At the Discovery Institute we often offer an inter-faith Prayer of Thanksgiving to the Almighty for the likes of P.Z. Myers, Larry Moran, Barbara Forrest, Rob Pennock and Jeffrey Shallit.Thank-you to all the inmates at the institute. I really appreciate your thoughts and prayers.
Le Canard Noir / Andy Lewis,What would a normal person do after receiving such a letter? Ask for more information about the "defamatory" content. That's what Andy Lewis did and here's part of the response.
I represent the Burzynski Clinic, Burzynski Research Institute, and Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. It has been brought to our attention that you have content on your websites http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2011/11/the-false-hope-of-the-burzynski-clinic.html that is in violation of multiple laws.
Please allow this correspondence to serve as notice to you that you published libelous and defamatory information. This correspondence constitutes a demand that you immediately cease and desist in your actions defaming and libeling my clients.
Please be advised that my clients consider the content of your posting to be legally actionable under numerous legal causes of action, including but not limited to: defamation Libel, defamation per se, and tortious interference with business contracts and business relationships. The information you assert in your article is factually incorrect, and posted with either actual knowledge, or reckless disregard for its falsity.
The various terms you use in your article connote dishonesty, untrustworthiness, illegality, and fraud. You, maliciously with the intent to harm my clients and to destroy his business, state information which is wholly without support, and which damages my clients’ reputations in the community. The purpose of your posting is to create in the public the belief that my clients are disreputable, are engaged in on-going criminal activity, and must be avoided by the public.
You have a right to freedom of speech, and you have a right to voice your opinion, but you do not have the right to post libelous statements regardless if you think its your opinion or not. You are highly aware of defamation laws. You actually wrote an article about defamation on your site. In addition, I have information linking you to a network of individuals that disseminate false information. So the courts will apparently see the context of your article, and your act as Malicious. You have multiple third parties that viewed and commented on your article, which clearly makes this matter defamation libel. Once I obtain a subpoena for your personal information, I will not settle this case with you. Shut the article down IMMEDIATELY.
GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.
Regards,
Marc Stephens
Burzynski Clinic
9432 Katy Freeway
Houston, Texas 77055
If you had no history of lying, and if you were not apart of a fraud network I would take the time to explain your article word for word, but you already know what defamation is. I’ve already recorded all of your articles from previous years as well as legal notice sent by other attorneys for different matters. As I mentioned, I am not playing games with you. You have a history of being stubborn which will play right into my hands. Be smart and considerate for your family and new child, and shut the article down..Immediately. FINAL WARNING.Yep, that's a threat you see in that paragraph.
Regards,
Marc Stephens
NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life. [NASA Researchers: DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space]
In order for extraterrestrial organic matter to have fueled the origin of life, a lot of meteorites carrying organic matter had to arrive on the primitive Earth. The problem of amino acid concentrations and stabiltity were discussed in a classic paper by Jeffrey Bada published in 1991.I don't know whether the NASA astronomers are aware of this problem but have developed a scenario to overcome it, or whether they just haven't thought about the problem.
Some of his calculations are worth remembering.
The current flux of extraterrestrial organic material is about 3 × 108 grams per year from cosmic dust and micrometeorites. About 1% of this is amino acids and most of them are not the ones found in living organisms. This should give rise over time to a concentration in the oceans of about 0.1 nM (10-10 M). That's not sufficient for life to have originated.
The flux in the past was almost certainly much greater and lots of organic material might have been delivered by large meteorites; however, it's unlikely that amino concentrations in the oceans could ever have been more than 10-100 pM for all amino acids combined.
Most amino acids will spontaneously degrade over time. There's a window of opportunity that only lasts about 10 million years because in that time all the water in the oceans will pass through hydrothermal vents and the high temperature will destroy most chemicals—including amino acids.
Bada, J. (1991) Amino acid cosmogeochemistry. Phil trans. R. Soc. Lond. 333:349-358.
[Hat Tip: Pharyngula]
De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a Latin phrase which indicates that it is socially inappropriate to say anything negative about a (recently) deceased person. Sometimes shortened to nil nisi bonum, the phrase derives from the sentence "de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est" and is variously translated as "Speak no ill of the dead", "Of the dead, speak no evil", "Do not/ Don't speak ill of the dead" or, strictly literally, "Of the dead, nothing unless good".There are times when social conventions need to be violated. This is one of those times.
[Hat Tip: Why Evolution Is True]
First, Larry points out that arguments about the existence of God require one to take a position on fairies. One can only be agnostic about gods to the extent one is agnostic about fairies. My previous argument that this is comparing unlikes has, in one fell swoop, been demolished! Of course, there must be other reasons for thinking that we can rule fairies out of contention (let us call them faeries to avoid confusion) which do exist but are undetectable. It cannot be the principle that “if it is unscientific it is irrational” for that would be the positivist presumption and that would be unscientific. I know I am wrong about positivism here, because Dan Hicks pointed out that some positivists weren’t positivists about everything. So positivism is never self-defeating, even when the positivist presumption is applied by some to everything.
Larry must have other reasons for showing that faeries do not exist – other than being uninterested in what some people claim; this, as Larry must appreciate, is not about what I the reasoner think is true, but about what others who make these claims must be called. I look forward to him enlightening me on this.
atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings [dictionary.com]The first definition defines an atheist as someone who maintains that gods do not exist. The second defines an atheist as someone who is not a theist.
atheist: a person who does not believe in the existence of God or gods [Oxford Dictionaries]
Effective population size is "the number of breeding individuals in an idealized population that would show the same amount of dispersion of allele frequencies under random genetic drift or the same amount of inbreeding as the population under consideration."The effective population size is always less than the actual population (Ne < N). Sometimes it's a lot less. In most vertebrates, for example, the long-term effective population size is calculated to be about 10,000.
1. The reason we focus on nobility isn't because they are more important, genealogically, than the 8,000 other soldiers at the battle. It's because we don't have any records of those other potential ancestors.
2. This doesn't mean that all of the alleles in the other 20 individuals were lost because many of them could have been passed down from siblings, aunts, uncles etc.
Let me be quite clear on this: I do not think there is evidence for a God, as an agnostic. And I certainly think there is evidence against many stories and characterisations of gods. But, and this seems to be the point that strong “skeptics” like Hecht cannot get into their heads, not all. So long as there is a formal possibility that some gods might exist, and no general evidence against it, the rational thing to do is hold off judgement on the (empirically permissible) claims. So Thor doesn’t exist, but Leibniz’s deity might.Like me, John, doesn't believe in gods—he is not a theist. But he is not an a-theist in spite of the fact that if you followed him around for several days you could not distinguish his bevavior from that of any other non-believer.
Gobind was so excited that he was going to start a lab of his own. He looked at the map of Canada, saw where Vancouver was for the first time, and off he went ...In 1960 he moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison (United States) and in 1970 he moved again, this time to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (United States). Gobind Khorana died in Concord, Massachusetts on Wednesday, November 9, 2011.
