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Date: 2008/03/13 10:08:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

While everyone is focused on Florida, Texas and Oklahoma seem to be gutting science education from another direction. I found this link on ERV, and as  newbie here, I don't know where best to post it. http://www.edmondsun.com/opinion/local_story_067125346.html Quote The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized. If a student’s religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student’s incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this bill. ... Even simple, factual information such as the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the student’s belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious belief, the school would have to credit it as correct.

Date: 2008/03/18 13:20:11, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote The Wall Street Journal has an article discussing the high scores received by Finnish students in a test measuring science knowledge and intelligence. However, part of the test, which was created by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, may be a measure of nothing more than whether a student believes in evolution. For example, see the sample test question, Question 3, Evolution: Which one of the following statements best applies to the scientific theory of evolution? A The theory cannot be believed because it is not possible to see species changing. B The theory of evolution is possible for animals but cannot be applied to humans. C Evolution is a scientific theory that is currently based on extensive evidence. D Evolution is a theory that has been proven to be true by scientific experiments. According to the answer key, the correct answer is C, the one that pledges allegiance to evolution as a well-supported scientific theory. I think there are problems with all four of those statements. But if one is closest to the truth, it’s probably answer A... http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008....or.html

Date: 2008/03/18 21:16:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (IanBrown_101 @ Mar. 06 2008,04:14) Thought I'd blow the dust off this one with something a little different from what has gone before. Anyone out there an opera fan? I'm looking to soak up as much as I can, since being properly introduced to it about 6 months to a year back (I'd known a few songs and such, but I went to see a double feature and I loved it). I've been looking for operas to try, first by looking up a few of the songs, and then if I like them, trying to find a performance I can get to and afford. Any particular songs or performers people like, in fact? I'm a fan of Pavarotti, Domingo and Bocelli, but I recently found Caruso and I warmed to his style instantly. Anyone interested in opera should see if the Metropolitan Opera live video broadcasts are playing at a theater nearby.

Date: 2008/03/19 23:10:27, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

The question is whether it will follow the box office pattern of "Passion" or of "Gods and Generals."

Date: 2008/03/20 11:01:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote It seems to me you can always expect the DI to do the crass and tasteless and the clumsy.  I'd love to be a fly on the wall listening to them congratulate themselves for the brilliance of choosing Stein. I was a bit surprised to see Stein assume the Monica position, but I'm not convinced he is being hypocritical. Evolution and ID are a bit like the vase and two women optical illusion. You see one aspect or the other. I know lots of people who "accept" evolution, even argue for it on the web, but who don't understand it as a universal tendency. They cannot, for example, see the parallel between biological evolution and learning. This deficiency of imagination is not confined to the right wing. Noam Chomsky was pretty much in the design camp. When pushed against the wall, he gave lip service to biological common descent, but he considered language and the language faculty to be irreducibly complex and not reachable by stepwise modification.

Date: 2008/03/21 03:21:25, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Perhaps they had to drop Crossroads as the title because they couldn't get Britney Spears to narrate.

Date: 2008/03/21 10:24:21, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (guthrie @ Mar. 21 2008,09:29) Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 20 2008,22:49) The only reason that they didn't throw Dawkins out is that they were apparently too fucking stupid to recognize him! They didn't even recognize him when he sat through the film - not until he rose to speak, after being called on - by said producer, MARK MATHIS - at the Q&A. Holy shit, the blood drained from his face then! :angry: Just for clarification purposes- Mathis didn't even seem to know Dawkins was there, so the blood drained from his face when Dawkins revealed himself? Maybe someone needs to speak to the people checking the list of names, so as to clear up why "Richard Dawkins" was allowed in... This has a fairly simple and rational explanation. Myers lives in the town and could be expected to show up. He signed up online under his own name, plus unnamed guests. So they had his name and a reason to look for him before he showed up.

Date: 2008/03/21 20:35:18, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/03/21 20:48:46, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I do believe I got reply #666.

Date: 2008/03/22 00:34:53, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Excellent work midwifetoad... and you know you should explain your moniker, right? Paul Kammerer

Date: 2008/03/22 03:04:23, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Mar. 22 2008,02:02) Writer of Expelled repents!! Read about it here: www.kevinmillerxi.com. Shit. He stole the image I stole fair and square from Expelled. Is there no honor?

Date: 2008/03/24 18:05:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (dnmlthr @ Mar. 23 2008,18:24) http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....us-more O'Leary has managed to squeeze in no less than 4 links to her ever growing link farm today. She writes: Quote One blogger found himself expelled for even writing about the Expelled film. In this context being "expelled" apparently means "receiving e-mail and comments". The malicious atheist conspiracy is really getting desperate! I think some of these people are not expelled so much as habitually late to class.

Date: 2008/03/24 19:28:15, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Getting to the nub of it, how can a society be non-Darwinian? Every social structure and every meme has descended with modification. Perhaps Dawkins is confusing or conflating this inescapable process with social Darwinism.

Date: 2008/03/25 03:06:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Wasn't capitalism itself based upon a naturalist view of the world? Actually, Darwin was inspired to conceive natural selection after reading the likes of Adam Smith. The problem here is that some political movements have argued that natural equals good. The suffering of the unfortunate is part of nature; therefore it is desirable. Makes as much sense as arguing that disease is part of nature, therefore attempts to eliminate disease are unnatural and evil. Some folks might discern that conservatives are not the only people who have gone down this road. Back to nature is a road well traveled.

Date: 2008/03/25 09:40:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Casey throws in the towel Quote Nonetheless, it seems that the alleged products of blind Darwinian processes are outperforming human technology, which is the product of intelligent design. Some might marvel at the alleged ingenuity of blind and random processes. Others will see this as clear evidence for intelligent design. Either way, it seems clear that biologists and engineers who still believe in neo-Darwinism need to continue to repeat Francis Crick’s mantra: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." Industrial use of evolutionary algorithms has gotta cause so cognitive dissonance, or at least deep denial.

Date: 2008/03/25 12:12:13, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/03/25 12:50:27, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Thanks. I only have a few posts here, but I'm not a total n00b.

Date: 2008/03/25 13:13:41, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Gary Bohn @ Mar. 25 2008,13:03) Quote (midwifetoad @ Mar. 25 2008,12:50) Thanks. I only have a few posts here, but I'm not a total n00b. You have 17 posts here and you haven't hawked your darwincentral blog posts yet? Midwifetoad, you be slackin'. I just did. ;) I am not particularly pleased when people come to a forum just to flog their own, so I don't plan to spend my time here linking to my own stuff. The Stein fiasco, however, just drives me wild. I have been called a Nazi by better people than the Discoveroids.

Date: 2008/03/25 13:27:04, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (factician @ Mar. 25 2008,13:15) Via Uncommonhypocrisy: Get yer tickets here! Quote Due to unavoidable changes in the travel plans of the producers of “Expelled”, several of our screenings have been canceled or are being rescheduled to a new date or time. If you'd like to be notified once a new screening in your area is confirmed, please sign-up on one of the waitlists below. Snort!

Date: 2008/03/26 12:51:07, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I ran into a book called The Origin of Life at an estate sale. It turned out to be a "marriage" manual. Sadly they were asking more than I wanted to pay.

Date: 2008/03/26 14:37:07, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

This is a bit like salted peanuts. I can't make just one.

Date: 2008/03/27 13:49:23, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Great idea MidWifeToad.  But do you mind if I take the blue ball and run with it a bit Not at all. You've finished what I started. I'm not a Photoshop ace, and it would have taken me hours to get that kind of merger. Someone needs to fire that off the Harvard.

Date: 2008/03/27 14:00:49, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (VMartin @ Mar. 27 2008,13:58) Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Mar. 27 2008,13:20) snakes and testicles, snakes and testicles, snakes and testicles. marty I'm beginning ti think you're soft in the head or possibly have a hidden desire/fetish you're not sharing with the class. Just when did your obsession begin with snakes and testicles? It has started when I noticed that darwinists are like bulls. If they see a red colored animal they start shouting - look aposematim! Survival advantage! Descent of testicles is another phenomenon that darwinists are lost how to explain. They claim in their text-books that there must have been cooling of spermatozoa behind it  (whatever the facts are). They stick to this nonsense like a leech. Personally, I thank God every day for my hernia, and the Design of our upright posture. Good work, Big Guy.

Date: 2008/04/02 09:30:54, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

There must be some pop culture reference in this image that I don't get.

Date: 2008/04/02 13:08:21, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

Does this guy count? It's suitable for performing bris on creationist shkotzim.

Date: 2008/04/02 13:14:50, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

Quote I have this one, but I think it's a bit wordy. So where is the original image without the Expelled or parody add-ons?

Date: 2008/04/02 13:23:59, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

An existence without chance is one in which every outcome is determined by the first event. People of faith call this a meaningful existence, as opposed to the higgledy piggledy of evolution.

Date: 2008/04/02 13:29:14, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

I have assumed for some time that the Discovery Institute is operating as a mole in the creationist camp. Every court case they have participated in has sealed the door tighter against religion in the science classroom. They are mostly lawyers. They couldn't be achieving this outcome except by design, could they?

Date: 2008/04/02 15:48:33, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Presented in Tard-AO. Screen so wide it's gaping.

Date: 2008/04/03 10:05:56, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/04/03 11:18:16, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Toad's gift to the world.

Date: 2008/04/03 11:29:51, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ April 03 2008,10:33) re: post 1582 Sorry Kristene, your question kind of got lost in the shuffle. It's pretty easy to answer though, especially if you read the article that accompanied the photo. Have you ever heard the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" That's what you're seeing in that picture of Ben Stein and Ken Ham. As Ken makes pretty clear in his review of the film, his group has some serious reservations about Intelligent Design. But he recognizes that both ID and Creation Science (which he sees as two distinct movements, something few people on the other side of this debate have been able to do) face a common enemy in academic suppression. So he has decided to endorse Expelled on that basis. Sort of like Bill Dembski, in the preface to Mere Creation, saying, What's a few billion years among friends? Six thousand, 4.5 billion, they're equal in the eyes of those who oppose naturalism. Quote One advocate of creation thinks it is essential that God intervene in the causal structure of the world. Another thinks it is essential that God not upset the causal structure of the world. One advocate of creation thinks it is essential to read Genesis literally and accept a young earth. Another thinks it does not matter how old the earth is. Quote There is, however, an alternate approach to unifying the Christian world about creation. Rather than look for common ground on which all Christians can agree, propose a theory of creation that puts Christians in the strongest possible position to defeat the common enemy of creation, to wit, naturalism. Throughout history common enemies have been invaluable for suspending in-house squabbles and uniting people who should otherwise be friends. Although approaching creation through its common enemy may seem opportunistic, it is quite illuminating. We learn a great deal about something by learning what it is not. Creation is not naturalism. By developing a theory of creation in opposition to naturalism, we learn a great deal about creation. Mere creation, then, is a theory of creation aimed specifically at defeating naturalism and its consequences.

Date: 2008/04/03 11:33:08, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/04/06 11:01:13, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I wonder if the courts are going to go with PoMo when Harvard asks the theater chains to turn over all Expelled revenues to the rightful owner of the cell video. Courts are known for considering all world views -- those of the defendants and of witnesses -- to be equally valid. That's their job, isn't it?

Date: 2008/04/06 21:08:29, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Larry Fafarman saith: Quote Also, natural selection does not necessarily consist of just culling. For example, a bird that is a mutation of a lizard can enter a new ecological niche, and other lizards are unaffected at least for the moment. That is natural selection, too.

Date: 2008/04/07 10:41:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

QUOTE]It wasn't some doctrinal or dogmatic shift that demonstrated the earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa, it was the evidence.[/QUOTE] If it's all a matter of interpretation, perhaps Kevin could make the case for geocentrism, based on the evidence available at the time of Galileo.

Date: 2008/04/07 11:43:30, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Bob O'H @ April 07 2008,11:04) midwifetoad - didn't Feyerabend do that? He seems to have argued that the Church had the better argument, but I haven't seen how he would account for the dynamics of a geocentric system. I suspect it took Newton's dynamics to put heliocentrism on firm rational ground.

Date: 2008/04/07 13:32:54, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ April 07 2008,12:54) Somehow I think I'm never going to hear Kevin's rationalization for lying to 'undesirables' to keep them from seeing Expelled. It's a mistake to think you can get anywhere in HWood by sleeping with the writer.

Date: 2008/04/08 13:54:42, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ April 08 2008,13:27) O'Leary apparently knows something too   Quote That’s what the Expelled film is doing in the ID vs. unguided evolution (Darwinism) controversy. It shows both the evidence for intelligent design of life and the unconscionable lengths to which the Darwin fans are willing to go, to keep both students and the broad public from knowing why their ideas about the nature of life are probably  wrong. Does it? Does it really? Not from the reviews I've read. My bold. Has O'Leary seen a special version maybe? Kevin? denormalizing-the-darwin-thugs-2-pz-myers-and-friends/ I have an idea about how to denormalize evilutionists. Make a movie that calls them crypto-Nazis. That'll learn 'em.

Date: 2008/04/08 20:06:07, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

How does a movie open on a thousand screens and not get a mention on Rottentomatoes.

