#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Stickwick gets my vote today for this response to a Nature request:
“Are you a working scientist who plans to vote for Donald Trump? We want to talk to you.”
About what, fast-tracking the fiery death of your career? If Nature is surprised by a lack of response, they should read Scott Adams.
Thanks to you all, we already hit our goal and I am running the Color Run in a tutu. With only 36 hours to go, Spacebunny has decided to throw down in case the original goal is doubled.
If we get to $10k by Saturday night I’ll run in a bikini and tutu….. it’s for a great cause.
There is more information about the event on her page, but to summarize, she is raising funds for a prospective cure for Crohn’s Disease that is in the testing stage. And yes, I will post the pictures here.
There is room for a lot of discussion and debate concerning what actually happened 15 years ago in New York City. But there is no room to argue that the collapse of WTC7 was anything but a controlled demolition, despite Sillon Bono’s attempt to argue otherwise.
I discussed the way the towers collapsed with other people at the time who also had considerable “understanding in structural mechanics” and everybody agreed that at least the twin towers didn’t look “uncharacteristic”.
I haven’t heard any video or collection of witness say anything about hearing explosives going off when the WTC7 went down.
You can believe what you want, I’m not telling you to do otherwise, show me links where the explosions can be heard.
As I said, from the angles where it was filmed the WTC7 building collapse “looks” like an intentional controlled demolition.
“Looks” it is not the same as “it was”.
We all have a hunch that the entire 9/11 is nowhere near clear, but to make assertions like a building was purposely demolished using explosives in just a few hours of preparation is a bit too much.
Controlled demolition of a building that size requires a hell of lot of preparation, and (((very loud explosives))).
First, the National Institute of Standards and Technology already implicitly admitted that WTC7 was demolisehed in their report which describes how the building collapse featured 2.25 seconds of freefall with no internal structural resistance.
Free fall acceleration for approximately 8 stories or 32.0m (105 ft). Free fall acceleration means that there was no resistance encountered while the top of the building when through the space where 8 floors of reinforced concrete stood just seconds before. We are talking about a building with had 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns. And yet, 8 floors of that somehow disappeared almost instantly. If you read the full report, you will see that NIST does admit this, but never recognizes the implications of this fact. In fact, under a separate section entitled “HYPOTHETICAL BLAST SCENARIOS” NIST specifically excludes any controlled demolition based on the completely wrong assumptions that no blasts were heard (they were, of course).
Second, there were plenty of explosions reported. You can even hear them yourself on the various videos from the day. You can hear the firemen talk about them. If you haven’t heard them, or heard the testimony of eyewitnesses talking about them., you obviously haven’t even gone to the trouble of a single Google search for them.
There. there is no doubt about what happened to WTC-7 whatsoever. It was intentionally demolished with preset explosives.
CRAIG BARTMER NYPD: “I walked around it (Building 7). I saw a hole. I didn’t see a hole bad enough to knock a building down, though. Yeah there was definitely fire in the building, but I didn’t hear any… I didn’t hear any creaking, or… I didn’t hear any indication that it was going to come down. And all of a sudden the radios exploded and everyone started screaming ‘get away, get away, get away from it!’… It was at that moment… I looked up, and it was nothing I would ever imagine seeing in my life. The thing started pealing in on itself… Somebody grabbed my shoulder and I started running, and the shit’s hitting the ground behind me, and the whole time you’re hearing “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” I think I know an explosion when I hear it…”
The old challenge for parents used to be keeping their girls off the stripper pole. Now the more pressing challenge is to keep them from burning coal, before they end up as STD-infested single mothers with no paternal support in the best case scenario, or, in the worst case scenario, eaten by alligators.
Drexel was last captured on video on April 25, 2009, leaving the Blue Water Hotel in Myrtle Beach, where she was staying against her parents’ permission. A different inmate serving time at Georgetown County Jail told officials he was informed Da’Shaun Taylor picked Drexel up in Myrtle Beach and transported her to McClellanville.
Munoz said the FBI believes Taylor “showed her off, introduced her to some other friend that were there…they ended up tricking her out with some of their friends, offering her to them and getting a human trafficking situation.”
As the media spotlight grew ever brighter on the desperate efforts to find Drexel, the girl was “murdered and disposed of,” Munoz said.
Given the recent study that reported only two percent of black fathers of mixed race children with white mothers support their children, it would be interesting and informative to work out whether a coal-burning woman’s odds are higher with regards to a) getting married, having children, and being supported by her black husband or b) getting raped and murdered.
