akh

So, then immortal. What exactly are the test methods? I want to try them at home. What exactly are the results? I want to see the results for myself. Why is that over thousands of years of "eastern" religious thought, you have yet to come up with anything that compares to the discoveries of science? Why? Why is that the young disciplines of physics have so much more to offer? Why, is it that over the months of this thread you yet can't provide any real evidence for your beliefs?

Oh, but those aren't "real" people. Just a bunch of men, women and children trying to get through the day. But they are brown, and over.....there.... BTW, where is my bible, I need it to overturn Roe V Wade....babies from rape are gifts from god and all that.

Anybody else pick up on this? Somehow, I think people will ignore this too and still vote for Romney. So, he slams the bailout of the auto industry while profiting greatly form the bailout!? I am looking for more confirmation on this, but... http://skydancingblog.com/2012/11/01/crew-uaw-file-ethics-charges-against-romney-for-hiding-auto-bailout-profits/

I don't think the core reason for Obama hatred has changed, but it seems that more people feel it is ok to spread the hatred. What is for certain, is that if you accuse GOP'ers of racism, they will violently deny its a factor. I have had conversations with people during the last election who said they strongly disliked Obama. Most did not have any real reason as to why. And if you spent enough time talking to them in a casual way they would offer comments about Obama's heritage, about how he is secretely Muslim, about his middle name, about his mother, ect. After more than a few conversations like this, I really was forming a view about many GOP'ers that I wish I didn't have. Many would say things like, "I don't know what it is, I just don't like him" or "I just don't trust him." If you asked why?, they often could not give reasons. Only a few seemed to have concrete, specific issues with policy, foreign or domestic idealogy.

The issue of slow rotation is more than just temperature related. Rotation (and mantel convection) appear to be needed to produce a magnetosphere. Without a magnetosphere, the solar wind of the system star will strip a planet of its atmosphere and irradiate the planet with high energy particles. Light, volatile compounds and elements are stripped first (hydrogen) making the planet inhospitable to life as we know it. Venus (slow rotation) and Mars (apparent lack of mantel convection) are good examples. But there is still chances for life in the Venusian upper atmosphere and underground on Mars.

For a guy who insists (or at one time insisted) that the government cannot create jobs, he seems to have some pretty weird ideas of what will happen if he becomes president. The guy thinks that the second he jumps into office, the economy will boom just because of the presence of his crooked smile. That's how he plans to make up the balance; by waving his magic wand over the economy, thus increasing the tax base. I can't figure out if he is delusional, stupid, or plain lying in this regard (good chance its a mix of all three). This is why he flat out refuses to answer as to how he plans to increase military spending and at the same time lower taxes. He completely ignored a direct question about this in the last debate. The math does not work! Romney is hedging a bet, and it will be the 99 percent that will suffer if (when) it fails. Its a policy that has been tried multiple times and has never, ever worked! Why would it work this time?!

More GOP absurd stupidity. All in the name of God of course! I really hope that the people in Indiana (A given red state for decades) have enough sense to not vote for this guy. These comments are not accidents, or slips of the tongue, or taking out of context; the GOP is overflowing with stupid. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/10/23/richard-mourdock-abortion_n_2007482.html?icid=hp_front_top_art

The only thing close to immortal here, is this thread. I say "close" because somebody refuses to accept that it (the thread) died many pages ago when the initial claims were shown to be lacking in evidence, full of mis-understanding, and driven by zealotry. Congrats Immortal!, you have finally put forward the only solid piece of evidence to your claims of mystical powers! It's a zombie! The thread is dead, but you keep resurrecting the empty corpse. You chant the same lines over and over...and finally a zombie arises!

From the time of the debate, I have always wondered what Obama's advisors thought was the best strategy. History has shown that the challenger wins the first debate no matter what, which is followed by a post debate bump in the polls. Its pretty easy for a candidate to attack an encumbant by highlighting the failures of the last four years. But it is difficult for the encumbant to do the same especially when the opposition changes (lies) about their position. The debate did force Romney to make statements about his policies (although he still did not offer many details). Therefor, I do think there is a component of strategy to what happened. I find the statements regarding altitude a bit pathetic. If there were only windows in that auditorium that could be opened...

I agree. I for one, am tired of being shamed into not speaking against this kind of crap. These people are about as backwards and delusional as one can get. I can't decide if they actually believe this garbage or whether they are just trying to hold onto a voting base. Either way, its a ridiculous to allow them to hold office, let alone serve on the science committee. I think flies have been intentionally placed in the ointment. This should bring up some good discussion the next meeting of my local chapter. It can be trying to live in bible thumping red state, but there are some here (mostly northern or western transplants) that have more clarity of mind. Edit: Crappy spelling due to haste.

