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1. Because we don't have enough troops to garrison the whole country like we need to in order to fight this type of insurrection. Nor do we have enough spec ops forces to deal with the insurgency that way. 2. Beause of the lack of troops, there apparently is still pretty much free movement within the country. So the insurgents simply move from where the US troops are to where they aren't. 3. Because the situation in Iraq is not simply us vs al-Qaeda. Instead, it is Sunni vs Shiite, Shiite vs Kurd, Kurd vs Sunni, and Sunni vs Kurd, Baathist vs republican, and lots of people against the USA. I heard a story this week on NPR where, in one Sunni town, the people had gotten fed up with al-Qaeda and turned against them. The local US commander had helped the Sunnis form and arm a militia to fight al-Qaeda. The local Iraqi commander -- a Shiite -- strongly opposed it. So we have good news on one hand, but bad news as now the Shiites want us gone. So what? Have you ever heard of a war that stopped because weapons were destroyed. Combatants always get new weapons. And yet the attacks continue. By the data, the intelligence isn't that good, is it? As you noted, the Democrats have tied themselves to getting out of Iraq. Ironically, if the situation improves, doesn't that argue for pulling troops OUT? After all, that is the reason the Brits used for decreasing their troop strength earlier this year: things were so quiet in the South that they didn't need the troops. So, if Petraeus' report is positive and progress has been made, then that strengthens the argument for turning security over to the Iraqis and pulling the US troops out! What excuse would Bush and the Republicans have for continuing the high number of US troops? Quite frankly, it looks like a win-win for the Democrats. If the report is negative, then the troops should come out because we can't "win". If the report is positive, then the troops come out because we did "win" and the troops aren't needed anymore. I think the Republicans have backed themselves into a no-win corner.

I'm not in England and haven't heard much news about it, so cannot vouch for the accuracy of the statement. Second-hand smoke is a health problem for others. Going by the "your freedom to swing your arm ends at my nose" principle, I can see forbidding smoking in enclosed public areas. I would also think smokers would be considerate of the harm to others and not smoke outdoors when someone else is going to get a good dose of cigarette smoke. However, if they want to poison themselves in private, who am I to say otherwise?

In order for al-Qaeda to win its war, the USA must be stupid enough to make all Islam the enemy. That is, al-Qaeda must convince Muslims that the USA is against Islam. If that happens, then the West is grossly outnumbered in people and then al-Qaeda can turn this into a conventional war and actually militarily defeat the West. It can't do that by terrorist tactics. Actually, a membership of over 2,000 sounds large to me. I don't think real al-Qaeda membership is that large. The problem is that someone has to exert sovereignity over the region and arrest/fight/kill al-Qaeda and destroy the camps. And stay around so the camps aren't reestablished. That happened in Afghanistan with the new government actively fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In Pakistan, it is going to have to be the tribes in the region or the central Pakistani government. We have the ability to raid the camps, but not the ability to establish a permanent military and civil presence. It is reasonable to question ALL candidates on their stance on defense. As we see in Iraq, you can err on being too warlike, too. Again, if we are going to reasonably address the issue, we have to look deeper. 1) Carter tried the military option. The military failed Carter, not the other way around. Any invasion to rescue the hostages after the aborted attempt would just have gotten them killed. The failure of the military left Carter with no choice but to pursue diplomacy. 2) It was the Republicans who opposed intervention in both Iraq and Kosovo and limited Clinton to "no fly zones" and bombing in Kosovo. As it happens, both tactics accomplished the results desired -- with minimal military involvement. Yes, we could have invaded Serbia, but that would have ended just as badly as invading Iraq has. Clinton got his objectives achieved. 3) I will say this again: we have overreacted to the "danger" of al-Qaeda. We are so afraid of Americans (us as individuals) being killed that we have let that fear rule our response and cloud our judgement. al-Qaeda can kill some Americans, but al-Qaeda cannot destroy the USA. So, based on the actual threat posed by al-Qaeda in the 1990s (and even now in the 2000s), Clinton's response was appropriate. Invading Afghanistan to get at Bin Lauden then would have been disastrous. In the event, the USA didn't invade Afghanistan, but used local allies and supported them with air power directed by special forces. In my very strong opinion, people are so scared that they might be killed in a terrorist attack that they have lost all judgement and are advocating policies to keep them "safe" that are disastrous. We're all going to die eventually, people. What we, as supposed patriots, are supposed to care about is the USA, not our individual skins. Yes, it must be asked. And we as a society must have the discussion about what we consider moral and appropriate to defend ourselves. There is no good answer here. We are using a double standard in regard to this hypothetical about Pakistan. We would never tolerate military action on our soil by a foreign power, even when they claim "self-defense". In fact, look at the Irish Republican Army in the 1970s and 1980s. They used the USA to buy weapons, get funds, recruit operatives, and plan operations. Yet we would never have permitted Britain to send planes and bomb a house where IRA members were known to be! Basically, our argument is "we can do this because we have the power and you don't" Am I against in incursion into Pakistan? No. But I'm not going to delude myself that I am not in a morally ambiguous area and am not using a double standard. See above. No, a nation does NOT have "every right". Our rights stop at the border of another sovereign nation. We are proposing to ignore that. However, don't delude yourself that we have "every right and reason" here, because some day that is going to come back and bite you in the ass. That caveat can't be met. Remember, many members of al-Qaeda are Pakistani citizens. And there is always collateral damage. So, if you are really serious about this "as long as ...", then we can't ever act. That's an oxymoron if ever there was one! And this is a problem with a lot of people on this subject. The supposition is that killing a few leaders will stop al-Qaeda. How stupid can you get! Doesn't anyone read ANY history? It is the idea/movement that you have to kill. If you kill a leader, then next one in line steps forward to take his place. You can hope the replacement isn't as competent as the guy he replaced, but then again, he might be MORE competent. Well, not "deniable". If a bomb drops out of the sky, it's pretty sure the USA did it. However, the key here is that most Pakistani people are not bothered, so they can forgive the intrusion into their soveriegn territory. Please don't be so naive. Israel has been trying this for years, but still ends up being criticized for it. The issue is how severe the criticism is and whether the long term harm is greater than the short term gain of getting rid of a few al-Qaeda leaders. An alternative would be to insert some spec ops teams to laser-designate training bases etc for more massive airstrikes. But again, the only long term solution is for Pakistan to assert actual civil and military control over the area. The facts on the ground are simply that Musharef cannot do so at this time. The action would offend politically powerful members of his country and could lead to his ouster.

