Hogwash. Sex is fun because we evolved that way, and humans have, via our evolved brains, been using various forms of birth control since, probably, pre-history.
99% of the time, sex does not lead to procreation.
I was hoping for better coverage of X-Windows. I think that UNIX based GUIs had some pretty damned good ideas of their own - or, were they their own - the article didn't say.
Multiple desktops is the single most useful feature for me. I use it religiously, and can't stand the constant shrinking and moving required in Windows as a result - I love to have certain apps open full screen 100% of the time - like my browser. When I want desktop space, I switch desktops. The news-ticker and taskbar remains constant across each desktop and I LOVE that.
It also might have mentioned more about the networkable nature of X - this is a feature I use all the time too - running remote apps. A quick mention of desQview and its plans to use the X system might have worked too...
Finally, more attention to GEOS would have been nice - maybe I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that windows 3.0 did not have true-type fonts, but GEOS did. Further, GEOS could multitask its own apps better than windows of that time - in other words, GEOS really was, for a short time, a better product - the best GUI for the pc at the time - and written with what GEOS was famous for - lean and clean, no bloat, code.
just use the word "google" in front of your search string, for example:
google slashdot science
I never use that silly "google" search box...this works for all kinds of things, btw - you could use imdb to look a movie, or dict to spell:
imdb robots
dict necessary
It's so natural to me now, that I find even when I'm at google, instead of using their search box to do a secondary search, I still use the main url box...
There is a list of of these somewhere, and you can add your own - those three are the ones I use all the time.
I wouldn't say that TNG and DS9 were 1930s scifi, not by a long shot.
They incorporated AI ideas, Virtual Reality, all manner of genetic stuff - modernish scifi concepts. As for the original series, well, maybe...
Buffy and the like are not what I would call scifi. They are pure fantasy. Firefly is probably maybe real scifi, the Treks are, let's face it, sci-fantasy - we know that aliens won't look just a tad like humans and have slightly different faces - they also knew this in the 1930s [1] Firefly escapes this because they don't have aliens...
As for real scifi - 90% of it would never make it on tv, especially hard SF. When 2001 came out, many people didn't get it, and most today would find it extremely boring - similar would never make it on tv.
Farscape was wonderful because it took the soap of the space-soap-opera to a new level and it was made for "grown ups", with real adult drama, not the sugar-coated drama of the Treks. It's definetely sci-fantasy, however...
Battle Star Galactica is great, and a bit closer to scifi, but is still sci-fantasy. Or, a military drama set in a weak-scifi-fantasy setting.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble, folks, but most scifi just ain't all that popular, certainly not enough for hollywood to make money...
[1] How do we know aliens won't look mostly like us? Common ancestry, DNA and evolution - each alien planet would have to have nearly identical flora and fauna to our own, and, no, "DNA seeding" of some sort doesn't solve the problem - could seeding have helped or hindered the obliteration of the dinosaurs, for example? No. Aliens may have recognizable features, eyes and hair, for example, and appendages, but could they be roughly the same size, weight, shape as humans with similar body-layouts? The chances are so remote that it's more fantasy than science...
I mostly agree - I've played "Dactyl Nightmare" in the same type of getup that you described.
I found myself near the edge of a platform and had a hell of a time turning around without falling off, the way I had to twist my torso, hit the button, twist again, and so on, all the while wrapping myself tigher in the cables left something to be desired...
There was one very cool bit about the whole experience though - looking at your own arm and seeing an arm that wasn't your own, with a gun in your hand. The graphics were silly, the game got a 1 out of 10 for fun, but the notion that an attempt was made to fool yourself into seeing your very body in a different way was pretty cool, IMO.
That and the 50 pound helmet that wanted to pull forward and cover up my field of vision were the only things that left any "impressions";)
Way the frell back, I remember these two Sat. morning cartoons, one was about R2D2 and C3PO (or is it 3CPO?) and the other about Ewoks.
Compared to the other cartoons on at the time, I really liked both. If I remember right, the Droids show went off before the Ewok show did, and then they remade the Ewok show, making it simpler animation-wise and stupider...
Yeah, it was cheesy and geared for kids, but hell, I was a kid at the time and I really liked them...I mean, it was every bit as good as Transformers or that cartoon where they always called Godzilla to come and save the day - of course, neither was as good as Robotech or Voltron, but when I saw those I was a bit older and cared more for some emotional realism and drama.
