shoot women in the town square for daring to teach their daughters to read. Idealogies that make a reduction in your liberty a specific and explicit objective and foundation of their beliefs, and use it as a purpose for sending mentally retarded young women into markets with bombs strapped to them in order to kill other women and children... those are not "liberators." That you would confuse the totalitarian, militant Islamists with those that would pursue liberty doesn't say much about your take on everything else, that's for sure.
the doublethink used to consider the prisoners NOT POWs would make the signers of the declaration of independence spin in their graves
... and were told, "None of the above. We're part of a loosely organized, cell-based multi-national idealogical group that are united by a more or less common theological desire to see your influence in the world, culturally, die," well... they'd probably not really know WHAT to do about that. They'd have no chain of command with which to come to an understanding, no state or head of state to hold accountable (except those that perhaps chip in some funding and support such people, like Iran), no entity with whom any conventions have been signed or with whom any sort of reciprocal behavior can be possibly expected (though I'm not sure what the baroque equivalent would be of an internet-posted video clip of your captives' affiliates hacking the heads off of prisoners with a knife while invoking their peaceful god's name). No, our founding fathers would have had to really think that one through, especially when confronted with reports of continuous attacks or attempts at more, and the promises of more - and not from some head of state with a standing army. The Barbary Pirates might have been a better example. And I don't believe they treated them like they did British POWs.
Think again.
If they captured numbers of people who had been shooting at US soldiers (miltia, what have you, considering the times), and then said to them, "So, who do you work for... France? England? Spain?"
It's pretty clear that Apartheid wouldn't have ended as quickly as it did if it were not for the ANC's terrorist tactics. Because of that, the ANC's terrorism was justified
Well, then, it would have ended even more quickly if they had simply slaughtered all of the white people in the country, right? That would have changed the political landscape pretty much instantly. And since you think speed is good, isn't even more speed better? Better yet, why discriminate? Just move a few people you like outide of the borders, and then kill everyone in the country, so you can move back in and enjoy a blank slate. Totally justified, since it's so quick, right? Do you even listen to yourself?
On the presumption that you don't think the Taliban was a really swell regime to have running Afghanistan, would you have supported simply nuking the country? So what if civilians are killed without any attempt whatsoever to control such damage... gets the job done more quickly, right?
Those kinds of things (and just the sheer odds) don't happen all in a week.
Read the damn information. These things do happen every week. Often MORE than once a week. That's the whole point, here. You're just really, really desparate to find a villain where you really want to find one. Just because the facts of the matter, and the statistical history of these very common failures and damage events don't end up fueling the narrative you prefer doesn't mean you should still be leaning towards the conclusion you're drawing. If you're not going to take basic facts into account, then why is your urge to synthesize a conspiracy any more rational than someone else's urge to say that you, personally did the deed? Or that it's guerilla marketing for the upcoming episodes of Lost? Yeesh.
I paid for a 6mbit connection, and now I have to pay again if I want to actually use my 6mbit connection for more than a few seconds at a time?
We're not talking about your peronal deal with your personal ISP. The whole topic - and the post to which I responded - is about the wider infrastructure. Regardless, there's still some valid analogy. One COULD pay to build a nice road on which you, at the time you paid for it, could drive 60mph. Now the traffic has gone up by 10000%, wildly out of porportion with the growth in actual paying customers. It's as if your neighborhood road that used to be easy to drive on now has 10 times the people using it... but each of them is also driving a three-section tractor trailer instead of a passenger car. And they all want to pay passenger car rates, and still act like they're the only ones on the road.
Actually, you are trolling. Being right-winged loser how lives in your moms basement
I keep looking at your reply, knowing that somewhere in there you'll point to how exactly President Gore would have had us on Mars by now. You must be really, really subtle, because I'm not seeing it. Or, maybe you're just full of crap on that subject, and were making a comment that is the very definition of a troll. Now, which part was I wrong about? Afghanistan? The recession that started in 1999? See, I can point at your BS about Mars, but you're just making odd mom's-basement comments rather than actually talking about history. Which makes you a whiny troll.
Bush wasn't president of the U.S and we now have people on Mars and so on. That universe had Al Gore as president.
Ah, I see. Because... when Gore and Clinton were in charge of NASA, there were plans in place and programs under way to have people on Mars by now, only 7 years later, and that got stopped cold by Teh Evil Bush. I wonder what else was under way while Clinton and Gore were running the executive branch? Say, the rapid build up of Al Queda tranining camps in Afghanistan, and the launching of plans to re-attack the WTC? The recession we were in as they left office? The changes in your alternate universe have to go back a lot farther than Gore not getting selective votes counted just the way he wanted in Florida in order to have people on Mars now, as we're talking. Of course, you know that, and you're just trolling.
So now they want us to pay again?
Yeah, I paid for a car, and now I want a faster car that can carry 100 people, and I have to pay again?
I paid taxes, and that money was used to build a local road, and now more people live in town and we need another lane on the road, and we have to pay more? What a rip-off.
Compare how much ISPs charge and how much power and water companies charge, and what you get for it. While small ISPs have to pay per bit (like water and power companies which have to pay per unit of gas/coal/water), AFAIK large ISPs have cushier arrangements with each other, since the incremental costs of sending bits isn't high once the network capacity is paid for - if nobody uses the bandwidth, the ISP still has to pay about the same for the network.
