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Posts by freeper4u

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  • Anti-terrorism alliance

    12/12/2008 11:51:24 AM PST · 11 of 12
    freeper4u to MimirsWell

    From what you said, it sounds like Pakistan’s military has two things going for it: the people’s need for it to continually fight outlaw terrorists, and the people’s need for it to face India.

    But if the first part only came into play after 9/11, maybe it is a luxury item. They will always have Kashmir and India, so maybe they can be pressured (from the inside) to give up those with ideological ties to the terrorists.

    Also, from India’s point of view, it’s a double whammy — they are really fighting two Pakistans, and I don’t think that’s sustainable.

  • Anti-terrorism alliance

    12/12/2008 1:21:51 AM PST · 5 of 12
    freeper4u to MimirsWell

    Thanks for your reply — I agree with all your points. However, this would be a more exclusive treaty. Palestine doesn’t need to be accepted because they will define Israel as a terrorist nation, and then we have another U.N.

    Of course Britain and the US can’t just form an alliance and use that as justification to invade Iran, but maybe such an alliance could be constructed just the right way to target terrorists in Pakistan (which is probably everyone’s top priority).

    I think there is enough secular DNA in Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership for some window of opportunity to be created when they might accept some language that opens the door to cooperation.

  • Anti-terrorism alliance

    12/12/2008 1:15:11 AM PST · 4 of 12
    freeper4u to Cindy

    Sorry, it wasn’t a news item (is this forum just for news posting) — just my idea.

    It just seems like an obvious thing to do. If India were part of such an alliance, and the tug-of-war between secular and religious forces in Pakistan happened to favor secular leaders at the time, they might be able to call in an international force to help keep the peace while palettes of whoop ass are deployed to ungoverned regions.

    An “alliance”-branded multi-national force wouldn’t be as helpful to terrorist recruitment as a formal US invasion force, but functionally, a mix of “peace keepers” and covert forces could accomplish the same thing.

  • Anti-terrorism alliance

    12/12/2008 12:52:53 AM PST · 1 of 12
    freeper4u
  • US legislators propose China Olympics boycott over rights(Rohrabacher & Ros-Lehtinen)

    08/12/2007 7:41:15 PM PDT · 18 of 18
    freeper4u to phillyfanatic

    While the opening coverage of the 2008 Olympics should congratulate the people of Beijing for the wonderful improvements they have made to their city, and trumpet some of the great social and economic strides that have been made by the Chinese government; the international media should not become trapped in an echo chamber of Chinese propaganda.

    Protests are inevitable. At the first sign of violence against peaceful protesters, the international media should prioritize the human rights issue above the sporting event. The international media needs to send a message to the Chinese government: it will be held to a higher standard during the games and there will be no parades while serious human rights violations are occurring. If the international media holds this line, the Chinese government will have no choice but to learn how to deal with dissent in a peaceful manner or else sacrifice the tens of billions they invested to polish their image to an Olympic legacy that will be remembered as a season of protests and crackdowns.

  • U.N. Demands Iran Suspend Nuke Enrichment ~~ Iran remained defiant,

    05/02/2006 2:54:15 PM PDT · 7 of 7
    freeper4u to Ernest_at_the_Beach

    Does anyone know if any groups in the US have published any exploration of a doctrine to hold terrorist-supporting countries accountable for WMD attacks on the US?

    If Iran or NK know in the event the US is attacked with a WMD that cannot be traced to any state actor, we reserve the right to use tactical nukes against any of their suspected hardened facilities, then they would be actually be incented to open up to inspections and help prevent a terrorist attack on the US.

    Jason

  • India to buy Russian aircraft carrier

    03/29/2004 2:18:05 AM PST · 37 of 37
    freeper4u to knighthawk
    This is good news:

    1) That's one less Russian carrier on the market for the Chinese to pickup. China is currently thought to be working on a Russian carrier that it hopes to field by 2006, and having an Indian group in close proximity would provide a counterweight.

    2) Like the activity of all other carrier owning Western nations of the world, I'm sure an Indian carrier group would only be fielded in support of US lead operations.
  • What to do if we catch him alive

    08/09/2003 12:35:44 PM PDT · 1 of 30
    freeper4u
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/22/2003 4:57:18 PM PDT · 1,855 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    G3K: "Only in living things. And they do not really self assemble anyway. They follow the program set out by the parents."