They’re both obviously very low. It would be unfair to fail to recognize that the vast majority of black men are simply not going to support a white woman under any circumstances. Or rape and murder one, for that matter. I’m just interested in learning which scenario represents the lower probability.
I should probably note that the aforementioned study was published by an African-American scientist. Please don’t question it, as that would be terribly raciss and I would hate to be forced to disavow any of the commenters here.
On the plus side, the short-lived romance of Da’Shaun and Brittanee does provide a useful answer to parents whose daughters demand to know “what is the worst that could happen?”
Gang-raped, tricked out, shot in the head, and fed to alligators, my dear.
Pity these poor genetic scientists. Someone needs to inform them that race and ethnicity do not exist, and that gender is a social construct. Obviously there is no way that this so-called test can possibly work; they might as well claim to test for unicorn and leprechaun hair.
The crime-busting tools of science fiction are becoming a reality. A new forensic test can detect the ethnicity and gender of someone using nothing but a single hair, and in less than two minutes no less, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, details how a new tool designed by scientists has shown a 100 percent success rate in identifying gender and ethnicity using a strand of hair.
This test reportedly trumps DNA testing currently used by law enforcement – which traditionally relies on blood to determine factors like gender and ethnicity. According to a Queen’s University press release, the new test and tool also works in a fraction of the time of standard blood testing, getting highly accurate results in about 85 seconds.
According to the study, the test takes an unusual approach to DNA testing, in which a single hair is ground up and then burnt. The foul smelling vapor consequently produced is then analyzed to produce a DNA analysis that reportedly has had a 100 percent success rate.
“Our analysis process is very robust and can be used universally,” co-author Lily Huang said in a recent statement. According to Huang, the incredibly fast test can distinguish between East Asians, Caucasians and South Asians, to name a few ethnicities, and is even accurate when analyzing hair that has been dyed.
Advances in genetic science terrifies the Left and the equalitarian “Right” alike. This response was particularly amusing:
Jon Matthews @mrmatthewsjbhs
it was a graduate student’s experiment that tested 13 hairs. Groundbreaking! #altreich or #altright?
Equalitarians make Flat Earthers and haruspices look scientifically advanced by comparison.
Seriously, what is wrong with you people? I mean, sure, I’ve got the legs for it, but there is clearly something wrong with anyone who is willing to pay to see me in a tutu.
And now it is going to happen. It’s all your fault!
Also, thank you. I wrote this a few days ago, but I suppose this is the right time to post it. Note that it was made possible, in part, by the same research team whose work you are supporting through the Color Run.
So, Ender played his first game with his new team. He had no idea where he would be playing, or even if he would be playing at all, since they have four goalies to divide among the two teams. The situation is in flux, as the presumed first team starter was dreadful in the first friendly, and lost his position to the first team number two. There was even speculation that he’d be sent down to the second team, which might well end up in Ender replacing him as the second team starter.
But when they suited up, the coach went with only one goalie, the club number three, who is surprisingly mobile despite being huge. I mean, we’re talking 6’2″, 280 at a minimum. Ender was dressed for the field, and assumed that he’d probably go in as either a defender or a wing, as those are the two field positions he’s played before.
Now, keep in mind that I was his coach for the first four years of his soccer career and I’ve seen nearly every game he’s ever played. He’s a mediocre goalie and a slightly above average defender, which is why his insistence on playing goalie has always been a mystery to me. Decent size, good discipline, good awareness, below-average ball control, average speed, good toughness. Not a star player, not necessarily even a starter, but a solid and reliable player you can trust to come off the bench and hold his own without hurting the team. He’s scored precisely one goal in his entire career, putting a pass from a corner kick into the upper right corner from just outside the left corner of the box.
He’s also the youngest player on the men’s team by at least a year. I still don’t understand why he’s not eligible for a junior team, but the ways of the national sports bureaucracy are byzantine and impenetrable. He also hasn’t played on the field for more than two years; even in the practices in which he was able to take part for a while, he was playing in the nets.
The game started off reasonably well, but it soon became clear that the team has a fundamental problem. They have a fair number of skill players, and two with serious cannons attached to their legs, but they have no natural scorers. Despite generally controlling the game and creating multiple scoring chances, they were down 2-0 as their designated striker put the ball over the net, to the right of the net, and to the left of the net on three successive one-on-ones with the goalie. Forget the net, he couldn’t even hit the keeper! He’s a good player with good speed, but he simply cannot handle the pressure that being in scoring position places upon the player.
