From all of us at Crossfit One World, thanks for coming out!!! It was awesome!

I have always really been into working out, I have competed in cross country, track, soccer, and triathlons. I was also on Texas A&M's Sandhurst team last year. Since I started doing crossfit ademently about 3 months ago and dabbled for a few months prior, I have seen more gains in strength, endurance , speed, power, and flexibility than ever before. I have also as a side not got more ripped than I ever was when doing weight lifiting even though that was not what i was shooting for. Some people may say crossfit doesnt work but I'd say they haven' pushed themselves hard enough, or it was too much for them to handle. I still get my butt kicked reguarly to the point of exhaustion by the wod's. So let others talk and let us who are willing and not afraid to push ourselves reap the results of crossfit. Whoop!!

"have also as a side not got more ripped than I ever was when"

there should be no "no"

have also as a side not got more ripped than I ever was when"

there should be no "not"

sorry

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7137290

Get SERIOUS!

I really could have used some global warming on my 10K run this morning.

Anyone out there own one of these Iron Woody "Kettle Grips"?

http://www.ironwoodyfitness.com/kettle-grips.php

It's basically a kettlebell handle that you can attach regular plates to to adjust the weight, I was considering buying one instead of a kettle bell set (b/c of the $), was wondering how they compare.

#2 ask him to do Linda in under 40 minutes. 'nuff said.

I was wondering how I could do kipping pullups, considering that the only pullup bars at my gym are either attached to the wall, or are on the power rack, which is too short for a swing at my height (6'2").

Curtis, you are blessed with a wonderful child. The patience and understanding that you take away from this relationship are skills that we should all be envious of. I pray for the day you hear the word Daddy, up until now I took it for granted. It seems that every day I am peppered with Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I never realized how wonderful it was.

Jim

FYI...

Poster #2 is some lame-assed troll that shows up every few months. You'll also see the same moron posting as "nivek" or sometimes a variation of "Kevin *", etc. (two posts by said asshat on the 070208 rest day). Look for the telltale email address of SMSUL* or the consistently tired and recycled blithering along the lines of "I'm getting ready to start CF" or "I asked so-and-so about CF and they said...". Idiot has been around for quite some time, every post is a backhanded slap at CF.

Hey jerkoff...get some new material.

Talking about global warming is like talking about ADHD. Many (lay)people have a very strongly held opinion that is based solely on their own ideology rather than any real knowledge of the subject.

Interesting article though and it should provide some interesting responses.

I was somehow able to miss the last 3 wods...back at it on Tuesday!

Comment #2 kidweba
Sounds like your head trainer just put himself up for a challenge. Why don't you laugh back and ask HIM to put his comments to the test by DOING the xfit warm up and work out of the day for the next month! WATCH him if you can,or better VIDEO him! and I garantee he meets MR Pukie,or his cousin,RHABDO,in the first week! Then, ask him again, what he thinks! ;-)

"Faster than a coed's heart at an Al Gore lecture"

Is there any truth to that? Somebody please comment

Matt G. Where have you been? I've missed your WOD posts.

#16, James C.,

No.

Curtis Bro, I wish you and your family all the best, like Jim said "you are blessed with a wonderful child". Hang in there!

Question to anybody What would cause Curtis' injury? how to prevent it?

first of all, Curtis you are blessed with a beautiful son. That short film brought tears to my eyes. I am a social worker who has been involved with advocacy for people with special needs (incl one special young man with Fragile X) for several years. We all have so many lessons to learn from their simplicity and radiant kindness. How can we all help you to raise more money for research? As you said every little bit is a baby step to that "Daddy."

On global warming:
Here on the Great Lakes during the 1960's water levels began increasing, several homes were washed away, that led to talk of diverting water from the Lakes to the Mississippi. For the past few years Lake levels have receded and rich yacht owners are upset that thier deep water docks are now shallow water docks. [i can still carry my windsurfer right to the waters edge teehee].
Are we fu@k!ng up the planet? Maybe, maybe not.
Don't get me wrong i own a Prius and walk to work often, i use compact fluorescents but in the big picture it's more for my conscience than any real benefit.
The older i get and learn more, the more i realize we don't know $h!+. As a medic just 20 years ago we gave drugs we now know are very harmfull. Look at your profession and tell me anything that is known for certain.
Should we take steps to decrease our negative effects on our planet? of course...
but the sky is not falling, and in twenty years we may realize that we avoided the ice age predicted twenty years ago. Hope i'm around to see how it turns out.

ratt

Matt G., throwin' it down. Nice.

No time for climate change debate today.
On a slightly related note, I always get a kick out of saying "global warming my a**" whenever it gets really bitter up here in New England. Couple of weeks ago it was just brutal and we ran outside - nobody saying sh*t about global warming that day, with snot dripping down their faces. (This is not science, folks, nor even an opinion - just having fun.) It may be we're responsible, but then again, it may not. I haven't had enough time to research the issue for myself and am unwilling to commit to one or the other yet.

Kurtis - Crummy luck blowing an achilles, man. Keep up all of your hard work. Your cause is noble. All of the best to your family.

Probably the best part about crossfit is the sense of community surrounding it (which might be better than the forging of elite fitness). any time I crossfit with a group of friends, I feel some kind of bond for having suffered through it together. and that also carries over to the online community even though i have never meet any of the other posters. I am reminded of that when I see Curtis and the challenges he faces with his son, and the way the crossfit community, if nothing else, offers encouraging words. Its post like #20 and a few others that make me proud to X-fit

Curtis and Laurie rock. Casey is a lucky kid to have such wonderful parents.

I am no climatologist, but I am wary when so many people claim such a high degree of certainty in such a complex matter. Science and certainty are not friends. A true scientist must be willing to quickly change his hypothesis in the face of undermining counterevidence. The Al Gore documentary strikes me more as propaganda than anything else. Dumbing down such complex science to inflame the hearts of the masses may be useful, but sacrifices precision and accuracy for the sake of compelling entertainment.

That said, I really have no idea whether there is human-induced global warming or not. It does not seem that reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, given their myriad other negative effects, would be a bad idea. There's no reason to cause more pollution than necessary or to give Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or Iran any extra funding. The question is what's the cost of changing our main sources of energy versus the cost of maintaining the status quo. That's a question I certainly don't have an answer to.

#2,
First of all, the head trainer at your gym has obviously never tried a muscle-up. Second, fitness and "getting ripped" are two seperate things entirely. I have friends that can bench twice their body weight, but when are you ever going to need to lift over 400 pounds straight upward while lying on your back (I don't plan on a car falling on top of me anytime soon)? Plus, these same people are the ones in my therapy clinic after they tear their rotator cuff muscles. Even with all that in mind, the bottom line is; train like a gymnast, you'll start to look like one.
By the way, I've showed Crossfit to 3 trainers at my gym and all of them now do the WOD.

i really dont get this article. it sounds to me like hes trying to slam environmentalists more than hes trying to argue against global warming.

yes...the climate changes naturally every couple decades, and even more so every couple hundred years. but to argue that we havent done anything in the way of environmental destruction is ridiculous. i agree some people are a little more alarmist than they need to be...but how is keeping a close eye on our environment a bad idea?! how will making conscious decisions to not destroy our planet cripple our economy?!

it always seems that these people are so focused on arguing the exact opposite of whatever democrats or environmentalists say that they dont look at the big picture. i honestly think that if the democrats wanted to start a group to prevent killing babies some republican would say it was a bad idea. it just blows me away...

#26 said...
"i honestly think that if the democrats wanted to start a group to prevent killing babies some republican would say it was a bad idea. it just blows me away..."

We'll have another ice age before a Dem seriously proposes a group like that.

There are a lot of anecdotes in that article, but very little science. I have yet to see a single peer-reviewed scientific study that credibly disputes climate change. Op-ed pieces and magazine articles don't count.

Yet more right-wing flavored bs from xfit.

Great, challenging workouts here and seemingly a lot of good people involved in xfit, but all the right-wing propoganda is laughable.

The myth of global warming is yet another scare tactic from the Left to promote a big-government agenda. The environmentalist movement is anti-capitalism and anti-American to the core. As author Christopher Horner points out, if global warming was really as serious as the scaremongerers suggest, no amount of regulations or sacrifices would eradicate the effects, thus providing the perfect excuse for greater and greater government intervention.

In 1968, author Paul Ehrlich wrote "[t]he battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." He also claimed that "U.S. life expectancy will drop to 42 years by 1980 due to cancer epidemics." The solution, of course, was government legislation to implement massive birth-control programs. Now he is an ardent supporter of global warming.

With the 1970s came the global cooling scare. The pending doom was summarized in an April 28, 1975 Newsweek article titled "The Cooling World": "[t]he evidence in support of these predictions [of global cooling] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." Sound familiar? At least Newsweek had the integrity to admit that they were "so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future" over three decades after publishing the article.

Unfortunately, the media has yet again jumped on the doomsday bandwagon in the spirit of "act now, ask questions later". We are told that our capitalist-lifestyle is to blame and that drastic measures, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are the only answers to our dire situation. Steven Schneider (an expert on both cooling and warming) explains "[t]o capture the public imagination, we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest." So much for unbiased reporting.

In reality, the only imminent threat is the propaganda being spewed by a few self-loathing socialists. They would be wise to heed the advice of economist Julian Simon: "As soon as one predicted disaster doesn't occur, the doomsayers skip to another... why don't [they] see that, in the aggregate, things are getting better? Why do they always think we're at a turning point -- or at the end of the road?"

*sigh* Op-ed pieces and magazine articles don't count.

#30

sweet jesus are you kidding me! now being worried about the environment is anti-american. next thing you know theyll be saying vegans are terrorists because they dont eat meat...oh wait they already have. the right wing is f'in insane.

you know what i think is anti-american...taking peoples rights away because of who they love or telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. this entire administration is anti-american...

and your "self loathing socialist" line is the dumbest thing ive ever read. how do you equate environmentalists to that...unreal.

#27

maybe im not reading it right but i hope youre not trying to bring up an abortion argument...my post had nothing to do with that and that is an entirely different issue.

#21 - nicely put.

I very much appreciate Steyn’s and other recent articles by G Will, and Lomberg's challenge to Gore, for the simple fact that they resist the "repeat it til they believe it" approach that the anti-capitalists are using with GW (refer to Jeff G and Barry C's posts in recent rest day discussions regarding brainwashing/cognitive dissonance). Also relevant are John Stossel's cogent observations on the type of person that govt EPA jobs attract; a 'do gooder' type, for example, who's looking for a cause.

Yes, I'm assuming a motive (anti-capitalist agenda), and perhaps that's not relevant to the situation. Noted. Perhaps all the frothing about GW is just random, coming out of the urgency of the situation. I don’t think so. For one thing, the US, UK, and especially Continental Europe's insolvent social programs are far more urgent and threaten human life a lot more than GW. The fact that we have enough time to sit around and fret about SUVs and other red herrings of GW is evidence of the immense power of global 'almost free' trade to create wealth, which is allowing a majority of the 6 billion people alive today to live better than all but the rare upper crust of nobility did in the past. The US, because of our relative economic liberty, benefits the greatest from and is the only force capable of defending the global system of trade that is the greatest wealth creating force of all time. The anti-capitalists (ACs) have to show a 'negative eventuality' equal in magnitude to the goodness that 'global almost free trade' is generating or they do not have a leg to stand on. Europe's experiment of the last 60 years has conclusively proven that governments are not effective tools to organize economic transactions. The ACs had to find a GW like phenomenon with which to fight back. Amazingly, Americans are almost universally ignorant of where their good fortune comes from (AC influence in education?). I doubt that 25% of Americans can answer the question: Why is the US the wealthiest country in the world? Or, how is wealth created? It is the most amazing phenomenon of our time and we don’t even notice it. Because of that, we are vulnerable to killing the ‘golden goose.’

Here's a question: why do we as a entertainment-news consuming culture have more appetite for theories to explain the unexplainable climate fluctuations than the certainty that our govt is insolvent due to un-payable future obligations to government wealth transfer programs (the entering arguments for which were that we had to do them because we could afford to)? We should be hearing about this catastrophe daily - because the financial hindrance these programs are bringing will prevent us from being able to deal with immigration, WMD, GW or anything else. The solvency of our govt is foundational to it completing its primary reason for existence: defense of the nation and its people and their constitution (and by extension preserving the order that allows the global of system of trade to create wealth for all).

The ACs are 'capitalizing' on the fact that many Americans have good intentions but not the determination, time or critical thinking skills to sort through the volume of crap that the anti-capitalists are putting out about GW. They have successfully marketed the phrase "Global Warming" so that when the average good citizen hears it, they hear: The temperature is higher to a statistically significant amount; humans caused it; the negative outcomes will be catastrophic (therefore justifying some loss of human life now to stop more loss of life in the future); humans can stop the changes by government restriction on free human behavior (leading to decreased economic growth and therefore human deaths).

Note the tipper that advocates are attacking anyone who would 'dare' to disagree with the GW assumptions, not unlike the ACs on college campuses who attack anyone who 'dares' to question the politically correct cultural norms that rule those places.

Free people have the absolute right the belief that it's OK to let people die now to save us from the imagined GW catastrophes of tomorrow - but I deeply fear that those people will gain enough control over the govt that they will be able to use the overwhelming power of the federal govt to effect their agenda. It was predicted over 200 years ago based on the unquestionable truth, "power corrupts." The Founders' desired to build a republic which would be powerful enough to defend the rights of the individual without becoming so powerful that it would be the agent by which to take away those same rights. Their effort was an amazing accomplishment, it seems to have almost worked as they intended, it may still do so.

I offer this feeble little bit as a solution. Don't give in to the collectivism, cling to and fight for liberty, demand less govt, do not allow politicians to win elections by subjecting the freedom we've won to the fury of the masses. Demand that our government return to its mission to defend the rights of the individual. Al-Qaeda, WMD, immigration, GW, “health care crisis” … none of these is as great a threat to the way of life that we love as is the continued assumption that governments are the means to create goodness in the world.

Being a meteorologist and having studied climatology and climate change a great deal, I can firmly say that 99% of the comments made by people regarding "global warming" here are baseless and uneducated. Scientists can make a case for or against "global warming". It all depends on what data they want to include and what data they want to ignore. Add on top of that the quality and quantity of reliable data pre 1800's and it's impossible to accurately calculate. Also, when measuring "global" temperatures, you must measure more than just surface temperatures. Temperatures, dewpoints, and etc. must be measured up to the troposphere. Upper atmospheric measuring has only been going on for 50 years or so, with widespread coverage for only the last two decades or so. Only recently have satellites with the capability to measure temperatures "top to bottom" been dedicated to the research of global warming.

In the past 20 years a huge amount of data and research has been compiled from accurate, widespread, and indisputable sources. And that data has shown an average decrease in temperatures globally. So with industrial pollution still growing, the amount of automobiles growing, the population growing, and so on; how is it that temperatures have gone down over the past 20 years? Another random point to ponder: When temperatures increase; evaporation increases. The more evaporation of water; the more water vapor in the air. The more water vapor in the air; the more clouds. More cloud cover leads to a decrease in solar radiation leading to cooler temperatures. That may be dumbing it down a bit, but I think most can grasp that concept. Perhaps mother nature has a way balancing herself out. Leading me to firmly believe that global climate change is cyclical.

Perhaps we should not worry so much about theories that cannot be proven. Global warming is not an immediate threat to our way of life and to the destruction of world. Islamic Extremists and their host countries are. I don't think there is any debate about what a nuclear detonation in New York, LA or London would do to us and the world.

QA4, Afghanistan

#24, 30, 34 - "Hooahh" as they say around here, what a treat to share the company of others who won't drink the GW kool aid.

#32 - being conscientious about the environment is not what we're talking about - it's the utilization of scare monger tactics regarding "chicken little" theories as a means to unending govt restriction of the rights of free men that's unAmerican (if you want to phrase it that way).

