Warp wrote:
> Xavier Manget <NOS### [at] freefr> wrote:
>> If the trains' speeds are close enough to the speed of light, because of 
>> relativistic length contraction  (and with correct timing) the trains will 
>> have enough length to pass each other on the double track?...
> 
>> Did I get it? :-p
> 
>   Yes.
> 
>   (Had you heard of the thought experiment, or did you figure it out on
> your own?)

Oh, wait, I thought this was a real-world situation.  Silly me.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/02 15:53:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> It's funny how many people won't deny something unintuitive like quantum 
>> mechanics or relativity, stuff that's really hard to understand properly 
>> even *with* math, but they're happy to deny the possibility of 
>> evolution, which is easy to explain without any mathematics.
> 
>   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
> now, but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution
> nor we can perform evolutionary experiments which require a few millions
> of years.
> 
There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done. Some using 
mice, others using insects. Take a mice colony and have it live in a lightless 
environment, another in a chilly one, a third in a very hot one, a fourth in a 
place where possible living area are far from food sources. Another one 
prevented females from copulating for an increasing time.
Do the experiment over a few decades (some are still going on after over a century).
In the dark environment you get mice with atrophied eyes, longer wiskers and 
larger ears, and a high albinism incidence.
In the cold, you get longer hairs, increased body fat, short tails and smaller ears.
In the heat, shorter hairs, slightly longer and spindly paws.
The ones that had to travel a lot devoloped longer, stronger legs, larger 
stomach. They also devoloped hamster like cheeks.
In the last case, the longevity increased very significantly! Increases in the 
order of +200 to 300% to the life span! We are now doing that experiment in a 
very large scale: The whole Human Western and Asian populations! Asia, Europe, 
the Americas, parts of Africa and Oceanya. From the middle ages to now, 
generation time went from about 15 to 16 years to over 30~33 years...

Those are called "forced evolution experiments". The key is to use speciment 
that have a short generation time.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss 
asks for a ride home from the office.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
> now, 

99.44% of the world cannot - they accept the word of experts.  And we 
can check the theory of evolution here and now - it has been done 
repeatedly.

> but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution

Sure we can. That's what fossils are for. Same way we check things like 
binary stars obeying GR and black holes obeying GR.

> nor we can perform evolutionary experiments which require a few millions
> of years.

Nor can we perform GR experiments that require a few millions of years, 
like noticing that the expansion of space seems to be accelerating, or 
that light traveling long distances thru space doesn't travel at 'c' for 
all the different frequencies.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
> > now, 

> 99.44% of the world cannot - they accept the word of experts.

  It depends on the subject. When the experts say, for example, that they
have to take GR equations into account for GPS to work, that just using
Newtonian laws would not be enough, then sure, you just have to take their
word for it, but it's quite improbable that they are all lying. You can
go and buy a cheap GPS device and check that it works. Now you either
accept that it works correctly because of those GR equations, or you claim
that all the experts are lying. There's no reason why they would do the
latter.

  This is an example of a measurement which we can do right here right now.
It doesn't require humongous amounts of time.

  As for things like the expansion of the universe, it's a lot more of a
hypothesis. The current consensus among scientists is that the universe
is expanding, but without the millions of years of measurements it's a
lot more of guesswork. I don't believe science says otherwise.

  There's a difference between saying "I believe scientists when they say
that GPS needs GR equations to work correctly" and "the current consensus
among scientists is that the universe is expanding". There's a categorical
difference between these two.

  Now, if I say "the current consensus among scientists is that the theory
of evolution is mostly correct", that doesn't mean I have the same degree
of confidence in it as with the GPS thing.

>  And we 
> can check the theory of evolution here and now - it has been done 
> repeatedly.

  In the exact same way as we cannot check how the expansion of the
universe has occurred during millions of years, we cannot check how
evolution has occurred during millions of years. We can speculate from
some of the consequences, but it's only speculation. We cannot measure
here and now.

> > but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution

> Sure we can. That's what fossils are for. Same way we check things like 
> binary stars obeying GR and black holes obeying GR.

  Says the person who takes expansion of the universe and dark energy
with a grain of salt, and seriously considers alternative theories...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Oh, wait, I thought this was a real-world situation.  Silly me.

  Given the proper circumstances (not actual trains, but something similar,
capable of doing the feat), why wouldn't it be a real-world situation?

  Or are you saying that relativity doesn't work in the real world?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   This is an example of a measurement which we can do right here right now.
> It doesn't require humongous amounts of time.

Yep.

>   Now, if I say "the current consensus among scientists is that the theory
> of evolution is mostly correct", that doesn't mean I have the same degree
> of confidence in it as with the GPS thing.

Yeah, until you get drug-resistant TB. Then you're kind of screwed.

>   In the exact same way as we cannot check how the expansion of the
> universe has occurred during millions of years, we cannot check how
> evolution has occurred during millions of years. We can speculate from
> some of the consequences, but it's only speculation. We cannot measure
> here and now.

Fair enough. But you're not checking that GR worked for millions of 
years. You can't check that *any* theory has been correct for millions 
of years. It's nothing specific to evolution.

You can watch evolution and speciation in the lab. You can cause it to 
happen at will. You can see millions of years of results consistent with 
evolution, from bone shape to genetics.  You can prove that bone shape 
is *caused* by genetics.[1] You have to account for it when creating 
medicines. Software and hardware you use daily is designed with 
evolutionary algorithms.

Not sure how you can't measure "here and now" what evolution does.

What part do you think is in doubt?

>>> but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution
> 
>> Sure we can. That's what fossils are for. Same way we check things like 
>> binary stars obeying GR and black holes obeying GR.
> 
>   Says the person who takes expansion of the universe and dark energy
> with a grain of salt, and seriously considers alternative theories...

Yep. Because we have tons of other ways of checking the same thing. 
That's what makes it a theory instead of a hypothesis: You get the same 
answer when you measure the value with a dozen different independent 
experiments.


[1] Apparently, the same gene that causes there to be five fingers is 
also related to sexual reproduction, so almost all mammals, birds, and 
fish that have anything even remotely like hands and feet, wings, 
flippers, fins, etc have five bones in them. Not something you'd expect, 
until you look at the genes that cause that, and see they also cause 
stuff necessary for sexual reproduction.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.

  So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?

  (I hope you get the point.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Says the person who takes expansion of the universe and dark energy
> with a grain of salt, and seriously considers alternative theories...

Or, as an alternate way of saying this, when Sharper Image sells a 
device that lets me park three cars in a two-car garage by using dark 
energy, I'll suspect very strongly the cosmologists have figured it out. :-)

Now, I know very little about cosmology, and that's probably where my 
skepticism comes from. But as far as I know, there's really only one 
major measurement made post-hoc that supports these theories. 
"Inflation" hasn't *predicted* anything, and "dark energy" hasn't 
*predicted* anything. Dark matter hypothesis predicted that we'd see 
colliding galaxies with the dark matter "splashing" off, as was in the 
news recently.

I'd be happy to hear about other things that the hypotheses of 
"inflation" or "dark energy" have predicted that were observed only 
after those hypotheses were proposed. It would greatly reduce my 
skepticism. :-)

> We cannot measure here and now.