It was a friendly, so the substitutions were not limited. Ender was the third man in, and to my surprise, the coach put him in at striker. He didn’t do much at first, and clearly didn’t know what to do or where to go, except when his team was attacking. But when the midfield was in possession and brought the ball over the center line, his positioning was reliably excellent, which paid off after about 10 minutes when the other striker beat the left defender and fired over a knee-high cross that Ender redirected effortlessly into the net. 1-2. The team was totally fired up, redoubled their attack, and about five minutes later, Ender took a pass on the left side and returned the favor, sending a nice low cross to the other striker which he promptly put in the back of the net. 2-2. Fifteen minutes of playing striker and he’d already racked up one goal and one assist… talk about a flying start!
I was standing next to the coach, who nodded approvingly and mentioned how well Ender was playing. His expression, when I told him that it was the first time Ender had played up front, was downright comical. I’m not entirely sure that he believed me.
Unfortunately, the other team was very good and had two third-league players who promptly responded by carving up our defense to make it 3-2 at halftime. In the second half, Ender had a good chance that caught him wrong-footed, as well as a perfect cross that the striker somehow managed to whiff on in front of an empty net, after which he moved back to the wing, and then defense when one of the defenders got hurt. He played nearly the second half and was competent in all three positions. They lost 5-3, but everyone felt pretty positive about how the team had hung in there against what was observably a better team.
And despite the loss, I have to say that it was about as close to a perfect evening as one can hope to see in this world.
No, that’s not a forthcoming book from Simon Hawke, it is what Spacebunny has promised she will make me do if we are able to hit her $5k for 5k target for research for the Crohn’s MAP vaccine as part of the Color Run in which we are participating next month.
Personally, I thought it was bad enough to have to be dragged out of bed at some obscenely early hour and then forced to embark upon some hellish modern Trail of Tears while people yell at you, and apparently, dye you like an Easter Egg somehow; apparently they were inspired by Cersei’s walk of shame from A Game of Thrones or something.
I tried to point out that running a 5k is something I have done precisely once in my life, and that perhaps a 100-meter sprint for charity might be more in order, but I was outvoted as my treacherous spawn sided with her. Then Spacebunny promised that if the $5k for 5k was raised, both of us would not only run the race, but do so in tutus as well. And that she would post the pictures on Twitter. And that I would post them here.
So, if you are either a) interested in supporting scientific research that may bring an end to the ongoing torture that is Crohn’s Disease or b) looking to have a pretty good laugh at my expense, you can do so by supporting Spacebunny’s Color Run Page at Justgiving. I have spoken with several members of the research team, it is a lean and efficient organization, and the funds will not be wasted.
Prof. Hermon-Taylor, together with Dr. Tim Bull and other members of the team at St George’s University of London and scientists at the Jenner Institute University of Oxford, developed a modern DNA vaccine against MAP, which is the bacteria suspected of being the primary catalyst for Crohn’s Disease. Developing this vaccine took 10 years and cost around £850,000, much of it donated by the families of Crohn’s patients, without whom this new vaccine would not exist.
The Crohn’s MAP Vaccine is a modern, therapeutic vaccine against MAP. Preliminary studies in animals have shown it is safe and effective. Now a trial in humans is needed to take the vaccine from lab to clinic. If effective, the vaccine will not only protect people from developing Crohn’s Disease, but will also serve as an effective cure for those already suffering from it.
The money will go to helping pay for the human trial of the vaccine which has already been developed.
In which Stickwick and I tag-team a pair of godless self-appointed wonderboys. First up, DookerT:
On people like Sam Harris. I don’t know how anyone can really debunk anything he says, you can just make your own subjective moral arguments of why you think he’s wrong and you’re right. As far as the final word goes, it’s in the eye of the beholder. The Christian will generally see people like Vox as being correct and an atheist might generally agree with Harris . There simply are no certainties in this realm of debate, at least in my opinion.
It’s quite easy to debunk much of what he says, as it happens. Sam Harris makes many arguments that are based on objective assertions. They can be, and have been, conclusively debunked by the simple mechanic of showing those assertions to be factually false. There is nothing subjective about it. A very good example can be found in the appendix of On the Existence of Gods.
The ironically named Mr Rational picked the wrong blog to try to dazzle with pseudo-intellectual posturing when he responded to a statement about the Big Bang theory:
You do realize that the current model of cosmology is a creationist theory, do you not?
That statement utterly discredits you. Creationists may have tried to claim Big Bang/Inflation theory as their own, but it is utterly without theistic implications. If you are listening to people who claim it does, you are listening to liars. The left has its own liars telling lies which support its dogmas; if you commit the same errors you are no better than the left.
