It might not be wise for them to recommend SAA7134 TV tuner cards. I had to hack MythTV's source code (using a patch someone else developed, fortunately) just to get TV audio working. That might not fit in with their plug-and-play philosophy.:-) Other than that, this looks pretty neat!
I agree with you both, Wisconsin is a great place. I lived in Eau Claire all the way through my undergrad years, and since then I've bounced between Urbana-Champaign, IL, and Washington, DC. I'm obviously extremely biased, but I still hope to get back to the Chippewa Valley after I'm done with school. There are a few tech jobs in that area, but they certainly don't pay as well as those in the Silicon Valley. I worked at Cray for 2.5 years, and my dad has worked there since I was born. Cray is an incredible place to work, but they've become pretty unstable. I hope that more tech companies will move in eventually. UWEC produces relatively good software engineers;-) and land is still fairly cheap.
...self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.
Well, they've got 295,734,134 people to guard from threats across the globe and within their borders, so you should be able to understand why they might seem a bit sensitive at times.:-)
That's just the way of the world, every nation should always be constantly advancing their defense technologies while at the same time trying to maintain the best relations possible with the rest of the world. To open up everything and start subjugating military technology (GPS, at least originally) to commercial and civilian interests is one way to allow your military, commercial, and civilian interests get whacked simultaneously. However, most military technology eventually matures and becomes a part of the civilian landscape, like crypto, computers, etc., and I think GPS is at that stage now.
The first amendment issue is an interesting one. It first came up afaik when Madalyn Murray O'Hare sued over prayer in schools. (Btw, her son that she used as the basis for her suit is now the head of the Religious Freedom Coalition. He has a fascinating autobiography.) Even their lawyer admitted that the separation of church and state is not contained within the first amendment, it is just commonly construed in that way. In fact, the first amendment has been used as the basis for more Christian persecution in this country than anything else. Removing all vestiges of Christianity from the government actually establishes atheism, or humanism, as the state religion. Basically, the courts have gotten this backwards: The first amendment was intended to prevent the state from restricting religious expression, not to prevent religion from influencing the state. If you doubt me, just look at the background of those who fled to this country to avoid religious repression. When the government starts forcing people to go to the Church of England, that's religious repression. Likewise, when the government says you can't pray in school, that's religious repression. Now, when the public school says you have to pray a specific prayer in the morning, I can't support that either, so I'm not actually opposed to the outcome of the Murray case, but it served as the precedent for other incredibly damaging verdicts. Are you honestly happier with the way our schools look today with all vestiges of Christianity eliminated? They'll only get worse if this trend continues. The reintroduction of ID to the classroom is the only glimmer of hope I can see right now.
Now, I do think that evolution should be given equal air time with ID until people are convinced that it is not scientific in comparison to ID, so that the state is actually neutral. Otherwise, if it were the only thing taught, that would currently be an establishment of religion, just like the sole teaching of evolution is an establishment of Humanism. Things are so complicated in public schools...
There are some significant differences between ulcers and Creation, although it is a good example of the problems that can arise in the peer review system:
- ulcers occur all around us, Creation will never again occur.
- ulcers are a fairly neutral topic, Creationism is not. Creationism is the basic tenet of Biblical Christianity, evolution that of Humanism.
I will agree with you that Creationism's proponents have sometimes hurt it more than they've helped it through their methods. There's not much we can do about that now, except improve going forward. There are a number of publications that support Creationism, they just can be hard to pick out from the crowd. If you were an archaeologist that had grown up in a public school, what interpretive framework would you use? Is it any surprise that explicitly Creationist publications are difficult to find today?
I read Slashdot, it should be obvious what I'm getting my PhD in.;-) I'm at UIUC in CS. Every field has its own peculiarities, but peer review processes are basically similar.
Wrong. Just because someone presents an alternate conjecture about the accuracy of a scientific principle does not mean that said conjecture is automatically on the same level of legitimacy as whichever principle one seeks to disprove. If that were the case, I could argue that computers run on magic, and then protest when my theory of devine computation was not taught in computer science classes. The antecedents of ID are undoubtedly religious in nature; ergo, the conclusions postulated by ID proponents are derived from sources known to be false, or at the very least untestable.
- How did the falsity of propositions based on religious sources become an axiom? That is a premise of humanism, but humanism is not known to be a correct doctrine.
ID, not being a scientific hypothesis, will *always* be rejected by legitimate scientists, due to the fact that it:
* Cannot be tested
- you obviously didn't understand my original post
* Cannot be separated from religious dogma
- we believe that the Bible is a direct account of absolute prehistory from the only One who existed at the time. So you're right, our beliefs are rooted in that account. Can you think of a more reliable source for such beliefs? The historical accuracy of the Bible is remarkable, as has been shown by many archaeological discoveries, and is more reliable than any other document that ever existed.
* Requires belief in the supernatural as part of its core support structure
- Would you outlaw the supernatural from science if it does in fact exist? How do you then expect science to accurately describe the universe?
* Negates many scientific principles which *are* tested and well-regarded among people of learning.
- There are a great number of scientific principles which were considered to be adequately tested and were well-regarded in the past that nonetheless have later been widely ridiculed. Unfortunately, one of those, macroevolution, has made a stunning comeback in modern times....ID differs from science in that the key promoters of its hypothesis begin with their own surity of their ideas, and then disregard conflicting facts.
- It sounds like you're condemning evolutionism, not creationism. We are using much different interpretive frameworks.
The Earth is not young. Carbon dating, fossil records, geology, atomic theory, astronomy, and many other scientific disciplines have all independantly dated the earth at more than four billion years old.
- there are many holes in such methods that rely on a uniform past as a basic premise
If God did create the world, and all the things in it, in six days, then how were days reckoned before the creation of the sun?
- time existed before the sun
If God created all the animals, why were so many of them such complete failures as to become extinct?
- there was a catastrophic, global flood
If all humans are descended from Adam and Eve, then why the biblical prohibition on incest?
