Letting my Flying Subscription Expire

"Dan Youngquist" wrote in message
hell.org...
True. But the more I learn about the issue, the more I realize that many
people are confused on which is science and which is faith or
superstition.

Doesn't sound to me like you're actually doing much learning.

Even Darwin himself said something to the effect that if fossils
supporting his theory didn't start turning up soon, their absence would
disprove his theory. (150-odd years later, no luck yet.)

Your assertion is that there is no fossil evidence in support of evolution?

Things have only gone downhill since then for the theory of evolution --
the more we know, the harder it becomes to support the theory from a
scientific standpoint.

Hardly. Evolution has not only received strong support from geological
evidence, but from laboratory experiments as well.

One factoid that got my attention: Evolution proponents insist that
_only_ evolution be taught, while intelligent design proponents say teach
the pros & cons of all views and decide which has the most going for it.

A fundamental component of science is a testable hypothesis. Evolution
qualifies for this, "intelligent design" does not.

Evolution proponents do not "insist that _only_ evolution be taught". What
they do insist on is that in science class, the topics be restricted to
things that are valid science. If someone came up with an alternative
theory that actually proposed a testable hypothesis, I'm sure they would
have no trouble accepting that as a teachable topic.

"Intelligent design" is nothing more than the religious idea of a creation
by a supreme being restated. It contains no actual theory for process, no
testable hypothesis, nothing that would even remotely qualify it as science.

The latter position is in line with scientific principles and an honest
effort to learn the truth, while the former smacks more of unsupportable
religious belief and superstition.

You have that backwards.

[...]
Which reminds me... I've never understood how people can simultaneously
believe in evolution theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy).
Just doesn't make sense, from a scientific or logical standpoint.

It seems that you understand neither evolution nor thermodynamics. Entropy
is in no way a counter-proof to evolution.

Pete

Kyle Boatright wrote:
My last issue of Flying came in the mail today, and I won't be re-upping the
subscription. In recent years, I've grown more and more reluctant to renew
it, but when it came to crunch time, I went ahead and mailed in my $12.00 or
whatever. Not this year, though. In all honesty, I don't remember the last
article or column in Flying that made me want to go back and re-read the
article. Instead, the magazine arrives and I spend an hour or so breezing
through it, then it goes into the trash can, leaving me wondering what I
missed.

Once upon a time, I subscribed to 4 or 5 aviation magazines and enjoyed them
all. Now I'm only taking two aviation related mag's - Sport Aviation and
AOPA Pilot, and both of them are member benefits from their sponsor
organizations. I have a tremendous interest in aviation and love to read,
so why don't the aviation magazines interest me anymore? Have the
magazines changed? Is it me? Is it that the subject matter is finite and
after reading 20 years worth of aviation magazines, there is very little
left that is new and interesting to me?

Anyway, it is sad in a way that there isn't an aviation magazine that
interests me enough that I'll spend $12 or $15 a year for a subscription.

My interest in GA pretty much started when, several years ago, I read a
Flying Mag in a doctor's waiting room. It was about an inch thick and
had articles like the history of the China Clipper, one of the
classics IMO was "When Real Men Flew IFR" which was an old airline
writing about his experience flying DC-3's on four-course ranges and
cheating minimums to get into Idelwild because the competition got in
so damnit I'm getting in too, etc. I've subscribed ever since.

It has gone significantly downhill. It has much less content than just
a few years ago and too much of it is the same stuff written by the
same old blowhards. Just look at how thin it is now compared to only a
few years ago. Clearly the budget for editorial content has been cut
to the bone. Richard Collins is particularly hard for me to take.
Someone said his statistical stuff is good, yeah right. He's boring
and his writing is completely self-centered. He flies a C210, so he
does a scan of C210 accidents and gets an article out of it, then he
does one of C210 SDR's and gets another article out of it, etc. I
think he bangs some of those articles out in all-nighters at deadline.
Half the time I think he just pulls out his work from a few years ago
and puts a few touches on it. He's done that several times.

I still think it's worth it for Lane Wallace, Aftermath, and Les Abend.
Very occasionally they'll have an additional feature article that
interests me but more and more seldom. But hey it's only $12/year and
IMO the three I like are worth that.

I also get Aviation Consumer, which I usually find fascinating. I
recently let Aviation Safety lapse because I didn't think I was really
getting any new info from it. AOPA Pilot is the best of the glossies,
but that's kind of top.turd.dungpile at this point. I found Private
Pilot and Plane & Pilot to be atrocious, bad quality (not just poor
writing but also layout errors), very repetitive, and unrewarding to
read -- so many times an article looks like I would enjoy it because
it's about an airplane type or subject I'm interested in and I always
came away disappointed.

