LucidDreamer

There is a sort of progression in complexity of multi-cellular form: single celled organism->colony of single-celled organisms->sponge->jelly fish->multi-cellular. The colony, such as certain phototrophic cells, is made of cells that are loosely connected. The sponge is made up of a collection of the same kind of cell. A jellyfish is slightly more complex but there is very little differentiation in its cells. I'm not saying that the origin of complex multi-celled organisms on earth followed exactly that pattern but I believe it followed a similar pattern. It started out as a colony where the individual cells benefited by staying together. So a single cell would start the colony, clone itself, and then the descendant cells would continue to asexually reproduce. The cells were located in different spots in the colony and so the colony benefited by some cells producing slightly different proteins or performing the slightest difference in function depending on where it was. The cell knew where it was in the colony because it received different amounts of sunlight or nutrients based on whether it was in the center or the end. Each cell was identical but each of the cells contained a variety of genes that could be turned off and on through regulation The differentiation that resulted proved to be incredibly useful to face the pressures confronting it. Each cell had an identical genome, as complex multicultural organisms do today, but the colony benefited by having specialized cells. Perhaps the cells on the outer layer benefited by producing more proteins that helped protect itself from competitors or predators. Perhaps the top layer receive more sunlight and the bottom layers absorbed more nutrients from the sea, so the two layers benefited by sharing resources. Since function is dependent on structure the colony/organism benefited by having some cells with different structures than the other cells. The colony/organism also benefited by having the cells begin to differentiate earlier and more completely so they could be highly specialized and efficient. Very specific control mechanisms and regulation evolved because it was very advantageous for an organism that had already become a primitive multi-cellular organism. This pattern continued until you observe to complexity that you see today. You can think of a fertilized egg in a modern vertebrate as a sort of seed cell for a very complex colony of cells.

I was thinking of a whale or a dolphin because they are the most likely contenders for sentience. Their flippers are useful for swimming, not using tools.

One of the problems with an aquatic species achieving a technological society like ours is that they don't have hands and therefore it would be difficult for them to manipulate simple tools effectively.

Big time. Exercise switches the body from the sympathetic nervous system response to a parasympathetic nervous response. The sympathetic is involved in the pumped up adrenaline state when you are stressed and the parasympathetic is the relaxed state. Just don't try to exercise right before you want to go to sleep.

Much more likely.

It's stress. Make sure you exercise and find something that is a big stress reliever; meditation, yoga, running around the house with a rubber glove on your head--anything that works.

Did you read my post? The inequality is caused by: 1) Location. Some countries are richer in resources than others. 2) Government. Some forms of government distribute the wealth more evenly 3) Culture. Some people's cultures are better at generating wealth. 4) Past. Some countries are rich because in the past they conquered rich nations or created a new industry. Individuals are rich because: 1) Luck. Somebody or one of their descendants was standing in the right place at the right time 2) Ability. Somebody or one of their descendants had incredible skill at making money. 3) Race/Sex People are treated differently based on their race and sex and are given different opportunities. 4) Culture Some peoples cultures encourage ambition more than others.

Are you under a lot of stress? Do you drink lots of caffeine? Is there some other form of stimulant that you are taking?

Chromosomes are not like boxes that store goods. The chromosomes are not a separate component from the DNA. The chromosomes are the DNA that is wraped around proteins called histones. The chromosomes just refer to a state that the DNA exists in when it is tightly condensed, in distinct units, and associated with certain proteins. Each species has a unique karotype that can be used to identify it. The amount of chromosomes and the banding pattern of each chromosome are specific for each species. Comparing chromosomes is a valid tool for identification of a species and determining the relationship between two organisms. Chromosomal comparison is just one of many independent forms conformation that establishes the common descent of life. It may not be broken, but why create a common flaw? Endogenous Retroviral Sequences are errors where a virus inserted some of its DNA into a host gamete. I think I would fire a builder who was so careless in his designs. Thousands of locations in the humane genome contain Endogenous Retroviral Sequences. It is almost unthinkable to imagine a virus inserting itself into exactly the same spot in an entire population of a species while simultaneously inserting itself into the exact same locale in entire populations of many other species. You have not thought this argument through. Why do "all" Asians have jet black hair? Why do they "all" have brown eyes? The answer is simple. A small population of individuals separated from the rest of man and made his home in Asia. This group had these traits, either all of the members had these traits or the majority did and the other traits were lost by selection or drift. The event that you are calling "very unlickely" has already occurred many times. A very similar occurrence produced a population that all have the same endogenous retroviral sequences. There are hundreds of examples where an entire small isolated population has DNA sequences that have no conceivable advantage or disadvantage that the rest of the world does not have. It doesn't take a great imagination to see that if this were the only population to survive that all of the members of that species would have that DNA sequence and all of species that evolved from it would to, unless of course it was lost by the same means. Misinterpretation of the chart. DNA all has the same handedness. Finding the ERV's does not require searching the DNA with a fine-tooth-comb. Trying to imagine an ancient virus completely different than today's is a little farfetched.

