Showcase Forum Issues and Requests

I'd like authorization to participate in the showcase threads. In particular I want to ask Dr. Davison for details on how to test the semi-meiotic hypothesis. As he has been known to say (paraphased from memory) "There are two kinds of evolutionary hypotheses - those that have been tested and failed and those that have yet to be tested. The prescribed evolutionary hypothesis is among the latter." I wish to know in as much detail as he can provide how to test the PEH.I may have subsequent questions for Dr. Davison or other showcase luminaries in the future.

What? I didn't drop any soap.Good grief. The edit history is starting to look like like old source code!Edited by DaveScot, : Changed html quote type. Edited by DaveScot, : Trying out dbcodes.Edited by DaveScot, : No reason given.Edited by DaveScot, : No reason given.

I didn't mess with the active/inactive status on my profile. I did notice it allowed me to submit a comment while being inactive and didn't think much of it. I just figured the programmer made the assumption that if someone is posting a comment they aren't inactive at that moment. The behavior seems to have changed since it now pops up a message saying inactive members can't submit comments or something to that effect.On a more general note, I admit I had no real interest in this forum other than Davison but I didn't come to flame him. I came in the hope of getting answers on how he thinks his hypothesis can be tested. I was hoping I could pose the questions in an environment where I didn't have to put up with John replying using my real name and calling me endearing things like "genetic garbage", "goon", "coward", "Texas pig", "mongrel cur", "play with yourself and come all over yourself"... and that's just a small sample from the last few comments on John Davison's blog. Don't believe me. Read his blog starting from the bottom up. It won't take more than a minute to confirm what I said above.At any rate, if the PEH can't be tested then it's not a scientific hypothesis but rather a narrative - a just-so story that fits the facts but cannot be verified. The neoDarwinian hypothesis of chance and necessity driving organic evolution in the remote past likewise is a just-so story. By definition it describes how unrepeatable, unpredictable, unobserved events happened in the distant past. Anything that is unrepeatable, unpredictable, and unobservable is not amenable to scientific inquiry. It may make an interesting and even credible narrative but it isn't science. Davison's hypothesis in my opinion fits the facts a lot better than the modern synthesis in regard to prehistoric evolution but absent a means of verification the PEH, like NDE, is no more than a just-so story.

I tried to duplicate it in the showcase thread and discovered I no longer had permission and it won't duplicate in this thread. Is there possibly a different execution path for people with permission granted in the showcase thread, when replying to that thread, that bypasses the check for active/inactive status? If you changed/added any code to accomodate the showcase protocol I'd look there.On the Davison issue - John asked repeatedly why I removed his papers from the Uncommon Descent sidebar after I'd put them there and why I didn't put them back. I gave him an honest answer. What was I supposed to do - ignore his question or lie about it instead? They say no good deed goes unpunished. They are evidently correct.Edited by DaveScot, : Added second paragraph.

25 years experience programming. Millions of lines of code. The guess was that you recently modified the forum source code for the showcase i.e. there was no sandbox extant. From there it was pretty safe to assume that you had to mess with permission checks to make a sandbox for certain users. Probably had to add a new category of permission SHOWCASE. Easy to accidently skip past some other permission checks once you identified a SHOWCASE authorized poster posting to the showcase forum. Almost all my work has been in various assembly languages (mostly 80x86), C, and Visual C++. I'm expert with lower level TCP/IP protocols, Winsock, peer2peer and client/server applications but have done little at HTML level inside a browser - just a few things on as needed basis mostly to embed banner advertising with ad agencies like Double Click in stand-alone applications where there's no browser to fetch and display the GIF adverts from their server. Email me with a quick description of your programming environment and I'll see if it's up my alley or if not whether it looks interesting enough to spend some time learning. So far I've mostly avoided mucking around in the script code for WordPress on Uncommon Descent. Micah Sparacio does the harder technical stuff and I have all the fun. May I plead nolo contendere and throw myself upon the mercy of the court? It's actually better if I don't interact with John. Restraint isn't one of my virtues and John could drive a saint to drink. Edited by DaveScot, : Added final paragraph.