We can. We can make predictions of what we'll find based on the theory, 
and then when those predictions come true, it supports the theory. Such 
as using genetics of different whales to figure out what the genetics of 
the first cetacean would have been like, then finding the land animal 
with the closest genetics, then digging around for fossils there and 
finding fossils of cetaceans with feet near the shore.

Kind of like how Young Earth Creationists have a difficult time figuring 
out where the oil is before they start drilling, ya know.

(To be completely clear, I'm not certain that evolution explains 
*everything*. But it clearly (to me) explains the majority of what we're 
seeing going on, with a large variety of correct predictions.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.
> 
>   So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?
> 
>   (I hope you get the point.)

It takes a long time to convert a fish into a cat. So?

How many complete orbits of pluto have been observed? How do you know it 
is really orbiting the sun?

You haven't said why you think it's unlikely to be true.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/03 01:50:
> John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Oh, wait, I thought this was a real-world situation.  Silly me.
> 
>   Given the proper circumstances (not actual trains, but something similar,
> capable of doing the feat), why wouldn't it be a real-world situation?
> 
>   Or are you saying that relativity doesn't work in the real world?
> 
Real word trains can't go fast enough. A freight train 2000m long going twice as 
fast as the fastest maglev will only have a relavistic contraction of atomic 
scale, and a thermal expantion from air friction aproaching 1m.
So, your relativistic seppd solution is not viable. My critical breaking 
solution is at least tryable. Each wagon coupling can contract almost 30cm, 
multiply that by the number of wagons in a typical freight train, and the train 
can contract a few meters.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Methodist: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve grape juice 
with it.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> >> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.
> > 
> >   So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?
> > 
> >   (I hope you get the point.)

> It takes a long time to convert a fish into a cat. So?

> How many complete orbits of pluto have been observed? How do you know it 
> is really orbiting the sun?

  Yes, both things are comparable in complexity.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I'd be happy to hear about other things that the hypotheses of 
> "inflation" or "dark energy" have predicted that were observed only 
> after those hypotheses were proposed. It would greatly reduce my 
> skepticism. :-)

  You are welcome to propose a better theory. (How come this sounds
familiar?)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> Real word trains can't go fast enough.

  Yes, and machines will never fly.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I'd be happy to hear about other things that the hypotheses of 
>> "inflation" or "dark energy" have predicted that were observed only 
>> after those hypotheses were proposed. It would greatly reduce my 
>> skepticism. :-)
> 
>   You are welcome to propose a better theory. (How come this sounds
> familiar?)

I have no better theory. However, I have no evidence at all that the 
current theory is "right". I'm sure someone probably has some evidence, 
but that's why I asked for the evidence, you see.  Maybe there's a whole 
bunch of evidence pointing to dark energy as a real thing out there, and 
I just haven't heard about it. Given how wide-spread the "dark matter" 
evidence was all over, I kind of doubt it.

The difference, again, is that when evidence is presented that a theory 
is correct, I can actually change my mind. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>>>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.
>>>   So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?
>>>
>>>   (I hope you get the point.)
> 
>> It takes a long time to convert a fish into a cat. So?
> 
>> How many complete orbits of pluto have been observed? How do you know it 
>> is really orbiting the sun?
> 
>   Yes, both things are comparable in complexity.

No, of course not. But you haven't expressed why you think creating a 
new species over the course of a few weeks or a few years couldn't 
easily lead to creating a cat out of a fish over the course of a few 
million. All the mechanisms to make it happen are understood, and 
technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and 
non-living environments.

What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant 
TB is evolved from earlier TB? Do you believe that seedless grapes 
evolved from grapes with seeds? Do you believe that dogs evolved from 
wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.

I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of 
evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence, have no alternate 
theory to propose that explains any of the evidence, and still say "I 
don't think it could be right." It just sounds a bit crazy to me.

But that's OK.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:16:20 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Darren New wrote:
>> But the conductor of the eastbound train will see the westbound train  
>> get onto the tracks later than he does, and vice versa.
>
> Actually, I meant to say "may see" there. And it looks like based on  
> that wikipedia article that the conductor will actually see the other  
> train get to its junction *before* he gets to his own. Very strange.

Though won't the double track also seem foreshortened?

To quote from somewhere - a conductor stands on the platform of the train  
station and sees that the railline has collapsed leaving a large hole. The  
train coming towards him is travelling at near-light speed and the  
shortening effect means that from the conductor's POV the train is short  
enough to fit neatly into the hole, except he can see that it's travelling  
so fast it'll just sail straight over the gap without falling far enough  
to get stuck. From the train's POV the hole is shortened to a tiny gap so  
the driver expects to experience just a small jolt as he goes over it. So  
both points of view match the expectations of both.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Darren New nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/03 21:10:
> Warp wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Warp wrote:
>>>> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>>>>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.
>>>>   So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?
>>>>
>>>>   (I hope you get the point.)
>>
>>> It takes a long time to convert a fish into a cat. So?
>>
>>> How many complete orbits of pluto have been observed? How do you know 
>>> it is really orbiting the sun?
>>
>>   Yes, both things are comparable in complexity.
> 
> No, of course not. But you haven't expressed why you think creating a 
> new species over the course of a few weeks or a few years couldn't 
> easily lead to creating a cat out of a fish over the course of a few 
> million. All the mechanisms to make it happen are understood, and 
> technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and 
> non-living environments.
> 
> What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant 
> TB is evolved from earlier TB? Do you believe that seedless grapes 
> evolved from grapes with seeds? Do you believe that dogs evolved from 
> wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.
> 
> I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of 
> evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence, have no alternate 
> theory to propose that explains any of the evidence, and still say "I 
> don't think it could be right." It just sounds a bit crazy to me.
> 
> But that's OK.
> 
They actualy made dogs out of foxes. Over just a few generation, taking only the 
more dociles and crossbreading them. The foxes went from redish fur to brown and 
black fur, stoped yaping to start barking.
The goal was to ease the farm raising of foxes for the furs.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when your personal correspondence to 
friends starts out with #Dear Linda =
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook wrote:
> Though won't the double track also seem foreshortened?

Yes, but the oncoming train will seem *more* foreshortened.

> travelling so fast it'll just sail straight over the gap without falling 
> far enough to get stuck.

Not ... exactly. The problem isn't that he doesn't fall far enough. The 
problem is that the bottom of the train starts falling before the top 
does, kind of.

And in that case, there are only two speeds involved (the track and the 
train), rather than the three in Warp's original problem.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Alain wrote:
> They actualy made dogs out of foxes. Over just a few generation, taking 
> only the more dociles and crossbreading them. The foxes went from redish 
> fur to brown and black fur, stoped yaping to start barking.
> The goal was to ease the farm raising of foxes for the furs.

I saw that. They also got floppy ears and curly tails. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:477abc37@news.povray.org...
> Xavier Manget <NOS### [at] freefr> wrote:
>> If the trains' speeds are close enough to the speed of light, 
>> because of
>> relativistic length contraction  (and with correct timing) the 
>> trains will
>> have enough length to pass each other on the double track?...
>
>> Did I get it? :-p
>
>  Yes.
>
>  (Had you heard of the thought experiment, or did you figure it 
> out on
> your own?)
>
> -- 
>                                                          - Warp

This could only be true if the trains and the track are uncoupled.
They are not, so any contraction of trains will apply equally to 
the
track. Same problem, different scale for an outside observer.

