Evolution

[RuralGamer]

snip

I'll admit, I don't know everything (no one can; its a physical impossibility because you don't live long enough to learn everything), but from what I've come to in conclusion, evolution is not the truth. A couple of points for you though;
1) At school were were never taught the difference/distinction in any of the sciences; I studied all three at one point or another.
2) There is no evidence of evolution in dogs; they are all still the same species, thus they have not evolved, only been adapted by humans to serve certain purposes. Yet this is still used, along with numerous other "proofs" as basis for the theory of evolution; I posted a few of them a page or so back.
3) I believe in natural selection; that the environment allows beneficial traits to be promoted in animals, but fail to understand how that is automatically a part of evolution or has anything to do with the creation of new species, even over however long evolution is now thought to have taken.
4) As I mentioned previously on this thread, scientists have been proven in the past to have altered the evidence to fit the theory. How do you know that any part of the rest of the evidence hasn't been altered? They're still humans with an agenda.

As I said, I don't profess to be a man of science. I can't say that you're intelligent or not because I don't know you. Obviously you are learned though. All I have to ask (and these are rhetorical questions);
Have you ever considered (or read) the counter arguments? If not and don't care, then you can ignore the rest of what I have say.

Spoiler

Ten years ago, you asked me if I was an evolutionist, I would have said yes. Now, I would say definitely no. What changed? I became a Christian, but that was not what caused me to become anti-evolutionist. Now I've seen a few of arguments against evolution; one that did ring strong was The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by a scientific journalist called Richard Milton. His reason for writing the book was because one day his daughter asked him questions about evolution he couldn't answer, so decided to go away and look it up. He found there to be some arguments and evidence that could be posed against evolution, but were ignored by the evolutionist community. Response to the book was hostile and it actually lists a few of them in the new editions; notably Richard Dawkins, who called him "an unqualified hack" and spent most of a review slanting him and the publishers for printing it; he only criticises a small portion of the book and ignores everything else as if it weren't written. You can read it yourself;

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17464072/Review-of-Richard-Milton-The-Facts-of-Life-Shat

Does that sound professional?
I'm not saying you're an idiot; I'm just saying that counterarguments are ignored and shouldn't be. If you're interested, there is a three-part series by an evangelist preacher called Michael Penfold which explains why Darwinism is both scienfically and philosophically (his words not mine) bankrupt. I don't have the link immediately available, but if you want, PM me and I can look it up for you. If not, don't bother replying, because I have better things to do than fight with someone when I'd rather not; this argument is solving nothing.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

it cannot be demonstrated in a laboratory or though a mathematical equation, which most of what science has discovered can.

It can and it has. Just because you haven't/couldn't be bothered to read up on it doesn't mean the information and proof aren't there.

Ok then, present me with an experiment that definitively proves it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

Check that out then, it's only an overview form New Scientist of a wonderful experiment set up to hopefully catch evolution in action. Which is precisely what happened. It's written in simple enough language so you should have no problem understanding it even if you know nothing about biology/science.

 

[Ben Hussong]

"There is a three-part series by an EVANGELIST preacher" that right there is a warning sign of a conflict of interest personally. And these counter arguments aren't "ignored" they've been dealt with soo many times it's just not worth the time almost anymore, since the people who listen to these arguments aren't likely to be swayed by scientific facts at all..

 

[Shoqiyqa]

oooh reading richard dawkins is enough to put me off evolution. he comes off as such a twazzock

Can't disagree there. Calling a fraction of a long molecule "selfish" pissed me off right from the start, and then someone got me a book called "How The Leopard Changed Its Spots" and ... actually I think I binned the book and gave up on the person who bought me it, because ... well, if you really want to know how pretention a twat an author can be, read the preface!

If a hippo feels threatend it will breath on you, ...

The verb is BREATHE. The word BREATH is a noun. A BREATH is what you take when you BREATHE.

The abbreviation of YOU ARE is YOU'RE. The word you used, YOUR, is the second person possessive pronoun. To illustrate: YOUR mother was a hamster and YOU'RE an elderberry!

As for hippos, **** not with the hippos.

Hippos are actually easily scared, and their response to being scared is to get into the water. Where you don't want to be is between the hippo and the water.

