I haf bad news. Ze vorld armadillo market has collapsed because of ze idiotic sub-prime loans debacle. I haf had to sell all mein beasts und also ze ranch. Zis is ein disaster!
Vorse still, I haf had to leave Argentina. Luckily, I haf managed to find ein house in ze United States vich vos kvite cheap - also due to ze sub-prime fiasco. I moved in last night, und am now - how do you say? - getting mein feet unter ze table.
It is eij pretty town in Platte County, Wyoming called Chugwater. Nozzink fancy, but ze neighbors are very nice. Mrs Pumpernickel ze gas pump lady seems to haf taken ein shine to me, und has already baked me ein enormous apple strudel vich she shtuffed into ze mailbox zis morning vith ein note vich read "Welcome to Chugwater - best little town in America".
Zis is good to know. It seems I haf shtruck it lucky. Of all ze towns in America, I haf found ze best von!
I am sure I vill fit in vell here, und ze strudel vos most acceptable. Also, Mrs Pumpernickel is kvite ein comely vench, und cannot be ein day over 75. She tells me zat 250 people live here, so it is kvite kviet, apart from ze coyotes vich howl und yelp all night und ein Indian called Billy Frontal Lobotomy, who drinks ze firewater und suffers from ze mammoth flatulence.
Zere is much excitement in ze town just now because of ze elections. Mrs Pumpernickel says all zepeople in Chugwater are Republicans, vich I vould haf thought vould make for boring political conversation, but I am assured zere is dissent about who vill make ze best President. I vill of course keep Glumberters posted on ze campaign from ze Chugwater perspective.
Zis afternoon I vos nearly killed! Both ze local youths - Bob und Bobby - drive zere huge cars up and down ze main street (ze only street) all day as fast as zey can, und I came vithin an ich of being mown down. Bob, ze intelligent von, has decided I should be used as ein target, und tells me zat I should be honoured to haf been chosen for zis purpose. Bobby, ze less intelligent von, is ein mute und communicates by punching.
I sink I am going to like it here!
Hey adolf, there is an anniversary coming up tomorrow (Jan 30th): 75 years ago Reichspresident von Hindenburg thought it would be a good idea to bestow a certain Adolf Hitler with the job of Reichschancellor.
I haf no knowledge of zis man of whom you speak. I vos ein humble armadillo farmer who left his native soil in 1945 for economic reasons. I vos never ein Nazi!!!!
It has been a while, sorry for my absence but it was chrunch time to prepare for my wedding. It is done now it was on saturday and it was awesome, beautiful and we are so happy.
Ranger....marriage is the noblest estate...and the most rewarding...and the most challenging.
Congratulations! Two independent people sharing a common life successfully...that's the challenge. Love does, after all, conquer all. My best to you and your wife. How remarkable love is, eh?
Dis dude musta bin in an earlia video about dem drunk spiders. I dunno anyting bout no 'racknids, but da video be named "Effects of Drugs and Alcohol on Spider Webs". Dem scienticians had dem skeeders all fugged up. Tru dat! Doin dat 8-ball, beeatch. Getcha every tyme.
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
I think we (as well as all ratoinal-thinking persons) have already established and seen, that Huck is just a hick. A RELIGIOUS ZEALOT hick, to be precise.
What I can't figure out is this:
If guys like this (and there are quite a few like him) are so hung-up on having a religious-based leader, who is guided by his own pious beliefs in the governance of his office.....
Then why the fuck don't he (and the rest of his ilk) simply move to a country where they DO have a theocratic leader? Or an ayatollah? Or an Imam? Or better yet....just get the fuck out, and found his OWN backwards, religious-dominated nation?
Seems to me that this kind of stupidity should have NO place/bearing on being the President of the United States, or executing the duties therein, of said position.
hi c i think supreme court justice Sandra Day O'Connor said it best. when being pestered by some fundamentalist crazies she stated"why should we change a form of government that has worked so well for one that never has"
oh dear holy huckabee. But you have to admit, he WOULD be the ideal candidate for the democrats to beat in 08. With McCain neither Hillary nor Obama stand a chance. Thats a statement I'll carry to the bank.
Sandra Day Oconner is awesome. Such a wonderful quote, chuck.
I have just looked at a youtube video of the Republican candidates debate. Huckabee was asked a straight question about his view on creationism. He gave what he thought was a reply, although, despite sounding honest and committed, he failed to answer the question. The interviewer failed to ask the appropriate supplementary question, and things moved on.
