heh, someone needs to take a few courses in statistics and mathematics and an understanding of basic cellular biology. not trying to make this an ad hominem attack, but there's no way we evolved from simple cells to human beings.
Statistics and mathematics? Oy, vey.
Let me guess, you probably think evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, too? Ahahaha. XD
For microevolution - yes, there is some. None for macroevolution or abiogenesis, both of which are quite important to the completeness of the theory. No, extrapolating from microevolution to the other aspects is not an evidence.
Drawing a distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is all the proof I need that you don't know what you're talking about.
It is not my responsibility to give you a biology education. Stop closing your heart and mind, and maybe you'll see that instead of telling God how He must have made the world, you can look with curious eyes upon His creation and seek the knowledge of the tools He used.
Oh well, geeks have always stressed quality over quantity, no? Maybe we would be able to stay that way by her being quite selective with whom she chooses to actually have her offspring with.
Actually, you're more on the right track here, I'd say. There's a strong case to be made that "geekhood" is passed on to children (both via genetics and culture); therefore, if geek men consistently mate with the small number of geek women out there, the children they produce (with a normal gender ratio) will be much more likely to be geeky themselves, thus shifting the geek gender ratio closer to 50/50 and enabling more geek+geek couples to form and reproduce.
Over time, social reproductive isolation (geeks breeding exclusively with geeks) and eventually genetic drift (high intelligence, bad eyesight, nocturnal behavior...) will have full effect, resulting in divergance into an isolated subspecies. (Homo sapiens geekus?)
From there on, standard slow genetic drift will eventually justify fully seperate species.
Actually, I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ does not, in fact, hate gay people. You may wish to revise your theory in light of new facts (that's the scientific method, after all!:D).
Unfortunately, detailing exactly WHY "creationist" arguments are full of crap is rather complicated; schools have a hard enough time getting science taught properly as it is. Covering the subject thoroughly would be very challenging for the typically abysmal public school science teacher.
Not to mention, the creationist types would probably sue the school for religious descrimination (and might actually have a decent chance, sadly).
Unfortunately, that wouldn't be all that viable, as the gestation period would severely limit the ability of the female to produce enough children to maintain a population replacement rate.:)
Actually, it was. Any "holes" have been pretty much plugged. Unfortunately, that doesn't slow down the people who prefer to remain ignorant...
True. Which is why the labelling of evolution as "science" rather than "creation myth for Atheists" has long puzzled me.
Perhaps because it is, in fact, science?
Of course, I must admit that the sheer arrogance of the uninformed to think they know all the answers has long puzzled ME.
The theory of evolution is not "safe" to criticise, since it can be tested in our own back-yard and has immediate theological implications whenever something that's effectively impossible to produce by evolutionary processes is found. And you know what? Each time something like that is noticed, it's written off with a statement along the lines of "we'll eventually find a way of explaining this with evolution, never you mind". That statement is an act of faith. "There's no evidence for it here, but I believe in evolution, brother, how about you?"
There's plenty of evidence for evolution. Please educate yourself before you spout nonsense.
Of course, given that you believe yourself so knowledgeable that you can tell God how He must have created the universe, I don't suppose the knowledge of mere humans means much to you.
Surpassing break-even? No problem! The physics are well understood, even. In fact, I see it happening every day (starting around 6am these days usually).
It DOES require inconvinient amounts of hydrogen, though....
Er, well yes, you really can't rule out random chance. But in general, the more probable explanations are more frequently correct. (Now how was that for a tautological statement?)
On the whole, the entire thing is pretty remarkable given current understandings of the universe no matter how it happened, so it's largely a moot point.
I assume by "refresh rate" you mean how quickly the display can be changed, since the whole "no energy required to maintain image" thing obviously implies there's no regular refresh required as there is with a standard monitor. The article didn't seem to say how quickly it can be changed, but I suspect it's really not optimized for that.
As for being backlit, I'd suspect not, simply because one of the major goals for digital ink has been to avoid precisely that--it's actually digital control of pigments, so it doesn't self-illuminate at all. Like normal paper, the display would require external, frontal illumination to be read via reflected light; something most people find more comfortable to read than a backlit, emitted-light display with the faint refresh flicker.
Actually, from what I understand about digital ink research the memory feature is not particularly unique (despite the tone of the article), it's a (useful) result of the approach used--the remarkable thing is the flexibility and the color.
