From the article:
For Barnes, the device needed to be able to take cues from the human body. The lab designed a prosthesis that uses a technique called electromyography to pick up on electrical signals in the upper arm muscles. By tensing his biceps, Barnes controls a small motor that changes how tightly the prosthetic arm grips the drumstick and how quickly it moves, vital skills for a drummer.

The researchers then added another layer of complexity: a second, autonomous drumstick on the robot arm (see photo). This second stick, controlled via its own motor, uses a microphone and an accelerometer to sense the rhythm Barnes is playing, as well as music from any nearby musicians. An algorithm then produces a new beat with a complementary rhythm and melody, modelled on the music of jazz greats like John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.

With this extra artificial intelligence, human and machine combine to make Barnes a kind of "superhuman drummer", Weinberg says.

@oritteropo (oh ya, as an aside, if your a fan of Wigner, his pupal Alvin Weinberg was already thinking about the energy crisis back in the 50/60's, and wrote a great little diddy on it "ENERGY as an ultimate raw material, or problems of burning the sea and burning the rocks" http://energyfromthorium.com/energy-weinberg-1959/ They cut them from a different mold back then I guess.)

Terrific post, thank you, it should be required viewing in all schools. The last comment - Steven Weinberg - is the way forward; "science IS corrosive to religious belief, and, it's a good thing too." We have a duty to insist that our children are well informed. That they doubt, and question, tenets, rather than just simply accepting them as "gospel." I forget who said; " An intelligent man has no need of religion."

^ Will a poem do?

The standard model of particles, founded 50 years ago,
By abdus salam, steve weinberg and sheldon glashow.

They theorised three new forces, through which we used to find.
That gravity isn't the only all pervading influence of its kind.

The strong force exchanges gluons, of nuclear design.
Forgive the sense of humour, science needs a focused mind.

Before that comes the weak force, which must be overcome,
To fuse elements together and create a heavier one.

E-M forces follow; with yet a greater range,
"Quantum electrodynamics" uses photons to exchange.

Gravity we discovered first, Newton lead the way.
Applying it to the planets to map the celestial ballet.

From the smallest to the largest, we arrive at the present day.
The "Theory of Almost Everything"; so close yet so far away.

(Needs a bit of work!)

Safe nuclear refers to many different new gen4 reactor units that rely on passive safety instead of engineered safety. The real difference comes with a slight bit of understanding of how nuclear tech works now, and why that isn't optimal.

Let us first consider this, even with current nuclear technology, the amount of people that have died as a direct and indirect result of nuclear is very low per unit energy produced. The only rival is big hydro, even wind and solar have a great deal of risk compared to nuclear as we do it and have done it for years. The main difference is when a nuclear plant fails, everyone hears about it...but when a oil pipeline explodes and kills dozens, or solar panel installers fall off a roof or get electrocuted and dies...it just isn't as interesting.

Pound per pound nuclear is already statistically very safe, but that isn't really what we are talking about, we are talking about what makes them more unsafe compared to new nuclear techs. Well, that has to do with how normal nukes work. So, firstly, normal reactor tech uses solid fuel rods. It isn't a "metal" either, it is uranium dioxide, has the same physical characteristics as ceramic pots you buy in a store. When the fuel fissions, the uranium is transmuted into other, lighter, elements some of which are gases. Over time, these non-fissile elements damage the fuel rod to the point where it can no longer sustain fission and need to be replaced. At this point, they have only burned about 4% of the uranium content, but they are all "used up". So while there are some highly radioactive fission products contained in the fuel rods, the vast majority is just normal uranium, and that isn't very radioactive (you could eat it and not really suffer any radiation effects, now chemical toxicity is a different matter). The vast majority of nuclear waste, as a result of this way of burning uranium, generates huge volumes of waste products that aren't really waste products, just normal uranium.