- the prohibition of incest arose fairly late in history, after the gene pool had become corrupted through genetic mutations
And, furthermore, I am not a genetic researcher, but I'm fairly certain that thousands of generations of familial in-breeding would result in a rather, shall we say, shallow gene pool.
- our original (and current, to a lesser extent) genes contained an incredible amount of diversity
The *key difference* in these bits of biblical lore which seperate them from real science is that the observer, the reader of the bible, assumes them to be true solely on basis of religious conviction.
- Certainly not. I want to believe the truth, wherever it m
There is an obvious bias against creationism in mainstream science, which comes through strongly in peer review situations. I'm a PhD student, I know how the publication process works.
Look who's talking about liberty and control. The courts effectively trampled on liberty with this latest decision. All that the government must do is maintain neutrality, not favoring one view over another. Thus, if both evolution and ID are taught, neutrality is maintained. If ID is banned simply because it is religious, neutrality has been violated. If evolution is banned only because it is religious, neutrality has likewise been violated.
I said "effectively trampled on", because ID was rejected for being unscientific in this particular case. That is the fault of the defense, and I can't actually fault the judge on that count, from what I've heard at least. However, if ID ever gets a decent legal and scientific team on its side, we should make some headway. Notice I said headway, since we're the ones who are trying to open people's minds to a theory that more reliably accounts for the evidence we see than evolution does. The Inquisitors were charged with snuffing out dissenting voices, and actually murdered many Bible believers, so your analogy is certainly backwards.
Normally I stay away from debating the evidence for literal Biblical Creationism (the only reasonable strain of ID), but this is an exceptional circumstance, since so many voices have challenged the very fact that Creationism is a falsifiable scientific theory at all.
Literal Creationism has at least four main tenets:
- the earth is young, probably around 6000 years old
- God created all "kinds" of animals within 6 evening-morning days (fish vs. birds vs. land mammals vs. humans, etc.)
- the earth was devastated by a global flood early in its history
- all humans descended from a single couple known in the English Bible as Adam and Eve
If it could be shown that any one of these propositions does not hold, then Biblical creationism would crumble. The fact that they are extraordinarily difficult to challenge certainly does not mean that creationism is not a scientific theory. Furthermore, all of the evidence we have ever uncovered and understand quite well supports these propositions. Note that these observations are the exact same observations used by evolutionists, just interpreted according to a different framework.
In fact, Biblical creationism is such a superior framework that I eagerly anticipate the day when macroevolution is finally put on trial for being unscientific in comparison and barred from classrooms on that basis and that basis alone. Both evolutionists and creationists have difficulty explaining many parts of their theories and demand patience, but the relative magnitudes of uncertainty between the two theories are hardly worth comparing.
If you want to learn more about specific pieces of the evidence, you can buy books and read papers from any number of creation institutes, it's not worth discussing them here as I've done so many times before.
Evolution is asserted as fact in basically every place where it is even remotely possible to make such an assertion. You're watching an IMAX movie when suddenly, "Millions of years ago, dinosaurs evolved into birds...", etc. There is NEVER any mention that "we currently believe that dinosaurs evolved into birds millions of years ago...". I have never in my life heard an evolutionist unequivocally admit that perhaps evolution is a false theory. As such, they claim it is fact. If you have a couterexample, please point me to its source so I can read it.
ID as a whole could be falsified if it were possible to show that no god played a role in the creation of the universe. Such an argument will never be discovered for a variety of reasons, but theoretically it could exist.
Examining a particular corner of ID such as literal Biblical Creationism is much simpler. It sets out a number of hypotheses that can be compared against the evidence we observe:
- Earth is around 6000 years old
- The entire surface of the earth was covered by floodwaters at some point
- Fish, birds, land mammals, humans, etc. were all created separately by a single Creator
- All humans are descended from a single couple, Adam and Eve.
I have absolutely zero interest in debating the evidence for these events, since it is almost axiomatic that no evolutionist can accept any arguments for them (they have incredible faith and patience). However, the point is that ID as a whole and specific parts of ID are both theories that can be scientifically examined. Yes, ID involves the supernatural, but if the supernatural exists, how can you exclude it from scientific discourse and still call yourself a scientist?
That's great they're using exhaust gasses to power this, but what about other wasted engine heat that is normally dissipated through the radiator?
It's very intriguing to see this technology. I've heard before that steam engines could easily have powered the cars we drive today, except that oil companies forced them into oblivion. I've also heard that turbines could have made it into mainstream cars as well, if Indy 500 officials would have allowed the turbine cars to keep racing. It seems pretty silly to outlaw a car from the world's greatest race because it's unfairly fast. Oh well.
The thing that bothered me about this article though was the note at the end: we won't see this for at least 10 years! That seems like way more time than is necessary to bring something like this to market.
I was sort of offended to hear Torvalds call Gnome an idiot-magnet, I doubt its developers intended that. I'm personally a developer that has gone so far as to write a kernel driver, so I'd hardly call myself a Linux idiot, even if I'm not some super-elite. The thing is, much of my work can be done on the command line anyway, so the GUI is of secondary importance to me.
I personally use Gnome for a few reasons:
- I think KDE is ugly (sorry, not trying to flamebait, just my opinion!)
- I prefer GTK to QT for developing my own applications
- I don't like all the bundled applications KDE includes, like KOffice and Konqueror. I much prefer choosing my own apps, like OpenOffice and Firefox, since I feel they're superior. Unfortunately, Gnome is becoming more like KDE with the inclusion of Evolution and Epiphany. Those are the two apps that take the most time to compile when I'm installing Gentoo!
On the other hand, I do like some of the KDE apps like K3B. Fortunately, I can still use them, even within Gnome.
There have been some changes in Gnome recently that do really annoy me. I can't understand why they removed the capability to edit menus directly, and the whole Nautilus change is hideous. Fortunately, tree view is one feature they reintroduced recently, if you know how to reenable it with gconf-editor. Perhaps end-users aren't providing enough feedback to the developers? They should have some sort of community forum to interact with their users. That might help them innovate a bit as well, instead of just copying features from Windows and OS X.
Those are my two cents.
