mark01970

Well... I tend to flip-flop on this matter personally. (being a lunatic, that just happens naturally of course) First, I think that animal testing is okay, so long as the animals are not being tortured needlessly, AND that the testing serves a definite intention of bettering the world as a whole. (and No, I don't think human testing is a good idea heheheh) However, I do believe that some animals posess advanced intelligence, at least as far as posessing some meager amount of emotions. I know, that will generate some heated responses from the many people who believe animals are nothing more than biological machines with instincts, but I just disagree because of personal beliefs. For example Elephants, dogs and cats seem, to me anyways, to exhibit beyond instinctual behavior. I apologize for not being able to offer any specific source for this, but I do recall hearing somewhere about a mother Elephant whose calf was struck by a train, and the next day the mother Elephant was at the site of the accident and derailed the train. Now some might say that was instinctual act of self defense. I say it was plain and simple revenge. Why else would she return. PLUS, I am always playing games with my dog and he just seems happy to be playing, and sad when I don't bring him outside or anything like that. So it is with this belief that some animals might be of a higher intelligence than most believe, that I often think it is wrong to test on animals in a way that harms them. BUT.. I am a realist and say hey, screw you beasts, if the shoe was on the other foot, you'd bathe us in perfume to make your crap smell better too! I told you I was a lunatic Mark

There seem to be an abundance of sharp people here, I was really hoping for some responses. Did I post in wrong forum, or was it all just so much non-sense it wasn't worth responding to? ...Just curious.. Mark

Maybe we need to stop thinking of life as some supernatural force that seperates us from anything else in the universe. Perhaps "life" is a false concept. Maybe we aren't any more alive than a rock floating in space. Maybe someday that rock floating in space will collide with the right object and mix up with other stuff, and its collective energies will become something else. Maybe the only thing seperating us from a tree is that our genetic material got a good jump start. Our make-up of matter and energy interacted in a much better(?) way than a plants let's say. The layman, Mark

Hello All, I am not an educated man. I am not a man of great intellect, as you will witness within these intellectual machinations. I had a number of friends in my youth who were intellectuals, most going on to study in physics, calculus, engineering and what-have-you. Myself, I am a creative soul truth be told. Although, probably more from a philosophical angle, I did enjoy varied discussions on all manner of sciences with these friends. I am sure you have experienced these sorts of group discussions where you could start out discussing your new car and several hours later the subject has somehow morphed into black holes. Well.. I don't have any contact with these friends of old. My path in life, let's just say, was along the low road. So, over the decades I have come up with some theories about things. Be they philosophical, physical, or whatever you choose to call them. These theories, or more apt to be called notions, bother me because I have no one to discuss them with that can understand, not my theories, but me. I am going to take a chance at making a complete and utter fool of myself here, but I would like to see what anyone has to say about any of these concepts. Please bear in mind that I have no formal science background. All I know about such matters having been gleaned from case-of-beer blathering with those much more gifted than I. So I may say things that make no sense. They may be funny. They may be downright idiotic. They be old news. They may be so fundamental you shake your head. I have no way of knowing. So if you are interested, and are still actually reading this, please respond to me if you like. I am interested in opinions on these matters, but keep it in laymen terms. If you start spouting off latin terms and calculus equations, I won't have a clue. I am a poet, not a scientist. I create with my mind, I don't mind about creation. Okay here goes... 1. Light. Light is a waveform correct? At least I think it is. Isn't a dual wave type or something like that? I was thinking about light and energy, and energy being light. I was thinking that if everything is essentially a form of energy, then maybe everything is essentially a form of light? or... maybe light is a form of matter? I started thinking maybe light could be another state of matter but pushed that aside as not making an sense. 2. Gravity. I think, and this may be old news, or it may be dumb. Gravity, and magnetism and energy are all the same thing on some level. I think that all matter either is or contains energy. I think that all energy reacts with other energy in the form of magnetism. I think that gravity and magnetism are one in the same. I think, therefor, that every single piece of matter in existence has a gravitational/magnetic field. The bigger the object the more energy it contains so it has the stronger field of magnetism. Some objects are too small so as not to have an effect on other objects maybe. 3. Dimensions. I think the idea of dimensions is misleading to most. Dimensions don't really exist. I mean, we, mankind, made up the concept of dimensions as a means of measurement and conceptualizing our environment sure, but when you think about it. Nothing is truly anything besides three dimensional. Right? Least that is how I see it. Even a drawing of a line on a chalkboard, under a microscope, the chalk dust looks monstrous. A sheet of paper..three dimensional. I'm trying to think of something that is NOT three dimensional and can't. If you know of something physical that does not have three dimensions to it, please, let me know. So we can forget about undiscovered dimensions, unless we decide we want to start measuring how much energy something has and calling THAT another dimension of something. I know.. I'm a weirdo. 4. Time travel. Nope. Not happening. Why? Simple. How do you travel through something man made up? We invented time to help us keep track of the sequence of cause and effect events in our universe. You can't make something UN-happen. You can't make something happen any faster than it can. I know I have heard the theory that if you leave the earth and travel at light speed, or some other godly velocity for an hour, when you returned everyone would be like a year older, or some other ratio or another, I'm not trying to quote verbatim here, but I have a lot of trouble with that. I want to see the proof before I'll buy that one. No formulae or theories will do it either heheh. You may as well tell me a burning bush told you all about it! <grin> 5. Intelligent Design. Okay, if the designer was so damned intelligent, why did he design us to be so *@#$!*D-UP! I mean, if I was capable of designing a universe, or even just a world. I certainly wouldn't have designed human beings. I mean, if I had those kind of powers, why would I even be designing little beings anyways? If were going to design them it would either be as a hobby or an ego boost or something. Either way I think I would want them to know who I was. I'd say "Yeah, that's right, I'm God, all praise be to me, now knock all that ^%$# OFF and play nice!". Although.. I suppose I could be doing it as a project and just want to see how things all work out if I gave them free will, but if I just let them destroy themselves, well then I just wasted all that time. ...and wouldn't time to someone that powerful be a valuable commodity? I don't know.. I guess what I am thinking is, if there were INTELLIGENT DESIGN I would think it would have done a much better job overall. 6. Souls/Ghosts/Hereafter/Heaven/Death. Okay here is another bizarre one. Remember how I said I agreed with the concept that all matter was or has energy. Well, that goes for people too. I believe this energy is what we call a soul. I don't think this energy has any sentient qualities to it outside of controlling our biological machines, but it's at least nice to think, that even though the matter may waste away, the energy will always be there. So maybe life and death and heaven and ghosts and souls.. Well, maybe it's all just different states of energy. Maybe the brain is nothing more than an energy management system. It processes all the energy around us. Sight is light waves/energy, sound is audio waves/energy, everything else would be physical energy. Ya think? I think.. I think too much, I need to rest my little brain. So please let me know what you think about any of these thoughts of mine. You can flame me if you want, but I already warned you I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Mark