1. 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'

Comment #178480 by Buddha on May 11, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Abdel-Qader Ali, you are an oxygen thief and a scumbag.

2. Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear

Comment #172438 by Buddha on April 29, 2008 at 2:57 pm

This story is utter twaddle. I wasn't fishing, I was actually trying to retrieve my car keys!

3. Tyrannosaurus rex protein proves dinosaurs evolved into birds

Comment #169953 by Buddha on April 27, 2008 at 5:46 am

@rod-the-farmer:

A definition of taxa (singular: taxon) is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxon. Essentially, it's a name that describes an organism, or group of organisms.

Raja is a genus of Skates: http://www.first-nature.com/fishes/raja_batis.htm

Cladograms such as this are constructed by defining various characteristics of each organism (number of teeth, length of tibia, volume of skull etc.) and then building the relationship between those organisms by minimising the number of character differences between each one i.e. closely related organisms have fewer character differences than distantly related ones. This is the Principle of Parsimony.

Often, with large cladograms there may be many arrangements of the tree structure that can give equally parsimonious results. When this happens an average "consensus tree" will be constructed that includes the features of those equally parsimonious trees that are in agreement. This is where the "bootstrap" confidence values are calculated.

You can try this for yourself at home by downloading the PHYLIP software package (http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip.html) and using the PARS module to process your own character matrices and generating your own cladograms. A good project would be to analyse the evolutionary relationship between your household pets and the wife - just make sure you use the goldfish as the outgroup ;-)

EDIT: For an excellent primer to evolutionary relationships that also covers taxonomy and cladistics for the layman, I can't recommend RD's "The Ancestors Tale" highly enough.

4. Tyrannosaurus rex protein proves dinosaurs evolved into birds

Comment #169440 by Buddha on April 26, 2008 at 5:16 am

@rod-the-farmer

I agree, truly neat stuff. However, I went to the cladogram mentioned in Comment #9, by Angels on a Pinhead, to see if I could understand the science a bit more. Nope. I must be dumb, but so are several of the people posting there as well. Is there anyone watching this site who could explain that cladogram to us non-techie types ?

5. Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study

Comment #159378 by Buddha on April 12, 2008 at 3:52 am

Comment #159010 by headcold on April 11, 2008 at 10:37 am

Using hallucinogenic drugs coincides directly with my final break from religion and associated metaphysically supported stuffs. After realizing that while tripping on mushrooms or DXM I went through a variety of emotional states, from great fear to extreme joy and "genuine" religious experiences, I finally started to understand that maybe I was just stimulating a part of my brain that made me hallucinate into thinking that there was something divine in the world.

6. Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study

Comment #158898 by Buddha on April 11, 2008 at 6:42 am

I too abused amphetamine at college. Unfortunately, rather than hitting the books and revising, it just gave me the urge to drink obnoxious quantities of lager and jump about to very loud techno.

7. Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin Way Beyond

Comment #155929 by Buddha on April 6, 2008 at 10:37 am

@Steve Zara -I doubt it. Genes are what are what replicate and are passed on. Genes can have effects at those levels, but they are still primarily where changes start.

8. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155925 by Buddha on April 6, 2008 at 10:29 am

I hope the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't cotton on to the fact that RD is married to a regenerative transmuting Time-Lord. Technically, that would be bigamy.

On a tangent I found this alternate profile of the Prof.: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

9. In His Name We Pray, Ramen

Comment #152195 by Buddha on March 30, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Bah! Pastafarianism is an upstart, baby religion. We Discordians have been singing praise to Her Wot Done It All since the 70's.

Hows -that- for credibility?

Hail Eris

10. No Admission for Evolutionary Biologist at Creationist Film

Comment #148099 by Buddha on March 22, 2008 at 4:04 am

Dr. Dawkins, who like everyone was asked to present identification, said he offered his British passport, which lists him as Clinton Richard Dawkins.

11. In Britain, creationist theory is evolving

Comment #144639 by Buddha on March 16, 2008 at 1:51 pm

I just had brief visit to the Answers in Genesis website and the first thing I clapped my eyes on was this foul piece of bare faced dishonesty:

If dinosaurs evolved from amphibians, there should be, for example, fossil evidence of animals that are part dinosaur and part something else. However, there is no proof of this anywhere. In fact, if you go into any museum you will see fossils of dinosaurs that are 100% dinosaur, not something in between. There are no 25%, 50%, 75%, or even 99% dinosaursâ€"they are all 100% dinosaur!

