Mokele

Also, c) Failure to finish school can be *caused* by the same underlying factors that lead to crime. In the US, schools are funded by local property taxes, and by "local" I mean "confined to the immediate area of the school". Thus, even within the same city, a school in a wealthy area will get more funding, and a school in a high-crime area will have low property values leading to low revenue.

2500 is too high. I'm a big guy, and my resting metabolic rate (seated) is ~2325 (I'd have to dig out the old spreadsheet - I was bored and had access to a respirometer). Plus, while we burn most of it, about 10% or so is used in "productive" means (though about half the energy of the reaction probably winds up as heat). A more reasonable 2200 calories/day and the above gives a bit more than 100W, which lines up nicely with swansont's post.

Being serious, I could see it being useful of reading PDFs of science articles (since kindle is awful for that), but I'm sure as hell not paying $500 for it.

The history channel now has a show by Larry the Cable Guy

Oh my god, that's *PERFECT*

There's also the issue how how much effort an individual puts into their appearance. Some folks will spend 2-3 hours in the morning getting their look just right, others will just toss on any clean clothes and stagger out the door. In women, the former is far more common, because they've basically been told by our patriarchal society that their only value is in their appearance.

Ok, see, that's what I was after. Still, fat lot of good they did. The Dems seem more interested in appeasing their right wing than left. My point was that if the Republicans hadn't insisted on showing all the debating and political class of a troop of screaming, feces-hurling howler-monkeys, hadn't insisted on treating their party like a cult where any deviation from dogma was an excuse for excommunication, and hadn't insisted on waving their possible fillbuster around like a kid with his dad's gun, then maybe there could have been a productive level of debate. Had there been any *REAL* dialog, rather than political posturing, the Repubs would read the poll results I linked to and actually represent the interests of their constituents. Not the crazy, teabagger minority, the whole constituency. And the damn Blue Dogs would have followed suit. I realize that, but can you not see the inherent problems of telling a group that has been denied basic human rights that giving them their rights is "not tactically feasible"?

Has it seriously not occurred to you that the parents might have been more attractive when they were younger? And that the difference if because you're comparing the young to the old?

The problem was entirely from the right. I've not heard of any progressive candidate backing out, only the pseudo-dems "playing hard to get" until, in a vain effort to appease them, the bill was stripped of everything useful. Find me even a single actual quote of a progressive democrat who has said they refuse to vote for the bill due to these concessions (with the exception of the abortion issue). Also, and this is being lost in the shuffle - You only need 60 votes to pass a bill when one party is a load of completely obstructionist jackasses who refuse to participate in the political process, preferring to undermine it. Were it not for the republicans, we could have ditched the Blue Dogs and had a great bill with a public option 4 months ago or more. Yeah, because that whole "Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person" compromise worked so well. Just because a position is "in the middle" or "politically palatable" doesn't make it *right* or even a good idea. Did the founding fathers adopt "moderate" positions on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial, etc? No, because basic human rights are never "an extreme position" - the extremists are those who seek to deny people a fair place in society. She's also 100% correct - this is an issue of health. Well, I guess I must be a "radical" for holding the "extremist" position that women are actually people who have rights. It's a good job we ignore "radicals" and "extremists" like, say, MLK or Susan B Anthony or Harvey Milk.

Then why have polls over the past year consistently shown support for the public option at between 60-80% That's a pretty damn big margin. And the whole "scott brown" thing - Brown only won because those who voted for Obama were disillusioned at the *lack* of a public option, which 80% of them support. Bullshit. Cite a source for this happening. The *only* time I recall progressive Dems backing out was with the hideous misogyny of the Stupak-Mills "We hate women" amendment. Yeah, all those "basic human rights", they're really just bargaining chips, to be cast aside for political convenience.

Possibly, but the point is that the whole "dumb herbivore, smart predator" thing is still based on a highly limited diversity of organisms, all within mammalia, so you cannot simply assume reptilia will follow suit.

Yes, it has collagen and polysaccharidea, but is mostly water.

Based on what I saw and the various lefty blogs, right now the opinion of the Dems is "inept", largely due to an idiotic fascination with "bipartisanship".

It's a plume moth, family Pterophoridae

I think at this point, nobody likes it. The right has always hated it, for whatever crazy-ass reason, and as it's become increasingly watered-down, stripped of meaningful reform, and less effective, the left has been looking at it going "What, seriously? We got you a super-majority, and this is best you could do?" At this point, I wonder how much worse US healthcare is going to have to get before we can finally actually see some meaningful reform.

Consider whales. Bigger than any sauropod, eating food that's considerably harder to find and of just as marginal quality, yet very smart. I suspect the whole "herbivore vs carnivore" thing is a load based on the particularities of ungulate mammals and carnivorans. It certainly doesn't seem true outside of mammals (parrots are herbivores).

Agreed, like "no atheists in foxholes" this is pure bullshit, and frankly rather bigoted.

And results that aren't purely due to sampling error (too low frame rate) and poor camera use (too low shutter speed).

One that's turned off?

The last part is the problem - Earth is full. *Everywhere* has life, even in the most extreme conditions. Thus, anywhere there are the complex molecules that could lead to life, there's already-living organisms who'll eat them up.

Galindo, two notes: 1) the idea that we only used ___% of our brain is flat-out wrong. We use *all* of our brain, just not all at once. There is no magic area we never use. 2) The pineal gland is nothing more than an endrocrine structure that regulates sleep-wake cycles and annual cycles. No magic.

What's the problem with multiple origins, all but one dying out? There was more than one ancestral human at any given point in time, but all living humans descend from a single female that lived 200,000 years ago. Other women at the time had kids, but eventually, the lines died out. Why is this unbelievable for the origin(s) of life?

AFAIK, there's no evidence of plant prions.

And do you actually have any evidence of this?

What most directly causes valves to shut is blood flowing in the "wrong" direction forcing the valve closed. The valves themselves are totally passive flaps of tissue. Elasticity does play a role in the heart valves closing, but only as an indirect mechanism that causes backflow - when the heart pumps out blood, it not only pushes blood through the aorta, but causes the aorta to stretch and expand in diameter. When the heart contraction ends, the aorta recoils pushing blood both further through the body and back into the heart, but the backflow is stopped by the valve.