I am not talking about "stupid graphs". I am talking about a live committee of researchers. The reason is so that the debaters will not feel like they can just throw BS numbers around during the debate. So say a candidate said "You lost 10 million jobs in four years" or whatever and the real number was effectively zero. Then the moderator could step in at a later time, and while citing references, ask the candidate why his numbers are so far off from cited sources. Make them answer on the spot for their BS. The problem with day-after-analysis is that people don't often have the time, energy, and/or resources to fact check let alone watch the original debate. This idea may not work at all, it may not be easy to implement, or it may be too disruptive to the flow of the debate. But what is the point of a debate anyway, if the candidates can just say whatever they want? That is pretty much what Romney did, yet he "won" the debate. Obama was not completely accurate in some cases, but there was way more truth to his comments (according to my research so far). I guess you can say that it is all up to the candidates to be prepared, but its hard to prepare against BS and imaginary figures, so it comes down to who can throw the most and make it stick. Romney does not have to defend much because he doesn't have any distinct policies or ideas. Even if he did at one point, he would say something completely different at another. I agree, its very difficult for Obama to attack Romney's statements or positions when they change daily. So, the Romney tactic seems to be to go after Obama's last 4 years but remain as amorphous and opaque as possible with his own policies so that Obama does not have a counter point. Thus making Obama appear to be continually on the defensive. Seems to have worked for the first debate.

I think Obama did poorly in the debate. But I feel he was more factually correct, or at least not as far off in his statements. Obama really looked like he was bitting his tongue a bit.

I really wish there was some sort of instant fact checking during the debates that would allow the moderator to revist the response to a question if the canidate lies or throws ficticious numbers around. Maybe a panel of neutral researchers that could verify claims during the debate. It should be easy enough to do in the modern age of information. That way, both parties would need to be factually accurate during the debate, and not just throw feces at each other to see who can make the biggest stink.

Vote me down all you want for posting facts (as three of you did). The director (Joel Gilbert) of that dvd would have you believe that the pictures were taken in 1960, but the fact remains that those pictures first appeared in a magazine in 1958. Gilbert knows this, because he would not have had those pictures without the magazine. So if these pictures are real pictures of Ann Dunham, it would make her 15 years old when the pictures were taken. So its either child porn...or complete and utter, slanderous, fictitious bullshit. It screams of racism. Either way, its disgusting to the core. I'm sure I will get voted down again. That's fine. But instead of pressing the red button, maybe back up your disagreement. Or at least post your disagreement instead of hiding behind the red button. Edit: Two, but the challenge remains.

As a follow up to Moontanman's post. So the director of that dvd should be charged with distributing child porn. Nice one Tea Baggers! http://barackryphal.blogspot.com/2012/10/fever-dreams-from-my-real-father-1-nude.html?m=1

I don't want to make this about semantics. I think there is some ambiguity in the term "law" (irony I suppose) in that there is a mechanistic definition and a definition that only applies under certain conditions. The former is the meshing of gears (clockwork-like) that is the ubiquitous, flawless, true representation of reality. To my knowledge, this definition of "law" does not truly exist in any field of study. I agree, this definition is antiquated The later definition describes things under certain conditions and is of a hierarchical organization. It is this definition that I was addressing. I assumed that this is the definition (idea) that jp255 was using, as he did specify application at the population level and created different algorithms for the two examples. But perhaps the thread title is misleading or there was not an as clear concept in mind when the thread was started. Ophiolite, you may be right, the term might not be the best, especially in the study of biology. But I still think there is room for the idea of fundamental organization (law) at certain levels within the study of biology. Do you not agree? And I do think that this can be applied to the study of evolution. Again, we may just be arguing over a nuance in definition. I can see the case for not using the term, and it may be that it is only used today out of convention.

Evolution without question is a process, and due to the enormous amount of variables, it would be difficult to make predictions based on some fundamental laws or laws. A scientific law, by definition, is a simple pervasive concept. Think, as you correctly examplified above, of ohms law or any other. They are simplistic mathematical equations. Theories, are generally more complex than laws, and have some flexibilty. It is interesting that biology is nearly deviod of laws but has numerous theories. That is mostly due to shear complexity. But it could also be that we have yet to approach different aspects of biology in the correct manner. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2816229/

jp255, When I studied astrobiology, one of the things that began to run through my head was the idea that life itself can start to resemble a law of nature. To me, it seems that given a certain set of conditions, life is inevitable. Within that context, it may also be possible that evolution follows as a law of nature. It may be an extremely complicated law, and thus difficult to recognize, but I do agree with the possibility. The biggest issue, of course, is that we don't have any other examples of life to compare against. If we discover life on Mars, or the Jovian moons or those of Saturn, and this life is shown to have arose independently, then we might have something to measure against. If other life exists within our own solar system, it would not surprise me if DNA was the genetic material. Some scientists have theorized about the possibility of truly alien life; life that does not resemble anything we know. This life would use different chemistry and could be so alien that we would not recognize it as life at all. But, in my opinion, the chemistry of life and its major elements (oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, sulfur) may force all possible life down a single path as a law of nature, and likewise genetic material and ultimately evolution. This is not to say that there would not be variations, I expect there would be. But this further complicates the question you pose, as we only have examples of life here. As such, our examples may not represent (and most likely do not represent) the full range of what is possible, and therefor, we may not be able to identify the underlying laws if they exist.