Post a reply to this message

pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
> This could only be true if the trains and the track are uncoupled.
> They are not, so any contraction of trains will apply equally to 
> the
> track.

  Nope. The trains are moving at a different speed than the track and
thus the trains compress more.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Nope. The trains are moving at a different speed than the track and
> thus the trains compress more.

More specifically, from the POV of one train, the other train is moving 
faster than the track is.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:19:43 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>> Though won't the double track also seem foreshortened?
>
> Yes, but the oncoming train will seem *more* foreshortened.
>
>> travelling so fast it'll just sail straight over the gap without  
>> falling far enough to get stuck.
>
> Not ... exactly. The problem isn't that he doesn't fall far enough. The  
> problem is that the bottom of the train starts falling before the top  
> does, kind of.
>
> And in that case, there are only two speeds involved (the track and the  
> train), rather than the three in Warp's original problem.

 From an outside observer's pov both trains are shorter then the double  
track so should pass without problem; I was trying to reconcile it with  
the traindrivers' view. The oncoming train is shorter, but so is the  
double track; so they should still collide?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
>  From an outside observer's pov both trains are shorter then the double  
> track so should pass without problem; I was trying to reconcile it with  
> the traindrivers' view. The oncoming train is shorter, but so is the  
> double track; so they should still collide?

  From the POV of one of the trains the other train is shortened *more*
than the track.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:44:23 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
>>  From an outside observer's pov both trains are shorter then the double
>> track so should pass without problem; I was trying to reconcile it with
>> the traindrivers' view. The oncoming train is shorter, but so is the
>> double track; so they should still collide?
>
>   From the POV of one of the trains the other train is shortened *more*
> than the track.

If they were travelling at the same speed I'd have thought that the  
shortening of both track and train would be proportional from the view of  
the other train?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
> If they were travelling at the same speed I'd have thought that the  
> shortening of both track and train would be proportional from the view of  
> the other train?

  The trains travel at the same speed (in relation to the track) but in
opposite directions. Thus from the POV of one of the trains the other
train is approaching faster than the double track.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:38:14 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
>> If they were travelling at the same speed I'd have thought that the
>> shortening of both track and train would be proportional from the view  
>> of
>> the other train?
>
>   The trains travel at the same speed (in relation to the track) but in
> opposite directions. Thus from the POV of one of the trains the other
> train is approaching faster than the double track.

Okay I'm the driver of one train and you're the driver of the other.

I see that your train is shorter then the double section of track and that  
you're travelling faster then I am, therefore you hit the double section  
before I do. But my train is still the same length as the double track (or  
longer), so although I can clear the section without hitting the end of  
your train (because you're shorter) I would expect you to hit the end of  
my train (because you're faster).

I mean I can it understand how it works from Darren's perspective sitting  
by the track, just not from the drivers.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:01:51 -0000, Phil Cook  
<phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> did spake, saying:

> And lo on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:38:14 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  
> did spake, saying:
>
>> Phil Cook <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
>>> If they were travelling at the same speed I'd have thought that the
>>> shortening of both track and train would be proportional from the view  
>>> of
>>> the other train?
>>
>>   The trains travel at the same speed (in relation to the track) but in
>> opposite directions. Thus from the POV of one of the trains the other
>> train is approaching faster than the double track.
>
> Okay I'm the driver of one train and you're the driver of the other.
>
> I see that your train is shorter then the double section of track and  
> that you're travelling faster then I am, therefore you hit the double  
> section before I do. But my train is still the same length as the double  
> track (or longer), so although I can clear the section without hitting  
> the end of your train (because you're shorter) I would expect you to hit  
> the end of my train (because you're faster).
>
> I mean I can it understand how it works from Darren's perspective  
> sitting by the track, just not from the drivers.

Ah got it I think. Although both trains hit the double track at the same  
time from my train you haven't reached it yet, so if I see you as 1/4 of  
the length of the section I can be halfway along the double track before  
you've even got on it. So I'll reach my end when you're clear and you  
won't reach your end (despite being faster) until I've cleared your end  
(my start).

Ouch yeah that works, we each perceive the other as reaching the double  
section after ourselves.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook wrote:
> And lo on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:19:43 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> 
> did spake, saying:
> 
>> Phil Cook wrote:
>>> Though won't the double track also seem foreshortened?
>>
>> Yes, but the oncoming train will seem *more* foreshortened.
>>
>>> travelling so fast it'll just sail straight over the gap without 
>>> falling far enough to get stuck.
>>
>> Not ... exactly. The problem isn't that he doesn't fall far enough. 
>> The problem is that the bottom of the train starts falling before the 
>> top does, kind of.
>>
>> And in that case, there are only two speeds involved (the track and 
>> the train), rather than the three in Warp's original problem.
> 
>  From an outside observer's pov both trains are shorter then the double 
> track so should pass without problem; I was trying to reconcile it with 
> the traindrivers' view. The oncoming train is shorter, but so is the 
> double track; so they should still collide?

No, because the oncoming westbound train is coming at the eastbound 
train faster than the tracks are coming at the eastbound train, so the 
westbound train appears to be smaller than the siding as seen from the 
eastbound train.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:477fd1d1@news.povray.org...
> pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
>> This could only be true if the trains and the track are 
>> uncoupled.
>> They are not, so any contraction of trains will apply equally to
>> the
>> track.
>
>  Nope. The trains are moving at a different speed than the track 
> and
> thus the trains compress more.
>
> -- 
>                                                          - Warp

Train wheels gripping track exponentially gets looser
the greater the speed of the train. At c or near c the
track will have to move almost the entire speed of the
train; else the instability will overwhelm your system.

ergo: the track and train muts be coupled, else you
would be asking about trains and tracks on separate
unique vectors. (Unpredictable vectors btw)

unless of course your train wheels and track rails are
made of unobtanium held together in the grip of
stick-but-slick-enough-to-let-the-wheels-move goop.

Think dentures under a lot of strain.

Post a reply to this message

pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
> Train wheels gripping track exponentially gets looser
> the greater the speed of the train. At c or near c the
> track will have to move almost the entire speed of the
> train; else the instability will overwhelm your system.

> ergo: the track and train muts be coupled, else you
> would be asking about trains and tracks on separate
> unique vectors. (Unpredictable vectors btw)

> unless of course your train wheels and track rails are
> made of unobtanium held together in the grip of
> stick-but-slick-enough-to-let-the-wheels-move goop.

> Think dentures under a lot of strain.

  I don't even understand what you are trying to say.

  But if the contact with the train and the track bothers you, then
assume maglev.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>  But if the contact with the train and the track bothers you, then
> assume maglev.

What about when the trains have to turn when the track splits?  That is the 
bit that bothers me most at those speeds...

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> What about when the trains have to turn when the track splits?  That is the 
> bit that bothers me most at those speeds...