However, that advancement is very important to its intended community. Sun and Cray target very specific communities (which overlap only slightly I might add) with a lot of cash and specific needs. That community would certainly be happy to hear about more cores, or any other advancement, in a Cray, Power, SPARC, or IA64 processor. You might also note that Cray uses AMD processors in some of its offerings, so in a way comparing SPARC and AMD isn't too far off the mark.
I used to run Windows 2000 on my HP Vectra P166 with 32MB of RAM, 2MB S3 integrated video, and dual 1GB 5400 RPM hard drives, which I configured as a software RAID-0 array.
The reason I didn't reach the point of diminishing returns with that box is simply that I had no money. I paid for it (approx. $150 on eBay) by selling some old software, also on eBay. Hard to imagine trying to deal with that now that I'm on a 2GB Athlon64 running Gentoo...:-)
You should still be able to set up RAID in software, even with your heterogeneous drives. In fact, if all you were planning to use is a RAID controller built into your motherboard, you'll be no worse off. Motherboard RAID controllers provide NO hardware acceleration. All they do is add a few tiny bits of useful info to the hard drive, to tell the software RAID drivers how to arrange the array. Quite a scam, isn't it? I sure was disappointed when I found that out originally.:-) Fortunately, under Gentoo and dmraid with my Athlon64 3000+, I still get doubled transfer rates, without excessive CPU utilization. So, just forget about the RAID controller and set everything up in software.
Actually, they do. Pop is one of the greatest health hazards in common consumption, and no doubt leads fairly directly to many deaths.
Here's a short list of possible health effects:
- osteoporosis
- improper bone formation in kids
- (interesting fact: the only bone I've ever broken is a rib)
- dental cavities, etc.
- kidney stone recurrence
- allergic penicillin reactions
- white blood cell suppression for 7 hours from one soft drink (effect of sugar)
- internal methanol production (from aspartame in diet soda)
- I had a CS professor who always drank diet soda, and also experienced frequent headaches. They have actually discovered cavities in the brains of diet soda drinkers.
- obesity
- bladder cancer
- 50% decrease in fertility
- rashses and asthma from sodium benzoate
Also, do not take cola and antacids together. They react and cause a variety of uncomfortable conditions.
All this makes me wonder why we ever let food companies hire chemists.
As pointed out by someone else in this thread, Cray Canada makes the XD1 Opteron cluster (http://www.cray.com/products/xd1/index.html) with FPGAs built in. Might cost a little more than a PCIe card though.:-) They can even be programmed in C now, rather than a full-blown hardware design language like Verilog, since Cray bundles a special C-to-FPGA compiler.
I also went to demo of the SRC6 (SRC = Seymour Roger Cray, Cray's last spinoff in Colorado that has never quite taken off) here at the U of I in Urbana-Champaign. It appears to have similar capabilities and is quite neat, but is a smaller system. (http://www.srccomp.com/HardwareElements.htm) Somebody who knows more about these machines could probably point out more differences...
the creationist movement has tried to bypass the scientific process by getting their material brought in through the side door of legislation. this puts the rational people in a tough situation where they have to fight back using equally nasty methods. i think that's a shame, but i understand they have to do what they have to do.
]]]] I lived near Grantsburg, WI when they were attempting to instate creationism alongside evolution. The local school board was the one that decided to teach it, and they received letters of dissent from 350 educators and 200 pastors with crippled theology. Who's being nasty?
for the same reasons they don't want their kids taught that earth is flat, or that the holocaust never happened. because school is supposed to be about education, not making your kids "stupider".
]]]] Do you think your analogies are buying you anything? The earth IS round, we have pictures and observe ionospheric skip with RF transmissions. The Holocaust is a FACT. Evolution is a THEORY. (I'm not offended, just letting you know how your analogies appear to their recipient) I'm not saying we should force evolutionist's kids to learn anything. I was talking about the parents who want their kids to learn other theories and are bludgeoned to death by the scientific and misguided religious communities. Make it an elective. Require parental approval. That's still not going to appease AAAS and the others.
the place for contending science, is within the field of science. creationists have every opportunity to find some other explanation besides darwinism for biology. but they can't do that. they are being shut out, because they are trying to enter through the back door instead of paying with evidence.
]]]] We work with the same evidence as you; it comes out of the ground, from the earth's magnetic field, etc. Evolution does not come packaged with other evidence, it's an interpretation of evidence.
I know you think it's down for the count, but a lot of people don't, so by definition it isn't.
allow me to clue you in on how science works. it isn't a matter of what people think. it's a matter of what they can support with facts. so far, there are no alternative theories to neo-darwinian synthesis. i know that's really tough for you to deal with, but..deal with it. part of being an adult means dealing with things that can be frustrating to accept. i know it's hard when you're a kid and you find out there's no santa. same thing applies here. you just have to be strong brother.
]]]] I was talking about ideas, not facts. We don't have universally acceptable facts in the area of origins. I've been discussing an alternative theory to darwinism this whole time. It's becoming really difficult to carry on an intelligent discussion when you relate my beliefs to a belief in Santa. Again, I'm not sure what you're trying to buy yourself here. If you're getting fed up with talking, just tell me.
a lot of people genuinely don't understand the case for evolution. i admit, a lot of it can be very difficult to understand.
]]]] Aye to that!
if you still don't believe it, then you misunderstood something. explain why you don't believe in it, even though it's utterly obvious, and i'll be happy to clear up your confusion.
]]]] Your refutations to my previous objections are not acceptable, for the aforementioned reasons: high improbability, excessive complexity, and lack of convincing, unequivocal evidence.
there are no arguments for creationism. not one. no creators have been observed.
]]]] Creationism is an interpretive framework. The evidence fits it. Now you have an argument. Besides, the Creator has appeared in some limited form or another many times in Biblical history, and I have the records.