Date: 2008/04/09 13:09:55, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Depends a bit on what he's eating, doesn't it?

Date: 2008/04/09 15:34:00, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

It's really about time to have a betting pool. Will the box office for Expelled be closest to A. Mel Gibson's Passion. B. Gods and Generals. Will the number of theaters A. Increase the second weekend. B. Drop the second weekend. Will Rottentomatoes link to any reviews at all? A. Yes. B. No. If yes, what will be the Tomatometer score? A. 0 B. 10 C. 20 D. 30 E. 98 Will Ben ever work in Hollywood again? A. Yes. B. No. If no, will he be able to find a position at Bob Jones teaching Science and Economics? A. Yes. B. Yes.

Date: 2008/04/10 10:17:55, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 10 2008,00:16) Quote So they'll probably go ahead with the movie and then attempt to tough it out in court. That will be fun. More subpoenas, discovery, deposition, and cross-examination. I don't think they'll think it is much fun on the other side, though. I'm wondering if the theater owners don't face equal liability, having been put on notice. By the way, there's at least one surviving typo in the pdf version of  the letter. Millennium spelled millenium. Letter

Date: 2008/04/10 13:48:04, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/04/10 17:34:50, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

RichardFry Quote It’ll be interesting to see if this does get to court. No doubt the NCSE’s tactic is to naively hope that there is no background research supporting the science depicted in the video that can be used in court to defeat the idea that it’s simple a shot for shot reworking of the original, errors and all. Has anybody done or seen anywhere a shot for shot or split screen comparison? Perhaps that is the ultimate reason for the goons with the night vision specs, making sure no one could make such a comparison before release.

Date: 2008/04/10 19:13:12, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Reginald Beasley @ April 10 2008,19:00) Quote (ERV @ April 10 2008,16:46) William Dembski: Not a Lawyer Everyone needs to read this post - Dembski is admitting to malicious forethought - maybe on the advice of the dumbest lawyer in the history of the Universe? It's post 63  on the UD comments Generally it takes weeks or months, and lots of subpoenas to unearth evidence of a conspiracy.

Date: 2008/04/10 22:42:25, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Busted. This has ATBC written all over it.

Date: 2008/04/11 13:28:50, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Expelled To XVIVO: Up Yours!

Date: 2008/04/12 14:38:27, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I think Bill will live to regret his involvement in the video. There are elements of criminal violations here. Copyright law has more teeth than in the old days.

Date: 2008/04/14 18:33:43, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 14 2008,16:41) Expelled Exposed Variety Magazine credits these guys as animators. Out of Our Minds.

Date: 2008/04/14 18:48:58, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Some stills from the Out ofOur Minds demo:

Date: 2008/04/15 12:26:27, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Damn, I hate to rain on parades, but filling a gap only adds one to the total gap count. Math is a bitch.

Date: 2008/04/15 13:03:08, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

An overwhelming percentage of fundie children drop church affiliation when they leave home. That's why they have to have nine children to replace themselves.

Date: 2008/04/15 19:52:55, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Here's the official Expelled Paternity Test. Who's your daddy?

Date: 2008/04/15 20:03:33, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (BWE @ April 15 2008,19:56) Pretty pictures Midwife, I'd like Option J with a side of relish? Damn, and it was supposed to be a hard test.

Date: 2008/04/16 09:26:26, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

[QUOTE][/For instance, if particular objects have specific movements (e.g. jiggles) that are identical in both depictions, but are not due to a correlation of the underlying process, then that would be evidence of copying. QUOTE] That kind of thing is exactly the basis of XVIVO's cease and desist.

Date: 2008/04/17 22:21:19, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

What are they estimating? The only "professional" estimate I have seen is that they will not make it to the top ten.

Date: 2008/04/20 09:06:02, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote You figure about 4 people per showing (just a number I pulled out of the air, but it seems reasonable), 1,050 theaters with 2 showings per theater, that’s 8,400 people per day. At 7 dollars per ticket, that’s $58,800 a day. Not a big number as movie grosses go, but it adds up. Over a reasonable run, that could easily add up to over a million dollars. Well, you’re only off by a bit over two orders of magnitude. Now go away. -UD admin Must be Dembski math. He is aware, isn't he that this is a hypothetical calculation of the losses due to screen hopping? If true, the box office is under-reported by about five percent. Probably a lot less than the under-reporting of 'R' rated movies.

Date: 2008/04/21 11:21:45, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

From the political angle, the only technology that can substitute for fossil fuel in the next fifty years is nuclear, and the various energy transmission and storage technologies it enables. (Hydrogen, for example) If anyone can run the numbers and demonstrate this to be wrong, I'd like to be proved wrong. This is the politics of climate change. I can't foresee any likely scenario in which global demand for energy subsides.

Date: 2008/04/22 10:30:01, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote If you stop to consider how radically different the top-down thinking of design is from the bottom-up thinking of Darwin, the potential for breaking new ground in biology is strikingly clear. Who knows where it might lead?   Where it seems to lead in engineering is increasingly sophisticated and successful attempts to emulate evolutionary processes. One might also observe that technology seems to be incremental.

Date: 2008/04/22 11:04:13, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 22 2008,10:37) Graceout is a tard   Quote It is true that many southern ‘evangelicals’ shared views that demanded racial separation (Bob Jones Sr., etc.) but all recanted of them later in life. It is important to realize that the source of such thinking — that there is a clear line of demarcation between the races — is due to evolutionary thinking. Huxley and Darwin both believed that the races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australoid) were separate species who (miraculously) could inter-breed. Strangely, all but the Caucasoid had direct ancestry to apes, orangs, or other lower life forms. Many churches of the time (as they do today) acquiesced to the social science of their day – much to their detriment. Biblically, there is NO demarcation between the races. All are direct descendants of Adam (or Noah), and all are of one blood. ummm... This didn't come from social science. Interestingly, the end of slavery coincides pretty much with the publication of Origin. The region of the United States that permitted slavery is called the Bible Belt.

Date: 2008/04/22 11:08:28, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote It may be interesting to hear from professors who teach science who HAVE been granted tenure, even while being known to express doubt that every event experienced by mortals is determined --- completely and solely by natural processes, in respect of which any superior expression of consciousness or will is foreclosed. Maybe we could find a few among those who signed the DI statement. ;)

Date: 2008/04/23 17:00:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,15:08) From that .pdf I just linked:   Quote Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ). http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin....9625890

Date: 2008/04/23 20:50:39, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,17:21) Quote (midwifetoad @ April 23 2008,18:00)   Quote (Lou FCD @ April 23 2008,15:08) From that .pdf I just linked:       Quote Habitability on a larger scale was considered a few years ago, by Gonzalez et al. (2001) who introduced the concept of Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ). http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin....9625890 Did you read the whole paper I linked, by chance? Appropriately enough, he's critical of the GHZ idea and the paper sets out to deflate it. He makes some statements that to my layman's ear sound a lot like "Gonzales pulled that assumption out of his ass, and here's why it's no good." Are you suggesting that coining the term Galactic Habitable Zones is equivalent to coining the term Cold Fusion?

Date: 2008/04/25 12:03:17, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Doing some basic arithmetic for Expelled's first week, it appears that a bit more than half a million people have paid to see it. That seems like a lot, but it represents 550 tickets per theater, or 80 tickets per day per theater. If we assume five showings a day, that's a bit more than 15 tickets per showing. If we assume two showings a day, it's still 40 tickets per showing. Looking at weekdays, we have about 35 tickets per theater per day. I suspect most theaters are having only one or two showings per day during the week. I'm predicting the total box office will not reach ten million. The first week gets four million, and the second might get half that. After that, the number of theaters will plummet. We could see it max out at six or seven million.

Date: 2008/04/25 16:06:36, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Venus Mousetrap @ April 25 2008,14:37) Quote (Richardthughes @ April 25 2008,14:30) Quote (ERV @ April 25 2008,14:23) Just read the complaint against Premise by Yoko. Its beautiful. Did you all know EMI is in on the suit too? I didnt know that. *wipes away tears of joy* Has your blog been delisted from Google? I noticed that too. I search for ERV on Google because it's easier than typing in the url, but it's gone again. Just happened today. Really annoying.

Date: 2008/04/25 16:18:03, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote And I think I'll name my next child DingDing. Works for a boy or a girl! We have a wiener!

Date: 2008/04/26 14:49:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Looking at some popular movies, most take in about 40 percent of their total box office the first week. That's assuming a long run.

Date: 2008/04/28 08:18:45, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Time to start asking some questions of Google in public.

Date: 2008/04/28 08:51:13, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Looks to me like policy. The site was delisted several days ago.

Date: 2008/04/28 08:56:53, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Mere Creation is a hoot, particularly if you contemplate Dembski testifying in court. Quote One advocate of creation thinks it is essential that God intervene in the causal structure of the world. Another thinks it is essential that God not upset the causal structure of the world. One advocate of creation thinks it is essential to read Genesis literally and accept a young earth. Another thinks it does not matter how old the earth is. ... There is, however, an alternate approach to unifying the Christian world about creation. Rather than look for common ground on which all Christians can agree, propose a theory of creation that puts Christians in the strongest possible position to defeat the common enemy of creation, to wit, naturalism. Throughout history common enemies have been invaluable for suspending in-house squabbles and uniting people who should otherwise be friends. Although approaching creation through its common enemy may seem opportunistic, it is quite illuminating. We learn a great deal about something by learning what it is not. Creation is not naturalism. By developing a theory of creation in opposition to naturalism, we learn a great deal about creation. Mere creation, then, is a theory of creation aimed specifically at defeating naturalism and its consequences. ... Why should Christians bother with “mere creation” when they already have a full-fledged doctrine of creation? Sadly, no such doctrine is in place. Instead we find a multiplicity of views on creation, many of which conflict and none of which commands anywhere near universal assent. As a result the Christian world is badly riven about creation. True, Christians are united about God being the ultimate source of the world, and thus they are united in opposing naturalism, the view that nature is self-sufficient. But this is where the agreement ends.

Date: 2008/04/29 07:23:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote He found out that something had been done to it and it was SOMEHOW linking to some sort of pop up ad link farm page. WordPresss had a bug that allowed hackers to insert links into blogs without the knowledge of bloggers. The patch for this just came out a couple months ago, and not every blog installs every update. This insertion of links was done by bots, and many thousands of blogs were corrupted. Delisting was their first clue.

Date: 2008/04/30 12:36:37, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Descent with meddling. I'm going to remember that one. Original citation?

Date: 2008/05/01 09:44:29, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 01 2008,09:31) Sal is crowing about "Judge Jones" losing in Flori-duh! I didn't know he was involved there. I'm guessing now that the law is passed, some creobot 'teacher' will bang on bout the ark, the ACLU will sue, some schoolkids will lose a million bucks of education money and they we might get a new bill.. I must have missed it. Were the House and Senate bills reconciled? My betting was that this was a ruse on the rubes: pass conflicting bills that go nowhere.

Date: 2008/05/01 19:29:39, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (don_quixote @ May 01 2008,18:18) Y'know, maybe WE should set up a journal of ID 'research'. We could fill it with subtly nonsensical crap, which I'm sure would fool most of the IDiots. If the rubes accepted the faux papers as evidence of ID, Dumbski et al would be reluctant to discredit them, and then, at some point in the future (when the ID movement had well and truly attached their cart to it), we could expose the journal as a fake (thus sending the cart over the edge of the cliff)! Muhahahahahahahahhhaahahahahahah! It would be Sokal on a grand scale. Some say this has already happened.

Date: 2008/05/02 07:45:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Using the distance light must have traveled to light up the inner ring as the base of a right angle triangle, and the angular size as seen from the Earth for the local angle, one can use basic trigonometry to calculate the distance to SN1987A, which is about 168,000 light-years Interesting number. 168,000 happens to be the speed of light in miles per second. Dr. Dr. D should pounce on this as the True signature of the Designer. What are the odds that this cosmic number should be expressed in earth years and English units, unless God is an Englishman?

Date: 2008/05/02 19:12:02, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Reed @ May 02 2008,17:25) Quote (midwifetoad @ May 02 2008,05:45) Interesting number. 168,000 happens to be the speed of light in miles per second. Only if you are dylsexic ;) The speed of light = 186,282.397 miles per second. Only a materialist would let measurements get in the way of truth.:p

Date: 2008/05/07 11:12:15, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (William Wallace @ May 07 2008,10:30) Quote (didymos @ May 07 2008,02:26) Quote (William Wallace @ May 06 2008,20:50) You should check out my latest post, however, in which I describe a My son’s first grade teacher (God Bless Her!) . It will be enough to get the NCSE and their minor thugs worked up. William, you fool, it just so happens that's illegal.  To save everyone the trouble, here's what this "wonderful" teacher is doing: Illegal?  Wow.  I did not know that.  Could you please tell me, oh fool, exactly which law she violated? Did not think so. You're the only fool, fool. Trick question. Is the school a public school or a Christian school? Did the teacher own the book, or did she vandalize school property?

