Haven't watched this yet but it would seem to me that all animals have language in some version. Ours is just the most complex in the abstract sense. Other animals may be able to communicate with finer detail on a less abstract level but I haven't seen the studies on that.

How can we have a substantive conversation if you're not willing to put in any effort to actually understand the subject matter, either for or against? If you're content with your blind faith in whatever scientists tell you, then you're just as dogmatic as you accuse me of being. The video I provided is very good and it chronicles the history of deep time, as well as the science behind it, in exacting detail using the methodology of geologists. You could watch 10 minutes of it, and if you decided you didn't like it, you could turn it off.

As far as the paradigm shift goes, here is a quote from the father of uniformitarianism, Charles Lyell:

I am sure you may get into Q.R. [Quarterly Review] what will free the science from Moses, for if treated seriously, the [church] party are quite prepared for it. A bishop, Buckland ascertained (we suppose [Bishop] Sumner), gave Ure a dressing in the British Critic and Theological Review. They see at last the mischief and scandal brought on them by Mosaic systems … . Probably there was a beginning—it is a metaphysical question, worthy of a theologian—probably there will be an end. Species, as you say, have begun and ended—but the analogy is faint and distant. Perhaps it is an analogy, but all I say is, there are, as Hutton said, ‘no signs of a beginning, no prospect of an end’ … . All I ask is, that at any given period of the past, don’t stop inquiry when puzzled by refuge to a ‘beginning,’ which is all one with ‘another state of nature,’ as it appears to me. But there is no harm in your attacking me, provided you point out that it is the proof I deny, not the probability of a beginning … . I was afraid to point the moral, as much as you can do in the Q.R. about Moses. Perhaps I should have been tenderer about the Koran. Don’t meddle much with that, if at all.

If we don’t irritate, which I fear that we may (though mere history), we shall carry all with us. If you don’t triumph over them, but compliment the liberality and candour of the present age, the bishops and enlightened saints will join us in despising both the ancient and modern physico-theologians. It is just the time to strike, so rejoice that, sinner as you are, the Q.R. is open to you.

P.S. … I conceived the idea five or six years ago [1824–25], that if ever the Mosaic geology could be set down without giving offence, it would be in an historical sketch, and you must abstract mine, in order to have as little to say as possible yourself. Let them feel it, and point the moral.”

As you can plainly see, Charles was scheming to deceive the church into accepting his uniformitarian theories even though he knew they contradicted scripture. He wasn't interested in a scientific investigation of the facts:

From a lecture in King’s College London in 1832

I have always been strongly impressed with the weight of an observation of an excellent writer and skillful geologist who said that ‘for the sake of revelation as well as of science—of truth in every form—the physical part of Geological inquiry ought to be conducted as if the Scriptures were not in existence

He had an agenda and his bias is plain to see. He completely excluded the testimony of scripture apriori before he even began. That is the beginning of why there was a shift in geology as the intelligentsia embraced his theories and began to teach it at Universities. There was no spectacular confirmation of any of this; in fact the evidence he gave about Niagra Falls to supprt his theory has been completely falsified.

@GeeSussFreeK

I tried to stay way from issues specific to the use of nuclear technology for a reason. There's very little in your reply that I can respond to, simply for a lack of expertise. So bear with me if I once again attempt to generalize and abstract some points. And I'll try to keep it shorter this time.

You mentioned how construction times and costs are pushed up by the constant evolution of compliance codes. A problem not exclusive to the construction of power plants, but maybe more pronounced in these cases. No matter.

What buggers me, however, is what you can currently observe in real time at the EPR construction sites in Olkiluoto and Flamanville.
For instance, the former is reported to have more than 4000 workers from over 60 nations, involving more than 1500 sub-contractors. It's basically the Tower of Babylon, and the quality of work might be similar as well. Workers say, they were ordered to just pour concrete over inadequate weld seams to get things done in time, just to name an example. They are three years over plan as of now, and it'll be at least 2-3 more before completion.
And Flamanville... here's some of what the French Nuclear Safety Authority had to say about the construction site: "concrete supports look like Swiss cheese", "walls with gaping holes", "brittle spots without a trace of cement".

Again, this is not exclusive to the construction of NPPs. Almost every large scale construction site in Europe these days looks like this, except for whatever the Swiss are doing: kudos to them, wonderful work indeed. But if they mess up the construction of a train station, they don't run a risk of ruining the ground water and irradiating what little living space we have in Europe as it is.