However, the astonishing thing is that, of more than 1200 comments on the video, not one criticised Huckabee's obviously insane views. Indeed, without exception, all the respondents believed he woould make a fine president.
I wonder - is youtube now an organ of the lunatic right, and is it spiking any anti-Huckabee posts? Or - more worryingly - are all potential Republican voters really intellectually vacant?
Seriously - go and look at the thread. It's incredible. Scary, mind boggling and incredible.
What the fuck has been the point of educating a nation over the last 200 years if they still cannot see past this flawed view of the world?
What does his creationist viewpoint have to do with being President?
(This is a Constitutional question as to what a President can do.)
By the way, belief in strict Darwinian evolution is a minority viewpoint.
And again, there is a fake fear out there about leaders who are religious. (It is a fake fear in that this argument is couched in language of theocracy, as if the President can enact religious dictums at hs whim.) Canuck, in his learned wisdom, seems to believe that our gubment was founded, in part, upon the idea that religious people are to kept out of the presidency.
What gives?
hey stream, I don't want the pres asking god for directions, I'll also take evalotion over the so-call creatsceince bullshite. The rocks in my collection are over 2 bill yrs, so fuck the god shit.
Great, Canuck...would you like to cite something to back up your assertion? (Try to use something in AMerican history. You could redeem yourself here by NOT making somethong up.)
Gym-lots of hostility. Ouch.
Please consult Hitler and Stalin for further examples of your philosophy.
By the way...how do you know the rocks are 2 bill. years old?
About a GAZILLION times. And there will NOT be a GAZILLION AND ONE. If YOU don't know your own countrys history, then you certainly don't need me to educate you about it. Not only are you a disloyal, treasonous American towards the country that your Founding Fathers intended....but you carry on, and purposefully pervert and corrupt it even further (through sheer, blind stupidity and ignorance, if nothing else).
But like the tone-deaf kid in the back row in the orchestra pit, you just either will not, or cannot, get the tune. Which is EXACTLY why it is PERTINENT and a GOOD thing, that you (and those like you) ARE in the MINORITY.
Now go away.
And try reading a book or something (besides your bible, I mean).
Actually Bug, I think he'd have a goddamn heart attack if he realized just how little I reference the Internet, either now or over the span of the last ten years or so (maybe even longer).
Something tells me it's been a long damn time since he's been in a "library", and actually doing some old fashioned research, in the QUIET section.
canuck...You ONLY cite what you find on the internet.
If you spoke with half the authority you believed you had you would admonish me to read the Bible AND other books.
I suggest you do both. You have spoken with certainty about what Christians believe and then admit you won't give religion the time of day as it is stupid. (Some time in the Bible would help you understand why Christianity is embraced by millions and millions of people. Another area where your bigotry knows no bounds.)
You have spoken with certainty about US history and its Constitution and have been shown to wrong all along the way. Just take an afternoon and read the Constitution, some Federalist papers, Thomas Jeffersons and James Madison's letters...really, there is a lot of information out there that you willingly ignore to maintain a tenuous grip on the things you believe.
But, if you did these things, you would no longer be the Canuck of legend.
There we go, the master of non-discussion has spoken.
If you want to read a good book try John Brunner: "The Sheep Look Up"
That old bible you constantly talk about is a clobbered together collection of incongruent stories which has a couple varying translations, none of them really exact as translating from ancient Hebrew and Greek to a modern language does not work that well. Not to talk about the non-canonial parts that are omitted from most modern versions. "Word of God", my ass, it is not even the word of the original writers any more.
Thanks, Bug
You are as uninformed and willingly ignorant as I have ever seen you.
Rare form these days.
You have just dismissed the most studied book in all of mankind.
Have you ever read this cobbled together book? Which parts are not like the originals? Where are the originals? How do you arrive at that educated conclusion?
Where are the originals is a good question. With 2000 years since the messiah incident and a few 1000 years more for the old testament it is a good question what is original and what was changed to make things more interesting or more adjusted to the overall message.
There are three religions which each have a version and there are a couple translations into the major languages. So which ones are you refering to?
Great, another one of your tactics: "Answer my question!"
I did that except for the part wether I did read the one book you are basing your life on: Yes, I did read much of it and it was a great waste of time. Though I am not sure if you are refering to the same version. Translation form the ancient languages is not a very exact thing since concepts and meanings have shifted.