Date: 2008/05/07 13:49:44, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote So what's Dembski going to do?  If he tries to keep up the "this is science" story, he's going to risk alienating a big chunk of his base.  If he doesn't, he's going to make life more difficult for the DI, just at the point when they're making a new push to get ID into science classes. The author of Mere Creation is not in a very good position to expel creationists. Bill is on record saying 6000 is just as valid a number as 4.5 billion when it comes to dating the earth.

Date: 2008/05/07 18:54:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Dave's in a bind. His ego is too big to spend time on any blog he can't control ... Didn't Dave post at Freerepublic as SirLinksALot until being banned for supporting the wrong guy in the primaries? Apologies if I ruined anyone's supper.

Date: 2008/05/07 19:30:26, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin] This is making me feel bad. In 1983 I was working for what is now Fidelity Information Services, writing COBOL code to calculate mortgage payments for a couple dozen kinds of loans. The feds provided rather specific algorithms to insure that software written by different companies would arrive at the same payment. I used a garage sale HP-80 to verify my programs. Fidelity pretty much owns the mortgage software industry, and there's not much chance my programs have ever been re-written.  But I don't know where my 80 is at the moment. Somewher in a pile of junk.

Date: 2008/05/08 11:30:05, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

My cat brings things to me after they stop wiggling, as if to say, please fix it.

Date: 2008/05/08 11:50:49, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I'm always amused when supposedly conservative folks like Dembski and Stein play the victim card. When did this start, and when did it become the dominant mode of anti-science argument?

Date: 2008/05/08 12:23:15, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

If you do go "over there" you will be treated to such gems as this: Quote For example, the oft-repeated idea that an object of a specified size and shape dropped from a specified height in a vacuum will take an amount of time to fall that is independent of the dropped object’s mass is simply untrue. But it is a useful approximation, and widely considered to be “true” even among the scientifically educated.

Date: 2008/05/08 13:57:28, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ May 08 2008,13:16) Quote (dheddle @ May 08 2008,13:13) Technically WW is correct re. falling bodies, although I am not sure if the trap he plans to spring is General Relativity or relative acceleration. Whatever it turns out to be I wonder how that'll be spun into but see ID coulllddd be right I'm always impressed by the argument from incompleteness of science in the fifteenth decimal place. Must mean we're no kin to monkeys.

Date: 2008/05/12 14:01:30, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Added to the college credits she's already accumulated by taking AP classes, she'll walk in the front door of UNC Greensboro (where she wants to go as of now) as a freshman with like 19 credits. Not likely that any university will accept them all. The most you are likely to get is one year of college credit, not that a year is trivial.

Date: 2008/05/12 16:58:53, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Here ya go...

Date: 2008/05/12 16:59:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Of course that's just the American side.

Date: 2008/05/20 19:15:11, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote So that's what happened the QUESTION WAS could it have happened in 1000 years given different conditions?? That's what I don't get about the 'scientists' here. To really test a theory you imagine different scenarios and see if the theory still works. You're just lucky we are mostly pacifists. Else one of us would respond to the impulse to jump out of your monitor, tear your arm off and beat you to death with the bloody stub.

Date: 2008/05/22 10:50:05, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

What's up with Altenberg anyway? The designheads are talking about it the way people who weren't there talk about Woodstock. Anything likely to come out of Altenberg besides aromatic smoke?

Date: 2008/05/22 12:32:42, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Naturally, the Republican primaries in this state are populated by voters whose source of information is Fauxnews, and whose ideal politician would be a cross between Ronald Reagan and Mussolini. But at least there is hope; now I need to get a lot of people to register as Republicans so that they can vote in this primary   You could call it Operation Order.

Date: 2008/05/23 12:06:27, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Lou FCD @ Dec. 14 2007,08:01) Quote (Truth Radio @ 1 August 2006,(Tape 1)) I happen to believe - I don't know if I could prove this - I happen to believe that during the original creation with the canopy of water overhead, increased air pressure and filtered sunlight, fermentation was not possible. I don't think Noah knew what he was doing when he got drunk. It was an accident. He was used to making the grape juice [...] so I'm going to give Noah the benefit of the doubt and assume his getting drunk was purely accidental ignorance. Well, I have to admit that's the best explanation I've ever heard as to why Ham got punished for seeing his drunk ass dad naked, but the drunk ass dad didn't get in trouble at all.  It's almost endearing. Elsewhere in the Bible, "uncovering nakedness" means having sex with.

Date: 2008/05/23 22:45:48, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Obviously eaten by the Andromeda Strain.

Date: 2008/05/25 11:46:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/05/25 12:05:31, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote The problem is, of course, that once you know that Darwinism isn’t true, you don’t immediately know what is true. You just know where not to look for answers. The Argument Regarding Design in a tightly packed nutshell.

Date: 2008/05/25 12:13:01, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (stevestory @ May 25 2008,12:10) Quote (midwifetoad @ May 25 2008,13:05)   Quote The problem is, of course, that once you know that Darwinism isn’t true, you don’t immediately know what is true. You just know where not to look for answers. The Argument Regarding Design in a tightly packed nutshell. link? http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....ew-blog

Date: 2008/05/25 13:01:23, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

At least one ID insider posted at Freerepublic for years before being banned for supporting the wrong candidate. He outed himself by posting Dembski's essay on ID and google statistics under his own FR name.

Date: 2008/05/25 14:06:33, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 25 2008,13:04) Quote (midwifetoad @ May 25 2008,11:01) At least one ID insider posted at Freerepublic for years before being banned for supporting the wrong candidate. He outed himself by posting Dembski's essay on ID and google statistics under his own FR name. Can you share with us who this was? The FR poster was SirLinksALot. He seemed to have an unusual affinity for UD, often posting blog articles. Oddly, they were not always verbatim. Of course the evolution debate is pretty much dead on FR, for the same reason it is on UD. Everyone who knows anything about science gets banned. There was a time when evolution threads could routinely run for thousands of posts.

Date: 2008/05/25 15:49:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Dover killed the ID movement. It's thrashing around pretty violently, but its head has been cut off. No one but Behe testified under oath, and he hurt the cause. Everyone else -- Dembski et al. -- is on record as a creationist. They will never be allowed to testify under oath by any competent attorney. Johnson has acknowledged that there is no theory of ID. Dembski is unwilling to differentiate between the numbers six thousand and four billion. Expelled has set up a circular firing squad. Money lost, no positive impact for ID, all the academic freedom bills died, Catholics and Methodists support evolution. New evidence supporting common descent coming by the bucketful. It's got to be demoralizing.

Date: 2008/05/25 15:54:33, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Could be. It was one of the UD insiders.

Date: 2008/05/26 17:14:57, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Your bird looks a bit like a Magpie Jay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-throated_Magpie-jay

Date: 2008/05/26 17:22:13, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Robert O'Brien @ May 26 2008,13:19) Quote (Lou FCD @ Dec. 14 2007,08:01) Well, I have to admit that's the best explanation I've ever heard as to why Ham got punished... When I first glanced at this I thought you were referring to Ken Ham.  :D Just wishing.

Date: 2008/05/27 15:15:04, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Dave's Expulsion preserved here:

Date: 2008/05/28 17:44:07, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Richardthughes @ May 28 2008,16:47) Quote (Annyday @ May 28 2008,16:44) Not quite the same. Having to use existing sugars is a wee bit less convenient than assembling your hydrocarbons from raw hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. I'm kind of pessimistic about anyone managing the latter with existing (or near-future) technology. Even Venter. If someone does pull it off without any too-large hitches, though, they'll be filthy rich. Containment would seem to be a problem. Is it potentially an "Atmosphere Bomb"? You might want limited replications encoded. It's all getting a bit 'Blade Runner', but nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for. But evolution is still the bitch goddess in the driver's seat. Jurrasic Park may have had retarded dialog, but the idea is right. Evolution will eventually free your slave organisms.

Date: 2008/05/29 13:28:53, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Just ask what book supernaturalism has produced that is equivalent to this: http://www.amazon.com/Documen....0124401 Why is it that a communist will find this just as useful as a capitalist, a Muslim just as useful as a Hindu?

Date: 2008/05/29 14:23:08, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote All IMHO of course. Off the top of my head, or out of my ass, and straying dangerously close to woo... Not to muddy the waters, but Skinner considered biological evolution and learning to be functionally equivalent. He saw no difference between an arrangement of neurons and connections brought about by Darwinian processes and one brought about by feedback during the life of an organism. One process simply operates faster. He also had an equivalent concept of drift. He wrote of superstition and adventitious learning -- things learned as a result of "random" feedback.

Date: 2008/05/29 20:40:27, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm aware that Skinner rejected speculation about the physical underpinnings of behavior and learning. But as you have pointed out, he never rejected the desirability of having such knowledge.

Date: 2008/06/02 11:45:49, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I see a message indicating the database is down, probably for maintenance. Quote DB function failed with error number 1030 Got error 28 from storage engine SQL=SELECT * FROM jos_fpslideshow_slides WHERE state = 1 AND registers <= 0 AND ( publish_up = '0000-00-00 00:00:00' OR publish_up <= '2008-06-02 11:37' ) AND ( publish_down = '0000-00-00 00:00:00' OR publish_down >= '2008-06-02 11:37' ) ORDER BY RAND()

Date: 2008/06/03 09:33:51, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote A simple proof. Assuming finite memory (a reasonable assumption for a Pseudo-Random Number Generator), then there are a finite number of possible states of the system. At some point, it must repeat itself. Except that random number generators don't simply spit out lists from memory. The best of them use radioactive decay events to generate binary streams. But algorithms will do. The digits of Pi are indistinguishable from a random stream, and it is possible to jump to any arbitrary position in the binary expression of pi and begin spewing out a stream of binary digits.

Date: 2008/06/03 14:52:02, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote ...merely because the "scientific consensus" deems it the wrong avenue to explore. Perhaps you will bless us with some evidence that the avenue hasn't been and isn't being explored. I think you are lying.

Date: 2008/06/03 15:31:16, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote I have never been one to dogmatically insist that we must stop vaccinations or stop the teaching of evolution, etc., etc..  You act as if I'm out to stop all scientific inquiry in it's tracks, and that is simply not the case. But you have no hesitation about giving aid and comfort to those who do recommend against vaccination. If only to nod in their direction and suggest they aren't loons.

Date: 2008/06/03 15:59:46, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Many are desperate and very emotionally spent due to their situation.  Sometimes a person will latch on to anything that they think might help their child or keep another child from suffering as their own has. All the more reason to be careful to avoid quackery. I believe I started my exchange with you by asking for some evidence that mainstream public health isn't studying the effects -- including unwanted effects -- of vaccination.

Date: 2008/06/04 09:41:50, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I thought the new buzzword was "historical biology," which of course is completely unnecessary for getting through life.

Date: 2008/06/04 13:57:44, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (blader @ June 04 2008,12:13) Quote (Kristine @ May 16 2008,11:18) Me, I'm hoping that they build up a big expectation in the press that they're going to cure cancer or something. The internet didn't exist when all this "creation science" was around. Now they're leaving a virtual paper trail, and good! I say. It seems curing cancer is aiming pretty low compared to their obvious objective, which is to use the tools of modern day scientific mimicry to prove the existence of God. By design, it will keep them in business for an eternity. Now that's a Deep Thought.

Date: 2008/06/05 11:19:34, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Same old same old. Unspecified actions done by an unspecified agency having unspecified capabilities and limitations, done at unspecified times and places for unspecified reasons using unspecified methods, leaving no evidence. Poof.

Date: 2008/06/05 14:27:16, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Let's hear from you about a real "weakness" of evolutionary theory, a bit of actual evidence that is at odds with the theory AND that could be explainable in a high school classroom. Without using the bullshit term "weaknesses" it would be possible to list some of the early arguments against evolution and how they were resolved. I've been re-reading Ernst Mayr's "Endless Argument," and I think a bit of science history is reasonable. The problem, of course, is that creationism adapts to antibodies, and every argument will countered by new bullshit. I note that Mayr's book, published in 1991, shamelessly uses the terms Darwinism and evolutionist. Why not? They were not dirty words until that anti-science crowd said they were dirty.

Date: 2008/06/05 20:28:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (stevestory @ June 05 2008,17:46) I used to wonder if Davescot would humiliate Dembski enough that Dembski would quit the site. But with Dembski's support of the Bible Code, opposition to common descent, advocacy of the paranormal, and calling catholics lunatics who don't believe in god, I wonder if Dembski will humiliate Davescot into quitting. Myself, I'd be happiest if they both stayed, co-humiliating each other, having banning wars, etc. Just wondering who owned UD, and found this: Quote Similar Domains Available for $9.95 unusualcollapse.com unusualplunge.com unusualsinking.com unusualcollapse.net unusualplunge.net unusualsinking.net unusualcollapse.org unusualplunge.org unusualsinking.org

Date: 2008/06/09 11:39:45, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Damn. Entangled posts. Kewl.

Date: 2008/06/09 14:22:28, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (dnmlthr @ June 09 2008,10:27) Currently reading Road to Reality by Roger Penrose, but making slow progress. It's not exactly a book you just zip through on a lazy summer day. I hope that road doesn't traverse too many miles through the Emperor's Mind.

