| Believe In | Don't Believe In | Not Sure | |
| % | % | % | |
| God | 80 | 10 | 9 |
| Miracles | 75 | 14 | 12 |
| Heaven | 73 | 14 | 13 |
| Jesus is God or the Son of God | 71 | 17 | 12 |
| Angels | 71 | 17 | 12 |
| The resurrection of Jesus Christ | 70 | 18 | 13 |
| Survival of the soul after death | 68 | 15 | 17 |
| Hell | 62 | 24 | 13 |
| The Virgin birth | 61 | 24 | 15 |
| The devil | 59 | 27 | 14 |
| Darwin’s theory of evolution | 47 | 32 | 22 |
| Ghosts | 44 | 39 | 17 |
| Creationism | 40 | 31 | 29 |
| UFOs | 36 | 39 | 25 |
| Witches | 31 | 54 | 14 |
| Astrology | 31 | 51 | 18 |
| Reincarnation–that you were once another person | 24 | 53 | 23 |
P.S. Congrats to Denyse O’Leary, whose Post-Darwinist blog tied for third in the science and technology category from the Canadian Blog Awards.
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic who notes that "sometimes this job [mocking Conservatives] is way too easy."
Let's see how the enzyme works so we can understand why that reaction is incorrect.
Here's a schematic drawing of the oxidation-reduction reaction (right). The important point is that FAD is part of a short electron transfer chain from succinate to QH2. FADH2 can't be a product of the reaction because it never dissociates from the enzyme. The product is QH2, which can diffuse in the membrane to complex III where it is oxidized.
Cheng, V.W.T., Johnson, A., Rothery, R.A. and Weiner, J.H. (2008) Alternative Sites for Proton Entry from the Cytoplasm to the Quinone Binding Site in Escherichia coli Succinate Dehydrogenase. Biochemistry 47:9107–9116 [DOI: 10.1021/bi801008e]
1. Oops, did I say that out loud?
There's an ongoing dispute about how to present science to the general public. People like Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney advocate framing—another word for spin—in order to appeal to the public's perceived biases. They seem to be comfortable with a little "lying for science" as long as it serves the greater good. It's time for heretical thinking on climate change. After two decades in which science has told us more and more about global warming, climate modellers may have to recognise that we have learned most of what we can from their number-crunching.The point of this editorial is that there's no reason to be overly alarmist and there's no reason why we can't admit that our climate models are flawed. The bottom line is that we know the climate is warming and we know that we are contributing to the cause. It's time to do something.
Some of the detailed forecasts about exactly what the climate will be like in Albuquerque or Basingstoke in 2050 or 2080 are little more than statistical noise, as physicist Lenny Smith underlines this week (see "Bad climate science"). Even the global picture may depend more than we like to admit on feedbacks and tipping points produced by a system that is inherently chaotic. We need to beware of the known unknowns and - whisper it - the unknown unknowns.
Some politicians still demand certainty from climate scientists and are sitting on their hands until they get it. But certainty may be no more available here than in that other troublesome discipline, economics. This is not a counsel for inaction, but for grown-up government: for doing what we know is needed in the face of uncertainty, and for taking actions like those called for this week by the British government's Committee on Climate Change, from decarbonising electricity generation to culling carbon-spewing vehicles and aircraft.
Here's another heresy. Perhaps the endless negotiations to frame a successor to the Kyoto protocol - currently in mid-grind in Poznan, Poland - are becoming an impediment to action. The protocol's various market devices, like cap-and-trade and the clean development mechanism, could now be holding up the technologies we know will do the job. Invented by the Clinton/Gore administration, should they now be jettisoned by Barack Obama? Michael Le Page believes so (see "Time for change on climate: an open letter to Barack Obama") and argues that taxing carbon would be a better plan. It would be a bold move. But just as past economic certainties are failing, maybe it is time to think the unthinkable here too.
GROSS: I imagine you didn't agree with Sarah Palin on environmental issues. For example, her emphasis on drill, baby, drill, and also the fact that she said she wasn't sure if human behavior contributed to climate change. Now, climate change and the environment are issues you're trying to put much more toward the top of the evangelical agenda.If I have to choose between the New Scientist editorial and Rev. Cizik then New Scientist wins hands down.
REV. CIZIK: Yeah, I couldn't - you're right. I couldn't have disagreed with her more. Just a year ago, we found out from climate scientists that the melt in the Arctic had turned into a rout. It was happening so fast it was as if your hair turned gray overnight. Now, I have a receding hairline, but I don't have my hair turning gray overnight. Well, that's what happened with the environment. An area the size of Colorado was disappearing every week, and the Northwest Passage was staying wide open all September for the first time in history. And so, to look at this and not see what's happening, I think is, well, it was sort of the ignorance is strength idea. Well, not. It's not strength. Look, strength is knowing what's happening to the world around us, and moreover, as a Christian, we can't claim to love the Creator and abuse the world in which we live. To do so is like claiming to be a fan of Shakespeare and then burn his plays....