Aswab

i posted a couple weeks ago about veganism and how it affects health, fitness, etc. if i came off as having an agenda or secondary motive to anyone i apologize. i only wanted to see what the reaction would be. having converted recently and just finishing the week-long 'ramp up' to crossfit from brand x, i believe it to be just as effective, if not more, as meat based diets in promoting health, and more importantly fitness. this is not an attempt to convert anyone, but more of an experiment for myself. to see if i can eventually compete with the other scores here on such an apparently controversial diet. i am just beginning so it will be a slow process, but this is the first step. next stop, 1000 miles. with respect to everyone...

#36 uke-
Welcome aboard and Good Luck! Happy CrossFiting!

#33 aswab & #34 willski52- excellent posts and as thought provoking as the article.

The article is thought provoking in the sense that it opens us up to the debate of the global warming hype. I say hype because as willski52 stated, we don't have enough reliable data going back far enough to conclude that the current global warming is anything other than a trend in nature. Choas is the only constant thing in nature.

Kate

Howdy,
Work
{Rope Jumpx2100; 10 glitches; 14:23}.
HR 160, 115, 90 during recovery (1:00 intervals).

I think what we have seen is a shameful corruption of science for political purposes. What "scientists" are offering as "proof" are computer models showing what COULD happen. It is not sufficient for a scientific hypothesis to be internally consistent. I have no doubt the models they are using ARE in fact internally consistent, and include all the factors they know to include. However, it is a scientific truism that models are not reality, and that reality, self-evidently, is always more complex. This leads to the obvious conclusion that the only value of models is in their ability to PREDICT real world outcomes.

This is not a demand the public or even in large measure our legislative bodies have made on scientists with respect to Global Warming. The whole philosophy of science is built on the notion of falsifiability. You take a model and predict something. If it doesn't happen, your model has been falsified/shown to be wrong in some respect. If it does happen, then you set up another experiment, then another. If, over time, the model performs well--like Newtonian mathematical models of motion--then they rise to the level of theory, and are generally accepted as useful, and as accurate as any approximation of the external world can be.

It is nothing even approximating science--but VERY closely approximating fraud or at least intellectual bad faith--to use the model as evidence. ALL scientists know, or should know, this. The key issue is: what do the models predict and is it happening? What would falsify this idea? If they predict a bad hurricane season--which many did, post-Katrina--and it doesn't happen, why don't we tell them to be quiet and go back to the drawing board? If part of the Arctic is getting colder, and part of it is getting warmer, what does that mean? If polar bears can be filmed with frowns on their faces, has that proven anything?

The vast bulk of scientists, with respect to other issues that interest me, are more than happy to trot out the psychological phenomena of Confirmation Bias, which simply stated is seeing what you want to see, and not seeing what you don't want to see. Our brains are filters, and we can preset them to remove any data we want, which is why it is perfectly possible for people to spend entire lifetimes believing very strange things.

If the individuals polemicising in favor of mass Global Government want to be considered scientists, they need to publish an unambiguous set of predictions that can be verified over the next 5 years, with respect to global temperature, CO2 levels, and include specifically phenomena that will falsify their hypothesis. If they fail to do that, but continue the histrionic shrieking, they are deserving of nothing but contempt.

Apolloswabbie: excellent post.

#34, also an excellent post. Where would one go to find that data?

It's hard for me to accept an article like this that is supposed to be about global warming but spends most of the time thrashing the government and it's methods for determining the warming. I appreciate the opinions of the people who don't just blindly accept these things and look at the bigger picture or have some sort of educated basis. I'm not going to pretend like I have an educated opinion on this matter but I do agree with comments like #20 and #34 where mother nature and "global" tendancies are pretty good at balancing things out. Yes we may be messing things up and yes we may be able to prevent some of it but looking at the big picture and the lifespan of the planet, not just us humans, changes happen. Species eliminating kind of changes whether we contribute to it or not. I have a feeling that whether or not we're bringing that date closer to us or not with our "warming" habits, the good ol' mother is eventualy going to knock us out. Whether it's by warming, another ice age, or maybe she'll even take another big rock in her side. Things happen that we humans can't control. Especially on the global scale and it's not always a bad thing. The Earth also gave us beautiful things like waterfalls and roses so maybe to help her out we can take a moment and take a sniff.

I also heard somewhere ;) that "nature tends to punish the specialist". Nature has trends (whether we contribute or not) and if we can't keep up then we can't stick around. That's it!

JaredK: You brought up abortion.

The enviromental movement is a dumping ground for Socialists and is funded heavily by Communist front groups such as ANSWER.

It is an anti-capitalist movement that reaks of "the sky is falling"...yet continually wrong generation after generation. Not just partially wrong...devistatingly wrong.

From DDT to Global Cooling to Droughts to wide spread Cancer...this bunch creates and supports a looming disaster in effort to rally anti-capitalist support to push global resources and wealth redistribution.

1/2 are symapthetic wackos, the other half are using the first half.

First of all, I read Mark Steyn's articles every week in the paper and I honestly believe that he works for the administration. If he doesn't, he looks at their website to see how he believes before he picks up his pen. If he has opinions of his own, he doesn't write about them.

He does make a few valid points here specifically regarding the tendancy of GW enthusiasts to make up data supporting their point. Of course, the anti-GW people have no data whatsoever (or if they do, they won't quote a source) to counter the fact that the overall global tempature has never been higher and CO2 levels have never been higher. They just like to point out again and again that 30 years ago some people thought there was global cooling. Talk about "repeat it until they believe it", there it is. As #28 pointed out, the only dispute of GW (seemingly anyway) is done by politicians and op-ed writers.

Is it cause and effect? Maybe the CO2 levels are caused by the global warming. Maybe they are both caused by something entirely different. If we change our behavior now, and it turns out to be bunk, whats the harm?

The anti GW people are more "Chicken Little" about the harm of reducing CO2 emissions than the GW people are about warming. Do you really think that the economy would be completely destroyed because of something like that? Or is it more likely that creative people would start thinking of ways to function without emitting and make a lot of money selling their ideas?

I say we reduce CO2 emissions now while we are figuring it all out. Worst case is we were wrong and spent some money on nothing.

If one truly believes that the current science is inadequate, how can one so fervently defend one side of the argument. If you do, then you are revealing your own political bias, not your "opponents". If you are actually interested in finding the truth, you would encourage research and be willing listen to what it says.

Tony & I made it in 38 minutes, Chris was AWOL!

ran 5k. beautiful weather in N. Fla.

Matt G- Keeping it real! Drop me a line bro.

CCTJoey- Nice bro.

Freddy C- The seminar looked awesome bro, I would of liked to have gone. I can't wait till I can get out west again and check out your place.

Steve HB- Glad to see you're keeping it a family thing.

the utilization of scare monger tactics?...like the ones GW has used to make war and win elections? oops, until the last elections, when even the scare tactics of GW and dick cheney couldn't cover up their vast incompetence...

i dunno about global warming. i am no scientist. but scare tactics happen on the right and the left, and both are despicable.

#43

saying that global temperatures have never been higher is not true. global temperatures have returned to levels reched during the Medieval Warm Period from A.D. 1000 to A.D 1350.

"Overall global tempature has never been higher and CO2 levels have never been higher."

You state this as fact. Upon what basis?

Greenland is currently frozen. It supported agriculture less than a thousand years ago. Please reconcile this with your statement.

Thanks Kate. Paul

This post is going back to the topic of Rower's from last week. I was wondering how anyone can go for extended periods of time on the C2's? My legs go numb limiting my constant workout time to 7-10 min at a time. I have to constantly take breaks to let the blood circulate again. Am i doing something wrong? Any thoughts/hints would be appreciated

PS Ever notice on the weather channel that when we have unseasonably warm temps all you hear about is global warming, but the past few weeks we have had unseasonably cold temps and there hasn't been any reference to global warming...

#43 - "I say we reduce CO2 emissions now while we are figuring it all out. Worst case is we were wrong and spent some money on nothing."

I say that you and I, if we think it is important, should reduce our CO2 emissions and encourage others to do the same.

Important to note that the present frothing about GW is aimed at promoting govt actions which will reduce productivity, waste, reduce economic growth, decrease individual rights in direct opposition to the purpose of the govt's existence - based on anxiety over 'chicken little science.'

Man, am I glad tomorrow is a rest day (Tomorrow 'cause I'm on the other side of the globe and a day behind) - my lower back and hammies are killin' me! I'll be lucky if I can walk tomorrow - will have to do some good stretching before I hit the sack tonight.

Freddy, Brad, Zvi, James, Jolie, Mike and everyone else at One World,
You have a great facility and are an equally great crew. Thanks for the hospitality and I look forward another at your facility.

Just wanted to thank those in charge of the videos. I just got a mac and appreciate the mov files for the exercises. Keep them coming.

KIZ and I went for the 1000 lb club at the gym today.

KIZ:405 lb DL (tied PR); 250 lb bench (PR), 350 lb squat, total 1005
MurphIZ 500lb DL (PR); 315 lb bench (tied PR); 385 lb Squat, total 1200.

Both of us off on max squat today but happy with PR deadlifts. Only time we ever bench is "Linda" or "Lynne"

"You could take every dime spent by every government and NGO and eco-group to investigate "climate change" and spend it on Internet porn instead, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to what the climate will be in 2050."

Best line EvAr!!!

On a serious note, one month ago I started my planche progressions with a 2 second frog stand. Last night I hit a record with 45 seconds! Not only that but I am up to 3 HSPU's and can almost hold a free handstand!

Back Squats today.

First link does not seem to work--It does not take me to the article, and I can't find the article.

Back later to read and post comments after I give the article on GW a serious read.

Did the last 2 days in one scaled back.

25 20" bench jumps
25 35lb db swings
25 sit up
25 45 barbell cleans
25 back extension and 1 mile on the bike

Did 135x6 reps and 185x 9 reps
No time forgot to wear a watch today. Great feeling in the legs. Thanks to everyone on thier positive feed back on this site.

Went to the Cert at One World and had a fantastic learning experience. Thanks to EVERYBODY. Hosts, coaches, trainers, other Level 1s.

If your thinking about it, do it.

One word of advice to other 'backyard CrossFitters;'
You can't get the form on everything just from film and reading. Some yes, but you are probably learning some bad habits that will keep you from your potential like I did. I've only done 6 workout in CF gyms before this Cert in 21 months of WODs. Professional coaching really makes a difference.

Hey guys, this is my first post but watching the video on Little Casey was inspiring. I have been working out with weights for about 17 years but only 5 months with Crossfit and I am completely hooked.
I was wondering if there was a way to make donations to Curtis and his wife. I am sure every little bit would help.
Thanks in advance

I don't believe in "statistics" as they can be altered or based on ridiculous surveys, or selective information. I just heard recently that the city where I live is 5th on the list of "the most overweight city." That was based on how many fast food restaurants we have in relationship to the population.

A few months ago, a "report" was released that stated that Arizona ranked last in the nation in education. That particular study was done by a textbook company, that based the information on how much money was spent on their particular textbooks.

I think you know where I am going with this.

Sometimes, here in AZ, we have very hot summers.
Sometimes, Januarys are colder than normal.

I don't think we need to overanalalize. It is what it is.

JMM #28, and whomever it may concern:

JMM said, “I have yet to see a single peer-reviewed scientific study that credibly disputes climate change.”

Of course not!

The accusation is that peer reviewed journals on global warming are, whether intentionally or through incompetence, committing a fraud on the public.

You offend logic by relying on the same peer-reviewed science, including the IPCC reports, as evidence of its legitimacy.

The peer-reviewed science may be used to establish consistency. However, it fails this test, too. Examples on request.

Casey you are one lucky kid to have such wonderful parents.

Curtis, I have experienced you injury myself! I relived my moment of injury hearing that pop. Take care of yourself, it will take time, but you will be back to full functionality soon!

Was going to stay away from the Global Warming debate, today. Then I came across this article and wanted to share. This is what scientific experimentation offers to the GW argument.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

The key difference is experimentation versus computer modelling. One is reproducable and observable while the other is an "educated" guesstimate. Both are susceptible to human error.

The bottom line, the universe is an extremely complex system. It is the height of arrogance to belive the world revolves around us.

Oh, and this one has a diagram even.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/11/warm11.xml

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website...

“For the Northern Hemisphere summer temperature, recent decades appear to be the warmest since at least about 1000AD, and the warming since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1000 years. Older data are insufficient to provide reliable hemispheric temperature estimates. Ice core data suggest that the 20th century has been warm in many parts of the globe, but also that the significance of the warming varies geographically, when viewed in the context of climate variations of the last millennium.”

“Human activity has been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mostly carbon dioxide from combustion of coal, oil, and gas; plus a few other trace gases). There is no scientific debate on this point. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are about 370 ppmv. The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today, has not been exceeded in the last 420,000 years, and likely not in the last 20 million years. According to the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), by the end of the 21st century, we could expect to see carbon dioxide concentrations of anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm (75-350% above the pre-industrial concentration).”

Here is the address:
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#Q1

It only covers the last 1000 years and only the Northern Hemisphere so I need to keep looking for trustworthy sources. It does include Greenland and the period 1000-1350AD. The "warming since the late 19th century" its referring to is the rate of change of temperature.

I'll keep looking for more reliable data but first I have this pesky thing called work.

JPW in #43.

You state "Of course, the anti-GW people have no data whatsoever (or if they do, they won't quote a source) to counter the fact that the overall global tempature has never been higher and CO2 levels have never been higher."

This is incorrect.

Check out the graph at post 25 in this thread, which shows that both temparature and CO2 have been higher than the present during 4 separate warming cycles going back the last 450,000 years.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1670875/posts#25

You should also take a gander at post #51 on that thread for some interesting factual information which refutes your premise.

Some of you may have read this challenge. If it is true, it may be worth pursuing.

http://www.nowpublic.com/us_think_tank_will_pay_scientists_to_dispute_global_warming

Man. Some of you seem to style yourself thinkers - so think on this:

1. Thinkers should be philosophers. A philosopher loves truth, and is always ready to abandon a position in the light of new evidence. He has no other agenda. Climate change is not a political question, it is a scientific one. How we might respond to predicted climate change is thoroughly political. Try to keep the two issues separate.

2. Climate Change science isn't capable of predicting the future with accuracy, and won't be for a very long time. We don't have the data, and we don't have the computing power. We're stuck with this situation. It's called doing the best you can with what you have. Are the modelers overstating their case - I think so. But only because laypeople and governments won't accept "We can't say for sure, but we're really worried".

3. There is one over-riding reason to suspect global climate change: the burning of fossil fuels. You can talk about your natural cycles all you want - yes, Greenland was green during the Medieval Warm Period. The crucial difference between all previous climate cycling and the current situation in that we've gone and taken massive amounts of Carbon Dioxide that have been out of circulation for millions of years and shot it straight into the atmosphere. This makes for a very impressive hockey stick graph that spans 600,000 years. No, we don't know, and can't know, what the precise ramifications will be. Is it such a wacko idea to think that the effects might be large? And undesirable? Worth taking precautions against?

4. The climate scientists I know (and have worked with) hate the tools they have available to them. They stick with it because there are very solid reasons to be worried. Note that these are normal people with kids and hobbies and favourite sports teams - not anticapitalist wackos. They do their work in what has become an intensely politicized environment - something that fits very badly with objective truth-seeking.

Conclusion:

I can live with Crossfit being right-wing, but it would be nice if the featured pieces were more credible and civil than the last one.

-Jay

Comments #25, #69:

The graph you linked covers 450,000 years. It's hard to make out the last 200 on a graph like that. Try this one instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg

I link the wikipedia version because they link to all of the original data sources. Go ahead and throw the data into Excel yourself if you like.

The misleading graph:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1670875/posts#25

I have been travelling back from overseas and missed this weekends workouts. I made up for Saturday's today.

Wholly Heartrate batman, that was a smoker. I puked into my mouth after I was done with the workout and I was in the shower. Nice.

Me 40yo/M/5'10"/195#

CFWU + HSPU 3 sets / 15 reps

As rx'd

Subbed 24" Box jumps and subbed towel pull ups for rope climb.

Time 50:41 I feel excellent about this one because I did every single rep well. Its 2 hours post workout and I still cannot think about eating.