Date: 2008/06/09 15:36:00, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Charting out simliarities[sic] between organisms was done before Darwin as well.  Studying the similiarities[sic] between organisms is what leads to scientific advancement.  It doesn't matter one iota whether your philosophical viewpoint is common design or common descent. Hey, it's mathematically possible to map all astronomical observations to a geocentric model. It doesn't matter one iota to anyone not planning to travel through space. The central weakness of ID is not that it is wrong, but that it can't be wrong.

Date: 2008/06/10 09:53:30, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

DaveScot opines: Quote Citrate digestion is a real yawner. If that’s all it is, it’s really pathetic and is really a world class example of the lack of any compelling evidence for RM+NS as a mechanism capable of driving creative evolution.

Date: 2008/06/10 13:02:12, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Ekstasis says: Quote Since everyone is performing these fantastic mathematical computations, I will simply conjur up a point backed up by third grade mathematics, and then return to my seat in the back of the class, and take the short bus home after the bell rings. 30,000 generations of e. coli, and presto, we get a new constructive function, the ability to utilize citrate. Now, 30,000 advanced primate generations, at 20 years per generation, equals 600,000 years. So, a billion years equals less than 2,000 generations.

Date: 2008/06/10 15:24:27, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Good thing Billy D is a mathematician. I'm sure he can correct third grade arithmetic.

Date: 2008/06/11 10:42:36, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Finally, voters vote not only for school boards, but for idjits like Santorum and Brownback.

Date: 2008/06/11 10:43:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Try another way. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/SANTORUM_sadness.jpg

Date: 2008/06/11 14:45:10, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Patrick discusses Behe in the third person:     Quote The whole point of Behe’s new book was to try and find experimental evidence for exactly what Darwinian mechanisms are capable of. On the other hand we have speculative indirect stepwise pathway scenarios but so far the OBSERVED “edge of evolution” doesn’t allow these models to be feasible. But this “edge” is an estimate based upon a limited set of data which in turn “might” mean the estimated “edge” is far less than the maximum capable by Darwinian mechanisms. If Darwinists would bother to do further experiments they may see if this “edge” could in reality be extended. Then if this new derived “edge” is compatible with these models then so be it (though I’ll add the caveat that the “edge” might be better for Darwinism only in limited scenarios). In the meantime they’re just assuming the “edge” allows for it. Even worse, unless I failed to notice the news, the very first detailed, testable (and potentially falsifiable) model for the flagellum is yet to be fully completed (I realize there are people working on producing one) so a major challenge of Behe’s first book is yet to be refuted, never mind the new book. Linky Hey, if you've got a flagellum, why don't you whip it out?

Date: 2008/06/11 18:16:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Dave had a momentary lapse of unreason, but recovered.

Date: 2008/06/11 20:08:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

The Behetitudes

Date: 2008/06/12 09:11:40, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

http://www.discovery.org/a/5711 http://blog.darwincentral.org/2008....olution Quote Baton Rouge — By a vote of 94-3, Louisiana’s House of Representatives today passed an academic freedom bill that would protect teachers and school districts who wish to promote critical thinking and objective discussion about evolution and other scientific topics. There was no vocal opposition, and the floor speech by Rep. Frank Hoffman made clear that the bill was about science, not religion. “This bill promotes good science education by protecting the academic freedom of science teachers,” said Dr. John West, Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs at Discovery Institute. “Critics who claim the bill promotes religion instead of science either haven’t read the bill or are putting up a smokescreen to divert attention from the censorship that has been going on.”

Date: 2008/06/12 15:02:56, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Maybe I should try to get in touch with Behe.  He's one person I've never tried to contact yet.  Hmmm...maybe he could tell me why molecular biologists must maintain that all of nature had a common ancestor. Because it is the only explanatory theory, not simply the best among many. Design does not constitute a theory for the simple reason that it doesn't lead to research. It's been around in its present form for two hundred years and still says nothing about the attributes or activities of the entity that does the designing. No times or places for the activities of the Designer. No list of events caused by the Designer. No motives or intentions, even though these are considered to be the distinguishing features of Design. No samples of objects known to have been designed -- as arrowheads and pottery have current designers and producers.

Date: 2008/06/12 17:14:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ June 12 2008,16:40) Quote (Kristine @ June 12 2008,17:19) If Darwin is so scary, how come no one has come up with a good (non-"doc") Darwinian horror flick? I love horror films. You know - "we've traced the information from the call and it's coming from within your junk DNA!" Arh, arh. Try to run out of that house, babysitter! You just know she's going to venture alone into the basement and -  audience screaming because they know what's behind the door - enter the cellular machine and become entangled in mitochondrial DNA. Sounds a bit like this: http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Door-Madeleine-LEngle/dp/0440487617

Date: 2008/06/13 12:37:06, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/06/13 13:23:40, Link 70.154.164.249

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Weird. Ok. "Let the bloodletting begin." Whatever you say, Bill. I thought it was bloodclotting that was ID, but what do I know? Is this Friday, and if so have we always been at war with Eastasia?

Date: 2008/06/13 14:52:35, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ June 13 2008,14:47) Quote (J-Dog @ June 13 2008,12:43) BTW - The original post, which comes "this close" to advocating those death camps you mentioned, has a smiley face on it Link? http://www.csama.org/csanews/nws200807.pdf

Date: 2008/06/13 17:20:46, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (stevestory @ June 13 2008,16:02) Quote (hooligans @ June 13 2008,15:35) Perhaps one of the funniest posts I have ever read from Sal:   Quote The general mood among my associates is that the Darwinists haven’t even begun to see what will be unleased on them. They’ve only been sparring with scouting parties so far, they haven’t seen yet a truly organized and large-scale assault yet, but they will… It's true that we haven't seen anything formidable from the ID movement yet.... ...and with idiots like Nelson, Dembski, and Cordova in charge, we never will. Perhaps they simply misspelled large-scale asshole.

Date: 2008/06/14 08:38:44, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

My fifth grade teacher taught me that there's a rat in separate, a cyst in cdesign proponentsists, and a schism in cdesign proponentsism. :p

Date: 2008/06/15 08:59:35, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Permalink | Josh Rosenau | 09-09-2005 | 07:58 PM Snookums, if you had a piece of evidence that you didn't think was adequately addressed, you would have said something. But all you have is vague handwaving about how evolution is about to die. I'm sure they were saying that back in the 1920s, too. I guess what I'm saying is, don't hold your breath. Evolution, A Theory In Crisis since 1859. Aren't we eight years into Dembski's ten year prediction? Time to fasten our seat belts.

Date: 2008/06/15 15:33:58, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

They went down this road in '87, didn't they? I guess if you keep putting your hand in fire, eventually the fire will get tired of burning.

Date: 2008/06/17 09:26:45, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Peter Henderson @ June 17 2008,09:16) Will this be the next Dover ????? I would imagine (hopefully) the NCSE, the ACLU etc. are putting together a case as we speak. Incidently, how high up in the political sphere is this ? Is this the equivalent of a council, a regional assembly (e.g. MLAs in NI) or are they the same as MPs in the UK ? The state governor who suppports the law is a front runner to become the Vice-President. Or at least the Republican candidate. On the plus side, the law would protect teachers who show videos like Judgement Day or like Ken Miller's lectures.

Date: 2008/06/17 11:09:18, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Hi. I'm a tapeworm. I used to be a megaworm with lasers and stuff but SLoT made me devolve and now I have to live in the ass of this other thing which also devolved. Amazing that devolution can still give changing environmental fit. It's good to know that Malaria and Leishmaniasis are devolving from their original and more perfectly created forms.

Date: 2008/06/18 20:35:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Since hopefully you are evidence-based, perhaps you could explain how many neutral mutations can be expected to be traversed by an organism in, say, 500,000 generations, with a genome of, say, 3 billion bases and a mutation rate of, say, 6 mutations per generation. Is there an edge to evolution, and can we approximate it? And if so, how does it compare with the standard interpretation of paleontological change? http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-290969 Damn, if there were only one organism, it might take a long time. Quote the gloves are off, and one might as well be a full-blown YUC I like that term.

Date: 2008/06/18 22:30:15, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote After having engaged others on this matter and reading their responses, I have changed my mind. I am now prepared to say that both Dave and I have been premature in our analysis. It is far more likely that TEs are both gutless and irrational. http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-290975

Date: 2008/06/19 10:12:19, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote “The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the neo-Darwin theory is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.” Dr. Lee Spetner (Ph.D. Physics - MIT) I don't see how an algorithm that employs feedback automatically loses information. Isn't feedback a form of information? This is such a common line of argument, and I don't see the point cdesign proponentsists are trying to make.

Date: 2008/06/19 10:17:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Maybe if I illustrated my point about feedback. Suppose you have a robotic car whose steering mechanism makes frequent, minute, random changes to the left or right. Suppose each small change of direction is followed by a yes or no response from a sensor that detects deviations from the center of the road. Perhaps this isn't as intuitive or efficient as having the sensor simply command a jog left or right, but I can't see that it would fail to work.

Date: 2008/06/19 12:45:47, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

The images are gone. Anyone know where they can be found?

Date: 2008/06/19 12:52:09, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I just wonder how anyone thinks a change in the value of a parameter can be construed as a loss of information. I suppose they are always thinking in terms of The Fall, so any change is a degradation. What a cruddy metaphor by which to organize your worldview.

Date: 2008/06/19 13:43:16, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I'm no photoshop expert, but I don't see a hidden channel in the image that claims there is one. I do see the text in the unhidden one, but it's not in a separate channel.

Date: 2008/06/19 14:01:24, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Tom Ames @ June 19 2008,13:23) Quote (midwifetoad @ June 19 2008,08:17) Maybe if I illustrated my point about feedback. Suppose you have a robotic car whose steering mechanism makes frequent, minute, random changes to the left or right. Suppose each small change of direction is followed by a yes or no response from a sensor that detects deviations from the center of the road. Perhaps this isn't as intuitive or efficient as having the sensor simply command a jog left or right, but I can't see that it would fail to work. Furthermore, you'd have a mechanism to increase information about the environment into the system: keeping track of your location over time would provide you with a map of the road. Excellent metaphor. I kind of forgot to specify that the system needs to respond to yes or no in some way. this is the stuff of genetic algorithms, about which I know little. But it is obvious that the system has to learn something from feedback. The point of my metaphor is that feedback is information. A system that saves feedback and changes as a result can increase its store of information.

Date: 2008/06/19 16:45:35, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

April 2, 2016 will be four years after the Mayan jaguars descend from the sky. Or it will just be a tardy April 1.

Date: 2008/06/19 19:13:02, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote hope they take Louisiana to court and make a big deal out of this. This time our side needs to be prepared and force the issue that matters: teaching evolution in public schools is a thinly disguised attempt to teach atheism and that the attempts to silence critique of evolution is proof of an atheist conspiracy to teach a government sanctioned specific religious viewpoint as the only scientific and therefore authentic ontological explanation of our existence and is therefore unconstitutional…as it is nothing more then state sponsorship of a specific religious viewpoint. http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-291059 That argumant went over well in Edwards v. Aguillard, didn't it? [QUOTE]The Act does not grant teachers a flexibility that they did not already possess to supplant the present science curriculum with the presentation of theories, besides evolution, about the origin of life. Indeed, the Court of Appeals found that no law prohibited Louisiana public school teachers from teaching any scientific theory.

Date: 2008/06/20 07:31:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Why do I see HTML tags instead of formatted text? I don't see any option to display HTML properly.

Date: 2008/06/20 07:35:16, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Is there a thread here with all those? If there were such a thread, you would have to call it "Understanding Intelligent Design In Plain Language."

Date: 2008/06/20 07:54:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote The Dover school board deserved to lose when the facts came out - lying under oath, hiding the source of money to pay for textbooks, declaring in school board meetings they were standing up for Jesus, and things like that. Intelligent design has to be divorced from the religious motivations. I fear that might not be possible. The well was poisoned too well. I wonder who poisoned it. It couldn't possibly be the person who published a book titled Mere Creation and got nearly everyone in the ID game to sign on to the premise that 6000?4.5 billion.

Date: 2008/06/20 07:56:23, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote 6000?4.5 billion Crap. My character map lied. Where's the approximately equal button?

Date: 2008/06/20 09:04:30, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote And speaking of predictions: Quote But let’s say we did find such foresighted mechanisms. Darwinists might argue that such mechanisms would be selected for without intelligence being involved. After all, being foresighted would allow proactive responses to a changing environment and thus increase survivability. It’s kind of like how they create a story for modularity. My prediction has come to pass. Such foresighted mechanisms that modify genes have been empirically identified. And the reaction from Darwinists has been as expected. http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-291091 My reaction is to ask what foresighted mutations have been observed.

Date: 2008/06/20 09:49:33, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Behe displays foresight. http://www.uncommondescent.com/evoluti....ntified

Date: 2008/06/20 09:53:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote A new study by Princeton University researchers shows for the first time that bacteria don’t just react to changes in their surroundings — they anticipate and prepare for them. Quote How many times have we noticed evidence of changes that have occurred faster than what should be capable of RV+NS (non-foresighted mechanisms)? I give up.

Date: 2008/06/20 10:29:30, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm kinda slow. Is genetic entropy compatible with genetic foresight? Or do they live together under one roof, producing lots of little IDiots?

