Balta1701

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Aug 15, 2006 -> 02:18 PM) I do not mean to say that we cannot learn anything from the evidence that we have. I just have a different viewpoint that the time scale may be different. In which case, if I am wrong, then take this opportunity to give me a lesson in how you come upon the assertions that you make that such and such took place millions or billions of years ago. I actually do want to understand this better. How do we know that it was such a large scale that it took for these geological events to take place? Is it all based upon radio-carbon dating? How do we know that radio-carbon dating works now in exactly the same way that it worked thousands of years ago? If I remember correctly, that dating comes from isotopes losing protons? at a certain rate. How do we know that the rate is the same now as it was thousands of years ago? This is a very detailed, but I think very interesting question, that gets at the heart of a lot of how Geology works. First, to make one thign clear...it is not "radio-carbon" dating that is used by most geologists working on the age of the earth. A better word would be "Radio-metric" dating. Radiocarbon dating refers to one specific type of radiometric dating, using Carbon-14's decay to Nitrogen 14 as the radioactive isotope. Radiometric dating uses one of any number of isotopic systems. Basically, the principles of radiometric dating are this: you take a radioactive isotope with a known decay constant that you can measure in the laboratory today. You measure the amount of that isotope, you measure the amount of its daughter products, you deal with the few occasional other problems that come up which can cause difficulties in making a measurement, and then do a little math, and it produces an age. Now, I'm standing there with an age on a rock calculated with radiometric dating. How exactly can I have confidence in this age is the question we're going for. Well, there are a vast number of things one should look at to see if an age makes sense. First, I mentionned a second ago that there are a non-trivial number of isotopic systems available to geologists. This is quite true. 2 isotopes of Uranium, Thorium, Samarium, Strontium, Potassium, Tungsten, and some others I'm forgetting all have radioactive isotopes that decay a measureable amount during geologic time. And, each of them has a different decay constant, so they will decay by different amounts in the same amount of time. Some of them are orders of magnitude apart, but still usable. So, if I want more confidence in that date, one simple procedure is to test more than one system. In fact, for determining the ages of the oldest rocks on earth and many meteorites, this is exactly what is done, as the Uranium-thorium-lead system had 3 independent chronometers all working - Uranium 235, Uranium 238, and Thorium 232, all of which decay at different rates. So, if I were to test all 3 of these molecular clocks, and come up with the same age, and maybe some other research group does one of the other systems on the same rocks, and they come up with the same age, then there are 2 possibilities: either the ages are representing the age of the rocks, or the decay constants of those isotopes, which seemingly have no relationship to each other, are all changing in an exact and uniform way. So, can I make an argument that the decay constants do not change? Yes I can, because in addition to these very long lived isotopes, there are also many short lived isotopes which will decay completely on human timescales. If I got the same age on these rocks through different systems but the decay constants were changing to screw me up, then the decay constants on an isotope that lives short enough should change within timescales that are measureable in the laboratory. There are isotopes that if you put a block of the stuff on your lab table will completely disappear within seconds, minutes, hours, years, decades, centuries, millenia, and so on. And on all of these, when they've been measured, the decay constant has actually been a constant. The decay rates vary between isotopes, but there has been no variation witnessed in any decay constant, and certainly not a variation that could somehow completely confuse different chronometers in an ordinary way. But, I would also say that this is still not enough. If I want these clocks to be useful, they also have to tell me something that fits in with information I can gather from other sources. For example, if I'm looking through a large rock outcrop of sedimentary layers, and I can tell that nothing has happened to them in terms of deformation, if the rocks span a large enough time, I should be able to look at the rocks on the top of the sequence and find them younger than those on the bottom. I should be able to take rocks from the top of the Grand Canyon and find that they are much younger than those at the bottom of the canyon. I should date meteorites and find that they're younger than the earth. I should be able to establish a consistent story. Geologists can in fact do a lot of work without a specific timeline; that's how things were done in geology for a century, just taking the timeline as it is set in the rocks without knowing exactly how long each period lasted. When radiometric dating came along, all of a sudden, the numbers it produced fit quite well with the story that the rocks themselves told. In many cases it illuminated new facts, but it did not completely overturn everything that had been done in geology previously. Rocks that looked very old through field methods turned out to be very old through other methods. Give you a great example here...through looking at fossils, we can trace roughly the evolution of many lineages throughout geologic history. We can say roughly at what time the first fish appeared, the first land plants, the first reptiles, etc. With radiometric dating, we can then put an exact age on the dates of those boundaries. So, let's say that I'm a scientists and I want to look for evidence of when fish first started to develop legs and colonize the land. I go and I learn when we see the first fish fossils, I see when we find the first amphibian fossils, and I say to myself "hmm, there's a few million years in here where this transition would have to happen." So what do I do? I try to find a unit somewhere on earth which gives radiometric dates in that gap where I think the fossil should be. I go there, take some samples, and what happens? I find a fishapod fossil...a fossil with some fish characteristics, and some amphibian characteristics, right where it should be based on every chronometer, geologic tool, and so forth. There are many other details I'm leaving out here, of course, as this question basically covers all of geology. But I think you get the idea...the datings make sense, the predictions of those datings make sense, and the whole thing fits together as a package. We have tools to calculate what temperature volcanic eruptions took place at, we look at older rocks, and we find things that erupted several hundred degrees hotter than any current eruption on earth, exactly as we'd predict as the earth cools off. We figure that the Earth and moon should have formed from meteorites and should give younger dates, and they do. And so on. That's basically the story. We're not just doing this or making claims based on one single line of evidence, but we're in fact telling a story. It's a story based on centuries of evidence of a great many types, with each step built on top of the work of others. It is science done exactly the way chemists do it, biologists do it, physicists do it.

