lucaspa

Not in my opinion. I always thought that Clinton's correct response to reporters about Monica Lewinski was "It's none of your damn business. Even Presidents get to have a private life. Unless you can demonstrate a security breach or some other failure of job performance, go away." Notice I have a couple of qualifiers there. 1. If it does interfere with job performance. 2. If there is a security breach, i.e. the lover is an agent for a foreign power. 3. If it involves hypocrisy to the politician's publicly stated policies. i.e, the politician says homosexual unions should be illegal but has a homosexual affair or if the politician says fathers of out-of-wedlock children should be fined, but has gotten his lover pregnant and is keeping it a secret.

Yeah, me too. This concept of "preemptive war" is very dangerous. The 9/11 Commission and others noted that Al Qaida had approached Hussein after 1991 and Hussein didn't let them in. I think Hussein was just too afraid of the USA after the Gulf War. He had tried tangling with the USA and knew he got his ass kicked. He figured another confrontation would lose him his position -- as it did! So I think fear would have kept him away from Al Qaida. You're welcome. It's also about including things under "terrorism" that have no business there. It's confusing the ends with the means. "Terrorism" is tactics -- bombings, assassinations, killing people at random. People with different goals can use the same tactics. Labeling them "terrorists" limits discussion and thought as to whether the goals are those we would agree with or not agree with. For instance, the Israelis use this tactic very well -- labeling all Palestinians "terrorists" and covering up that the Palestinians are fighting an illegal occupation and oppression. The Bush Administration uses "terrorism" to instigate widespread inroads on our personal liberties that will not actually harm or stop our enemies. I can, and do, object to both of those while still opposing Al Qaida and its goal to destroy Western secular civilization. BTW, did you hear about the new National Intelligence Assessment that says Al Qaida today is stronger than before we invaded Iraq? Most wars are started because one or both sides don't understand the other and misinterpret what is going on. Everyone misinterpreted each other's mobilizations in August 1914 and Europe slid into war. England particularly was a little fuzzy about its commitment to Belgium, which led Germany to think England would not object to a "little" violation of Belgian territory. You don't need conspiracy theory here: in 1990 Hussein misunderstood the position of the USA partly because the position was not stated as clearly as it should have been. His logic about Kuwait being an "internal border" and similar to the Germanies is just dumb.

Yes, but part of that perception and reality may be deity. What is often overlooked is that the ability to communicate with deity (if it exists) would be an advantage in terms of natural selection. If you can communicate with a very wise, powerful, and knowing entity, then you can get advice such as "there is a lion hiding in the tall grass" or "you need to get away from the river because it is going to flood" or providing comfort in grief such that you can get over it and get back to the problem of finding food, etc. Individuals with this communication are going survive and have more kids. So, there is going to be selective pressure for evolving a brain module that is able to communicate with deity. A "deity detecting module" roughly similar to the brain module we have for detecting cheating. Perhaps atheism persists because the deity detecting module did not become fixed in the population. It spread to about 90% of the population but never went that extra 10% to become fixed; atheists lack the module and therefore cannot experience that part of reality. Now, before you blow a fuse, that is a plausible hypothesis. It does not say deity exists. It only says, if deity exists, then 1) ability to communicate with deity offers evolutionary advantages and 2) evolution by natural selection could design a material part of our brain to detect and communicate with deity.

1. If you say "the universe is everything", then you are in a position that "universe" includes deity (if deity exists). Sagan got in trouble because he made a separate definition that 'everything' was limited to material entities. 2. You are going to have problems with the "take the universe as everything, which by definition the universe is." Many scientists are discarding that definition and defining "universe" as "what we can observe or see in terms of looking out from earth". Both Multiverse and Bubble Universe say there are many "universes"; we just can't see them. I'm not here to argue the merits or demerits of those theories, only to note that "universe" is not universally ( ) used as "everything", but is also used as something less than that.

I was hoping for a more detailed explanation than that one-liner. Galaxyblur's issue is the reference frames and that different reference frames seem to give differnt answers. Just saying "it's a different reference frame" doesn't address the issue. It would be better if you could show how changing the reference frame makes it appear different but that there really isn't any new momentum. Again, I'm sure there IS an answer, it's just whether WE know what it is. Galaxyblur, I say that because I respect the intelligence of Einstein, Eddings, and other physicists. If this dilemma could occur to you, it should have occurred to them. So, the issue is first to see if we can find where it is dealt with textbooks and other literature on Relativity. Only when we (and particularly you) have completely exhausted that option should you consider that the theory is challenged. In relativity, speed of light in a vacuum is constant. Therefore, not all velocity is "relative". It is always absolute in regards to c. No, because now YOU are the reference frame. You look at what they are doing relative to you. Now, you could change reference frames and then the interaction would appear different to you, but it is still the same interaction. Remember that we are dealing with spacetime. Over time, your reference frame is indeed going to change. So yes, you can have 2 reference frames for one object; you just have them at different times. The idea of "proof" is only strictly speaking. Yes, strictly speaking, we cannot absolutely prove. One reason is that, no matter how many tests we perform, there are still an infinite number of tests yet to perform, and the theory may fail. However, at some point in the testing, the theory has been tested enough that we accept it as (provisionally) true unless and until new contradictory data comes to light. What you are doing is not finding contradictory new data. Instead, you are finding examples where you are personally puzzled as to how relativity handles the situation. This is an issue with yours (and my) personal knowledge of Relativity, not a weakness of the theory. So far you have demonstrated the opposite. You casually dismissed the website I provided without a detailed read. You simply decided that, because it dealt with more complicated examples than the one you gave, that those solutions would not work on your simpler case. I am hoping that you will get better. No, I mean the apparent gain of momentum. In science an "artifact" is something that is not "real" or part of the system, but instead is introduced from outside. In this case, by not taking into account that, when the 1 ball is accelerated, it is now in a different reference frame because it is moving, you have introduced an artifact into your thinking. You are vieiwng the 1 ball as being in the same reference frame both before and after the collision. But it is not. Once the cue ball hits it and the 1 ball experiences acceleration, it's reference frame is no longer the same one when it was "at rest" relative to the 5 ball.

