iNow

I, too, think that idea has merit. I argued briefly a similar point over here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=422261#post422261

I just came across this and was very impressed: http://scienceblogs.com/transcript/2008/09/pubget_the_next_step_in_the_ev.php Pubget - The next step in the evolution of academic search engines This website is order of magnitude better then Pubmed. I am totally converted! http://pubget.com/ And a YouTube video of same:

Well, thanks for clarifying. I would never have guessed that based on your previous response.

You're correct. She did not play that up in the interview, but did reference it. When that reference is coupled with the talking points from the McCain campaign and accompanying news organizations since the day she was announced as McCains pick for VP, however, she still fails badly on the international knowledge/experience issue since she can't seem to offer up anything other than that Alaska is near Russia response. If nothing else, if this were a 2nd grade quiz on maps, she'd get a gold star!

When do we start what, exactly? Solving the energy problems of our nation and planet with that tiny sliver, do you mean?

As most of you have probably heard by now, there is some broohaha about Governor Palin, presently the VP pick on the McCain presidential ticket, wanting to ban books. A good summary of the issue and how it's come about is available via the Boston Globe at the following: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?&articleid=1117009&format=&page=1&listingType=2008pres#articleFull Accroding to this recent CBS News piece, there is an interesting new angle to the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/11/politics/animal/main4439414.shtml Ross emphasized an angle I previously hadn't heard much about. Palin was elected mayor thanks in large part to the strong backing of her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, which, right around the time Palin took office, "began to focus on certain books available in local stores and in the town library, including one called 'Go Ask Alice,' and another one written by a local pastor, Howard Bess, called 'Pastor, I am Gay.'" Watch the video of that story below, share your thoughts and comments, and vote above.

Oh, stop nitpicking Edtharan.

Was that your way of saying that you are going to blatently ignore every single counter point which has already crushed your argument and that you are going to continue repeating the same inaccuracies anyway? Fascinating. Which part of religion is moral, again? Is it the part where you organize public stonings? What about killing a woman who is not a virgin, or raping a virgin first so it's no longer a sin for you to kill her? Was it the part where homosexuals were hunted and murdered? What about killing people who decide to leave your particular brand of voodoo and who have evolved mentally past the childishness? What about slaves? Not only is it okay to keep slaves, but it's okay to beat them as bloody as possible, so long as you don't hurt their eyes of course. I dunno. While those commandments sure sound nifty, at least 3 or 4 of them talk about what will happen to you if you worship other gods (geesh, how petty), and at least one talks about no murder. They're nothing if not internally inconsistent, so OF COURSE our morality is based on them. They are so very clear and logical.

There should be additional Nightline clips available soon, and also after tomorrow morning when an additional segment airs on Good Morning America. Now, you could tell she got hung up when the question strayed into things which she'd obviously not practiced. I wonder how well she would do in the white house when she has not been previously prepped by experts and media consultants for a full week before something happens on the planet requiring immediate action. EDIT: Here's the Nightline segment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2phSE7BGH8

I was reminded about how strongly I disagree with this selective medicine nonsense earlier this morning. A great post over at Respectful Insolence that's worth the read: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/09/when_religion_interferes_with_medical_ed.php When religion interferes with medical education

I can find common ground with you there, too. I didn't like that a bit, as any reasonably intelligent human being knows that McCain's bigger point was that we would stay as long as it takes. The true issue is the difference between the candidates on their definitions of "what it takes" and what we can reasonably accomplish and how. To the "100 Years" comment, though, that's one. When considered as an issue of scale, you must admit that it truly pales in comparison when viewed in context (such as at the video to which I've linked below).

She also totally backpeddled about the Iraq being a mission from god comments from her summer speech. Trying to move the goal posts and pretend she said something else, all the while saying the name Abraham Lincoln as many times as possible in the short span of time. Btw, bascule (two parts):

I think it was, "Can we please focus on the issues that Americans are facing right now instead of these ridiculous and vacuous distractions?"

<sigh> The point is that the theory itself is not rhetoric, but is instead a well formulated, well tested, and accurate description of reality, regardless of whatever dipstick religious or political movements have tried using it for their own ends. http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/evosphere.html?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3af12fd84e-253f-46cf-9408-ee579f9a3a0bPost%3af03a66ad-509f-4ba6-9bd6-2e73397573dc Exactly 150 years ago today, three papers appeared in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London that would start a revolution in the biological sciences. The papers had been read the previous month by the distinguished scientists Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker (a geologist and a botanist, respectively) and contained "the results of the investigations of two indefatigable naturalists". Earlier that year (June, 1858), their friend Charles Darwin had received a startling letter from a young naturalist called Alfred Russel Wallace, with whom he had been corresponding during the previous year. The letter, posted in February from the remote Moluccan Islands (now in eastern Indonesia), contained an essay titled "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type". In it Wallace began by ... <more at link>

