It's really not pop science... maybe not even easy. I've been reading the first few chapters and it definitely seems that I need a few more courses in maths to get any further.
So I'll be putting the damn thing aside until I've gotten through some hyperbolic geometry courses and algebra. The writing is clear and enjoyable, the contents get my noodle in a knot.
Adaptation in biology, an anatomical structure, physiological process or behavioral trait that has evolved over a period of time by the process of natural selection that increases the likelihood of producing larger numbers of offspring or its reproductive success.
It seems to me that adaptation IS evolution. By definition evolution INCLUDES the emergence of new species, but that doesn't mean that EVERY mutant is a new species. You see, even some humans have differences in their DNA (!), and still are considered by some to be of the same species.
throughout this research, every specimen that is mutated has either reproduced offspring like the original species, or they cannot reproduce
You mean that cancer cells don't exist? That all those GM crops growing on our fields are an illusion (put there by Your God to test my faith, perhaps)? "Mutant" does not mean "a new species". Mutants can and do reproduce, and they are widely used in studies about how nature works. If you want, I can give you examples of this ([Feron C, Baudoin C 1995], [Goddard 2005], etc.). I'm sure you can find thousands of examples yourself if you take off your tinted glasses and learn to do research on the subject your arguing about (or to google).
What many people fail to understand is that (modern) science is a process of learning more about the real nature. What religion or philosophies do is another matter; they are not verifiable and in that sense not real. They have nothing to do with causes and effects in the physical world, and whenever they try to explain reality on a concrete level, they fail miserably because they are based on purely cultural and "made up" premises. This is why you will inevitably lose all your ID arguments; even if you follow logical steps in your deductive argumentation, your propositions are not real. You can advance your point in a religious or philosophical context, and I'll be happy to discuss with you on those levels as well, but there is nothing you can add to discussion about science by talking about ID (except in the "is not science"-sense).
...and yes, I have extensively studied ID, read books on it, conversed with it's "experts", seen the shows, heard the "evidence" and still no. It makes NO sense. Not only is it NOT science, it even seems to fail as a philosophy, collapsing into contradictions and hypocrisies. As a religion it promotes crass values (as in "it's ok to lie if it feels right") and it's doctrine is unpermissive of free thinking.
Now I know that deeply christian people find it hard to accept real facts; so many facts contradict their (what already are an extremely discrepant) holy books' teachings. You just have to make yourself understand that there is a difference between things that are real and things that are made up. The made up things can be "real" concepts but not ever physically real as that'd be magic.
It is clear that my concept of what is true evolves with time. I try to form my understanding of nature upon scientific facts and theories that change with time into more explanatory and powerful ones. My understanding of philosophy comes from a variety of sources; they increase and diversify along with the development of logic and mathematics. My understanding of religious matters comes from cultural sources and from observing my own relations with the universe. There is no need to forcefully try and mix these different kinds of understanding, especially since their foundations are so obviously separate by nature.
Of course many religious people are convinced that eventually science will develop into an understanding that agrees with their view of the world. I believe that science will develop a world-view that can eventually explain everything and I know there will be no more need for ID then than there is now.
I agree, it doesn't sound plausible that chinese would become a creative majority in the net any time soon. As you say, the chinese internet population is mostly consumers, so I would expect a lot of the advertising on the net to be targeted at them soon. Again, not a majority, but a lot.
West creates most of the content of the net at the moment, and it remains to be seen whether the chinese will ever exceed the wests cultural output, or indeed if they'll ever be allowed to do so. I suppose you're right in saying that "Westerners don't care about Chinese blogs or webpages of minor signifcance", I myself only ever get onto chinese or indian homepages when looking for curiosities of the net.
Then again, I do believe that no matter how culturally starved the chinese people may be, they still probably are equal to an average american webpage maker in the ability to add new content to the net. I know from personal experience that a globally insignificant culture can root itself very strongly on the net. The sense of a cultural net community is tightly tied to the language of the culture. Once the number of chinese, indian, african etc. webpages is enough to sustain an interest from their respective members, the web will be very different from what it is now. Which is nice.
About ten years ago people were talking about the problem of millions of chinese and other peoples with complex character sets coming to the net. It was estimated that around something like 2020 the most used language in the net would be cantonese and that content written in english would be becoming a minority. It was said that if the automatic web-page translators wouldn't keep up, we westerners would soon find ourselves in a position of a tourist in a strange land when surfing the net.