Dimreepr, are you asking specifically about phage therapies? As in treatment of bacterial infections? Just lookinjg for clarification, thx.

You would think he would at least have enough common sense to not specifically talk about things he has no idea about. It doesn't make sense to him? As in the same way that many things about this country and its foreign and domestic policies don't make sense to him? How taxes don't make sense to him? How regulation of the financial sector don't make sense to him? What else doesn't make sense to Mitt? The frightening extention will be his attempts at solutions. Keep on talkin Mitt....

I have know idea how you managed to think this entire thread was about size (retroactive attempt to show how you are right?) The title wasn't "How did evolution get everything bigger?" The point is, your original statement was just plain wrong. Then you tried to float your idea with logical arguments and analogies so full of holes that they only served to illustrate how poorly you understand evolution. You made accusations as to a relationship to size and redundancy, which you have yet to back up with anything. At every post, you are amending the original statement, moving the goal posts in attempt to show what "you really meant" and how your original statement was correct. Now you want to show how we, being unintelligent (yes another insult) are too stupid to understand what you are saying? Give me a break! It not about nitpicking, its about being accurate with your statements. That is so the next guy that comes across this thread doesn't repeat the same garbage as fact. Broad sweeping generalizations will get you into a lot of trouble in the field of science, as will not being able to back up your claims, or failing to admit you are wrong. Congrats, you have done all three in a single thread. And, you are still making strange wide-sweeping claims and analogies in your posts. Huh? Can you not see what is wrong with your verbiage? Ben Brown? Did you mean Ben Bowen? Also, you referred to Moontanman as "Moonman" earlier. Way to pay attention to details!

I think you got the basic idea. I would change "bigger is often better..." to "bigger can be better...". Without question bigger is not always better, as was asserted by dmaiski. Obviously, this is not the case. If it was, all organism would get forever larger. Its not just the resources that limit size http://www.pnas.org/.../14518.abstract , there are physical barriers to unlimited size. This is why you do not see land animals the size of blue whales. Tree height is limited, but not by available resources http://www.nature.co...ature02417.html .

Enough scientific evidence for zombies?! Where? No, wiki link does not count and it is not evidence. Nor does ancient manuscripts or any other scripture count as evidence. And theist are always quick to deny facts and evidence when it does not match their ideology. -You have this theist tree. Its a big tree, it provides shelter from the sun (facts). Its a pretty tree, it has a lot of pretty flowers and it smells good. But there is a problem, it bares no fruit. It has not bared fruit in 10, 100, or even a thousand years. It is barren. -Then there is another tree, the one of sciences, that is shorter, uglier, has dull flowers and it stinks. But it bares fruit, and it bares lots of fruit. You may not like the way it tastes, but that is because it does not agree with your dogma palate. So where is your fruit? I have yet to see any, and I have been asking for awhile now. At least you could pick off a low hanging zombie. Remember the zombies you offered? Don't skirt what you offered as proof. Where is my zombie? You can deliver it to my doors step if you like. Once I see it, I can turn to juanrga and Ben and let them know how wrong we are. Where is my zombie?!

Just wanted to quote your original statement, in case you have forgotten. Again, you have not shown in any way that your assertions are correct. Nothing ever got smaller? All this shows is how evolution takes advantage of ecological niches. This may result in being larger or "more complex", but it is not an absolute condition of evolution. Again, all this shows is evolution taking advantage of ecological niches. Moved onto insults? Good stuff. All I ever asked was for you to provide evidence as to your assertions. Where are your examples of the redundancy assertion? No, not supported at all sorry. I don't even understand your last point. Was it even a point, or just another insult?

I understand what you are saying, and I think there was some degree of caution in your initial post. I think we both agree that this is something that may be very difficult to prove. But accepting this thought would suggest that evolution today is somehow superior to evolution 250 million years ago. I just don't think there is a good case for that assertion. Again, I see myself leaning slightly in favor of the other side of the argument. I can see how this might work for an organism with an extreme high fecundity rate and low generation time, but the outcome is statistically poorer for organisms that do not fall under those categories. It seems to me, that it is a tremendous gamble for an organism that is placed under stress to respond by introducing more stress into the system (e.g. increased mutation rates).