Date: 2008/06/20 10:35:15, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote I hate to mention it again but simple things like the twin nested hierarchy are clear indications, i.e. uncontroversial observable facts that rely on no "special paradigmatic interpretation" at all. It strikes me that when humans do genetic engineering they tend to produce the kind of "out of hierarchy" artifacts that cdesign proponentsists would love to find in untampered organisms.

Date: 2008/06/20 10:51:29, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

But is it north or south of the equator?

Date: 2008/06/20 13:08:37, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Did I hear someone that someone had suggested research projects for ID, and that funding was denied? What were those projects and what hypotheses were they testing?

Date: 2008/06/20 14:41:21, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Henry J @ June 20 2008,13:53) Quote (midwifetoad @ June 20 2008,06:31) Why do I see HTML tags instead of formatted text? I don't see any option to display HTML properly. Those are posts ported (bounced?) here from Panda's Thumb, still with the formatting codes that are used in notes and replies there. Those codes don't work on AtBC threads. Henry I was wondering if I was too stupid to find the control panel option, or the poster was to dim to notice his stuff doesn't work.

Date: 2008/06/20 14:52:52, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Bots most likely.

Date: 2008/06/21 17:57:06, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Patrick continues to have foresight: Quote Old saying, but there are many ways to skin a cat. Meaning that there are many ways to meet a designed end goal. This end goal need not be very specific and narrow (one and only one option in a search space of infinite). This end goal in search space can be generalized and thus have many varied options/implementations that fulfill the end goal. These implementations sometimes may appear odd, but subjective aesthetic considerations do not take away from the objective real design. http://www.uncommondescent.com/evoluti....-291183 What exactly forces one to assume that evolution is about finding a solution or reaching a goal? I mean, what about the poor schmuck species that didn't reach their goal and went extinct? Are Lotto winners really better at anticipating the future?

Date: 2008/06/21 23:40:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

My hate letter was pretty short and simple. I said I felt sorry for the taxpayers of Louisiana who would have to foot the bill for a loosing court case that would cement and extend the Dover and Aguillard decisions.

Date: 2008/06/22 08:49:40, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

My God Its Full Of Holes!

Date: 2008/06/22 10:58:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Substantiation of what?

Date: 2008/06/22 16:42:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ June 22 2008,16:32) Congrats, Rich. You've just demonstrated your ability for selective reading once again. Try this PZ quote on for size, from the same article: "As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn't matter which hat I'm wearing, the answers won't change." But exactly what are you trying to substantiate? Do you disagree with what follows your mined quote? Quote What should a scientist expect from an idea? That it be a reasonable advance in knowledge; that it be built on a foundation of evidence; that it be testable; that it should lead to new and useful questions and ideas.

Date: 2008/06/22 16:53:55, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Tribune7 asks: Quote Here’s a question that I think is not asked enough: “Why would one think DNA is not designed?” Possibly because it doesn't look or behave like anything known by observation to be designed. It seems odd that DNA can simultaneously be likened to a computer program, but one that can't be emulated in computer code.

Date: 2008/06/23 07:04:57, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

The Gov is more likely thinking about this: Quote The Louisiana Legislature adjourns today. Gov. Bobby Jindal should mark the occasion by vetoing the session's most offensive and self-centered legislation: the 123-percent pay raise lawmakers gave themselves. It won't be easy for him. He's said repeatedly that he won't veto the measure, and if he does now, he will have misled lawmakers. But if he doesn't veto it, he will have misled voters, breaking an unambiguous promise he made on the campaign trail to "prohibit" raises such as this.

Date: 2008/06/23 13:08:28, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I'm curious about motives. What was the perp's motive for making all the cool disease organisms? Not just making them, but also providing them with the foresight™ with which to modify themselves in response to human attempts to evade their horrors.

Date: 2008/06/24 12:36:39, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I suppose if you repeat something often enough, it becomes TRVE.

Date: 2008/06/25 12:47:08, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote The problem is that every moment spent exposing dreck is one taken away from trying to get students to understand the science that has passed muster. Responsible teachers are going to begrudge or abhor waste like that. As a former student, I'm still confused about why it is a waste to teach a bit of history about how major discoveries were made and confirmed. I don't think you have to go int church bashing, but I think it would be useful to teach high school kids that ideas aren't the result of virgin births.

Date: 2008/06/25 19:10:54, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin] The miracle of Flushmate.

Date: 2008/06/25 21:19:37, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Not to mention back doors.

Date: 2008/06/26 12:52:22, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (BWE @ June 26 2008,11:44) I'm totally fucking serious. Like I said. It's a little bit strange. Especially in light of the beauties posted by other people on the web. I expect to be wrong but I can't figure out how I'm wrong. I'm in uncharted waters. With Surfer Dude, no doubt. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth....114.xml

Date: 2008/06/26 12:59:09, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Ftk would raise the IQ level of both sites if she left here for Freerepublic. She would be worshipped as a genius. Maybe she's already there.

Date: 2008/06/26 14:12:00, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Guys like you, Louis, Ichy, PZ & crew, OM, et. al. are destroying science due to your attitude.  We don't have a clue how you act in the real world...all we have to go on is your antics in this debate.  I can't imagine that a person who writes the stuff you do can actually be a normal, kind, compassionate person in the classroom or anywhere for that matter. If they keep it up will you resign your commission?

Date: 2008/06/26 16:34:32, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Hi I would like to know why my last two comments have not been allowed to appear on your blog. The courtesy of a reply is requested. Gene That's the nastiest, most offensive thing I've ever seen in print.

Date: 2008/06/26 19:06:16, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote That is no way to practice science Paul looking for anomalies and error rates in which to make your case! The only way to practice science is fat, drunk and stupid.

Date: 2008/06/26 20:44:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

As part of my 12 step plan, I will not respond to this thread, no matter how tempted.

Date: 2008/06/27 15:58:42, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Jingo is facing a recall petition because he didn't veto the pay raise for legislators. Unfortunately this is more damaging than being stupid.

Date: 2008/06/28 15:08:58, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote If, on the other hand, design is true, materialist atheism is bunk. Materialist atheists know this perfectly well. That is why they persecute the design guys and cozy up to the “theistic” evolutionists. And why Expelled was made and has no time for “theistic” evolutionism. Now here is a quick test: If “theistic” evolution meant anything other than what I am describing above, ID theorist Mike Behe and I should be called theistic evolutionists - we accept conventional dating methods and common descent of living things But we think that God’s actions, if they exist, can be detected. They are indeed distinguishable from chance occurrences. This is the position affirmed by Scripture, tradition, and reason and denied by “theistic” evolution. And it is why we are called “creationists.” Look, if God doesn’t exist, he doesn’t exist. But if he does exist, we’ll know about it. All science so far. http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....houghts

Date: 2008/06/28 22:27:43, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I wouldn't wish Shingles on my worst enemy.

Date: 2008/06/29 09:40:21, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Jindal watches goodwill evaporate Sunday, June 29, 2008 Stephanie Grace Of this, there can be no dispute: Gov. Bobby Jindal's honeymoon is over. The consensus at home is that Jindal lost his luster by declining to veto the Legislature's lavish pay raise. But Jindal is also playing to a national audience these days, and on that front, he's taking a different sort of hit. While Louisiana voters are up in arms over the revelation that Jindal is not above cutting political deals, the deal killer elsewhere in the country could be an unrelated bill that he signed last week, state Sen. Ben Nevers' "Louisiana Science Education Act." http://www.nola.com/news....&coll=1

Date: 2008/06/30 09:28:30, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (stevestory @ June 30 2008,01:49) Let me clarify. 'Genetic entropy' is not why front-loading is wrong, because genetic entropy is a pile of shit. If some DNA was front-loaded but currently dormant, it would gradually accumulate errors which would disable whatever it was supposed to do later. But a front loader can move dung faster than mere entropy.

Date: 2008/06/30 11:08:53, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Lou FCD @ June 30 2008,07:17) Quote (Bob O'H @ June 30 2008,01:37) bFast 06/29/2008 11:57 pm Tard Alert! Russ, I also have been toying with the same thought line. Have you ever considered milk? The stuff separates into milk and cream very easily. Yet I don’t know of this phenomenon being used in nature. The cream, once shaken, turns into cottage cheese, butter and butter milk. With a little common bacteria, you get cheese. Yogurt is just about as easy to make. Does this give you the feeling that these varieties were waiting to be discovered — like hidden treasure? It’s just all too easy to find such wonderful, yet unimplemented properties in nature. [/quote] Perhaps bfast should google "lactose tolerance" and its evolutionary history/explanation. Add a banana to yout milk for a perfectly designed shake.

Date: 2008/07/01 08:26:44, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote To you all creationists are ignorant morons and or buffoons. Just the ones we've met on the internet.

Date: 2008/07/01 09:18:47, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Contrary to what naturalistic thought would expect, these very first photosynthetic bacteria scientists find in the geologic and fossil record are shown to have been preparing the earth for more advanced life to appear from the very start of their existence by reducing the greenhouse gases of earth’s early atmosphere and producing the necessary oxygen for higher life-forms to exist. Who knew? http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-291740

Date: 2008/07/01 10:58:43, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ July 01 2008,10:44) Quote Does "deluded teacher" mean to you when applied to ID as someone who was, "pressured to teach something they feel is very wrong, got fired and they are now suing a hostile work environment"? I'm afraid that doesn't parse easily, but it appears that the answer is, "No." Why would a teacher be fired simply for being pressured to teach something? Maybe the intended meaning was that the teacher taught something contrary to the curriculum. So would it be a hostile work environment that fires a math teacher for teaching that pi equals three?

Date: 2008/07/01 12:19:09, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote A history teacher fired for teaching holocaust denial.   A physics teacher fired for teaching the earth is 6,500 years old A Social Studies teacher fired for teaching the 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' Damn. You've just prescribed permanent unemployment for the majority of creationists and cdesign proponentsists.

Date: 2008/07/01 12:19:45, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

But you left out HIV denial.

Date: 2008/07/01 13:44:34, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Chelsea and Clinton are adjoining neighborhoods in Manhattan. Clinton is also known as Hell's Kitchen.

Date: 2008/07/01 13:49:36, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

If the Intelligent Designer hadn't wanted bananas used in classroom condom demonstrations, He wouldn't have made the fruit fit the hand so irreducibly.

Date: 2008/07/01 20:43:54, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Everything not mandatory is forbidden.

Date: 2008/07/01 22:47:19, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

The Jolly green Giant's posterior on the cover may be an allusion to DrDrD's new title, The Dick ButtKiss of Intelligent Design.

Date: 2008/07/02 12:54:20, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Is there a bathroom wall for stuff too sick for the bathroom wall?

Date: 2008/07/02 12:58:14, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Anyone who remembers a dream knows that what we see and feel are constructs of the brain. Anyone who has kicked a large stone with bare feet knows that the constructs correlate with something "real."

Date: 2008/07/02 13:58:09, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Yes.  It's called "Your blog". Odd. "My Blog" mostly just links to your stuff. One should be careful before stepping onto the Möbius link.

Date: 2008/07/02 14:15:30, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (dnmlthr @ July 02 2008,13:59) Quote (midwifetoad @ July 02 2008,19:58)   Quote Yes.  It's called "Your blog". Odd. "My Blog" mostly just links to your stuff. One should be careful before stepping onto the Möbius link. Are you saying that the two of you equal one Denyse O'Leary?

Date: 2008/07/02 14:30:27, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I went a couple hundred rounds with someone who asserted SETI should be looking for something equivalent to "john loves mary" in mitochondrial DNA. Such people get quiet when you ask them for examples that have actually been found. Obviously we know that humans produce sentences and we have lots of examples of things humans have produced. Oddly enough, the list of things produced by humans doesn't include living cells from scratch chemistry, nor any fully functional computer simulations of living things. So the list of living things that resemble things known to have been designed is a null set.

Date: 2008/07/02 14:39:39, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

[/QUOTE]Fixed that for you, since the entire article is about when they don't. [QUOTE] My layman's understanding  is that correlation is a measure of probability. I've had a couple of brief waking dreams. Call them hallucinations induced by strong expectations, or whatever. Makes me sympathetic toward people who have religious experiences, but lack sympathy for their conclusions.

Date: 2008/07/02 14:43:19, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I'm so old I hadn't seen a television at age eight. First thing I saw on TV was Queen Elizabeth's coronation. About eight and a half.

Date: 2008/07/02 15:40:32, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/07/03 04:35:18, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I've got a text version of the Comer lawsuit, my own OCR, so beware of glitches. Comer lawsuit

Date: 2008/07/03 16:04:11, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

No one looks at the bathrrom wall today. For those interested in reading and possibly quoting from the lawsuit, I have a text pdf. text pdf

Date: 2008/07/03 16:38:57, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote As for lawsuits, I'm sure the good people at the Discovery Institute (OBTW, I think the name people around here give it, the "Disco Tute" is funny) are getting ready to do more lawsuits to get the "Evolution Uber Alles"* thrown out and let science back into the classroom. Now that's funny.

Date: 2008/07/04 07:53:23, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

dead tree media=print media Beyond that you're on your own. She did say she tried, and that should be good enough.

