@newtboy,

"Stupid to use all these differing sets, that only adds confusion to an already technical and confusing topic."

I'm just glad they stick to metric, with sea level rise you don't even get that .

"No matter what, it's incontrovertible that every iteration of the IPCC reports has drastically raised their damage estimates (temp, sea level) and sped up the timetable from the previous report."

At least temperature wise the AR1 report had higher temperatures, and definitely higher worst case projection scenarios for temp than the latest. I can't say I checked their sea level projections, though typically they're other projections have followed on using their temps as the baseline for the other stuff and thus they track together. That is to say, if you can point me a source that reliably claims otherwise I might go check, but currently what I have checked tells me otherwise.

"I'll take the less conservative NOAA estimates and go farther to assume they over estimate humanity and underestimate feedback loops and unknowns and believe we are bound to make it worse than they imagine."

Which is fine, I only object if that gets characterized as the factually scientific 'right' approach.

"The NOAA .83C number was compared to average annual global temperatures 1901-2000...and oddly enough is lower than 2017's measurements."

Which is yet another source and calibration period from what I found. The 1901-2000 very, very roughly speaking can be thought of as centered on 1950, so in that fuzzy feeling sense not surprising it's 0C is colder than the IPCC centered on the nineties.

The source on current instrumental I went against is below:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

As for 2018 being cooler than 2017, that's pretty normal. 1996/1997 were the hottest years on record for a pretty long time before things swung back up. It's entirely possible we stay below the recent high years for another bunch of years before continuing to creep up. Same as a particularly cold day isn't 'evidence', the decadal and even century averages are where the signal comes out of the noise.

You are correct, I was using NOAA numbers, not realizing they use a different start point to compare from. I honestly thought both would use 1890, pre industrial era start points, since that's what the 1.5C limit is based on. Stupid to use all these differing sets, that only adds confusion to an already technical and confusing topic.

No matter what, it's incontrovertible that every iteration of the IPCC reports has drastically raised their damage estimates (temp, sea level) and sped up the timetable from the previous report. You can accept their current estimate, that's better than the average person. I'll take the less conservative NOAA estimates and go farther to assume they over estimate humanity and underestimate feedback loops and unknowns and believe we are bound to make it worse than they imagine.

I have no horse in this race. I hit my best by date next year, and don't have kids...got fixed in my 20's. What happens after 2050 isn't my concern, and I have no problem if humanity goes extinct. It's all the other life we will take with us, or worse, that we survive as the last species standing, that gets me upset.

Lol..no.
CCD is barely studied in wild hives because it's not been seen in the wild in statistically meaningful numbers, and it's much more of a problem for commercial hives because they move, making them more prone to weakness and diseases, they are kept together, making them more prone to parasites like nosema and Varroa mites and disease spreading problems like the Israeli virus, and they are constantly in contact with crops sprayed with various pesticides weakening and confusing them. Wild hives don't have these extra deleterious factors, so are far less effected by CCD if at all, and are not noticeably effected by most if not all commercial or hobby beekeeping that targets human agriculture, not native flowers. I kept a hive of bees for years to pollinate my orchard, so I checked on this stuff before jumping in.

Commericalized bee operations (commercial pollinators who's byproducts are honey/bees wax/pollen/royal jelly/bee venom/and bees themselves) don't displace natives. If there were native bees pollinating the crops they are hired to come pollinate, there wouldn't be a commercial bee industry. Honey is mostly a byproduct of the pollination industry, without which America at least would starve. Native bees simply can't pollinate at the industrial scale and timetables required for your vegetables, so without commercial beekeepers we'll all have to eat more meat.

I don't disagree about the snooping since 2001. As far as the koch brothers and the Tea Party, you don't know what the fuck your talking about.

They just want the Constitution follow or at least print current laws back towards it.

Instead of watching biased Democratic sucking media, go to an actual event .

They are not raciest, or the desire to go back to slavery as the media puts forth. . That's Bullshit. B.W.Y. the slavery shit and the KKK was the Democrat south doing its thing, not Republicans. MLK was Republican.


Today the Republican party is nothing more than a cheap intimation of the Democrat party. They will never win fighting that way. The Tea Party is they way to go.


FYI a little history ... Since you had a public education and hence only learned skewed left leaning revised history...


http://www.humanevents.com/2006/08/16/why-martin-luther-king-was-republican/

"
It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.