These are not to be confused with the live action Ewok movie thing or the Holiday Special *shudders*.
I thought the acting was on-par, but of course the effects were horrible - but you are correct, that was a very nicely done story.
I always laughed at the over-dramatic and slow-moving aliens too - it was almost like Twilight Zone mixed with a cheesy horror flick...
The first episode of the new Dr. Who was really good for about 20 minutes, and then turned to shait when the trash can swallowed up the boyfriend. It seemed that in the old series, at least the Tom Baker era, they didn't bend over backwards to try and make it "funny"...
Welp, I've kept watching, and it's got potential...I think 40 some-odd minutes is too short, but the last two episodes were connected via a "to be continued", if they do that often, it could work.
If they can balance the "cheese factor" (which is needed for Dr. Who, IMO) without getting stupid (or stupid funny), I think it could be a hit with a whole new cult following...
Can't wait to downlo...er...legally watch the Dalek episode;)
But there is also this passage in the Bible which makes some think the Bible considered the world flat. Don't take offense at this site, it's obviously trying to make a point, but it was the first google link when you search for "bible world is flat":
I'm too lazy to find it now, but there are other "books" which some feel should have been included in the Bible but were left out - I think one is called the Book of Enod or something similar. It has a description of cosmology that is, no offense to anyone, laughably wrong.
Of course it could be argued, giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt, that Enod was _not_ included by divine influence due to the fact that it's so utterly wrong...any way you slice it, damn interesting stuff!
I gave up on the show during the first season. I didn't mind the captain, or the theme song, or all of the other "silly" reasons that irked people. I wasn't so up on Trek trivia that I could catch the continuity screw-ups either...
I hated that Voyager-like, hoytee-toytee, scooby-doo, crap-happy, bs.
Other Treks are much better at showing that people are still people and have real problems even in "paradise".
They need to make a DS9 movie series. The can do this by making the first movie full of flashbacks, or something, to catch people up.
Fond memories, lol. I got into the 85 thing a bit late - Usgard (sp?) was already out. It was a better OS, and it had support for zshell "apps", like that really good Tetris game that actually had a multiplayer option via the link cable...
I wrote my own game for the 85 in smallC for Usgard. It's still at ticalc.org, though I haven't updated it in years...
Anyway, it was too cool realizing that they turned a calculator into a general purpose computer, and kudos to Ti for making this a standard feature now on their new calcs. I can't believe they actually had TSR programs for Usgard - I used to run one which would take screen captures with a keypress.
Fully interruptable OSes on a calculator with 32k, with programs stored as strings - it was a geeks dream come true, lol...
If I remember right, they even had some games with sound - if you plugged a speaker into the link-port;)
Of course, the more I ramble on, the more I'm off-topic. Bash! Bash rocks! I've written and still use many a bash-script, though I can't get over the way bash closes blocks - if...then...fi, or case...esac - gives me the willies!
Right, right - I get that part. Let me be more clear. First, we agree that expanding a bit is a good thing for other reasons.
According to the article, ozone depletion, death at the bottom of the ocean food chain, etc., are the bad effects of one of these bursts. I highly doubt we will find many human-life compatible atmospheres, let alone human-compatible biospheres out there...
Accepting that, I doubt then that ozone depleting gamma-rays would be an issue on Mars;) Let alone the inside of a near Earth asteroid.
I also tend to doubt that humans will walk in the open under another ozone layer on the surface of another planet anytime soon - I think it's enclosed semi-self sustaining environments for us for the foreseeable future, and, if I'm to believe, "Pale Blue Dot", than planets are really to be avoided all together as permanent locations for habitation.
As for faster-than-light-travel - it's not required to spread us around. Assuming we can travel to bodies and establish semi-self sustaining environments, we could hop from system to system and have the habitable parts of the galaxy we choose conquered in under a few million years (there was a more exact estimate (if there is such a thing), that I read years ago, that put this figure at 10,000 years I believe).
To get from system to system, we might use hollowed out, rotating, asteroids and do a generational journey (that idea came from the end of the novel, "Blue Mars").
99% conjecture, I know, based at least 50% on scifi (but hard-scifi!);)
Now, avoiding the asteroid issue which we agree on, I guess some might argue that building self-sustaining protected environments here on Earth would be enough - no need for all of that expensive and dangerous "space travel" shait...