I am moderately familiar with the theory of inflation (far more than most readers here, I’m certain). The fluctuations in the temperature of the Cosmic Background Radiation associated with quantum density variations frozen in the cosmic fireball as space expanded too fast for them to reach equilibrium again is predicted by WHAT holy book in WHAT passage, precisely? If it is fair for Vox to demand a specific list of mutations to turn organism X into organism Y, it is eminently fair for me to demand this specificity in theological claims and pronounce the theology worthless if it fails.
I responded to this myself, by pointing out that a) the Big Bang Theory and expansion were conceived by a Belgian priest, and b) the Big Bang Theory is a necessary, though not sufficient requirement for the Bible to be true, but Stickwick’s response is better. She is, by the way, a very well-regarded astrophysicist with a bibliography of published scientific papers on esoteric cosmological matters that is much longer than my list of publications:
I can’t decide if this is the stupidest thing ever said here or the funniest. Others have done a sufficient job explaining to you why this is wrong, but I’ll add one thing. A few years ago, I was present as a Nobel laureate and one of the greatest living physicists explained to a group of non-scientists that the multiverse hypothesis was developed at least in part because of the theistic implications of the big bang.
You’re doing something very annoying, which is attempting to dazzle people with the details of science instead of addressing the heart of the matter. Unless you’re an expert, this is a bad idea, because not everyone is going to be bowled over by your ability to parrot this information. I’m certainly not, because you’ve failed to realize that inflation is not yet a theory with any predictive power. The recent BICEP2 results that supposedly confirmed it were disproven. Inflation is a nice idea, and one that I think is probably correct, but let’s be honest — so far there is no conclusive evidence supporting it.
In any case, it’s absurd to say that the theistic implications of a theory hinge on whether a holy book mentions one particular unproven detail of the theory. It’s like the idiot biologist I talked to who said Genesis was bogus, because out of the dozens of scientifically-testable statements made by Genesis 1, she could find no mention of bacteria. The theological implications of a theory do not hinge on whether it contains every possible detail of the theories of the natural development of the universe, but on whether it says anything that confirms or denies a central tenet of a religion.
As Vox already explained to you, the big bang confirms the first three words of the Bible. The Bible begins with Genesis 1, because, among other things, it establishes God as the sovereign creator of all things. Without this, the Abrahamic religions are meaningless. If the universe is eternal, that’s obviously a big problem for Christianity. Scientists in the 1950s and 1960s understood this very well, which is (partly) why there was so much initial resistance to the big bang and why physicists continue to try to find loopholes in the theory that imply the universe is de facto eternal.
Now, before any atheist gets his panties in a bunch, I hasten to add that I know perfectly well that neither DookerT nor Mr Rational speak for all atheists nor are representative of the best that they have to offer. There are atheists I like, respect, and even admire.
But I think it would be wise for the average Internet atheist to understand that not only are there Christians who are better-educated and more intelligent than they are, but that there are actually more highly intelligent Christians than there are highly intelligent atheists. According to the GSS, in the United States, there are 11.4x more +2SD theists who either know God exists or believe God exists despite having the occasional doubt than there are +2SD atheists who don’t believe God exists.
And if you don’t understand why that is, you’re really not equipped to even enter the lists here.
Although the fetishists are loath to admit it, the scientists themselves are well aware that something is rotten in the profession of scientistry:
Spectacular failures to replicate key scientific findings have been documented of late, particularly in biology, psychology and medicine.
A report on the issue, published in Nature this May, found that about 90 percent of some 1,576 researchers surveyed now believe there is a reproducibility crisis in science.
While this rightly tarnishes the public belief in science, it also has serious consequences for governments and philanthropic agencies that fund research, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. It means they could be wasting billions of dollars on research each year.
One contributing factor is easily identified. It is the high rate of so-called false discoveries in the literature. They are false-positive findings and lead to the erroneous perception that a definitive scientific discovery has been made.
This high rate occurs because the studies that are published often have low statistical power to identify a genuine discovery when it is there, and the effects being sought are often small.
Further, dubious scientific practices boost the chance of finding a statistically significant result, usually at a probability of less than one in 20. In fact, our probability threshold for acceptance of a discovery should be more stringent, just as it is for discoveries of new particles in physics.
The English mathematician and the father of computing Charles Babbage noted the problem in his 1830 book Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. He formally split these practices into “hoaxing, forging, trimming and cooking.”
