I'd be interested in seeing a study done on the gradual "filling in" of the fossil record from Darwin's time to the present. It's pretty clear that he didn't see the fossil record supporting his thesis. It's pretty clear that paleontologists now think the fossil record now overwhelmingly supports evolution (from single celled to trillion celled). How did the former situation evolve into the latter?
I understand that the idea of transitional is a little redundant when one views the fossil record under the theory of evolution. Every fossil is transitional -- either from one organism to another, or one organism to annihalation. However, the idea of stasis was quite prominent in Darwin's time, and I believe one can still find it in many places today. I think the idea of "transitional" can still be useful, although perhaps creationists have muddied the waters too much. I would like to see some more intelligent discussion on this issue, instead of evolutionists and creationists talking past each other.
I find it hard to believe that blogs have influenced the signal-to-noise ratio in a positive way, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have influenced negatively. Blogs simply provide more information to sift through; you do find gems, but you can do an awful lot of work to find them.
I'm going to make up numbers here, but the idea holds: 90% of people think they're good at something when in reality, only 10% are. (I believe there is a statistic in Code Complete about how many programmers think they can get away with flowcharts when few actually can.) Therefore, when I'm searching the web, I get results of the 90% when I only want the 10%. I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers are closer to 99% and 1%...
The bottom line is that blogs aren't going to help a whole lot until it's quite easy to sift the pearls from the sand, and current "popularity search engines" don't cut it. More information isn't very useful unless you can actually find it!
3 more watts, double the weight. How will that give me 8 hours of battery life? I'm skeptical. Maybe in an ultra-light notebook with a slow processor doing word processing.
You are confusing energy with power. Using SI units, the latter is in watts and indicates how much juice your battery can put out per second, the former is in joules and indicates how much juice your battery can put period. To get the total battery life, you must divide energy by power, which will yield seconds using joules & watts.
If anyone tells you that they can build a permanent magnet motor that will just keep on spinning, and even put out a little bit of force, it's OK to believe them, as this is not perpetual motion. The energy is coming from the magnets themselves -- yes, they are getting weaker as the motor spins. An interesting friend of mine was into this sort of thing and after I did some looking, I stumbled upon the energy source.
I experience this often when I'm going to the bathroom during work. I'll have one or more problems, go to the bathroom, and end up solving one or more of said problems before getting back in front of my computer. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm getting my mind off my work. In addition, I often innovate (small and large) when I'm not trying to.
Although I couldn't find the site I visited a year or three ago, I remember reading that Richard Feynman advocating keeping multiple problems going in your head that you try to solve now and again. I'll bet he know about his brain's subconcsious processing abilities; perhaps he only know about it subconsciously! I pretty much did what Feynman suggested before I read about him; I definitely try to do it more, and because of this scientific study, I will recommend that others do this as well! ("Drink more water, it helps you think better... indirectly";] )
I guess a more learned person would just consider the bible as fact before considering the source of it. Or would that just better suit your argument?
I don't just assume the Bible is fact; this is not intellectually satisfying. I simply search for the truth, and the way I do this is to correlate what I hear and read with reality. I find that the Bible describes a reality that is virtually identical to the one that I observe. The faith I have in the Bible is not a leap of faith, but a well-calculated trust: what I've read so far has been good, so the chances that other things I read will be good are high. I do not hold blind faith in anything.
I don't worry about the science in Genesis or the PI = 3. The Bible is not a science textbook.
So the son-of-god-savior-of-mankind was born on a Tuesday in May but since the dirty non-believers have a swank party in mid December we are going to too, and we'll call it his Birthday? What a great way to convert people-that-are-easily-fooled.
I am continually impressed at the ongoing refusal of people to acknowledge that the foundation of most religions amounts to a bunch of people stopping doing what one asshole was telling them to do and starting doing what some other asshole was telling them to do, only this asshole is wearing a robe.
How much do you know about culture in the time periods you are describing? Methinks you're evaluating it based on Society today; this would be a grave error and the source of what you perceive to be "shady".
Why do most of the Christian holidays coincide exactly with pagan holidays that are centuries older?
What better way to convert people than offer them alternative holidays so that instead of studying both the pagan version and the Christian version, they have to either merge them or choose one over the other? This page offers some details. Be careful of criticizing something that you haven't researched (I found the site I just linked to by clicking on the first link of Google results with criteria "pagan christian holiday").
If you say something to yourself similar to, "Obviously that part was allegory," then you have no leg to stand on. Either every single thing in it is literal (and the earth has four corners) or everything must be interpreted. Once everything must be interpreted, you cannot claim any sort of non-relativism.
Have you ever heard of the literary device hyperbole? In any given literary work, not every word is to be taken "literally"; one must understand the word in context. Moreover, when reading interpreted works like the Bible, one must understand not only textual context, but cultural context. You make things out to be a lot simpler than they are, which leads me to believe that you're acting like stereotypical Creationists in spewing out the same thing over and over again.
I'm not even sure what you mean by relativism; I would call it the search for truth and claim that absolute truth exists (you cannot deny that absolute truth exists for everyone, only that it does not exist for you given your worldview). If you speak of "what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you," then great, are you going to violate the law set down by your country because it isn't true for you? I would try questioning more important things, like whether Christ died or just swooned; here is where you get into theologically imporant material. However, do your homework before you start making ignorant comments about it.
Methinks they should build an add-on that blocks AdSense and publish it through some fake company. I'm sure loads of Google's AdSense revenue comes from IE users. If Microsoft really wants to get into the search business or generally compete with Google, what better way to attack an opponent in the style Microsoft is famous for?