1) every life form is an intermediate. 2) many obvious lines of evolution, where the gradual changes can be clearly seen, are known. see http://www
I don't know if you caught the latest Slashdot article, but the evolutionist organizations are the ones legislating ID curriculum out of the classroom, using sneaky copyright issues. Continuing in the vein of that ACLU sham, the Scopes trial of course: http://www.themonkeytrial.com/ They're afraid and it shows. The question is: why? Why are they so afraid to let parents decide their kids should see a few different theories? Red flags pop up when the arena of ideas shuts a contender out. I know you think it's down for the count, but a lot of people don't, so by definition it isn't.
I don't want to start throwing more accusations around, but seriously ask yourself what motivation I have to believe something I think is a lie. I've heard plenty of arguments for evolution, it's not like I've been denied the opportunity to try that interpretive framework out. I've also seen many different types of creationism. Creationists have made big mistakes in the past when they've tried to modify what the Bible clearly says, just to agree with the latest whims of science. I suspect that's the breed of crippled Christianity you got when you were young. I've thrown all those away with full awareness of my actions.
Why would I believe evolutionists when they tell me to just give them some more time to find the strong intermediate life forms their theory so badly needs? When they keep extending the age of the universe, even though it's obvious that it can't be nearly that old? When they say everything around me with its flawed but beautiful order and complexity is one big accident? Evolution doesn't give anything except empty, unsubstantiated guesses to grasp at. Evolution certainly can't tell me where matter came from. It ultimately goes back to the same assumptions as creationism: "something" always existed. "something" holds matter together:
(Colossians 1:17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him.)
With literal creationism, I have an account that matches up with what I see. I see a worldwide flood in the rocks beneath my feet. Excavated dinosaur bones with soft tissue. A rapidly degrading earth and universe. Ancient, highly intelligent civilizations that built structures we can hardly build today with our current technology. Harmful mutations leading to horrible diseases and deformed creatures, not higher organisms.
Now, you're not going to follow the rest of this, but I feel I need to throw it out there to finish things off. The Bible, despite being imperfectly translated as you've pointed out, is powerful. Its prophecies have been fulfilled, all throughout history. More are left. Think about Revelation:
13:15 The second beast was empowered to give life to the image of the first beast so that it could speak, and could cause all those who did not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 13:16 He also caused everyone (small and great, rich and poor, free and slave) to obtain a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. 13:17 Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things unless he bore the mark of the beast--that is, his name or his number.
Remember that passage, it's not hard to see that its realization is not far off...
Matthew 24:7 "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes."
The number of strong earthquakes has been increasing tremendously.
21:25 "And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth nations will be in distress, anxious over the *roaring of the sea and the surging waves.* 21:26 People will be fainting from fear and from the expectation of what is coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 21:27 Then they will see the Son of Man arriving in a cloud with power and great glory. 21:28 But when these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
Whenever IP is brought up on Slashdot, all I see are scathing diatribes against those attempting to use IP laws to their own benefit. Now, when one of the sneakiest uses of IP laws I've seen comes up, I couldn't find a single post decrying it. I guess slashdotters and IP advocates have at least one common enemy.:-)
I believe what makes sense with respect to reality. Yes, you have refutations for everything I say, and I have refutations for everything you say. Your refutations are much more complex and rest upon weird, highly improbable assumptions. I wish somebody would invest some money into biology research that starts with Biblical assumptions, the tables would turn quickly when clear, unified results begin to appear.
]]]] They're shifting the burden of proof. Proof by absence of counterexample is not proof.
[macroevolution's] framework has so many holes
name one:
[[[[ Here's a straightforward statement: Any random change in a complex, specific, functioning system wrecks that system. And living things are the most complex functioning systems in the universe. Science has now quantitated that a genetic mutation of as little as 1 billionth (0.0000001%) of an animal's genome is relentlessly fatal. The genetic difference between human and his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6% Calculated out that is a gap of at least 48 million nucleotide differences that must be bridged by random changes. And a random change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal. (Geneticist Barney Maddox, 1992 )
Another problem is that the universe appears to be too young to accommodate the millions and billions of years that evolutionists require for their processes to operate:
- if the universe were more than a few hundred million years old, the milky way's spiral pattern would have degraded to an unordered disc. (look up the "winding up dilemma")
- according to evolutionists, comets are supposed to have been around since the beginning of the universe, but they don't last more than 100,000 years. On average, they last 10,000 years.
- each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean. About 1 billion tons are recycled into the core of the earth each year. Thus, the current levels of sediment in the oceans could have accumulated in less than 12 million years, assuming unifom conditions throughout history. If you assume a flood, it could have accumulated very quickly, definitely within 5000 years.
- the total energy in the earth's magnetic field has decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. Without an extremely complex and improbable mechanism, it couldn't be more than 10,000 years old.
- Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.17 'Squashed' Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale. 'Orphan' Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactivity decay rates.
- Evolutionary anthropologists say that the stone age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between 1 and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artefacts. By this scenario, they would have buried at least 4 billion bodies. If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years, so many of the supposed 4 billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artefacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the stone age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas.
- According to evolutionists, stone age man existed for 100,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4000 to 5000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely. ]]]]
and is so unsupported by our observations.
mutations and selection events are observed, so you're wrong there.
]]]] - I absolutely believe in mutation and natural selection. Man, you attribute more stupidity to me
I wasn't arguing with the fact that mutations occur, I fully believe in evolution, as does any other scientist. I just don't believe in the enormous extrapolation from the irrefutable principle of simple mutation to macroevolution, since its framework has so many holes and is so unsupported by our observations. Darwin's treatise hardly has more credibility than a comic book, if you look at it. He didn't even intend it to.
As far as the Bible goes, how do you support the validity of anything? Interpret your observations by it, see how they line up. Just so happens that our observations of this world line up very well with the Bible's account of history. Incidentally, archeology has never refuted a single fact in the Bible either. I feel a lot more confident trusting that sort of book than the whims of evolutionary "science", which must be adjusted every few weeks.
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It might not be wise for them to recommend SAA7134 TV tuner cards. I had to hack MythTV's source code (using a patch someone else developed, fortunately) just to get TV audio working. That might not fit in with their plug-and-play philosophy. :-) Other than that, this looks pretty neat!