It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.

During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.

Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act... And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican.

The Democrats were loosing the slavery battle and civil rights were breaking through and JFK/Johnson the

Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Republicans also started the NAACP and affirmative action with Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher) that set the nation’s fist goals and timetables. Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.

Few black Americans know that it was Republicans who founded the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Unknown also is the fact that Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. Not mentioned in recent media stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen wrote the language for the bill. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of civil rights legislation without the support of Republicans."


Democrats are still in the slavery business. They just use the welfare system to keep the poor poor and use the shallow promise of If you vote Democrat we will keep giving you a little cheese.

The Democrat party has been the most destructive political party to date.

Hah! I worked briefly for EA on the sequel to Need for Speed. I found out that one of the rules there is, the more money a game makes, the shorter the timetable for making the sequel. It's funny Yahtzee's picked up on that too (if you ever read this Yahtzee, yes it's very much intentional on the game-maker's part, at least with EA).

Basically, they don't care if the sequel sucks, they just want it done quickly so gamers will still have that fond glow from the previous game and plonk down their money without thinking.

Oh, and if you played NFS 2 and thought it sucked, don't blame me, I only modeled headlights and taillights and got paid a crap wage for the job.

If you thought the worst part of the game was the headlights and taillights, well then, go ahead and blame me.

Vetoing the 2012 NDAA would have held up the military budget and would not have stopped the detention clause. It was a lose/lose game of political chicken and Obama chose pragmatism over idealism.

Obama has greatly helped the country by creating a healthcare program, by passing stimulus, by using quantitative easing to keep the recession from going depression, by ramping down military operations in the middle east, by favoring diplomacy over sabre rattling in Iran.

As far as promises go, he has kept (or at least attempted to keep to the best of his ability) most of his big promises, like ending combat in Iraq, creating a health care system, ending the use of torture, putting needed financial regulations into place, restricting warrantless wiretaps, ending denial of health coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and signing an executive order to shut down Gitmo. Congress blocked his order to shut down Gitmo, which means the timetable is dependent on getting Republicans out of congress this November. Contrary to popular belief the executive branch is not all powerful. I know you don't like Obama, but can you at least admit these are positive changes for the better that would not have happened under a McCain or Romney administration? What were the broken promises you were talking about?

I love intellectuals like Chomsky and Chris Hedges and respect their criticisms of Obama. I think it would be much more productive to be informed by intellectuals, rather than slumming it in the right libertarian gutter. This video is just as frivolous as the Jackson video, if not morso.

I wish Obama was could be more progressive too, but that isn't going to happen in a conservative country where big business and the military industrial complex wield as much power as they do. We need both idealism and pragmatism if we are going to make progress. The country is far from how I'd like it to be, but I am happy that Obama is moving us in the right direction.

Don't mind me since I have been drinking but most of this seems like personal conjecture.

Obama did not Veto NDAA when he said he would.

People where killed overseas without Due process.

I personal don't give two shits over mittens and Kock brothers.

Jackson didn't produce depth it just made it seem cool, but it is more like the anti drug commercial this is your brain on drugs commercials. Shock value.

Obama has promised many things and delivered on little.

I like Noam Chomsky and he has been highly critical of the administration.

He hasn't closed Gitmo and has given no timetable.

Fuck John McCain and his sanctimonious POW bullshit.

I know that it was a rider and his administration fights to keep that one part alive.

Obama is not going to save this country. That believing he will help the country is only prolonging its death. I don't vote for the lesser evil.

@enoch

Howdy. First off, thanks; coming back to this discussion is kind of interesting after a few years.

My thoughts:

1. I wasn't a huge Obama supporter - but I did expect more from him in terms of change on health care (the US system is still a crazy-quilt of expensive nonsense) and reduced military expenditure (I expected a faster withdraw timetable from both Iraq and Afghanistan). I thought he could sell his vision, but it hasn't worked; he's lost people and as a result doesn't have the political will to make real change. It's too bad, because I think he did intend some good things.

2. I think the Occupy movement is a good illustration of the point I wanted to make. They had a good thing going and some scattered good ideas - but they didn't integrate themselves into the political movement. They distrusted it, shunned it. Candidates couldn't espouse Occupy ideals to get elected because Occupy people were poorly organized, had vague goals, and were not reliable voters. Nobody worried about not getting re-elected because they didn't line up with Occupy.