As with all institutions in this latter day, social justice convergence is having its deleterious effects in science. This is why a strict division between scientistry and scientody is absolutely vital; science-SJWs profit from the nebulous nature of the term “science” and use it to cloak their convergent activities.
One significant characteristic of the Gamma male is that he cannot deal with being publicly shown to be wrong. Such an event punctures the delusion bubble in which he, the Secret King, always triumphs, so it creates a wound that never heals, and festers much longer than any higher-rank man can imagine. Even if he manages to control himself and not let it show immediately, it eats away at him and preys on his mind.
The way the Gamma usually deals with a festering wound is to attempt to negate it by subsequently demonstrating his superiority to the party who dealt it to him. This means that he will lie in wait, for years if need be, for what he sees as an opportunity to prove the offending party wrong. This, he believes, will disqualify and discredit the party, which somehow means that the Gamma was not wrong the first time, even though he was. But no matter, the Secret King triumphs in the end!
This behavior is so predictable that I not infrequently find myself able to correctly anticipate when a previously wounded Gamma is going to think he sees an opening and launch what I am coming to think of as a restorative rebuttal. However, I did not see this one coming; I did not think that Camestros Felapton was dumb enough to launch what is either his third or his fourth attempt to repair his delusion bubble since being so publicly humiliated about his lack of knowledge concerning rhetoric in Of Enthymemes and False Erudition. Apparently the sting of his repeated defeats at my hands has become more than he can bear, because he is really grasping at straws now.
The other day Vox was disparaging about the value of scientific evidence. I’m not entirely sure if he is clear himself about what he means but when it comes to IQ he is happy to post anything that he feels supports his case. This time, it is a pair of studies that point to a 4 point decline in IQ in France in a 9-10 year period. Vox quotes a second study that was an analysis of the first. This second study was an attempt to discern the cause of the decline by looking at the magnitude of the changes at a subtest level. This second paper concluded that the decline ‘likely has a primarily biological cause’. Vox declares it was due to immigration.
Did I now? What did I actually write? Let’s review:
My estimate of a post-1965 four-point IQ loss in the USA was a minimum estimate based solely on replacement migration, but considering that dysgenic fertility is also a factor in the USA, the actual decline is almost certainly worse.
If replacement migration is also the lesser factor in the US case, then the post-1965 IQ decline in the USA could be as much as 10 points. However, US immigration has been higher and US native birth rates have remained higher than in France, so something on the order of 7-8 points is more likely. This is not insignificant; it is the difference between the current USA and Sierra Leone.
So, Camestros is obviously wrong. I did not say the decline was due solely to immigration, I merely repeated what the study said, which is that the reported IQ decline in France was primarily due to dysgenic fertility and secondarily due to immigration.
Moreover, this shows that Camestros was not merely wrong, he was lying, because I even pointed out that while dysgenic fertility appears to have been the primary factor responsible in France, in the US it is more likely that immigration is nearly as important a factor for two reasons: US immigration rates are higher and US native birth rates are higher. There is a third reason as well; higher abortion rates among the lowest-IQ population tend to partially counterbalance the lower fertility rate of the highest-IQ population.
We had damn well better hope I am right, because we know the immigration-related decline of IQ in the USA is at least 4 points based on population averages. If the dysgenic fertility decline in the USA is, like France, even worse than the immigration-related decline, then we will have already seen a catastrophic decline in average US IQ of 9 points or more! In his desperation to declare me wrong about immigration and IQ, (and therefore retroactively wrong about Aristotle and rhetoric) Camestros fails to even notice the horrific implications of his argument. Who cares about that, what is important is to patch up that punctured delusion bubble stat!
Finally, after again trying to cast doubt on IQ as a reasonable metric for intelligence as well as upon the possibility of comparing average national intelligence levels, Camestros ends by saying, “neither paper ends up agreeing with Vox’s conclusion.”
Considering that neither paper addresses the USA at all, it would be absolutely remarkable if either of them had.
Once more, Camestros provides us with sufficient evidence to safely conclude that if IQ is a reasonable measure of innate intelligence, his is considerably lower than mine. It’s funny that despite being such a questionable metric, a similar percentile just seems to keep showing up no matter how it’s measured.
Of course, my actual vocabulary is probably more than twice that, but then, we’re not counting Italian, German, French, or Japanese vocabularies.
UPDATE: Gammas never learn. And they never stop lying.
Camestros Felapton @CamestrosF
@voxday declares me beneath his consideration, againSupreme Dark Lord @voxday
You’re lying, again. I take on all comers. Even hapless, midwitted gamma males like you.