I agree with you both, Wisconsin is a great place. I lived in Eau Claire all the way through my undergrad years, and since then I've bounced between Urbana-Champaign, IL, and Washington, DC. I'm obviously extremely biased, but I still hope to get back to the Chippewa Valley after ;-) and land is still fairly cheap.
I'm done with school. There are a few tech jobs in that area, but they certainly don't pay as well as those in the Silicon Valley. I worked at Cray for 2.5 years, and my dad has worked there since I was born. Cray is an incredible place to work, but they've become pretty unstable. I hope that more tech companies will move in eventually. UWEC produces relatively good software engineers
...self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.
:-)
Well, they've got 295,734,134 people to guard from threats across the globe and within their borders, so you should be able to understand why they might seem a bit sensitive at times.
That's just the way of the world, every nation should always be constantly advancing their defense technologies while at the same time trying to maintain the best relations possible with the rest of the world. To open up everything and start subjugating military technology (GPS, at least originally) to commercial and civilian interests is one way to allow your military, commercial, and civilian interests get whacked simultaneously. However, most military technology eventually matures and becomes a part of the civilian landscape, like crypto, computers, etc., and I think GPS is at that stage now.
The first amendment issue is an interesting one. It first came up afaik when Madalyn Murray O'Hare sued over prayer in schools. (Btw, her son that she used as the basis for her suit is now the head of the Religious Freedom Coalition. He has a fascinating autobiography.) Even their lawyer admitted that the separation of church and state is not contained within the first amendment, it is just commonly construed in that way. In fact, the first amendment has been used as the basis for more Christian persecution in this country than anything else. Removing all vestiges of Christianity from the government actually establishes atheism, or humanism, as the state religion. Basically, the courts have gotten this backwards: The first amendment was intended to prevent the state from restricting religious expression, not to prevent religion from influencing the state. If you doubt me, just look at the background of those who fled to this country to avoid religious repression. When the government starts forcing people to go to the Church of England, that's religious repression. Likewise, when the government says you can't pray in school, that's religious repression. Now, when the public school says you have to pray a specific prayer in the morning, I can't support that either, so I'm not actually opposed to the outcome of the Murray case, but it served as the precedent for other incredibly damaging verdicts. Are you honestly happier with the way our schools look today with all vestiges of Christianity eliminated? They'll only get worse if this trend continues. The reintroduction of ID to the classroom is the only glimmer of hope I can see right now.
Now, I do think that evolution should be given equal air time with ID until people are convinced that it is not scientific in comparison to ID, so that the state is actually neutral. Otherwise, if it were the only thing taught, that would currently be an establishment of religion, just like the sole teaching of evolution is an establishment of Humanism. Things are so complicated in public schools...
There are some significant differences between ulcers and Creation, although it is a good example of the problems that can arise in the peer review system:
;-) I'm at UIUC in CS. Every field has its own peculiarities, but peer review processes are basically similar.
- ulcers occur all around us, Creation will never again occur.
- ulcers are a fairly neutral topic, Creationism is not. Creationism is the basic tenet of Biblical Christianity, evolution that of Humanism.
I will agree with you that Creationism's proponents have sometimes hurt it more than they've helped it through their methods. There's not much we can do about that now, except improve going forward. There are a number of publications that support Creationism, they just can be hard to pick out from the crowd. If you were an archaeologist that had grown up in a public school, what interpretive framework would you use? Is it any surprise that explicitly Creationist publications are difficult to find today?
I read Slashdot, it should be obvious what I'm getting my PhD in.
Wrong. Just because someone presents an alternate conjecture about the accuracy of a scientific principle does not mean that said conjecture is automatically on the same level of legitimacy as whichever principle one seeks to disprove. If that were the case, I could argue that computers run on magic, and then protest when my theory of devine computation was not taught in computer science classes. The antecedents of ID are undoubtedly religious in nature; ergo, the conclusions postulated by ID proponents are derived from sources known to be false, or at the very least untestable.
...ID differs from science in that the key promoters of its hypothesis begin with their own surity of their ideas, and then disregard conflicting facts.
- How did the falsity of propositions based on religious sources become an axiom? That is a premise of humanism, but humanism is not known to be a correct doctrine.
ID, not being a scientific hypothesis, will *always* be rejected by legitimate scientists, due to the fact that it:
* Cannot be tested
- you obviously didn't understand my original post
* Cannot be separated from religious dogma
- we believe that the Bible is a direct account of absolute prehistory from the only One who existed at the time. So you're right, our beliefs are rooted in that account. Can you think of a more reliable source for such beliefs? The historical accuracy of the Bible is remarkable, as has been shown by many archaeological discoveries, and is more reliable than any other document that ever existed.
* Requires belief in the supernatural as part of its core support structure
- Would you outlaw the supernatural from science if it does in fact exist? How do you then expect science to accurately describe the universe?
* Negates many scientific principles which *are* tested and well-regarded among people of learning.
- There are a great number of scientific principles which were considered to be adequately tested and were well-regarded in the past that nonetheless have later been widely ridiculed. Unfortunately, one of those, macroevolution, has made a stunning comeback in modern times.
- It sounds like you're condemning evolutionism, not creationism. We are using much different interpretive frameworks.
The Earth is not young. Carbon dating, fossil records, geology, atomic theory, astronomy, and many other scientific disciplines have all independantly dated the earth at more than four billion years old.
- there are many holes in such methods that rely on a uniform past as a basic premise
If God did create the world, and all the things in it, in six days, then how were days reckoned before the creation of the sun?
- time existed before the sun
If God created all the animals, why were so many of them such complete failures as to become extinct?
- there was a catastrophic, global flood
If all humans are descended from Adam and Eve, then why the biblical prohibition on incest?
- the prohibition of incest arose fairly late in history, after the gene pool had become corrupted through genetic
mutations
And, furthermore, I am not a genetic researcher, but I'm fairly certain that thousands of generations of familial in-breeding would result in a rather, shall we say, shallow gene pool.
- our original (and current, to a lesser extent) genes contained an incredible amount of diversity
The *key difference* in these bits of biblical lore which seperate them from real science is that the observer, the reader of the bible, assumes them to be true solely on basis of religious conviction.
