...drugs, cigarettes, liquor, gambling, lottery tickets, flat screens, cell phones, junk food, etc...

The problem isn't attribution as much as it is cross referencing. Say I want to refer to Y. Wang's paper on network theory. I wouldn't use his signature in my paper (signatures are not searchable.)

No, we're constantly running out of account numbers. It's such a common problem that several stop-gap solutions have become commonplace, which is why you never noticed.

"GUID, bitte."

Oh how I wish that were true. A 2005 poll has acceptance and rejection of evolution in the US are pretty well tied. The only change over twenty years was a decline on both sides, with an increase in the "not sure" response. I think that indicates some margin of success in their "teach the controversy" tactic.

Note that out of 34 countries, the US came in SECOND TO LAST, ahead of only Turkey.

(If anyone happens to have more recent polling data hand I would be eager to see it, but I don't anticipate any large shift in the numbers)

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Vacuum, gasses, liquids, and solids reveal different properties in how sound waves pass through them (with vacuum revealed by not transmitting sound at all of course). Sound waves can also be focused to create images, like the way dolphins can see with sonar. Where building a suitable lens is impractical you can use multiple sound sources and/or multiple listening points as a virtual lens to compute an image. Here's a good link explaining a 1998 confirmation of a solid inner core below the molten mantle and molten outer core: Earthquake Provides Proof That Earth's Innermost Core Is Solid.

Another link is: Evidence for Internal Earth Structure and Composition. That one gives more explanation on how seismic waves are used to see the inner earth, but mainly I'm linking it for this image which illustrates how seismic stations at different points on earth see seismic waves passing through different parts of the earth. Seismic stations at the bottom of the image see seismic waves which reveal the inner and outer core. Note that it takes something like a half hour or more for waves from an earthquake to arrive at the opposite side of the planet. Different kinds of waves travel at different speeds and arrive several minutes apart, with the difference in timing between different kinds of waves providing rich additional information of the composition of the earth along various paths. Different kinds of waves can be analyzed separately to compute images of different aspects of the inner earth.

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My buddy works in a factory that makes furniture. Guess what? They prefer iPads to the old notepads. It has reduced duplication of effort and sped up the entire workflow process by automating it. No need to wait until your floor check run (two or more hours) is over before heading back into the offices to get the data entered. It's all done from the floor.

Keep on trying to live out the old style. If it's not broke, fix it anyway because there's a much better way.

YMMV.

I don't know where you work but I haven't printed more than a handful of pages in the last 5 years which were actually necessary to do my job.

In the two places I speak of, there's a culture of sharing information via e-mail/PDF or, in my current role, via Google Docs.

I can't imagine going to a job which didn't act that way.

I realize this is fanciful, and the odds are really high that this didn't happen, but who is to say that six thousand years ago something didn't just pop everything into existence fully formed, *including* all of the evidence?

Wow. It's really impressive seeing someone literally invoking Last_Thursdayism in defense of "merely circumstantial evidence" argument. Usually it's the atheist side that invokes Last Thursdayism to point out how unbelievably stupid it is to dismiss an entire planet of evidence as "merely" circumstantial.

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*IF* that can indeed be used to tear down their beliefs, then these beliefs are in conflict with reality.

When someone acts based upon misinformation the outcome is at best random. Any benefit derived from acting on false beliefs is pot luck, and it is on average grossly outweighed by the harm that often results from acting on false information.

"Tearing down" falsehoods and misunderstandings is an altruistic social good. It makes it less likely for people to inadvertently cause harm with their well-intentioned acts.

The study and understanding of evolution can potentially do something infinitely better. It may save that child or family member from dying in the first place. Either it may further the advancement of science in general leading to the cure or prevention of the cause of death, or it may keep someone from unwittingly acting in some way that causes or allows the death to happen.

10-year-old Lilly Badger and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah Badger are dead. And why are they dead? Because they believed Santa Clause was real. They are dead because some people allowed and encouraged them to believe Santa Clause was real. They are dead because there was not a single adult in their life to stand up and tell them the truth. The children were afraid Santa would be hurt by the burning embers in the fireplace. So the burning embers were hazardously removed from the fireplace, and they were trapped when the house turned into an inferno.

I have a radical proposal. My proposal is that they could have been told the truth, and the family could have still celebrated the holiday, and the children and the parents still could have enjoyed the presents and family time.

Santa-frigging-Claus. Something every adult knows is fiction. When adults believe in a fiction, and act based upon that fiction, the harmful results are infinitely more common and overall cause vastly more harm both large and small. I am not selectively singling out the most extreme results like, as you note yourself, enslavement and torture. I'm not ignoring any positives. I'm saying that in sum total, when people act based upon misinformation the result is at best random. That it is on average harmful. I'm saying the net result is harmful.

it's not going to help them find satisfaction in helping to feed and clothe the starving or serving mankind in other ways.

Nor does knowledge of evolution prevent people from finding satisfaction in helping to feed and clothe the starving or serving mankind in other ways.

And if we didn't waste so many resources building gold-clad temples to Athena and Zeus, perhaps there would be fewer people in desperate need of food and clothing. If we didn't waste some much time doing rain dances to water the crops, perhaps we could allocate even a tiny fraction of that time building irrigation for crops to feed and clothe people.

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