If two students were accused of plagarism, and one said "Hey, his essay has 23 paragraphs, and mine has 24, therefore they can't be the same" you'd automatically believe them?
Its not the count, its the content. Chromosomes are just the packaging for genes, and gene duplication or deletion can happen without reproductive failure. Science sees that happening today. Chromosomes' breaking or merging can happen, and as long as the genes are still there it doesn't automatically mean reproductive failure.
Anyways, on your chromosome question: humans have one less chromosome, but all the same genes, because 2 'chimp' genes simply fused together. Human chromosome 2 is chimp chromosomes 2P and 2Q fused together- it even still has all the broken bits of telomeres at the fusion point. Its just like someone combined 2 chapters together in a Word document by only removing the 'chapter break' mark, but forgot to remove all the end and start chapter formatting.
If you compare us with chimps, you see something like:
Take a group of "last common ancestors" that's moved away from others (is reproductively isolated). if one of them gets the 2 genes fused, they would have no problem reproducing within the group- the genes still line up. If the group never rejoins other lca hominids, then the fused gene trait gets fixed in the now-speciating group. Note that they're speciating not because they can't interbreed but because they don't interbreed. Later on some ancestral chimp (post lca split) has a change on 'gene6,' as do the humans (but a different mutation) so that we get the 98% similarity instead of identical genes.
And to cover a few well-refuted but always repeated creationist / ID claims made in slashdot threads, as I summarized elsewhere:
A transitional species- a missing link- will always itself be a species Because "species" are actual lifeforms, everything else is just a clade- a grouping. So if you have a an animal species that becomes another species, the transitional form can't be anything but a species. This is because evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so at no point, with either modern scientists or Darwin himself, was anyone ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species. Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
There are excellent examples of transitional species Check out Ape to Modern Man. Each one of the 20 main hominids is slightly different from its neighbor, but very different from a few neighbors down. No, the earliest ones could not be confused for modern humans, no matter how much you shaved and suited them up. (Note how you still have some morphological leftover traits-- take a look at your teeth, and notice the giant roots for your tin
I question this assumption by Yahoo, AOL, etc. that search terms, by themselves, have no privacy considerations because they've been separated from personal info. What if the search itself contains personal information? Are the search companies deleting the timestamps and randomizing the order of the search terms themselves? Because otherwise I could see personal info showing up:
Alice.Geekotourist and cryptography (searching for a relative's paper)
Geekotourist 212 (then their phone number and address)
Model.rocket.supplies near 742.Evergreen.Terrace, Springfield (buying hobby supplies)
postal.regulations rockets (learning why I can't buy model rocket engines )
So now a block of searches associates the name Geekotourist with rockets and with one or two addresses. Does this affect my privacy if these searches are clumped together?
Did Yahoo/AOL include any white pages or yellow pages searches while doing the government's homework? Does the government expect Google to keep all Google Local searches out of the "1 week of searches"? The white page and local style searches leak personal info like mad.
Or what if a search was designed to check on one's personal privacy, for example:
Geekotourist and Bob.Aliceson (checking to see if anyone has linked "Geekotourist" with the nickname "Bob.Aliceson)
Geekotourist and 212.313.4114 (seeing if my old phone number is linked to me)
Geekotourist and bobalice@yahoo.com (seeing if I'm connected with an old email address or to a blog, say)
And while Y/AHOOL didn't provide "the results of the searches" to the gov't, I assume the gov't will be re-running them. The searches 'Cameras near 742 Evergreen Terrace' combined with 'photographing children' may have just been me helping with photos at a birthday party or finding a portrait studio. But its going to be analyzed by people who think 15-degrees-of-separation is a reasonable search.
From the prescient (and unfortunately being used as an anti-guidebook) best essay this century on Why Privacy is a Fundamental Human Right [just substitute 'Porn' for 'September 11' as the excuse the gov't gives, it comes out the same]:
"But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.
"If someone intrudes on our privacy - by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation - we feel uncomfortable, even violated.
"Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do.
"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm.
"The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.
"...But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and
Studies have already found that certain types of emotional memories- flashbulb memories- are unreliable:
Perhaps you are thinking that "there are some memories that I have that I will never forget. I remember them as if they just happened. Sure, some of my memories may be become altered or even distorted, but surely these special memories are not subject to such changes." What you are thinking of are called flashblub memories, which are memories formed when some personally significant event occurs, and the whole scene is encoded into memory. Examples of flashbulb memories may include the first time someone asked you, or you asked someone, out on a date, the first time you heard that a special person died, when you first heard you won a prize or contest...
Neisser and Harsch (1992) had subjects describe what was going on when they first heard about the Challenger shuttle explosion. Two and half years later, Neisser and Harsch found their subjects, and again asked them to describe what they had been doing when they first heard about the Challenger explosion. They compared the descriptions and scored them for similarity. The mean score was 2.95 out of 7. Three subjects of 44 got a perfect 7, and over half were less than 2.[emphasis added]
Or, anecdotally, ask women who've been through childbirth how long they waited until their next child. I've heard "Soon after I forgot how $#@# painful the last one was" more than a few times. Thats what I remember.
This is common creationist claim number CC310. The short response is:
Many strata are not dated from fossils. Relative dates of strata (whether layers are older or younger than others) are determined mainly by which strata are above others. Some strata are dated absolutely via radiometric dating. These methods are sufficient to determine a great deal of stratigraphy.
Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata. Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means.
"The geologic column was outlined by creationist geologists. For example, Adam Sedgwick, who described and named the Cambrian era, referred to the theory of evolution as "no better than a phrensied dream" (Ritland 1982). The geologic column is based on the observation of faunal succession, the fact that organisms vary across strata, and that they do so in a consistent order from place to place. William "Strata" Smith (1769-1839) recognized faunal succession years before Darwin published his ideas on biological evolution.