Pangloss touched on it; it's a silly comparison. And you didn't define what you meant by "worse". The rank and file creationists are simply people who have made a tragic logical mistake and ended up facing a spiritual crisis. Therefore they have rejected the science that led them to the spiritual crisis. I can't get too upset at them for this; scientists have been doing the same thing. In fact, scientists have a very similar emotional response when the creationist arguments get down to saying science is a faulty method of knowing. The professional creationists are another matter. I put them in the same moral category that I put especially viscious con men; the ones that con the elderly out of their entire life savings, for instance. Homophobia is more about feelings of inadequacy in the homophobe and power manipulation. Interesting you should look on it that way. Look how homophobia is being used: to discriminate against people. As Western society matured and discrimination against other races and women became unacceptable, we see the shift to discrimination against homosexuals. It appears that there are people who have a pschological need to feel superior to some group. Now homosexuals and illegal immigrants are the groups. [quote If you are going there, I suggest you focus on the common denominator to both creationism and homophobia in the West: Fundamentalism. This is a new religion that identifies itself as "Christian" but is not. It is sneaking into Christianity and taking it over from the inside unless the Christians opposing it manage to stop it. One of Fundamentalism's main creeds is an inerrant, literal Bible. It is this creed that fuels the sexism, creationism, and homophobia within the religion. I've heard this from every other homosexual I've known. And it is consistent with my experience of never making a conscious choice to be heterosexual. I had my first crush on a girl in 1st grade and it was NOT a conscious choice. The genetic data are very strong that sexual orientation is determined by your alleles. In fruit flies, change the alleles on one of at least 3 genes and you convert heterosexuals to homosexuals.

Yes. It also depends on the size and duration of the incursion. An air strike would be visible, but it doesn't last long and thus the violation to Pakistan's sovereignity can be forgotten by Pakistanis. It also depends on location. Even if the incursion is by, say, a brigade force but is up in the remote mountains on the border with Afghanistan and doesn't get anywhere near the major population centers of Pakistan, it can also be downplayed and the Pakistanis might be able to forgive. But whoever said that a delicate balancing act must done weighing the benefits/costs hit the nail on the head, IMO. Would the possible outrage in the Islamic world -- and thus sympathy for al-Qaeda -- outweigh the benefit of taking out a few "high value" leaders? With the example of strategic stupidity of the invasion of Iraq in mind, I have no confidence that the NCA can make an intelligent and correct assessment and decision. It may, but we are interested in reality, not the misperception of reality by a segment of the population, aren't we? On one extreme you have those who favor any and all military action. On the other extreme are those who oppose any and all military action. Those 2 extremes don't help anyone reach a rational and reasonable decision on the costs/benefits of any particular military action, do they?

First, let's get this accurate! Obama said he would violate the sovereignity of Pakistan, not "invade" Pakistan. Those are 2 very different things. An invasion involves deliberate and intentional conflict with the armed forces and government of the nation. Obama would send in spec ops or an air strike to get at al-Qaeda. Who is obviously not either the government nor armed forces of Pakistan. This is a violation of Pakistan's sovereignity in that we are using armed force in their territory without the permission of the government. If the Pakistani armed forces find out, their obligation is to "defend" their country, even if the force is directed at people/organization that they themselves have declared enemies/criminals. So let's discuss the rationality and morality of a violation of sovereignity, not "invade". "Invade" simply has us discussing a strawman. I agree. I have always stated that, in the war against al-Qaeda, the USA lost a major battle the moment we invaded Iraq. The troops didn't lose the battle, but the NCA did. Supporting the Afghan opposition to the Taliban was an appropriate strategy against al-Qaeda. It deprived them of a safe haven. Invading Iraq gave them that safe haven back, as well as providing a huge recruiting bonus.

What I see the politician doing is saying: this is wrong for you to do but OK for me to do. After all, if the politician considered it wrong at all, he would not do it! That is exactly what is happening: attaching a moral value judgement to legality. IOr rather, attaching legality to a moral judgement. For instance, we think cheating people is immoral. So we make laws saying CEO's cannot cheat stockholders (Enron). But then we have the problem with you, as a future politician, not having respect for the law. That you smoke off the job shows that you don't think you are bound by the laws you pass, because you don't think you are bound by the laws NOW. IOW, since marijuana is illegal now, we have you smoking marijuana and that shows you think some laws can be disobeyed. So, when you get into office, how do we trust you not to obey other laws -- such as those against taking bribes? Yes, he has. Partly this comes down to trying to judge the candidate's job qualifications on whether he is going to restrict MY freedom, and use the power of the state to do so. Yes, he is restricting the freedom of his son, but using his personal power. There is a huge difference between that and using the power of the state. So, if he says gay relationships are illegal but maintains a secret gay lover, then he is using the power of the state to restrict the freedom of others (while trying to secretly enjoy such freedom himself). That's one place where we are talking past each other. I'm talking beyond this to responsible use of power, restricting freedom of others while enjoying that freedom yourself, and respect for law. You have a much more limited criteria: will the politician do what he specifically promised on the campaign trail? You just contradicted yourself, since you did point out where "deserve" has something to do with the law -- a driver for it. Back to respect for the law. Also, you forget that HE is a member of the "public". You say it's good for "us" but, since he doesn't really think it "wrong", why is he restricting our freedom of choice? IOW, if the politician thinks the behavior doesn't affect anything important -- such as his ability to perform the job -- then why is it so damaging that there must be a law forbidding it? You can't have it both ways. You can't argue that the law is for the "public good" but the politician thinks the behavior is bad for him. Depends on what the morality is. If someone is preaching the morality of tolerance and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", I don't have a problem with that. Do you? If so, why?

