The Bathroom Wall
With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.
This is a test of the new Bathroom Wall
bumping
bumping
More testing.
Dang; if only somebody had told me there wuz gonna be a test I could’a studied fer it… :p
Entries here show up on the main page’s Recent Comments panel. Should they? I’m thinking that perhaps all the bathroom wall traffic will drown out the main PT comments rendering the Recent Comments panel less than useful.
I may not be able to prevent comments on pages from showing up in the recent comments box, but I’ll look into it. Thanks for pointing that out.
BTW the Update function is really cool. I trust it will be featured on the main site soon?
Oops, ignore my last comment. The answer is implicit in your original post
This should be fun!
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/600991
Blog: Stages of denialism
Denialists never want to admit that they are wrong about anything, so they keep a debate going as long as possible to sooth their egos. Then, when their views are discredited by the mainstream scientific communities, they appeal to the prejudices of the general public instead.
Global Warming (GW) denialist stages:
“Global warming is not happening and may not happen. Why worry about it?”
“Global warming IS happening, but there is no evidence that humans are a factor in the problem.”
“Global warming is happening, humans are a factor, but there is nothing we can do to stop it anyway.”
‘Global warming is happening, humans are a factor, we can stop it, but the costs of trying to stop it would outweigh the benefits.”
Decades ago, most GW denialists were at stage one. Today, most of them are at stage two, with some already moving to stage three or four. Truly honest and fair people should have stopped at stage one.
Creationist (evolution denialist) stages:
“Species are eternal and unchanging, existing in their present form since Creation. There is no evidence for evolution.”
“Species do change, but only within the limits of created kinds. Evidence cited for evolution can also fit within Creationism.”
“Even if evolution occurs, an Intelligent Designer must have been involved, so complex are some biological forms.”
“Evolution is as unscientific as Creationism.”
The difference between a skeptic and a denialist, on any subject, is that a real skeptic knows in advance what evidence would convince him that something is real or that action of a certain kind is justified. A denialist has no such standards. His commitment to an ideology trumps any scientific standard. Gaps in scientific knowledge, which would motivate most scientists to look for more data, are wrongly used by denialists to reject completely a concept they do not like because of prejudice. This is dishonesty.
I’ve changed the panel size to ten to make it easier for y’all to play with it. We’ll eventually settle on a larger number.
Great idea.
Besides color (and tabbing the BW from the main page) I would suggest keeping or increasing PT default font size - no reason to humor trolls ranting off masses of texts.
With this PT has evolved as a dynamic site on the web. Kudos!
PS: In preview I get the default font size. Yet another reason to keep posted comments as default size.
‘Nuther thing: refreshed the 2nd page and got back to page 1. Saturday is cookie day, nom nom nom - but anyways.
There is cookie support, for the last viewed tab, but it may be iffy.
I’m not sure what you mean about font sizes. Are you asking for comments to have the same font size as the entries?
If you access the page normally via the url http://pandasthumb.org/bw/, then last page viewed will be properly retrieved. If you use the a link with a fragment ID, then it won’t try to cookie. I’ll try to patch the tabs library that we’re using to change that.
The tabs also understand links to specific comments and will load the proper panel. Try it out.
http://pandasthumb.org/bw/#comment-149706
It seems Sal Cordova has matriculated back to UcD. He is now holding forth on how Fisher’s Theorem is the death of Darwinism, on the back of Michael Lynch’s new book on genetic architecture.
If by Darwinism, Sal means the strawman pseudo-religion invented by creationists, great! Kick it down, Sal, just don’t erect Kimuraism in its place when you find that we haven’t all become YECs.
If, OTOH, Sal means a theory composed of strands assuming Deep Time, common descent, variability, and selection, then he should increase his dosage. Nothing in Lynch affects those things. As I understand Lynch’s work, the relatively small populations of eukaryotes and multicellular organisms coupled with neutral drift is the key source of variation upon which selection operates.
Sal also does a quick switch in his post between ‘biodiversity’ as used in a quote from Lynch, and ‘diversity’ as used in a discussion of Fisher’s Theorem. The two terms mean vastly different things.
Yup; both for hampering trolls and for editing breaks et cetera in fairly accurate previews.
Comment preview is going to become 2.0ified as well. The preview will be displayed on the entry page, probably under the update button.
On Wallace’s personal blog he whines
Such a lovely display of Christian ethics and morals… Not only is his foolish behavior undermining his own credibility (what little there is left of it) but Wallace seems perfectly content in dragging down Christianity with him.
Bump test:
http://pandasthumb.org/bw/#comment-149706
Okay, I changed the hue of the default color scheme to fit with our bluish color scheme.
[Crossposted from Good Math, Bad Math]
@ SC:
Oh, you are here now, kvetching over the same points. As the Panda’s Thumb thread that activated you is now closed due to your ranting, I will post my belated answer here instead. (Isn’t the ability to google crosslinks to get to the full picture wonderful?)
On PT:
The URL DiEb looked at and when skewered you, sparing me the analysis?
Here:
The thread here answered that already, but more detail is provided in the link above.
The continuing misunderstanding of how to make proper limits is clearly exhibited, demonstrating the shallowness that Mike Elzinga, DiEB and others have noted several times over now.
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H fckng sshls. plgz t Dvsn NW bfr gt pssd ff nd strt fckng wth . dn’t wnt t mk m md. Trst m n ths. r scrt scks bg tm.
^ | | Oh good, it works.
Not only is his foolish behavior undermining his own credibility (what little there is left of it) but Wallace seems perfectly content in dragging down Christianity with him.
why oh why do you let people who are obviously not completely (or even partially) sane get to you so, Pim?
he certainly doesn’t speak for xianity, or ID, or creationism, or anything other than the random delusions flitting through his skull.
