Recent Comments

Talk: Richard Branson's life at 30,000 feet – August 27, 2008

Thank you. i am moved by this interview. The questions were brave and the interview kept twisting in turns I wasn't expecting.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

@cole
It makes my stomach hurt from laughing so hard that your argument is that ID is not creationism its just proof that a divine being gave the universe its initial push. Are you kidding? do you even comprehend how sill y that sounds?

Cole from the few statements you made im convinced that Dawkins is at least right about your ignorance. Evolution is a fact my friend theres not much to argue about either way. So if dawkins says anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is ignorant thats pretty much true in the same way that someone who doesnt believe in cars would be ignorant.

Of course you wont see an ID article published in a science magazine. I dont reab many religious magazines but i doubt there are many scietificly accurate articles published about the big bang. why would science magazines even consider publishing about divine beings? it has nothing at all to do with science. so in that sense it is discriminated because it cant be proven scientificly.

Happy with dualism??? where did you come from? this is too funny. Descartes dies like 500 years ago and his entire theory was based on the pineal gland which people in his time knew hardly anythign about. That is just another example in history of people not understanding somethings function so they attribute it mystical powers. Thankfully science is around to continually answer questions that so many people were happy to accept magic as the cause of. I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW MY CAR STARTS!!! It must be tiny gnomes living in my engine that start a fire every time they hear the key turn.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

Scientists are not "just arguing over what was the first initial push." That's not what evolution explains.

The origin of life on earth is as yet unknown. Evolution instead addresses common heritability and descent with modification.

Talk: Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves – August 27, 2008

i first read of "The Hole in the Wall", as a forward from my computer mentor and ardent home-schooler, Anita. . At a time when i was heartily resisting technology, and "suffering" with self-imposed stress. The experiment excited me out of the fear of making an error, thus breaking the machine. Thank you Sugata Mitra. i too was held spellbound by the latter part of the talk. I am inspired.

Talk: Alisa Miller shares the news about the news – August 27, 2008

It's kind of ironic that the one lecture about Americans not getting enough information is one of the shorter lectures on this site. Something that's beautiful though, is that current (a television station based on user generated content) has almost no stories or documentaries based on celebrities or pop culture.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

Dawkins makes so many wide generalizations it's almost appalling at parts. He makes it appear as if anyone who believes in any belief structure outside of atheism (Islam, Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism) doesn't believe in evolution or any form of science and are ultimately ignorant. Also, he makes the generalization that the only people who are against evolution are creationists, when in fact the intelligent design movement is 1000x stronger and is more often accepted across every faith than strict holy text creationism. Even the catholic church doesn't believe in creationism! In fact, the people that I know that are creationists is much less than those that are atheist and I live within the Bible belt! Also, something most people opposed to the intelligent design movement fail to understand is that it is not equal to creationism. I.D. basically agrees with evolution and nearly all of science, except it calls back to a corollary of Newton's first law and says that God was the one who gave the first initial push to the cosmos.
This is where peter's (the guy who posted below me) suggestion begins about an "evolution argument". You won't see an I.D. article ever published in an academic science magazine, because it's discriminated against by those who don't subscribe to that belief structure, whether or not it has legitimacy and is factual in its subject. It gets to the point where people are just arguing over what was the first initial push and the lab science is ridiculously incoherent on both sides. Ultimately, it breeds academic fascism and is one of the most oppressive rules any society could possibly have. We should all just be happy with Descartes' theory of dualism!

Finally, if he hates religion so much,. why would he want to go and organize another religion? I mean, organizing people to discuss their "disbelief" and having them periodically rally against other beliefs sounds A LOT like a religion.

Talk: Patricia Burchat sheds light on dark matter – August 27, 2008

You mentioned dark energy and dark matter as opposing forces in the universe, Matter, attracts, energy subtracts. The graph showed that there was allot more dark energy than there was dark matter. And when research was made regarding the speed at which the universe was expanding the result was that space was expanding faster as a function of time.
Given that the energy is functionally expanding the universe, and the matter is an opposing force, i.e. keeping it together, it would seem that the amount of dark matter is decreasing and the amount of dark energy is increasing, expanding the universe as a result. Perhaps dark matter becomes dark energy at some point? Or maybe there will be a point where the dark energy values and dark matter values will equalise to stop the expansion of the universe.

