If thou gazest long into the Pit, the Pit will also gaze into thee

Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

Kareem wrote:Because now I gotta ask:

If a Chtorran worm,
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1829h6w ... xlarge.jpg

got in a fight with a Shai-hulud,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... ndworm.JPG

Who would win?

My Dick.

Tony Parsehole wrote:Who needs their daily dose of cringe at the expense of furries? Trigger Warning: Toe-Curling Embarrassment


[youtube]OZlGVsB8L54[/youtube]
[youtube]z4yaQqpowRY[/youtube]

Look, ye mortals, and weep.

Actually, this was his first time:



(Not Safe For Life.)

Tony Parsehole wrote:Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

'tis proof REO Speedwagon are indeed God.

Steersman wrote:However, it seems that “evolution” itself spans three and a half to four billion years, and encompasses a great number of processes.

Wrong. One process, known as natural selection, as put forth by Darwin in 1859. Random variation selected non-randomly by environmental pressures. We now know that the random mutations of genes (proximately, the phenotypes therof) are the units being selected. If you want to treat the rise of naked replicators as separate from darwinian evolution, I can live with that.

It is only rarely that there is a sufficiently severe mutation that is capable of “kicking” the system into cycling through a different set of elements.

'Severe' mutations, or "hopeful monsters" were long ago ruled out as the cause of variation & speciation. It is very minor variations, yielding very minor fitness advantages, that are selected for. To understand better how this works, I encourage you to learn more about Grant's exhaustive research on the beaks of Darwin's Finches.

mutations tend not to be random affairs, but are changes that produce a cascade of other changes that are integrated, stable, and coherent – maybe somewhat similar to Gould’s “punctuated equilibria”.

Genetic mutations are completely random, minor transcription errors. You're confusing mutation with speciation. I find it odd that, although you apparently own a copy of Mayr's magnum opus, you seem ignorant of his theories on speciation, or that Gould and Elderedge bastardized them to come up with punctuated equilibrium.

... my own very limited understanding of some truly intricate processes – awe-inspiring ones, actually. However, if it is even marginally accurate – and Kauffman and many others sure seem to think it more than that – then it still suggests that self-organization – the coupled nature of all of those genes and their products – tends to make the argument or claim of “random variation” largely an untenable fiction.

If all your information on evolution comes from the likes of Kauffman and the other anti-Dawkins, anti- natural selection crowd that PZ Myers is so fond of, then no wonder you're so confused. I urge you to (re)read The Selfish Gene without delay. Because what Dawkins describes in that book is the orthodox, darwinian (technically, "neo-darwinian") concept of evolution, which Kauffman, et al. seek to overthrow.

welch wrote:
Actually, this was his first time:



(Not Safe For Life.)

Somebody got me with that last week so as soon as I saw the house turned it off and deleted my history.
Very hard to masturbate to but if you cover the bottom half of the screen it's still possible.

Most of us have likely watched friends with substance abuse problems as they struggle to quit with the least effort necessary.

Often the first attempt to kick is low-key. They try to "turn their life around" without letting most who know them know the real story. (Although everyone has known it far longer than the addict themselves.)

They spruce up, change the hair, start yoga or running. For a few weeks or months they are all fresh faced and peppy as a church picnic. Eventually they relapse big time because they never entered a medically sound treatment program.

I look at Rebecca since she resumed YouTubing and begging for money, and that's what I see.

- ExNewAger

Tony Parsehole wrote:Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

I'm intrigued. Let's discuss this. I just noticed my nose is perfectly designed to hold up my cycling glasses. Weird, huh?

ExNewAger wrote:Most of us have likely watched friends with substance abuse problems as they struggle to quit with the least effort necessary.

Often the first attempt to kick is low-key. They try to "turn their life around" without letting most who know them know the real story. (Although everyone has known it far longer than the addict themselves.)

They spruce up, change the hair, start yoga or running. For a few weeks or months they are all fresh faced and peppy as a church picnic. Eventually they relapse big time [...]

Anyone want to chip in to buy Rebecca a lifetime (i.e. six month) supply of Jim Bean through Amazon.com?

