Barak Hussein Obama? or Barak Hussein Osama?

On 13 Dec 2006 14:22:51 -0800, "Conan The Librarian"
wrote:


wrote:

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:03:03 -0600, Conan The Librarian
wrote:

Ah, so because some hypothetical Joe Sixpack doesn't know who DeLay
is, he magically is no longer a major player in American politics?

See my reply to Joe - he was never a real player, at least not on his
own.

I said he was a "big name" on the right, and you said he wasn't. I
said he was the majority leader of the house and you went into your
song-and-dance about how Average Joe wouldn't know him.

And if by "the right," you mean him and possibly some or all of the 100
or so suckers who subscribed to his blog, then yeah, he's probably still
a real big name powerbroker stud. OTOH, if by "the right" you mean
anyone else, then no, he's old news.

I pointed out to you that equating whether Joe Average knows him to
him being a political big name was irrelevant.

So I'll point out that it's pretty hard to be a big name, political or
otherwise, if most of those to whom you wish to be a big name don't know
who you are and rest don't give a ****...

And now you've changed the discussion once again to say that he's
not a "major player .. on his own". Well of course not. He's a
frontman for the Ridiculous Right. That's exactly the point;

No, it isn't. The point is that he _was_ this, that, or the other, and
now, he _isn't_ anything but a washed-up nobody...which is exactly what
he deserves.

he is a
big name who is trotted out for things like re-districting (remember
that?) and other "issues" where they need a sleazeball with no ethics
or self-respect.

Was, Chuck, _was_, not _is_, and in politics, the difference is
everything.

HTH, but I doubt it.

I know just how you feel,
R

wrote in news:ve01o2hql815l8sqp8m05lu2kqc5phc68k@
4ax.com:

All fair enough. And most of the former part of the above is why
"evolution" cannot be "taught," only "taught about" without moving from
hypothesizing to hypostatizing. And how do you reconcile the above,
acknowledging the variety and the fact that the hypotheses are not
absolutely "testable and demonstrable," with your pervious statement
regarding "untestable hypothesis" being crap.


http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html

Microevolution is quite often tested and easily demonstrated. We can, in
fact, easily synthesize evolution, and this happens all the time. Let's
say I want E.coli to produce a certain protein. I can use genetic
engineering techniques to splice the production of this protein into the
bacteria, and make a colony that expresses this protein. Now, let's say
I don't really understand this protein so good, but I do know that I want
to change it in some testable way, like I would like the protein to work
at a higher temperature than normal. Well, I could take the DNA from the
little guys, and I could replicate it in a fashion guaranteed to
introduce lots of fairly random errors in the copies. I'd whip up a
bunch of these dirty copies, put them in some bacteria, and test the
resulting proteins, if the production managed to survive. Then, I'd
artificially introduce "survival" by making error-filled copies of that
DNA that produced a protein that worked at a higher temp. I'd just keep
doing this till I got what I wanted. This sort of artificial evolution
is going on every day now.

The jump to natural macroevolution is a tad tougher, and this is why it
is still a theory, and not a fact. However, it is a pretty strong
theory. It falls within our current model. We have seen proteins, we
have seen DNA, we have seen many the molecular events that are associated
with sexual and asexual reproduction. We have seen mutation, and we have
seen mutations passed on. All of this, and more, supports the theory of
evolution. From the web page I point you to, "As Stephen J. Gould has
said, a scientific fact is not 'absolute certainty', but simply a theory
that has been 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to
withhold provisional consent'".

We have not, however, seen the finger of God come down and instill our
corporeal asses with pneumae. This calls for something that lives well
outside our physical explanation of what is, our model, our Kuhnian
paradigm, if you will. To have intelligent design make sense, first we
have to assume that given a primordial ooze, energy, billions of years of
random events, and that "survival of the fittest" deal that Darwin was
so fond of, evolution on its own (or some of its incarnations, such as
saltatory evolution) is not sufficient to produce that which already is.
Then, we have to incorporate some godhead, which lies entirely out of our
best concepts of the physical world, and invoke a miracle. We'd have to
throw out just about every vestige of Descarte's concept of methological
skepticism, upon which most, if not all, of our knowledge has been based
for centuries.