I rather suspect this stuff isn't transparent. From what I know of digital ink technologies, the basic idea is that you have little tubules with ink drops; small electrical impulses can make the ink either move to the visible surface (on) or away to the back surface (off). The ink sticks in the same spot on its own, which is why these require no power to maintain an image. It should be obvious why such a system would not have transparency in a layer....
Of course, this particular version could use some other method; if so, disregard this.
I believe there is literature describing this particular phenomenon, yes--with photographic evidence recently obtained as well. Prior data indicates the simultaneous appearance of (apparently potted) flowers; it is hypothesized that the whale and flowers share some sort of particle/antiparticle relationship, and that the seemingly improbable quantum fluctuation that enables the spontaneous creation of the aforementioned objects is some highly irregular form of virtual particle production. The standard model of particle physics currently does not account for the phenomenon in question, largely (but not entirely) due to the unfortunate size issues involved in creating sperm whales inside of particle accelerators.
Er, capitalizing occasional words is the easiest way in an informal text medium to convey which parts of a statement carry the strongest emphasis. I'm not sure what your point was...?:\
It never ceases to amaze ME how little people seem to know about ANY science. At least the vague lack of comprehensive education and reflexive skepticism that one seems to find amongst slashdot posters is preferable to the blindly gullible misinformation or total disregard for science of any form that is typically found in the non-technical and ineducated teeming masses (especially politicians).
We've found quite a large planets in the last decade, actually, but only by observing the faint variations they create in the motion of their parent stars. Most planets are too distant and too faint to be seen directly by our telescopes, but that doesn't mean we can't still detect them indirectly.
Actually, it is somewhat surprising that a multi-star system would have a significant planet-forming debris cloud. Orbital mechanics tend to be relatively unstable in multi-star systems, so it's considerably more likely that the dust and debris would end up in unstable orbits and fall into one of the stars, instead of clumping up into a planet with a stable orbit. The fact that a planet can actually have a stable orbit in a system with three stars is actually somewhat surprising to me.
As for the system being thrown together after forming seperately, that's highly unlikely. First of all, space is mostly... well, space. The chances against two star systems colliding at all, nevermind doing so in a way that forms a stable three-star system are, no pun intended, astronomical. Even if a stable three-star configuration formed, it's even more likely that the sudden change in orbital dynamics would promptly eject the planet from the system (not hard to do--actually, if memory serves me, Mercury is in the process of being very slowly ejected from our own solar system. The sun will probably die first, though).
So, yes, lots of things could have happened... most of them probably even more fantastically implausible than the system forming as-is.
But that doesn't mean we discard science (at least, the level-headed among us don't).
Then it's rather a pity there are so few of such level-headed folks.
In most cases when someone refers to "creationism" without further qualifications they're referring to the young-earth creationist types--Kent Hovind, Answers in Genesis, and their ilk. The "intelligent design" crowd usually tends to get lumped in, because their ideas of science are equally stupid, albeit more subtle.
There's a great deal that can be said about finding God's hand in evolution; the mere fact that the evolutionary process has so far been a more successful design mechanism than anything humans can do by themselves speaks volumes. Unfortunately, the religious folks who don't casually discard science tend to be a rather smallish and largely silent minority among those who are eager to do just that.
Yes, and 90% of the time the "religion" in those games is just a bunch of silly trappings with no meaningful relevance to real religions. Just a lot of symbolism and some weird complex about anything that feels Catholic being evil. Having a lot of crosses and references to weird mystic sects like Gnosticism and Kabbalism does not a religious story make.
Besides, the religions in such games are almost always central to the storyline in a way that involves you meeting the relevant deities, usually as villains. This is rather absurdly irrelevant to real religion, because despite the delusions of fundamentalist extremists, real people don't get that kind of certainty.
Let me know when a game deals with religion in a way that portrays the experience of faith in the real world, then we can talk. Failing that, it's cheesy nonsense.
Religion in videogames is a terrible idea. Go play a random RPG and watch them babble philosophy that make the Matrix's sophmoric concepts look deep and well-explained in comparison, and spew crappy arm-chair psychology as part of 'character development'. Does anyone REALLY want that level of shoddy, shallow treatment applied to religion?
Slashdot Mirror
heh, someone needs to take a few courses in statistics and mathematics and an understanding of basic cellular biology. not trying to make this an ad hominem attack, but there's no way we evolved from simple cells to human beings.
Statistics and mathematics? Oy, vey.