Have Fun, Train Hard,

Billy

JPW,

That is relevant. Thank you. I don't have time to investigate the site at the moment, but did have one thought. Assuming a worst case scenario, we are increasing atmospheric CO2 levels from .0385% of the atmosphere to .1260% of the atmosphere. Yes, this represents a doubling, but it looks, to me suspiciously similar to the way drug companies cook their trial data. If 1 non-smoker in 100 gets lung cancer, and 1 smoker in 20 get lung cancer, the rate is ten times greater, but the odds are still heavily against any given smoker getting cancer. The odds for smokers, by the way, are about right. They do this sort of nonsense all the time, and statistical illiterates don't understand it. Most drugs on the market, for many conditions, deliver more actual benefits as placeboes than as bioactive pharmacueticals.

I'd be curious as to the sources of the data. How many readings taken over what period in how many locations? That's what I'll be looking for when I do have time to read the link.

Jay,

You argue that we should be philosophers willing to abandon positions based on new evidence. I agree! However, that "evidence" should be scrutinized via the scientific method:
"The scientific method involves the following basic facets:

" * Observation. A constant feature of scientific inquiry.

* Description. Information must be reliable, i.e., replicable (repeatable) as well as valid (relevant to the inquiry).

* Prediction. Information must be valid for observations past, present, and future of given phenomena, i.e., purported "one shot" phenomena do not give rise to the capability to predict, nor to the ability to repeat an experiment.

* Control. Actively and fairly sampling the range of possible occurrences, whenever possible and proper, as opposed to the passive acceptance of opportunistic data, is the best way to control or counterbalance the risk of empirical bias.

* Falsifiability, or the elimination of plausible alternatives. This is a gradual process that requires repeated experiments by multiple researchers who must be able to replicate results in order to corroborate them. This requirement, one of the most frequently contended, leads to the following: All hypotheses and theories are in principle subject to disproof. Thus, there is a point at which there might be a consensus about a particular hypothesis or theory, yet it must in principle remain tentative. As a body of knowledge grows and a particular hypothesis or theory repeatedly brings predictable results, confidence in the hypothesis or theory increases.

* Causal explanation. Many scientists and theorists on scientific method argue that concepts of causality are not obligatory to science, but are in fact well-defined only under particular, admittedly widespread conditions. Under these conditions the following requirements are generally regarded as important to scientific understanding:

* Identification of causes. Identification of the causes of a particular phenomenon to the best achievable extent.
* Covariation of events. The hypothesized causes must correlate with observed effects.
* Time-order relationship. The hypothesized causes must precede the observed effects in time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Note that all scientific hypothesis are subject to disproof. Yet, when dissenters of AGW voice the reasons they do not support the propposed hypothesis, they are currently shouted down.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

JPW # 68 quotes the following from NOAA:

>>Human activity has been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mostly carbon dioxide from combustion of coal, oil, and gas; plus a few other trace gases). There is no scientific debate on this point. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are about 370 ppmv. The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today, has not been exceeded in the last 420,000 years, and likely not in the last 20 million years. According to the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), by the end of the 21st century, we could expect to see carbon dioxide concentrations of anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm (75-350% above the pre-industrial concentration).

Note first that NOAA is in the control of the same peers who control much of the peer-reviewed journals. E.g., Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen.

Where NOAA says, “There is no scientific debate on this point”, it should have added “in the peer-reviewed literature.” To the contrary, I dispute the claim as it is later expanded.

The CO2 concentration of 370 ppmv is from the continuing work of the late Charles Keeling at Mauna Loa. Keeling gave two warnings about these data. First, he cautioned that his measurements were regional and were all taken in the mid-troposphere. Secondly, he cautioned that measurements from two locations could be considered together provided neither is near a source or a sink for CO2. NOAA ignores these cautions in its conclusion. Also, Keeling would need to modify his second precaution. It assumes that CO2 is well-mixed away from sources and sinks. This is the well-mixed assumption of climatologists. The IPCC 2001 report repeatedly relies on that assumption, even though in one place it remarks on the existence of east-west and north-south CO2 concentration gradients.

Climatologists take the CO2 concentration of 280 ppmv from ice core data. These are polar, of course, and reflect sea level concentrations. This treads on Keeling’s first precaution. What is worse, however, is that icy waters surrounding the poles are a huge sink for CO2. These low concentrations are measured surrounded by one of these sinks.

Mauna Loa on the other hand sits in northeasterly trade winds. These winds are created by the descending circulation of the air in what is known as a Hadley cell. This particular cell collects air from the eastern Equatorial Pacific where the great outgassing of CO2 from the ocean occurs. Air heavily laden with CO2 rises at the equator, splits north and south, and descends to create, or feed, trade winds that quickly impact Hawaii. In short, Mauna Loa sits in the corkscrew chimney of concentrated CO2 emitted by the ocean. This violates Keeling’s second precaution, which NOAA and its peers ignore.

The next problem is the claim that the present level of CO2 “has not been exceeded in the last 420,000 years”. The present level of tropical CO2 has exceeded the largest measured polar CO2 for about the last 50 years. The 420,000 year record comprises about 290 samples. That’s one sample about every 1,500 years. If one other 50-year example of CO2 had occurred at the poles, the chances of catching it with samples every millennium and a half is 3%. Usually in sampling we like a 95% probability that the hypothesis is correct. Sometimes we have to weaken that to 90 or 85% probability. Fifty percent is a coin toss. So the conclusion is unwarranted hysteria. It compares CO2 in the chimney of the ocean efflux of CO2 with the CO2 surrounded by a CO2 sink, and ignores the improbability of having sampled such an event even if the measurements were co-located.

The statement about the last 420,000 years is extraordinarily naive. These climatologists put some data points on a graph and then play the children’s game of connect the dots. That is exactly what the Excel graphing algorithm does, and they have given the problem no more thought than clicking ChartWizard or “paste”. No matter how much they might smooth the curve, in between the original data points is nothing but a semi-educated, unjustified interpolation. Over twenty times the IPCC report proclaims global climate to be chaotic. If chaos should prove to have merit as a theory, and should it have anything to do with climate, then interpolating between data points requires special treatment, and may prove impossible.

The last sentence from the IPCC again compares Mauna Loa extrapolations, or worse concatenated Mauna Loa-South Pole extrapolations (which would rise even faster), to “pre-industrial concentration”, i.e., ice core data.

And there’s lots more wrong with this species of peer-reviewed science.

#75 Blake

You're my kind of dissenter, if you are a dissenter!

It is not anti-philosophical to be skeptical of global warming scenarios. I was referring to the tone and quality of some posts that were clearly out to defend a political position as opposed to seeking the truth.

You are also right to point out that climate change science does not compare favourably to chemistry or metallurgy. We can't perform classic science here. But science still holds the best tools for attempting to explain and predict the likely impact of our modern economy on global climate. What else can we do? To what other adviser can we turn?

I read the www.boston.com link. I didn't see any shouting though?

The environmental movement has more than its fair share of sheep and hysterics. I freely admit it. Those people will shout - loudly and often. You won't find the scientists I know doing the same.

Cheers,

Jay

did yesterday's wod today
185x3
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#43, JPW,

"First of all, I read Mark Steyn's articles every week in the paper and I honestly believe that he works for the administration. If he doesn't, he looks at their website to see how he believes before he picks up his pen. If he has opinions of his own, he doesn't write about them."

Correlation is not causation.

Kurtis and Laurie Bowler. The definition of selfless. Read that carefully, it says self-less, as in more regard for others than self.
Very strong work, and popping an Achilles, then asking, "What was that?" is astounding.
Best of luck fighting Fragile X.
Casey will say, "Dad" soon.

Harry MacD,

You have convinced me that temperatures have been higher than today several times in the past 450,000 years. I was falling asleep while watching An Incovenient Truth because the movie is so boring (and sucks so badly) so I accepted some of his assertions without further research. However, my argument depends on the correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. I was not convinced that there is no correlation since both EPA and NOAA say they see it and all of the graphs clearly show a correlation. I'm also not saying that CO2 levels are the cause and not the effect. What I'm saying is that we should reduce our CO2 levels in case it is the cause (we may never know for sure). We already regulate pollution (EPA). Is it really a stretch to consider CO2 as a pollutant? I fail to see the huge impact on industry that everyone assumes would happen or the burden on individual rights that some mention. If we decrease our dependance on carbon based fuels, it has the added bonus of decreasing our dependance on oil producing states like those in the Middle East.

Having said that, yes there are a lot of people running around declaring that GW is THE TRUTH and if we don't stop driving our cars right now we will all perish. Michael Crichton has a book about eco-terrorists that is awesome. The name escapes me and I need to get back to work. The good guys are very centrist in this debate so its worth a read if anyone is interested.

Googled 'George Carlin environmentalists' just to get the following:
http://www.chaparyan.com/2005/04/george-carlins-planet-is-fine.php

This fool can be so spot-on sometimes. Read it how you want, he's got something to say.

I, for one, AM interested in self-preservation and species/ecosystem survival. I don't think we should sacrifice that end in favor of capitalism. I also concede that we have probably not yet reached the point where we have to make that choice.

But if we continue to ignore this *potential* problem as a matter of policy, we could end up literally burning our own home. We definitely have the potential to do that if we try hard enough or neglect long enough. Of course, we could just start h-bombing each other and prove once and for all that humans can destroy their own ecosystem. Yee-haw! Aren't we mighty!

I think money spent studying the possible negative effects of industrialization is money well-spent. Especially from a country where a television set is valued in the hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

I will be ecstatic if GW is a hoax. I don't mind being wrong.

By the way, a pure capitalist would strive to destroy the extant ecosystem and concurrently research a way to sell its replacement, right?

"Things change for the better either because something went wrong or because something went right. Recently we've seen an example of the former, and this failures fill me with optimism.

The acceptance of the reality of global warming has, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern in his report on climate change to the British government, shown us 'the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen'.

The currency of conservatism for the last century has been that markets are smarter than governments: and this creed has reinforced the conservative resistance to anything resembling binding international agreements. The suggestion that global warming represents a failure of the market is therefore important. Technical solutions will hopefully be found, but the process will need to be primed and stoked and enforced by legislation that would be regarded as big government socialism in the present climate. The future may be a bit more like Sweden and a bit less like America.

If a single first instance of global governance proves successful, it will strengthen its appeal as a way of addressing other problems —such as weapons control, energy management, money-laundering, conflict resolution, people-trafficking, slavery, and poverty. It will become increasingly difficult for countries to stay outside of future treaties like Kyoto—partly because of international pressure but increasingly because of pressure from their own populations."

Brian Eno,from here: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_13.html

Jacques Chirac quoted as arguing for "world government" using global warming as an entry point: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

Fun workout of the day today:

"The Swinger's Mile"

Run 800m
400m 2-Handed forward motion kettle bell swings
Run 400m

Time: 30:51

Normally I swing the 24kg bell but I used the 16kg bell for this crazy concoction and it was more than enough weight.

#76 Jeff Glassman

First, IMHO you've done 10x better than the linked article in presenting valid reasons to be skeptical of the IPCC's work. However, I think a debate on the methodology of ice-core analysis , etc. is just going to leave casual readers behind. What's the answer? I think it may be to leave serious scientific and political debate out of a forum like Crossfit.

Quick points:

Current CO2 concentrations come from far more sources than Mauna Loa. Mauna Loa simply has the longest contemporary time series. You can find a short series of averaged global annual CO2 concentrations here:

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/index.php#global

I won't attempt to get the last word in on this. You are right to ask questions and raise concerns about the work being done by scientists on climate change. I would point out, however, that in my experience these scientists are rational people seeking truth to the best of their abilities, and not dishonest scaremongers. The IPCC is several degrees removed from these men and women.

Anecdote: I once attended a meeting of a scientific advisory group (SBSTTA)to the Convention on Biological Diversity. I was appalled to learn that in the main meeting space, the scientists sat, back-bencher style, behind the diplomats. If the diplomatic representative of a country didn't like what their scientists told them, they would just ignore them.

Keep thinking,

Jay

THIS JUST IN....

VALENTINE BOUQUETS BAD FOR ENVIRONMENT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/10/nbouquet10.xml

Jay,

Thanks! In that Boston Globe article, dissenters were briefly compared with "Holocaust Deniers". It's not shouting per say, but strong strong words that cross the line.

You could call me a dissenter in that I share many of the views of Dr. Glassman, here. By trade, I perform a number of tests that lead me to be skeptical of models/scientists that minimalize the effects of the sun on our planet. In designing spacecraft, NASA must take these effects into account a numbers of space environmental effects, especially solar energy. The sun is anything but constant, although it is our primary source of thermal energy. Hence, my primary contention is with those that minimize the role of the sun or assume that it's a constant. As well, there are a number of other unanswered questions in my mind. The science is not solid. I remain unconvinced until experimentation or observation can prove otherwise.

With that said, I do think it is in everyone's best interest to work towards cleaner sources of energy, etc. Clean air is a good thing! There should always be untouched wilderness, and a frontier to explore. Acid rain is bad, it kills native trout - I like fishing. The key is moderation!

THIS JUST IN...

AL GORE is a LOON!!!

Czech President Confirms...

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity
Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•

A: ...I am right...•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say. Well, it makes a lot of sense, Prof Klaus. Other parts of the interview were dedicated to the Organization of European States (and Jo Leinen), the Czech civil cold war that has already ended, the radar for the U.S. missile defense, and his relations with the current Czech government. Show postings on this blog that contain the word Klaus.

[English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl]

Just some comments on comments--

#39: "The whole philosophy of science is built on the notion of falsifiability."

Not so. *Some* philosophy of science *was* built on the notion of falsifiability, but the structure has been declared unsound for at least two reasons. First, philosophers found that the "observation statements" are not so readily demarcated from the "theory statements" they are used to test. See Grover Maxwell, The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities, in 3 Scientific Explanation, Space and Time 3 (Herbert Feigl & Grover Maxwell eds., 1962); Hilary Putnam, What Theories Are Not, in Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science 240 (Ernest Nagel et al. eds., 1962); and Peter Achinstein, The Problem of Theoretical Terms, 2 Am. Phil. Q. 193 (1965). Second, thanks to mid-century work by Duhem and Quine, philosophers also found that the "auxiliary hypotheses" puzzle frustrates falsifiability, by creating situations in which a simple hypothesis is falsified despite being correct.

You might respond that science gets along nicely without worrying about the philosophy of science, which I think seems right. I just wanted to point out that your depiction of the philosophy of science isn't quite accurate.

#79: "Correlation is not causation."

I've always thought that the line should go, "Correlation is *not necessarily* causation." After all, if causation exists, isn't it true that "causation is correlation"? If not, what would causation, as a feature of universe, look like? And if it be true that "causation is correlation," doesn't it follow that sometimes correlation *is* causation?

To quote the fictional Dr. Ian Malcolm...

"Life finds a way."

The world works in cycles. There are hot spells and cold spells, dry and wet times, etc. Just be respectful, and enjoy living.

the huge lunch i had yesterday at my mommas after church would not allow me to workout. did yesterdays wod today.
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Scientists are herd animals like anyone else, and the way GroupThink happens is, as far as I can tell, comprised of two simple processes. The first is a matter of only selecting for inclusion in a lab or other type of group only those individuals who are "smart" enough to "understand" the "truth" about GW, and apply the same criteria to peer review, which of course is very literally a matter of selling to your peers. As long as they say, "yep, that's what I thought", you are "fit" for publication. Note the researcher in one of the links arguing for the effects of solar radiation having difficulty getting published, despite following scientific protocol, and having something both novel and relevant to share.

He also couldn't get his research ideas funded, which is the second issue. The history of science is in no small measure--especially in the last 100 years--the history of individuals who were given the money, by someone, to study something. Proving NON-anthropogenic GW just isn't sexy. Foundations want to spend money on cool stuff, and what they think is cool dictates who gets the money. Scientists understand this, and few like being left out in the cold.

