PhDP

Still, it's an allergic reaction. Throwing billions, thousands of soldiers, waging two wars, because of one terrorist act. BTW, I can't believe you still defend the Iraq war Biggest problem ? To who ? To the West, and Israel ? Perhaps ! But it's not killing thousands of people right now, and we have a chance to do something about it, no need to panick. But at the scale of the world ("world > occident", and not "world = occident"), those problems are outrageously "overcovered". You'll need to enumerate a lot of terrorist attacks just to match the number of people dying of hunger in one day (~30 000). Nobody is waging wars for them, and they would never have the chance to worry about what Iran could, eventually, do in years to come...

Amen ! Terrorists would have to find very destructive weapons if they want to compete against famine, poverty and illness. It would take them a couple of well-placed nuclear attack just to do "as good" as the massacres in Sudan (nearly half a millions lives lost). They're not worth a medal in a "what's Earth worst problem" contest. Yet, we're brought to believe every dollar spent in security is a dollar well spent, because "the war on terror" is the main international problem of this new millenium. I'm sure they enjoy the attention. Newsmedia are only interested in the middle east, terrorists, or the lastest beautiful woman kidnapped or killed.

Did you just used Blair to show some "liberal" governements are supporting Bush ? That's not very convincing....

Bascule, What is it then ? Blackmore, and many memeticists promote memetics as an scientific approach to cultural evolution. The journal of memetics was there to promote memetics as a science, nothing less. The point made by Dawkins was that we should expect all replicators to show a similar "selfishness" than genes. Recently, in a book devoted to selfish elements, "Genes and Conflict" (2006, Burt & Trivers), the authors, right at the start, say that most genes aren't selfish. Generally, authors are starting their books by saying how dramatically important the subject is to science, but in this case, they knew they had to break down the misconception that all genes are selfish. So, the vision of genetics Dawkins sought to expand to all replicators isn't even true for genes. Blackmore's hypothesis that brain-size has evolved because of memes is a good example of the kind of misconception you can get with memetics. The human brain stopped enlarging half a million years ago, while the supposed meme cambrian-like explosion occured 30 000 years ago, yet the enlargement, she said, is caused by memes. So, we have, on one hand, plenty of trivial comparaisons and predictions, and one the other hand, confusion generated by memetics. It doesn't seem unfair to say memetics is useless.

What kind of scientist would accept a theory which add new words, doesn't add anything to our knowledge of a subject, and lead to misleading reasonings ? It's catchy, but it's not science. Scientists are studying how culture is evolving (Nowak's papers are quite fascinating), but they don't need to base their researches on an analogy with a certain perception of genetics.

I want to learn it too. I have access to the book "Mastering MATLAB", it's a decent book, but the help and demos on MATLAB are very well done and for now it was enough for me.

done

You're right, Haldane and Maynard Smith (a student of Haldane) got out of the communist party in the around the 50s because of the authoritarian soviet union. Haldane was from the left, Fisher from the right, yet they both worked on the same project. Haldane would certainly made my list of the top 20 mind in evolutionary biology, I've read a very convincing argument that his book "the causes of evolution", marked the birth of the modern synthesis (instead of Fisher's book), which show how important he is to the history of evolution.

I wonder... she's from New England, many from New England descended from Quebeckers ("French-Canadians"), and her surname is quite similar to the common French-Canadian surname "Cloutier"... If it's the case, I don't think she's proud of it... What's disturbing is not really what she says, but that so many people are buying her books.

It's sometime the case. Sometime evolution is purely random, sometime it's partially random and partially nonrandom. Anyway, it's always random at some level... "Selfish Gene", "Extended Phenotype" and the "Blind Watchmaker". Not the ancestor's tale. I would certainly not being so criticical if I haven't read the "Blind Watchmaker", and, most importantly, if I hadn't encountered so much fans of Dawkins. What lie ? Strawman ? That's quite ironic... I said he did not acknowledge the IMPORTANCE of drift and mutations, he said very often natural selection "solved" the problem of our origins, he said pretty clearly, and quite often, that selection was THE key, the rest was details... Also, he's using strawmans (and sometime just confusing terms and concepts) to discredit neutralism and mutationism. I don't like the idea of replacing a bad argument with another bad argument. However I perfectly understand your motives, and they are indeed noble. Have you read the "Blind Watchmaker" ? The last chapter, "Doomed Rivals", is simply awful. Yes, he IS clueless about a lot of things concerning modern evolutionary biology, and I'm not talking about tiny details...

...a mildly deleterious allele can even drift to fixation if the population is small enough. The statement by Dawkins is just wrong, every undergraduate biology student should know life results from both random and nonrandom survival of more-or-less random varying replicators. It's not surprising however, Dawkins doesn't even seems to acknowledge the importance of drift and mutations.

That's just nonsense. To make a realistic simulation, they should start with a random 9-letters "word", then from that word, generate a certain number of word with some letter changed (mutations). Those "word" looking more like "evolution" should be selected, and from this word, again, generate a certain number of words with some letter changed, et cetera... With some generation the word "evolution" would come up easily.

'Swan Lake' was composed by Tchaikovsky many years after Mozart died.

I think it's more wise to see viruses as something between life and nonlife. They share very important characteristics with living organisms, like the ability to reproduce, some form of genetic code, the ability to evolve. But they also lack characteristics; the ability to use energy to perform a task without help from the molecular machinery of a cell and autonomous self-reproduction.

