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Posted 4 years ago
(376 items)
I've tried to research these lovely watch fobs and keep coming across the term "white metal". These don't tarnish and don't have any marks. They are very intricate so I think they are from 20's or 30's?
I found them in early 90's and paid about $20 each for them which I thought was a steal because they are SO gorgeous. Since then I've worn them as bracelets but also attached to an old sterling pin on a 40's jacket - a posh English look. So pretty - haven't come across any as intricate as these in all my travels. Your help please. Are they sterling?


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The Coming Kingdom
from R.C. Sproul Jr. Oct 27, 2009 Category: ArticlesThe world is full of hypocrites, and the solution to this problem is twofold: If you are more modern, you deal with the gap between your obedience and what you pretend to be by trying harder to be good. You try to make your sin go away. If you are postmodern, you deal with the problem not by trying to do better, by getting rid of your sin, but by getting rid of the idea of sin. If there is no right and wrong, no one can rightly accuse you of acting like you are right when you are actually wrong. Keep Reading
The Faces of Ministry at Ligonier: Greg Bailey
from Karisa Schlehr Oct 26, 2009 Category: ArticlesAs the Director of Publications for Reformation Trust Publishing, Greg Bailey spends his time working with authors, editors, and proofreaders, editing and preparing manuscripts for print, and evaluating manuscript proposals. He also chairs the editorial committee that evaluates promising proposals for books that may be published by Reformation Trust. Keep Reading
Suffering for Righteousness
from R.C. Sproul Oct 25, 2009 Category: ArticlesMartin Luther's teaching of "justification by faith alone" was a battle cry for the sufficiency of the merit of Christ and for the graciousness of redemption. His slogan sola fide ("by faith alone") was merely an extension of Augustine's earlier credo, sola gratia ("by grace alone"). Keep Reading
Avoiding a False Theology of Suffering
from R.C. Sproul Oct 24, 2009 Category: ArticlesMartin Luther's tenure in the monastery was a time of spiritual desperation. He was tormented by unrelieved guilt coupled with a gripping fear of the wrath of God. Why would an educated man retreat to a barren cell and abuse himself with self-inflicted physical punishment? Why would a believer go out of his way to find personal suffering? Keep Reading
Here We Stand Campaign Update
from Randi Walter Oct 23, 2009 Category: ArticlesThe end of September marked the one year anniversary of Ligonier Ministries' first-ever capital campaign. Here We Stand: The Campaign for Ligonier Ministries was launched to fund the entire campus project that will be home to the new Ligonier Academy of Biblical & Theological Studies and our other ministry outreaches. Keep Reading
Eschatology Is Christology - Ligonier Leadership Conference (XI)
from Keith Mathison Oct 22, 2009 Category: Articles"When we think about the last things we must never allow our minds to be diverted from this principle, that the last things, like the first things, are the things of Jesus Christ." --Sinclair Ferguson Keep Reading
Loving the Church - Ligonier Leadership Conference (X)
from Robert Rothwell Oct 22, 2009 Category: Articles"How can you love Jesus and not love who He loves?" -- Ligon Duncan, "The Church and Sacraments," Ligonier Leadership Conference Ligon Duncan's message on the church is all about the need of Christians to love His church. Keep Reading
Saved by Grace - Ligonier Leadership Conference (IX)
from Keith Mathison Oct 21, 2009 Category: Articles"When we exalt God's holiness and put man in his rightful place, we magnify grace." --Steve Lawson, "Saved by Grace," Ligonier Leadership Conference. It seems to be common knowledge among "enlightened" Christians that grace is somehow exalted when we soften the holiness of God and diminish the wrath of God, while at the same time elevating our view of man. As Dr. Lawson reminds us in his lecture today, the exact opposite is the truth. Keep Reading
Resembling God - Ligonier Leadership Conference (VIII)
from Chris Donato Oct 21, 2009 Category: Articles"Mankind is made to resemble God. What, then, does it mean to be made in the image of God?" --Ligon Duncan, "Created in God's Image," Ligonier Leadership Conference. The question quoted above is that which Dr. Duncan sought to answer throughout his second discussion at the Ligonier leadership conference. His answer was full-orbed, challenging, and thought-provoking. Among the many great points, one in particular stood out: "We are to represent God's ownership and interests in His creation." How glorious--and yet so daunting. Keep Reading
Exercising Your Power of Choice
from R.C. Sproul Oct 18, 2009 Category: ArticlesDoes man have a free will? This question is one of the most frequently asked questions of theology. At times, it is not voiced as a question but as an objection to the whole idea of a sovereign God. Keep Reading

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An Episcopal Seminary Forming Men & Women for Lay and Ordained Leadership
3737 Seminary Road, Alexandria, Virginia 22304 · Phone: (703) 370-6600 or (800) 941-0083
Virginia Theological Seminary is the largest of the 11 accredited seminaries of the Episcopal Church and was founded in 1823. The graduate seminary school prepares men and women representing more than 50 different dioceses and 9 different countries for service in the Church, both as ordained and lay ministers. The seminary college offers a number of professional degree programs and diplomas. Degrees include a Master in Divinity (MDiv), a Master in Theological Studies, a Master of Arts in Christian Education, a Doctor of Ministry Development (Dmin), a Doctor of Ministry in Educational Leadership, and several non-degree programs.


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Reviewed By: A customer from Windsor, Ontario, Canada on 12/25/06
We used the Adventure Cycling Association's Florida Connector map and started in Port Charlotte. We traveled to Fort Myers Beach, then headed east across the state to Fort Lauderdale where we continued with the ACA Atlantic Coast Section 7 map and made our way to Key West. We stayed there for a couple of days then took the ferry service back to Fort Myers Beach. From there we retraced one leg of our route back to our car in Port Charlotte. This was an interesting loop to travel. The Adventure Cycling Association maps were very helpful. The only snags that we had were on the I 75 ramps at Weston ( see http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=RrzKj&page_id=143685&v=3h for a full description of our problems) and the heavy traffic and dangerous, narrow road conditions on Card Sound Road outside of Florida City ( see http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=RrzKj&page_id=144023&v=3B ). Thanks for the helpful maps. If the above mentioned problems were fixed in future publications of these maps, the entire route for bicycle tourists doing the Florida Loop would be more enjoyable and much safer.


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When 9.20 came out I'm deeply disappointed. The ME is much worse than 9.10, I mean, does the designer of 9.20 even know how to play football? Now this is the last patch of FM 2009, what if the MEis even worse than 9.20?
When 9.20 came out I'm deeply disappointed. The ME is much worse than 9.10, I mean, does the designer of 9.20 even know how to play football? Now this is the last patch of FM 2009, what if the MEis even worse than 9.20?
It has been tested extensively and we are all hopeful of a better match engine. We can only wait and see though, just don't start slamming it before you have seen it, you may be suprised
usually the final patch is the best, even ME. since you're so disappointed it can't get much worse, right. let's hope we all get surprised.
What sort of answer do you expect? Think an SI guy will come on and go, "Yeah, it's terrible. We really couldn't be bothered."
They've had several months of abuse plus another month of beta testing - including many experienced FMers.
It won't please everyone 100%. It will probably have the odd minor issue - every incarnation of FM has and probably always will. But I expect it to erase the worst of the problems.
Just hope the vocal minority are at least some way satisfied.
Then we just have to put up with the morons asking when FM10 is due. I predict the first thread on that to be around 24th May.
Yeah the 9.2.0 engine is absolutely abysmal, i went back to fm07 for a bit the other day and it was amazing compared to it.. if only it was updated
why did u think 920ME is so bad? :-?
why? why???? u must be as blind as a bat mate.
lets wait and see before knocking it hope it will getter better.............but sure fm10 will be awesome!
I'm with Kingrobbo here I think its just basically a matter of us just waiting to see before we can give any constructive criticism.
God, I hope not!
I polished my crystal ball, specifically for this thread and IT SAY NO!
I also have the best defense of my league but firstly that doesn't mean that there is no issue and secondly it is unconnected to the flaw because of course the AI defense has the same issues. This is a general issue, not something biased against the human user.
I honestly dont think you should be slamming the M.E from 9.3 patch until you have actually played which wont be till the end of the month as like the others have said it is in the beta test stage and i bet they are giving a really good and thorough test to make sure it is as good as it can be to make sure the only bugs left in it are really really minor so that the game is just as enjoyable as it has been so far but with out the bugs
Is there any chance of this new patch being out this week?
very small upgrades can be expected.
only changes will be alot of players in england will be upgraded and chelsea got a new manager. even if game starts summer 2008 they will have manager and players from jan- 09 . lols
will i be able to use the patch to cover a hole in my jeans
Pointless thread. Wait until the patch comes out before commenting on the M.E..


