who said offices have to be dull?

know how he feels eh?!





funniest thing is the guy in the background who checks out what's going on...sees what is going on... and chooses to ignore it in the interests of his own safety!

making this kept me entertained...

A little show for fans of mr wakeham to enjoy...















Dunno if these are actually him mind...?






















THERE'S LOADS!!!




Right! That took ages! And I'm sure I missed a couple...

I can't believe it...

excuse the pun... but apparently seeing is believing

of course there are a few problems I find with this...

1- is this meant to all happen in the lifetime of one fish, or is this over a period of time, i.e. across a species...
2- what use does the "eye" in the first few diagrams have, when there are no nerves to connect said "eye" to go to a unit to interpret the signals being received...
without which, there is no use for the eye, and therefore would be making a creature complex in an uneccesary area.

no?

and this...

will write about this when I have time...

just read this...

from this

corkscrew corkscrew corkscrew...

re: I'd say that: no scientific evidence => it's not useful to accept existence.

If you can't make valid predictions of any sort about what X will do next, then it's not advantageous to consider X as a factor in your calculations - you'll do just as well on average if you simply ignore X and get on with your life.

This doesn't necessarily mean that X doesn't exist, but it does mean that belief in the existence of X is fairly daft - if nothing else, it's a waste of valuable brain resources, which aren't something that most people are overly blessed with to start with...

there is no evidence that you can see that I'm writing this, does that mean that there is no purpose for me writing this, or that I don't exist? nope

RE: X - you have to take "X" into consideration as whilst you may not be able to predict what "X" will do next, your results would not reflect the result which would happen with X present, which may well make a grave difference!

Nor does it mean that belief in X is daft... though it appears to be that you're stating you are of a higher intellect because you choose not to believe in the existance of X... correct me if I'm wrong?!

In response...

... to the longest comment that "Same beat, different tune has ever received...


With regard to creationism, it's basically a post-hoc attempt to fit existing facts to a preconceived story (one interpretation of Genesis). That's not how science works.

So what is it that people are trying to do with Darwin's theories? When Darwin himself, the originator of his theories, strangely enough, would not have believed his own theory given the evidence now available, why do people still try to fit their thoughts in line with his? And why, when it is no more proven today then it was when it was first stated as A THEORY, is it still taught in schools as scince fact.

I didn't want to get into discussion hypotheticals, because I wasn't there that's all the following is...

The first, hydrological sorting, fails to explain why (for example) sea turtles, which sink like rocks when they die, only appear at the top of the column.

I don't know if you're aware, and forgive me for being facetious if you are... but Sea Turtle can swim... therefore should there be a flood, they would probably be able to swim for a while, and survive perhaps slightly longer then say a T-rex...(great kicking legs, but upper body strength somewhat lacking for swimming...)

The second, involving the ability of animals to temporarily escape uphill, fails to explain why mangrove trees were apparently able to run faster than velociraptor.

Again hypothetical, and only a possibility.... During major floods, landslides can create vast amounts of incredibly high speeding trees, and all it would take would for your velociraptor friend to be not on the sliding land for it to be overtaken.

It's simple, but you can't say it's wrong... even if it is unlikely, lets not even get started on the mathematical probability of life from nothing...

They fail to explain the burrows, because they never set out to... What would be the purpose of explaining it anyway...? Can you explain them?

Re: Radiological timings... Whilst we all agree that radiological data is quite reasonable to predict at a constant in the short term, i.e. a time that we have tested it in, when we start basing our proof of a theory based on something that is older then we could ever actually test... i.e. a constant rate of decay in various radiological elements, CANNOT BE PROVEN, and therefore takes an element of faith somewhat to believe it to be correct. An element of faith, that is somehow more of a leap then to believe the alternative. Anyway, I digress...

Not to mention the lack of oxygen halfway down a thousand-foot pile of dirt.

Sorry... did you expect there to be an expanse of oxygen? Is it also beyond belief that there could be pockets of oxygen, sufficient for a burrowing animal to survive for a brief time, enough for it to burrow some way, before asphixiating? Anyway...

So creationism is quite demonstrably wrong, at least when it attempts to make any positive claims at all. What about its successor, ID?

I'm sorry again... I should stop apologising, but demonstratibly wrong? You haven't demonstrated actually anything, you've cast aspersions on the flood theory, but nothing that even I, chief of skeptics, could ignore... and readily!

Onto ID we go...

Getting into philosophy of science for a moment, a claim is held to be scientifically useful if (broadly speaking) it provides us with some information as to what we'll see next. In particular, the most useful claims make concrete, testable predictions.

I'm glad you said broadly speaking, because otherwise I'd probably point out that science was IMO there to try to understand how things worked in the way they did, and what caused that first and foremost... predictions are there to make sure we got our understanding right, as if things don't behave the way we thought they were going to, we probably got our understanding wrong.

Another way to look at it is: the only way to figure out whether an unverifiable claim is right is to have lots and lots of potential ways to prove it wrong (falsifiability).