But this isn't what makes light water reactors unsafe compared to other designs. It is all about the water. Normal reactors use water to both cool the core, extract the heat, and moderate the neutrons to sustain the fission reaction. Water boils at 100c which is far to low a temperature to run a thermal reactor on, you need much higher temps to get power. As a result, nuclear reactors use highly pressurized water to keep it liquid. The pressure is an amazingly high 2200psi or so! This is where the real problem comes in. If pressure is lost catastrophically, the chance to release radioactivity into the environment increases. This is further complicated by the lack of water then cooling the core. Without water, the fission chain reaction that generates the main source of heat in the reactor shuts down, however, the radioactive fission products contained in the fuel rods are very unstable and generate lots of heat. So much heat over time, they end up causing the rods to melt if they aren't supplied with water. This is the "melt down" you always hear about. If you start then spraying water on them after they melt down, it caries away some of those highly radioactive fission products with the steam. This is what happened in Chernobyl, there was also a human element that overdid all their safety equipment, but that just goes to show you the worst case.

The same thing didn't happen in Fukushima. What happened in Fukushima is that coolant was lost to the core and they started to melt down. The tubes which contain the uranium are made from zirconium. At high temps, water and zirconium react to form hydrogen gas. Now modern reactor buildings are designed to trap gases, usually steam, in the event of a reactor breach. In the case of hydrogen, that gas builds up till a spark of some kind happens and causes an explosion. These are the explosions that occurred at Fukushima. Both of the major failures and dangers of current reactors deal with the high pressure water; but water isn't needed to make a reactor run, just this type of reactor.

The fact that reactors have radioactive materials in them isn't really unsafe itself. What is unsafe is reactor designs that create a pressure to push that radioactivity into other areas. A electroplating plant, for example, uses concentrated acids along with high voltage electricity in their fabrication processes. It "sounds" dangerous, and it is in a certain sense, but it is a manageable danger that will most likely only have very localized effects in the event of a catastrophic event. This is due mainly to the fact that there are no forces driving those toxic chemical elements into the surrounding areas...they are just acid baths. The same goes for nuclear materials, they aren't more or less dangerus than gasoline (gas go boom!), if handled properly.

I think one of the best reactor designs in terms of both safety and efficiency are the molten salt reactors. They don't use water as a coolant, and as a result operate at normal preasures. The fuel and coolant is a liquid lithium, fluoride, and beryllium salt instead of water, and the initial fuel is thorium instead of uranium. Since it is a liquid instead of a solid, you can do all sorts of neat things with it, most notably, in case of an emergency, you can just dump all the fuel into a storage tank that is passively cooled then pump it back to the reactor once the issue is resolved. It is a safety feature that doesn't require much engineering, you are just using the ever constant force of gravity. This is what is known as passive safety, it isn't something you have to do, it is something that happens automatically. So in many cases, what they designed is a freeze plug that is being cooled. If that fails for any reason, and you desire a shutdown, the freeze plug melts and the entire contents of the reactor are drained into the tanks and fission stops (fission needs a certain geometry to happen).

So while the reactor will still be as dangerous as any other industrial machine would be...like a blast furnace, it wouldn't pose any threat to the surrounding area. This is boosted by the fact that even if you lost containment AND you had a ruptured emergency storage tank, these liquid salts solidify at temps below 400c, so while they are liquid in the reactor, they quickly solidify outside of it. And another great benefit is they are remarkably stable. Air and water don't really leach anything from them, fluoride and lithium are just so happy binding with things, they don't let go!

The fuel burn up is also really great. You burn up 90% of what you put in, and if you try hard, you can burn up to 99%. So, comparing them to "clean coal" doesn't really give new reactor tech its fair shake. The tech we use was actually sort of denounced by the person who made them, Alvin Weinberg, and he advocated the molten salt reactor instead. I could babble on about this for ages, but I think Kirk Sorensen explains that better than I could...hell most likely the bulk of what I said is said better by him



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

But the real question is why. Why use nuclear and not solar, for instance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

This is the answer. The power of the atom is a MILLION times more dense that fossil fuels...a million! It is a number that is beyond what we can normal grasp as people. Right now, current reactors harness less that 1% of that power because of their reactor design and fuel choice.