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5 Weird Directions Human Evolution Could Have Taken
Evolution is a gamble where you lay not only your life, but the existence of your entire species on the table. What's more, it's an absolute crapshoot -- there are any number of pitfalls, dead ends and natural disasters that can boot you out of the casino at any given moment. But far from hating the game, we love evolution, fickle bitch that she is. Because, as humans, we pretty much rode that dumb luck to the top of the world. One meteor here, or a jacked up gene there, and we might well have been challenged or even replaced as the dominant species by one of these silly bastards ...
#5. Lizard People
Lizard people, also known as reptilian humanoids or "the government," depending on your recommended daily pill intake, feature prominently in fantasy and science fiction, where they either serve as some beefcake's sword fodder or rule the world with an iron claw.
Also, you may have been just one meteor away from being one.
"'Hu-Man Creatures Living in Sewers?' Wow, they'll print any frogshit these days."
If a certain little extinction-level event hadn't turned all the dinosaurs into Exxon executives' paychecks, there's a pretty decent chance that you would be reading this article with your creepy lizard eyes, fondling your crotch with your tail instead of your left hand. (Yes, we know.)
There are a whole lot of different theories on dinosaur evolution, but by far the funniest one, and therefore the one we choose to focus on, is courtesy of paleontologist Dale Russell, and it looks like this:
His name is the lizard equivalent of "Gary."
That is what Troodons, a species of dinosaur, might have ended up evolving into, had they not been space-punched into oblivion. Troodons lived in what would eventually become Canada, and were well on their way to dominating the world before disaster struck. They were two-legged and had a brain proportionally six times larger than that of any other dinosaur. What's more, they had not one but two opposable fingers on each hand, making them the seven-minute abs of the digital arms race.
Obviously, if evolution had decided to put these guys in the driver's seat instead of us, civilization would look quite different. Dinosaur humanoids (or dinosauroids) wouldn't require too much dental care, what with having toothless beaks. Their internal genitalia would render tall buildings, Hummers and other phallic symbols meaningless. What's more, they wouldn't have mammary glands and would feed their young by regurgitating food from their mouths, bird style.
And there but for the grace of the Science-God go we: stuck eating vomit in a world without boobs.
Thank Science-God.
#4. Hobbits (Seriously)
Peter Schouten, guardian.co.uk
Many, many years ago, a small tribe of people lived on Flores Island. They were a bit different from their primitive cousins, in that they rarely grew over 3 feet tall and had long, nimble arms. Their most distinctive trait was their huge, fuzzy feet.
Sound familiar? The scientist who strolled along a few millenniums later certainly thought so when he found their bones and exclaimed "Holy shit, hobbits!"
That's a true story, by the way. We're not just being goofy, confusing fantasy and history to make it sound more badass -- there really was a race of hobbit humans, and that's what the scientists are calling them.
"One guy wanted to call them Ewoks, but we clubbed him to death with his own thesis."
These human hobbits were neither mutations nor the product of a nutrition deficiency. They were a unique and previously undiscovered hominid species who just happened to be almost identical to Tolkien's most famous creation. Their surroundings reflected their unique nature, too: Upon closer inspection, all of Flores turned out to be a ridiculous fantasy island that contained remnants of rats the size of golden retrievers, komodo dragons so big they didn't really need the "komodo" part and awesome miniature elephant things called Stegodons that the hobbits hunted for food (and certainly must have ridden around on, because wouldn't that have been hilarious?). Of course, such a harsh living environment also ensured that the hobbits themselves weren't of the cuddly Elijah Wood subspecies, but rather had a foot firmly planted in Gollum territory:
"Screw the ring, do you have any conditioner?"
There they lived, on their crazy island full of monsters -- hunting, using sophisticated tools and maintaining the kind of complex civilization that shouldn't even have been possible with their brain size. They were doing alright, too, having outlasted Neanderthals by over 12,000 years. At that point, it looked like humans and hobbits were going to be in direct competition to carry forward the proud name of "Homo."
And then the volcano erupted.
The geology of the area indicates that the real-life hobbits never had to take a continent-wide hike to Mount Doom, because their volcano made house calls -- it wiped out Homo floresiensis along with all of Fantasy Island's wildlife in one fell swoop.
Legends say that a sister island may have survived ...
#3. Neanderthal Supersoldiers
Photolibrary.com via bbc.co.uk
Neanderthals are probably what you think of when we say the word "caveman" (well, either that or "Captain"). Their species was so similar to ours, in fact, that they gleefully boned with our ancestors and left a bunch of their DNA all up in our genetic business. Which is actually kind of curious: Neanderthals were physically stronger than us and their brain capacity even rivaled ours. What's more, they matured way the hell faster than Homo sapiens, reaching full adulthood at around 15.
"I swear, officer, she said she was 12."
So, not only were they stronger than us and potentially as smart as us, but they had to deal with way less puberty, and were therefore ready to start clubbin' heads and takin' names far sooner than we were. If survival of the fittest was a game of Punch-Out!! we were Glass Joe to their obnoxious spinning Indian guy.
But it didn't quite go that way. In fact, we killed them. Just straight up murdered their fast-developing, super strong, intelligent-beast-man asses, no problem. See, Neanderthals were actually royally screwed by that seemingly bitchin' early maturity thing. High school keg parties notwithstanding, being of legal drinking age at 15 actually has little evolutionary value -- in fact, it's more of a drawback. As we've pointed out before, taking your time to mature isn't a disadvantage; it's a survival trait. Our ancestors chose the sightseeing route to adulthood, and that gave them more time to develop a society. This, in turn, honed their social and organizational skills. Meanwhile, Neanderthals dead-sprinted into humpin' age without really paying attention to what was going on around them. They were plenty strong, smart and fast -- it was just their bad luck that they lived next door to the organized and bloodthirsty abomination that was us.
We also may have been a bunch of Hannibal Lecters.


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It is well known that the generating function of a regular language $L$, i.e. $\sum n_kz^k$ where $n_k$ is the number of words of length $k$ in $L$, is rational, i.e. a quotient of two polynomials $P(z)/Q(z)$. Suppose that $L$ is the language accepted by some finite automaton $\mathcal{A}$. How to find the polynomials $P, Q$ given $\mathcal{A}$? Is there a simple procedure and proof?
Cannon does more than just refer to result that you ask for, he sketches the proof out. His proof is couched in the notation that he has set up for his application to hyperbolic groups. But it is easy enough to unravel the notation and express the proof in general.
Label the state set of the automaton as $0,\ldots,N$ where $0$ is the start state. Consider the transition matrix whose $i,j$ entry is the number of directed edges from $i$ to $j$ in the automaton. The growth function we want is the power series $f(x) = \sum n_k x^k$ where $n_k$ is the number of directed paths starting at $0$ of length $k$ and stopping at the terminal states of the automaton. For simplicity I'll assume every state is an terminal state; otherwise one just has to change the notation. With this assumption, $f(x) = f_0(x) + \ldots + f_N(x)$ where $f_i(x)$ is the growth function whose $k^{th}$ coefficient is the number of directed paths from state $0$ to state $i$ of length $k$. Cannon then writes a linear recursion for these functions: $f_0(x) = 1$ (the interpretation is that there are not actually any directed edges ending at the start state); and $$f_j(x) = x \cdot \sum_{i=0}^N b_{ij} \cdot f_i(x), j=0,\ldots,N $$ He explains how to express the coefficients $b_{ij}$ as functions of the entries of the transition matrix. Then he writes "It is a routine problem in linear algebra to solve (these equations) for $f_0, f_1, \ldots, f_N$ and $f$", which I interpret as rewriting the equations in vector form $F = x B F$ where $F$ is the column vector whose entries are the functions $f_0(x),\ldots,f_N(x)$ and $B=(b_{ij})$. So we get $(I - xB) F = (1;0;...;0)$ and this can be solved for $F$.
Start by making a deterministic finite automaton $M$. Now $n_k$ is the number of walks of length $k$ from the starting state to an accepting state, so $\sum n_k z^k$ is the sum of some entries of $(I-zA)^{-1}$, where $A=(a_{ij})$ is the integer matrix in which $a_{ij}$ is the number of transitions from state $i$ to state $j$. The entries you need to add are the $(k,\ell)$ entries where $k$ is the starting state and $\ell$ is an accepting state. To get this as a rational function, write $(I-zA)^{-1}$ using Cramer's rule. The denominator (before cancelling of any common factors) is the determinant $|I-zA|$. The numerator is the adjugate of $I-zA$, whose entries are cofactors, which are also determinants. So in total, if there are $m$ accepting states, you get a sum of $m$ determinants divided by one determinant, and all these determinants are polynomials in $z$.
This is of course a special case of the Chomsky-Schutzenberger theorem that unambiguous context-free languages have algebraic generating functions. Restricted to a regular language it is like this. Assume the automata has state set $1,...,n$. Let $1$ be the initial state for convenience. Let A be the adjacency matrix of the automaton, let $e_1$ be the standard unit row vector and let $c$ be the column vector which is the characteristic vector of the terminal states. Then it is easy to see that the generating function is $$f(t)=\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}e_1A^nct^n = e_1\left[\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}A^nt^n\right]c= e_1(I-tA)^{-1}c.$$ Now using the classical adjoint formula for the inverse, you get that the denominator is $\det(I-tA)$ and the numerator is what it is.
