Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

We're about half-way through the first season and love it. Thanks for the recommendation. We've been watching the BBC doco series "Edwardian Farm" which makes a nice companion piece.


In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Issy and I just finished the second season. I'm pretty sure you will love it. Part of it involves WW1, so there is some blood, violence and frightening situations. There is also very mild sexuality, but probably nothing progressive parents like you would object to. The plot might be hard for kids to follow, but I think they would enjoy the colorful characters and beautiful locations.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Might have to give this series a try. We've been watching Edwardian Farm lately, which coincides nicely chronologically. I don't want to watch the spoilers above. Is this show suitable for kids?

Issy and I just finished the second season. I'm pretty sure you will love it. Part of it involves WW1, so there is some blood, violence and frightening situations. There is also very mild sexuality, but probably nothing progressive parents like you would object to. The plot might be hard for kids to follow, but I think they would enjoy the colorful characters and beautiful locations.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Might have to give this series a try. We've been watching Edwardian Farm lately, which coincides nicely chronologically. I don't want to watch the spoilers above. Is this show suitable for kids?

Yep. Kid friendly. There are some adult situations -- but nothing you won't see on network TV.

I don't know if kids would like it particularly. Depends on their age. It is a Masterpiece Theater, PBS dealy. Lots of talking and raised eyebrows as high drama. Which it is, of course!


>> ^dag:

Might have to give this series a try. We've been watching Edwardian Farm lately, which coincides nicely chronologically. I don't want to watch the spoilers above. Is this show suitable for kids?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Might have to give this series a try. We've been watching Edwardian Farm lately, which coincides nicely chronologically. I don't want to watch the spoilers above. Is this show suitable for kids?

>> ^Reefie:

@A10anis @kevingrr @carneval Interesting to note that none of you had previously commented on this sift but the moment something is said that you can argue against you wade right in. I cycle daily, everywhere, and I can tell you that drivers are dickheads 99% of the time. I've done everything the highway code asks cyclists and yet I've still been run over at roundabouts, every couple of days I get some arsehole winding down their window and telling me to get the fuck off the roads and buy a proper vehicle, I've been knocked off my bike more times than I can count (often while I'm in the cyclist lane), drivers who rarely indicate when required, though often they do it as an afterthought after they've side-swiped me.
Basically if you cycle daily then you are all too aware of just how frustrating it is for cyclists to commute. If you deny the frustration that cyclists endure daily then you're full of it.


I, like Kevin, watched the video and then read your comment as it had already been posted. I think you are making some assumptions about the chronology of events here

You must live in a bad area for cyclists, and I'm sorry to hear that. I went to college in a town that had what you described; many dickheads.

I'm a driver too, I do not commute by bike, and I do understand how drivers can get easily irritated. Unfortunately - and I am not excluded from this - being behind a window/steering wheel tends to disconnect people from the world/results in a lack of empathy. It's sad, and very unfortunate.

I see that you are in the UK. I have never cycled there but my relatives across the pond tell me that the dynamics between cyclists and drivers are really bad- it seems your experience agrees.

However, I think my point still stands - I do not want to be run over because some other cyclist pissed off the operator of a 2-ton killing machine yesterday, last week, or last year.

This is the main reason I find the "hotness" filter in sift disgusting as well. Luckily it's possible to choose chronological order still.

I'm a Stooge fan. I own the chronologically released shorts on DVD and I've seen all thier shorts at least 3 or 4 times.

As far as the trailer goes, the Stooges themselves look and sound great. They really seem to have nailed the Stooges' mannerisms, voices, and style. The guy doing Larry Fine is a little taller and thinner than he should be, but for the most part in every other way they are a faithful re-creation of the classic characters. They nailed it. And what slapstick I saw sure looked like it had the punchy, zippy choreography that made the stooges so great when they were on thier game. Kudos.

I'm a bit nervous when I see nuns in slingshot thongs though, and women walking around with 6 inches of cleavage. The Stooges were certainly no strangers to spicing things up a bit and playing the wolf-hounds. But they kept the innuendo pretty subtle, and the pool nun was about as subtle as a crowbar. I liked how they kept Curly innocent though. "Is your hair different?". I sure hope they keep the boys innocent. I'd hate to see the movie become nothing but a scatological, sex humor cesspool. The Stooges should not go there. That's no thier thing. But it IS a Farrel movie, so (sadly) such pandering seems likely.

