For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
[latex test]
[latex test]
I’ll just put this here: http://www.nature.com/news/mosquitoes-engineered-to-pass-down-genes-that-would-wipe-out-their-species-1.18974?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
Alan,
Don’t enable permissions. I don’t want any suspicions raised and by not granting such permission, my reputation here will be protected.
Thanks for the offer though. I’ll make do some other way.
Sal
And you have a great reputation for YECism/IDism that *needs* to be protected. 😉
Thanks for the vote of confidence. As I said, I’d prefer not to have those privileges, that’s guaranteed way I won’t disappoint on that issue.
As far as other issues, there’s an old saying “don’t talk religion and politics”. Now that I’m starting to get along with you guys, I have to think about what few topics I can post on here without getting too much on any one’s bad side but also which will be beneficial for my learning. Stuff like the thread on fitness etc. would be good.
As far as the Christmas party….(You did say you had lunch with Jerry Coyne, so I assume you’re out in the mid west).
Well I was once passing through the Midwest and there was the Peoria Par-a-dice Casino and Hollywood in Joliet and a few near Chicago but which I never visited. I’d comp you a lunch or a drink if I were still in that neck of the woods and assuming security doesn’t escort my tail out of the casino.
Too bad I got flagged as an expert player. Up until I got 86d from the Hollywood casino chain, I had free access to the high roller player lounge and all sorts of exotic drinks. I can’t really drink partly cause I just cough it up and I don’t hold it down well (as if my body thinks its poison). Almost too bad because I had so much access to unlimited amounts of high class alcohols. You could have educated me on the finer kinds of scotch even though I can only sip a teaspoon here and there and preferably on my ice cream. 🙂
No need to say where you are stationed, it was just a thought, and it’s moot anyway. I can’t be travelling too much these days as much as I’d like to. So if you can accept it, I send a toast to you remotely.
Sal
No worries Sal. Its a big world. I’m sure we’ll grab a scotch at some point. That goes for anyone, even those who think we’re at war.
Illustration of the Golden Mean
H/T DaveS at UD link
In response to Alan’s”merry Christmas” message:
Git yontif, Alan!
Scotch?! Distilled liquor?!?!
On his deathbed with advanced cirrhosis of the liver, John Huston was asked if he had any regrets.
“I regret that I never developed a taste for beer and wine,” he replied.
Have a joyous and festive Christmas, y’all!
Someone told me names of the 3 Wise men: Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker 🙂
Rich has quite a collection of scotch from what I understand. Our family has a many bottles of alcohols collected over the years as gifts from others, mostly wines.
And there were the good ole days when preachers ran distilleries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Craig
and
and
I’ve wondered if chemically the really expensive stuff detectably tastes better than the cheap stuff. At some point the benefit to cost ratio must go down, but any way here is 4,999 bottle:
http://liquorama.net/balvenie-40-year-old-speyside-single-malt-scotch.html?vfsku=7928&vfsku=7928&gpla=pla&gclid=CLeOgoiA-skCFYIcHwod1ZUJWA
One thing I’ve been curious about, would this caviar taste good at around 11,000 a pound (2kg):
http://www.melandrose.com/istar.asp?a=6&id=1520&vfsku=3329125&vfsku=3329125&gpla=pla&gclid=CKOpisKA-skCFc2RHwodBloIYg
Total aside:
http://thefuntimesguide.com/images/blogs/santa-claus-tombstone-by-jurvetson.jpg
oh, that’s cruel. lol.
I wonder if God has a gravestone.
A few years ago I met a former nun Nadine Begin, wife of a former Catholic priest. I met the Mrs. Begin when I was visiting the Chantal Chateu:
http://www.chateauchantal.com/winery
Myself being an ex-Catholic I knew one can leave the priesthood or nunnery in order to be married. It’s not grounds for excommunication or expulsion.
I hated being so nosy, but I recall I asked Mrs. Begin if she and her husband were still part of the church, if their marriage was blessed by the church. I was happy for them. I’m glad the church did not get in the way of their happiness. They have a beautiful chateau and a beautiful daughter named Marie-Chantal.
