Mokele

Well, first, I didn't say "castrate". More on that later. Second, If they want to have kids, they can do it before the treatment, just like anyone else. They can do their genetic duty ("Just lie back and think of the gene pool, dear") and *then* get snipped. True, though I guess we could pass some laws about not using that on immortals or something. Yes, but I never advocated castration, only sterilization. If I were castrated, I'd lose mini-Mokele and his two best friends, and have no sex drive. But, if I simply had a vassectomy, all the equipment would remain, as would my sex drive, but I'd just lose the ability to have kids. Tubal ligation would accomplish the same for females (though it's not as simple a procedure). Mokele

I agree with aeroguy's post. IMHO, most people with great "natural talent" are simply mutants. It seems hypocritical to talk about a "level playing field" when some players already have a distinct advantage simply due to chances of genetics. Mokele

I'm assuming the "somewhat" is in place because they don't care for their young once they've hatched. However, incidentally (and totally off-topic), there is some new evidence showing up that females may hang around the group of babies (which themselves tend to aggregate into a 'creche') for a few months. Still tenuous and debated hotly, and still nowhere near the level of parental care seen in mammals and birds, but interesting nonetheless. Mokele

Maybe vitamin A doesn't cause total blindness simply because the other effects of vit A deficiency will kill you first? Mokele

There are 3 bones in the mammal ear (plus the tympanic bone, supporting the eardrum), versus 1 in every other land vertebrate. Everyone has a stapes, but mammals have 2 more bones, the malleus and incus. Mammals also have differnt jaw-bones: Our lower jaw is just one bone, the dentary, while reptiles have a dentary, splenial, angular, surangular and articular. Also, mammals lack the quadrate, a bone present in reptile jaws. Basically, in reptiles, the quadrate (part of the skull) joins the articular at the jaw-joint, and the articular joins the angular, which attaches to the rest of the jaw bones. As mammals evolved, the joint moved forwards to enhance crushing power of the jaws, leaving these bones free to evolve a new function. The quadrate became the mammal incus, the articular became the mammal malleus, and the angular became the tympanic bone. These relations can still be seen in modern embryological studies of mammals; we've known for more than a century that these ear-bones were homologous to reptile jaw-bones. Hence, the pun is many-layered: "Malleus" in "with malice aforethought", "getting an earful" about something, in this case the ancestral jawbones. Mokele

That itslef also improves fuel efficiency, at the company level. Ascent is the most fuel-consumptive time of flight. By comparision, steady, level flight is pretty low-cost. By making a single, large plane that can carry many passengers, you save fuel by a) having less planes on that route and b) going farther per flight (less plane changes) which decreases the relative proportion of the trip that's occupied by the expensive ascent (thereby increasing average fuel efficiency). Mokele

In the case of the first ruling, from what you quoted, it didn't sound like she was ruling based on foreign laws at all, but rather saying "hey, I decided this, and the fact that every country in the world agrees with me bolsters my arguement and means I'm more likely to be right." (let's not touch the logic of that, though). I mean, the first phrase of the first sentence you quoted pretty much states that foreign law didn't determine the decision, but merely cemented the idea that it was the right decision. Mokele

Actually, those aren't muscle-spasms; the snake is still alive, and can live for over 10 minutes. Because they have such low metabolisms, it takes a lot longer for the lack of blood to the brain to kill them. It's an exceptionally cruel death. Mokele

I strongly doubt that, simply based on the fact that Monsanto has done similar things in other areas (chemicals, mostly), and have cultivated a reputation for it. Their behavior is abnormal within other industries they are part of, and therefore I have very strong doubts that they can be taken as a representative case for firms in the genetic engineering business. Just because one person in the room is a jerk doesn't necessarily mean everyone in the room is a jerk, even if they're all there for a common reason. Mokele

Mutation and natural selection go hand in hand. Mutation produces the variation, but evolution via natural selection (and sexual selection) acts on it to reduce diversity and weed out the unfit. The two processes and completely separate: Mutation can occur without natural selection (just irradiate some fruit flies to see this), and natural selection can occur without mutation (though it quickly runs out of diversity without them). Think of it like a car. Evolution is the car, natural selection is the motor, and mutation is the fuel. If you don't keep filling the gas tank, the car stops. But, even if it's stopped, the engine still exists, even if it's not running. Mokele

What if it was simply mandatory to undergo sterilization at the same time as the immortality procedure? That way you could have your kids before you become immortal, then get the treatment. Those who don't agree with sterilization don't get immortality, period. Mokele

The numerous stages can actually be seen today, in polychaete worms: (on a side note, I'm fairly sure I got that image from another poster on this board, but I don't recall the primary source, so anyone who knows, please PM me.) Talkorigins is just plain spectacular, IMHO. Their FAQs and articles are stellar, and I've learned quite a lot from them (more than from my upper-level evolution course). It might also simply be a neutral trait (not good or bad) that drifted to fixation, or might be linked to another, different but very advantageous trait in development. Mokele