The geologic column is validated in great detail by radiometric dating, which is based on principles of physics, not evolution. Furthermore, different dating techniques are consistent, and they are consistent with the order established by the early pioneers of stratigraphy.
If you want to see more references to dating, check out the geology section of the common questions. For example, "Isochron methods do not assume that the initial parent or daughter concentrations are known..." from CD002, which then links to a full essay on isochron dating. It has references, including to a text that is "An excellent semi-technical introduction to isotope dating methods... It is accessible to those who haven't studied the field, and has even received reasonably positive review in creationist literature..." which might be exactly what you're looking for to catch up in this area.
First, a background question: you know that a transitional species- a missing link- will itself be a species? Because "species" are actual lifeforms, everything else is just a clade- a grouping. So if you have a an animal species that becomes another species, the transitional form can't be anything but a species.
Also, you know that evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so at no point, with either modern scientists or Darwin himself, was anyone ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species? Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
That said, How about the transition from Ape to Modern Humans? Transitional enough for you? Each one of the 20 main hominids is slightly different from its neighbor, but very different from a few neighbors down. No, the earliest ones could not be confused for modern humans, no matter how much you shaved and suited them up. (And for kicks, you still have some morphological leftover traits-- take a look at your teeth, and notice the giant roots for your tiny little canines. Note how earlier humans used to have much larger canines.)
Other transitions include dinosaurs to birds, or reptiles to mammals, or land mammal to whale. Or if you're talking about genetic missing links, that's really, really easy to find. For example, chimps and humans don't have the same number of chromosomes- we have one less- but funny how human chromosome 2 is almost identical to chimp chromosomes 2p and 2q. We even have broken bits of telemorase right in the middle of 2, exactly what you'd expect if 2p and 2q had fused together. All primates have to eat vitamin C, we can't produce it ourselves, unlike all other mammals except guinea pigs. One prediction scientists made (see '29 evidences' below) was that we'd eventually find that primates have a broken vitamin C gene. Funny how they recently found that exact gene, the identical broken bit shared by all primates (The gene also has further 'chips and scratches,' where the additional broken bits correlate highly with the type of primate. Guinea pigs also have a broken gene, but in a completely different place. The designer sure spent a lot of time on making broken genes correlate with morphological similarities. You'd think the designer could be a lot more creative in being a plagarist, no?)
Also, scientific theories are never "confirmed," just corroborated. In the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ you can find well-referenced (peer reviewed research) evidences, each with predictions and falsifiability criteria. We're still waiting for the '1 evidence for ID' that includes the same predictions and falsifiability.
Another example is the Enola yellow bean, where an American company got a patent on a bean they'd bought from Mexican bean farmers. They then sued those farmers exporting yellow beans into the US.
Specific problems solved by genetic engineering can also be solved in other ways. Word isn't the only way to write a document. Golden rice isn't the only way to get more vitamin A to people.
Opportunity Costs- what do you lose if you spend a big chunk of money on a single proprietary solution? You lose flexibility. Continuing with Golden Rice: sure, its gets people more vitamin A. But if instead you spend the same money to give people wider access to vitamin-rich veggies you *also* give them more of the other vitamins and phytochemicals that we've selected for in those veggies for 3000+ years.
The food itself is secondary to locking you into a company's support products and support cycle. The problem that Montanto is trying to solve isn't "how can farmers improve crop yields and reduce weeds?" Monsanto's problem is "How can we lock farmers into using our weedkillers?"
The proprietary product is often based on (taken from / stolen from) older open source projects.
they're closed source, top-down implementations that lead to monocultures. For example: Andean potato farmers- they developed hundreds of different potato varieties over the years: buttery tasting ones, meaty tasting ones, ones that grow in drought / shade / various altitudes... and these potatoes could be susceptible to a particular pest (quite likely one or more of their varieties already had resistance: smart breeding is how you'd get that trait out from the one potato into the rest). A major North American company came in saying "Hey, our potato + pesticide combination is resistant to the pest. Buy both from us, then you'll have no problems. By the way our potato is patented- don't think about crossbreeding it." At the same time they launched a major advertising (FUD) campaign in major potato buying markets saying "Hey, our potato is the best most modern potato. Don't buy anything else." So farmers couldn't just patch their own potatoes- they had to buy into the product / product cycle upgrade of the NA company. Sounds familiar?
they have all or nothing security models (they focus on zero tolerance for weeds / pests: in the long run this will be more expensive than "accept a marginal and mildly fluctuating loss" as they learned with citrus pests in California and Florida)
They break standards. For example, BT is a bacteria/toxin used by organic farmers for decades to kill certain insect pests. At the previous rate of use- as a spray- there was a very, very low probability of insects developing resistance. Decades of use hadn't produced it. Now that BT has been spliced into crop plants, the widespread planting of monocultures of BT crops means BT resistance is increasingly likely. As this happens the non-organic farmers can move onto other pesticides. But the organic farmers whose old standard- BT sprays- will also become useless have no backup. There was no system set up to compensate these farmers from their soon to be broken standard. Nor was their any "royalty" paid to these farmers who'd discovered BT in the first place.
If by "in common" you mean the characteristics that rats and humans share as mammals vs. all the other organisms in the world, well, yes we have them. Much harder to do experiments on tidal-zone rock crabs, or thermal vent tubeworms, no?
But if by "in common" you mean that pigs or rats are unexpectedly close to us in some genetic traits: no. Nope. Not at all. They are useful in the lab because of physiological traits not held in common. For example, humans live decades long and only have one, rarely two offspring per pregnancy, with years between pregnancies. Ditto the other great apes which share the high-90's percent of our DNA, (including sharing the same broken gene for making vitamin C. Rats- all other non-primate mammals- can make C (except guinea pigs, but their C gene is broken in an entirely different place)). Ditto much the same for monkeys, and even ditto the bats (the closest non-primate mammal group). Rats only share 90% of our DNA, but they reproduce early and often. The only reason we've got rats with the same diseases as human diseases is that we've made them that way.
