Stonehead

Who's to say that alien life has to be solely represented by organic life? Copernicus demoted humanity by removing Earth from the center of the universe. Darwin showed that, rather than being made in God's image, people were merely products of nature's experimentation. Now, advances in fields as disparate as computer science and genetics are dealing our status another blow. Researchers are learning that markets and power grids have much in common with plants and animals. Their findings lead to a startling conclusion: Life isn't the exception, but the rule. We're beginning to discern life processes at their fundamental level, and as we re-create these processes in silico, we're starting to see how they work in inorganic settings. It turns out that many of life's properties - emergence, self-organization, reproduction, coevolution - show up in systems generally regarded as nonliving.

Your avatar image reminds me of that Bugs Bunny episode where Elmer Fudd and Bugs are in the remake of one of Wagner's operas. "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"

Fundamentalist = homegrown terrorist Scrambled, You bore me. Why don't you run along now with your fundamentalist funkies and join the Army of God so you can harass some abortionists? I suppose you believe the earth is only 6000 years old too? You and Gish probably also believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted? The people who fall for Gish's arguments aren't known for their intellectual prowess.

What's wrong? Can't you Handel it?

"If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him."--Voltaire (1694-1778) US report foretells of brave new world "A draft government report says we will alter human evolution within 20 years by combining what we know of nanotechnology, biotechnology, IT and cognitive sciences. The 405-page report sponsored by the US National Science Foundation and Commerce Department, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, calls for a broad-based research program to improve human performance leading to telepathy, machine-to-human communication, amplified personal sensory devices and enhanced intellectual capacity. People may download their consciousnesses into computers or other bodies even on the other side of the solar system, or participate in a giant "hive mind", a network of intelligences connected through ultra-fast communications networks. "With knowledge no longer encapsulated in individuals, the distinction between individuals and the entirety of humanity would blur," the report says. "Think Vulcan mind-meld. We would perhaps become more of a hive mind - an enormous, single, intelligent entity." "Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?" - Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900) "Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God is himself mad." - Laing, R. D. "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use." - Galilei, Galileo And, Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus perhaps has the last words: "My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) Where one cannot speak, therefore one must be silent."

"A womans place IS on the face"-Anonymous

Nice article titled 'What you can't say' (This essay is about heresy: how to think forbidden thoughts, and what to do with them. The latter was till recently something only a small elite had to think about. Now we all have to, because the Web has made us all publishers.)

Well, once you have the primordial element, hydrogen, then helium is produced and all the other elements up to iron on the periodic table are formed under gravitational coalescence and burning when a star forms and ignites. The elements heavier than iron are produced during the explosion of a supernova when the gravitational forces overcome the force of expansion caused by the generation of heat. Sounds pretty damn convenient, doesn't it? Different principles may appear when you're talking about a singularity. You're saying that matter can neither be created or destroyed. Matter is conserved but it can be transformed. Some scientists have said that all of the matter in the universe was supercondensed to a 'singularity'. In such a state, matter would no longer be possible as matter. It would be stripped down to pure energy, and energy itself would be raw and undifferentiated; variations like gravity and light would not have emerged. Time would not yet be real; for there can be no time before zero; neither would space make sense in the context of a question like "what was there before the big bang?" Physicists reply, "There's no 'there' there. There's no 'then' then." Space and time, matter and energy, sprung into existence at the moment of creation; "before" that moment the concepts do not apply. So, creation yes. But creator, not necessarily.

That second pic looks like James is still in his Hulk state.

Just in time for the election gearing up. Let's bring values back to topic again. I can hear it now. 'The liberal media is foisting its easy morals on the majority of unsuspecting folks out there. Flinging it in your face as it were. Leave nudity to the sanctity of a loving, committed relationship. Don't expose my kids to a morality free, exhibitist lifestyle. What's wrong is the imposition of these lax attitudes as mainstream values. Blah. Blah. Blah.' Nevermind the federal deficit, the exportation of high income jobs, the wars, the looming budget crises, etc. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that if politicans don't have the answer, they deflect the question to another issue. Makes me wonder if some of these Hollywood types are playing a role out of a politican's gamebook. For instance, Brittany's short-lived marriage. Wasn't it conveniently timed with Bush's proclamation about heterosexual marriage? And Brittany's stunt was pointing out the fact that what's so special about it?

