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Comment Re:A Simple Explanation (Score 2) 151

Genesis 6:3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

This verse in the Bible is most likely referring to the coming flood and not how long they should live. There were a number of people after Noah's time that lived beyond 120 years old. Including Abraham that lived to 175 years. His wife Sarah was 127 years old as well. Adam lived to 930 years old. My understanding is that people started to have shorter life spans than 900 years because of genetic degradation. That is also why there was no law, back then, against marrying your brother or sister. After a time, when genetics became an issue, God made it a law not to marry within your own family. This all lines up that we live in a cursed world that is subject to degradation.

Comment SimCity Cities: Skylines (Score 1) 86

I actually enjoyed SimCity more than Cities: Skylines. SimCity had much more polish than Cities: Skylines. I admit that if Cities: Skylines had as much development as SimCity it might have been a more refined product with higher production values and more polish. The lack of tutorial and polish meant for me that SimCity was much more enjoyable. My 12 year old son thought the same. Saying that he couldn't figure out many of the Cities: Skylines "rules" which was all very straightforward in SimCity.

Comment The Earth May have Billions of People with Sunpox (Score 1) 380

Here's a hypothetical story to illustrate a point.

"A recent report came out stating that as many as 1 in 4 people have sunpox. But is the world at risk? A simple bit of math based on some decent assumptions shows that there may be billions of people potentially infected. '... astronomers studied 166 people within 80 miles of New York, and did a survey of the people they found. What they found is that about 1.5% of the people have a terminal virus, 6% have a virus, and about 12% have people think they have a virus. This sample isn’t complete, and they cannot yet detect the sunpox virus as it is still being studied in the one reported case of it globally. But using some statistics, they can estimate from the trend that as many as 25% of the people have the sunpox virus!' Proving this directly has proven to be an issue..."

For those that may need me to connect the dots for you, how likely would you say that the world needs to be in fear, based on the story above, of the sunpox virus? Now read the headline and synopsis again. How likely are you to believe that there are habitable planets out there just because we live on one? I'm not saying there aren't any out there, though I doubt there are any that have developed with intelligence, but with this kind of thinking it makes science look like a young child trying to jam a piece of the puzzle into a hole that it doesn't fit into.

Comment Re:Mutation does not equal Evolution (Score 2, Informative) 461

Perhaps you should define as to what you think evolution is, before you say you don't see any.

I thought I did. E. Coli still remainds E. Coli. Perhaps I should have said I don't see anything significant about this study. I have no problem accepting that genetic mutations occur. However, it seems that this study is inferring that this is the first witnessed proof for evolution. I would be interested at the lead researchers definition of evolution.

It's a fair request that you ask. I looked it up. Good ol' Google:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html

I looked at other pages as well but it seems the most standard definition I could find was on the above page and read:

"Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations."

Also reading further into other articles about this study it would seem that Richard Lenski and many other evolutionists hold this study as a holy grail (in comparison to other studies before it) in the debate of creation vs. evolution. If all evolution is defined as being is the heritable change in a population spread over many generations then why would there be any debate at all?

Perhaps the debate is mearly by what process did life evolve. If this study holds any significance in that debate I am not seeing one. If this study is of significance in the study of mutation then I suggest there are more clear and abundant examples elsewhere.

20 years of study for what?

I digress a bit from the original request of a definition but I believe you should now understand the point I am making.

Games

Videogames Really Are Linked to Violence 204

ahoehn writes "Amanda Schaffer has written a refreshingly balanced piece about the connection between video games and violence. Instead of regurgitating the typical reactionary voices in this debate, she looks at what scientific studies suggest about the issue. From the article: 'Pathological acts of course have multiple, complex causes and are terribly hard to predict. And clearly, millions of people play Counter-Strike, Halo, and Doom and never commit crimes. But the subtler question is whether exposure to video-game violence is one risk factor for increased aggression: Is it associated with shifts in attitudes or responses that may predispose kids to act out? A large body of evidence suggests that this may be so ... Given this, it makes sense to be specific about which games may be linked to harmful effects and which to neutral or good ones. Better research is also needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse.'"

Feed Xerox developing "natural language color editing" (engadget.com)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets


Xerox's Geoffrey Woolfe seems to think he's found a way to make picking just the right color a bit easier, laying out his plans for so-called "natural language color editing" at the annual meeting of the Inter-Society Color Council (ISCC). While it's apparently still in the early stages, the system will supposedly let you adjust colors simply by describing them in natural langauge, using voice or typed commands like "make the sky a deeper blue" or "make the background carnation pink" -- the software then does all the rest of the work. Of course, Xerox isn't exactly giving any indication when that may happen, so you'll have to make do with the cumbersome point-and-click method of color-choosing we've somehow managed to get along with all these years for a little while longer.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!


Feed Photos: Yahoo hosts an open house (com.com)

Internet giant gives a tour of its new San Francisco office, where visitors can spin a digital globe or check out a dynamic display of digital user info.
Portables (Games)

The PSP - Sony's Missed Opportunity 157

C|Net passes on the words of Forrester analyst James McQuivey, who lambasts Sony for failing to live up to the opportunity the PSP presented. Though the handheld has certainly been doing better of late, it's hard not to point out that the PlayStation Portable's sales numbers flag in the face of the DS's incredible popularity. McQuivey also makes a point of stating how well the system could have done at taking a slice of Apple's death-grip on the downloadable media market. "'The thing is, Sony could have been all this,' McQuivey said. 'The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years. It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies.' Instead, the mobile-video play of one of the world's largest electronics companies is straggling behind Apple, has shaken the confidence of supporters--especially in Hollywood--and added to the woes of CEO Howard Stringer."

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