How do you know in China all the intelligent people worked for the government? You are confusing social status with intelligence. And you are ignoring that Mao, in the Cultural Revolution, sent a lot of intelligente people to the farms! You contradicted this when you said: First you say intelligence and knowledge are not the same, but then you equate the 2. You have no reason to say our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not as smart as we are UNLESS you say they don't know as much as we do. Otherwise, they are just as smart. After all, who invented language? Our hunter-gatherer ancestors! Washington was very smart. It needed a smart person to 1) figure out a strategy to defeat the British and 2) find improvisations to keep his army fed and supplied. Again, you are confusing intelligence with occupation. Getting into a particular occupation does not equal intelligence. After all, you say "teachers were really valued". That means that people would try to get their relatives into teaching -- no matter how intelligent they were. However, animals have invented. I remember looking at documentaries showing how macaques invented new ways to separate sand and grain. One genious female macaque took the mixture the the shore and dropped it into the water. Sand sank, the kernels of grain floated! The other macaques were intelligent enough to copy the invention. So now you have overlap of intelligence based on your between humans and animals and you have lost your "smooth progression". After all, there are lots of things macaques cannot comprehend -- such as language -- but they invent. It's not that you used an "ambiguous" word, but rather that "intelligence" itself is ambiguous. Back to the OP. Which of your 3 sections is tested by standardized tests, including IQ? Or are all 3 tested? Interestingly, you say teachers in China were the most intelligent. But they didn't invent, did they? How would that compare to a farmer that invented a new way to plow his/her field? By your 3 sections, the farmer would be more intelligent than the teacher.

The quote is from creationists. The idea is that the proof-reading process is too complex to have evolved. BTW, this should be in "Evolution". I've bolded the parts that tell you are dealing with a creationist: "explain to us how the process of evolution advanced so as to let the following occur-- DNA replication requires a high degree of fidelity in order to preserve the genetic code in daughter cells and prevent lethal mutations. This high fidelity is accompanied by 3' to 5' proof reading exonuclease activity of DNA which removes one nucelotide at a time from the end of a DNA chain. Yet there is just one enzyme specifically which executes the process from the 5' to 3' position to allow exonuclease acitvity which facilitats, or I should rather say functions to remove the RNA primer, which enzyme is that? and how did it evolve sentience to be aware of its very specific function? further why would a process that works hard to maintain that high fidelity allow at some point for many a random mutation whose very nature, we are not quite sure of to allow for this 'budding' so to speak from a primogenitor into such things as butterflies, and rabbits, fishes and trees, lizards and humans, stars and glaxies, lakes and mountains etc etc etc.. " No enzyme is "aware of" its specific function. Rather, those cells that had the proof-reading had fewer mutations and thus produced more viable offspring. As to "allow a mutation", no system can be 100% accurate. The second law of thermodynamics forbids it. Any and every system is going to have errors. What you have here is a standard creationist mish-mash of evolution, throwing up supposed problems but in reality making a strawman of evolution and then tearing it apart.

DUH! Our technology gives us the ability to destroy ecosystems. That is due to our intelligence and tool-making, which gives rise to our technology. We are actually adapted to living in a warm climate. We can't survive without technology in most of the places humans live today. Our chronospecies evolved in a geographical area of east Africa. That is, if you go back to the species that are the direct ancestors of H. sapiens (H. erectus and then H. habilis), all the evolutionary changes happened in east Africa. Population pressure then forced tribes of the species to leave the area and settle elsewhere. However, within the east Africa ecosystem, the species Homo were generalists. They were omnivores and never specialized in teeth or other morphology for a particular food source. Think of rats today; they are also generalist omnivores. And rats get along in many different ecologies because of this. There was a branch -- the genus Paranthropus -- that were herbivores and perhaps specialized herbivores. When the climate of east Africa changed they went extinct. Without technology, we are specialized for a warmer climate. Not much fur to keep us warm in if the temperature drops. We are also not adapted to deserts; we lose way too much moisture by sweating. So, again without technology, we are evolved for a warm climate where water is plentiful. of course most other species could not! We survived because of our technology. Species of Homo are the only ones that have reached that level of technology.

You are right, of course. The politicians did screw around with the summary statement for the politicians and there was quite a stink. Several scientists walked out and some said they would never work with the IPCC again due to the interference of politicians trying to water down the conclusions. China wanted the number of projected deaths made vague, and the certainty was higher than 90%. However, in terms of what MangoChutney wants, this makes the statement weaker for anthropogenic climate change than what the scientists think it should be. So MangoChutney can trust any statements for GW, knowing that scientists feel the changes should have been stronger. I find the SciAm article very convincing. The first figure looking at the contributions of various factors on forcing temperature change blows away SkepticLance's oftstated claim that solar activity is greater than human activity. The graphs on modeling also blow away any claims that they are unreliable, since they match the existing data very well. I haven't been able to copy any figures and graphs out of the PDF for pasting here. I'm hoping someone else will have more luck.