From the page: "In certain special cases, energy conservation works out with fewer caveats. The two main examples are static spacetimes and asymptotically flat spacetimes." You seem to have missed that. The more complex solutions reduce when you have your example.

1. The point I was making was that weapons manufacture did not have to follow the progression you outlined. You changed the specifics for weapons to general tool use. Strawman. 2. Unfortunately, the point at which the hominid line split did not include simple tool use. Instead, it was bipedality. That has been well-established by the fossils: bipedality came first. As Paralith pointed out, your progression doesn't work because chimps and bonobos are equally related to humans. It appears that apes and humans independently evolved the use of tools. Remember, octopi and some ravens have also been observed to use tools. You wouldn't say tool use was present in those common ancestors, would you? 1. And yet you compare modern chimps to Australopithecus when it comes to brain size and the ability to use tools! You say they are similar there, but different where you want them to be different. Sorry, can't have it both ways. BTW, what really matters is absolute brain size in cc, not compared to body mass. If you do that, Australopithecine brains are the same size as chimp. 2. How do you conclude that Australopithecus was weaker? See above for your use of selective comparisons. 3. Australopithecus dentition was a lot like that of chimps. "The canines retain the primitive form of marked difference between sexes, with the males distinguished by greater size and higher, more tapered crowns. The anterior teeth of afarensis are quite large, and among the largest known for any hominid, and similar to chimpanzees, although relatively narrower labioloingually. The differ from chimpanzees, however, in that the hominid maxillary incisors reflect the plesiomorphic condition in which the lateral incisor is much smaller than the medial one." http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/australopithecusafarensis.htm http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html#afarensis "In fact, predation is not much of a problem overall for chimps, which might seem odd until you look at what you face when you face a chimp. What you face is usually not just a chimp, but a group of chimps. A group of strong, howling, stick and/or rock throwing gang of vicious little hominoids. They kill baboons and leopard cubs (with leopard-mommy present) with no more armament or natural ability than australopithecines had. They are not defenseless out there, and neither were australopithecines. In fact, even lone chimps have been seen sleeping overnight on the ground in areas frequented by leopards, which further suggests that they don't have much trouble with such predators. " " "Researchers studying chimps have seen them encounter leopards a number of times. Sometimes, the chimps hardly react to the sight of a leopard, but usually they call aggressively and have managed to chase leopards away. In the daytime, leopards seem to be somewhat wary of the apes, even though, at up to 200 pounds, the cats are much larger than the primates, which weigh 70 to 85 pounds." pg. 22, Byrne, Richard W.; and Jennifer M. Byrne, 1988, "Leopard Killers of Mahale", pp. 22-26, in Natural History, volume 3." Both quotes from http://www.aquaticape.org/predators.html If that is the standard response, then why are you insisting Australopithecines must have used weapons? They could have "gotten the hell out of there!" Australopithecines were still partially adapted to climbing trees. So yes, they could also just run up a tree and out to a branch that the predator can't follow (due to its greater weight). However, the data above says chimps can and do stand their ground without weapons. Remember, as the website says "The bottom line on dealing with predators is that a species doesn't have to be able to avoid them completely, but in order for the species to survive, they have to avoid predators well enough to be able to replace their numbers." However, there is also data showing that chimps will throw rocks or pick up tree limbs and throw them at the predator. This would fit in with your idea that Australopithecines used tools to defend themselves, altho it is quite less than deliberately making "spears" and keeping them handy. This is just spontaneously picking up what is lying to hand, not using forethought in planning a defense. Making stone tools says "forethought", since you aren't going to have enough time to sit down and knap a flint while the predator is approaching! Skeptic, I think you didn't read what I posted: "You can suggest it. What you can't do is say that absolutely Australopithecines used weapons or that their survival required them to use weapons. CDarwin and I have shown several ways -- by looking at contemporary primate species -- that Australopithecines can get by without using weapons. " I don't know anyone that definitively rules out the use of tools by Australopithecus. Instead, it is the manufacture of stone tools that is used to demarcate Homo. Chimp tool use is most often (always?)spontaneous and uses materials close to hand. Manufacturing stone tools requires forethought to future situations where the tools will be useful. A different level of cognition. You are also shifting the goalposts and saying "use of tools". That's different from saying Australopithecines must have used weapons. Yes, you can deduce the hypothesis. What you haven't got is the data to support the hypothesis strongly enough that we accept it as (provisionally) true. We may have to live with the unanswered question of whether and how extensively Australopithecines used tools for quite a while, because the data is going to be very difficult to find. It's just that your circumstantial arguments do not lead us to the idea that Australopithecines MUST have used tools and weapons. Even if we think they used tools, that doesn't mean they used spears. Don't overinterpret the data

