• (cs) in reply to the beholder
    the beholder:
    Last I heard, evolution theory was something that could be considered uhm, how is it called... oh yeah that's right. A theory!!! Do you know why?

    That's nothing. Physicists make wild claims about a godless "natural force" they call "gravity". Gravitationists like to present this as an observable fact, but actually it is not called Theory of Gravity for nothing. For every evidence they have in favor of gravity, there's another against it (e.g. intelligently designed birds).

    Yes, the ball falls to the ground, but that's only because a conscious omnipotent agent, let's not call him G-d however (nudge nudge), WILLS IT. I call this Intelligent Plummeting.

  • (cs) in reply to Evan
    Evan:
    Anon:
    So why does Paraparaumu College use a "Biology course for Year 12" for its year 13 biology course?

    Because it's an Australian book, where they start counting school years at age 6 (New Zealand starts counting at age 5). Sorry to provide such a rational and unentertaining reason, but 'tis the truth.

    This comment has somehow touched me deeply. The last sentence has woken up a plethora of emotions in me.

    It's like... I want to take this comment home and make love to it.

  • (cs) in reply to iMalc
    iMalc:
    You do all realise that "ENTER" is referring to the name of the key one can press to dismiss the dialog, and not the name on the button right?

    Sure, but you're missing the point. The point is that there's no point to this dialog. It doesn't say "Done!" or "Insert disk #2" or anything. It does nothing! This dialog has no business being there! And besides, if the author wants the user to press Enter so badly, why didn't they disable the close box on the window?

  • Eddie (unregistered)

    I think you're supposed to neatly cut around the warranty label and place it, unbroken, with your receipt.

  • Chris (unregistered)

    Hmmm you could open the envelope on the side so it doesn't break the warranty ;)

    And the textbook is spooky, all the portraits looks like the same person....check out the smiles O_o

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to cconroy
    cconroy:
    Funniest sound I ever heard (Paraparaumu Paraparaumu) But I can't understand a single word (Paraparaumu Paraparaumu) Well if he's serious or if he's playin' Woo my my it's all he's sayin

    Paraparaumu Paraparaumu Paraparaumu Paraparaumu Paraparaumu Paraparaumu Paraparaumu Paraparaumu

    It's an ancient Maori name honouring my ancestors who did in battle, you insensitive tetaumata­whakatangihanga­koaua­o­tamatea­urehaeaturipuka­pihimaunga­horo­nuku­pokaiwhenuaa­kitana­rahu!

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Pim
    Pim:
    iMalc:
    You do all realise that "ENTER" is referring to the name of the key one can press to dismiss the dialog, and not the name on the button right?

    Sure, but you're missing the point. The point is that there's no point to this dialog. It doesn't say "Done!" or "Insert disk #2" or anything. It does nothing! This dialog has no business being there! And besides, if the author wants the user to press Enter so badly, why didn't they disable the close box on the window?

    The dialog! It does nothing!

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to John Muller
    John Muller:
    It's also entirely impossible for hundreds of millions of electrical switches changing state billions of times a seconds in a space less than a square inch to every possibly work, and utterly absurd that an entire planet could have millions of such devices connected to each other simultainiously; each with an attached moving picture screen and a device with over a hundred buttons; and you'd have to be insane to believe that animals could intelligently use such an impossible system to effectivly communicate with each other...

    Simple things can come together to build complex systems.

    Surely you are not suggesting that the development of computers is analagous to evolution? Computers did not arise by chance. They were created by intelligent beings.

    Yes, simple things can be brought together to make more complex things. No one questions that an intelligent being can do that. The question is whether they can do that by chance.

    If you really believe that evolution works, why don't you use it in your software development work? I mean, not "evolution" like people use the term for human inventions, gradual changes made by intelligent beings over time. I mean a true neo-Darwinian process:

    Write a program that writes completely random bytes to your hard drive. Then take that stream of bytes and execute it. If it does not work, throw it away and create another random stream of bytes. If it does work, use it as the starting point and overwrite a few bytes with more random bytes.

    How many iterations of that do you think it will take to get a working "Hello, world" program? How long before you get a complete working operating system? Do you honestly belive that would happen in a million years?