I'd worry more about comets and asteroids at this point and put this one in the category of "When we have to start worrying about it, we'll probably be advanced enough to do something about it," kinda like the sun going nova.
That's a might dangerous, no? If either event happened tomorrow (impact or burst), it would be a bad thing, no? We now know about these dangers - we have a window.
Now is the time between first learning about this kind of "oh shit there goes humanity-danger will robinson!" stuff (and having the start of the technology to do something about it) and the next extinction event. We need to get off of our duffs and do what we can, right now. We can start with expanding, just in case: first, near earth asteroids, and then, Mars and the moon at the same time.
If we become so advanced down the line that we can safely move our eggs all back on one basket, so be it, but for now, we need to use 'living elsewhere' as a fall-back plan.
How can we do a cost/benefit analysis, when everything is at stake? Personally, I think we need to drastically increase funding for these kinds of things...
"a seed is in every human being"? Most humans have a religion and science has *maybe* shown that humans have a need for this - to feel part of something greater...
But a seed it's not - worshipping trees gives one the same "benefits" as worshipping Jesus.
By any measure, especially morals, most religions lose to secular humanism as a "something greater" to feel part of.
As for the "the shit hits the fan without God", realize, that based on sheer numbers, more people today have a better living then at pretty much any other point in history, and the concentration is overwhelmingly in those countries which are most secular.
It sounds like you are talking about sex - sex is part of the theory of evolution, this is abiogensis we are talking about here.
DNA and RNA are not alive - it does what it does based on chemical reactions and it can do amazing things, true, however, taken alone, it's not living.
Molecules make copies of themselves; the chemistry would allow grabbing the right chunks of atoms and molecules floating around nearby and making a copy . It's not sex by any means, and I'd hardly call it reproduction. The process might be analogous in some ways to evolution, but evolution deals with life, and we are at a pre-life stage here.
But, if you like, given similar conditions and similar chemicals, yes, I would expect many many "winners" to arise all at once. This sounds silly, since these aren't life forms - think of adding vinigar to baking soda or something - you don't consider each molecule that joins the reaction a "winner", you just say that the whole liquid has changed in a rather large reaction, even if many individual molecules are un-affected. Afterwards, the "soup" is different, and this changes what may or may not happen to all of the individual molecules in this liquid.
Further, in this pre-life soup, since the winners are able to make copies of themselves - the lottery they won is like a "gift that keeps on giving", this also affects the soup as a whole.
The "impossible odds" theory? Is that a scientific theory?
Abiogensis is a scientific theory, and all which that entails. For no other reason, it's not to be taken lightly. I'm not nearly as familiar with it as I am with evolution, but I feel I can point out what I see as the basic flaw of your line of reasoning.
Huge odds of what? Odds that something alive will crawl out of a lagoon, complete with legs? Certain chemical reactions involving catalysts are able to make copies of certain molecules. This happens by the laws of chemistry; odds don't come into play. I think the odds of a slightly more complex molecule arising from these simple molecules, given the number of reactions which must be taking place every minute, is actually quite good. Once we have that more complex molecule, the odds of a slightly more complex molecule forming are also quite good.
It's "lying with numbers" to look at a lobster and try to calculate the "odds" that it came into being. If we could simulate an entire ancient-planet and see what would evolve, the odds of a lobster evolving in exactly the same are virtually zero, yes, however, consider this: what are the odds that the USA came to be, given all of the wars, treaties, inventions, etc., throughout history? The odds that one nation gradually takes on new religions, or changes it's government, etc., are quite high - and this mechanism is all you need to drastically change a country. But the odds of a specific country coming into being is virtually zero if we had to do it again or could somehow simulate history/politics...yet, here we are.
I agree. I'm not that familiar with abiogenesis, but it seems to me, that there would be billions of lotteries going on at the same time. Any significant self-replicating molecule would be the winner. It would be like you playing every lottery in the world every day/week at the same time - sooner or later, you'd win one of them.
And like evolution, but very much unlike a junk-yard making a 747, the first self-replicating molecule was probably quite a bit cruder and simpler than RNA or DNA.
Lets not forget, either, that explosions in junk-yards do not assemble working vehicles. It would take a system, and a series of explosions; for example, when molecules meet, some naturally interact according to the laws of chemistry, and some can naturally make crude copies of themselves...