This sounds like a general statement -- that there are going to be commonalities between the surviving species between different extinction events. BUT, then you note: And that gets us into differences between mass extinctions. DUH! Even today's mass extinction caused by human activity translates to an abrupt and severe change to the environments of species. Instead of massive volcanic eruptions that caused the changes in environments for the Permian-Triassic extinction or the meteor impact that caused the change in environments for the K-T extinction, today we have human activity changing environments and causing extinctions. NO. NO. NO. The class did NOT "make it overall". Instead, a very few species of all the birds survived the KT extinction. That's the fallacy we have been laboring under. We have been thinking that all or the vast majority of bird species survived while all the dino species went extinct. That has us chasing for some overall feature of birds that would be different from dinos. Instead, what the data says is that over 70% of bird species went extinct! That is not "made it overall", but rather "a few species survived". So now what you need to look to is not only differences between birds and dinos, but differences between the surviving bird species and the bird species that did not survive. Now you are back to the generality. That doesn't work, either. As you noted, there are simply too many differences in the morphology, physiology, and lifestyles of the species that did survive the KT extinction to make a generality for ALL those species. And you can't then extrapolate to other extinctions, because they have entirely different causes and different changes in the environment. The only generality you can make is that larger animals and predators are perhaps the most sensitive to extinction. Because 1) they need more food and 2) are higher up the food chain, this means that anything that disrupts the food chain is going to deprive these species of food. Depends on what the species is. If it is unicellular algae, then it will be fine. Basically, what you need to consider is food source. Either the species must have a very common and large food source -- such as some bacteria that work thru oxidation of iron -- or the species must be photosynthetic so it can make its own food. This depends on several factors: 1. How major the shift is. If the shift is "sudden" but not severe, there is probably enough variation within the population so that there will be individuals with the requisite traits to survive the new environment. As the shift gets more severe and more fatal for individuals, then survival of the species becomes less likely and extinction more likely. However, not always. Antibiotics were 99.999% fatal to bacteria, but still there were a few resistant individuals that lived and repopulated. 2. Whether the food chain collapses or not Antibiotics were very specific for bacteria and the bacteria's food source -- humans -- were not affected. But if the food chain collapses, then there is unlikely to be more exinctions as food sources go extinct. 3. Specialization of the species. A species specialized to a particular environment becomes vulnerable to extinction. Partly this is due to purifying selection (a form of natural selection) that reduces genetic variation within the population. Partly it is due to the limitations of having a (relatively) small environment available. There may be other factors, but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head. Blue cristal was referring to founder events, where you have a single or 2-3 breeding pairs becoming geographically isolated. New species do result. This is rare because 1) getting a single breeding pair isolated does not often happen and 2) accidental death can eliminate the population in the first couple of generations. However, genetic viability is not an issue. Two individuals in a sexually reproducing population typically have about 75% of the total genetic variation of the population. However, allopatric speciation where a larger number of individuals become geographically isolated. And this looks to be the major form of cladogenesis of higher animals. In fact, that is what Punctuated Equilibrium is all about: the fossil record shows that most speciation happened by allopatric speciation. You forgot sympatric speciation. This is where you have speciation in the same geographical area, but divergence of populations as they exploit different environments (within the geographical area). You need to define "few". If you mean 1-3 breeding pairs in a founder event, then yes. It does happen, however. The many species of Drosophila in the Hawaiian Islands resulted from a founder event. Dobzhansky spent considerable time studying and documenting that. I don't think you meant "rebuttal", but that the hypothesis that birds don't burrow and, therefore, are differnt from mammals in how they survived the KT extinction doesn't withstand testing. You then went on with some excellent tests for that. I particularly like: Now, go up and compare that to the bird species that survived the KT extinction! "Only the loons and some primitive shorebirds crossed the K/T boundary" Congrats, Sayonara! You may have found a very plausible hypothesis for why the particular bird species survived the KT impact! They were able to shelter in burrows and thus mitigate the effects of the nuclear winter. This would make them comparable to the small mammals that survived and for the same reason. You should do a bit more research on these birds and look to see if the birds that survived the KT extinction could also have burrowed. If so, then you should write this up for publication.

Waht you have is the total energy of the system A + B, right? And that energy is different based on the perspective. That shouldn't be. Somewhere the equations are off. Wait a minute! We have 1 event but in 2 different reference frames. By conservation of energy the energy released by this event is a single value. It can't be one value in the spaceship and a different value on the planet! One event.