...I'm always looking for ways to reframe issues, give the biblical point of view a different slant, if you will, and look it - we have to. The whole world, literally, the planet, is changing around us. And if you don't change the way you think and adapt, especially to things like climate change, scientists like Bob Doppelt, he says, well, if you don't adapt and change your thinking, you may ultimately be a loser because climate change, in his mind, he is a systems analyst, has the capacity to determine the winners and losers, and your life will never be the same, growing up during, I say, the great warming. Our grandparents grew up during the Great Depression. Our parents, well, they lived in the aftermath of that and became probably, the most, well, the greediest generation and our generation, this younger one, needs to be the greenest....
1. The area of Colorado is 269,837 km2 and the area of the entire Arctic ocean is 14,056,000 km2, which 52× the area of Colorado.
Naming your kid after you is one thing. But imagine if an entire species were named for you.In the ongoing battle between splitters and lumpers, you can bet that the splitters are going to gain the upper hand if they can earn so much money by creating a new species.
This week, Purdue University is auctioning off the rights to name seven newly discovered bats and two turtles, the Associated Press is reporting. The winners — who will shell out a minimum of $250,000 for at least one of the bats, a Purdue spokesman told ScientificAmerican.com — can link their own name or that of a pal to the animal’s scientific name.
"Unlike naming a building or something like that, this is much more permanent. This will last as long as we have our society," John Bickham, who co-discovered the nine species, told the AP.
Walter Gilbert (1932 - ) was awarded the Nobel Prize for developing a chemical method of sequencing DNA (with Allan Maxam). The method relied on chemical reactions that cleaved DNA at specific residues. By carrying out partial reactions where only one cleavage occurred in each DNA strand, it was possible to separate the cleavage products on an acrylamide gel and determine the position of each residue by the length of the fragment. Gilbert and Sanger have independently developed different methods to determine the exact sequence of the nucleotide building blocks in DNA. Among applications of sequence methods may be mentioned that Gilbert has investigated the structure of those parts of a bacterial chromosome which control the reading (transcription) of the genetic message. Sanger is responsible for the first complete determination of the sequence of a DNA molecule. He has established the sequence of the 5375 building blocks in DNA from a bacterial virus called phi-X174. Sanger's method has also been used to determine the sequence of DNA from humans, which led to the surprising discovery that the genetic code is not universal, i.e. it is not the same in all living organisms, from viruses and bacteria to man.I have no idea what they are referring to here when they mention the non-universality of the genetic code. I don't recall any revelations back in 1980. Are they referring to slight differences in mitochondria?
The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.
[Photo Credit: NNDB, original source unknown.]
Below the fold I have reproduced an interesting comment thread in which ribczynski attacks ID proponents’ criticisms of macroevolution through NDE, and two ID proponents convincingly refute the Darwinist line.Let's see how these two IDiots "refute" the Darwinian line by picking out one of the most common falsehoods that are often repeated by those who are completely ignorant of evolution.
gpuccio writes:Punctuated equilbira have absolutely nothing to do with saltations. This particular misunderstanding has been discussed and refuted dozens of times over the past thirty years. The fact that IDiots would use it in 2008 demonstrates something related to the "Gipper" (the Ronald Regan version) but it's not what they think.
First of all there are saltations. Have you ever heard of “punctuated equilibrium”? That’s not an ID theory.
Jerry writes:
Gould said the whole history of the fossil record was one of apparent saltations. That was why he developed his absurd fix for Darwinian processes called punctuated equilibrium. I suggest you read Gould and as suggested by other, his ideas on punctuated equilibrium. Everybody immediately just lapped up his ideas and it is now part of the evolutionary canon.
The UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is set to spend £250 million on creating 44 centres to train 2,000 PhD students over the next 5 years.Here at the University of Toronto we've been having a discussion about increasing the number of graduate students. The goal of the university is to increase the number of graduate students by 30% over the next few years. The objective is supposed to be achieved by providing extra money to fund graduate students.
The interdisciplinary Centres For Doctoral Training will focus on areas including climate change, sustainable energy, healthcare technologies and nanotechnology. All of the new centres will be spread across 22 UK universities, and 17 will also have strong ties with businesses.
Businesses will also contribute some cash, EPSRC says, but how much is not clear.
The new centres will accept their first batch of students in October 2009. The students will have four years of funding for their PhDs — more than the roughly three years that most PhDs receive — and will spend up to 75% of their time training with the industrial partners.
