PhDP

Evolution is a fact; we can see it happening. Evolution is also a scientific theory, hoping to understand this complex phenomenon. It's like gravity; it's both a fact and a scientific theory. The origin of humanity can be explained by the theory of evolution, it's the origin of life (abiogenesis) that is distinct.

True. In fact, pretty much everything from evolutionary biology has been used to fight AIDS (even phylogenetics).

But why do you say that? I gave you proofs of macroevolution, and you said you could not understand them. It's what I don't understand with creationists, how can you say you don't believe in evolution when you clearly don't understand it? If you don't understand something, if you're sceptical about something, ask a question, or read a good book about it. I think you, and many creationists, live under the illusion that there's this big debate going on in the scientific community about creation and evolution, it's simply not the case. Science is done by publishing articles in serious journals, creationists don't publish, they’re not making science. The only real problem is the amount of pseudoscience produced by creationists, and how it can confuse the public.

Well, yes... you think creationists are well informed about evolution ? I don't think so. Does it means they are idiots ? I don't think so. I do have a problem with that. They don't own their children, and all children have the right to get a good education.

lucaspa, It's probably because you're working in a science with little mathematics. In physics, mathematics and theoretical biology, many (if not most) articles are written in LaTeX (font; Computer modern). Even in biology, TeX files are generally accepted. I never saw a TeX document with Times New Roman.

I don't mean to make a personal attack, but it's absurd to be "skeptical" about evolution before even knowing what evolution is. I never said, and I don't believe, that all creationists were idiots. But they are not very well informed.

Don't be surprised, very few people in this discussion seem to care about the actual validity of the studies.

Survival of the luckiest To be fair, it was more wishful thinking than a real prediction. I'm not a physicist, but I read about string theory I tend to side with skeptics.

Perhaps, but it should have been done several years ago. Many economists are now thinking that we should get rid of both the 0.05$ and 0.10$ pieces. And we still have 0.01$ in circulations.

Lucaspa, I'm happy to see we're going to have a civil discussion It depends of what is discussed and the area of study. In truth, there's just so many ways to classify natural selection; Ecological selection vs. Sexual selection. I don't have the reference with me right now, but this classification must be included in Futuyma's "Evolutionary Biology". Hard vs Solf Selection ("Life History Evolution", Roff, 2002, Rice's excellent "Evolutionary Theory" also covers this); Hard selection = Density- and frequency-independent Soft selection - Density- and/or frequency-dependent Of course, we often see the oppositions; frequency-dependent vs frequency-independent and density-dependent vs density-independent selection. In molecular evolution, very often, natural selection is simply divided in two forms; positive/advantageous selection (pushing allele frequencies toward fixation) and negative/purifying selection (pushing allele frequencies toward extinction). Also, selection can be classified by units of selection; species selection, group selection, kin selection. It has been often said that group selection did not exist, it's not really true. T. Ryan Gregory wrote an interesting article about this (Macroevolution, hierarchy theory, and the C-value enigma, Paleobiology, 2004). He makes a clear distinction between the old "naive" theory of group selection and a modern perspective. There's just so many other names; genic selection, dominant selection, codominant selection. I'm not saying the classification you used was wrong, it's the standard definition used in most basic textbook on evolution and population genetics. But natural selection can be divided differently.

Men are slightly more likely to have very high or very low IQ, it's exactly what I (and Sisyphus) meant by "the standard deviation is higher for men". They also say the same thing in your article. But what you initially said was very different; There's a big distinction between "women can't be geniuses", which is not true, and "they are less likely to have either very high or very low IQ", which is true to a certain extent.

Indeed, they publish mostly (if not exclusively) short letters.

You mean, writing equations with LaTeX ? Or writing documents with LaTeX ? I learned to write documents with LaTeX by myself, I'm not an expert but I'm good enough to write articles with it, it's really much better than Microsoft Word. I use MiKTeX + TeXnicCenter.

What ? It's well established that both women and men have an average IQ around 100, but the standard deviation for men is slightly higher. It doesn't mean women can't be geniuses, or that men are either stupid or intelligent, it only means the distribution is a little more homogeneous for women. And still, the standard deviation is quite similar.

Chess or Go are really great games for children, especially chess, your child will have to learn to concentrate and focus his mind better if he wants to win. Through the Desert is also a very interesting perfect-information board games, it's similar to Go, but it's easier to master. Also, there's Hive, a board game with no board, and with insects (you can try it; http://www.hivemania.com/) ! I don't really like monopoly, too much luck involved. But some games, like Tigris & Euphrates or Ticket to Ride (original), have just enough randomness. In monopoly, it's often very hard to adapt to a series of bad luck, but most of the time in Ticket to Ride you can adapt and think of a new strategy to win. A truly great game, and everybody seems to like it.

Most psychological problems of this kind can be solved with a healthy lifestyle, breathing techniques + a cognitive-behavioral therapy.

It's not really about mathematics, but about mathematicians What bibliography style are you using in LaTeX ?

Thank you very much BigNose, I think I'll try the "Handbook"

It's not really a journal, and AFAIK, it has no peer-review system.

Yep, but our government should stop making 0.01$ (they cost more than 0.01$ to produce), and perhaps even 0.05$.

I don't know, I have not read his draft or anything about his work. And I use LaTeX even when there's no equations.

He does have a point, Presidents don't have to be experts at everything. But the real question is; can we trust a politician which is going to rely on the Bible, or ideology, instead of relying on experts? I’m sure some of the greatest leaders of the world were quite ignorant about many things, but I think they had to be able to listen to the right people at the right time to be great leaders. If Bush had listened to the experts on the Middle East, the U.S. would not be in Iraq. It has nothing to do with how much Bush know about the Middle East, but it has a lot to do with how much he listens, and care, about the opinion of experts..

My "fellow" Canadians don't have the time to be proud of their currency, they are panicking about exports.

The fitness landscape is never totally stable. For example, the concept was often used to predict the optimal age at maturity, which depends on many environmental factors, including mortality. When mortality is high, it's less advantageous for an animal to invest in growth so they tend to start reproducing earlier. Obviously, mortality is not stable so the optimal age at maturity is never exactly the same. It might, in part, explain some variation in the observed traits. There's always change. A mutation with little effect on fitness will randomly reach fixation or extinction by drift. Unless the effective population size is very large (which is rarely the case for animals), random drift will be stronger than selection even for slightly deleterious allele and some will reach fixation.

Lucaspa, If you're going, again, to misinterpret everything I say; don't bother replying, I'll do the same. I never said the GC content was imposing a direction, I was talking about mutational directionality and how the GC content was a key example. This explanation is 50 years old; it's hardly a new discovery and I used this example specifically because it's noncontroversial. If you had read his article before saying he should have "looked in the literature", you would have known. How ironic. Mutationist hypotheses; Emphasis on the mutational input Selectionist hypotheses; Emphasis on positive/balancing selection Neutralist hypotheses; Emphasis on drift I'm sure you can find longer and more accurate definition in most books on molecular evolution (books by Wen-Hsiung Li are generally very good). Obviously, all hypotheses are true in some circumstances; the question is; which one is more prevalent. Foodchain, I don't want to subtract natural selection; I want evolutionary biologists to have a realistic view of the impact of natural selection on evolution.