SkepticLance

To Pangloss Not so much that I changed my mind. I still think suicide is a bad thing. Just that the argument about whether people have a right to kill themselves, as a part of their general right to liberty, is purely subjective and cannot be answered using data. My own view is that human life is the most precious thing we have. A very large percentage of those who try, and fail at suicide, later recover from their depressed state and realise they are very glad to be still alive. Thus my personal view that anything that reduces the rate of suicide is a good thing. However, that view is subjective. I think it is clear that access to firearms increases, not the rate of attempts at suicide, but the rate of successful suicide attempts. And this, according to my subjective view about the value of human life, is a very bad thing.

I have always had a bit of a problem with the concept of a Dyson sphere. It has the same drawback as Larry Niven's Ringworld. That is, you cannot physically anchor a structure to a star, since it is just too damn hot. And a ringworld or Dyson sphere does not orbit. It cannot. It sits in space independently of its parent star. Without some means of changing its position dynamically, it is only a matter of time before the star moves through the sphere, creating massive destruction, before moving off into space, leaving the sphere to die. It would be much easier and safer to establish millions or even trillions of habitats in space, orbiting the star. The orbit would keep the habitats safe. And those habitats are potentially mobile. If there is any problem, they can move off and join another star.

I have been arguing that the wide availability of guns, and especialy hand-guns, increases the number of successful suicides. I think this argument really cannot be faulted, bearing in mind the very clear data. http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/TheCaseForGunControl.html And of course, shotguns can be used for suicide. I suspect though, that most people would be a bit reluctant to use that method, since it is enormously messy! Does anyone have statistics on what kinds of firearms are used in suicides? Whether people have a right to take their own life is, of course, a quite separate issue. If someone want to argue that point, I suggest they start a new thread. I am not terribly keen to get involved in that debate, since there are no right or wrong answers. That is a debate based on opinion, not data.

The probable answer is never. The classification of civilisations into Type I, II, and III is just one man's idea of what might happen. We have no actual scientific evidence that this classification has the least bit of validity whatever, or even that it is technically possible to tap the entire energy of just one star. My own view is that we will become independent of stellar energy totally. In theory, deuterium can be used as an energy source via nuclear fusion. The amount of deuterium just here on Earth is enough to keep humanity going for billions of years. And the probability is that there is vastly more in space. The rings of Saturn alone must contain many Earth's worth of deuterium. Why would a highly advanced species tie itself to stars at all, when it can load up on the universe's abundant deuterium and travel to anywhere it wants?

Bascule The three types of suicide I mentioned were the three listed in my source. They did not supply a comprehensive list. Maybe someone on this thread has one? Pangloss Your latest post was accurate. Yes, I frequently challenge on the grounds that variables are not accounted for, and thus conclusions are uncertain. You can indeed suggest that this should be the same. And I am taking a position. My position may be right or wrong. However, the logic seems to me to be fairly much valid. Let me make this suggestion, relating to suicide. If a person wants to take his/her own life, the probability of success depends on the method. Guns 90% versus drug overdose 2%. A fairly extreme comparison. If guns, and especially hand-guns, are not available, the would-be suicide will need to try another method, which will have a much lower probability of success. Conclusion : Strict gun control, including a total ban on hand-guns, will reduce the number of successful suicides.

To Bumfluff I am going to be nit picky here. Humans are descended from apes. In fact, we are still apes. We belong to the Great Ape group of primates. The only thing is that we are not descended from modern apes. Re clothing. I agree with you that clothes were worn a hell of a long time ago. I think that simple clothing was invented way back when our ancestors were hairy apes. It was only after this invention that our ancestors could access the advantages of hairlessness without the disadvantage of dying of hypothermia. Once clothing was worn during the cold hours of the day, and shed for hunting, the evolution of hairlessness would have been rapid. What was the earliest clothing like? Lots of artists draw pre humans wearing animal skins. I doubt it. Untanned skins go rotten really fast. And tanning is not easy. It can be done with tree bark, but that leaves a lump of leather like a sheet of plywood. Not well suited to clothing. I think it is more likely that the first clothing was a variation on woven plant fibre. If you weave a mat of that type, and interlock animal hairs or bird feathers into that mat, you will end up with a type of blanket that will keep you warm very well. Sleeping under that mat during the cold hours would add to warmth. Wrapping it around you would keep you warm later. Making actual clothing (as opposed to a simple blanket) would be more difficult, but pre-human intelligence was probably up to the development.

