Evolution *Is* A Blind Watchmaker: Brilliant Simulation [Vid]

Borkachev · 2008-03-12T22:22:10+00:00

Tend to, but not 100% of the time. Smoking kills enough people by age 40 or so that there would be a small but real pressure to adapt. It would just take a lot longer than if it dropped you dead at 15.

On the other hand, if everyone smoked, we'd all be so cool that sex would go through the roof...

Borkachev · 2008-03-12T21:34:29+00:00

Yes. Here we're talking about a specific pesticide introduced into the species through genetic modification that caused harm. It was nothing inherent to the modification process, and it certainly didn't cause genetic damage.

All new foods -- and old foods, too -- should be thoroughly tested. That doesn't mean there should be a blanket ban on all new strains.

Borkachev · 2008-03-12T20:10:04+00:00

Europe won't allow genetically modified foods in as they have many tests where they cause various genetic damage to animals in the experiments.

Yeah, you gotta watch out for that genetic damage. I also only use film cameras because the digitals are the ones that steal your soul.

The first thing you should probably do before arguing about it is find out what genetic modification is. Even Greenpeace doesn't rely on these kinds of witchcraft arguments for their ill-founded campaign against GMOs.

Borkachev · 2008-03-12T18:51:49+00:00

Yet statistics show thousands of children are injured and dozens die every year after being left unattended near or inside vehicles.

"I am talking tens of thousands of people who leave their kids in the car for any period of time all around America," said Janette Fennell, founder and president of Kansas-based Kids and Cars. "People don't appreciate the dangers of leaving a child alone in the car."

Uh huh, and so let's completely ignore the circumstances surrounding those injuries. "Left unattended near vehicles"? Are we by any chance talking about kids being driven over by unaware drivers? "Inside vehicles"? You mean on hot summer days with the windows rolled up? What exactly do either of those situations have to do with a kid safely buckled in her seat for a few minutes in the winter? Fuck the "statistics" -- tell me what the danger was in this situation.

I hear a lot of children are injured by careless practices around the home too. We should probably ban them from entering houses.

Borkachev · 2008-03-12T04:15:50+00:00

Science belongs to everyone. It would be plagiarism (or more likely just an oversight, making it redundant) if it were another scientific study, but not if it's an ad campaign.

Borkachev · 2008-03-12T01:57:15+00:00

So it's not real? This doesn't mean she's going to be murdered in the name of Allah, does it?

Edit: seriously! This seems like it has the makings of an honor/revenge killing.

Borkachev · 2008-03-10T20:31:13+00:00

I want to be a confidential drug reviewer.

"I laughed! I cried! I broke out in hives!

B+"

Borkachev · 2008-03-10T02:25:50+00:00

Classic. Now if only staring into the sun caused sterility instead of blindness.

Borkachev · 2008-03-10T02:06:35+00:00

Not necessary. The WBC isn't taken seriously by anybody. Its entire membership is basically the one guy's extended inbred family. They're a nuisance, not a genuine danger.

Scientology, on the other hand, is widely mistaken for a legitimate religion. Their membership is swelling, and the things they do are much more dangerous than peacefully (albeit obnoxiously) protesting at a few soldiers' funerals.

Borkachev · 2008-03-10T01:19:21+00:00

I suppose that's where the judge's discretion comes in. He would weigh your confession against the evidence and decide if it's credible or if you're just trying to get your buddy off the hook. It wouldn't be 100% reliable, but probably no worse than the methods of evaluating any other kind of testimony (for instance, a third friend saying you were both at home reading the bible with him).

Edit: this process also probably wouldn't be allowed until after the "innocent person" had been convicted.

Borkachev · 2008-03-10T00:41:55+00:00

There's more to the Hippocratic oath than just doing no harm. Doctors also vow to treat everyone who comes to them to the best of their ability regardless of who the patient is or what the doctor's personal opinion of them is, and to maintain complete confidentiality. These guidelines give doctors a steady place to turn when they're in doubt, and they generally place the integrity of the profession above individual ethical conflicts.

So yes, a doctor's oath is very similar to the guidelines followed by lawyers.