The IPCC website is unbiased and unpolitical. Politicians have tried to mess with the data (people who share your view), but the scientists have put the data there. You can also go to the July Scientific American and see a reliable, unbiased, hones, and unpolitical articles summarizing the work of climatologists to date: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=B1182F51-E7F2-99DF-30CB2EAAC975FE93 Water vapor isn't going to account for the increase observed in average temperature. Remember, there is only so much water vapor the atmosphere can hold, so there is an upper limit. Is it "insufficient" to determine that global warming is happening? Or is it just "insufficient" in terms of understanding the exact paleoclimate of the area? When you talk of data, you must always keep in mind the hypothesis being discussed. In this case, if you read carefully, you will find the "insufficient" refers to only an auxiliary hypothesis, not the major one: anthropogenic global warming. What flood? I have seen articles that there were settlements 8,000 years ago on parts of the North Sea now flooded, but the data I've seen says that the "North Sea" flooded over a period of 12,000 years (18000 - 6,000 years ago) as the Ice Age ended. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6584011.stm So this is about the $$. Not about the science. You are trying to confuse the science issue so the $$ doesn't have to be spent. Thanks for making your agenda clear.

Did you read my response? You are dealing with ONE paper and how they stated it, not "we call this theory ... if it asserts". As I noted, neutral theory is not stated as the authors of the paper stated it. Yes. You can look at this paper that measured deleterious mutation rate == lethal or adversely affecting lifespand and reproduction: PD Keightley and A Caballero, Genomic mutation rates for lifetime reproductive output and lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3823-3827, 1997 This study documents the rate of deleterious mutations in the worm C. elegans. Because they are hermaphroditic, the authors were able to separate the worms and run parallel populations descended from a single individual. By maintaining independent sublines, the effect of selection could be minimized, and thus the deleterious mutations could be kept in the population. Lethal mutations are still lethal, but the experimental design allows accumulation of deleterious mutations (as well as neutral mutations) and then the effect on lifespan and production of viable offspring, both of which are measurements of fitness. The estimated deleterious mutation rate per haploid genome (the whole organism) was 0.0026, or 2.6 per thousand. This is about 100 fold *less* than previously found for Drosophila. All in all, deleterious mutation rates are very low, considering that total mutations are about 1 per genome (individual).

Of course they are. For instance, the IQ tests on the web look for pattern recognition by saying France is to Europe as India is to ... and then give you choices, one of which is the continent "Asia". Guess what, that is culturally biased to a Western education system to give you the basic facts to recognize a pattern! Another problem solving question involves figuring distances by saying "A car travels south for 15 minutes at 60 miles per hour ... " Guess what? You need basic math and the culture to solve that. A !Kung tribesman is that takes time from positions of the sun is not going to know that 15 minutes is 0.25 hours. So if you are going to compare intelligence in populations from "geographically isolated" regions, that also means you have different cultures in those regions! Now, if you had an IQ test for !Kung and it asked you to solve a problem such as "village A is 12 goongs from you and it is noon, would you arrive in time for dinner?" you and I couldn't answer it correctly. For one thing, we don't know the distance of a "goong". Because (and the Bell Curve) have a distorted notion of what "every other heritable trait" is. Most traits are polygenic -- that is, they are the result of many genes. It is the combination of alleles that gives the trait. And, in a very important sense, intelligence does follow the path of every heritable trait: you have a broad bell-shaped curve for every population. Those curves overlap since all human populations can interbreed. BUT, until you can get a precise definition so that you can accurately measure the trait, the studies comparing different poplations simply can't be done. Your error in determining "intelligence" can make differences appear that don't exist. It's not like measuring height or body mass. The Bell Curve was written when such a definition -- and the corresponding measurements -- don't exist. The non-verbal tests still assume cultural equality. Even your description of it -- "Alfred Hitchcock-like" -- assumes that we share a culture so that we know what that phrase means! Not all cultures have the same non-verbal cues or responses. Farmers aren't intelligent? You ever try to be a successful farmer? This illustrates how different people define "intelligent". You look at technology and occupation. Are you seriously going to tell us that our hunter-gatherer ancestors weren't as smart as we are? Or that Washington and Jefferson were not intelligent because they were "farmers"?

Pioneer, that smoking causes lung cancer is a theory. It's just that you are stating it wrong. The theory does NOT state that smoking causes lung cancer in every person who has ever smoked a cigarette. Instead, cancer is known to be a complex etiology and that individuals vary. Also, cancer itself is a stochastic process. Not all cells, exposed to the same chemicals, react the same. Stochastic processes are accomodated in science. For instance, all of quantum mechanics involves stochastic processes. If you have 1,000 C14 molecules and wait for a half-life, you will not ALWAYS see 500 of them decay. Sometimes it will be 499 and sometimes 501. Does that invalidate radioactive decay? No. So, given a population of 1,000 people with a 20 pack year history of smoking, the theory says that X% will develop lung cancer. This is backed not only by what you mistakenly call "empiricism" -- which in this case is retroactive epidemiological studies -- but also by studies on cells in culture where the effect of cigarette smoke as a whole and specific chemicals within that smoke are tested for their effects. It is observed that the effects are "harmful" to the cells in that they disrupt several cell processes. See? this is where you mistate the theory. You made a strawman and now you are knocking it down. Have fun, but you aren't touching real science or the real theory. Nonsense. In dealing with biology, one of the very well know facts is individuals vary. No group of individuals is going to react identically to ANY compound or stimulus. So biology always accomodates this by including the error bars. However, by the time the studies get to the media and policy is made from them, the theory gets simplified. You are arguing against the simplified situation, not reality. Of course, I don't have much hope you will actually listen to this. I explained this in another thread of yours and you posted this one as tho that one did not exist. sigh. We've been over this. Yes, science is the study of the physical universe and, as such, it is about finding out how the universe actually works. In that sense, science is about "the truth". And science is NOT "a method". Science uses many methods. The most common one is the hypothetico-deductive method. Uh, yes, they do. The conclusions have to be consistent with the data. Now, new data can come along that causes you to change the conclusions. This is "intersubjectivity". It is necessary, but I would not equate it to "quality science". Quality in science involves a lot more than that. If I might hypothesize, I think Pioneer's problem is that public policy that affects his behavior is made from what he calls "empiricism". Altho Pioneer states "I don't condone smoking", let's face it: it is the scientific data that leads to the ethical decision not to "condone" smoking. For instance, he is told not to smoke. That may be OK, because he can ignore it. But then because of those studies on smoking policy is made that affects whether he can smoke or where he can. For instance, cigarette taxes are increased dramatically and this affects his ability to buy cigarettes. And laws are passed saying he cannot smoke in enclosed public spaces. Also, social pressures change and some people -- citing that cigarette smoke is unhealthy -- will not allow him to smoke in their presence or their homes.

