>> ^kymbos:

I've noticed that Facebook is now misrepresenting the products that people 'like'. A friend of mine who hates sports suddenly 'liked' this sports gambling website. I took a screen print and sent it to him on email, and he responded telling me he'd never heard of it.
I find this dishonest and morally repugnant. It seems like they're desperate to monetise their potential and are starting to over-reach as a result.


Yeah, and the whole 'promote' a status thing, with the option of paying to promote being trialled also spells the end it would seem.

People are entrenched, to be sure, but if a cleaner, competitor comes along and provides a simple migration process ('enter your login details and we'll transfer all your photos/videos over to our FlubBrook service now'), people will jump ship if Facebook keeps becoming more and more and more of an advertising platform rather than a social network.

There are two things that I think are overlooked with Windows 8...

First up it's an operating system that has a UI designed specifically for touch input. The UI is obviously not intended for regular desktop usage, and is Microsoft's attempt at reaching out to the consumer market. Let's face it, Microsoft has pretty much got the business side of things covered with Windows 7, and there is still a large business user base who have yet to put migrations to Windows 7 into effect. Why use a keyboard and mouse with an operating system designed for touch input? Windows 7 will be available for a long time yet, because Microsoft know Windows 8 is a stretch too far for most businesses.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the whole desktop UI is still there, and you can run your entire Windows session in the traditional desktop without having to step in and out of the "modern UI" (aka metro) shell. The start menu is lacking, but easily recreated with a shortcut to the start menu folder in your user profile pinned to the task bar.

Yep, there'll be many geeks who wanted to persuade their bosses that everyone needs their monitors replaced with touchscreens but let's face it, Windows 8 is a consumer product and is not yet geared up for business use. Touch input is slowly creeping into the business world with many executives loving their shiny pads/tablets/slabs that make them look professional. It'll be a bit longer before tech departments start envisioning an overhaul of their entire workstation setups and are willing to embrace Windows 8.

One last thought crossed my mind... As far as touch input goes, Windows 8 is pretty sweet.

>> ^Sagemind:

Sad to say, my opinion is to destroy them.
First of all, they'll never get them all so so they won't really be destroying them. If they do get them all, however unlikely, then they would just be culling them back to their country of origin.
By not getting rid of them, it would be like consciously choosing to kill off all other indigenous animals. With no natural predators, these snakes throw the balance out and will only be stopped once the food supply runs out at which point, they'll migrate as far as they are able, further killing off local wildlife. The next logical food source for them would be pets and humans.
Look up Kane toads if you don't think they can take over!
http://youtu.be/4mvV8OT-mmE


A couple words difference and you might have been referring to human beings.

Sad to say, my opinion is to destroy them.

First of all, they'll never get them all so so they won't really be destroying them. If they do get them all, however unlikely, then they would just be culling them back to their country of origin.

By not getting rid of them, it would be like consciously choosing to kill off all other indigenous animals. With no natural predators, these snakes throw the balance out and will only be stopped once the food supply runs out at which point, they'll migrate as far as they are able, further killing off local wildlife. The next logical food source for them would be pets and humans.

Look up Kane toads if you don't think they can take over!
http://youtu.be/4mvV8OT-mmE

I think it's more likely a displaced population of some foreign crustacean (made even more ambiguous by being larval), either deep-sea or swept (maybe even migrated due to environmental change) from somewhere else.

>> ^NetRunner:

But what about blue people living in red states, and red people living in blue states being "stuck" with a system they don't like?
I guess my problem with that whole framing is that it makes it sound like there's some moral equivalency at work between red & blue people's preferences.

It may take a long time but if you've got a good mix of with and without states, people will gradually migrate to their preferred environment.

If the programs are successful, over time I suspect purple and even some red states would change their tune.

My point was not, "fuck you if you're in the wrong state", it was "why should I, as a NYer, have to wait for TX to get on board if I want reform?"

I do not see this as a moral issue and I do not think government should enforce good behavior anyway, only punish the harming of others.

That last statement is ripe for taking out of context; please try to resist doing so.

"Ok, you need to understand two different concepts........the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality.....supposedly bring down evolution."

