Ophiolite

As Ringer says, later editions of Origin were vaguer, allowing for Lamarkism to creep in to a degree. If he had been aware of Mendel's work and had bought into it, then the move away from natural selection at the turn of the centurymight never have occured and the Modern Synthesis could have been realised twenty or thirty years earlier.

That seems incorrect. Mendel presented his findings, in 1865, to the Natural History Society of Brünn and these results were published the following year. (See below) That was after the first edition of Orgin was published. Mendel, Gregor. 1866. Versuche über Plflanzen-hybriden. Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Ver-eines in Brünn, Bd. IV für das Jahr 1865, Abhand-lungen, 3–47. The first English translation and UK publication did not occur until 1901 in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. What is interesting is that after his death an unopened copy of Mendel's paper was found in Darwin's library. One wonders what would have happened to the development of evolutionary theory had Darwin read the paper.

Don't you just hate it when everyone starts listening to everyone else and behaving all rational and respecting the other members and apologising for any slights they may have caused. The next thing that will happen is inow will arrange for Interflora to deliver a single red rose to each of the participants in the thread. Let's go back to mindless flaming - you know it makes sense.

Recurrent theme. Since you've nitpicked your way through every post that seeks to clarify and placed your own special and often distorted interpretation on each post then I guess I can return the favour. I didn't say you were immature. I asked whteher it might not be worthwhile to behave in a way that appeared mature. I am addressing the appearance of your maturity/immaturity not its actuality. I have not expressed any view on whther or not you are mature. I have implied that your posts have a strong flavour of immaturity. That's not down to me - I'm not writing your posts.

In your opening post you are concerned that another poster on another forum said "you seemed to be attacking him". This, you assert, was an ad hominem. He gave you his impression of what you appeared to be doing. He made no absolute declaration. A few posts back you declare that swansont "is impatient". you don't say he seems impatient or appears to be impatient. You are absolutely convionced: he is impatient. Impatience is generally seen as a negative quality. You are attacking his character. But this is not an ad hominem, you say. I agree, but it sure as hell is an attack, which your first example is not. Now to the heart of the matter: have you considered just taking a step back and appearing to behave like a mature human being?

He does.

Good advice. You could always ask the admins to delete your post. Only a few of us saw it.

This link may be of help: http://www.springerlink.com/content/kg9u6444509967r6/

I was unable to watch past the abominable grammar of "There are an amazing amount of prophecies." War, pestilence, nation against nation, and all the rest have been a feature of life since humans got organised. The only special thing about today is that we are more destructive of ourselves and our environment than ever before. But that is in no way predicted by the Bible. Frankly the idea could be considered silly if it was not so downright dangerous.

When I receive positive rep I consider what it was about the post that was appreciated. This has helped me, I think, to improve somewhat the quality of my serious posts. The rare instances of negative rep seem mainly to have been associated with a vindictive reaction on the part of another member, or a strong distaste for a controversial position. Negative rep on others have helped me reach a conclusion on the question, "Is this guy nuts, or am I just not reading him right." Summary: they are useful, but they are not the beginning or end of the world. As to why you have gathered a lot of neg rep. I read your thread carefully. My interpretation: you made the heart of your argument obscure; members carelessly read it, jumped to a concussion and attacked a strawman; rather than seeking to clarify in an objective fashion you got belligerent; that confirmed the initial prejudices and the rest followed naturally.

Apes have fingerprints and these fingerprints display the same diversity seen in humans.

That sentence is difficult to understand. I think you mean that you want to know more about the astronomical theories that predated Copernicus and Galileo. Is that correct? If so, a better starting point might be wikipedia - you have shown you are already familiar with it. If you want to find out more via this forum I think you will need to do two things: 1) Ask questions that are more specific. i.e. they ask about some detail of pre-Copernican thought. 2) Make it clear you are asking a question and not just making a series of statements. (For example, there are no question marks in your OP to give us a clue as to your intent.)

It also confuses the feeble minded, such as myself.

Ottahhh, you might also want to try dipping into some research papers. I thoroughly recommend this link here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/index.html Search for a topic and see what it turns up. While for many of the papers only the abstract is available, in some cases the entire paper can be downloaded. While many (most) of these will be pretty heavy going, try reading the abstract, introduction and conclusion only. You can extract most of the meaning that way, without being bogged down in detail. Now to properly understand some of them you need a post-graduate degree in the speciality, but there are also review papers you can track down with some effort that are much more digestible. Let me know if this works for you and good luck with your studies. Edit: As an example I just searched on sunspots, sorted by date, scanned down the titles and my eye was caught by number 52 on the list, Helioseismology. This is a good example of the kind of review paper I was speaking of. See what you think.

Are you asking this question on every science forum? If so, why? If not, how are you selecting the ones you do ask?

Nice one, but we'd better get back on topic.

So it seems, in your case, she has pulled.

This depends on several things: the size of the comet; its activity (release of volatiles); it's orbit in relation to distance from the sun and to the Earth; etc. The brighter comets can be seen by the naked eye for several weeks. Telescopic observation is possible for months.

That's a capital idea.

I think Anders is making the argument that practices once considered reprehensible are now becoming accepted or even celebrated. He argues that just as that is the case for homosexuality so will it be the case for pedophilia.

Also look into anything on The Lunar Society.

Personally, I'm against anti gravity.

What evidence do you have for this opinion?

This is a science forum for discussion of mainstream science. Novel ideas are welcome, but these are two confined to the appropriate thread. It is wrong to put forward an unproven hypothesis in response to questions for which their is a well establised mainstream explanation because this is misleading. It is also wrong to respond to a modnote in the thread when the moderator specifically says "Any response to this modnote should not take place here" I hope that helps - I'm just a regular member like you.

July 4th? British Thanksgiving.