This is basically equivalent for finding an unambiguous regular expression for the language. This MO answer explains how to do it, given an DFA $\mathcal A$.
The rest is easy:
Source: this paper.
Please see http://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/books.html ,the book Analytic combinatorics's first several chapters.


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Which ballet do You think is the most boring You've ever seen?
Posted 12 August 2007 - 02:19 AM
I really can't stand Romeo&Juliet as a whole.If It's an extract ok.The whole becomes very boring,especially MacMillan's version.And then everything that's contemporary.I love to dance it,but to be watched,I admit It is boring when It's not a highly genial choreography.
Now It's up to You.
Posted 12 August 2007 - 05:56 AM
Netherlands Dans Theater in Jiri Kylian's Black and White Ballet's. I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed.
If you end up looking at the Dvd, all of the segments are fabulous, and humorous. My favorites are Sarabande and Petit Mort. (It's a blast to dance as well!).
I am assuming by contemporary, you are meaning this type of performance? What other contemporary ballet's irk you?
Posted 12 August 2007 - 07:38 AM
You don't like contemporary? Hmm. If I may, I would like to recommend a dvd to you. Perhaps you've already seen it? It is one of my favorites, and is some of the best compelling contemporary choreography I've seen, (and not even in person!).
Netherlands Dans Theater in Jiri Kylian's Black and White Ballet's. I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed.
Oh I love Kilian(but Petit Mort that I find genial but boring...),Mats Ek(especially his Sleeping Beauty) but that's an enjoyable type of contemporary dance.Because It's very neo-classical,so You have an Aestethic of the movement,of the dancer and sometimes there's a story or something to follow.
I don't like the contemporary that has the tendence to make dancers and movements get ugly,oppressive and exasperatedly dramatical.I mean,like "Sagre du Printemps" or........i don't know but I think You understand.The one with dancers wearing rags,skin headed with thick dark make up and exhasperating movements and sorrow.Can be nice once,but It really gets upsetting after 10 minutes of performance.And unfortunately this type of contemporary seems to be taking root in the dancing scene.
The choice of music must also be well done or people will start sleeping on the seats.Instead It is really "In" nowadays to make performances on Bach or Mozart pieces,which I personally find repetitive and not for sure of impact on the audience.
But tell me about what You find boring;-)
Posted 12 August 2007 - 07:44 AM
Posted 12 August 2007 - 09:13 AM
Petite Mort of Kylian and La Dame aux Camelias of Neumeier.
Also " ..... " by Peter Martins, except that when I try to fill in the quotes, then I've got to fill in the cast, and those glorious NYCB dancers (and some of their best are always cast in the Chief's ballets) are never boring!
Posted 12 August 2007 - 09:16 AM
I find 'Mayerling' boring and also hate it.
Me too, and I'm usually a huge fan of MacMillan's ballets - his Romeo and Juliet, and Manon usually have me in tears by the end.
I think that Mayerling is trying to tell too convoluted a story, with too many people having too many affairs, and what is it with the opera singer in the middle?
Posted 12 August 2007 - 09:19 AM
Posted 12 August 2007 - 09:38 AM
Posted 12 August 2007 - 09:50 AM
Posted 12 August 2007 - 10:00 AM
Of the ones I remember -- a double-edged sword -- I used to think it was MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, whose Balcony Pas de Deux reminds me of movie previews that are better than the movie. Then I saw Manon at the Met in the '80's. Any ballet that feels eight hours long but stars Alessandra Ferri is not one I'm willing to see again.
Posted 12 August 2007 - 10:01 AM
The choreographer who bores the most on second viewing of a work: Jiri Kylian. (Apologies to dancerboy87, but Kylian's work I've seen is sometimes mesmerising the first time around, but mind-numbing on sequent viewings.)
Posted 12 August 2007 - 10:34 AM
Posted 12 August 2007 - 10:39 AM
"The most boring ballet I've ever seen is "Watermill," by Jerome Robbins."
Plenty of people would have agreed. The audience booed the night I was there and at many subsequent performances. Who could blame us? We'd come to see one of the great dancers of the time, Edward Villella. But instead of his usual jumping and turning, he hadn't danced a step. He'd come onstage in a long black cloak, slowly removed it and whatever else he'd been wearing, until he was finally down to white jockey shorts. Ah. we thought, watch him go now! But instead, he'd gone to lie down and think about his past.
The subject of "Watermill" was the passage of time, and, as Lincoln Kirstein said, the tempo of the ballet was "diabolically slow." It took several viewings and the passage of time in my own life, for me to begin to appreciate the beauty of "Watermill." I don't know what today's audiences would make of it. After all, everything is faster now than it was in 1972. I still don't count it among my favorite ballets. But I'd like to see it again once or twice before it's time to put the cloak back on.
Posted 12 August 2007 - 11:48 AM
I have enjoyed subsequent performances of Watermill, but only with Villella to date.
I generally find MacMillan boring. I agree that Kylian is boring on second viewing -- well put, bart -- except Sinfonietta, thanks mainly to the stage full of leaping dancers at the end.
I think boring choreography is often the product of inept choreographers, while bad/ offensive/off-putting ballets can be the work of great choreographers. There are exceptions to that . I find Balanchine's Ballade boring.
I'd rather be offended than bored -- at least then I have something to latch onto.
Posted 12 August 2007 - 12:17 PM
I'm not wild about that one, but the Robbins ballet based on folk traditions that really bored me the one time I saw it is "Dybbuk." Perhaps it would grow on me with further viewings.
Les Noces.
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Home > Food > Recipe Slideshows > 10 Great Recipes from Around the Globe
10 Great Recipes from Around the Globeby Erin Dower
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The other day, my teacher stated something along the lines of, "Conservation of momentum is not violated by the actions of internal forces, but the conservation of energy is violated. Energy is conserved only when/if internal forces are conservative."
Can anyone explain this is simpler terms or reiterate it in some fashion?


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The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World
#2. Time Travel
Hundreds of stories have been written on the subject of time travel, and just about every one of those stories involves some kind of catastrophic disaster, or at the very least, an unhappy ending.
Of course, a lot of physicists think that it's not possible at all, and that the very existence of the universe proves it. Also, if they invent time travel in the future, where are the time travelers?
But there's one lingering theory about the possibility of time travel that kind of makes a lot of sense, and that's that it's not possible until we actually build a working time machine. Maybe you can only travel back as far as the technology actually exists, and after that it's all hovering skateboards and flying steam trains.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Of course, there are plenty of ways in which the universe can fuck us for daring to violate that most fundamental of laws, cause and effect. We can't even imagine them until we know the first thing about time travel, which we don't. But some speculate that the very attempt to travel back in time could result in the world exploding, imploding, collapsing, shrinking into a singularity, or simply disappearing.
But because we strive to bring you only the weirdest of possibilities, so consider the chronological collapse scenario.
In the distant future, when the stars have burned out and the planets have wobbled out of their celestial orbits, the descendents of humanity will be staring extinction in the face, and if they have access to a goddamn time machine then it's likely they're going to say "fuck this shit" and just return to a more comfortable point in history.
A flood of refugees from the future might set up home in the present and flourish, until the world ends again and they decide to do what worked last time. And again. And again. Effectively, the moment we switch on our very first time machine, our universe is going to be home to approximately infinity refugees from the future. You do the math.
So, Basically It's Like...
How Long Have We Got?
Meet the Large Goddamn Hadron Fucking Collider.
Again? What the fuck? Are they doing this on purpose?
OK, so there may be like a dozen ways the LHC can destroy the universe, but seriously, time travel?
Well, yes, according to some Russian scientists. Sure, there are no serious plans in motion to research into building time machines, but who says it has to be deliberate? The discovery of penicillin was a complete accident.
"Oh, shit. Honey, I think I just invented time travel.
The theory is that the LHC might open wormholes with its high-energy collisions that future generations can manipulate for time travelling purposes. Apparently it's possible that those Swiss eggheads will switch on the machine only to find a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger asking for their clothes.
Risk Level: 7
You may be thinking, "If we get a time machine, and realize it will destroy the universe, then all we'd have to do is travel back in time and destroy the time machine! Easy!"
But then... if we destroyed the time machine, then we wouldn't be able to go back in time... so the machine would remain intact, in which case we could use it to go back and... Look, we don't know. Fuck science.
#1. Nanotechnology
Technology is all about making things smaller, and to that end, right now they're working on making the smallest things possible. Nanotechnology is the science of making robots that aren't much bigger than a molecule, and there are lots of reasons for doing it, the biggest being because we fucking can.