It's not a dissimilar process to that of determining who gets to be "in the gallery", as described by Dire Straits: http://www.lyricsdomain.com/4/dire_straits/in_the_gallery.html

Ross,

If you actually understand what you just wrote, you can use other words for it. It looks like a cut and paste. Please use plain English to explain to me why the process of developing hypotheses then testing them is something OTHER than the bedrock technique of science. The contrary would seem to be that you get to say whatever you want, because it seems right. No doubt many people do that, but they are not scientists. Would you go so far as to deny the scientific method in order to protect the speculative hypothesis of GW?

Kurtis and Laurie Bowler,
Love you guys. Wish you all the best in your fight.

Hey..new to Crossfit...totally excited that there is a new affiliate near me now.

I am training for the Bataan Death march re-enactment in march 06. Does anyone know someone going? I will be traveling by myself and it would be nice to know someone else going.

It’s kind of interesting that global warming is discussed in cataclysmic terms. I don’t think history bears this out. Through the numerous warming and cooling cycles, these “the sky is falling” events haven’t happened. An article I read about the 11th century warming (when Greenland became green) stated “The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.” Hardly cataclysmic……

Just wondering...active rest...

Anyone care to post what their favorite active rest is??

and what time frames/intensity?

#95 wtp

FAVORITE active rest
ummm...I'd have to say...having sex

if that counts as rest

I wonder if anybody ever got rhabdo from doing the Wild Thing?

assuming that crossfit.com should remain fairly family friendly I guess it's best I drop the issue.

Love the article Coach

Coincided perfectly with our morning "discussion" here at Crossfit vancouver.

Patty

#90, Ross,

"I've always thought that the line should go, "Correlation is *not necessarily* causation." After all, if causation exists, isn't it true that "causation is correlation"? If not, what would causation, as a feature of universe, look like? And if it be true that "causation is correlation," doesn't it follow that sometimes correlation *is* causation?"

There is an obvious correlation between being a mother and being female. However, being female doesn't cause one to become a mother, and being a mother doesn't cause (though it obviously requires) one to become (be) female.

#51 Paul- Your Welcome!

#87 Joey-
Could the world get any crazier?!
So, environMENTALists want to stop the import of flowers, which would help a poor country to start to get a foothold on boosting their economy, and therefore, saving their people from starvation, or even from the drug cartels, before they would want to possibly (because as they said, they don't know for sure) add extra air pollution, that the same said flowers or plants are helping to clean up and add extra oxygen back into the air. Now, why don't they do something about the destruction of the Rain Forests first.

Kate

#90 Ross and #97 Hari

IF causation THEN correlation
THEREFORE
IF NOT correlation THEN NOT causation

That's all you get, really, from the logical argument.

It could be that sometimes correlation *is* causation. But it doesn't "follow." To say "X follows Y" implies a logical relationship exists, which is misleading here.

Causation is just a type of correlation, that between cause and effect. Imagine a Venn diagram with a circle representing all instances of correlation. The circle inscribing all instances of causation is wholly contained within the first circle inscribing all instances of correlation. However, logic does not require that the smaller circle have any population in order that the larger circle be populated.

It is possible that correlation has never been causation. Of course, that implies that nothing has ever happened, the universe is static, "it was all just a dream", or whatever philosophical dead-end you want to apply.

Such is the nature of pure logic. It's really worthless when debating anything as complex as reality.

The general consensus is that we live in a dynamic universe full of cause and effect. This is really just a belief, unverifiable by logic. [oh, centuries worth of philosophers have tried to prove that we do "exist" based on our response to external stimuli, which are assumed to "exist." logically it's all something we've taken on faith] However it is a necessary belief for pretty much anyone who wishes to accomplish anything. Many of the correlations we observe are then to be considered causation. In that case it does follow that much of the time correlation is causation.

So, Calvinists and Descartian dreamers aside, most of us have to agree that "correlation is not necessarily causation."

Put much more simply, Webster's provides the following definition of the intransitive verb "correlate- 1b. to show a causal relationship between."

So, if you have the right dictionary, correlation is causation. However, this is only true under one of several definitions. Therefore, even to Webster's, "correlation" is not necessarily "causation."

#87 Joey & #98 jknl - I have to side against my 'fellow' environmentalists here. What a waste of political resources! Here they are just picking on an easy target: poor African entrepreneurs.

I would much rather see 'developing' economies take advantage of a renewable resource and the disposable income of the 'developed' world than turn to sloppy industrialization.

The planes exist, and the flights are scheduled. The environmentalists argue that the amount of fuel used is a function of the weight of the cargo. This is true. However, the volume of the cargo is fairly constant: airlines and shippers will usually seek to fill their cargo holds. Therefore the true determinant variable is the DENSITY of the cargo. A plane full of flowers is much lighter and more fuel-efficient than a plane full of car parts, flip-flops, or emigrants.

It is kind of silly to send off to Africa for flowers but right now they need the money more than the British, so why fight that?

Flowers don't really put off much oxygen. We should be paying Africans to plant and keep trees, instead of admonishing them for cutting trees down, but paying them for the lumber regardless.

I am very curious if the right-wing ideology which permeates the crossfit nation (at least most of those who choose to post on rest day) extends to the "theory" of evolution as well?

I mean, do most people here believe that evolution generally describes the course of life on this planet, or does the right wing (biblical literalism, creationism, anything-but-we-came-from-a-monkey) dominate this issue as well? I recognize that creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive, and that some would argue that god created evolution, etc.

The question holds interest to me because, IMO, those who attempt to debunk evolution usually come from a religious ideological standpoint. The other right wing opinions advocated here generally stem from political/social/moral ideology and conviction.

#101 "I am very curious if the right-wing ideology which permeates the crossfit nation (at least most of those who choose to post on rest day) extends to the "theory" of evolution as well?"

Not sure what you are getting at, but CrossFit is directly supported by biblical scripture. I forget where, but it says "Thou shalt do high-intensity functional movements on a near-random basis. This shall be the whole of the law". Check out "Biblical basis of CrossFit" in the FAQ.

Also at CFO we are trying to train monkeys in OLY lifting. So far they are not getting it at all, so clearly we cannot be descended from them.

Hm. URL did not show in last post. Mouse over to see.

Jay #86,

The AGW conjecture is being thrust on the public on the national and international levels. The answer is not to stick our heads in the sand, but to increase the literacy of the public, the potential victims. Fitness is physical and mental. Some CrossFitters might become legislators.

There is a troubling record in the IPCC Third Assessment Report showing the Mauna Loa CO2 record and that for the South Pole record graphed right on top of one another. Both records are from Keeling and Whorf. The 2000 version of this chart had four such CO2 records from around the globe plotted right on top of one another. The 2005 version like that in the IPCC report only has two traces. Why?

Keeling has described his calibration techniques in a couple of papers. He has adjusted records from different sources so that they agree by adjusting the calibration. This in itself is not faulty science. Much can be gained from different records so adjusted. However, such records may not used to prove that the records are invariant to any extent, including with regard to location. That would not just be bad science, but would be unethical and dishonest. Did that happen in the South Pole and Mauna Loa records? If not, the AGW peers need to explain why the records should ever agree.

The coincidence of the two Keeling & Whorf records would be strong evidence that the CO2 is well-mixed. The AGW peers claim that it is, and rely on that conclusion to show, among other things, that man is the dominant cause of the increase for this greenhouse gas. The IPCC states that the CO2 is well-mixed because it resides in the atmosphere from decades to centuries. However, other data in the IPCC supports a simple computation that the CO2 mean resident time is 1.5 or 2.0 years, depending on which of two conflicting sets of CO2 flux data one uses from that report.

Why would the IPCC rely on such a tenuous assumption as the long residence time of CO2? It could have used Keeling's overlapping South Pole and Mauna Loa data. In fact, a search of the IPCC 2001 report failed to show where the overlap was ever used.

You say, “The IPCC is several degrees removed from these men and women” – “rational people seeking truth to the best of their abilities”. You can check this for yourself, since the IPCC lists the contributors to various chapters of Climate Change 2001.

Charles Keeling and his son, Ralph, were both contributors. Why didn’t they explain why the overlapping records chart appears in the Report? Why didn’t they explain the reasons and the implications? Why did they allow the flaky residence time argument to stand as a justification for the well-mixed assumption? Why didn’t either Keeling bring forward Charles’ precautions against misuse of his data?

James Hansen, a shameless, self-proclaimed leader of the movement, was a contributor.

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert was a contributor. He is one of the most competent and quotable writers and teachers in this field. Regardless, he is an editor of RealClimate.org, Gavin Schmidt’s website dedicated to promoting the nonsense of AGW.

Gavin Schmidt was not a direct contributor, but five times the IPCC relied on peer-reviewed papers he co-authored.

David Archer was a contributor. He is also an editor of RealClimate.org. He determined from his analysis of CO2 reactions in the ocean that the residence time for CO2 in the atmosphere was between 30,000 and 35,000 years. The IPCC toned this down in its 2001 report to 5,000 years. IPCC data supports that the residence time is two years or less. Where did Archer go wrong, you might ask. He assumed that reactions like the formation of calcium carbonate occur between ions in the water and atmospheric CO2. This chemistry is better modeled as the reaction with aqueous CO2 instead. It is better because the residence time fits other data, and because Archer’s model contradicts the well-extablished physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, a physical phenomenon.

Shame on them all, including the real scientists.

JUS...
]
I disagree with your #100 comment.

We should not be paying the Africans a dime to plant and keep trees.

That is the real issue in all this global warming/ climate change stuff is wealth redistrobution. I refuse to let my country be crippled anymore by a global socialist agenda meant to take money out of my child's college fund and give it to Despots and buearocrats in the UN.

This really is about Socialists using the more "sensative" of us to create a reason for a global goverment and undermine sovernety. Just look at thier solutions.

They are going about this like the Trial Lawyers and "Big Tobacco".

-Find out who has the deepest pockets.

-Demonize thier product/productivity.

-Say the taxes imposed are meant to curtail behavior.

-Budget your goals based on the money made from very activity taxed.

Bret Kleefuss

I don't agree that Creationism is "Right Wing".

Millions on the Religious Left would disagree with you as well.

Make no mistake... many on the "Secular Left" hold their view towards evolution as much in a religious way the "Religious right".

"Oh, my science!"

"I will eat the end-trails of the Time-Child on my tummy!"

What you are generally finding here is a pro-national defense Libertarian/Conservative bent by many of the "regular" posters that you indicate that "dominate" the discussion here.

Though most of those that I know from this site do not subscribe to a religion. They tend to be irked more so by the Leftist Secular types who bash everything not secular and collectivist. Enviromentalist and "Blame America First" tupes tend to fit that bill.
I believe it is the "I am smartest guy in the room" attitude along side the blind religious like following of the modern Leftist causes. Again, which have lead to atleast as death and suffering than in the last 100 years as religious types have done in the last 1000 years.

DDT banning and Communism being the most obvious examples of complete failure. That is 100 million+ right there.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts on Caseys piece. We think they did a great job of helping us raise awareness of Fragile X Syndrome. NBC said they'd air the story again just before Mt. Rainier's Strongest Man 2007 which will take place on July 21st in Sumner, WA. (All are welcome to watch and invited to participate!!)

If you'd like to donate to FRAXA, the Fragile X Research Foundation their website is www.fraxa.org or http://www.fraxa.org/getInvolved_donate.aspx or it is linked from Rainier CrossFit.

Kurtis is doing well, he was running at 5 months post surgery. Still very careful with the ballistic stuff, jumps and o-lifts but he has flipped that tire again. The cause of Kurtis' tear was his technique - in trying to flip fast he decellerated the downward momentum of the tire while on his toes, you can see the tire bounce in the video and the pop. We think the weight of the tire, the angle of his toe turn-out,and the eccentric nature of the contraction all added to the rupture.

As lucky as Casey may be to have gotten us as parents, we feel just as fortunate to be a part of this great community. Thank You.

Oh, I am curious as to how many of the right-wing political/social hardcores on here extend those philosophies to religious issues, or vice versa. I guess stem-cell research is another issue with serious religious connotations (abortion is different in my mind...general morality I think supercedes religion on that one).

If the Bible really said all that about functional movement, I would be a lot more religious!

As for monkeys doing olympic lifting...damn, that would make one hell of a science project. I bet some monkeys would be better at it than I am!

Question for the ages: How much could a gorilla squat clean?

OK. A couple more comments.

Military (and former military) guys, get out your ORM sheets and think about GW. What is the likelyhood? What is the severity? What category do you get? Would you accept that risk for a mission or would you mitigate it?

Maybe the solution (for those like me who believe there may be a problem) isn't to burn less hydrocarbon at all. What if we could use solar energy (or wind or tides or rivers) to make CO2 and water into hydrocarbon. Then we can burn all we want with no net increase in CO2. What if we could convert hydrocarbon into hydrogen and solid carbon? Again no CO2 accumulation. What if we could have a little chamber in our car that converts the exhaust CO2 into carbon powder that we dump out once a week? The question isn't how you burn fewer hydrocarbons. The question is how you reduce the net amount of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere.

Cheers,
JP

Comment #65 - Posted by Jeff Glassman

"The accusation is that peer reviewed journals on global warming are, whether intentionally or through incompetence, committing a fraud on the public...You offend logic by relying on the same peer-reviewed science, including the IPCC reports, as evidence of its legitimacy."

Of course. The "science mafia." I'm sure these are the same people that are forcing the theory of evolution down our throats.

The paranoia is unbelievable.

"The peer-reviewed science may be used to establish consistency. However, it fails this test, too. Examples on request."

No thanks. I could just do a quick Google search myself. I'm sure the rightwing sites have accumulated oodles of "inconsistencies" to poke holes in the global warming theory. They do the same thing in response to the theory of evolution.

Neil(49)165 & Ellie(52)110

Back squats 7 X 3

Neil
10 x 132 W/UP
10 X 176 W/UP
3 X 231
3 X 253
3 X 264
3 X 275
3 X 286
3 X 297
3 X 308

Was not really up for this, due to poor nutrition over the weekend. Self inflicted. Nobody to blame but me.

Ellie
10 X 55 W/UP
10 X 77 W/UP
3 X 88
3 X 99
3 X 110
3 X 121
3 X 132
3 X 132
3 X 143 PR

Back slightly sore, so didn't over do it. There's more to come.

The Dirty Dozen : 12 Myths about fitness exploded. (By Andrew Hamilton Ultra-Fit magazine Vol 17 No 2)

Myth #1 Weight training makes you muscle-bound.

Resistance training using weights will no more make you muscle-bound than sprinting down the high street to catch a bus will make into 100m world record holder Asafa Powell! To gain any significant muscle mass requires months even years of carefully structured, very intense weight training or Crossfit training(with the Crossfit system you get superfit into the bargain)combined with optimum nutrition(Zone/Paleo diet).Even then, it's only men who will are lightly to gain significant muscle mass; 99.9% of women simply don't have the hormonal profileto gain much mass(we're talking drug free).What regular weight training or a Crossfit program will do is to make you look more toned and defined, feel stronger, preform better and more resistant to injury whether you male or female.

To be continued.

#101, Bret,

"I am very curious if the right-wing ideology which permeates the crossfit nation (at least most of those who choose to post on rest day) extends to the "theory" of evolution as well?"

Those whom you label as "right wing" for being hesitent to act dramatically on global warming include John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, who along with 95 other US senators, voted not to adopt the Kyoto Protocol. (And, of course, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hilary Clinton all voted to authorize President Bush to take military action in Iraq.) So, what precisely is it that makes Crossfit Rest Day posters "right wing?"

I don't have time to read all the postings above, but one that I found especially laughable is by Steve N. Let me quote him: "Unfortunately, the media has yet again jumped on the doomsday bandwagon in the spirit of 'act now, ask questions later.'"

I think that one fact that shouldn't be too hard to grasp is that people are not beneficial toward the environment. We DO disrupt the natural equilibrium. Cars and coal burning is not a natural phenomenon. What that means from an environmental standpoint is unclear, but its probably not good. Accepting this, is there really any reason not to "act now, ask questions later." Ever hear the saying, better safe than sorry? We might as well try to limit our impact on the environment for safety's sake.