  The trains and the double track segment can be really long, meaning that
the turn can be very subtle.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:32:22 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>> And lo on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:19:43 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
>> did spake, saying:
>>
>>> Phil Cook wrote:
>>>> Though won't the double track also seem foreshortened?
>>>
>>> Yes, but the oncoming train will seem *more* foreshortened.
>>>
>>>> travelling so fast it'll just sail straight over the gap without  
>>>> falling far enough to get stuck.
>>>
>>> Not ... exactly. The problem isn't that he doesn't fall far enough.  
>>> The problem is that the bottom of the train starts falling before the  
>>> top does, kind of.
>>>
>>> And in that case, there are only two speeds involved (the track and  
>>> the train), rather than the three in Warp's original problem.
>>   From an outside observer's pov both trains are shorter then the  
>> double track so should pass without problem; I was trying to reconcile  
>> it with the traindrivers' view. The oncoming train is shorter, but so  
>> is the double track; so they should still collide?
>
> No, because the oncoming westbound train is coming at the eastbound  
> train faster than the tracks are coming at the eastbound train, so the  
> westbound train appears to be smaller than the siding as seen from the  
> eastbound train.

Check my later comments on how this could still mean they collide; I think  
I've got it now anyway thanks.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Funny enough, when I was in university, some of the EE students were 
talking about these trains you couldn't stop, had a big length, and had 
to get routed around switching like this, and you had to figure out when 
to schedule a track switch to keep them from colliding.

Turns out they were talking about optical networks with optical 
switching, rather than actual trains. :-)  Very confusing for a while, tho.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:47831ea6@news.povray.org...
> pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
>> Train wheels gripping track exponentially gets looser
>> the greater the speed of the train. At c or near c the
>> track will have to move almost the entire speed of the
>> train; else the instability will overwhelm your system.
>
>> ergo: the track and train muts be coupled, else you
>> would be asking about trains and tracks on separate
>> unique vectors. (Unpredictable vectors btw)
>
>> unless of course your train wheels and track rails are
>> made of unobtanium held together in the grip of
>> stick-but-slick-enough-to-let-the-wheels-move goop.
>
>> Think dentures under a lot of strain.
>
>  I don't even understand what you are trying to say.
>
>  But if the contact with the train and the track bothers you, 
> then
> assume maglev.
>

Hmmm ... your lack of understanding must equal my dislike of
poorly done thought experiements.

Reset your conceits to some unitary object and no one
will bother you about real world dynamics.

Using atrains as your main object of conjecture implies
a necessary co-consideration of the track and the system
that the track and train comprise. To do otherwise
is laziness and sloppy. You obviously wanted a situation where
a inevitable collision of two trains served as a constraint
that was included only to heighten interest and (ahem) impact.

Much better models will serve you better to learn about
relativisitic effects.

"There was a young fellow named Fisk,
A swordsman, exceedingly brisk.
So fast was his action,
The Lorentz contraction
Reduced his rapier to a disk."


There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.

Arthur Buller    (1874-1944)

Post a reply to this message

pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
> Using atrains as your main object of conjecture implies
> a necessary co-consideration of the track and the system
> that the track and train comprise.

  No, it doesn't. The length of the train doesn't depend on the properties
of the track.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Here's another alternative: using the Z Machine based on Heim's quantum 
theory...!  ;op


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

Post a reply to this message

Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/02 15:53:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> It's funny how many people won't deny something unintuitive like quantum
> >> mechanics or relativity, stuff that's really hard to understand properly
> >> even *with* math, but they're happy to deny the possibility of
> >> evolution, which is easy to explain without any mathematics.
> >
> >   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
> > now, but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution
> > nor we can perform evolutionary experiments which require a few millions
> > of years.
> >
> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done. Some using
> mice, others using insects. Take a mice colony and have it live in a lightless
> environment, another in a chilly one, a third in a very hot one, a fourth in a
> place where possible living area are far from food sources. Another one
> prevented females from copulating for an increasing time.
> Do the experiment over a few decades (some are still going on after over a century).
> In the dark environment you get mice with atrophied eyes, longer wiskers and
> larger ears, and a high albinism incidence.
> In the cold, you get longer hairs, increased body fat, short tails and smaller ears.
> In the heat, shorter hairs, slightly longer and spindly paws.
> The ones that had to travel a lot devoloped longer, stronger legs, larger
> stomach. They also devoloped hamster like cheeks.
> In the last case, the longevity increased very significantly! Increases in the
> order of +200 to 300% to the life span! We are now doing that experiment in a
> very large scale: The whole Human Western and Asian populations! Asia, Europe,
> the Americas, parts of Africa and Oceanya. From the middle ages to now,
> generation time went from about 15 to 16 years to over 30~33 years...
>
> Those are called "forced evolution experiments". The key is to use speciment
> that have a short generation time.
>
> --
> Alain
> -------------------------------------------------
> There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss
> asks for a ride home from the office.

And yet, the animal that results is still a rat. Within its genes are the needed
variability. All the conditions you described seem to me to be based on hormone
production, not gene mutation or evolution.

The human population increase in life span isn't based on evolution, but on
better nutrition and heathcare. But maybe our brains "evolved" enough to
realize we needed better nutrition.

Leef_me

Post a reply to this message

Leef_me nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/09 13:58:
> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>> Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/02 15:53:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> It's funny how many people won't deny something unintuitive like quantum
>>>> mechanics or relativity, stuff that's really hard to understand properly
>>>> even *with* math, but they're happy to deny the possibility of
>>>> evolution, which is easy to explain without any mathematics.
>>>   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
>>> now, but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution
>>> nor we can perform evolutionary experiments which require a few millions
>>> of years.
>>>
>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done. Some using
>> mice, others using insects. Take a mice colony and have it live in a lightless
>> environment, another in a chilly one, a third in a very hot one, a fourth in a
>> place where possible living area are far from food sources. Another one
>> prevented females from copulating for an increasing time.
>> Do the experiment over a few decades (some are still going on after over a
century).
>> In the dark environment you get mice with atrophied eyes, longer wiskers and
>> larger ears, and a high albinism incidence.
>> In the cold, you get longer hairs, increased body fat, short tails and smaller
ears.
>> In the heat, shorter hairs, slightly longer and spindly paws.
>> The ones that had to travel a lot devoloped longer, stronger legs, larger
>> stomach. They also devoloped hamster like cheeks.
>> In the last case, the longevity increased very significantly! Increases in the
>> order of +200 to 300% to the life span! We are now doing that experiment in a
>> very large scale: The whole Human Western and Asian populations! Asia, Europe,
>> the Americas, parts of Africa and Oceanya. From the middle ages to now,
>> generation time went from about 15 to 16 years to over 30~33 years...
>>
>> Those are called "forced evolution experiments". The key is to use speciment
>> that have a short generation time.
>>
>> --
>> Alain
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss
>> asks for a ride home from the office.
> 
> And yet, the animal that results is still a rat. Within its genes are the needed
> variability. All the conditions you described seem to me to be based on hormone
> production, not gene mutation or evolution.
Still mice or rats, yes. A new sub-race of the generic mice or rat, YES!
The observed changes do remain, unchanged, for many generations after the 
populations have been put back into "normal" environnements. There are cases 
where specimens from different environnements have become mutualy incompatible: 
they can no longer cross bread!
> 
> The human population increase in life span isn't based on evolution, but on
Not yet!
> better nutrition and heathcare. But maybe our brains "evolved" enough to
> realize we needed better nutrition.
Beter alimentation and health increase the longevity. Improve them and longevity 
increase immediately. Remove it and longevity immediately go down. There is no 
hereditary effect.

