SCOOTER93

No, I have not heard of Urey-Miller, But I am suspicious of any one with 2 last names. Will run google on him right now.

Wether live evolved on earth or spores were seeded here from somewhere else, it seems like life must have started SOMEWHERE, so the mystery remains as to how and why.

>>>>>If I am expected to adhere to the rules, laws and conventions of this society, <<<<< When people are executed, it usually is because they did NOT adhere to the rules, laws and conventions of our society.

I would think that if we are going to execute people, occasionally we will execute an innocent person, given an imperfect system. One way to look at it is to consider the risk, and do we think capital punishment deters murder. No one wants to be excuted for a murder they did not commit, but you don't want to BE a murder victim. Either way, you are just as dead. So, ideally, we should execute enough people so that risk of being an innocent executees will just balance the risk of being an innocent murder victims. I don't think we are anywhere close at this time.

Well, when we get civilized here in the USA we can think about abolishing the death penality. (I can't spell capital either)

I taped one of the tv shows about the Kennedy assasination and ran and re-ran the sequence that showed the head shot. That tape shows 2 things. It shows brain matter being blown forward, and it seemed to me like it was about in the right direction to have been coming from school book window where LHO was supposed to be. The other thing I saw was Kennedy's head being knocked back and to the left. This was a very sharp movement, like he had been hit by a hammer, or bullet coming from the front. "Experts" have claimed the forward ejecta from the shot from the rear will cause the head to recoil back, but I'm not sure I believe that. Maybe what happened was 2 bullets hit him at the same time, with the front shot being a heavier caliber bullet, to produce the 2 different effects. But that would require at least 2 gunmen and a serious conspiricy.

Reversal of the earth's magnetic field would have no effect on electric motors. The only serious effect that I can think of is that for a short period of time the field would be zero. THEN, we would have no shielding from solar wind or gamma rays. (Actually, gamma "rays" are high energy protons). This would expose all of us to an additional load of radioactive Scooter93

>>>>Further, corporations don't pay taxes, people do......corp taxes are simply passed on the people.<<<< Close, but not quite. CUSTOMERS pay taxes, and wages, and health benefits &&&&.

Rotation doesn't create gravity, BUT, if you build your spacecraft as a wheel, with crew quarters around the rim, and make the wheel/spacecraft rotate, centrifugal force will push everything to the outside edge and crew will think the outside edge is "down". Scooter93

To a 19 yr old biology student in a physics class. Relax! I'm assuming you are in about a 2nd year of college, in a general physics class. Unless the Prof has stressed relativity in lectures, I would be very much surprised if this question was on a test for this class. The thing to remember about relativity is that the speed of light, and all laws of physics, are the SAME for all frames of reference. If you play ping pong in a fast space craft or a slowly moving earth, you play the same way

I think a VAT would discourage consumotion and encourage an underground market in 2nd hand goods. I don't think I favor it. I tend to favor a flat rate income tax, maybe with a reasonable personal excemption.

A week or so ago, someone ask President Bush if he had made any mistakes. He couldn't/wouldn't think of any, and the story sort of died. I don't understand why people don't want to admit their mistakes, I would admit my mistakes, if I made any. Seriously, back in Dec. 2002, he had his vote from congress to invade Iraq, but instead of going ahead, he went back to the UN AGAIN for another resolution and gave the French another chance to stab us in the back. (Notice the root word for RESOLUTION is RESOLUTE, meaning, well I guess it has lost all meaning by now) Meantime, the Iraqi's, and likely the Russian's, were busy loading up trucks from Al Qaqa (sp) and hauling stuff to Syria. Which might have something to do with why we can't find "The good stuff". Also, the delay almost got our troops bogged down in the desert summer. It didn't happen, but it was too close. Question: Would that have been political suicide for Bush to have admitted that mistake? Scooter93

The South has belonged to the Republicans, pretty much, since Barry Goldwater voted against the LBJ's civil rights bill in 63. In the 64 election BG took the 7 southern states, and nothing else. Since then the Dem's have clear title to the black vote. In a way, the Republican's traded the black vote all over the country for the white south. Scooter93

Your link to the Y-chromosome Adam and the Mitochondrial Eve were very interesting and explain a lot of the things that I have been puzzling over, well, I'm still puzzling, but perhaps in a little more informed way. Thank You Scooter93

I thank you and Sorcerer for your comments. Just by looking at people and comparing variation of general apperance with the variation of other species, (In the wild, I mean, not species that man has genetically messed with), it would seem there should be more genetic variation with people. Think about lions, tigers, zebras, deer elk ect. These all look much more alike each other than people look like each other. Sorry about your UK traditions for dentist's office waiting rooms. Do you have to wait that long for treatment, too?

