"spazzies"? Really? You know, before the car accident that screwed me up, I was perfectly normal. Now that they've done surgery to correct the issue, I'm perfectly normal, with a little extra titanium hardware. We're all one car accident away from having the same issues. That is, unless you never leave your mother's basement.

Good parroting of the popular Dawkins-driven line, but simply vastly historically incorrect as the sequence of events. Origen of Alexandria (one of the "Fathers of the Church", that is, one shaping core positions at the very earliest foundation of Christianity) was arguing for allegorical interpretation of Genesis in the second century A.D.

I'm aware that many Christians throughout history have argued for an allegorical interpretation of Genesis, which is why I specifically said "literalists" (i.e. creationists and associated nuts). Whatever other problems I may have with the Catholic Church (for example), I do not consider them anti-science. I had in mind the people who try to prove that the speed of light must have changed drastically in order to make the observed size of the universe compatible with their reading of Genesis (e.g. the Ussher chronology). I'll grant that I was a little unfair in blaming "the Bible" for this, but you can't really escape the fact that Christianity is dependent on an essentially immutable set of scriptures*, and there is also a large contingent that views allegorical interpretations as heresy.

The notion that science comes along and "shows religion incorrect" is fanciful nonsense.

Which is why I never said that. But it is certainly not nonsense to point out that the available scientific evidence supports a much different origin theory than the literal reading of Genesis. You can view the hand of God in there if you want; I don't really concern myself with such things. However there is still that very large subset of Christians (and Muslims, and Jews) for whom this compromise is intolerable, because for them, whatever the Bible says must be true.

(* At least within the last millennium or so. Of course in the longer time frame the contents of the Bible - especially the Old Testament - were subject to a great deal of revision and selective editing, which is why the literal interpretation really seems nonsensical to me..)

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.

Ya.. There are are a bunch of whiny bitches here. :) The same ones who complain about kids, or the fact that I bypassed the lines in the courtesy wheelchair, because I couldn't walk through an airport.

Thanks. I am so delighted it got fixed. It only took about 1.5 years and a half dozen "expert" doctors to find one who knew what he was doing. I had sympathy for people who couldn't get around before. Now I have a *lot* more.

Science is wrong

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Science was incomplete, in the sense that our assumptions about the appearance of dinosaurs were based on limited fossil evidence (and analogies to modern lizards rather than birds). And the raw evidence wasn't even "wrong", it was totally valid - only our interpretations were incorrect. Now we have new evidence, which is being incorporated into how we think about dinosaurs. When was the last time that anything was added to the Bible?

There are more models to support the scientific theory, but even then, there are something like 35 competing theories of evolution.

Possibly, but the general concept isn't even remotely controversial (at least among actual scientists). Especially the theory that humans and apes have a common ancestor, which is simultaneously the most minimal example of evolution, and the one that seems to upset people the most.

However, if one wants to be totally objective (or at least minimize biases), one has to admit that science doesn't always have the answers. The idea that science can eventually explain everything is as an untestable hypothesis as a deity creating everything. Neither can be proven.

The predictive ability of science - and the number of things it explains - does continue to improve over time, however. The same cannot be said of religion. Or, put another way, science is capable of changing as new evidence is obtained, as exemplified by this article. The Bible, however, is immutable, and the literalists have to resort to increasingly contorted explanations for how the Genesis account could be factually correct.

large reptiles of today which are descended from dinosaurs.

Uh, nope. Crocodilians for certain predate dinosaurs and evolved in parallel. I'm pretty sure the other big lizards did too.

Only if you're lucky. Well, I think SW does that. No other airlines I fly do. I don't really care about kids. My ears have never really tolerated flying much, so I have to use the pressure relieving earplugs. Wearing noise cancelling headphones over them, I can barely tell the engines are running, much less screaming children. :)

No, you really want them to board first.

For the last year, up until last month, I was barely able to walk. I still had to fly for work. I boarded flights with the kids and anyone else that needed help.

The parent doesn't just stow their stuff and sit down. They stow the kids bags, get the kids to sit down, shut up, buckles on, no you can't go to the bathroom, blah, blah, blah.

For me, it took me about 4x as long just to get down the airway. A guy barely walking down the ramp with passengers walking normal speed definitely held up the flow, no matter how much room I tried to leave. I still got held up by the parents with kids, and I didn't care. I'd just sit on the nearest armrest until they were done.

You don't want me, or the parents with kids slowing you down. People are assholes enough boarding planes.

If you wait for them to board last, now you'll have parents trying to stow bags in the last few spots (if there are any), trying to get the kids in their seats at the same time, and having the kid(s) climbing over other passengers.

For me, barely able to walk, if I had to take the window seat, that would mean everyone in the other seat(s) would have to move. Walking on a cane, I wasn't able to just squeeze by anyone, especially if there were no good seats available. It was still hard just to get *to* the window seat.

And before any of you complain, since surgery I can walk fine. The cane is retired at least for another 30 years.

Did YOU look at the graph? The bars are comparing all of 2013 against the first half of 2014 (obviously, as the second half is in the future). So the fact that IE already matched last year's record is where the 100% figure comes from - it's another way to say "doubled". Unless the second half of 2014 has a lower exploit rate then the conclusion will be correct.

This hasn't been my experience. It's hard to find qualified people - they've all got decent jobs already. It's the unskilled workers that are struggling with unemployment (and underemployment).

The thing is, fossil fuels run out rather quickly on the cosmic scale. A few centuries and the consequences of pollution become apparent quickly too. A civilization must quickly move to something cleaner or it dies. Either way, the pollution stops. What are the odds that our telescopes will find a planet inhabited by a civilization that just happens to be going through a (likely) one-time few century window of time?

This is an excellent point, but it's also orthogonal to the post I was replying to. You're arguing based on certain physical constraints which are based on reasonable extrapolation from our present circumstances. The GP was arguing that pollution was "illogical", which is just a nonsensical argument. Polluting the planet to the point of species extinction would be illogical, but trace levels of CFCs in the atmosphere don't necessarily indicate a fundamental lack of logic, just a transitional period where a civilization was smart enough to make such things, but not smart enough to realize the long-term impact. (But I agree that this timeframe is not likely to be very long.)