I am a scientist by profession. I am a critical thinker and I formulate my own opinions. Steve obviously doesn't have a scientific background nor does he find himself mired in logic during his arguements. Instead he would rather select quotes that support his point of view and pontificate about how his ideas are more valid than an expert's.

Realize this Steve. You sit there and support some propaganda from the right, that states propaganda from the left is bogus. Pretty hippocritical if you ask me. Maybe this website should stick to the workouts and not the politics.

Why do all these idiots want to wait around and see what happens. "Don't steal my precious pennies, because that is all I have and that is who I am." Sweet idea. Take away my right to privacy, but don't take away my right to destroy the planet that has created us...sickening.

Crossfit rocks, but some of the people that do it definitely do not.

#110, Mark M,

"Cars and coal burning is not a natural phenomenon. What that means from an environmental standpoint is unclear, but its probably not good."

Ageed. It is unclear, and that was the point of the article. (Antibiotics are also not a natural phenomena. So what?)

Ran 8 laps around track=2 miles

15:46

if people were to forget the politics and labels for a second (myself included)

wonder what thoughts are on various aspects of cleaner living and how we can affect that?

do those who do not believe in global warming or question the existence of a threat of global warming think it's a bad idea to:

try to find non fossil fuels or alternative cleaner technologies for our vehicles

regulate the junk that's emitted from factories or chemical plants

keep old growth forrests/rain forrests or reforrest

Even if I suspected that global warming was unsubstantiated, I'd still think trying to clean up the world would be a good idea. Anyone here bike or run on streets shared with autos, breathing in their exhaust? Anyone know children affected by the factories they live near? What if we didn't have these problems?

What makes crossfitters right wing? I don't think all of them are. I am certainly NOT. What gives me the impression that most crossfitters who post on rest days are right wing? Well, the pro-war agenda for one thing. The George Bush apologists for another. The incessant liberal bashing. And yes, some people's position on global warming.

As for the votes on the war, yup, many Democrats made that blunder. But I ask who was the Pied Piper in that fiasco? Who was it that misled both houses of Congress and the American people? And who is it that desperately clings to the ever-more-slippery notion that going into Iraq was either (a) necessary; or (b) a good idea? Right wingers, and fewer and fewer of them every day.

Another point is that the Democrats who voted to go to war were also in a political morass, which changes the dynamics of a simple black-white decision dramatically. At least they (along with more and more Republicans) have the ability to confess a mistake and attempt to rectify it (like we could really ever undo the damage we have caused worldwide to our reputation and credibility, or the damage to humanity in terms of death, injury and families losing loved ones).

By the way, the Kyoto treaty is not a referendum on the existence of global warming. It is a political document, and as such, has political baggage. You make assumptions about those who signed it which are more than likely inaccurate. Notice how I never once mention how I feel about the whole issue of global warming, except to say that I don't know.

My whole point was a curious one, as in I am curious as to how many crossfitters willing to post on rest day also feel that evolution is a liberal concoction designed to do "THIS-OR-THAT" (in my best dick cheney grumble).

The solution is simple:

Don't read or post on rest days.

Might as well argue with a television that is tuned into Fox "news".

Anyone who took high school biology knows that everything in the world is based on an equilibrium (homeostasis). The point is, if you get to far away from that equilibrium point, can you recover? I got a Ph.D. in chemistry, so I was (for the sake of arguement) saying that maybe massive CO2 amounts are not good for the environment. The evidence points to that. Make sense hari?

By the way. Most antibiotics are natural as are most drugs. They are resynthesized in a lab to make them cost effective top produce. Many drugs are tweeked in a lab to make them work a little better or differently, but all drugs are inspired from nature. Nature does with perfection things that people can't even begin to grasp, but that's beside the point.

The point of the article was (paraphrasing): "let's not change anything, because the people who base their ideas on science are just trying to screw me out of some money through taxation."

Just for the heck of it is went to the "Nature" website to see if the current issue supported Steve N's ideas, or those of the scientific community. For those of you that don't know what "Nature" is, it's one of the most respected and referenced journals in the scientific community. The top dog. Just like I thought, there were a couple articles that not only said that global warming is reality, but raised the questions about how to deal with it. Go look for yourself and do something that is more noble than reading an article that someone posts on a website without discretion.

My point is that Steve N is worrying about whether to engineer a stone wheel to be triangular or circular, and scientists are putting men into space.

Those scientists should feel bad about saying that the science is "solid" instead of explaining it in terms that most laypeople wouldn't understand. That's sarcasm by the way.

Finally a voice of reason #120.

Tavis has got the picture. I am just sorry I decided to read that article and the comments. I will stick to the WO's from now on. I don't want others' opinions to spoil crossfit for me.

By the way, #108 sgt whatever your name is, if you'd read your history books you would know that global wealth redistribution has been going on for centuries. Its called imperialism and it is one of the reasons why America is so wealthy and why you can currently afford to purchase all of those consumer goods that are manufactured elsewhere.

Your children have every right to be ensured of a good college education. But so should all children.

Hmm I wrote another comment but it was "held for approval by blog owner."

That's hot.

Curtis & Laurie -

You are amazing parents and Casey is so lucky to have the two of you on his side! Thanks for sharing that story, very touching.

CrossFit One World - GREAT cert this weekend! Thanks for being amazing hosts!

Bret- You would probably say that I am right wing because of my stance on the war and my support for Bush, but I also believe in evolution and believe that it should be taught in schools. I also believe that to explain the "missing link", the only explanation is God. I don't think there is anything wrong with combining both thoughts.
I do think it is an over generalization of anyone to pigeon hole people by their thoughts. I'm not saying that you do that though. :)

I find #121 Mark M's statement curious about that he is sorry he read the article and the comments section. It is curious that he regrets seeing other points of view. I don't know how many times I have read the article and the comments section and truly saw things in a different light, therefore expanding my mind. Isn't that the whole intent of the articles in the first place?

Kate

#109 Laurie and Kurtis-
Thank you for posting the link. I couldn't watch the story earlier, but the website I could go to.

Kate

Did yesterday's WOD

CFWUx3

BS WU 65*10, 85x5, 95x3, 105x3
115x3(F on 2),115x3,115x3,115x3,115x3,115x3,115x3

30 Squats, 30 wall ball, 30 push up, 30 DL @95#
75 asst pull ups

BS was 10# less than I can get on 5 reps. I slept 1.5 hrs on Sat night because I was not feeling well and really can feel the fatigue in today's workout.
Erin

OPT Mommy- saw the OPT female fitness challenge you had posted yesterday. That looked really neat :) Tried a bit of it today but all in the wrong order as equipement was available in the gym
Erin

Although I categorize things habitually (it is part of my job), I also have the ability to look at cases individually (also part of my job).

But, yes, via this forum and for the purposes of my question, I did generalize all of those things as being right wing (and left wing). And you answered my question perfectly. Notice I did implicitly admit that many would opt to choose god as the engineer of evolution.

Thanks for answering. Apologies for mischaracterizations and generalizations.

The way debate is supposed to work--and bear with me, I'm apparently a dinosaur--is you stake out a position, then proceed to support it with fact and logic.

Would the question: "Are any of y'all Creationist nut jobs, as that would explain a lot?" fall within that rubric? It doesn't appear to, in my estimation.

Facts are the sorts of things Jeff Glassman offered, and whoever the dude was that I was responding to. 320 ppm of CO2 versus 1220 or whatever it was. These are facts.

Facts come in various flavors and grades of reliability. If we had been sampling 5x daily in 200 places for the last 50 years, we would be a pretty decent position to make BROAD claims about CO2 dispersion. However, as Jeff points out, a substantial portion of the CONCLUSIONS are based on data that, if it were part of clinical trial for a new drug, probably wouldn't be admissable, from what I can tell.

So you have on the one hand data that is suspect--that in any event ignores what we might call the "Greenland Problem", coupled with, oh, say 3 dozen computer simulations from different "researchers" that show varying degrees of global warming, but that refuse to make specific and verifiable predictions in any timeframe less than roughly 20 years.

You have proponents of global government using the "fact" of global warming to argue for some sort of binding transnational legal entity, that presumably would not only undue the many and manifest evils of capitalism, but also usher in a new paradise of "people's democracy" (I didn't post the whole Eno text).

Make no mistake, if we take the alarmist claims at face value, we are not talking about small changes, but radical changes--at least in the West, that would likely run into the trillions of dollars in overall economic cost. The developing world would either ignore us, or be forced by those who "know better" into some sort coercive pact.

Deciding whether the data is sound enough to justify that is not a matter of indifference. It seems sometimes that multiculturalism has conditioned this "whatever, dude" impulse into us to the extent that we fail to take seriously what NEEDS to be taken seriously. It MATTERS if this is right.

I had a post held, and can't think of anything overly objectionable in there, so it should pop up at some point, but the main thing I noted is that SCIENTISTS are people make predictions. That's what they do. They predict the rate at which stones fall, and rockets rise. That is the nature of the beast. If they refuse to make predictions here, why should we still consider them intellectually credible? If their models are accurate, they should enable predictions. To me, it's that simple. This is logical. That's the other part of debating.

#82,
the Michael Crichton book of which you speak is entitled "State of Fear," and it is excellent. A real eye opener, as educational as it is entertaining. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about this matter, or just enjoy a good read.
-John

Kate #125

I do try to accept peoples' opinions, and thanks for waking me up as to my closemindedness. I just have a profound respect for this planet. I want my children to grow up in a world where tigers exist in nature and not only on the Las Vegas strip. If you read #115 and 121, that was my point (if you read between the lines). I would rather error in favor of the environment than destroy it and say "I guess we did have an impact." It just makes sense to me.

I think this website is an engine for self-improvement, but I think some of the above perspectives are antiquated. I want to move forward and make a difference (as far-fetched as that is). Being content with the status quo is not what makes up a person. Challenging the norm is...

The fundraising aspect of the blog is positive and great.

The global warming debate doesn't seem to be very positive. The people with the most narrow-minded views have the loudest voices and the most quotes...so it's discouraging.

good idea Mark M. practice what you preach.

Kurtis and Laurie,
Great to see this video and the positive attention you bring to Fragile X and Crossfit. Seeing this reminded me that I'd promised Laurie at the Rainier Cert to share my blog post about the StrongMan Event. I guess this moment is as good as any!
http://www.carmenb.ca/2006_08_01_archive.html

You are both amazing and inspiring, keep up the strong work! :-)

I find it funny that those who do not agree with or to the extent of Man-made global warming, as posed by those who are true-beleivers, are considered the narrow minded ones.

Yet, they are the ones declaring the "Facts are in!" "There is no more discussion!" as well as a goofy lady from the Weather Channel that says that meteorologists who don't agree with the Global Warming agenda should be de-certified.

With that logic I guess Coach, et all, should have be ostresized from the fitness industry.

This I know:

1. there is an object between 7-8 light minutes from our planet that gives off heat.

2. That light/heat is given off omni-directionally and as such manages to peirce the space between itself and our planet through several million miles of close to absolute zero temperature.

3. That light/heat is generated by some sort of nuclear reaction and has and will be viable for millions of years by any conservative estimate.

4. Our planet is covered with water.

5. Somehow that water vapor reacts with this light/heat to create/sustain our atmosphere.

6. One volcano eruption puts more crap in the air than all the years of human activity.

7. The Earth has been hot before and the earth has been cold before.

8. Secular collectivists have done more damage to human lives in the last 100 years than any other religious/political movement.

9. The Global Warming Leaders, supporters, scientists ie. "pushers" tend to be either Secular Collectivists of one shade or another (liberal to communist).

10. These same pushers always want some sort of "government" to rescue us from ourselves, yet government by its very nature tends to be corrupt and inefficient.

11. This is coincided with monetary redistribution.

12. These people are ALWAYS wrong about the outcome of their actions.

Therefore, this average guy does not believe the hype that a huge burning ball of nuclear reaction that some how sends light and heat through millions of miles is NOT responsible for a less than 1 degree warming of this planet over 100 years.

Yet we can't manage to heat our own back yards in the winter with diesle powered, flame throwing heaters in a mild breeze.

I am not against being a good steward of my planet. I just realize that we are way to small in the grand scheme of things.

If we can't fix it...then we did not cause it.

So I am not paying some "TAX" created by leftists that will go into the wallets of Despots and buearocrats to somehow level "the Playing field" that won't work anyway. Especially, when their record is so dismal and catastrophic world wide.

Plus these jet-setting charletains are hypocrits.

#76
Thank you so very much. I graduate in the spring with a B.S. in Biological Sciences and even then, will not be seen in the scientific community as a scientist. I can see by the level of written communication in the postings here that most crossfitters are not educational slouches, but non-scientists don't have the educational background to verify the plausibility of scientific hypotheses. Extensive education and continued training in a scientific field only begins to bestow the scholar/researcher with enough background knowledge to assess the plausibility of a scientific hypothesis.
Governments role in science is to implement moral accountability in the application of science to our daily lives.
And as citizens, your and my roles are to influence governmental powers that make and enforce the laws.
A big thank you to those scientists who do post and offer us evidence both for and against hypotheses, educating us and helping us make better personal decisions.

Back squat
255 X 3
265 X 3
270 X 3
275 X 3
280 X 3

Low deadlift
255 X 3
285 X 3
285 X 3
285 X 3
255 X 5

Shoulder Press
145 X 3
150 X 3
155 X 2 (1)
160 X 1
145 X 3

Skill work

Ah the rest day - Needed it

32 y/o male
222 lbs
6'3

Navy pt and warm up
60 crunches
60 leg levers
60 p/u
21 pull ups
1.5 mile run

No time recorded. Trying to implement Crossfit and functional strength to Spec Ops in Guam. Will try and comandeer M & F PT sessions.

[OMG I can't believe I just sat and typed all this garbage.]

An essay on why I've enjoyed these rest day discussions and why I won't be part of them anymore. Ignore if you have something you need to do today.

Since CrossFit Rest Day discussions seem to be dominated by libertarian/conservative posters, I am a little dismayed by the willingness of people from different political perspectives to cede ground, e.g. 'might as well argue with Fox News.'

This forum is much better than many places where you can discuss politics because it mostly includes people who have at least given some degree of thought to where they stand. CrossFit doesn't seem to attract two-legged sheep.

I have always maintained that people on the other side of the aisle are your friends, if their convictions are true. They're your friends because you can expose your own biases while exposing theirs. We all have an emotional attachment to our opinion which is really only masked by pretensions of neutrality and academic detachment.

Furthermore, you shouldn't allow yourself to define your opponents along the alleged spectrum of political beliefs. This left-right dichotomy is DEFINITELY a social construct, whether it is intentionally designed to set us against one another and if so, by whom, depends upon your own beliefs as well. It may just stem from our own human need to oppose one another, arising in the context of a world where axes of xenophobia are constantly being altered.

Of course, this is not an academic forum: argument is limited. It's always going to be possible to reduce an undesirable post to the absurd. I try to save you the trouble by making my posts absurd to begin with.

Yes, I happen to believe that unchecked capitalism is more dangerous than unchecked government. Why not be frank about it? I also think that capitalism is a gateway to democracy, and I believe in democracy [if you couldn't tell already] so I am NOT ANTI-capitalist. Some of us need to mistrust capital, some of us need to mistrust government. We need disagreement and I'm proud to be American because we've created a nation where disagreement can exist; hopefully we can make our disagreements more constructive in the future.

Modern politics has all of the bluster of Professional Wrestling. As a believer in democracy I think all of that huff-and-puff is a waste of energy when our disagreements actually have meaning, as they do on the question of global warming.

It is not an insignificant phenomenon that we all share this common interest in maximizing our own health and physical preparedness through Crossfit. Coach, whoever he is as a person, seems to lean to the so-called right wing in his political opinions. We can't divorce that person and his political beliefs from the fact that he has also created CrossFit which appeals to us all on physical, emotional, and intellectual grounds. I am grateful for his efforts in creating this exercise philosophy, so I have to appreciate him as a whole person [even if he posted a sub-standard article for this particular rest day].