Has any one been to the dentist office lately and read the October 04 National Geographic article about the Phoenicians? They claim in that article that all modern males trace their ancestory back to a common ansector who lived 60,000 years ago. This seems surprising to me because modern people were supposed to be migrating out of Africa (by the replacement theory) by 110K years ago. So our intrepid ancestor would have had to rack up a lot of milage on his frequent flier card. Also, there seems to be too much genetic variation in the human genome to have a common ancestor as recently as 60K years ago. National Geographic is not exactly a super market tabloid so I have to give it some credence, but it seems strange with accepted thinking on human evolution. SCOOTER93

Nukes are not politically feasible, and will not be until the lights go out. There is a story in the wall street journal today about wind turbines. With the fed tax credit of 1.8 cents per KW, they are the cheapest power around. In Kansas Flint hills area, (Roughly between Wichita and Kansas City) power companies were running into a lot of trouble from land owners who were upset by the prospect of these un-sightly machines. The towers were stated to be 300 feet high and the turbine looked to be maybe 120 feet in diameter. They claimed mega-watt power from these things. Anyway, nukes are not the only thing some people object to. Personally, I would save Anwar for National Defence, maybe develop it and build the pipeline, so it would be ready to go when needed, but if we did that it would most likely not be possible to keep from using it to power our gas guzzling urges. With enough cheap electric power we could make hydrogen, I suppose, and do our transport with the fuel cell. Back to my original question, would it be a good thing to withdraw from the Middle East? if we could

I was watching Robert Kennedy jr on TV this evening and he was saying it could be done with a little conservation, windmills and solar ect. renewable and alternate energy sources. He thought it would take maybe 15 years to do it. Question? IF IF IF it could be done, would it really be a good thing? I suppose we would disengage from that part of the world and leave them to revert back to whatever previous centuary appeals to them. That would be a haven for terrorist, despotic dictators, and people who do not like us very well. Where as now, we are interested in that part of the world BECAUSE we would like to buy their oil. We have a chance to establish a democratic government in Afgan. and Iraq. Saudia Arabia and Iran are under pressure to move toward more democracy. Any thoughts on this anyone? Scooter93 It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, its the things you know that ain't so.

Yes, that would be really neat if we could do it. I would like to go back to Dealy plaza at Dallas Tx, about 11/22/1963 to see what really happened there, but before I left I think I should sharpen up my pencil and do some very careful arithimetic. I would like to go, say, to the grassy knoll. Not too picky about the time, arrival almost any time in the morning of that day, but would need to be real carefull about position. You see, the earth is spinning on its axis, once/24 hrs, and the earth revolves around the sun once/365.25 days. and the sun is revolving around the milky way galaxy and the galaxy is moving at a rapid clip towards goodness knows where. I want to arrive at the grassy knoll, not 200 feet up in the air, (watch that first step, its a doozy) or maybe 20 feet under ground, so I have to calculate all this and get it exactly right. Also, I want to arrive at the grassy knoll moving with the same relative velocity as the ground and not slam into a building at 40,000 mph. (That would sort of take the charm out of the game) Now when you get all these details sorted out, sign me up.

No, he would have shot his partner and his partner would have shot him. Darwin ussually works more slowly in cleaning up the gene pool, but occasionally....

Without working it out, .044% might be about right for 4 million years. Why? Well the earth is about 4 Billion years old, or 1000 times the 4 million years stated in the problem. If we stretch the 4 million by a factor of 1000, this takes us to 44%. IF IF IF all the water on earth came from this source then we are short by 56%, same order of magnitude. Extrapolating present data by a factor of 1000 is a chancy thing, but I would expect that the accretion rate was greater in earth's earlier times than it is now. It ain't the things you don't know that get you into trouble, It's the things you know that ain't so.