What's really depressing is if you can dig up old articles from Flying
or AOPA Pilot. I've run into a few on the web, they used to be so much
better.

But the more I learn about the issue, the more I realize that many people are confused on which is science and which is faith or superstition.

The key difference is that a scientific theory can be =dis=proven, with
appropriate evidence. An issue of faith cannot.

Evolution proponents insist that _only_ evolution be taught, while intelligent design proponents say teach the pros & cons of all views and decide which has the most going for it.

It may be a factoid, but it is not a fact. A factoid "resembles" a
fact. What you state above is not true. It is not a fact.

What is a fact is that those whom you call "evolution proponents" insist
that matters of faith not be taught as science. Come up with a
testable, disprovable theory and it can be taught as science. Come up
with some evidence in its favor and it might even gain support.
Evolution fits the bill. Neither Intellegent Design (laughable when I
see how living things actually work!) nor the Great Spaghetti Monster
(bless his noodley appendages) can be disproven, therefore do not fit
the definition of "scientific theory". To be a "scientific theory" it
must be more than an idea or speculation - it must be DISprovable. (not
that "disprovable" does not mean "incorrect"; it merely means that there
are experimental results which, =if= obtained, could disprove the theory)

Theories of air pressure on wings is testable and disprovable. Lifting
fairies are not.

I've never understood how people can simultaneously believe in evolution theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy).

Entropy increases over a closed system. Evolution shows its effects on
an open system. It's like perpetual motion machines being impossible,
even in the face of solar powered motors. While small areas of a system
get more complex, they do so at the cost of larger areas of the system
becoming more degraded. Go to any garbage dump for a picturesque
illustration.

This has been discussed here about six months ago. I forget the (of
course misleading) subject lines, but google for it.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Dan wrote:

Which reminds me... I've never understood how people can simultaneously
believe in evolution theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy).
Just doesn't make sense, from a scientific or logical standpoint.

Check out: http://www.2ndlaw.com/evolution.html

--Walt

"Dan Youngquist" wrote in message
hell.org...
On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Roger wrote:
Try becoming well informed on the evolution/intelligent design
"controversy" if you're not a biologist to begin with.

That's easy. One is based on science and the other on superstition,
some times called faith.

True. But the more I learn about the issue, the more I realize that many
people are confused on which is science and which is faith or
superstition. Even Darwin himself said something to the effect that if
fossils supporting his theory didn't start turning up soon, their absence
would disprove his theory. (150-odd years later, no luck yet.) Things
have only gone downhill since then for the theory of evolution -- the more
we know, the harder it becomes to support the theory from a scientific
standpoint.

HA!!! Where did you get that non-sense?

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

"Dan Youngquist" wrote:

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Roger wrote:
Try becoming well informed on the evolution/intelligent design
"controversy" if you're not a biologist to begin with.

That's easy. One is based on science and the other on superstition,
some times called faith.

True. But the more I learn about the issue, the more I realize that many
people are confused on which is science and which is faith or
superstition. Even Darwin himself said something to the effect that if
fossils supporting his theory didn't start turning up soon, their absence
would disprove his theory. (150-odd years later, no luck yet.) Things
have only gone downhill since then for the theory of evolution -- the
more we know, the harder it becomes to support the theory from a
scientific standpoint.

You're a fine example of someone who has been grossly misled on the
subject.

1) The fossil record offers fine support for the theory of evolutuion.
Google ambulocetus or archaeopteryx.
2) Genetics, a field of science Darwin didn't even know about, has
provided even stronger evidence.
3) Advances in many other natural sciences--paleontology, biochemistry,
geology--have all affirmed the t. of e.

This is exactly the baloney that a Christian, Republican, conservative,
Bush-appointed judge struck down in Dover, PA. Intelligent Design is not
science; there is no scientific controversy about ToE vs. ID.

Quite...150 years after Darwin, not ONE shread of contradictory evidence has
been raised.


[snip]

Which reminds me... I've never understood how people can simultaneously
believe in evolution theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy).
Just doesn't make sense, from a scientific or logical standpoint. I've
seen some attempted explanations of this phenomenon, but they don't stand
up to critical and unbiased examination. It's sort of like believing if
you play the slot machines long enough you've just gotta win, when there
are big signs everywhere saying "Our slots return [some number less than
100]%" -- in other words, on average, you are going to lose. But, folks
keep believing what they want to believe, despite the facts staring them
in the face.

More of the bogus arguments I was refering to in my previous post. The
2nd LoT argument is a particularly old often refuted chestnut that keeps
coming up because the ID/Creationist scammers know that most people won't
make the effort to learn why it is BS.