Sick of google throwing up shite, can't be arsed seeking science, posting this. [http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/animals/news-africas-most-dangerous-animal]

If there is one thing you hear when you go to Africa it's: "Never get between a hippo and the water!" An angry or threatened hippo is a pretty intimidating adversary, weighing between 1.5 and 3 tons and able to run at up to 30 mph - that's three times faster than most of us). If hippos are threatened on land, they'll run for water... and believe me you don't want to be in the way! It's no wonder that the most deaths by wild animals in Africa are caused by hippos.

If you thought you had thick skin, think again. Hippo skin is two inches thick! It has historically been used to make ferocious whips capable of killing a man in 10 blows. The whips are called kiboko, the swahili term for hippo. That's not the only weird thing about hippo skin.... it doesn't contain any sweat glands! During the day hippos hang out together in the water or cover up in mud to keep their skin from drying out and cracking. They also secrete an oily red liquid as an additional protection from the sun, giving rise to the myth that hippos sweat blood.

Hippos are among the most irascible creatures on the continent. While they are typically content to sleep away the day on the shore of a river or in the shallows, when alarmed they are quick to show their hostile side. Hippos are reputed to cause more human deaths than any other large animal in Africa (though some claim the cape buffalo holds this honor).

Although an adult hippo has no natural predators, it quickly retreats to the safety of the deep water when it encounters the unexpected, such as a canoe coming around the bend. Most human deaths occur when the unlucky victim finds himself between a startled hippo and the deep water. Females with young are especially dangerous.

Apart from snakes and insects the hippopotamus kills more people in Africa than any other! It?s a statistic which many find shocking especially because they?re not actually meat eaters. So what makes the hippo so dangerous ?

Well to begin with they?re large, extremely bad tempered and surprisingly quick on both land and water. If you combine these factors with a strong set of jaws and large tusks you have an animal with an extremely destructive bite.

Most attacks seem to occur at watering holes or near to water where humans either come too close or simply disturb the hippo from a distance. So just remember next time you?re in Africa it?s not only the lions, cheetahs and crocidiles you need to worry about. Beware of the bad tempered hippo!

Though it has a placid and goofy-looking demeanor, the hippo is actually one of the planet?s grumpiest creatures. In Africa, hippos are as feared as crocodiles, and for good reason. Despite their rotund cuteness and adorable teddy-bear-like ears, startled hippos are quickly enraged. They can easily outrun a human being; they capsize boats and maul passengers unfortunate enough to fall out. Angry hippos rely on bulk (they can weigh up to 8,000 pounds) and surprising speed (they can run up to 30 miles per hour) to take down and destroy anything that annoys them?including enormous Nile crocodiles.

et cetera

 

[Shoqiyqa]

... bacteria will become resistant to antibiotics, why? because the individuals that have the mutation that makes them more resistant will be selected for and soon the entire population will be resistant.

Actually, that's more likely a plasmid than a mutation within the bacterium, although the plasmids themselves could be the result of a mutation within a bacterium, and have some interesting overlaps with bacteriophages, too.

 

[omega 616]

The verb is BREATHE. The word BREATH is a noun. A BREATH is what you take when you BREATHE.

The abbreviation of YOU ARE is YOU'RE. The word you used, YOUR, is the second person possessive pronoun. To illustrate: YOUR mother was a hamster and YOU'RE an elderberry!

As for hippos, **** not with the hippos.

Yeah, I am not going to read all that crap since I know all about them ... didn't I say that all ready?

Oh my gosh, how dare I typo the "E" at the end, I am so so sorry.

Your is the same as you're. While reading that in your head did it sound different? No? There we are then. There is also just one "were" "to" (unless with the number) and "there" 'cos life is just to short to be bothered by semantics like all there verious speelings of the same word!

Also ...

 

[Shoqiyqa]

I learned at university that most of the mutation which occur are either repaired by cell mechanism and never show up, or they are lethal, or almost insignificant.
Why there are some that make that big diffence, I do not know.

Let's take some arbitrary figures.
0.1 mutations per generation (0.3 according to one site I checked, but let's use 0.1).
90% of mutations are corrected immediately by internal mechanisms.
60% of mutations are immediately fatal.
80% of non-fatal mutations weaken the organism and thus gradually die out.
40% of the rest do some good.
0.00000001% of those do huge amounts of good, like allowing it to see in 3D or fly.

