Stonehead

Ok, here's the one that gets me. 'Celibate' Catholic priests who provide marriage counseling. Isn't something really wrong with that picture?

The music was using a bitter man as a vehicle for its expression.

Pissing mannekins spell out famous quotes

But some ID proponents are creationists and this movement reflects a push to legitimize the teaching of religious themes in a science class. Please don't 'dumb down' our science teaching anymore! The ID vs. Evolution debate should be relegated to a philosophy or rhetorics class. I don't the Bible claims a specific age for the Earth. I think that was deducted from the begets & the begots by people interpreting the Bible. As I understand the Neo-Darwinian synthesis (evolution as it is currently understood), natural selection acts more as a filter on species, reducing diversity, rather than as an actual mechanism of speciation. Although I suppose speciation through geographic isolation could be classified as natural selection. There are other mechanisms of speciation that involve heterochrony or developmental timing (ontogeny), genetic mutation, etc. Isn't 'alien' anything that didn't originate on Earth? Would that include all those supernatural beings mentioned in the various world mythologies? I believe the reason creationists have such a difficult time with Evolution is that it does not require a special creation, i.e., man is not accorded a special place by virtue of design. The argument was similar for the origin of the Earth and the geocentric-heliocentric controversy that the Church fiercely fought. Creationists cannot image the existence of 'chance' in producing complexity, even though the mathematics are evident, e.g., fractals. There have been (are) people who believe in a teleological interpretation of Evolution. Pierre Teilhard Chardin believed in an Omega Point where evolution is continuing along a process from simple life to complex life with Man and the Noosphere at the developmental end.

Is the issue really Chouinard vs. Bush, who's the better man?? Isn't the issue whether Bush relies on faith or science to base some of his policy decisions, or rather whether Bush supports faith-based initiatives that concur with a Biblical perspective? Isn't that Bush's paradigm?

I've not heard or seen anything that supports the idea that Bush believes the Earth is only 6000 years old. I do, however, recall that he supports the idea that Intelligent Design be taught in science classes along with Evolution as a competing theory for the diversity of life.

--snip-- When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins. But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests. If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes. "That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a leader in the chimp project. Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted. Their analysis was just the latest of many in such disparate fields as genetics, biochemistry, geology and paleontology that in recent years have added new credence to the central tenet of evolutionary theory: That a smidgeon of cells 3.5 billion years ago could -- through mechanisms no more extraordinary than random mutation and natural selection -- give rise to the astonishing tapestry of biological diversity that today thrives on Earth. Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative" explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force. Today, in a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pa., a federal judge will begin to hear a case that asks whether ID or other alternative explanations deserve to be taught in a biology class. But the plaintiffs, who are parents opposed to teaching ID as science, will do more than merely argue that those alternatives are weaker than the theory of evolution. They will make the case -- plain to most scientists but poorly understood by many others -- that these alternatives are not scientific theories at all. "What makes evolution a scientific explanation is that it makes testable predictions," Lander said. "You only believe theories when they make non-obvious predictions that are confirmed by scientific evidence." Lander's experiment tested a quirky prediction of evolutionary theory: that a harmful mutation is unlikely to persist if it is serious enough to reduce an individual's odds of leaving descendants by an amount that is greater than the number one divided by the population of that species. The rule proved true not only for mice and chimps, Lander said. A new and still unpublished analysis of the canine genome has found that dogs, whose numbers have historically been greater than those of apes but smaller than for mice, have an intermediate number of harmful mutations -- again, just as evolution predicts. "Evolution is a way of understanding the world that continues to hold up day after day to scientific tests," Lander said. By contrast, said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Intelligent Design offers nothing in the way of testable predictions. "Just because they call it a theory doesn't make it a scientific theory," Leshner said. "The concept of an intelligent designer is not a scientifically testable assertion." Asked to provide examples of non-obvious, testable predictions made by the theory of Intelligent Design, John West, an associate director of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based ID think tank, offered one: In 1998, he said, an ID theorist, reckoning that an intelligent designer would not fill animals' genomes with DNA that had no use, predicted that much of the "junk" DNA in animals' genomes -- long seen as the detritus of evolutionary processes -- will someday be found to have a function. --snip-- New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory--Washington Post, 9/26/05

Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina by Mark Townsend Houston Sunday September 25, 2005 The Observer It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. --snip-- Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

Tyra Banks proves her breasts are real

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. --F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hamster Deathmatch!

What is the inspiration for this work? Matt Groening's Life in Hell ?

From Moveon.com: If you are being evacuated from your home due to hurricane Rita and need a place to stay, please visit HurricaneHousing.org or call 1-800-638-4559. Right now, there are over 265,000 spaces being offered to evacuees all over the country. We estimate that between 15,000 and 30,000 hurricane Katrina evacuees have already found temporary housing through the site. By all reports, hurricane Rita threatens to be devastating—and after Katrina, we'd hate to see anyone take a chance staying in the path of the storm for lack of another place to go. If you're in the affected area and need a safe place to stay, please take advantage of this resource. -– Noah, Justin, Carrie, Micayla and the MoveOn.org Civic Action Team Wednesday, September 21st, 2005

Chaps, I can't tell but is that someone riding on your back piggyback style? Just what the hell is your avatar pic?

Canada is a state of mind...

I make no assertions attesting to the truth and/or validity of the contents of the test. BTW, I think a healthy dose of skepticism is the real object of the test.

Would that be facial or bathroom tissue?

Squid Labs have developed an electronically sensed rope - a rope or webbing with integral sensing capability which can be monitored electronically. -- Squid Labs: Suckers for Novelty Appears to be static line but could the tech be integrated into a climbing rope?

Yeah whatever, Alice.

The Gullibility Factor test

Silly me! Yes, a Red Giant. So, you're not an extropian?

Hurricane Rita headed for Crawford, Texas!

Stoopid, poop flingin' primate. Doesn't it know it's doomed?

Yeah, thumbs are pretty damn nifty. It was pretty damn nifty too when our primitive ancestors used that opposable thumb to fashion weapons and wield firestarting flints. You can see it in a flash of teleological vision, from flints to nuclear power, hydrocarbon refineries, etc.

"UNMENTIONABLE AUCTION"