Then you explain the advantages of small scale, modular reactors. Again, no argument from my side on the feasability of this, I have to take your word on it. But looking at how the Russians dispose of their old nuclear reactors (bottom of the Barents Sea) and how Germany disposes of its nuclear waste (dropped down a hole), I don't fancy the idea of having even more reactors around.

As for prices, I have to raise my hands in surrender once again. Not my area of expertise, my knowledge is limited to whatever analysis hits the mainstream press every now and then. Here's my take on it, regarding just the German market: the development, construction, tax exemption, insurance exemption, fuel transport and waste disposal of the nuclear industry was paid for primarly by taxes. Conservative government estimates were in the neighbourhood of €300B since the sixties, in addition to the costs of waste disposal and plant deconstruction that the companies can't pay for. And that's if nothing happens to any of the plants, no flood, no fire, nothing.

That's not cheap. E.ON and RWE dropped out of the bid on construction permits for new NPPs in GB, simply because it's not profitable. RWE CEO Terium mentioned ~100€/MWh as the minimum base price to make new NPPs profitable, 75.80€/MWh for gas-powered plants. Right now, the base (peak) price is at 46€/MWh (54€/MWh) in Germany. France generates ~75% of its power through NPPs, while Germany is getting plastered with highly subsidized wind turbines and solar panels, yet the market price for energy is lower in Germany.

Yes, the conditions are vastly different in the US, and yes, the next generation of NPPs might be significantly cheaper and safer to construct and run. I'm all for research in these areas. But on the field of commercial energy generation, nuclear energy just doesn't seem to cut it right now.

So let's hop over to safety/dangers. Again, priorities might differ significantly and I can only argue from a central European perspective. As cold-hearted as it may sound, the number of direct casualties is not the issue. Toxicity and radiation is, as far as I'm concerned. All our NPPs are built on rivers and the entire country is rather densely populated. A crashing plane might kill 500 people, but there will be no long term damage, particularly not to the water table. The picture of an experimental waste storage site is disturbing enough as it is, and it wasn't even "by accident" that some of these chambers are now flooded by ground water.

Apologies if I ripped anything out of context. I tried to avoid the technicalities as best as I could in a desperate attempt not to make a fool of myself. Again.

And sorry for not linking any sources in many cases. Most of it was taken from German/Swiss/Austrian/French articles.

>> ^jimnms:

Caffeine is not a diuretic.

“In the 10 studies reviewed, consumption of a caffeinated beverage resulted in 0 to 84 percent retention of the initial volume ingested, whereas consumption of water resulted in 0 to 81 percent retention.”
Another study, in the same journal in 2005, involved scientists following 59 active adults over 11 days while controlling their caffeine intake. They were given caffeine in capsule form on some days and on other days were given a placebo. Researchers found no significant differences in levels of excreted electrolytes or urine volume. [source]

Words are far removed from reality. You don't give me enough for me to know how much of my thinking you understand. You have to take all that I wrote as a whole to get somewhat close to what I am thinking. Picking out a word or sentence that I wrote tells me that you have no interest in understanding me but I don't know that for sure because you aren't giving me anything to go on to let me understand what you are thinking.

I am saying that if quantum theory is correct then evolution has to be correct as well.

"The big bang proves humans" seems to be a wholly different kind of statement that means one event in time proves another event in time.

I am saying that quantum physics and evolution are in essence describing the same process, the same truth, the same idea. People use slightly different words in these two areas but in essence: the interactions shape the whole and the whole shapes the interactions. Nothing is fixed, everything is constantly moving and changing so you cannot simply create a flower by itself nor an atom by itself. Atoms exist (in the sense we think of existence) because of quantum effects interacting and the flower exists because of all the interactions at its scales of time and size.

Calling part of what I wrote about fractals a separate argument seems to indicate exactly what the problem is. It isn't about agreeing or disagreeing or separate arguments. It is about using abstractions (words, sentences) to dance around a big idea in order to communicate that big idea. No one abstraction can describe the whole. at best we can circle around the edges and make the connections which will be a different process for you than for me.

Also I find it weird to be compared to intelligent design. I have never read anything nor seen any videos about intelligent design where their evidence supported their conclusions. It seems that they always present really good reasons why, for example, an eye has to have evolved over time from simple light-sensitive cells to current more complex structures but they present those reasons as evidence that evolution didn't happen but the eye was created whole as we know it now. Same thing with the flagellum thing. Everything they say about those structures tells me they have to have evolved from simpler structures in an ever evolving environment but the conclusion that they say they support is the opposite. In other words, I hope you don't think of me as dumb.