Late reproduction slow down the aging process. It becomes hereditary. It takes 
10's of generations to have an effect. For humans, it will take some more 
centuries. Remove that and the slowdown remains for 100's of generations. A few 
millenias for humans.
> 
> Leef_me
> 
> 
Evolution need many generations, usualy 100's to 1000's, in an environnement 
forcing some adaptive evolution. Recent studies show that the dodo evolved from 
the common pigeon, but no dodo could cross bread with a pigeon. Humans, chimps, 
gorillas and orangoutans only differ geneticaly by one FRAGMENT of one 
chromozome (two in the case of the gorilla: two fragments switched between two 
cromozomes).

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you hope that you can render your 
ideas on your PC before you die.
Sven Rudolph (Germany)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Warp wrote:
> >>> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> >>>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.
> >>>   So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?
> >>>
> >>>   (I hope you get the point.)
> >
> >> It takes a long time to convert a fish into a cat. So?
> >
> >> How many complete orbits of pluto have been observed? How do you know it
> >> is really orbiting the sun?
> >
> >   Yes, both things are comparable in complexity.
>
> No, of course not. But you haven't expressed why you think creating a
> new species over the course of a few weeks or a few years couldn't
> easily lead to creating a cat out of a fish over the course of a few
> million.

Variations within species can be caused by those capable of interbreeding.
Existing animal types of cat and fish would seem to have no path to evolve
between species. Throwing the cat in the pond will make it mad or drown it,
throwing the fish in the litter box will most certainly kill it.

>All the mechanisms to make it happen are understood,

Are they now? Where can I pick up a copy of "Cat to fish evolution for dummies"?
Breeders can interbreed animals of a species and have done so for several
centuries. But the result is up to chance based on the variations the two
'parent' animals bring to the equation.

> and
> technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and
> non-living environments.

Man writes a computer program and you equate that to biological evolution, why?

>
> What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant
> TB is evolved from earlier TB?

Yes, it is know to exist, but how? Did the TB colony hear "humans have developed
drugs, we must mutate to save ourselves?" Or perhaps the natural variation of
the TB allowed some of it to survive?

> Do you believe that seedless grapes evolved from grapes with seeds?

Not as a normal course, this would have sealed their fate.
What is the offspring of a seedless grape?

> Do you believe that dogs evolved from
> wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.

Dogs and wolves are of the same species, evolved - no; they are variatons within
the species. Man has found the traits desired and prevented the natural
varibility from being expressed in the domesticated dog.

>
> I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of
> evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence,

Early holders of the theory have promoted it by falsifying drawings. Others now
still tend to obfuscate the issues by saying that observed variation within the
species is somehow proof of variation between species. Others note the gene
similarity between humans and chimps. Some theorize that part of the human gene
split to make the chimp, others think the chimp choromosome merged to make
human.

Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks of life".
Yet the amino acids created are short-lived under the conditions that
theoretically existed when life began. Beyond the stable creation of amino
acids are the hurdles of organizing them into anything more complex, and then
forming that into cells. Then there is the making of multicelled life.
The issues for more and more complexity seem insurmountable even for millions of
years of experimentation.

> have no alternate
> theory to propose that explains any of the evidence,

An alternate theory is that no species is a decendant from another.
All coexisted at one time but some (obviously) died out. Perhaps each animal has
its own number of chromosomes, neither merged nor split from anothers.

All these increasing complexities must be supported on the life of the amino
acids. But our science suggests that things tend to become less complex, that
is, break down with time. But still some say "That isn't how it happened, that
can't be right."

It sounds crazy that someone would accept naturally occurring increase in
complexity as the conclusion; when the exact opposite is readily observed.

But that would be OK, until they say "The debate is over."

Leef_me


> and still say "I
> don't think it could be right." It just sounds a bit crazy to me.
>
> But that's OK.
>
> --
>    Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
>      It's not feature creep if you put it
>      at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Leef_me wrote:
> Variations within species can be caused by those capable of interbreeding.
> Existing animal types of cat and fish would seem to have no path to evolve
> between species. 

No, but that's because they're existing. Before they were separate 
species, they interbred. Then they stopped interbreeding, and changed 
more and more over time.

Kind of like how horses and donkeys can breed now, but often make mules. 
Give them a few thousand years more, and they'll be separate species.

> Are they now? Where can I pick up a copy of "Cat to fish evolution for dummies"?

Univeristy of California.

Cats don't evolve into fish. Fish evolved into cats. It took a while.

> Breeders can interbreed animals of a species and have done so for several
> centuries. But the result is up to chance

Not so much as you'd think, no.

>> technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and
>> non-living environments.
> 
> Man writes a computer program and you equate that to biological evolution, why?

Not only that technology. I equate the computer program to biological 
evolution because it's a simulation of evolution.

>> What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant
>> TB is evolved from earlier TB?
> 
> Yes, it is know to exist, but how? Did the TB colony hear "humans have developed
> drugs, we must mutate to save ourselves?" Or perhaps the natural variation of
> the TB allowed some of it to survive?

The natural variation of TB allowed some of them to survive. Then they 
bred like mad, because the competition was wiped out, so there were now 
enough with that resistance to that particular drug to make a viable 
collection for other people to get infected.

That's why it's important to finish all your antibiotics when the doctor 
prescribes them, even if you feel better before you're done.

>> Do you believe that seedless grapes evolved from grapes with seeds?
> 
> Not as a normal course, this would have sealed their fate.
> What is the offspring of a seedless grape?

More seedless grapes. Seeds aren't the only way plants propagate.

But so what if it was influenced by humans? That doesn't mean seedless 
grapes didn't evolve from seeded grapes. Humans just provided a 
different form of natural selection, a different environment if you 
will, than they would have had without humans.

>> Do you believe that dogs evolved from
>> wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.
> 
> Dogs and wolves are of the same species,evolved - no; they are variatons within
> the species. Man has found the traits desired and prevented the natural
> varibility from being expressed in the domesticated dog.

I think dogs have much more variability than wolves do.

>> I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of
>> evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence,
> 
> Early holders of the theory have promoted it by falsifying drawings. 

Not sure I'd say "falsifying", but yeah, I know what you're talking 
about. So?

> Others now
> still tend to obfuscate the issues by saying that observed variation within the
> species is somehow proof of variation between species. 

Not "somehow". Very clearly how.

 > Some theorize that part of the human gene
> split to make the chimp, others think the chimp choromosome merged to make
> human.

I don't think anyone well-informed any longer disagrees about which 
direction it went - you can see the duct-tape on the human chromosomes.

> Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks of life".

And this has what to do with evolution?

>> have no alternate
>> theory to propose that explains any of the evidence,
> 
> An alternate theory is that no species is a decendant from another.
> All coexisted at one time but some (obviously) died out. Perhaps each animal has
> its own number of chromosomes, neither merged nor split from anothers.

And where'd they come from? I mean, you're the one that brought up the 
forming of amino acids.  So what's your reason for thinking all these 
similar beings are completely unrelated, all appeared at the same time?

And if rabbits were around at the time of dinosaurs, why don't people 
find dinosaur fossils next to rabbit fossils?

> All these increasing complexities must be supported on the life of the amino
> acids. But our science suggests that things tend to become less complex, that
> is, break down with time.

