Mokele

That's always the way of it, for every group. Christians get judged by the actions of Psycho-Fundamentalists, good reptile keepers get judged by the idiots who let their 20 foot python roam the house, clean weightlifters are assumed to use steroids because of high-profile users. The bad makes more impact than the good, so we remember it more and it governs out impressions more. Mokele

Wrong, it's like saying "Bill told a lie, therefore he is a liar". You didn't just present a trait that *correlates* with a category, you presented a trait that *defines* a category. Really, you didn't say, and I quote: "women are very docile compared to men, especially in the presence of men"? Funny, because it's right up there at the top of the page. You didn't even attempt to qualify the statement with "some women" or "women *tend to be*", no, you just flat-out stated that women are docile, especially when men are around. As for whether it's a bad trait or not, that doesn't matter. Saying all blacks are good at basketball is still racist, even though it's a positive trait. What makes it racist is lumping an entire group of people under a single rubric, period. Yeah, I'm sure you say you love your wife right after you beat her. Oh, isn't that a lovely view of women! "Hi dear, don't get upitty or express yourself, just be nice and docile in this box we've made for you." Let me fill you in: whether on not you *think* you hate women, your assertions about them reveals your deeper feelings. Whether or not you consciously realize it, you harbor a number of misogynist feelings and delusions. No, you're just laying the groundwork so that those assertions are more easily accepted. Except you never said "conformist". You said "docile", which is *not* the same thing, and you only started trotting out the word 'conformist' when we called you on your misogynist bullshit. You want proof, fine: You claim is, and I quote, "women are very docile compared to men, especially in the presence of men." Since you are including *all* women, like a good little misogynist, I can disprove it by pointing to a single exception, such as my fiancee or my friend Em. Care to contest? Sorry, no dice. You *never* specified that you meant only in general or on average or for some women. Your quote said "Women are very docile...". That's an all inclusive statement, and if you don't think so, you need to learn to read. Funny, but when you label an entire group as "docile, especially when in the presence of Group B", you are saying that group is the 'weaker' one, the more subservient and 'docile'. I didn't choose anything; you said it in a very unambiguous manner. As for internal labels, I already had you labeled as "emotionally maladjusted asshole" from your prior intelligence thread. This has merely confirmed that and added "misogynist" as an adjective. Strawman. The point is that women do not have equality in our society yet, nor do minority races, and there are segments of our society actively and prominently working to keep them from equality. When you spread propaganda about a group that's still struggling to reach equality, you make their efforts harder, while insults to a dominant group don't really do anything other than maybe make someone feel bad for a moment or two. In an ideal world, when everyone has true equality and no force is trying to take that away, yes, discrimination will be equal too. But that world is a long way away. And people like you make it farther. Mokele

Precisely, and that should be the first line of defense. Not "we're not pervs" but "we're not *all* pervs". I don't know if I buy "harassment". Ok, there's the Somethingawful trolls and everyone else that takes a crack at y'all, but people make fun of or denigrate others all the time online, and the really stupid ones threaten. But it's all online, really. I remember when a webcomic I read did a few on furries, expecting a backlash. The LJ group associated had some discussion, and one very good point was raised: people make fun of furs for precisely the same reason they throw rocks at a beehive. There's a guaranteed reaction which will be furious, disproportionate, and ineffectual. The old saw about 'ignore them and they'll go away' may not be totally true, but I think the fur community has proven that reaction is certainly the worse course. One thing I have noticed is that furs don't seem to have the same boundaries about sexual topics as other people. I've had furs bring up their personal kinks in chat rooms the way I bring up the weather, and on most art sites, there's no division between the PG stuff and adult stuff, so if you browse you get both. I'm on deviantart, and when I go through the day's most popular pictures, I wind up with furry inflation porn. I'm not saying that there's any way to change it, just that this is why a lot of people react the way they do. Mokele