Since you just read a book on verifying originality you will likely be aware of the concept of correlating information sources. If the bible is the ultimate truth of the world, then why did the Romans not have any records of Jesus?
Many congratulations to you Herr Ranger!
Mein mutter used to say: "Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener."
Do not believe zis! Many happy years to you both.
Spiderman did a good job except the last little bitty where he lost all sense of direction. "World's worst" is far from a good title. I could do way WAY worse than that. Someone should have told the goof that's screaming.... the camcorder microphone doesn't like the clipping abuse it's put through. .... none-the-less .... silly.
Consider the Book of the Lord
And all that is written therein.
Heed not the man who speaketh lies
And gainsays the Word of God.
The beasts of the field, the birds of the air,
They have their place, but surely, Man
Alone is God's true creation.
fucking bastards
John ran a good campaign and vowed to stay in it all the way to the convention, but apparently that’s not going to happen. John’s populist message scared the shit out of the wealthy elite and the corporate media, which ultimately hurt his coverage. I wish him and his family all the best (like he'll ever see me write that.....but oh well).
I've met the man John Edwards, I ran his campaign at my uni way back in 2004. I liked him because he was the only real progressive out there.
I didn't get involved this time around because I'm too busy being a grad student and I didn't want to be in the middle of mud-slinging.
Edwards gave it a hell of a ride, and I pray to God either Obama or Hillary (whichever idiot that wins) will be an anti-poverty spokesperson. Highly doubtful, though.
Stream - I really don't want to get involved in an argument here, but what exactly do you mean by "strict" Darwinian evolution? And if you are right - which I doubt - that those who believe in it are in a minority, so what?
Most people believed at one time that the world was flat. Maybe you still do?
The point is - whether or not you are right, the thought of someone like Huckabee (quite a nice chap I'm sure apart from his insane religious leanings) holding the reins of power is truly terrifying to most of us who are allowd sharp pencils.
Thanks Arse
Strict DE would be something like this: that matter came from nothing...that said inanimate matter gave life...that life, by diminishment of information, evolved into what we see now.
(The idea that the flat earth adherents and that they held scientific sway is pure mythology.)
The minority comment held three purposes: One, you exposed very well...the illogical position that majority opinions mean much beyond that. (I know Canuck is reading here.) Two...that there is an elitist group(including those who want to be in that group) who thinks the common man incapable of taking care of himself as he is uneducated. Since Huck holds a non-elitist belief, this disqualifies him from leadership since he must be uneducated. Three...It scares many of said elitists that their beliefs are not readily accepted by the rabble. ("why can't they see how much smarter we are than they and that we know what is best for them?!"
Why would it scare you, other than NOT having the slightest clue what the President can do with his authority? to wit: what could a Mike Huckabee do with his authority that another President couldn't?
arse, this is what you get out of Streamy: He just tells you that you are wrong because he can not grasp scientific concepts. Then he fails to deliver any useful arguments and rambles on about something else.
Bug--you are scaring me. One, because you are following me around. Are you former Stasi?Two, you are really having a hard time reading. Since you addressed, Arse, you must have read his post and the questions that he asked me. Then, you clearly read my post where I specifically addressed his questions. Then, keeping to true form, claimed something that a first-grader could check and show to be false. (That I said he was wrong and then went off on a separate subject.)
In your efforts to snuggle up to Canuck and fit in, you are making a fool of yourself. Just like most of your posts, you don't support what you claim.
I am just exposing your tactics. Since facts are not able to reach you it is rather pointless to try to argue with you, so I rather expose you as the clueless holy roller you are.
Have you ever considered a career as an insurance or used car sales man?
Vot a night I haf had! Ze coyotes vere in full song, und Jimmy Frontal Lobotomy visited me in ze early hours to show me his rain dance. It vos kvite interesting, but I draw ze line at him urinating on mein porch to prove zat his magic vorks. I vill haf to speak to Sheriff Kongeriel about zis behaviour.
Mein neighbor Mrs Pumpernickel has made some bagels for me! I am beginning to suspect she is after mein body - it cannot be mein money, as I am, how do you say, viped out following ze vorld armadillo crash. Most flatterink!
I am reading ze argument above about Man und Monkeys. I know nozzink of zis matter, but Mrs Pumpernickel has strong views. She told me she has only ever seen von monkey in ein zoo in Albequerque in 1958.