You can suggest it. What you can't do is say that absolutely Australopithecines used weapons or that their survival required them to use weapons. CDarwin and I have shown several ways -- by looking at contemporary primate species -- that Australopithecines can get by without using weapons. True, but that doesn't mean we have a "gradual" progression of making weapons from sticks and then making stone tools. It could be no weapons from sticks at all, then make stone tools for other than defensive weaponry, and THEN get the bright idea to put those stone tools on the ends of sticks to make spears. In fact, the data that many Australopithecines ended up as meals for predators but that H. erectus wiped out predators suggests ( ) the second sequence. I can't remember data that show H. erectus being a regular meal for predators (although I'm sure it happened to isolated individuals from time to time, just as it does to H. sapiens). No, the point is not made, because groups of primates about the same size fend off large predators today. And, as CDarwin pointed out, Smilodon was not in Africa. The transitional individuals link A. afarensis to H. habilis. Another set of transitional individuals link H. habilis to H. erectus. So you have a 2 species leap and more time involved than you think. I just wanted the info. I can try to find Johanson's book at the local library. Any web sources BESIDES Wiki? Can't use Wiki as a reliable source. Scaling doesn't matter, just absolute size. I thought the difference was larger. 1. SkepticLance refuted the point about chimps and tool use. Chimps use stones to crack nuts, but you hardly need to shape a stone for this purpose. 2. The original stone tools seem to be knives and scrapers. Scrapers are not much good in preparing plant material. Better for scraping hides off carcasses. 3. Yes, being obligate herbivores does matter. Unless the species is engaged in agriculture or cooking, you don't need tools to be a herbivore. Just pick the fruit or munch the grass. As is. Or use a convenient stone to crack nuts. But not shape the stones to knives and scrapers. And there is no evidence that H. habilis or Paranthropus used fire. Plenty of evidence that H. erectus did. So, I can't see Paranthropus having a need to make tools. OK, two more books for me to find.

Even if this is so, you still have information being exchanged instantaneously in violation of Relativity. And that is the basic "problem". The problem here, gcol, is that people thought of that. So, let's take the L photon and entangle it again with an R photon and then separate them. Now measure the original L photon and it could be R! Did it change? If so, how? Or better yet, take all the L photons and entangle them with other L photons. Then measure and half will be R! And, of course, for those measured as L, the other one becomes an R! How did that happen? They were both originally L. So, they "knew" what they were, did they change their minds? But photons don't have minds!

All of you are confusing "God created" with a particular HOW that God created. IOW, each time you say "God created" you are limiting God to one particular method that He had to use: direct manufacture by "miracle" ("out of nothing"). Put differently, you are all using a couple of basic assumptions for which you have no evidence: 1) God must create by "miracle", 2) God is absent from any "natural" process. Put another way, you are all assuming god-of-the-gaps theology and the basic faith of atheism. Without evidence. Why couldn't God create life by chemistry using the method discovered by Fox and co-workers?

Of course you do. You say you have ideas. Those are hypotheses. No. I've had those as well. I said falsifying data. Because of the nature of deductive logic, you never get "irrefutable" data FOR a theory. You wanted a modern falsified theory? Steady State universe. Irreducible Complexity. Multiregional for origin of H. sapiens. "The only multipotent adult stem cell is the hematopoietic stem cell". MOND Meetings are where you present ideas. And you probably won't get a platform session, but a poster. See above for your "knowledge" about science. However, you overlook that data WILL prove a theory wrong. BTW, it's best not to think of it as "your" theory. Don't get too emotionally attached. The attitude I'm trying to get you to see is Milgrom's in reference to "his" theory of MOND: 1. C Seife, Radical gravity theory hits large scale snag. Science 292: 1629, June1, 2001 "As its inventor, I would like it [MOND] to be a revolution, but I look at it coolly," says Milgrom. "I will be very sad, but not shocked if turns out to be dark matter." Yes, but I am saying what I'm saying due to what YOU are posting. It has nothing to do with your "amateur" status. Just the statements I see you write. For instance, it is taking you forever to present your ideas. You should have started the thread with the ideas, not taken this long to get to them. With all respect, Galaxyblur said that, with respect to the 5 ball (the observer at rest) momentum is conserved. The issue is with the perspective from the 1 ball. 1. Before collision it sees the cue ball coming toward it at 20 kph. That's one momentum. 2. After the collision, since the 1 ball is moving and the cue ball has come to rest, both the cue ball and the 5 ball appear, from the one ball, to be moving away from it at 20 kph. Yes, momentum with the cue ball is preserved from the 1 ball perspective, but what about the "added" momentum of the 5 ball? You haven't addressed that. I'm sure there is an answer, since this situation would have been obvious to Einstein and all people working on Relativity since. It had to be dealt with in the past. The issue is whether WE know the answer. Never mind! Found it! Galaxyblur, I like learning new things, but it didn't take me long to find this by simply doing a Google search on "relativity conservation momentum". The question is: why didn't you do the Google search before you asked us? http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html This seems to be, in general, what you have done: " In GR, one must always guard against mistaking artifacts of a particular coordinate system for real physical effects."

Mostly you are just vague. I have no idea what ideas in the thread you feel fit within the different categories you have made.

