AzurePhoenix

It goes beyond what room is left behind and not built over, the damage is done to vast tracts of land that will never be apparent to someone who does't know something's wrong. Sure there are enormous open "wild" places across the plains of america, yet there are rpactically no bison where there were millions, scarcely any black footed ferrets. Arizona is larger than many contriess, but there are no more grizzlies, the only wolves are reintroduced and already dwindling. The same goes for species all across the face of the planet, and habitats are being whittled away from hunting, over-grazing, hunting, chemical polution and all sorts of nice things that lave the land but do their damage anyway. No matter where they live, humans have a bubble of influence that envelopes the entire world and does its damage in every corner. Then when you focus down on these chimps, you suggest destiny, a them or us natural course of evolution outlook, but no matter how stupid we are collectively, we are NOT ignorant of the damage we cause, the damage DOES reflect back at us simply by damaging and imbalancing OUR ecosystem, not even to mention destroying something unique to our planet for no better reason than gratuitous slaughter to satisfy our own monetary desires. Killing these chimps and a few other notably intelligent species is scarcely different from killing humans in the sense that they are thinking, feeling beings, truly aware. And while they may not be as intelligent as a human, I'd say some humans are equally more inteligent than their kin as their kin are to dogs. Does that mean they should have free reign to treat the rest of humanity like caattle? Somehow I don't think you'd be as willing to accept a bunch of poachers raiding a mental care home to cut down the patients and sell their skins to Americans for their value as wall tapestries as "part of the natural course of evolution". And I sincierely doubt anyone is saying it's okay to slaughter other things just because they're "not cool." Look at the effort put into saving pup-fish and rare minnows.

Well, dolphins do as well, but yes, bonobos are prolifically promiscuous, far more than humans even. And what's more, they're all sexual "deviants." Sex is a social lubricant keeping emotions cool and holding the troop together in place of the aggressive interactions of common chimps. Female to female, male to male, oral sex, incest, and all members of the tribe partake, from infancy to elderhood. I have read that the only real taboo is that males stop... "playing" with their moms when they hit young adulthood. Anyway, I wouldn't say the females really "rule" in the same sense that a warlord among chimps rules his troop. There is some social stratification and ranking, and females are higher up, but it's pretty lax, especially when food's easily available. I've always looked at bonobos as the hippy extreme, chimps as the 'militaristic' extreme, and humans as the middle-ground

I wasn't questioning their effectiveness, just their negative effect on society, in this case through my own desire to seek out the creator of each, force them through sausage-grinders and bake them into cookies to lace with ricin and give to their families in consolation baskets 'bout time someone other than me pointed it out I'll concede that point

All I know is that the incessant flood of commercials (especially cheap, corny, cheesy, pathetic and pointless ones) really pisses me off, and that can't be good for society's welfare. And I imagine it pisses off other people to, so that just magnifies the general unhappiness ratio for mankind. Especially late at night when every other commercial is one for dating services and strip-clubs and condoms and KY-Jelly, which all would be fine if they were done creatively or funnily or with awesome CGI, but of course they never are

Heh... I forgot that my entire point was that there wouldn't BE anymore substantial nature, so where'd my ancestors find the pinecones and squirrels? I 'spose we could find a nice feral sewer system or collapsed/buried district to inhabit and live off of mold and rats.

When I started off I had it around 35ish too, but after a few weeks, when you start to hear certain sounds in words that don't obviously spring to mind, the number slowly grows upwards, and maybe I'm just too attentive to detail, but I think they all fit rather well. I had the list written somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. And yeah, I exiled 'c' too; useless little bastard once you have something for 'ch' the 'ow' sound for instance. or the 'ng' in 'ing' oh, to make it clear, the way I tweaked mine was to suggest that every sound be able to stand alone, without requiring two or more letters to modifiy it into existence.

I've always loved the concept of a phonetic language, with alphabetic symbols for each potentially common or even not so common sound. I've fiddled with the idea myself and came up with an alphabet needing at least 47 letters, and I know I missed a load of obvious and potential ones. The alphabet might be marginally tougher, but I think the whole language (at least from vocabulary's point of view) would get much easier.The only issue would be words that sound alike, like two, to and too, or hole and whole.