Of course the webs content would only increase and diversify, not change into chinese, so I don't think there will be THAT kind of problems. But I wouldn't wonder if all the pop-ups and the ads in slashdot would one day be full of characters that are alien to me advertising something I could only guess at.
I like these proposals that the companies come up with from time to time. They always look like an intern had been forced to play with a 3D program and told to 'come up with something new'. This one even has a 'Potable Water Disinfectant' in it, according to the PM article.
I honestly do like the design, but can't help thinking that it would have been easy to make a lot of improvements here and there. Even the stick dudes of the concept seem to be uncomfortable in their chairs...
Being a part of a malignant growth that recognizes its future outlook, I feel that it is more productive to try and do whatever I can to change the course of human developement into a more sustainable kind.
As I said, humans have not yet started to spread effectively in the Universe, so I don't really know whether removing myself or any other part of humankind from the universe would be a good or a bad thing at this stage. That said, even though I haven't removed myself from the universe, I think I have removed myself from the tumor by making the decision of never parenting a child:)
I would hope that if humans ever reach the level of consensus needed for projects like Orion, they would also find a way of leading a sustainable existence so we could avoid the whole "tumorness".
Of all the atomic propulsion systems, project Orion is the one that struck me as 'reasonable', despite the atmospheric miniature nukes. The sheer payloads that it would enable make Orion the number one option for human spacefarization.
That said, I'm happy it never really materialized. Having a universe with a human population spreading effectively in it summons an eerie image on a spherically expanding brain-tumor to my mind...
...anyone interested in nuclear propulsion and the most avant-garde of rocketry, read about "Project Orion" if you already haven't.
When the LHC starts operating in 2007, it will be the most data-intensive physics instrument on the planet, producing more than 1500 megabytes of data every second for over a decade.
...but when that ten years is gone, that's about as much as an average persons warez d/l rate...
well _above_ average persons...
what did moore's law say about this data transfer stuff, anyway?
would it be a silly idea to have a proper category for fear-mongering so that it would not always make proper science look like an idiot..?
i know that in this era of learning through discovery channel "documentaries" some people are finding it harder and harder to tell the difference between science and speculation. i'd like it if slashdot would not stoop to calling this kind of articles "science". it has science in it but it's purpose is clearly to make people scared, not to increase their knowledge.
then again i'm a bit silly and as an astronomy hobbyist i take the misuse of GRBs slightly personally. they're really interesting and we need to do proper science about them. saying that they might have caused disasters in the past is just stating the obvious. (of course it's nice that they have made a computer model that proves that the speculated GRB is a plausible candidate for the fast die-off, but everybody knew that already, didn't we..?)
hmm... are there any geologists here who know of an isochron dating method that might result from GRBs? would make it easy to verify whether or not the extinctions were due to these things...
Slashdot Mirror
So I'll be putting the damn thing aside until I've gotten through some hyperbolic geometry courses and algebra. The writing is clear and enjoyable, the contents get my noodle in a knot.
Adaptation in biology, an anatomical structure, physiological process or behavioral trait that has evolved over a period of time by the process of natural selection that increases the likelihood of producing larger numbers of offspring or its reproductive success.
It seems to me that adaptation IS evolution. By definition evolution INCLUDES the emergence of new species, but that doesn't mean that EVERY mutant is a new species. You see, even some humans have differences in their DNA (!), and still are considered by some to be of the same species.
throughout this research, every specimen that is mutated has either reproduced offspring like the original species, or they cannot reproduce
You mean that cancer cells don't exist? That all those GM crops growing on our fields are an illusion (put there by Your God to test my faith, perhaps)? "Mutant" does not mean "a new species". Mutants can and do reproduce, and they are widely used in studies about how nature works. If you want, I can give you examples of this ([Feron C, Baudoin C 1995], [Goddard 2005], etc.). I'm sure you can find thousands of examples yourself if you take off your tinted glasses and learn to do research on the subject your arguing about (or to google).
What many people fail to understand is that (modern) science is a process of learning more about the real nature. What religion or philosophies do is another matter; they are not verifiable and in that sense not real. They have nothing to do with causes and effects in the physical world, and whenever they try to explain reality on a concrete level, they fail miserably because they are based on purely cultural and "made up" premises. This is why you will inevitably lose all your ID arguments; even if you follow logical steps in your deductive argumentation, your propositions are not real. You can advance your point in a religious or philosophical context, and I'll be happy to discuss with you on those levels as well, but there is nothing you can add to discussion about science by talking about ID (except in the "is not science"-sense).