Within anthropology, it is known that there is no such thing as the 3 "races". Neandertals were another species in the genus Homo. First there was Homo erectus. Homo erectus was the common ancestor for H. neandertals, H. sapiens, H. florensienis, and perhaps more. You are also guilty of "cleaning up" history. Europeans are members of H. sapiens. So are all the other people they encountered. The definitive biological proof is that Europeans interbred with all these peoples and had fully fertile offspring with them. Same species. All "human beings" as in H. sapiens. Savagery was not unique to Europeans. Amerindians -- especially in the eastern US, routinely tortured captives. The "Mongoloids" under Timur the Lame committed atrocities even worse than any the Europeans did, depopulating Persia as just one. The savage Japanese treatment of Koreans is legendary. Now, when you say "he" meaning Europeans, you don't mean ALL Europeans. There were also Europeans who helped DEFEND the native peoples during colonization. It is not fair to take the most extreme behaviors of a few -- "soap and furniture out of peoples body parts" --and say an entire population did so. Not even that. Ghenghis Khan and Timur the Lame, leading Mongol hordes, were much more destructive. Europeans in the modern era have had the most advanced technology. That might indicate creativity, or not. As far as anyone can tell, features such as intelligence, strength, creativity, and cunning are not statistically different between human populations. Each population represents a bell-shaped curve that is indistinguishable from the bell shaped curves of all the other populations. About the most that can be said are that the Masai are the tallest humans and the pygmies the shortest.

Please provide examples. ROFL! Bombus, please don't display your ignorance quite so openly. An Associate Professor is a "real" professor. The ranks go: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor. ALL are "professors". In the USA Assistant Professor is a rank before you have tenure. When you are promoted to tenure you get the rank of Associate Professor. When you have served on an NIH Study Section, an editorial board of a journal, and a few other things, you are promoted to Professor. The chairman of my department is ranked Associate Professor! Now you are just trying to trot out the Argument from Authority. She isn't going on meeting him personally, but what he wrote in the book! The issue is still whether the book is as Dr. Walker portrayed it (and yes, you should use her professional title). So far, you haven't given us any evidence to the contrary. Actually, it was the Alps and all but 2 died. Those died shortly afterward in the swamps of the Po River. But here the elephants went thru quickly and the Carthaginians carried some food for them! And wrapped them in blankets and built fires for them. Is that going to happen in the blizzards of the nuclear winter following the meteor impact? I understand that quite well. I'm saying that there are other factors at work than just that one. You keep pointing to animals ADAPTED for living in the cold. In that case, size itself does not work, does it? You also need fur, fat, and behavioral adaptations. The dinos had none of those. For animals adapted to warmer climates and then thrust into a snowstorm/winter, the amount of surface area to lose heat to the wind does matter. How many birds do you know that burrow? So that is wrong. Notice that you are repeating my arguments about requiring far less food than the larger dinos. Also notice that I am saying that they had the feathers and fur for insulation. But so did some of the larger dinos. 1. One of the pieces of data that fuels the controversy over the KT impact is that there does not seem to be any commonalities of the animal species that survived vs those that went extinct. This is what Bakker bases much of his argument on. 2. The KT layer is very visible where it can be seen. It has high levels of iridium wherever it is found on the earth and many areas have shocked quartz crystals. 3. Many of the continents were coming together -- which is one reason Bakker makes his argument of new diseases killing off the dinos. 4. I don't know of a climate map, but I haven't looked. Have you? Yes, that information is available. I was going by memory from 3 books about Hannibal I have read, including Harold Lamb's excellent history. It looks like my memory betrayed me to some extent. Hannibal started with 40 elephants and 4 survived. They are only exposed to snow for about 5 days. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/45492 Of his 40,000 men, 10,000 died of cold and exposure. Hmm. The smaller species did better. Yeah, yeah, I know, the humans may have had more clothes. But the humans were also wrapping the elephants in blankets, too. The smallest dinos known were chicken sized, but they were the ancestors of birds and were present 115 Mya. By the end of the Cretaceous there were true birds. So we are talking the size difference between shrews, chickadees, and chickens. Still a big size difference there. This is Bakker's argument. However, we would have to look carefully at WHICH cold-blooded reptiles and amphibians survived. There may be other behavioral considerations here. For instance, crocodile species only have to feed once a year. Some frog species can stand being completely frozen. That may be the reason they survived. As I noted, 3 out of 4 orders of birds also went extinct. So did many families of mammals. So it is not as if ALL birds and mammals survived. It may have been that all dinos were simply larger and couldn't get enough food to keep them going when the ecosystem collapsed. The question of feathered dinos would be: how many of the late Cretaceous dinos were feathered? We are getting lots of evidence from early in the Cretaceous, but not from the late Cretaceous. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v400/n6739/full/400058a0.html The ones I find are pretty large -- 2-3 meters long: http://www.dinosaurcollector.150m.com/featheredDinosaurs2.html SkepticLance, let's remember that we are dealing with species within the Classes of Reptilia, Mammalia, Aves, and Amphibia. I agree with Sayonara that, generally, we are not dealing with "accident". However, for a few species, your argument may hold. A few species may have been lucky enough to be in an isolated valley with hot springs that kept the temps up enough for the amphibian and reptile species there to survive. Originally we were just talking birds vs dinos. And I still want to remind you that 3 out of 4 orders of birds didn't make it! I think perhaps this thread has gone off is that we are working with the fallacy that ALL birds survived the KT extinction. That isn't true. Only a very few species survived! http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/birds/birdlectures/originflight.rtf "Most Cretaceous birds disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous, along with the dinosaurs End of the Cretaceous, the world was full of birds, coexisting with an incredible diversity of dinosaurs, many bird-like theropods like Caudipteryx Very poor understanding of the winners and losers among the groups of birds alive at the end of the Cretaceous Of the few that we know about, most joined their ancestors in extinction Hesperornithoformes, Ichthyornithiformes, Enantiornithes, all vanished without a trace Only the loons and some primitive shorebirds crossed the K/T boundary A stunning discovery from Antarctica adds the Anatidae to the growing list of survivors Vegavis iaai is a distant ancestor of the ducks, geese, and swans Lived 70 mya, alongside T. rex Few species of Neornithes survived the great devastation at the end of the Mesozoic Explosive adaptive radiation (about 10 million years) early in the Tertiary that produced the modern orders of birds" I would agree that crocodiles probably made it thru by 1) living in water which buffered the nuclear winter temps and 2) only having to eat once, or twice, or thrice a year. Wasps would be different. I would speculate that, living in hives, they could make the inside warmer by 1) beating their wings and 2) huddling together. Pretty much how honeybees get thru the winter now. Foodchain, you are aware that dodos went extinct in historical times from human hunting, right? They have nothing to do with the KT extinction. What you would want to do is look at the species of birds that were alive in the late Cretaceous and compare the species of the enantiornithines, the hesperornithoformes, and the icthyornithoformes (the toothed seabirds) -- all of whom went extict at the KT boundary and the neornithines which did not. http://www.google.com/search?q=enantiornithines&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1 http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/hesper.html http://www.bowdoin.edu/~dbensen/Spec/Icthyorniformes.html

