151. Shermer's 'Mind of the Market' Reviewed in L.A. Times

Comment #128484 by babrock on February 17, 2008 at 6:23 am

M. Shermer is to speak here in New Orleans at U.N.O. this Sat. (Feb. 23, 08) If anyone is planing on comeing here to hear him T wife and I would consider putting you up for t night, provided you donot have an overly big problem w/ t mess or t 3 dogs. Let us know. Here is best I supose.

152. The argument from oranges

Comment #128284 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 4:58 pm

A lot of t problem w/ these guys is how limited their perspective is. Dawkins, or Richard as he prefers, has explained how truely evolved to be like this we are, but come on, this tendency is not unsurmountable. Compared w/ t size of t entire universe, t distanc from here to pluto is almost nothing, when compared to lengths involving subatomic particals it is almost infinet. Similar things can be said about time.And if compared to his brother, t orange is a rather distant relative, tho compared to rocks, stars, fire, soap bubles and a huge number of other things t paterns making up him and t orange are fairly close to being identical. He was taking his inability to see things at t proper scale as a reason to be smug.

153. The Dog Allusion

Comment #128231 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 3:25 pm

For those who have not yet heard this: A person adopts a dog from a shelter, takes him home, cleans him up, feeds him, and has his medical needs tended to. To top it all off, he pets and loves on the dog and lets him know he is well-loved. The same case occurs w/a cat. A few weeks of this bliss goes by, and the dog takes all this into consideration and thinks: 'Damn, this wonderful fellow must be God!'-While the cat thinks:'Damn, I must be God!'

154. A match made on RichardDawkins.net?

Comment #128227 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 3:12 pm

To Justin,I just got this thing last Oct. or so, so it is all I can do to throw these words out in t disorganized manner that I manage. Deleting things along w/ proper spelling, gramer, or proofreading is as yet beyond me. Here tho is the other idea I had. This one I hope is worth t ones and zeros it will cost. Generaly what draws couples together is t females physical atractivnes, and often w/ t male how well off he is. For a couple to couple based on mutualy held ideas, such as we have here, namely rationalism, is to my mind an incomparably better foundation to base one future relationship on than most others have. I imagine they will have a good life together.

155. A match made on RichardDawkins.net?

Comment #128163 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 11:36 am

Goodness, that was an embaresing wasre of verbage on my part, that I wish I could take back. I think I will skip t 2.

156. A match made on RichardDawkins.net?

Comment #128161 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 11:31 am

A couple more things come to mind. 1. He talked of love as tho it is a conceit. Decades ago, late adolesence, early adulthood iwas while not depresed seriosly, not as happy as I thought I could be some how I made a leap of faith that I would be happy and somehow it worked to a surprising extent. If that conceit worked for me to that extent,then how much more should t idea that going thru life w/ someone that loves you and that you can love also work.

157. A match made on RichardDawkins.net?

Comment #128151 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 11:15 am

cool.

158. Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks for protection

Comment #128145 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 10:48 am

To everyone in general, as i think this particular coment by me is largly a waste of everyones time and resorces and such i apolagize for it, honestly. To hugh Cadwell in particular,I thought that defendig that guys position was worth doing, so I geuse defending myself is also ok. In answert to your why donot you question, You donot know us, T wife and I, so i am a bit lost as to where you think you do enuf to be like that. Maybe I am being overly sensitive, but I donot see t gain of t sniping I see too often at this website. There realy is a rather long somewhat legitamate list of reasons that I am not, so for t sake of brevity let me give merely t one posibly best reason you may be familiar w/;Katrina

159. Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks for protection

Comment #128106 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 7:37 am

As I probably will not be donating any money, I donot have any extra, I donot know how toget it transmited, and varios other quite lame exuses, this might be unexecptably hypocritical of me to say, but I do feel It would be easyer to stand btwn her and harm, than to shoot someone else under most circumstanses. I realy do hope to get thru t rest of my life w/o having to kill anyone, and I donot think that is that odd of me.

160. Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered

Comment #128096 by babrock on February 16, 2008 at 6:41 am

I am mposibly T bigest Star Trek fan you are likely to meet. I think t idea of "boldly going" guided by t "prime directive" is a reasonably decent way to live ones life, much supirior to either of t three desert dogmas plaging us curently. They never did tho work out t problems involved w/ scientific problems of varios aspects, particularly t transporter. In an atempt to resolve t problem that we have been writing about some scipt writer came up w/ t Hiesenberg compensaters, basicaly an imposible problem solving devise. I need to pick me up a couple of those when i get t chance. T closest I know of any real solution is this idea involving holagrms and mirrors. T mirrors somehow transmit t info for copying w/o having to have t info digitized.

161. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #127952 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 7:38 pm

T wife and I were actualy looking to rent afor mentioned Aramaic snuff film to see what all t fuss was about, but they werenot carrying it. Some sort of eqeul opertunity thing involving T Last Temptation, which I rather liked,tho I couldnot see what all that fuss was about.

162. Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered

Comment #127942 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 7:16 pm

Transporters themselves I donot think would be all that imposible, simply changing mater to energy, keeping track of some info, then energy back to mater. that is about it for a lump of lead say, tho keeping track of t info needed to transport anything living would require an almost infinet amount of info, a bit beyond t capacity of any computer

163. Smaller Version of the Solar System Is Discovered

Comment #127939 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 7:08 pm

I am wondering why if this cosmic event that alowed this microlecing to take place hapened in March 06 and it lasted 10 days , why did it take till feb. 08 for Dennis Overbye to write this up. Also t title of t article is a bit missleading. It implies that more than just t two gas giants were found. I was exited about an earth like planet being found, but not this time. They are hard to find using that woble method as they cause such a tiny wobble, tho I think a few have been found.

164. US military accused of harboring fundamentalism

Comment #127814 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 4:15 pm

It is a rather small thing ,but my favorite part was when t fucktard oficer said to t nonfunamentalist that "I realy love you guys"and "want you to see t light." If that is t case I imagine that our friend would prefer to remain a distant aquaintenc not bothered by t others' idea of his own self improvement.

165. Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

Comment #127764 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 3:28 pm

On Anabana and your avatar:I alwas figured when I figure out how to do one ,I want one just like yours, t fact that i am a geezer pushing 50 is nomater, and whoever refered to you as nieve i think is confusing nievity w/ a lack of cynicism or a big desire to put anyone else down simply to raise ones own status. On t video, I know that in reality there is no way to enact this w/out being an realy big dick like on t level of Stalin, but it realy does frustrat me that that someone w/ that level of stupidity is alowed to breed.

166. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #127710 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Wait. I think I am getting it finaly. While I belive I was corect in stating that traits viewed as fit or succesful were not being propagated at an at all above average rate , I belive I was incorect in stating that we therefor could not be evolving. We are simply ,in 1st world cultures any way, evolving t other way; a little like deers w/ those overly big antlers, or maybe a little more like an odd dog breed evolving into some uselessly odd shape. We still do have t option of improving t specis artificialy, thru genetic manimulation or computer augments tho, and culturaly and such.

167. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #127225 by babrock on February 15, 2008 at 4:16 am

Thank you for putting it to me in such clear terms,honestly. I think T succesful individual would nowdays practice birth control more succesfuly. Succesful people nowdays have smaler families. so if anything I think it would be moving us in that direction.

168. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #127046 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 7:23 pm

For everyone tired of giving muslim oil tycoons more of our money, read ENERGY VICTORY. I was very exited when I heard t author talk of it. It sounded too good to be true actualy. I timed out twice trying to hype it here. So for short chech it out yourselves.

169. New meat-eating dinos identified

Comment #127041 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Almost all of t cool dinos lived in either t Jurasic or t Cretacous periods. I forget t name of t 1st period. Whatever it was called,T.riasic maybe, it mostly had only tiny unimpresive dinos. Few if any were any bigger than elephants

170. New meat-eating dinos identified

Comment #127036 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 6:09 pm

And even that one specis, t rex, was around for about entire lenght of t Cretacous period, about 1/3 t age of dinos.So that would be say 50 milion years compared to 4 milion.

171. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Madeline Bunting

Comment #127017 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 5:04 pm

I belive she hit t high piont in her argument when she said w/assuraty, acuracy and truthfulness when she said " I havenot realy worked this thing out" Nothing else she said rose anywhere near t level of that.

172. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #126971 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 3:21 pm

pt4..Put more bluntly myopic mentaly chalenged individuals are just as likely to procreat as any one else nowdays.

173. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #126965 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 3:11 pm

Pt3 That is what I am diagreeing w/ or not understanding ,one, t other, or both. He says that a homeless, less succesful person would be less likely to mate. I think that for every birth not achieved by t unsucceful individual,there is also a birth not achieved by t succesful individual,regardless of how long each of them lives or mantains themselves in breeding condition ,whatever. In t west, conditions that once would have signifigantly lessened ones ability to procreate are now merly insignifigant as we have succeeded in making life less of a struggle in those terms. So again, I still donot see it.

174. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #126957 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Damnit, I spent 25 minuts writing up pt2 and it got timed out. Here goes again.Like sent2null says,in t past and in 3rd world cultures individual posesing unfit traits "still have reduced ability to pass on their unfit genes." What I meant to make more clear was that I am adressing t situation of that in a western culture. T_ult_sam says that a smart succesful person would be expected to mate more readily and pass on those traits

175. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #126927 by babrock on February 14, 2008 at 2:06 pm

This is a rather late responce on my part (I apolagize for what ever life I might have away from this site that causes delays such as this), but I still donot see it. Not at all to say that I am sure I am right (Hell, the main piont of t artical was that basicaly I am wrong) Yes I see that it is a matter of degrees, and yes I see that evelution is a two part process; 1. The genitic drift or whatever that yes would increase w/ t increase in births and 2. T selection, natural or culteral or whatever.

176. Earliest bats did not 'see' with sound

Comment #126654 by babrock on February 13, 2008 at 7:12 pm

Donot creationists often cite t lack of any "missing links" as proof evolution isnot t way species come to be?

177. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126253 by babrock on February 12, 2008 at 7:53 pm

I simply want to add my name to the list of people who think flooding t media w/ cartoons like that is a good idea. It works on t "I am Sparticus" level, and it also should help to inure muslims to t idea, if for no other reason than that not taking offence so readily is part of life in western society. Also I want to add my thanxs to RD, along w/ that of bentleyd for being shown t thing for t 1st time as well.

178. Why multiculturalism must be abandoned

Comment #125959 by babrock on February 12, 2008 at 10:27 am

I didnot hear pat say anything like "love it or leave it" and if he had I think he meant it under t condition that if t muslims insist on being alowed a special and separat justic code , then under those circumstances, that they should leave. Part of me, at least, wants a planet/society wherein all foxy chichs that cross my path must make out w/ me at my bidding. T wife to begin w/ would not be to keen on that. If I started acting like I thought that I was owed that, I think I would have a problem and that banishment would be a relitivly benign form of punishment from a society that had to deal w/ my insitenc on such ridiculous expectations and behavior. And insisting on ones right to beat ones old lady if she displeases oneself is no less ridiculous than my preferenc. That, among a few other things are what i have to say in pat condels defence

179. Why multiculturalism must be abandoned

Comment #125950 by babrock on February 12, 2008 at 10:10 am

steve and oisha. thanx and point well taken. that was my initial responce, as i think my diferences w/ yall are relitivly minor and posibly simply due to semantic haisplitting. on t other hand, i think that while pat condel doesnot need defending , i think he deserves it, from me, for all t times he has made me laff or alternativly prompted a "right on" responce, so here follows