    Lets see how much of a creationist/evolutionist you are. Since the topic has branched into three parts, I want you to answer with an honest yes or no to each independant argument...

    1) The first self-replicating machinery arose due to natural chemcial processes and without the guidance of an intelligent entity.

    2) Once the first self-replicating machine was in place, the execution of that machinery required no outside intelligent agent.

    3) The improvement of that machinery with respect to its environment occurred by solely by natural evolution.

    Do you believe that outside intelligence is required for all three steps? My guess is that you would say No to #1 and #3 -- but will at least concede that there are no little invisible angles moving molecules around once all the machinery needed to execute are in place -- hence "self assembly".

    --

    freeper4u: "Second, there is no need for anyone to "find all the possible ways" to make a certain sequence to exist in all species. In fact, with evolution you would expect to find common sequences among organisms with common ancestors."

    G3K: "Continuing to discuss what is not being discussed and to create confusion. The post is about abiogenesis. It is pretty clear from the post what it is about. You are attempting to refute something to which the post does not apply."

    I must have misunderstood the point you were trying to make. Please restate or explain why you think our ability "to find all the possible ways in which 3 different bit pairs... appear in the DNA sequence of all species" proves that "the arrangement [of DNA]" "cannot be due to [natural forces]" and I'd be happy to try again.

    --

    Bookkeeping: Still waiting for reasons why sexual reproduction prohibits speciation.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/21/2003 6:23:30 PM PDT · 1,791 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    G3K "it takes numerous attempts at changing a species to achieve a single beneficial mutation - even according to evolutionists... To achieve it, it requires numerous individuals to serve as guinea pigs and die trying."

    Not necessarily. There's an infinite spectrum of possible effects of mutations that are not immediately beneficial.

    G3K: "What is worst, the whole group, in a sexual species has to change together, otherwise the group would be split by becoming sterile to part of the group."

    G3K, the next few sentences are fine up to this one. If this were true, you would have to show that all mutations break reproduction. That's simply not true. There are hundreds of breeds of dogs. Even though the significance of the changes between them is huge, most of them can interbreed. If your hypothesis were true, instead of getting a mutt, the offspring would die.

    If you consider the node just before two species branch, there should be a range of creatures with different characteristics at different geographic locations, all of whom can technically interbreed. At the time of the branch (it is not a moment, but a period of time), you will see some kind of failure divide the species between those that evolved one set of traits, and those that evolved another. However the populations at both ends of the spectrum can still mate with each other, just not from one end to the other.

    As a hypothetical example, you may have a frog that has done particularly well in one region by eating mosquito larvae that has overflowed into a new territory with less mosquitos. The frogs in the first area continue to optimize for eating mosquito larvae and avoiding water preditors while the same frogs in the new region start to optimize for climbing and catching new types of of prey such as crawling insects. At some point, the frogs in the new territory become so different that they cannot mate with frogs back in the old territory, but at that point, there are already two entire populations of frogs who can continue to mate within their own groups who share the same ancestry.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/21/2003 2:48:38 PM PDT · 1,788 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    G3K: "Lots of water is not an example of self-assembly. Neither are snowflakes which are just the result of freezing of water and perhaps the power of the wind in giving them different shapes. They lack complexity. They are totally due to natural forces, and very simple ones at that."

    Even though this argument is only tangentially related to evolution (evolution does not deal with the origins of life, just the process by which life adapts over time to the environment), what about viruses? They can be observed self-assembling in a test tube without any evidence of little angels pushing their little molecules around. Likewise for every single celled organism. We have seen the mechanism of self-assembly. We have never observed a miraculous creation. Which one makes more sense scientifically?

    G3K: "The DNA in the simplest organism however, the arrangement of it is not only not due to any natural forces, but it cannot be due to it. Otherwise we would not be able to find all the possible ways in which 3 different bit pairs with 3 possible values (64 in all) appear in the DNA sequences of all species. Such self assembly is totally unknown anywhere in the natural world. For anything even close, one must go and look at humanly designed things."

    First, DNA is not an organism. Second, there is no need for anyone to "find all the possible ways" to make a certain sequence to exist in all species. In fact, with evolution you would expect to find common sequences among organisms with common ancestors.