Yeah, I know. "Jim Beam" I'm on Tappatalk, typo-nazi dirtbags.

#4. Suck it, CH2O!

#5. I am unstoppable.

Mykeru wrote:
Feel free to make a thread for this, because I'm sick of this posturing horseshit.

http://m.quickmeme.com/img/07/0713206e2 ... d77c80.jpg

And here's six, for you dicks.

mikelf wrote:

Mykeru wrote:
Feel free to make a thread for this, because I'm sick of this posturing horseshit.

[img]deleted%20image%20of%20Mike's%20mom's%20massive%20clit.[/img]

Fuck you, Mike

1. You're too easy. LoL I troll U

2. You fucked up my streak

Mykeru wrote:

mikelf wrote:

Mykeru wrote:
Feel free to make a thread for this, because I'm sick of this posturing horseshit.

[img]deleted%20image%20of%20Mike's%20mom's%20massive%20clit.[/img]

Fuck you, Mike

1. You're too easy. LoL I troll U

2. You fucked up my streak

I prefer to think of it as saving you from a Welchian streak of pathetic hyperactivity.

I am a giver.

ROBOKiTTY wrote:Welp, it didn't take long for Google to delete C+=. Misogynists, misogynists everywhere

It's still at the FSF.

Mykeru wrote:#5. I am unstoppable.

YAWN



call me when you get 8 or more sonny.

welch wrote:

Mykeru wrote:#5. I am unstoppable.

YAWN



call me when you get 8 or more sonny.

I apologize for not meeting your exacting standards. We now return you to the regularly scheduled circle-jerk, already in progress.

welch wrote:

Tony Parsehole wrote:Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

'tis proof REO Speedwagon are indeed God.

I can't imagine life in a universe where heavy metal isn't formed.

ExNewAger said (http://www.slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... 52#p151952):

Most of us have.... I look at Rebecca ... that's what I see.

There may be some truth in that, but I am not sure that there is enough evidence to support it as a sole or even primary cause.

Allow me to clarify.

What I see is:

1.The apparent beginnings of a return to "normal" hair colour.

2. Leaving the ridiculous granny/farm girl/dolly clothes behind and attempting to dress in both a more adult, and a somewhat more professional style.

3. The adoption, out of her apparently bottomless collection of trendy eyeware, of somewhat more adult and serious, and less frivilous, eyeware.

4. Adopting a somewhat more serious style of speech/delivery -- not content, but a slightly more reformed diction and presentation, and so on.

What all of that leads me to believe is that one, or some, or all of the follwing have/are taking place:

1. She has realized that for all of her dislike of her nominative enemies, some of them have clearly had some very valid points regarding her public persona and presentation, and she realizes it's time to "adult up", and try for a more professional appearance and presentation.

2. Someone, or some number of people (I would suspect her boyfriend and Amanda Marcotte as firstline probabilities) have provided suggestions and advice on ways to enlarge her audience, and increase her revenue stream and potential, but new, speaking engagements, and she accepts/realizes that it's time to "adult up", and try for a more professional appearance and presentation.

3. She has consulted a PR professional, and/or one of her previous communications mavens, who have provided guidance that has shown her that it's time to "adult up", and try for a more professional appearance and presentation.

Now it is certainly possible that ExNewAger's theories also apply, especially in light of her supposed financial difficulties -- if things really are that financially tough, and as her speaking engagements seemed to have dwindled dramatically, it is always possible that the posited impending sobriety is being forced upon her through fiscal pressures -- but I don't think ExNewAger's theories can, or effectively do, wholly explain the myriad changes, subtle and otherwise.

Of course, all of that is mere supposition based on a very, very limited viewing of her intolerable and intolerant bullshit. So it is just as likely that I am completely off the mark and completely full of crap.

zenbabe wrote:

Southern wrote:

ROBOKiTTY wrote:I have a hard time understanding how Peter Jackson turned a mediate-length novel into a movie trilogy. It just smells like profiteering to me.

How he did it? Simple: New Line Cinema was going down under until PJ got into the Hobbit project. They could have done with two movies, but that would be only 66% of the profits.