And unfortunately, renewables just cost to darn much for how much energy they contribute. In that, they also use WAY more resources to make per unit energy produced. So wind, for example, uses 10x more steal per unit energy contributed than other technologies. It is because renewables is more like energy farming.

http://videosift.com/video/TEDxWarwick-Physics-Constrain-Sustainable-Energy-Options


This is a really great video on that maths behind what makes renewables less than attractive for many countries. But to rap it up, finally, the real benefit is that cheap, clean power is what helps makes nations great. There is an inexorable link with access to energy and financial well being. Poor nations burn coal to try and bridge that gap, but that has a huge health toll. Renewables are way to costly for them per unit energy, they really need other answers. New nuclear could be just that, because it can be made nearly completely safe, very cheap to operate, and easier to manufacture (this means very cheap compared to today's reactors as they are basically huge pressure vessels). If you watch a couple of videos from Kirk and have more questions or problems, let me know, as you can see, I love talking about this stuff Sorry if I gabbed your ear off, but this is the stuff I am going back to school for because I do believe it will change the world. It is the closest thing to free energy we are going to get in the next 20 years.

In reply to this comment by ReverendTed:
Just stumbled onto your profile page and noticed an exchange you had with dag a few months back.
What constitutes "safe nuclear"? Is that a specific type or category of nuclear power?
Without context (which I'm sure I could obtain elsewise with a simple Google search, but I'd rather just ask), it sounds like "clean coal".

Disease rates

"During the past two decades, an explosive growth in both the prevalence and types of sexually transmitted diseases has occurred. Up to 55 percent of homosexual men with anorectal complaints have gonorrhea; 80 percent of the patients with syphilis are homosexuals. Chlamydia is found in 15 percent of asymptomatic homosexual men, and up to one third of homosexuals have active anorectal herpes simplex virus"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrezDb=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=2242700&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_Resul
tsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Higher rates of AIDS - 63 percent of new cases

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a2.htm


Drug use

Among homosexual men, ages 18 to 25: 79.2 percent have used marijuana; 75 percent have used psychotherapeutics for nonmedical reasons; 65.2 percent have used stimulants such as dexedrine and benzedrine; 62.5 percent have used inhalants such as amyl or butyl nitrate; and 50.2 percent have used hallucinogens such as LSD. Rates among lesbians: marijuana, 82 percent; psychotherapeutics, 58.8 percent; stimulants, 52.9 percent; inhalants, 41.2 percent; and hallucinogens, 41.2 percent. Comparing current usage to national usage, homosexuals were found to use drugs with greater frequency: "Among adults aged 18-25, 16.5 percent of men and 9.1 percent of women have used marijuana in the past month, compared with 37.5 per-cent of gay men and 23.5 percent of lesbians."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615476/

20 times higher rate of meth use (quoted from LA Times article)

http://www.narth.com/docs/methuse.html

Domestic violence

"Rates of battering victimization among urban MSM are substantially higher than among heterosexual men and possibly heterosexual women. Public health efforts directed toward addressing intimate partner battering among these men are needed."

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.92.12.1964

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r130ql0471892435/

Depression, suicide, mental health

LGB people are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self harm than heterosexual people

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18706118

Findings support recent evidence suggesting that gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people are at increased risk of mental health problems, with these associations being particularly evident for measures of suicidal behavior and multiple disorder.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10530626

Life expectancy of homosexuals

"In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871"

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/657.abstract

Statistics on Amsterdam

According to a study in the Netherlands where homosexuality has been accepted and mainstreamed for years, homosexual behavior significantly increases the likelihood of psychiatric, mental and emotional disorders, negating the mindset that society’s lack of tolerance of homosexual behavior and lifestyle produces these psychoses Youth are four times as likely to suffer major depression, almost three times as likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, four times as likely to commit suicide, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer multiple disorders, and more than six times as likely to have attempted suicide.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11146762

That covers all of my claims. I think you'll find all of the evidence I have provided is from unbiased sources. This refutes the claim that homosexuality does not harm anyone. It clearly harms the individual, the community and society at large.

Here are some more statistics that I don't have direct links to. .

An Amsterdam study found that the average homosexual relationship lasts only 18 months and that "men in homosexual relationships, on average, have eight partners a year outside those relationships." By comparison, more than two-thirds of heterosexual marriages in America last longer than ten years. Maria Xiridou et al.,

"The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection Among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,"
AIDS 17, 7 (2003): 1029-1038.

Ricky Behaviors:

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that thirty-six percent of homosexuals engaging in unprotected oral, anal, or vaginal sex failed to disclose that they were HIV positive to casual sex partners.

