Oh my god. What can it be? We're all doomed! Who's flying this thing!? </Wash>

But seriously, this guy has too much tinfoil on his head.
It's just an artifact of the image-processing done on the footage.
Strangely enough Yahoo News has the best explanation.

>> ^dannym3141:

The very first thing i thought of was some mechanism similar to our northern lights, but i have no grasp of the distances, axes (unless the weird artifact line is one) or sizes or anything from the video to argue for it.
I guess we're seeing in IR, so all we know for sure is that something is hot around that region, bearing in mind that it's at least the diameter of mercury itself, so it's a fucking big whatever it is. A ship that big? Well, i guess if you say it's a ship you can say it's any size you like, we're in the realm of imagination.
Edit:
Also, culd be a fault in the equipment.
Edit 2:
http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/sccmovies/mpegs/2010/HI1/20101203_1216_hi1
.mpg
Happens several places on that video, it looks like some artifact of the video that comes from the planet when the CME hits.


You nailed it with that Edit2 video. It's just an artifact of failing to mask the enormous brightness of the planets out.

The very first thing i thought of was some mechanism similar to our northern lights, but i have no grasp of the distances, axes (unless the weird artifact line is one) or sizes or anything from the video to argue for it.

I guess we're seeing in IR, so all we know for sure is that something is hot around that region, bearing in mind that it's at least the diameter of mercury itself, so it's a fucking big whatever it is. A ship that big? Well, i guess if you say it's a ship you can say it's any size you like, we're in the realm of imagination.

Edit:
Also, culd be a fault in the equipment.

Edit 2:
http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/sccmovies/mpegs/2010/HI1/20101203_1216_hi1.mpg

Happens several places on that video, it looks like some artifact of the video that comes from the planet when the CME hits.

oh man,
how awesome to find out im not the only one sucked into this game.
my arena team on wow are sooo pissed at me right now due to skyrim.
i have been addicted to TES series since morrowind.
yahtzee called it correct.
its a great game with a ton of bugs and glitches but who cares?not one of them is a deal breaker.
lvl 48 in full daedric armor with a few daedric artifacts (spellbreaker is $$$) but even on the hardest setting im kicking the crap out of pretty much everything (unless i run into a few arch casters..bastards).
time to make a new toon.

They forgot a stupid cover system, ridiculously over-pronounced head-bob, video glitches and artifacts purposefully designed into the opening logos and cinematics, and an NPC character constantly talking at you even in the scary parts and the middle of fire-fights. Don't forget quick-time events and pointless mini-games that you have to revisit eight million times to progress through the game you actually intended to play.

@messenger said: "The crap the two Fox guys are coming up with though is just silly, and the same old false tropes, like the protesters are against capitalism, their message is incoherent, and so on."

Yeah, I agreed above that the two Fox people said some dumb things, but there are countless similar things in Cenk's discussion, and his supporters always conveniently ignore them all. If Clinton had left office 6 months later, the dot-com bubble would have been burst, and we'd today be talking about how bad his performance was. That's been known for a decade, so when can we expect ideologues to understand it? Probably never.

Also, since Cenk is a college graduate (I checked; he went to some of the best schools possible), surely he knows to base his case on a variety of metrics, which would help him avoid errors like the one discussed above. For example, since Cenk is more interested in increasing his intelligence than in scoring statistical-artifact cheap shots, he'd surely be interested to add the comparative performance of red and blue states to his analysis.

I'll help:

The study looks at factors that affect state prosperity and economic outlook, such as tax burdens and population change. What’s clear is that red or red-leaning states dominate the top positions while blue states have the dubious distinction of dragging in last. In the economic outlook section, for example, the top 20 states are bright red or lean red, while eight out of the bottom 10 are very blue: New York, Vermont, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon and Rhode Island.

Most of the “poor states” states, as ALEC calls them, have the highest personal income tax rates and the largest unfunded state pension liabilities. Source

That's something I have a personal interest in because my home state, California, went from being one of the best places in the world to one of the worst states in the country on some measures. This happened despite (or because of) having some of the most liberal policies and the highest taxes in the country, so that path doesn't seem very reliable.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

@messenger said: "It's not professional, but speaking extemporaneously, I get it."

Yeah, Cenk is a nice guy, but it doesn't seem proportionate to give him a free pass because (1) in the same breath he's giving his opponents zero leeway for making the same kind of mistakes, and (2) even when he has endless prep time, he still seems to make the same 'ideologue type' mistakes. I don't expect Cenk's performance to ever improve, but it seems pro-social to at least talk about it.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you think it's warranted to change the title of this video, since it doesn't appear to be true?

