Mokele

Well, don't be so automaticly accepting of genetic conclusions, as they can be wrong. For instance, over the years, people constructed a very good phylogeny of mammals, based on morphology of living and fossil species. Then, a genetic-based phylogeny came out that was completely different, contradicting the prior, well-established phylogeny. Which was right? There was a huge arguement, until someone solved it. The problem was an inherent flaw in genetic methods: they can only sample living organisms. When extinct species were removed from morphology-based trees, they yeilded the same results as the genetics-based ones. So, the moral of the story is that genetics is *not* the final word in phylogeny, especially since we don't fully understand all of the variables that affect genetic change on macroevolutionary time scales. The massively contradictory data given from different genes of the same species is proof-positive of that. Mokele

Something I'm seeing in this thread is that certain traits (like visual accuity or disease resistance) are "good" or "bad". That's not at all the case. No trait that isn't 100% lethal or 100% sterilizing is automatically "bad". We value eyesight for social and psychological reasons, but that has nothing to do with evolution: the fact that individuals with poor eyesight are not suffering a reproductive handicap is proof that the "bad vision" alleles are now selectively neutral. The same for disease. What makes something selectively good or bad is the environment. Eyes are great for a bird, but a useless waste of energy for a deep-sea shrimp that never sees light anyway. That certain formerly negatively-selected alleles have become of neutral value only sinifies that we are evolving in a different environment. Evolution has not goal, no purpose, nothing long-term. We've altered our environment, and thus our allele frequencies change. Mokele

It's more than a similar theme. Seriously, watch them back-to-back. It's almost perfectly the same in terms of scenes, order, etc. It's not just the same theme, it's the same film. Mokele

They're just insects. Because they're moving so much faster than the frame-rate of the camera, you get those images. Each of the "wings" is a wingbeat of the insect. In fact, if you note that most have 4 "wings", and most home video cameras have a rate of 30 frames/second. This gives us 120 wingbeats/sec, which is about average for most fast-flying insects.

I've seen a few of their shows, including the creationism one and the Armageddon one, and they were both hilarious. Especially when they noted that creationists believe the same thing as the Raelians, just with a different "intelligence". Mokele

They already re-made War of the Worlds, quite recently. Go rent War of the Worlds (the original movie) and Independence Day, and watch ID4 right after WotW. There are some differences, but by an large they're nearly identical. Mokele

Sea World has a new "swim with dolphins" thing. You have to pay extra, of course, but my sister was very happy with it when she tried it. Mokele

Oh, don't worry, when I write, my favorite character does oh-so-scientific things like shoot energy beams out of her hands. She was married to a shapeshifting dragon at one point. I actually think I'm rather good a biological technobabble for fiction (make it sound just good enough that nobody but bio majors could catch on), and I always loved creating fictional monster-races for AD&D or other RPGs. Mokele

Yes, on my new Cestoda diet pill! Easy, fast, painful weight loss! Pay no attention to the giant tapeworm now living in your colon.

Well, maybe, just maybe, bloggers will step up to the plate. I know they did a number on that phoney document some important news station or other claimed was real. However, realistically, I cannot expect them to be able to wade through all the lies; they have lives too. Ok, you know what this has me thinking: War of the Worlds. Find some group of people with enough money and a sick enough sense of humor, get them to buy off all the media outlets, and we start claiming the martians are invading. Mokele

They got an apartment with the Bat-Boy and adopted the world's fattest cat.

It's times like these that I'm glad I don't get the paper, watch the news, or listen to the radio. Mokele

Nope, it varies tremendously with both species-specific adaptation (such as Gila monsters, where every scale has a large lump of bone under it, and the body is pretty stout and hefty), and, most importantly, with size. See, if you double a lizard's size, you increase every surface areas 4-fold (including bone cross-sections, which in turn determine strength of bone), but you increase mass 8 fold. So it's now supporting 8 times the weight on just 4 times the bone, which is Bad. This is why large species have proportionally thicker bones than small ones (both for lizards and all other terrestrial vertebrates). As a result, bigger lizards will have a higher percentage of bone than small ones. Given that lizards can range in size from less than 3 cm to over 3 m, there'd be a tremendous variation in relative skeletal mass. So, basically, there's not going to be a fixed percentage, but a rate at which that percentage changes. I know of studies on this for aspects of bone geometry (such as cross-sectional area, length, etc), but nothing for raw skeleton mass compares to total live mass. What are you trying to figure out, exactly? Mokele