180. Why multiculturalism must be abandoned

Comment #125638 by babrock on February 11, 2008 at 6:36 pm

oisha and steve. what is it w/ t pat condel thing that yall heard and i missed that makes his take particularly diferent than this? they both thought this special case justice was a bad idea. i imagine we all do. this thing spells out some of t particulars that a true liberal society should have implimented instead of shaira justice, but i donot remember hearing of anything that i thik pat would object to. he simply didnot spell them out precicly or partcularly. hell, while this one i found right on instead of funny, he is a comedian obsencibly as i understand it. i often find him quit funny myself as think most of us do. anyway i donot see it as his place to spell out t particulars like that. on t other hand maybe i missed something.did i ?

181. Hitchens and Boteach Debate on God

Comment #125575 by babrock on February 11, 2008 at 3:56 pm

animavisual. Yeah I caught that word/letter thing as well.Tho as he was tripping over hiself as fast as he could pull his foot out of his mouth, it counted only as one of many rather than a screw up of any particular note for him.But yeah, that was pretty stupid.

182. Hitchens and Boteach Debate on God

Comment #125567 by babrock on February 11, 2008 at 3:46 pm

P. Jackson, I rather liked and thought scored what meager points there are to be scored by t fundementalists. This guy was iritatingly arogent and when he felt he was not succeding he apearently felt that merely repeating t premise again, tho more shrilly, counted as another salvo. He only looks at all good if compared to one of those muslims whining about being forced to kill those who disagree w/ them by t disagreement counting as blasphemy. I can understand that someone else may differ w/ me on this, but I think it is a waste of Hitches time to be shooting fish in a barrel like this.

183. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #125486 by babrock on February 11, 2008 at 12:41 pm

matt7895 and noodly; thax for responding to my earlyer question. I have been at work all day and so just got back to look it up. I just recently got this computer so going to t wikipedia doesnot occer to me and once I did I had a bit of trouble understanding what "intentional programing" is but otherwise that was perfect.thanx again.

184. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #125193 by babrock on February 11, 2008 at 3:55 am

I am going to risk looking realy dumb once again and ask, w/ no intentional disrespect, who is Charles Simonyi? T photo showed him in a space suit. Was he on t shuttle? If no, then why is he wearing t suit? And if yes , then how did an astronot come to have such inflluenc at Oxford?

185. 10 cc of atheism

Comment #124722 by babrock on February 10, 2008 at 6:04 am

That was a pretty cool clip. My wife says t show is pretty good too.

186. Christopher Hitchens Debates Timothy Jackson

Comment #124518 by babrock on February 9, 2008 at 4:52 pm

This is posibly my favorite debat I have ever seen Hitch do. Mostly because P Jackson, as opposed to Desousa and everyone else for that matter, did not engage in a lot of double talk adding up to no more than a staw man position., but instead put forth , to my mind, t best arguments for t oposition: That it is posible that people acted more moraly upright when they feared judment and that we might give ourselves too much of a pass on t Stalin and Pol Pot circumstances and mite be going too far in denying t positive influence christianity had on ML King and others. Hitch responded well and overall gave a much better acounting of our position than did Jackson but I thought he looked beter when he was in a debate w/ an actual oponent.

187. Battle of the Chambersburg billboards

Comment #124509 by babrock on February 9, 2008 at 4:30 pm

That he can say w/ belife that "In god we tust" does not and "Imagine no religon" "does reflect t values or morals of our company" shows how little respect or even acknowlegment of our existanc we get, let alone t total lack of rightousness in it.

188. The Passion of 'Anonymous'

Comment #124499 by babrock on February 9, 2008 at 4:20 pm

Also in responce to Doublebassatheists question aqbout its" basis in science. I always understood that they are big on this idea of practitioners becoming "clear"; an idea based on a purly psychological idea of clearing ones mind of stuff like bad habits and such, and as such based on science and not a bad sounding idea at that. T problem, I belive, is that they apparently have less knowlege of psycology than I do w/ my smatering of classes on t subject not to mention that also t proces is related to those thatans in t suspended animation in those volcanoes and a lot of other factors not ever mentioned in any of t psyc classes I took.