Atheist, Swansont, I'm having a difficult time seeing this. Can you guys please walk me thru an example calculation: A 1 gm sphere A moving at 0.9c relative to a 100 gm sphere B. So, can you do the energy calculation based on the perspective of A where A is at "rest" and B is moving at 0.9c? Then the calculation from the perspective of B where B is at rest and A is moving at 0.9c? That way I can see that the energy released comes out the same. Thanks

Why not? Walk in and get the seminar schedule. Attend the seminars. Ask questions. Stick around for the cookies and coffee afterwards and strike up conversations. You mentioned "experimentation when we are ready". Testing starts LONG before then. I've had some ideas of mine stolen. But if that is your concern, then e-mail isn't going to help. My ideas were stolen by a few people I approached. In science, there is something wrong with that. In science, you must be prepared to give up ideas when the data shows them to be wrong, and that includes data that has already been gathered. Most people who try to give us a new "ToE" on the boards will not give up their idea when it is shown to be wrong. And that means getting up in a lecture hall. Or writing an abstract and submitting it to a physics meeting. THIS is not the next place to go. This is where you make us suspicious. We don't "believe" what our professors taught us (remember, I am a professor) because they said so, but because the professors were summarizing DATA that supported what they said and falsified other ideas. You don't seem to understand enough about science to appreciate that. Science isn't about "believing" people, but accepting DATA. There are several ways to find out. One is to go to http://www.archivx.org and look at the papers. There are other search engines such as "sciencedirect" that you can use to search the physics literature. Or even some basic textbooks in the area. If you haven't tried any of those yet, then this is a waste of our time and yours. I've done this before: you give us "your" theory, we find falsifications, and you think we are being "closed-minded" because we won't think "outside the box". I suggest going to a university library and ask the librarian to help you use their search engines.

