Greg H.

No - if what you want is a hoofed critter to mow your grass that doesn't take up a lot of room, get a goat, not a genetically engineered version of a genetically de-extincted critter. The issue is, veering back to the subject of the OP for a minute, that we have no idea how these creatures would react to the modern world. A wooly mammoth is NOT just a big furry elephant. They were a unique species evolved to deal with a unique set of ecological needs. Reviving them is questionable at best. I am reminded of the line from Jurassic Park. To paraphrase, Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. If we want to revive extinct species, then we need to first focus on those that human activity, rather than evolutionary failure, have rendered extinct.

Those are called goats.

You think geese make a mess on a car when they fly over? Imagine a few of Argentavis magnificens landing one on your freshly polished ride. Not to mention carrying off toddlers for brunch. With a 23 foot wingspan and the wing loading of an ultralight, they could probably carry off a smaller adult human if they were feeling peckish.

The History channel should be forced to rename itself to prevent a false advertising claim.

I prefer the logic of David Hume: A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. From that, i would say that a belief in God is the exact opposite of wisdom.

Creationists have fallen into the trap of the false dichotomy between science and their belief, thinking that they cannot have both. They are unable (or unwilling) to accept that their religious text is fallible, like any text, and should be examined with the same critical eye that we would observe any scientific article. Speaking from personal experience, my in-laws fall into this "Infallible Bible" camp, and i very quickly learned not to try and reason with them on any topic that disagreed with their preconceived notions. They didn't want to hear evidence or stories that contradicted those beliefs. As Epictetus said, It is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

I'm almost certain the effectiveness of ridicule as a tactic for effective argumentation was not the original topic of this thread.

The sun is always out. You're just not in the optimal solar area all the time. So really, it's your fault.

For those on the web application gig, AngularJS looks to be making inroads in the business world. We just started using it here at work for an 80,000+ user application. www.angularjs.org

Fundamentalists tend to avoid pesky distractions like facts and evidence. Most of them probably regard fire as som kind of heathen sorcery.

Pretty much this. Can you perhaps explain what this is supposed to illustrate and why any of us should care?

Honestly, I don't know. I'm not sure how Li-Fi works, aside from it shoots beams of light between the network nodes.

If this is an old tube type display, then I will offer this warning: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WORK ON THE TV TUBE UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND HAVE THE PROPER EQUIPMENT. These old tubes carry voltages in the thousands or tens of thousands of volts, and take special equipment to discharge safely. You can very easily kill yourself monkeying about in the rear of a tube style set. Certain LCD sets can carry voltages just as high, so it's best not to DIY a television unless you have some idea what you're doing.

Microwave based networking equipment tends to be directional. You point two dishes at one another and communicate directly. There are radio based WAN solutions which work as you describe, but they tend to be lower bandwidth and subject to interference from the same sorts of things that would interrupt radios in general.

Microwave based wireless networking has been around for a while - I've seen it used to connect separate buildings on a corporate campus to one another, for example. It does have drawbacks, like any networking technology - especially the requirement for line of sight (which I assume Li-Fi would share).

I'm not a professional scientist, so I'm not sure how the grant process works, but I assume there are checks and balances in the system that try to prevent this sort of bias. Then again, maybe not.

It helps if you look at the equation for surface gravity in terms of density: [math]g = \frac{4\pi}{3}G \rho r[/math] Where [math]\rho[/math] is the density. As you can see, as the density increases, so does the surface gravity. It can be further expanded by looking at [math]\rho = \frac{m}{v}[/math], so [math]g = \frac{4\pi}{3}G \frac{m}{v} r[/math], where m = mass, and v = volume of the object in question. From this we can see that if the mass increases for a fixed volume, or if the volume decreases for a fixed mass, the surface gravity will increase. Note, however, that actually calculating the surface gravity of a black hole is a good deal more complex, because you have to treat them in relativistic terms.

I gave up on creationists a long time ago. I spend my time focused on the people who are still on the fence.

I don't think so - at least, not for very long (cosmologically speaking). There is an equation that can be used to approximate the time required to tidally lock a satellite to its primary: [math] t_{lock} \approx \frac{\omega a^6IQ}{3Gm_p^2k_2R^5}[/math] The part of this equation that becomes really important is the [math]\omega[/math] which is the initial spin rate of the satellite in radians. With a non-rotating body, this results in the time to lock being approximately equal to 0, which means that the non-rotating body would be immediately tidally locked, within the margin of error of the approximation. This, in turn, means it would,eventually establish a rotation equal to its orbital period (if I understand the mechanics correctly) and become tidally locked. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking for an explanation of the equation and its terms.

It never fails to amaze me how many psuedo scietific types seem to hand wave away the competition among scientists, as if they all have a vested interest in propping up some false system. They seem to forget that discoveries that were to, say, replace GR with something better are career makers for scientists. They're not trying to prop anything up - on the contrary, scientists work very hard trying to expand, refine, or even replace established theories because that's what earns them funding. Beung a synchopantic yes man in the scientific community earns neither accolades nor funding, despite what the psuedo-science crowd would have us believe.

I've never really stopped my kids from watching horror movies. I watched them when I was young. It's how you handle the event that makes it a big deal. If they kid is obviously too scared to continue, then be the parent and turn it off.

You're neglecting the idea of dominant and recessive genes. If the mutation occurred on a dominant gene, then only one of the pair would need to have it in order for it to spread to off spring. That aside, a single point mutation isn't going to create a new species, regardless. It may turn out the new mutation isn't fit, and dies out long before that happens, or that despite the mutation the species remain the same (pale complexions versus dark complexions). It is the accumulation of changes over time that results in new species.

I read a book a few years ago about the advent of biotechnology and how it will play an increasing role in human evolution. In the future (and in some part, it already is), it may be us, not nature, that decide what the human race ultimately becomes. For the interested, the book is Evolution Isn't What It Used To Be: The Augmented Animal and the Whole Wired World, by Walter Tuett Anderson. (link to amazon.com)

And yet, your original conundrum is not really a conundrum at all, since they can reach things on the ground, if they need to. It's not easy for them, perhaps, but it's also no impossible. So where is this conundrum you speak of?