Can you get a few other fruits in there to compare with your apples and oranges?
I don't want to carry an AK47 on the way to the supermarket and you do, now just who is being rational. Your (non-sic) mental landscape must be a very scary place .. :)
The difference between us is that you're painting a picture of me in your mental landscape that includes me carrying a rifle to work. I don't feel that need to. I don't even feel the need to have a handgun, 99.9% of the time. It's about having the option to defend myself if I feel the circumstances warrant it. If I'm carrying a vehicle full of expensive gear into rather dicey territory, I don't like the idea that the only deterrent I have against being roughed up or killed and having my stuff stolen is a 911 call on a cell phone, and the minutes or hours it might take to get a useful response. There's a place I go to do some dog training, but an incident a few years ago on a neighboring farm means that, now, there are feral hogs loose on the adjoining few thousand acres. I don't have any particular interest in hunting them, but they are absolutely scary several-hundred-pound animals that can kill you or your dogs if they're in the wrong mood. A magnum handgun is a convenient tool to have, just in case. And I can't get from home to where I'm going (where I might want to actually have one on my hip while in the field) without having it with me in the vehicle on my way through several jurisdictions, all with a patchwork of varying laws on the subject. On such a round trip, I would go from being a free citizen, to a felon, and back to being legal again in the space of 15 minutes and three zip codes. None of those geographic changes alter my mindset (or my aim!).
This isn't about carrying a piece into the grocery store every day, or expecting that somehow I'm going to be the one to shoot some imagined terrorist before he Tom Clancy-ifies a shopping mall. It's about not being a felon for choosing the option when it seems appropriate. Likewise, I have no problem with far more draconian use of the law when it comes to people who DO decide that shooting in the street is a normal part of business. Most such people are repeat offenders, and are tied to gangs and other habitual crime. They need to go far, far away for a long time. In your jungle-instinct-driven behavior model, of course, we'd all just kill them on the spot for acting so stupidly or aggressively. But we don't do that, generally, do we?
it's you walking down the street carrying one that scares me .. :)
Why? I'm rational. Crazy people/criminals are the ones you need to worry about, as they're more likely to be willing and able to do something dangerous whether or not you have a law that says otherwise. Statistically, you should be more worried about the thousands of people driving cars around you. Out of malice or poor judgement, they are far more likely to hurt or kill you or someone you care about than a person who legally owns and know how to use a gun. At least with your car, you have some experience, and the capability to be relatively protected in your own car - at least against some misuses by other people. What defense do you have against someone who comes after you and your car in a parking lot? Or who is breaking into your house, knowing that you're at home?
your [sic] still driven by the same basic instincts that allowed humanity to be a successful hunter/gatherer on the African planes millennia ago
And you aren't? Not nearly enough time has passed for evolution to make you not aware of, and not care if you are threatened, or not care if someone is threatening or injuring someone you care about. And such an evolutionary trend would be short lived, of course, because people who don't feel the need to preserve their lives or those of their families and friends aren't as likely to survive and reproduce.
it is a weapon, completely unnecessary for a citizen in a modern society
I'm really curious which modern society you live in (a very creepy one, apparently) that there is a cop handy for every household, only moments away, 24 hours a day. Or do you actually live in a place where there are no breakins, no robberies, no crazies, no rapes, no gangs? I live in a large metropolitan area. We have a huge gang problem, carjackings, home invasions, strong-arm robberies, etc., at fairly high rates. I've had someone trying to beat down my door in the middle of night with a pipe, screaming and dangerous. Took police a long time to arrive, but the guy (whom they eventually apprehended, and was in a very bad way on a cocktail including PCP) did finally give it up and move off when confronted with a gun in his face. It took three officers to constrain him. I'm very glad I didn't have to shoot, but I'm also very glad that I wasn't risking my life waiting for the cops. If I'm away, and my wife is home alone, what's she supposed to do with someone like that? Let him break down the door because you don't think it's civilized for her to be able to defend herself? I'm sure nothing TOO bad could happen to her in 15 minutes anyway, right?
escalations in violence
As mentioned, I used one to de-escalate violence. Guns are used that way all the time. The prospect of a gun being available to a homeowner, business owner, or (where it's allowed) someone going to or from work absolutely reduces the rates of violent crime. It wasn't very long ago you could walk into a hardware store and purchase a handgun along with other tools. Sears sold shotguns over the counter and by mail order. There weren't epidemics of shootings. You can't (for now) own a gun in DC. Unless, of course, you're a criminal. Great recipe, there.
violence that would never be as severe or harm as many innocent bystanders as gun violence does.
Except, of course, for things like motor vehicles. Crazy people, drunks, and just plain bad drivers kill a lot more people than people with guns do. People with knives, machetes, gasoline, fists, and plenty of other methods also kill people. In the meantime, I've used a gun to put a stop to a violent encounter, and have used guns many, many times to put food on the table (food that doesn't spend its life on a factory farm, full of drugs). I realize that you're happy enough having other people kill the leather for your shoes or clear the varmits from the soya fields for your tofu. How tidy for you!