    And bear in mind that even the simplest living creature is far more complex than any computer program. The human genome contains 3 billion bases -- at one byte each that would take 5 CDs just to record it all.

    See "The Living Database" at http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i4/database.asp

  • (cs) in reply to Sutherlands
    Sutherlands:
    When did he say anything about discussing intelligent design/creationism in class? All he said was that they tried to get schools to discuss evidence for and against evolution.

    Creationists tried to get their hodgepodge of fallacious and misleading "arguments" posing as science into biology classes under the name of Creationism. They failed.

    Then they tried to get their hodgepodge of fallacious and misleading "arguments" posing as science into biology classes under the name of Intelligent Design. They failed.

    So I guess it's only logical that they now try to get their hodgepodge of fallacious and misleading "arguments" posing as science into biology classes under the name of Open Mindedness, Balance or what have you.

    None of this however affects the central issue by the least little bit: That their so-called arguments are disingenious bullshit, most of them illogical, many long disproven, many others lacking relevance, and some are plain lies, good only to impress the gullible and undereducated masses. There is, however, a lesson to be learned: If the scientifc education in the US and elsewhere weren't so inappropriate, then students would be prepared to laugh the Creationist charlatans out of the class rooms all by themselves. Many of those "arguments" thrive only because schools have equipped their students with superficial and one-sided ideas of evolutionary principles and the Theory of Common Descent.

  • (cs) in reply to Eternal Density
    Eternal Density:
    Also, if you carefully examine how population genetics really works,

    Notice the Creationist's preference for words like "really" and "truly" setting himself up for a heinous logical fallacy in the very first sentence of his drivel. "Your opinion of population genetics differs from mine? You don't know how it really works."

    Eternal Density:
    Ignoring the deterioration, there's nowhere near enough time for all the required beneficial mutations to become fixed in the population.

    This is completely disproven. In sexual species, many beneficial mutations can proceed to saturate the population simultaneously. Also, the time span required for a beneficial mutation to spread is low even in species with long reproductive cycles such as man. For instance, there is ample evidence that adult lactose tolerance spread all across Europe in only six to eight thousand years. The higher the beneficial effect of a mutation is, the less time this requires.

    For asexual species, the claim would be a bit more plausible because beneficial mutations cannot combine in this case. But what we see in the natural world is that complex species are all at least facultatively sexual except for a few that have obviously had sexual ancestors but have reverted to obligate asexual reproduction (with respect to animals, this is known as parthenogenesis, as has been mentioned). And even of the simpler asexual organisms such as bacteria, many participate in forms of genetic exchange other than sexual reproduction, most notably plasmid transfer. (By the way, many single-celled Eukaryotes such as yeast are facultatively sexual.)

    Eternal Density:
    And putting those two problems together, the more time you wait for beneficial mutations to build up, the more time you allow for harmful ones to build up.

    Harmful ones do not build up because they are selected against. The more harmful they are, the faster this happens. Miscarriages and infant mortality induced by genetic defects probably make up for only a small portion of the cases of immediate annihilation. Most embryos that are affected by such ailments never live long enough to cause observable pregnancy.

    Eternal Density:
    And because DNA can't be selected for single letters - crossover occurs on the scale of large blocks - selecting for a beneficial mutations unavoidably brings a linked bunch of bad ones with it.

    This is nonsense with respect to sexual species as I have partially explained above. There is one more thing to be said, however: Those "large blocks" are not fixed, even though the chromosome is usually the unit of selection in sexual species, chromosomal crossover sometimes happens. In some cases, the resulting chromosome will be defective and the embryo may die quickly, possibly even before the first mitosis. In other cases, beneficial mutations from distinct population subgroups can be combined. If both mutations are sufficiently beneficial as to have spread over a large subgroup, there is ample opportunity for this to happen in a sufficiently large population. However this is not necessary to explain the higher speed of evolution in sexual species as it is entirely sufficient to have more than one chromosome (pair) in order to obtain parallel evolution. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs.

    Eternal Density:
    Natural selection is great for getting rid of debilitating mutations and does a great job of choosing between variations so organisms can adapt to their environment,

    That's funny because you previously claimed the complete opposite.