Imagine sending a million microscopic machines into a person's bloodstream programmed to attack a tumor, or shoot the AIDS virus with tiny little phasers. Imagine swarms of little cleaning droids mopping up the pollution in our rivers, or tiny manufacturing droids that can build anything we want, in seconds, molecule-by-molecule.
The big problem is, of course, how you actually build trillions of these little bastards. Simple: you teach them to replicate like cells, using materials from the environment.
Just think about, like, a million of these little fuckers!
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
K. Eric Drexler, one of the founding fathers of the whole nanotechnology concept, came up with a number of spine-chillingly plausible doomsday scenarios. The problem is our nanobots would be like cellular terminators, much more advanced than any of the pansy-ass creations nature invented. They could out-compete organic life overnight, obliterating it in a frenzy of Darwinism.
A million of these little fuckers!!
Taken to its extreme, we have the scenario affectionately known as the gray goo problem, which speculates the machines would simply start replicating out of control until everything in existence is just a mass of tiny, scuttling robots, which scientists imagine would look like a pile of gray slop floating through the void.
So, Basically It's Like...
Imagine you meet a magical leprechaun. For a bargain price, he offers to fix up the your house and add an extra room. So you take him home, and he proceeds to eat your house and shit out a hundred and forty more leprechans, which promptly murder you.
How Long Have We Got?
Scientists excitedly assure us that we will have a fully operational murderous death-swarm within twenty years, maybe even as soon as 2010. Right now they're trying to build something called a fabricator, which from our reading is some kind of indestructible robot swarm-queen built out of diamond, who will give birth to trillions of nanomachines and command them to consume all in their path.
Risk Level: 10
Basically the only thing that will save us from getting transformed into globulets of grey goo in a few years will be if the Large Hadron Collider kills us first.
For more evidence that science is pure evil check out The 5 Current Genetic Experiments Most Likely to Destroy Humanity. Or if you're tired of hating science, check out 5 Mental Disorders That Can Totally Get You Laid.


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text: Sipho Kings Sipho Kings is the person the Mail & Guardian sends to places when people's environment is collapsing. This leads him from mine dumps to sewage flowing down streets – a hazardous task for his trusty pair of work shoes. Having followed his development-minded parents around Southern Africa his first port of call for reporting on the environment is people on the ground. When things go wrong – when harvests collapse and water dries up – they have limited resources to adapt, which people can never let politicians forget. For the rest of the time he tries to avoid the boggling extremes of corporations and environmental organisations, and rather looks for that fabled 'truth' thing. For Christmas he wants a global agreement where humanity accepts that sustainable development is the way forward. And maybe for all the vested interest to stop being so extreme. And world peace. And a sturdier pair of shoes. @SiphoMcDhttps://www.facebook.com/SiphoKingsSipho Kings


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The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life (Hardcover)
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A keeper - my whole family loved it, and that does not happen often!
Skillet Gnocchi with Chard & White Beans
From EatingWell: January/February 2009
In this one-skillet supper, we toss dark leafy greens, diced tomatoes and white beans with gnocchi and top it all with gooey mozzarella. Serve with a mixed green salad with vinaigrette.
419 Reviews for Skillet Gnocchi with Chard & White Beans
I love, love this recipe... I've made it many times! I use a can of fire roasted tomatoes and whole wheat with sweet potato gnocchi
Like others, I thought this was a great dish. However, I don't agree that it makes great leftovers. When left overnight, the Gnocci absorbed most all of the sauce and were very mushy. Next time I am going to substite a pasta that will hold up better for the next day. Will definately be making again.
Made plenty for two people and great for leftovers. It is a wonderful recipe to keep on hand for when you don't have much time to cook dinner. Also as most of the ingredients are shelf-friendly it is great to have on hand when you don't have time to run to the store.
This is one of our favorite dinners! All of my kids love it and my 3 year old begs for the gnocchi right out of the pan. I've tried spinach and chard. Both worked well. I've tried plain gnocchi and the whole wheat gnocchi made with sweet potato and I think I slightly prefer the whole wheat over the plain. The last time I made this, I used fire roasted tomatoes with garlic--loved it! Next time I make it, I think I will try an italian cheese blend instead of mozzarella for a little different flavor. You could also add a cup of shredded rotisserie chicken to stretch this meal and use up some leftovers.


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Well, it seems that blogging has become a must in our industry nowadays so I'll not escape. Of course, I must admit that I spend easily 30 minutes to 1 hour of my time every single day reading the blog entries I bookmarked in some of my blog reader tools.
This blog, even though it's hosted on MSDN.com, will partly talk about my life at Microsoft but also about the industry as a whole and, why not, about me! :-)
Pour ceux que cela peut intéresser, je parle aussi le français et je serai très heureux de recevoir des commentaires dans ma langue maternelle!


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On sites like SNPedia, some pages contain the frequency of the SNP in question in different populations, based on published research. I'm trying to write a script that takes 23andme data and compares it with SNP frequency to find rare SNPs that the user possesses. I'm thinking that the only way to do this might be to scrape it from a SNP database. Is there anywhere you know of that makes this information available in a more accessible format, ideally preformatted for parsing?
You might be able to get some raw data on SNP frequency by batch querying the dbSNP database. I have not used it myself, though.
This is one of the reasons the 1000 genomes project was created.
Have you looked at ALFRED (The ALlele FREquency Database)? The data is from 2011, but seems extensive and has downloadable zip files at http://alfred.med.yale.edu/alfred/alfredDataDownload.asp


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6 Movie Plot Holes You Never Noticed Thanks to Editing
#3. Magneto Is a Free Man (For No Good Reason)
The first thing you need to know about the X-Men supervillain Magneto is that he's an elderly Holocaust survivor who can control metal (just accept this). The second thing you need to know is that he spent three films trying to kill the universe, only to be thwarted by the X-Men every time. At one point he is successfully imprisoned, but murders his way out using the powers of evil and metal manipulation so he can continue to wreak havoc.
And these weren't just rinky dinky Lex Luthor amateur show schemes, either. By the third movie, the guy is engineering a mutant terrorist army and tearing up the Golden Gate Bridge, because lord knows mutants are anything but subtle.
You could have just mutated yourself a boat, jackoff.
Once again, Magneto and the X-Men go to battle. And during the battle, Mag gets a taste of his own medicine, literally, because he gets injected with some mutant cure, which leaves him powerless. He escapes, the X-Men win, everybody's happy. We even see the Golden Gate Bridge, back to its original spot and being repaired as Angel, a winged mutant, flies above the San Francisco skyline ...
Probably should have just repaired it with concrete and plastic. Just to be safe.
Cut To:
A sullen-looking Magneto sits at a chessboard in the park with a case of the grumps.
Awwww ... he needs a hug. A justice hug.
So, the guy who tried to kill EVERY HUMAN IN THE WORLD is now free to wear a newsy cap and play strategy games in public spaces. Either this is a universe where the scales of justice don't even bother with the unmutated (in which case, hey Hitler, you could have saved that bullet!) or the greatest crimes against humanity are punished with unmitigated freedom and leisurely afternoons in the park.
Then there's the possibility that Magneto just didn't get caught -- that he didn't go through a court system at all, which is even worse. Look at him -- not only is he not disguised, he's IN THE SAME FUCKING CITY THAT HE JUST ATTACKED. Earlier we compared a scene to bin Laden walking into the CIA building, but this is actually worse -- this is bin Laden sitting in the middle of Central Park three months after 9/11, completely undisguised. Either because the authorities are that incompetent, or because he got crippled somehow and society said, "Eh, he can't do terrorism any more. Just let him be."
Never Forget ... Or Forget ... Whatever ...
#2. Indy = Aquaman?
Even with all the supernatural stuff we've come to expect from the Indiana Jones series, from the holy ark to magical stones to aliens, Indy himself is not supernatural. He's just a regular guy who's good with a whip and bad with snakes. Yet, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jones demonstrates that either he's got the blood of Poseidon running through his veins or he's actually a fish in human form. Don't know what we're talking about? We'll refresh your memory.
Indy and Marion have rescued the Ark of the Covenant, and they're just about to sail it to England on a steamer, when who should show up but the Nazis, as usual. The Nazis steal the ark, kidnap Marion and take off on their U-boat. Not one to take stealing-the-Holy-of-Holies-or-his-ex-girlfriend lightly, Jones stows away on the sub. And we mean "on" the sub, not "in" the sub -- he's riding on top of it.
Doing fucking pull-ups.
Cut To:
We are treated to a Nazi U-boat diving montage superimposed with the iconic Indiana Jones-style red line map animation showing the path of the U-boat as it travels from the middle of the Mediterranean and onto an island in the Aegean Sea. The sub is then seen docking on said island, and as the Nazis debark, we finally see our hero once more, soaking wet from the ride over but still as spry and macho as ever -- he even takes out two Nazis right off the bat. Way to go, Jones!
"Surveillance report: clear. Sneak mode: activated."