You keep raising 100% random as the standard thought but are doubting it. From your post 7-01-07 When you say "I can't fully accept ..." you are saying that other people are saying natural selection is 100% random. They are not. Nor are other processes random, which you implied when I quoted you as saying "the universe is 100% random". Gravity isn't "random". It ALWAYS attracts, not attracts half the time and repels the other half. Chemical reactions are not random. When you mix sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid, you ONLY get NaCL + H2O. You don't get a random mixture of Na2Cl2, NaCl2, Na2Cl, Na3Cl3, Na3Cl2, etc, do you? Some can. Remember, it's only been about 20 years that we have sequenced enough of the genome that we can correlate specific changes in the sequence of bases in the DNA to specific traits! Sheesh! Give it some time, will you? Some examples relating particular mutations to "as to the why part" are: 31. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Wolfgang Enard, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher, Cecilia S. L. Lai, Victor Wiebe, Takashi Kitano, Anthony P. Monaco, Svante Pääbo Nature 418, 869 - 872 (22 Aug 2002) 2. Evolution in E. coli: http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/2003,%20JME,%20Lenski%20et%20al.pdf Lenski RE, Mongold JA (2000) Cell size, shape, and fitness in evolving populations of bacteria. In: Brown JH, West GB (eds) Scaling in biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 221–235 Lenski RE, Travisano M (1994) Dynamics of adaptation and diversification: 10,000-generation experiment with bacterial populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91:6808–6814 http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/1994,%20PNAS,%20Lenski%20&%20Travisano.pdf 3. Sequence of favorable mutations in E. coli http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/7/3807 1. Birth of a unique enzyme from an alternative reading frame of the pre-existed, internally repetitious coding sequence", Ohno, S, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 81:2421-2425, 1984. Frame shift mutation yielded random formation of new protein, was active enzyme nylon linear oligomer hydrolase (degrades nylon) http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm 3. D. Grady, Quick-change pathogens gain an evolutionary advantage.Science, vol.274: 1081, 1996 (November 15). The primary research articleis JE LeClerc, B Li, WL Payne, TA Cebula, High mutation frequencies among Eschericia coli and Salmonella pathogens. Science, 274: 1208-1211, 1996 (Nov.15). 1. We don't know every "given environment". Remember, "environment" is not just climate and geographical location, but EVERYTHING that impacts the individual: predators, microbes, plants, siblings, etc. That is hugely complex and can't be projected into the future very well. BUT, that said there have been some new recent experiments in the wild where species have been put in different environments and the evolution by natural selection predicted: 2. Reznick, DN, Shaw, FH, Rodd, FH, and Shaw, RG. Evaluationof the rate of evolution in natural populations of guppies (Poeciliareticulata). Science 275:1934-1937, 1997. The lay article isPredatory-free guppies take an evolutionary leap forward, pg 1880. 1. Case, TJ, Natural selection out on a limb. Nature, 387: 15-16, May 1, 1997. Original paper in the same issue, pp. 70-73 (below). Discusses natural selection in the wild where lizards were introduced to various islands in the Bahamas. Length of limbs varied according to the plant life present on the islands. JB Losos, KI Warheit, TW Schoener, Adaptive differentiation following experimental island colonization in Anolis lizards. Nature, 387: 70-73,1997 (May 1) 1a. JB Losos, Evolution: a lizard's tale. Scientific American 284: 64-69,March 2001. Phenotypic plasticity and evolution of Anolis lizards. Natural selection has been tested: Testing Natural Selection http://www.tulane.edu/~eeob/Courses/Heins/Evolution/lecture9.html#DEFINS http://library.thinkquest.org/19926/text/tour/10.htm?tqskip1=1&tqtime=0827 In Mendelian genetics we find the Hardy-Weinberg Law. This basically states that, in a population the meets certain criteria: "large size", no gene flow in or out, no natural selection, then the frequency of traits (or alleles) will be constant from one generation to the next. Frequency = the fraction of individuals with that trait or the fraction of alleles. So, if the size of the population is large enough and there is documented no gene flow in or out, then changes in frequency are due to natural selection. What is measured is the ratio of progeny actually produced to the progeny expected from Mendelian inheritance. This is "fitness". Fitness is therefore always relative (Understanding Evolution, pp. 153-154.) We can also get a selection coefficient that measures the selective advantage, or disadvantage. S = 1.0 - fitness. Now, you can apply these to the population. The discipline of population genetics did the basic mathematical formulas. Remember that, in the absence of any outside influence, such as natural selection, the frequency of an allele does not change from generation to generation. That is, if you have a population and 100 and 10 individuals have allele A and 90 have allele B, the next generation will be exactly the same: 10 A and 90 B. This is called the Hardy-Weinberg Law. Frequencies are symbolized mathematically by p and q. W is the relative fitness value. So we have W(A), W(B), and W(AB). The last is the fitness of the heterozygote in a sexually reproducting population. So, for the first generation the frequency p of A in the population is: p^2 +2pq + q^2. Straight Mendelian genetics. The frequency of p in the next generation after selection is: p' = p^2W(A) + pq W(AB)/p^2W(A) + 2pq W(AB) + q^2 (WB). Now, if W(A) and W(AB) are higher than W(B), it can be seen that p' will increase. Not chance, but pure determinism. You can see all this and a lot more in Chapters 4 and 13 in Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology, 1999. Remember Hardy-Weinberg. The frequency of an allele remains unchanged from generation to generation in the absence of outside influence. Therefore, the fitness of a new mutation is defined as the ratio of the number of progeny actually produced divided by the number of progeny expected by Mendelian genetics. This is going to be greater than one in the case of favorable mutations. From that we get a selection coefficient such that fitness = 1 - s. Now, doing the math we find that the advantageous allele A increases in frequency, per generation, by the amount delta p = (1/2)spq/(1-q). If you look at the equation, you see that delta p is positive as long as s is greater than 0, even if it is very small. Eventually p will equal 1, which means that every member of the population will have the allele. Thus, a characteristic with even a miniscule advantage will be fixed by natural selection. "Fixed" means every individual will have the allele. Care to cite the paper? What do you mean by "different result" and "different kinds of ways even"? The "different kinds of ways" would be the contingency I was mentioning in evolution. HOW you get to the design solution is going to depend on what variations are presented to natural selection. You may also get a situation where there are also different general design solutions to the problems. This is what happened in the evolution of eyes: there are several different general types of eyes that will function: compound eyes, pinhole and camera eyes, cup eyes, etc. Foodchain, if you are mistaken about something in science, what do want me to do? Not say anything? Would that make the statements made by you correct? Much of what I have said has come in response to questions you posed. If you didn't want answers, why did you pose the questions? Now, if you go back and look at my first reply to you in this thread, you had asked: Did I say you were "wrong about everything"? NO! I said that you were correct that QM did have a role to play in evolution! "2. QM comes into play when you consider the contingency of evolution. Kenneth Miller did this brilliantly in Chapter 6 of Finding Darwin's God; I will try to summarize." I even reassured you when you mentioned in your post 07-03-07: What was my reply? "No, you did fine"! What can't be "called anything more then such [science fiction] currently"? Evolution? Natural selection? Quantum mechanics in evolution? What do you consider the "science fiction"? I agree that you can't reduce everything! But look at the quotes of yours I responded to: the ones where YOU were reducing evolution to "energy". "Reduction" in science is trying to explain complex systems or phenomena in terms of simpler ones. As an example: all the behaviors of gasses under different pressures and temperatures can be "reduced" to the motion of the atoms of a gas. The complex motion of the planets and moons of the solar system can be "reduced" to the equations of Newtonian gravity and Kepler's Laws of Motion. Sometimes complex systems cannot be reduced that way. You can't reduce evolution to "So basically what you have then is energy evolving." That won't work because "energy" is not a population of individuals. And evolution happens to populations of individuals.

