CDarwin

Nobel's will states that the Peace Prize goes to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." By the strictest reading of that definition Einstein and Nelson Mandela probably shouldn't have won it either. It seems to have become an award broadly for those who work to promote general human welfare, which you could argue Al Gore has done by making a public case for global warming. The real difficulty I see is how effective Gore has really been in making that case to the public.

Alright, I was under the impression that Everett's Many Worlds thingamajig says that the wave function doesn't collapse. Different outcomes just happen in different universes. Again, this isn't my forte at all.

Physics... or you. It depends on what you mean by the question.

It will make a backlash, I'm afraid. Gore's proved a bit too easy a target.

Obviously this isn't my area of expertise, but I've been reading a bit about "multiverses" lately in my science magazines, and of course I'd heard of this rather famous prediction of quantum theory in general sketches before. What struck me somewhat was some of the ethical questions that a multiverse of the type Everett proposes might bring up. Is anything really right or wrong if what ever action 'you' don't take some other 'you' does in some other universe? Am I making difficulties? I don't suppose it's a terribly pressing question, just a bit of a mind game.

Someone with a more sociobiological bent might say a lot of it has to do with things that were healthy and things that should be avoided during your evolutionary past. A greened vista reflects abundance and makes you think "I want to go there" because your ancestors could have gotten food there. A rotting pile of garbage reflects disease and unhealthiness, so it makes you think "Ew, stay away from that." I don't think that's a terrible explanation.

Well that's less fun. I don't think he's alive.

I think the scientists who first started making people aware of global warming 30 years ago deserve one more than him.

Who would you say to be the most influential physicist alive today? Is it possible to say?

These things move in trends, so "end our democracy" is probably a bit extreme, but low turnout certainly hurts it while it's in vogue. Low voter turn-out absolutely does correlate with bad government, though. Look at Tennessee politics in the first half of the 20th Century. 10-20% votership meant that the Crump machine could dominate state politics with just the 200,000 Memphis votes that it was able to secure by paying poll taxes and bringing benefits to the city. Now we don't have political machines anymore, but the equivilant are lobbies and interest groups like unions or the balloting believers, and low voter turnout allows these groups to dominate politics.

Doesn't that pretty much describe every conventional military?

"Who do you propose license biologists?" is the obvious question. It's just not a 'profession.' I don't know that there's much that could be done about that. Tougher entrance into graduate schools would be about the only equivalent I could think of. What is a biologist anyway? It's such a heterogeneous field with so many people from so many different backgrounds doing different things but contributing to the same broad body of knowledge. The term is one "real scientists" (by which I mean real scientists, not Creationists as you seem to be implying) aren't particularly fond of because it is awkward, as Phil noted. I would like to point out that the "people" you speak of are the same as the "real scientists" I speak of which also happen to be the same as the "Religions Atheists" you speak of who work to "conjure up evidence for evolution." This isn't a Creation/evolution debate. This is all work within the framework of evolutionary science, which makes it pretty similar to all of the rest of modern biology. You are right however, that it is improper to say that all "junk" DNA has no purpose, both because much of it does and because much of it might that we just don't know about yet.

"They" is the infallible Mrs. Sue Dunlap, master of English at Seymour High School, esteemed educator at Walter State Community College, and my Freshman Experience professor. I probably won't need 5 since I'll be going in with 25 hours of credit, but if you're starting from scratch and you want to do a major/minor (I want a double major, but that's a weird case), at her recommended 12 hours a semester you apparently need 5 years to get in all the requirements for many degrees. My point was just that the longer amount of time to get the degree isn't per se that important. If he pressed himself a little and finished up I'm sure he wouldn't be doomed forever to the depths of janitorial work just because it took him a couple of more years.