"Lawks a mercy Mister Vanker!" she said. "We cain't be related to them! Only person I ever seen lookin' like that was my Uncle Cody. Kids used to run away when he went on the street. Mark my words, we're made as we are by the good Lord, and no mistake."
Apparently, all ze ladies of Chugwater agree vith Mrs Pumpernickel. Zey are even making ein kvilt vich has ze face of Herr Huckabee on it vith ein halo on his head.
"He's the only one talkin' any sense Adolf," she said. "All the rest's godless varmints, 'cept Romney, and he cain't suck peas from a gopher's ass."
Vot this means I do not know, but I am beginning to understand American politics.
Well Stream.
Eloquently put. But I never suggested Huckabee was uneducated. Neither are the Imams, or Mao, or any number of leaders. It's what they do with the education that matters.
I just can't take a man seriously if at the core of his being is a belief that the world was created 6,000 years ago. Of course Darwinian theory has flaws - Darwin himself never claimed it was more than a theory. But surely you must agree that research since the 19th century has all but blown creationism out of the water?
Many committed Christians can reconcile their faith with evolution. I suppose we'll have to agree to differ. I'll butt out now and leave you and Canuck to slug it out!
Thanks Arse
I didn't say you did. I said the elitists do.
You said he had insane religious beliefs, assuming you meant his evolutionary ones.
I suggest you look into the evolutionary debate over the last 100 years. As a former evolutionist, I believe the research has ruled out Natural Selection as the means of evolution and Darwin's Theory belongs with the flat-earth theories. Since we have no testable proofs of the past, no one knows how old, etc the earth or the universe is. The information out there is, at best, contradictory from a number of scientific fields.
Many do reconcile their beliefs with evolution, on a number of grounds. None of them biblical.
Canuck..."UNCLE UNCLE...I GIVE-I GIVE...YOU'RE POWERFUL ARGUMENTS...YOUR UNASSAILABLE REASONING...YOUR VISEGRIP ON LOGIC...YOUR COMMAND OF THE LANGUAGE and YOUR INTEGRITY HAS VANQUISHED ME!"
Just because cosmology does not have exact numbers does not mean there is anything that supports the option of a 6000 year old earth.
If anything is in the flat earth category it is creationism and other such bullshit.
The basic problem with you is "belief", since you fail to understand science sufficiently your only option is to believe in something, rather than being able to actually understand working principles of nature. The first step to understand anything would be a sufficent grasp of mathematics, statistics, and large orders of magnitude.
Bug-
You are right about cosmology...only you left a convenient fact or two: Some of cosmology's assumtions are contradicted by actual research.
Contradicted. Not, off by a little or close enough...contradicted. Models are just that, they are not fact.
The earth is full of research and evidence of processes that support a much younger earth than 4 Billion years. I was specifically talking about Darwinian Evolution earlier. Many of these arguments are separate. Again, please read.
You fail to understand Christianity and the Bible, bug. You claim they are wrong on the same grounds.
The zealot thinks you are "psychotic" because you think a book of ghost stories written a couple of thousand years ago might be....well.....just that: ghost stories.
Yes, reading and some medicine may be the solution. You should really try this.
And a bottle of alcohol a day (or whatever stuff you take) plus the stuff your creationist bunch of crackheads write result in what you are suffering: Loss of reality.
We established earlier on that contrary to you I am able to read and understand scientific papers. There are many details in cosmology for which no final concept has been found (yet), but nothing supports a Mikey Mouse version like "god created the world in six days and rested on the seventh".
The problem with you and people like you is that you do not think for yourself, or if you try you lack sufficient intelligence or basic skills to come to useful conclusions. There is no proveable evidence for the world being significantly younger than 4 billion years, just idiots who do not understand basic principles and deliberate fakes.
How does C14 dating work? What about the theory of general relativity? Maybe sepcial relativity, that one is easier? What is the Hubble constant?
I noticed you did not mention Dr. Hartnett in a while?!?
Uh oh, Bug.
We are getting back to an area where you know what is current, but miss the big picture.
a. Carbon dating works on a series of assumptions that we don't know are true or not. Original conditions and concentrations.(eg. it's limits are only about 50,000 years in terms of probable dating...not millions or more. In fact, if something is carbon dated then it is certainly NOT millions of years old.) Further, plants discriminate against C14 and therefore test older than they are. Also, atmospheric ratios of C14/C12 have not been constant. (The industrial revolution and atomic bomb testing has skewed testing.)
b. What about it?
c. What about it?
