mistermack

This stuff is hardly news. Even the popes had white slaves. I remember being taught as a child that one of the popes was so impressed by the good looks of a new batch of British slaves, that he asked where they were from. When told that they were Angles, he remarked, "more like angels". I was taught that in a Catholic school lesson. ( so it might be rubbish )

I think it's mainly a form of social display by the various parties. The main enjoyment people get out of eating a ridiculously expensive meal it in telling people about it later. They will bore you stiff with the most pointless details of what elaborate effort went into the food that they put in their stomachs. It's very like going on a cruise. The main joy is in going on and on and on about it afterwards. People think it gives them status. Maybe it does in some circles. It makes people feel important, and of course, being waited on is all part of the massaging of the self-image.

Nicely put.

Thanks, I get that. I've got a mental picture of a magnet being like a short pipe in a fluid, with liquid circulating in at one end and out at the other, and the field being like the motion in the fluid around it. And gravity being like a pipe sucking fluid in, but with nothing coming out. The fluid motion around the first pipe will drop off quicker than the second.

Fossils in the wrong place? This has happened. I've seen them, in the Natural History Museum. But there is usually a story about how they got there. The same applies to any other apparent misplacement. As someone else said, in view of the billions of fossils that are in the RIGHT place, you have to assume that if you find one in the wrong place, it's probably been moved as the default position and look for evidence of that. If all of the evidence suggests that it HASN'T been moved, then what you have is a mystery. Not a refutation of evolution. It would take millions of them to begin to do that. You also have to be cautious of very clever fakers. It's been done with oil paintings and antiquities "worth" millions. So experts can be fooled.

Why does magnetic attraction reduce so quickly over distance, compared to gravity? ( I don't know the answer ).

If the bar rests on the shoulders, none of it's weight is transferred through the arm joint. You could theoretically take your hands off the bar. If you hold the bar off your shoulders, all of the weight is routed through the muscles and joint of the arms. In both cases, the same identical weight is routed down through the spinal column to the legs and feet. It's just routed differently at shoulder level.

From an engineering point of view, it would be pretty futile to try to calculate the effects, when there are so many variables such as wind and humidity and cloud cover and wave action etc etc. It sounds to me like a practical study would need to be done and statistics gathered.

How does matter and energy move at all, without time? And what does faster or slower mean? The clue is in the question.

You seem to be picturing a sudden jump, from a population with no jawbones, to a population with. It really doesn't happen like that. It's an incredibly slow process, with successful animals all along the way. I believe that jawbones in fish evolved from previous structures that were originally part of the first set of gills. And were originally of benefit in the most primitive form as a pumping mechanism, to enable the fish to pump water in and out of the gills while at rest. It might have been the benefit of not having to constantly swim that originally helped the feature to gradually develop. Later, it might have became a more efficient feeding mechanism. The genes or gene sets that you are talking about might have been proliferating for different reasons, before the recognisable jaw came into being.

Galveston Tommy, your five points show a complete misunderstanding of how evolution happens. You would be better off reading the many books on the subject, than trying to work out your own theories in a vacuum. Evolution doesn't happen at individual level, as you are picturing it. It happens at population level. And you keep saying "beneficial" as if it's a black and white subject. It's actually grey areas, and evolution doesn't need to produce clearly beneficial features. Things can be beneficial in one corner of an environment, and not so in another. Or they can become beneficial as a change in climate progresses. Or you can just get change due to drift, when a population is split for some reason. An example of that is the difference that's arisen between Bonobos and Chimpanzees, due to the populations becoming separated by the course of a river. They live in environments that are pretty identical, but they have drifted apart due to the lack of exchange of genes. Point number 5 in particular is way off the mark. You really need to read a bit about how the frequency of genes in a population come into it. I would get a copy of the selfish gene, if I were you. It's been out for forty years now, but it's still relevant.

Yes but do you THINK that science is on the right track? You seem to be dodging the question. I'm convinced that science is on the right track, and every new discovery so far, ( and it's millions ) has fitted in with the basic picture of evolution that is generally accepted. A Nobel prize undoubtedly awaits anyone who can show that the generally accepted picture is wrong. There's plenty of motivation out there for a new approach. All that's needed is evidence. Gaps in the current knowledge is just evidence of an incomplete picture, which everybody is fully aware of. Evidence of some other process would definitely make you a household name like Darwin.

Well, I think you are pointing out the obvious. Nobody is claiming that every step is known. I'm sure that no scientist would ever claim that for anything. Is there a point to pointing out the obvious? Are you worried that the scientists working in the field are on the wrong track? If so, what track do you think they should be on, and why? Just pointing to gaps in knowledge without reasons or purpose is a nudge nudge wink wink tactic. Spell it out, if you think people are wasting their time. And give your reasons.

Assuming you aren't imagining it all, it sounds like you need to do a fingertip search of your bedroom. The only likely gadget that I can imagine he is using is a remote control which would indicate something hidden in the house that he is switching on and off etc. I can't say I find any of it very likely, but that's what I'd look for, if it happened to me. You could also invest in an ultra-powerful torch, and light him up like a search light next time he tries it. Or hire someone who owns a big vicious dog to spend the night hiding, and then set the dog on him when he was in action. Not that that would be legal, but you could argue that the dog got loose.

This is a very common fallacy that's pushed by creationists. Pretending that the two possibilities are equal, when one is following all the evidence so far, and the other is basically a fairy story. If you follow tracks in the snow for fifty miles, and they are always pointing towards a cave in the foot of a distant mountain, and you follow them faithfully right up to the cave, and the tracks never diverge, always pointing towards the cave, and then they disappear, at the mouth of the cave, what do you suspect? You might conclude that whoever made the tracks walked out of the cave. Or you might conclude that a pink unicorn swooped down on huge wings, and dropped him there. Both are possible. But that doesn't make them equal theories. One is based on evidence, the other is away with the fairies. And that's where your faith puts you. The evidence for evolution is the equivalent of tracks in the snow, and it goes all the way back to the mouth of the cave.