This is all especially impressive considering that right at that very moment our lively hero hasn't eaten, drank or breathed air in more than two goddamn days. Thanks to its signature map shot, this film just gave us a really clear idea as to what kind of trip this U-boat just took.
The red is the trail of blood Indy is leaving behind as kelp and fish cut into his skin.
See that? Right between Crete, Greece and its mainland. That map is so accurate that you can put it right up against Google Maps:
Bam! See that little legend in the bottom? You can see for yourself that the U-boat traveled roughly 500 miles to get where it was going. Also through the magic of modern technology we can tell you that a German U-boat such as the one in the film goes about 7.5 knots, which for you non-mariners out there is about 10 mph. That's a 50-hour ride, spent on top of the sub. So how did he do it?
The first thought would be that perhaps he somehow entered through a hatch and stowed away -- but considering that we last see him standing right on top of the bridge of the U-boat, any hatch would surely lead him to a room full of angry Germans. Also, good luck prying open a sealed hatch and not getting noticed. We're assuming those things lock pretty tight, you know, as not to let the ocean in.
Via Wikimedia Commons
It's the reason people are able to return home after riding in one.
So what? Did he just hang on? Actually, yes. As a deleted scene explains, Indy fucking latches himself onto the periscope via whip and then just kind of ... enjoys a 50-hour ride that may or may not involve drowning, dehydration or just dying from exposure and exhaustion. And when it's all over there he is, still standing, and ready to fight Nazis with his bare hands.
Via Theraider.net
Here's them filming part of that scene while masking fits of muffled laughter.
Speaking of superheroes ...
#1. The Man Of Steel KILLS AN ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD
Superman fans all remember those awful moments when Superman turned evil in Superman III. And if you don't, you're lucky. They were horrifying.
Two hours of him grabbing your sister's boobs and giving you wedgies is just too much.
But for most of Superman's existence, he's goodness personified ... or is he?
Case in point: the earthquake in the first Superman movie. Lex Luthor launches a missile that triggers an earthquake on the West Coast. So naturally, Superman races the fault line, attempting to save as many lives as he can. The first thing he does is save a school bus from nose-diving off of the Golden Gate Bridge. After that, he prevents a train from derailing by literally standing in for the train track.
The people who make his hair gel should design body armor.
After that, Superman takes the time to jet over to the Hoover Dam, which is near collapse. After saving some workers in the dam, Superman's next move is to rescue the increasingly annoying Jimmy Olsen from falling to his death. As he flies Jimmy to safety, the dam finally ruptures, spilling out an ocean of water heading straight for a neighborhood not too far away.
These future corpses.
Meanwhile, intrepid reporter/Superman boner-causer Lois Lane has run out of gas in the middle of the fault line. Hilarity ensues as Lois's car gets sucked into the ground and engulfed by dirt, burying her alive as she dies gasping for air.
It gets funnier every time we see it.
Unfortunately, at the exact same moment, Superman is busy with the dam disaster -- he's creating a giant rock dam to stop the wall of water that is rushing toward the panicked town below. After exerting all of his strength, he finally creates the barrier needed to save the countless lives.
Only after the town is saved does Superman finally fly to Lois's rescue, only to find out that he is too late. In a fit of rage, Superman flies up into the upper atmosphere.
In a bizarre attempt to fistfight God.
It's now that Superman gets an idea -- fuck time. In what is one of his most iconic moves, the Last Son of Krypton shoots as fast as he can around the planet Earth, somehow reversing the events that have just transpired. The wall of water flows backward into a repairing Hoover Dam, the earthquake destroys in reverse and Lois's car unburies itself in the ground.
Otherwise known as Xenos ex Machina.
Cut to:
Lois Lane sits in her recently broken-down car. Before she can be sucked into the ground, however, this time Superman is right there to help. He coolly flies in, helps her out of the car and engages in a cute conversation while simultaneously eye-fucking the shit out of her.
"Wait, why do you look four minutes older than you should?"
Just before he can make his move, in comes Jimmy Olsen, who thanks Superman for saving him from falling to his death. All is right again, and Superman flies off to go catch Lex Luthor and throw him in jail. YAY! Everyone lived! And by everyone we mean everyone who didn't live in that town that Superman just opted to drown.
It was, after all, the whole freaking point of why Superman couldn't save Lois; he had to choose the greater good over what was going on in his tights. So when Superman goes back in time to try it all again, he shows up right as Lois runs out of gas -- a sequence we previously saw happen just as a giant flood of water is rushing toward the town. It can only be logical that he is choosing to not save the town this time around. After all, he then spends the next few minutes where he is supposed to be straining to contain the flood with rocks chatting it up with Lois instead.
"By the way, there's one hell of a story just over those hills."
For more baffling plot points, check out 6 Plot Threads Famous Movies Forgot to Resolve and 8 Classic Movies That Got Away With Gaping Plot Holes.
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Nagel's Untimely Idea
Few recent works of philosophy have provoked as much controversy as Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press, $24.95, 130 pp.). Reviewing the book for the New Statesman, Simon Blackburn wrote, "If there were a philosophical Vatican, the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index." The Guardian named it the Most Despised Science Book of 2012, while the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker took to Twitter to pronounce that a scathing review in the Nation had "exposed the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker." As for Nagel's defenders, some have been defensive (the title of one mostly favorable review: "Thomas Nagel is not crazy"); others have been defiant: the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier wrote, "I understand that nobody is going to burn Nagel's book or ban it. These inquisitors are just more professors. But he is being denounced not merely for being wrong. He is being denounced also for being heretical."
Why all the fuss? In Mind and Cosmos, Nagel argues that "the Neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly wrong" because it cannot explain the origin of conscious life, much less the human mind's ability to apprehend scientific truths or objective moral and aesthetic values. In the book's introduction, Nagel writes that the failure of neo-Darwinian theory to offer a satisfactory account of these things suggests that "principles of a different kind are also at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic." Nagel does not believe these principles are supernatural; as an atheist, he rejects every kind of supernatural explanation. But he also rejects the claim that the natural world is reducible to the material world. Consciousness, he believes, is no less natural than the material world, but is not itself material. Nagel does not propose a scientific alternative or supplement to Neo-Darwinian theory; instead, he presents the problems that such an alternative would have to solve. "Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole. Pointing out their limits is a philosophical task, whoever engages in it, rather than part of the internal pursuit of science—though we can hope that if the limits are recognized, that may eventually lead to the discovery of new forms of scientific understanding."
We asked three writers—the philosopher Gary Gutting, the biologist Kenneth R. Miller, and the physicist Stephen M. Barr—to assess Nagel's critique of "the current orthodoxy," and to describe how that critique fits into the larger discussion about what the natural sciences have yet to explain about ourselves and the world we observe.
—The Editors
Gary Gutting
Not surprisingly, most reviewers have approached Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos in terms of philosophy of mind or philosophy of science. But the book is also of considerable interest from the standpoint of science and religion.
We're used to seeing religion and science as competitors in explaining the world. But until the middle of the nineteenth century—about two hundred years after the Scientific Revolution—modern science was the main source of evidence for a creator God. The precise regularities of physics and the complex mechanisms of biology seemed irrefutable proof of a designer. This grand alliance of science and religion collapsed only with Darwin's discovery that we can explain apparent design through a combinaton of chance variations and natural selection. The result was a "war" between science and religion, with religion continually retreating as science explained more and more aspects of our world with no reference to a divine will. The pseudo-science of "intelligent design" is the last gasp of an effort to return to the pre-Darwinian theological glory days.
The one "cloud" threatening the triumph of science has been the fact of consciousness. As Nagel points out, Galileo and Descartes excluded "everything mental from the scope of physical science" by making what seem to be qualitative features of matter (colors, aromas, tastes) features of the perceiving mind, not of the objects perceived. This gave the mathematical methods of the new science full scope in the objective, external world, but posed an enduring obstacle to a science of the mind. Scientists have established detailed correlations between the physical and the mental, to the point of showing that, as Nagel says, "our mental lives, including our subjective experiences...are...probably strictly dependent on physical events in our brains." The mind changes only if the brain changes. But even total correlation of mental states to brain states wouldn't show that the mind is, like the brain, a material thing completely describable by the physical sciences.
Neuroscientists often claim to have made great progress in providing a scientific account of consciousness. But they have never done anything more than specify more precisely the correlations between brain events and mental events. For their part, philosophers have repeatedly proposed ways to describe the mental in entirely physical terms. But, as Nagel notes, "such strategies...leave out just what was deliberately left out...by Descartes and Galileo in order to form the modern concept of the physical, namely, subjective appearances." The fact is we still don't know how to fit subjective experience into an entirely materialist world.
Nonetheless, most scientists and scientifically minded philosophers have been confident that we will eventually achieve a materialistic account of consciousness. At one time, Nagel himself agreed, although he suggested that such an account would involve an expanded conception of mind that "will permit subjective points of view to have an objective physical character in themselves." We would, in other words, find a way to think of the mind as both entirely material and irreducibly subjective. But in Mind and Cosmos Nagel has changed his view and now thinks that integrating the mind into the world requires not a new conception of the mind but a new, nonmaterialistic conception of the world.