Question: we can measure the strength of the earth's magnetic field; therefore what is the magnetic field of moon? How strong is that in relation to the earth's magnetic field? If there is this magnetosphere pressure bridge that passes with the tides, wouldn't that disrupt compasses? How about affecting radio (electromagnetic) signals? What you want to look for, Fleep, are OTHER consequences of this magnetosphere pressure than simply the tides. When you make a hypothesis, look for lots of consequences of the hypothesis, and then start looking for those consequences in an attempt to show the hypothesis WRONG. It doesn't look like you've done that.

All you need do is go to any physics faculty at any university in the world! How do you think the current theories were devised? By people thinking outside the box! I think what you want are some uncritical people who won't bother seriously testing the ideas outside the box. You won't find that here. Multipotent adult stem cells that can make new tissues. And what happens if we show the ideas to be wrong? Are you willing to accept that or will you just say we are "stubborn" and "untrustworthy"?

You've just shown that our senses are realities of the world around us. "Colors" are specific wavelengths of light, heat is motion of molecules, and sound is vibrations of material. All those are realities. In this context, sane means, like the definition above "soundness of mind". To be sound of mind means that you can trust your senses to correspond to the realities of the physical universe. If you can't, then you have what you call "an abnormality of the brain" and are, by your own definition, "insane". All I'm saying is that illusion can be forced on us from the outside such that what we perceive with our senses is not, in fact, reality. We are then also "insane", "not sane", or "unsane", but the cause is not an abnormality in our brain, but an external cause. No. Your senses are telling you accurately what you are seeing. It is your hypothesis about the relation of senses and location that is mistaken. Why? The picture on the TV really does look like the people are moving, doesn't it? You seem to be objecting to the use of the word "insane". Would you like the terms "unsane" or "not sane" better? The difference is whether we know the illusion is an illusion. When we watch a magic show we know we are dealing with illusion, therefore our perception of reality is OK. Now, there are some visual illusions that you find in science museums, BUT, those illusions can be tested in other ways by our senses and shown not to be the way they look to our eyes. And yes, if we lived in the world of Last Tuesdayism or The Matrix, we would all be insane. We can't prove we're not. We take it on faith that we are not. Excuse me, we are living in this universe. So the hypothetical universe is irrelevant.

I take it that, in the UK, you are required to get a master's before you go for a Ph.D.? Yes, Europe generally has more of an "apprenticeship" approach to getting a doctorate. You pick a mentor, and then you are very dependent on that mentor. Basically, the mentor is God. US graduate schools take a different approach. The mentor is still important, but the graduate school wants some documentation that you have studied much of the discipline: whether that is biochemistry (my Ph.D.), microbiology, cell biology, etc. On my first postdoctoral fellowship one of the other labs down the hall had this saying posted on their tissue culture hood for all to read: "Wizard of Oz to the Scarecrow: 'I can't give you a brain but I can give you a degree." Something I've always kept in mind.

1. The OP was talking only about humans manufacturing a cell. However, conceptually there is not that much of a difference. True, you need a larger genome with genes for control of embryonic development, but it is really just "more of the same". In the area of artificial intelligence, humans are trying to create a "cognitively active being" but made out of computer chips, metal, and plastic rather than DNA, proteins, lipids, etc. 2. If you construe "create life" to "manufacture organisms that are different from ones observed in nature", then yes, humans have modified many species many times. For instance, cell biologists routinely manufacture either knockout mice where a gene is missing or transgenic mice where a gene is inserted into the genome so that a particular protein is overexpressed. This takes an existing genome and modifies it. But it is conceptually similar to taking an existing car and modifying it to make a new model, i.e, a hybrid Toyota Camry instead of the original purely gasoline powered Camry.

But the point is that, in the nuclear winter following the meteor impact of the KT boundary, all life adapted to living in the warm Cretaceous would have been immediately -- in a single day -- been subjected to a blizzard! You've forgotten the context of what we are talking about. We aren't talking about gradual evolution of a population to a cold climate. We are talking about instantaneous transformation of the climate from warm to cold. As you noted, in this instantaneous transistion, elephants are at an even greater disadvantage because of their ears -- adapted to giving off heat. Now imagine what this does to the poor elephant, adapted to living in the tropics, suddenly having a blizzard. It freezes to death even faster. But the small birds of the savannah -- with their insulation and smaller body area to lose heat -- might live thru the blizzard. And then, of course, is the food problem. You thought I would forget that?