Check out the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution, especially the nested hierarchy section. If there were traits that rats and humans shared more closely than chimps and humans (like the false chickens and humans, or bananas and humans claims that creationist keep on using), then that would falsify evolution. Hasn't happened yet.
If only he'd remembered that a few words have been added to the dictionaries since his 1973 version was published. Because it isn't as if the search place to look up words doesn't return, say, online dictionaries.
Even the 1973 treeware dictionary should have given him pause. Perhaps a 'root kit' simply helps the gardener to vegetatively propagate plants- ok, that sounds benign. But since when does Sony bundle plant hormones with their CD's? However, a 'root kit' could perhaps also imply Toys of a Certain Nature in Australia. Sexual content could get the CD pulled in WalMart. Is annoying WalMart benign?
For future reference, Mr. Hesse, if you see these other seemingly benign words in an email, please do look them up before assuming all is well: "neoplasia," "engine preignition," "crack propagation," "blue screen," "elegant worm," "percussive maintenance," "cereal rust"...
I do have a degree in biology, and in getting that degree they told us not to read Darwin unless we were also into the history of science. He was a good writer, not a great one, and his books are long. Sure, read summaries of how he did it, and definitely read any sections of his books from which creationists have extracted a sentence or two (because creationists are notorious for quote mining: taking quotes out of context to say exactly opposite of what the writer was saying. They do this with Darwin a lot). To learn about evolution and creationism, start with the modern books and work backwards.
And this is the point that many creationists don't get or don't like: science starts with the latest research and works backwards. No book or article gets to be the authoritative foundation of a field for all times, even if that book started a science or an article's researcher got the Nobel prize.
A well-corroborated world can be a bothersome world- as you say, it doesn't let you just believe what feels good. In the corroborated world you have to give kids the scientific method, you can't just give them a list of facts to memorize. Theories can be falisified: while scientists can be annoyed if their particular theory is bettered, the fact that they can themselves do better on someone else's theory makes it worthwhile (aka if they couldn't discover new things they wouldn't have jobs, would they.)
"Species" are actual lifeforms, everything else is just a clade- a grouping. So if you have a an animal species that becomes another species, what else could the transitional form be but a species?
Evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so its not like modern scientists or Darwin were ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species. Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
BurningMan is held on Bureau of Land Management land. Its the BLM that doesn't allow onsite vending: the coffee and ice sales required special permission from the feds.
As for charging for tickets, BurningMan is legallly required to count the number of participants, and at its size it does have some unavoidable infrastructure costs. For example, local / state and federal law enforcement agencies have found the festival to be a cash cow, requiring ever larger per-participant payments each year.
Tickets also cover the bothersome necessity of reducing liability (the alternative is not having the event) and helping to keep out the 'girls gone wild' producers (the alternative is a lot less naked chicks, which would be a big disappointment to many Burners. A "Critical Tshirts" parade doesn't seems as interesting.) Tickets and vending bans both help stop the slackers who might otherwise just show up thinking "I can just buy what I need on the Playa..." That attitude towards preparation doesn't scale.
The EFF doesn't get to choose sympathetic posterboy cases, much as it would help them out. The EFF people are probably entirely squicked out and disgusted by the guy.
I'm sure they'd have rather defended the 4th Amendment and Computers on any other case. Say where the technician found reverse-engineered AIBO and XBOX code, or P2P software, or the Anarchist's cookbook, or growing instructions for Peyote, anything other than child porn. But this is the guy they got.
The EFF's major "bug that's really a feature" is that they attempt to work on major issues long before most people would recognize that the issue exists. In 1989, how many people knew what BBS's were, let along why it isn't constitutional to seize an entire server to check out one person's email? The EFF is fighting the equivalent of Physical and Link layer issues, while most people can only really get worked up about Application layer issues.
When you're working that early, you take the cases as they come. With the recording industry, much as the EFF would love to get a "RIAA threatens to eat babies at the widows and orphans facility" case, the XXAA never gave them that- its never going to give them one: it'll always be the rowdy college students first. They get 2600, not the NYTimes. They get Hamadi, not the girl scouts. They get Bernstein for the encryption case, not 'Nobel Prize winning Dr. Wonderful with her malaria-solving encryption device.'
The rich and sympathetic people getting arrested or sued aren't the people the EFF exists to help. They started off helping a gaming BBS, not Atari (and in the big picture let the gov't understand that seizing an email BBS is just as bad as seizing an entire post office). They helped Bernstein (led to a better environment for hundreds of US encryption companies: if you work for one, make sure your company has donated). Not that they aren't helping professors, but it is more likely to be students who get thrown into jail.
When you choose your principles first, you don't get to choose the cases.
The information can only be shared with "...other agencies at the federal, state, local, foreign, or tribal level, who are lawfully engaged in collecting law enforcement information (whether civil or criminal) and national security intelligence information and/or who are investigating, prosecuting, enforcing, or implementing civil and/or criminal laws, related rules, regulations, or orders." "The Privacy Act SORNs for the systems on which US-VISIT draws provide notice as to the conditions of disclosure and routine uses for the information collected by US-VISIT. Any disclosure by DHS must be compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected."
The tag only contains an unencrypted number, and only the very limited number of groups above would have access to the information.
The tag can't be used to ID someone as a visitor because the DHS has contemplated this problem. Thus problem solved... "it is contemplated that the unencrypted RFID tag number will not be structured in such a way that it can be used to identify the individual as a non-immigrant."(pg 15)How exactly? Will everyone soon be carrying an RFID, so the visitor won't stand out?