Let me guess, you probably think evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, too? Ahahaha. XD
For microevolution - yes, there is some. None for macroevolution or abiogenesis, both of which are quite important to the completeness of the theory. No, extrapolating from microevolution to the other aspects is not an evidence.
Drawing a distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is all the proof I need that you don't know what you're talking about.
It is not my responsibility to give you a biology education. Stop closing your heart and mind, and maybe you'll see that instead of telling God how He must have made the world, you can look with curious eyes upon His creation and seek the knowledge of the tools He used.
Oh well, geeks have always stressed quality over quantity, no? Maybe we would be able to stay that way by her being quite selective with whom she chooses to actually have her offspring with.
Actually, you're more on the right track here, I'd say. There's a strong case to be made that "geekhood" is passed on to children (both via genetics and culture); therefore, if geek men consistently mate with the small number of geek women out there, the children they produce (with a normal gender ratio) will be much more likely to be geeky themselves, thus shifting the geek gender ratio closer to 50/50 and enabling more geek+geek couples to form and reproduce.
Over time, social reproductive isolation (geeks breeding exclusively with geeks) and eventually genetic drift (high intelligence, bad eyesight, nocturnal behavior...) will have full effect, resulting in divergance into an isolated subspecies. (Homo sapiens geekus?)
From there on, standard slow genetic drift will eventually justify fully seperate species.
Actually, I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ does not, in fact, hate gay people. You may wish to revise your theory in light of new facts (that's the scientific method, after all! :D).
Unfortunately, detailing exactly WHY "creationist" arguments are full of crap is rather complicated; schools have a hard enough time getting science taught properly as it is. Covering the subject thoroughly would be very challenging for the typically abysmal public school science teacher.
Not to mention, the creationist types would probably sue the school for religious descrimination (and might actually have a decent chance, sadly).
Are we going to be muscle-less blobs that can't survive without robots?
You mean the amorphous mounds that I see driving around in SUVs aren't already precisely that?
Unfortunately, that wouldn't be all that viable, as the gestation period would severely limit the ability of the female to produce enough children to maintain a population replacement rate. :)
What, a hundred and fifty years isn't enough?
Actually, it was. Any "holes" have been pretty much plugged. Unfortunately, that doesn't slow down the people who prefer to remain ignorant...
True. Which is why the labelling of evolution as "science" rather than "creation myth for Atheists" has long puzzled me.
Perhaps because it is, in fact, science?
Of course, I must admit that the sheer arrogance of the uninformed to think they know all the answers has long puzzled ME.
The theory of evolution is not "safe" to criticise, since it can be tested in our own back-yard and has immediate theological implications whenever something that's effectively impossible to produce by evolutionary processes is found. And you know what? Each time something like that is noticed, it's written off with a statement along the lines of "we'll eventually find a way of explaining this with evolution, never you mind". That statement is an act of faith. "There's no evidence for it here, but I believe in evolution, brother, how about you?"
There's plenty of evidence for evolution. Please educate yourself before you spout nonsense.
Of course, given that you believe yourself so knowledgeable that you can tell God how He must have created the universe, I don't suppose the knowledge of mere humans means much to you.
Surpassing break-even? No problem! The physics are well understood, even. In fact, I see it happening every day (starting around 6am these days usually).
It DOES require inconvinient amounts of hydrogen, though....
Er, well yes, you really can't rule out random chance. But in general, the more probable explanations are more frequently correct. (Now how was that for a tautological statement?)
On the whole, the entire thing is pretty remarkable given current understandings of the universe no matter how it happened, so it's largely a moot point.
I assume by "refresh rate" you mean how quickly the display can be changed, since the whole "no energy required to maintain image" thing obviously implies there's no regular refresh required as there is with a standard monitor. The article didn't seem to say how quickly it can be changed, but I suspect it's really not optimized for that.
As for being backlit, I'd suspect not, simply because one of the major goals for digital ink has been to avoid precisely that--it's actually digital control of pigments, so it doesn't self-illuminate at all. Like normal paper, the display would require external, frontal illumination to be read via reflected light; something most people find more comfortable to read than a backlit, emitted-light display with the faint refresh flicker.
Actually, from what I understand about digital ink research the memory feature is not particularly unique (despite the tone of the article), it's a (useful) result of the approach used--the remarkable thing is the flexibility and the color.