I think if you want to examine the origin of flying creatures you should look at creatures like flying squirrels. Flying squirrels don't fly but they glide long distances from tree to tree. The transition from a ground creature to a flying creature can be explained when you consider how a creature that leaps from tree to tree might benefit from developing traits that help in gliding, such as a flying squirrel. It's easy to see how a creature that glides might benefit from learning to stay in the air longer.

I don't think we can always make an absolute distinction between instinctual and learned behavior. I believe that almost everything has some kind of genetic component and there are usually learned behavioral aspects as well. I imagine that kissing leans towards the learned behavior side of things. I’m guessing that there were a few tribes that didn’t kiss. Were Eskimos one of them?

First of all, unequal distribution of resources is a fundamental truth of the universe. Gaze out in any direction and you will find pockets of stars, planets, mass, and energy in some locations and the complete absence of these things in other spots. The same is true for the earth; some places get more sunshine, wind, and water than others. The organisms that are able inhabit locations that are abundant in resources thrive, while those that are banished to poorer locations starve. This ownership of resources is often inherited by the organism’s descendants. Humans are creatures of the earth and therefore some humans will have more wealth than others. Early humans fought over resource-rich land because of its ability to provide a better life. Areas with abundant game wildlife, lots of edible vegetation, and fresh streams allowed its inhabitants greater chances to survive and raise more children. Those that lost the war for the choice land were forced to subsist or possibly die off in harsh environments. This battle for resources has been going on since the times that we lived like our chimpanzee cousins and it goes on today. Much of the wealth of the world is situated on coastland that encircles rich farmland. Pockets of wealth can be found in areas that contain rare valuable resources like oil, diamonds, or rich culture. The current distribution of wealth is a result of our ancestor’s battle for resources. The Europeans are wealthy because of several lucky factors including: being exposed to Roman and Arabic cultures, the invention of the printing press, good farmland and natural resources, and the wealth brought over from the Americas. The Americans are wealthy because they were victorious after the World Wars and their country did not experience the destruction that the rest of Europe did, and democracy of course. As lance has mentioned, your wealth is also dependant on your parents and their parent's ability to acquire wealth within their situation. There are also social reasons. I believe mankind needs some unequal distribution of resources to encourage him to work hard. If everyone was given equal amounts of wealth regardless of any kind of ability or hard work then few people would work as hard as they do because they would have less motivation. Also, human civilization, and his society, is still in its infancy. We cannot keep up with our expanding population and constantly changing world. We have barely managed to keep from blowing ourselves up, so properly taking care of the poorer groups of mankind is still beyond our capability. Think on this: Half of the human beings that have ever existed are alive today. It takes time for man to learn and adapt. We are not socially ready to deal with the world that our technology has created.

So what it comes down to is that you would need two mechanisms: One which destroys the container of super cooled gas/liquid. And the second is the actual freezing effect from the super cooled gas. The overall effect would depend on how much super cooled gas/liquid you could force into the container and the resulting pressure and how thoroughly and quickly you destroy the container. I believe that there is probably some means to create a magnificent implosion with a powerful endothermic reaction that would result in the freezing of the surrounding environment.

Notice that they reduced the argument to only genetically coded human protein. They did this because it has been observed in bacteria yeast, and viruses. Bacteria, yeast, and humans all share the same DNA->RNA->Protein mechanism as well as very similar methods of producing proteins from DNA. This is a deliberate attempt to mislead you. All of the research that would allow us to observe an increase of efficiency of a protein through mutation was done on microorganisms such as bacteria and yeast. You cannot expose humans to radiation and grow thousands of them in a lab because of ethical reasons as well as generation times. The research done on humans is very limited and usually involves studying people that have a disease and looking for the mutation. Mutations that increase the efficiency of a protein have been observed in humans. Some HLA proteins on human cells bind certain antigens more tightly than other HLA proteins. The variety of protein binding within the HLA alleles is needed so an individual can bind many types of antigens to ward off infection. Also, the variety is needed so that some individuals in a population will survive an epidemic, even if others will not. There are literally hundreds of different alleles for the HLA proteins. Since each human can have only a few alleles for the HLA proteins there is no way that two humans could have the hundreds of alleles that have been observed in the human gene pool. The only way to account for the variety is through mutation. Since the variety of HLA alleles makes a population more resistant to being wiped out by infection, the mutations that have resulted in different HLA proteins, with their different efficiencies of binding to different proteins, have been advantageous to the human population.

Well, I'm not sure this is going to help your condition but I think you need to stop washing other men's penises when you shower and wash your own instead.

The answer is simple. You obviously have to cut off one of your nipples and attach it to your penis.

They are ignoring the obvious. Somebody could have been trying to illegally transport some creature like a crocodile and it ended up in the ocean.

I must reveal a secret. I like creationism. No, I don't believe a word of it; I like it because it challenges our thoughts about evolution and forces to really think about the concepts. The problem is the people behind creationism are fanatics and if you give them an inch they will run into the schools setting every book that has the letters evol on fire, tear apart any picture with a monkey, make every class a bible study, and promptly send us hurling back to the dark ages--chasing our neighbors with pitchforks, screaming "witch."

