Not in Texas...

It's called Carbon 14. 14C, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon discovered on February 27, 1940, by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, CA. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological, geological, and hydrogeological samples.

But not in Texas...

Radiocarbon dating is a method that uses (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years old. The technique was developed by Willard Libby who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work. One of the frequent uses of the technique is to date organic remains from archaeological sites. Plants fix atmospheric carbon during photosynthesis, so the level of 14C in plants and animals when they die approximately equals the level of 14C in the atmosphere at that time.

But, not in Texas...

However, the radioactivity decreases thereafter from radioactive decay, allowing the date of death or fixation to be estimated. The initial 14C level for the calculation can either be estimated, or else directly compared with known year-by-year data from tree-ring data (dendrochronology) to 10,000 years ago, or from cave deposits (speleothems), to about 45,000 years of age.

But, not in Texas...

A calculation, or (more accurately), a direct comparison with tree ring or cave-deposit carbon-14 levels, gives the wood or animal sample age-from-formation. The technique has limitations within the modern industrial era, due to fossil fuel carbon (which has little carbon-14) being released into the atmosphere in large quantities, in the past few centuries.

But, not in Texas...

You see, The Texas Board of Education has decided to throw logic and science into the wind and begin to teach the children of that state that it is highly possible that the world began only 10,000 years ago by the hand of God...

Textbooks have to be changed to reflect this doubt in evolution to bring in a more "realistic" view of the possibility of divine intervention only 10,000 years ago. This socially conservative viewpoint will begin to be a standard in textbooks in that state as early as 2011.

This is a perfect example of a separation of church and state...?

There are those who's non-religious beliefs give them pause, and rightfully so, to abstain from saying the Pledge of Allegiance due to the fact of the statement of God and Country, etc. because of our Bill of Rights and Freedom of Religion. Only now, that child has to be brain fed the garbage of the religious right that the world is only 10,000 years old...

...We work the black seam together...




This, the 269th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!


(c)Copyright 2009 Doug Boggs

Calculating God...

I recently finished a book called "Calculating God". I found it to be a great read on creationism, Darwin's evolution theory, religion vs. science, death and more. Written by Robert J. Sawyer who is a very prolific Canadian SciFi writer with numerous books and awards. This book was a 2001 Hugo Nominee. You can find the book by clicking the link below;

Buy the Book

What is it that keeps science and religion from both being able to hold their truths to the idea of a God, as well as the evolutionary process? Can the two not exist together in theory and reality? This book goes through a series of discussions with visiting aliens who befriend a museum paleontologist in the Canadian ROM Museum who is dying of cancer. Written in a wonderful conversational style between humans and aliens to describe some intriguing scientific ideas and religious concepts that find the Universe is filled with the sameness in all of its randomness.

Is Intelligent life a Catch 22?

As we have heard the TAO, the Alien beings who have populated one of my favorite blogs, state previously that the Universe is a dangerous and violent place, filled with wars, an Emperor, Federation and such, I wonder that is violence innate in all intelligent species? As there is a known Universe, as well as an UNknown Universe, the TAO is incapable of answering this question with verified truth. As Darwin stated, it is survival of the fittest. Is this throughout the Universe? Is true evolution driven by struggles for dominance. Is this to say that violence is required for intelligence. In order to further an intelligent sentient specie does intelligence need to give rise to the ability to destroy one’s species. With this said, only through intelligence can one overcome the violence that gives rise to that same intelligence.

As in “The Planet of the Apes” when Cornelius read to Taylor from the 29th Scroll:

Beware the beast Man, for he is the devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport, or lust, or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him. Drive him back into jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

Yet, it seems that the same can be said of all beings, that be sentient beings. Are those same beings trying to pass as sapient beings? This would be the true Catch 22, no?