3. By contrast, the Tea Partiers had a much more substantial impact on policy because they did connect to the Republican party, connected with candidates, and they got out the vote (sometimes at least). If they could have found anyone who wasn't a complete and utter moron to lead them (I guess it's hard to find sane leaders when your policies are nuts), they could have got a lot of stuff changed (mostly for the worse, of course, but change nonetheless).

I think if Occupy could have organized better (maybe have some leaders, or at least rallied behind some statement of principle and ideas for change), it could have been a huge force for good. I think they were hampered by exactly this sense of hopelessness. They didn't actually believe they could make a difference in political decisions, so they didn't really try - and because of this, in the end I don't think they've had much lasting effect. A lot of their ideas resonated with a powerful number of people, but all that effort and will got channeled nowhere - just anger and hopelessness and failure.

I still think positive change is very possible in the US (and the world in general), and I think it's still most likely to happen (in the US) through the normal democratic process. It'll take some real leadership, though. Someone like Ron Paul - but with much less crazy and more charisma - could turn the Occupy-type crowd into a very potent political force that could do some real good. (On Ron Paul: he did certainly face some unfair extra hurdles as an anti-establishment candidate - but I think his main problem was that too many people legitimately disagreed with him).

Will it happen? I don't know. As I've said, I think a big problem is that the current generation - the students and young people who've driven change throughout history - distrusts the entire political process. More than that, they distrust "leadership" in general. Returning to Occupy, they seemed to be actively against leaders emerging or having cohesive policies to rally around.

That's cool and fun and Internet-like, but it doesn't get the job done.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Evolution is just another item in the list of fact we atheists can use to disprove religion, since according to pretty much every religion around, evolution is not real, even though it's a PROVEN fact, studied, analyzed and even used in several fields of science on a practical level, to the point of exhaustion.
It's all you have, and we have to define what we're talking about when you say evolution, because there is microevolution and macroevolution. The difference between them is, one has been observed and one hasn't.
But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.
Science v.208 1980 p.716
DS Woodroff U. of CA, SD
In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.
New Evolutionary Timetable p.95
SM Stanley, Johns Hopkins
The theoretically primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the type fails to materialize.
Plant life through the ages p.561
AC Seward, Cambridge
Are you actually stupid enough (and I do believe you are) to think there were no atheists before Darwin came around, or to mix atheism and darwinism?
Of course there were atheists around before darwin, but they had no basis for a religion without a creation story.
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."
Provine William B., [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], "Darwin Day" website, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 1998.
"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."
Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], ", "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life", Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.
"Dr. Gray goes further. He says, `The proposition that the things and events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism.' Again, `To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos... If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold around us were undirected and undesigned; or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is atheistic.' We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism? It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic, that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to atheism."
Hodge, Charles [late Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA], in Livingstone D.N., eds., "What Is Darwinism?", 1994, reprint, p.156
"The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion."
More, Louis T. [late Professor of Physics, University of Cincinnati, USA], "The Dogma of Evolution," Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160.
"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory-is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation-both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof"
Matthews, L. Harrison [British biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society], "Introduction", Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," J. M. Dent & Sons: London, 1976, pp.x,xi, in Ankerberg J. & Weldon J. , "Rational Inquiry & the Force of Scientific Data: Are New Horizons Emerging?," in Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1994, p.275.

>> ^EMPIRE:
shinnyblurry, you are so fucking ignorant it actually hurts my eyes to read your comments.
I also love how your "atheist creation" history is somehow mixed with darwinism, which just proves how much of an ignorant you are.
Evolution is just another item in the list of fact we atheists can use to disprove religion, since according to pretty much every religion around, evolution is not real, even though it's a PROVEN fact, studied, analyzed and even used in several fields of science on a practical level, to the point of exhaustion.
Are you actually stupid enough (and I do believe you are) to think there were no atheists before Darwin came around, or to mix atheism and darwinism?


Needs more quotes. But I guess that's what religion is all about, rely on things someone said before you and not think for yourself.

Evolution is just another item in the list of fact we atheists can use to disprove religion, since according to pretty much every religion around, evolution is not real, even though it's a PROVEN fact, studied, analyzed and even used in several fields of science on a practical level, to the point of exhaustion.

