Mokele

Based on what?

Scrappy, you seem to think that whether something is or isn't constitutional is some sort of final answer. The fact is, it's not - the constitution can be changed (again). Nobody wants "an answer", they want basic human rights, and if re-writing parts of the constitution is what it takes to achieve that, that's what'll be done. Remember, if it ended with what the constitution says, voting would still be restricted to white male property owners.

There's two serious errors here: 1) The spinal cord has *no* sensory nerve endings. It's a bundle of wires, with no sensory ability. Raising the temperature near it will no more affect your perceived temperature than raising or lowering the temperature of an ethernet cable will change your email address. 2) Even if you *could* alter the perception of temperature, that wouldn't actually lower the body's temperature.

Part of the problem is that, even if there are mutiple, distinct intelligences, they'll all be correlated because they're being tested in the same species.

Um, that's a load of pseudoscientific garbage. Wrong. Firstly, you cannot just shove any DNA into any other DNA. Second, Chitin is weaker than bone, not stronger. Third, bone does not limit flight ability, as evidenced by some truly huge vertebrate flyers. Wrong again - there is no convincing evidence that ape muscles are inherently different from our own in any way. Croc nictating membranes are cloudy, and allow only poor vision. Also, their immune system is *not* perfect. I've worked with captive crocodilians, and can assure you they *do* get sick. Let me rephrase that for you: "And we need to make our body 50% respiratory system by volume". Seriously, birds are mostly air. 20 feet would be a bare minimum, to ensure a tolerable wing loading. Then why are you here? Let's hope it's not to dispense any more of your "facts".

No, you haven't, and you haven't said anything that hasn't been thoroughly addressed. Here's a quarter, go buy an informed opinion.

The spine thing is BS, but the back of the neck is generally a good place to cool.

Honestly, my predition is that CA is doomed to a two-year yo-yo cycle, with gay marriage oscillating between legal and not, until it finally gets decided at the federal level, at which point they'll find something else to squabble about, with the same yo-yo effect. Which goes back to my contention about 10 pages ago that allowing constitutional ammendment by simple majority is just a stupid idea.

He also went with a candidate who has more experience than any nominee in the past 70 years. That makes all the whining about 'preferences' moot.

Very possible, though they'd have to abandon the typical rodent diet of low-grade plant matter for something more energy rich, such as fruit or insects, like bats.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uogzJvYSQHoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA8&dq=rodent+biogeography+gondwana&ots=-h9dlQGRdY&sig=J7A4O8Z_h-wInZx3ko5owSGyZs4#PPA12,M1

Two points that need to be made here: 1) We are talking about the founding fathers, not the Borg. They were a quite diverse bunch, and I doubt any single claim applies to all of them. From now on, please specify which founding fathers in particular you are talking about. if you mean "all", "most", "some", or "a few", Be Specific. 2) It is well-known and historically established that Deism was, at the least, influential in the philosophies of many prominent founders (Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams, Paine). Whether Deism counts as Christianity is a legitimate question, and central to this debate. However, it also runs pretty close to our general embargo on discussions delving into doctrine. It should, at the least, be taken into consideration when making claims in this thread.

Ok, since nothing really new has come up, I'm closing this thread in accordance with the 24-hour suicide watch.

Statistics is an absolute must, and the higher level, the better. While it doesn't really come under "math", I'd strongly suggest a good background in programming, as it'll *definitely* prove useful for data management, and IIRC, some of the phylogenetic software packages have programming built in as scripts and such. Beyond that, it really depends on what you want to do within paleontology. One of the folks in my dept (and hopefully on my thesis committee, when I get around to asking) does dinosaur locomotion from a biomechanical perspective, so he's always using engineering-based concepts which require stuff like calculus. Other paleo folks I know don't need much math beyond the above and what they learn from papers (after all, there's no college course in phylogenetic independent contrasts). Still other folks do some form of ecological modeling. IMHO, the best thing you can do is take a fair bit of math, stats and programming. If you're in a geo-based program, go out of your way to take bio, as much as possible, possibly even to double-major. Don't just take evolution and animal behavior classes - comparative physiology, vertebrate anatomy, all of those can be essential. And do undergrad research - it'll set you apart and demonstrate your ability to do research, which is really what grad programs are looking for.

Ok, there's several issues here. First, IMHO, dispersal vs. vicariance (drifting with the splitting continents) will only make a difference in terms of which rodents are present and which natural fauna you start with. However, if you want a big island, you should probably go with vicariance - most volcanic islands are far too small to support large mammalian carnivores. Big mammal carnivores need HUGE areas to roam, and even bigger areas to maintain a suitably large population. As far as rodent diet, while they are well adapted to low-quality plant matter, that doesn't necessarily preclude evolving into a more predatory lifestyle - after all, crocodiles have evolved herbivorous, clam-eating and filter-feeding forms in the past. On the other hand, there are suspiciously few rodent carnivores, and no known large rodent predators, so maybe there is some constraint on them? Given that this is fiction, though, I'd embrace the possibility - if fiction stuck too close to fact, it'd be pretty boring. Size is the main issue. Rodent-sized things can reach elephant sizes - after all, that's exactly what happened after the dinosaurs died out, and where elephants come from. But on an island? Truly huge endotherms almost never occur on islands. Even the giant ground sloths that used to live in Cuba were small compared to their massive continental bretheren. Would it be possible to set your novel after a mass extinction, rather than on an island? That way, you could wipe out all the big animals, predators included, and have rodents radiate on a continent.

No, the problem is that you take a legitimate puzzle and prematurely use it to declare the entire system impossible, all while deliberately mis-characterizing the views of others. Yes, the origins of DNA coding and the transcription and translation into proteins is unknown. But your continued insistence that it is some sort of insurmountable hurdle, along with your claims that others who study the topic simply ignore it, are both flat-out false. You're using the same method as ID proponents: You find a gap then immediately give up and proclaim it unsolvable without even trying. Sorry, but if that's your idea of science, you have a lot to learn.

Can you really say some arguments aren't bunk? What if someone's argument on a legal issue is blatantly contradicted by a long, well-established, and uncontroversial history of legal decisions? I'm not saying that's the case here, but I'm always skeptical of "everyone's opinion is worthwhile".

Since there really hasn't been anything new in the past two pages, and it generally seems that every argument that can be made has been made from each side, this thread is on 24-hour suicide watch. If something really new or interesting crops up, it'll continue.

Show me a synapsid that doesn't have warm blood. Just because there aren't any around today doesn't mean there never were, or that we must infer that even early pelycosaurs were endotherms. You've trotted this out before, I've said the same - you cannot assume the past is exactly like the present. That nothing today can reproduce without DNA doesn't mean nothing ever could.

Re-evolution of the pigments, perhaps?

We're currently working on it.

Apparently the mammal divergence and phylogeny has been a big source of contention between molecular folks and paleo folks. Oddly enough, this sort of issue doesn't seem to come up in other vertebrates. PM me your email and I can send you Benton's paper on the subject.

Maybe mammals simply lost some of color pigments during their evolution. They do seem curiously dull compared to other vertebrates.

Eating it wouldn't transmit the virus unless a) there were cuts, open wounds, or ulcers in the GI tract, and b) the meat was eaten raw.

HIV did come from monkeys, but due to contact with monkey blood during butchering for food.