CDarwin

I've never understood how they choose "Miss etc" people anyway. She's attractive but there are girls in my high school that look as good as or better than her. Of course none of them would go out with me either, but that's not the issue.

Not quite "after." They lived at the same time to an extent. But yes, you're right, "Cro Magnon" is just another name for early Homo sapiens. They evolved later and survived further in time (to the present day) than Neanderthals.

You don't even have a continent according to National Geographic. You're an orphan island chain.

In Turkey, "The Army is the Constitution".

For one thing, the AK (Gul's party) isn't "strictly Islamicist." It's a moderate Moslem party dedicated to secularism that opposes Sharia. If we're going to have Moslem parties in the Middle East, the AK is exactly what we need. For another, the Turkey has already succeeded as a liberal, secular, democracy. That was the work of the demi-god like first leader of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The AK's election victories demonstrate that. The great danger to the democratic process isn't Islamists it's the army getting nervous and effecting a coup. Everyone in Turkey just needs to keep their heads and things will turn out alright. Maybe I'm just burying my head in the sand but that's how things appear from what I've read.

Anthropologists hate that picture. Just so you know.

Funnily enough that's not always the case. Sometimes you have so many fossils that an entire phenetic lineage is represented, and it's difficult if not impossible to define where one "species" starts and another begins. The best example I can think, if it is a little obscure, would be the primates of the subfamily Anaptomorphinae (of the family Omomyidae) that lived in North America during the Eocene. In Wyoming there is a fossil record that documents step by step various changes in the jaws and teeth of the lineage related to a shift to a diet heavy on gums and tree exudates. There is all sorts of controversy as to the systematics.

Talk to the Russians. It might have something to do with the fact that Russia controls so much of the northern Eurasian seacoast, where as New Zealand is just a little bump on the Australian plate. I'm not really sure. Are there any maritime lawyers on the forums?

That'd be a pretty good way to start World War III...

Oh, Geoguy, and your anti-Dixie agenda.

They've got us surrounded.

If we're going to go by Mayr's notion (which I like), there are only two valid species concepts: The Biological Species Concept, and a typological species concept. I'm going to assume everyone has a good conception of the BSG, so let me go into depth on the typological concept. A typological species concept uses the phenotypic difference between two animals to define them as separate species. Obviously, all paleospecies are therefore described under a typological concept. We can't get a bunch of hominids together and see if they'll interbreed. So the question is, should paleontologists look at some specific 'diagnostic' features (known as essentialism, or sometimes confusingly enough typologism) or should they consider the weight of features by simple enumeration ('populationism') to define different species? This also ties into to cladistic vs. classical taxonomy, with cladists preferring the former tack and classicists the latter. I realize my analysis of the competing philosophies is probably pretty incomplete and perhaps even flawed, but I think the question is salient regardless of any philosophical or historical quibbles. Feel free to correct me of course. That's how I learn.

You can spot all these pretty easily, with the exception of the last condition, which is the source of all the controversy over Homo floresiensis

The three are also the most significant to the United States politically.

He was wrong anyway. The individual is the unit of selection, not the gene. Meme was the brain child of Semon not Semon was the brain child of the meme. You're use the term backwards. Anyway, the 'meme' is reductionist and inaccurate too. Any anthropologist will tell you human cultures are more holistic than that. Basically, Dawkins is the most eloquent advocate of attractive but incomplete ideas. That's his "greatness."

Yeah, no one likes Canada anyway.

Alright, alright, it was a stupid topic. Sorry for dirtying your general discussion forum.

Well that's really what I was curious about, people outside of the US. I haven't I'm afraid. That's quite alright. Derail away. They don't count. Well, it came out of a discussion we had at Governor's School a few months ago, and again, I was bored last night. I was also very tired, and I don't think quite as clearly when I'm tired. I must admit that now that I'm fully awake the thread does seem a might more silly, but I'm still curious.

I don't know if anyone will respond to this or not, but I've always been curious as to how many people have actually heard of Knoxville, Tennessee. "Heard of" would probably mean you know what state it's in, maybe broadly where it's located. More that just hearing the name somewhere. It's a medium sized city. A good 300,000 in the metro area. We've made a few famous people. James Agee, Admiral Farragut, Nikki Giovanni, Jack Hanna... Trace Atkins... Yes, Johny Knoxville... Mountain Dew came from Knoxville. There's Knoxville marble in the Pentagon. The Knoxville Zoo was the first in the world to breed African Elephants in captivity. We had the World's Fair in '82. UT's here of course.

Or as Presidents of the United States.

It seems that posters are trying their very hardest to skew their definitions of intelligence so that humans won't be the most intelligent in the face of all conventions of the English language.

A forum for my ravings about tarsier origins? I am intrigued.

Right off the bat I feel I should note that the United States hasn't had the GOP and the Dems for 230 years. The Democratic Party traces it's ideological roots back to the Democratic-Republicans of Jefferson who opposed Hamilton and the Federalists. The Republican Party is much more recent, just barely antedating the Civil War. It arose out of the abolitionist members of the defunct Whig Party (which itself arose specifically to oppose Jackson's Democrats). The platforms of the two parties have also changed dramatically. The Democrats used to be the party of limited government, whereas the Republicans used to be the party of abolition and punishing the South.

I thought it was interesting, if just for that one quote from the Ayatollah, "terrorists are going to Hell."