...and yes, I have extensively studied ID, read books on it, conversed with it's "experts", seen the shows, heard the "evidence" and still no. It makes NO sense. Not only is it NOT science, it even seems to fail as a philosophy, collapsing into contradictions and hypocrisies. As a religion it promotes crass values (as in "it's ok to lie if it feels right") and it's doctrine is unpermissive of free thinking.
Now I know that deeply christian people find it hard to accept real facts; so many facts contradict their (what already are an extremely discrepant) holy books' teachings. You just have to make yourself understand that there is a difference between things that are real and things that are made up. The made up things can be "real" concepts but not ever physically real as that'd be magic.
It is clear that my concept of what is true evolves with time. I try to form my understanding of nature upon scientific facts and theories that change with time into more explanatory and powerful ones. My understanding of philosophy comes from a variety of sources; they increase and diversify along with the development of logic and mathematics. My understanding of religious matters comes from cultural sources and from observing my own relations with the universe. There is no need to forcefully try and mix these different kinds of understanding, especially since their foundations are so obviously separate by nature.
Of course many religious people are convinced that eventually science will develop into an understanding that agrees with their view of the world. I believe that science will develop a world-view that can eventually explain everything and I know there will be no more need for ID then than there is now.
West creates most of the content of the net at the moment, and it remains to be seen whether the chinese will ever exceed the wests cultural output, or indeed if they'll ever be allowed to do so. I suppose you're right in saying that "Westerners don't care about Chinese blogs or webpages of minor signifcance", I myself only ever get onto chinese or indian homepages when looking for curiosities of the net.
Then again, I do believe that no matter how culturally starved the chinese people may be, they still probably are equal to an average american webpage maker in the ability to add new content to the net. I know from personal experience that a globally insignificant culture can root itself very strongly on the net. The sense of a cultural net community is tightly tied to the language of the culture. Once the number of chinese, indian, african etc. webpages is enough to sustain an interest from their respective members, the web will be very different from what it is now. Which is nice.
Of course the webs content would only increase and diversify, not change into chinese, so I don't think there will be THAT kind of problems. But I wouldn't wonder if all the pop-ups and the ads in slashdot would one day be full of characters that are alien to me advertising something I could only guess at.
I honestly do like the design, but can't help thinking that it would have been easy to make a lot of improvements here and there. Even the stick dudes of the concept seem to be uncomfortable in their chairs...
As I said, humans have not yet started to spread effectively in the Universe, so I don't really know whether removing myself or any other part of humankind from the universe would be a good or a bad thing at this stage. That said, even though I haven't removed myself from the universe, I think I have removed myself from the tumor by making the decision of never parenting a child :)
I would hope that if humans ever reach the level of consensus needed for projects like Orion, they would also find a way of leading a sustainable existence so we could avoid the whole "tumorness".
That said, I'm happy it never really materialized. Having a universe with a human population spreading effectively in it summons an eerie image on a spherically expanding brain-tumor to my mind...
http://isbndb.com/d/book/project_orion.html
...but when that ten years is gone, that's about as much as an average persons warez d/l rate...
well _above_ average persons...
what did moore's law say about this data transfer stuff, anyway?
Would be a good chance to put a digger on an asteroid, maybe even park a HST-like observatory on it...
...almost as good as a lunar base...
would it be a silly idea to have a proper category for fear-mongering so that it would not always make proper science look like an idiot..? i know that in this era of learning through discovery channel "documentaries" some people are finding it harder and harder to tell the difference between science and speculation. i'd like it if slashdot would not stoop to calling this kind of articles "science". it has science in it but it's purpose is clearly to make people scared, not to increase their knowledge. then again i'm a bit silly and as an astronomy hobbyist i take the misuse of GRBs slightly personally. they're really interesting and we need to do proper science about them. saying that they might have caused disasters in the past is just stating the obvious. (of course it's nice that they have made a computer model that proves that the speculated GRB is a plausible candidate for the fast die-off, but everybody knew that already, didn't we..?) hmm... are there any geologists here who know of an isochron dating method that might result from GRBs? would make it easy to verify whether or not the extinctions were due to these things...