The last few sentences are what make intelligent design fall squarely
into the religion column. I do not pay science teachers to teach
religion.

--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

wrote:


Well, sure, but one really shouldn't hold that against a bunch of 10
year old kids, no matter how much smarter they are than you...

But we should hold it against 'grown-ups' who ought to know the
difference between theology and a sneaky end-run that tries to convert
religious theology in to a science. They should know better.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Scott Seidman" wrote in message
. 1.4...
"Opus" wrote in
:

I'm not sure I agree with ya here Scott. I believe the courts said
that "intelligent design" belonged on the shelves of comic book
stores.

Op


I'm particularly sensitive to this issue. History of Science is a hobby
of mine, and I teach it whenever there's an opportunity.

You may or may not have misread my reply. I was serious too and I don't
think many comic book stores consider their products works of science.
Unless we're talking Marvel Comics.

The Scientific Revolution (in the sense of the nickname of the 1450's-
1550's, not the Kuhnian sense) happened because scientists managed to
shed the religious dogma that people like Aquinas managed to wrap around
the Ptolemaic Universe, with its crystalline celestial spheres moving
heavenly bodies in perfectly circular orbits around the earth. Even my
scientific hero, Tycho Brahe (who I named my parrot after, cause his beak
looks a little metallic), fell victim to this dogma, and supported a
geocentric solar system. Read Brahe's wikipedia entry, if so inclined--
he was a real hoot).

Parrot's who fall victim to religious dogma, now that's a hoot!

Inquisitors teach this kind of intelligent design crap and call it
science. The enlightened do not.

Too true.

Op


--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

wrote in message
...

R

You know Rah, you really do yourself a disservice, when you try to compete
intellectually with a true intellectual. I wouldn't confront Scott anymore,
if I were you. It really makes you look even more the fool than usual.
Seriously!

Op

"Opus" wrote in :


You may or may not have misread my reply. I was serious too and I don't
think many comic book stores consider their products works of science.
Unless we're talking Marvel Comics.


Wasn't really at you, Op, so much as just a convenient place to hit the
reply button!

I did have one of them super big comic books of the bible, though. I can't
remember who made it. I had a Howard the Duck comic of the same size, and
a race between Superman and the Flash (that ended in a tie, IIRC)



--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

wrote in message
...
On 13 Dec 2006 12:51:13 -0800, "rb608" wrote:

wrote:
That said, I agree that people should be "taught" about both,
as well as about religion.

By the way you phrase the statement, I infer you do not consider ID as
religion?

I don't, no, but I don't begrudge anyone who chooses to (peacefully) do
so...and don't think ID is a satisfactory explanation of how life came
to be. But I am able to reach that conclusion for myself because I know
at least a smattering about the thinking behind ID. IMO, general
"science" class (in the non-collegial, preparatory education, such as in
a US lower, middle, or upper school) is as good a place as any to inform
about it under the premise that it is an alternative theory to what is
accepted as "science," but I don't feel that such instruction _must_
occur there. It isn't what I'd call accepted modern science, but
neither is much of early (erroneous) "science" which is taught about as
precursor information in the chain leading to current, accepted thought.

I don't think "intelligent design" is the
way life came about and evolution is the more-reasonable explanation,
but I'm certainly aware of both, and I'd make sure my children were as
well.

If you don't think ID is the way life came about, why would you want it
taught to your kids?

Because if they aren't well-informed, they can't possibly make
well-informed choices. There are lots of ideas that I don't personally
embrace that I don't wish to be hidden from anyone, children included.

And I think you'll find that most voters would want their kids as
well-educated as possible, and many of those would truly believe that
intelligent design is the more-reasonable explanation.

Many of those might believe the earth is flat; but that doesn't mean we
should squander resources teaching it in school.

Uh, yeah, "we" sure as heck wouldn't wanna squander resources teaching
things in school...why, shoot, too much of that kinda nonsense, and
before you know it, schools won't be able to afford new computers or
something...

IAC, just how do you "squander resources" by teaching about something in
a school? In fact, how do you squander them teaching about anything,
anywhere?

