Posts by ChrisW
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If history of science teaches us anything it is that today's quackery is tomorrow's orthodoxy. Actually I think that's one of history's lessons, period.
In a literary or frivolous context perhaps this might be legitimate and due allowance made, but at the end of a serious essay on scientific method? I don't think that's really what you meant, given your prior discussion of your own approach. How about an alternative way of putting it, that two of history's lessons are that from among the broad range of today's quackery only a modest proportion will emerge as tomorrow's orthodoxy.
The corollary would be not so much that quackery per se must be tolerated, but that one should be careful in assessing non-orthodox practice, insofar as it does no harm, as there may well be some good stuff in there.
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Gidday Ross - Looks like a lonely thread over there, strung along by a few interesting posts over 6 months. Obviously Giovanni nailed the answer to the header 'Should creation be taught in schools?' in the first word :-)
Instead we have here the more stimulating proposition - Miracles just rate better? There must be something appealing to many in that, as applied to creation/evolution as elsewhere. But also perhaps there's a common reaction against what Ben a few days ago expressed as -
I think orthodox science is extremely arrogant in a way that serves no good purpose except for the perpetuation of it's own colossal power.
But Ben - surely an overstatement or two there? What power science has derives from the evidence of its power to explain and accurately predict the physical and biological world, much/most of the time.
The exceptions are really important too, of course, hence the focus on them, using the ongoing processes of science as well as intuition and ....
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Indeed the homeopathic connection in Mrs B. Shears' recipe is obscure. Could it be related to her husband not coming back from the war, but popping up singing vaudeville in Liverpool in the 1960s (for the benefit of Mr Kite)?
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Ross - long ago when this thread was young you asked whether anyone had read Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth" - well yes I have. It's clearly another of his very significant books, good reading, full of interest throughout, but I have to admit to being just a little disappointed in it. After The God Delusion and especially The Ancestor's Tale, I had very high expectations, not quite met.
I think this is because it seems like he wasn’t trying as hard as he could to systematically and absolutely nail the arguments establishing the overall case that evolution is a fully reliable fact, how compellingly strong are the individual strands of evidence as well as their mutual reinforcement. His sub-title "The evidence for evolution" describes it well - he presents the various lines of evidence and some of the context and arguments around them, does it well, but leaves it at that. (Although there is a wonderful last chapter expanding and expounding on the last two sentences of Darwin's Origin " ... There is grandeur in this view of life ..." line by line.) Perhaps a conscious decision to take a lowish-key approach, dialling back the stance that some inevitably characterise as arrogance and worse, of him personally and science in general.
He's more assertive in his very positive review of Jerry Coyne's book "Why Evolution is True" published earlier this year for Darwin's 200th birthday. This (his review) includes such gems as "Evolution is true in whatever sense you accept it as true that New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere". It is a substantial review of the context, as well as of the book itself, and I think he might be acknowledging generously that Coyne has done the sharper job of demonstrating why evolution is true and how we know it.
Has anyone around here read 'Why Evolution is True' then?
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multiple axes
Thats the bugger. I have a different picture of spectrum in my minds eye now.
Me too - cutting-edge research into the sexuality spectrum reveals, in image and supporting text, more axes than you can shake a stick at, and more diversity than plain vanilla axes that's for sure.
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Aren't the reflected waves potentially as dangerous anyway ?
Reflected waves potentially dangerous if they were big enough, as for example in the sloshing around in Wellington Harbour in 1855 scenario, but they're not in this case. Could be unusual surging currents around harbours and headlands if local sea level changes 30 cm in a few minutes, but no need to move stock to higher levels, unless they were out grazing the mudflats.
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you know I think the data on the tsunami warning map is running an hour or so later than real time ....
Either that or Civil Defense is about to get very embarrased.
On the map North Cape is just starting to flickerAs suggested earlier (10.36), I'm pretty sure the waves then being recorded at Raoul Island at heights of up to c.60 cm or so will be those reflected back off the various islands of Samoa, hence the lag time relative to models based on expected first wave direct from source, and their irregularity. These will be the waves arriving now in NZ further attenuated to quarter that size.
That there were no clearly detectable waves at either of the two tsunami gauges on Raoul (Fishing Rock on north coast, Boat harbour on south) at around the expected time should have given confidence no damaging tsunami was heading in our direction - and the arrival of the small reflected waves later is good to confirm that the system's working perfectly. But not being interpreted as such by Civil Defence which was e.g. still recommending evacuation of *western* Waikato coast even after non-arrival of tsunami at East Cape let alone Raoul. Why have such a brilliant system of gauges, but not use them?
Tsumamis being asymmetric, waves of very different strength in different directions from source, is normal, depending on the specifics of how the seafloor moved at source. In this case the main waves were apparently directed north and east rather than SW.
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The NZ stuff looks like noise and is late. The absence of any tsunami a couple of hours ago at Raoul Island on track between source and NZ should have been enough to indicate no risk here, I would have thought. Waves much less than a metre arriving at raoul in last few minutes will be waves reflected back off Samoa rather than directly from source, a good indicator.
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The tsunami was generated on the eastern side of the Tonga-Kernadec trench and has that deep water wave-guide to speed it towards East Cape and down the eastern coast of the country beyond there. But it has to cross volcanically lumpy shallower seafloor to get to western Bay of Plenty and Auckland - that's why earlier arrival time in Wellington. Nothing at East Cape yet 5 mins after predicted arrival time.
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I meant the time of wave travel to Samoa, and thought the non-observation of waves there half an hour later (or non-reporting at least, and given PagoPago is on that SW side of the island towards the epicentre) was evidence enough that there was no major tsunami generated.