A man who makes it as far as Clark did in the military would have to be a consummate politican. He doesn't have all of the canned answers right now but he's a quick study. He should be able to take the heat. That'd earn my respect depending on how he thinks on his feet.

Things are real in as much as they can influence your experience. In other words, something doesn't have to exist in concrete reality to have a real effect on you. A belief, however irrational or unfounded, can influence your actions. So yeah, these things such as ghosts exist even if not physically proven but as mental constructs such as the embodiment of conscience as in Shakespeare's MacBeth, in other words, as projections of our minds. The important thing, I believe, is not to confuse things such as imaginery threats versus real threats. If you imagined a tiger in the trees, it poses no real threat to your life. However, if you didn't see a real tiger in the trees, then you might not live to tell about it. Also, it's a matter of perception. You might imagine a coil of rope to be a snake and react accordingly. The imaginery snake and tiger might cause you to recoil but once you realize these as illusory appearances, your ignorance is dispelled and your fears disappear. So, what I'm trying to say is to recognize things as they are, to see clearly if possible. We do not see by our eyes alone but also with our minds, our preconceptions, etc. I am a believer in using the imagination and sometimes it calls for using it in ways that seem to be unorthodox. What I am against is using imagination as a tool to force control over others such as instilling the belief of heaven and hell. What better way to stifle intellectual dissent than by saying someone will burn in hell for questioning his beliefs?

Creationism has no place in the formative educational development of our young people in our liberal democratic society. Creationism is fundamentalism, the literal interpretation of the Bible, and smacks of the closing of the American mind. Leave the debate of creationism to college courses. The subjugation of high school students to creationism is wrong because it's confuses the development of a rational worldview. Teaching creationism is akin to teaching students to believe in ghosts, demons, angels, supernatural powers, etc. Look, you want students to believe in miraculous things, teach them about science and technology. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

Look, the report will say that Bush got his info directly from God. How can you argue with the Supreme Being?

Clark should be running as General Slaughter out of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Reminds me of that General Alexander Haig, when he got on the podium after Reagan got shot and proclaimed that he was in charge. Clark is running as the Democratic candidate with military experience. He debases Kerry's military experience in Vietnam as that of a junior officer compared to Clark's high ranking position of former commander of NATO forces. Why isn't this general serving on several boards of chairmanship for various defense contractors like his contemporaries? Is it because his thirst for power knows no end? He seems to have an intelligent mind but I'm not certain about his judgment. Also, why is it that people tend to identify with a candidate so that when a candidate is criticized the person takes it as personal criticism? Happens all the time with Bush supporters, as if his supporters were actually mental clones of the man.

As an antiwar leader, John Kerry was arrested with hundreds of others after protesting on the green in Lexington, Mass., on May 31, 1971. The Nixon White House identified Kerry as the movement's most effective spokesman. (AP File Photo) April 28, 1971, 4:33 p.m. President Richard M. Nixon takes a call from his counsel, Charles Colson. "This fellow Kerry that they had on last week," Colson tells the president, referring to a television appearance by John F. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. "Yeah," Nixon responds. "He turns out to be really quite a phony," Colson says. "Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" Nixon says. Yes, Colson says in a gossiping vein, telling the president that Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on the mall. "He was in Vietnam a total of four months," Colson scoffs, without mentioning that Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, and had also been on an earlier tour. "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue." "Yeah." "He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Colson says. "Sure," Nixon responds. "Well, anyway, keep the faith." The tone was sneering. But the secretly recorded dialogue illustrates just how seriously Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House. Some of these conversations have not been previously publicized, and Kerry said he had never heard them until they were provided by a reporter. --Source

Uh, yeah. The real creator of this world is the ultimate trickster god, the Devil.