I get it. It's like child molestation. Most of us know what it is and
would never subject our children to such degenerate individuals with such
perverse behaviors, but because you want you children to be well learned,
you would actually introduce you children to a child molester and leave them
with he/she over the day.

Simple logic, the Rah Dean method of teaching about.

Op

Scott Seidman wrote:
"Wolfgang" wrote in
:

Actually, the story isn't quite that simple. The flat versus
spherical debate (not to mention infinite variations) raged for a long
time. It certainly IS true that most educated people knew a long time
ago that the question had been settled, but it was by no means a dead
issue as late as the mid-15th century......any more than evolution
versus intelligent design is today. Washington Irving may have
popularized the myth about Columbus, but many of the sailors aboard
his vessels undoubtedly had serious concerns about this spherical
Earth "theory."

Incidentally, while Columbus was obviously right about the shape of
the Earth, he was WAY wrong about its size (thus leading him to
believe that he'd arrived at the East Indies).......which had been
pretty accurately estimated by a number of folks centuries earlier.

Wolfgang


"Settled" might be an overstatement-- after all, we still have flat
earthers today.

Settled. Note that I said "educated people." Yeah, we have flat
earthers.....and we have creationists.....and we have intelligent
designers.....and we have dicklets and kennies and stevies.

There do seem to be some historians that hold that the
flat earth theorists were influential at the later Middle Ages,

It doesn't just seem so. It is so.

but most
historians seem to agree that based upon a relative scarcity of traceable
reference to a flat earth after about 800AD, the influence was marginal.

The Church has not yet been marginalized. Would that it were so.

As for Columbus, if he did in fact use a flat vs spherical Earth
hypothesis to bilk Spain out of funds, it certainly wouldn't be the last
time a scientist set up to disprove a straw horse to secure funding (but
it might have been the first!)

It would most certainly not have been the first.....not by a long shot.
However, it doesn't seem likely that he did. I mean, why would he so
much as hint at a discredited theory that predicted the certain failure
of the enterprise he was trying to bankroll?

Size was a different matter. I think that the Late Middle Age "natural
philosophers" had a fair problem understanding scale, and the fact that
people didn't understand that the distance of stars was so vast as to
preclude parallax errors was responsible for geocentrism holding on as
long as it did.

Well, all of that is, again, only partly true. Aristarchus of Samos
proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system as early as the third
century BCE. Hipparchus, a century or so later, came up with a good
estimate of the circumference of the Earth.....and the moon.....and the
distance between them, relying heavily on information gleaned from
eclipses, both solar and lunar. The ancient Greeks (as well as the
later Arabs) were well aware of the implications of the terminator on
the lunar surface. And, once again with the help of eclipses, they
were able to extrapolate from those implications and deduce the shape
of the Earth.* Astronomers and other natural philosophers in the late
middle ages had varying access to a lot of this information and equally
diverse opinions as to its validity and utility. Most of their
problems stemmed from, or were at least greatly exacerbated by,
official Church doctrine. Some things never change, it would appear.

This isn't what gave Columbus problems, though.

True. But then, I didn't suggest that it was.

Indeed, his estimation
of how far he travelled is remarkably accurate given his dead reckoning
preference (see http://www.columbusnavigation.com/v1a.shtml).

Stipulated. I don't need to follow the link.

The
problem was that he used Ptolemy's huge underestimation of circumference.

Yeah, that's what I said, he was wrong about the size of the Earth.

Almost 500 years before Ptolemy, Eratosthenes had an estimation of
circumference to within 8%.

O.k., you've got me there.....I didn't mention Eratosthenes
specifically.

While he preferred dead reckoning, Columbus also had a quadrant on board.
I would think that a well developed technique for quadrant based
navigation at Columbus' time would indicate a well developed sense of a
spherical earth.

Yep. But then, I didn't suggest that Columbus was wrong about the
shape of the Earth. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.

Wolfgang
*and then there's the chinese, the mayans, the druids......and just
about everybody else who figured it out a long long time ago.

