Mokele

We are. Only intellectual dishonest individuals can seriously doubt the factuality evolution. Or morons. Which are you? Mokele

Well, the foam is there to keep it cold while it's on the launchpad. Does this paint work just as well for preventing cold things from becoming room temperature?

Oh, jesus ****ing christ on a stick. Go get an education, you ignorant little ****. Mokele

Ironically, the placebo effect is scientifically proven...

The reason why they don't use it on the shuttle is likely very simple: weight. They actually used to paint the external tank of the shuttle, so everything was white, until they realized they could save 500 pounds of weight by just leaving the orange foam exposed. Mokele

I strongly feel that the first photo depicts the building block of all civilization....

I use dialup, because cable and DSL are way too expensive (about $30 a month) for a service I almost never use. I rarely download anything or use the web for anything but surfing and IM.

Yep, all arthropods do, including them. It was just less of a limitation back then. Actually, far from it. A good many organisms, like worms and octopi, have hydrostatic skeletons, in which their bodies are supported by fluid-filled spaces. Compression of these spaces causes them to extend in the non-compressed dimension, like a long balloon when you squeeze it, which it how octopi shoot out their tentacles. Yes and no, as the lungs are still very simple and inefficient, which limits size. Mokele

Here's a cheaper version of the difference between the two: Problem: I find holes all over my lawn every morning. Hypothesis: It's an armadillo hunting for grubs Prediction of hyp: If it really is an armadillo, erecting a firm wall around my yard will either prevent it from entering (resulting in a cessation of holes) or will result in armadillo-sized holes under the fence where it burrowed in to enter. Hypothesis two: it's a mole Predition two: the fence will have no effect, nor will it be disturbed. Experiment: erect the fence, see what happens. Depending on the results, you can reject one of the two hypotheses. Of course, you don't always *need* two hypotheses, it just makes for a very neat, well-formed test (especially if mutually exclusive) that will be accepted to journals with the minimum of fuss. Mokele

No, their size is pretty much set at the moment. Two of the main problems are that an exoskeleton limits the surface area in contact with the outside world, and therefore restricts respiration, and that arthropods must molt. When an arthropod molts, it develops a new but soft exoskeleton, then sheds the old. Upon emerging from the old one, it it soft and pliable, and must immediately inflate itself before the exoskeleton hardens from contact with the air. Once it does, the insect cannot grow any more until next molt. This is fine at small sizes or when supported by water, but a truly large, terrestrial arthropod would run into big trouble. That said, they used to be larger, back during the Carboniferous, when the atmospheric O2 levels were much higher. By 'larger' I mean dragonflies with 2 foot wingspans, spiders the size of footballs, and 6 foot long millipedes. Mokele

Another thing: Nobody is exactly caught by surprise by a hurricane. They're *huge*, rather slow, bloody obvious, and the news media in an area goes to 100% hurricane stuff as soon as it even looks half-likely to affect an area. Any sex offender, knowing this law, has 3 options: get out of the state ahead of the storm, stay home and hunker down (if it's a strong, inland home), or go to the prison-shelter. Nobody is being 'turned out into the storm'. If anyone is so collosally stupid as to not be able to effectively plan an escape or shelter with *all* of those options and such advanced warning, they *deserve* to die; natural selection. Pets are often not allowed in shelters either, but I don't hear anyone yelling that pet-owners are being discriminated against. Mokele

Should we need it, we had a 'bot' program (the bartender) who could roll dice for us, but mostly things were determined by subjective knowledge of character's abilities or by what made the best story (like a character slip-up at the most dramaticly appropriate time, etc). It was more like character-acted group writing than traditional D&D style RP. Mokele

Personally, I never really liked D&D due to how 'rules-heavy' it was, and how long combat took. I've always favored systems with minimal rules, like Star Wars back when it was West End Games, or White Wolf. My all-time favorite game ever was an online game over IRC in which there were almost *no* rules (and absolutely no rolling). Everything was governed by playing the character and what would be most dramatic or fitting, with the emphasis placed on storyline and emotional depth, rather than leveling or quest completion. If I had time, I'd still play my characters from that game. Mokele