    For bookkeeping purposes, we're still waiting for your definition for what passes as self assembly since you've rejected so many examples. And we are still waiting for the reason you claim that all members of a species must evolve together because any genetic difference within the pool will prohibit mating.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/20/2003 8:01:18 PM PDT · 1,683 of 1,975
    freeper4u to f.Christian
    Ichneumon: "And while you're at it, self-assemble into *what*? Raindrops self-assemble into lakes, for example. Chaotic water droplets self-assemble into highly organized snowflakes."

    f.Christian: "In short, just what in the *world* are you babbling about?"

    I guess you haven't been keeping up...

    Here, Ichneumon was replying to G3K's endlessly recurring challenge to provide proof that some form of order can naturally come from chaos. Each time an example is given, G3K claims it doesn't meet his requirements. So Ich's latest attempt, in addition to providing more examples, is to ask G3K to clearly state the requirements.

    f.Christian: "you think water formed the container that holds it ..."

    Your deliberate misinterpretation of his point -- that the natrual conglomeration of droplets into larger pools of water occurs without the direction of an outside agent -- does not dimish the relevance of his example.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/20/2003 6:59:34 PM PDT · 1,681 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    gore 3000: "It should be noted that you have not provided a single bit of explanation for your statements. All you have done is say 'it is not so'. This is not evidence, it is not even decent discussion. It is just arrogant blather."

    Time for a trip down memory lane. Shall we?

    Maybe Ichnaumon's replies are getting terser due to the fact that he has already refuted these points in detail over and over again, and each time you attempt to revive your position, you come back armed without any evidence or rebuttal to his points.

    For example, in your most recent post, you try to resurrect the argument that sexual reproduction inhibits evolution because whole species cannot evolve together.

    His most recent reply "Whole species" do not evolve -- straw man misrepresentation" was terse because you have yet to submit any evidence since his previous reply on the subject in #1599:

    Ich: "Oh, for pete's sake. The mechanism of the evolution of sexual dimophism has been explained to you over and over again. How many more times are you going to pretend not to have learned anything about it? Hint to jog your failing memory: Sexual dimorphism does *not* need to develop as in your ludicrous scenario above. There are many more "easy" routes for evolution to take.

    That was in reply to the previous time when you brought up the argument on sexual reproduction without new evidence, to which he had replied in #447:

    Ich: "...in evolution the debate isn't over which mechanism (e.g. natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, punctuated equilibrium, etc.) are true, because they all have been factually demonstrated, the real debate is only over which mechanism(s) contribute most heavily and which are more minor factors, and/or which one was in play to drive a particular historical evolutionary change."

    and:

    Ich: ""The theory of universal gravitation is also independent of the specific explanatory mechanism for gravity, and in fact Newton never gave a mechanism for gravity. Why does the force between two masses follow the inverse square law and not another law (perhaps an inverse cube law)? It took nearly 300 years before any plausible mechanisms for gravity were proposed (by quantum field theorists). None of these proposed mechanisms currently have any experimental support."

    and:

    Ich: "This only shows that you really haven't a clue as to what science is or how it works. Science most certainly *does* deal in the tug-of-war among competing theories. See: Evolution and Philosophy: Is Evolution Science, and What Does 'Science' Mean? and 29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific Proof?"

    not mention post 1322:

    G3K: "Indeed because a new trait or mutation is not in the gene pool of other individuals, it has an almost impossible chance of survival."

    Ich: "Troll Challenge #7: Document, please. And since I remember your failures in our earlier discussion of genetic drift, I must remind you that 1-in-a-thousand, or even 1-in-a-million, is *NOT* "almost impossible". Nor do your misconceptions bother to address the selection of favorable new traits, which have a far higher success rate."

    There may be more, but I digress. G3K, you've been challenged over and over with counter arguments and calls for evidence. So I don't think it's fair or productive to recycle the same old, unsubstantiated arguments, unarmed with any new evidence, and demand that he reword his standing counter arguments or provide new ways to defeat them.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/18/2003 3:58:52 PM PDT · 1,577 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    gore3000: "If evolution is science, with all the scientific experiments going on in real life, in biology, how come they cannot give proof for their theory from real life and must resort to simulations which we all know can be manipulated any which way one wishes. For example, in almost all game simulations which I have seen, there are actions which are unduly rewarded and not sufficiently punished. In such a way any simulation is able to prove whatever one wants to 'prove'. "

    You seem to continue having trouble understanding what claim the theory of evolution makes, even after it was explained (ie http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/907983/posts?page=1543#1543).