Date: 2008/07/06 09:30:43, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Raevmo Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:33 pm Guts: Why do anti-ID activists here, like Raevmo, feel the need to act like spoiled retarded children? It blows my mind. Excuse me? I just mentioned that Shubin's claim to fame was his discovery of Tiktaalik. I see you have deleted that post. Why is that? Comment by Raevmo — July 5, 2008 @ 7:33 pm Guts Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:36 pm I just went through this with Zachriel. I already provided a link to that, the topic is not Shubin's discovery, the topic is well beyond Shubin's discovery. Comment by Guts — July 5, 2008 @ 7:36 pm steve Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:44 pm Speaking of Zachriel, why was he covertly banned? That kind of behavior flies at Uncommon Descent, but I thought people here had some ethics. Comment by steve — July 5, 2008 @ 7:44 pm Guts Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:47 pm he wasn't banned. he was barred from this thread. Comment by Guts — July 5, 2008 @ 7:47 pm

Date: 2008/07/06 09:30:43, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Raevmo Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:33 pm Guts: Why do anti-ID activists here, like Raevmo, feel the need to act like spoiled retarded children? It blows my mind. Excuse me? I just mentioned that Shubin's claim to fame was his discovery of Tiktaalik. I see you have deleted that post. Why is that? Comment by Raevmo — July 5, 2008 @ 7:33 pm Guts Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:36 pm I just went through this with Zachriel. I already provided a link to that, the topic is not Shubin's discovery, the topic is well beyond Shubin's discovery. Comment by Guts — July 5, 2008 @ 7:36 pm steve Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:44 pm Speaking of Zachriel, why was he covertly banned? That kind of behavior flies at Uncommon Descent, but I thought people here had some ethics. Comment by steve — July 5, 2008 @ 7:44 pm Guts Says: July 5th, 2008 at 7:47 pm he wasn't banned. he was barred from this thread. Comment by Guts — July 5, 2008 @ 7:47 pm

Date: 2008/07/06 14:40:18, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote So, Dave what are the odds of tossing 5 heads in a row, given that you've already tossed 5 heads? The odds don't change retrospectively, but the question being addressed is wrong. The way to look at it is this: Say you've tossed a hundred heads in a row; what are the odds that the coin is fair? In terms of evolution, when you know via many lines of evidence that something has evolved, what are the odds that Dembski/Behe's CSI probability assumptions are correct?

Date: 2008/07/06 19:02:40, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm wondering if Guts is the HIV denier who shows up on other forums.

Date: 2008/07/06 19:02:40, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm wondering if Guts is the HIV denier who shows up on other forums.

Date: 2008/07/07 07:35:22, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I think TT's Guts may be the same person as this Guts: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1861848/posts Quote No, the article proves that darwinist expectations are wrong again. ID scientists predict frontloading, whereas the Church of Darwin predicts evolution from the simple to the complex. Seeing how sea anemones are thought to precede the Cambrian explosion, this article flies in the face of Darwinist expectations (and to their credit they admit it). Of course, they omit the fact that IDers have predicted frontloading all along, but such behavior is to be expected from nature worshiping darwinists. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2032538/posts Quote IT'S TIME TO REOPEN THE DUESBERG FILE! Indian media begins to cover the story our own AIDS establishment (and their friends in the MSM) has been spiking for almost two decades. If you would like to be put on my RETHINKING AIDS list, please FReepmail me--GGG To learn how the AIDS establishment used phony AIDS alarmism to push an anti-family, anti Judeo-Christian, pro-homosexual, totalitarian agenda, please read the following: The Hidden Agenda behind HIV Front Loading: check HIV denial: check Abusive language: check.

Date: 2008/07/07 07:35:22, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I think TT's Guts may be the same person as this Guts: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1861848/posts Quote No, the article proves that darwinist expectations are wrong again. ID scientists predict frontloading, whereas the Church of Darwin predicts evolution from the simple to the complex. Seeing how sea anemones are thought to precede the Cambrian explosion, this article flies in the face of Darwinist expectations (and to their credit they admit it). Of course, they omit the fact that IDers have predicted frontloading all along, but such behavior is to be expected from nature worshiping darwinists. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2032538/posts Quote IT'S TIME TO REOPEN THE DUESBERG FILE! Indian media begins to cover the story our own AIDS establishment (and their friends in the MSM) has been spiking for almost two decades. If you would like to be put on my RETHINKING AIDS list, please FReepmail me--GGG To learn how the AIDS establishment used phony AIDS alarmism to push an anti-family, anti Judeo-Christian, pro-homosexual, totalitarian agenda, please read the following: The Hidden Agenda behind HIV Front Loading: check HIV denial: check Abusive language: check.

Date: 2008/07/07 10:21:36, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote 6 July 2008 Chris Comer was shilling for CFI-Austin DaveScot Cool. This should be interesting when it gets to court. As I was reading the complaint it mentions Barbara Forrest’s talk was sponsored by the Austin Center for Inquiry. http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelli....-austin The briar patch! Anything but the briar patch!

Date: 2008/07/07 10:38:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ July 07 2008,10:28) Gutless has covered his tracks in that comment thread at TT. All of the comments relating to his trollery at AtBC have been deleted. Apparently he is so proud of his turd-chucking here that he doesn't want any of the TT regulars to get a whiff of it. More things to think about re your choice of bedfellows, lcd. I don't think he wants his HIV denial to become widely known either, except to his chosen audience. If I have misidentified him he is free to correct me. I'll be happy to back away. But I've seen this behavior at other sites. I doubt if I'm wrong.

Date: 2008/07/07 10:38:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Albatrossity2 @ July 07 2008,10:28) Gutless has covered his tracks in that comment thread at TT. All of the comments relating to his trollery at AtBC have been deleted. Apparently he is so proud of his turd-chucking here that he doesn't want any of the TT regulars to get a whiff of it. More things to think about re your choice of bedfellows, lcd. I don't think he wants his HIV denial to become widely known either, except to his chosen audience. If I have misidentified him he is free to correct me. I'll be happy to back away. But I've seen this behavior at other sites. I doubt if I'm wrong.

Date: 2008/07/07 13:16:29, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Somewhere Goebbels is smiling and nodding knowingly. I wonder if Telic Thinkers are smiling. We are talking about someone who's HIV stuff offended the tender sensibilities and discerning scientific minds at FR. There does seem to be an under-the-counter trade in HIV denial amongst IDiots.

Date: 2008/07/07 13:16:29, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Somewhere Goebbels is smiling and nodding knowingly. I wonder if Telic Thinkers are smiling. We are talking about someone who's HIV stuff offended the tender sensibilities and discerning scientific minds at FR. There does seem to be an under-the-counter trade in HIV denial amongst IDiots.

Date: 2008/07/07 15:13:58, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I'm familiar with slavery denialism, particularly as it pertains to the many in the Bible that sanction slavery, admonish slaves to obey their masters, or codify just how near to death you can beat a slave.

Date: 2008/07/07 15:23:58, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. That was easy. I wonder when they'll get around to providing an example of detection.

Date: 2008/07/08 17:32:21, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (argystokes @ July 08 2008,16:41) Over on the comment thread in discussion, Joy said: Quote Though as a mere nuclear physicist, I obviously don't know much. I expect Heddle would agree. Joy is a nuclear physicist? Really? I find it hard to believe she's ever been a scientist of any kind. Homer's a nuckular physicist, isn't he?

Date: 2008/07/08 18:22:27, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote So what's all this pious bullshit? Maybe he remembers his days in the timeout room, outside the Inner Circle.

Date: 2008/07/08 18:55:28, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote 15 DaveScot 07/08/2008   Quote 6:17 pm austin_english We have gross models of gravity that permit us to predict trajectories of projectiles with considerable accuracy. Similarly, we have gross models of evoluton. You really lost the plot there. NDE predicts nothing. Look at poor Dr. Lenski and his 20 years and 40,000 generations of E.coli. He couldn’t predict jack diddly squat about what or when (if anything) was going to happen to them in the way of evolving. All he could do was watch, wait, then when and if something did happen he could explain it after the fact. You had better a get a clue pretty quick or you’re history here. On second thought, get lost. That was just too stupid to tolerate. EDIT: cool. With an edit button I can scoop everyone.

Date: 2008/07/08 19:30:58, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Can't edit yet. Who's in charge of that?

Date: 2008/07/09 06:18:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote BTW - I note that Guts has denied being the Freeper Guts HIV-denier. Fair enough. Perhaps next time he'll do what I'd do if such a terrible case of mistaken identity happened, and emphasize that not only is he not that person, but that he's not any sort of HIV-denier. It's a very insulting charge to make of anyone, even by mistaken association, and I'm sure that, as a man to whom personal honour is so important, he doesn't want to be so labeled. That would be me making that claim. If he denies it, he must be telling the truth. all I can say is he behaves the same and talks the same and shares an internet username.

Date: 2008/07/09 08:04:07, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Ftk @ July 09 2008,07:50) LoL...right on target there, Olegt... ;) I hope you've seen a doctor. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health....d-drugs

Date: 2008/07/09 08:29:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Another one bites the dust, same thread. Quote 30 DaveScot 07/09/2008 7:49 am Petrushka Austin English compared gravity to evolution. I told him it was ludicrous as gravity allows us to make exquisite predictions of the future and evolution can’t predict anything. You then started to make analogies about evolution and the rolling of dice. Yeah, buddy, but it’s almost infinitely sided dice. No two rolls ever have to come up the same in a finite universe. You can’t make predictions based on statistics from dice like that. That’s why neo-darwinian evolutionary theory can make no unpredictions. For participating in the stupidity of comparing of evolution to gravity you are out of here. Say hi to Austin English wherever he is.

Date: 2008/07/09 11:31:40, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote The argument is valid...nothing juvenile about it.  Perhaps you can explain to me how it's invalid?  The conspiracy element is an accusation forwarded by both sides of this debate. Being caught lying under oath about your motives is evidence of a conspiracy. Being caught changinging creationism to intelligent design in a textbook is evidence of a conspiracy. Hiding a strategy paper is evidence of a conspiracy.

Date: 2008/07/09 12:10:50, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Save this comment for a couple of years.  It will make one of my publications really, really funny (hint: I use principles of evolution to predict things). Does that mean you've explained gravity?

Date: 2008/07/09 13:25:52, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

FYI: Quote Flatfish missing link tells twisted tale By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 09/07/2008 A twisted tale of how the world's flatfishes ended up with two eyes on one side of their head is told at last by a newly analysed fossil that has lain in a museum drawer for more than a century. The 50 million year old discovery puts an end to an enduring problem that has been puzzled over by many famous evolutionary thinkers, including Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth....109.xml

Date: 2008/07/09 14:04:54, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (lcd @ July 09 2008,14:02) Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ July 09 2008,12:58) lcd:   Quote An Intelligent designer would use things over again that worked. So, why would a designer use things over that didn't work? From what I believe and read it was Original Sin that caused and is causing God's creation to break down.  Micro Evolution is fully supported by ID and indeed it is supported and predicted by it.  The loss of Information is why we get these sub-optimal appearing designs. God's creation was perfect, our sin destroyed that perfection. Or again that is what I Postulate. So would Fall Theory imply that disease causing organisms were better at their work before and just after the Fall, or have they lost information and become wimpy over time?

Date: 2008/07/09 17:36:00, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Think whatever you like, but I'm not lying.  Have you ever seen flood geology or age of the earth issues covered in Dembski/Johnson/Behe books regarding design? I would start with Dembski's Mere Creation in which he welcomes young earth creationists to the fold and says solidarity in the war against materialism is more important than deciding whether the earth is 6000 or four billion years old. He has repeated this recently on his blog. Now if you see nothing ironic about a mathematician who doesn't care to distinguish between 6000 and four billion, I'd say you need serious help.

Date: 2008/07/09 18:00:56, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Kind of blurs the usual political stereotypes. Creationism, Kos, No Nukes, Conspiracy.

Date: 2008/07/09 18:17:17, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm familiar with the acronym "FTA" from my time as a draftee, but what is "FTK"? Something from WWI?

Date: 2008/07/09 23:03:06, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

That's three in about 24 hours.

Date: 2008/07/10 07:58:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (keiths @ July 10 2008,00:47) Joy's intellectual hero, Matti Pitkänen, opens today's post on his blog with this paragraph:   Quote A code for protein folding and bio-catalysis The TGD inspired model for the evolution of genetic code leads to the idea that the folding of proteins obeys a folding code inherited from the genetic code. After some trials one ends up with a general conceptualization of the situation with the identification of wormhole magnetic flux tubes as correlates of attention at molecular level so that a direct connection with TGD inspired theory of consciousness emerges at quantitative level. This allows a far reaching generalization of the DNA as topological quantum computer paradigm and makes it much more detailed. By their asymmetric character hydrogen bonds are excellent candidates for magnetic flux tubes serving as correlates of attention at molecular level. Woooooooooooooooo...   I think he failed to take this into consideration,   Quote In string theory, the quantum-mechanical amplitude for the interaction of n closed or open strings is represented by a functional integral (basically, a sum) over fields living on a two-dimensional manifold with boundary. In quantum gravity, we may expect that a similar representation will hold, except that the two-dimensional manifold with boundary will be replaced by a multidimensional one. Unfortunately, multidimensionality goes against the grain of conventional linear mathematical thought, and despite a recent broadening of attitudes (notably associated with the study of multidimensional nonlinear phenomena in chaos theory), the theory of multidimensional manifolds with boundary remains somewhat underdeveloped. Nevertheless, physicists' work on the functional-integral approach to quantum gravity continues apace, and this work is likely to stimulate the attention of mathematicians.