- Certainly not. I want to believe the truth, wherever it m
There is an obvious bias against creationism in mainstream science, which comes through strongly in peer review situations. I'm a PhD student, I know how the publication process works.
Check out the first article on this page: http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/Abs tracts42-2.htm (peer reviewed)
Look who's talking about liberty and control. The courts effectively trampled on liberty with this latest decision. All that the government must do is maintain neutrality, not favoring one view over another. Thus, if both evolution and ID are taught, neutrality is maintained. If ID is banned simply because it is religious, neutrality has been violated. If evolution is banned only because it is religious, neutrality has likewise been violated.
I said "effectively trampled on", because ID was rejected for being unscientific in this particular case. That is the fault of the defense, and I can't actually fault the judge on that count, from what I've heard at least. However, if ID ever gets a decent legal and scientific team on its side, we should make some headway. Notice I said headway, since we're the ones who are trying to open people's minds to a theory that more reliably accounts for the evidence we see than evolution does. The Inquisitors were charged with snuffing out dissenting voices, and actually murdered many Bible believers, so your analogy is certainly backwards.
Normally I stay away from debating the evidence for literal Biblical Creationism (the only reasonable strain of ID), but this is an exceptional circumstance, since so many voices have challenged the very fact that Creationism is a falsifiable scientific theory at all.
Literal Creationism has at least four main tenets:
- the earth is young, probably around 6000 years old
- God created all "kinds" of animals within 6 evening-morning days (fish vs. birds vs. land mammals vs. humans, etc.)
- the earth was devastated by a global flood early in its history
- all humans descended from a single couple known in the English Bible as Adam and Eve
If it could be shown that any one of these propositions does not hold, then Biblical creationism would crumble. The fact that they are extraordinarily difficult to challenge certainly does not mean that creationism is not a scientific theory. Furthermore, all of the evidence we have ever uncovered and understand quite well supports these propositions. Note that these observations are the exact same observations used by evolutionists, just interpreted according to a different framework.
In fact, Biblical creationism is such a superior framework that I eagerly anticipate the day when macroevolution is finally put on trial for being unscientific in comparison and barred from classrooms on that basis and that basis alone. Both evolutionists and creationists have difficulty explaining many parts of their theories and demand patience, but the relative magnitudes of uncertainty between the two theories are hardly worth comparing.
If you want to learn more about specific pieces of the evidence, you can buy books and read papers from any number of creation institutes, it's not worth discussing them here as I've done so many times before.
Evolution is asserted as fact in basically every place where it is even remotely possible to make such an assertion. You're watching an IMAX movie when suddenly, "Millions of years ago, dinosaurs evolved into birds...", etc. There is NEVER any mention that "we currently believe that dinosaurs evolved into birds millions of years ago...". I have never in my life heard an evolutionist unequivocally admit that perhaps evolution is a false theory. As such, they claim it is fact. If you have a couterexample, please point me to its source so I can read it.
ID as a whole could be falsified if it were possible to show that no god played a role in the creation of the universe. Such an argument will never be discovered for a variety of reasons, but theoretically it could exist.
Examining a particular corner of ID such as literal Biblical Creationism is much simpler. It sets out a number of hypotheses that can be compared against the evidence we observe:
- Earth is around 6000 years old
- The entire surface of the earth was covered by floodwaters at some point
- Fish, birds, land mammals, humans, etc. were all created separately by a single Creator
- All humans are descended from a single couple, Adam and Eve.
I have absolutely zero interest in debating the evidence for these events, since it is almost axiomatic that no evolutionist can accept any arguments for them (they have incredible faith and patience). However, the point is that ID as a whole and specific parts of ID are both theories that can be scientifically examined. Yes, ID involves the supernatural, but if the supernatural exists, how can you exclude it from scientific discourse and still call yourself a scientist?
That's great they're using exhaust gasses to power this, but what about other wasted engine heat that is normally dissipated through the radiator?
It's very intriguing to see this technology. I've heard before that steam engines could easily have powered the cars we drive today, except that oil companies forced them into oblivion. I've also heard that turbines could have made it into mainstream cars as well, if Indy 500 officials would have allowed the turbine cars to keep racing. It seems pretty silly to outlaw a car from the world's greatest race because it's unfairly fast. Oh well.
The thing that bothered me about this article though was the note at the end: we won't see this for at least 10 years! That seems like way more time than is necessary to bring something like this to market.
I was sort of offended to hear Torvalds call Gnome an idiot-magnet, I doubt its developers intended that. I'm personally a developer that has gone so far as to write a kernel driver, so I'd hardly call myself a Linux idiot, even if I'm not some super-elite. The thing is, much of my work can be done on the command line anyway, so the GUI is of secondary importance to me. I personally use Gnome for a few reasons: - I think KDE is ugly (sorry, not trying to flamebait, just my opinion!) - I prefer GTK to QT for developing my own applications - I don't like all the bundled applications KDE includes, like KOffice and Konqueror. I much prefer choosing my own apps, like OpenOffice and Firefox, since I feel they're superior. Unfortunately, Gnome is becoming more like KDE with the inclusion of Evolution and Epiphany. Those are the two apps that take the most time to compile when I'm installing Gentoo! On the other hand, I do like some of the KDE apps like K3B. Fortunately, I can still use them, even within Gnome. There have been some changes in Gnome recently that do really annoy me. I can't understand why they removed the capability to edit menus directly, and the whole Nautilus change is hideous. Fortunately, tree view is one feature they reintroduced recently, if you know how to reenable it with gconf-editor. Perhaps end-users aren't providing enough feedback to the developers? They should have some sort of community forum to interact with their users. That might help them innovate a bit as well, instead of just copying features from Windows and OS X. Those are my two cents.
However, that advancement is very important to its intended community. Sun and Cray target very specific communities (which overlap only slightly I might add) with a lot of cash and specific needs. That community would certainly be happy to hear about more cores, or any other advancement, in a Cray, Power, SPARC, or IA64 processor. You might also note that Cray uses AMD processors in some of its offerings, so in a way comparing SPARC and AMD isn't too far off the mark.