12. Contribute to science directly by volunteering some of your computer's processing power!

Comment #140345 by Buddha on March 7, 2008 at 7:08 am

I've been a BOINC member for about a year now running both SETI@Home and ClimatePrediction. I would advise anyone with modest hardware avoid ClimatePrediction as it requires serious number crunching otherwise you may not meet the submission deadlines for the work units. My 1.6GHz Duo Core 2GB RAM laptop has been chugging away for 6 months and is only 25% through it's model run that needs to be finished by July. My other PC that I use for gaming eats through SETI@Home work units in about 3 hours.

My experience of BOINC is that it is very stable and doesn't interfere with what I'm doing - you just need to ensure you have enough RAM e.g 1GB

It's certainly a great way to participate in leading edge scientific endeavour and I can't recommend it highly enough.

13. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #125235 by Buddha on February 11, 2008 at 5:28 am

I would nominate Jim Al-Khalili who is currently Professor of Physics and Chair for the Public Engagement of Science at the University of Surrey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili

He's an excellent communicator of science and regularly appears on TV & radio here in the UK. His recent BBC Four TV series "Atom" was absolutely sublime and one of the best pieces of science programming that I've ever seen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/atom.shtml

He's only 45 and unlikely to croak anytime soon.

14. Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'

Comment #123657 by Buddha on February 7, 2008 at 1:10 pm

In the name of all of those people throughout British history who have fought and died for our freedom and democracy and all those who have contributed to the enlightenment of the modern age....Over my dead body!

15. Happy Birthday Josh Timonen!

Comment #118925 by Buddha on January 31, 2008 at 7:09 am

Happy Birthday Josh and thanks for your efforts in making this a great site. January the 30th is my birthday too and it's an honour to share it with you.

16. Launch of 'Atheists in Foxholes' Book Anthology

Comment #116250 by Buddha on January 26, 2008 at 3:25 am

I spent a short time in the British Royal Navy. Again, to bolster some of the comments here, the main motivation for me was to give something back to defend the notions of freedom, fair play and democracy rather than nationalism.

I hope that Pat Tillman's story gets in to the anthology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman

His family suffered some absolutely disgusting treatment from senior officers after his death due to his professed non-belief.

17. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #109618 by Buddha on January 9, 2008 at 9:28 am

Even when we do our worst to mess things up, many species thrive. Just look at our cities, filled with pigeons, rats, cockroaches, predatory birds...

18. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #109479 by Buddha on January 9, 2008 at 5:44 am

Not quite yet. The permian extinction killed of 95% of all non-microbial species. We would have a problem achieving even a fraction of that even with a full-out nuclear war.

19. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #109070 by Buddha on January 8, 2008 at 9:08 am

but I don't know of many examples (none TBH) in the history of the Earth in which evolutionary mechanics (in this case the rise of insects, flower plants and deceases) lead to complete worldwide eradication of the dominant species in a relatively short geological time span.

20. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #108994 by Buddha on January 8, 2008 at 5:33 am

Because dinosaur fossils are relatively rare, the dating of the appearance and disappearance of a particular species can be difficult to pin down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signor-Lipps_effect

The ultimate disappearance of the dinosaurs was instantaneous with the K/T boundary impact event, however, instantaneous in geological terms could be 100,000 years. Many species were in decline in the lead up to the K/T boundary and it is possible that some dinosaur species may have survived into the early Tertiary.

21. Clegg 'does not believe in God'

Comment #101205 by Buddha on December 20, 2007 at 5:08 am

I suspect Mr & Mrs Clegg are committed to bringing up their children as catholics more out of a desire to get them into a decent nearby "faith" school.

I know plenty of godless heathen parents who suddenly get an overwhelming urge to baptise their kids once they start researching the schooling options in their area.

22. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99049 by Buddha on December 15, 2007 at 10:47 am

Absolutely sublime. Thank you very much.

23. Chimps beat humans in memory test

Comment #93754 by Buddha on December 4, 2007 at 5:58 am

Chimps arn't that smart. I saw a TV prog recently with an interview of a psychologist who managed to conclusively prove that Chimps are incapable of following the plot to Shakespeare's Othello.

Something to do with the fact that they are limited in their ability to mentally project themselves to empathise or imagine other peoples motives to any great degree.

24. Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster

Comment #88860 by Buddha on November 19, 2007 at 4:52 am

I for one shall deal a blow to the infidels with my bolognese bomb-vest and achieve glorious to-martyrdom!!!

Peace be udon you.

25. A third of adults believe God watches over them

Comment #87550 by Buddha on November 12, 2007 at 12:45 pm

A spokesman from the TearFund was interviewed on BBC Breakfast News on Friday morning. He said that the results of this poll "clearly shows that Christianity and Islam is exploding around the World".

The irony left me chortling quietly to myself.