That is, assuming that there is some symbiotic relationship between, dark energy and dark matter.

This is just what struck me wile watching your talk; it was very interesting, although I%u2019m not really educated in this field at all.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

Peter:

This is no "evolution debate," at least not in the sense that you mean it. You just want to think that there is so you manufacture one. It's not an "argument" either. You are correct that Charles Darwin was not the first person to discover that evolution occurs. His uncle Erasmus and others thought of it before him. Charles was the first one who first explained it in such detail.

And yes, by definition, evolution has been around "since history began" (at least natural history). But it doesn't have anything to do with a "belief system" akin to a "religion." That evolution occurs is a FACT, based upon demonstrable evidence. You choose to ignore this reality based upon sound science and I don't believe that any amount of evidence would convince you otherwise.

Blog: The search for dark matter and dark energy: Patricia Burchat on TED.com – August 27, 2008

The link "Watch Patricia Burchat's 2008 talk on TED.com" is wrong =/

Talk: Jill Bolte Taylor's powerful stroke of insight – August 27, 2008

I think most of the people got sidetrack by Mrs Bolte "scientific" talk. As I see it, there was really nothing real scientific about it. She talked about how she personally experienced a stroke, that she is a scientist doesn't make any of her report "real" or "scientific". . As I understand, not all strokes do feel like entering Nirvana ect. There are many stroke experiences by people who say it was a trip to hell and back.
To get to the bottom of it, science needs to looks at what parts in Mrs Bolts brain were directly involved and compare to other stroke experiences and get a real study going.
(btw, I was amazed how she stayed conscious throughout the entire experience, AND remembers every detail, to the point of counting seconds which seemed like hours at the time)
I agree with Vlad Dascalescu, not with so many harsh and unkind words..., that this has nothing to do with science,but with pushing our "feel-good" buttons. As a non scientist,, for me she describes a nice shroom / LSD trip. What really would be of interest is to find out, how and why her experiences are so similar (bad trip/stroke vs good trip/stroke) to those trips. Can we actually create Enlightenment with a pill and make this a better world by PX ??? Hey, I like to hear a lecture on that one!
Claiming that was a scientific talk for me is , like the Christians extremist c;aiming that Creationism is a science.
Sorry, nothing personal, just my opinion.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

@liz
I dont see how religion has changed much in the passed few thousand years. The people practicing the religion may have changed the way they view their scriptures but the scriptures themselves are completell stagnant. I require facts. what evidence is there of spiritual teachers and how can their significance even be measured? By the amount of influence they have? like David Koresh? the Dalai Lama? i think the dalai lama is a great person but i require evidence that he is reincarnated from past Buddhas. There have been just as many, if not more, false profits in history. Also how does the past predict the future? its a nice little saying and all but show me some actual history of it happening.

@peter
Dawkins idolizes Darwin becasue he is a biologist like Darwin. Its the same reason physicists admire Einstein or anyone admires Newton. The arguments are certainly not the same as 30 years ago. you are obviously in need of some research. Darwin is however a huge contributor to evolution.

Dont confuse the fact that science is contantly changing and progressing with the idea that what is right today will be wrong tomorrow cause thats just not the case. If the fundamentals of the evolution debate have not changed its not because of science. Science is constantly adding info like dawkins did with The Selfish Gene. Religion has even changed its view on evolution, just look at the catholic church's stance on it over the last century. I dont understand where you are getting your facts from because you seem to be misinformed.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

I agree that science is continually moving. Dawkins I dont think has veered too much from Darwin; he certainly seems to idolize him. His views are pretty consistent over the 30yr period.

This perhaps illustrates my point. Science ; ie computers, space travel, medicine, etc. is continually on the move, and improving. The arguments on either side of the evolution debate are much the same today as they were 30yrs ago. I've been around a while. Yes science is used to pile coal on both sides of the argument, but the basic premise is the same. The evolution argument didnt start with Darwin; he only gave it some publicity. Like religion, its been around since history began. The fundamentals do not alter; why ? Because it is a belief system, or a religion if you like.