Again... erm... what? if a claim is "unverifiable" then surely it cannot be proven one way or the other...?

Does ID match up to these requirements? Not even slightly. ID proponents have made a grand total of one concrete testable hypothesis in the last decade, and it turned out to be inaccurate.

You know why there has only been one hypothesis made? Probably because those people that could be making them, are too busy teaching science to others, so they don't get blinded by poor science being propergated as fact, (see numerous threads) and arguing against the claims like you make...

I believe the technical scientific term for this record is: completely pants.

As I have discussed before, there has been a paper written, which makes many many claims, all bar one have so far been proven correct, the greatest historical document we have both in terms of content, accuracy and testability, and yet this paper is largely ignored because it makes some claims that people don't want to accept... Anyway, I digress again...

(Note: some ID publications could be considered to have some value to the fields of philosophy or theology, where it's harder to definitively state what constitutes good research. However, when it comes to maths and science, they're rubbish)

I like you. That's why I'm gonna take the above as humour, and not as an actual argumentative point... because otherwise I'd need to point out the crossover between science and theology and philosophy being extremely close, and the distinct lack of mathemtical models of probability for the origins of life being by co-inky-dink and the sheer unfathomable heights of faith required to subscribe to such a model.

As I have suggested before to someone else, you might want to read this as I think it would show some very good examples of the lack of "probable" arguments... or at least the difficulties they experience in holding up... have an excerpt

Next...

phew... hand hurting from typing...

This has two major problems. Firstly, it assumes that evolution always increases complexity

yes... otherwise it's defined as D-evolution... but anyway, I'm not here to pick holes in words...

given half a chance, evolution will ditch any unnecessary complexity. So it's possible for an irreducibly-complex system to evolve as parts are removed from a larger reducibly-complex system.

example... please...

My understanding, for example, the eye... without the tear duct, the eye would dry up and cease to function. But if we're talking about the probability of both a full eye, all cells, inluding nerve tissue, eye lid, eye lash, retina, iris, muscle fibres, goop inside, and tear duct, seemingly unrelated part, all "evolving at once". You see, without any of these elements the eye would not work, and therefore would serve no purpose. The eye would therefore not evolve, logically speaking, as all these parts COULD NOT, mathematically speaking happen at once to form a fully functioning unit...Not to mention that the mutant that had all these elements would then require a similar mutant with a good eye to reproduce to propergate the institution of sight in a species... we're talking worse odds then 1 in 1 to the raised 42 or something I think I read... eep...

Secondly, it doesn't cconsider whether any subsystems of the IC system have a different function.

oh ok... so what's the second function of the eye? even in it's development stages?

frankly the work of Dembski (the originator of CSI) is a mess.

times have changed... other people have taken the "jello-mould" of Dembski and progressed the work themselves... Though I have noticed that most people arguing against such theories will not quote other research other then Dembski. It's bizarre. It's almost as though someone has found a weak link in defence and concentrates their entire attack on it... CSI is above me, but not above my brother, who I hope will also post on this to state a few points.

re: the ID theists and such of the last 2 paragraphs... I've been staring at the same screen for too long... my head hurts and I still have a full days work ahead of me...

So I'm gonna leave this as it stand and await the tyrade of abuse that comes back...

In closing, I'd like to confirm that I'm not an expert on any of this.

I await your comments world!

following yesterdays news...

I wish people could post sooner so I didn't have to trawl through my blogs to find where their responses had actually been posted...

Anyway... in response to lifewish's comments...

This link is simply for me soI don't have to search for the latest debate...... you're welcome to use it too though...

I think I write "..." too much...

see?

AIM Series Photos...

Down I go...

tweak!

ha... make a me...

How to make a fernandez fernandez

Ingredients: 1 part competetiveness 5 parts crazyiness 3 parts beauty

Method: Stir together in a glass tumbler with a salted rim. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of caring

ha...

You scored as Karl Barth. The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology. Karl Barth 100% John Calvin 100% Martin Luther 100% Anselm 87% J�rgen Moltmann 73% Jonathan Edwards 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 47% Augustine 33% Charles Finney 20% Paul Tillich 0% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Top 10...

memories of this weekend...

1- wondering what that burning smell was, only to go find someone cooking an egg, not using a frying pan, but just straight on the electric hob...

2- listening to 4 people in a 6 person room snoring... intermittent jibberish sleep talking as well...

3- "sleeping" under a bed, barely high enough to roll over enough...

4- "DON'T TELL ME HOW HE COULD GET HERE!"

5- Wakeham responding in the only way he could to a pikette who pushed him into the skate ramp he was on...and who had just spat at him...

6- Wakeham running away from said pikette following recent action...

7- The Police helicopter that circled our chalet for a couple of hours...

8- looking at the panic stricken face of a complete stranger girl when she found that having used the toilet in our chalet, she had now been locked in!

9- watching Porko's backflip Peter Pan pose!

10- "WHERE'S YOUR NECK?!"

Awesome times...!