I haven't seen the movies nor read about the ones that are out, so guessing wildly, did Jackson bring in a lot of back story from the Sillymarillion into the Hobbit?

I still haven't watched the second one, but what he did with the first was: increased the role of Radagast (instead of just being mentioned by Gandalf, he actually does something), and shown the White Council meeting and talking about the Necromancer and the journey of the dwarves. The rest was pretty much doing visuals in scenes already in the book - the capture by the trolls in the forest, the mountain giants fighting in the storm, the goblin's caves, the fight against the orcs when they're saved by the Eagles...

I've skipped a few pages of catchup in order to post this. Therefore you may consider this post to be a fprm of time travel, as the pit travels at the speed of light, and i at the leisurely pace of a frog. (Not the phil type).

In the time i come from, there are calls for heddle to be transferred to an alternate dimension, i hope in this future version of the pit, this has not come to pass. I realise i won't know until enough time has passed whether my fear has become reality.

In my time, we had just come through the great cuntic episode of disappoint, and heddle, whilst evasive in my opinion, brought much needed debate, opinion from expert study, and actual theological difference to the pit.

So my hope for the reality you lightspeeders exist in, is that heddle still exists despite the problem that presents for him.

Tony Parsehole wrote:

welch wrote:
Yes. he also expands on the battle of the 5 armies, given that in the hobbit, it was basically "Bilbo gets hit by a rock. WHen he wakes up, it's all over but the crying over Thorin"

*snigger* Spot-on.
I like how Dol Guldur is only mentioned about 5 times throughout the entire source material with the actual assault on the fortress being covered in a single sentence in the arse-end of the LOTR appendices. They really fleshed that story-arc out.

I fucking loved Desolation Of Smaug BTW, absolutely stunning film.
Considering the holy texts devote an entire chapter to the company walking through a pitch-dark forest, another to Bilbo sitting on a barrel and has the Dwarves being 100% superfluous tag-alongs whose only contribution to the quest is to make Bilbo and Gandalf seem awesome by virtue of their being so shit, I'm pretty glad Jackson didn't follow it word-for word.

Come at me Hobbit-bro's.

DIE, CISGENDERED, NON-TOLKENIAN SCUM!

Tony Parsehole wrote:Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

And God did it, as I always said because I never doubt Lord Jesus. Amen brother!

welch wrote:

Tony Parsehole wrote:Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

'tis proof REO Speedwagon are indeed God.

I have my doubts about that

[youtube]zpOULjyy-n8[/youtube]

windy wrote:

Steersman wrote: Further, due to the nature of those attractors, they exhibit substantial degrees of homeostasis in themselves, that mutations in some elements or “genes” tend only to “perturb” the system briefly which then returns to its basic cycle. It is only rarely that there is a sufficiently severe mutation that is capable of “kicking” the system into cycling through a different set of elements. However, it seems that the implication there is that, as the system is tightly coupled – or loosely coupled between a large number of elements which may be the same thing, mutations tend not to be random affairs, but are changes that produce a cascade of other changes that are integrated, stable, and coherent – maybe somewhat similar to Gould’s “punctuated equilibria”.

Now that is of course based on reading between the lines, and on my own very limited understanding of some truly intricate processes – awe-inspiring ones, actually. However, if it is even marginally accurate – and Kauffman and many others sure seem to think it more than that – then it still suggests that self-organization – the coupled nature of all of those genes and their products – tends to make the argument or claim of “random variation” largely an untenable fiction.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/ ... 003116.jpg

:lol:
Ok, I’ll concede that I don’t know everything about how evolution works, although considering the basis for some of it, it seems untenable to claim that I’m pulling everything out of my arse. But if you knew everything yourself then you would have already picked-up your own Nobel for eludidating and proving a slam-dunk explanation for the whole process.

And while Kauffman’s model seems a little weak – being charitable – in the area of how self-organization might work in the DNA genome, or I’ve missed a step or two in his exposition of it, it also seems that something like it is necessary to explain some highly improbable aspects of Darwinian evolution. For instance, Kauffman discusses the problem in some detail, and with some credible support:

…. I shall be at pains to show you soon that such self-organization may have made the emergence of life well-nigh inevitable. …. In his book Origins, Robert Shapiro calculates that in the history of the earth, there could conceivably have been 2.5 x 10^51 attempts to create life by chance. That is one hell of a lot of trials. But is it enough? We need to know the probability of success per trial. …. [To duplicate a bacterium] … it would be necessary to assemble about 2000 functioning enzymes. The odds against this would be … 1 in 10^40,000.