Minor disagreements? I'm having a hard time believing that you've seriously investigated this subject if you are now claiming (scaled back from your prior claim of perfect agreement between "scores" of them) that molecular and morphological phylogonies typically have a high level of agreement. They don't. Agreement is the exception, not the rule. Even worse, molecular phylogonies don't agree with eachother either:

As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology. . . .

Partly because of morphology’s long history, congruence between morphological phylogenies is the exception rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all generated within the last couple of decades, the situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence between molecular phylogenies are documented above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1% of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published (e.g. 132, 152, 170), structure or resolution tends to evaporate

Congruence Between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

"If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference"

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution""

Your charge of quote mining is false. Quote mining is the logical fallacy of quoting something out of context, distorting its intended meaning. The quote I provided was very much in context, and showed support for the assertion that molecular and morphological phylogenies do not have "perfect" agreement, and now I have further supported that assertion (and disproven your scaled back claim of very statistically significant agreement) that their agreement is actually very superficial. It is far more significant how little agreement there actually is.

The very reason there is a contention about which is the "best" method is precisely because there is so little agreement. In any case, molecular homology appears to be winning the battle, perhaps because the evolutionists are getting tired of never finding any evolution in the fossil record.

Which brings us to the many issues with molecular homologies, specifically, their lack of falsifiability:

"We believe that it is possible to draw up a list of basic rules that underlie existing molecular evolutionary models:

All theories are monophyletic, meaning that they all start with the Urgene and the Urzelle which have given rise to all proteins and all species, respectively.

Complexity evolves mainly through duplications and mutations in structural and control genes.

Genes can mutate or remain stable, migrate laterally from species to species, spread through a population by mechanisms whose operation is not fully understood, evolve coordinately, splice, stay silent, and exist as pseudogenes.

Ad hoc arguments can be invented (such as insect vectors or viruses) that can transport a gene into places where no monophyletic logic could otherwise explain its presence.

This liberal spread of rules, each of which can be observed in use by scientists, does not just sound facetious but also, in our opinion, robs monophyletic evolution of its vulnerability to disproof, and thereby its entitlement to the status of a scientific theory.

The absolute, explicit and implicit, adherence to all the monophyletic principle and consequently the decision to interpret all observations in the light of this principle is the major cause of incongruities as well as for the invention of all the genetic sidestepping rules cited above."

A Polyphyletic View of Evolution

Schwabe and Warr

This is why Schwabe, a biochemist, wrote:

Molecular evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist I should be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many, in fact, that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message

It's a shell game where virtually any kind of data can be accomodated, and at no point is the theory questioned. Ad hoc explanations can be invented for any kind of discrepency.

""There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.""

A mountain of weak, circumstantial evidence (much of which contradicts itself) does not prove macro evolution. "We're working on it" does not somehow validate that evidence. We know the holocaust happened; there is no proof for macro evolution.

""As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.""

There are numerous sources showing that junk dna is not junk:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/28/1103894108.full.pdf+html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025112059.htm

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/transposons-or-jumping-genes-not-junk-dna-1211

Based on your earlier argument, "we're working on it", you should realize that what some scientists consider to be junk dna stems entirely from ignorance. The idea that it got in there by "viral dna insertions" and the like is simply another ad hoc explanation among many.

""And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on""

I have already demonstrated that the consensus is very weak. What you need to provide is data backing up your claims regarding cytochrome c. I am awaiting the "scores" of phylogonies that will match that data.

>> ^messenger:

@Deano
A thought experiment should have valid parameters. To me, it fails the moment it makes all those dubious assumptions about DNA differences.
I did love his point about Mars though. That's spot on. What scares me is that if true, it would Scientology look more reputable.


Well except for the Overlord, his large economy flier airplanes, and bombing volcanoes (plus there are only a few volcanoes that he can actually bomb in the first place; they just are not built ALL like the Hawaiian chain open caldera type of volcano). Plus I have to wonder, how did our primitive species as we were slowly migrating upwards in the DNA chain deal with all the bad juju stuff that was injected into the DNA sequencing line--and then eventually ended up in ours...?

I really don't think you have to worry at all. Except for the stupid people, they amazingly will believe ANYTHING and often do; like Obama's birth certificate not really being one.