The bomb in a junk-yard sounds like the "tornado in a junk-yard making a 747" analogy to me. I'm not exactly sure what this analogy is analogizing, but it certainly isn't comparable to abiogenesis (or evolution, for that matter), IMO.
Lets also not forget that even if this was a valid comparison, it wouldn't matter insofar as the validity of the theory of evolution. How life began isn't what the theory attempts to explain; it attempts to explain the "how" for the fact life changes gradually over time.
I mostly agree, except that evolution and "big bang" are the only scientific theories that you mentioned, the others may be "theories", but not scientific theories.
It's a funky beast, to be sure, but it's not actually a "mix" at all. It's bill isn't anything like a duck's bill. A duck bill is hard, the platypus has a soft, rubbery, bill. They merely look similar. There are many mammals that have evolved really strange nose/mouths - elephants, anteaters, moles, etc.
Webbed feet can be found on other mammals too. Egg laying isn't so strange either - it helps show that mammals evolved from reptiles - at first, they all laid eggs. There is actually another mammal alive today that lays eggs, the echidna, if I remember right...
There are three broad groups of mammals, these two are one group, pouched mammals are the second, and live-birth creatures like us are the third. If you get a chance, check out the BBC series, "The Life of Mammals" - fascinating.
You give ID too much credit, seriously. It's an interesting philosophy, but not a scientific theory by any stretch.
Taken "scientifically", if that were possible, ID would merely show that monotheism is wrong - if the Universe is so damn complex that it had to be designed, than surely, God must be even more complex, and therefore, had to be designed, etc., ==> polytheism.
I agree, jails should be about removing someone harmful from society first and about punishment second.
This man just needs to pay fines, do community service and wear an electronic lock on his ankle for a few years...
If the idea is to prevent future spammers by fear - make this guy pay big-time, suck money from each of his income checks and tax returns until he dies, but jail - I don't think so...
I dislike your association of the word "liberal" with a negative connotation.
This type of silly generalizing would be like if I were to point out that it's almost always the conservatives, both in American history and today around the world, that do the "wrong" thing, and resist change. The conservatives-hardliners in China are responsible for that whole "lets threaten Taiwan" deal, for example...
Science should come before politics when the issue is science orientated, but since politics is responsible for the funding of science in a big way, it's sometimes hard to separate the two.
Personally, I see some "smart" conservatives caught and slightly panicked - they see that science is diverging from their cherished conservative ideals. Everything from global warming and the environment in general, for example, to the "dangers" of pot.
It's the, "oh shit, the liberals were right!" syndrome. No, the scientists were right, liberal polices just happen, these days anyway, to coincide with science more often by far than conservative ideals, IMO.
This administration has been particularly good at ignoring science, and particularly when it comes to the environment. Don't become what you accuse the liberals of being - think for a second and toss your ideals to the side.
Although I'm a political liberal, I'm well informed enough to realize that alternative energy just isn't going to cut it, and I'm all for nuclear power - hows that for an self-described "environmentalist"?
If science counters the Republican view that the world is flat, the answer is simple - drop Republicanism like a cheap ho and move on. I realize I've "assumed" much about your views and affiliations, excuse me for acting like a "reactionary idealistic Conservative";)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh - I forgot to mention - I have evidence that I do have a parody gene - click the link in my sig ;)
No, I just have the watch-out-for-religious-nuts gene, and it tends to activate these days before the parody gene kicks in.
99% of the time, sex does not lead to procreation.
Multiple desktops is the single most useful feature for me. I use it religiously, and can't stand the constant shrinking and moving required in Windows as a result - I love to have certain apps open full screen 100% of the time - like my browser. When I want desktop space, I switch desktops. The news-ticker and taskbar remains constant across each desktop and I LOVE that.
It also might have mentioned more about the networkable nature of X - this is a feature I use all the time too - running remote apps. A quick mention of desQview and its plans to use the X system might have worked too...
Finally, more attention to GEOS would have been nice - maybe I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that windows 3.0 did not have true-type fonts, but GEOS did. Further, GEOS could multitask its own apps better than windows of that time - in other words, GEOS really was, for a short time, a better product - the best GUI for the pc at the time - and written with what GEOS was famous for - lean and clean, no bloat, code.
google slashdot science
I never use that silly "google" search box...this works for all kinds of things, btw - you could use imdb to look a movie, or dict to spell:
imdb robots
dict necessary
It's so natural to me now, that I find even when I'm at google, instead of using their search box to do a secondary search, I still use the main url box...