It's all you have, and we have to define what we're talking about when you say evolution, because there is microevolution and macroevolution. The difference between them is, one has been observed and one hasn't.

But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.

Science v.208 1980 p.716
DS Woodroff U. of CA, SD

In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.

New Evolutionary Timetable p.95
SM Stanley, Johns Hopkins

The theoretically primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the type fails to materialize.

Plant life through the ages p.561
AC Seward, Cambridge

Are you actually stupid enough (and I do believe you are) to think there were no atheists before Darwin came around, or to mix atheism and darwinism?

Of course there were atheists around before darwin, but they had no basis for a religion without a creation story.

"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented."

Provine William B., [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], "Darwin Day" website, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 1998.

"Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent."

Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], ", "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life", Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.

"Dr. Gray goes further. He says, `The proposition that the things and events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism.' Again, `To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos... If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold around us were undirected and undesigned; or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is atheistic.' We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism? It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic, that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to atheism."

Hodge, Charles [late Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA], in Livingstone D.N., eds., "What Is Darwinism?", 1994, reprint, p.156

"The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion."

More, Louis T. [late Professor of Physics, University of Cincinnati, USA], "The Dogma of Evolution," Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160.

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory-is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation-both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof"

Matthews, L. Harrison [British biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society], "Introduction", Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," J. M. Dent & Sons: London, 1976, pp.x,xi, in Ankerberg J.* & Weldon J.*, "Rational Inquiry & the Force of Scientific Data: Are New Horizons Emerging?," in Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1994, p.275.



>> ^EMPIRE:
shinnyblurry, you are so fucking ignorant it actually hurts my eyes to read your comments.
I also love how your "atheist creation" history is somehow mixed with darwinism, which just proves how much of an ignorant you are.
Evolution is just another item in the list of fact we atheists can use to disprove religion, since according to pretty much every religion around, evolution is not real, even though it's a PROVEN fact, studied, analyzed and even used in several fields of science on a practical level, to the point of exhaustion.
Are you actually stupid enough (and I do believe you are) to think there were no atheists before Darwin came around, or to mix atheism and darwinism?

>> ^quantumushroom:

Lefty, don't think you're off the hook because now you disavow Odumbo for not ending the wars, closing Gitmo and raising taxes.

Isn't Obama about 2/3rds of the way through ending the wars?

There are fewer than 50k soldiers in Iraq, none in active combat positions. Heck we have 28k soldiers in Korea, are you counting that war against Obama, as well?

Obama has also laid out the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, slightly faster than the generals wanted, after putting serious hurt on Al Qaeda.

Congress blocked the closing of Gitmo. Obama can't do anything about that.

Are you complaining that Obama hasn't raised taxes? Congress clearly blocked that, as well. Obama has been trying to let the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.

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.

So let me see if I got this correct. The Bible says that God has a set time, and not even Jesus knows what that time is. But Obama's actions are so strong that it forces God to move his timetable up... so Obama is greater than God by his logic... And why do they always forget Jesus was a socialist himself?
It also drives me crazy when the right says the left wants to control how people live their lives, when they are the ones the ones saying who can marry who, and trying to force their relgion into the schools.

Not very accurate video. Its missing a lot of good and memorable games like Operation Flashpoint, FEAR, Tribes, NOLF, TFC or the original UT. Also the timetable doesnt always fit. CS wasnt released 2000, it was first released to the public in 1999.

I think us liberals are all still feeling a bit pissed about being called traitors for (take your pick): saying the Iraq war was a bad idea, saying there were no WMD's in Iraq, saying that we shouldn't torture people, saying we shouldn't wiretap American citizens without warrants, saying the PATRIOT act is unconstitutional, saying that we should give terror suspects trials, saying that our soldiers have killed civilians, saying that Iraqis have died in much larger numbers than US citizens, talking about timetables for withdrawal from Iraq, talking about getting better body armor for troops, saying that Muslims for the most part are civil and even friendly people, mentioning the ever increasing cost of the war, pointing out the ineptitude, corruption, and violently criminal acts of our "independent contractors", questioning the President's motives for starting the Iraq war, and on, and on, and on.

I think when people literally start talking about secession (in a time of war! ), it's fair to toss back accusations of treason, especially when it's done in a fairly tongue-in-cheek fashion.