Other philosophers—most notably, David Chalmers—have also given up on materialism. Chalmers, however, opts for a version of dualism, positing units of consciousness (qualia) in addition to the material units (e.g., elementary particles) of physics. Nagel rejects dualism and instead proposes that we think of the world as made of a single stuff that somehow includes the seeds of both mind and matter. (Such a view, called "neutral monism," had been suggested by Bertrand Russell and by John Dewey.) Nagel's development of this idea is both sketchy and highly speculative. But one of his key suggestions is that the fundamental stuff of the world is directed toward goals that constrain the outcomes of evolution, moving it toward higher forms of organization, such as human consciousness.
Why does Nagel insist on a radical rejection of the materialist metaphysics rather than endorsing Chalmers's dualistic supplement to it? Because, Nagel maintains, materialist accounts rely on Darwinian evolution, which is not capable of explaining the origin of consciousness from matter. He agrees with the claim—often advanced by intelligent-design theorists—that there is not enough geological time for the processes of Darwinian evolution to produce the organisms that currently exist. But he offers no reason that laypeople should ignore the strong scientific consensus against such arguments—apart from the disdainful thought that the consensus persists only because "almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive [Darwinian] research program as sacrosanct."
In any case, even if Darwinian evolution could in some sense explain the origin of consciousness, it could not, Nagel maintains, provide a good explanation. A good explanation, he says, must show that consciousness is not just a low-probability possibility that happened to occur but rather something to be expected from evolutionary development. Since evolution depends on random variations, there are many possibilities, each of them in its own right quite improbable, so that what actually happens was not to be expected. But why should such a situation exclude a good explanation of what occurs? There's a low probability for each of the possible results of spinning a roulette wheel. But when the ball settles on, say, twenty-two, we rightly explain this by saying that this is a result that will occur every so often. Nagel doesn't reject (or even discuss) such examples, but he apparently thinks that consciousness is too "remarkable" a feature to be explained in this way. Why, however, he doesn't say.
The second half of Mind and Cosmos offers much better developed and more interesting arguments that our knowledge of objective truths—logical, factual, and moral—are undermined if our minds are the results of the vagaries of random mutations and natural selection. Here Nagel lends his powerful voice to a case Alvin Plantinga and a few others have been trying to make for several years. The core claim is this: Evolution can explain our having certain beliefs only because they have survival value, but a belief can have survival value even if it is false. For example, our belief that 2 + 2 = 4 would have survival value even if in fact 2 + 2 equaled 3.9999999, since it would be an adequate approximation for any practical purpose. Similarly, a widespread belief that murder is objectively wrong would help preserve the human species even if it were not in fact true. This argument has been strongly contested, and we still have a lot to learn from the ongoing discussion.
Despite its argumentative failings (thoroughly canvassed by early reviewers), Mind and Cosmos is an important contribution to our thinking about science and religion. Nagel is, at points, sympathetic to the intelligent-design community and, especially, to Plantinga's vigorous defense of theism. But Nagel's own view is secular, indeed atheistic. He rejects materialism (the idea that there is nothing but matter) but not naturalism (the idea that there are no supernatural forces in the universe). Believers may welcome his aid as a critic of materialism, but his work will be most valuable to agnostics and atheists seeking intellectual depth, subtlety, and flexibility not available in the crude materialism of popular unbelief. Even though the brief book is short on rigorous detail, it outlines a potentially fruitful picture of what a metaphysics of atheism might be.
Nagel's book also suggests the possibility of a turn to—of all things—idealism within analytic philosophy. With the demise of positivism, much analytic work, especially in epistemology and ethics, has centered on Kant. But there has been little movement, at least in the fundamental domain of metaphysics, toward fulfilling Wilfrid Sellars's prophetic aphorism: When Kant appears, can Hegel be far behind? Nagel is no full-bore Hegelian, but he does allow that he is "an objective idealist in the tradition of Plato and perhaps also...of Schelling and Hegel." He rejects the subjective idealism that regards the so-called external world as mere appearance, but, like Hegelians, sees mind as implicit in all reality. It is not surprising that he shows sympathy for another glimmering of idealism in the analytic world, Galen Strawson's panpsychism, which sees all matter as at least minimally conscious. Nagel also speaks with respect of an intriguing quasi-idealistic path-not-taken by analytic philosophy—Alfred North Whitehead's process metaphysics.
An atheism that is antimaterialist, even idealistic, and committed to teleology and objective values—right or wrong, it's a refreshing change in our stale battle between science and religion!
Kenneth R. Miller
Put "Darwinian" and "false" on the cover of a book, and you're bound to attract plenty of attention. Whether he planned it that way or not, that's exactly what's happened with Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. After seeing the book's subtitle—with its claim that the "materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false"—one would expect a scientific broadside against evolution to be packed into the pages of this slim volume. But it's not there. In fact, the big surprise in Mind and Cosmos is how little it offers in the way of science.
To be sure, Nagel is skeptical of the evolutionary process. He says it's "prima facie highly improbable that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection." But he does nothing to support that intuitive skepticism. He puts forward no statistical argument, no critique of the fossil record, and no discussion of molecular evolution, genetic novelty, or biochemical complexity. His subtitle notwithstanding, Nagel leaves the vast inventory of evidence for evolution untouched. Indeed, those seeking a full-throated takedown of Charles Darwin will have to look elsewhere, as Nagel himself admits, writing that he proposes merely "a revision of the Darwinian picture rather than an outright denial of it."
Why, then, does he claim that the neo-Darwinian view is "false"? As the reader quickly discovers, Nagel's problem isn't so much with evolution as with neuroscience. To put it simply, his big complaint is that the human brain has not yet succeeded in figuring itself out. Sorry, but this is not news.
While the neuroscience research community may welcome the assertion that there are still fundamental problems for it to solve, Nagel regards this as a fatal critique of the materialist program in biology. The premise of that program, he claims, is that all of biology is ultimately reducible to chemistry, which is reducible to physics, which deals with matter and energy and nothing more. As an experimental biologist, I have to admit that's a pretty fair description of how the science has operated for the past hundred years or so. And I'd say it seems to be working pretty well, at least so far. But Nagel sees an obstacle—a big one—to the ultimate triumph of materialist science: consciousness.
Nagel starts with the obvious fact that consciousness has, as yet, no detailed material explanation. Fair enough. But then he asserts that it will never be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. This matters because "if physics and chemistry cannot fully account for life and consciousness, how will their immense body of truth be combined with other elements in an expanded conception of the natural order that can accommodate those things?" So, why is the theory of evolution also in trouble? Because, as a theory of biological origins, it must offer some account for the emergence of mind and consciousness. And, "Since a purely materialist explanation cannot do this, the materialist version of evolutionary theory cannot be the whole truth."
While most neuroscientists would agree that we have not achieved anything close to a mechanistic explanation of consciousness, the assertion that such an explanation cannot be achieved is striking. Nagel supports this claim not with empirical evidence, but with philosophical arguments about the nature of cognition, drawn ultimately from the mind-body dualism of Descartes. Echoing Descartes, Nagel argues that "since we can clearly conceive of the mind existing without the physical body and vice versa, they can't be one thing." The experience of a sensation, like the taste of sugar, cannot be identical to the physical brain state involved in tasting sugar. Therefore the conscious reality of what sugar tastes like cannot be fully accounted for by the physics and chemistry of the organ we call the brain.
Nagel also argues at some length for a moral realism that is independent of evolutionary accounts of the emergence of moral judgment. He recognizes, as have others, that if our moral sense is entirely the product of evolutionary forces related to reproductive success, then it becomes difficult to argue that we are equipped to discover and evaluate genuine truths that do not depend on our own subjective views.
These are fascinating arguments. While making clear that he holds no brief for theism, Nagel nonetheless appreciates the believer's intuition that there must be something above and beyond the order of nature itself. This is a sentiment I gladly share. But Nagel, an atheist, goes further, observing that "the existence of consciousness seems to imply…that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything." Less austere? One has to ask, how does he know that? While some of the more dreadful undergraduate courses in physics and chemistry might indeed seem austere, nature itself is filled with extravagant beauty and creativity. And that beauty is built, as far as we can tell, on the very physics and chemistry that Nagel disparages. The problem of consciousness notwithstanding, Nagel's bold arguments about the nature of the physical universe are clearly grounded more in personal preference than in the realism he seeks to defend.
Despite that criticism, I would urge my scientific colleagues to take his arguments seriously, and especially to consider the central nature of the problem of consciousness. Referring to our own species, Carl Sagan once wrote that "we are a way for the cosmos to know itself," and so we are. In Nagel's words, "The process seems to be one of the universe gradually waking up." If we are creatures truly formed from the cosmic dust of physics and chemistry, the question of how we have come to know ourselves and the universe around us demands our attention more than ever.