There is a list of of these somewhere, and you can add your own - those three are the ones I use all the time.
They incorporated AI ideas, Virtual Reality, all manner of genetic stuff - modernish scifi concepts. As for the original series, well, maybe...
Buffy and the like are not what I would call scifi. They are pure fantasy. Firefly is probably maybe real scifi, the Treks are, let's face it, sci-fantasy - we know that aliens won't look just a tad like humans and have slightly different faces - they also knew this in the 1930s [1] Firefly escapes this because they don't have aliens...
As for real scifi - 90% of it would never make it on tv, especially hard SF. When 2001 came out, many people didn't get it, and most today would find it extremely boring - similar would never make it on tv.
Farscape was wonderful because it took the soap of the space-soap-opera to a new level and it was made for "grown ups", with real adult drama, not the sugar-coated drama of the Treks. It's definetely sci-fantasy, however...
Battle Star Galactica is great, and a bit closer to scifi, but is still sci-fantasy. Or, a military drama set in a weak-scifi-fantasy setting.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble, folks, but most scifi just ain't all that popular, certainly not enough for hollywood to make money...
[1] How do we know aliens won't look mostly like us? Common ancestry, DNA and evolution - each alien planet would have to have nearly identical flora and fauna to our own, and, no, "DNA seeding" of some sort doesn't solve the problem - could seeding have helped or hindered the obliteration of the dinosaurs, for example? No. Aliens may have recognizable features, eyes and hair, for example, and appendages, but could they be roughly the same size, weight, shape as humans with similar body-layouts? The chances are so remote that it's more fantasy than science...
I mostly agree - I've played "Dactyl Nightmare" in the same type of getup that you described. I found myself near the edge of a platform and had a hell of a time turning around without falling off, the way I had to twist my torso, hit the button, twist again, and so on, all the while wrapping myself tigher in the cables left something to be desired... There was one very cool bit about the whole experience though - looking at your own arm and seeing an arm that wasn't your own, with a gun in your hand. The graphics were silly, the game got a 1 out of 10 for fun, but the notion that an attempt was made to fool yourself into seeing your very body in a different way was pretty cool, IMO. That and the 50 pound helmet that wanted to pull forward and cover up my field of vision were the only things that left any "impressions" ;)
Compared to the other cartoons on at the time, I really liked both. If I remember right, the Droids show went off before the Ewok show did, and then they remade the Ewok show, making it simpler animation-wise and stupider...
Yeah, it was cheesy and geared for kids, but hell, I was a kid at the time and I really liked them...I mean, it was every bit as good as Transformers or that cartoon where they always called Godzilla to come and save the day - of course, neither was as good as Robotech or Voltron, but when I saw those I was a bit older and cared more for some emotional realism and drama.
These are not to be confused with the live action Ewok movie thing or the Holiday Special *shudders*.
I always laughed at the over-dramatic and slow-moving aliens too - it was almost like Twilight Zone mixed with a cheesy horror flick...
The first episode of the new Dr. Who was really good for about 20 minutes, and then turned to shait when the trash can swallowed up the boyfriend. It seemed that in the old series, at least the Tom Baker era, they didn't bend over backwards to try and make it "funny"...
Welp, I've kept watching, and it's got potential...I think 40 some-odd minutes is too short, but the last two episodes were connected via a "to be continued", if they do that often, it could work.
If they can balance the "cheese factor" (which is needed for Dr. Who, IMO) without getting stupid (or stupid funny), I think it could be a hit with a whole new cult following...
Can't wait to downlo...er...legally watch the Dalek episode ;)
http://www.answering-christianity.com/earth_flat.h tm
I'm too lazy to find it now, but there are other "books" which some feel should have been included in the Bible but were left out - I think one is called the Book of Enod or something similar. It has a description of cosmology that is, no offense to anyone, laughably wrong.
Of course it could be argued, giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt, that Enod was _not_ included by divine influence due to the fact that it's so utterly wrong...any way you slice it, damn interesting stuff!
I hated that Voyager-like, hoytee-toytee, scooby-doo, crap-happy, bs.
Other Treks are much better at showing that people are still people and have real problems even in "paradise".