I rather suspect this stuff isn't transparent. From what I know of digital ink technologies, the basic idea is that you have little tubules with ink drops; small electrical impulses can make the ink either move to the visible surface (on) or away to the back surface (off). The ink sticks in the same spot on its own, which is why these require no power to maintain an image. It should be obvious why such a system would not have transparency in a layer....
Of course, this particular version could use some other method; if so, disregard this.
I believe there is literature describing this particular phenomenon, yes--with photographic evidence recently obtained as well. Prior data indicates the simultaneous appearance of (apparently potted) flowers; it is hypothesized that the whale and flowers share some sort of particle/antiparticle relationship, and that the seemingly improbable quantum fluctuation that enables the spontaneous creation of the aforementioned objects is some highly irregular form of virtual particle production. The standard model of particle physics currently does not account for the phenomenon in question, largely (but not entirely) due to the unfortunate size issues involved in creating sperm whales inside of particle accelerators.
Er, capitalizing occasional words is the easiest way in an informal text medium to convey which parts of a statement carry the strongest emphasis. I'm not sure what your point was...? :\
Of course, pretty much anything out in space is "far, far" away... from a certain perspective.
It never ceases to amaze ME how little people seem to know about ANY science. At least the vague lack of comprehensive education and reflexive skepticism that one seems to find amongst slashdot posters is preferable to the blindly gullible misinformation or total disregard for science of any form that is typically found in the non-technical and ineducated teeming masses (especially politicians).
We've found quite a large planets in the last decade, actually, but only by observing the faint variations they create in the motion of their parent stars. Most planets are too distant and too faint to be seen directly by our telescopes, but that doesn't mean we can't still detect them indirectly.
Actually, it is somewhat surprising that a multi-star system would have a significant planet-forming debris cloud. Orbital mechanics tend to be relatively unstable in multi-star systems, so it's considerably more likely that the dust and debris would end up in unstable orbits and fall into one of the stars, instead of clumping up into a planet with a stable orbit. The fact that a planet can actually have a stable orbit in a system with three stars is actually somewhat surprising to me.
As for the system being thrown together after forming seperately, that's highly unlikely. First of all, space is mostly... well, space. The chances against two star systems colliding at all, nevermind doing so in a way that forms a stable three-star system are, no pun intended, astronomical. Even if a stable three-star configuration formed, it's even more likely that the sudden change in orbital dynamics would promptly eject the planet from the system (not hard to do--actually, if memory serves me, Mercury is in the process of being very slowly ejected from our own solar system. The sun will probably die first, though).
So, yes, lots of things could have happened... most of them probably even more fantastically implausible than the system forming as-is.
And you're an Anonymous Coward. Glass houses and all that, you know.
If you're going to be a nationalist zealot, at least have the courage to put a name behind your bigoted words.
But that doesn't mean we discard science (at least, the level-headed among us don't).
Then it's rather a pity there are so few of such level-headed folks.
In most cases when someone refers to "creationism" without further qualifications they're referring to the young-earth creationist types--Kent Hovind, Answers in Genesis, and their ilk. The "intelligent design" crowd usually tends to get lumped in, because their ideas of science are equally stupid, albeit more subtle.
There's a great deal that can be said about finding God's hand in evolution; the mere fact that the evolutionary process has so far been a more successful design mechanism than anything humans can do by themselves speaks volumes. Unfortunately, the religious folks who don't casually discard science tend to be a rather smallish and largely silent minority among those who are eager to do just that.
Yes, and 90% of the time the "religion" in those games is just a bunch of silly trappings with no meaningful relevance to real religions. Just a lot of symbolism and some weird complex about anything that feels Catholic being evil. Having a lot of crosses and references to weird mystic sects like Gnosticism and Kabbalism does not a religious story make.
Besides, the religions in such games are almost always central to the storyline in a way that involves you meeting the relevant deities, usually as villains. This is rather absurdly irrelevant to real religion, because despite the delusions of fundamentalist extremists, real people don't get that kind of certainty.
Let me know when a game deals with religion in a way that portrays the experience of faith in the real world, then we can talk. Failing that, it's cheesy nonsense.
Religion in videogames is a terrible idea. Go play a random RPG and watch them babble philosophy that make the Matrix's sophmoric concepts look deep and well-explained in comparison, and spew crappy arm-chair psychology as part of 'character development'. Does anyone REALLY want that level of shoddy, shallow treatment applied to religion?
Given that his online stalking attempt didn't even get my age right I'm not inclined to worry. I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it. :)
...what the HELL?