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Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

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"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

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There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

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If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

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When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

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Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

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If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

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The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

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The Origin of Life/Evolution?

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  • #406
    Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

    Originally posted by Hicks View Post
    Personally, I don't buy the allegation that the 7 days stuff could mean some kind of 'special God days' versus just plain old 24 hour days. The only reason I can see for anyone to assume that spin is to make what would otherwise be a square peg fit in a round hole, in my opinion.

    The Hebrew word translated “day” can mean various lengths of time, not just a 24-hour period. So in Hebrew the context gives meaning to the word. In this case the context does not support the conclusion that each creative period was a 24 hour day.


    The Bible doesn’t say how long each creative day was, however there are things we can deduce that logically indicate the creative days were longer than 24 hours.


    The first example is the first words of the Bible which say, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ The Bible doesn’t say how long it took God to do this, however, science says the universe is 13.7 billion years old and the earth is 4.5 billion years old. So God had apparently been creating for eons before turning to an earth which verse 2 says ‘was formless and waste.”’


    The point? Do you think during all these billions of years God was holding himself to 24 hour work periods? That's totally unlikely, so why think so just because on the first creative day God created a 24 hour time period for the earth? By insisting a 24 hour time period is what was meant by the word day, you are actually holding God to a time period he created for man's use, not his own.


    Another example found in Genesis the 2nd chapter. Before Eve’s creation the Bible says that God began bringing to Adam all the creatures he had formed and let the man decide on a name for each one. The point I want to draw attention to is that when God brought Eve to meet him, Adam said,“This is 'at last' bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one will be called Woman, Because from man this one was taken.”


    Adam’s words, ‘at last’ apparently indicates that he had waited for some time to receive his counterpart of the opposite sex.


    The account further shows Adam didn’t just arbitrarily call Eve ‘woman,’ we know he reasoned on it because he tells us why he settled on that name, “because from man this one was taken.”


    This means he likely had a reason for giving all living things their names too. For example he probably said something like, ‘this one will be called a dog, for such and such reason.”


    All this indicates it’s very unlikely Adam did this in one day. Remember too, Adam wouldn’t have had a full 24 hour day to name everything. For example, you would have to subtract his sleeping hours and other daily requirments.


    Another point, the Bible says at the end of all the creative days, ‘And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a first day, a second day, a third day, etc. Chapter one of Genesis ends with the words, “And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a sixth day.”

    However, nowhere in the Bible do you find a closure for the 7th day, “And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a seventh day.”


    Genesis the second chapter starts with these words, “Thus the heavens and the earth and all their army came to their completion. 2 And by the seventh day God came to the completion of his work that he had made, and he proceeded to rest on the seventh day from all his work that he had made. 3 And God proceeded to bless the seventh day and make it sacred, because on it he has been resting from all his work that God has created for the purpose of making.


    Did you notice what it says about God on the 7th day? It says, “he has been resting from all his (creative) work,” indicating the 7th day was still ongoing when Moses wrote Genesis. Moses wrote the Genesis account some 1,500 years after creation.


    There’s more evidence to indicate God’s rest day is still ongoing. Consider Jesus’ words to opposers who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath, which they construed as a form of work. Instead of disputing whether it was work or not Jesus said, “My Father has kept working until now, and I keep working.” (John 5:16, 17)


    What was the point of Jesus words? Jesus was being accused of working on the Sabbath. His reply: “My Father has kept working” answered that charge. In effect, Jesus was saying since my Father has kept working during his millenniums-long Sabbath, (The 7th day) it is quite permissible for me to keep working, even on the Sabbath.’ Thus, Jesus implied that as regards the earth, God’s great Sabbath day of rest, the seventh day, had not ended in his day.


    There’s more, but I think it’s already clear that rather than the earth being created in 24 hour time periods, the days are most likely much longer.


    A thought. If someone still believes God created the earth in 24 hour time periods, did he just work in the day time, or did he work at night too?

    Comment

    • #407
      Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

      [QUOTE=Will Galen;1649700]More questions answered.

      [2] the earth really is at the center of the universe
      I asked for the scriptures that say the earth is the center of the universe. You never got back to me on this.

      Copernicus will be glad to hear this. He was threatened with excommunication for suggesting the earth rotated around the sun, not the other way around.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus

      In March 1616, in connection with the Galileo affair, the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation of the Index issued a decree suspending De revolutionibus until it could be "corrected", on the grounds that the supposedly Pythagorean doctrine[99] that the Earth moves and the Sun does not was "false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture".[100] The same decree also prohibited any work that defended the mobility of the Earth or the immobility of the Sun, or that attempted to reconcile these assertions with Scripture.