I used to run Windows 2000 on my HP Vectra P166 with 32MB of RAM, 2MB S3 integrated video, and dual 1GB 5400 RPM hard drives, which I configured as a software RAID-0 array.
:-)
The reason I didn't reach the point of diminishing returns with that box is simply that I had no money. I paid for it (approx. $150 on eBay) by selling some old software, also on eBay. Hard to imagine trying to deal with that now that I'm on a 2GB Athlon64 running Gentoo...
That's the end of my little story.
Here's a comparison between comparable SATA1 and 2 drives, although it doesn't really look at link saturation like you mentioned: http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/hard_drives/hitachi/ T7K250/
I have an nForce4 with SATA2 links, but I'm running SATA1 drives. (7K250) I wonder if it still gets 300Mb/s total shared link bandwidth?
You should still be able to set up RAID in software, even with your heterogeneous drives. In fact, if all you were planning to use is a RAID controller built into your motherboard, you'll be no worse off. Motherboard RAID controllers provide NO hardware acceleration. All they do is add a few tiny bits of useful info to the hard drive, to tell the software RAID drivers how to arrange the array. Quite a scam, isn't it? I sure was disappointed when I found that out originally. :-) Fortunately, under Gentoo and dmraid with my Athlon64 3000+, I still get doubled transfer rates, without excessive CPU utilization. So, just forget about the RAID controller and set everything up in software.
Actually, they do. Pop is one of the greatest health hazards in common consumption, and no doubt leads fairly directly to many deaths.
Here's a short list of possible health effects:
- osteoporosis
- improper bone formation in kids
- (interesting fact: the only bone I've ever broken is a rib)
- dental cavities, etc.
- kidney stone recurrence
- allergic penicillin reactions
- white blood cell suppression for 7 hours from one soft drink (effect of sugar)
- internal methanol production (from aspartame in diet soda)
- I had a CS professor who always drank diet soda, and also experienced frequent headaches. They have actually discovered cavities in the brains of diet soda drinkers.
- obesity
- bladder cancer
- 50% decrease in fertility
- rashses and asthma from sodium benzoate
Also, do not take cola and antacids together. They react and cause a variety of uncomfortable conditions.
All this makes me wonder why we ever let food companies hire chemists.
I got almost all of this stuff from this article: http://www.newstarget.com/004416.html
As pointed out by someone else in this thread, Cray Canada makes the XD1 Opteron cluster (http://www.cray.com/products/xd1/index.html) with FPGAs built in. Might cost a little more than a PCIe card though. :-) They can even be programmed in C now, rather than a full-blown hardware design language like Verilog, since Cray bundles a special C-to-FPGA compiler.
I also went to demo of the SRC6 (SRC = Seymour Roger Cray, Cray's last spinoff in Colorado that has never quite taken off) here at the U of I in Urbana-Champaign. It appears to have similar capabilities and is quite neat, but is a smaller system. (http://www.srccomp.com/HardwareElements.htm) Somebody who knows more about these machines could probably point out more differences...
the creationist movement has tried to bypass the scientific process by getting their material brought in through the side door of legislation. this puts the rational people in a tough situation where they have to fight back using equally nasty methods. i think that's a shame, but i understand they have to do what they have to do.
]]]] I lived near Grantsburg, WI when they were attempting to instate creationism alongside evolution. The local school board was the one that decided to teach it, and they received letters of dissent from 350 educators and 200 pastors with crippled theology. Who's being nasty?
for the same reasons they don't want their kids taught that earth is flat, or that the holocaust never happened. because school is supposed to be about education, not making your kids "stupider".
]]]] Do you think your analogies are buying you anything? The earth IS round, we have pictures and observe ionospheric skip with RF transmissions. The Holocaust is a FACT. Evolution is a THEORY. (I'm not offended, just letting you know how your analogies appear to their recipient) I'm not saying we should force evolutionist's kids to learn anything. I was talking about the parents who want their kids to learn other theories and are bludgeoned to death by the scientific and misguided religious communities. Make it an elective. Require parental approval. That's still not going to appease AAAS and the others.
the place for contending science, is within the field of science. creationists have every opportunity to find some other explanation besides darwinism for biology. but they can't do that. they are being shut out, because they are trying to enter through the back door instead of paying with evidence.
]]]] We work with the same evidence as you; it comes out of the ground, from the earth's magnetic field, etc. Evolution does not come packaged with other evidence, it's an interpretation of evidence.
I know you think it's down for the count, but a lot of people don't, so by definition it isn't.
allow me to clue you in on how science works. it isn't a matter of what people think. it's a matter of what they can support with facts. so far, there are no alternative theories to neo-darwinian synthesis. i know that's really tough for you to deal with, but..deal with it. part of being an adult means dealing with things that can be frustrating to accept. i know it's hard when you're a kid and you find out there's no santa. same thing applies here. you just have to be strong brother.
]]]] I was talking about ideas, not facts. We don't have universally acceptable facts in the area of origins. I've been discussing an alternative theory to darwinism this whole time. It's becoming really difficult to carry on an intelligent discussion when you relate my beliefs to a belief in Santa. Again, I'm not sure what you're trying to buy yourself here. If you're getting fed up with talking, just tell me.
a lot of people genuinely don't understand the case for evolution. i admit, a lot of it can be very difficult to understand.
]]]] Aye to that!
if you still don't believe it, then you misunderstood something. explain why you don't believe in it, even though it's utterly obvious, and i'll be happy to clear up your confusion.
]]]] Your refutations to my previous objections are not acceptable, for the aforementioned reasons: high improbability, excessive complexity, and lack of convincing, unequivocal evidence.
there are no arguments for creationism. not one. no creators have been observed.
]]]] Creationism is an interpretive framework. The evidence fits it. Now you have an argument. Besides, the Creator has appeared in some limited form or another many times in Biblical history, and I have the records.