Well, I just took all of my plants out of dormancy (those that were in dormancy, by which I mean in my refrigerator), and re-potted them a few weeks ago. As it stands, the Alice's sundew and Nepenthes couldn't take the low humidity, so I had to bring them back into a terrarium w/ grow lights, where they're recovering. The Venus Flytrap got damaged by a freak hailstorm, but is recoving, and my white pitcher plant seems to be barely straggling along, so I bought another one recently. On the up-side, I ordered a hybrid plant along with it, and my parrot, hooded, purple, pale, and yellow pitcher plants are all doing wonderfully, as are my cape and forked sundews. The hooded and parrot pitcher plants are producing 2 flowers each, so I'm gonna produce a stock of hybrids and 2 pure lines for next year. Last year, the hooded pitcher plant produced seeds, which are currently sitting in peat, and should germinate in about 5 weeks. Maybe one day I'll actually try growing a plant that *isn't* carnivorous.... Mokele

Open any Biology textbook and look up "Neurons". You'll read all about ion permeability of membrances, action potentials, and neurotransmitters. That's all there is to it, chemicals and cells (which are themselves just chemical reactions). Every external stimulus is converted into these chemical and electrical messages, and processed as such by the brain. No, I have better things to do than waste time reading BS conspiracy theories. Mokele

Ramin is intent on remaining ignorant of the fact the the brain is a product of genes, ergo can be influenced by them. Yes, this is harsh, but I already wasted a fair amount of time on this with him in another thread. You might as well talk to Christslave. Mokele

Well, I can definitely say that not all animals have emotions, and prove it with one word: sponges. After all, they *are* animals, and lack any nerve cells at all, let alone a nervous system. However, triviality aside, you do have a good point, but it brings up semantics: what is an "emotion"? How do you define it, and, most importantly for science, how do you detect it in species that cannot self-report (everything but us, in other words)? Furthermore, is emotion really needed for some behaviors? Couldn't it just be "hormone stimulates behavior, can goes away afterwards"? Could that release be called emotion? Mokele

That would be because I evidently buggered up the explanation. This is Mokele's brain on insufficient sleep... The experiments I so poorly described were separate. The one with the spinalized mice (suspended over an electrified plate, so they'd be shocked if they let their legs relax) showed that spinal learning can occur with just classical conditioning and without conscious awareness of pain. The second experiment had morphine-doped mice in a two part cage, one part of which was electrified but evidently had something desirable about it (I forget what). The non-doped mice learned to stay away from the electrified room, but the doped ones didn't, even though they could detect the noxious stimuli (but not the 'pain' in the brain). It seems to me to be saying that, without 'pain', the mice won't learn avoidance of nociceptive stimuli operantly. (But this isn't my field by a long shot, and I'm recalling from a seminar speaker several months ago.) I'd agree they might not experience it the same way we do, yes, but I strongly disagree that means they don't experience it at all, especially if pain (like the mice experience) is needed for aversive operant learning. If there is one thing evolution teaches us, it's that there's more than one way to skin a cat (or in this case, wire a brain). Octopi display lots of mental traits that "higher" organisms do, but their brains look *nothing* like any chordate's. The portion of a crocodile's brain that we'd assume is dedicated to learning and thought seems small, yet one species is a pack hunter which seems to be "smarter" in that area than wolves (though nobody has yet done conclusive studies on this, in part due to the sheer danger of such studies, since they most often display this behavior when hunting their keepers). Just because a brain seems to lack areas that mammals use for certain tasks, does not mean it cannot perform those tasks. And the sheerplasticity of the human brain in terms of broad functions merely underscores how easy it would be for areas to change function over evolutionary time, especially between highly divergent lineages. That's my main objection, the idea that just because mammals use a portion of the brain for something, then therefore that particular part of the brain is necessary for that function to occur at all. If you'll re-read my annecdote, you'll notice that I said 'tail-whip', which is a very specific, very accurately-targetted defensive behavior, rather than a reflex response. It's usually aimed for the eyes of the attacker, or the limbs, thereby involving the brain, if only to co-ordinate with sensory input. To assume that a voluntary, defensive, targetted behavior involving the brain can be linked to the brain detecting something analagous (though possibly not homologous) to 'pain' is far less of a stretch. ------- Mostly, my objection is to the seemingly mammal-centric tone of the assertion that the limbic system is necessary. One would assume that 'pain' has a distinct evolutionary purpose (or is linked to something that does, like operant learning involving painful stimuli) else it would vanish. To then assume that the only ones to capitalize on it are a bunch of comparatively unimportant fuzzballs is, to me, counter-intuitive. An analogy would be to say that because other animals lack the system of malleus, incus and stapes, they cannot hear, when in reality they can hear just fine, simply through a different method (stapes alone). Forgive me if I sound a bit confrontational or anything, but like most non-mammal-centered biolgists, I have a large sore spot when it comes to the over-emphasis of mammals and the assumption that mammals are someone the definitive group when it comes to whatever. Mokele

