Phi for All

So the smear is in the middle, rather than on the outside or inside? Wow, that is an OCD nightmare.

Stick around here long enough, and you'll stop using the word "just" in relation to hypotheses and theories. Scientific methodology turns these into the most powerful predictive tools known to man. Theory is the best you can get in science, and theory starts with an hypothesis. You're asking the wrong questions, but that doesn't necessarily mean you won't get some informative answers. I'm also very pleased that you're asking questions at all. So many people come here to overthrow science and tell us how wrong we all are. You personally are immune to attack here (it's against the rules), but we attack ideas all the time. It's what science does. We try to Big Bad Wolf your house down. If we can, it's a wrong idea. If we can't, you may have something.

OK, so not off-gassing from the dashboard. Sure, it's just Windex. You may want to try using a single edge razor blade on the outside of your windscreen to see if it can lift off whatever is causing the smear. It won't work as well as it does on windows because of the curvature of the windscreen, but if it's removable, the razor should remove at least some of it, which will let you know you're on the right track. Dish soap is surprisingly effective at cutting greasy smears, you may want to try that. Also, anything that would remove tar from an auto should remove this from windscteen glass. If none of that works, you may need to go pro. Do you have any auto detailers nearby? They must run into stuff like this all the time.

Two possibilities for what it could be. Off-gassing from the dashboard, so the smear is on the inside, or you're parking under some trees that have aphids producing honeydew. Not sure how to clean it off best, just know that wiper blades will only take you so far. If the sticky stuff isn't removed, the blades just keep spreading it around. I'm a fan of diluted ammonium hydroxide in isopropyl alcohol and propylene glycol. Also works great on cuts and pimples. I think there's some kind of physical law that dictates that all windshields will only fog up or become smeared on the driver's side. Passengers can always see perfectly. Right-side driver or left-side, makes no difference, if the windshield is going to become hard to see through, it will be the driver's side. Always.

I think happiness is aided by chemicals, but is more subtle at the same time. It seems to be more of a perspective that some people have trouble seeing, than an actual, tangible state of being. It seems to be trainable. I can do things that help me see life in a happier way. I like to take walks on a greenbelt path with my dog, and I can stop thinking about things I have to do and focus on the things I appreciate that make me happy. Little things usually, things I wouldn't necessarily observe unless I was trying, like how a Corgi's whole head seems to get bigger when he hears a great horned owl hoot in the trees above him. I know people who have to have complete quiet to make a phone call. I've trained myself to focus on just my call, so I can be in a room with a whole bunch of people on the phone and it doesn't bother me. Similarly, I think some people just let themselves be manipulated by circumstances, and they choose to be agitated by life rather than training themselves to see the things that could make them happier. It's hard for us sometimes to judge what will make us happy. I used to think I liked to drive my car, but now I'm starting to look at traffic as a system I can help make better, rather than a bunch of obstacles I have to overcome. Now I really enjoy driving, because I'm using it to get somewhere efficiently, rather than trying to beat someone to the next stop light. I'm a much more defensive driver now too, and that makes me happy. Perspective is the key, imo. It helps us find what really makes us happy, rather than what's supposed to make us happy.

We didn't start out smart and develop tools and processes for adaptation. Our brains grew a little bit more each generation along with more flexible fingers, a more upright posture, better communication and cooperative skills, and a whole host of other small improvements that, when taken all together, form the animals we are today. Removing a linchpin concept like intelligence makes the whole Jenga tower fall. If we aren't smart enough to figure out what to do with fire, our guts don't develop in a way that would let us run fast, jump, and swim. I'm not sure I see the point of removing a single attribute like this. They're all important to our development.