They need to make a DS9 movie series. The can do this by making the first movie full of flashbacks, or something, to catch people up.
I for one welcome our new autonomous semi-successful satellite finding space-craft overlords!
Fond memories, lol. I got into the 85 thing a bit late - Usgard (sp?) was already out. It was a better OS, and it had support for zshell "apps", like that really good Tetris game that actually had a multiplayer option via the link cable...
I wrote my own game for the 85 in smallC for Usgard. It's still at ticalc.org, though I haven't updated it in years...
Anyway, it was too cool realizing that they turned a calculator into a general purpose computer, and kudos to Ti for making this a standard feature now on their new calcs. I can't believe they actually had TSR programs for Usgard - I used to run one which would take screen captures with a keypress.
Fully interruptable OSes on a calculator with 32k, with programs stored as strings - it was a geeks dream come true, lol...
If I remember right, they even had some games with sound - if you plugged a speaker into the link-port ;)
Of course, the more I ramble on, the more I'm off-topic. Bash! Bash rocks! I've written and still use many a bash-script, though I can't get over the way bash closes blocks - if...then...fi, or case...esac - gives me the willies!
According to the article, ozone depletion, death at the bottom of the ocean food chain, etc., are the bad effects of one of these bursts. I highly doubt we will find many human-life compatible atmospheres, let alone human-compatible biospheres out there...
Accepting that, I doubt then that ozone depleting gamma-rays would be an issue on Mars ;) Let alone the inside of a near Earth asteroid.
I also tend to doubt that humans will walk in the open under another ozone layer on the surface of another planet anytime soon - I think it's enclosed semi-self sustaining environments for us for the foreseeable future, and, if I'm to believe, "Pale Blue Dot", than planets are really to be avoided all together as permanent locations for habitation.
As for faster-than-light-travel - it's not required to spread us around. Assuming we can travel to bodies and establish semi-self sustaining environments, we could hop from system to system and have the habitable parts of the galaxy we choose conquered in under a few million years (there was a more exact estimate (if there is such a thing), that I read years ago, that put this figure at 10,000 years I believe).
To get from system to system, we might use hollowed out, rotating, asteroids and do a generational journey (that idea came from the end of the novel, "Blue Mars").
99% conjecture, I know, based at least 50% on scifi (but hard-scifi!) ;)
Now, avoiding the asteroid issue which we agree on, I guess some might argue that building self-sustaining protected environments here on Earth would be enough - no need for all of that expensive and dangerous "space travel" shait...
That's a might dangerous, no? If either event happened tomorrow (impact or burst), it would be a bad thing, no? We now know about these dangers - we have a window.
Now is the time between first learning about this kind of "oh shit there goes humanity-danger will robinson!" stuff (and having the start of the technology to do something about it) and the next extinction event. We need to get off of our duffs and do what we can, right now. We can start with expanding, just in case: first, near earth asteroids, and then, Mars and the moon at the same time.
If we become so advanced down the line that we can safely move our eggs all back on one basket, so be it, but for now, we need to use 'living elsewhere' as a fall-back plan.
How can we do a cost/benefit analysis, when everything is at stake? Personally, I think we need to drastically increase funding for these kinds of things...
But a seed it's not - worshipping trees gives one the same "benefits" as worshipping Jesus.
By any measure, especially morals, most religions lose to secular humanism as a "something greater" to feel part of.
As for the "the shit hits the fan without God", realize, that based on sheer numbers, more people today have a better living then at pretty much any other point in history, and the concentration is overwhelmingly in those countries which are most secular.
DNA and RNA are not alive - it does what it does based on chemical reactions and it can do amazing things, true, however, taken alone, it's not living.
Molecules make copies of themselves; the chemistry would allow grabbing the right chunks of atoms and molecules floating around nearby and making a copy . It's not sex by any means, and I'd hardly call it reproduction. The process might be analogous in some ways to evolution, but evolution deals with life, and we are at a pre-life stage here.
But, if you like, given similar conditions and similar chemicals, yes, I would expect many many "winners" to arise all at once. This sounds silly, since these aren't life forms - think of adding vinigar to baking soda or something - you don't consider each molecule that joins the reaction a "winner", you just say that the whole liquid has changed in a rather large reaction, even if many individual molecules are un-affected. Afterwards, the "soup" is different, and this changes what may or may not happen to all of the individual molecules in this liquid.
