If we are reporting on "stuff who matters" then you may drop all pretense and rename slashotNN. Slashdot has always been about stuff that matter on the technological news , geek, and other similarly cultural references. Now it is all sort of news ? Non sense.

Many of the part of the ancient testament get stuff out of order, or even downright wrong (like the the "slave" in egypt), and the new testament is the same.

As for the "skeptic bible" I agree with you it is somewhat shrill, but a lot of point are valid even if not given politely. Like for example somebody getting cursed and bear mauling 40 children, or the amount of incest, drunken rape, massacre and terrible things happenning, or even the fact that *nothing* said in the bible be it scientifically or morally was new at the time (code of amurabi is older, golden rule too).

"And atheists are different? Big bang was the atheist answer to God for nearly a century."

Some of the basis for the big bang theopry came frpm a priest : "n 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and forecast the Hubble law. He based his theory on the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's equations for an expanding universe. Also, the red shifts themselves were not constant, but varied in such manner as to lead to the conclusion that there was a definite relationship between amount of red-shift of nebulae, and their distance from observers." Hoyle an opponent of the theory coined the term big bang. That makes you fully wrong.

But more importantely atheist need no big bang, no evolution to say "god dont exists" simply again point to absence of evidence of god. Theist NEVER provide non-personal , verifiable, evidence of god existence. That's why there is atheist, because if there was evidence it would not be called "faith", but rather "theory of chrisitanism". So. Yeah.

from the wiki on platypus :
"The platypus and other monotremes were very poorly understood, and some of the 19th century myths that grew up around themâ"for example, that the monotremes were "inferior" or quasireptilianâ"still endure.[60] In 1947, William King Gregory theorised that placental mammals and marsupials may have diverged earlier, and a subsequent branching divided the monotremes and marsupials, but later research and fossil discoveries have suggested this is incorrect.[60][61] In fact, modern monotremes are the survivors of an early branching of the mammal tree, and a later branching is thought to have led to the marsupial and placental groups.[60][62] Molecular clock and fossil dating suggest platypuses split from echidnas around 19â"48 million years ago"

Seeing that the article is speaking of older time, the split happenned after that common ancestor.

Inverse square law is a bitch. Even us we only sent 2 signals which had a chance to go beyond our solar system. Nothing else we sent would be heard beyond 1 light year.

Distance between stars, round trip, and power of the signal you have to send to a particular planet, point of time in civilisation development.... So many obstacle as to make communication improbable and a waste of time and resource (remember we are only *hearing* , *sending* is much much more costly especially when you do not know where you have to send to and how far, we have only 2* a few minutes signal we sent which went further away than a few light years 8back in the 70) all other radio/radar/tv they are all gone into noise latest by 1 light year many much nearer than that).

In other word the "aliens" might have already figurated that it is useless to try to spend energy on the off chance somebody might hear.


And frankly even if all alien are bad bad evil carnivorous paranoid invader whatever , what do you think they will do if they detect a civilisation 10000 light years away ? Come and invade ? pffft. Unless you come up with fantasy FTl drive it will be at best 10000 years trip and more probably a few millions years. *shrug*.

I published a few paper (Quantum physic), and i do care that people read them. But I would not want somebody to take them and CHANGE them potentially reflecting badly unto me because the guy changing it make a blunder. *shrug* not a surprise other feel the same.

groudn breaking science happen by quantic leap. You can't forsee in advance that looking at small effect will yield in a ground breaking effect. Furthermore you can't tell if the ground breaking effect will yield commercial application (maybe not at all!) whereas a small imporvement would yield incredible application (think safe battery capacity increase). That#s why the article / summary are laughable.

You should be able legally to force him into the contract ONLY if he use the data at which point you could tell him "you used data on date X/Y/Z at H:M we have evidence in our entwork". If he does not you should not be able to force him into the contract, because you feel like it, that reeks of being the same level of the mafia offering you "protection". In europe you would get slapped. Hard. I am glad I am living on the eastern side of the big pond.

http://www.purr-n-fur.org.uk/famous/felix.html

"France planned to launch Felix the astronaut cat into space on October 18, 1963, but Felix escaped so they chose another cat, Félicette. The cat had electrodes implanted into her head to measure neural impulses. Félicette was recovered alive, but, due to an accident, the next cat in space was not. The final French animal launches were of two monkeys in March 1967."

felix is above a trigred cat, the female felicette black and white. Although I admit it could simply have been ignorance and taking a cat photo at random rather than archive photo.

I cannot remember the name , one was felix the other I can't recall, a female. They were two cats with implanted electrode in the brain to be sent in space. Felix escaped, the female was taken instead. Funnily on the commemorative stamps, they got the picture of the female, and put the male cat name (felix).

Even when a female get an achievement there is a male to steal it ;).

The question of the op is about failing the preliminary test quote "Is there any way you can prove that your organization is not falsely debunking claims during the "Preliminary Tests," i".

This is totaly different than actively not setting a proper protocol. The reason I could answer that question btw is that on jref.org this is asked again and again and again. With a lot of woo coming by and stating the same question insinuating the same things. But if you look at the protocols (which are public btw) you will see this is never the case.

I understand slashdot is not jref, but I would rather see "new" question than question which were answered to death.

No it is not a cop out, because the protocol is negotiated and agreed upon by both party *before* the test, preliminary or not. Also the JREF make sure the protocl to be agreed upon is impartial, that is can be judged by any party to be failed or sucess without having any sort of discussion. For a dowser for example it might be "dowser go out of the room with judge, impartial person put a gold nugget under observation under a random paper cup, then go out of theroom , judge come back with dowser, dowser has as many time as needed (with say an upper limit of 30minutes) and chose a paper cup , then paper cup are revealed, then mished at different position and first step is repeated. To pass preliminary dowser must at least find 3 gold nugget out of 10 test , and at least 6 out of 10 test for the real challenge".

Usually a lot of woo protest that the prelim are not fair, but in reality the test are agreed upon to have 1 chance out of 1000 to happen by chance alone, and 1 out of 1 million for the final test. All those protest of unfairness are in reality from most woo just cop out because they can't when properly double blind tested show any special ability whatsoever.

They are asking the facebook company. If the facebook company has a commercial presence in EU , then they better obey the law and court order. Again, as all in those discussion you have to separate the web site, to the company. The court order are going to the company where it has presence. It does not matter afterward if the web page is chaos.ru or texas.us, the company has to obey the court order because of its commercial rpesenc in EU. naturally if facebook is ready to abandon completely the EU market that's another story.

There are a lot of ethical action which are unlawful and vice versa, a lot of unethical action which are perfectly lawful. I would certainly hear the lecture of somebody which know the difference between ethical and lawful and the ramification.