Phi for All

This is more tripe from IDists. No true scientist believes in irreducible complexity. Just because something is fabulously well-suited to enhance the survival capabilities of a species, it doesn't mean it has to have an intelligent designer. It just means it's a fabulous mechanism. IDists love to talk about the "design" of the eye, only so they can say a design has to have a designer. It doesn't logically follow at all.

You conveyed your message quite well. I realized that my suggestion was not exactly what you had in mind. I believe I used words to that effect. If my passion for the subject came off as rude, then it is I who apologize. Offended? I'm not sure where I conveyed that. I actually admire you for graduating college and starting law school by the age of 18. I don't accept your apology. OK. I hope that as well.

This doll is alive. Note the hair, just like a real human woman. Note the dress; no lifeless thing would wear a dress like that. She has hands, a head and neck, and although you can't see them, she has legs and feet just like a real person. Conclusion: Barbie is a real person. Q.E.D.

Intelligent Design is not a theory. In science, an idea is only called a theory when it has been rigorously tested by scientists the world over. The scientific method is a process by which we avoid what we want to believe, to get at what is repeatable, testable and predictable. If ID was content to say that perhaps an intelligent designer used evolution (one of the most tested theories available in science) as a method, scientists could retain their skepticism but really wouldn't mind (science is more interested in how than why). But ID contradicts evolution, with bad data, misrepresentation (we didn't descend from apes, at least not modern apes; apes and man both descended from a common proto-ape ancestor) and repeated claims that have been thoroughly debunked but still get passed around. Could God have used evolution to help Earth "be fruitful and multiply" once He got things going? Sure, why not, if God exists. Could evolution have produced the biodiversity we see today in just 6000 years? Not a chance.

jsispat, please copy your URLs directly from the sites, not from the search engine links. Those ellipses (the ...) are breaking your link and sending us to advertisements. Please stop doing this.

Sorry if this isn't exactly what you had in mind, but I think a more timely issue would be patent law, and the suppression of science technology through patents. Like the fact that we don't have fully electric cars today because the patent on large format NiMH batteries is held by Cobasys, a subsidiary of Chevron. Cobasys only sells the technology to companies making hybrid cars that still use gasoline. The patent office was meant to protect inventors, not allow a company to purchase rights to an idea in order to stifle it because it would hurt their current market. If Hoover would have bought Dyson's patented technology when they had the chance, we'd still be paying millions every year on vacuum cleaner bags instead of enjoying the bagless revolution Dyson created and the rest of the industry leaped to compete with. That's what I'd like to see a bright young legal eagle take on. A free market needs competition, not suppression.

No, the post was moved to Speculations. Your idea remains speculative until it's been examined rigorously. As long as you can back up your thesis with good science, the Pseudoscience part of the sub-forum need not apply to you. The promise has always been that a good idea can be moved from Speculations to the main science boards after review. Unfortunately, most claims resort to the use of pseudoscience because they either have no maths or can't show why they solve a problem better than a current accepted solution. So it's really up to you whether you'll be damned (but if so, it will be pseudoscience that damns you, not faint praise ) Note: You've already done well not to be sucked into the "aether".

This one was not caused by the US. Before we were a country, European ships were plying the coasts of Africa and South America, sending scouts into the interior looking for metals like bauxite, copper and tin. When they found it, the next ships brought steel rails and locomotives to establish a railhead so they could bring the ore to the coast where still other ships would take the ore home. The Europeans encouraged the natives to plant bananas along the rail route and traded goods for the popular fruit. The natives changed their whole economies to take advantage of this trade. Unfortunately, when the mines played out, the Europeans pulled up the rails and loaded everything on ships headed on to the next mining site, leaving the natives with a huge supply and no demand. The natives themselves picked up the European class system of a few privileged individuals at the top, governing a huge working class of peons. So now the term Banana Republic is given to any government that has a shaky economy based on antiquated economics with a dictatorial leadership that is mostly corrupt and abuses the masses. Sorry to key on this one bit. James Burke is my favorite scientist/historian and this was the topic of a segment of one of his many PBS television shows. [/history tidbit]

Chemistry thread moved from Engineering to... um, Chemistry.