All very well to hand-wave all of that away – as Dawkins did, I think, in his The Blind Watchmaker – but actually dealing with the devils in the details tends to be something else again. Apropos of which is this from Lewontin:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

And prime among those “just-so” stories seems the one about “random variation” being sufficient - even with selection - to generate manifest order; that was, I think, the flaw in that book of Dawkins', that his analogy relied on an a priori standard by which "selection" worked its supposed magic. In any case, while Kauffman’s models of self-organization – which may well be imperfect and not yet ready for prime time, they seem to be, as models tend to be, a useful guide for further exploration.

Tony Parsehole wrote:

welch wrote:
Actually, this was his first time:



(Not Safe For Life.)

Somebody got me with that last week so as soon as I saw the house turned it off and deleted my history.
Very hard to masturbate to but if you cover the bottom half of the screen it's still possible.

Not a good idea then to click on that link, even out of curiosity? A trojan or a virus buried in it?

ROBOKiTTY wrote:I keep trying not to let feminazism get to me, but I can't. Every time I see something retarded from feminazis, it makes me angry and more sympathetic to the crazies on the other side, with whom I'm equally uncomfortable. I hate that feminazism is equated with leftism.

How do you fine leftist peoples cope?

By drifting further towards the other extreme, then waking up in a cold sweat and drinking whiskey until I stop hallucinating the "gynocracy."

My family was going out to dinner to celebrate my sister's graduation. On the way there, she hit me with that old feminist bullshit, "Baby it's Cold Outside is a rape manual." Me mum joined in. They're not even feminists, just sex-negative christians. Liberal puritans meeting with conservative christians to create a new wave of sexual negativity and puritan witch-hunting. At least with the conservative christians, they'll outright tell you they don't like sex that doesn't conform to their rules. Feminists do the same thing but call it sexual liberation.

Puddle wrote: 1) We don't know the answer. That is why it is a problem. Luck is one of the possible answers but the least satisfying for physicists. If there was (or if there is shown to be) no fine tuning then "the constants are just what they are" would be an OK answer for most of us, and how the constants got those values would be a much less intriguing question. It some sense instead of "fine-tuning" the problem could also be called "the unsatisfying appearance of luck problem" for cosmology.

"the unsatisfying appearance of luck"? You do sound just like a puddle after all.

ROBOKiTTY wrote:Welp, it didn't take long for Google to delete C+=. Misogynists, misogynists everywhere

I bet the people who deleted it were white men.

screwtape wrote:

Puddle wrote: 1) We don't know the answer. That is why it is a problem. Luck is one of the possible answers but the least satisfying for physicists. If there was (or if there is shown to be) no fine tuning then "the constants are just what they are" would be an OK answer for most of us, and how the constants got those values would be a much less intriguing question. It some sense instead of "fine-tuning" the problem could also be called "the unsatisfying appearance of luck problem" for cosmology.

"the unsatisfying appearance of luck"? You do sound just like a puddle after all.

OMG, after years on Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula and UD and WEIT and Dispatches and many other blogs where I have been heavily criticized never, ever has anyone (except for maybe 100 others) been so creative, so clever, so insightful, so witty as to convert heddle to puddle. You are a genius. Your sense of a nuanced jibe is second to none. I tip my hat to you. You are Hitchens-esque in your ability to insult economically and sublimely in the english language.

Steersman wrote:

Tony Parsehole wrote:

welch wrote:
Actually, this was his first time:



(Not Safe For Life.)

Somebody got me with that last week so as soon as I saw the house turned it off and deleted my history.
Very hard to masturbate to but if you cover the bottom half of the screen it's still possible.

Not a good idea then to click on that link, even out of curiosity? A trojan or a virus buried in it?

No. I'm an asshole, but there are things I won't do. It is however, potentially disturbing, and contains wang.