I hope you at least can confine your non-arguments with him in this new locale.
Frankly, i still say he’s not worth your effort.
What Ichthyic said. I made one final insult to whatever Wallace had been blubbering about, but he is not worth ANYONE’s time, save as a crashtest dummy.
So why post a mention of him at all? Well, I feel that creationists reveal the seabed of asshole-ish stupidity (as opposed to crackpot asshole-ish-ness and stupidity, though there are PLENTY of those, more mundane, types of creationists, of course!), but the thing that mimics a human personality sometimes takes on compellingly repulsive forms, unique in their awfulness. Anything unique is a treasure to be admired, at least for a very brief time. Or so I deeply believe. The wonder of the human mind, to this mere human, is that the most sickeningly ugly dross can be used to understand life (yes, and the UNiverse and everything.) Sal Cordova represents one of these bizarrely ugly mounds of dishonesty that move along sifting through the intellectual/moral/spiritual feces that covers the bare idiocy of standard creationism. I believe W. Wallace, like some self-poisoning pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the putrid floors of this silent poisoned sea represents another.
From a very, very distant point of view, William Wallace provides us all with a unique service, although thanking him for that service would be absurd: he provides it despite himself, and I would never wish his fate on the shittiest person I have ever met.
Booger!
Ben Stein pooped here.
Then explain why we need to invoke God when building a refrigerator or making an antibiotic.
Why would the inventors, programmers, etc… Have their names listed in these manuals? Clearly these computers, refrigerators, could have evolved by natural causes:) I have been to flea markets have seen older generation computers, and refrigerators.
When IBIBS can tell us exactly which one of these intermediates is a problem for evolution and exactly why, then maybe someone care.
Protoavis 225 M
Coelophysis 210 M
Lisboasaurus 175 M
Archaeopteryx 150 M
Deinonychus 140 M
Sinornis 138 M
Ambiortus 125 M
Hesperornis 100 M
Just as soon as he explains all of this, he can also explain all of the intermediates between terrestrial artiodactlys and cetacaeans and the intermediates between chimps and humans. Remember, this is the guy that claimed that none of these even existed. He has yet to explain a single one. Why am I not surprised?
What can you expect from someone who argues that because an ostrich can survive that birds could not have evolved. Now why didn’t any biologist think of that? This guy doesn’t even know the difference between a dead tree and a live tree. Who cares.
Astronauts Who Found God
by Chuck Colson
Astronaut, John Glenn’s return to outer space many years after his awe-inspiring orbit around the earth is a reminder of the kind of heroism that makes space exploration possible. What author, Tom Wolfe called the “right stuff.”
What you may not know, however is that for many of the early astronaut heroes, the “right stuff” included deep religious faith. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are best known as the first astronauts to land on the moon and take that “giant leap for mankind.” But you probably don’t know that before they emerged from the spaceship, Aldrin pulled out a Bible, a silver chalice, and sacramental bread and wine. There on the moon, his first act was to celebrate communion.
Frank Borman was commander of the first space crew to travel beyond the Earth’s orbit. Looking down on the earth from 250,000 miles away, Borman radioed back a message, quoting Genesis One: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As he later explained, “I had an enormous feeling that there had to be a power greater than any of us-that there was a God, that there was indeed a beginning.”
The late James Irwin, who walked on the moon in 1971, later became an evangelical minister. He often described the lunar mission as a revelation. In his words, “I felt the power of God as I’d never felt it before.”
Charles Duke, who followed Irwin to the moon, later became active in missionary work. As he explained, “I make speeches about walking ON the moon and walking WITH the Son [of God].” Guy Gardner is a veteran astronaut who speaks in churches on the reality of God.
To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. – Astronaut John Glenn
What is it about being in space that seems to spark our innate religious sense? Two centuries ago the philosopher Immanuel Kant said there are two things that “fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Huh? What does this have to do with no need for gods in science and technology?
Or do you agree that gods are unnecessary in science and technology?
These men evoked God didn’t they???
Show and explain exactly where they said “GODIDTHIS” when they did science.
Yeah. I did know that.
Yeah. And so did Copernicus, Newton and Darwin.
However, like you, none of them has ever provided any evidence for God.
In that respect, you are like the greats, IBIG.
And frankly, I’m pretty sure that these men are all smatr if you asked them point blank to opine on evolution given the current evidence, all of them would readily admit it works as advertised.
No, technically, they INVOKED god - but not in scientific or technical contexts. You’ll note that I specifically stipulated that authors of such literature may themselves be believers. Yet no mention of gods appears in any of their technical and scientific publications.
So why are gods of no use whatsoever in these fields?
Actually all that we see is evidence of God. It’s not evidence to you because you choose not to believe in God, but it was evidence to these astronauts just like it is to me.
For an observation to be evidence for a hypothesis, it has to be a logical consequence of that hypothesis; i.e., it has to follow from by deduction from the hypothesis that the described observation would be highly likely to occur.
The “God did it” hypothesis does not logically imply any particular pattern of observations.
I’m not questioning the sincerity of your belief, IBIG, nor that of anyone else. You may interpret the evidence in any way you see fit.
However, these facts have no bearing on my question: why do gods exhibit no utility whatsoever in scientific and technical publications?
Well at least IBIBS explained the intermediates between reptiles and birds. No wait he didn’t. Once again he completely ignored all of the evidence and told cute little stories about nonsense. Nobody cares how many people found god in their navel lint.
I’ll take this as a SINE that the fool is never going to learn anything about SINES. More is the pity.
Update