Philosophically speaking I am open to the idea that to an eternal mind the time from the big bang to today is like a flash. What to us would be a thought of an elephant that appears and disappears in a flash in our minds might be similar to the universe as we know it in the mind of the All. Even so, quantum physics and evolution is how that thought process would appear to us.
>> ^lampishthing:

As I said, quantum mechanics provides the mechanism for evolution.
I only object to your use of "proof". I will whole-heartedly agree with "Quantum physics supports evolution", I will not agree with "Quantum physics proves evolution." The argument about the beauty of the fractal nature of interactions progressing scale is akin to an argument used for intelligent design. Argument from beauty
>> ^swedishfriend:
>> ^lampishthing:
Um, no. Quantum mechanics is necessary for mechanisms involved in, say, genetics but to say that quantum physics proves evolution is like saying that the big bang proves humans.>> ^swedishfriend:
Quantum physics also proves evolution.


Quantum effects show that all is probability unless there is interaction. This leads at larger scales to the process we call evolution. No one living cell or organism can be created and exist by itself but rather has to evolve from simpler matter along with the other simpler matter in is environment. Everything relies on everything else would be a basic way of thinking about it. Everything grows out of everything. Experiments of quantum effects at larger scales have shown that what we call reality comes into being by interaction with all else that exists. In the same way living organisms cannot be created out of the blue without all other organisms and matter around it but rather has to grow and be shaped through time and interactions with the nature around it.
If you can hold large enough ideas and interactions in your mind I think you will see that evidence for quantum effects supports the idea of evolution and evidence of evolution supports the idea of quantum effects.
Nature is one thing, the functions of life and evolution fractally rise up out of atomic and quantum effects. If you truly understand fractals, evolution, and quantum effects it is easy to understand them as a whole.

>> ^Engels:

i don't think you have a grasp of the level of protest going on. Estimates have that 77 percent of the population support the protesters. This isn't a confusing WTO mess, with imported protesters with abstracted ideals on the line. The severity of the social cuts is so punitive that the force behind the protest won't cave to police enforcement as easily. That, and the Spanish populace won't tolerate the level of violence US law enforcement is used to doling out.


This because BY DESIGN, the people who run the show want a dick-less, purposeless, exhausted and discourage bunch of sheepies that are unable to bitch while being ass-fucked, IMLTHO

i don't think you have a grasp of the level of protest going on. Estimates have that 77 percent of the population support the protesters. This isn't a confusing WTO mess, with imported protesters with abstracted ideals on the line. The severity of the social cuts is so punitive that the force behind the protest won't cave to police enforcement as easily. That, and the Spanish populace won't tolerate the level of violence US law enforcement is used to doling out.

I'm typically not one for anecdotal evidence myself, but I don't need to rely on it. There is very little data on successful techniques for long term weight loss. Here's an example. Now, not everyone will interpret these results in the same way that I do. On my reading, people that maintained weight loss needed to check their weight, reduce their fat intake, and expend more energy than people that are naturally weight stable at that weight. In fact, people that lost weight, and regained it had effectively the same habits as people that are weight stable at the lower weight. In other words, weight stable fat people and weight stable thin people exercise and eat the same amounts. Granted, there were some that were able to maintain this increased activity level and highly restrictive diet, however I would suspect if you were to investigate that group you would likely find a higher incidence of psychological issues surrounding body-image, and likely an increased incidence of OCD. Now if your claim is true, the people that lost weight down to an average of 167 pounds or so (the average weight of the weight stable controls), should have been able to have equivalent habits to those controls and maintain that weight as their BMR should be equivalent. Clearly the data shows your claim to be false. They need to maintain an increased activity level and lower fat intake in order to maintain the same weight.

>> ^Duncan:

@bmacs27 You're using every cliche in the book. Basal Metabolic Rates vary in negligible amounts between people of the same gender, age, height, and weight. If your body doesn't get the energy it needs from an outside source, it will break down itself for fuel. And your anecdotal evidence means very little. Argue all you want about how body fat has little to do with health, but don't go saying some people can't lose it (genetic conditions notwithstanding).

Bmacs You are moving the goalposts.
You say above that your key gripe is in using BMI to approximate health. Not the likelihood of ones imminent demise.
Lets clear this up.
1. You are making a conversation about morbidity about mortality.
2. You are dealing with data specific to BMI as it relates to Blood pressure and mortality as it specifically relates to hypertensive individuals. Is your suggestion that High blood pressure and cardiac events are the only risks involved with obesity? What about things that don't kill you but directly impact the quality of your life? Thinking diabeties here, among other things.
3. You seem to be trying to somehow debunk the concept that obesity has ANY negative health consequences by dismissing the other articles cited.
4. What biomarkers are you concerned with. What study are you focused on? There are plenty of studies surrounding biomarkers for obesity and comorbitidy. Here is a nature article directly citing that.