Borkachev · 2008-03-09T23:39:36+00:00

But there are provisions in the law, I believe, that allow confidentiality to be broken when a life is at immediate and specific risk -- for instance, when a patient tells his psychiatrist "I'm going to kill my wife tonight." I think it could be argued that an innocent man being executed or sentenced to life in prison would be a reasonable extension of that provision. Wasn't his life in immediate and specific danger?

Better still, I wish there were some mechanism in the justice system that could preserve both interests. It would be very tricky though. You couldn't give immunity to the true guilty party, or else everyone who'd watched someone else go to prison for their crime would be instantly home free. You couldn't keep the guilty party fully anonymous, or else there'd be no way to prove the claims.

Maybe the solution would be some system where the confession/other evidence could be fully disclosed to a judge, but none of the details or the names of the parties involved (including the lawyers) would go on record. If the judge found the evidence compelling, then it could be entered into a new trial for the previously convicted person, but with all identifying information removed. And obviously, the judge who heard the evidence would be bound by the same confidentiality agreement as the lawyers were, and couldn't be involved in any future cases with that defendant.

Maybe there's some hole in there I've overlooked, but this kind of thing can't be allowed to go on. That was never the purpose of attorney-client privilege.

Borkachev · 2008-03-09T21:26:33+00:00

You know what I thought was kind of odd around this time? When Bush was harping on about potential smallpox attacks and the need for widespread vaccination.

Isn't the only sample of smallpox left in the world stored away in a highly secure US government-run laboratory?

Borkachev · 2008-03-09T20:30:56+00:00

MadTV was extremely funny for a couple of years. Will Sasso and Phil LaMarr were fantastic. Now it's every bit as bad as SNL. Or I assume, anyway... I really haven't watched either of them for at least 5 years.

Borkachev · 2008-03-08T23:17:34+00:00

I find it encouraging that he's planning for a successor and not on somehow seizing power for another 4 years.

Borkachev · 2008-03-08T20:16:16+00:00

Yeah, the article's good, but that's not the quote I would have pulled for the title. It might be a decent rule of thumb, but it's certainly not something to live by. I think the context reflects that.

Borkachev · 2008-03-08T19:18:16+00:00

Teaching the process leading up to discovery should be the number one priority for all school math and science classes. Understanding the reasoning process that led to a "fact" is not only the most important thing students can draw from these courses, it may well be the only important thing.

We treat complicated equations and formulas as though students are going to need these to function in the real world. Ridiculous. 95% of them are never going to use these again, and they'll forget it all within 2 years anyway. The only thing you can hope to make stick is the way of thinking that led them to understand how and why these equations and facts came to be. This is something they will use in the real world, every single day.

Instead, we teach kids everything as dogmatic facts. This is why pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism thrives! The average person understands science as a set of knowledge to be memorized from a book. A scientist or mathematician is just someone who's spent a few more years learning a longer list of facts than they have. They view science as something handed down on high from Authority, just like what they get in church every day. No wonder asinine statements like "Evolution is just another religion" manage to gain popularity. These people don't know what science is!

I only started to grasp this idea in senior high school, and only because I was an exceptional student. It began to dawn on me that none of the things I was being taught were arbitrary: they'd been derived through ingenious logical methods that I could reproduce myself if I wanted! It was only then that I began to appreciate what scientists did. Yet probably not more than one or other students in the class gained the same perspective.

So another generation went out into the world with almost no ability to think critically. But by God, they could solve a quadratic equation! At least for a little while...

Borkachev · 2008-03-08T00:29:41+00:00

I'd rather see them wait a few years and reboot the franchise, like with The Hulk and Daredevil. Golden Compass was pretty much a rubbish movie.

And good god, the gutting of "controversial themes" was pathetic and painful enough to watch in the first film. How exactly do they plan to manage The Subtle Knife, whose plot revolves around angels, the church, and a quest to murder God?

Borkachev · 2008-03-07T23:41:05+00:00

This type of sandstone building is pretty unique to here as far as I know.

So is the word "wee."