As long as you say "may", you are OK. But go back and look at your statements. Your first statements had the "may" absent; you stated it (several times) as undeniable that australopithecines used spears for defense. As it happens, the observed examples of chimps using "spears" is for hunting. In defense, the observations are that chimps use branches as clubs, not for stabbing. Again, I don't recall seeing any data of stone tools with A. afarensis or A. africanus and no one has provided specific citations (Wikipedia here is not sufficient). Instead, the examples given of stone tools are later when there are Paranthropus species and H. habilis. There were predators that regularly preyed upon Australopithecus. One of the more extensive collections of A. africanus fossils occurs in a cleft in the rocks beneath a tree where leopards regularly took the bodies of A. africanus kills to eat. The bones dropped into the cleft. The bones bear the tooth marks of the predator.

1) The Bell Curve is useful only for toilet paper or, perhaps, as an example of bad science. 2) Intelligence is both heritable and determined by the environment. It is NOT reasonable to "assume" that geographically separated populations are going to have statistically different intelligence levels. You've got several problems: 1. Define precisely what you mean by "intelligence". No one has so far. We have an intuitive feel for it, but no precise definition. 2. Figure out a way to objectively test for it. And no, IQ tests don't do that because they test for knowledge that is cultural. For instance, you could ask you and I what continent France was located on. Or you could ask us how many people are on a football team. Both of those are cultural but give an indication of our "knowledge" or "intelligence", but a !Kung wouldn't know the answers. BUT, ask us which plant indicates underground water in the Kalahari desert, and we would be stumped. A !Kung would know, however. One problem of The Bell Curve is that they didn't compensate for socio-economic differences in IQ scores. What they needed to do was compare middle-class blacks that lived in the suburbs with middle class whites that lived in the suburbs. Intead, they ended up comparing middle class whites that attended private schools in the suburbs with blacks who lived in the inner city. Apples and oranges. Another problem is using the information to make social and political judgements. If you plot "intelligence" on the y-axis vs number of people with that value on the x-axis, you will end up with a bell-shaped curve (the title of the book). Even in The Bell Curve, the curves for IQ scores had a HUGE overlap. The means differed (where the most people had a particular IQ score), but that doesn't help you with the individual. Faced with 2 job applicants -- one white and the other black -- it doesn't tell you which is more intelligent because it is extremely easy for the black to be on the right hand side of the curve and white to be on the left hand side. Thus, on an individual basis, the black has about a 50:50 chance of being smarter than the white. So you can't use any differences (even if they exist) in any meaningful way for social or political judgements.

Good point. This is what makes the discussion so difficult, because it gets to what society accepts. Let's face it, Michael Jackson has done everything possible to be "white". And this argument is a powerful one for my personal opinion: the treatment may be available but the person should not be treated differently if they choose not to take it. Homosexuality is not a "disease", but a possible combination of alleles. Skin color is also a possible combination of alleles. I don't think there is a definitive answer. I would only note that homosexuality does forbid one of life's basic drives and pleasures: having biological offspring. And yes, before you say it, there are other possible routes to that end and there may be more in the future. However, it remains a limitation of homosexuality not shared by ethnicity. High melanin content is just as much an adaptation as low pigment (white), so it's not clear if there was any "original" color. High melanin content evolved to protect folic acid from degradation by UV radiation. No folic acid and low sperm count and no viable fetuses (neural tube defects). Less melanin content evolved, as people migrated from the tropics, to allow more UV radiation so that cholesterol could be converted to vitamin D in skin by UV radiation. No vitamin D and non-functional bones due to decreased ability to absorb calcium from the GI tract. The result is rickets.

Is that relevant? After all, we don't consider rape any less rape if the victim has an orgasm (and many do, which contributes to the later psychological trauma). It's not "quite easily". Meat has a higher density of energy per gm. Our brains use quite a bit of energy. And we need quite a few dietary amino acids -- ones we don't make. Meat is a much denser source of amino acids than plants. So, to be completely vegetarian requires some pretty good meal planning to compensate and ensure the diet is nutritionally complete.