Frankly, I confess a certain admiration for Nagel's boldness. As a philosopher, he looks at the research community from the outside. While others may see this as a problem, there have been times in the history of science where someone standing outside a field was able to see its difficulties far more clearly than those working within it. One of those times came in the 1940s when physicist Erwin Schrödinger cobbled a series of lectures together into a book with the title What Is Life? Many scientists, including James D. Watson of double-helix fame, have credited Schrödinger's book with inspiring them to think critically about the chemical and structural nature of the gene. It's instructive that Schrödinger himself once made a claim remarkably similar to Nagel's. Specifically, he argued that our then-current understanding of physics was incapable of explaining the chemical nature of the gene. Science, he felt, had to take a leap forward to accommodate the challenge of heredity by discovering "other laws of physics, hitherto unknown." Nagel makes a similar assertion, telling us that "the tendency for life to form may be a basic feature of the natural order, not explained by the nonteleological laws of physics and chemistry."
Schrödinger, however, did not claim that our current understanding of those material laws was "almost certainly false." Nor did he indict "materialist science" as being unable to solve the problem of the gene. Rather, he wrote that those "other laws" of physics, "once they have been revealed, will form just as integral a part of this science as the former." And so they have. Discovering the double helix and the molecular nature of the gene showed pre-1950s physics and chemistry to be not false but merely incomplete in their ability to explain living matter. Schrödinger's challenge to biology was met by new discoveries that, far from rejecting materialist science, actually validated its power and extended its reach. The same will be true, I predict, with respect to the problem of consciousness.
Nagel's great mistake is that he seems to regard naturalistic science as hopelessly stymied by the problem of consciousness. From such a viewpoint, any unsolved problem becomes fatal to a science that claims to have everything figured out. But no science, even "materialist neo-Darwinian" biology, can actually make the claim of finality. Rather, all science is necessarily incomplete, and recognizing that fact with respect to questions like consciousness does not mean that the great achievements of neuroscience and evolution are "false." In fact, it tells us something quite different. It tells us that we have only now reached a level of understanding from which we can begin to address exactly the questions Nagel considers off limits to materialists. Far from being at a dead end, we're at a point where things are just getting interesting, and the material sciences Nagel scorns are the very tools that will show us the way ahead.
Stephen M. Barr
Scientific materialism is perhaps the main intellectual rival to religion today, and one that recently seems to have grown in popularity. It is therefore a momentous occasion when a forceful attack on materialism is made by a leading philosopher who is himself an avowed atheist.
Scientific materialism claims that everything that exists and everything that happens is ultimately reducible to the behavior of particles, fields, energy, forces, and the other kinds of entities posited by theoretical physics. Those who embrace this view are encouraged to do so by the enormous explanatory success of modern science. That success has been based on a form of reductionism that explains physical systems by analyzing them in terms of their fundamental constituents and how those constituents are organized and interact with one another. Wherever such analysis has been carried out—at least for inanimate matter—the resulting explanations seem complete. Most physicists (myself included) think it highly implausible that there is anything about the nature or properties of a chunk of iron, say, or a drop of water, or a star, or an atom that is not explicable in this way. This kind of reductionism has been extended with increasing success to biology. Molecular biology and related disciplines are giving us an ever greater and more detailed understanding of the processes of life.
The big question, of course, is whether minds can be understood completely in this way. Thomas Nagel contends that they cannot be and that materialism must therefore be false. His main argument is that materialism cannot account for three aspects of mind: consciousness, cognition (specifically, certain features of human rationality), and the human capacity to apprehend objective values. He argues, moreover, that even if materialism could explain how minds can exist in a purely physical world, it has no plausible account of how and why they did in fact come to exist. Darwinian evolution, being a purely physical theory, is not enough. To use Nagel's language, materialism provides neither a "constitutive" nor a "historical" account of mental phenomena. What's more, materialism leaves unexplained the remarkable fact that the world is intelligible. As Nagel puts it, not only is "nature such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds…it is such as to be comprehensible to those minds." On the basis of all these considerations, he concludes that mind must be recognized as a feature of the natural world just as fundamental as matter.
Though I find all of Nagel's antimaterialist arguments cogent, I will confine my comments to the argument that consciousness is not reducible to physics. As a physicist, this conclusion seems to me obvious and to follow directly from the very nature of physical science and the way it explains things. According to physics, every physical system is completely characterized—indeed, defined—by a set of "variables," which mathematically describe what its elementary constituents are doing and whose evolution though time is governed by a set of mathematical rules and equations. (The transition from classical to quantum physics in the twentieth century did not change this basic framework, it only made the system of rules and equations more subtle.)
Of course, one does not need to keep track of all the variables of a physical system in order to know many interesting and important things about it—otherwise it would be impossible for human beings to do physics. But if one did know what all the variables were doing and the laws governing them, one could in principle derive everything there was to know about the system's properties and behavior—if the system is just physical. This derivation could be carried out using only the rules of mathematics and logic. That is what physicists generally believe, and for very good reason: in the purely physical realm—for example, the realm of inanimate matter—nothing has ever been found that gives grounds for doubting it.
In any event, whether you believe in this kind of reduction or not, it is the only kind that is done in physics. And so, if the physical sciences provide any warrant for believing in reductionism, it is only this kind of reductionism. It is clear, however, that this kind cannot be extended to consciousness. Even if one knew all the variables of a physical system, their values at one time or at all times, and the equations governing them, there would be no way to derive from that information anything about whether the system in question was conscious, was feeling anything, or was having subjective experiences of any sort.
Of course, we sometimes infer from its physically observable behavior that a being has feelings. When my dog begs for a strip of bacon, I know it's because he enjoys the taste. But that conclusion is based on an analogy between the dog's reactions and mine, not on a mathematical or logical derivation from physical facts. Nor could it be based on such a derivation, for such things as enjoyment or taste are not quantities, and physics deals only with quantities—quantities that appear in equations and quantities that are measured.
While Nagel rejects "psychophysical reductionism," and believes mind to be as fundamental as matter, he rejects any form of mind-matter dualism. "Outright dualism," he says, "would abandon the hope for an integrated explanation…and would imply that biology has no responsibility at all for the existence of minds." Instead, matter and mind must be seen as parts of "a single natural order that unifies everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles." In his view, the evidence "favors some form of neutral monism"—the idea that there is really just one basic stuff in nature, which has both physical and mental aspects.
Nagel may be right to reject dualism, but his reasons for doing so seem weak to me. It is not clear why dualism would preclude an "integrated explanation" of the physical and mental. After all, even within the physical realm there can be distinct entities, quite irreducible to each other, that are embraced by a single theory that "unifies [them] on the basis of a set of common elements and principles." Physics provides many instances of this. For example, electromagnetic fields and electrically charged particles are two distinct kinds of entity, whose relationship to each other is explained by an integrated theory called "quantum electrodynamics." Furthermore, in this theory the charged particles have some "responsibility" for the existence of the electromagnetic fields despite being utterly distinct from them. It is not clear why, in an analogous way, matter organized into biological structures couldn't be responsible in some degree for the existence of minds, despite being ontologically distinct from them.
Finally, there is the question of Nagel's atheism. Nagel admits that theism has an advantage over materialism in that it at least "admits the reality of more of what is so evidently the case"—in particular the reality of mind, purpose, and value. He also admits that theism has some explanatory power. It might, for instance, be able to explain why the universe is such as to bring forth minds, and why it would be intelligible to those minds. (That might be part of God's intention in creating the universe.) But Nagel objects to theism on the grounds that merely positing the existence of God does not provide the kind of explanation he is seeking: an explanation of how matter and mind fit together within a single unified natural order. And, of course, he is right that it doesn't. Knowing that God is the author of the natural order does not, by itself, tell one very much about how the natural order works.
Of course, if one could know completely the mind of God (which is impossible without being God), one would understand what he understands, including everything there is to understand about the natural order. But the theist is not in that position, obviously. To say that God is the ultimate explanation of everything is not to say that theism is the explanation of everything. It doesn't have to be such an explanation, however, in order to be a rational and well-founded belief. It only has to explain more than the alternatives. And a key point, which Nagel at times seems to forget, is that natural explanation and theism are not alternatives to each other. The idea that all the various aspects and components of the natural order fit together in some internally coherent way and the idea that some mind (God's) conceived the natural order in the first place can be seen themselves to fit together in a coherent way.
We ought to be grateful that Nagel has been able to see so much "more of what is so evidently the case" than most contemporary philosophers, even if that does not include the existence of God.
Saving Faith
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I just started reading a book by William Egginton, In Defense of Religious Moderation, which takes a position somewhat like Nagel's. Eggington describes how atheistic scientists and religious fundalmentalists hold absolute positions in direct conflict with each other, yet in both being absolutist, they much more like each other than they would care to admit. He prefers a moderate position, religious or agnostic, that does not proclaim it is totally right, a more humble and less arrogant view -- not exactly Nagel's but in the same ballpark.