Tony Parsehole wrote:Has anybody realised how the universe seems so finely-tuned for life? What are people's thought on this?

God created it. The god of the crab people. He holy crabbiness created this universe so that one day, crab people could swarm up from deep in the Earth's core and take over the world.

You will feel the pinch of his mighty claw!

heddle wrote:OMG, after years on Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula and UD and WEIT and Dispatches and many other blogs where I have been heavily criticized never, ever has anyone (except for maybe 100 others) been so creative, so clever, so insightful, so witty as to convert heddle to puddle. You are a genius. Your sense of a nuanced jibe is second to none. I tip my hat to you. You are Hitchens-esque in your ability to insult economically and sublimely in the english language.

You mean you've been droning on about this for years? My god, chaps, we don't stand a chance.

heddle wrote:

screwtape wrote:

Puddle wrote: 1) We don't know the answer. That is why it is a problem. Luck is one of the possible answers but the least satisfying for physicists. If there was (or if there is shown to be) no fine tuning then "the constants are just what they are" would be an OK answer for most of us, and how the constants got those values would be a much less intriguing question. It some sense instead of "fine-tuning" the problem could also be called "the unsatisfying appearance of luck problem" for cosmology.

"the unsatisfying appearance of luck"? You do sound just like a puddle after all.

OMG, after years on Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula and UD and WEIT and Dispatches and many other blogs where I have been heavily criticized never, ever has anyone (except for maybe 100 others) been so creative, so clever, so insightful, so witty as to convert heddle to puddle. You are a genius. Your sense of a nuanced jibe is second to none. I tip my hat to you. You are Hitchens-esque in your ability to insult economically and sublimely in the english language.

Shut the fuck up, Donny.

C+= is now on Gitorious: https://gitorious.org/c-plus-equality

However, the lead dev of Gitorious has already made his opinion known on Twitter:
So it might be gone any moment now. Seriously, one might think C+= was neonazi hate speech propaganda just looking at the rate at which it gets censored.

Hmmm I wonder what other people think...and yes it almost relates to fine tuning and free will... NOOOOOO!

So if you could sort of just put time on rewind and go back say 10,000 years and then hit play, would things turn out exactly the same? I'm not saying if you could travel back and time...just if you could rewind time and have it replay. Would it be exactly the same as it previously played out? What if you go back to the big bang? Or 10 minutes?

I think things would play out differently. Maybe not vastly so but certainly (in my mind) enough so that individual people would never be born (depending on how long you rewind back).

Anyway if this is just too goofy then don't respond or call me stupid, whatever.

welch wrote:

Tony Parsehole wrote:

Ape+lust wrote:
Love Bedazzled. Hate the remake. I wish they'd quit doing that.

The remake was a big pile of wank. Are there any remade films that are better than the original?

Lord of the Rings. (I love Bakshi, but yeah.)

You just won't stop will you? Push push push. I feel sympathy for Melody now.

:)

But you are of course wrong. Bakshi stopped halfway through the story - and therefore must, by definition, be the superior interpretation.

heddle wrote:

screwtape wrote:

Puddle wrote: 1) We don't know the answer. That is why it is a problem. Luck is one of the possible answers but the least satisfying for physicists. If there was (or if there is shown to be) no fine tuning then "the constants are just what they are" would be an OK answer for most of us, and how the constants got those values would be a much less intriguing question. It some sense instead of "fine-tuning" the problem could also be called "the unsatisfying appearance of luck problem" for cosmology.

"the unsatisfying appearance of luck"? You do sound just like a puddle after all.

OMG, after years on Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula and UD and WEIT and Dispatches and many other blogs where I have been heavily criticized never, ever has anyone (except for maybe 100 others) been so creative, so clever, so insightful, so witty as to convert heddle to puddle. You are a genius. Your sense of a nuanced jibe is second to none. I tip my hat to you. You are Hitchens-esque in your ability to insult economically and sublimely in the english language.

Yawn. Now if someone put you on a list or called you a howard hershey clone, you might have a point.