We'll see who's right when your ancestors are assimilated by their kitchen appliances while mine live a non-metallic life in wooden huts subsisting off of pinecones and squirrels

The way i see it that's just slapping ductape on the wears and tears. Eventually we'll just be patching the patches, and that can't go on for too long before things start to break down. The changes to the planet that we cause are so drastic, and concentrated into such a small span, and are layered one atop the other constantly within the lifespans of single human generations. While we'll always evolve, we're not adapting towards physical natural pressures, so we're becoming dangerously dependent on our tech (in my opinion). Combine that with the sheer pace of the changes we're causing, a pace that seems to me to make human evolution a non-issue. As I see it, (considering species are already dying off at the rate of a mass extinction) if we continue the way we are we've got the potential for a major ecological collapse in the near future (several centuries) and technology isn't gonna save us from the pressures of the impending 11 billion people when society collapses and everything reaches third-world levels. Especially if we evolve towards a reliance on our wonderous gizmos and gadgets and gadgety lifestyles. But then again, I'm rather cynical about this stuff. I'm of the opinion that the only permanent solutions can come from learning to not rely so much on tech to bail us out and try to reach a more "primitive" equilibrium with the world. Evolution is a non-issue by this point, all that matters is ecological stewardship and responsibility for the world that's left to take care of wihtout making it any worse. Of course, with the human population being what it is, and with humans being what we are, neither'll ever happen, so why should I bother thinking about it at all anyway? Bah.

Who the hell thinks I'm sweet? Or anything less than savagely violent, cold, heartless and malicious? Or globally genocidal??? Half the year it's rather hellishly hot out during the late morning through afternoon, so sue me if I've adaapted to reserve my outdoor-active times for the cooler earlier morning and the evening

Depends; did his parents just pretend he was theirs, or did they adopt him through legal channels? Up until his late teens he didn't have a clue himself, so really the only thing he would have lied about was his biological parentage. That's kinda what I was getting at. I don't think visas would even apply to him, not being human. He miht look it, but he's less closely related to us than bread-mold. It'd be like giving visas to migratory birds that got swept off-course and ended up in the wrong territory. I thought the UN or something commissioned him to do that? I'm not actually a fan and don't remember the movies very well.

Just because you're not really doesn't mean you should autimatically be allowed to get away with crime .... and NEVER say that about Bugs!

His heart's in the right place. Anywho, I don't think the legal system for immigration would technically have anything to do with a non-human non-earth immigrant. Besides, who else is going to fight off the ridiculously over-powered evil forces that CONSTANTLY plague Metropolis? Sometimes it's logical to say, "okay he's breaking some rules, but realistically, the damn rules need to be broken in this case, so let's just give him official permission."

I left out the fruit due to their healthiness, but yeah, grapefruit, grapes, blackberries, kiwis, and pomegranate seed. And while we're at that, also celery, carrots and especially radishes. I would like to add artichoke and nachos to my former list, and point out that when I say chips I mean the american sense of the word / crisps

*popcorn, potato chips (always Poors Brothers brand), spicy mustard-pretzals, or Cheetos *beef jerky and snack sausages (like Slim-Jims), pickles, pickled vegetables, olives and snack peppers (jalepeno, banana peppers, pepperoncinis) *most type of barfood snacks; cheddar-pepper-poppers, onion rings, curly-fries, buffalo-chicken, cheesy-bacon potato-skins, fried cheese, etc

and from what I can tell from the article at the very least the keratin in this mummy is still keratin, otherwise they never really state the fossilization state of the rest of the damn thing so I assume it's mostly mineralized tissue like suggested.