Evolving Some thoughts for the prison your religion imposed on your mind: If the universe embodies creativity becoming manifest as an emergent property and as a natural function of physical matter and the laws it operates under, why do we have to postulate a conscious agent behind the workings of the universe? Why do we need to multiply the names of god if the word 'universe' covers it? Is it any coincidence that most religions offer the idea of eternal life or life beyond our mortal coils? Is it so difficult to envision the idea of a soul apart from the body by examining how primitives understood dreams? For example, the Australian aborigines believe in dream entities that exist independently. Is it any wonder that primitive man when faced with consciousness of the eventual death of his physical body became afraid and created the idea of a conscious agent that lives on? Wouldn’t you want to belong to a religion that offered to let you win the lottery or live forever? A deeper, more primitive being underlies our contemporary veneer of modernity, our clothes, our attitudes, and our beliefs. How else could the most culturally and technologically advanced nation at the time (Nazi Germany) have turned to superstitious scapegoating of a group of people? How does religion deal with the problem of human evil? Some religions saw the need to create the image of an evil being that causes mischief to occur. Again, religion tried to provide answers to society’s problems by acting as its authority. One only has to look at modern day equivalents of rudimentary religions by examining the development of cults and the tactics these cults use to influence group behavior. It seems, in my mind at least, that we must be comforted by the idea that we are not alone in the universe and that there is a higher purpose among life than reproduction and competition for resources. This implies that there is some grand goal that a conscious agent has in mind, an omega point, as it were. Why do we have to have a conscious agent directing our development and how do we account for events such as genocide? Why do we have to take such a circuitous route to whatever omega point we are approaching? In other words, saying that god acts in mysterious ways is not enough for me to subsume my responsibility to become self aware and an active agent in this world. Face it, scrambled legs, all the gods exist in the human mind as does good and evil in our own hearts. We don't need the existence of beings exterior to us to account for these things and when we accept that social motivations come from our desires and fears then maybe we'll live in a saner world free from irrational superstitions. And, the way to do this, is to continue to study the human mind and body, its history of development, etc.

Your basis for criticizing evolution as a discipline clearly shows your ignorance. This is what happens when a complex aggregate of ideas is condensed for popular consumption. Actually the ideas underlying evolution are not very difficult but the ideas become corrupted through simplification. The idea of man evolving from apes, for instance. Nowhere does evolution postulate this. Humans and apes have a common ancestor. This is not the same as humans evolving from apes. There appears to be times when species are more 'plastic', meaning capable of change followed by long periods of stasis and usually ending in extinction as depicted in evolutionary diagrams showing long branches or lineages branching off of a common trunk (ancestor). The process of speciation is not constantly occurring. There are speciation events that occur, again followed by periods of stasis or no change. How do you explain homologous structures in life? Some invertebrates show well developed nervous systems with resultant intelligence, social structure, and complex behaviorial strategies. Invertebrates such as the octopus and squid have a well developed eye that differs from the vertebrate eye. How do you explain the multiple origins of flight in different groups of animals such as the extinct dinosaurs/reptilian ancestors, mammals, and birds? The same goes for the swimming features such as fins in fish and the fin-like appendages on sea mammals. How do you explain the existence of vestigal structures in the body? Why would god create the appendix if it served no current purpose? Look at the development of the ear from the jaw bones or the development of the brain in humans (brain stem is autonomous nervous system, commonly called 'reptilian' brain; the neocortex is the most recent brain structure.). The evidence to support the discipline of evolutionary biology does not come from just the fossil record. There is evidence from genetics, observations of the developmental changes through life (ontogeny), breeding or artificial selection, etc. The evidence is so overwhelming that one would have to be a modern day Luddite with respect to intellectual ideas or a throwback to not see the cultural relevance of evolution to our modern day view of the world. In the absence of a better explanatory model, then evolution as an unified theory and as a discipline remains. The only thing disturbing is that ignorance is still widespread today in this country. It's as if these same people don't realize what causes babies.

Religion is aid

I think that my complaint regarding the replacement of the word 'evolution' with 'change though time' is that it dilutes the impact of the idea that change progresses naturally without a conscious agent directing it, much as water flows down a canyon under gravity and depending on the vagaries of such things as the strength of the stone to erosion, etc. Given long periods of time (and this is very limited as a metaphor since this deals with inorganic substances rather than organic life) one can see fantastic shapes produced. Do we need to know about evolution in order to function in life, to have life skills? No. Just like I don't need to know physics or chemistry to take advantage of having my car repaired or have my leg fixed. I do believe, however, is that it puts us on a lower level of being, as mere technologists, who leave it to others to dictate why things are as they are. So, basically it puts us back in time to the days when priests told us the important things, effectively relinquishing power back to the elite. Interestingly, it is similiar to what would happen if we gave the interpretation of Christianity back to the priests. The issue revolves around the idea of power, authority, and our standing in the world as (seemingly) free agents.