26. Sir David Attenborough on God

Comment #86760 by Buddha on November 10, 2007 at 5:16 am

Though I have the greatest respect for David Attenborough, he does get on my nerves sometimes. There have been a couple of occasions when myself and Mrs Buddha have been taking a quiet weekend out in the bush for a bit of a rest, when he turns up with a bloody camera crew. We're minding our own business and he just crouches there whispering to himself then expects a cuddle.

27. Internet used to target extremism

Comment #84086 by Buddha on November 1, 2007 at 6:19 am

On my way to work this morning I walked past a young muslim girl in a hijab who was wearing a poppy. I felt quite moved at this. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope for the future after all.

For those of you not from the UK or Commonwealth the significance of the poppy is best explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

28. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #83907 by Buddha on October 31, 2007 at 3:44 pm

This is one of the best articles posted here in a long time. I was almost wincing at the end of each sentence. I'm glad I'm not Rowan Williams - it would have been awful to have been on the receiving end of that intellectual kicking.

29. You can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God

Comment #81736 by Buddha on October 25, 2007 at 5:45 am

A quick google came up with this potted summary on the biochemical basis of "love":http://people.howstuffworks.com/love6.htm

Even if not 100% correct it shows that there are many avenues of scientific endeavour on the subject

30. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81284 by Buddha on October 24, 2007 at 2:31 pm

"It's not possible to be a true scientist and believe in the supernatural"

This was Craig Venter's response to being asked if he was religious on BBC Newsnight the other day in a piece about his work on synthetic lifeforms.

31. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81257 by Buddha on October 24, 2007 at 1:59 pm

Hitchens did OK, his only real stumbling is that he's not able to tackle D'Souza's science based strawmen head on. Methinks Prof Dawkins would be a more formidable opponent.

BTW the poll on D'Souza's site (http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/bloggers/dinesh-dsouza/) has Hitchens in the lead:

Christopher Hitchens 77%
Dinesh D'Souza 16%
There were no winners 7%

32. Review of Darwin's Angel

Comment #70180 by Buddha on September 14, 2007 at 9:00 am

I wouldn't have expected an impartial review from Peter Stanford. He's a former editor of The Catholic Herald.

33. Griffin's 'offensive' Emmy speech to be censored

Comment #69698 by Buddha on September 12, 2007 at 8:54 am

Does anyone really believe that this kind of childish, petulant behaviour convinces anyone to be more rational? Does anyone here really think that cheap, pointless shots thrown at a religion will convince its adherents that atheism is a sensible position?

34. Gene regulation in humans is closer than expected to simple organisms

Comment #66559 by Buddha on August 30, 2007 at 12:12 pm

The way I read it is that this is a bit more evidence that indicates that 99.9999% of the genetic scaffolding and processes that it takes to make us mammals was formulated in the slime-ponds of the primordial earth. Makes sense as the majority of our planet's history has been ruled by single-celled organisms - still is in some respects.

I don't think there is any need for paranoia about the use of the word "design". I think it's just the usual inadvertant teleology that creeps in with sloppy journalism.

35. A Daddy Longlegs Tells the Story of the Continents' Big Shifts

Comment #66247 by Buddha on August 29, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Did you hear about the agnostic biologist who had twins? She baptized one and kept the other as a control.

Baddum-tshh!

36. Researchers find fossils of 10-million-year old ape

Comment #65172 by Buddha on August 23, 2007 at 4:57 am

DADDY!!!

37. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61856 by Buddha on August 7, 2007 at 6:27 am

Here's my comment I posted at the Daily Mail site...

Can I suggest that Ms Phillips enrols on a geological or biological sciences degree course, which can be found at any decent university? She is obviously wallowing in her own ignorance.

If she does so, she may learn that the Cambrian "Explosion" took place over a period of up to 30 million years. Consider that most of the radiation of mammal species, including ourselves, has occured in the past 2 million years, the Cambrian "Explosion" was more of a slow burning candle.

She may also learn something about the scientific method, unlike those "distinguished scientists" who promote "Intelligent Design", who have yet to provide a single piece of peer-reviewed evidence to support their ludicrous distortion of plain reason.

38. The Out Campaign

Comment #60032 by Buddha on July 31, 2007 at 2:54 pm

I'm in! ...or out!!

I must say that I'm rather humbled by some of you having so much bother over being openly atheist due to local attitudes. I'm in the deeper darkest reaches of Britain and it's never something I've felt I've needed to worry about.

Be strong, and revel in the fact that you are on the side of sense and reason!

As well as wearing the T-shirt, you should also broadcast an atheist slogan as your WiFi SSID. I've got "Smile, There is no Hell!" permeating the air waves around the Mosque next door.

