Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:Not mutually exclusive. (Score 0) 735

by whrrr (#35759666) Attached to: Tennessee Bill Helps Teachers Challenge Evolution
The Genesis myth claims that light, the sun, plants, fish and birds, then animals were created, in that order. This is wrong on any timescale. The book goes on to explain that suffering exists because a talking snake tricked a woman.

Genesis is simply not compatible with reality, literally or metaphorically. You are trying to square a circle, sorry.
Social Networks

Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter 147

Posted by samzenpus
from the type-slower dept.
tsamsoniw writes "California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign team attempted to share with her Twitter followers an endorsement from a police association. Unfortunately, the campaign press secretary entered an incorrect or incomplete Bit.ly URL in the Tweet, which took clickers to a YouTube video featuring a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar. And for whatever reason, the Tweet, which went out on the 18th, has remained active through today."
Australia

Fine-Structure Constant Maybe Not So Constant 105

Posted by samzenpus
from the variety-is-the-spice-of-life dept.
Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"

Comment: Re:Good god... (Score 0) 189

by whrrr (#33229510) Attached to: Tool Use By Humans Pushed Back By 800,000 Years
It's possible your colleagues were baffled because your statement is a non sequitur. The fact that wolves were domesticated by man does not automatically imply that this act was beneficial to humans.

Perhaps a more general rule of "domestication of animals is helpful" provided an overall benefit in spite of the costly affair of feeding stray wolves specifically.
Perhaps wolves managed to hijack our innate tendency to like small furry animals http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/why-are-animals-cute/
Or perhaps, as you say, domestication of wolves provided a benefit in terms of guarding, or tracking large game animals, etc.

Probably all three, to an extent. If you still disagree, apply your same logic to cats and goldfish :)

Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future. -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly

Working...