Let's take a hypothetical example of a small early animal that reproduces once per day and exists in fairly small numbers in a very limited area, like maybe only one million of them in total.

That's 0.00003232 beneficial mutations per generation, or 11804 per year across the whole population. Clearly I was too generous with my figures, so ...

0.01 mutations per generation
99% of mutations are corrected immediately by internal mechanisms.
99% of mutations are immediately fatal.
99% of non-fatal mutations weaken the organism and thus gradually die out.
1% of the rest do some good.
0.00000001% of those do huge amounts of good, like allowing it to see in 3D or fly.

0.0000000001 beneficial mutations per generation.

One every 10,000,000,000 generations.

One every 27.4 years, across the population, and actually 3D vision or flight would take 2.7 billion years by those figures.

Given that the Earth has room for rather more than one million amoebae and has been around for a bit more than four billion years ...

As for big changes, take the example of birds. Feathers are freaky, to be sure, but the first coelurosaur [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html] to grow feathers probably got a really big advantage out of it, like staying a fair bit warmer after sunset and being able to catch the endothermic mammals and/or stop them stealing its eggs. There's been a video about the evolution of flight posted already, so I'll defer to that for now, but feathers of suitable lengths make for a really nice aerofoil with shape adjustment for steering and speed control, which is probably why birds tend to be doing better than bats.

Bats? Oh, hey, sonar! Hearing's handy. Really good hearing's better, so once something randomly got the ability to detect sound it had a huge advantage and every refinement helped, and once things could hear vocal communication became useful so things that could deliberately make sounds and found ways to use that ability were more successful, and that made hearing all the more valuable to everything else ... and then something realised it could use the echoes of its own sounds to find its way in the dark, and DUDE I CAN FIND MY WAY IN THE DARK! Interesting note: birds all recognise each other's alarm calls, and we recognise them too. Even though they've been separate species for a very long time and we evolved from a different branch of the tree going back much further than that, we know an alarm call when we hear it. Did anyone have to tell you what it was? Did you have to see a bird flying away in fear and hear it making that sound to know it was an alarm call, or did it just sound alarmed? Blue tits and coal tits have so much in common they're natural rivals in a lot of ways, but neither benefits from the predators getting the other as much as they do from the predators being unable to feed their own chicks this year.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

... feral cats in the UK are rarely pure feral and therefore regarded as endangered.

Wildcats. Feral cats are domestic cats that have gone wild, and are a threat to wildcats.

... you've said evolution has never been demonstrated in a lab when it has, ...

Nah, labradors are thick. Alsatian-collie crosses are the way to go.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

I'm sorry but the fact that it's called the theory of evolution and not the Laws of evolution, like the Laws of Motion, means that it is still a theory.
A very well thought out and compelling and likely theory, but a theory nonetheless.

Four bad arguments against evolution [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/four_bad_arguments_against_evo.php#more]

... error of assuming there is some universal authority that ranks scientific ideas into "laws" and "theories", with laws having some objective priority. This is not true. ... testable mathematical formula, it tends to be called a law: ... F=ma, ... PV=nRT. Laws tend to be short and simple.

Theories, on the other hand, ...

FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM NOT A CREATIONIST!

I think the problem here is this:

When you say "it's only a theory" people assume that some rant about creationism will come next.

Also: see the bits of what I quoted that I quoted again above. I've trimmed it a little to try to make it even more obvious why I quoted that little bit of the huge page to which I linked when I quoted that little bit of it.

3) I believe in natural selection; that the environment allows beneficial traits to be promoted in animals, but fail to understand how that is automatically a part of evolution or has anything to do with the creation of new species, even over however long evolution is now thought to have taken.

Try reading the rest of the thread. I think it's been explained.

If you're interested, there is a three-part series by an evangelist preacher called Michael Penfold which explains why Darwinism is both scienfically and philosophically (his words not mine) bankrupt.

I have no interest whatsoever in what some weirdo wearing a black dress with his shirt collar turned backwards and out to recruit new members to his bizarre cult has to say on the subject, especially if he's peddling a bunch of hokum closely related to that peddled by the Hitler Youth veteran who says he's allowed to hand out licences to sexually abuse kids.