I think Bill Cosby is likely guilty, whether the courts can demonstrate it is another matter.
What I find compelling is that 40 women came forward with an accusation — that seems a little overwhelming in terms of the sheer number of women willing to embarrass themselves and come forward. Unless there is some financial gain in it for them, or some vendetta, I have reason to believe most of the women are being truthful. Agree, disagree?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/30/us/bill-cosby-sexual-assault-investigation-pennsylvania/
Casey Luskin retires from Discovery Institute:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/a_big_announcem102011.html
Hey, why don’t we invite Casey here to TSZ? 🙂
Patrick,
ID does not have to be repeatable nor scientific to teach the improbability of the Origin of Life, and improbability of coding systems and machines. I could just as well teach them that fish don’t evolve into birds because fish give birth to fish. The most repeatable experiments are consistent with fish resulting in fish, bacteria resulting in bacteria up to N generation, where N is large. It depends which audience I’m addressing, young kids, high schoolers, graduate students, etc.
To a six year old I taught the phrase “law of large numbers.” I shook a cup of coins and then put the cup face down on the table. I said to the kid, “you think they’ll be all heads.” He (age six), his sister (age 8), his brother (age 9) all said, “NO”. I didn’t have to teach them that, they knew it instinctively. They put Nick Matzke to shame:
I then said, “that’s because of the law of large numbers.” The larger the number of coins the harder it gets to make them all heads by shaking.
I then turn to their parents, “your kids understand what a PhD (Nick Matzke) refused to.” They quip, “some people just want to plug their ears.”
I give put a set of dominos to stand up on their edge. I tell them, things like that don’t emerge by themselves (the domino cascade configruation). I show them videos of Rube Goldberg machines made by man, then show them videos of living things and tell them they are Rube Goldberg machines too.
I teach them “dead dogs stay dead dogs”, “life does not come from non-life except by a miracle.”
I teach them the word “inference”. I take a deck of cards, and take all card in a suit. I then let them pick one card, and show them I can, by inference figure out what card they have without seeing it directly. I taught them, “you can believe something is true without seeing it.” “Blessed are they who have not seen yet have believed.”
“Life is a miracle, miracles need a Miracle Maker.”
For the college biology students, I say: “here’s a list of questions to ask peers and professors (after you get your diploma). Explain the origin of amino-acyl tRNA synethases (aaRS). Without aaRS to begin with, you can’t get more aaRS’s — chicken egg paradox. How about polymerases, helicases, topoisomerases, and so many other genes. The most reasonable explanation is the Everything-First model of creation (which is sufficient but no necessary to infer ID). For macro evolution, how did the prokaryote to eukaryote transition occur? Splicesomes, spliceosomal introns, different origin of replication complexes, Shine-Dalgarono sequences (for bacteria), Kozac consensus sequencs (for eukaryotes), histones, etc. emerge? How about multicellular animal life? How about taxonomically restricted features that look like they poofed out of nowhere, such as the vertebrate liver.
I then teach them Pascal’s wager and point out, they have less to lose by being wrong about ID and God’s creation than their Christ-hating professors, therefore it’s worth stepping out in a little faith if that’s what they want to do.
I suggest that if they worry the professors are right, I suggest they ask them these sorts of questions. When they see their professors can’t answer, they often say, “then why do they teach evolution is true, they have no proof.” My point exactly.
I then point the college students to the problem of the world passing away based on thermodynamics and our genes slowly dying and that Jesus said, “this world is passing away.” I teach them they (as biology students) no more than Darwin did, and that there is no salvation in Charles Darwin.
I basically frame the ID question in terms of Pascal’s Wager, not formal repeatable science.
stcordova,
Without some science your improbability arguments are merely arguments from incredulity.
You’re talking about a strawman at best. No scientist claims modern fish evolve into modern birds.
If you really wanted to teach them something, you’d give little Janey and Johnny each a cup of coins to shake and dump out. Janey puts all the coins that came up tails back in her cup and shakes again. Johnny puts all his coins back in his cup unless they all come up heads simultaneously. Then you let them see who gets all heads in the fewest number of shakes.
Janey learns something about cumulative selection, Johnny gets to continue to be a creationist.
