Recent content by Dinwatr

Football: Give all the players except the QBs 3' long rattan sticks. Fencing: Use rapiers. Track and field: replace any hurdle or other thing that you're required to jump over with a lion. Shot put: Have two people throw at a time. At each other. Rowing: 4-pounder cannons at the...

Sauron was just someone finishing what his superior started. He was Morgoth's second, and when Morgoth failed the task fell onto his shoulders.

Don Vito Corleone. He's evil; the book certainly doesn't portray him as a good guy in any way. However, he's that extremely rare bad guy: relatable. I know many, many people who share the Godfather's philosophy. It's even got history on its side--in a number of ancient cultures he would have...

Anyone who can look at multiple fields of science--including some of the most practical and active fields of science--and say they won't get any intellectual stimulation from studying the subject fundamental to all of them has missed some rather large points. There's an old joke in fields...

Hank Rearden. Forget the money; the man started off in an iron mine. He had a goal, and moved towards it his entire life. And, to be blunt, his family never understood what he was doing, what it cost him, or why he would bother. He did it all, standing in all essential aspects alone. A hero...

I've seen my familyi get Marines to say "Ma'am, that's a bit much." At one point two of my great-aunts sat next to a priest. The pries lasted five minutes. We timed it. We also had a saying: "All jobs require a certain amount of swearing." It wasn't uncommon to see a family member standing there...

After using both a sugarloaf and a more open Norman design, I go for the open design. Sure, it allows more dangerous shots to come in--but it allows you to SEE those shots. And everything else going on. On the flip side....it allows you to see the shots. Which means it allows you to see the...

I take it you haven't looked very hard. Try "Evolution: Triumph of an Idea". It's a university-level textbook, and outlines the evidence pretty well. Tell that to the people who's lives are saved every year by flu vaccines. Or the entire field of agriculture. Or animal husbandry in general. If...

I always find it funny that people present these arguments as if they haven't been addressed, as if they're new. This has been debated for a long, long time. There are in fact 5 different types of omnipotence, and this paradox only applies to some of them (reference...

There was a doctor in Nazi Germany that used concentration camps as fodder for some really twisted experiments. Dr. Mengala, or something like that. The man is rightly condemned by every rational person; he was an evil monster, who sadistically tortured people for no reason. That said, he...

Language evolution certainly is. Slang is a perfect example of it--you get both short-term variations in linguistic patterns, as well as long-term trends due to cultural isolation. Those long-term trends start out the same as the short-term variations, but stick. Look at the English...

And an entire school of monks in the Cluny tradition that interpreted the Bible in an explicitely mystical fashion, rather than as a history text. [auote=Jarimir]In this thread I see a lot of nerds DYING to have a knock-down drag-out fight with creationists That may be how you see it...

If you're honest about wanting to study evolution, I can find some papers for you. There are a lot of free PDFs out there from peer-reviewed journals that amply demonstrate the fact of evolution. You'll just have to put up with a paleontological perspective.

Not quite. "Inconclusive" is what we call evidence that supports multiple conclusions. For example, in 1987 the fossil record supported both a catastrophic extinction at the K/Pg boundary and a gradual one; we simply didn't have enough data to firmly conclude either one. But the important bit is...

Go to YouTube. Type in "AronRa". Watch his Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism videos. One of the first ones is about how many evolutionary biologists, geologists, paleontologists, biologists, geneticists, etc. are actually religious. For example, Dr. Robert Bakker, instrumental in...