Search results

So why are endogenous retroviruses called endogenous if (according to you) they invaded the germline? And remind me again, how on earth does the profusion of ERVs in the human genome form any argument whatsoever against evolution?

As a complete aside, my cursory background research has led to what is probably the most bizarre genetic hypotheses I've ever seen in my life: the human testis may have exapted ERV sequences to stave off cell death while under stress. This cries out to be the subject of some form of lewd joke...

Okay mark, good to see you start to read up on specifics. There is a good little snippet in the koala paper on what actually happens to integrated proviruses, but let's tackle this in little baby steps: What does the word "endogenous" in "endogenous retrovirus" actually mean?

In fact, if you are aware of Kahnemann, you should be aware that most scientific work is acutely taxing on the cognitive Slow System, which is precisely the part of the brain that is supposed to unmask the dancing gorillas on the basketball court. It is precisely the scientists who are...

Yes, I keep abreast with developments in cognitive psychology, and I am acutely aware of work by Kahnemann and Ives and such. Let me ask you a question, though: now that you know about the dancing gorilla experiment, do you keep an eye out for a dancing gorilla during every NBA game? Let's go...

I love this OP! :D Let me give my take on questions 3 and 5. Q3 has to do with the meaning of the word "full", and you can see even in ordinary English that the word covers a range of meanings. On one hand, if you tell me that your pasture is "full of cows" and I see one miserable animal...

You keep saying these things that I don't believe you yourself believe, like: What does that phrase mean, mark? What, precisely, is a devastating infection of the germ line with endogenous retroviruses? Surely you must know, as "devastating" is not an adjective to be appended lightly to a...

To make matters more complicated there are factual-historical narrative poems, metaphorical narrative poems, fictional-historical narrative poems, metaphorical non-narrative poems, etc. So, for example, in The Charge of the Light Brigade, the Charge is not a metaphor for anything but is in...

The Standard Model interacts with cosmology (as we know it) in at least two ways, although it is true that quantum mechanics simply can't be applied (not without some considerable, er, creativity) at the level of general relativity. Firstly, our best large-scale model of the universe assigns a...

Right-o, that sentence there was what I needed to hear. Before we can even proceed, can I assume that we also agree on what the word "isotope" means? And do not assume that the pursuit of Heaven precludes increasing our understanding of the earth. We are called to redeem earth in Heaven's...

Heaven is indeed strange and distant from Earth. The question of what physical conditions and histories it takes for a wide variety of rocks, from Earth or from space, to have particular isotopic ratios - now that is not quite as strange and distant, however. What has Heaven to do with that?

So go on, tell me exactly why endogenous retroviruses are extremely rare and dangerous. (Some things don't change, huh!)

So, I've been thinking about this for a little while and I suppose I have some basic questions that I would need to know about before we proceed. 1. Is there any baseline agreement on the historiography of the Gospels + Acts? So most people agree on the source theory for the Gospels (Q +...

I have to run for work so this is going to be a hit-and-run reply - for some reason Papias's reply didn't pop up on my usercp so I'll have to take some time with that. If that's what we're talking about then there's no evidence that the author of 2 Peter was addressing Gnosticism at all! I'm...

Surely you are not claiming that all conceptually possible biodiversity is the result of microevolutionary accumulation (mutation, selection and speciation). For example, we already have AI of increasing flexibility, sophisticated robotic manipulators, and 3D printers. It is not inconceivable...

Papias, I'm quite interested in interacting with the website you listed. Like John this isn't one of my strong areas but I'm increasingly getting tired with the whole origins tirade :P and this could be a fruitful area to expend my energy in. I note that even the latest dated epistle of the New...

What calculations?? I don't understand why you're so difficult to pin down on this. Precisely what calculations do you trust, and what calculations don't you trust? The locations per se have got nothing to do with it - after all, if I told you that my bedroom was two kilometers away from...

Most basic scientific facts are highly counterintuitive to most people, as the above post shows. The mathematical shape of the Moon's orbit is actually accounted for by gravity, all protestations about cause and effect to the contrary. Can you put the moon into orbit?

How do you know the spaceships actually went where NASA said they went? After all, you've never been there to check. Maybe their cameras malfunctioned. Maybe the speed of light decreases so drastically outside the Earth's atmosphere (it's not like you've measured it there, right?) that although...

If you got A grades for them then surely you remember a little bit of the science. I genuinely do not know of any direct measurements of distance within the Solar System - none that don't assume the speed of light, which I assume you've never personally measured before.