I believe that criticism about the maths/physics terminology was addressed to me (seeing as I presented that example), in which case I reply by saying that I was merely demonstrating cause and effect, not physics in particular. A clunky example, I concede – I fired it off somewhat rapidly – but I don’t think your criticism is fair.

Ray, your comment has nothing to do with anything I said, much less anything Steven J. said. I used the cookies example to demonstrate cause & effect, and then you go, “oh, but no-one created those cookies!”. Which is utterly unrelated.

Are you trying to be disingenuous, or do you simply not care?

Steven J. rather obviously meant that gravity and heat created the water cycle in the sense that the laws of physics – those that govern gravity and heat – interact in such a way that they caused the phenomenon we know as the water cycle. This clearly does not imply the presence of any intelligence or creator.

Take maths. “2 + 2 = 4”. No-one and nothing “created” the result; no intelligence invented the concept of maths and then decreed that “two plus two shall always equal four!”. That’s simply how the equation plays out. If you add two cookies to two other cookies, physics (and common sense) dictate that there shall therefore be four cookies, no more, no less. Unless you eat some. Cuz cookies are yummy.

Anyway. That’s the same as what Steven J. meant when he said that gravity and heat “created” the water cycle. Not cuz Mr. Gravity and Ms. Heat had a baby named Hydrologic Cycle (the scientific name for the water cycle). It’s all just cause and effect.

Clearer now?

I swear it’s not me! Maybe …

[points finger at Uzza] Explain yourself!

You completely missed the point. As I said: Keezer wasn’t fired just because he wore a pro-Christian button. He was fired because he refused to take it off when his boss(es) told him to, several times, over a period lasting more than a year. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do: If you disobey your bosses like that, you will be fired, whether you’re a “patriotic Christian” or pro-LGBT or whatever.

Whereas, the reason why the employees with the pro-LGBT insignia weren’t fired is because what they did was allowed by Home Depot. They followed the rules and didn’t piss anyone off. But they still would have been fired if their bosses had told them to get rid of their pro-gay buttons and they had refused. And they should be, if they violate the dress code. And, no, I would not be “flying off the handle” over it, because if you disobey your boss that flagrantly, you deserve to be kicked out.

It’s funny that you assume that “[I] tell an entirely different story” out of absolutely nothing at all, though, especially seeing as the exact opposite is true. Some might even think you were pulling it right out of your rear.

Can we send a flood of angry mail to MeanBoss?

[Comment by Veritas, reposted with his permission.]

No.

This is one of the situations in which I think it is important to remember PZ is a biologist, not a historian. His solution sounds really, really good (nuke an island! scare the Japanese!). Unfortunately, it simply would not work. Why?

The Japanese could never have seen the destruction of a remote island. As PZ himself has noted, by the time the nuclear bombs were dropped on the two Japanese cities, the Japanese were essentially paralyzed. They had no naval or air power remaining. Their island outposts were completely isolated, and in many cases, starving to death. There's no island the Americans could have vaporized that would have been communicated to the Japanese High Command in a believable fashion.

The Americans could have chosen to not utilize the bomb, and hope that their firebombing campaign and starvation campaign, both of which had already killed ten times the amount of Japanese the nuclear bombs killed, would end the war without an invasion. A negotiated peace that allowed the Japanese Empire to continue existing was not feasible, for reasons that would take a year to explain. If those options didn't end the war, then the Allies would have had to invade.

A million dead Allied soldiers, and the total destruction of Japan, a scouring and ethnic cleansing that would make Hitler look like an amateur, would have been required to win the war by invasion. So…I don't see an alternative. Not one.

Thanks, hun. *hugs back* Leaving just now.

Or mebbe a special, extra-long EEKy post for you? ;-)

No longer gruntled? Does that make you disgruntled?