I used to drink too much. Twenty-three years ago I stopped, and as part of my recovery, I took a look at all the shameful things I'd done while drinking. Since then, I just try not to say anything about anyone I wouldn't say to their face. I try not to do anything I would be ashamed to have anyone know about (and no, I'm not ashamed to say I masturbate). I have no more addictions (I gave up smoking also), I've never done anything to anyone that would send me to jail. I can't think of a single secret I have that I'd lie to protect. I hate the fact that there are no positive words for a woman who likes sex, and no negative words for a man who likes sex. I'm not advocating negativity here, but I think the most negative thing I've ever heard said about a man who likes sex is to call him an "addict". People feel threatened about concepts like virtue. They fear that those who aren't virtuous will somehow sully those who are. I think the fears are probably somewhat justified, since many of those who profess virtue are the ones who fall off the wagon hardest when they do fall. But that's not the fault of others. Sometimes I think the people who consider themselves most virtuous have the most secrets to hide. As far as business secrets go, as long as they aren't hiding illegal activity, I think they mostly fall under the intellectual property umbrella. If I discover a legal process that lets me make my product or deliver my service in a way that makes it better/faster/cheaper than my competition, I see no problem ethically. The benefit to society is that my inefficient competitors will fail and clear the way for investments in other areas, leaving my business as the market leader for as long as I can maintain my innovation. Personally, although I'm a free market proponent, I think there are certain things that don't benefit from private resources. I'm not a fan of private utilities, I think energy, water, and sanitation should be publicly funded and maintained. I don't think prisons for profit work very well at all. I don't mind private companies making a legitimate profit from legal activity. But I think too many areas of our lives are being privatized in a way that makes no sense. As far as keeping good things quiet, let's take an extreme example like a new power supply. I develop a small, quiet generator that most people with a general handiness could put together for about $300, it requires nothing out of pocket to operate, and can easily power the average home. I determine that, since it's pretty simple and easily knocked off anyway, I'm going to give it to the world for free instead of trying to build a huge corporation around the product, or sell the idea to an existing corporation (one who may decide to shelve the idea to protect their existing business, like Chevron did with their large format batteries for electric cars). Almost overnight, there could be people generating their own power. Is that better for society, or should there be some kind of transition so the existing power companies can avoid firing all their workers? The free market says "Tough, suck it up", but you know the biggest energy corporations would scream for special privilege. Would they be wrong? I hate that most people assume politics = lying. I also dislike that campaign "promises" aren't held to as strict rules as regular promises. For some reason, we want that promise even though we know it probably won't get fulfilled. We don't elect that guy who says, "We're going to do everything we can to get the budget balanced". Instead, we elect the guy who swears he'll do it, even when we know he's being unrealistic. Unless we're liars, we shouldn't be represented in our government by them. I understand that some lies are necessary for security ("We have no mission planned to retrieve our citizens being held hostage"), but someone who lies about what they believe just to get the votes necessary for office isn't telling necessary lies. They're just lying.

That is a better question. Who would kick who's butt in a fight doesn't really tell us that. A tiger could kill a leopard in a fight almost every time, but leopards are much more adaptable, so the tiger is endangered while the leopard is not. There are ten times more leopards than there are tigers, lions, and cheetahs combined. But it's not the question in the title, unless being better adapted makes one more dangerous.

I try to avoid behavior I'd be ashamed for anyone to find out about. This obviates the need for most lies. To me, privacy is mostly about leaving me to my lawful business. This type of privacy isn't about secrecy, imo. If there was a definite benefit for society to know when I'm going on vacation, or what kind of security system I've installed, I wouldn't necessarily miss this type of privacy. I know of no benefit, but I do know of some detriments to NOT keeping these things private. Secrecy is for when you don't want specific people to know what you know. It's not always bad; if I don't want my favorite vacation spot overrun with other tourists, I don't tell anyone about it. Businesses have lots of legitimate secrets that help them stay profitable. But many people and businesses (yes, two separate things) need to keep illegal activity secret. Lies are obviously the big problem. Deception, compounded by secrecy. Is it ever OK for a government to lie to its people? I don't think so. I think, in every situation I can imagine, I want as much accurate information as is possible, so my decisions are informed and meaningful.

We see a great deal of evidence that Homo sapiens sapiens, modern man, predates his own ability to record history. We also see evidence they could defeat much stronger foes and survive where other species failed. To be fair, this really needs to have more context. Change the environment and you change the answer. Throw the T-rex in deep water and he's just a big tub of meat for some of the bigger marine reptiles.

I hope we've settled that the staff has no agenda to silence or censor anyone. We don't have to think about motives when it comes to moderating posts. The system we have in place assures that our personal feelings affect decisions about the rules as little as possible. It's never, ever, been about egos or opinion. It's all about the evidence, can't say it enough times. You've had a rough go here because you claim to be skeptical, but then don't change when you see the evidence start to stack up against you. That's not skepticism, that's denial, and it shouldn't have any weight as a scientific argument. Your point of view hasn't been censored, it just hasn't been supported. And when we continue to ask you to support it, you don't, and you don't back away from it either. That's very frustrating in a discussion, more so because I think you're kind of proud of not backing down, or have some reason why you can't. Something is causing you to be a bit irrational about the way you defend your stances. You aren't listening to all the reasonable arguments, and you aren't providing enough to support your own. You still think it's about believing or not believing. It's about looking at the evidence rationally, looking at the methods used to obtain it, looking at the collaborative efforts to explain what's been observed. It's not a search for truth, it's a search for the best current explanation, the one with the most support from objective reality, the most trustworthy.