And of course it can't be used for surveillance, as "There is also a low risk that the RFID tag could be used to conduct surreptitious locational surveillance of an individual; i.e., to use the presence of the tag to follow an individual as he or she moves about in the U.S. However, ensuring that RFID tag numbers do not exhibit properties that can be readily attributed to US-VISIT and using a limited radio frequency range effectively mitigates this risk. The design process is also taking into account methods of reducing eavesdropping and skimming possibilities." (pg 15). Reducing the "possibilities" by sticking their fingers into their ears and singing "La la la" each time a new tech groups shows them ever longer read ranges.
And most importantly it doesn't affect US Citizens, because the document doesn't mention them. Never mind that every traveler in the car must be identified in order to separate the residents and citizens from visitors (by definition). They'll now know who you're associating with as you travel.
When you examine the 20 main hominids you find that the earliest ones have thick jaws, big canines, and brains barely larger than those of chimps. They look like other apes. By 500,000 years ago they mostly look like us. But none is transitional?
As I found when reading the DHS's privacy assessment of the program, the RFID in the I-94 document will just have an unencrypted number. While airports scan fingerprints / take a biometric reading, regular border stations don't. So it seems like if the bad guys can find a nice innocent visitor who looks like one of them, a cloned RFID could do some damage.
and you can read all the details about how this won't affect privacy at all through my post here.
I'm guessing that this is their response to all the govenments missing the deadline for putting RFIDs into passports. Now the US will just put the RFID into the paperwork you have to keep with your passport upon entry into the US.
It applies to every visiting person in the car- it is the new I-94 documentation for aliens.
It is extremely private, in that "The information may also be shared with other agencies at the federal, state, local, foreign, or tribal level, who are lawfully engaged in collecting law enforcement information (whether civil or criminal) and national security intelligence information and/or who are investigating, prosecuting, enforcing, or implementing civil and/or criminal laws, related rules, regulations, or orders."
"The Privacy Act SORNs for the systems on which US-VISIT draws provide notice as to the conditions of disclosure and routine uses for the information collected by US-VISIT. Any disclosure by DHS must be compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected." Yup, limited purposes.
But really, the tag is safe, as "The RFID tag number will not contain or be derived from any personal information." (pg 14) Its just an unencrypted number. And only those very few groups listed above have the right to connect the number back to your personal info.
...therefore removing the possibility that a person can be found out as a visitor just because they carry an RFID: "it is contemplated that the unencrypted RFID tag number will not be structured in such a way that it can be used to identify the individual as a non-immigrant."(pg 15) Uh-huh. Because we all carry RFIDs, so one person carrying one can't stand out. I am comtemplating that my social security number will never be used as an identifier: it says so right on the card.
And the RFID can't be used for surveillance, as "There is also a low risk that the RFID tag could be used to conduct surreptitious locational surveillance of an individual; i.e., to use the presence of the tag to follow an individual as he or she moves about in the U.S. However, ensuring that RFID tag numbers do not exhibit properties that can be readily attributed to US-VISIT and using a limited radio frequency range effectively mitigates this risk. The design process is also taking into account methods of reducing eavesdropping and skimming possibilities." (pg 15) Yup, if you take it into account you're solving it.
There are no risks to U.S. citizens, because this document doesn't mention them at all. Sure they'll have checked and scanned everyone's documents in the car- citizens or not- so now know exactly which so called "U.S. citizens" have the audacity to travel with others, but nothing to worry about.
Lovely privacy document. All you have to do is "contemplate" a technology issue and its solved. Great. I'm going to "contemplate" that my computer is invulnerable to hard drive failures, theft, malware and crackers... whooohoo: my system is now secure!
Does the RFID apply only to foreigners renting the car? Driving it? Being a passenger? This certainly implies they'll be logging the entry and exit of any US citizen traveling with a foreigner- aka tracking who you assemble and meet with. That makes me feel secure in my person and effects, yup.
What about a family with a mix of dual and single citizenships? We're a nation of immigrants: its fairly easy to have a family with all three of dual-citizenships, green cards, and visas. If you and your family are traveling together, will you get tagged as suspicious because you don't have the same number of YourRFIDsPlease leaving as you did when entering? (i.e. your cousin stays in Seattle to go to the SciFi Museum while your aunt goes up to Vancouver?). Wait, that's jut a rhetorical questions: of course these families are suspicious.
Some creationist claims like "there was a global flood" are falsifiable, and they've been falsified. "Creationist theory" could be falsifiable if creationists would actually provide a theory (other than "evolution can't be true").
In the wild, non-cryptic marking will get selected against very quickly, as camoflauge is extremely important. Boring, landscape imitating markings keep you from being eaten and/or gets you more food to eat. (Sexual selection plays a role in the other direction, but even this will apply to only one sex (usually male). This mostly occurs in the extra-color-visioned birds. Mammals' sexual selection tends more towards size or strength.)
Once humans stop natural selection and start applying our own standards of selection, camoflauge becomes a neutral trait: we, not camoflauge, protect the flock or the field.
Humans as a species have nothing that even approaches sub-species. One troop of chimps, or one litter of puppies, likely has far more genetic diversity than the entire human race. Our last major speciation event was 500,000 years ago, when H. sapiens split into H. sap Neanderthalis and H. sap sap: that's what a real subspecies of H. sapiens looks like. But even with them we could probably interbreed, even though we/they didn't.
Our racial traits likely evolved because of a near-extinction (to humans) event 70,000 years ago: the Tobu supervolcano eruption. During that time, humanity went down to about 1,000 individuals and random evolutionary neutral traits (like eye-folds or hair shape) became more common in the then widely separated groups. But for all of our history before and after that event, humans have been moving around constantly, never allowing an isolated population to exist for that long.
Positive "racial" mutations like skin color changes (actually we all have the same skin color, its just that we have diffent saturation) or malarial resistance (sickle-cell isn't just a "black" disease) happened to any group of people who moved to significantly different areas. Race doesn't correlate with race, in other words.