    Eternal Density:
    but it can't stop the constant buildup of tiny unelectable errors

    Of the millions of mutations that happen in each individual of a multi-celled species, only the mutations that happen in the particular gametes that merge to form a new organism are relevant. This completely invalidates the old Creationist argument that the mutation rate was so high that "everything goes downhill somehow". Also, most sexual species have two chromosomes (in at least one sex) of each type which means individuals can survive with one broken recessive copy of a protein-coding gene. This does lower the negative selection pressure somewhat, but it may increase positive pressure, i.e. while harmful mutations may be exterminated more slowly, beneficial mutations may spread more quickly.

    Eternal Density:
    and it can certainly never create new functional biological systems.

    Wrong, for example the emergence of nylon-eating bacteria has been observed. Of course the enzyme nylonase is derived from a pre-existing enzyme that had a different function, but that is precisely how evolution works: New problems are solved by modified old solutions.

    Eternal Density:
    Eyeless fish, wingless beetles, and antibiotic resistant superbugs are great examples of natural selection preserving downhill changes because of a specialised environment.

    This demonstrates an unscientific though sadly widespread (even among non-Creationists) notion that there are objectively "uphill" or "downhill" mutations. Scientifically there are only three kinds of mutations: Neutral ones (actually, most mutations fall into this camp because there are so many parts of the DNA that are of little significance), harmful ones in the particular environmental niche, and beneficial ones in the environmental niche. Everything else is based on man's subjective fantasies and has nothing to do with science.

    Eternal Density:
    There's lots of hype about the amazing things that natural selection and mutation can create, given enough time, but realistically, the idea that complex life forms such as ourselves could have arisen entirely through a process of natural selection of mutations is falslified.

    If you want a piece of genetic numerical simulation software, check out http://mendelsaccount.sourceforge.net/

    I'm always suprised how Creationists can quote sources in the apparent hope that no one will ever bother to check them out. The screenshots on this website demonstrate the opposite of what you have postulated. In particular, they show how even in small populations and even with harmful mutations outnumbering beneficial ones 9999 to 1, deleterious alleles will be eliminated quickly, except when their effects on fitness are benign, and even in this case most of the dominantly inherited alleles are exterminated anyway. It is interesting to note that the observed frequency of deleterious alleles was even less than that predicted by theory (which is based on some simplifications).

  • (cs) in reply to Alexis de Torquemada
    Alexis de Torquemada:
    Eternal Density:
    And putting those two problems together, the more time you wait for beneficial mutations to build up, the more time you allow for harmful ones to build up.

    Harmful ones do not build up because they are selected against. The more harmful they are, the faster this happens. Miscarriages and infant mortality induced by genetic defects probably make up for only a small portion of the cases of immediate annihilation. Most embryos that are affected by such ailments never live long enough to cause observable pregnancy.

    Most mutations are near-neutral. While I agree that the particularly harmful ones are quickly selected against, it's the tiny ones that build up. These have a very small effect on overall fitness, and they as they occur in all individuals of a population there is no fitness difference between the individuals. Whichever individuals are chosen, there will still be some of these near-negligable mutations appearing in all individuals in the next generation. Over time, these will increase. It could be possible to kill off individuals with certain mutations, but there is only a limited amount of population available to be selected. Killing off 75% of the population each generation does not get rid of all the mutations and it will reduce the population size making it harder to get rid of subsequent mutations.

    Eternal Density:
    And because DNA can't be selected for single letters - crossover occurs on the scale of large blocks - selecting for a beneficial mutations unavoidably brings a linked bunch of bad ones with it.

    This is nonsense with respect to sexual species as I have partially explained above. There is one more thing to be said, however: Those "large blocks" are not fixed, even though the chromosome is usually the unit of selection in sexual species, chromosomal crossover sometimes happens. In some cases, the resulting chromosome will be defective and the embryo may die quickly, possibly even before the first mitosis. In other cases, beneficial mutations from distinct population subgroups can be combined. If both mutations are sufficiently beneficial as to have spread over a large subgroup, there is ample opportunity for this to happen in a sufficiently large population. However this is not necessary to explain the higher speed of evolution in sexual species as it is entirely sufficient to have more than one chromosome (pair) in order to obtain parallel evolution. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs.