Talk: Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves – August 27, 2008

But imagine the technology in the hands of GOOD teachers!!! I haven't given up on that possibility! As we lower the bar for student achievement, (I think that is a major problem in North America), we simultaneously lower the bar for teacher achievement and reduce the list of qualitiies we would ideally like to see in the people who train our children...

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

@ Christian

Religion stagnant? I think not. If in general terms 'the past predicts the future', and there are reliable records of some of the 'great spiritual teachers' at fairly regular intervals throughout human history (some are verbal accounts, and some written in stone... grin), then why do we think this pattern would come to a sudden stop? Surely not because we have become 'too smart' for spiritual guidance...

Talk: Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves – August 27, 2008

education is probably the most single important factor to advance in development and to create the conditions for people to help others and themselves. sugata mitra's project shows us how technology can be used to reach this goal. thank's to laurent from liftlab I had the chance to interview him last year at picnic - in this interview he said that instead of giving kids no or bad teachers, give them computers to organize their learing.

http://www.infonomia.com/tv/video.php?video=87

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

@peter
well lets take a look at the last 30 years in science and technology and see why 30 year old quotes might be out of date. Personal computer.....internet....two of the most advancing technological developments in the past 100-200 years arguably.

What i mean though is that science progresses at nealry the same speed as computers. If you take Moore's law into consideration that speed becomes something that is not even easy to grasp. So in a sense 30 years is a massive amount of time. only 40 years ago we first landed on the moon and now we are prepping trips to Saturn's Enceladus.

You say that darwin will be even more irrevelant in 30 years like thats a bad thing. Science differes from religion in that exact way. it isnt stagnant. If scientists today are still the leaders of thought 30 years from now then something will have gone terribly wrong.

Dawkins gives a great speech about a teacher he had in college that had a theory he stuck to for decades and one day a younger scientist gave a lecture that proved the old idea wrong. The teacher walked up to the younger scientist, shook his hand and thanked him. Being proven wrong and being outdated and obsolete is not an insult in science its a sign of progress and its welcomed.

Talk: A.J. Jacobs' year of living biblically – August 27, 2008

This was an amusing and quite intelligent talk. A.J. Jacobs showed an ability to learn from his experience, and admit he often was misled by his own longtime prejudices. His discovery that there is a meaning to 'sanctity' a meaning to a day of rest, a meaning to much of the teaching of the Bible is part of that learning. However he should have mentioned and I hope he knows that the Jewish religion is not at all based on a literal reading of the Bible. It is based on an interpretative structure derived from the Bible, from the Mishnah and Gemarah a system of Halakah. Had Jacobs been interested in Judaism he would have explored this. What he did was perhaps more amusing but has in the context of Judaism anyway little sense or significance.

Talk: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism – August 27, 2008

Peter I think you are missing the point, he is saying that the references you used are quite outdated texts in the field. Just as once people thought that the earth was flat (I'm sure there are numerous papers to support this at the time) knowledge evolves and through time principles are revisited and revised to take into account the latest scientific information.

So in a sense yes, "30yrs time todays quotes will be out of date" if they don't take into account the latest information.

Blog: Prototype: Scope, a camera for kids – August 27, 2008

MORE TECHNICAL DATA NEEDED.

I assume it uses internal memory an has an option to use external memory like secure digital.
The resolution is probably VGA -> 640x480

What about focus ? I assume it auto focuses and the zoom is fixed.....probably equivalent to a Nikon 50mm SLR lens, which is the most basic all purpose lens you could get....

The viewfinder is not that great because you really cant tell what you will take a picture of....since humans have 2 eyes.....and proper framing in this case would depend on the position of the head relative to the wheel....

Talk: Pilobolus perform "Symbiosis" – August 27, 2008

Wow- this is astonishing in the strength and grace of the performers and beautifully presented in its minimal way. I find it unnecessary to find literal meaning in this performance- everything that can be known from it is available in the music and movement. It moved me.