Do you explain that those Rube Goldberg machines evolved that way and look nothing like what known intelligent designers create?
So you teach them to assume their conclusions and not to look for other reasons. Killing a child’s curiosity is not a nice thing to do.
Hopefully some of them learn that they can’t trust everything adults tell them.
But ID isn’t about religion — Frankie says so.
Hopefully some of them think “Hey, this is an interesting research project for when I escape Liberty College and go to a real school.”
I suspect you neglect to mention the god that gets very annoyed with people who try to game it.
Then you are teaching them lies.
You challenge the mountains of evidence for biological evolution and push beliefs for which you yourself have admitted have no evidence to support them. That’s not teaching, it’s indoctrination.
The mountains of evidence are only in the minds of evolutionary biologists, not in actual repeatable experiments. Bacteria stay bacteria, they don’t become Eukaryotes even when they evolve anti-biotic resistance. The way things actually evolve under experimental conditions isn’t consistent with macro-evolutionary claims.
Do you think Eukaryotic evolution was an exceptional event or a typical event? Typical events are things like evolution of anti-biotic resistance, exceptional events would be the implementation of the Eukaryotic genome architecture. If emergence of eukaryotes is an exceptional event, then as a matter of principle, it shows evolutionary theory requires atypical events, and at some point atypical events are indistinguishable from miracles. I gave a small list of problems any biology student can appreciate. So why no credible answers from professors who supposedly have mountains of evidence? What are the plausible intermediates from a prokaryote-like architecture to to a eukaryotic architecture or something of similar Rube Goldberg complexity?
They can ask their professors the question I posed, and I know they won’t get answers because there are no mountains of evidence. I don’t have to indoctrinate them, they can ask the professors for themselves and see the emperor has no clothes and there aren’t mountains of evidence, only mountains of conflicted phylogenies that make little mechanical sense.
I supported you about the inability of IDists to calculate CSI, but now the tables are turned and I’m pointing out evolutionary biologists don’t have mountains of evidence, only mountains of assertions that make little mechanical sense. Evolutionary biologists tend to think phylogenies can substitute as explanations for mechanical feasibility. Such thinking is fatally flawed.
Plenty of physical experiments that show life doesn’t arise from non-life. Same could be said of bacteria transforming to something as complex as a Eukaryote. Experiment and observation agree with creationist theory, not OOL nor evolutionary theory.
You can believe what you want, but let’s not pretend the “mountains of evidence” are from repeatable experiments when in fact they are imaginary scenarios with no mechanical reasonableness.
I shake a cup of pennies and dump them on the table. I keep the ones that show heads and put the ones that show tails back in the cup and repeat. I ask the students to predict whether we can eventually get all heads. Therefore, ID.
## Parameters to set:Number.of.Digits <- 9
#9 for decimal, 15 for hexadecimal, can be as big as 100
#though after 35 there is not a representation as a string any longer
Stagnation.Limit <- 1000
#the GA will stop after Stagnatation.limit runs without an improvement
Max.Length.of.Permuation <- 4
#a child is created by rotating 2 to Max.Length.of.Permuation letters in the parent's string.
Sim.Zahl <- 1000
#number of simulations executed
## internal parameters
Op.Names <- c("+","-","/","*")
Alph.2 <- character(104)
Alph.2[1:35] <- unlist(strsplit("123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ",""))
Alph.2[101:104] <- Op.Names
#Alph.2 is the biggest possible alphabet
Alphabet <- c(1:Number.of.Digits,101:104)
#Alphabet is the actually used alphabet
# the numbers are encoded as 1,2,3...,Number.of.Digits
# 101 : "+"
# 102 : "-"
# 103 : "/"
# 104 : "*"
Pos.Value <- (Number.of.Digits+1)^(0:(Number.of.Digits-4))
#The positional value of a digit according to the base
Is.Viable <- function(v){
##it is much faster to check a string of viability this way than to evaluate the string and catch the error.