      [3] the sky (firmament) forms a "roof" over the world.
      Again, you have yet to provide me with the scripture that says this. However, if you look up the definitions of ‘roof,’ the sky can be termed a roof.

      The word is used in the Genesis creation narrative:


      Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.[7]

      [7] dragons (fiery serpents) are real.
      Are you referring to the angel that rebelled and became the devil? From the Greek drakon, depicting a terrifying monster, a serpentlike devourer. It occurs 13 times, but only in the highly symbolic book of Revelation, and it represents Satan the Devil, not a Hollywood type flying dragon.


      [8] giants were real.
      Since no scripture was provided I will assume this is referring to Goliath from the story of David and Goliath, which everybody is somewhat familiar with.

      No, the very beginning of Genesis says: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4 (KJV)

      Apparently God created the Giants and then married them off to the daughters of men. Where those women came from is a mystery isn't it. It seems like you talk about the Bible a lot but have not bother to read it and see just how absurd some of it really. How do those giants fit in with science and theology?

      Comment

      • #408
        Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

        Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
        Human emotions are certainly complex, but I would not say that emotion is limited to us humans.

        That being said, then couldn't a non-human ancestor have had some emotions?

        Darwin believed that emotions evolved into higher complexities when they were beneficial for evolution, and that emotions more often than not improved chances of survival. For example, the brain uses emotion to keep us away from a dangerous animal (fear), away from rotting food and fecal matter (disgust), in control of our resources (anger), and in pursuit of a good meal or a good mate (pleasure and lust).
        The problem with all that is it doesn't tell how emotions evolved. It's hypothesizing they did and reasoning on it from there. This is basically how evolutionary scientists reason about everything involving Evolution. They run into something they can't explain they just hypothesize it did and reason from there. Because they are scientists people listen to their reasoning, and give little thought to all the hypothesizing they do. Ask them how something happened and they go into reasoning mode, but can't explain any of their hypothesis.

        Evolution is like a house of cards, it's built on one hypothesis after another that scientists can't prove.

        For example in post # 308 I gave an account of scientists trying for 40 years to cause good mutations, and couldn't. In post #310 you replied, "Given hundreds of millions of years, rather than 40 years using a misguided protocol of gamma radiation to induce all change, absolutely and emphatically yes."

        Isn't your hundreds of millions of years, just another hypothesis?

        Comment

        • #409
          Rainmaking: if I'm right, it's because. I have magic powers. If I'm proven wrong, I come up with more excuses (you're not translating the Hebrew correctly, you're not understanding gods powers correctly, etc.) why I wasn't.

          Science is built on accumulated knowledge. Genesis is built on accumulated fairy tales.
          Last edited by Kstat; 05-22-2013, 08:37 PM.

          It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

          Division Champions 1955, 1956, 1988, 1989, 1990, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
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          Comment

          • #410
            Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

            Originally posted by Blue&Gold View Post
            Nice challenge since it happened hundreds of thousands of or perhaps even millions of years ago. What do you want now, a time machine? I don't have any objection to what you believe. I do object when people try to get around the separation of church and state and get their mythology into the schools...
            I agree to the separation of church and State, but how about schools teaching theories as fact?

            Comment

            • #411
              Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

              Originally posted by Kstat View Post
              Rainmaking: if I'm right, it's because. I have magic powers. If I'm proven wrong, I come up with more excuses (you're not translating the Hebrew correctly, you're not understanding gods powers correctly, etc.) why I wasn't.

              Science is built on accumulated knowledge. Genesis is built on accumulated fairy tales.
              Your definition of rainmaking is your own. How are people to understand each other if they make things up?

              As for Genesis being built of fairy tails, you are just making claims without merit.

              Apparently you have been though this type of discussion one to many times. I don't know what to tell you except to read the Bible and do deep research on your own.

              Comment

              • #412
                Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                summation of the great many Bible references to Giants: http://www.answersingenesis.org/arti...7/n1/ot-giants

                ---------
                Earth as the center of everything:

                The most important biblical quote supporting a geocentric universe can be found in the Book of Joshua.


                Joshua 10:12-13
                Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.


                The miracle of Joshua appears again as a reference in The Book of Habakkuk.