Here is the detailed Index of Creationist Claims which provides short answers to a very large number of oft-claimed claims. Each has the terminology and links to allow a much fuller exploration of the answer.
Very well-written and filled with references29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ. For each of the 29+ evidences, they provide predictions and ways to falsify the claim.
Arguments that even creationist themselves have said should be retired as arguments. Interesting how many of these arguments still get used.
For your specific points, these are very common questions / issues from creationists and others (except the bone question), so the Index is useful:
With Lobsters you've been handed a fine rich beer of a story by Stross. Smooth, tasty, has a bit more of a kick than most. You nod with empathy for the lobsters and kittens, thinking Manx has a good point.
But its only chapter 1 of Accelerando the book. And in each subsequent chapter he's distilling things down, speeding things up. By the 2nd half of the book he's handing you pan galactic gargle blasters as his chapters. Never mind a brick wrapped in lemon: his book is a porcupine wrapped in velvet. Once you're done quite a lot is going to stick with you.
You get jealous of the lobsters and start worrying heavily for yourself. You remember that feeling of being a top-of-the-techworld Silicon Valley type going to Japan for the first time. Jetlagged in Akihabara, it hits you that you're a bit behind the curve: your portables are Model-T's and Japanese teenagers are choosing their Ferraris. And Charlie is telling you that the feeling is only going to get worse. And permanent. And your kids and grandkids'll have to deal with it too. Better hope your grandniece's "My First Pharma Lab" can make a nice TetraValium, you'll need it.
The technologists can tell you why the Singularity is Near- why today's technologies are leading towards it. But it takes a book like Stross's to remind you that we're not just contemplating a technologic switch equivalent to tool-making and upright walking, or even lungfish thinking about a permanent stay: we're the anaerobes wondering what happens if the atmosphere switches to oxygen, but we keep on producing oxygen by-products anyways.
...a few hours of slackjawed cartoon watching and the worry mostly fades away, but you never get all of the quills out. Or at any rate, its a very good read-- better be on the Nebula and Hugo shortlists. It isn't a perfect book, writing-wise, but he's got the Sensawunda: the rest comes with practice. That a great author is going to get better is cause for happiness.
Based on anecdotal evidence the Slashdot crowd trends towards the young and male. So tomorrow at some point (8:22 est) the congressional staffers are going to get bored of the "yet another angry techie" call.
That's where your mom comes in: she's a different generation and (on average) a different gender. This surprises the staffer, and they'll add a +2 to whatever your mom says.
She can use one of the standard talking points, or mention how she wants her techie child to continue being employed. And, if she has grandkids, then variations of "Nothing, but nothing gets in the way of my showing off hi-def videos of my grandkids to my friends" could be useful. Plus, sad to say, the staffers are more likely to believe her when she says that she votes (or contributes to campaigns) because (on average) its true.
This is yet another example of some U.S. government officials showing that they don't really think that naturalized citizens are citizens. This is worrysome.
Part of the ideals of America- part of the ideals of joining a free country- is that people can freely choose to join the country and then are just as American as those to those born here. (Other than that can't be president thing.)
So far they've applied this to people who've become citizens of other free countries. But if they don't accept that a naturalized Canadian is really Canadian, why would they, deep down inside, think that naturalized Americans are really Americans?
Whatever characteristics they think keep immigrants from becoming true Canadians must also exist in the immigrants who become American. Its bad enough we've got government officials who can't read the constitution well enough to see that our rights go to "persons," not just "citizens." Now we also have officials who openly yet indirectly show that they think only some citizens are actual citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not the count, its the content. Chromosomes are just the packaging for genes, and gene duplication or deletion can happen without reproductive failure. Science sees that happening today. Chromosomes' breaking or merging can happen, and as long as the genes are still there it doesn't automatically mean reproductive failure.
Anyways, on your chromosome question: humans have one less chromosome, but all the same genes, because 2 'chimp' genes simply fused together. Human chromosome 2 is chimp chromosomes 2P and 2Q fused together- it even still has all the broken bits of telomeres at the fusion point. Its just like someone combined 2 chapters together in a Word document by only removing the 'chapter break' mark, but forgot to remove all the end and start chapter formatting.
If you compare us with chimps, you see something like:
Take a group of "last common ancestors" that's moved away from others (is reproductively isolated). if one of them gets the 2 genes fused, they would have no problem reproducing within the group- the genes still line up. If the group never rejoins other lca hominids, then the fused gene trait gets fixed in the now-speciating group. Note that they're speciating not because they can't interbreed but because they don't interbreed. Later on some ancestral chimp (post lca split) has a change on 'gene6,' as do the humans (but a different mutation) so that we get the 98% similarity instead of identical genes.
You can compare them yourself: check out what it looks like if you line up human and chimp genes next to each other. Not at all different by the plagarism standard. In fact, you can do a letter by letter comparison nowadays: here is the human genome, and here is the chimp genome.
And to cover a few well-refuted but always repeated creationist / ID claims made in slashdot threads, as I summarized elsewhere:
So now a block of searches associates the name Geekotourist with rockets and with one or two addresses. Does this affect my privacy if these searches are clumped together?
Did Yahoo/AOL include any white pages or yellow pages searches while doing the government's homework? Does the government expect Google to keep all Google Local searches out of the "1 week of searches"? The white page and local style searches leak personal info like mad.
Or what if a search was designed to check on one's personal privacy, for example:
And while Y/AHOOL didn't provide "the results of the searches" to the gov't, I assume the gov't will be re-running them. The searches 'Cameras near 742 Evergreen Terrace' combined with 'photographing children' may have just been me helping with photos at a birthday party or finding a portrait studio. But its going to be analyzed by people who think 15-degrees-of-separation is a reasonable search.