Wake up Dan; you've been had. Try a little reading:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-...ons.html#proof

Took the words (okay...the URL) right out of my mouth.

"Walt" wrote in message
oups.com...
Dan wrote:

Which reminds me... I've never understood how people can simultaneously
believe in evolution theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy).
Just doesn't make sense, from a scientific or logical standpoint.

Check out: http://www.2ndlaw.com/evolution.html

Two good links from Walt and Dan Luke. Let's wait and see if Dan Y. recants.

My bet is he spins like a top. (Based on experience)

If you want interesting reading, you should get a subscription to Aviation
Week.

Mike Schumann

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
. ..
[...] I have a tremendous interest in aviation and love to read, so why
don't the aviation magazines interest me anymore? Have the magazines
changed? Is it me? Is it that the subject matter is finite and after
reading 20 years worth of aviation magazines, there is very little left
that is new and interesting to me?

Only you can say. However, if your experience is similar to mine, it's a
combination: you have read the same thing over and over again often enough
that it's no longer interesting; but also, I feel that Flying in
particular has been going downhill. I can't stand either Mac or
Collins -- Mac just seems like too much of an idiot sometimes, and Collins
is just too full of himself. When Collins came back, the magazine
practically turned into "The Richard Collins Magazine".

Back in the day, there were several authors in the magazine that I enjoyed
reading: Gordon Baxter (duh), Len Morgan, and Peter Garrison being the top
three. "I Learned About Flying From That" kept my interest occasionally
as well. But Baxter and Morgan are both gone and while their replacements
are competent enough, they don't draw me hopelessly in the way those two
did (especially Bax). The stories in "ILAFFT" have gotten old (I guess
there's only a limited number of ways most people wind up crashing or
nearly crashing an airplane). And Garrison on his own isn't enough to
keep me resubscribing, especially when I not only have lost interest in
most of the rest of the magazine, but the principals in the magazine are
people who irritate me.

That said, every now and then Flying runs a feature that seems
interesting, and it's one of the least expensive aviation magazines I've
seen that's worth reading. But I already have a LOT of reading in my
life. Aviation isn't the only topic for periodicals to which I subscribe,
and there are still books, and of course online resources to read.

If I had nothing better to do, maybe I'd have kept up the subscription,
but when it came time to do some paring down, Flying was one of the first
to go.

Have you tried Air & Space Magazine? It's not targeted at general
aviation per se, but rather runs a broad gamut of aviation topics. IMHO,
it is to Flying Magazine what Scientific American is to Discover Magazine.
I also still keep my subscription to Flight Training Magazine, even though
it's now published by AOPA and has a lot of duplicated content. I am
especially interested in the topics targeted at flight instructors, or
which address the learning process generally; as far as I know, there's
not another aviation magazine out there that provides that slant.

But as far as general aviation, and general piloting topics go, I think
the two you're getting now are about the best around. Hopefully they
still interest you, more than Flying Magazine at least.

Pete

"Mike Schumann" wrote in message
ink.net...
If you want interesting reading, you should get a subscription to Aviation
Week.


If you want articles that really get to the nitty-gritty of piloting, get a
free subscription to "Professional Pilot", though the ads are some of the
most blatent asskissing I've ever seen.

On 2006-03-16, Dan Youngquist wrote:
religious belief and superstition. Some folks don't think kids should
even be told that evolution is only a _theory_, not a proven fact, and
that there are other views with good scientific arguments behind them.

As soon as someone says '...evolution is only a _theory_' you can
immediately tell they actually have no idea what a scientific theory
actually is. They are equating the scientific meaning of 'theory' with
the common every day use of 'theory'.

The common use of 'theory' often really means a hunch, or a gut feel, or
maybe even as much as a conjecture. In science, a 'theory' is something
much different. A theory must be falsifiable for a start. It must make
predictions that can be tested. I won't waste my time here going over
the full definition of a scientific theory, if you're interested, Google
will help you do that.

Electricity is also "just a theory" too. So is Einstein's Theory of
General and Special Relativity. Even though, as you put it, they are
'just a theory', you tell the residents of Hiroshima in 1945 that E=MC^2
is part of something which is 'just a theory'.

On the other hand, Intelligent Design is not a theory or even a
hypothesis - it only qualifies as conjecture. It is not scientific in
any way. It has no place being taught in science classes. That's not to
say it should *not* be taught at all - perhaps it should be taught as
what science ISN'T and why it is not science. Perhaps it should be
taught in religious studies classes and philosophy classes. But it
should not be taught as a valid theory in a science class because it is
not science.

Teaching the theory of evolution is not religious or religious
fundamentalism. It is just science. Of course, those who don't even
understand what a scientific theory actually is (probably because their
own science classes failed them) are not likely to agree.

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
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