Forgive me for launching into this debate, but at some level, I feel I'm fighting for my life, but I guess since I am a geologist, on some level that makes sense. :-) You are fully correct that as you go back in time, you're going to understand less, and the margins of error are going to go up (at least on most measurements). If I date a rock that is 4.2 billion years old and a rock that is 1 billion years old, the rock that is 4.2 billion years old is likely to have a higher margin of error on the measurement, because in 4.2 billiion years there are more things that can have affected the measurement. However, just because the margin of error goes up on many measurements, and because we don't have as many rocks from the Precambrian as we do from the more recent epochs, I don't think we should just throw up our hands and say "oh, it's all just garbage." We can't tell every single thing that happened on every single day throughout Earth history, but there is an enormous amount of data in what we do have available. We just have to know where to look, and learn correctly how to look. Yes, as things change, environments get different, and modern analogs don't work as well. However, there is also knowledge to be gained from learning why modern analogs don't work for certain events in the past. For example, until about 2.5 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million years, the people on my floor can tell you better numbers), there was virtually no oxygen in the earth's atmosphere. We know this, because we can see the time that significant changes happen in the rock record, and we can interpret what caused those changes based on, again inductive reasoning (in this case, you go from having anoxic sediments to oxygenic sediments in places, isotopic systems shift worldwide, there may be a snowball earth event, etc.). So even when one of those massive shifts happens, we can learn about when the shift happened, why it happened, and what it changed on earth, by looking at the various lines of evidence which we do have. No, we don't have every detail sorted out yet, and we don't understand every little nuance. But what you seem to be arguing is that because we don't understand every single detail, we can learn nothing from the evidence we do have, or that we shouldn't trust the things that we can learn, and I would argue that those lines of thought just are not true.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Aug 15, 2006 -> 12:48 PM) It is with statements like this that make people with my beliefs out to be ignorant or stupid, etc. Apparently, if you believe in a young earth (something that we cannot go back in time and check), you believe that cars and planes work by magic. There are some people who believe that science can tell us an incredible amount about how things work, and it can even give theories and glimpses into the past of a naturalistic way that things may have occurred in the past. That does not mean that we believe that is the only explanation. Dr. Abram's is being told that he cannot hold a certain public position because of what he believes even if he is able to separate his beliefs from what is taught. To me that is very wrong. To try to avoid the insult above...here's the real key point. All of science is based on inductive reasoning. You see one thing happen over and over, and eventually you generalize from that specific case to say that this is what happens under all circumstances. For example, if I press with a certain amount of force on a known mass, I produce a known amount of acceleration. Or if 2 bodies have known masses, they attract each other with a known force. And so on. Now, I can't go backwards in time or forwards in time either and see for certain that 30 years from now Gravity won't just decide to triple in intensity. But I can say that if you accept the principle of inductive reasoning, that one can learn general truths about the universe from observing more limited cases, and that those general truths are always applicable, then I have no reason to conclude that there will be an unexpected defiation. Biology and geology work the same way as all of the other varieties of inductive reasoning in science. For example, with something like radioactive dating, one of the main tools of determining the age of the earth: I go into a lab, and I can take radioactive elements and measure their decay rate. I can see how many atoms of Uranium decay into daughter products in one timespan, and I can see how much of those daughter products I wind up with. I can do this over and over and over and get the same result, whether it's in 1945, it's a Tuesday, it's a hot day, etc. I can then generalize this into a set of rules...based on the amount of radioactive decay that has happened, I can tell how long something has been sitting there decaying. So, when I go out to the field and find a hundred meteorites, and use the same technique on them, they all give ages of around 4.5 billion years. When I look at very old rocks on earth, I find they're slightly younger, a little over 4.2 billion years, which is what one would sort of expect to see as the earth takes time to join together and cool. So now, here's the point of all of this...you've accepted that your car goes because you put gas in it and every time that gas undergoes a chemical reaction to give off a finite amount of energy. You've accepted that the Earth orbits the sun because there is a defined law that explains that behavoir and you can see it with your own eyes. The principle of inductive reasoning is one of, if not the single foundation block of modern science. But when, in this specific case, every single scrap of evidence conflicts with what is written in a piece of religious text, the entire set of evidence, all the rules, and everything else is discounted. Inductive reasoning, and in other words, every single principle of scientific inquiry, is thrown away. So if a person then says that in this specific case, he feels that inductive reasoning is wrong, and that there is no reason to believe it, then why is he qualified to speak on scientific issues in general? If a person throws out the entire foundation of science in one case, why should anyone accept that person's opinion on science in other cases?