From the prescient (and unfortunately being used as an anti-guidebook) best essay this century on Why Privacy is a Fundamental Human Right [just substitute 'Porn' for 'September 11' as the excuse the gov't gives, it comes out the same]:
"But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.
"If someone intrudes on our privacy - by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation - we feel uncomfortable, even violated.
"Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do.
"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm.
"The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.
"...But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and
Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata. Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means.
If you want to see more references to dating, check out the geology section of the common questions. For example, "Isochron methods do not assume that the initial parent or daughter concentrations are known..." from CD002, which then links to a full essay on isochron dating. It has references, including to a text that is "An excellent semi-technical introduction to isotope dating methods... It is accessible to those who haven't studied the field, and has even received reasonably positive review in creationist literature..." which might be exactly what you're looking for to catch up in this area.
Also, you know that evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so at no point, with either modern scientists or Darwin himself, was anyone ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species? Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
That said, How about the transition from Ape to Modern Humans? Transitional enough for you? Each one of the 20 main hominids is slightly different from its neighbor, but very different from a few neighbors down. No, the earliest ones could not be confused for modern humans, no matter how much you shaved and suited them up. (And for kicks, you still have some morphological leftover traits-- take a look at your teeth, and notice the giant roots for your tiny little canines. Note how earlier humans used to have much larger canines.)
Other transitions include dinosaurs to birds, or reptiles to mammals, or land mammal to whale. Or if you're talking about genetic missing links, that's really, really easy to find. For example, chimps and humans don't have the same number of chromosomes- we have one less- but funny how human chromosome 2 is almost identical to chimp chromosomes 2p and 2q. We even have broken bits of telemorase right in the middle of 2, exactly what you'd expect if 2p and 2q had fused together. All primates have to eat vitamin C, we can't produce it ourselves, unlike all other mammals except guinea pigs. One prediction scientists made (see '29 evidences' below) was that we'd eventually find that primates have a broken vitamin C gene. Funny how they recently found that exact gene, the identical broken bit shared by all primates (The gene also has further 'chips and scratches,' where the additional broken bits correlate highly with the type of primate. Guinea pigs also have a broken gene, but in a completely different place. The designer sure spent a lot of time on making broken genes correlate with morphological similarities. You'd think the designer could be a lot more creative in being a plagarist, no?)
Also, scientific theories are never "confirmed," just corroborated. In the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ you can find well-referenced (peer reviewed research) evidences, each with predictions and falsifiability criteria. We're still waiting for the '1 evidence for ID' that includes the same predictions and falsifiability.
Oh, and that "microevolution is distinct from macroevolution" idea? That's a fairly common creationist claim. One of a very long list of common creationist claims. Answers to claim CB902 are here. (For kicks, you can also check out the claims that even creationists say to stop using, and see how many of those get mentioned in this thread.)
Essentially farming has been an open source project, done by thousands of farmers over hundreds (or thousands) of years. But because any individual variety doesn't have an owner, the existance of the plant itself doesn't count as prior art. In earlier stories on Smart Breeding v. Biotechnology or Open Source Biotechnology, I wrote about some problems with proprietary aka closed hood genetics in food production:
But if by "in common" you mean that pigs or rats are unexpectedly close to us in some genetic traits: no. Nope. Not at all. They are useful in the lab because of physiological traits not held in common. For example, humans live decades long and only have one, rarely two offspring per pregnancy, with years between pregnancies. Ditto the other great apes which share the high-90's percent of our DNA, (including sharing the same broken gene for making vitamin C. Rats- all other non-primate mammals- can make C (except guinea pigs, but their C gene is broken in an entirely different place)). Ditto much the same for monkeys, and even ditto the bats (the closest non-primate mammal group). Rats only share 90% of our DNA, but they reproduce early and often. The only reason we've got rats with the same diseases as human diseases is that we've made them that way.
Check out the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution, especially the nested hierarchy section. If there were traits that rats and humans shared more closely than chimps and humans (like the false chickens and humans, or bananas and humans claims that creationist keep on using), then that would falsify evolution. Hasn't happened yet.
Even the 1973 treeware dictionary should have given him pause. Perhaps a 'root kit' simply helps the gardener to vegetatively propagate plants- ok, that sounds benign. But since when does Sony bundle plant hormones with their CD's? However, a 'root kit' could perhaps also imply Toys of a Certain Nature in Australia. Sexual content could get the CD pulled in WalMart. Is annoying WalMart benign?
For future reference, Mr. Hesse, if you see these other seemingly benign words in an email, please do look them up before assuming all is well: "neoplasia," "engine preignition," "crack propagation," "blue screen," "elegant worm," "percussive maintenance," "cereal rust"...
And this is the point that many creationists don't get or don't like: science starts with the latest research and works backwards. No book or article gets to be the authoritative foundation of a field for all times, even if that book started a science or an article's researcher got the Nobel prize.
A well-corroborated world can be a bothersome world- as you say, it doesn't let you just believe what feels good. In the corroborated world you have to give kids the scientific method, you can't just give them a list of facts to memorize. Theories can be falisified: while scientists can be annoyed if their particular theory is bettered, the fact that they can themselves do better on someone else's theory makes it worthwhile (aka if they couldn't discover new things they wouldn't have jobs, would they.)
Evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so its not like modern scientists or Darwin were ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species. Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
Oh, and How many missing links do you want? How many more well-referenced testable and falsifiable evidences for macroevolution can scientists put together while we all wait for IDers to put together one? How many times will creationists in this Slashdot thread say that scientist are ignoring a creationist claim when in fact its been answered so many times they made a FAQ (or sometimes Slashdotters'll use something from the list of claims that a major creationist group asks people to stop using)? It'll be interesting to watch this thread and see the last question being answered.
As for charging for tickets, BurningMan is legallly required to count the number of participants, and at its size it does have some unavoidable infrastructure costs. For example, local / state and federal law enforcement agencies have found the festival to be a cash cow, requiring ever larger per-participant payments each year.