    Once again: evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations. The "proof" of this very meager theory is self evident. Don't you have any traits similar to your parents? How can you deny that evolution? It's like denying that gravity exists!
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/17/2003 7:49:49 PM PDT · 1,545 of 1,975
    freeper4u to Ichneumon
    Ichneumon: "The most you could possibly support is the statement that for those phyla which *are* known to exist in Cambrian times (which is *not* all of them, contrary to your claim), most of them (*not* all, contrary to your implication) have no obvious ancestor in the *currently known* pre-Cambrian fossil record (which at this time is *extremely* few and far between). So your conclusion from that limited data set would be... what?"

    Ichneumon, excellent rebuttals. I don't think I've ever seen anyone give a wedgie to someone online before :)
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/17/2003 7:16:08 PM PDT · 1,544 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    gore: "That is a false analogy. No one is forced to go to church, there are hundreds of different ones to choose from also. In addition, the government does not force anyone to pay for churches. Schools are preaching atheism and trying to take away the religion of the children attending. This is unconstitutional. The government is interfering with the religion of the people. Just because the religion being preached is atheism, does not mean it is not a religion."

    Schools do not teach athiesm and athiesm is not a religion.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/17/2003 7:12:46 PM PDT · 1,543 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    gore3000: "As to 'a store of previous results', that is total nonsense. Where is the store? The fact that there are numerous deleterious mutations which try to reverse what already works shows this to be absolutely false. "

    First you contradict yourself and say that storage of previous results is "nonsense" but in the next sentence claim that deleterious mutations are in fact stored.

    Second, you once again fail to grasp the simple concept of evolution by focusing on just bad mutations stored in DNA as negating the possibility of evolution, when in fact good, bad, and irrelevant changes are all stored. The part you omit, however, is that evolution includes a third component: natural selection that predicts that only the good changes are likely to be carried forward.

    Gore3000: "That evolution 'does not guarantee" any single result just verifies my statement that it is not predictable."

    Evolution is process that does not predict a specific result or even a specific result set; rather it predicts the probability that a result set will meet a certain set of characteristics. That is, it predicts that given a set of random changes to a string and a selection of good strings from that set, it is more likely that subsequent result sets will meet the selection critereon.

    If you want to talk about strict repeatability in mathematical terms, then you can pretty much wipe out everything except for pure mathematics. Because at the sub atomic level, everything is purely random; however the likelyhood that all the electrons in grain of sand will randomly decide to bounce in one direction at the same time causing that grain of sand to leap up in the air is so infinitesimal that it is not introduced into equations governing the behavior of matter.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/13/2003 9:09:55 PM PDT · 1,356 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    "That's like saying that when Milton Friedman gets an article published in the People's Daily he will be a legitimate economist. Nature is a biased evolutionist magazine."

    Why do you say Nature is biased? Do a search of the literature. You'll find thousands of references to evolution and very few to creationism and similar terms. Those that do exist use the terms as a reference, not as the subject of any scientific research. So I don't think Nature magazine is out of step with the scientific community. Still, I'd accept Scientific American, unless that journal is biased too.

    "As to the genesis of life on earth, the materialist/atheists have absolutely not a clue about how it could be possible while fullfilling the known scientific requirements for life on earth. "

    Anything in particular? Or are you just making an unsubstantiated generalization here?
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/13/2003 7:56:25 PM PDT · 1,351 of 1,975
    freeper4u to Law
    Law: "The left talks of doing everything "for the people" but they don't believe it. Instead they believe "public school" is their private laboratory in which they have a sacred right to indoctrinate the children of others using funds coerced from their parents. That's why they fight so hard to prevent the taxpayers from leaving government school with their tax dollars."

    As soon as creationists get something published in Nature magazine to support their theory as a possible alternative explantion for the genesis of life on Earth, they can get a timeslice of taxpayer dollars in public schools as well.

    Until then, taxpayer dollars should be used to support theories that are widely discussed in scientific literature.
  • Artificial Life Experiments Show How Complex Functions Can Evolve

    05/13/2003 7:28:46 PM PDT · 1,345 of 1,975
    freeper4u to gore3000
    "Yes, it is shameful how atheists have gained control of our schools and seek to separate us from our religious beliefs."

    You don't preach in my school and I won't think in your church. Deal?