                Habakkuk 3:11
                The sun and moon stood still in their habitation at the light of thine arrows as they sped, at the flash of thy glittering spear.


                The evidence in support of a geocentric model is overwhelming here. Joshua commanded the sun to stand still. He did not order the earth to cease rotating nor did he qualify his statement with the divine knowledge that the sun was merely made to appear stationary. The sun was commanded to stand still because it is the sun that moves. Descriptions of its motion can be rather poetic.


                Psalms 19:4-6
                yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.


                Ecclesiastes 1:5
                The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

                ------------

                The Bible’s ‘kinds,’ are the boundaries within which creatures are capable of bearing offspring together. For example cats and dogs are two different ‘kinds’ and you can’t breed them together. Whereas science lists animals as different species even though they can breed and have young together. For example, there are reportedly 36 cat species.
                A species are the boundaries within which creatures are capable of bearing fertile offspring together. Cats and dogs are two different species and you can’t breed them together. Certain animals are classified as different species even though they can breed and have young together because those young are infertile and cannot carry on their lineage. Lions and Tigers can have infertile ligers. Horses and donkeys can have infertile mules. The Biblical "kinds" would have to be the exact same thing as "species" unless you accept that the "kinds" that were on the ark then later evolved into new "kinds".

                ---
                dragons in the Bible: http://www.dragonsinn.net/bible-1.htm

                ---
                unicorns in the Bible: http://www.bible-topics.com/Unicorn.html


                ------

                I admire your devotion to the Bible. I respect it. From a scientific point of view, though, it's frequently very very goofy. It's vague enough and the language is archaic and open to translation enough to explain away virtually everything, though. Which is convenient, because it's staunch followers can adopt radically different viewpoints over time as to what it demand of humans. One century women should just shut up, walk behind us guys, never own land, and never vote jsut because "the Bible says so" and then we decide that this is not really fair, so we then decide that the Bible does not say so.

                I'm not a Bible expert and I'm not really aiming to disprove chapter and verse of the Bible. I just hope to offer a scientific perspective, and ironically one that is widely accepted by Christians the world over.

                The Bible just isn't a great source of scientific knowledge and isn't a text to always be taken with exact literalness. The Bible tells you the value of pi, as an example. In the Bible it is 3.0. The legislature of Iowa supposedly once considered a resolution to make pi legally equal to 3, based on the Biblical passage!

                I Kings 7:23-26, describing a large cauldron, or "molten sea" in the Temple of Solomon:


                He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. Below the rim, gourds encircled it - ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea. The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two thousand baths. (NIV)

                You can say that the Bible text "rounded off" but then isn't that sarificing the literal truth?

                link to pi in the Bible:

                http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/pibible.htm
                The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                Comment

                • #413
                  Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                  correction: It was none other than the great state of Indiana that, in 1897, unanimously passed a bill in the state House of Representatives to establish the value of pi within Indiana's borders as equal to 3.0. The bill, House Bill 246, died in the State Senate.

                  Thus pi in Indiana stayed the same as pi everywhere else!

                  http://www.snopes.com/religion/pi.asp

                  more on the Indiana pi bill:

                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

                  A funny line:
                  "it was nearly passed, but opinion changed when one senator observed that the General Assembly lacked the power to define mathematical truth"
                  The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                  Comment

                  • #414
                    Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                    Hot off the peer-review presses...

                    Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology - Denis Noble - Experimental Physiology

                    Originally posted by Abstract
                    What is the Topic of this review?Have recent experimental findings in evolutionary biology concerning the transmission of inheritance opened the way to a reintegration of physiology with evolutionary biology? 

                    What advances does it highlight?
                    The answer is yes, and that this requires a new synthesis between evolutionary theory and experimental physiology.

                    The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing number of cases that inheritance has now been shown to be robust for many generations. The 21st century can look forward to a new synthesis that will reintegrate physiology with evolutionary biology.
                    From the article...

                    Originally posted by Denis Noble
                    Evolutionary theory itself is already in a state of flux…

                    all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproven
                    Ouch.

                    Even better, the article is based on a recent lecture, the video of which is online:



                    And for those curious about Denis Noble (read: those looking for a cheap excuse to dismiss his views), here's his quick biography from Wikipedia:

                    Originally posted by Wikipedia
                    Denis Noble CBE FRS FRCP (born 16 November 1936) is a British biologist who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960. His research focuses on using computer models of biological organs and organ systems to interpret function from the molecular level to the whole organism. Together with international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart.

