Starship Asterisk*

I wish everyone one Earth– including Oprah, and Jenny McCarthy, everyone — would take 19 minutes of their lives and watch Michael Specter talk about why science is so important:

Of course, Jenny McCarthy won’t listen. But if the people who listened to her did, then they’d stop listening to her. And what a wonderful world that would be.

makc wrote:I will watch it later... I promise

The "old dude" you are dismissing is saying something important.

makc wrote:p.s. no, really, by all means please do, because I saw wonderful technologies getting only 3 minutes window on TED, and it's impossible to even scratch the surface in 3 minutes. what a hell makes whatever this dude has to say so important that he gets whole 20 minutes to read a speech that can't manage to hold my attention?

Chris Peterson wrote:Maybe the problem is that you fast forwarded through important points.

makc wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:Maybe the problem is that you fast forwarded through important points.

I assume you did not, and so can write down these important points in a few lines. Can you?

In that Faustus review I posted earlier the guy is asking one key question, "why do I have to read this". In this case, it's "why do I have to watch this".

owlice wrote:I hope you have someone in your life who can provide that service for you.

Chris Peterson wrote:There's a value in knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

makc wrote:Oh man, dont you even start this. I had this very subject under discussion on other site just days ago, I'd hate to go over it again. But, since I am replying to this, I thought why not be better than some other people and give you a "trailer" of this lengthy discussion key point :D Which is, if you spend 10 years aquiring some knowledge and then actually use only 10% of it in your daily life, you wasted 9 whole years of your life for nothing.

Michael Specter talk(s) about why science is so important

Chris Peterson wrote:You think that you need to "use" knowledge to make it valuable, that anything you don't "use" is just wasted knowledge, and the time spent acquiring it was wasted?

makc wrote:so now it turns out the video was another american science-vs-creationism carp?

makc wrote:I dont pay any tax dollars to teach children creationism, because I live in other country (yes, there are other countries) where this bullshit is not an issue. we have so much better stuff to discuss, such as russian military base.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism wrote:
<<Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring. It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829). The identification of Lamarckism with the inheritance of acquired characteristics is regarded by some as an artifact of the subsequent history of evolutionary thought, repeated in textbooks without analysis. Stephen Jay Gould wrote that late 19th century evolutionists

"re-read Lamarck, cast aside the guts of it ... and elevated one aspect of the mechanics - inheritance of acquired characters - to a central focus it never had for Lamarck himself." He argued that "the restriction of "Lamarckism" to this relatively small and non-distinctive corner of Lamarck's thought must be labelled as more than a misnomer, and truly a discredit to the memory of a man and his much more comprehensive system".

A form of Lamarckism was revived in the Soviet Union of the 1930s when Trofim Lysenko promoted Lysenkoism which suited the ideological opposition of Joseph Stalin to Genetics. This ideologically driven research influenced Soviet agricultural policy which in turn was later blamed for crop failures.

Interest in Lamarckism has recently increased, as several studies in the field of epigenetics have highlighted the possible inheritance of behavioral traits acquired by the previous generation. Some recent notable studies include those made by the University of Linköping, Sweden, which have looked at foraging behavior in chickens as well as stress factors.

Several recent studies, one conducted by researchers at MIT and another by researchers at the Tufts University School of Medicine, have rekindled the debate once again. As reported in MIT's Technology Review in February 2009, "The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring ... The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring.">>