>> ^budzos:

I kind of liked I Kissed A Girl, but this chick's singing voice literally stresses me out now.


I can tell it's her from about half a second of hearing the singing voice, and i also find it interesting (not necessarily bad) how she always sings chronologically about what she's done on a night out, or on a date, etc. Last friday night, we had a drink, might have kissed, then we went down to the boulevard, skinny dipping.... I think it's something fairly old fashioned that she is wittingly or unwittingly bringing back a bit.

>> ^budzos:

It's a guy giving significant video review/coverage of every single famicom released, in chronological order. After 39 episodes averaging an hour in length he's just gotten through December 1988.
It's on Youtube now but the first couple dozen episodes are only on archive.org.
>> ^ant:
>> ^budzos:
Great series, this. Ant, you seem pretty into this shit. You watch Chrontendo?

Nope, where is that? I just like watching video and computer game documentaries even if I am not into those game series.



Cool! http://chrontendo.blogspot.com ... Hey, you should submit the videos to VS. I didn't have Nintendo when I was young so I wasn't into their games.

It's a guy giving significant video review/coverage of every single famicom released, in chronological order. After 39 episodes averaging an hour in length he's just gotten through December 1988.

It's on Youtube now but the first couple dozen episodes are only on archive.org.

>> ^ant:

>> ^budzos:
Great series, this. Ant, you seem pretty into this shit. You watch Chrontendo?

Nope, where is that? I just like watching video and computer game documentaries even if I am not into those game series.

So basically, you cannot provide a refutation to the information itself but instead try to discredit the source. I've got hundreds of these..it's not exactly a secret among palentologists that the evolutionary theory has more holes than swiss cheese. Another issue is just the dating itself..take these quotes out of context:

Curt Teichert of the Geological Society of America, "No coherent picture of the history of the earth could be built on the basis of radioactive datings".

Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead, the uncertainty grows as more and more data is accumulated ... " (Waterhouse).

richard mauger phd associate professor of geology east carolina university In general, dates in the “correct ball park” are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are the discrepancies fully explained

... it is usual to obtain a spectrum of discordant dates and to select the concentration of highest values as the correct age." (Armstrong and Besancon)

professor brew: If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it iscompletely out of date we just drop it. Few archaeologists who have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having sometimes applied this method.

In the light of what is known about the radiocarbon method and the way it is used, it is truly astonishing that many authors will cite agreeable determinations as 'proof' for their beliefs. The radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. "This whole blessed thing is nothing but 13th century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read.” Written by Robert E. Lee in his article "Radiocarbon: Ages in Error" in Anthropological Journal Of Canada, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1981 p:9

Radiometric dating of fossil skull 1470 show that the various methods do not give accurate measurements of ages. The first tests gave an age of 221 million years. The second, 2.4 million years. Subsequent tests gave ages which ranged from 290,000 to 19.5 million years. Palaeomagnetic determinations gave an age of 3 million years. All these readings give a 762 fold error in the age calculations. Given that only errors less than 10% (0.1 fold) are acceptable in scientific calculations, these readings show that radiometric assessment should never ever be used. John Reader, "Missing Links", BCA/Collins: London, 1981 p:206-209

A. Hayatsu (Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), "K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia",-Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,-"In conventional interpretation of K-Ar (potassium/argon dating method) age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily-attributed to excess or loss of argon." In other words the potassium/argon (K/Ar) method doesn't support the uranium/lead (U/Pb) method.

"The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years old, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such `confirmation' may be shortlived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man." (“Secular Catastrophism”, Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p. 21)

“The procession of life was never witnessed, it is inferred. The vertical sequence of fossils is thought to represent a process because the enclosing rocks are interpreted as a process. The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.” (O’Rourke, J.E., “Pragmatism Versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276, 1976, p. 53) (emphasis mine)

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning . . because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of science, January 1976.

Dr. Donald Fisher, the state paleontologist for New York, Luther Sunderland, asked him: "How do you date fossils?" His reply: "By the Cambrian rocks in which they were found." Sunderland then asked him if this were not circular reasoning, and *Fisher replied, "Of course, how else are you going to do it?" (Bible Science Newsletter, December 1986, p. 6.)