    Yes, there are multiple chromosomes with some chromosomal crossover, but that's a far cry from selection of individual nucleotides. The fact remains that nucleotides are linked and inherited with the surrounding nucleotides. Because they can not be inherited alone, individual beneficial mutations always have attached deleterious ones.

    Eternal Density:
    Natural selection is great for getting rid of debilitating mutations and does a great job of choosing between variations so organisms can adapt to their environment,

    That's funny because you previously claimed the complete opposite.

    No, I didn't. There's a big difference between the significant mutations that natural selection can remove, and the near-neutral ones it can not.

    Eternal Density:
    but it can't stop the constant buildup of tiny unelectable errors

    Of the millions of mutations that happen in each individual of a multi-celled species, only the mutations that happen in the particular gametes that merge to form a new organism are relevant. This completely invalidates the old Creationist argument that the mutation rate was so high that "everything goes downhill somehow". Also, most sexual species have two chromosomes (in at least one sex) of each type which means individuals can survive with one broken recessive copy of a protein-coding gene. This does lower the negative selection pressure somewhat, but it may increase positive pressure, i.e. while harmful mutations may be exterminated more slowly, beneficial mutations may spread more quickly.

    I'm well aware that mutations in non-reproductive cells are irrelevant to the issue. However, in humans there are at least 100 point mutations per individual in the germ cell line, plus insertions, deletions, etc. There's no avoiding the continual degradation of the genome.

    Eternal Density:
    and it can certainly never create new functional biological systems.

    Wrong, for example the emergence of nylon-eating bacteria has been observed. Of course the enzyme nylonase is derived from a pre-existing enzyme that had a different function, but that is precisely how evolution works: New problems are solved by modified old solutions.

    Yes, there are cases of modification of an existing system, but that's not the same as developing a completely new system from scratch. And the nylonase example may not have been mere random chance either. Here's an article I found on the topic http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/1586/

    Eternal Density:
    Eyeless fish, wingless beetles, and antibiotic resistant superbugs are great examples of natural selection preserving downhill changes because of a specialised environment.

    This demonstrates an unscientific though sadly widespread (even among non-Creationists) notion that there are objectively "uphill" or "downhill" mutations. Scientifically there are only three kinds of mutations: Neutral ones (actually, most mutations fall into this camp because there are so many parts of the DNA that are of little significance), harmful ones in the particular environmental niche, and beneficial ones in the environmental niche. Everything else is based on man's subjective fantasies and has nothing to do with science.

    I agree that there's a lot of misunderstanding about this issue. Yes, there are only those three kinds of mutations. The problem is that the mutations that are beneficial in a particular environmental niche are not necessarily a functional improvement. Lack of eyes, lack of wings, and antibiotic resistance (due to non-functioning chemical pumps which no longer bring antibiotics into bacteria, or due to overproduction of certain defensive chemicals due to non-functioning of control mechanisms) are beneficial mutations in a certain environmental niche. But they are still destructive changes. It doesn't take subjective fantasy to see that these changes don't help long-term evolution, yet they are commonly used as examples of evolution.

    Eternal Density:
    There's lots of hype about the amazing things that natural selection and mutation can create, given enough time, but realistically, the idea that complex life forms such as ourselves could have arisen entirely through a process of natural selection of mutations is falslified.

    If you want a piece of genetic numerical simulation software, check out http://mendelsaccount.sourceforge.net/

    I'm always suprised how Creationists can quote sources in the apparent hope that no one will ever bother to check them out. The screenshots on this website demonstrate the opposite of what you have postulated. In particular, they show how even in small populations and even with harmful mutations outnumbering beneficial ones 9999 to 1, deleterious alleles will be eliminated quickly, except when their effects on fitness are benign, and even in this case most of the dominantly inherited alleles are exterminated anyway. It is interesting to note that the observed frequency of deleterious alleles was even less than that predicted by theory (which is based on some simplifications).

    Funny, I was hoping that people would check it out. My point was that the near-neutral mutations are not quickly removed. Obviously the particularly deliterious alleles will be removed more easily. There are no 100% benign mutations, as every nucleotide has effects on more than just protein structure (for instance, DNA coiling for storage). The near-neutral ones don't have an obvious effect, but they do still have an effect. Actually, that example has a rather high reproductive rate, allowing for a large amount of selection to take place. And harmful mutations outnumbering beneficial ones 9999 to 1 is actually generous to the beneficial mutations.