CCTJOEY
I was actually serious about the value of paying to save the rainforest, but mainly for biodiversity reasons. We can plant more trees anywhere to generate oxygen but we can't replace those species that only exist indigenously in tropical rainforests. If I was running a major international pharmaceutical company I would start snapping up that land and fill it with researchers. Unfortunately these corps. seem to have a 7-10 year limit on looking forward, so I'd rather see tax money do the job than see the forests disappear.

Hari and Mark M
I think synthesized antibiotics are about as natural as carbon monoxide.[ok slightly more natural than CO because closer to its natural form] Everything's natural, from one way of looking at things, because all we have available to make our little inventions from is nature's raw materials.
From another way of looking at things, anything that man takes out of its natural environment could be viewed as artificial. Maybe antibiotics are about as natural as Chinese carp in North America. The latter is an artificial occurrence and a regrettable one. The former seems to have been a better choice but it remains to be seen how much damage the antibiotic-resistant strains of staph, etc. will do.
I guess my only point is that 'artificiality' isn't a normative statement, nor is it clearly defined. [I have had fun with 'artificial' but I prefer 'natural'] We have to decide as a democratic entity which alterations of nature we are willing to accept. I opine that a great deal of discussion is necessary, and I appreciate the willingness of those who might rather ignore the issue to enter the discussion.

Sadly I will probably not be participating in Rest Day discussion any further because I simply don't have time to even read all these posts anymore. I have a career path that satisfies my personal political philosophy and being online is keeping me from doing my work. Sorry if this makes me a 'lurker' I never knew how long-winded I would get.

To me rest day discussion is the equivalent of yakking between sets that I used to do in the gym. It's fun, it can be enlightening, but now that I'm doing CrossFit I don't have time for it anymore.

THIS JUST IN...

INDIAN EXPERTS QUESTION GLOBAL WARMING THEORY...

GLACIER RETREAT IS VARIABLE

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1925164,0008.htm

Science is supposed to be broken and incomplete. The use of the word Law should probably be discontinued in scientific discourse as a relic of Deistic conceptions of universal clockwork mechanisms. The words Postulate, or Theory of First Order Predictive Power, or something like that should be subtituted.

Given that we don't understand how gravity works, why should we assume that it's power can't change? What basis do we have, other than scientific convention, for believing that the speed of light is fixed? It actually varied through numerous measurements--a fact blamed on errors in the test equipment--until it was "fixed" through fiat back in the 70's.

Pragmatically, of course, these theories "work". But the fact of the matter is that you can only perceive what you are prepared to perceive, and a good scientist--and thinker, for that matter--constantly reevaluates his or her own first principles.

Science is supposed to be comprised of facts, and not appeals to authority. It only progresses when sufficient humility exists to allow new facts to be allowed into the process. Putting restrictions on discussion--which many AGW proponents have proposed--is EXACTLY equivalent to putting a block on a wheel. It can't roll, and the process of science has been subverted entirely. The whole value of it. The whole qualitative difference between free inquiry and the Gallilean Inquisition.

I have referenced many times in the past Edward de Bono's "Village Venus" effect, which is that everyone considers the prettiest girl they KNOW, in their small village, to be the image of beauty. Likewise, for ignorant and philosophically maladroit scientists, what constitutes "proof" is precisely the lack of alternative ideas.

That is the value of alternative hypotheses--especially ones which are amenable to experiment, such as the one on cosmic rays, or correllations with solar output.

In my view, it is precisely the PAUCITY, not the overabundance, of evidence that is compelling efforts to shut off discussion. Is anyone going to argue that many people seduced by Communist ideology were not well meaning? That they didn't intend well? That they didn't think they knew just a little better than everyone else, which is why dissidents had to be killed, since they were wrong anyway?

It seems to me on far too many of these discussions, the weight of opinions posted relate not to actually facts or logic, but to the very propriety of the discussion. This is inherently antithetical to the very SPIRIT of free public discourse, which was enshrined as a basic right precisely BECAUSE of the human tendency--in abundant evidence through every period of history, including that of atheistic Communist Russia--to shut down alternative points of view as IN PRINCIPLE flawed because of their content.

If somebody wants to call all of us dummies, that's fine, but they need to do something other than "appeal to authority", and offer instead evidence and logic. This debate is tainted by political hacks like Al Gore, who apparently portrayed the effects of a 20 ft. increase in the ocean levels, knowing full well that in most worst case scenarios we can't expect more than 23 INCHES, over the next CENTURY. This is not science. Surely that is clear enough.

I'll take the evolution issue as well, although this is not the place to go too deep in to it. I see very little of common sense on this issue, and would like to say something coherent here. Those of you who have issues with the received "wisdom" with respect to this issue, cut and paste this part and send it to someone. It's accurate, as far as I can tell.

We have domesticated dogs because human beings, stretching far back into the mists of prehistory, understood the basics of breeding. That if you take two animals that have traits you want, and breed them, the offspring will likely have the same traits. That that species can therefore be altered over time, often substantially, as evidenced by the tremendous diversity of dogs around the world. That is clear enough, and didn't require the discovery of DNA to be obvious. Likewise with corn, cows, and many other products of human effort.

When Charles Darwin wrote "The Origin of SPECIES", he wasn't trying to make the obvious point that species change over time. Rather, he was trying to explicate a means through which inanimate matter became self aware, and capable of writing books. The dominant vision of the universe, then, was what we might term materialistic post-Deism, which in effect meant that they still believed in the universe as a clockword mechanism, just not in the clock-maker. Within this framework, everything was essentially conceived of as little balls that fell into slots from time to time, in accord with gravity and other "sensible" principles.

His basic conception is that every time something reproduces, a sort of slot machine wheel is turned, with say 100 places. There is a certain "habit" to the machine, in hitting the same 100 numbers every time, but every once in a while, you get a 5 instead of a 6. A slightly different creature. Now, this creature might be slightly better adapted to the environment, or slightly worse. Which it is determines if that creature reproduces, and the "5" mutation continues, or the "6"s continue their historical dominance.

Given his mechanistic paradigm, it is important to note that there is no means whatever posited for ACTIVE adaptation to the environment, a fact which is often misunderstood. There is no means in place to FORCE adaptations which are favorable. Thus, there is no relationship between what the slot machine does, and what the environment does, other than chance. Sometimes, it will happen that a beneficial mutation happens at just the right time, but there is no power making that more likely.

This makes the whole process both slow, and necessarily continuous. It is a step by step process and every step in the process needs to make some sort of sense--or at least the bulk of them--or else they won't be retained. This is the essence of the "survival of the fittest" notion.

Now, if we want to use this theory as a basis for the explanation of speciation, for the transition of one species to another, it fails miserably based on all extant physical evidence, a fact of which he was well aware in his own time. He also noted his utter inability to explain a complex structure such as the eye.

First, the evidence. What we should be able to trace in the fossil record is where all the branchings between species happened. Links between them. It should be a slow radiation of subtle but continuous changes in form over long periods of time. Most people think the so-called "missing link" needs necessarily to refer to the link between man and ape, but in actual fact, pretty much ALL of the links are missing. What we see in the record is species appearing in the blink of an eye, geologically speaking--fully developed--continuing for 100 millions years or so, then disappearing. This is not what we should see.

This fact was fully appreciated by Stephen Jay Gould, who essentially called it quits with orthodox Darwinism back in the 70's, took the existing evidence, and said something along the lines of "We know evolution happened, and that God has nothing to do with it. Given these presuppositions, what theory can we devise?" And what he came up with was "Punctuated Equilibrium", which takes mechanical evolution for granted, and simply works with the evidence as is.

However, from what I understand of this theory, where Darwin only needed to posit ONE mutation at a time, Gould essentially says that from time to time, out of 100 digits on our slot machine, 50 of them change at the same time in a beneficial way. Basically, if you roll 100 heads in row, when flipping a coin, then logically and statistically there are a bunch of tails on the way. The 100 heads in a row constitutes the "equilibrium", and the following 100 tails the "punctuation". In my view, he made evolution more intellectually tenable by making it yet less probable. And he wrote a number of books detailing his ideas, none of which are falsifiable, as far as I can tell, and hence beyond the pale of formal science.

This is an important point. The critique that the more militant atheists make is that religion is unfalsifiable and metaphysical. Then they proceed to write books which are 100% speculative and likewise cannot be falsified, and are thus, according to the Logical Positivist ideas underlying science as a whole, likewise "metaphysical". How do I falsify the "Selfish Gene", which is essentially a long story masquerading as science? What experiment could I do?

Well, one method some people have used, such as Michael Behe, is to point to the fact that many structures in nature, such as the cell, and the eye, cannot by any plausible means be constructed piece by piece, since they only work as wholes and each piece cannot function on its' own.

Richard Dawkins was driven to such a fury at one point, that he felt compelled to inform those ignorant of the "truth" that in fact a computer model had been created which showed clearly that an eye could be evolved, step by step, in as little as 375,000 years. Compelling, one might think. And it probably would have been, had the model existed.

In actual fact, though, and on the account of no less than the person to whom he attributed the model, this Oxford Don, this distinguished "scientist" (with NO experimental work to his credit, as far as I know), this impartial but impassioned seeker after the truth, LIED. He pulled it out of his anatomy.

Thus, this issue is to this moment unresolved.

I offer this lengthy summary by way of pointing to the very similar dogmatism with respect to evolution that has corrupted our "scientific" community. Now, it is not necessary to draw any conclusions with respect to the theories, other than they are apparently incomplete. This does not necessitate Creationism, Intelligent Design, or any other "metaphysical" notion. It is simply to point to the--to me unambiguous--fact that the theories do a very poor job of explaining speciation, and documenting how exactly we relate to trees.

For those huffing and puffing, think this through with me: if you had another idea that didn't put you in bed with Jerry Falwell, wouldn't you be eager to consider it? Isn't the main reason this travesty continues unabated because undebated that you can't come up with any other ideas that appear "scientific"?

I will say simply that I am currently reading a book on the history of biology that shows clearly that field theories of various sorts have been proposed repeatedly for the last 200 years, and been validated in some form in many cases by many people, and it was only in the 1930's that notions other than those of molecular biology were formally rejected as inherently unscientific by the AMA, and propagated throughout our body biologic from there. They literally shut down debate.

That is dangerous, in ALL areas of science.

Barry,

You have too much time on your hands. One google search, first article. Read the last paragraph.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html

As for global warming, I guess it doesn't matter anyway.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17080934/site/newsweek/

"If the Glove Don't Fit...You Must Acquit"

Read my post again.

". .according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch."

I put 375,000. I was off by 11,000. My bad. Please find this "one scientist" for me. Does this sort of biassed nonsense really count as evidence for you?

I will add that the more substantive issue is the lack of evidence favoring Darwin's theory of speciation. It isn't small, it's so massive you could drive a truck through it. In fact, what we have actually found is darn close to the polar opposite of what the theory predicted, which is why Gould found it necessary to reconstruct it from the ground up.

Do you understand that "stories" are inherently unscientific? That most current propagandists for AGW are in fact offering stories and not hard evidence? How something "might" have happened is no different in principle than arguing what "might" happen in the future, and I don't know about you, but it's a rare week I don't see some article in the news along the lines of "Scientists now say Global Warming MIGHT be much more dangerous to the ocean's reefs than previously thought", or whatever. Note the next time you see this that they stop well short of making predictions, in all but the most abstract and unverifiable ways.

I think Ernst Mach was fully justified in demanding that science--if it wanted to genuinely elevate the level of discussion on "truth"--avoid metaphysics. By that, he meant ANYTHING that was IN PRINCIPLE unfalsifiable. In my view that would include both the Bible AND received versions of evolutionary theory. Whatever happened, it happened in the past. We can review the fossils, but how do we set up an experiment? This obvious fact is overlooked in our haste to overcome the "burden" of organized religion, and enshrine Science on a throne for which it is ill fit.

Science was never intended to become a secular religion, but rather to be a systematic means of increasing usable human knowledge. To be a subset of culture, not THE culture. Whereof it couldn't tread, it was not supposed to speak. That caveat, however, has been trodden well underfoot by modern ideologues and polemicists, which is why so many read the oracles of those wearing lab coats as so much prophecy, and why progress is so difficult.

"Does this sort of biassed nonsense really count as evidence for you?"

Barry, yes. IMO, the 364,000 years isn't the thing to focus on (no pun intended) there.

who was the guy wearing the "What has your backup done for you lately?" shirt? I work at Avamar and have never seen anyone outside our company wearing that shirt! Cool!

Here the image I have when I'm thinking about both Neodarwinism and Gouldian notions of Punctuated Equilibrium. There is this massive clockwork mechanism, and the casual observer can readily observe hundreds of cogged wheels, working together in apparently seamless perfection. It is for all intents and purposes a giant clock, perfect in its' operation.

Yet, upon a closer inspection, one can see that although the wheels move in time and measure with one another, that the actual cogs seem to fade into and out of existence. The wheels move without them. This leads to the conclusion that something besides mechanical force--and there is no need to posit a Creator here--is driving the wheels.

In my view, integrating field theories into biology makes the whole process far more probable, scientifically credible, and makes use of 20th century notions of physics versus the 19th century notions still extant universally in professional evolutionary biology. If we have proven that non-locality is a function of matter both mathematically and experimentally (again, to the extent that anything can be "proven"), then, logically, why wouldn't such properties of matter find some expression in living beings?

If the notion that they eye can evolve from a light sensing patch is so simple, and so obvious, then why DOESN'T that computer simulation exist? Even if it did, we would still be dealing with a metaphysical "just-so" story, but it would help. My sense is that it has been tried, and that somewhere, on the level of detail where real scientists actually do productive and useful work, there was an unbridgeable gap. This gap is not a problem if we posit some form of wholism, some form or order in how matter organizes itself, but it is if we insist--contradictorily--in rejecting "metaphysical" notions using OTHER "metaphysical" notions.

Barry stick to philosophy and leave the scientific issues to people who aren't going to get caught up in minutia.

THIS JUST IN.....

UNITED STATES CONGRESS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE HEARING ON:

"WARMING OF THE PLANET",

CANCELED BECAUSE OF SNOW/ICE STORM!!!!

HOUSE HEARING ON 'WARMING OF THE PLANET' CANCELED AFTER SNOW/ICE STORM
HEARING NOTICE
Tue Feb 13 2007 19:31:25 ET

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”

The hearing will be rescheduled to a date and time to be announced later.

DC WEATHER REPORT:

Wednesday: Freezing rain in the morning...then a chance of snow in the afternoon. Ice accumulation of less than one quarter of an inch. Highs in the mid 30s. Northwest winds around 20 mph. Chance of precipitation 80 percent.

Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows around 18. Northwest winds around 20 mph.

Mark M. - I am wating for the "kneel before Zod" command. Evidently, MARK HATH DECREED THAT BARRY SHALT QUIET HIMSELF!
This is exactly what we don't need. Scientists work at the level of minutiae by the way. Theorists work elsewhere.
I was once considered a "promising young scientist" (I suppose) - a top 40 finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search in 1987 for a project on "A Solution to the O'Connell Effect for Eclipsing Binary Stars of the Beta Lyrae Class". This qualifies me for exactly nothing on the science scale, by the way, as I wound up with a law degree.
You, and several above, however, have exactly made Steyn's point in the article by crying foul on anyone who would DARE to contradict you or even offer a differing opinion. That's not very scientific, either. Some of the great scientists I have met (a Fields Medal winner, two Nobel Laureates in physics) were extremely humble men, always willing to be challenged, even in their area of expertise by high school students.
Bret Kleefus - on the evolution point. I feel like this was a setup question, so I point you to a Rule of evidence that I believe should be invoked whenever questions like this come up.
FRE 610 states: "Evidence of the beliefs or opinions of a witness on matters of religion is not admissible for the purpose of showing that by reason of their nature the witness' credibility is impaired or enhanced." The drafters recognized the power of using religion to attack a witness' credibility and disallowed inquiry there. I concur wholeheartedly. I know you've been coming here for a while, so this isn't just a one-shot drive-by, but why make the inquiry? What does it prove about posters, in your mind? Einstein believed in God - does this prove relativity was crap? Newton did, too, although he refused the sacrament at his death - does this mean his equations were bunk?