/I actually know a birther here in Utah and I can tell you that I can give them ALL THE PROOF on why their belief is incorrect, including evidence. Yet they will not believe me; BUT if I change my STANCE in the middle of my proof and make something up ON THE SPOT instead supporting them--they believe me!!! So I know what you believe is far more important than the truth and this is true EVEN for smart people. It's rare to find people that will switch positions on the spot--I think due to a lot of pride.

i see where fisk is coming from and the anarchist in me agrees.
i fully understand that some people seek and desire cutesy marmalade syrupy cute kitty/animal videos and that is their thing.
no judgement here but some of us actively seek out the obscure,dark and inspired videos that are becoming a rare commodity on this site.
videos that challenge our preconceived notions and make us ponder and contemplate,inspire us to think or feel in a different manner.

mrFisk is pointing out the fact the community of sifters who engage and post content such as described above is becoming smaller and smaller,and the sift suffers because of this collective neutering.we know full well who posts the eclectic,obscure and controversial and we recognize our dwindling numbers.
blankie and choggie challenged conventional ideas and were supremely vocal while they did it,and yes,could oftentimes be total dickwads in the process.
passionate people tend to behave like that.
they cross lines.
they speak before they think things through.
they offend tender sensibilities.
but fuck all if they didnt make ya stop and think for a second.

these are the people who add a dynamic to a community..
a diversity that is so badly needed.

so yeah,
when a few members of that small group leave (for whatever reason) the rest of us take notice and the sift suffers as a whole.
the voice is diminished,the message diluted and what is left is the gelatinous vanilla goo of a uninspired collective group-think.

blankie and choggie had something to say and people like fisk and i appreciated them for that,even though we may have disagreed.
and you are right @speechless.
there are other sites and venues to speak what is in our hearts and what is on our minds,and many who once lurked on this site have migrated enmasse,to the sifts detriment.
which is exactly MrFisks point.
a point you have decidedly missed.

i am not condoning nor defending choggie and blankies behavior (and others) all i am saying is that they brought a unique and interesting perspective to the sift and now we are all diminished due to their defunct silence.

through conformity there is stagnation.
you have been warned.

on a side note:
thank god DFT is still around and keeping it old skool!

oh..and *promote this poll!

I think he's getting caught up on predictions...he's right though that a lot of predictions haven't panned out. That doesn't disprove global climate change...I mean just take Neils example of the animals changing their migrating patterns and timing of changes. It's pretty easy to see if you study it...not so easy if you only read some reports or even worse read some laymans interpretation of the reports. Of course doubly worse if that layman has an agenda.

@MonkeySpank

Every time you label things like "communist-founded ACLU," etc., you bring down the entire discourse to poop-hurling and name-calling.

Do you know why I "labeled" it communist-founded ACLU? Because it was!

I am for Socialism, disarmament and ultimately, for the abolishing of the State itself … I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.

--Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU in 1920, speaking in 1935

I'll ask you the following questions:

1) Do you believe in evolution?

>>> A Creator created evolution.

2) Do you think that government, a protocol of civil conduct, is always flawed; and therefore it should be minimized or eliminated?

>>> It's always flawed in the sense that it's run by humans, not angels. Corruption is the grease of democracy; the greater the size of the government, the more tyrannical.

3) Do you believe in the passage "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back." Luke 6:35; do you live by it?

>>> As much as possible, but I imagine everyone thinks that. Also, sometimes the best way to love your enemies is to end their karma in this lifetime.

4) Do you believe in divorce and interest rates? Would you oppose them if you could vote against them?

>>> No, but we pay a heavy price for each.

5) Do you believe in a non-profit Universal Healthcare, or something similar? Mark 3:10

>>> It doesn't work, so no. Do I believe in helping those who truly need help? Yes.

6) What countries do you like besides the United States?

>>> There are other countries? I like some aspects of some countries. Japanese ninjas, Canadian Shatner, etc.

7) Would you support a war against Iran?

>>> Yes, as needed. You really want to allow nutjobs to have The Bomb? Say goodbye to Nuked York.

Do you believe that Mexicans, the original owners of this land, are free loaders when we arbitrarily set a border south of AZ, NM, CA, and TX and decided to call their migration "illegal"?

>>> We won those states by winning wars with Mexico. We are all trespassers on dinosaur land.

9) What would be one good thing can you say about Obama, although I am not a fan of his, to show any lack of bias?

>>> He's an eloquent speaker.



