Mokele

Honestly, there's a reason I don't even bother with them anymore. For a time, when I first became a mod, we had a 'ban-on-sight' policy for them, due to their disruptions - now we let them dig their own graves with infractions, which rarely takes more than 2 days thanks to the "Persistent Logical Fallacies" infraction.

I checked with Snape:

A paper on the remnants of yolk genes in placental mammals

Still won't work. Muscles have limits to how much they can grow, and those limits are far, far below what's needed to power flight.

That is utterly bizarre; I've never seen anything like it. If I had to take a guess, I'd guess some sort of colonial mollusk or worm (possibly a colonial serpulid worm), though it may be a single fossil which has been broken along the ridges (I can't see well enough to tell).

It's not. The fact that you even think that undermines any level of credibility you might have had.

She won.

Yes, and it's a frequent occurrence on Faux News. So much for "Fair and Balanced".

Basically, if you can't run away from predators (herbivores) or move at all, you need some other way to defend yourself. Some plants use physical means (tough bark, spines), but many use chemicals to poison their attackers. What's poison to an insect or fungus, however, may be useful to us by blind luck.

Yes, we should be harder on him, and press him to hold himself to the standard he espouses for others. IMHO, the tolerance of hypocrisy by both parties has contributed to the public view that all politicians are liars, hypocrites, etc., which in turn leads to a general "why bother" attitude towards politics. I'm not saying holding hypocrites responsible would fix everything, but IMHO it would probably foster a more involved public, higher voter turnout, etc. It's about what they've said previously. By analogy, imagine we have two Senators, an absolute pacifist who publicly opposes all violence even in self-defense and me, who views violence as sometimes necessary. Both of us are at a bar, and get involved in a bar-room brawl. Both of us are charged with assault. While we both did a bad thing (hitting someone), I didn't contradict my professed beliefs and the code I believe others should follow too, while the pacifist did. As such, they should be judged more harshly for failing to live up to their own rules as well as society's. IIRC, "left/right" means the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic, but "liberal" and "conservative" have different meanings (though not exactly swapped, either).

Inductive logic is based on experience or outside data, such as "the sun rose in the east every time it's been observed, therefore it's highly unlikely it will depart from that pattern". Deductive logic is stuff like "If all A are B, and some B are C, then some A are C". Deductive logic can be absolutely certain (and is essentially mathematical), but it depends on the starting assumptions. Inductive logic has a hard time proving or disproving, but typically has fewer assumptions and relies more on external observation. Consider "There are no white ravens". Deductive logic would address it by assessing what a 'raven' is, whether color is a necessary part of the description, and whether potential ravens count. Inductive logic would either say "We looked at a lot of ravens and didn't find any white ones, so they likely don't exist" (leaving open the possibility that they're just very rare or were overlooked) or "We found one, so that's wrong".

Ahh, thanks! So, to add to the math fun, what happens with fewer or more prizes? More or fewer tickets per pot? Is there ever a set of conditions where it's better to put all the tickets in one pot?

IMHO, we should be harder on anyone who demonstrates hypocrisy. If any candidate constantly harps on about "the sanctity of marriage", then undermines it in his own, we should hold his feet to the fire and demand he justify his prior positions in light of his behavior. Ditto for a candidate who constantly champions safer working conditions, but made their fortune by opening a sweatshop overseas. Ditto for a candidate who always promotes saving your money, but then splurges himself into bankruptcy. If any politician proposed to hold us to a certain standard or behavior, it's entirely appropriate to require them to uphold the standard they promote. If they fail, it's entirely appropriate to ask both how genuine they really were in their claims and how their plans can be feasible for all of their constituents if they can't make it work themselves.

Not as far as I know. Building legs and such is a very complex process, involving hundreds or even thousands of genes.

Ok, this should be interesting, and will hopefully settle a debate between my wife and I. Let's say there's a raffle, with 10 prizes, and you can put your tickets in individual boxes for each prize (thus there will be 10 separate, non-overlapping drawings). 9 other people have already bought 10 tickets each, and as a result, each cup now has 9 tickets in it. If I buy ten tickets myself (and I'm the last person to enter), would I have a better chance of winning if I put one ticket in each cup, or if I put all 10 in one cup?

John Edwards didn't vanish for almost a week, in clear dereliction of his duty. Not that pillaging public funds was OK, but it's certainly less incompetent. Of course, there's the hypocrisy angle, too - we're harder on Republicans because they're always winging about 'sexual immorality, just as we'd be harder on Democrats for failures on issues of equality and social justice.

When did I claim to know everything? Or that neurons were necessary for complex behavior? Here's two claims for you: 1) I know much, much more about neurobiology than you do. 2) There is no empirical evidence for quantum effects in the brain.

Hiroshima: 140,000 Nagasaki: 80,000 Firebombing of dresden: 250,000 World War 2 (civilians included): 60,000,000 Malaria: 1,000,000 per year Black Death: estimates range from 75,000,000 to 200,000,000 deaths. Influenza: 36,000 in the US alone per year Tuberculosis: 1,577,000 per year So, according to the numbers, you'd have to drop 6 nukes on Hiroshima-sized populations per year to equal malaria alone, and 9 more to equal tuberculosis.

Bullshit. Show me your faculty page, and post your faculty email address, so we can directly email that address to confirm your identity. If you're a history prof, how come you've never heard of the Black Plague, tuberculosis (aka 'consumption'), smallpox, malaria, typhus, yellow fever, or influenza? If you've studied history and never once run into diseases, your education is worthless.

Want to dispute empiricism? Jump off a building. Let's see who's right - my prediction based on evidence, or whatever philosophical gibberish passes for thought these days.

No, we understand perfectly how the brain works at the deepest level - they're called neurons, and there's no deeper level. Have you ever seen a neuron? They've *VERY* large cells. Individual axons of the largest of them can be seen with the naked eye, and can be over 3 feet long. They're composed of literally *billions* of molecules. Transmission of a nerve impulse involves fluxes of literally tens of thousands of ions. No electrons are involved - just whole sodium and potassium ions, moving in large numbers. Transmission between cells is due to the release of thousands of neurotransmitter molecules. Any quantum effect would be rapidly averaged out over the sheer number of molecules involved. Of course, that ignores the real issue - evidence. We can model neurobiology without going any deeper than the neuron, and can do so accurately. What actual evidence is there for any quantum effects?

Zeno was a moron. It's not about "conforming to our reality", it's about empirical testing. We do an experiment, and let reality tell us. If it gives us the same message enough times in enough circumstances, it's pretty damn near impossible to ignore or dismiss.

Go to Somalia and tell me that. Even there is spoiled, because we've eradicated previously horrific diseases like smallpox. You want to make these claims, present evidence, hard numbers. For mine, look into any medical textbook ever written.

We do, in order to kick the ass of the other country whose planes can. Yes, we have, and it's the best damn thing we've ever done. Go out into a crowded place. Look at all the people. Now, imagine 95% of them simply drop dead. That's what life was like prior to us "not accepting our limitations" and inventing vaccines and antibiotics. It's about making life better. If you don't want it, unplug your computer and go live in a cave somewhere.

Logic itself is inductive, since we got all the rules from observing what works and what doesn't. In that sense, logic is as true as anything we sense, and the only way out of it is arguing that we're all dreaming or in the Matrix (which is a load of pseudo-deep crap).