Mokele

Technically we are special, in our own way. Just like every species of beetle is special in it's own way. No, it hasn't. Anyone successfuly producing abiogenesis would be on the front page of every paper in the world, and would have the Nobel Prize the moment someone verified it. Caused a mutation in what? Mutations are part of DNA (and RNA), not protiens. Furthermore, as prior links in the page state, RNA is now believed to have been the start of life, not protiens. Mokele

A long time ago, Buddha (the *real* one) said "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." I suggest we follow the sage's advice...

Iirc, the Picts were matrilineal. They were also so vicious and warlike that the Romans build a wall all the way across England to keep them back.

Let's just end this ridiculous BS in one word: Antibiotics. I win. Seriously, I want you (Chatha) to sit down and tell me how antibiotics really don't work, and it's all just a scam that happens to have saved millions or even billions of lives, since you seem to believe that nothing the medical or pharmaceutical proffessions do works. You made a post. You stated your poorly-formed opinions as facts, expected agreement, got pissy when challenged and refuse to accept the fact that the burden of proof is on the claimant in this, as in all cases. So, it's up to you, either stop trolling and actually try to at least back up your idiocy with some sort of evidence or logic, or get used to being treated like crap. Mokele

I'd also note that how much you need to take in depends on how much you lose. For instance, I usually don't drink very much water. But a few summers ago I worked for Fed-Ex throwing heavy boxes around (yes, throwing, which is why I advise you to protect anything you ship via Fed-Ex *very* well), and I was going through 2 gallons of water a day to to replace all that I sweated out. If you're inactive and don't lose much water, then taking in too much might actually be a bad thing, in that it forces your kidneys to work harder than they need to in order to maintain your body's osmolarity. Mokele

Solitare, Freecell, spider solitare, minesweeper, and this cool breakout clone called "jardinains" that involves killing gnomes. Oh, and Starcraft and SC: Brood Wars. Those are the only two major commercial computer games that have ever held my interest for a significant length of time. I also liked DDR and SSX Tricky, but I don't feel like wasting money on consoles. Mokele

Yes, except before modern medicine they passed on a lot more frequently, a lot sooner, and with *much* nastier aliments. Your post is little more than an incohrent rant on a subject you clearly do not understand. Mokele

The first thing that pops into my mind is salmonella, since you mention chicken nuggets (salmonella is often associated with raw or undercooked chicken). I've got nothing beyond that, except advice to get to some sort of medical care if you can (I know this can be a pain if you lack insurance). Mokele

Well, appearance only matters sometimes. In many species, female choice either doesn't occur or is for things like size or desirable territory or vigorous mating dances. Also, just as appearance is subject to natural variation within a population, so are female preferences for particular aspects of appearance. Mokele

Yay, I have a star! And super-human abilities, apparently! ::Flexes and poses::

1) it's the pumping mechanism, so the heart is given a base value of 0 as a reference point. For instance, the blood pressure in your legs changes if you elevate them above the heart. But the pressure in the heart doesn't change with body position, only with physiological causes like stress and McDonald's. 2) Because if there's no pressure in it, blood doesn't get back to the heart, which is very, very bad. It also gives us a measurement of pressure-loss in the capilaries. 3) Muscles in your legs assist in return of venous blood. Mokele

Actually, by the definition of "macroevolution" as "anything involving speciation and stuff at or above the species level", then yes, we have observed it, and it doesn't have to take a long time at all. For instance, plants, because of the tendency for errors in gametogenesis that produce polyploid offspring, speciate like crazy, and we've watched them do so. Two accidentally diploid gametes meeting (happens more than you'd think) can instantaneously produce a new species, in the form a tetraploid plant that can only produce infertile hybrids with the parent plant (though if it cannot self-fertilize or reproduce asexually, it's screwed). Plus, well, the distinction is purely artificial anyway. All macroevolution is is microevolution that's "scored" differently ("teams" rather than every organism for itself) and left to run for longer. The veracity of one logically necessitates the veracity of the other. Mokele

Pythons incubate eggs via shivering (no known post-natal care), and king cobras build nests and guard them (much to the dismay of anyone or anything in the area). Several amphibians engage in parental care, too. I disagree; there are some behaviors that are purely learned, with no innate component, such as stick-fishing in termite mounds by chimps, or opening jars via octopi. The most you could say for any of these is that the animals are wired for the capacity to learn. Sometimes it's a bit narrower, like with songbirds which have a critical period during which they can learn their species' song, but learning must still play a role. I agree that gene-based behaviors can become more intense and totally fixed, but without that initial basis, I don't think it can happen. Mokele

Close enough, you pronouce it in such a way that it's not really distinguishable by ear whether it's "jyo" or "jo".