QUOTE(Steff @ Aug 15, 2006 -> 11:34 AM) Short period could be from a year to 5. The pros and cons depend on his financial situation. I don't understand why you guys are trying to scare him from an interest only loan Spider, sit down with your potential lender and go over all the options. IOL's are not as bad as they are being made out to be here. Also, WF for a repeat customer is in the low 5% range right now - being a repeat get's you somewhere between .5 to .8 of a point off prime so the rates you quoted do seem a bit high - though I am basing it someone with a high 700 credit score. An interest-only loan makes sense, IMO, if you can expect one of 2 conditions to be prevalent over the term of the loan. 1. Housing prices will increase. If this happens while you're holding the loan, you pay a limited amount in interest, but you sell the house for more than you paid for it after a few years, and thus you pocket the difference between what you paid in interest and the price of the house. And 2. interest rates must stay relatively low, as increasing interest rates would increase the amount of interest you'd pay overall. If you took out an interest only loan in about the year 2000-2001, you'd be in excellent shape right now, as the interest rates at the time were going down rapidly, and housing prices were going through the roof accordingly. However, right now, at least to my eyes, both of those situation are reversing. Right now there is a glut of housing on the market, and that glut may in fact get worse as people who purchased real estate for speculation in the last few years get nervous. Likewise, interest rates are on their way up to counteract inflation. If the price of the town house were to decline, and you were only on an interest-only loan, if you went to sell the house in a few years, you wouldn't have any equity at all built up in order to cover the decrease in price. So if you didn't have extra cash around, you'd be in pretty bad shape, and you'd be out all of the money you spent in interest. An interest only loan is a gamble. In the right circumstances it can be a profitable one. But I think the others who have said that a fixed-rate right now is a good idea are completely correct...build up some equity, lock in rates while they're still relatively low, and if a storm does come in the next few years in the housing market, you'll be in a much better position to weather it.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Aug 15, 2006 -> 10:59 AM) However, I still do believe that the universe was created thousands of years ago and not millions of years ago. I do not think that we can take a strictly uniformitarianistic view of history. I do not believe that the way things are happening now is exactly the same as they behaved years and years ago. How is it that one of the main rules of nature is that things tend to move toward disorder, except for this one case, evolution? The universe expands, we and everything around us age and decay, but somehow life has bucked that trend? You're fundamentally misinterpreting the second law of thermodynamics. The second law says that an isolated system will move towards an equilibrium by maximizing its disorder, or entropy. The Universe can theoretically be treated as an isolated system, if one assumes that all energy/mass in the universe is constant from the creation of the universe (probably a safe assumption, but I for one sure can't prove it.) However, the Earth is by no means a closed system. The earth through time has had a massive input of energy, mainly from the sun. When you input energy into that system, some of that energy is used in the formation of complexity, just in the same way that cleaning up and ordering a messy bedroom takes energy. If one were to treat the entire solar system as an isolated system, which is a much better approximation but is still not entirely true, then because of the massive expenditure of energy by the sun, the solar system itself is moving towards a minimum energy/maximum entropy equilibrium state. The growth of complexity on Earth is just one way of releasing/using the energy pumped into the Earth by the sun and a few other sources.

The pitching staff is starting to get on a roll. Javy, keep that going.