What are you actually suggesting here? Obesity is causal to NO life threatening or impacting diseases? That it has NO negative health consequences?
>> ^bmacs27:

@scannex Okay, none of your articles whatsoever considered any other biomarkers that may be correlated with obesity, let alone other factors like socioeconomic status, other behavioral choices, etc. For example: In this plot from this article of the oxford journal of epidemiology shows that the relationship between BMI and mortality breaks down for women with a systolic blood pressure below about 150mmHg excluding morbidly obese women(those with a BMI between 40 and 75). It also shows a "protective effect," in terms of mortality risk, of obesity in men with high blood pressure.
The article cites at least 9 articles and I quote, "The associations between body weight, raised blood pressure, and mortality remain controversial." Thus, you're wrong, this is very much a "jury is still out" sort of a question.

@scannex Okay, none of your articles whatsoever considered any other biomarkers that may be correlated with obesity, let alone other factors like socioeconomic status, other behavioral choices, etc. For example: In this plot from this article of the oxford journal of epidemiology shows that the relationship between BMI and mortality breaks down for women with a systolic blood pressure below about 150mmHg excluding morbidly obese women(those with a BMI between 40 and 75). It also shows a "protective effect," in terms of mortality risk, of obesity in men with high blood pressure.

The article cites at least 9 articles and I quote, "The associations between body weight, raised blood pressure, and mortality remain controversial." Thus, you're wrong, this is very much a "jury is still out" sort of a question.

Those riots and killings, Sagemind, seem to me to be much more a function of politics than any specific religion. Also, the "Muslim people" you are invoking is an obvious abstraction of a complex, massive, and plural group of people/voices around the world. Isn't that much obvious?

I know where you are coming from, and a big part of me agrees with you, but I also feel that the way both of us want to react to the violence is based on propaganda we've been fed about Islam and its "violent" nature. Nick Kristof has a pretty good piece on this here (should you be interested): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/kristof-exploiting-the-prophet.html

Well there's plenty of places to go for jack-off fuel. Unless you're the type of guy in a titty bar trying to look down the cocktail waitress's blouse, if you want to handle business you go somewhere that brokers your own specific kind of wonderful smut.

It's your site, I'm just trying to help with generalizing the rules to these abstract and subjective ideas like "pornography". But where the line is hazy, I always tend to vote away from censorship >> ^dag:

That's true - and a valid point. I guess it comes down to VideoSift's raison d'etre - jack off fuel or entertaining, thought provoking videos and good conversation?
>> ^rottenseed:
@spoco2 "merit" is funny word...
@dag there is no shortage of this kind of stuff on the Internet - why does VideoSift have to be one more dump for it?
Take a look at the top 15...there's plenty of that kind of stuff on the internet...

@ReverendTed

Sorry for the late reply. I was having email issues and didn't know this conversation was still going on. Also, I really don't have the time or energy to read all the posts right now, so apologies if I'm saying something that's already covered. Perhaps tomorrow after work I'll give it all a better look.

I agree that "at birth" is almost certainly not the best place to draw the line for omniscient lawmakers. Unfortunately, we're fresh out of those. We have to draw the line somewhere based on what we actually know. This is why I said before that we need to identify some particular quality (henceforth known as "qX") that we can agree makes a fetus a human. That way, we can say, "No, this fetus has developed qX and is no longer eligible for termination." Of course, once we define qX, then we may also need to be able to test for it, depending on what qX turns out to be, otherwise this is all pointless.

Now, I suppose we could say "qX is normally developed in week 25" and draw the line there but then we'll have those who develop sooner and those who develop later and we will inevitably terminate those that should technically not have been. I concede that this could still be a decent law even if we had to define it this way, but we've got a long way to go before we can even consider it. We haven't even defined qX, let alone identified approximately when it develops.

Defining qX alone is a nearly impossible task because most people who are trying to define it are using feelings (It's a defenseless little baby!), mysticism (The soul enters the zygote at conception!) and abstract concepts (Once the fetus has developed consciousness, it's human.) to do so.

