1. Reviews of Expelled

Comment #158329 by scrub on April 10, 2008 at 10:54 am

After following the scientific american link, I was browsing their weekly science show and they have a great post-expelled-screening interview with associate producer Mark Mathis that's absolutely humiliating:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-conversation-with-mark-mathis

Deserving of it's own thread imho.

2. The Secular Conscience

Comment #147820 by scrub on March 21, 2008 at 11:06 am

To play devil's advocate,
Here is an interesting talk from Beyond Belief that really caught me off-guard. Jon Haidt presents a scientific basis for short-comings in the net effectiveness of "enlightened" liberal/secular/scientific morality:

http://thesciencenetwork.org/BeyondBelief2/watch/haidt.php

Is this "white noise" too??

3. Defying Gravity in Science Class

Comment #129866 by scrub on February 19, 2008 at 5:21 pm

UCB was a great show. Cancelled many years ago but I still have a handful of episodes on my hard drive. Try to find the "ass pennies" skit.

4. Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Comment #129859 by scrub on February 19, 2008 at 5:06 pm

As for those who say a brain is so different from a computer that this could never be possible, Ray's answer would be that brain scanning technology will eventually have such high resolution that we can "reverse engineer" the brain.

If you want a more detailed explanation without reading Kurzweil's entire book, try googling "The Law of Accelerating Returns"

There is also SIAI which is an organization that is expecting and preparing for the singularity. I'm not entirely convinced but its a fascinating topic none the less.

One author called the singularity "the rapture for nerds." That had me rolling.

5. Critical Analysis of Case for a Creator

Comment #72569 by scrub on September 21, 2007 at 5:39 pm

I was a bit disturbed at the commentator's repeated assertion that the universe is infinite.

6. Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years

Comment #64760 by scrub on August 21, 2007 at 5:12 pm

Long time reader, first time poster.
I don't think the creation of self-replicating wetlife adds too much to either side of the abiogenesis debate...ID proponents will argue that intelligence was used and that's obviously "cheating" when it comes to disproving ID. And as already stated, disproving ID is not the an intended goal of this research.

I'm more interested in how different this life might be, especially if the 8 "new" bases (tripling the current number) are added to the mix. Could that give rise to faster developement of genome complexity....SUPER-LIFE? How will the scientists "let evolution do the rest" to create useful (or even naturally viable) organisms without having to wait a few million years for evolution to take it's course? Manipulating their environmetns can only do so much...right? And why not just take existing single-cellular organisms and manipulate their evolution to do these tasks such as atmospheric carbon reduction or toxic waste comsumption?

I'm no biologist, so hopefully someone here can speculate on these questions even though the article says the effects are "impossible to predict"