To Bumfluff A couple of points. First : Apes do not carry food in their hands. They carry it in their stomachs. Our early ancestors would have done likewise. However, carrying tools or weapons is a good reason for upright stance. Second ; Relating to hairlessness. Your theory is not new. Loss of hair as a cooling mechanism has been proposed many times. In fact, one of the few special physical attributes humans have is extreme stamina - if you are young, male, and physically fit - and at least some in each tribe fit that description. This permits a special kind of hunting. To chase a gazelle or similar prey animal until it keels over from exhaustion. This is still done by some African tribes. One reason humans can do this is due to lack of hair and a cooling system that is far superior to most terrestrial mammals. The problem with that theory is that it does not deal with the downside. That is : if you lack hair, how do you deal with the very cold conditions that crop up from time to time - usually early morning - and happen even on the equator. It is my belief that no other terrestrial mammal in our size range has lost hair because they cannot cope with this problem. Humans and pre-humans, however, had simple technology. The use of fire or clothing would permit humans to stay warm when it got cold, and thus lose hair, giving the benefit of better cooling for hunting. No other animal has technology and can do that.

Pangloss Please define 'opposition to global warming.' I am not a denier. I understand that the world is warming, and by how much and what the cause is. I am skeptical of the some of the silliness surrounding ideas of global warming. So please be more specific.

For those who want to learn more about the benefits of GM for impovershed third world countreis, try : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080630102737.htm This lists a number of the research activities leading to improvements in food supply etc, and paticularly for Africa. The articles begins with "Scientists have determined how to fortify the cassava plant, a staple root crop in many developing countries, with enough vitamins, minerals and protein to provide the poor and malnourished with a day's worth of nutrition in a single meal."

To bombus Humans are lousy swimmers, unless trained and experienced. The fact that babies can survive for a brief time in water can be explained by evolutionary processes apart from actually being aquatic. Survival from drowning for long enough for a parent to rescue them is something else. After a relatively short time without rescue, even that capability is not enough, and the baby will die. The baby cannot swim to shore, which seems to me to be a very basic and essential skill for even a semi-aquatic mammal. The ability to swim as adults is widespread among fully terrestrial animals. Even elephants are much better swimmers than untrained humans as adults. And the adult human ability to breath hold dive is not natural. I know. I am a keen scuba diver and snorkeller. That ability is one obtained by training and practise - something other terrestrial animals do not do. And the vast majority of people, despite training, cannot come within an order of magnitude of what a seal can do. Only a tiny percentage of human divers can develop to the point of even spending two minutes swimming underwater while breath holding. Personally, even after many years of snorkel diving, my comfortable limit is less than a minute. A seal would laugh at me!

To imp The reason why criminals do not carry guns will not be because their victims do not. The reason for criminals not carrying guns will be if, and only if, said guns are too difficult to obtain or too expensive. Here in New Zealand, very very few burglars are found with guns. That is not because they are unavailable. I was once approached by a very seedy character who wanted to sell me a hand-gun for an exorbitant sum. Needless to say, I did not buy! If a criminal wants a gun, he can get one. However, he will have to pay dearly for it. A small number of members of our gangs have guns. Usually sporting rifles stolen off legitimate owners. However, because of our much tighter gun control laws, possession of firearms by criminals is quite limited. Most violent crimes here in NZ fall short of murder. But many of them would actually be murder if guns were involved. Assaults with knives, clubs etc are common, but rarely lead to fatalities. Similar assaults with guns normally lead to fatalities. Widespread possession of hand-guns means both ordinary citizens and criminals will have them, and the fatality rate goes up. Banning hand-guns will take a long time to make a difference, but in the end will cut the murder rate and the suicide rate substantially.

Immortal I don't think you are entirely correct. Poverty is key to overpopulation, yes. However, it is not due to people wanting more children to carry out money earning activities. Quite the contrary. Putting children to work is REQUIRED to feed them. People in poor situations would rather not produce the children in the first place. Repeated surveys of women in third world countries has returned a result showing that women do NOT want lots of children. Quite the reverse. Each new child, while loved, is an economic curse. If these women had birth control, they would use it.

To doG I took a look at your reference. Not very convincing. They could not even quantify how many schoolboy 'weapons' were firearms and how many were knives, and they admit that the British firearms murder rate (and overall murder rate) are way lower than in the USA. I know how NZ police use hand-guns. They are issued only in emergency (except to airport police, who carry them all the time). They are trained to fire only at very close range, and to aim directly at the centre of the torso, due to the infamous lack of accuracy. Even then, they have to hold the gun in two hands, and aim very carefully. Hand-guns are carried by police only because of their compactness. When it comes to their use, anyone with a rifle has a major advantage.

