Cap'n Refsmmat

Show me a picture of one. Or video. Hmm. I can propose a test. Suppose I have some organisms. I introduce a chemical that kills most of the organisms. Using evolution, I'd predict that after some time, all of the organisms that are vulnerable to the chemical will be dead, and the rest will have gotten more and more immune. After a sufficiently long time, the chemical will not kill the organisms at all. What have we here? Antibiotic resistance, observed in numerous strains of bacteria. Hmm. How about another one? Suppose I put some organisms in an environment with several kinds of food. They can only digest one kind of food there, and they eat it and thrive. Using evolution, I'd predict that if one of the organisms develops the ability to eat more than one kind of food, it'll get ahead, because it gets to eat food that no other organism eats -- so there's plenty of food for it. Guess what! It's the Lenski experiment, exactly, and Lenski has the actual bacteria frozen away in petri dishes for you to examine under a microscope. Or another one? Suppose we have an insect that lives in a certain environment. Suppose humans build a new environment -- say, underground tunnels. Some of this insect get into the new environment and adapt. Years later, they've adapted so much they no longer breed with the original insects. What's this? Why, it's the London Underground mosquito, Culex pipiens molestus. In each of these examples, you can get samples of the actual organisms in question. You can perform whatever experiments you want on them. You can look at them under microscopes. (Lenski froze samples of his bacteria from every stage in the process, and analyzed the genome of many samples. You can get some of his samples if you have a lab and a freezer capable of handling them.) But you won't get video of it happening in real-time. The Lenski experiment has been running for 22 years, or 50,000 generations. Try videotaping that.

cabinintheforest, why are photos and videos the only acceptable evidence? If you were to apply this standard to all empirical observation, most of science would be out the window. Along with most science done before 1900. In fact, if I had video evidence of evolution taking place in just a few minutes or hours, that would falsify our current theories of evolution -- because they require timescales of thousands of years. But if you want a photo, here you go: http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/citrate2008/citrateflasksphotos.html That beaker that's all cloudy inside is cloudy because it evolved to eat the citrate in the medium, so there's loads more bacteria than there are in the others.

What sort of video evidence are you expecting? A video of a cow giving birth to a Komodo dragon?

Although, with reputation, you'll just as often get members who are known for being witty as you'll get members who are actually helpful.

Depends on the state. Some allow for hardship permits if you can demonstrate extenuating circumstances, but I don't know what the criteria are.

There's plenty of frequency bands reserved for radio astronomy that cannot be used for commercial purposes. (Far more than is reserved for public radio broadcasting, for example.) They're reserved to prevent interference with astronomical observations.

The symptoms you describe really do sound like the side effects of an antipsychotic. However, they also can be side effects of Sereupin (paroxetine or Paxil generically) and the drug label says you should see the doctor immediately if you experience them. So, as -Demosthenes- says... ask the doctor if Sereupin might be causing it. I have no idea how long side effects should last, but you don't want to risk serious problems.

Indeed, but again, this isn't what Lipsky was talking about. But it's much more interesting than what he was talking about, so let's run with it. What other competitors are there at the moment? I seem to recall CNN operating (or providing content for) AM radio stations, and it seems they do satellite radio now as well. There are some shortwave competitors as well: Voice of America (though it's federally run), the BBC World Service, Radio Netherlands, and so on. (I've listened to each via shortwave at some point or another.) Interestingly, all are publicly funded one way or another... If competition with NPR were more viable, each of these services could likely sell its content more easily. And everyone who broadcasts on Sirius or XM for news (Fox, MSNBC, CNN) could presumably adapt their satellite radio lineup to be syndicated by broadcast radio stations. It would be interesting. The mainstream television channels could move in to radio syndication, should they deem it profitable, and NPR would hit serious competition. But is the audience big enough to motivate the big channels to do it? Does NPR have a big enough fan base to prevent it? This reminds me, I ought to dig out the shortwave radio again and listen to some Radio Netherlands...