Again, since you say "the methods that work", you have multiple methods, so you can't say "The scientific method". Different disciplines use different methods. And no, your attempt to define science in terms of method is not correct. It's been tried before. And failed for the reasons I gave you. I refer you to the essay "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem" by Larry Laudan. You can find it in But Is It Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Contorversy. Michael Ruse, ed., pp 347-349, 1988. Sorry, but you are wrong. Hypotheses do often come out of a vacuum. Hypothesis generation is an imaginative process. Even when "data" is involved, the function is to serve as inspiration, much like a day in the country inspired Beethoven's 6th Symphony. It's not like Beethoven spent the day in the country hearing music and then put it together into a symphony. A classic example is Darwin reading Malthus' and being inspired to think of natural selection. Malthus wasn't writing about plants or animals, but economics and noting that human population could expand faster then agriculture. Darwin had a flash that said any animal could breed faster than its food supply, and then leaped to the inspiration that this would apply to any resource. Darwin then made another imaginative leap to variation and a final leap to changing the traits of a population over generations! NOTHING in Malthus would even suggest this, nor did any other data Darwin had by itself. What you said was that the scientific method could be used to define sscience. By definition , a definition includes everything that is being defined, and excludes everything that does not fit the definition. Now you acknowledge that other disciplines use "the" scientific method. That means they must be included in science. Which is why trying to define science based on method fails. Again, you are confusing people and ideas. If football coaches "act like scientists", then they are doing science! So that means football must be a discipline of science, like chemistry or biology! But we don't do that, do we? You seemed to skip the example from religion. No need to wonder why! You are never going to admit that clergy "are acting like scientists", are you? And yet, they are. End result: you can't use "the scientific method" to define science. 1. You contradicted this when you talked about testing the hypothesis: "The prediction is tested by novel experiment or observation," What are those "observations"? Aren't they facts? 2. The National Academy of Science has defined "fact" as "repeated observation". What you are saying here is that "facts" are supported hypotheses/theories. However, aren't all the falsified hypotheses also products of science? IOW, yes, you do have an internal contradiction but want us to ignore it. What you also seemed to skip is that the product of science is not facts as in observations, but hypotheses/theories that are either 1) falsified or 2) supported. It's just that you are considering strongly supported hypotheses/theories to be "fact", as Whewell pointed out. I'm not trying to discredit the hypothetico-deductive method, but to show you that it is more complicated than you outlined. There are ways that you can try to get around what is called "naive" falsification. Ad hoc hypotheses are one method. In order to correctly incorporate ad hoc hypotheses (and have the method remain valid), is to demand that ad hoc hypotheses be tested independently of the hyothesis they are designed to save. The Lorentz contraction was an ad hoc hypothesis to try to save the aether. However, it had no other testable effect than to save the aether and was, therefore, an invalid ad hoc hypothesis. OTOH, Neptune was an ad hoc hypothesis to save Newtonian gravity from falsification because the orbit of Uranus did not adhere to Newtonian gravity. So another planet beyond Uranus was hypothesized. However, the existence of this planet (Neptune) could be tested by the theory of optics (telescopes) that was independent of Newton's theories. Another way to avoid naive falsification in the hypothetico-deductive method is to discard an underlying hypothesis. Pierre Duhem showed that we don't test hypotheses singly, but only in huge bundles. If the predictions don't work, you can always say that one of the bundle (which you assumed were all true) is, in fact, false. We can discuss this in more detail if you want but, the short version is that the experimental controls keep this from happening. I think you are making a mistake to try to rate hypotheses in "importance". Rather, I think what you are trying to say is that the broader the hypothesis, the more deductions (and thus tests) it will have. It's not "measurable", but intersubjectivity. After all, you can measure the heights of the fairies in your garden, but if you are the only one who can see and experience them, then those measurements still aren't part of science. The classic example is Fleischmann and Pon's cold fusion. They measured the energy output in their experiment quite precisely. It's just that no one else could get the same measurements under approximately the same condition! I understand what you are saying, but you need a better example for a logical deduction. Light travelling for one year will travel one light-year is more akin to tautology. Let's see if I've hearing you correctly. You are setting out 4 "parts" of science: 1. Fact 2. Logical deduction 3. Theory 4. Empiricism So you must put "empirical correlations" under #4: Then you seem to also construct a hierarchy of "certainty" within science, corresponding to the order you have given from highest certainty to lowest. Pioneer, you aren't going to find a philosopher of science (or scientist) that agrees with your hierarchy. I'll give you some of the reasons: 1. You construct a non-objective hierarchy of "fact". You say Define "hard data". Why do you consider some data "hard" and other data not? See the problem? You don't have a way to objectively say when some data is "hard". 2. Most data is indirect, and you have hit upon the idea (stated by Whewell, see my post above) that very strongly supported theories are considered as fact. Let's take the theory (and it IS a theory) "the earth is round". How does that affect your hierarchy of certainty. 3. Also consider another observation of Whewell's: every fact involves theory. So two of your hierarchy are inextricably entangled. 4. Logical (and mathematical) deductions are really hypotheses/theories. IOW, the way we do science is to test whether those deductions are, in fact, observed. Most deductions are not observed: that's how you falsify hypotheses/theories. I would say -- and do say to the graduate students when I'm teaching philosophy of science -- that science is the study of the physical universe. As I noted to SkepticLance, it is not "a process" because different disciplines within science use different processes. What's worse, disciplines outside of science often use the same processes. However, you did limit science to studying "nature". What seems to annoy you is that hypotheses, particularly in the medical field, are often misstated or not stated with the appropriate precision. You mention In medicine, the hypothesis is stated as: X% of people, on average, who eat greater than Z amount of calories per day will gain weight. Saying "people who eat chips will get fat" is not the proper way of stating the hypothesis.