Date: 2008/07/10 12:27:22, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Richardthughes @ July 10 2008,12:08) Quote Not at all. Why, you should feel Special since you have your very own Olympics. and forces, too.

Date: 2008/07/10 13:54:45, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote I hope someone keeps track of the 11 parents and their children. Everyone in Dover knows damn well that no children were forced to listen to the 60 second announcement regarding evolution and intelligent design. So what you have is 11 parents whose religious hostility extended to such a trivial matter they were willing to make the tiny school district pay a million dollars. Linky?

Date: 2008/07/10 15:16:17, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Another one Expelled. http://www.philly.com/inquire....gs.html

Date: 2008/07/10 21:17:13, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin] All right. Time for a group hug.

Date: 2008/07/11 09:29:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Ah, neutrality toward the controversial belief that 6000 does not equal four billion.

Date: 2008/07/11 10:20:17, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Though I seem to be banned from uncommondescent (for no apparent reason) I hope the moderators there read this. It's fairly apparent to me. Even Dave had a close encounter with reality and was removed from the inner circle for fumigation. I see he's recovered.

Date: 2008/07/11 12:42:36, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin] Where I come from, The Swamp is a place of honor and glory. Just sayin'. On a higher literary plane, the swamp was the home of Pogo, a wise creature from whom the DI crowd could learn much.

Date: 2008/07/24 10:30:28, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

As an outsider looking in on the biology community, I see lots of opportunities being created for quote miners. One obvious problem in popular writing about transitionals is the common notion that one fossil  is a descendant of another, and an ancestor of yet another. The notion of cousins is occasionally mentioned, but it seems to clog up the flow of writing. It seems to me that with graphics and animation technology, someone could come up with a good flash video illustrating how something could be a transitional and at the same time be on a dead branch of the tree.

Date: 2008/08/01 20:52:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Anyone else having trouble opening scienceblogs sites with internet explorer? EDIT: I see on other forums that many blog sites are suddenly inaccessable with IE. More edit... http://applesofgoldinpicturesofsilver.blogspot.com/2008....ad.html Quote: If you have sitemeter and us Internet Explorer, they are not working together and will not allow you to get into your blog. What it also means that I cannot read any blogs with sitemeters on them. THIS is a HUGE problem in blogspot land right now. What you do is: go to blogspot.com log in get to your dashboard then layouts remove sitemeter.... THAT is the only reason my blog is working tonight.... hope this helps some of you The final word... http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsea....h+Blogs

Date: 2008/08/05 16:39:50, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Dec. 27 2007,23:18) Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 27 2007,21:34)   Quote (VMartin @ Dec. 27 2007,11:15) Have you ever heard about Paul Leautaud? No, but since you like him, we know two things about him: he's probably dead, and probably had some idea no biologist in his right mind would accept today. And odds are no one's bothered to translate him into English and he never wrote anything after the 1930's. Il naît d'un père comédien puis souffleur vingt-trois années à la Comédie-Française. Cinq jours après l'accouchement, il est abandonné par sa mère, une des « compagnes temporaires » du géniteur. Élevé par un père indifférent, le petit Paul acquiert très tôt le sens de l'indépendance et possède une clef du domicile à l'âge de cinq ans. Dans son adolescence, il se lie d'amitié avec Adolphe Van Bever et partage avec lui une vie d'employé pauvre. Leur passion commune de la poésie les conduira à publier en 1900 l'anthologie Poètes d'aujourd'hui.

Date: 2008/08/06 09:15:20, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I could provide a version of the fiddle tune with the hum removed if someone has a place to upload an MP3.

Date: 2008/08/06 20:43:51, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'"

Date: 2008/08/07 10:21:02, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Quack @ Aug. 07 2008,10:13) Quote (lcd @ Aug. 07 2008,07:10) It's called faith. I don't have evidence that you'd consider to be so for why I believe and think the way that I do.  What I'm looking for is science evidence that will back up my faith. So yes all you ATHEISTIC EVIL NAZI-MARXIST WANNABES I'm looking for evidence to give to more than a few people I know and teach them a few things. Later Just what is it you want to teach? Faith or facts? It's not faith or facts; it's faith or empiricism. Exactly why anyone would look for evidence to bolster faith is beyond my imagination. The evidence for revealed religion has been on a downhill slope for centuries.

Date: 2008/08/08 10:11:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote many Limeys of my acquaintance think (for comedy purposes) that the American accent and male population is gay The John Wayne accent sounds gay to me, particularly imitations of the accent.

Date: 2008/08/10 19:34:40, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (lcd @ Aug. 10 2008,18:47) I've asked my questions at the UD board. Please forgive me but I hope they answer in a way that shocks and surprises you. Later, Ed Link please?

Date: 2008/08/10 19:51:57, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I asked polite and reasonable questions at UD and lasted six posts before being banned. I was accused of arguing for something I never even mentioned. All I know is that all my posts aroused the attention of someone posting under the name Patrick. Except the last one, which was answered by Dave Scot.

Date: 2008/08/10 20:16:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (lcd @ Aug. 10 2008,20:00) I'll ask here as I've already asked on the TT Board. What systems are considered IC by IC proponents? Ooooh. A moving target. Edit: The correct answer is any system that hasn't (yet) been explained as an accumulation of small steps.

Date: 2008/08/10 20:39:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

On the other hand they might be waiting for it to show up here to support a bannation. I suggest making a copy in Notepad and holding it for a day or two.

Date: 2008/08/10 23:00:15, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

That a jumbo bag of questions. In my experience, all but one will be ignored, and the one that is addressed will be the least interesting.

Date: 2008/08/10 23:01:20, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Ping me when they burn Atlanta.

Date: 2008/08/11 09:18:59, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Adding on to that, the word "better" is relative to the current environment, which changes all the time. Also, it is possible to be "as good as". Sexual selection allows populations to drift apart for purely cosmetic reasons. Some chicks just prefer guys with redder feathers, for arbitrary reasons. There are other forms of drift as well.

Date: 2008/08/11 16:44:28, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (lcd @ Aug. 11 2008,12:32) To any UD proponent.  Is this true?  Did Dr. Dembski actually misuse someone else's work for his own profit? Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but the weight of evidence is stacking up against him.  I'm really asking for some help here.  I want to know that people who are leading the charge to show that there is alternatives to Evolution are not themselves doing the very thing they accuse others of doing. Ed Quote P.S. I’m banned on AfterTheBarCloses so I can’t respond there but I read the accusations about stolen materials. Ask them where a court found a violation of “fair use” in any of it. There won’t be any affirmative answers forthcoming Not much chance of any court action, but I wonder if Christians think it is OK to remove a copyright notice from a video and show the altered video at a paid lecture. As long as you don't get taken to court.

Date: 2008/08/11 21:41:06, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

of the week.

Date: 2008/08/12 08:55:41, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Much of The Argument Regarding Teleology involves the use of bolding. Sharp. On many levels.

Date: 2008/08/12 10:52:25, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (cewagner @ Aug. 12 2008,10:38) I am not arguing for a supernatural explanation. I am arguing that random, accidental or non-directed processes cannot do the job. I do not deny that there may be some yet to be discovered "first principle" involved in the process that provides a perfectly natural explanation. What part of selection is not direction? The fact that you can't predict the direction is no more mysterious than the inability to predict the weather a month in advance.

Date: 2008/08/12 20:46:44, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Need I mention that Newton's "law of gravity" describes a subset of observed conditions?

Date: 2008/08/13 08:22:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (olegt @ Aug. 13 2008,07:38) Rude on Ted Davis's departure from UD.     Quote In spite of all the nuanced chatter one thing is clear. Ted says that many TEs won’t enter the Big Tent because it’s too big, that unless we disavow the YECs and Common Descent deniers (and Global Warming deniers?) they will stand aloof. Well if that’s the case then who wants them? The age of the earth and common descent are empirical questions for which I have no dog in the race, nor should ID because they are irrelevant. Should ID be an organization with litmus tests for irrelevant issues just so that sophisticated people can avoid embarrassment? Irrelevant isn't the right word, Rude.  Those issues are settled.  When a large number of people under the big tent argue against long-established science, they look like a bunch of crackpots. Six thousand does equal 4.5 billion, approximately, so what's the issue?

Date: 2008/08/13 10:09:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Bots.

Date: 2008/08/13 10:15:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Actually, Darwinism is the only supposedly scientific theory I have ever heard of that always seems to need a legal defense fund - and thrives simply by expelling opposition. That is a reliable mark of falsehood. Or a reliable mark of a theory that is only challenged in the courtroom and not in the laboratory. I forget. when was the last time creationists went to court to demand equal time for flood geology? Or variable rates of atomic decay, or variable speeds of light?

Date: 2008/08/13 12:27:22, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Fight in the big tent coming? All the money comes from the yahoo contingent, so I predict counselling and continued cohabitation. Without the questioning of the age of the earth and the questioning of common descent, ID is an empty shell.

Date: 2008/08/13 18:34:02, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Did anyone ever tell him the moon hasn't always been the same distance from earth as it is now?

Date: 2008/08/13 21:13:01, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Tracy P. Hamilton @ Aug. 13 2008,21:09) Quote (midwifetoad @ Aug. 13 2008,18:34) Did anyone ever tell him the moon hasn't always been the same distance from earth as it is now? Yeah, but the moon was designed to be at just the right distance when humans were to be designed.  And the earth-moon system was designed to have the earth's rotation be 365.25 days at just the right time to match the calendar! I guess that tells us how many days we have. Just calculate when the moon will cease producing total eclipses and you have the day of reckoning.

Date: 2008/08/14 12:11:21, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Do we get to assigne weather to pixies because there is no theory or law of weather? Dave might want to distinguish between the study of elementary forces and particles, and the study of complex processes. Even gravity gets dicey when you have more than two bodies interacting.

Date: 2008/08/14 13:55:52, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Atheism seems to serve as porn for the yeccies. Where's the LOL cat?

Date: 2008/08/14 13:59:58, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Are you bringing up again that drunken fling he and Bill and/or Denyse once had? The gravity of that possibility buggers belief.

Date: 2008/08/14 15:06:18, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

So where's the gay, atheist kittuh pics?

Date: 2008/08/14 17:48:20, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Aug. 14 2008,17:07) Quote Intelligence only comes from intelligence. Write that down. Then one can only conclude that Dave's parents weren't real bright. Intelligence Entropy?

Date: 2008/08/14 18:39:58, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Srsly. From Dave's standpoint, and the apparently official position of Dembsky/Behe, et al, is there any reason we shouldn't expect every generation to be stupider than its parents?

Date: 2008/08/14 18:43:16, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm always wondering about the percentage of biology teachers convicted of diddling boys, compared to the percentage of clergymen.

Date: 2008/08/16 15:22:07, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Is the assumption of randomness really necessary? Would a system of variation that produced all possible alleles in sequential order have different evolutionary consequenses than one that produced them in random order? Just asking. :p

Date: 2008/08/16 15:58:42, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote What does the one have to do with the other? The guys at UD seem to think everything produced by evolution is simply the expression of an algorithm, not unlike a cellular automaton. See front loading.

Date: 2008/08/16 16:00:27, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

The question though, is does it matter? As long as the variation generator produces all possible values for a given string.

Date: 2008/08/17 08:31:00, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Original Skonk Works.

Date: 2008/08/17 10:34:04, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I think the wheels in Dark Materials were borrowed, in the fashion of the hermit crab.

Date: 2008/08/17 19:36:31, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Accused of independent thinking. I'm so ashamed. I think I'll go hide under a rock for a while.

Date: 2008/08/17 20:14:14, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Personally, I think ee cummings said it pretty well. Quote i like my body when it is with your   body. It is so quite a new thing.   Muscles better and nerves more.   i like your body. i like what it does,   i like its hows. i like to feel the spine   of your body and its bones, and the trembling   -firm-smooth ness and which i will   again and again and again   kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,   i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz   of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes   over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,   and possibly i like the thrill   of under me you quite so new

Date: 2008/08/17 21:38:06, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

By the way, The Gang of Four at the Gateway of Life" sounds a bit like "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" from Wind in the Willows. Also a Pink Floyd album.

Date: 2008/08/17 23:26:17, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Dave prefers nazibaters to clean guys?

Date: 2008/08/18 08:50:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote I always wonder: what? I hear that often, that people have enough to thank for, but I never hear exactly what. I think this may reflect the story that if all the troubles of the world were put in a bucket and you could draw out anyone's, you would -- after reflection -- choose your own. Maybe.

Date: 2008/08/18 10:16:23, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Real genetic engineers mix genes across families, even across kingdoms to produce useful products. why none in nature? Why does it all look like common descent with small modifications between generations?