People don't need a god to do good things. In fact, I would say the truly good people are the ones who do good without the threat of eternal punishment. People are horrible witnesses, and people near death would be even worse, so I wouldn't trust them to be accurate about seeing paradise. Personally, I think the idea of the universe happening on its own, with no designer, is a fantastic thing. It means we're here on a planet at just the right distance from our sun, with just the right mix of chemicals to form life and develop the biodiversity we see after billions of years. That's awesome to me, I'm happy to be here and be a part of it. I also think humans are the only species Earth is going to have in the next million years or so capable of leaving the planet to spread our biodiversity elsewhere. People are the best hope of spreading the only life we know of. Like you, I'm sure there is more life in the universe, but we've seen no evidence yet, and evidence is the only thing we can really trust, in a world with tens of thousands of conflicting religious beliefs.

I had a similar problem with hammers. Worthless, useless, stupid tool that doesn't work no matter how I grip the handle with my teeth....

I think Benedict XVI used to be known as Hare Ratzinger....

Have you understood the links to other literature about DNA and evolution? Because what you ask here has already been answered. We're most closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos, our DNA differs from theirs by only 1.2 - 1.3%, compared to about a 1.6% difference between humans and gorillas. Now imagine about 6 or 7 million years ago, there was a common ancestor to both humans and chimpanzees. That ancestor species split off, some staying in the trees, some venturing out onto the plains. Some of our ancestors on the plains discovered that walking upright freed their hands up for tool use, and they also discovered the uses of fire. Meanwhile, the ancestors that stayed in the trees felt different survival pressures, and developed in other ways. Eventually, the ancestor species died off, leaving multiple, slightly different versions of itself in different climates and environments, some developing into chimpanzees, some into bonobos, and some into the genus homo, the first humans. There were several species within the homo genus, but they also died off, leaving a single dominant species, homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans. DNA shows us how much we have in common with all other vertebrates, and more specifically with all other mammals, even more specifically with all primates, and the most specifically with chimpanzees and bonobos. The differences in the DNA sequences shows us how closely we're related to other species. We're at least 92% similar to every other mammal, but we only share about 44% of the genes insects have. We even share an 18% similarity with plants, which are hugely different, but some of the genes we use are identical to a tree's. This is a really simplified version, I hope that's what you needed.

"The brain's not a tool, so you are the fool." --Phi for All, That's The Way I Like It And btw, you're misusing the term "logic". What you mean is "stuff I made up that only makes sense to me". That's worse than just being wrong or not reading your own links.

We see this happen far too much. It seems in line with the rigor-free attitude towards science that many theory-deniers display, but at a certain point it's a little demeaning to think that these folks aren't bothering to read their own supporting links, so they certainly aren't reading yours in refutation.

I heard you were swinging astronomers around, and that's how the cat died in the first place.

It seems like an attempt to discredit the validity of the Big Bang Theory that, um, blew up in his face. It can be embarrassing to criticize the brains of others and then not read the article you base your criticism on.

There are no new creationist claims. The information at TalkOrigins hasn't been updated because nothing has changed with reality. Evolution still works, we see it every day.

! Moderator Note Excellent! I'm always glad when these speculations are resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Thread closed.

That's why I think it's important to interrupt and ask for acknowledgement. It's more difficult to do here, where multiple posters and time lag can throw off your focus, but talking face-to-face with Dad it should be fairly easy to stop him from asking another question until he acknowledges the answer to the first. When possible, it's also good to remind Dad that he can NEVER use these arguments again, once they've been answered and acknowledged. I'm sure he doesn't want to be intellectually dishonest, right?

Tell him there's nothing wrong with "question everything". Where he's making his mistake is not listening to the answers when he asks the questions. As I said before, a true skeptic questions everything, until he sees the preponderance of evidence favor a certain explanation. Then he accepts it, because it's the most likely and best supported. When Dad tries to <insert new question>, you need to say, "Stop! Before we move to the next question, can you please acknowledge my answer to this one?" Don't let him bury you with his talking points, make sure to deal with each one individually. That's all creationism has, really, just a bunch of individual threads that are easy to snap. Evolution's evidence weaves in and around so many other accepted theories, it forms a tapestry that no one has been able to successfully tear apart.

You're most welcome to discuss science here, lots of friendly people with lots of questions. That's what everyone comes here for. You might have better luck somewhere else with the Skype request. We like discussions with lots of participants and viewers. I'm so sorry about your other friends hating science. It wouldn't have worked out well with them, since you're going to continue to get smarter, and they're going to fall off the edge of the world if they get too close.

Concise, well-supported answers to a very specific question. I think we're done here.