Err, no they don't. And that's only in a closed environment anyway, 
which isn't where evolution happens. Entropy isn't about things becoming 
less complex. It's about things becoming less ordered. Less ordered is 
often *more* complex.

> It sounds crazy that someone would accept naturally occurring increase in
> complexity as the conclusion; when the exact opposite is readily observed.

The exact opposite of naturally occurring increase of complexity?

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Leef_me wrote:
> And yet, the animal that results is still a rat. 

You can do it with flies, and get creatures who aren't flies, because 
the flies breed fast enough.

(Yes, they're still flies, but they're a different species of fly, and 
can no longer interbreed with the flies you started from.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

"Nekar Xenos" <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4784dcd7@news.povray.org...
> Here's another alternative: using the Z Machine based on Heim's quantum 
> theory...!  ;op
>
http://news.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=2739585


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

Post a reply to this message

Nekar Xenos <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> http://news.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=2739585

  "the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of
light is faster"

  Either the article didn't mean that, or it's based on pseudoscience.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:478603bd@news.povray.org...
> Nekar Xenos <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> http://news.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=2739585
>
>  "the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of
> light is faster"
>
>  Either the article didn't mean that, or it's based on pseudoscience.
>

I wouldn't know, but it sounds more like science fiction to me...  :o)


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

Post a reply to this message

In article <47858023$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Leef_me wrote:
> > Variations within species can be caused by those capable of interbreedi
ng.
> > Existing animal types of cat and fish would seem to have no path to evo
lve
> > between species. 
> 
> No, but that's because they're existing. Before they were separate 
> species, they interbred. Then they stopped interbreeding, and changed 
> more and more over time.
> 
> Kind of like how horses and donkeys can breed now, but often make mules.
 
> Give them a few thousand years more, and they'll be separate species.
> 
> > Are they now? Where can I pick up a copy of "Cat to fish evolution for 
dummies"?
> 
> Univeristy of California.
> 
> Cats don't evolve into fish. Fish evolved into cats. It took a while.
> 
> > Breeders can interbreed animals of a species and have done so for sever
al
> > centuries. But the result is up to chance
> 
> Not so much as you'd think, no.
> 
> >> technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and
> >> non-living environments.
> > 
> > Man writes a computer program and you equate that to biological evoluti
on, why?
> 
> Not only that technology. I equate the computer program to biological 
> evolution because it's a simulation of evolution.
> 
> >> What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant
> >> TB is evolved from earlier TB?
> > 
> > Yes, it is know to exist, but how? Did the TB colony hear "humans have 
developed
> > drugs, we must mutate to save ourselves?" Or perhaps the natural variat
ion of
> > the TB allowed some of it to survive?
> 
> The natural variation of TB allowed some of them to survive. Then they 
> bred like mad, because the competition was wiped out, so there were now
 
> enough with that resistance to that particular drug to make a viable 
> collection for other people to get infected.
> 
> That's why it's important to finish all your antibiotics when the doctor
 
> prescribes them, even if you feel better before you're done.
> 
> >> Do you believe that seedless grapes evolved from grapes with seeds?
> > 
> > Not as a normal course, this would have sealed their fate.
> > What is the offspring of a seedless grape?
> 
> More seedless grapes. Seeds aren't the only way plants propagate.
> 
> But so what if it was influenced by humans? That doesn't mean seedless 
> grapes didn't evolve from seeded grapes. Humans just provided a 
> different form of natural selection, a different environment if you 
> will, than they would have had without humans.
> 
> >> Do you believe that dogs evolved from
> >> wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.
> > 
> > Dogs and wolves are of the same species,evolved - no; they are variaton
s within
> > the species. Man has found the traits desired and prevented the natural
> > varibility from being expressed in the domesticated dog.
> 
> I think dogs have much more variability than wolves do.
> 
> >> I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of
> >> evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence,
> > 
> > Early holders of the theory have promoted it by falsifying drawings. 
> 
> Not sure I'd say "falsifying", but yeah, I know what you're talking 
> about. So?
> 
Actually, if he is talking about the drawings I *think* he is, then he 
is wrong. Heckle's drawings where known, even in his own time, to be 
inaccurate, but sort of provided an example of something that *does* 
happen. Its the equivalent of showing a lot of pictures of seedlings, 
all of which are "sort of" similar, at a specific stage, but may be 
different prior to, and after, that stage. And even while similar, they 
are not *quite* a similar as Heckle implied. The got used in text books, 
for a while, by people that thought evolution was a real important thing 
to know, but who themselves didn't know a damn thing about it. That is 
kind of the point, which gets glossed over by deniers, its not 
biologists, scientists or evo-devo people that **write** those text 
books. They might advise about what goes into them, but that won't stop 
a lot of morons, who do write them, from writing them in ways that are 
inadequate, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain ignorant. That said, if 
one reads 90% of the text books that contain the drawings in them, its 
pretty obvious that the pictures have, for the most part, been displayed 
as, "Here is an example of what **some** people thought about how it 
worked, at one time. We now know they where wrong." This, in the mind of 
those apposed to evolution constitutes, "They are still using them and 
misleading people!" Sure, and, to use their own silly BS against them, 
allowing the Bible to still include passages about golden cows means 
their must still huge numbers of Christians with cow idols sitting in 
their closets... lol

The only reason these drawings are even and issue any more is that the 
reading comprehension of the average person using the argument is about 
on the same level as their understanding of what they are trying to 
dispute, which is to say, if they where my car mechanic, I would hire a 
6 year old to work on my car instead. At least the 8 year old wouldn't 
be confused by discovering the car had tires, and didn't work by 
sticking your feet through the floor, and running really fast.

> > Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks of 
life".
> 
> And this has what to do with evolution?
> 
Umm. Might as well ask what spontaneous formation of transistors would 
have to do with silicon lifeforms, should such a thing ever be found. 
Put simply, amino acids where *not supposed to be* possible without life 
producing them. If you have to have a living cell to produce and amino 
acid, you have a serious problem. If you get them *without* cells, then 
the question is, "Could those combine in some way to produce something 
like a cell?" It was a major "oops!" moment for early evolution 
denialists. And, we know, from things like runaway prions. There is even 
on article I read a while back saying that there are *detectable* sub-
virus type cells, which have little more than a weak shell, and a tiny 
fragment of code in them, which a) can't infect a host to case 
replication, and b) can't replicate themselves, yet **somehow** manage 
to exist, despite the fact that they lack the most basic two mechanisms 
to reproduce themselves, and their internal code can often be so simple 
that it barely creates the "shell" they use to shield themselves from 
the environment around them. The going theory is that some sets of these 
things do contain "partial" replication code, and that when they come in 
contact with code from another partial replicator, which has the missing 
fragments, they can combine and generate replicants of "both" pseudo 
organisms. It isn't hard to imagine one of those suffering a coding 
error during replication, which produced a "combined" code, in one 
stronger cell, which had "all" of the code needed to self replicate.

Problem is, I wouldn't even have a clue where to look for the article on 
them. I think it was in Discovery Magazine, but not sure, or even what 
year that the article was in. Its also one of those fields that a) 
doesn't interest most biologists (who cares about something that 
**can't** infect you?), and b) is kind of laughed off, more or less the 
way they did black holes, until someone discovered one. Oh, and it may 
have just been absorbed into the current pursuits of the main theory, 
without anyone taking much notice, kind of a, "Well, this is 
interesting, but what can it tell me about how viruses *became* viruses 
and how their DNA works?"