"Some With HIV Aren't Disclosing Before Sex; UCSF Researcher's 1,397-person Study Presented During aids Conference," The San Francisco Examiner (July 15, 2000)"

A CDC report revealed that, in 1997, 45 percent of homosexuals reporting having had unprotected anal intercourse during the previous six months did not know the HIV serostatus of all their sex partners. Even more alarming, among those who reported having had unprotected anal intercourse and multiple partners, 68 percent did not know the HIV serostatus of their partners

Gay and Bi Men Less Likely to Disclose They Have HIV," GayHealth News (July 18, 2000).

Promiscuity

A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sex partners.

A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 308, 9; see alsoBell, Weinberg and Hammersmith, Sexual Preference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981)

Paul Van de Ven et al., "A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men," Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354. Dr. Paul Van de Ven reiterated these results in a private conversation with Dr. Robert Gagnon on September 7, 2000

In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al., found that only 2.7 percent claimed to have had sex with one partner only. The most common response, given by 21.6 percent of the respondents, was of having a hundred-one to five hundred lifetime sex partners.

Survey Finds 40 percent of Gay Men Have Had More Than 40 Sex Partners," Lambda Report, January/February 1998, p. 20.

A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than a hundred sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than a thousand sexual partners.[11]

M. Pollak, "Male Homosexuality," in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, edited by P. Aries and A. Bejin, pp. 40-61, cited by Joseph Nicolosi in Reparative therapy of Male Homosexuality (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991),

In his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, M. Pollak found that "few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners."

David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984), pp. 252, 3.

>> ^curiousity:

Imma throw in some recommended reading

http://energyfromthorium.com/energy-weinberg-1959/

http://books.google.com/books?id=4swk0glJuswC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Resource+Wars&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oFJxT-GRJ8eaiQKBg43nDA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Re
source%20Wars&f=false


First, from a genius that sums up the debates on energy like geniuses do.

Second, showing the horrors of the current state of energy production. There is no greater issue, IMO, than the production of energy as it relates to the quality of life for ALL men. The low hanging fruit for the improvement of lives is directly tied to energy.

>> ^RadHazG:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." -Steven Weinberg


No... The affront to human dignity is humanity. We are a species of sick fucks and the fact that we don't admit it makes us sicker. We blame "concepts" as our faults--as if religion is the insult to human dignity...hard to say that when it is a naturally occurring concept, i.e., ingrained in the human code (One of the five Universals. Something we must "unlearn" in order to break away from.) Always something else's fault... never ours. If it was ours we'd have to work hard to fix it. Reminds me of why America is in decline right now...

Here, Steven Weinberg is an idiot. I appreciate Alan Watts much better...

@kulpims
I wouldn't let anyone adopt a child...let alone a religious person.

>> ^RadHazG:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." -Steven Weinberg


I'm an atheist and I personally find it one of the most uninformed and absurd quotes ever. Good people do bad things for lots of reasons besides religion (see for example the results of the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram experiment). Also, a great many "evil" people (prison inmates for instance) find religion and turn their lives around--essentially allowing any religious teacher to turn the quote on its head and claim that "for evil people to do good things, it takes religion."

>> ^RadHazG:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." -Steven Weinberg


I had not heard this one Rad. Save.

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." -Steven Weinberg

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.

^concerning the above comments, I will concede two points: first, this is obviously an angry rant that is not to be taken too seriously (cf. the comic it is transcribed from). Second, the author clearly has Christianity (and the Abrahamic monotheisms in general) in mind when using the term "religion", causing its use to partially exclude certain religions.

That being said, the sentiment of contempt and disrespect for people's refusal to use their "god-given" brains in the domains of ethics, superstitious beliefs, etc., is perfectly understandable, and does not mean that the bearer of such sentiment has no empathy for the human being, even when considering said human being an idiot.

An extreme example: I have nothing but contempt and not one iota of respect for the WBC gang, and yet I would rush to their guru's aid (as probably any one of you commentators would) if he were to be hit by a truck. Does that mean I think he's not stupid? Or suddenly have respect for him? NO. Only basic human empathy.