Exactly. Every animal that is clearly a transitional fossil becoms just a strange looking ape with some features of a man or just a whale-like creature that has legs. There are hundreds of examples and when creationists are confronted with one they just close their eyes and cover their ears and go "nananananananana."

Life began on earth more than 3 and a half billion years ago. It's true there is no fossil evidence of very simple life evolving into more complex forms. In fact, there is no fossil evidence of anything at all because there are almost no rocks left on the face of the planet that old. Some of the rock that is around 3 billion years old is found with exactly what you would expect according to evolution; all simple one-celled organisms and other simple organisms and absolutely no evidence of any higher life forms. If the creationist model was correct then you would expect to find fossil evidence of recently evolved sea creatures that live today in the fossil record. But you do not of course. This is exactly what you find. Going from oldest to newest rock you find: very simple sea organisms, more complex sea creatures, amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs and small mammals, large mammals, and birds. Exactly what you would expect with evolution and exactly what you find. What you don't find are organisms in the wrong strata. If creationism was correct you would find amphibians in 1 billion year old strata and dinosaurs and mammals in 700 million year old rocks. But of course you don't. As someone already pointed out you don't find countless of anything because fossils are rare. You do find a plethora of examples of transitional links though. First of all, developing new limbs and organs is relatively rare event. What you find are modifications of already existing limbs and organs into a variety of forms. This is what you would expect to find with evolution and this is what you find. There are good examples of transitional features such as in the case of whales, whose legs become flippers and horses, whose toes become hooves. All of which, the fossil record disagrees with. After years of study and research, what does the fossil record show? If by suddenly you mean millions of years instead of hundreds of millions, then yes. Evolution occurs in spurts and plateaus. The Cambrian explosion is a spurt. What you don't find in the fossil record from the Cambrian explosion is a single creature from a latter period in time (no sea turtles or modern fish or anything that evolved latter), which is what you would expect if all creatures were created at the same time. What is that suppose to mean? You don't find a large variety among the members of a species because once you find a large difference between different populations we classify them as a different species. Ape-man, reptiles to mammals, dinos to birds, whales, horses, There are no new limbs in the fossil record because there are no new limbs. Evolution works on what already exists and you find adaptations of limbs instead of new ones. This is what you would expect and this is what you find. There are museums full of adaptations of the limbs of animals. You don't find new organs in the fossil record because you don't find any organs at all. Organs are soft tissue and don't fossilize very often. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is an argument that relies on the shortsightedness of its audience. Modern technology relies on an intricate system of interdependence. If you remove any number of individual technologies the whole system collapses. You cannot remove the use of petrochemicals or the cars will stall in the freeways, the manufacture of plastics will cease, and our power plants will die. You cannot remove the use of electricity or our computers will refuse to turn on, our TVs will grow silent, and our houses will remain dark. You cannot remove metal because our planes need them to fly and our circuit boards need them to conduct electricity. And so on and so on. We could pretend that this means that all of our technology must have been created all at once because you cannot remove any part and have it still exist the way it does. We know from history that this is not true though. All of the marvels of technology were incorporated over time and the world adapted to its introduction until the present modern technological world that could not exist without all of its parts -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Young woman were often accused of being witches so that men claiming to be men of God could rape them. Old woman were accused of being witches so that men claiming to be men of God could take their land. In the name of God we killed countless numbers of people during the crusades, the inquisitions, imperialist England, and the conquest of America. God-fearing men took men from Africa and made them slaves. God-fearing men made woman second class people. The list goes on and on. Again, Christians shouldn't be pointing fingers at anyone. Note: I wasn’t looking at a time line when I wrote this so my billions and millions of years ago might be, and probably are, off a bit.

Let me ask you a question Walden. What do you want to do after you graduate? Any of those engineering majors could conceivably complement your biomedical engineering degree, depending on what you wanted to do after you graduate. Also, my suggestion is that you take a look at the actual courses required for each degree and see if you would like those courses and if you think they might help you with whatever you plan on doing after you graduate. One of the most important things you can do is to choose a major that you enjoy doing. Finally, you are putting way too much emphasis on choosing which one in 3 weeks. Engineering degrees all pretty much have the same freshman courses and you will have time to change majors later without really loosing any ground.

I believe a positive attitude can have beneficial effects on the body. It has been shown that things like pets and friends increase the life expectancy of cancer patients. In fact, there are several links between mental well-being and physical health. Believing that God is going to protect you and ensure that everything is going to work out is a tremendous relief during a time of stress and I am sure that it can have positive effects on your body.

Link it; I'm curious.

A combustion reaction: (reactant containing carbon) + O2 --> CO2 + H2O (unbalanced) I think your jetpack rocket engine would need a reactant besides what's already in the air. If you were to take CO2 or something from the air and turn it into a combustible compound then you would use more energy than you would get out of the combustible compound. Maybe you could make a suit of photocells to supply the energy needed to make the combustible compound. You could be a sort of flying combustible black plant.