Again, there is no scientific consensus on seeing past the big bang. There just isn't. Stephen Hawking might have an idea - actually he has had a few contradictory different opinions on things over the years and he's honestly not universally respected at this point - but he's not "science" and US Today is not a great place to learn about science.

How quickly your commentary changes. I guess that's scientific, right? Before it was "NO ONE IS SAYING SOMETHING CAME FROM NOTHING STUPID!" Now it's that there is no concensus.

To be clear, I'm not making the opposite assumption. If Hawking said the Universe came from nothing, for all I know he's right. Maybe one day that will become part of established theory. Right now it isn't - in any way, shape or form - and it's not part of the general Big Bang theory; it's just the speculation, possibly not even terribly serious speculation, of a famous physicist.

Ahh, more science here..before you said, that something comes from nothing makes no sense. Now it's, a scientist said it so I can believe its true. Hah!

Science doesn't have the full picture. People will try to figure out more, but until then Science is OK with not knowing everything.

Science doesn't know anything about origins, whether it is the origin of the Universe, or life itself. It doesn't have a clue, and it is plainly obvious when one of the foremost scientists in the world is positing that something came from nothing and everyone is nodding sagely. The emperor has no clothes.

But now I'm curious, about your full picture. How old is the Earth? How long ago were Adam and Eve (assuming you believe in a literal Adam and Eve)? Was there a worldwide flood? Why does it really, really look like there wasn't? Were there dinosaurs? When did they live and die? Was there pre-human human like beings (Cromagnons and what not)? If not, what are all those skeletons, artifacts and history? Why is it the further we dig the less complex the fossils are? Did all humans once speak the same language? Was there a tower of Babel where the languages split? Is the universe expanding?

I don't want to lose the thread here. If you want to discuss all of these things, message me.

Overall, is science right about pretty much everything, other than the few places it contradicts your scripture? Isn't that an odd coincidence? Or do you think science is wrong about a bunch of other stuff too?

Science gets a lot right but overall it is blind. I appreciate science, and I have nothing against it. I am just against things which aren't science, such as macro evolution.

>> ^jmzero:
@shinyblurry
You never explained anything but rather offered your amatuer opinion. Here is the opinion of an expert:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-09-03-hawking02_ST_N.htm
Congrats, you can use Google - but no, that isn't much of a link (I'm very surprised you couldn't find something better than that, really). Hell, the story doesn't even support the headline. But even if Stephen Hawking swears on his life that the Universe came from nothing, it wouldn't mean us "followers of Scientism" would believe that. Science doesn't work like that.
Again, there is no scientific consensus on seeing past the big bang. There just isn't. Stephen Hawking might have an idea - actually he has had a few contradictory different opinions on things over the years and he's honestly not universally respected at this point - but he's not "science" and US Today is not a great place to learn about science.
And did I explain it before? Yes, I did. I just checked. So did a couple other VS posters. And you commented on the Tyson Big Bang video. Did you watch it before writing your stupid comment (oh, and it was stupid)? In there, he explicitly says that the Big Bang theory doesn't explain what happened before a certain threshold. As Tyson says around 31 minutes, we need a new theory to get us before that.
That's the current scientific consensus. His talk is simple and easy to understand, and you pretended to watch it. Do you think he's lying about the current state of knowledge? Do you think he's wrong? Or do you think some new secret scientific consensus has maybe emerged since that video? Hint: it hasn't.
To be clear, I'm not making the opposite assumption. If Hawking said the Universe came from nothing, for all I know he's right. Maybe one day that will become part of established theory. Right now it isn't - in any way, shape or form - and it's not part of the general Big Bang theory; it's just the speculation, possibly not even terribly serious speculation, of a famous physicist.
To learn about what is the Big Bang theory, try the Wikipedia article - which, as I quoted before, does represent more or less the current consensus. (Hint: when you want to learn about scientific theory at a "popular" level, try Wikipedia before USA Today). As it says, science doesn't have a consensus on seeing past the Big Bang. You can see some other speculative theories at the end of that article.
Science doesn't have the full picture. People will try to figure out more, but until then Science is OK with not knowing everything.
But now I'm curious, about your full picture. How old is the Earth? How long ago were Adam and Eve (assuming you believe in a literal Adam and Eve)? Was there a worldwide flood? Why does it really, really look like there wasn't? Were there dinosaurs? When did they live and die? Was there pre-human human like beings (Cromagnons and what not)? If not, what are all those skeletons, artifacts and history? Why is it the further we dig the less complex the fossils are? Did all humans once speak the same language? Was there a tower of Babel where the languages split? Is the universe expanding?
Overall, is science right about pretty much everything, other than the few places it contradicts your scripture? Isn't that an odd coincidence? Or do you think science is wrong about a bunch of other stuff too?