Haven't mentioned Hartnett as there has not been a need.
You keep arguing with me over Hartnett. You need to argue with him. You see, my problems with Big Bang and its deriviatives, are not with you. You are in an indefensible position when Big Bang principles cannot account for the formation or ages of stars...as some of their theories directly contradict actual (not theoretical) observations.
Stream, thank you for demonstrating that you don't have the foggiest about how carbon dating works. It is not applicable for short term dating and it gets a better error margin the older the probe is since that averages transients. Nuclear testing has no effect on carbon dating today, if at all it will have an effect if someone in many thousand years tries to date stuff from the 20th century.
And really interesting that you know a mechanism by which plants can distinguish isotopes. Does the nuclear industry know about this? All the fuzz about the centrifuges to enrich uranium could be solved with a few plant pots.
My questions were intended to again establish that you don't understand scientific concepts and are as much capable of having a valid opinion as a cow is capable of reciting poems.
Another important thing to remember: If you don't understand something you are in no position to decide if it is right or wrong.
Bug...You are simply WRONG about carbon dating. The information is all over the place. (I may have stumbled upon another illiteracy moment here.) Plant discriminate against carbon containing C14. (This is not contraversial- learned it in college when studying test biases.) Your statement about accuracy is also false, in a very, very big way. C14 dating is based on measuring half-life concentrations...so, the less an amount, the older the specimen (all things being equal) So, half of an amount of C14 will decay to N14 in approx. 5700 years. (Thus, if the amount of 14C relative to 12C in a sample is one-quarter of that in living organisms at present, then it has a theoretical age of 11,460 years. Anything over about 50,000 years old, should theoretically have no detectable 14C left. That is why radiocarbon dating cannot give millions of years.)
Radiation from nuclear testing and cosmic rays causes the conversion of N14 to C14...again, learned in undergrad. Please feel free to look it up.
The Hubble constant: Glad you brought it up. There has been some dispute as to how fast the universe is expanding, due in part to the use of the Hubble constant. BECAUSE of the discrepancies, the universe is suggested to be 10-14 Billion years old while globular clusters are tested to be older than that. That is what we call contradictory research. Which is all I claimed...flawed for Big Bang, yes...fatally, no.
There's one claim, there are others.
Please take your own advice.
I suggest reading what scientists who dissent have to say. What you think is solid fact, is not, BECAUSE since it is science it is left to testability and therefore, to falsifiable scrutiny. Be prepared to change what you believe based on new research (that should acknowledge its own limits). I do not make my claims of God's Creation based on science, since that is a fallible pursuit. Of all the things you should understand, that should be at the top.
Ah, so you can carbondate things up to about 50,000 years old on a planet that according to you has been created 6000 years ago?
Plants do not discriminate C14, C14 is slightly less reactant than C13 or C12 because it is heavier.
Regarding the Hubble constant: Edwin Hubble himself came to an age of 2 billion years for the universe, the figure has been moving up since then. Today the best estimate is that many numbers in cosmology do have an error margin of about 50%. Though the error may be in either the current value for the Hubble constant or the age of the clusters. At least in one case it was found that the age result was flawed since the object measured was really light from a quasar modified by a gravity lense.
So if you don't base your concept of creation on rational arguments you will admit that it is pure fantasy and in conflict with the real world?
Bug...just because you say it, doesn't make it so.
Your belief about plants and C14 is wrong. But, hey, that's just my opinion and my non-Creationist's textbook.
There are logical rationale's behind carbon-dating's limits. Thank you for agreeing that they extend only to 50K years. I did not say I beleived in the 50K number as absolute, only that because of it's limit, that prevents it being used as a reliable test beyond that limit. So, anytime something is C14 dated to millions of years, it is immediately false.
Margin of error of 50%. Do your beliefs about the Universe have that margin? They must if you accept their claims.
I showed you a contradiction...what's the problem? You agree, to some extent. I know that research presents contradictory evidence all the time and over time. You just don't like it because a Creationist points it out to you. Doesn't make it any less true.
Stream, I don't have a problem with measurements having an error margin, that is something you always have to live with. It does not mean that the underlying mechanisms are wrong, it just means that current technology is not able to do any better for getting the exact figures.
But even an error margin of 50% does not give your Genesis any credibility, you are off by several orders of magnitude, not just by half.
And by the way: I do like it if there are discrepancies, since that means the involved scientists will try harder to find an answer just like in the QSO 0957 case.
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