"There is such a thing as having a mind so open your brain falls out" - Richard Dawkins Secondly, why am I the one being judgemental, when the quote that you open with *proves* you wrong. It shows that the stimulus is rainfall, not cosmic mumbo-jumbo. Honestly, I'm at a loss to understand why you haven't been banned yet. Trolling is trolling, whether it's by malice or by sheer stupidity, as in your case. You are a disruption to the board who contributes nothing of value. Please leave. Mokele

I disagree that fish or other animals without a limbic system cannot feel pain, since, as you put it, pain is usually inferred. I actually recently attended a very good talk on pain and animals, which opened a lot of interesting doors. Firstly, it differentiated pain from simple nocciception, in a variety of interesting ways. The speaker noted that detection of noxious stimuli is universal, even bacteria do it, so it can't truly be called "pain". Furthermore, he noted that, with precisely the right dose of morphine, a human or a mouse can remain conscious of noxious stimuli, but lack the pain associated (such as when humans at this dosage report they can feel the doctors doing things, and they know it hurts, but they feel no pain). Also, he pointed to a series of experiments with spinalized mice that used negative conditioning to their posterior, and got learning, even though there was no pain involved (because of the severed connection to the brain) and no conscious awareness. However, he also noted that mice doped with that "nocciception but no pain" dosage of morphine, while they could learn via classical means, could not learn via operant conditioning involving pain. If these results truly mean that pain (rather than simple nocciception) is required for operant learning with painful negative reinforcement, then we can more easily test to see if animals truly can feel pain, simply by seeing if they can learn under such conditions. --------- I agree that non-mammals have a different perception of pain than we do, but I'm hesitant to say they do not feel pain at all, or that their different pain is somehow "less" than ours (I realize you didn't say that, I'm merely expounding my position using yours as a jumping-off point). My experiences with "lower vertebrates", while admittedly annecdotal, do seem to indicate some level of conscious pain (different though it may be). Post-operative behavior of reptiles, for instance, clearly indicates attempts to minimize pain (taking extreme measures not to rest on healing incisions for example). For a more funny example, I'd contend (a bit jokingly) that there has to be some level of brain involvement for my tegu to take the input stimulus of a vet giving him an injection in the base of the tail and produce the seemingly spiteful behavior of tail-whipping him in the eye (even if the brain is only being used to use sight to target the tail motion). He was *not* a happy lizard. Mokele

You violated that request the moment your fingers touched the keyboard. Looks like yet another of your posts that's destined for the "psuedoscience" forum. Mokele

The only problem I could potentially see is one of legal precedent. If we open one national park to drilling, even if it's a icy wasteland, couldn't that be cited as legal precedent to open other, less barren parks to other forms of resource exploitation? Mokele

I dunno, I'd pay to see that. Especially if it's to the death. Mokele

Well, since blood transfusions are recent, we can assume there was no major selective value to having type O blood in the distant past. This leaves non-selective evolutionary mechanisms. The two I see as most possible for this are: 1) genetic drift. Since it'd be a neutral trait in the past, the gene frequency would fluctuate randomly, due to random events determining who lives or dies, who mates and how often. So, basically, it could be the product of simple random chance. 2) Founder effect / genetic bottleneck. If there were an unusual number of humans with type O blood in the initial group that colonized Europe, the gene frequencies would be higher due to that (with drift acting over subsequent generations). Alternatively, if a few individuals became highly geneticly productive (possibly while others died, such as during a famine or plague), there would be a genetic bottleneck in which a disproportionate number of type O individuals founded the future of the populations, resulting in a spike in gene frequency. So basically, it's probably just random chance. Mokele

Oh, there probably is some evidence of more primitive immune systems and such somewhere, but since that's not my field, I don't know it. However, even a possibility without any basis is enough to destroy Behe's arguement, which is that there is no possible way the system could function without all the current components nor evolve from simpler systems. By showing that such a possibility exists, we prove that the system is not "irreducibly complex". Whether those possibilities play out or not, we have still shown that there *can* be a solution, which effectively counters Behe's claim that there cannot be one. In a discussion elsewhere on this board, I pointed out that creationists wouldn't be swayed if you had a time machine and watched evolution happen from the first cells onwards. They're claim the time machine was built by Satan to decieve us or something. Mokele

Heard of, yes. Truly understand, no. Have any good URLs that explain it so that someone who's never taken any economics can understand? Mokele