Tickets also cover the bothersome necessity of reducing liability (the alternative is not having the event) and helping to keep out the 'girls gone wild' producers (the alternative is a lot less naked chicks, which would be a big disappointment to many Burners. A "Critical Tshirts" parade doesn't seems as interesting.) Tickets and vending bans both help stop the slackers who might otherwise just show up thinking "I can just buy what I need on the Playa..." That attitude towards preparation doesn't scale.
I'm sure they'd have rather defended the 4th Amendment and Computers on any other case. Say where the technician found reverse-engineered AIBO and XBOX code, or P2P software, or the Anarchist's cookbook, or growing instructions for Peyote, anything other than child porn. But this is the guy they got.
The EFF's major "bug that's really a feature" is that they attempt to work on major issues long before most people would recognize that the issue exists. In 1989, how many people knew what BBS's were, let along why it isn't constitutional to seize an entire server to check out one person's email? The EFF is fighting the equivalent of Physical and Link layer issues, while most people can only really get worked up about Application layer issues.
When you're working that early, you take the cases as they come. With the recording industry, much as the EFF would love to get a "RIAA threatens to eat babies at the widows and orphans facility" case, the XXAA never gave them that- its never going to give them one: it'll always be the rowdy college students first. They get 2600, not the NYTimes. They get Hamadi, not the girl scouts. They get Bernstein for the encryption case, not 'Nobel Prize winning Dr. Wonderful with her malaria-solving encryption device.'
The rich and sympathetic people getting arrested or sued aren't the people the EFF exists to help. They started off helping a gaming BBS, not Atari (and in the big picture let the gov't understand that seizing an email BBS is just as bad as seizing an entire post office). They helped Bernstein (led to a better environment for hundreds of US encryption companies: if you work for one, make sure your company has donated). Not that they aren't helping professors, but it is more likely to be students who get thrown into jail.
When you choose your principles first, you don't get to choose the cases.
The Department of Homeland Security has a Privacy Assessment of this program. Guess what? It has no privacy implications.
- The information can only be shared with "...other agencies at the federal, state, local, foreign, or tribal level, who are lawfully engaged in collecting law enforcement information (whether civil or criminal) and national security intelligence information and/or who are investigating, prosecuting, enforcing, or implementing civil and/or criminal laws, related rules, regulations, or orders." "The Privacy Act SORNs for the systems on which US-VISIT draws provide notice as to the conditions of disclosure and routine uses for the information collected by US-VISIT. Any disclosure by DHS must be compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected."
- The tag only contains an unencrypted number, and only the very limited number of groups above would have access to the information.
- The tag can't be used to ID someone as a visitor because the DHS has contemplated this problem. Thus problem solved... "it is contemplated that the unencrypted RFID tag number will not be structured in such a way that it can be used to identify the individual as a non-immigrant."(pg 15)How exactly? Will everyone soon be carrying an RFID, so the visitor won't stand out?
- And of course it can't be used for surveillance, as "There is also a low risk that the RFID tag could be used to conduct surreptitious locational surveillance of an individual; i.e., to use the presence of the tag to follow an individual as he or she moves about in the U.S. However, ensuring that RFID tag numbers do not exhibit properties that can be readily attributed to US-VISIT and using a limited radio frequency range effectively mitigates this risk. The design process is also taking into account methods of reducing eavesdropping and skimming possibilities." (pg 15). Reducing the "possibilities" by sticking their fingers into their ears and singing "La la la" each time a new tech groups shows them ever longer read ranges.
- And most importantly it doesn't affect US Citizens, because the document doesn't mention them. Never mind that every traveler in the car must be identified in order to separate the residents and citizens from visitors (by definition). They'll now know who you're associating with as you travel.
As I said last time...I'm now going to "contemplate" that being asked for "your papers, please" and being tracked every time I enter and leave my country, that there is no more "If" in "If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free." doesn't change our rights (4th Amendment anyone? it says "Persons") in the US. Whooohoo, I'm ever so much safer! [btw, that's one of the best essays on why privacy is a necessary and fundamental right in a free society. He warns Canadians not to give up what the U.S. has already lost. Worth reading.]
For the Apes to Human transition, would this set of transitional species help?
When you examine the 20 main hominids you find that the earliest ones have thick jaws, big canines, and brains barely larger than those of chimps. They look like other apes. By 500,000 years ago they mostly look like us. But none is transitional?
I'd say each morphs into the next quite nicely, making them a nifty example of missing links. (I list other sets in a post here.)
Good questions.
As I found when reading the DHS's privacy assessment of the program, the RFID in the I-94 document will just have an unencrypted number. While airports scan fingerprints / take a biometric reading, regular border stations don't. So it seems like if the bad guys can find a nice innocent visitor who looks like one of them, a cloned RFID could do some damage.
I'm guessing that this is their response to all the govenments missing the deadline for putting RFIDs into passports. Now the US will just put the RFID into the paperwork you have to keep with your passport upon entry into the US.
- It applies to every visiting person in the car- it is the new I-94 documentation for aliens.
- It is extremely private, in that "The information may also be shared with other agencies at the federal, state, local, foreign, or tribal level, who are lawfully engaged in collecting law enforcement information (whether civil or criminal) and national security intelligence information and/or who are investigating, prosecuting, enforcing, or implementing civil and/or criminal laws, related rules, regulations, or orders."
"The Privacy Act SORNs for the systems on which US-VISIT draws provide notice as to the conditions of disclosure and routine uses for the information collected by US-VISIT. Any disclosure by DHS must be compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected." Yup, limited purposes.
- But really, the tag is safe, as "The RFID tag number will not contain or be derived from any personal information." (pg 14) Its just an unencrypted number. And only those very few groups listed above have the right to connect the number back to your personal info.