Ozone There is a big difference between intent and results. The intent to harm or kill often does not result in that consequence. I have seen numerous news reports of victims who have been stabbed many times, and still lived. However, if the assaulter uses a gun, survival of the victim is way way less. The same applies to suicide. If you decide to kill yourself and try it with poison, drugs, drowning etc., you will probably survive. Lots of such people recover from their depressed state and are most grateful that they chose a less lethal mode of suicide. However, if you try to kill yourself with a firearm, you have little chance of being able to repent later!

To doG In case there is some misunderstanding, no-one has said that hand-guns were responsible for all those suicides. The original statistic was 55% of all firearm deaths are suicides. My original source said that hand-guns were disproportionately represented, but did not specify exactly what proportion of suicides came from hand-guns. As I see it, though, a hand-gun is ideally designed for suicide. In fact, it is not much use for much else. With one exception. It is an excellent murder weapon at close range when there is a need to keep it concealed until the time for the murder. For most other purposes, it is of little use. For warfare, you need accuracy at range, which is exactly what a hand-gun is useless at. Similarly, it is a lousy hunting weapon. While Western movies often show the hero drilling coins with his trusty Colt 45, the truth is that most people could not hit a barn door with one (OK, a slight exaggeration). For self defense, you are better off with a rifle or shotgun, since they are accurate at a greater distance, and you simply do not want to get close to someone who is threatening your life. I do not believe much in the self defense argument, anyway, since with guns restricted most of the time no-one gets seriously hurt in confrontations. If one person has a gun to 'defend' themselves, it usually guarantees at least one party getting badly hurt or killed, and often both parties. It was interesting to see in the Michael Moore movie 'Bowling for Columbine' that he concluded that the main reason for the terrible firearms death rate in the USA was the pathological attitude of Americans themselves. Americans tend to see guns as a constitutional right, and often see no problem with killing burglars and the like to protect their family and property. Many Americans fail to see that large scale possession of firearms, including hand-guns, actually leads to more innocent people being killed than if those weapons were severely restricted. And just to make things clear. I have not advocated total bans. Just much stronger restrictions. A responsible person who hunts deer should be able to own an appropriate rifle. The weapons I would like to see banned are those that are specifically designed for killing people, including hand-guns for anyone except police. Plus a major restriction on who can own a weapon. Those who have criminal convictions, psychological problems, or just plain fail to know the principles of safe firearms use, and the laws governing the same, should not be permitted to own a firearm.

To ecoli Re the natives of New Zealand. Before the coming of the European, the natives (Maoris) fought among themselves using various clubs. They did not even have the bow and arrow. The death toll from intertribal warfare was extremely low. The few records of these battles show that, of hundreds involved in conflict, only 2 to 3 would die. Would it not be better if this was the limit of weaponry available today? To ozone Re the results of tighter gun control (as opposed to total bans) - this does not need to be speculated about, since there are numerous nations which have done that. The results are very clear. Fewer guns means fewer deaths from violence - whether self violence by suicide, or violence against others - a lower murder rate. My country has a high rate of violent crime, since a high percentage of our population (25%) are from cultures recently limited to technologies from the stone age. Gangs, intergang warfare, rapes, assaults etc are common. Total violent crime per capita seems to be similar to the USA. However, the murder rate per capita is about 25% that of the USA. The difference is that, if you attack someone with a club or knife, your victim will probably survive. Not if you attack with a gun. Official murder rates : Worst : Columbia at 0.6 per 1000 people per year No. 24 : USA at 0.04 per 1000 per year No. 52 : NZ at 0.01 per 1000 per year The USA has the highest murder rate of 'developed' nations, though a bunch of third world countries are worse. Of those murders, approximately 60% in the USA are from firearms, while only 10% in NZ are from guns. Does this not suggest a safer nation would arise from stricter gun control?

To Nicholas Depends on your definition of 'plant.' Technically, plants are eucaryotes, which did not evolve till 2 billion years ago, with their predecessors - the procaryotes evolving 1 to 2 billion years earlier. The first life almost certainly used material made by non organic processes, such as geothermal, as a source of energy and nutrients. Did this make them plants? Not by any definition I have seen. The first photosynthetic organisms were early versions of cyanobacteria - but were not plants. Their appearance is marked by oxygen in the atmosphere, which shows in the fossil record as iron oxides. They probably came about 200 to 500 million years after the first living organisms.