Agreed on all the rest except this, doG. I think the government is the tool being wielded badly. Corporations have too much power and they've moved beyond simple bribery and corruption. Now they're actively engaging in a reformation of the way the government deals with them. They've created yet another business partner, this one with the deepest pockets of all. We can still take the government back. I think it's obvious that our government can still oppose the mega-corps, otherwise why are the mega-corps working so hard to change it?

OK, thanks for the reply. Is it for school homework?

Why, oh why, are you resurrecting all these 2-3 year-old threads?

Hey, you guys stop dissing my new homeland. JohnB promised to make me an honorary Austrich. Which is a much better offer than I got from those guys in France, who wanted to make me an honorary Parisite.

Listen, tomas, you're going to need to give us a bit more background on this. Is this for homework? We don't do your homework for you. We can help aim you in the right direction but you need to talk to us here. What's going on?

Zero's uniqueness overrides the rule of dividing a number by itself. Imagine you have all the positive numbers in your right hand and all the negative numbers in your left. Zero sits between your two hands, representing the absence of either.

It doesn't. It's nothing, while all the other numbers represent something. Even negative numbers aren't nothing, they represent a deficit of something.

But eating cooked meat is something we've evolved to do, gradually losing the larger gut that helps other creatures digest raw meat. My point is that a cow's milk is for calves, and even they stop drinking it the same as a human infant stops drinking its mother's milk. Mother's milk (whatever the mammal) is perfect for infants but loses its effectiveness as a food source after a while. Is the milk in Israel homogenized? If not, I wonder if that's why US milk tastes "plasticky" to you. Homogenization makes the milk blander but it feels creamier on the tongue because the fat has been pulverized and spread more evenly throughout the fluid. The process has been used less than 80 years and was a marketing response from dairymen who knew they could sell more milk if it didn't separate so easily. The osteoporosis angle should be investigated. It makes sense that we'd have problems when ingesting a substance that makes our bones stronger while simultaneously adding growth hormones into our system. I haven't read all of this yet, but here is a pro/con sheet on homogenized milk. It seems to have just as many pros as cons. But we're talking about the milk you're drinking here in the US. Did you know that milk sales are subsidized by the US government? The dairy farmers have a very powerful lobby. I agree that, in moderation, milk isn't BAD (caps) but I do think homogenized milk is bad (lower case) because it changes the composition and bypasses many of our bodies natural mechanisms (which always makes me leery - we're not perfectly designed but I do respect natural mechanisms). There's a lot of conflicting studies (mostly because the dairy farmers have their own "scientists") and I wonder if we'll ever be able to answer the question, "Got proof?"

I guess the true test is that even young cows stop drinking the stuff at a certain point. No other animal drinks another animal's milk except for humans. I just don't think it's that great for us. Marketing and subsidization have insured milk its place on our tables. It's like Anita Bryant telling everyone that, "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine". That little ad campaign produced more than a few diabetics, I'm sure. At least osteoporosis will take your mind off the fact that your liver and lungs are shot.

I remember reading once upon a time that the homogenization process was suspect, breaking up the fats so they didn't separate from the water. Before homogenization, you had to shake milk up to blend the liposomes with the rest of the milk. IIRC, homogenization actually increases the amount of proteins you receive from it, which sounds like a good thing, but is not what nature intended. Like many things, nature assumes most protein hormones won't survive so milk has a lot. Homogenization also insures you'll be ingesting all the steroids the cow was given as well.

An Alsatian went to the telegraph office, took out a blank form and wrote, “Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof.” The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: “There are only nine words here. You could send another ‘Woof’ for the same price.” “But,” the dog replied, “that would make no sense at all.”

Or jsispat copy / pasted and included the ellipses used to abbreviate the link. Like calling him jizsplat when his username is jsispat? I'm reading it as js-is-pat.