You do yourself no favor by hoping to draw out "creationists" (right wingers, you seem to presuppose), if your intention is to then attack their credibility on other matters. It doesn't prove or disprove AGW, in other words. If such was not your intent, then I apoologize in advance - it just seemed a real non sequitur and a loaded question.

Marshall - that article you linked proved nothing. It was too general and no mention of the "one scientist" who has "calculated" 364k years to evolve an eye. Even if it were all true, the article is a rebuttal to nothing. It essentially says, some "intelligent design" folks point to the eye as defeating Darwin's theory (darwin himself was troubled by the eye fitting into his theory) but there's someone who says the eye COULD have been evolved. That is hardly proof of anything as I understand it.
JUS - I too am saddened by your decision to "depart the pattern". I learn much from the discussions here, even if it is just by forcing me to defend my occasional drive-by's. I agree, it can be time-consuming, but sometimes the effort is worth it. Your posts seem lucid and you are honest about where you stand. That alone adds to the level of discussion here.

Mark M. - someone else said it, but your view of what is narrow-minded seems, well, incredibly narrow-minded. Jeff G. et al. have offered serious "science" that at least raises the specter of doubt on AGW. Jeff once submitted a link to a paper he authored on the oceans as CO2 sinks and the science was certainly compelling. A refutation demands equally compelling science, not cries of foul and "narrow-mindedness". That's called ad hominem, nothing more. This is not meant as an insult, but rather as an invitation to join in the debate - not withdraw because you think "these guys are all 'conservatards'."
Not your word, I know, it's an allusion to a long ago poster who flung insults rather than evidence.
Cheers to all.

Dale, sometimes the temptation of an interesting conversation is really just the procrastination of a pretrial memo that is due tomorrow.

We don't even know if we should be eating egg yolks. Seriously. From one year to the next, nutritional scientists continue to debate such a seemingly insignificant issue. Are they full of healthy nutrients or 'bad' cholesterol? Who knows if they'll ever come up with a solid answer.

In the meantime I think it's prudent that I cut back on egg yolks. I've been eating, like, two a day; I really like 'em. Seems like enough to be unhealthy.

I really truly appreciate the irony of this! For the last few years it seems that GW summits have fallen on the coldest days of the year. Now due to snow and freezing rain here in DC, Congress has had to cancel it's hearing on GW.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8.htm

Oops, Joey... missed your post.

This link discussed the difference between praising kids for their intelligence, and praising them for effort:
http://tinyurl.com/yo73qb

The corrollary I would draw is that the bulk of the scientific community--and really, the academic and intellectual world at large--is drawn from populations of people who have been "smart" since they were kids. They have above average IQ's. It takes effort to learn any subject area, so you can't get to a paid position without work, but I think there is a pronounced tendency once you're learned whatever the received version of something is, to use your "intelligence" to defend your positions, which are the correct positions, precisely because they are what you know, and you are "intelligent".

One sees this basic dynamic constantly, of "intelligent" people defending positions on a theoretical basis without reference to actual detailed analysis of facts. I'm sure I'm guilty of it myself, and frankly ill-equipped to self-assess the extent to which that happens, but the fact that I understand it is both possible and likely that I am doing that, makes correction possible.

I think a useful heuristic is to make a blanket assumption that 10%--at least--of everything I "know" is wrong. It's much harder to do than it sounds, but that 10% is what keeps science rolling.

Great Dale #154... I don't care about your scientific credentials (or lack there of), I care about people using reasonable arguments and coming to sane conclusions. You are a lawyer and you have been trained to argue. Unfortunately you are obviously versed in rhetoric, but not logic.

If people are to move forward, beaurocracy needs to be back-burnered. That is what I mean by minutia. I don't need to waste time arguing points that are obviously flawed in their reasoning.

From what I can gather from this blog is: a lot of people do not believe in global warming.

The difference between my views and narrow mindedness is that I accept that global warming may not exist. I propose that people should take the necessary precautions to prevent irreparable damage if global warming does exist. Make sense. It's called playing it safe.

The people who think global warming should not be something that we try to limit are like people arguing not to circumnavigate the planet. "What if the earth is flat? Wouldn't we look stupid if we sent someone to check?"

What if global warming doesn't exist? Then we should not take any precautions to limit our affect? Is that what people want to do?

Barry is probably a lawyer too. I don't respect people trying to change opinions when the solution to protect ourselves is so simple. Most people on this planet are not capable of formulating their own ideas. They listen to the media, and they listen to people like Barry and you Dale. It is up to the people with education to lead those people in the right direction. When people listen to people who argue well versus good arguments, that is the problem. Hell, most people in this country base there political votes on a single issue...abortion! What does that tell you?

People are not good for the environment. We are that part of the evolutionary equation that was not solved for. We are an anomaly and we are changing all the balances on the planet. We are the top of every food chain and we disrupt every ecosystem on the planet. With that power comes responsibility. Should I have an open mind to people who claim that we have no responsibility? I am sorry I cannot be open-minded towards those people.

By the way, global warming is not just about icebergs melting and the thermometer reading 74 instead of 72. It's about changing global weather patterns. It's about fluctuations in weather patterns and extremely hot spells, and extremely cold spells.

Mark M...

by your logic all of us should become card-carrying (insert a religion)just in case there is an "after-life". You know...just to play it safe.

People are very good for the environment...just ask my Boston Terrier.

Honestly, I don't want to offend. I just think that precautions should be taken in matters such as global warming. I don't feel that it is necessary to provide links and literature to support ones own arguement. I would rather speak from my mind and make my own points. My argument was simply: take the route that is safer, but maybe a little less convenient.

I know that the posters on this blog like Dale and Barry are intelligent and well spoken (or written).

In fact, these conversations are much easier over a cup of coffee and in person. It's a little easier to convey points and to receive them.

Cheers and tapping out of the arguement.

P.S.

I choose not to post literature, not because I can't find it or haven't read it, but because everyone can find compelling literature for any side of an arguement.

Regards,
Mark

"I don't feel that it is necessary to provide links and literature to support ones own arguement. I would rather speak from my mind. . ."

I like it. You know what? MY mind tells me that this cold spell is quite obviously a sign that the planet is getting COLDER. It's obvious, isn't it, that the next Ice Age is just around the corner? Hell, anybody that can't see that might as well try telling me Columbus didn't sail the ocean blue in 1492. It's cold here; it's never cold in February. We had an ice storm last night, and it put a chill in my bones in more ways than one.

We are surrounded by signs. Signs everywhere, and all I'm asking is that we try and burn some more fossil fuels to turn the darn thermostat up so we don't have eskimoes living in Portland. If it isn't getting colder, fine, but don't we need to at least try? It's a simple, reasonable question.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!! Geez.

The following excerpt was taken from

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1995-06-16peepers.shtml

and concerns the ability of evolution to explain the eye.

"Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant. A more ponderous show of weight seems to lie behind the inevitable supplementary: "Speaking as a physicist, I cannot believe that there has been enough time for an organ as complicated as the eye to have evolved from nothing. Do you really think there has been enough time?" Both questions stem from the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Audiences nevertheless appreciate an answer, and I have usually fallen back on the sheer magnitude of geological time. "

The link given in my previous post talks in detail about the computer program used to determine the length of time evolution needs to create the eye.

Barry...maybe you are right...but if that's the case then hell must have frozen over from the global warming too.

"They then let the model deform itself at random, constrained only by the requirement that any change must be small and must be an improvement on what went before."

What is the basis for this assumption, other than a desire to reverse engineer the eye for polemical, and not scientific purposes? Remember how the theory works. Mutations have no order--no telos--and only an increased ability to survive enables mutations to endure.

This is what makes it essential that each progressive change be shown to have increased the survivability of that organism and its' progeny, and that case was not made. Rather, they postulated percentage increases from 0% of the eye--or, rather a light sensitive cell which they freely admit they cannot yet reverse engineer (BUT THEY'RE GOING TO, we hear)--to 100%.

Do you understand why this is not science? First off, it uses presumptions that are alien to the theory, and secondly it is unfalsifiable. How would we generate an experiment to prove or disprove these notions? We can't. But you say WE HAVE TO BELIEVE SOMETHING. No doubt, but don't call it science. Call it what it is: belief. Do you understand that Catholic Theologians have no gaps in their ability to explain everything? Does that make it necessily correct?

He says: "Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant."

This is pure Dawkins: intellectually dishonest, contemptuous, and wrong. He knows this, too, in my view. Each and every change has to MAKE SENSE, or else there is no selective pressure favoring it. He just allows his unabashed hatred for organized religion to dominate his thinking. He is not practicing science. He is an anti-theological dogmatist and Self Appointed Priest of Truth. The problem is, he lies. I note you didn't address that minor faux pas.

I will add, that I would draw a structural similarity between

a) Calling anyone who questions orthodox accounts of speciation through random mutation and natural selection a "Creationist"; and

b) Calling anyone who questions orthodox accounts of AGW a "denier", with implicit--and distressingly often, EXPLICIT--comparison to Holocaust Deniers.

There have always been what we might term today "Orwellian" elements in all aspects of culture, including science, but we seem to have reached a point where this fact is missed by many. In my view, it is because we are generating so much raw data in so many areas, that it is forgotten that that data exists within a paradigm which itself is rarely or never questioned.

If you are a prestigious journal, the sheer bulk of what COULD be published, even within existing normative paradigms, is immense. So why devote space to outlying ideas? Once this process becomes habitual, it becomes largely invisible, even to those practicing it.

I wonder why my last 3 posts have not shown up...

just curious

Barry,

Some miscellany on your recent posts.

1. Re #143. In the military-industrial complex, a maxim evolved: everything following the word “essentially” is a lie.

2. I dispute your view that the Darwin theory has failed, or that Gould so distanced himself from it. As Sir Isaac Newton is supposed to have said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Darwin marked a major shift in biology, introducing descent with modification. Gould recognized the unevenness in the rate, and called it, as you say, punctuated equilibrium.

3. Darwinism is a term used unfortunately even in science publications. It has been exploited by the creationists. It should be banished. Science has no place for isms. An ism is a belief system. It matters not what a scientist believes. Also, they don’t vote, and any consensus is irrelevant and unscientific.

4. Reliance on the supernatural violates basic principles of science. Creationism and intelligent design with its thinly veiled Unknown both are outside science.

5. You should disavow yourself of the antiquated concept of falsification. It was mostly a view of science from the outside. I am aware of no scientific pursuit wherein the scientist paused to include falsifiability.

Scientists build models of the real world, whether manmade or natural. The models must fit all the data in their domain. Conceivably this could be called a falsification test (but it is not.) Secondly, the models must make some non-trivial prediction. When sufficient predictions are demonstrated to be correct, and none fail, the model advances from a hypothesis to a theory. When a prediction fails, the model is adjusted or discarded, if necessary. This could be called falsification, too (but it is not.)

6. Evolution is a strong, prevailing theory in biology. Darwin gets the credit.

7. The eye exists. There is no scientific alternative to it being the product of evolution. Be patient. No scientific theory is exhaustive and complete, and none ever will be.

8. Whether science explains or describes anything is incidental to scientific knowledge. Explanation and description are subjective. Science is the objective branch of knowledge. Science models the real world to make predictions that are better than chance.

9. Re #167: “Each and every change has to MAKE SENSE”. Not so. There is no “must” in evolution. Science may ascribe no purpose to nature. Evolution has no will. Science books are in error that even hint that evolution has a sense of perfecting the species. Sometime biology texts give natural selection such a desire. The very notion is subjective, and outside science. New varieties or species have no scientific purpose whatsoever. An unimaginably large number of varieties and species emerge only to die at birth or vanish in a geological blink.

10. These are the elements of basic scientific literacy. Every 12th grader should have captured them.

11. Mathematics I submit will soon cause Darwin and punctuated equilibrium to evolve. Mutations occur randomly with great regularity, and in every conceivable manner. A minute number are viable, and of those many are weak. In periods of speciation, these weak varieties will improve. Extinction doesn’t begin until a niche can support no more. Then is when competition occurs with a vengeance.

The words “survival of the fittest’ will be retained, but it will be understood in the sense of survival of the most prolific. Punctuated equilibrium will be seen to follow environmental upheavals, coupled with the problem of sampling. Just as we have had too few samples of CO2 concentration to say the present level is very unprecedented, sampling of species occurs following random, major geological events.

12. All of this may be God’s wondrous ways, as you might choose. Science, though, may take no position. Science builds its models on facts (measurements compared to standards). Everything that can be measured is by definition material; none is supernatural.

13. Peer review is part of academe and prizes. It is not part of science. Nor is publication. Proof on request.

Mark M.

>>unchecked capitalism is more dangerous than unchecked government

You are saved by the over-qualification “unchecked”. With less particularity, your belief is Marxist. This nation was founded on principles of keeping government in check. No one does it better. No one does it much worse than Marxist states.

And capitalism has conveyed far greater wealth on the citizens than any other economic system. Marxists can’t even dispute that, so they focus not on well-being but on wealth disparity. Marxism can meet its goals only when everyone is broke. That is, everyone outside the Party.

I disagree that capitalism begets democracy. The elements of Capitalism are seeded in our freedoms. It is an accidental outcome.

Besides, our federal government started out a federalized republic. The people had a say in only half of one of the three branches. It is decaying into a centralized democracy.

Should we ban cell phones and power lines in case they cause cancer?

Barry #167, how does the comment you quoted from Dawkins' article:

"They then let the model deform itself at random, constrained only by the requirement that any change must be small and must be an improvement on what went before"

contradict what you said

"Mutations have no order--no telos--and only an increased ability to survive enables mutations to endure.

This is what makes it essential that each progressive change be shown to have increased the survivability of that organism and its' progeny, and that case was not made."

The program was designed so that all progressive changes were improvements. The eye became more complex and more effective, a careful reading reveals this nugget:

"Their task was to set up computer models of evolving eyes to answer two questions. The first was: is there a smooth gradient of change, from flat skin to full camera eye, such that every intermediate is an improvement? (Unlike human designers, natural selection can't go downhill not even if there is a tempting higher hill on the other side of the valley.)"

You also say that Dawkins is dishonest when he claims that half an eye is better than 49% and 49% is better than 48%. I think you misunderstood him; if a human eye with visual acuity of 20/20 is 100%, vision of 20/100 is less than 100% but still better than nothing. Likewise, a photocell that can only detect the difference between light and dark is above 0% but far from 100%. I believe Dawkins is refering to the purpose of the eye, not the actual makeup.

I'm sorry if I did not understand your post correctly, or if it seems like I'm just summarizing the article with little personal contribution to the topic, but I have heard the argument about the complexity of the eye many times from those who oppose evolution and thought I would try to put it to rest.

Mark M. - I like the tone of these last posts (not that that means anything to you), but thanks. Let me make one point I should have earlier - I agree about being stewards of the environment. I always have. I learned it in the Marine Corps from my first Drill Instructor - "Leave the goddang place better than you found it. I don't care if you didn't make the mess, clean it up." That doesn't mean that I have to agree with AGW and its proponents, nor with their proposed solutions. Nor do I have to subscribe to some form of self-loathing for humanity and our "damage" to the planet. We are as "natural" as anything else here. We were gifted (either through some divine plan or good speciation) with opposable digits and reason. I, for one, am not sorry about that. But it comes with a responsibility; I accept that (but without guilt).
I also love this line - "I tap out of the conversation." As a jujitsu guy, that's a great one. Kudos.

Mr. Glassman - I look forward to every one of your posts. Thank you for the free education. I wish you had been teaching when I was an undergrad - maybe I would have stayed in Engineering.

Oliver,

If I put a room full of monkeys in an electrical supply shop, posited constant change, and only retained improvements in the direction of a Cray Computer, not only would I get one, I would get one quickly. Now, the notion that monkeys would be able to figure out how to solder wires onto printed circuit boards and appropriately align and wire microchips, but if we only posit unidirectional movement and constant change, then it is not only probable, it is mathematically necessary anc certain.