                    As Secretary-General of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 1993-2001, he played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome, and he was elected President of the IUPS at its world congress in Kyoto in 2009.

                    He is also a philosopher of biology, and his book The Music of Life challenges the foundations of current biological sciences, questions the central dogma, its unidirectional view of information flow, and its imposition of a bottom-up methodology for research in the life sciences.

                    Comment

                    • #415
                      Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                      Originally posted by GrangeRusHibbert View Post
                      Hot off the peer-review presses...
                      I haven't read it yet, but that is not a peer-reviewed research paper. It is clearly marked at the top as a "lecture article".

                      There is a difference between a peer-reviewed research paper and a review article / opinion piece. The first must go through peer review while the latter is published at the sole discretion of the publisher or journal editor.
                      The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                      Comment

                      • #416
                        Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                        Noble would be absolutely appalled that you view his article as some sort of support for intelligent design or creationism.

                        I start with some definitions. I will use the term ‘Modern Synthesis’ rather than ‘Neo-Darwinism’. Darwin was far from being a Neo-Darwinist (Dover, 2000; Midgley, 2010), so I think it would be better to drop his name for that idea…

                        In some respects, my article returns to a more nuanced, less dogmatic view of evolutionary theory (see also Muller, 2007; Mesoudi et al. 2013), which is much more in keeping with the spirit of Darwin’s own ideas…
                        ----
                        It's an interesting piece I need to study some more, since it's not my field. He advances the term "Integrative Synthesis" as his own term for a modernized view of Darwinian evolution more in line with Darwin than with some more dogmatic geneticists who followed him in the mid 20th century, before modern molecular biology allowed for the study of DNA.

                        Integrative Synthesis takes into account the known mechanisms of genetic mutation. For example, certain types of gene sequences are inherently more prone to copy errors than others and thus are "hot spots" for mutation. It's not occurring at random sites in the absolute sense. Transposons insert entire generic sequences.

                        The most important point IMO: He also points out the critical role of epigenetics: genes that can be silenced or altered during the course of the life of a single organism, often in response to the environment. It is a powerful evolutionary force that is unaccounted for by the basic concept of mutation and inheritance. You can inherit a gene and yet it may be silenced by another gene! So the loss of the trait didn't occur by a mutation in the corresponding gene encoding for a protein, but by a mutation in a regulator gene!

                        Fascinating stuff. An effort to clean up the language of evolutionary biology, in part recognizing the central role of epigenetics (basically the changes in the transcription of genetic material that occurs at some point AFTER you are born)
                        Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-24-2013, 05:31 PM.
                        The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                        Comment

                        • #417
                          Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                          For those of you who know the poster known as Gamble1 (my nephew), one of his brothers is a Post-Doc in Genomics at Stanford. Which has nothing at all to do with anything I have ever posted....except I've had a bit of Jim Beam this evening.
                          Ever notice how friendly folks are at a shootin' range??.

                          Comment

                          • #418
                            Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                            Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
                            I haven't read it yet, but that is not a peer-reviewed research paper. It is clearly marked at the top as a "lecture article".

                            There is a difference between a peer-reviewed research paper and a review article / opinion piece. The first must go through peer review while the latter is published at the sole discretion of the publisher or journal editor.
                            I've seen no evidence that this article, nor any article published in Experimental Physiology, isn't subjected to peer review.

                            From the Wikipedia article on peer review:

                            Originally posted by Wikipedia
                            Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication.
                            Further down the article, under the subheading scholarly peer review:

                            Originally posted by Wikipedia
                            Scholarly peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field, before a paper describing this work is published in a journal.
                            So, contrary to your claims, peer review isn't applied only to articles which deal in the recent laboratory research of the article's author. Why would it be? Scientific data is open for interpretation amongst anyone, and these various interpretations and piecing together of the data is what often leads to progress. These interpretations of scientific data (ideas) are the basis for many peer-reviewed articles, including the one I posted above, which was based on the same ideas Noble shared during the lecture in the video.

                            Comment

                            • #419
                              Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                              According to my smartass daughter she said, "When your old butt got up and turned the lights on". She had the ammunition for that since her coach thought that I was her grandfather watching her softball game. lol

                              Comment

                              • #420
                                Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                                Just wondering, how many posters here have had a peer reviewed article published?

                                How many of us are published at all?
                                Ever notice how friendly folks are at a shootin' range??.

                                Comment

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