It is a problem not easily solved by the classic methods of stratigraphical paleontology, as obviously we will land ourselves immediately in an impossible circular argument if we say, firstly that a particular lithology [theory of rock strata] is synchronous on the evidence of its fossils, and secondly that the fossils are synchronous on the evidence of the lithology."—*Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record (1973), p. 62.

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 48.

"Material bodies are finite, and no rock unit is global in extent, yet stratigraphy aims at a global classification. The particulars have to be stretched into universals somehow. Here ordinary materialism leaves off building up a system of units recognized by physical properties, to follow dialectical materialism, which starts with time units and regards the material bodies as their incomplete representatives. This is where the suspicion of circular reasoning crept in, because it seemed to the layman that the time units were abstracted from the geological column, which has been put together from rock units."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1979, p. 49.

"The prime difficulty with the use of presumed ancestral-descendant sequences to express phylogeny is that biostratigraphic data are often used in conjunction with morphology in the initial evaluation of relationships, which leads to obvious circularity."—*B. Schaeffer, *M.K. Hecht and *N. Eldredge, "Phylogeny and Paleontology," in *Dobzhansky, *Hecht and *Steere (Ed.), Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 6 (1972), p. 39

"The paleontologist's wheel of authority turned full circle when he put this process into reverse and used his fossils to determine tops and bottoms for himself. In the course of time he came to rule upon stratigraphic order, and gaps within it, on a worldwide basis."—*F.K. North, "the Geological Time Scale," in Royal Society of Canada Special Publication, 8:5 (1964). [The order of fossils is determined by the rock strata they are in, and the strata they are in are decided by their tops and bottoms—which are deduced by the fossils in them.]"The geologic ages are identified and dated by the fossils contained in the sedimentary rocks. The fossil record also provides the chief evidence for the theory of evolution, which in turn is the basic philosophy upon which the sequence of geologic ages has been erected. The evolution-fossil-geologic age system is thus a closed circle which comprises one interlocking package. Each goes with the other."—Henry M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (1972), pp. 76-77

"It cannot be denied that, from a strictly philosophical standpoint, geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organism as has been determined by a study of theory remains buried in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain."—*R.H. Rastall, article "Geology," Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 10 (14th ed.; 1956), p. 168.

"The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales."—*J.E. O'Rourke, "Pragmatism vs. Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, January 1976, p. 53.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Let us begin with this definition of "quote mining" from Wikipedia: The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
Thank you, shinyblurry, for your cut&paste, thought-free, research-absent, quote mining wall of nonsense. The only part you got right is that you should google each and every one of these quotes to find out the context, something you actually didn't do.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the late Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory prior to his recent death, confessed "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology..."

This Steven J. Gould quote is discussed in talk.origin's Quote Mine Project. Gould was a proponent of Punctuated Equilibria, which proposes a "jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change" in evolution. The quotes that are taken out of context are arguing that the fossil record does not indicate a gradual change over time as Darwin suggested. The specifc quote above is discussed in section #3.2 of Part 3. Far from an argument against evolution, Gould was arguing for a specific refinement of the theory.
More to the point, your own quote says "extreme rarity", contradicting your primary claim that transitional fossils do not exist.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal... ...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book... ...there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.

Dr. Patterson is discussed on a page dedicated to this quote in the Quote Mine Project. This page touches on the nature of scientific skepticism. As Dr. Patterson goes on to say, "... Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else." This is the nature of pure science. We can say that a piece of evidence "indicates" or "suggests" something, but there is nothing that may be held up as "proof" unless it is testable. As a man of principle, Dr. Patterson would not indicate one species evolving into another simply because there is no way to be absolutely sure that one fossil is the direct descendant of another. We can describe the similarities and differences, showing how one might have traits of an earlier fossil and different traits similar to a later fossil, but that is not absolute proof.
Incidentally, this is probably where the main thrust of the creationist argument eventually lands. At this level of specificity, there is no known way of proving one fossil's relation to another. DNA does not survive the fossilization process, so we can only make generalizations about how fossils are related through physical appearance. This will be where the creationist claims "faith" is required. Of course, you might also say that if I had a picture of a potted plant on a shelf, and another picture of the potted plant broken on the floor, it would require "faith" to claim that the plant fell off the shelf, because I did not have video proof. The creationist argument would be that the plant broken on the ground was created that way by God.
>> ^shinyblurry:
David B. Kitts. PhD (Zoology) ... 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...

