Mokele

Have the stimulus checks even gotten to the states to spend yet? I've not paid a great deal of attention, but I don't actually think so. Expecting the stimulus to fix things before even being implemented is a bit like being disappointed because your computer didn't turn itself on and connect to the internet before you even opened the box. No, and he's 100% right. During good times, we tend to not bother doing things that we probably should.

"Generalizations" = "vague, unsubstantiated, unverified impressions based more on personal perception than actual data" Conservative policy is generally "hard on crime" - how is that NOT control of human behavior? BOTH parties favor control of human behavior, because that's the fundamental precept of all society. The opposite of "control of human behavior" is called "anarchy". And your arguments for the programs you cite as 'controlling' are beyond weak - no human being wanders around thinking "ok, so how do I become eligible for ____?" No, they act as they normally would, and the government helps them out if they need it. Nobody says, "I'm bored, I think I'll get hit by a bus so I can't work and am in constant pain so I can live off the government."

Click the link, then go to the top of the google page, click 'More' then 'Scholar'. This will give you peer-review journal articles on the topic, and if you're reading from a university library, you should be able to access most of them. Those will be your best sources.

See my comment above. He's been branding us as traitors for over 7 years for daring to disagree with the Prez, yet the moment that Prez is someone from the other party, he drops all of his bullshit about "it's not patriotic to question a sitting president's policy during a time of war" and immediately does the same thing he accused us of doing. Sure, it's not the worst thing he's ever said, but it's the most recent example of his intellectual dishonesty.

How do *ANY* of those 'control behavior'? Seriously, try putting some thought into your posts. Or your opinions. Either would help.

How much of that is due to laws of chemistry, and how much just due to lack of strong selection pressures in other directions due to the natural temperature range of our planet? Depends upon the creature. Fish cannot be warmer than the water (though some can warm certain parts of their body via muscle activity) since their gills effectively act as heat exchangers, most amphibians adapt to cooler temperatures to prevent dessication of their moist skin (except in the humid tropics), and most inverts are either too small to retain much heat (though some flying insects regionally heat their thorax to keep flight muscles warm) or use gills (see fish). In contrast, most reptiles actually have field-active temperatures in the high 80's or low 90's, achieved by behavioral thermoregulation. This is probably why the only lineages of true endotherms both evolved from reptiles - reptiles already had enzymes "pre-set" to high temperatures, so all that was needed was a switch from external to internal heat.

While I can't speak for most of them, since they took tests in separate, special rooms, I recall one student of mine who *definitely* had serious test anxiety. I tried to do everything I could to help, but he still didn't score as highly as I know he should have from our interactions in class.

I think it depends upon what you mean by "fail". Nobody *wanted* to see chaos in Iraq or the stock market fall, but rather wanted him to 'fail' in his attempts to gather ever-more executive power, persecute minorities, etc. Personally, I would have loved it if he'd brought peace to Iraq - no political ideology is worth that many lives - but I was *definitely* rooting for him to fail on the Federal Marriage Amendment. The difference is twofold: 1) most conservative pundits seem to be rooting for things to *stay bad*, effectively hoping for suffering and misery in the advancement of their politics, and 2) more importantly, these same people were accusing liberals of being treasonous for daring to oppose W, making blanket statements that "we must all support the president as out patriotic duty", but now they're doing exactly what they accused us of being traitors for doing. Highlighting their hypocrisy is great fun.

Another relevant point - this is not a risk-free procedure, and the blood-slave could easily develop an infection, or trigger an immune response. So this person isn't just being forced into slavery, they're also being forced to risk their life without consent.

Actually, enzymes are remarkable flexible, and can have very low optima. In geckos, nocturnal species can have muscle temperature optima in the low 70's, while diurnal species have more typical optima. That's currently one of the major theories, yes - increased basal metabolic rate in theory leads to increase maximal aerobic metabolic rate.

::Peers into the distance, looking for the original topic::

But if CEO-level people have come to *expect* obscene salaries, far beyond their own worth, then none will apply for a job with a reasonable salary, and you'll get stuck with the bottom of the barrel. How much does this cultural expectation influence or even coerce business? Consider that in CEO salaries have gone from 24x average worker salary in 1965 to 300x in 2000. In the period from 1989 to 2000 alone, the average CEO salary went from 71x to 300x, over a 3-fold raise (even considering rising wages, which surely didn't rise over 3-fold). Can the supply and demand for CEOs have changed enough in 11 years to justify an over 3-fold pay raise? I'm very skeptical of that. If not, where did that raise come from? I disagree - the skill difference at that level is almost insignificant. You're *WAY* on the tail of the statistical distribution. And if that was the case, why is it so quick and easy to get a replacement when someone retires or is injured? These conditions long preceded the bailout.