Alternatively, one could simply use Firefox and download an extension that makes AdSense ads invisible;)
I would be interested in seeing this bookmark website of yours; I am working on my own that currently allows both (wow, you don't have to be exclusive) tagging and strict hierarchies. Not only this, but one bookmark could go in multiple categories, so you'd get the benfit of tagging with the structure of hierarchies. Like you, mine would not surivive/.ing, as there are only a few users right now. Drop me a line at labreuer+slashdot@gmail.com if you're interested.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be interested in seeing a study done on the gradual "filling in" of the fossil record from Darwin's time to the present. It's pretty clear that he didn't see the fossil record supporting his thesis. It's pretty clear that paleontologists now think the fossil record now overwhelmingly supports evolution (from single celled to trillion celled). How did the former situation evolve into the latter?
I understand that the idea of transitional is a little redundant when one views the fossil record under the theory of evolution. Every fossil is transitional -- either from one organism to another, or one organism to annihalation. However, the idea of stasis was quite prominent in Darwin's time, and I believe one can still find it in many places today. I think the idea of "transitional" can still be useful, although perhaps creationists have muddied the waters too much. I would like to see some more intelligent discussion on this issue, instead of evolutionists and creationists talking past each other.
I find it hard to believe that blogs have influenced the signal-to-noise ratio in a positive way, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have influenced negatively. Blogs simply provide more information to sift through; you do find gems, but you can do an awful lot of work to find them.
I'm going to make up numbers here, but the idea holds: 90% of people think they're good at something when in reality, only 10% are. (I believe there is a statistic in Code Complete about how many programmers think they can get away with flowcharts when few actually can.) Therefore, when I'm searching the web, I get results of the 90% when I only want the 10%. I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers are closer to 99% and 1%...
The bottom line is that blogs aren't going to help a whole lot until it's quite easy to sift the pearls from the sand, and current "popularity search engines" don't cut it. More information isn't very useful unless you can actually find it!
You are confusing energy with power. Using SI units, the latter is in watts and indicates how much juice your battery can put out per second, the former is in joules and indicates how much juice your battery can put period. To get the total battery life, you must divide energy by power, which will yield seconds using joules & watts.
If anyone tells you that they can build a permanent magnet motor that will just keep on spinning, and even put out a little bit of force, it's OK to believe them, as this is not perpetual motion. The energy is coming from the magnets themselves -- yes, they are getting weaker as the motor spins. An interesting friend of mine was into this sort of thing and after I did some looking, I stumbled upon the energy source.
For example, confidential Novell code. (In case that link doesn't work, search for "StopWatch" in "C#"; there are only two results.)
Will this new site perform such wonders?
I experience this often when I'm going to the bathroom during work. I'll have one or more problems, go to the bathroom, and end up solving one or more of said problems before getting back in front of my computer. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm getting my mind off my work. In addition, I often innovate (small and large) when I'm not trying to. Although I couldn't find the site I visited a year or three ago, I remember reading that Richard Feynman advocating keeping multiple problems going in your head that you try to solve now and again. I'll bet he know about his brain's subconcsious processing abilities; perhaps he only know about it subconsciously! I pretty much did what Feynman suggested before I read about him; I definitely try to do it more, and because of this scientific study, I will recommend that others do this as well! ("Drink more water, it helps you think better... indirectly" ;] )
I don't just assume the Bible is fact; this is not intellectually satisfying. I simply search for the truth, and the way I do this is to correlate what I hear and read with reality. I find that the Bible describes a reality that is virtually identical to the one that I observe. The faith I have in the Bible is not a leap of faith, but a well-calculated trust: what I've read so far has been good, so the chances that other things I read will be good are high. I do not hold blind faith in anything.
I don't worry about the science in Genesis or the PI = 3. The Bible is not a science textbook.
What better way to convert people than offer them alternative holidays so that instead of studying both the pagan version and the Christian version, they have to either merge them or choose one over the other? This page offers some details. Be careful of criticizing something that you haven't researched (I found the site I just linked to by clicking on the first link of Google results with criteria "pagan christian holiday").
Have you ever heard of the literary device hyperbole? In any given literary work, not every word is to be taken "literally"; one must understand the word in context. Moreover, when reading interpreted works like the Bible, one must understand not only textual context, but cultural context. You make things out to be a lot simpler than they are, which leads me to believe that you're acting like stereotypical Creationists in spewing out the same thing over and over again.
I'm not even sure what you mean by relativism; I would call it the search for truth and claim that absolute truth exists (you cannot deny that absolute truth exists for everyone, only that it does not exist for you given your worldview). If you speak of "what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you," then great, are you going to violate the law set down by your country because it isn't true for you? I would try questioning more important things, like whether Christ died or just swooned; here is where you get into theologically imporant material. However, do your homework before you start making ignorant comments about it.
Methinks they should build an add-on that blocks AdSense and publish it through some fake company. I'm sure loads of Google's AdSense revenue comes from IE users. If Microsoft really wants to get into the search business or generally compete with Google, what better way to attack an opponent in the style Microsoft is famous for? Alternatively, one could simply use Firefox and download an extension that makes AdSense ads invisible ;)
I would be interested in seeing this bookmark website of yours; I am working on my own that currently allows both (wow, you don't have to be exclusive) tagging and strict hierarchies. Not only this, but one bookmark could go in multiple categories, so you'd get the benfit of tagging with the structure of hierarchies. Like you, mine would not surivive /.ing, as there are only a few users right now. Drop me a line at labreuer+slashdot@gmail.com if you're interested.