Well, first, it'll come pre-killed, more than likely. Second, cut shallow. You can always deepen a cut that's too shallow, but you can't un-cut a cut that's too deep. Also, be patient. If you take your time and be careful, you'll have a much nicer dissection that'll make it easier to find the things your teacher wants you to find. Mokele

If the redback's behavior is not evolution, then why is the paper I'm getting this info from published in the journal Evolution? Somehow I think the editors of the biggest peer-review journal in evolutionary biology know what evolution is. Behavior can be shaped by evolution. They're called "instincts". Not every behavior is learned; mammalian ineffiency does not typify the rest of nature. Or perhaps you'd like to explain why spiders kept separately, who never see another member of their species, all spin the same web design that typifies the species? No trial-and-error, and they don't have enough of a brain to learn something that complex. Mokele

::Shakes a fist furiously:: How could you! You're all a bunch of Diploidists! Opressing the poor Haploids! Sure, they have a shorter lifespan, and are unicellular, but they're people too! Seriously, while we're talking about arbitrary lines, why aren't sperm and eggs human? They're just the haploid phase of our life cycle. The sporophyte and gametophyte stages of a fern are both ferns, right? Why should we discriminate in what is nothing more than another phase of our life cycle? IMHO, life has begun only once. Everything since then has been produced from life. My parent's living cells formed gametes (which are alive), which combined into a zygote (alive) which grew into me (alive). Trace back until life originated. Thus, from my perspective, life does not "begin" anymore. It merely continues, changing form and mixing genes as it does. Mokele

To put it succinctly, a species will only evolve suicidal behaviors if the benefits of an early demise outweight any potential benefits of continued life. An excellent example is australian redback spiders. The females live alone in webs that are widely scattered through the landscape. Like nearly *everything* in Australia, they're extraordinarily venomous, so things tend to leave them alone. The males, however, a tiny, venomless, non-feeding (though that's probably something that evolved after suicidal behavior became the norm), and roam widely to find females. The mortality is *very* high on their excursions. Basically, once they find a female, they're unlikely to live long enough to find a second, and even less likely to find a 3rd. However, length of copulation is a *very* strong indicator of paternity. The longer the male mates, the more eggs he fertilizes *and* the less likely the female will be to mate with subsequent males. Suicide by being eaten allows a much longer copulation than he'd otherwise get. So, if a male self-sacrifices, he gets more kids on this female, and less chance of his sperm being displaced by subsequent males. If he doesn't, he gets less reproduction from this female, and *might* be able to balance that out by mating with a second, but the odds are against him surviving that long. It all comes down to "how can I have the most offspring?" In some cases, male suicide is the way to go. Mokele

What about fire? It starts, grows, can split off into new fires, and eventually is extinguished. It can even be said to "eat" and break down the chemicals it "eats" for their chemical energy. Mokele

Are you sure his name wasn't Magneto? Mokele

Well, one thing I *have* noticed: ugly rocks are never used in crystal healing. You never see recommendations to wear limestone to cure headaches. Also, you never see any claims about expensive rocks. If crystals worked, why aren't diamonds, opals, saphires, etc used? Surely such high-quality crystals should have some "healing properties". Mokele

I can see how it could be considered to be an artefact, especially if normal succession is prevented. But, I'm also of a rather cynical, pessimistic POV about environmental issues, and feel that the area is better as an artefact than a Wal-Mart parking lot. Mokele

Absolutely magnificent! Can one of the admins pin/sitcky this at the top? IMHO, it's *more* than worth it. Mokele

Is he trying to say that the restorations are imperfect, due to our admittedly imperfect understanding of ecology? If so, yes, restored ecosystems are inferior to their state prior to damage. But it's much better to restore them than just not bother, so I'm inclined to say, in the current political climate especially, that beggars can't be choosers. However, if he's going on about some sort of moral continuity, or some artificial distinction that terms anything humans have even touched as "un-natural" (in spite of the fact that we are a part and product of nature), I'd have to agree with my long-tongued colleage above. Mokele

Actually, these rings do precisely what they're intended to do. They work according to a single, simple principle: "It is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money." - W.C. Fields. ------------ I almost wish I had a little less integrity. I've got a good knowledge of science, I can BS very well, and I have a deep, seething misanthropy that borders on pathological. I could be making money hand over fist from this sort of crap! Mokele

It's a "look at me, I'm so big" display. It's used both in courtship and dominance contexts, to emphasize the size and power of the animal. Same for head-bobbing. It actually consumes a lot of energy, so is a pretty good indication of the vigour of an individual (usually a male, but females can get territorial too). Mokele