Indeed awesome. And I'm I right in understanding that they said that the soft-tissue is actually the remains of tissue itself? Unmineralized? Not like that heterodontosaur "mummy" a while back where the original tissue was fossilized to stone but left intact enough to identify organs and a four-chambered heart?

oooh, I've seen pics of those pyrite ammonites and you can bet I'm envious. I'm no geologist, but most of what I've got isn't impressive mineral-wise, except for one smooth ivory-white brachio with a shallow crater on the shell that got grown in with fine geode-type crystal, and a few chunks of wierd "melted" quartz. And all I've really got on "display" is a large hunk of petrified wood I use as a doorstop

I collect brachiopod and coral fossils, and crystals if I can find them (I camp at geological-hotspots) artifacts like arrowheads, pottery shards and a coupla old horseshoes, etc.

Actually, in deep sea areas where the sun doesn't penetrate, chemo-autotrophic bacteria actually thrive off of sulfer and are the first link in a whole food chain of organisms able to at least tolerate it. They're all carbon-based of course.

I'm half-blooded down in arizona, but really I just know a bit about what went on / goes on down here. What's the Canadese background on N.A. history?

Top 10 strategies domestic animals may use to take over the world 10. Pets of world leaders will pool their collective intel and blackmail their owners with dirty pictures and incriminating recordings 9. Fed up with abuse, lab rats will team up with fleas again for a new Black Death 8. Utilizing their unequalled fluffy cuteness, chinchillas will make their way into the loving homes of the majority of the world's population, then smother their owners while they sleep 7. Cow-milk bio-engineered to house sleeper-enzymes that after a year's time will unleash a catalytic meltdown in anyone with a taste for dairy 6. You know how pet taratnulas are harmless? That's just what they WANT you to think. 5. Bees, lots of them, wanting their honey back, will form a kamikaze force the likes of which the world has never seen 4. All pets will cooperate to hide all of the world's television remotes, leading to mass chaos. In the resulting mayhem, humanity will inevitably destroy itself. 3. Dolphins working together with techno-savvy squirrels will use satelites to broadcast brain-killing echolotory pulses across the face of the planet. 2. The animal nation will simply replace Bush with one of their Chimps. No one will ever notice. 1. Human dominion is only an illusion anyway; the Hyperintelligent Pandimensional Mice rule all! Ten Reasons NOT to hate/maim/execute Paris Hilton &/or Lindsey Lohan (good luck )

To be fair, it's not even really suicide at all. Overpopulation leads to mass crowding and they get pushed over ledges or into water by the lemming-mobs. because that's not how evolution works. The predators evolve in reaction to what they need to get the prey, prey evolves to better get away, all in response to actual influencing selective factors combined with the random mutations that provide the possible traits. Organisms don't evolve towards a goal, and they are limited by rules of biology, often making tradeoffs to get certain advantages best suited to their needs. Besides, if some uberpredaotr DID evolve, likely a prey species or two with counter it with their own eventual uberness.

Is there any money to be made in this sorta crap? And I don't imagine hot chicks are lining up for the chance to boink these guys, so I'll assume they're just former or current stoners or the progeny of evil brain-washing science-nazis who authentically believe in their little delusions.

I think it's simply common sense to logically assume the closest and most similar group would in fact be the one to pinpoint as human ancestors. What else did we possibly arise from if not apes? Did an artichoke suddenly bloom one day and humans just sorta unfurled? If not apes or artichokes, what ancestral line do you propose makes most sense? There is simply no logical reason to claim that similarity in DNA between morphologically related organisms (all morphologically related organisms in a comparative chain from one end of the evolutionary chain to the other, oh my! ) is just a monstrously freakish coincidence. And don't say "god made it that way," that abandons all logic for a mystical reason. You can say that of course and believe it if that's what you believe, but to be honest you'll have to acknowledge the paucity of logic and rationality in that line of thought from a scientific point of view. Fine, go ahead and denounce the science, but if you're going to do so, can you try to provide a reason why it isn't so and provide an alternative explanation? ----edit---- Pah, this is all a non-issue because the thread-maker was asking a question about something specific in evolution he was wondering about, did not ask for the dispute between evolution and... whatever it is the other guys are clinging to at this moment. I apologise to Blackhole123 for letting myself carry this irrelevant sidetracking even further.