They're probably involved in the attacks of Madrid/London/Riyad/Bali/Kenya/Tunisia/Istanbul + multiple attacks in Iraq (and others I'm missing). I agree the US and their allies have damaged al-Qaeda to a certain extent, however, considering how much attacks were made by al-Qaeda since 9/11 and considering they've waited 8 years after the first attack on the WTC, I'm not sure about the "good forture". I would also like to see the number of attacks made by al-Qaeda since 9/11 vs. before 9/11, perhaps it's not as pretty as you think.

Well, you've just found out one of many problems about our "biological species" concept... ==> http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/crossbills/species.html Not as smart, it's why I said we were quantitatively different. However there's a tendency to underestimates the other great apes, I've just read an article in science, scientists have found that bonobos and orangutans were able to "plan ahead". We though (again), we were the only one able to do this. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/518/2

First, by definition, you can't breed with another species, simply because we often define a species by all the individuals that can interbreed and produce a fertile offspring. Also I'd like to point out the differences between humans and the other great apes aren't that great. Most great apes have a certain form of conscience, and all of them are quite intelligent. It's more quantitative than qualitative. The interpretation of Severian is interesting, I wish similar views were more widespread among monotheists.

Jim, My objections are both procedural and substantive. We all live on the same planet and all countries have to act responsively, I think the US government did not on the case of Iraq. About the idea that you just need to prove "good faith", I don't agree. It's insufficient, you cannot just do anything and justify it by saying it was done in "good faith". The US and UK governments had the responsibility to do anything in their power to know if there was WMDs before invading Iraq. Not only they exaggerated the treat posed by Saddam, but they even refused to let the weapons inspector do their job. Was Saddam the most cooperative guy in the world, no, but what did you expect ? Anyway, he was cooperative enough for Blix to be optimistic about the outcome. And when the war began, he said there was probably no WMD in Iraq. The rest is history... Also, I don't know how we can put too much emphasis on WMDs and the link between Saddam and al qaeda, those were the reasons used by the administration to convince the american people. You're right, the world is safer without Saddam, he was a treat, albeit a minor one, but I think this question is a diversion, the real issue is; is the world safer with the war in Iraq. I don't think so, Americans should be worry by the impact of the war on the image of the United-States in the middle-east. However, I'm not interested in a large scale debate about the war in Iraq, we've deviated from a topic about the opinions of nonamericans of american foreign policy to a debate about the rationale of the war in Iraq. Many people are worry about it (not just europeans). Personally, I don't think it's very important, but it does feel really strange. However, there's a very important distinction in the quotes you've given and what Bush said. It's something to say "god bless you", it's something else to look like you think you're Jeanne D'Arc. About the "crusade" thing; http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cuse/analysis/terrorism.htm I can see the impact of Kyoto on politics, but I don't know much details about Kyoto itself. The objective is noble, according to a study by italians reseachers, it's also cost-effective. But there's perhaps a better way.

No. [math]\lim_{n\to\infty} \sum^{n}_{k=0}\left(\frac{1}{3}\right)^k[/math] You must have something about geometric series/progression in your volume, how to solve sums of the form; [math]\lim_{n\to\infty} \sum^{n}_{k=0} a\times r^k[/math] If [math]|r|<0[/math], the series converge to [math]a/(1-r)[/math].

I have the same problem.

[math]\lim_{n\to\infty} \frac{n+1}{n^2+2n+1} = \lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{n+1}{(n+1)^2} = \lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n+1} = \frac{1}{\infty+1}=\frac{1}{\infty}=0[/math]

It depends on the limit... to infinity, 0, 1, -1 ? Also you should simplify it. Hint; geometric "series" What's the problem with the sketch ? To put it in "y" form, you just need to know that [math]log_b b^c = c[/math].

Yes; http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html But the best is probably NOT to rely on any enclypedia for serious researches.

It's possible, but in term of foreign policy, it's not a popular move, especially in Europe. However I'm curious to know why you think Kyoto is a joke, can you back this up ? I consider myself an environmentalist, but somehow I'm always in disagreement with the major "green" groups because of their opposition to nuclear power, to GMOs and the kind of researches they're promoting... But for once I agree with them over Kyoto. You might have good reasons to disagree on the details of the protocol, but surely, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere can't be a bad idea. Declaring a war is a serious thing, what angered many Europeans and many other people around the world, is the idea of a preemptive stike against a country for no sufficient reason. You make it sounds like the Iraq war was between Iraq, the US and the UK, I think everyone on this planet ought to be concerned when a country is attacking another. It's not really about wether the Iraqis are better now than before, we were told Saddam was a treat, that he had WMDs and that Bush couldn't wait for the weapons inspectors to do their job, he didn't even seemed to care about resolution 1441. France, Germany, Canada aren't not "victims", but we can strongly disagree with the way America is acting with other countries. The French, in particular, were appalled by the reactions of the US against them, even if their stance was more moderate than Germany's stance on Iraq. Also, like Pangloss said, the way Bush is expressing himself cannot constitute an argument against the policy of his administration. But politics has much to do with communication, when Bush is saying, essentially, that God is on his side, that the war is a crusade, or when he's speaking about the axis of "evil", he's undermining his chance of being taken seriously.

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