Back to your reply, you seem to be dancing around what "illegal" means. Someone once pointed out to me that "It's not a law if it's not enforced". There has to be a penalty for having an abortion or it's pointless to make it illegal. What should be done to people who have (or perform) the procedure even after you've "[limited] their access" to it?

If we want to reduce abortions, we should be focusing efforts on reducing unwanted pregnancies; tell people what they can do rather than what they can't.

@ReverendTed
Many issues to address here, but first, some clarifications. My analogies (wonky as they are) were to point out the immorality of the “you’ve got to live with the consequences” stance, they were not about who’s harmed. But speaking of harm, it would be more ethical to let the two analogical characters “suck it up” than to demand of a woman she bring an unwanted pregnancy to term. In the first cases, there is only one victim, but in the latter there are two. When I say abortion is “punishment enough”, what I mean is that it is already a disagreeable outcome of mistake-making/poor-choice-making, while obliging a woman to give birth to (and raise) an unwanted child not only negatively affects the mother’s life, but that of the child as well; it is a disproportionate price to pay for the former and completely unfair for the latter. Hence, imo, abortion is by far the lesser of two “evils”.

Adoption instead of abortion is “a non-solution and worse” for several reasons. First, there are already more than enough children already alive who need parents, and you know very well that most people prefer making their own than adopting, so many of these will never have a family (not to mention the often inferior care-giving in foster homes and social centres). Now imagine that every abortion is replaced with a child given up for adoption; can you not see the horror? It’s that many more neglected lives, not to mention the overall problem of overpopulation.

I’m going to go on a slight tangent, but a relevant one. I have a certain amount of experience with humanitarian aid in Africa, and one thing that causes me no end of despair is the idiotic, selfish way much of it is performed. Leaving aside corruption, proselytization, etc., the “West” pours food and medicine into Africa with that whole “life is sacred” “feed the poor” mentality – good intentions of course – but with disastrous results because education and contraception (not to mention abortion) are almost always left out, even discouraged, with the support of the usual religious suspects (remember the pope on condoms causing aids?). The result is simple, and simply appalling: despite aid and funds increasing globally every year, starvation and child mortality continue to rise. Why? Because the people being barely maintained keep making kids who grow up to starve and die in turn, instead of focusing on the education of one or two children to get them out of the vicious cycle (there is another argument to be made about the education of women, but I’m ranting enough as is).

The point of this digression is to show that the non-pragmatic “all life is sacred” stance is terribly counter-productive, and the same holds for abortion (viz: on adoption above). As for lack of pragmatism, the same goes for your comment on abstinence:
I appreciate that "don't have sex if you can't accept being pregnant" is not a magical incantation that makes people not have sex, but it has to be a part of it, because no method of contraception is 100% effective, even if used correctly.
What you’re saying basically is “people shouldn’t have sex unless they’re ready for childbearing/-raising”, which is absurd when one considers human nature and human relations.

All of the above arguments weigh into the question of the “ball of cells” vs “human being/identity”. The “sacred life” stance is one of quantity over quality, and in the long run devalues human life altogether. To quote Isaac Asimov on overpopulation: “The more people there are the less one individual matters”. In the abortion debate, what we have is one side so intent on protecting the abstract “life” that they disregard the lives of the two individuals in question, namely the “individual who is” (the mother) and the “individual who might be” (the child). The former is already a human individual, with memories, relationships, a personality, etc. The latter is not. The abortion question takes into account the future quality of life not only of the mother but of the would-be child as well, something the anti-abortion stance does not. Abortion doesn’t end an individual’s life, it prevents a ball of cells from becoming one. Here is where the religious aspect is crucial, because while embryologists see a complex mass of cells with no capacity for cognition/sensation, superstitious people assign an individual “consciousness” or “soul” to it, thus making abortion feel like murder instead of like the removal of a tumour. The question of potential is an emotionally manipulative one that does not hold up to criticism, because as @packo sarcastically (and the Monty Python brilliantly ) point out, you can go a long ways up the stream of potential.

I like the first half of @gorillaman’s tomato analogy for that reason (the second half is hyperbolic absurdity), that it underlines what is important in the debate: the living “thing”’s capacity for sensation/cognition/interaction. If you grew up with a tumour on your body which giggled when you tickled it and cried when you hit it, you would probably think twice before getting rid of it. That does not mean I’m categorically against late-term abortions, but for me the scale seriously tips between the 20-25th weeks when the nervous system of the foetus centralises. Of course, it is preferable that should an abortion take place it would be before the foetal stage, for the sake of medical and psychological comfort, but unfortunately one cannot always know so soon that one is pregnant.