On 13 Dec 2006 23:40:22 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:

wrote in news:ve01o2hql815l8sqp8m05lu2kqc5phc68k@
4ax.com:

All fair enough. And most of the former part of the above is why
"evolution" cannot be "taught," only "taught about" without moving from
hypothesizing to hypostatizing. And how do you reconcile the above,
acknowledging the variety and the fact that the hypotheses are not
absolutely "testable and demonstrable," with your pervious statement
regarding "untestable hypothesis" being crap.


http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html


The jump to natural macroevolution is a tad tougher, and this is why it
is still a theory, and not a fact. However, it is a pretty strong
theory.

Sorta like an "untestable" hypothesis that you've expounded as
truth...

We have not, however, seen the finger of God come down and instill our
corporeal asses with pneumae. This calls for something that lives well
outside our physical explanation of what is, our model, our Kuhnian
paradigm, if you will.

I won't! I won't!

Just because whoever "we" might include besides yourself haven't seen
something is no impetus upon me to accept it as an absolute. Neither
you or I (or anyone else) have seen evolution, either. Yet you choose
to accept it as an absolute insofar as when compared to "intelligent
design" while I choose to simply accept it as the most likely occurrence
based on currently available information.

To have intelligent design make sense, first we
have to assume that given a primordial ooze, energy, billions of years of
random events, and that "survival of the fittest" deal that Darwin was
so fond of, evolution on its own (or some of its incarnations, such as
saltatory evolution) is not sufficient to produce that which already is.

Again, whoever "we" might be could well be so encumbered. I'm not.
While I don't have to consider some form of intelligent design or even
"creation" as a "most likely" occurrence, I choose not to be so
close-minded as to eliminate the merest possibility of it having
occurred. And I'm certainly not going to let the fact that whoever the
hell "we" might be, you, or anyone else hasn't personally witnessed
something influence my thinking on that subject.

Then, we have to incorporate some godhead, which lies entirely out of our
best concepts of the physical world, and invoke a miracle.

No, "we" don't, and since of whom "our" consists is unknown, a statement
regarding their "best concept" of anything is meaningless. IAC,
religion and "God(s)" are not intertwined by definition, only by
individual perception. It is entirely possible to be a religious
atheist or believe in (a) "God" and have no religion. You are
attempting to attack another's theory with your own perception of fact
while simultaneously admitting that your "fact" isn't, in fact, _fact_.

We'd have to

No, "we'd" not have to do jack ****.

throw out just about every vestige of Descarte's concept of methological
skepticism, upon which most, if not all, of our knowledge has been based
for centuries.

Yet again, no, "we" wouldn't, but if evidence surfaces that indicates it
needs to be thrown out, AFAIAC, out it goes. But I think you may wish
to familiarize yourself more completely with Descartes.

The last few sentences are what make intelligent design fall squarely
into the religion column. I do not pay science teachers to teach
religion.

But you will pay them to teach Descartes, at least his work that you
personally canonize...interesting...again, you may wish to become more
familiar with his writings.

HTH,
R

Scott Seidman wrote:
... All of this, and more, supports the theory of
evolution.

No, no, no, no, NO! There is no "the theory of evolution"! There are
multifarious theories concerning the mechanisms that drive biological
evolution. That such evolution occurs is a demonstrated,
incontovertible, and unassailable FACT! A billion years ago there were
no dinosaurs. A hundred million years ago there WERE dinosaurs. Today
there are no dinosaurs. A hundred million years ago there were no
human beings. Today there ARE human beings. Species have come and
gone. They continue to do so. That is a fact. That's it......it
really IS that simple.

From the web page I point you to, "As Stephen J. Gould has
said, a scientific fact is not 'absolute certainty', but simply a theory
that has been 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to
withhold provisional consent'"....

Gould was wrong. Dead wrong. Unequivocally wrong. Scientific facts
ARE absolutely certain....just like any other facts. What is NOT
certain.....all too often.....is whether or not the assertion in
question is indeed a fact. That determination is what science is
about......and it does a damned fine job of it.

Meanwhile, advocates of "creationsim" and "intelligent design" are in
no material way any different than "flat earthers" and
"phlogistonists." They deserve a great deal more contempt and derision
than my meager lexical skills allow me to bestow on them. Treating
them like adults that one can have a meanigful discussion with is a
grave disservice not only to humanity, but to every other living thing
on the planet as well.

You should stop doing that.

Wolfgang