One can define something by stating what one is. Alternatively, one can define something by stating what a thing is not. By the evidence (what we currently know given the Genesis account), the creation story would have to fall more correctly under the definition of myth rather than science. I think people get carried away with the ideas of Karl Popper (that things cannot be proven to eliminate all uncertainty but the obverse holds that, something once disproved can thus be eliminated). I'd guess we'd have to say that all hypotheses are equally valid but a much higher standard would have to be taken to elevate a hypothesis to a working theory. Common sense also dictates that the idea of holding all hypotheses (accepting all things as true) is not efficient, you'd spend an eternity trying to figure what's right and what works. Besides, evolution is more of a discipline rather than a single theory to be disproved. So, it's a discipline with subdisciplines such as evolutionary psychology that can generate hypotheses to be tested and validated as theories based on the foundation that life evolves through unconscious goal (evolution as random, not directed).

All of the posts I've read supporting the creation side are rather amusing. It stems from the misunderstanding the function of science and the use of the scientific method. Intelligent design. Clever. So, the premise is that some omnipotent god outside of time and space created our universe (because this god would have to exist prior to his creation). He (or she or it) was lonely or bored so he created life (if we anthropomorphize his motives). If you follow the Judeo-Christian myth, then god didn't want his human creations to be conscious (they didn't have that faculty until later). But a fallen angel in the guise of a snake tricked woman into eating the fruit of consciousness (hmm, makes me wonder, if man was made in the image of god then does that mean god is not fully conscious of his ignorance). Woman tricked man. The punishment for transgression of the law (prohibition) was death (limited lifespan) and suffering (for man through work and woman through pregnancy). I could go on like this but you get the point. These are creation myths. As metaphor, you could give the Hindu creation myth as much validity as the Judeo-Christian. In the Hindu myth, our universe, or phenomenological world, is the dream of Vishnu. Interestingly, Vishnu inserts himself into our world on Earth as various avatars including Krishna and Buddha, different versions of world saviors to show us the true state of being. But you can clearly see the role of these systems of religious ideas in their function as arbitrator in how society should operate. They are merely social contructs that support a particular view of how the world should function, in particular, a strict interpretation of Genesis envisions a patriarchial world where women are lesser beings. Yes, I'm all for introducing the teaching of creation myths in anthropology and literature classes. Let's shed some light on the religions and see them for what they really are. I disagree with the function of religion to control people's potentiality, although religion serves wonderfully as such. Personally, if you view yourself as more than just an animal being that's fine as long as you also realize the limitation of holding a particular belief system exclusively and recognize that spiritual beliefs should be empowering rather than a tool of oppression. There have been a number of different revolutions in our understanding of the world. The most prominent one was the displacement of the geocentric world view with that of the heliocentric system. This revolutionary belief shed considerable doubt on the literal truth of Genesis as a description of the world's (earth's) beginning. As myth fine (the earth's land was brought into being from the waters and later 'let there be light'). The Church fought the revelations as an erosion of their authoritative power and went so far as to condemn Galileo. We've seen successive revolutions in thought since then, such as the idea of a dynamic earth that has a very long history, changes in our mental perception brought about by the evolving nature of our scientific observations. To summarize: Copernicus--contrary to popular belief, the earth is not the center of the universe and everything does not revolve around us. Darwin--Contrary to popular belief, we have not been specially created, but are an advanced evolution of lesser life forms. Freud--Contrary to popular belief, we are not even very well evolved. We are not very much in control of ourselves. We do not much understand our own feelings nor why we have them. The nature of the world today shows these observations to hold. It does not eliminate a higher being apart from ourselves. But perhaps, maybe life itself and intelligent life are emergent properties of the universe. Explain to me why I should possess inconsistencies, absurdities, muddled and/or convoluted thinking when my goal is to see things as they are, clearly?

I'd rather see a whaletail. But look here for Hubble images.

According to this source, OBL has been captured. In any event, Al Qaida may be pursued into Pakistan .