As for the Weinberg quote, yes, I am aware of the Stanford and Milgram experiments, which show the effect of authority on human behaviour. Weinberg's quote implicitly integrates those experiments; indeed, what greater and more unquestionable authority is there than God(s)? How many disgusting, unethical and barbaric actions and wordlviews are continually sanctioned by religious authority (and the weight of the sheeple's adherence thereto), that no self-respecting ethical and empathetic person would otherwise accept?

As for Communism, it is nothing but a state religion, with the Party replacing God. I won't bother addressing the moronic argument of "Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc...", which has been thoroughly debunked by many speakers far more eloquent than myself (e.g. Hitchens).

Finally, @quantumushroom, your answer about atheists being delusional not only makes no sense (unless you're teetering into solipsism), but quoting the Bible does not help your case in the least. Benjamin Frankin's comment seems to be a cynical criticism of the masses' stupidity and immorality, not a sanction of religion's merit.

"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it." Benjamin Franklin

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Benjamin Franklin

I think you're looking for the word "empathy" when writing REspect.

>>> That's correct. REspect is the treatment resulting from empathy.

1) Strawman attack. Nothing in the letter suggests what you're accusing it of.

>>> The Bozo in question wrote, "I have nothing but contempt for you (the religious)." Therefore I would not expect REspect or empathy from such an individual. He's set himself up as an enemy, needlessly, I might add. Look at all the angry responses here. Probably what he was after.

2) Atheists are smarter than religious people within the domains mentioned.

>>> What "domains" are we considering? Science? Famous Scientists Who Believed in God There are plenty of dumb atheists as well as dumb religious people. There are also atheists who have not a whit of curiosity about the universe.

3)You have two points here that have nothing to do one with the other.

They're close cousins.

First: most religions (including the worst of the lot, i.e. the Abrahamic monotheisms) do exclude all other religions.

Bozo said "you realize all the OTHER religions are wrong" in blanket condemnation.

The farther one moves from this exclusivity, the closer one gets to a religion being a philosophy (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism), or woo (e.g. New Age).

You forget Hinduism, a dynamic, evolving faith older then Christianity, with billions of gods. It accepts other paths as legit. But even as Hinduism is weighted down with a caste system, Christianity has broken barriers around the world across all nations and races and even within itself.

Second: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg

Weinberg needs to read up on communism, a much more potent enemy of human dignity and worth. Communist countries are run by a--holes who believe they are the only true gods. Religion can be abusive, insulting and dehumanizing in the wrong hands, just like politics and language. However, there is no atheist tradition declaring 'All life has value.' Einstein once said 'Either everything is a miracle or nothing is.' The lack of sanctity endemic to atheism places it on the side of nothing being miraculous. It doesn't mean atheists are bad people, it means they have no reference outside of their own feelings, which leads us to...

4) Care to explain how atheism is delusional?

I said the atheist is delusional, not atheism, and I'm not referring to what atheists think of deities at all.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it? This means you and I can rationalize anything at any time. We lie to ourselves ALL THE TIME to preserve our own egos and pride, with a subconscious dominantly seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. A single human is not even a unified consciousness but a collection of competing desires and savage impulses. It's a miracle in itself that anyone ever stops to look outside of themselves.

The atheist has as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as anyone else, but I'm still siding with Ben Franklin: If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?

Yawn. Other videos on the Sift have said pretty much the same thing with much sounder logic and, frankly, better insults (see pretty much any of Christopher Hitchens videos on the subject).

Downvoted for:

1) Starting the argument with the premise that anyone who disagrees with his argument must be stupid. Can't really claim to represent informed and rational intelligence when you don't even understand the basics of logical fallacies.
2) Being apparently unaware not every religion believes the same things as Christianity (the only actual arguments made against religion are in fact specifically made against Christianity).
3) Promoting disrespecting people. Don't like their ideas? That's fine. But even Hitchens respects the person, if not the beliefs they hold or the argument they're making. Disrespecting people isn't going to get them to see your point of view and only makes the problem worse.

@hpqp

Have you read about the Stanford Prison experiment or Milgram's experiments? Both of these quite clearly prove Steven Weinberg wrong--there are in fact several things that will get good people to do bad things. And you can easily turn Weinberg's quote on its head by pointing out that religion (but not only religion) can get "bad" people (whatever that means) to do good things.