This quote is from 1974. Think maybe some of those gaps might have gotten smaller since then? Doesn't really matter, because the scientist in question goes on to explicitly state that this does not disprove evolution. He then discusses hypotheses which might explain his perceived gaps, such as Punctuated Equilibrium. A brief mention of this quote is found in the Quote Mine Project at Quote #54.
>> ^shinyblurry:
N. Heribert Nilsson, a famous botanist, evolutionist and professor at Lund University in Sweden, continues:
My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed… The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.

First of all, Nilsson is only famous to creationists. To scientists, he's a bit of a wack-job. But that neither proves nor disproves his findings, it only goes to show that creationsists will frequently embellish a scientist's reputation if it will increase the size of the straw man argument. His writings would naturally include his opinions on the weaknesses of what was evolutionary theory at the time (1953!) in order to make his own hypothesis more appealing. He came up with Emication, which is panned as fantasy by the scientific critics. Perfect fodder for the creationists.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Even the popular press is catching on. This is from an article in Newsweek magazine:
The missing link between man and apes, whose absence has comforted religious fundamentalists since the days of Darwin, is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures … The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated.
The popular press. Newsweek Magazine. 1980!!! What year are you living in, shiny???
>> ^shinyblurry:
Wake up people..your belief in evolution is purely metaphysical and requires faith. I suppose if you don't think about it too hard it makes sense. It's the same thing with abiogenesis..pure metaphysics.
Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species.
The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us?… The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record. 2

Well, now you're just quoting some anonymous creationist. Any evidence whatsoever that the gaps between major groups are growing wider? No? Can't find anything to cut and paste in reply to that question?
>> ^shinyblurry:
You've been had..be intellectually honest enough to admit it and seek out the truth. Science does not support evolution.

I wonder, shiny, if in your "intellectually honest search for the truth" if you ever left the creationist circle jerk? Your quotes are nothing but out of context and out of date.

God damn there's some huge ejaculations, semens almost cumming out of you lot. Who would have thought a queer blowing off some christians could have caused such an orgy of banging at the keyboard. It's a metaphorical desert of paragraph sized dunes for anyone following this thread so I'll let Epicurus keep it brief.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

Epicurus – Greek philosopher, BC 341-270

LOL It's like the argument for an all loving, omnipotent god was destroyed before Jesus was even born.

Note: This isn't why I'm not religious. I don't believe because I wasn't indoctrinated as a small child. That and the booze and drugs are still working for me da dum Ching1

Now before you, dear reader, set of oncemore into the desert of hopelessly convoluted diatribes, fill your camelskin bladders at the endlessly refreshing oasis of Bill Hicks, I believe named that after the comedian though I can't be sure of the chronology.

"The whole image is that eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. That's the message we're brought up with, isn't it? Believe or die! Thank you, forgiving Lord, for all those options."

Bill Hicks - 16 December 1961 – 26 February 1994

http://www.hacer.org/chile/?p=22

Naomi Klein’s disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist.

In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is a risk that they will ask you why you support dictatorships, torture, and corporate welfare. The reason for the confusion will be Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

In a very short time, the book has become a 21st-century bible for anticapitalists. It has also drawn praise from mainstream reviewers: “There are very few books that really help us understand the present,” gushed The Guardian. “The Shock Doctrine is one of those books.” Writing in The New York Times, the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called it “a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries."

Klein’s basic argument is that economic liberalization is so unpopular that it can only win through deception or coercion. In particular, it relies on crises. During a natural disaster, a war, or a military coup, people are disoriented, confused, and preoccupied with their own immediate survival, allowing regimes to liberalize trade, to privatize, and to reduce public spending with little opposition. According to Klein, “neoliberal” economists have welcomed Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asian tsunami, the Iraq war, and the South American military coups of the 1970s as opportunities to introduce radical free market policies. The chief villain in her story is Milton Friedman, the economist who did more than anyone in the 20th century to popularize free market ideas.

To make her case, Klein exaggerates the market reforms in question, often ignoring central events and rewriting chronologies. She confuses libertarianism with the quite different concepts of corporatism and neoconservatism. And she subjects Milton Friedman to one of the most malevolent distortions of a thinker’s ideas in recent history.

Well thank you!
In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
*promote

Here's a redone cut where the scenes play out in standard chronological order:
http://uk.ign.com/videos/2011/02/16/dead-island-backwards-forwards-announcement-trailer