Good job, editors in getting three perspectives on Nagel's fascinating book. Not only fascinating, the book is highly readable and your commentators have done a fine job of elucidating the positives and negatives of Nagel's argument.
To follow up, how about inviting a historian of science to look at their comments written very much from within their fields, as they should have written. But there is a bigger argument going on that none of them either did not address or dismissed rather easily. It is the issue not of Darwinianism but Neo-Darwinianism, the synthesis of biology with physics and chemistry, which has produced the materialist and reductionist views that Nagel criticizes.
After all, there is a war of ideas going on, succinctly captured in Nagel's sub-title: "Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly Wrong," echoing Richard Dawkins, "Why there is almost certainly no God."
As opposed to using theism to explain consciousness, I have found it helpful (in a personal sense) to use consciousness to explain theism. As one who lost the faith of my childhood, I intentionally sought to regain that faith. I needed a plausible explanation of God which did not depend upon supernatural magic and mysticism.
I started with the human brain, which is merely a more advanced version of my cat's brain, which is merely a more advanced version of my turtle's brain. The brain is the source of consciousness. From all we are able to deduce, consciousness is organized bioelectrical energy. No, we have not yet figured out how this organized bioelectrical energy produces sentience, nor have we as yet discovered precisely how to arrest the process of aging. But one day we shall surely understand the secrets to both, and probably sooner, rather than later. In this regard, I agree with the views of Miller, one of the three invited reviewers, above.
Getting back to a non-mystical explanation of God: Human intelligence is astonishing, yet that intelligence emanates from the bioelectrical interactions between neurons contained in a structure the size of a loaf of bread. Imagine a brain as big as the earth. Or a brain as big as the universe. What is the nature of dark energy, which is most of the energy in this universe? If the mutiverse theory is true, what about other universes, with different laws of physics, which don't even permit the formation of matter, but which do permit the formation of alien forms of energy? Imagine the comparative omnipotence and omniscience of organized energy within such a universe.
It cannot be asserted that God can be explained by some variation on this theme, but, for me, it was at least plausible. It was enough to start me on a journey of spiritual renewal, which has led to my scheduled receipt of the sacrament of confirmation as a Roman Catholic this Pentecost Sunday. At this point, it doesn't matter at all to me whether or not my speculative hypothesis concerning a non-supernatural deity has even a modicum of validity. I just needed a kick start, and that's what did it for me.
I describe this in a little more detail on a little blog: http://physicalheretic.com
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
You know that this topic was covered years ago by Gregory Bateson in his two books Mind & Nature A Necessary Unity, and Steps To an Ecology of Mind.
Furthermore has anyone every noticed that hardly any of the usual protagonists in this never-ending and unresolvable argument uses the word Consciousness with a Capital C, nor Light which is the Energy of Consciousness. Furthermore, reading all of the usual arguments one could assume that noone had ever heard of the equation E=MC2 and/or begun to think about or take into account the revolutionary all-the-way-down-the-line cultural implications of that equation.
That having been said please check out these references which, if properly understood resolve this seemingly never-ending argument.
Nagel, Barr, Miller, and Gutting use words like "natural" and "material" as if they had some clear meaning, readily apprehended. Is this so? Am I alone in finding them almost devoid of meaning. The material world. The natural world. What are the other worlds? Who has visited them?
I earlier took a position similar to Nagel's. I think I wanted to defend belief in God, for myself especially. I think I wanted that because, for me, Judaeo-Christianity says that we belong here (God saw that it (creation) was good). After reading this article, I re-read an essay I had written on the subject. It was heavily influenced by an undergraduate seminar given at then California State College at Hayward (now California State University, East Bay) by Professor Paul Bassen, on the Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the essay I say that we can't speak about phenomena of consciousness as easily as we can speak about, say, Galileo's experiment with gravity, because the data aren't as accessible. They have become more accessible over history, and are likely to continue to do so. My essay is available here, http://crittervilleproductions.com/wp/?p=66
Dr. Weisenthal, may I suggest a book I just read, which I think you may enjoy? It is Jesus Before Christianity, by Albert Nolan, 1976. http://books.google.com/books?id=2UWm30LdqEYC
Hi Jim, Thanks for the reference. I've spent a good bit of time reading the opinions and scholarship of a number of writers, both in blogs and in books. Examples of the latter were/are: cradle Catholic-turned-agnostic Vincent Bugliosi's "Divinity of Doubt," Biblical scholar works for lay readers (Bart Ehrman, Ben Witherington), Jesus Seminar scholar Dominic Crossan's "Birth of Christianity" (still only 1/3 of the way through; this verbose author gets my award for the most words per take home message), and my favorite historical Christianity author, Fr. Raymond Brown (currently working through the Pauline chapters in his classic "Introduction to the New Testament").
I read everything I have time for about St. Paul, who is -- by far -- the single author most responsible for my own (to me -- astonishing) spiritual transformation. I was thrilled to learn (very recently) that St. Augustine had a spiritual epiphany from reading Paul's letter to the Romans, as did I.
I plan on spending many more years (longevity permitting) reading books relating to historical Christology. I'll check out Nolan in the future.
Thanks again, Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
As one who trained in science and mathematics, I take strong exception to "our belief that 2 + 2 = 4". That has nothing to do w/belief. I derives from the definitions of "integer" and the operator "+". "4" is the name of the integer which is one more than 3. While there are algebras/number systems in which 2+2 ^= 4, again that occurs because of the definition of the algebra/number system.
I would suggest revisiting Aristotle on levels of abstraction. The sentence "Similarly, a widespread belief that murder is objectively wrong would help preserve the human species even if it were not in fact true." used to compare the use of "belief" on a different level of abstraction. I think the au currant term is - fail.


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When you get sick, you generally don't contract enough bacteria at once for them to succeed in battling your immune system, right? Their numbers must gradually increase in the host's body before they know that they can attack. How does that work?
I think the current answer to this for bacterial infections is quorum sensing. Quorum sensing is a signalling pathway in bacteria which senses a molecule that the bacteria themselves secrete. When the concentration of the quorum signal reaches a certain level, the bacteria interpret this as their population density reaching some threshhold.
Bacteria are always around - even infectious Staph, as described in the other answer, the bacteria are always being cleared out by the immune system, but when they find the right place where they can get critical mass, they dig in, form a biofilm and secrete toxins, which can help them divide more successfully.
This is a description of the process from a paper on Staph infection, a common bacterial infection in humans.
Viruses are typically simpler - as @MattDMo describes. They seem to rely on finding an environment where they can infect more cells at such a rate greater than the immune system can clear them out. For influenza, this is more of a 'shock and awe' offense where they infect and multiply quickly, trying to outpace the immune system. Another virus like HIV will actually multiply so slowly that the immune system can't find the host cells, allowing HIV to slowly spread over the host cell population.
Here's a bonus topic... When they were looking a cholera in the 1990s they found that V cholerae bacteria actually take up phage with toxins in them that convert benign bacteria to virulent ones (that cause dysenteric cholera). They do this by conveying both the pili that attach to human cells and the toxin that causes the violent G.I. reaction of dysentery. I think this is not unusual for bacterial diseases. (the reference is Science 272, 1910-14 BTW).
This has lead to a suspicion that bacteria might be even adapting to infectious phenotypes through genomic changes. This study had sequenced the genome of C difficile from 486 patients and found that relatively few of them really were capable of patient to patient infection:
Infectious agents like bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc., don't know when to "attack" or produce pathogenic substances, they just do it under their preferred conditions, and your body's immune system either succeeds in fighting them off immediately, or it doesn't and you get sick. Your body is constantly confronting and clearing potentially dangerous microorganisms without your ever being aware of it. Every breath of air, mouthful of food, or contact with your mucus membranes is a possible infection, if not for your innate immune system.
However, sometimes pathogens get past the first line of defense, or are otherwise able to evade it, and in the time it takes for the adaptive immune system to engage they are building up their numbers and gradually getting to the point where you realize that you are sick or otherwise infected.
Interestingly, many of the symptoms of sickness you often feel - being tired, feeling sore, having a fever or localized redness/inflammation - are actually caused by some of the effector chemicals or cytokines released by your own immune system, and not by the infective agents themselves.
For example, lipopolysaccharide or LPS is a major component of the cell wall of Gram-negative bacteria, including such pathogenic species as E. coli (food poisoning, urinary tract infections), Neisseria species (bacterial meningitis, gonorrhea), H. pylori (stomach ulcers), and Salmonella species (food poisoning, typhoid fever). LPS on its own does not cause fever or inflammation, for example, but when bound by certain immune cells (B-cells and macrophages, mostly) it rapidly and overwhelmingly promotes the generation and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNFα and IL-1β. These proteins then act on target tissues to allow the inflammatory response - swelling, pain, increased temperature, redness, etc. - and recruit immune cells to fight whatever invaders must be there.