@shinyblurry

You never explained anything but rather offered your amatuer opinion. Here is the opinion of an expert:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-09-03-hawking02_ST_N.htm


Congrats, you can use Google - but no, that isn't much of a link (I'm very surprised you couldn't find something better than that, really). Hell, the story doesn't even support the headline. But even if Stephen Hawking swears on his life that the Universe came from nothing, it wouldn't mean us "followers of Scientism" would believe that. Science doesn't work like that.

Again, there is no scientific consensus on seeing past the big bang. There just isn't. Stephen Hawking might have an idea - actually he has had a few contradictory different opinions on things over the years and he's honestly not universally respected at this point - but he's not "science" and US Today is not a great place to learn about science.

And did I explain it before? Yes, I did. I just checked. So did a couple other VS posters. And you commented on the Tyson Big Bang video. Did you watch it before writing your stupid comment (oh, and it was stupid)? In there, he explicitly says that the Big Bang theory doesn't explain what happened before a certain threshold. As Tyson says around 31 minutes, we need a new theory to get us before that.

That's the current scientific consensus. His talk is simple and easy to understand, and you pretended to watch it. Do you think he's lying about the current state of knowledge? Do you think he's wrong? Or do you think some new secret scientific consensus has maybe emerged since that video? Hint: it hasn't.

To be clear, I'm not making the opposite assumption. If Hawking said the Universe came from nothing, for all I know he's right. Maybe one day that will become part of established theory. Right now it isn't - in any way, shape or form - and it's not part of the general Big Bang theory; it's just the speculation, possibly not even terribly serious speculation, of a famous physicist.

To learn about what is the Big Bang theory, try the Wikipedia article - which, as I quoted before, does represent more or less the current consensus. (Hint: when you want to learn about scientific theory at a "popular" level, try Wikipedia before USA Today). As it says, science doesn't have a consensus on seeing past the Big Bang. You can see some other speculative theories at the end of that article.

Science doesn't have the full picture. People will try to figure out more, but until then Science is OK with not knowing everything.

But now I'm curious, about your full picture. How old is the Earth? How long ago were Adam and Eve (assuming you believe in a literal Adam and Eve)? Was there a worldwide flood? Why does it really, really look like there wasn't? Were there dinosaurs? When did they live and die? Was there pre-human human like beings (Cromagnons and what not)? If not, what are all those skeletons, artifacts and history? Why is it the further we dig the less complex the fossils are? Did all humans once speak the same language? Was there a tower of Babel where the languages split? Is the universe expanding?

Overall, is science right about pretty much everything, other than the few places it contradicts your scripture? Isn't that an odd coincidence? Or do you think science is wrong about a bunch of other stuff too?

@ChaosEngine

The only one out of those that doesn't use prior material is islam, and the creation story from the quron is just a rip off of Genesis, so I don't think it really counts.

As far as the age of the Earth goes, there are plenty of evidences to indicate a young earth just in the fossil record. You have polystrate fossils all over the place, which traverse multiple layers that were supposedly laid down over hundreds of millions of years. You have fossils supposedly millions of years old found with intact DNA, which has a max decay rate of 20 thousand years. You have fossils like these: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wiltshire/8208838.stm

Radiometric dating is also not proven reliable. It is predicated on a number of assumptions (guesses), such as a constant rate of decay, the amount of the elements, etc. Particularly, it must be assumed to have been within a closed system. Since there is no such thing on planet Earth, there is no way of telling what the original condition of the rock was. Whether it was contaminated by heat, or groundwater, or leeching etc. That makes all such measurements extremely problematic. The different methods used also almost never agree with eachother. Frequently, they provide a wide range of dates which the scientist will cherry pick from to match his particular theory. Radiometric dating has also been proven to be inaccurate by testing on samples that have known ages. Tests run on rocks known to be a few hundred years old will come back with estimates ranging from a few million to over a billion years old. If you can't get reliable results on known ages, how can you trust results on samples with unknown ages?

You have the problem of the geologic column being a complete mess, where layers appear in different places in different parts of the world, sometimes in reverse order. You also have the circular logic of the fossils dating the rocks and the rocks dating the fossils. You have human and dinosaur tracks in the same strata. You even have ancient artifacts found which show human/dinosaur interaction and even domestication.

http://www.mondovista.com/dinostone.ica2.html
http://www.mtblanco.com/ForSale/2006/ICAStones.html

There are many reasons to think that the scientific timeline is grossly inaccurate, and these are just a few of those reasons.