NRP isn't a broadcaster. They do not operate radio stations. They do not operate television stations. They do not operate print media. They are not like Fox News or the WSJ. Lipsky's article focuses solely on the money NPR gets from the CPB. NPR affiliates (i.e. radio stations that buy content from NPR) get free radio broadcast licenses from the FCC, but they are not NPR. They just purchase its content. So, if the government withdrew its support for NPR, very little would change. If the CPB ceased to exist, very little would change. NPR would charge a little bit more for its content and its clients would raise a little bit more money in fund drives. Now, if we want to talk about things Lipsky didn't mention, then sure, if public radio broadcasters had to pay for their broadcast licenses, public broadcasters would have less motivation to buy their content solely from NPR. With no motivation to choose public radio producers like NPR over commercial sources, they may just choose to syndicate other content. But this isn't what Lipsky is talking about.

Yes, then you patronize him and are surprised when he gets annoyed at you. Cut it out, everyone. We're only 7 posts into this discussion and people are already getting uncivil, in nasty personal ways. If you have a problem with anyone, take it to me. Flaunting it in public just makes things worse.

Mostly because NPR doesn't have any access to airwaves at all, because it doesn't broadcast. They don't need licenses to not broadcast.

There's the +/- thing by each and every post.

We partnered very early on in the existence of RatSkep. Once I'm done with my exam and my physics homework I'll take a wander through their site and see how things have changed.

The behavior I most often see leading to trouble in debates is reading ulterior motives into your opponents posts. The RatSkep crowd insists on the ad hominem attack "he's just trying to advance his secret homophobia by proposing this plan" and makes only a few points about your actual post. (I believe the most relevant comment was that it'd be tough for marriage contracts to be legally binding -- but that's an implementation detail that can presumably be solved.) I particularly enjoyed the bit where you said "the state shouldn't recognize marriage" and they said "ah! so you only want churches to recognize marriage! it's all part of your devious plan!" I do agree with you that the moderation there is terrible (at least, from this one sample I've glanced through). No debate should descend to that level and stay open.

Allow me to test this. I'll come back and double-post in a moment. Test. Hmm, nope. Merged posts are updated with the timestamp of the latest post. However, if you merely edit a post, rather than merging a new one into it, the timestamp is not updated. If you want the post to appear new, just make a new post in the thread, rather than editing your old one.

If you'd like, I can reduce the processes that store and retrieve information in a NAND flash system down to the constituent electrons trapped in each NAND cell. How exactly do you propose that these common information-storing systems do not store the information via a configuration of mechanical or physical parts? NAND cells store information by the storage of electrons; hard disks store information as a result of magnetic field orientation, which is a result of the orientation of various structures inside the metal platter; DNA stores information in the material of its base pairs. Are you proposing that, despite information-retrieval mechanisms using these material properties to read out information, the information is somewhere else?

All you do is see a problem in the code that needs to be fixed, or a feature people want added. Fix the problem, write some code, and send it in. They don't care who you are, so long as your code makes sense and is useful. There isn't usually a formal team that you have to join before being allowed to write code.

Open-source software is developed almost exclusively in teams. There's some open-source physics simulation software, as well as open-source 3D visualization programs for a variety of purposes. Take a look around. Often they'll have development mailing lists where you can follow the development process, send suggested patches, and report bugs.

creationist, if you really think this is an acceptable level of civility for the forums, please do us a favor and re-read the forum rules.

Interesting. After I upgrade to the latest version of the forum software (there's an update out to fix various bugs), I'll try this again, and if it still happens, I'll file a bug report with the software makers.

True, assuming the moon's density is uniform. True, if we're not talking about a hollow moon. If you have a hollow shell and you move around inside the hollow space, there will be 0 net gravitational force anywhere. Once you start traveling through the solid parts, you will begin feeling gravity as you described. Yup. Not quite, as I described above. See the shell theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem

Hmm. Google tells me its prey sometimes includes bees and wasps. It also has its own neurotoxin to deploy... and there's a picture here of one eating a bird. I think this will be an interesting battle. Keep us posted.

Have you been able to figure out what kind of spider it is? That could play a large role in how effective it is against wasps. If it normally eats very small things, I'm sure its web would have a hard time stopping a wasp.

I suppose it depends. If those are anything like the gigantic wasps of doom we get here in Texas, I doubt they'd be stopped by a spider of any size. But if they're smaller, and the spider gets out of the way and lets them all get caught up in the web, it has a shot.

I'll see if I can put a link up next to "View New Content" in the top bar, where it's noticeable.