 

[Ben Hussong]

I'm sorry but the fact that it's called the theory of evolution and not the Laws of evolution, like the Laws of Motion, means that it is still a theory.
A very well thought out and compelling and likely theory, but a theory nonetheless.

Four bad arguments against evolution [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/four_bad_arguments_against_evo.php#more]

... error of assuming there is some universal authority that ranks scientific ideas into "laws" and "theories", with laws having some objective priority. This is not true. ... testable mathematical formula, it tends to be called a law: ... F=ma, ... PV=nRT. Laws tend to be short and simple.

Theories, on the other hand, ...

FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM NOT A CREATIONIST!

I think the problem here is this:

When you say "it's only a theory" people assume that some rant about creationism will come next.

Also: see the bits of what I quoted that I quoted again above. I've trimmed it a little to try to make it even more obvious why I quoted that little bit of the huge page to which I linked when I quoted that little bit of it.

3) I believe in natural selection; that the environment allows beneficial traits to be promoted in animals, but fail to understand how that is automatically a part of evolution or has anything to do with the creation of new species, even over however long evolution is now thought to have taken.

Try reading the rest of the thread. I think it's been explained.

If you're interested, there is a three-part series by an evangelist preacher called Michael Penfold which explains why Darwinism is both scienfically and philosophically (his words not mine) bankrupt.

I have no interest whatsoever in what some weirdo wearing a black dress with his shirt collar turned backwards and out to recruit new members to his bizarre cult has to say on the subject, especially if he's peddling a bunch of hokum closely related to that peddled by the Hitler Youth veteran who says he's allowed to hand out licences to sexually abuse kids.

That's a little bit rude, I think we can try to be civil in this thread, even when we have big disagreements.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

snip

Well to say this again Gravity is not a theory it is fundamental force of nature. What causes it and what is actually is is a theory. This is why it is called Newton's Theory of Gravitation which was expanded on in Einstein's Relativity. It is a force because we have an equation for it which is an inverse square law if I remember right I might have to check log tables.

Since Evolution is a theory it is subject to change and improvements. I just want people to stop taking it is as absolute fact when it is not. It is scientific fact because it is generally accepted by the scientific community.

snip

I am going to go through this one more time. Saying it is just a theory does not mean I am refuting it. I am saying it is not absolute fact as I would like people to stop treating it as such. All theories change and side step through time. [HEADING=2] I AM NOT SAYING IT IS WRONG OR REFUTING IT.[/HEADING]

I understand the bones of it and general gist of it but not the finer details as I don't do biology I am physics man. Once again yes it is SCIENTIFIC FACT because it is generally accepted by the scientific community. I understand. The fact that light was a beam of particles and then a wave was also fact but now we know that is wrong. Well it is both really so we call them photons as it is not a classic wave or particle.

Also a hypothesis or conjecture is something we observe and think might be true. A theory is something that has been tested and vetted and has become widely accept but is not absolute true 100% fact(which is why they change a little). A law generalizes a body of observations. At the time it is made, no exceptions have been found to a law. Scientific laws explain things, but they do not describe them. One way to tell a law and a theory apart is to ask if the description gives you a means to explain 'why'.

The difference between a law and a theory is a theory can be disputed, changed, improved and proven wrong. This is all I am saying.

snip

I never said any rant about Creationism. I just it is a theory. I never said it wasn't real or unobservable.

The thing is Evolution is only a theory(wouldn't be called a theory otherwise) and not fully complete and of badly put across in modern society. Although the general idea of it does exist we can't really say we can from apes. I am sure we have a similar ancestor going back millions of years but then again if you go back far enough we all came from space dust.

All I have said is that it is not fully complete and our understanding of it changes. Which what I meant by that is for people to stop taking it as divine fact. It could be proved to be wrong but I don't think it will be but we should be open to change.

snip

Well that is all I am saying. I know what most people are saying but just because I say it is only a theory does not mean I am refuting it. I am saying that it is not absolute fact and subject to change. It is possible(but highly unlikely) it could be dead wrong to a degree like Newtons Inverse Square Gravity equation(although for general use it is fine).