Sitting down the right field line in the mid-90's, bout half way up. Lined drive shot into the seats off of the bat of Craig Grabeck. I'm ready to catch the thing, then the ball nails the beer in the hand of a guy like 5 rows in front of me. The beer goes all over me, blinds me, and somehow my dad winds up catching the ball before it knocks me unconscious.

Another nice thing tonight? We found a way to give the big 3 in the bullpen a much needed day off after a tough series over the weekend. They needed what the offense and Garland put together last night.

Hopefully Cotts will come around before the end of the year. If he does find some sort of groove again...then I don't know how anyone's going to score on our bullpen. The additions KW has made to it this year are just beautiful.

QUOTE(Felix @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 05:25 PM) Crede is insulted Crede only hits .333 against Redman. Dye hits .353, and Konerko hits .357 (with a cute 1.329 OPS) Actually, those numbers all just went up for Paulie didn't they.

If we're going to put a lot of runs on the board today, it's these next 2 guys who will do it.

By the way, that first inning is a prime example of why Dye should be in the 3 hole, if nothing else when we're facing lefties. Iguchi and Thome just have not hit lefties well this year.

2 outs in 5 pitches. I'll say this for Podsednik, at least he usually sees 3 or more pitches per at bat.

I was saying before the Deadline that the Mets were mad to try to make a playoff run with that rotation, and I'm still saying it.

Here's a frightening stat line. SPLIT AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB HBP SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS August 49 3 7 3 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 .143 .143 .204 .347 .143 BA with a .143 OBP? Man, that's rough. Anyone care to guess who I'm pointing at? (The answer is Ichiro)

QUOTE(beck72 @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 10:53 AM) In the short term though, I could see a trade for Coco Crisp. Freddy Garcia could be bait. The Red sox not winning the World Series this yr could go for Torii Hunter in CF and few SP's are available, which they need. IMO, Crisp's 2006 yr is a fluke. And Crisp should rebound to his 2004 and 2005 yrs--.297/.344/.446 and .300/.345/.465 lines playing his normal LF. Crisp would give the sox speed, defense and top of the order hitting. You know, out of all the potential "Leadoff hitter/LF" names to come up, that one might actually make the most sense, in that he could be available, the Red Sox have several outfielders already, they need SP, and have money to take on a veteran.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 10:56 AM) Those 6 games in MIN should worry everyone. Nobody said it'd be easy to repeat.

Brantley also said earlier this year that if he had to choose 1 player to start a team with, it would be Papelbon.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/rpi?sortColumn=sos http://teamrankings.com/mlb/27powerratings.php3

So, I didn't think this was worth a new thread, but it's sort of interesting...Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have started up his own blog. This will seemingly make him the only blogger in Iran not under threat of arrest for communicating with the west.

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 09:39 AM) I just wonder how much the Sox are willing to spend on a new LF or SS when Uribe and Pods are fairly cheap. Crede is due a raise and all the escalating contracts will go up next year, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. At least based on his current production, I'm not sure that in 2 years, Uribe will still be considered cheap to my eyes.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 09:15 AM) All fair points. They also have a ton of position prospects at every position in their system, however that means it's going to take a steep price of young pitching to get him. Yup. Which is why everything said thus far has been..."You want Crawford? It's Ervin Santana + a couple more. Or it's Brandon McCarthy plus a couple more." And so on, depending on who's asking. They have no obvious need to trade him, they're not going to win the AL East for a couple more years, so they can hold out for another Kazmir and even their fans can't complain, because it's the right move.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 09:10 AM) I don't know why Crawford would be available, isn't he signed at a fair contract for a player of his calibur through like 2010? The whole idea behind Crawford being available I believe is that a.) He's not going to be resigned by Tampa if he hits the FA Market, b.) his value in a trade is very high around the entire league right now, c.) Tampa isn't going to be ready to compete in the AL until a few years down the road, i.e. right around when Crawford is looking at leaving as a FA, and d.) They have a lot of other potential outfield talent heading up through their system.

This of course is all the fault of a guy 2 buildings over. Interestingly, he's walking around with a broken ankle right now. Supposedly another professor stepped on it awkwardly by his pool a few weeks back.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 14, 2006 -> 08:59 AM) I'd like to see Mack starting in LF next year. Maybe even this year. Then let whomever matures out of AA and AAA come in at a reasonable pace - no need to rush them. Mack has 40 more OBP points, plays better D, has a better arm, has good speed, can bunt, BB and K about the same as Pods, and hustles like hell. Yeah, I know, he's not done well against lefties (.279 OBP), but Pods is just as bad (.281), and Mack hasn't gotten to see many of them yet. If we had a righty who could also play LF...Mack would make an ideal platoon partner out there.