Further, in this pre-life soup, since the winners are able to make copies of themselves - the lottery they won is like a "gift that keeps on giving", this also affects the soup as a whole.
Abiogensis is a scientific theory, and all which that entails. For no other reason, it's not to be taken lightly. I'm not nearly as familiar with it as I am with evolution, but I feel I can point out what I see as the basic flaw of your line of reasoning.
Huge odds of what? Odds that something alive will crawl out of a lagoon, complete with legs? Certain chemical reactions involving catalysts are able to make copies of certain molecules. This happens by the laws of chemistry; odds don't come into play. I think the odds of a slightly more complex molecule arising from these simple molecules, given the number of reactions which must be taking place every minute, is actually quite good. Once we have that more complex molecule, the odds of a slightly more complex molecule forming are also quite good.
It's "lying with numbers" to look at a lobster and try to calculate the "odds" that it came into being. If we could simulate an entire ancient-planet and see what would evolve, the odds of a lobster evolving in exactly the same are virtually zero, yes, however, consider this: what are the odds that the USA came to be, given all of the wars, treaties, inventions, etc., throughout history? The odds that one nation gradually takes on new religions, or changes it's government, etc., are quite high - and this mechanism is all you need to drastically change a country. But the odds of a specific country coming into being is virtually zero if we had to do it again or could somehow simulate history/politics...yet, here we are.
And like evolution, but very much unlike a junk-yard making a 747, the first self-replicating molecule was probably quite a bit cruder and simpler than RNA or DNA.
The bomb in a junk-yard sounds like the "tornado in a junk-yard making a 747" analogy to me. I'm not exactly sure what this analogy is analogizing, but it certainly isn't comparable to abiogenesis (or evolution, for that matter), IMO.
Lets also not forget that even if this was a valid comparison, it wouldn't matter insofar as the validity of the theory of evolution. How life began isn't what the theory attempts to explain; it attempts to explain the "how" for the fact life changes gradually over time.
I mostly agree, except that evolution and "big bang" are the only scientific theories that you mentioned, the others may be "theories", but not scientific theories.
Webbed feet can be found on other mammals too. Egg laying isn't so strange either - it helps show that mammals evolved from reptiles - at first, they all laid eggs. There is actually another mammal alive today that lays eggs, the echidna, if I remember right...
There are three broad groups of mammals, these two are one group, pouched mammals are the second, and live-birth creatures like us are the third. If you get a chance, check out the BBC series, "The Life of Mammals" - fascinating.
Taken "scientifically", if that were possible, ID would merely show that monotheism is wrong - if the Universe is so damn complex that it had to be designed, than surely, God must be even more complex, and therefore, had to be designed, etc., ==> polytheism.
I agree, jails should be about removing someone harmful from society first and about punishment second. This man just needs to pay fines, do community service and wear an electronic lock on his ankle for a few years... If the idea is to prevent future spammers by fear - make this guy pay big-time, suck money from each of his income checks and tax returns until he dies, but jail - I don't think so...
This type of silly generalizing would be like if I were to point out that it's almost always the conservatives, both in American history and today around the world, that do the "wrong" thing, and resist change. The conservatives-hardliners in China are responsible for that whole "lets threaten Taiwan" deal, for example...
Science should come before politics when the issue is science orientated, but since politics is responsible for the funding of science in a big way, it's sometimes hard to separate the two.
Personally, I see some "smart" conservatives caught and slightly panicked - they see that science is diverging from their cherished conservative ideals. Everything from global warming and the environment in general, for example, to the "dangers" of pot.
It's the, "oh shit, the liberals were right!" syndrome. No, the scientists were right, liberal polices just happen, these days anyway, to coincide with science more often by far than conservative ideals, IMO.
This administration has been particularly good at ignoring science, and particularly when it comes to the environment. Don't become what you accuse the liberals of being - think for a second and toss your ideals to the side.
Although I'm a political liberal, I'm well informed enough to realize that alternative energy just isn't going to cut it, and I'm all for nuclear power - hows that for an self-described "environmentalist"?
If science counters the Republican view that the world is flat, the answer is simple - drop Republicanism like a cheap ho and move on. I realize I've "assumed" much about your views and affiliations, excuse me for acting like a "reactionary idealistic Conservative" ;)