- ...therefore removing the possibility that a person can be found out as a visitor just because they carry an RFID: "it is contemplated that the unencrypted RFID tag number will not be structured in such a way that it can be used to identify the individual as a non-immigrant."(pg 15) Uh-huh. Because we all carry RFIDs, so one person carrying one can't stand out. I am comtemplating that my social security number will never be used as an identifier: it says so right on the card.
- And the RFID can't be used for surveillance, as "There is also a low risk that the RFID tag could be used to conduct surreptitious locational surveillance of an individual; i.e., to use the presence of the tag to follow an individual as he or she moves about in the U.S. However, ensuring that RFID tag numbers do not exhibit properties that can be readily attributed to US-VISIT and using a limited radio frequency range effectively mitigates this risk. The design process is also taking into account methods of reducing eavesdropping and skimming possibilities." (pg 15) Yup, if you take it into account you're solving it.
- There are no risks to U.S. citizens, because this document doesn't mention them at all. Sure they'll have checked and scanned everyone's documents in the car- citizens or not- so now know exactly which so called "U.S. citizens" have the audacity to travel with others, but nothing to worry about.
Lovely privacy document. All you have to do is "contemplate" a technology issue and its solved. Great. I'm going to "contemplate" that my computer is invulnerable to hard drive failures, theft, malware and crackers... whooohoo: my system is now secure!I'm now going to "contemplate" that being asked for "your papers, please" and being tracked every time I enter and leave my country, that "If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free." doesn't change the privacy rights (4th Ammendment anyone? it says "Persons") in the US. Whooohoo, I'm ever so much safer! [btw, that's one of the best essays on why privacy is a necessary and fundamental right in a free society. He warns Canadians not to give up what the U.S. has already lost. Worth reading.]
What about a family with a mix of dual and single citizenships? We're a nation of immigrants: its fairly easy to have a family with all three of dual-citizenships, green cards, and visas. If you and your family are traveling together, will you get tagged as suspicious because you don't have the same number of YourRFIDsPlease leaving as you did when entering? (i.e. your cousin stays in Seattle to go to the SciFi Museum while your aunt goes up to Vancouver?). Wait, that's jut a rhetorical questions: of course these families are suspicious.
Some creationist claims like "there was a global flood" are falsifiable, and they've been falsified. "Creationist theory" could be falsifiable if creationists would actually provide a theory (other than "evolution can't be true").
Once humans stop natural selection and start applying our own standards of selection, camoflauge becomes a neutral trait: we, not camoflauge, protect the flock or the field.
Our racial traits likely evolved because of a near-extinction (to humans) event 70,000 years ago: the Tobu supervolcano eruption. During that time, humanity went down to about 1,000 individuals and random evolutionary neutral traits (like eye-folds or hair shape) became more common in the then widely separated groups. But for all of our history before and after that event, humans have been moving around constantly, never allowing an isolated population to exist for that long.
Positive "racial" mutations like skin color changes (actually we all have the same skin color, its just that we have diffent saturation) or malarial resistance (sickle-cell isn't just a "black" disease) happened to any group of people who moved to significantly different areas. Race doesn't correlate with race, in other words.
For your specific points, these are very common questions / issues from creationists and others (except the bone question), so the Index is useful:
But its only chapter 1 of Accelerando the book. And in each subsequent chapter he's distilling things down, speeding things up. By the 2nd half of the book he's handing you pan galactic gargle blasters as his chapters. Never mind a brick wrapped in lemon: his book is a porcupine wrapped in velvet. Once you're done quite a lot is going to stick with you.
You get jealous of the lobsters and start worrying heavily for yourself. You remember that feeling of being a top-of-the-techworld Silicon Valley type going to Japan for the first time. Jetlagged in Akihabara, it hits you that you're a bit behind the curve: your portables are Model-T's and Japanese teenagers are choosing their Ferraris. And Charlie is telling you that the feeling is only going to get worse. And permanent. And your kids and grandkids'll have to deal with it too. Better hope your grandniece's "My First Pharma Lab" can make a nice TetraValium, you'll need it.
The technologists can tell you why the Singularity is Near- why today's technologies are leading towards it. But it takes a book like Stross's to remind you that we're not just contemplating a technologic switch equivalent to tool-making and upright walking, or even lungfish thinking about a permanent stay: we're the anaerobes wondering what happens if the atmosphere switches to oxygen, but we keep on producing oxygen by-products anyways.
...a few hours of slackjawed cartoon watching and the worry mostly fades away, but you never get all of the quills out. Or at any rate, its a very good read-- better be on the Nebula and Hugo shortlists. It isn't a perfect book, writing-wise, but he's got the Sensawunda: the rest comes with practice. That a great author is going to get better is cause for happiness.
That's where your mom comes in: she's a different generation and (on average) a different gender. This surprises the staffer, and they'll add a +2 to whatever your mom says.
She can use one of the standard talking points, or mention how she wants her techie child to continue being employed. And, if she has grandkids, then variations of "Nothing, but nothing gets in the way of my showing off hi-def videos of my grandkids to my friends" could be useful. Plus, sad to say, the staffers are more likely to believe her when she says that she votes (or contributes to campaigns) because (on average) its true.
Part of the ideals of America- part of the ideals of joining a free country- is that people can freely choose to join the country and then are just as American as those to those born here. (Other than that can't be president thing.)
So far they've applied this to people who've become citizens of other free countries. But if they don't accept that a naturalized Canadian is really Canadian, why would they, deep down inside, think that naturalized Americans are really Americans?
Whatever characteristics they think keep immigrants from becoming true Canadians must also exist in the immigrants who become American. Its bad enough we've got government officials who can't read the constitution well enough to see that our rights go to "persons," not just "citizens." Now we also have officials who openly yet indirectly show that they think only some citizens are actual citizens.