This is all I wanted to say. I don't like when people go on like Evolution is complete. As there are plenty of people who have quoted me without reading past the first page and I have to restate the same thing several times. This is all I have been trying to say.

 

[Count Igor]

There is also just one "were"

Well, Where and Were are pronounced differently.
So... Ya know.

 

[omega 616]

There is also just one "were"

Well, Where and Were are pronounced differently.
So... Ya know.

Yeah, that silent H is a killer. Same as knife, that K always gets me.

Seriously, Were not talking about the evolution of words or the English language.

 

[Count Igor]

There is also just one "were"

Well, Where and Were are pronounced differently.
So... Ya know.

Yeah, that silent H is a killer. Same as knife, that K always gets me.

Seriously, Were not talking about the evolution of words or the English language.

Oh, you meant We're and were. Right.

Edit: Wait, that makes no sense...
Look, I was just pointing out that you were wrong in that sense.
You don't pronounce the K, but the H affects the word.
Where is like Ware
Were is like... well, wer.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Isn't that why scientist are trying to find a second earth somewhere out there? They are desperate to proove that it could have happened twice.

I think this, this accumulation of coincidences leading to a wonderful living world like we have, is proof for a concept behind it.

Sorry but I skipped through the bad analogies and such to pick out a lovely corn of bullshit. The reason scientists look for other S3 planets is several:

1. Space exploration - a pre existing S3 planet will be invaluable if we traverse space in the future.
2. Origin of life - !THIS IS NOT TO FIND OUT IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE! This relates to the Primordial Ooze hypothesis of how life started on Earth, if life is present where we find water in the same state as it is on Earth (something that is near impossible to test on earth alone due to the sheer amount of time and possible contamination aspects involved in such tests)
3. Curiousity - Earth like planets are pretty rare and fill us with thoughts of Star Wars like sci-fi universes so the prospect of finding one is always exciting.

Why do you insult people you don't know with things like 'lovely corn of bullshit'?
Does it make your words more true?
I would never dare to say it's bullshit what all of you are saying, its a discussion, not a war.
All I wanted to claim was: Don't be that narrowminded. There are so many opinions out there, not only creationism and Darwinism.

And as far as I know, and have informed myself, talked to scientist, what do you think, this curiosity comes from?
Just because people are like this?
Why do you think the topic of evolution leads oftentimes to this point where creationists start to scream and call it a lie?
Because thats what science is all about. We are curious to learn the rules of our world, because we wanna understand it. Understand what we are, where we come from, and why we are here.

You can never say that you're right. You can say with the theory I have, I can make pretty good prognoses for what is going to happen. You can use them, as it is stated above. But as I said befor people used the theorie of the earth being centre of the universe to navigate for hundreds of years. So are you sure that the mechanism behind what we see is exactly what we assume?

Columbus once discovered America, but he told till his death he was in India. He never knew that there is a whole continent in between and it is the same with us.
The only thing we can learn from history is, that the next generation is looking down on the former, laughing at what they stated to be 'scientific truth'.
Do you really think our generation will be an exception?

If we go back to the beginning of the thread the question was, how can tiny little mutation lead to variety as we do have?
Even if we say at the moment we can state, there are mutation and species are not stady stayng the same all over the centuries, I cannot answer this question.
I learned at university that most of the mutation which occur are either repaired by cell mechanism and never show up, or they are lethal, or almost insignificant.
Why there are some that make that big diffence, I do not know.

How you managed to turn 5 sentences from me into 5 paragraphs from you is pretty astonishing.

1. I called it bullshit because it was bullshit, you said scientists look for earthlike planets to prove evolution true, which is wrong.

2. Creationists react that way because they've rejected science and argue from a position of dogma rather than evidence and logic.

3. Yes. I. Know.
3b. Using the stars to navigate and believing the Earth is the centre of the universe don't always go together. Star navigation methods worked.

4. Please stop using analogies and straw men. Columbus wasn't 150 years of scientific study that gathered a vast amount of evidence to back up its claims. We don't laugh at a previous generation's knowledge, unless they rejected a hypotheses that has become common knowledge.

5. It's not just tiny mutations that cause evolution to occur, as many other people have already pointed out. Yes you have heard correctly that many mutations are repaired or lead to cell suicide, senescence or cancer.

