Spongebob, is that you?

At least that could never happen in a Presidential election.

Oh, wait...

It depends on your definition of "survived". If they are ever brought back online then I guess you could then say they survived, unless they require such extensive
rebuilding for that to happen that they are essentially new reactors.

Obviously you are an authority on this evidence that we haven't heard of. I await your publication.

For the record, Darwinian evolution says nothing about *when* modern humans could have first existed. All we know about that is empirically derived from the fossil record, not from theoretical predictions.

you would want to do to disempower the people is to start teaching them that we don't have any semblance of a democratic system. Don't want to give them ideas that they can change things.

You can be two things.

Preaching to my sig, you are.

Eh, democracy has no requirement for majority rule, which often can't be had anyway (think what happens when number of alternatives > 2). You can start your education with the wikipedia article.

How about a CAPTCHA for Reply-All? That would certainly stop the autopilots.

they are finnished with it, then?

Theories in science are *never* proven, only tested.

At some point, something is so well tested that it become pointless to speak of it as a theory and it is regarded as a fact, which subsequent theories must conform to. This has happened, for example, with evolution. Nowadays a "theory of evolution" should properly only refer to those theories which conform to the fact of evolution.

Now perhaps someday someone will directly observe an instance of the FSM creating a new species, with original members that have no parents. Then we may have to revise evolution downward from "fact" to "hypothesis" (it still won't be disproven, but would be subject to testing all over again). Until that happens, we should feel free to call evolution a fact, and all biological theories must be consistent with that fact.

As for "string theory", a better term might be "string conjecture". But, for the record, I don't think conjectures are worthless. They can be the forerunners of hypotheses and eventually theories.

Well said. The worst sort of relativists are those who believe their own (relative) views are absolute:

Face it, everyone is a relativist, whether they will acknowledge it or not. That doesn't have to get in the way of science. Good scientists are able to compartmentalize their ideologies and focus on the facts at hand.

I don't think AC was writing to criticize the article, I think his or her comment was directed at this statement from the summary: "Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the socially relativistic, postmodern loons." So I agree with that: it is a poor summary.

Oh, the oil companies will be very happy to fund you!

To be fair, he never said how many centuries ago.