What Dawkins needs to show is the actual selective process, which is what the other computer model--the one he made up--purported to show. Why those adaptions would be selected for.

And, more importantly, the most substantive objection made to orthodox biological models of speciation through random mutation and natural selection (we should avoid the word Evolution, and I'm happy to avoid Darwinism) is how the cell came about. Each part depends on other parts for it to make sense. Like the eye.

What he has done in this model is assume that every mutation in the direction of the eye is beneficial, and of course received the result he wanted. It's borderline fraudulent, from what I can tell.

Jeff,

I don't have time to address all of that, but one statement stood out for me: "Scientists build models of the real world".

Scientists needs to understand, in my view, that science always exists within an already existing context of meaning and signification. The very language you use, and patterns of interaction with the people around you are always already social. This cannot be avoided, and there is no means apparent to me for correcting for the "human"--which is to say the subjective--element in everything we do and see. To be fully confident in our apprehension of the world, we would have to be non-humans existing on a qualitatively higher level. This is not possible, as far as I can see.

Given this, the most that scientists can do-the extent, in my view, of their appropriate domain--is, as you say, to generate models of the universe that seem to offer predictive power in multiple contexts and in many locations, without respect to who is doing the measuring. That are, as near as we can tell, universally shared and predictable human experiences.

This enables material progress to be made, but should never be used as an overarching justification for more speculative jumps into areas wherein there IS no predictive power.

There is little doubt Ernst Mach had religion in mind when he rejected the notion of any sort of inclusion of the "metaphysical" in science, but the fact of the matter is that ANY body of ideas which cannot be submitted to testing, which cannot be set up so independent researchers, working in different labs, can replicate the results, IS metaphysical. That's just the way the theory--the same one providing the reason for rejecting religious ideas in toto--works.

It's a double edged blade. And in my view the whole reason we get into these quandaries of scientists being subverted by political agendas is their lack of philosophical sophistication. Their lack of a process of separating their biasses from what is legitimate science.

Science is a wonderful thing, as long as we understand it's limits.

I thought about this some more, and I'm glad we're having this conversation. I thought: in what does the process of "falsification" consist where ideas that I'm terming metaphysical--meaning experimentally unverifiable--consist? Is it not the case that the basic process, the basic question, asked is: "would a person of similar training and experience reach the same conclusion, based on the same data set"? Isn't that the very essence of the peer review process, which gets trotted out as "evidence" of the impartiality of the scientific process, and hence it's correspondingly immense and powerful claim on Truth?

Yet, doesn't that in fact INCREASE the importance of social factors in the whole process? Isn't that the exact opposite of the much more modest--but much more carefully considered--ideas of the logical postivists?

Ernst Mach, Karl Popper and others, in developing their ideas (in my understanding) in effect looked at the theological discussions of the Middle Ages. The "how many angels on the head of a pin" sort of stuff. Those debates went on endlessly, because nobody had any angels to put on a pin and count. Now, if one person did it, and counted 100, and then somebody in another country did it, and likewise got 100, then 100 other people did it, and all got 100, then the debate would have ended.

Their thinking, then, can roughly be summarized as "why debate the undebatable, and why not test the testable?" Religion, being untestable, was rejected, but the culture of science being what it is, the larger notion of religion as but one example--a subset--of the undebatable was lost.

At this stage, from what I can tell, how exactly life came about is inherently untestable. Intellectually coherent ideas can be offered, which are as far as we can tell not contradicted by physical evidence, but that does not constitute proof. There is no proof in science, only utility.

And that, it seems to me, is a much better heuristic: what is USEFUL, not what is TRUE. To be sure, people will always have their suspicions, their prejudice, the assumptions in this regard, but we need to very carefully separate the undebatable from the testable.

Now, it may be the case that notions of how man came about lead to testable ideas about the consequences of whatever thesis one is advancing. THAT is science, and if the ideas of evolution turn out to be useful as a fruitful paradigm for the development of testable ideas, then that's fine. If one studies the history of ideas, one sees repeatedly the adoption of correct ideas based upon faulty premises. This does not make the incorrect ideas wrong. Then along comes a better paradigm, leading to new, testable ideas, and on it goes.

But I can't accept the land grab that has been going on for the last 100-150 years or so. It is self-contradictory, and only able to avoid detection as such through the existence of great homogeneity and corresponding social and political pressure within a large swathe of the scientific COMMUNITY.

Barry #174,

You said,

>> Scientists needs to understand, in my view, that science always exists within an already existing context of meaning and signification. The very language you use, and patterns of interaction with the people around you are always already social. This cannot be avoided, and there is no means apparent to me for correcting for the "human"--which is to say the subjective--element in everything we do and see. To be fully confident in our apprehension of the world, we would have to be non-humans existing on a qualitatively higher level.

In my schema, science is the application of the scientific method. The method has four parts, the first of which I call Foundations, comprising natural language, logic, and mathematics. Arguably the three are but one entity: logic comes from natural language, and mathematics flows from both.

Far from being obliged to apply “existing context of meaning and signification”, science must define its own terms, inventing new words along the way, to remove every conceivable ambiguity. Ordinary language is highly ambiguous. In some fields, that ambiguity is raised to an art form, as in law and the liberal arts. Scientific models instead must resolve each possible ambiguity, even at the risk of tedium and obscurity. These are not the hallmarks of sociability.

But science is not concerned with explanation or description. Instead, it is about unambiguous models of the real world – models with predictive power, and that can be validated, and hence are reproducible. An ambiguity is a gateway to a disproof.

Science doesn’t remove the “subjective [] element in everything we do and see.” It strives to remove every subjective element from its models. Where it has not, the models fail (another form of falsification if you will). I wouldn’t concede that scientists are non-human. Rather I would emphasize that science literacy can make ordinary citizens “confident in [the shared] apprehension of the world”.

It seems to me the goal of the proper application of the the philosophy of science is the cultivation of humility. The destruction of certainty in all fields of study, with something close to certainty only pertaining to areas that have been experimentally tested in well designed experiments for long periods of time.

It is never the case that people who are wrong FEEL wrong, or feel that they have been other than systematic, rational, sensible, logical, etc. That they have failed to make adequate use of sensory input, or their faculties of thought. That there is any reason to think they COULD be wrong.

One of the more obvious examples is the one that gets used constantly, but rarely in the level of detail it warrants: that of the use of biology to justify the slaughter of Jews, Gypsies and other "defectives." In assessing this, it is important to realize that it is quite impossible to read ANY history of science that doesn't reference Germans--or Viennese--constantly. They are everywhere, and it almost reads something like: the Germans discovered something, the Italians discovered something, the Germans discovered something, the English discovered something, the Germans discovered something, the French . . .etc.

When Hitler started using anti-Semitism to gain power, he didn't make it up. He pulled it out of the air. It was already there, and the best and most respectable German scientists were busily developing theories of racial hierarchy and in essence differentiating between homo sapien "types", understood almost as separate species. Germany was the home of Franz Gall, who is often considered an intellectual father of biological psychology, and whose most noteworthy contribution in this regard was the notion of phrenology, which was the first linkage of expressed behavior with particular cortical regions. His idea was that different aspects of personality relate to specific parts of the brain. The more developed that part, the bigger that part in the brain. The bigger that part of the brain, there ought logically to be protrusions in that section. Therefore, by palpating, by feeling, a person's head, you could tell almost all you needed to about their character and general attributes.

Thus, he was able to generate a detailed description of a "criminal type". Later, the same types of scientists, described "Aryan" types, and "Semitic" types. If you watch the movie "Europa, Europa", you get the intensely ironic scene of a Jewish boy being held up by a schoolmaster, by a master of his field, as an "ideal" Aryan type. And nobody noticed this.

One would like to think there was a massive hue and cry in the academies against Hitler, but as far as I can recall from my readings in the history of that period, he was in large measure simply describing what they already believed, and if they had issues with him, that wasn't one of them.

Now, one could simply say: "well, obvious they were wrong. That's just bad science." True enough, but one has to, in this regard, consider the overwhelming erudition of these men, of their tremendous work ethics, of their, well, Teutonic "grundlichkeit", their thoroughness. They meant well, and in many cases they were not only following the scientific method in developing models of what was "real", but were offering substantial contributions of their own with regard to the philosophy of science.

I think that period, and those men, offer a very instructive example of what is possible when we fail to constantly question our own first assumptions. They were sincere, in most cases, and yet they fell err to their humanity and social natures. To the slight--but essential-- errors, in their basic thinking.

Jeff,

I think that if people want to smoke, use cell phones, or inject gasoline in their veins they can. I think that if a person is ignorant and determined, but not doing harm to anyone or thing but themselves, let 'em do it. It's a good learning mechanism. The issue here is that people may be harming other entities beside themselves.

I don't think that heavy government is the correct answer, but maybe the only answer that may work in particular instances (especially in issues that have blanketed impact like GW). Sometimes it is better to be told what to do, not because you don't understand, but because the 10 guys next to you don't understand.

Like everything in life, government should be taken in moderation. But, if a class of 1st graders was learning how to operate a car, I would rather teach them to drive than to watch them crash the car into a pedestrian (even if being taught was not convenient for the little complainers). Know what I mean?

Barry # 175,

>> [I]n what does the process of "falsification" consist where ideas that I'm terming metaphysical--meaning experimentally unverifiable--consist? Is it not the case that the basic process, the basic question, asked is: "would a person of similar training and experience reach the same conclusion, based on the same data set"? Isn't that the very essence of the peer review process, which gets trotted out as "evidence" of the impartiality of the scientific process, and hence it's correspondingly immense and powerful claim on Truth?

You seem to be trying to force an obsolete, alien concept, falsifiable, into a modern, pragmatic setting. In the context of the everyday workings of science, it goes unrecognized. I would concede that falsifiability may be viable in metaphysics. Shrug. (Is this the distinction you were making in #177 by "the application of the philosophy of science" instead of "the application of science"?)

The criterion about what a person of similar training might do is close to the reasonable man standard in law. It, too, is outside the realm of science. The validity question in science always relates to a model, not some generallized conclusion. In science the first test is whether the model violates any tenet of the scientific method. If so it is a conjecture. At this conjecture, we have well-known, twin examples of models that fail – creationism and intelligent design. They rely on a supreme being.

The following story taken from http://zugaldia.net/blog/2006/11/11/napoleon-and-laplace/ is delightful:

>>Laplace went in state to beg Napoleon to accept a copy of his work. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark:

>> “M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.”

>>Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly:

>>”I did not need to make such an assumption.”

>>Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed:

>>”Ah! that is a beautiful assumption; it explains many things.”

>>Laplace [later] declared:

>>”This hypothesis, Sir, does explain everything, but does not permit to predict anything. As a scholar, I must provide you with works permitting predictions.”

Napoleon, Laplace and Lagrange were the end of the line of precocious Frenchmen. Two instructions flow from this dialog:

• In practice, anything may be deduced from the assumption of God. Therefore, it is denied to science. And

• Significant, objective prediction is in the end-all of science.

The next test science applies to a model is whether it fits all the data in its domain and makes a novel, non-trivial prediction. If so, it is rated a hypothesis.

Next is the test of whether any novel, non-trivial prediction has been shown to be true by experimentation. If so, the model is a theory.

Finally, when the model has survived every test that science can muster, it is elevated to a law.

Does any peer review process apply any of these principles?

The Rand Corporation publishes its peer review criteria. It includes the following commendable standards:

>>The problem is well formulated; the research approach is well designed and well executed; the data and assumptions are sound; the findings are useful and advance knowledge; the implications and recommendations follow logically from the findings and are explained thoroughly; the documentation is accurate, understandable, cogent, and temperate in tone; the research demonstrates understanding of related previous studies; and the research is relevant, objective, independent, and balanced. Peer review is conducted by research professionals who were not members of the project team.

Are you aware of any such criteria in a scientific journal? Is any journal committed to the scientific process?

Peer review in climatology as exercised by the Journal of Climate and as might have been applied to IPCC publications is conducted by professionals dedicated to the goals of the publication: promoting Anthropogenic Global Warming. The process is dedicated to conformity. It is unscientific, unethical and utterly lacking in the virture of scientific skepticism.

The failures of the peer review process are legend, well worthy of a book. It is no guarantee of scientific quality.

Most science is performed by industry, and not universities or government laboratories. As I recall, a substantial majority of PhDs are employed in industry. Projects requiring a decade in academe are routinely executed in three years or less in industry. But industry regularly keeps its science secret. It is routinely not published, and often is not even protected by patents because of what they reveal. Science proceeds quite apace with no peer review.

On the other hand, fields like climatology, astrology, and paranormal studies sport peer reviewed journals. A façade at best, the process promotes conformity at the expense of science.

Mark M #178

>> I think that if people want to smoke, use cell phones, or inject gasoline in their veins they can.

Good! You got me. Let me revise my query:

Should we ban smoking in case second hand smoke causes cancer?

Should we ban homes near power lines in case they cause leukemia?

The point is to the extent to which you endorse costly government regulation on the basis of the mere speculation of harm. In posts #121 and 133, you defend CO2 emission controls IN CASE they might be harmful. Your position seems to be pro oppressive regulation under any pretext.

Did you say you are a scientist? #121. If so, why do you not make the distinction between global warming -- a fact of which you are skeptical -- and anthropogenic global warming – an unsupported conjecture that prompts you urge CO2 preemptive regulation? See #159.

As a chemist (#121) what is the harm you contemplate in atmospheric CO2, and as a scientist, what do you mean by “massive … amounts” of it? Isn’t CO2 harmless to the fauna and beneficial to the flora? Isn’t the present CO2 rate of increase minute compared to the total greenhouse gas concentration, even with the unknown concentration of water vapor? Isn’t the scary (runaway, tilting point, too late, 10 years to go) greenhouse effect grossly exaggerated speculation?

By the way, Nature, like Science and many journals, is not freely available to the public. This is science for sale. Like all copyrighted journals, though, you may freely quote from it. Please do so, or ignore it.

we simply have too many people on this earth. We have had warming and cooling of the earth as it revolves around the sun. You learn about current events by looking at history. Ever think about what has happened about the history of weather on our planet? Check it out == might be very interesting. When on the artic circle at age of 19 I saw very wide rivers of water coming off the artic circle in May and Jun 56 about one half inches deep. Study about something before you come to a conclusion, check with geogoligist who have studied about changes in atmospheric changes over ages of time not a few years. Sincerely, Grover Thomas.

we simply have too many people on this earth. We have had warming and cooling of the earth as it revolves around the sun. You learn about current events by looking at history. Ever think about what has happened about the history of weather on our planet? Check it out == might be very interesting. When on the artic circle at age of 19 I saw very wide rivers of water coming off the artic circle in May and Jun 56 about one half inches deep. Study about something before you come to a conclusion, check with geogoligist who have studied about changes in atmospheric changes over ages of time not a few years. Sincerely, Grover Thomas.

Southern Greenland is a beautiful island. Its national flower is the yellow poppy and it has beautiful mountains in the south. Further for your information Southern Greenland is situated south of northern Norway and Swedland. Check your globe if you do not believe it. There are various trips you can take to get there. Check your information before making statements that are not true. I was there for 43 days when the sun always shone ---24 hours a day and when Greenland was discovered it was pretty as a picture and still is. Get your facts straight before you listen to a bunch of lies. And furthermore, there are more eskimoes in Northwest Greenland than many other places. Continue to listen to a bunch of lies and believe them if you wish. But if you want the facts just E Mail me and get information from some Air Force personnel who have been there and seem it and walked across the hardened snow and seen the crevices in the artic ocean which were so deep you could not see the bottom. Apologize for making so many typos but to study Greenland all you have to do is to study just a little by using the internet. If you think this is a little terse, then I meant it to be. Study before you pass on false information. Thanks. By the way the ice was clear as crystal. My trip to Greenland was paid for by the taxpayers expense while we were protecting our country from the soviet union. Get the drift?