Mokele

Almost nil, because there's also 'crossing over', which will further mix the genetic material.

That's a bit like asking "what's wrong with the science in Star Wars?" Mostly it's the numerous factual errors and the baseless conclusions.

Bigotry is bigotry. Why does it make a difference what minority it's directed towards? Give me any good reason why a homophobe is any different from a racist.

Would you be OK with a beauty contest who was an active member of the KKK? Same thing.

We're drifting off topic, in the libertarian fringe-land again. Can we not waste time discussing a purely hypothetical option which has zero chance of becoming reality within even this century? Let's restrict ourselves to *viable* options, by *viable* parties. You know, the *real* parties who have actual power beyond local school boards and city halls.

I think you greatly overestimate the value of homeschooling. Sure, it works great if you're one of the less than 5% of the population who can afford to take the time to do it. What about the remaining 95% who don't have the time or money to allow that? The single moms working two jobs? The kids in foster care? Public education exists because prior to it, for most people, the alternative was no education, not homeschooling. And that's still true to a very large segment of the population.

Yeah, because the best thing you can do is just suffer, rather than, you know, changing things. Martin Luther King Jr. should have just told everyone to go home and suffer quietly, right? Nobdoy's saying they should be shot or jailed, but they should also know that their opinion can and will be challenged if they voice it. Freedom of speech/belief is not freedom from criticism.

It's because it smacks of "separate but equal" and is a potent reminder that, no matter how far we've come, we still are 'less than' and second-class citizens who are inferior simply due to being different. That may seem like an over-reaction, but when you've faced a lifetime of discrimination, usually with the looming threat of physical assualt and very frequently with actual assaults, sometimes including death, being reminded that large segments of society hate you isn't a pleasant feeling.

It's also theoretically possible for two separate eggs to be fertilized (fraternal twins), and each of those eggs to divide (identical twins), thus producing the effect seen on the show. However, I suspect it's more a case of cleverly casting two sets of identical triplets who just happen to be very similar in appearance (much like finding a body double, but 3 of them in one).

Flat out wrong. Many of the rights cannot be replicated via contract, including hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, and the right not to be forced to testify against a spouse in court.

You should be ashamed if that opinion results in the suffering of others for no reason beyond "my invisible friend sez so".

It makes you an opponent to equality, fairness, and basic human rights and decency. It makes you no better than those who tried to deny equality to any other minority group for no reason. And frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Actually, that's the sand tiger, different species. Boas and pythons cannot adjust the lens of their eyes to focus light - their eyes are effectively "fixed focus".

I think you're confusing the shelled egg with the single egg cell. Cloning can involve removing the nucleus of a fertilized egg cell (technically a zygote), or some cells once it's begun to divide (technically making it an embryo). However, for birds and reptiles (as well as the platypus), the shelled egg that is laid actually contains an embryo well on its developmental path, along with maternally secreted yolk and a materally secreted shell. By the time the egg is laid, development is way too far along to allow cloning.

From a very large and well-known feminist blog I frequent, from several different contributors: Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 And one from a blog I'm less familiar with: link 4 If you dig up posts from the primaries, you'll see a lot of folks pissed off because neither Hillary nor Obama would support gay rights, and a lot of talk about being 'thrown under the bus' for the sake of getting elected. These issues never made it to the mainstream media, because, let's face it, the primary was a total circus and they were too busy playing 'Fantasy Football' matchups between various potential candidates.

Your links are to sites written by people with barely a high-school level understanding of biology, and none of genetics or evolution. DNA repair mostly acts a) to repair damage that physically distorts the DNA chain, such as kinks or nicks and b) focuses repairs on certain key genes which are so essential that they basically stay the same over evolutionary time. None of that contradicts evolution even slightly, and in fact, faulty DNA repair frequently results in gene duplication, which can accelerate evolution. As for sites, how about simply ignoring anything on the web. Read Ken Miller's Biology textbook (typical for college bio 101 classes), followed by Futuyma's Evolution textbook. Both are on Amazon.com, both are afforable (at least as far as textbooks go), and both are quite authoritative and up-to-date. If you want to learn here, try asking questions, rather that making proclamations. There's a LOT more to this subject than you know, and we're more than willing to help you learn. But you need to first realize that you cannot learn if you start out with your mind already made up.

Seriously? Read the link I posted. T.O has an excellent FAQ on evolution that covers just about everything in great detail, but still very understandable.

Look, I'm going to lay it out for you: It's obvious you know absolutely nothing about how evolution actually works, or about how it's studied or what the evidence is. Yet you've clearly simply *decided*, based on ignorance and false ideas, that it cannot be true, and refuse to actually learn about it. If you want to actually *learn* something about the subject you're criticisizing, Go Here.

It's not "luck". You're neglecting natural selection. Selection imposes order onto random variation, and results in obvious, orderly end-products. Do you not believe crystals exist? Because it's the same principle - you start with molecules in solution, randomly bouncing around. But a few simple rules about how each molecule can bond to the other, repeated over and over, result in a highly structured, ordered end-product. So far you have *completely* ignored natural selection, the primary driving force of adaptive evolution. This is like trying to understand how cars work while completely ignoring the engine, transmission, wheels and drive-train.

Honestly, a lot of people on the left have given Obama a lot of flak for his marriage crap too, so it's hardly hypocritical.

Found it! Two of the videos on this page show the pretentious "energy master" getting his ass kicked from two angles. Rational beatdown, now with actual beatdown!

Snakes are the coolest animals *ever*.

Nope, merely impossible to evaluate. However, as a result of scientific training, most scientists become skeptical of concepts which lack evidence. Another point worth thinking about: if something does not produce any detectable effects, does its reality even matter at all? Even if it does exist, it may as well not, since it makes no difference at all.

If you can transplant it from another area, yes. It's very hardy stuff.

As for #1 and #2, part of the issue isn't just "natural" vs. "non-natural", but rather whether it's fair to give advantages to competitors who will risk their health (steroids have famously bad side effects, and any surgery, even as routine as breast enhancement, has risk). Of course, there are also health risk due to expected aspects of training for either competition (anorexia/bullimia and intense training), but there's also a historical aspect: when the rules were made, the risks of both were *much* worse, particularly in the case of steroids (early forms had *horrific* effects, including massively increased cancer risk). Plus, the rules of any game (pageant or sport) are, to some degree, arbitray. Does it make sense to allow athletes with inherent genetic advantages while banning steroids? Not by any deductive logic, but there's also not deductively logical reason why soccer players shouldn't be able to use their hands. They're games with a series of essentially arbitrary rules, and playing the game means agreeing to the rules, even ones as bizarre and seemingly illogical as "offsides".