ROBOKiTTY wrote:I keep trying not to let feminazism get to me, but I can't. Every time I see something retarded from feminazis, it makes me angry and more sympathetic to the crazies on the other side, with whom I'm equally uncomfortable. I hate that feminazism is equated with leftism.

How do you fine leftist peoples cope?

False premise.

http://i.imgur.com/2PiUrim.jpg

Lots of people attack feminists and liberals/lefties in the same breath. It's disconcerting.

debaser71 wrote:Hmmm I wonder what other people think...and yes it almost relates to fine tuning and free will... NOOOOOO!

So if you could sort of just put time on rewind and go back say 10,000 years and then hit play, would things turn out exactly the same? I'm not saying if you could travel back and time...just if you could rewind time and have it replay. Would it be exactly the same as it previously played out? What if you go back to the big bang? Or 10 minutes?

I think things would play out differently. Maybe not vastly so but certainly (in my mind) enough so that individual people would never be born (depending on how long you rewind back).

Anyway if this is just too goofy then don't respond or call me stupid, whatever.

Well, it's a good point to think of the rewind, anyway. Who is to say the parameters that matter, energy, etc are emergent properties of and which ratchets up through all the levels of existence could be different without an objective frame of reference one can't have? Not that the particulars need be the same, as in with the arising of a certain kind of life, much less the human species, much less a particular person, but the stuff of the universe, the matter, accretion, stellar furnaces and the setting of the universe, if you will, would be the same. Saying that, say, certain types of quantum particles are inevitable when you play it again, and the pulling together of matter from gravitational forces, and the production of helium and other elements from star stuff is a different thing from saying there had to be kittens and Bob Smith.

Also, you're stupid.

BarnOwl wrote:I haven't seen PJ's Hobbit films, but they can't be any worse than the Rankin/Bass animated The Hobbit from the 1970s. Ugh.

Ok it's time to bring out Spock singing the Bilbo Baggins song.

This. This is what happens when a classic escapes its pages.

[youtube]ZQ_duzQzS1I[/youtube] :hand:

ROBOKiTTY wrote:Lots of people attack feminists and liberals/lefties in the same breath. It's disconcerting.

Why? I'm a progressive but you have to admit that classical feminism is a result of the liberal/left tradition, and the dumb pop neurotic feminism we love to hate aligns more with the authoritarian left, but left nevertheless.

We have to own it rather than "not all liberals are like that" tap dancing. Obviously there's something wrong when these grievance parasites can infect all liberal movements and take over because liberals roll over for this shit, not only without a fight, but welcoming it in with open arms.

Boyo, InZvanity really is slowing down these days, as is her shrinking horde of sycophants. Since Novemeber 14:

Nov 14, post 1: no comments
Nov 14, post 2: 5 comments
Nov 15, post 1: 1 comment
Nov 15, post 2: 7 comments
Nov 16: 1 comment
Nov 22: 18 comments
Nov 23: 1 comment
Nov 24: 8 comments
Nov 30, post 1: no comments
Nov 30, post 2: 1 comment
Dec 2: no comment
Dec 4: 6 comments
Dec 5: 17 comments
Dec 7: 4 comments
Dec 10: 4 comments
Dec 14, post 1: 3 comments
Dec 14, post 2: no comments (last post so far this month)

I cannot deny that it warms the cockles of my aged heart to see raging, mendacious, ideological fanatics like Zvan lose a following so successfully.

screwtape wrote:

heddle wrote:OMG, after years on Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula and UD and WEIT and Dispatches and many other blogs where I have been heavily criticized never, ever has anyone (except for maybe 100 others) been so creative, so clever, so insightful, so witty as to convert heddle to puddle. You are a genius. Your sense of a nuanced jibe is second to none. I tip my hat to you. You are Hitchens-esque in your ability to insult economically and sublimely in the english language.

You mean you've been droning on about this for years? My god, chaps, we don't stand a chance.

Rebecca Watson wrote:Somebody called me a cunt. I win the debate.

Stephanie Zvan wrote:Somebody called me fat. I win the debate.

Need I continue?