1) every life form is an intermediate. 2) many obvious lines of evolution, where the gradual changes can be clearly seen, are known. see http://www
I don't know if you caught the latest Slashdot article, but the evolutionist organizations are the ones legislating ID curriculum out of the classroom, using sneaky copyright issues. Continuing in the vein of that ACLU sham, the Scopes trial of course: http://www.themonkeytrial.com/ They're afraid and it shows. The question is: why? Why are they so afraid to let parents decide their kids should see a few different theories? Red flags pop up when the arena of ideas shuts a contender out. I know you think it's down for the count, but a lot of people don't, so by definition it isn't.
I don't want to start throwing more accusations around, but seriously ask yourself what motivation I have to believe something I think is a lie. I've heard plenty of arguments for evolution, it's not like I've been denied the opportunity to try that interpretive framework out. I've also seen many different types of creationism. Creationists have made big mistakes in the past when they've tried to modify what the Bible clearly says, just to agree with the latest whims of science. I suspect that's the breed of crippled Christianity you got when you were young. I've thrown all those away with full awareness of my actions.
Why would I believe evolutionists when they tell me to just give them some more time to find the strong intermediate life forms their theory so badly needs? When they keep extending the age of the universe, even though it's obvious that it can't be nearly that old? When they say everything around me with its flawed but beautiful order and complexity is one big accident? Evolution doesn't give anything except empty, unsubstantiated guesses to grasp at. Evolution certainly can't tell me where matter came from. It ultimately goes back to the same assumptions as creationism: "something" always existed. "something" holds matter together:
(Colossians 1:17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him.)
With literal creationism, I have an account that matches up with what I see. I see a worldwide flood in the rocks beneath my feet. Excavated dinosaur bones with soft tissue. A rapidly degrading earth and universe. Ancient, highly intelligent civilizations that built structures we can hardly build today with our current technology. Harmful mutations leading to horrible diseases and deformed creatures, not higher organisms.
Now, you're not going to follow the rest of this, but I feel I need to throw it out there to finish things off. The Bible, despite being imperfectly translated as you've pointed out, is powerful. Its prophecies have been fulfilled, all throughout history. More are left. Think about Revelation:
13:15 The second beast was empowered to give life to the image of the first beast so that it could speak, and could cause all those who did not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 13:16 He also caused everyone (small and great, rich and poor, free and slave) to obtain a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. 13:17 Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things unless he bore the mark of the beast--that is, his name or his number.
Remember that passage, it's not hard to see that its realization is not far off...
Matthew 24:7 "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes."
The number of strong earthquakes has been increasing tremendously.
21:25 "And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth nations will be in distress, anxious over the *roaring of the sea and the surging waves.* 21:26 People will be fainting from fear and from the expectation of what is coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 21:27 Then they will see the Son of Man arriving in a cloud with power and great glory. 21:28 But when these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
The picture for tho
Whenever IP is brought up on Slashdot, all I see are scathing diatribes against those attempting to use IP laws to their own benefit. Now, when one of the sneakiest uses of IP laws I've seen comes up, I couldn't find a single post decrying it. I guess slashdotters and IP advocates have at least one common enemy. :-)
OK, this is my last post. :-)
I believe what makes sense with respect to reality. Yes, you have refutations for everything I say, and I have refutations for everything you say. Your refutations are much more complex and rest upon weird, highly improbable assumptions. I wish somebody would invest some money into biology research that starts with Biblical assumptions, the tables would turn quickly when clear, unified results begin to appear.
Antievolutionists argue that there has...
]]]] They're shifting the burden of proof. Proof by absence of counterexample is not proof.
[macroevolution's] framework has so many holes
name one:
[[[[
Here's a straightforward statement: Any random change in a complex, specific, functioning system wrecks that system. And living things are the most complex functioning systems in the universe. Science has now quantitated that a genetic mutation of as little as 1 billionth (0.0000001%) of an animal's genome is relentlessly fatal. The genetic difference between human and his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6% Calculated out that is a gap of at least 48 million nucleotide differences that must be bridged by random changes. And a random change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal. (Geneticist Barney Maddox, 1992 )
Another problem is that the universe appears to be too young to accommodate the millions and billions of years that evolutionists require for their processes to operate:
- if the universe were more than a few hundred million years old, the milky way's spiral pattern would have degraded to an unordered disc. (look up the "winding up dilemma")
- according to evolutionists, comets are supposed to have been around since the beginning of the universe, but they don't last more than 100,000 years. On average, they last 10,000 years.
- each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean. About 1 billion tons are recycled into the core of the earth each year. Thus, the current levels of sediment in the oceans could have accumulated in less than 12 million years, assuming unifom conditions throughout history. If you assume a flood, it could have accumulated very quickly, definitely within 5000 years.
- the total energy in the earth's magnetic field has decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. Without an extremely complex and improbable mechanism, it couldn't be more than 10,000 years old.
- Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.17 'Squashed' Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale. 'Orphan' Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactivity decay rates.
- Evolutionary anthropologists say that the stone age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between 1 and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artefacts. By this scenario, they would have buried at least 4 billion bodies. If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years, so many of the supposed 4 billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artefacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the stone age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas.
- According to evolutionists, stone age man existed for 100,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4000 to 5000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.
]]]]
and is so unsupported by our observations.
mutations and selection events are observed, so you're wrong there.
]]]] - I absolutely believe in mutation and natural selection. Man, you attribute more stupidity to me
I wasn't arguing with the fact that mutations occur, I fully believe in evolution, as does any other scientist. I just don't believe in the enormous extrapolation from the irrefutable principle of simple mutation to macroevolution, since its framework has so many holes and is so unsupported by our observations. Darwin's treatise hardly has more credibility than a comic book, if you look at it. He didn't even intend it to. As far as the Bible goes, how do you support the validity of anything? Interpret your observations by it, see how they line up. Just so happens that our observations of this world line up very well with the Bible's account of history. Incidentally, archeology has never refuted a single fact in the Bible either. I feel a lot more confident trusting that sort of book than the whims of evolutionary "science", which must be adjusted every few weeks.
Well, I guess it's already been decided that creationists can't be scientists. I wonder where science would be without these creationists: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/def ault.asp