(Hermes, Zoidberg and Bender come upon the burned-down husk of Dr. Zoidberg's *underwater* home) Z: How did this happen? <cries> H: Dat's a very interesting question! B, picking his cigar out of the ashes: Ahh, there's my cigar... H: That just raises further questions!

Yes, with a highly advanced brain, as Azure pointed out. Probably, they don't have a CNS, just a nerve-net. Yes and no. See, there's Scyphozoans, which are a single organism (ex: moon jellies), and colonial Hydrozoans, which are, well, colonies (ex: portugese man of war). Both are commonly called "jellyfish", but are actually quite evolutionarily distinct lines. You can tell them apart a few ways (without a microscope): 1) True jellyfish (Scyphozoa) are *always* radially symetric, usually bi-radial (so they're composed of 4 identical sections) 2) True jellies have 4 oral arms around the mouth, and numerous small tentacles around the perimeter. 3) True jellies have more complex sensory structures, called rhopallia, located on the perimeter at the planes of symetry, which can include image-forming eyes as well as statocysts (which are the sole sensory mechanism of colonial hydrozoans, aside from touch) and 4) Colonial hydrozoans have a "vellum", a flexible sheath of tissue around the edge of the organism, which can be seen fluctuating in and out as the animal moves. Mokele

Phi is right; any mutations that are passed on to the offspring must be in the gamete-generating cells. Somatic mutations tend to be cancer eventually, and even if not, cannot be passed on to the offspring. Mokele

Not correct. The rate of evolution can vary from extreme changes over just a few dozen generations to little or no change over millions of years. It all depends on the selective forces acting on a species. If you look at the fossil record of well-preserved species (clams are a favorite), you see long periods of stasis, followed by a rapid change in a isolated sub-population, which then spreads throughout the rest of the species. When the environment is stable, evolution tends to be very slow. They are, just not in overt physical ways. In fact, recent studies show strong selection for parasite resistance and tumor supression. There were pressures in the past (and still are) at varying intensities, as well as being different pressures. As far as transitional forms, look into the fossil record; there's so many I can't even remember all of them and that's just from vertebrates. Mokele

Could you clarify? I developed my segmented vertebral body plan, but that doesn't disprove the existence of the HOX genes. Just because it develops doesn't mean it doesn't have a genetic root. Even mutable behavior can be geneticly based. For instance, a single allele causes fruit fly larvae to express one of two types of foraging behavior. But one form can switch to the other depending upon food availability. Yet we know that there a genetic basis for these behavioral strategies, even the conditional strategy. Mokele

Tangentially, one of these days I'll get my sister to record her "particle physics rant". It's all about the nutty stuff that goes on and how things get modified post-hoc to conform to experiments that screw the theory, and stuff physics just pulls out of it's butt. It's actually really funny, and I've suggested she become the world's first stand-up physicist. Of course, most of it is over my head, but she explains it well enough to show how it's funny and/or ridiculous. Mokele

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, though; I recall hearing something about the use of stem cells to ferry altered DNA to the right cells in the body, possibly providing cheap and easier gene therapy. But I don't know where I heard this, so I might be mistaken. Mokele

With the usual caveat about IQ test accuracy, IQ is well over 50% heritable, iirc. Actual intelligence might be even more heritable. Mokele

Well, back then it was a fertile floodplain. Plus, I'm skeptical of the "hump" hypothesis because they'd need a much longer tail to balance it, and from what I've seen of Ouranosaurus, it's tail is pretty much the same proportion as other hadrosaurs. Well, not much better, especially since we don't have any Spinosaurus stomach contents. But yes, the jaws do seem like a piscivore, though it may also have scavenged (few predators don't) and snagged small terrestrial prey. We *have* found a series of moderate-sized pterosaur vertebrae with a spinosaur tooth lodged in them. When I first saw it, it was in the theater, and I kept looking around, because I though it was someone in the theater with their cellphone on. From what I've seen, each species is off in each direction by a similar amount. Utah's are too big, Deinos are too small. Mokele

But if that's the case, why aren't training regimes standardized? Seems to me that's adding another big variable that can conflict or overpower natural ability? I'm certainly not a sports person, but to me it just seems like the contest is "who's better?", which, because it's such an open question, invites these sort of problems. Mokele

Yep, it'll be katakana. First, take the katakana for "shi" and put a double-quote mark on it to make it "ji". Then, add a "yo", half sized and close to the "ji" (like a subscript of sorts, but not quite). These two, combined, make "Jyo". Then add the character for "n" and you have the closest you can get to "John" in japanese. Small additional: never add -san as a suffix to your own name. You are always just "Jyon" when you speak, but "Jyon-san" when others speak to or about you. Mokele