Mykeru wrote:

heddle wrote: <snip>
OMG, after years on Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula and UD and WEIT and Dispatches and many other blogs where I have been heavily criticized never, ever has anyone (except for maybe 100 others) been so creative, so clever, so insightful, so witty as to convert heddle to puddle. You are a genius. Your sense of a nuanced jibe is second to none. I tip my hat to you. You are Hitchens-esque in your ability to insult economically and sublimely in the english language.

Shut the fuck up, Donny.

Mykeru being a dickhead again. Or at least giving further evidence that he is a bit of a bonehead ....

Dick Strawkins wrote:

Ericb wrote:

Dick Strawkins wrote:Rebecca is promoting a kickstarter on twitter from her boyfriend and Carrie Poppy.
Apparently they are trying to make a documentary about Sedona - some Arizona town that is full of woo-merchants.
It sounds a pretty boring premise to sell and it doesn't really look like they are getting too many takers - they need 20,000 dollars pledged by the 1st of January. Currently they are at 3,300.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/165 ... ntary-film

Trigger warning if you click the video.

Going for the low hanging fruit eh? I thought SJW's looked on bigfoot skepticism with contempt.

If the likes of Shermer, Grothe and Radford do it, it's despicable.
But the skepchicks and their friends?

I think it's OK when they do it.

It's just like The Skeptologists, just with out the skeptologists.

ROBOKiTTY wrote:Lots of people attack feminists and liberals/lefties in the same breath. It's disconcerting.

People on the right tend to broad-brush the left. People on the left tend to broad-brush the right. Feminists tend to be on the left.

I think both lefty and righty libertarians are mostly just pissed at the authoritarians in the opposite camps.

Like Mykeru said, best to just own that shit and admit there are some obnoxious people on our "side."

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:

Steersman wrote:

Stuart Kauffman wrote: " Life is different from non-life because it generates selves with teleodynamic constraints, molecular arrangements that are for something, have a purpose, point to goals that, if achieved, allow the self to make the crucial natural-selection cut."

Looks pretty innocuous to me – all of life quite clearly seems to be based on increasing order – for awhile in any case – and the pursuit of goals in notable contradistinction to non-life. As mentioned, all within some quite credible physics – or are you going to dispute that?
<snip>
I hardly see Kauffman’s statement being inconsistent with or out-of-line relative to those statements of Mayr’s, and many others of his as well.

Mayr was talking about animal behavior being goal-driven. Kauffman is saying molecules strive toward goals.

Actually, he was talking about “molecular arrangements”, presumably collections of molecules. Apropos of which, consider this response to me from Strawkins which looks both like an unfair criticism of self-organization, and evidence of collections of molecules “striving toward goals”:

Strawkins wrote:You seem to be concentrating on self catalytic peptides and nucleic acids which have been demonstrated experimentally. Unfortunately for you these experimental systems are not a good example of a self organizing process - they generally involve scientists artificially examining a narrow range of possibilities in order to produce a self catalytic molecule. I don't know of any experiment that produced a self organizing and self catalyzing biomolecular polymer.

While he seems to be referring only to a single “self-catalytic molecule”, it seems there is some evidence for at least pairs – and where there’s two, there’s bound to be more – to wit this abstract:

An RNA enzyme that catalyzes the RNA-templated joining of RNA was converted to a format whereby two enzymes catalyze each other's synthesis from a total of four oligonucleotide substrates. These cross-replicating RNA enzymes undergo self-sustained exponential amplification in the absence of proteins or other biological materials.

And, relative to the “unfair criticism”, it hardly seems cricket to throw stones at “scientists artificially examining a narrow range of possibilities” when “nature” has had several billion years, and the whole Earth for a laboratory, to be examining a substantially larger range of possibilities. Surely the point is that self-sustaining autocatalytic sets of various biomolecules exist.

And those sets then appear to be cases of “strange attractors” – limit cycles in particular – which then exhibit, in effect, homeostasis. And it then seems hardly doing much damage to the phrase to characterize that as a set of molecules “striving toward the goal” of maintaining that “far from equilibrium” structure that is characteristic of life. Further, if Dawkins can talk of and champion "selfish" genes then I hardly think it fair to throw stones at similar anthropomorphizing of goal-directed behaviours in other collections of molecules.

