I like your post. I, too, have heated disagreements with "God's Elect" over these issues and have come to the conclusion the Bible was quite correct over False Prophets and wolves in sheep's clothing.

The main evidence I have against evolution, in favor of some sort of creation, is speciation. I observe that within a species, there is a continuous spectra of traits within that species - I am sure I can find every gradient of dog somewhere between a German Shepherd and a Chihuahua if I had to. However I do not find any gradient part dog, part cat. Same within the plant species. I hold that if evolution were true, I would expect to find gradients across the entire living ecosystem, yet that's not what I see.

Science itself has been the greatest witness to me that I am the product of some fertile imagination somewhere, not "slime plus time"... but every religion I have had the (dis)pleasure of encountering seemed to ignore the wonder of it all in favor of trying to control it all and vector itself tithes. The selfishness of the whole affair makes it stink.

The best explanation I have so far is right out of the Bible book of Revelation which states that I was created for God's pleasure. So, I am one of God's pets. I cannot prove it one way or the other, but so far that's the best I have seen as to why I exist.

I am an engineer. I have as good of training as any for recognizing good and bad design... and the designs I have seen are simply amazing in my view - but the religions I have seen look like the crap dreamed up in business schools on how to manipulate people. Same thing Al Capone would do. Finding ways of pinning people down so you can "give them an offer they can't refuse."

instructions unclear; got tumour stuck in revolving door

(For anyone actually wondering, 95.45% is actually the percentage of data expected to fall within two standard deviations of the mean in a Gaussian distribution. Five standard deviations is much, much more stringent—and not really standard outside of particle physics. As we all know, most amateur scientists have the knowledge and ingenuity to discover novel quantum interactions and particles on a regular basis, and merely lack the necessary funding to access synchrotrons to test their theories.)

I really don't think his intention was to discredit amateur science by linking to the search results of "proof that amateur science sucks."

Thanks, Cusco.. those are exactly my concerns. I figured my "troll" has never considered what an investment of labor it has been to provide the comforts of modern living.

I guess he's right considering that male engineers do not give birth to biological children ( although if we are lucky, we may make a contribution - but apparently not many of us do ), what I build is my legacy and I could well claim to be "speaking as a mother". I hate to spend my life trying to leave a legacy of something useful just to have someone else blow it up just for the fun of it. Or see another engineer's work destroyed like that. I have a very deep respect for the people who put this infrastructure in place.

Well, it's sort of complicated.

On one hand—it's probably worth pointing out that the American punitive system is absolutely insane, and the mildness of this should not be taken as evidence of a defective process simply because it doesn't follow suit. Indeed, there are some fairly involved legal and philosophical reasons as to why the punishments aren't more extreme. Here is a paper on it. (I haven't read all of it, but it seems sensible enough from the first few pages.) One of the key points is that a lot of money goes down the toilet on dead ends and genuine errors anyway; another is that scientific misconduct isn't actually illegal, so the power of funding bodies to defend themselves is somewhat limited. In the end, the top priority is still getting them out of science.

It's not. After this no one will touch him; his career as a researcher is over. For professors, three years of no federal grants is generally enough to kill the entire lab, and a three-year lapse in publishing is enough to kill any career on its own, with the possible exception of the most hard-boiled tenure.

Somewhat irrelevant trivia: in Toronto there is a moving company called "El Cheapo." Their motto is "Don't be a shmoe call EL CHEAPO" (replete with missing comma.) Ecce!

What a strange question. Octave has quite an enormous userbase, perhaps not as big as R but with a heritage going back to the 1980s.

The real question is what can't you do in Octave that you'd do in Matlab: it's been quite some years since I used either, but I did have to port my Matlab code to use different or missing toolboxes so that it would run on Octave. The other big problem is a complete lack of integration with data/signal acquisition hardware which has drivers for Matlab (up to a crusty old version you've probably just retired)...

That is the definition of uncool.

This topic forced me into consideration of what my role should be in an event such as this.

First, I am an engineer. I know damn well how important our electrical power infrastructure is to my community - and I also know damn well how irreplaceable those power transformers are should several be taken out at once - exceeding the spares available.

For me, the question boiled down to: "If I had the means, and already knowing this is an attack vector planned by entities hostile to my community, should I use those means, or bleat like a goat?"

I admit my feelings toward Washington are not all that good, and if they attempted this stunt against political adversaries, I would not be so adamant in my response, if I had any at all.

Taking out the power transformer that supplies myself and my neighbors with the comforts of a civilized life - well that's hitting pretty close to home if you ask me. One might as well be coming to our neighborhood drinking water reservoir with a truckload of dead animals and expect me to peaceably watch them dump the dead animals in, knowing all the time that our drinking water will now be unusable.

I have heard it said that all it takes for evil to take over is for the good to lay back and do nothing.

This is one of the reasons I like to run things up the flagpole here at Slashdot to see if anyone else salutes. I get a lot of other opinions from others to act as a "reality check" on myself. and I thank you for taking the time to post.

I just RTFA'd. Scared the hell out of me when I considered the ramifications of a co-ordinated attack,

Made me wonder if I would be justified in taking out anyone I saw trying to attempt such a thing.

( Of course, I guess even thinking that makes me one of the types who our government seems to believe should not have access to the means to do so. )

Its not like spares for those big transformers are laying around all over... those things were manufactured to order.