However, this doesn't happen 100% of the time.

Sudden origins: a general mechanism of evolution based on stress protein concentration and rapid environmental change.
Maresca B, Schwartz JH.

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy. [email protected]
Abstract
A major theme in Darwinian evolutionary theory is that novelty arises through a process in which organisms and their features are gradually transformed. Morgan provided Darwinism and the evolutionary synthesis with the idea that minor mutations produce the minuscule morphological variations on which natural selection then acts, and that, although mutation is random, once a process of gradual genetic modification begins, it becomes directional and leads to morphological, and consequently organismal, transformation. In contrast, studies on the role of cell membrane physical states in regulating the expression of stress proteins in response to environmental shifts indicate the existence of a downstream mechanism that prevents or corrects genetic change (i.e., maintains "DNA homeostasis"). However, episodic spikes in various kinds of environmental stress that exceed an organism's cells' thresholds for expression of proper amounts of stress proteins responsible for protein folding (including stochastically occurring DNA repair) may increase mutation rate and genetic change, which in turn will alter the pattern of gene expression during development. If severe stress disrupts DNA homeostasis during meiosis (gametogenesis), this could allow for the appearance of significant mutational events that would otherwise be corrected or suppressed. In evolutionary terms, extreme spikes in environmental stress make possible the emergence of new genetic and consequent developmental and epigenetic networks, and thus also the emergence of potentially new morphological traits, without invoking geographic or other isolating mechanisms.

Sauce = http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16437551

 

[omega 616]

There is also just one "were"

Well, Where and Were are pronounced differently.
So... Ya know.

Yeah, that silent H is a killer. Same as knife, that K always gets me.

Seriously, Were not talking about the evolution of words or the English language.

Oh, you meant We're and were. Right.

Edit: Wait, that makes no sense...
Look, I was just pointing out that you were wrong in that sense.
You don't pronounce the K, but the H affects the word.
Where is like Ware
Were is like... well, wer.

Nope, I really mean we're, were and where are all spelt were. Saying "this means this but this different spelling means this and this spelling means this" ... it's the same word! I think we should stop messing about with 3 veriations on one word and condense it down to "were".

This is why English is called the hardest language to learn (or so I have heard), it's all these bull shit little semantics and I watched this vid and it sounds like we can't even talk properly any more.

I think our language needs to evolve (bringing it back on topic a little) to cut out all these stupid nuances and just have "were", "there", "Which" and "to". You say them all the same anyway.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Nope, I really mean we're, were and where are all spelt were. Saying "this means this but this different spelling means this and this spelling means this" ... it's the same word!

They're really, really, really not. They're three different parts of speech and three different words serving three different purposes. Your inability to distinguish them does not constitute a failure on the part of the English language.

 

[omega 616]

Nope, I really mean we're, were and where are all spelt were. Saying "this means this but this different spelling means this and this spelling means this" ... it's the same word!

They're really, really, really not. They're three different parts of speech and three different words serving three different purposes. Your inability to distinguish them does not constitute a failure on the part of the English language.

You read them the same*, you say them the same, the only difference is the look. Does me using the wrong were make the whole sentance totally illegible? Can you not understand what I am trying to convey? If you can then what does it matter how I spell it?

Language is all about getting you to understand me, if I can do that by using the wrong "were" why should there be other ways to spell it?

*By read I mean as, you read it in your head you say were. You don't say wHere like Stewie says "cool wHip".

It's not like I am saying something like "hippo going to the shops" were it makes no sense.

Anyway, the topic. Maybe some people would like to talk about that?

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

You read them the same

No.

you say them the same

No.

the only difference is the look.

Annnnnd...no. The dictionary disagrees with you: [weer], [wur], and [wair]. Three different pronunciations for three different things.

Does me using the wrong were make the whole sentance totally illegible? Can you not understand what I am trying to convey?

"Sentence". Using the wrong word is a horrible little speed bump in the middle of a sentence. It's maybe a quarter of a second of my time wasted going back and reparsing the sentence so it makes sense, but the time adds up. You are wasting the readers' time.

Anyway, the topic. Maybe some people would like to talk about that?

You're the one who started going on about this.

 

[Ben Hussong]

And this thread has become an evolutionary dead end