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patcalhoun

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About patcalhoun

  • Birthday 01/10/1985

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  • Location
    Northeast US
  • Interests
    football, women
  • College Major/Degree
    Mathematics
  • Favorite Area of Science
    Hell, all of'em
  • Biography
    amateur writer, science enthusiast
  • Occupation
    Student

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Baryon (4/13)

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  1. It's looks bad with inline TeX, but that's the general FLRW metric. The [imath]\bar{r}[/imath] is defined as: [math]\bar{r} =\begin{cases} R \sinh(r/R), &\mbox{globally hyperbolic} \\ r, &\mbox{globally flat} \\R \sin(r/R), &\mbox{globally spherical} \end{cases}[/math] ...where [imath]R[/imath] is the radius of curvature.
  2. I believe is the point Card was trying to make is that conspiracy theories don't help ID's cause. It's an argument we should expect either from the: 1. weakest (knowledgably-speaking) critics of intelligent design, 2. or from the most authoritarian (psychologically speaking), 3. or as part of a concerted effort to frame a public policy agenda for the benefit of an audience consisting of members of the first two groups. Insofar as Card is critiquing the effectiveness of this attack, weak participants aren't useful, authoritarian ones (I'd number Dawkins--hell, maybe even me--amongst these) lack persuasive appeal, and for whatever reason the public advocates are stalling at the grass roots. I don't think Card was thinking of the last group when he wrote that, though, but I suspect group 3 fails because it apes the tactics of so-called neoconservatism's critics. Replace Paley with Strauss and you have something that comes across like tinfoil conspiracy-mongering. On the other hand, you might find a judge in the Third Circuit amenable to such a story if its the only disspositive history admitted into evidence. Another way to read Dembski's remarks is as retort to an attack on his credentials; that is not covered by what Card describes as credentialism. Offering the least favorable take of Dembski's reaction to score in a "well, they do it too" attack is also behavior I don't think Card would find especially useful. Then you have a low standard for persuasiveness [1]. A majority of Americans believe that man was created in his present form, and the next largest group excepts gene frequency change but considers either mutation or natural selection to be purposeful rather than random. Yes, the "we only mean that allele frequency changes over time" and "evolution is not abiogenesis" smirks are not very helpful. That evolution is now widely considered to include abiogenesis speaks a great deal about science educator's success in persuasively transmiting the theory. Card is referring to the "oh this is wrong and here's why...oh, everything else is wrong (hand wave) so the conclusions are wrong" approach. This is where you zone in a handful of objections and then say "oh, and there's a crapload of other problems." Maybe Card sees everybody zoning in on the same handful of issues. Maybe the lay critics need to spend more time browsing through talk.origins. Whatever the problem is, Card thinks it's not doing enough to slow down the ID movement. Me neither. This is only my personal experience, but the loudness of a lay critic on points of the law is inversely proportional to his lack of awe in his ignorance of the law and its application. I don't profess to be anymore knowledgeable about law than anyone else, but I think I know enough that impresses me how unqualified I am to look at a decision and say "this is what it means and this is how we should apply it." Yeah, which is why Card's preferred means of attacking ID isn't working on a national scale. Who the hell reads talk.origins besides (admittedly tens of thousands) of committed Internet activists? A review of ID criticism does not begin or end with Internet celebrities; arguably, it need not consider them at all. There are plenty of well funded, well publicized organizations at the national scale advancing arguments and seizing the five minutes of airtime and three paragraphs of print space this debate gets in a month.
  3. The scale factor [imath]a(t)[/imath] captures the scale of the space component (the [imath]dr^2 + \bar{r}^2d\Omega^2[/imath] stuff). The scale factor is given as 1 in the present day' date=' and if the universe is spatially flat, then the FLRW metric reduces to the polar coordinate version of the Minkowski metric (which is [imath']ds^2 = c^2 dt^2 - (dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2)[/imath] in Cartesian coordinates).
  4. patcalhoun

    Iran

    Those links were to refute bascule's claim that a cruise missile attack would be sufficient. It's borderline obvious that the inability of an airstrike to achieve the objective's effects necessitates an airland operation.
  5. There's no reference sticky at all in the Politics forum, and since we have no academic history or social science section to speak of I thought this might fit in best here. I was thinking that since there is a vast body of research in countless fields and subfields, members should start off by picking a well defined and supported area of history or social science scholarship and provide links to only open access general resources. Perhaps, if SFN ever spins off a separate section for social sciences, we can delve deeper and maybe draw on particular avenues of research. Well, I'll start off with my area of interest. Strategic Studies Globalsecurity.org - Excellent open source strategic studies repository and portal. Defenselink - DoD's information portal. Jane's Intelligence Review MIT SSP - Security Studies Program at MIT DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals (Law & Political Science) Dispatch Archive - Electronic archive of State Department's premier magazine Economic and Political Weekly Joint Force Quarterly - Check out the broader Joint Electronic Library Military Review - Combined Arms Center's bimonthly pub MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies Naval War College Review RAND Review Parameters - US Army War College quarterly Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents I'll continue to work on this one, and I'd definitely love to do one for public policy and operations research.
  6. That said, I've got a few questions. 1. Can the creationist movement achieve its objectives where science education is concerned? I suspect we'll see a movement that has the political and legal energy to secure a major reconsideration of establishment clause case law or at least craft an argument for some significant ID education program that would pass the present judiciary's muster. What do you think? 2, If creationists overcome at least the national legal hurdles, the battle in most states will turn to the legislatures and school boards. In that war of public opinion, what can secularists do to prevent a resurgence of anti-evolution pedagogy in the schools? I have no idea; I haven't thought that far ahead yet, but maybe a few of you have.
  7. It looks like you've just ended up at the Rydberg formula. How does this do away with wave-particle duality?
  8. patcalhoun

    Iran

    Okay then, I'll accept that. Fair enough. Well, we have: Source 1. Source 2. Your remarks aren't especially uninformed because you suggested an air strike. You suggested a cruise missile strikes. Tomahawks have no deep penetration ability whatsoever, and they only carry 1,000 pound warheads or nukes.
  9. patcalhoun

    Iran

    I gotta ask, and I'm only asking once. What did you get out of that snide remark to Dog? Dog at least made the connection that the only way you can present get to a bunker that deep in limestone and granite is with nukes. And, like you said, "[w]e don't need a ground invasion as much as just some cruise missile attacks." A conventional penetrator can only achieve about 300 meters per second in its terminal run. How deep can it penetrate, bascule? We don't need to go for each other's throats, and I have no intentions of taking the bait. So why don't you and I put our differences behind us and get along. And apologize to Dog. I know you're better than that.
  10. patcalhoun

    Iran

    You're the one who suggested a cruise missile strike in the first place.
  11. Its not so much philosophy as lexicography. Eternal, forever, and similar words in the vernacular doubly reference long but finite durations of time as well as the infinite interval. So the answer to his question is "pick a definition from the dictionary and get back to me."
  12. patcalhoun

    Iran

    You seem to be doing well regardless. And how do you handle facilities buried under 20 meters of limestone and granite? Tomahawks don't come equipped with jackhammers and lunchbreaks.
  13. Here's the preprint.
  14. They work. Case closed.
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