I love the one guy that starts clapping after the quote is read before quickly trailing off.

As for the integration of the cross, I don't know. On one hand, the memorial is a government project and, as such, should be secular. On the other hand, the cross was found and it became an important artifact associated with the site, so I can also see it has historical and cultural relevance.

@GeeSussFreeK

Time is interesting, truly one of humanities and other animals, greatest sensory abilities via memory. In fact how our memory is stored depending on what type of creature you are can give you a wide difference in abilities. Like a fly out maneuvering your swat attempts. Truly time seems not to exist at all if there is no memory. You can also tell that our perception of time was never meant to work with time dilation; this showing that time is extremely relative even just by biological standards.

But, you must remember that if we all died tomorrow and on some distant planet a new species started to learn as we have. They will still have access to the greatest library ever known: The Universe. Does that make time exist? Is it merely just an artifact? Time seems to have an "artificial" standing, as this new species will not see it at "one second" nor will they perceive "one second" the same as us. Time exists, but what is your duration, one tic = the time it takes for the Universe to go from 3k Kelvin to 0 Kelvin, or a few seconds = as we see it?

Much like temperature and other sensory based interpretations of reality. I think it does exist outside our perception, but it could be better stated than is. Perhaps using discreet energy packets in relation to the speed of light interpreted by general relativity for the system, etc... (a much more precise definition of time is using the mechanical nature of particle physics and sharing it with another system, much like nuclear clocks).

The 10,000 years thing is mostly derived from discerning the described geneology from Adam and Eve down. I'm not suggesting the Bible can't be a source for truth. I'm saying it's one source of many, and just like other information sources, some information is not valid, and all facts presented in the book should be read as such with a healthy amount of skepticism.

Translation: I have no problem if people use the Bible as sources of truth, but it must be balanced with other sources. Statements like "the Bible is 100% historically accurate" is an absurd lie, and the attitude is downright dangerous because it encourages blind acceptance of everything in the Bible, often taken literally. There likely has never been an actually history book ever written that's been unquestionably 100% accurate, either. I don't read the bible or any nonfiction book for that matter and assume everything in it is true.

That was my entire point of the post. It was not intended as an attack against Christians, or the Bible as a source of fact. It's an attack on the infallibility of the Bible as a source of knowledge, and those who make ridiculous statements like "nothing in the Bible has been proven wrong", when the above is an obvious example.

I do want to point out there's a difference between "Young Earth" arguments and arguments about how long human beings have been on the planet. I would agree with you the Bible doesn't actually say how long the earth or universe has been in existence. But it can be derived using biblical stories roughly how long humans have been on the earth. So, when those stories are taken literally, there have been numerous archeological finds that prove something in the Bible is false. That doesn't invalidate the entire Bible either, though.

>> ^smooman:

>> ^heropsycho:
You mean besides the Bible estimating the world to be only 10,000 years at most, when archaeological finds show just humans alone to be well over that? As in over 150,000 years old? 400,000 years old?
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/29/worlds-oldest-human-remain
s-found-in-israel/
Now, I'm sure you're gonna make the argument that archaeologists are not dating artifacts correctly, which is funny, because archaeologists are in fact the experts on how to do this, but nevermind that...
Dude, come on. 100% historically reliable? Seriously?!
>> ^shinyblurry:
On the contrary, the historicity of the illad is in great dispute, is sparse at best, and certainly isn't cited very often by historians or archaelogists for much of anything. Archaelogical finds have confirmed some minor details and disputed others. It is widely considered to be mostly legendary.
Far from fiction, the bible has been confirmed to be accurate in great detail..as over 25,000 archaelogical discoveries over the last 150 years have proven the bible to be 100 percent historically reliable, and no archaelogical find has ever overturned a biblical reference. Over 80 persons from the bible have been confirmed externally to be historical people, and there are over 39 external sources confirming 100 facts about Jesus alone. Your premise is indeed a fallacy as it is a false equivalence strawman


mind if i butt in? this claim you speak of, the one that says the world is less than 10000 years old...........appears no where in the bible. not a single instance, reference, or even an allusion to it. Young Earth theory (or, crap, as i like to call it) was created by some church dudes back in the day and came about because they took all the "begets" in the old testament and did math presuming, of course, that these were the only people to ever beget in the history of begetting on top of this taking the genesis creation story to be a literal word for word historical event (which is fine for some people, just not for me) and came up with 10 grand.
and truth be told, while not 100% historically accurate, for obvious reasons, the bible as a written work is, generally speaking, pretty reliable. the ancient hebrew, as with most cultures in those times, took their writings and history very seriously and took great care to preserve their history as accurately as possible. because of the more supernatural elements tho (the creation story for example) critics would completely disregard the body of archived history the bible encompasses all because of some fantastical stories that are woven throughout. that, by definition, is intellectually irresponsible