There's abiogenesis, and there's evolution, and both are *totally* separate. I never meant that AB is settled, only that evolution is. Actually, that's not *quite* correct. You see, the creationists/IDers continually manufacture 'reasons' evolution is wrong, and they have lots of them. Now, this is the important part: *NONE* of those hold up under logical examination. Talk.Origins has a list of *every* creationist/ID claim known, and a detailed refutation of each. I myself can probably refute all or most of them. But that takes time and effort, and I have other things to do (and, unlike creationists, one of those things is *real* science). On top of that, I've refuted "there are no transitional fossils" *very* well no less than 4 times on this forum alone, only to have a new creationist repeat the claim 4 months later. After a while, it just becomes tedious and aggravating, and we get snappy and mean. There *are* gaps in our understanding of evolution, but a) these gaps are *very* minor, and b) they are questions of 'how does this particular event in evolution happen?' that are *not* the sort of thing that would overthrow evolutionary theory. Darwinism *was* not fully correct. That's why we replaced it with a newer concept that incorporated all data. Then that was replaced with the New Synthesis, which in turn has been modified to incorporate punctuated equilibirum. Any flaw in evolutionary theory will *not* result in creedence for creationism, but rather in it being replaced with Evolutionary Theory version 4.8 That depends on what you mean by ID. Some people just use ID to mean that God guided the mechanism of evolution, while others use the term to mean that God spontaneously created many species and *directly* intervened in natural processes, supplanting evolution at certain points. The former is fine, there's no way to address whether there was or was not a guiding hand, nor does it really matter from the scientific perspective. The latter, however, is *not* fine, as it attempts to mix religion into science and pass it off as science (which the former does not do). There is absolutely no evidence for any 'divine intervention', and therefore the ID that is used by creationists as a 'stealth creationism' is not a valid or testable scientific theory. Arguement from incredulity. Just because we can't figure out how it could work more simply doesn't mean there's not a way. Behe's 'irreducible complexity' garbage has been utterly refuted, both in proper journals and here. This is, IIRC, the weak anthropic principle, and is logically flawed because, well, if those conditions *hadn't* been right, we wouldn't be here to notice that, now would we? Except, because it's untestable, it's not scientific in the least. "This exists, but it can hide, and can only be seen by those that believe already" is crap. You can use the same thing to claim the existence of fairys and invisible pink elephants. But, most importantly, even if you are right, it doesn't matter, because it's not testable and therefore not science. How is this any different than saying the world was created, intact and with false evidence of a past, last thursday around tea-time? It's not, and neither position is interesting, relevant, or the least bit scientific. Furthermore, if god created it so it would *look* old, doesn't that make god a liar? If you're trying to show that ID works as a *belief*, then yes, fine, it does. But that's not what we're disputing. We're disputing it's scientific merit, of which it has none, because it fails to fulfill any of the criteria. Considering your delusion that you 'won' the last creationism/evolution debate here, I'm inclined to take that with a heaping pile of salt. You were warned *repeatedly* for confusing abiogenesis with evolution, dodged questions you couldn't answer, refused to admit when you were caught with your pants down, and, to steal a phrase from a mod, 'threw out more red herrings than a russian trawler'. That you *think* you won any such debate only shows the depths of your delusion. I bet you think you're winning this, too. Well, if you'd've come here, we could have saved you some time. It's not scientifically testable or falsifiable. Mokele

For the whole 2500 foot thing, it seems to me that it's a case of "Not in my back yard" vaguely similar to what you get for nuclear power plants and such things. They've gotta go *somewhere*, but nobody wants them to be nearby. Mokele

Actually, I vaguely recall hearing that a proper study found that strong religious convictions *reduced* survirorship in such illnesses, because the person had an external locus of control (thinking that help must come from outside rather than inside). Mokele

Quick and dirty answer from the biological end: Your average human runs on about 2000 calories (actually kcal) a day, and, being a mammal, 90% of those go into heat production. So, given that your core body temperature doesn't really vary much (and if it does, that's a big, BIG problem), you have a back-of-the-envelope estimate of about 1800 kcal per 24 hours, which is 87 W. In cold rooms, it might increase, but in warm rooms, it won't decrease very much (instead, we sweat and thereby attempt to cool evaporatively). Mokele

