Posts by Peter Adamson

The Long Fail: Web 2.0's faith meets the facts

Where are the data coming from?

You cannot draw the conclusions that this article does without adequate data. Long tail niche products are sold primarily by long tail niche websites, not Amazon. There is absolutely no way to collect enough data on these websites (there are nearly as many of them as there are long tail keywords) to state anything conclusive at all about their revenues.

Oh well, academics are never bothered by reality. Remember the Efficient Market Theory? It states that you can't make money speculating in the stock market. It is favoured by academics, but not widely accepted by millionaire stock market speculators.

The reason why the data to not match the expected curve is simple: the data set is incomplete.

Royal Society: Schools should show creationism 'respect'

Asymmetrical Debate

The whole debate is asymmetrical, and therefore not a debate at all. On the one side we have a group of people who allow their faith or religious beliefs to shape their perception of science. If the evidence falls within the bounds of their belief system, they accept it. If not, they dismiss it out-of-hand. On the other side of the debase we have a group of people who are essentially agnostic in their scientific beliefs. Whatever the evidence points to, they are prepared to accept.

The first group of course, are the evolutionists who believe that all events within the space-time continuum must be explained by other events within the space-time continuum. The possibility that an outside agent may have influenced events cannot be admitted because of their belief that no such agent exists. This is an article of faith. It can neither be proven nor disproven.

Creationists on the other hand don't care how such an outside agent (God if you prefer...) did things. Six days or sixty million years, who cares? When you're God you do things as you please. Consequently they are prepared to accept whatever the evidence suggests.

Creationists err however when they bring non-scientific faith arguments into the arena of science. Evolutionists err when they reject sound scientific evidence because of non-scientific faith arguments.

Creationism does not belong in science class. But then, neither does evolution.