1) Do you believe in evolution?
2) Do you think that government, a protocol of civil conduct, is always flawed; and therefore it should be minimized or eliminated?
3) Do you believe in the passage "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back." Luke 6:35; do you live by it?
4) Do you believe in divorce and interest rates? Would you oppose them if you could vote against them?
5) Do you believe in a non-profit Universal Healthcare, or something similar? Mark 3:10
6) What countries do like besides the United States?
7) Would you support a war against Iran?
Do you believe that Mexicans, the original owners of this land, are free loaders when we arbitrarily set a border south of AZ, NM, CA, and TX and decided to call their migration "illegal"?
9) What would be one good thing can you say about Obama, although I am not a fan of his, to show any lack of bias?

>> ^quantumushroom:


The communist-founded ACLU has taken upon itself to decide that all mentions of religion in the public circle are, in fact, establishing a government religion, which is rubbish.


Every time you label things like "communist-founded ACLU," etc., you bring down the entire discourse to poop-hurling and name-calling. A good argument is one that sits on the fence. I'll ask you the following questions:

1) Do you believe in evolution?
2) Do you think that government, a protocol of civil conduct, is always flawed; and therefore it should be minimized or eliminated?
3) Do you believe in the passage "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back." Luke 6:35; do you live by it?
4) Do you believe in divorce and interest rates? Would you oppose them if you could vote against them?
5) Do you believe in a non-profit Universal Healthcare, or something similar? Mark 3:10
6) What countries do like besides the United States?
7) Would you support a war against Iran?
Do you believe that Mexicans, the original owners of this land, are free loaders when we arbitrarily set a border south of AZ, NM, CA, and TX and decided to call their migration "illegal"?
9) What would be one good thing can you say about Obama, although I am not a fan of his, to show any lack of bias?

Very clever! Just like... people. Notice how they cover their tracks? That implies cause/effect reasoning ability, although most likely a learned behavior passed from adults to young after generations and generations of happenstance trial and error. It's a stretch, but the strange noises they were making could almost be likened to language of some sort. I suspect they could even be taught to sign. Amazing they have been able to overcome barriers very similar to those even the very clever dingos of Australia have yet to breach. One can almost imagine us hundreds of thousands of years ago, migrating with the seasons, learning to cooperate as communities, the strongest of our ancestors surviving the harshness of a truly natural life and passing their genes to the generations to come as we began our long, slow journey toward ignorance, arrogance, and indifference.

I just don't know what the heck is going on with Facebook.

We got a notification saying they're removing Facebook App profile pages in February and that we needed to migrate our app's profile onto a Facebook Page. So, we did that, but now VideoSift updates no longer show up on the new Facebook Page, so we've been updating the Page manually a couple of times a day.

That widget in the front page sidebar is still referencing facebook.com/videosift, but it's only loading posts from the old App profile, which no longer exists.

Despite all my efforts, I cannot find a way to make Facebook allow our updates to the new Page, as it seems the updates are only accepted on App profiles. But since they're removing App profiles soon, I guess it means we just can't make any updates any more.

I'm just frustrated and confuzzled by all of this. If anyone knows anything more about this funny-business, please do enlighten us.

[edit]
Strike the bit about updates not working. After a lot of toil and trouble, I finally figured out the obscure method required to allow that. The only outstanding issue is that the Facebook widget in the sidebar is still showing the old app feed. This is a Facebook bug that hopefully they'll soon fix. (I just submitted a bug report about it.)

The question I'm annoyed they didn't pursue in sufficient depth was the one alluded to on a baseline of social services. I think it's all well and good to argue that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Certainly, especially if you're talking about easily traversable state lines in a country like the US, that there is migration to lower tax levels may say nothing more than that states overall benefit from the government spending (say R&D) around them and thereby there is an incentive to mooch off the collective spending and yet employ a lower tax rate in your own state to enable more jobs to be created.

The crux of the argument when you start talking about replacing social security solely with a mandatory super scheme (which by itself as an addition is good policy, we have it here in Australia at 9%, soon to go up to 12%) is not which one generates more income in the long run, it's whether you are fine with entirely replacing it and facing the prospect that someone down on their luck, perhaps mentally or physically handicapped in some way, stuck in a place of low social mobility is allowed by society as a whole to die because there is no scheme in place to assist them. At that point I think you expose the morally callous argument that he's making.