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Comment Re:One small victory for a man.. (Score 1) 717

I haven't watched the video yet, but according to his Wikipedia page, Haught is an evolutionist. I don't see what anachronistic fossils would do to his position.

Then watch the fucking video! Listen to what he says literally. I'm not gonna quote him, watch the video for yourself.

Creationists have gotta stop telling each other that just because creation needs blind faith, all other positions also needs blind faith. Believing without evidence, and not believing in absence of evidence is not the same thing. The former needs blind faith, the latter is just the wise thing to do. There is no such thing as an "evolutionist", it's not an -ism. Coyne is a scientist, pure and simple.

Comment Re:One small victory for a man.. (Score 3, Informative) 717

You obviously didn't watch the video particularly closely. Coyne (and me and all the rest of the scientists) are telling you exactly the type of things that would change our minds. Human fossils in the precambrian, any anachronistic fossil for that matter, whole amputated limbs regrowing just because of some prayer and not modern medicine, things in the bible like predictions about electrons or something else that couldn't have been written by men in the bronze age, things like that. That is not blind faith. It is falsifiable.

Why not use a tool like science, when it is there, and it makes predictions about the world? Something religion never has done.

Twitter To Meet With UK Government About Riots 186

"Twitter has confirmed that it will meet with the UK Home Secretary on Thursday, after being called in for discussions over the role it played in the recent UK riots. Twitter will send a representative to the meeting scheduled for August 25. Both Facebook and RIM will also send representatives to the meeting in regards to their effects on the riots."

Comment Re:It must be falsifiable (Score 1) 916

I don't think it's up to the antiponents of a hypothesis to decide that no falsification conditions exist. I had a search for falsification conditions, and I found this:

The hypothesis can be falsified by converting one organism/species into another...

That's already been done. Craig Venter converted a yeast to a bacteria. Last year in fact.

Comment Re:Appeal (Score 2) 530

Nor does Sweden:

Extradition is permitted, provided that the act for which extradition is requested is equivalent to a crime that is punishable under Swedish law by imprisonment for at least one year.[...]

Extradition may not be granted for military or political offences. Nor may extradition be granted if there is reason to fear that the person whose extradition is requested runs a risk - on account of his or her ethnic origins, membership of a particular social group or religious or political beliefs - of being subjected to persecution threatening his or her life or freedom, or is serious in some other respect.[...]

Nor may he or she be re-extradited to another state without the consent of the Government. Furthermore, nor may the person who is extradited be sentenced to death.

Yeah, that's smart. Looking at what they say and not what they do.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-ban-cia-rendition

Comment Re:Riiight (Score 1) 815

They're claiming no radioactive waste, which means they're going straight from one stable isotope of nickel to one stable isotope of copper. That means they're going from Ni62 to Cu63. Nickel-62 has the highest binding energy of any known isotope of any known element.

That makes no sense. If Ni-62 is your starting fuel (very high binding energy) and you convert it to Cu-63 (lower binding energy), then you will get some of that binding energy out.

You're moving from a high-energy state to a low-energy state... thus giving off energy.

Actually it makes perfect sense if you know physics and understand binding energy. Binding energy is how much energy you have to use to separate nucleons. So high binding energy actually means it is a lower energy state for Ni-62 than Cu-63, thus this reaction needs energy to work, not give off it.

Think it as how deep a well is. The deeper, the higher the binding energy.

Comment Re:Primary Programming. (Score 1) 645

So, you think that the power to build a nuke is all that? Try building a civilization without religion. So far every attempt has ended in Horrors far worse than any nuke unleashed to date. Worse than any Crusade or Inquisition even.

What about Sweden? We've freed ourselves from religion, and we are doing just fine.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 422

For added fun, try converting a metric recipe for six people into one that can feed 16.

That is soooo easy man. Take 2.5 of everything and add a dash more (to get close to 2.67). Or just multiply by 3 and make bigger portions.

And if you are the kind of person that thinks that recipes need to be followed down to 1% tolerance, and not judge the amounts by taste you shouldn't be allowed near a kitchen!

And if you work in a profession that needs recipes be followed exactly, like in chemistry for instance, then you should really be using SI units, or be prepared to be fired.

Comment Re:Just because his religion is made up.... (Score 1) 9

To anyone who believes in a religion, your belief is just as nutty as theirs is to you. You seem to be saying that no one should believe in anything unless they agree with you. Your logic will be consistent as soon as you concede your opinion that all religions are "made up" is just as unfounded as the religions about which you claim this.

You are erroneously assume that believing in something holds an equal truthvalue compared to simply not believing in something, and that not believing necessitates a belief. And is it is very commonly coached among religious to perpetuate this false dichotomy.

Also, not telling you children once a week to believe in X, is not the same thing as telling your children not to believe in X, nor telling your children to believe in X.

Get it? It is even logically consistent.

To reiterate my point, anyone who believes and then doesn't respect the wishes of someone else who believes, (and it doesn't matter if the belief is made up, or if the person i crazy and thinks he's Napoleon) deserves no freedom of religion, and is just a lame hypocrite.

Comment Just because his religion is made up.... (Score 3, Insightful) 9

...doesn't make it any less real.

Or actually, that is exactly what every religion thinks; that their made up stories, rules, hats and dietary needs are somehow special and real. Well you can't have it both ways. Either concede that your own religion is made up, or respect the nutty wishes of every nut job out there who believes in anything, or else you deserve no freedom of religion.

Comment Re:WRONG TWICE! sailboats have keels!!! No braking (Score 1) 229

If you angle the sail of the spacecraft, you will get a reduced thrust away from the sun, and a force in the horizontal direction (perpendicular to the radius vector). Canting the sail will bump the s/c side to side, and will reduce the thrust, but you can ONLY reduce thrust to Zero! You can't go negative. No braking thrust. ONLY if you "luff" the sail, parallel to the solar wind, will the thrust drop to zero, but then you are coasting UP the gravity well. By that time, you are probably past escape velocity, and will not be seen again. And remember, you didn't remove the initial orbital velocity of Earth, so you 'climb' is really a slowly-increasing spiral. At that distance, adding 10% to your velocity is escape velocity (at earth radius, V0 * sqrt(2)... 41% increase is escape, less farther out.)

disclosure: I'm a degreed aerospace engineer and accomplished sailor.

Of course you can slow down. Remember Kepler, the guy who figured out that orbits are ellipses? Angle the sail perpendicular to the orbit on the half of the orbit when the sail is moving towards the sun, this will give you a net braking thrust. On the other half of the orbit, when the sail is moving away from the sun, angle the sail perpendicular to the sun so you get zero thrust. I.e. slow down when going towards the sun and just coast while moving away.

full disclosure: I'm a physicist and a wind surfer.

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