    I'm sure that no one cares by now, and this is extremely off topic, but it can't hurt to clear up a few misunderstandings of what my point was.

    Also: Error'd is awesome :D

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    If you really believe that evolution works, why don't you use it in your software development work? I mean, not "evolution" like people use the term for human inventions, gradual changes made by intelligent beings over time. I mean a true neo-Darwinian process:

    Write a program that writes completely random bytes to your hard drive. Then take that stream of bytes and execute it. If it does not work, throw it away and create another random stream of bytes. If it does work, use it as the starting point and overwrite a few bytes with more random bytes.

    Evolutionary Computation. It can work.

    I recall evolutionary techniques were used to make an FPGA distinguish between two frequencies of input signals, and output logic high for one, logic low for the other. The final result was NOTHING LIKE any human designer had ever done. It even had cells that were not electrically connected to the main circuit, but nevertheless required for its function. Even more astonishing, it didn't work when set up on another FPGA chip of the same type - the tiny manufacturing differences were crucial to the functioning of the circuit.

    The most difficult thing in your example is getting the initial stream of bytes to make ANY meaningful program. That's the problem of the origin of life, a separate issue to its development, and an unsolved one.

  • Real-modo (unregistered) in reply to the beholder
    the beholder:
    Last I heard, evolution theory was something that could be considered uhm, how is it called... oh yeah that's right. A theory!!!
    Yes, it is called a theory. Just like William Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. And Lavoisier's oxygen theory of combustion. And the microbe theory of disease. And Mendel's gene theory of inheritance of characteristics. And quantum electrodynamics. And...

    If you're going to try to pick on a weak theory, you should choose gravitation. Michelson and Morley proved that there is no Ether, so gravity requires action at a distance. How can you believe in that kind of mystical ... oh, wait, ... never mind.

  • NameNotFoundException (unregistered) in reply to Claxon
    Claxon:
    But the question you have to ask yourself is "What is the warranty for?" Is is the Warranty on the software, the licenses, or... for the envelope, which would oddly make the most sense.

    The warranty, obviously, is for the label itself.

  • (cs)

    I interpretted that "Warranty void if broken" slightly differently, to mean, "The warranty is void if the product is non-functional."

    So, you're only covered if there's nothing to cover.

    That's a useful warranty, there.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    In New Zealand, like most western nations, you start primary school at or around age 5. Hence there are 13 years.

    Actually in New Zealand you start school on your 5th birthday, no matter when in the year it is.

    And in the Netherlands on your 4th... What age you graduate (if ever) depends on the path you take. Anywhere from 15 to 18 if you don't choose to go on to higher education...

  • marc (unregistered)

    I did not read the whole thread but what if you open it from the bottom :o)

  • Ben (unregistered) in reply to Evan

    You could have just not mentioned the year, so as not to cause the obvious confusion.

  • HT12 (unregistered)

    Just slice into it with a razor from the bottom... seal doesn't break, right?

  • john (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Wrong by law? Why?

  • casualobserver (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    :) I like this.

  • Matt Ordish (unregistered) in reply to Evan

    Because we didn't use it in our Year 13 class - it was just lying around in the same classroom and i noticed it.

  • MyriamD (unregistered) in reply to Capt. Obvious

    That's a crappy answer. Canada's complicated :P Living in Quebec, you end at 11th and then get virtually free college (CEGEP - two years standard, three in some programs). In Ontario it's 12 or 13, can't remember which. I used to live in B.C. and it was 12. I'd never heard of a 13th either until I went east. :P

  • someone (unregistered)

    Yawn... Opening the envelope: take a pencil and mark a 3" diameter cirkel around warranty label. Hold envelope up to strong light to see where the paper and stuff is, shake (if needed) so that the stuff is at the bottom. cut the fold (the ~ in the image below) shake it empty!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|\          /|
| \__[__]__/ |

    That wasn't that hard, was it?

    (Had to do it myself once too!)

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Evan

    If NZ is anything like Australia, there's no such thing as Year 13... Australia only goes up to 12.

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