189. The Passion of 'Anonymous'

Comment #124490 by babrock on February 9, 2008 at 4:04 pm

On one hand, I'd like to feed all of them, exept my mom, to t lions. On t other I donot see why beliving any of that stupid crap should be at all illegal. As explained in "End of Faith", I think, t only big diferenc btwn scientoloy and mormanism on one hand and t older religions is just that. They are older, and t myths that t older ones are based on are far back enuf that they are harder to investigat and refut.

190. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124160 by babrock on February 8, 2008 at 2:19 pm

A true perpetual motion machine is imposible yes. What is posible tho is for a machine to tap into some virtualy inexaustible source; tidal, solar, or, like La Castro mentioned in com 7, t earths magnetic field. Concievibly something like t magnetic recharg procces mentioned could be develop and t resulting almost free energy would be incredibly fantastic. Concievibly anyway.

191. Dusty Clues: Study suggests no dearth of Earths

Comment #123189 by babrock on February 6, 2008 at 3:03 pm

Why do we think more planets increases the likelyhood of finding life. A lot of it I think is because life is probably so damn likely. Life is defined a bit more restrictivly than any self maintaining and replicating patern, otherwise it would include certain types of sand and crystals and fire and such. It does however include I think three types of extremophiles that have never seemed to me all that diferent from the self replicating crystals. All this being true, one coud expect life all around. In fact, quite likely even on one of the moons of one of the gas giants

192. The Repeater

Comment #123168 by babrock on February 6, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Aha, I think I have somewhat figured this out. I get tuncated whenever I use the ampersand sign . Why in the world would this happen? Anyway ...ants and termites are more closly related to bees and roaches respectivly. They both however have evolved to have life cycles and societal structures w/ queens, solders, workers, and drones, that very closly resemble one another because that strategy has worked for them.

193. The Repeater

Comment #123159 by babrock on February 6, 2008 at 2:19 pm

ants and termites

194. The New Atheist Movement

Comment #123155 by babrock on February 6, 2008 at 2:17 pm

... atheism and homosexuality disproved". This guy is almost beyond belife in so many ways and it was a true howler

195. The New Atheist Movement

Comment #123151 by babrock on February 6, 2008 at 2:12 pm

While yes this guy is an utter moron, he did make complete sentences w/ words pronounced properly. To expreience this same argument notched down just a couple pegs on t unreasonableness scale, check out on t same utube page t thing entitled "athiesm

196. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #122195 by babrock on February 4, 2008 at 10:37 pm

For instanc it said that in northen europe, blue eyes have become more comon. Maybe for up to about 200 years ago, but w/ all our advances in our quality of life, it is hard for me to see any brown eyed, unfair skined, disease prone, or even outright stupid people having any particularly less likly chance to pass on their genes just as readily. Also for instance, I have eyes so bad I am sure I would hae missed my share of food and predators.Nowadays none of this is much of a life or death problem, thank goodness. So where is the presure coming from for us to evolve from any particular unfitnes traits?

197. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #122191 by babrock on February 4, 2008 at 10:21 pm

I may be misunderstanding something big. I know I donot understand aleles. but I donot understand realy how Gould could be wrong and there being any acual evelutionary presure pushing in any particular diection nowadays w/ us having manipulating our environment such that much of anything counts as unfit for survival.

198. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121792 by babrock on February 4, 2008 at 7:12 am

I can only imigine that the 1/8 thing actualy means 1/8 smaller. some people otherwise quite smart can misuse math as atrociocly asi spell.

199. Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory

Comment #121481 by babrock on February 3, 2008 at 1:18 pm

damit once again 3/4 of my comment didnot make it. I have no idea what is going on w/ this.

200. Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory

Comment #121479 by babrock on February 3, 2008 at 1:15 pm

As I understand it;other than learning things like riding a bike, memory falls into 2 types, 1 short term, like phone#s that one retains for a few seconds