I'm not sure of the exact DNA sequences involved in determining these, therefore I don't know if a single mutation would give these abilities. One way would be to compare the DNA sequences of bats -- which can hear in the ultrasonic -- and humans to see how far apart the genes are. Here are a few articles on vision you might want to look up and read: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112098747/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 1: Anat Rec A Discov Mol Cell Evol Biol. 2005 Nov;287(1):1001-12. Diversity of mammalian photoreceptor properties: adaptations to habitat and lifestyle? Peichl L. Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany. peichl@mpih-frankfurt.mpg.de All mammalian retinae contain rod photoreceptors for low-light vision and cone photoreceptors for daylight and color vision. Most nonprimate mammals have dichromatic color vision based on two cone types with spectrally different visual pigments: a short-wavelength-sensitive (S-)cone and a long-wavelength-sensitive (L-)cone. Superimposed on this basic similarity, there are remarkable differences between species. This article reviews some striking examples. The density ratio of cones to rods ranges from 1:200 in the most nocturnal to 20:1 in a few diurnal species. In some species, the proportion of the spectral cone types and their distribution across the retina deviate from the pattern found in most mammals, including a complete absence of S-cones. Depending on species, the spectral sensitivity of the L-cone pigment may peak in the green, yellow, or orange, and that of the S-cone pigment in the blue, violet, or near-ultraviolet. While exclusive expression of one pigment per cone is the rule, some species feature coexpression of the L- and S-pigment in a significant proportion of their cones. It is widely assumed that all these variations represent adaptations to specific visual needs associated with particular habitats and lifestyles. However, in many cases we have not yet identified the adaptive value of a given photoreceptor arrangement. Comparative anatomy is a fruitful approach to explore the range of possible arrangements within the blueprint of the mammalian retina and to identify species with particularly interesting or puzzling patterns that deserve further scrutiny with physiological and behavioral assays."

I was able to get the article. They did a weird job of stating neutral theory. This quote is before the one you gave. "These observations are best explained by the neutral theory of molecular evolution postulated by Motoo Kimura in the late 1960s (Ref. 16) (Box 1). According to this theory, the rate of evolutionary change in genomes is largely determined by the mutation rate and the extent to which mutations are weeded out by negative selection. The changes that are driven to fixation because of their survival or reproduction advantages are relatively rare compared with the large number of neutral changes." What they are saying is that individuals with deleterious mutations are not going to survive or have kids, therefore they are not going to change the base sequences of the population. Only neutral mutations or beneficial ones will become "fixed" -- the first by chance and the second by positive selection. It is in this context that you have to understand your question. No, most mutations are NOT deleterious. Instead, of the mutations that become "fixed" (in every member of a population) so that they show up when the genome is sequenced, none of them are deleterious. That is what they are trying to say when they say "deleterious and therefore subject to negative natural selection. Therefore they never (or only rarely) come to fixation." In general, the article is trying to figure out which of those 40 million sequence differences between humans and chimps are significant in terms of making chimps different from humans. Is it most of them? "An alternative possibility, which might apply at the phenotypic level, is that most differences between species are adaptive and fixed by positive selection. " Or is it only a few of them, with most of the differences being neutral and been fixed by chance? "In addition to these approximately 35 million point mutations, other differences include approximately 5 million insertions, deletions, duplications and inversions14. ... This means that only a small fraction of all DNA sequence changes between humans and chimpanzees are relevant to the functional differences between the species, making the identification of non-neutral changes a daunting task. Few studies have been able to bridge the gap between DNA sequence differences and phenotype differences. " Usually Neutral Theory is stated differently: "The neutral theory of molecular evolution, championed by Motoo Kimura and further elaborated by several other population geneticists, provides the "null hypothesis" agaisnt which data on molecular variation are compared. In other words, patters of molecular variation are assumed to be explicable by genetic drift of selectively neutral mutuations unless they depart significantly from neutral theory." Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, pg 628, 1999 "In Chapter 11, we will describe the "neutral theory of molecular evolution". This theory describes the fate of purely neutral mutations, i.e., those that neither enhance nor lower fitness." Futuyma, pg 273 I can't get the full article until Monday at work, so I'm not sure what is going on here. My first impression is that the authors of the article made a strawman version of the neutral theory. It's difficult. By it's very nature, a brand new mutation is only in one individual. If it is very deleterious, it kills the individual or prevents it from having offspring. In this case, the mutation is only in one individual in one generation, which makes it very hard to detect in wild populations. You need a laboratory population where you do genotyping on every individual. Such studies have been done and these types of deleterious mutations are very rate, only 2.8 per 1,000 mutations. However, if the mutation is only slightly deleterious, the individual will be able to have offspring and the mutation will persist at a very low frequency in the population for several generations. During that time, the frequency will start to decline faster than it would if it were neutral.

Thank you. Yes, that's what the "power enhancer" reminds me of. Instead of a gear that leads directly to the blades, put in a long shaft that leads to the gears and you have half a power enhancer.

Yes, it was the "Frontline" episode. Whatever "Frontline" said, the number is higher. "In the broadest sense, according to Gallup polls, the number of persons in the United States who described themselves as either Evangelical or Born-Again between 1976 and 2001 fluctuated between 33 percent and 47 percent with a reasonable estimate being 35 percent of the population or just over 102 million people in 2003.[6]" http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics.html Not all of them are political conservatives, but 79% voted for Bush. By my estimation, that is more than 58 million. You forgot "scary". Most evangelicals are lower middle class or lower economically. The economic policies Bush has been pushing have not been kind to that group. Objective data shows the policies have concentrated more wealth in the hands of fewer people. That means less wealth for the evangelicals. Thinking you were going to get a good economic deal and winding up poorer objectively qualifies as being "duped". Which makes me more puzzled why the people doing the buying didn't try to stick to the formula. Right now none of the top 3 Republican candidates for president are acceptable to the evangelicals. I would have thought the people who bought the election for Bush would have picked one of the evangelical Christian Republican politicians and bankrolled him/her for the primaries like they did Bush. Maybe they felt that the policies are so unpopular and associated with the Republicans that they can't get ANY Republican elected? So they have to switch to a Democrate? Or they just decided to sit out 2008 and try to buy 2012?