To bombus There is a chance that pre-humans may have been waders, but not very aquatic apart from that. Untrained humans are actually lousy swimmers, so we are definitely not pre-adapted by evolution to a fully aquatic life style. It is also clear that our ancestors have not spent much time in salt water, because there are no fossils found in salt water deposits. If our ancestors were sea water hunters, many would have died in the sea and been partly or wholly buried in sea sediment, and fossilised as such. After all, sea sediment is one of the very best ways of making fossils. If you look at the fossils that exist of pre-humans, they are not marine fossils. Thus, pre-humans spent little time in the sea.

Edtharan That banging noise is my head against the brick wall! Why do people like you come up with extreme and unnecessary suggestions? As I have said before, there have been a number of surveys in developing nations that show clearly that women will use birth control if it is available. You don't need extreme measures or measures that take away people's freedom of choice. All you need is birth control. Simply make birth control freely available to all the women in an impoverished third world nation and the birth rate will drop. The problem is poverty. Those poor women cannot obtain the birth control they need. Provide it freely through foreign aid and the population growth will slow dramatically, and possibly even reverse.

Pangloss said : "Those regimes aren't repressive BECAUSE they have widespread gun ownership, they're repressive AND they have widespread gun ownership!" I did not mean that. I was trying to make the point (possibly badly) that gun ownership does not lead to benevolent government, as shown by the fact that widespread gun ownership is found in oppressive nations. Thus the argument that gun ownerships stop governments becoming opressive is invalid. ecoli said : "The reason why nations like New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, exist in the first place is because of firearms." Strangely, in the case of New Zealand, you are correct, but not for the reason you think. NZ is probably unique in that the colonial government was invited in by the native people. They did not invade. However, this was the result of guns. Some of the native tribes obtained muskets and were running rampages up and down the country, killing thousands of those tribespeople who did not have muskets. The majority of the tribes got together and asked the British to come in to protect them. It could be argued that the natives would not have needed the colonial government if guns had not previously be made available to a minority.

The argument that the legal right to guns is needed to prevent an oppressive government is made clearly absurd by the fact that most of the governments that support human rights do not permit wholesale gun ownership. eg. My own country - New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, the UK, most of Europe etc. Of course, I understand that most Americans do not accept the existence of free nations outside their borders...... The most oppressive governments are in nations where gun ownership is widespread. Afghanistan, Pakistan, most of Africa, Middle East, Iraq etc.

To blike I made my view fairly plain at the beginning of the post. I am in favour of much stricter gun control laws. While it may be true that you are a very responsible adult, it is also true that lots of people out there are not. I had a friend who used to get quite drunk, then drive home. That sounds bad, until you realise that he drove at snail's pace with incredible concentration. He knew he was a potential disaster when drunk and changed his driving habits accordingly. Now, because he can drive slowly, cautiously and safely when drunk, does that mean we should change the laws to permit anyone to drive drunk? If banning hand-guns from personal possession will save thousands of lives each year, should we not do that? The suicide statistics suggest that a big saving in this tragic loss of life would follow.

I start by declaring my political stance on guns. I am in favour of much stricter gun control. I am a non American, but have visited the USA several times. I find myself tensing when in public due to my knowledge that guns, and especially hand-guns are in wide use among members of the public. In today's local newspaper is a small article quoting American sources, and relating to hand-guns. Here are some facts they report. 1. According to Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, of all deaths from fire-arms in 2005, suicides accounted for 55%. Homicides 40%. Accidents 3%. 'Legal' killings 2% (such as police shooting someone.) Hand-guns are over-represented in suicide statistics. 2. Homes in which a suicide happened are 3 to 5 times more likely to have a gun than homes where no suicide happened. 3. According to the American Public Health Assn. the fatality rate for suicide attempts are 90% for firearm, 34% from jumping off a high place, and 2% for drug overdose. Conclusion - permitting guns in the home, and especially hand-guns will dramatically increase the loss of life due to suicide.

Mr Skeptic is correct about retroviruses. However it needs to be said that most of the nucleic acid material placed into a higher organism's nucleus by retroviruses is 'junk' DNA. It may or may not have a significant role in evolution. That is poorly understood.

iNow I have not been ducking your questions. It turns out that it is simply that you were ignoring what I was saying and presenting references on a totally different topic. To JohnB That was a very impressive post. You must have put in a lot of time researching it, and I appreciate the depth. I also appreciate the fact that it supports my points very well. Certain people on this forum who have been arguing with me for a long time should have come to realise by now that I do not present BS. However, some people are slow learners. For example : I have been saying in this thread that there is no statistically significant data to 'prove' that hurricanes are getting more frequent/severe. JohnB's data shows this point well, and I thank him.