:-)

39. OUT Campaign Launched, 'Scarlet Letter' Shirts Now Available!

Comment #59691 by Buddha on July 30, 2007 at 8:23 am

Personally, I'll be sticking to wearing my "Pirate Fish" t-shirt that I got through the FSM Web site.

I actually had a bloke come up to me in the pub the other day who recognised it's noodly origin. It was heart-warming to get a friendly greeting from a total stranger.

40. Bill O'Reilly and Kirk Cameron on Atheism

Comment #51231 by Buddha on June 22, 2007 at 2:43 am

Russell's Teapot: Buddha created the universe? Really Bill?

41. Atheism is pretentious and cowardly

Comment #48052 by Buddha on June 6, 2007 at 12:08 pm

I would recommend that you all go straight to the comments section on the Guardian site. The cavalry are already sticking the boot in to this poor fellow good and proper.

I almost feel sorry for him...

42. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43630 by Buddha on May 22, 2007 at 6:36 am

Quetzalcoatl: I'm afraid I stopped taking Michael Crichton seriously when he started putting Cretaceous species in the Jurassic.

43. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43626 by Buddha on May 22, 2007 at 6:25 am

"However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively."

Well from those figures and my rough calculations that gives us a man-made contribution of 0.052 of a degree to average global temps, therefore AGW has been proven conclusively (and from a skeptic scientists own figures)!!!!!

Where do I need to queue for my Nobel Award? :-P

44. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43464 by Buddha on May 21, 2007 at 2:27 pm

Yeah, I can't wait for those malarial mosquitos to start heading North!

45. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43458 by Buddha on May 21, 2007 at 2:07 pm

"The atmosphere's composition during the dinosaur era was vastly different as well. Carbon dioxide levels were up to 12 times higher than today's levels."

Correct. The very high CO2 levels during the Cretaceous were in part due to the increased soil erosion from the newly arrived and prolific spread of flowering plants and also the enhanced rifting from the break-up of Laurasia and Gondwana. This CO2 was eventually removed by the formation of limestone over many millions of years in the extensive shallow seas that were created from the associated 200m higher sea-levels than today.

The point is that when CO2 arrives in the atmosphere it takes a VERY long time for it to get removed because it takes a VERY long time for the various carbon-cycle feedbacks to kick in.

Regardless of the root cause of present day global warming, increased levels of CO2 will amplify the warming effect. This is well established science and has been for over 100 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius).

6 billion petrol-heads today just might be causing as much harm as angiosperms did in the Cretaceous.

46. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #41360 by Buddha on May 16, 2007 at 2:10 am

Newton30: I agree with you to an extent that sections of the environmental movement are hysterical and prone to un-scientific propaganda, but this is also true of the PR machines belonging to the abject deniers.

I'm currently studying for a degree in Earth Sciences, which I hope has exposed me to the more balanced and sober thinking on the AGW issue. What I have come to appreciate is that the climate is a very complex beast with hundreds of tightly interacting feedback mechanisms, which are still very poorly understood. However, mankinds rapid short-circuiting of the one of the carbon-cycle's long-term sinks by digging up oil, coal and gas is unprecedented in the history of the Earth.

47. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #41197 by Buddha on May 15, 2007 at 3:50 pm

chbg21808: How many of those signatories on those declarations were real climate scientists? A study in Scientific American (2005) on the most recent declaration, the Oregon Petition:

"Scientific American took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community"

48. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #41072 by Buddha on May 15, 2007 at 1:11 pm

Brian: The one thing that you missed off your list that would have the quickest and easiest impact on reducing climate change would be for every family to not have more than 2 kids. The average family has 2.2 children. By not having that extra .2 of a child the global population would eventually decrease as well as its corresponding carbon footprint.

I think that all your other suggestions for preventing climate change will be just pissing in the wind if the projected population increase isn't addressed.

49. The Encyclopedia of Life

Comment #39410 by Buddha on May 10, 2007 at 2:38 pm

I think the easily navigable taxonomy that was demo'd in the video would be fantastic - it would have made "The Ancestors Tale" really come to life if it had been available when I read it.

I did make the suggestion when I registered on EOL that they should use Cameron Diaz as the subject for the Homo Sapiens page. Mmmmm

50. The Damned

Comment #37059 by Buddha on May 3, 2007 at 9:57 am

I've just placed an order for one of those "Smile! There is no Hell" t-shirts from the cafepress.com site that Admin posted earlier. Please come over and say hello if you see me wearing it in the street.

I have both a church and a mosque less than 50 yards either side of my house, so I'm going to see if I can configure my WiFi router to broadcast "Smile! There is no Hell" as my SSID.