Not true. The understanding is quite strong, it's just that computers are often not powerful enough to account for all of our knowledge and understanding. However, with new computers, the ability to add our knowledge of more variables into the system dynamics is growing. EDIT: I knew I'd find the article where I'd recently read about this. Enjoy. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112166&org=olpa&from=news "The limiting factor to more reliable climate predictions at higher resolution is not scientific ideas, but computational capacity to implement those ideas," said Jay Fein, NSF program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "This project is an important step forward in providing the most useful scientifically-based climate change information to society for adapting to climate change." Researchers once had assumed that climate can be predicted independently of weather, that is, with weather having no impact on climate prediction. Now they're finding that weather has a profound impact on climate, a result that's integral to the drive to improve weather and climate predictions and climate change projections. With this boost in computing capabilities, research team member Ben Kirtman, a meteorologist at RSMAS, has developed a novel weather and climate modeling strategy, or "interactive ensembles," designed to isolate the interactions between weather and climate. These interactive ensembles for weather and climate modeling are being applied to one of the nation's premier climate change models, NCAR's Community Climate System Model (CCSM), the current operational model used by NOAA's climate forecast system (CFS). The CCSM is also a community model used by hundreds of researchers, and is one of the climate models used in the Nobel Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. The research serves as a pilot program to prepare for the implementation of more intense computational systems, which currently remain a scientific and engineering challenge. "This marks the first time that we will have the computational resources available to address these scientific challenges in a comprehensive manner," said Kirtman. "The information from this project will serve as a cornerstone for petascale computing in our field, and help to advance the study of the interactions between weather and climate phenomena on a global scale." While this research focuses on climate science, he said, by-products of the work are applicable to similar modeling challenges in other science and engineering fields, particularly the geosciences.

Are you convinced?

http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/09/fannie_mae_and_freddie_mac_rej.html Why were Fannie and Freddie allowed to operate as private companies with implicit government backing? The history is that Fannie, created as a government agency (the Federal National Mortgage Association) in 1938, was privatized during LBJ's administration to get its debts off the federal government's books. Then Congress created Freddie (originally the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.) so Fannie wouldn't have a monopoly. So basically the motivation behind the creation of these strange public-private entities was an accounting subterfuge. Their debts weren't counted as government debt, but investors assumed that they were guaranteed by the government. In the 1970s Fannie and Freddie were both still reasonably small enterprises, so this wasn't that big a deal. But the collapse of the S&L industry in the 1980s left them the dominant force in the U.S. mortgage market. And until recently they (particularly Fannie) were able to wield their wealth and lobbying prowess to fend off all Congressional attempts to rein them in. From that same article: "Government support needs to be either explicit or non-existent," Paulson said today. Through the end of 2009, at least, it's going to be explicit. The FHFA has taken over the two companies as a conservator, and Treasury has entered into contracts in which it pledges to keep Fannie and Freddie solvent and they in turn give Treasury the right to acquire up to 79.9% of their common stock for a nominal fee. Treasury also committed to buy lots of the companies' mortgage-backed securities for the next couple of years, which should keep mortgage rates down. Both companies will be getting new CEOs (former Merrill Lyncher and TIAA-CREFer Herb Allison at Fannie and former U.S. Bancorper David Moffett at Freddie) and are suspending all dividend payments, but their common and preferred stock will continue to trade. And yet, just two months ago: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11751139 The authorities are keen to avoid nationalisation, which would bring the whole of Fannie’s and Freddie’s debt onto the federal government’s balance sheet. In terms of book-keeping this would almost double the public debt, but that is rather misleading. It would hardly be like issuing $5.2 trillion of new Treasury bonds, because Fannie’s and Freddie’s debt is backed by real assets. Nevertheless, the fear that the taxpayer may have to absorb the GSEs’ debt pushed Treasury bond yields higher. That suggests yet another irony; the debt of the GSEs has been trading as if it were guaranteed by the American government, but the debt of the government was not trading as if Uncle Sam had guaranteed that of the GSEs. If Congress approves this package, the Fed will have more authority over the agencies. But that will give the central bank another headache. If an institution is struggling, the normal answer is to shrink its activities and wind it down slowly. But that is the last thing that the housing market needs right now.

ignore it

Yawn.

Who's bluffing? They are NO different than the bigfoot ones. Sorry to that the truth is hard to accept for you, but it's still the truth.

That sounds like two wrongs make a right reasoning.

Ah. More content free a vacuuous nonsense from the Republican side. Here's a response more people should appreciate: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/09/lipstick_on_a_pig.php (specifically, I'm talking about the short video clip)

Yeah. Just look at politics and our election of the highest office in the land.

I could share some links and videos about leprechauns if you'd like.