Let me give you an example from a couple of years ago. An oil tanker had sunk in the Atlantic off the Spanish coasts. A newspaper article was giving the ecological consequences of the oil leaking from the tanker and Rush decided that there would be no ecological consequences. His example? The Titanic sank and the oil for its engines did not cause any ecological problems! Do you see the several lies here? The obvious one was that the Titanic used coal for fuel. As I listened Rush acknowledged that several people had e-mailed him informing him that the Titanic used coal, not oil. Rush's response "It's the same thing." Now, even a computer geek such as you must know that this was a huge lie. Coal is solid and oil is liquid. Not the same thing when applied to the situation. Of course, Rush also implied that the Titanic had as much oil as the tanker when, of course, the difference is at least 3 orders of magnitude between the amount of oil carried by a tanker and that carried as fuel by a cruise ship. Sadly, the data says, yes you do. You yourself gave the reason people will listen to lies: Let me ask you: how does Rush "validate"? By telling you "facts", right? Rush used the story above to "validate your suspicions" that ecological "liberals" were exaggerating the danger. He used the "fact" of the Titanic as his evidence. And you accept the lies because Rush is telling you what you want to hear. Thank you for so thoroughly refuting your position and supporting mine. Let me ask you another question: How "valid" are your suspicions if they are based on "factoids" that are not true? See above as you tell us why that is not so. As long as Rush is "validating your suspicions", you like him. Another way to attack science. Simply say the conclusions don't match the data. But on what basis? As you acknowledged in the previous post, the data clearly falsifies that 1) climate is staying the same and 2) humans are not involved. Now you attack the methods. Look what you said from last post: "you're not going have the time to train, for example, nuclear physicists to understand, for example, meteorological models. " You seem to "understand" them well enough to say that they don't work! How is that possible? You can't have it both ways. You can't say you don't understand the models but then say you understand them enough to say they are faulty! Look at the article from the recent SciAm and see if you can understand this: the graphs of the models go from the past to the future and they are plotted with the known values from the past. Now, if the lines from the models match the known values from the past, they are also going to be accurate going into the future. After all, we don't know everything that happened in the past, either, to cause temperature, do we? But the model has enough of those to give an accurate prediction of what those past temperatures were. The public should be looking at the data, not at us as people! You still keep doing this. You are making it personal. Science isn't personal and about scientists. Remember I said one way to deny science is to attack scientists personally? Look what you are doing. You don't look at the data but then say you shouldn't believe what is being said? You do realize how hypocritical that is, don't you? Yes. And the "theory" is that they are not looking at the data! Instead, it is more convenient to attack "you" and "believe you" and make it personal instead of looking at the data. So now you have an "excuse" to attack the person of the scientists and ignore data you don't like. You know, Paranoia, you are giving a great teaching lesson of the invalid ways people use to avoid data they don't like and to attack science. ---------- Do you think a scientific consensus is built on just one paper or one person? If you are a nuclear physicist you don't go into the detail of the meteorological models. What you do instead is look at the data in all the papers and compare the data based on different models. When the work from different labs is all giving comparable results, then you are still looking at data, not on "qualifications and background" of the authors! Accepting nuclear winter wasn't done because Sagan was one author, but because several groups all ended up with similar results even tho they used different modeling programs. Don't make a strawman of my position. I never said "all". Several books have documented the changeover in tactics and that, overall, Democrats are still stuck in Enlightenment ideas: that evidence, reason, and logic will sort accurate ideas from inaccurate ones and prevent people from accepting inaccurate ideas. The Republican Attack on Science does say that Democrats sometimes ignored sound science, but they didn't attack it like the Republicans are doing. No. What I am objecting to is the widespread use of invalid arguments against conclusions that are already there. Arguments such as "judgement based on your understanding of the qualifications and background of the person making the assessment" and then attacking the qualifications of scientists who have published data that you don't want to accept. Another tactic is to try to say the data is incomplete: "But it's also not a good idea to go leaping here and there with one idea or another without immediate, direct knowledge of what's actually happening." This is used to say that we must have more and more research because the data we have now is incomplete. You can see this tactic in your quote and in the global warming debate. You can also see it as a common tactic of creationists. But this is politics, not science, right? Interesting you did not use an example from science. You are looking at "his point of view". Science doesn't do that. The data is the same for everyone who takes the time and effort to do the same experiment. In science, we make our knowledge public. And why do we do this? So you can have the same knowledge we do! There is no arcane hidden "well, climatologists know how to do this and no one else does". HOW they did their research is right in the papers they publish! All you need to do is read Science, Nature, and Scientific American and you can get the data for yourself. The most recent SciAm has a great article on climatology, with the graphs of the data. You can evaluate the data expressed in the graphs and apply some common sense to tell you whether the methods were reliable. For instance, I gave you a hint before: the models must predict past values. If the model corresponds to values we already have, there is no reason to think it is suddenly just going to stop working when it moves to the future, is there? You also look for consensus among several papers from different research groups. What we are talking about is NOT taking a single paper and touting it as the answer. Instead, we are talking about consensus within a disciplinary community. You know how much computer scientists argue among themselves over data and interpretation. Why do you think climatologists (or any other area) are any different? So when you see the community reach consensus, it's just like in computer science: they reach consensus because the data compels them to. Yes, there are a few holdouts who are just too stubborn to give in (I'm sure you can name a couple in your field), but they are just no longer in touch with the data. You also look at where the agreements and disagreements are. Remember, claims are taken separately. In climatology, climatologists all agree global warming is happening and that it is anthropogenic. They also agree on what the general consequences are going to be. There are disagreements on just how fast the planet is warming and what the magnitude of specific consequences. You know enough to know that disagreements there do not negate the areas of agreement. You should also know enough that, when dealing with a scientific issue, you don't get your stories from the mass media. It's OK to read the News section of Science or Nature, because they know enough about science to get it right. You need to look through the literature and get some review articles (for background) and then look at some of the primary papers in Science and Nature. In any case, you are looking at DATA, not trusting to people.