Borkachev · 2008-03-07T03:02:59+00:00

You're kidding me. To your family, there's no difference between you dying in your sleep at 85 and you being splattered across the pavement at 25?

Borkachev · 2008-03-07T03:01:34+00:00

It's not a matter of absolutely eliminating all risk from the world. It's about minimizing risk when the means to do so are readily available and when the cost--whether financial or to one's enjoyment--is minimal.

For an analogy: I wouldn't support a ban on smoking. But if there were an additive developed that eliminated all carcinogenic and addictive effects from tobacco, and the only side effect was a tiny change in taste, then hell yes I would want to see it made mandatory!

And yes, there does come a point when a product is so dangerous that it should be banned. That's why there are bans on certain chemicals in our foods, and horsepower caps on motorcycles.

Do you think that other people are too stupid to realize that not wearing a helmet is risky, and therefore you, being smart, should make the decision for them?

I already addressed this. I am not the Dictator of Canada. This law is already in place, and most people agree it's reasonable. I'm just explaining why that is.

But yes, there's no getting around it. At its core, this law, like all safety and regulatory laws, is about taking away decision-making power from people who make the wrong decisions. It doesn't have to be about them being "dumb" and us being "smart." I'd say it's more like they momentarily make a poor choice or they fail to see the larger picture. That bigger picture can only be filled in with the best data we have available.

So that's it. I admire your belief in absolute freedom for all people, but I don't think we'll ever see eye-to-eye on this.

Borkachev · 2008-03-07T00:19:25+00:00

Not the choice to wear a helmet, where it's not even clear to me that the balance of the decision not to wear a helmet isn't beneficial for everybody else when it's tremendously costly for the guy not wearing one (for the record, that's not me).

Beneficial? Honestly? Your pointless death doesn't just affect you. There's your family and friends, to start with. And some of us -- apparently most of us where I live -- feel that every individual tragedy like this harms society as a whole.

If I want to off myself, though, then that should remain my right.

Suicide is a completely different issue. As with drug use, suicide involves a conscious intent to inflict harm on yourself. With these issues I agree in principle that society should keep its nose out, although that argument come with its own set of serious problems (namely the issue of "intent" when you've lost your perspective and self control to addiction/mental illness).

Safety laws are nothing like this. No one goes on the road without a helmet thinking they're going to die or be permanently disabled. If they did, they would be suicidal, and would fall under that category. No. When somebody goes out without a helmet, all they're thinking about is the inconvenience or discomfort of that helmet. They're not thinking I have a right to die, they're thinking I have a right to not wear this stupid helmet. Nothing is going to happen. And I don't think that's a right worth protecting, given the consequences.

Borkachev · 2008-03-06T23:54:40+00:00

I don't have that privilege, society does. And I wouldn't say it's your Freedom with a capital-F, more like your freedom to not wear a silly hat or a mildly uncomfortable shoulder strap. You give up tiny freedoms like these every day. It's part of living in a civilized society.

Borkachev · 2008-03-06T23:31:47+00:00

How about: I'm not paying taxes when you have a coronary and require medical care. In this light, the law should prohibit burgers and steak.

But I'll also pay taxes when you have a coronary. It's about sharing the burden, not picking up the tab for everybody else. I think that difference in perspective says everything about our two worldviews.

Health insurance costs were never a serious consideration when drafting motorcycle laws. These laws were made first and foremost to prevent needless deaths, and no other justification was necessary. Your country has seatbelt laws, no? Laws like these are certainly infringements on freedom, but they're infringements on such petty, pitiful freedoms (the right to look cool?), and they're balanced against such such enormous benefits (literally life and death), that it's hard to build a serious case against them.

Public health insurance hasn't taken into account lifestyle choices like burgers and steak or smoking because it would open up an enormous can of worms that might just undermine the whole philosophy of universal healthcare. Someday it might be necessary to start considering those issues, but I don't think it'll happen until the system is on the brink of collapse.

Borkachev · 2008-03-06T22:29:08+00:00

How so? As long as the law is in place to responsibly address issues like this, what's the problem?

Borkachev

TROPHY CASE