> >> have no alternate
> >> theory to propose that explains any of the evidence,
> > 
> > An alternate theory is that no species is a decendant from another.
> > All coexisted at one time but some (obviously) died out. Perhaps each a
nimal has
> > its own number of chromosomes, neither merged nor split from anothers.
> 
> And where'd they come from? I mean, you're the one that brought up the 
> forming of amino acids.  So what's your reason for thinking all these 
> similar beings are completely unrelated, all appeared at the same time?
> 
> And if rabbits were around at the time of dinosaurs, why don't people 
> find dinosaur fossils next to rabbit fossils?
> 
Damn, and here I left my Jurassic Rabbit fossil in my other pants. lol

> > All these increasing complexities must be supported on the life of the 
amino
> > acids. But our science suggests that things tend to become less complex
, that
> > is, break down with time.
> 
> Err, no they don't. And that's only in a closed environment anyway, 
> which isn't where evolution happens. Entropy isn't about things becoming
 
> less complex. It's about things becoming less ordered. Less ordered is 
> often *more* complex.
> 
Precisely. Entropy doesn't care "how" it gets to a state where 
everything balanced to 0. If in the short (or even long) run, that means 
it has to make a sequence like 1,-1,1,1,1,-1,-1,1,-1,-1 instead of 
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, the universe doesn't care, as long as the end 
result **approaches** 0 for the *entire* system. Or, Leef can look at it 
this way. If you have a scale, do you make it balance by adding random 
sized weights to only *one* side, until it centers, or to both? The 
universe is a balance with a near infinite number of "plates", and the 
earth, but comparison, might as well be one with trillions of plates. 
Its impossible, in such a system, to create entropy, unless you either 
a) allow for complexity, or b) reduce the complexity of the **system** 
itself to one plate (i.e. make the earth a perfect sphere, made from 
only one nonreactive material). So long as the *system* contains any 
kind of complexity at all, the entropy within that system can, and maybe 
must, create a level of complexity **at least** N-1 as complex as the 
system itself, where N is the number of variables in the system. In this 
case, that would be everything from the motion of ever subatomic 
particle on the planets surface **not** including other materials, 
energies, etc., introduced by the sun, passing meteors, comets, 
gravitational shift, energy from exploding stars, and too many things 
for me to list (or possibly imagine).

Leef_me is staring at a mold made of a hole in the ground, and asking, 
"Why does it look like the hole? Shouldn't it be perfectly flat?" Now, 
he may not *believe* that is what he is doing, but it is exactly what 
you have to do to ignore complexity via entropy, and claim that things 
get "less" complex instead. Not only is it wrong, even if its not, its 
describing the result of entropy in a system so simple we can ***see*** 
how complex the result is, compared to the environment. We can't even 
accurately **see** the complexity, in precise detail of a pail of sand, 
except in the most gross sense that it fits the shape of the bucket, 
yet, some people presume to be able to claim that the bucket proves that 
things got "less" complex. But, that is only true from the perspective 
of *that* bucket, and our *assumption* about what we actually see 
happening. We don't really see what the sand is actually doing "in" the 
bucket, what the sand is doing "to" the bucket, nor can we say, with any 
real certainty, that if we came back a billion years later, or even a 
hundred, that we could know "precisely" what the sand, the bucket, or 
*both* where going to look like. If we can't even get that right, what 
the @!#@!##$ business do we have talking about what the terms "more 
complex" or "less complex" mean to an entire planet, on a time scale of 
tens of billions of years?

Still, as with my -1/1 example, we can say its going to be as complex as 
the "system allows", while still allowing the system to achieve a value 
of 0.

-- 
void main () {
  If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

In article <MPG.21f1d739192db57d98a0de@news.povray.org>, 
sel### [at] rraznet says...
> 6 year old to work on my car instead. At least the 8 year old wouldn't 

Hmm. Always a good idea, when revising numbers, to make sure they both 
match. lol 

-- 
void main () {
  If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/11 21:44:

> Actually, if he is talking about the drawings I *think* he is, then he 
> is wrong. Heckle's drawings where known, even in his own time, to be 
> inaccurate, but sort of provided an example of something that *does* 
> happen. Its the equivalent of showing a lot of pictures of seedlings, 
> all of which are "sort of" similar, at a specific stage, but may be 
> different prior to, and after, that stage. And even while similar, they 
> are not *quite* a similar as Heckle implied. The got used in text books, 
> for a while, by people that thought evolution was a real important thing 
> to know, but who themselves didn't know a damn thing about it. That is 
> kind of the point, which gets glossed over by deniers, its not 
> biologists, scientists or evo-devo people that **write** those text 
> books. They might advise about what goes into them, but that won't stop 
> a lot of morons, who do write them, from writing them in ways that are 
> inadequate, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain ignorant. That said, if 
> one reads 90% of the text books that contain the drawings in them, its 
> pretty obvious that the pictures have, for the most part, been displayed 
> as, "Here is an example of what **some** people thought about how it 
> worked, at one time. We now know they where wrong." This, in the mind of 
> those apposed to evolution constitutes, "They are still using them and 
> misleading people!" Sure, and, to use their own silly BS against them, 
> allowing the Bible to still include passages about golden cows means 
> their must still huge numbers of Christians with cow idols sitting in 
> their closets... lol
> 
> The only reason these drawings are even and issue any more is that the 
> reading comprehension of the average person using the argument is about 
> on the same level as their understanding of what they are trying to 
> dispute, which is to say, if they where my car mechanic, I would hire a 
> 6 year old to work on my car instead. At least the 8 year old wouldn't 
> be confused by discovering the car had tires, and didn't work by 
> sticking your feet through the floor, and running really fast.
> 
>>> Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks of life".
>> And this has what to do with evolution?
>>
> Umm. Might as well ask what spontaneous formation of transistors would 
> have to do with silicon lifeforms, should such a thing ever be found. 
> Put simply, amino acids where *not supposed to be* possible without life 
> producing them. If you have to have a living cell to produce and amino 
> acid, you have a serious problem. If you get them *without* cells, then 
> the question is, "Could those combine in some way to produce something 
> like a cell?" It was a major "oops!" moment for early evolution 
> denialists. And, we know, from things like runaway prions. There is even 
> on article I read a while back saying that there are *detectable* sub-
> virus type cells, which have little more than a weak shell, and a tiny 
> fragment of code in them, which a) can't infect a host to case 
> replication, and b) can't replicate themselves, yet **somehow** manage 
> to exist, despite the fact that they lack the most basic two mechanisms 
> to reproduce themselves, and their internal code can often be so simple 
> that it barely creates the "shell" they use to shield themselves from 
> the environment around them. The going theory is that some sets of these 
> things do contain "partial" replication code, and that when they come in 
> contact with code from another partial replicator, which has the missing 
> fragments, they can combine and generate replicants of "both" pseudo 
> organisms. It isn't hard to imagine one of those suffering a coding 
> error during replication, which produced a "combined" code, in one 
> stronger cell, which had "all" of the code needed to self replicate.
> 
> Problem is, I wouldn't even have a clue where to look for the article on 
> them. I think it was in Discovery Magazine, but not sure, or even what 
> year that the article was in. Its also one of those fields that a) 
> doesn't interest most biologists (who cares about something that 
> **can't** infect you?), and b) is kind of laughed off, more or less the 
> way they did black holes, until someone discovered one. Oh, and it may 
> have just been absorbed into the current pursuits of the main theory, 
> without anyone taking much notice, kind of a, "Well, this is 
> interesting, but what can it tell me about how viruses *became* viruses 
> and how their DNA works?"
> 
There are DNA less "cells" that do reproduce. Start with an aminoacids wich 
solution. Add a little heat. Have some clay added in the mix. Wait a few hours 
and you get cell sized spherules that have enclosed cellular shells. Wait a few 
more days and you start finding some things looking like internal cellular 
elements, but no nucleus and no DNA nor RNA. After some time, you'll notice that 
the protocells are more numerous. Look closely and, with a little luck, you can 
spot one or some of those actualy dividing.
Similar organisms have actualy been found in nature. They don't have any genetic 
code at all, but they do reproduce, never grow older and any individual can 
literaly "live" for millenias. Those who discovered them even wondered why those 
never completely chocked the caverns where they where discovered.