What the hell are you gibbering about? What do issues like abortion, stem cells, and gay marriage have to do with economics? Seriously, if you try to define other people's terms to mean things that strengthen your arguments again, you're getting a strawman warning.

I've actually always been curious about the assumption that salary is the product of supply and demand. Has there actually been any research to determine if this really is the case? Are there *really* less bankers per job opening than engineers? Less CEO applicants? Given numbers that business schools pump out, I'm skeptical. And how much is based on the labor market versus 'perception of value', where employees who may be no more rare or skilled or desirable, but are doing socially valued activities like managing/'leading' get more money? I'm just skeptical that supply and demand is *really* the underlying factor.

That's all well and good, but it's nothing but a speculation. Without actual testing, that's all it ever will be. And frankly, that's not a very convincing speculation, either - a slightly faster recovery from illness cannot possibly outweigh a large possibility of sudden death for no reason at all.

They seem nice, but how feasible are high-speed rails, especially in a country where so many people are so attached to their cars, and where the distances are so vast. I know rail works fine here in New England, but that's because Boston is only an hour away from me, and New York only 3 hours. NYC to Chicago presents much greater feasability problems.

Temperature does vary among endotherms, particularly with body size, aerobic scope, and descent. Birds have temperatures over 100F in some cases, while marsupials tend to have lower temperatures. The purpose of fever has nothing to do with sweat. The idea is that increased temperature will cause denaturing of the pathogen's proteins, allowing your immune system to overpower it. Interestingly, even cold-blooded organisms can have fevers. They just raise their body temperature higher than normal by basking in the sun longer and at hotter hours of the day - in effect, a behavioral fever.

No, you didn't. You never lived under Free Market capitalism, nor did your father or grandfather. How do I know? Did they have "weekends"? Congrats, those are a product of unions. Did they have anything even remotely like workplace safety laws? Government. Child labor laws? Government. Were there laws that companies couldn't knowingly market dangerous products without any warning? Government. I find the reference to your grandfather growing tobacco especially ironic, since the tobacco companies' flagrantly dishonest attempts to conceal the lethal truth about their products rank as one of the top entries on the big list of "What's Wrong With A Free Market?". We live in a mixed economy, and have since the 19th century, entirely due to the egregious failures of an unregulated market.

Oh, for the love of all that is holy, give it a freaking *REST*! Your precious "Free Market" failed. Read a damn history book. The regulations we have in place now were specifically implemented to fix the FAILURES of your vaunted 'free market'. We tried a free market, and it got us monopolistic robber-barons, child labor, unsafe working conditions, the *murder* of those who attempted to unionize, fraudulent or even lethally dangerous products, a sky that the sun couldn't shine through, and a population which could work 80 hours a week and still barely put food on the table. We *had* a free market, and it showed us that businessmen will rapidly become murderous, corrupt plutocrats who will happily drag us back to the feudal system. Go on, you and every other conservative/libertarian can keep humping the corpse of the 'free market'. Those of us who've actually learned from history will be busy trying to make a system that *works*.

So, by that reasoning, I should be in the middle of the smoldering ruins of Tokyo right now, battling a giant moth?

Let's not forget them riding on dinosaurs. Who of course used those razor-sharp teeth to eat pineapples.

Recognizable microbe fossils are rare anyway, and really old fossils are always rare. Think of it this way: after a fossil forms, every year it has roughly the same probability of being destroyed. As time goes by, more and more fossils from a given era are destroyed by natural forces. As a result, you have an exponential decay in fossil frequency with age. We're up to our ass in fossils from the past 5 million years, but we've only got 2 really good sites from 500 million years ago. There's also hardness - the harder it is, the easier it fossilizes and the less chance of destruction. Shark teeth are dirt common, especially recent ones. Fossils of soft-bodied animals from any age, even recently, are extremely rare. And it doesn't get softer than microbes.

They're called 'subduction zones', where portions of the Earth's crust dive down under another plate, and are eventually melted. We actually have problems finding fossils of the very earliest life because any rocks of the right age are either buried too deep to get to them, or have been melted in subduction zones.

Um, what? Are those sentences?

See this thread, with several links to actual studies on the subject