>> ^heropsycho:

You mean besides the Bible estimating the world to be only 10,000 years at most, when archaeological finds show just humans alone to be well over that? As in over 150,000 years old? 400,000 years old?
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/29/worlds-oldest-human-remain
s-found-in-israel/
Now, I'm sure you're gonna make the argument that archaeologists are not dating artifacts correctly, which is funny, because archaeologists are in fact the experts on how to do this, but nevermind that...
Dude, come on. 100% historically reliable? Seriously?!
>> ^shinyblurry:
On the contrary, the historicity of the illad is in great dispute, is sparse at best, and certainly isn't cited very often by historians or archaelogists for much of anything. Archaelogical finds have confirmed some minor details and disputed others. It is widely considered to be mostly legendary.
Far from fiction, the bible has been confirmed to be accurate in great detail..as over 25,000 archaelogical discoveries over the last 150 years have proven the bible to be 100 percent historically reliable, and no archaelogical find has ever overturned a biblical reference. Over 80 persons from the bible have been confirmed externally to be historical people, and there are over 39 external sources confirming 100 facts about Jesus alone. Your premise is indeed a fallacy as it is a false equivalence strawman



mind if i butt in? this claim you speak of, the one that says the world is less than 10000 years old...........appears no where in the bible. not a single instance, reference, or even an allusion to it. Young Earth theory (or, crap, as i like to call it) was created by some church dudes back in the day and came about because they took all the "begets" in the old testament and did math presuming, of course, that these were the only people to ever beget in the history of begetting on top of this taking the genesis creation story to be a literal word for word historical event (which is fine for some people, just not for me) and came up with 10 grand.

and truth be told, while not 100% historically accurate, for obvious reasons, the bible as a written work is, generally speaking, pretty reliable. the ancient hebrew, as with most cultures in those times, took their writings and history very seriously and took great care to preserve their history as accurately as possible. because of the more supernatural elements tho (the creation story for example) critics would completely disregard the body of archived history the bible encompasses all because of some fantastical stories that are woven throughout. that, by definition, is intellectually irresponsible

You mean besides the Bible estimating the world to be only 10,000 years at most, when archaeological finds show just humans alone to be well over that? As in over 150,000 years old? 400,000 years old?

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/29/worlds-oldest-human-remains-found-in-israel/

Now, I'm sure you're gonna make the argument that archaeologists are not dating artifacts correctly, which is funny, because archaeologists are in fact the experts on how to do this, but nevermind that...

Dude, come on. 100% historically reliable? Seriously?!

>> ^shinyblurry:

On the contrary, the historicity of the illad is in great dispute, is sparse at best, and certainly isn't cited very often by historians or archaelogists for much of anything. Archaelogical finds have confirmed some minor details and disputed others. It is widely considered to be mostly legendary.
Far from fiction, the bible has been confirmed to be accurate in great detail..as over 25,000 archaelogical discoveries over the last 150 years have proven the bible to be 100 percent historically reliable, and no archaelogical find has ever overturned a biblical reference. Over 80 persons from the bible have been confirmed externally to be historical people, and there are over 39 external sources confirming 100 facts about Jesus alone. Your premise is indeed a fallacy as it is a false equivalence strawman

The gaps are fundemental..here are some more quotes:

"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Carroll, Robert L., "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion ...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. ...Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

"He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration...The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (George, T. Neville, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

"Despite the bright promise - that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

"It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions." (Wills, C., Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

"So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction." (Weinberg, S., Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p.

"We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology..." (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984.)

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood (Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

"As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)

"Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record." (Padian, K., The Origin of Turtles: One Fewer Problem for Creationists, 1991, p. 18.)

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163.)

"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

"One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged." (Ruse, "Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution," 1984, p.101.)

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 57.)

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.22.)

"To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis," 1983, p. 81.)

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163.)

"Gaps in the fossil record - particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution - are not surprising." (Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)

"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140.)

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)

"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)

"We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups." (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, "Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

>> ^Drax:
Shiny, it's kind of like you're saying,
Ok, we have: . -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and O
Then we find . -> o -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and o
or o and O
Basically, the more evidence we find.. the stronger your argument gets! <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/oh.gif">
ok, that last part's just a joke.. but seriously.. the other parts ARE your stance.
It's either that, or you're looking at o and e and expecting to find æ, which just doesn't happen.