if(v[1]==103) return(FALSE)
if(v[1]==104) return(FALSE)
if(v[Number.of.Digits+4] > 100) return(FALSE) # last element cannot be an operator
if(v[which(v==103)-1] > 100) return(FALSE) #'*' cannot be preceded by operator
if(v[which(v==104)-1] > 100) return(FALSE) #dito for '/'Con
return(TRUE)
}
As.True.String <- function(v){
##turns the vector v into a string (literally :-) )
return(paste(Alph.2[v],sep="",collapse=""))
}
Convert.To.Decimal.String <- function(v){
##turns the vector v into a string where numbers are represented in the decimal system
if(Number.of.Digits == 9) return(As.True.String(v)) #no conversion neccessary
H <- NULL
k<-1
while(k <= Number.of.Digits+4){
if(v[k]>100) {H <- c(H,Op.Names[v[k]-100])
}
else{
T <- v[k]
k <- k+1
while(k <= (Number.of.Digits+4) && v[k] <=100){
T <- (Number.of.Digits+1)*T+v[k]
k <- k+1
}
k <- k-1
H <- c(H,T)
}
k <- k+1
}
return(paste(H,sep="",collapse=""))
}
Evaluate <- function(v){
##returns fitness value - fastest for decimal string
return(eval(parse(text=Convert.To.Decimal.String(v))))
}
EA <- function(Stagnation.Limit=1000,Max.Length.of.Permutation=4){
##the evolutionary algorithm, using one parent, one child
#Initialization:
Parent <- sample(Alphabet)
while(!Is.Viable(Parent)){
Parent <- sample(Alphabet)
}
Counter <- 0 #number of generations
Max <- 0
Stagnation.Counter <- 0 #number of unchanged generations
while(Stagnation.Counter < Stagnation.Limit){
#getting number of elements for this permutation:
Anz <- sample(2:Max.Length.of.Permuation,1)
#creating a child by permuting Anz elements:
Child <- Parent
T <- sample(1:(Number.of.Digits+4),Anz)
Child[T] <- Child[T[c(Anz,1:(Anz-1))]]
while(!Is.Viable(Child)){
T <- sample(1:(Number.of.Digits+4),Anz)
Child <- Parent
Child[T] <- Child[T[c(Anz,1:(Anz-1))]]
}
#counting generations:
Counter <- Counter +1
#counting unchanged generations:
Stagnation.Counter <- Stagnation.Counter +1
Ev <- Evaluate(Child)
#is the child better than its parent?
if(Ev > Max){
Parent <- Child
Max <- Ev
#generation has changed!
Stagnation.Counter <- 0
}
}
return(c(Max,Counter,As.True.String(Parent)))
}
#### performing Sim.Zahl trials
system.time(Result <- sapply(1:Sim.Zahl,function(x) EA(Stagnation.Limit,Max.Length.of.Permutation)))
Therefore selection.
As if anybody would let you near any students…
Noyau has relaxed rules, folks, not the sandbox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spliceosome#/media/File:Spliceosome_ball_cycle_new2.jpg
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Spliceosome_ball_cycle_new2.jpg
Just posted at UD:
Sal Cordova Withdraws from the ID Movement
He mentions this site as his source, perhaps in reference to ID falsifiable, not science, not positive, not directly testable (he does not provide any links).
The opening phrase of the article is:
Haha. If you’re not fer ’em, you must be agin ’em.
Hey, BA, since you can’t tar-and-feather Sal in the real world, accusing him of “pretending” is all you can do. Smarts, doesn’t it, to be so impotent? Haha. IDiots,
I wonder how much Banny Arrogant paid for UD? I wonder if he’s still happy with the deal now that ID is going down the porcelain swirly hole and taking his tin pot dictator ass with it?
I thought Sal was already banned at UD. AS I recall, for not accepting ID as non-religious, or something.
It seems that gpuccio recently asserted the need to talk about the designer.
Interesting times.
Barry used the word “ID” not “UD”. He seems to conflate the two.
His first stated reason for removing me was for YEC stuff, then the revised story a year later was because I posted at TSZ and was a Quisling Nazi Collaborator.
Gee, and I thought I was the real deal, not just a pretender.