A theory say that DNA actualy apeared outside any cell, then got inside some 
archaic cells, causing the apearence of the cells as we know them today. In a 
way, DNA would be a kind of cellular parasit, at least originaly.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when 
you are not.

Post a reply to this message

In article <478906e4$1@news.povray.org>, ele### [at] netscapenet 
says...
> Patrick Elliott nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/11 21:44:
> 
> > Actually, if he is talking about the drawings I *think* he is, then he
 
> > is wrong. Heckle's drawings where known, even in his own time, to be 
> > inaccurate, but sort of provided an example of something that *does* 
> > happen. Its the equivalent of showing a lot of pictures of seedlings,
 
> > all of which are "sort of" similar, at a specific stage, but may be 
> > different prior to, and after, that stage. And even while similar, they
 
> > are not *quite* a similar as Heckle implied. The got used in text books
, 
> > for a while, by people that thought evolution was a real important thin
g 
> > to know, but who themselves didn't know a damn thing about it. That is
 
> > kind of the point, which gets glossed over by deniers, its not 
> > biologists, scientists or evo-devo people that **write** those text 
> > books. They might advise about what goes into them, but that won't stop
 
> > a lot of morons, who do write them, from writing them in ways that are
 
> > inadequate, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain ignorant. That said, i
f 
> > one reads 90% of the text books that contain the drawings in them, its
 
> > pretty obvious that the pictures have, for the most part, been displaye
d 
> > as, "Here is an example of what **some** people thought about how it 
> > worked, at one time. We now know they where wrong." This, in the mind o
f 
> > those apposed to evolution constitutes, "They are still using them and
 
> > misleading people!" Sure, and, to use their own silly BS against them,
 
> > allowing the Bible to still include passages about golden cows means 
> > their must still huge numbers of Christians with cow idols sitting in
 
> > their closets... lol
> > 
> > The only reason these drawings are even and issue any more is that the
 
> > reading comprehension of the average person using the argument is about
 
> > on the same level as their understanding of what they are trying to 
> > dispute, which is to say, if they where my car mechanic, I would hire a
 
> > 6 year old to work on my car instead. At least the 8 year old wouldn't
 
> > be confused by discovering the car had tires, and didn't work by 
> > sticking your feet through the floor, and running really fast.
> > 
> >>> Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks o
f life".
> >> And this has what to do with evolution?
> >>
> > Umm. Might as well ask what spontaneous formation of transistors would
 
> > have to do with silicon lifeforms, should such a thing ever be found.
 
> > Put simply, amino acids where *not supposed to be* possible without lif
e 
> > producing them. If you have to have a living cell to produce and amino
 
> > acid, you have a serious problem. If you get them *without* cells, then
 
> > the question is, "Could those combine in some way to produce something
 
> > like a cell?" It was a major "oops!" moment for early evolution 
> > denialists. And, we know, from things like runaway prions. There is eve
n 
> > on article I read a while back saying that there are *detectable* sub-
> > virus type cells, which have little more than a weak shell, and a tiny
 
> > fragment of code in them, which a) can't infect a host to case 
> > replication, and b) can't replicate themselves, yet **somehow** manage
 
> > to exist, despite the fact that they lack the most basic two mechanisms
 
> > to reproduce themselves, and their internal code can often be so simple
 
> > that it barely creates the "shell" they use to shield themselves from
 
> > the environment around them. The going theory is that some sets of thes
e 
> > things do contain "partial" replication code, and that when they come i
n 
> > contact with code from another partial replicator, which has the missin
g 
> > fragments, they can combine and generate replicants of "both" pseudo 
> > organisms. It isn't hard to imagine one of those suffering a coding 
> > error during replication, which produced a "combined" code, in one 
> > stronger cell, which had "all" of the code needed to self replicate.
> > 
> > Problem is, I wouldn't even have a clue where to look for the article o
n 
> > them. I think it was in Discovery Magazine, but not sure, or even what
 
> > year that the article was in. Its also one of those fields that a) 
> > doesn't interest most biologists (who cares about something that 
> > **can't** infect you?), and b) is kind of laughed off, more or less the
 
> > way they did black holes, until someone discovered one. Oh, and it may
 
> > have just been absorbed into the current pursuits of the main theory,
 
> > without anyone taking much notice, kind of a, "Well, this is 
> > interesting, but what can it tell me about how viruses *became* viruses
 
> > and how their DNA works?"
> > 
> There are DNA less "cells" that do reproduce. Start with an aminoacids wi
ch 
> solution. Add a little heat. Have some clay added in the mix. Wait a few 
hours 
> and you get cell sized spherules that have enclosed cellular shells. Wait
 a few 
> more days and you start finding some things looking like internal cellula
r 
> elements, but no nucleus and no DNA nor RNA. After some time, you'll noti
ce that 
> the protocells are more numerous. Look closely and, with a little luck, y
ou can 
> spot one or some of those actualy dividing.
> Similar organisms have actualy been found in nature. They don't have any 
genetic 
> code at all, but they do reproduce, never grow older and any individual c
an 
> literaly "live" for millenias. Those who discovered them even wondered wh
y those 
> never completely chocked the caverns where they where discovered.
> 
> A theory say that DNA actualy apeared outside any cell, then got inside s
ome 
> archaic cells, causing the apearence of the cells as we know them today. 
In a 
> way, DNA would be a kind of cellular parasit, at least originaly.
> 
Ah, see. You have more details than I did. Those are precisely what I 
was talking about, though, at the time the article I read talked about 
them, it wasn't clear how/if they reproduced on their own. And that is 
kind of the point. ID/Creationists want to insist you can't get "life" 
from non-life, but you "can" find stuff that *acts* alive in the most 
critical aspect, it copies itself. The next argument falls into the 
whole, "You can't get new information from random results.", which is a) 
bullshit, and b) irrelevant, because without *new information* you can't 
get *random* either. The random event *is* new information, so 
complaining that new information can't produce new information is... 
just stupid. ;)

-- 
void main () {
  If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message