Um, doesn't the 2nd law of thermo screw that up? You use energy to form complex molecules, storing a portion of that energy in their chemical bonds, then break for bonds and release the energy. In both steps, you lose energy to entropy, so it seems a bit pointless. Plus, you'd have to start out with a store of energy anyway, so why not just cut out the middle-steps and use whatever you have stored for propulsion directly? You'd get more efficiency that way. Mokele

Actually, the physiological tolerances of organisms are not related to lifespan. Rats live a lot longer than roaches, and both have wide tolerances. In fact, highly varaible environments would, IMHO, favor short lifespan; if you never know if the next drought or winter will kill you or not, it'd be best to invest in lots and lots of kids now and damn the consequences to your lifespan. Mokele

And this is precisely why, because any IDer's will spew forth a mess of intellectual dishonesty (like this) that I and others have to clean up. For your information, and as I understand things, you are not forbidden from posting about creationism and ID. However, the burden of proof is on you, and if you start spewing stuff that's been disproven multiple times in this forum alone (such as 'irreducible complexity' or 'there are flaws in radiological dating'), the posts will be moved to the psuedoscience where they belong. You may continue discussion there, if you wish, where you won't bother real science discussions. So basically, nobody's shutting down discussion, just streamlining it by preventing the usual creationist/IDer tactic of spewing the same arguements over and over, as they always do. If you want to find the answer to such things as 'irreducible complexity', use the search button. Hence why we have it set up so that healthy debate (that isn't recycled BS) can go on, but not just the typical debate in which the creationist/IDer flings out 'reasons evolution is wrong' that we've heard, disproven, heard again, disproven again, heard yet again and are thoroughly sick of by now. The debate is already settled, and has been for nearly 150 years. One side simply refuses to realize this, and as a result, they insist on wasting everyone's time. Mokele

Well, in the absence of selective pressure, genes for good and bad eyesight will not increase or decrease except by randomness (genetic drift). Since selection acts on the phenotype, and surgery/glasses alter that phenotype, surgery/glasses to give everyone good vision will reduce or eliminate most selective pressure. Do you have a source for that? And was that the *only* difference? Most developmental genes affect a myriad of processes and results. That's why 6 fingers hasn't caught on; because the process behind fingers and penii is the same, and if you screw one up, you screw both up, so the advantage of 6 fingers is offset by the damage to reproductive potential. It's entirely possible, and I'd argue probable, that anyone born without an appendix would likely suffer from serious detrimental effects elsewhere in the digestive system. --------- As for IQ, it's technically impossible for the average IQ to ever change from 100, because IQ *only* measures how different from the average an individual is. All IQ tests are calibrated so that 50% of a population is above, and 50% is below, and tests cannot be moved between populations and still generate valid results. Mokele

Even the plants that *do* eat animals (like mine) don't digest them in the same way; they mostly just digest them into a soup and absorb specific elements/ions they need like magnesium and such. Mokele

Personally, I don't see it as being a huge issue; at best, it's a minor side-issue. The big issues will be the usual, and as such, I don't see any candidates views on the topic being particularly influential to the overall outcome of the race. Plus, IIRC, the President has jack all power over school curiculums, so the limit of their power would be as a talking head to popularize one side or the other. But, given the limited political payoff, I doubt they'll speak up much. Mokele

It depends on the market and your major. Sometimes you're seen as 'overqualified' (meaning 'we don't want to pay as much as you cost'), but other times it affords you great opportunity. It's everything, from liberal arts to science. For instance, I'm probably going to apply to Lauder's lab there, for organismal biomechanics. MIT is also very good for sciences, of course. A lot of the time, it boils down to who you want to study under. Like if I got accepted, I'd be going for Lauder's lab, not the university as a whole. Who you study under is often just as important or more important than university name recognition. Mokele

Precisely. One of the biggest problems with maglev vehicles that I found when doing some work on them was "Ok, it's moving...so how do we stop it if it has no traction?". Not that it's not possible, just that it's not so simple as the brakes on a car. Mokele