Date: 2008/08/18 18:14:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Science fiction writers have populated Jupiter with balloon critters. There were going to be some in the movie 2001 -- they're in the book -- but the movie got shortened and the Jupiter critters got edited into the LSD/wormhole scene.

Date: 2008/08/18 19:18:01, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I think everyone would like to see an ID research proposal that didn't involve googling for quotelets.

Date: 2008/08/19 17:58:24, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

One comment so far, of uncertain gender.

Date: 2008/08/20 21:44:15, Link 96.26.146.87

Author: midwifetoad

If the drive is not physically dead you don't need to pay for a recovery service, but you might need to pay for a recovery program. I've used RTT and it has save the day a couple of times. I once deleted the partition on a drive used for a server backup. I was using it to restore to the server after installing bigger drives. The mistake wasn't fatal. I still had the original drives, and I had another day old backup, but it was rather embarrassing. RTT found everything in a reasonable time. It's essentially an unformat. Edit: I just realized that I use PC Inspector to get stuff off mangled camera memory cards. Good free program. I'm not sure it will work on NTFS. That's why I paid for RTT.

Date: 2008/08/20 21:52:52, Link 96.26.146.87

Author: midwifetoad

FAT32 is not terribly robust. It's a lot easier to lose the allocation tables and harder to rebuild them. I reformat all external drives to NTFS.

Date: 2008/08/20 22:07:24, Link 96.26.146.87

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ Aug. 20 2008,21:57) Quote (stevestory @ Aug. 20 2008,18:54) Nothing. 25 Gigs of music gone. OMG. You mean all those hundreds of Cake mp3's, just...gone? ? ? :O You only need to recover one. Then just copy it 2,999 times and change the titles.

Date: 2008/08/21 06:35:51, Link 96.26.146.87

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 21 2008,03:56) He can write a book (or have it ghost-written), hit the talk-show circuit, and never miss the day job. I'm thinking the title would include words like coverup and conspiracy.

Date: 2008/08/21 11:12:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Nerull @ Aug. 21 2008,10:49) Quote (stevestory @ Aug. 21 2008,00:18) A long, long time ago (four years) I was a power user and ran lots of premium software, and NAG libraries, and finite-element methods, and extensive Mathematica programs doing simulations and Cellular Automata runs and etc etc. And so at the time I knew all the deep deep computer junk, even as far as details about the IEEE 754 specs, etc, But now I just want a computer that fucking works. I want to hearz my musics without screwing around and I don't want to bother with tables and MBR backups blah blah blah. I swear to god if I have another event like this I'm just saying to hell with it and buying Mac. I guarantee if i took a hard drive out of a Mac and put it in another Mac it would just fucking work. If the filesystem is corrupted, it doesn't matter what OS you use. Macs wouldn't have any better luck reading it than Windows. It's a problem with the data on the drive, not the software. I was going to say that. I've swapped drives dozens of times without problems. I've also, in 24 years, seen several drives fail. The stupidest on was a SATA drive that had the data connecter break due to mishandling in shipping. Really weird. But I'm going to repeat. NTFS has a much better chance of supporting data recovery if things get erased, or reformatted or corrupted.

Date: 2008/08/21 12:55:38, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 21 2008,11:59) Quote But I'm going to repeat. NTFS has a much better chance of supporting data recovery if things get erased, or reformatted or corrupted. I'm glad that it has that going for it, for in my experience, an NTFS partition is by far more likely going to *need* data recovery at some point. Interesting. In nearly fifteen years of using NTFS and supporting it, the only time I've needed a recovery tool was when I screwed up. When I was using FAT, I had to run chkdsk every time the power failed.

Date: 2008/08/21 13:27:06, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Certainly. I wouldn't plug an NTFS drive into a system that didn't support it. If you need compatibility, network. I'm just saying that I've seen FAT files lost in power outages, but in fifteen years I've never seen an NTFS drive corrupted by power outages. Never seen an NTFS USB drive corrupted by pulling the plug illegally. But mainly I use it because I have humongous files that can't be saved to FAT32.

Date: 2008/08/21 15:23:56, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote "Network it" doesn't do much in a dual-boot laptop situation, where the host OS is not the one currently running. I wouldn't give up on this. NAS external, supports NTFS

Date: 2008/08/21 20:30:07, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/08/22 15:22:26, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

It did move biology and geology out of the realm of stamp collecting. Or, to use Darwin's metaphor, pebble counting.

Date: 2008/08/23 07:18:32, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Would it be unthoughtful and uncivil to suggest that science seeks find regularities rather than whims?

Date: 2008/08/23 10:25:56, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

It does seem that the requirement for thoughtful contributions has dried up the well. Edit: Or perhaps the UD regulars noticed that Fuller tries to enhance his credibility by distancing himself from Behe and Dembski.

Date: 2008/08/23 16:42:19, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I found a pic of Dave driving out the uncivil and unthoughtful, and those posting under pseudonyms.

Date: 2008/08/23 20:17:32, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I think Dr Dr might want to avoid calling attention to the Hereditas article. Linky Quote It is characteristic of both C. Darwin and G. Mendel that they created, for the first time, the possibility of true scientific theorizing, free of teleological philosophy, in the two main fields of biology/evolution and heredity’’ (SOSNA 1966).

Date: 2008/08/23 21:47:46, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Huh? horseshoe crabs in pursuit of edges? WTF? Crab nookie. Quote In 1967, Dr. H. Keffer Hartline received the Nobel Prize for his research on horseshoe crab vision. He discovered how sensory cells in the retina help the brain process visual cues, enabling horseshoe crabs to see lines, shapes, and borders. This mechanism, called lateral inhibition, allows horseshoe crabs to distinguish mates in murky water. http://www.ocean.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/research/eye.html

Date: 2008/08/24 00:28:46, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote They simply refuse to coordinate two or more aspects of the same truth. First, they intrude their theology on their science (A compassionate God could not have designed this world), then they intrude their science on their theology (Darwinism is true, so Adam and Eve didn’t exist). One wonders how many truths one mind is supposed to hold. Apparently, it has never occurred to them that it is much easier on the mind and the emotions to simply follow the evidence where it leads. How is the compassion inference less self evident than the design inference? After all we have evidence in scripture that God is loving and compassionate. Isn't the compassion inference more in tune with religion than the inference that a loving God designed leishmaniasis, as Behe seems to think? Just wondering...

Date: 2008/08/24 01:06:58, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote Personally, I think the idea of unobservable causation deserves careful consideration. But anyone who thinks scientists are going to be receptive to the notion anytime soon is dreaming. Any physicists care to illuminate this?

Date: 2008/08/24 08:02:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Bob O'H @ Aug. 24 2008,06:39) Quote (midwifetoad @ Aug. 24 2008,01:06) Quote Personally, I think the idea of unobservable causation deserves careful consideration. But anyone who thinks scientists are going to be receptive to the notion anytime soon is dreaming. Any physicists care to illuminate this? Some of you may think that the appearance of these words were caused by a human being typing them in front of the computer, but you would be sadly mistaken.  We scientists know that, because you didn't observe them being typed (and I know you didn't - even the cat is asleep), there is no point in even considering the possibility. Signed, The Mysterious Telic Entity Bob Of course they weren't typed by a human being. They were typed by a toad.

Date: 2008/08/24 19:12:14, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote lizlizard It doesn’t appear you want any constructive dialog but rather just came here to disrupt this thread with your preconceived beliefs. You’ve had your say and I want other people to get a chance to have theirs. Zip it in this one Sincerely, Dave

Date: 2008/08/24 22:27:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I lasted six posts on UD. My only claim to fame is that my posts got the attention of Patrick hisself. I don't know who Patrick is, but he writes like Behe.

Date: 2008/08/25 09:18:06, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

In the Republican debates, three wannabes raised their hands indicating they did not accept evolution. None of them will be on the ticket. McCain appears to be a theistic evolutionist. He doesn't seem inclined to pick a yahoo for a running mate. I'm more concerned about state legislatures and school boards.

Date: 2008/08/25 10:14:05, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I'm all for holding the candidate's feet to the fire on science. It would be odd to see candidates forced to deny being anti-evolution. That would be the day.

Date: 2008/08/25 11:35:30, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I think it should be obvious that politicians can't really have opinions on religion that aren't calculated. If anything matters, it is their voting record. And even that isn't a sure thing, because laws are packaged in such a way that everyone winds up voting for something they don't like.

Date: 2008/08/25 17:29:17, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080825/ap_on_re_us/gay_foster_ban Sometimes the news source says it all.

Date: 2008/08/25 18:21:52, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

China will eventually be the superpower simply because it has the most people and possibly the smartest.  Or the most smart people. Could take ten years or  fifty, but it's on the way. India could compete in this arena if they undergo a similar cultural revolution, but I doubt they will in my lifetime. Of course I would have said the same thing about China 20 years ago.

Date: 2008/08/25 18:23:15, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Drink fast. All your PgUp/PgDn keys are belong to Microsoft.

Date: 2008/08/25 19:09:37, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/08/26 20:07:21, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote A file that was completely, truly random would be basically incompressible, and the zipped file would be 100% the size of the original. Just to show how screwed up intuitive concepts can be, the digits of pi are believed to be "random" in the sense that an arbitrary sequence of digits taken from pi cannot be distinguished from a sequence generated by quantum phenomena. In another sense, the digits of pi are believed to contain every possible string of finite length. And yet pi can be generated by a simple algorithm.

Date: 2008/08/26 20:54:56, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Actual data, image size 100x100 pixel, White square, and same size square after Photoshop noise filter applied (looks like confetti). Saved with no compression and two kinds of lossless compression.     Object              .bmp      .tif         .psd white, 100x100 px   29.3k     7.83k      8.25k Noise, 100x100 px   29.3k    35.40k     44.60k

Date: 2008/08/26 22:05:14, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 26 2008,21:21) Quote (midwifetoad @ Aug. 26 2008,20:54) Actual data, image size 100x100 pixel, White square, and same size square after Photoshop noise filter applied (looks like confetti). Saved with no compression and two kinds of lossless compression.     Object              .bmp      .tif         .psd white, 100x100 px   29.3k     7.83k      8.25k Noise, 100x100 px   29.3k    35.40k     44.60k clearly there's a market for a metaformat that dynamically pics the best compression format - the added carrier cost for the 'format switch' would be minuscule... © 2008 - AtBC Labs Saving the same two files as .gif, the solid white takes 156 bytes and the noise file takes nearly as much space as the lossless compression files.

Date: 2008/08/28 07:51:00, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

I had in mind something a bit less drastic than all members of a population shifting their alleles like synchronized swimmers, but I see your point. I guess my point is that a pseudo random algorithm would work as well as a theoretically perfect random one. I'm pretty sure there are ID advocates hoping to demonstrate some day that some mutations anticipate need, or at least respond to environmental stress by producing targeted change. A non-theistic teleology, if you will. Don't shoot me. I'm just trying to figure out what they're thinking about, if anything.

Date: 2008/08/28 14:26:09, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Date: 2008/08/28 14:34:35, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Apparently not all teachers are prepared for this.

Date: 2008/08/28 21:24:10, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

Hmmm...

Date: 2008/08/29 12:54:16, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 29 2008,07:18) Quote (Richardthughes @ Aug. 29 2008,01:31) The math may be beyond me but I'm sure folks like Wes could offer you a good critique, if you'd like. I can at least speak to Dembski's history of claims with respect to information theory and evolutionary computation. I was the guy who set him the task of explaining away EC back at the 1997 NTSE conference. My example there was a GA that produces short tours for the Traveling Salesman Problem. It's an example Dembski has never come to grips with. The class of problem, NP-hard, sets both intelligent agents and evolutionary computation on the same level, seeking approximate solutions rather than exact optimal solutions for any non-trivial number of cities in the tour. The evaluation function is too simple to even try to claim that the solution state is incorporated into it: total cost for each tour. Instead, Dembski has been making a career out of misunderstanding even Dawkins' pedagogical example, the weasel program. So far, he has not even managed to describe the weasel program correctly. I have been wondering whether the weasel program could be run as a web page where viewers could vote on the strings to live and reproduce based not on a match to a given string, but on arbitrary criteria known only to each participant.

Date: 2008/08/29 14:27:48, Link 68.16.154.107

Author: midwifetoad

I have no idea what the population size is in weasel, but let's say it's too large for inspection by a human over the Internet. Suppose each page view is treated as and encounter with a reasonable sized tribe, and the web player is designated as a predator, choosing some to eliminate, or food, choosing some to survive and replace those that are eliminated. The host would dole out the roles so that the population size remains stable. On any given page view, the host program selects an individual at random and builds a tribe of those most nearly matching it. The player sees the tribe -- say 50 or 100 individuals -- and selects some for reproduction or elimination. At the host end the population would be in continuous flux; there would be no "rounds" affection the entire population at once. From the player's perspective, the "genome" would be beyond the control of any particular player. Depending on the population size, a player might never see the same string or same tribe twice. OK, so I'm nuts, but I think with some tinkering, you could build a game that would have interesting results.

Date: 2008/08/29 22:50:15, Link 75.92.64.171

Author: midwifetoad

The travelling salesman problem does not have a predetermined solution. It doesn't even have a single solution. There's a patent issued for an electronic circuit designed by a genetic algorithm.