Actually, I haven’t withdrawn. I’ve paid my annual dues to the Creation Research Society which has a peer-reviewed publication whose mission is to promote Intelligent Design:
I even get a 5.00 dollar membership discount for being a YEC IDist, not just any IDist, but a YEC Idist. No kidding, to be a full member you have to be a YEC, but you get $5.00 off for being a full member. So I’m more than the real deal, I’m a YEC IDist, not just a watered down creationist IDist, but a maximum strength 200 proof YEC Intelligent Design Creationist (IDC).
Sooo, that means Barry is making up his own “facts”.
He seems to have a creepy obsession over what I say here at TSZ. He banned me from UD, but he still comes over here to read what I write. Too funny.
Bob oH and Jonas Crump have taken Barry to task on this. I suspect that UD will shortly have two new bannings. Silent, of course. Or possibly asking them both a question, banning them, and then calling them cowards for not responding.
Barry is just too predictable.
Yeah, it’s not like your public airing of his private email and apparent obsession with him is creepy at all.
And it’s not like Barry’s email itself wasn’t creepy at all.
I also note that Barry deleted Jonas Crump’s comment pointing out the ethics of making a false claim against Sal when he knew that Sal wasn’t allowed to respond.
Thanks Acaratia.
It’s not like I can go over there and respond with a simple post to settle the matter by saying, I’ve not withdrawn from ID, as a matter of fact, I’m still a member of the Creation Research Society which advocates and promotes Intelligent Design.
I may have lost my affiliation with certain ID organizations such as UD, IDEA, ISCID, DI — but I’m still part of the ID community.
Ok, I’m going to try to show a jpg. This is a test.
Bwahaha! I got it to display!
Another try. This machine:
Makes this machine possible:
So, UD is still going strong. But it seems that The Skeptical Zone is catching up. My guesstimate (based on the comment ids for TSZ):
2015: 45,000 comments
2014: 22,000 comments
2013: 17,500 comments
DiEb,
Do you have a big version?
Ooooo-errrrr.
Yes, the original is big enough. But uploading always shrinks it…
I put it into media
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-admin/upload.php?item=29720
But I don’t know how to include this version in a comment. Sigh.
Sorry, DiEb, I’ve not been able to activate media uploading for members other than admins except by the admittedly rather limited plugin you used. Here is the link for the image.
And here’s the image.
Ah, I’ve to use that address – let’s see
[Sorry doesn’t work for me, obviously I’m not allowed to use the img- tag]
If you are interested in this kind of stuff, here are two more diagrams:
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ud-monthly-comments.png
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ud-threads-per-year.png
Perhaps I’ll post them to my blog…
Does anybody know if there is a way to view the “recent comments” list while on a smartphone?
They appear right at the bottom in my phone.(lots of scrolling) If there’s a demand, maybe we could add a mobile-friendly option.
Oh wow, I had never actually scrolled down that far. My bad. Thanks, Alan!
Or try the admin page. I personally prefer that
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-admin/edit-comments.php
Hi all – just a driveby post which I’ll repost at TSZ/ATBC (whichever one you’re not reading right now). I’m currently attending the ConspiraSea Cruise, which I know is of interest to the regulars. I’m submitting updates as I write them to my wife, who’s kindly formatting them and putting them up on her blog, Violent Metaphors. The first one’s up now and more will be coming later in the week. No creationism action but plenty of anti-vaxers and GMO fearmongering and legal mumbo-jumbo.
Sorry for the literally copy-and-pasted comment; internet is not cheap at sea. Which is annoying, but on the other hand, I have internet at sea, which is borderline miraculous. A miracle I’m parceling out precious minutes at a time, logging on to reload pages and drop prewritten comments/emails.
Anyway, we’d be delighted if you’d stop by Violent Metaphors to take a look and drop a comment—especially positive ones. Not for the sake of my ravening ego, but because I’m sure people from the cruise are reading (although not many and not often, given the data rates) and it’d be nice to show more positive, friendly engagement from the skeptic community. After all, the attendees are decent human beings. Some of the speakers make my hair stand up a bit, but more on that at VM when I’ve had a chance to write it up.
Colin,
Thanks, Colin.
I read that yesterday (with considerable interest).
For those who haven’t read it, here’s a link to the blog: Violent metaphors.
Blink.