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:To impart purpose or striving to evolution is non-darwinian, and inescapably summons A Higher Purposeâ„¢ and all that entails.

For a horseman you sure do have a surprising tendency to balk at rather trivial hurdles – so to speak. That the religious may have poisoned that well somewhat – as suggested by my previous quote of Lewontin – is no reason to think that all such wells are equally problematic, or that the “poison” is intrinsically so.

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:Mayr was a group-selectionist (thus anti-hamiltonian, thus wrong), but his excellent work on speciation was firmly rooted in darwinian natural selection. Kauffman, otoh, is a leading proponent of non-darwinian forms of evolution.

As you suggested, he’s hardly the only one. You may wish to review Massimo Pigliucci’s paper Do We Need An Extended Evolutionary Synthesis? for details.

BarnOwl wrote:The TV miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune was better than the David Lynch film, which I thought of as Blue Velvet Dune.

Lynch's Dune sucked so hard I actually was angry at the screen. I fucking hate that abomination. If it weren't for Francesca Annis's Lady Jessica being such a hottie MILF I would have nuked the theater from orbit, just to be sure.

Steersman wrote:

Tony Parsehole wrote:

welch wrote:
Actually, this was his first time:



(Not Safe For Life.)

Somebody got me with that last week so as soon as I saw the house turned it off and deleted my history.
Very hard to masturbate to but if you cover the bottom half of the screen it's still possible.

Not a good idea then to click on that link, even out of curiosity? A trojan or a virus buried in it?

It's just one of Welch's home videos. Nothing to damage your computer, only your sanity.

Brive1987 wrote:

BarnOwl wrote:I haven't seen PJ's Hobbit films, but they can't be any worse than the Rankin/Bass animated The Hobbit from the 1970s. Ugh.

Ok it's time to bring out Spock singing the Bilbo Baggins song.

This. This is what happens when a classic escapes its pages.

[youtube]ZQ_duzQzS1I[/youtube] :hand:

No, that's what happens when a classic begets and even greater classic.

an*

John Greg wrote:Boyo, InZvanity really is slowing down these days, as is her shrinking horde of sycophants. Since Novemeber 14:

Nov 14, post 1: no comments
Nov 14, post 2: 5 comments
Nov 15, post 1: 1 comment
Nov 15, post 2: 7 comments
Nov 16: 1 comment
Nov 22: 18 comments
Nov 23: 1 comment
Nov 24: 8 comments
Nov 30, post 1: no comments
Nov 30, post 2: 1 comment
Dec 2: no comment
Dec 4: 6 comments
Dec 5: 17 comments
Dec 7: 4 comments
Dec 10: 4 comments
Dec 14, post 1: 3 comments
Dec 14, post 2: no comments (last post so far this month)

I cannot deny that it warms the cockles of my aged heart to see raging, mendacious, ideological fanatics like Zvan lose a following so successfully.

A I am willing to bet the hag is still celebrating Halloween on December 25th .......

nd

Brive1987 wrote:nd

North Dakota? Caine? Two words? Sounds like? .... :-)

Southern wrote:
I still haven't watched the second one, but what he did with the first was: increased the role of Radagast (instead of just being mentioned by Gandalf, he actually does something), and shown the White Council meeting and talking about the Necromancer and the journey of the dwarves. The rest was pretty much doing visuals in scenes already in the book - the capture by the trolls in the forest, the mountain giants fighting in the storm, the goblin's caves, the fight against the orcs when they're saved by the Eagles...

I knew that the actor playing Radagast looked familiar but couldn't place him. Then the fiveish Doctorsplaced him for me.

Tony Parsehole wrote:

BarnOwl wrote:The TV miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune was better than the David Lynch film, which I thought of as Blue Velvet Dune.

Gotta disagree there Barnowl. I loved the film (even though it deviated a lot from the book) and fucking loathed the TV series. Ian Mcneice was half decent but everything else, particularly the sets and costumes was a disgrace. I'll never forgive them for what they did to the Sardaukar:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... V-2000.png

In fairness, the Sardaukar were described as "terror troops" and I'd certainly be pretty bloody uneasy if I saw a that lot charging towards me.