I would imagine this is an even bigger problem for people who might approach biology obliquely from a social science, like biological anthropologists or some neuroscientists. A lot of anthropology BA's have probably ended up struggling in graduate school because they couldn't handle the statistics and often advanced geometry (anthropologists love modeling those bones) that real research in biological anthropology mandates but that the mathematics general education requirements of their university and elementary statistics that the department required didn't prepare them for. Neuroscientists from backgrounds in psychology and philosophy might have the same problems; I don't know a whole lot about that field. Of course, that oblique approach addresses to an extent the other two weaknesses of biology education. Again speaking from the perspective of a biological anthropologist, I know that cell biology probably isn't going to be that useful to me, whereas evolutionary theory and population genetics probably are. It helps narrow the field a bit so less broad net-casting is required.

In the US the equivalent is probably technical school or junior college. I'm not sure where you're at, but they're beginning to tell us to expect to spend at least 5 years on most "4-year" degrees, unless you want to kill yourself with course-load every semester. Having to spend that extra time in a program may not hurt him that much, even if it is a waste of money.

"Basic duties of government" is just as bad as "civilized." It's hopelessly begging the question.

State senator. They're the people that pretty much can do anything they want since most people don't really pay attention.

Is it really always so horrible? Surely there are threads that may have terminated long ago but that a new poster might have a fresh opinion on.

An attack on the person and not on the issue. That's an ad hominem. Exactly what ecoli said:

If you'd read my rebuttal (or Talk Origins's, probably) then you'd see why it wouldn't matter if the knee cap was found in the next county (or whatever passes for counties in Ethiopia). No one but a Creationist ever said it was part of Lucy. There's a knee-slapper. Ole Jailbird Hovind, eh? If you really put stock in the ilk that pours from his mouth than I seriously doubt that anything that we say is going to unsettle you from your determined skepticism. I just want to ask one question to you MrSandman. Now I know how terribly arrogant this sounds, and I don't mean it to, and I know that it's poor argument, but I really think it's a question you have to ask yourself from time to time when you're a lay person criticizing established science: How smart do you think you are? Do you really think that because you read some websites and a high school biology textbook that you've discovered something that 150 years of science has missed? Do you really think that you're so much smarter than all the physicists and chemists and biologists and geologists that you're denying the work of here? Just something to think about. Mineral replacement leads to petrification, but not all fossils need be petrified. It's a matter of semantics, obviously.

It's not terribly, but that's an ad hominem anyway.

It would give benefits to more middle class children (400% of the poverty line) by taxing mostly lower class smokers. It's determinately regressive, and its redundant with what a lot of states do or should be doing anyway. As compelling as the "it's for the children!" argument is, I'm a bit skeptical.

I believe you're speaking of the coelacanth, and that's a strawman. No one ever said that every species that left fossils behind must also have gone extinct for evolution to have occurred. And geologists can spot those. You'd be surprised how much you can tell from an exposed rock layer with only an elementary education in what to look for. I'm not sure what you're talking about. Mammals didn't evolve from dinosaurs. Mammals evolved from the synapsid reptiles, of which the sail-backs are prominent members and likely direct ancestors of mammals. And the suggestion that there are too many "missing links" in mammalian evolution is particularly inaccurate, because the big problem in mammalian evolution is too many transitional forms. It's practically impossible to define the definitive "first mammal" on anything but pedantic grounds because of the fidelity of the continuum between the therapsid reptiles and the first mammals. A peccary actually, not a pig, there were no pigs in the New World during the Pliocene. Nebraska man was a bad example of nationalistic excess on the part of some American paleontologists who should have know better and the mistake was uncovered before the decade was out. Another strawman by Creationists, although perhaps their getting their due since Nebraska Man was actually used against them Henry Fairfield Osborn during the Scopes Trial. I do feel like I need to point out that this isn't necessarily the case. The fossils of the Miocene Age Gray Fossil Site, for example, still contain large amounts of their original bone. There are also insects preserved in amber and the remains of animals from tar pits and frozen in ice that it is proper to call fossils.

Wow, it sounds like you actually have one of those "budget" things to work with. I've always wanted to do an evolutionary anatomy dissection-lecture. You dissect some organism and discuss the evolution of each organ and muscle group and what not as you come to it.

Oh, not another one of these. Evolutionary theory makes predictions and those predictions can be confirmed by observations in nature. That's how scientific theories work. "MacroEvolution" has the same sort of basis as the atomic theory. Do you propose we stop teaching that?