From the same BBC article: "When an earthquake is about to occur, snakes will move out of their nests, even in the cold of winter. If the earthquake is a big one, the snakes will even smash into walls while trying to escape,' he told the newspaper." That's describing coherent, albeit undirected and somewhat frantic locomotion, *not* siezures. There's no possible way to confuse the two. The waxes are a relatively minor part of the overall composition, and mammal skin is dry too. Sadly, no, but it stands to reason it would. From personal experience dissecting things, I know skin thickness varies between animals, and snake skin is actually relatively thin. As I said earlier, there's no possible way to confuse a spasm/seizure with locomotion, and the report clearly describes movement (spasming snakes don't move substantially, but rather just writhe in place). Well, that leaves only a two options: 1) The reports of snakes responding to earthquakes are false. 2) The traditional studies missed something, possibly due to a weak signal. Since the snakes are not spasming, it can't be a current causing shock/electrocution. And since there is no evidence that snakes can detect electrical fields, that's off the table until someone does demostrate it. To be totally honest, I suspect the report that snakes can sense earthquakes may be false. It's unlikely that snake movements would be noticed and not salamanders. Salamanders exist in incredibly high population densities, far more than snakes, so much so that if something stirs them up, it'll be like the ground is moving due to the number of them. Many areas can have several salamanders per square meter. There's good reason for that: people report all sorts of crazy shit, from alien abduction to Nessie. We can't simply take all reports at face value; we need trained observers who are more likely to spot the real issue. None of which are in biology or seismology. Why should I give him creedence? Does he have evidence, photographic or otherwise? Tell you what, why don't you get off your ass and find out yourself? You think we have nothing better to do than jump up and do experiments on command? We've got our own work to do, and lots of it. Furthermore, science is not done just by randomly doing crap; Do we have a reason to suspect snakes may have interesting electrical properties? No. Do we have a reason to suspect they can detect electicity or magnetism? No. Do we have a reason to think such abilities or properties would be ecologically relevant? No. Do we have a reason to think the electrical properties of snakes will tell us anything interesting? No. Science is not about just randomly gathering data in vain hope it'll be useful someday, it's about answering questions about the natural world. There is not an infinite supply of herpetologists, so obviously there are gaps in our knowledge, some of which are huge (we have *no* studies on a very common mode of snake locomotion seen in every species). Mokele

Because it's precisely the sort of characterization misogynists use as a justification for why women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Because that myth (yes, myth) has been around for centuries, and has always been used to denigrate, trivialize and discriminate against women. Your statement is as much misogynist as saying "all blacks are criminals" is racist. See above. You use the same tactics used by men for centuries to legitimacize making women second-class citizens, and wonder why we see that as misogynist? You trot out a discriminatory idea that's known to be false, and don't expect to be called a misogynist? Sorry, that shit won't fly here. The 'weaker sex' crap is misogynist, period. Because all discrimination is not equal. Men are not, and have never been, an oppressed group, as women have. This coming from the guy who makes a baseless, discriminatory statement without investing the trivial amount of thought needed to see how it's obviously false. Seriously, turn off the computer, and go socialize. You'll find out just how wrong you are in short order. Mokele

Um, there are a number of zoophiles associated with the furry fandom, and I know this from direct experience. You want to claim you fandom isn't ****ed up? FurAffinity, one of the largest furry art sites, recently had a controversy over "cub art", art depicting child furs in sexual acts or situations. The admins put it up to a vote as to whether this should be allowed or not. Over 50% of the members voted to allow it. Now, not all voted because they approve, but rather because they're afraid their kink could be next, but if your kink is on a slippery slope near anthro-child-porn, that's very, very not good. Look, I know how this works; I've seen this arguement before. I know the furry community as a whole is excessively defensive, and will tirelessly fight percieved insults to the fandom, especially on the issue of sexuality. But in those fights, you hamstring yourselves by pretending there isn't a problem, that there isn't a *sizable* number of furs openly engaging in some really ****ed up stuff when all you have to do is scan VCL to see that's true. The problem is that the furry fandom is exceptionally accepting of any and all kinks/perversions/whatever, and those voices and their art tend to be loud and visible, which means that non-furs are likely to see stuff that freaks them out, leading to a bad impression. You can't simply deny that stuff is out there. The best you can do is note that not all furs are in it for sex, and even those that are, not all are terrifyingly kinky. Mokele

The flaw of the arguement is that's it's nothing but picking at details, rather than the core of the issue.

No, there aren't. I grow carnivorous plants, including some of the largest species, and the only way they could eat a human is if they were fed through a meat grinder first. Mokele

I disagree; the reports I've heard have mentioned frantic movement to escape, as well as some sort of head-bobbing, neither of which can be produced by uncoordinated spasms. When a snake spasms, it "kinks" into a series of very short, low-amplitude static waves that do not move down the snake as they do in lateral undulation. More extreme spasms may cause the snake to bend upwards across their entire body in a writhing manner, which is why dead snakes are almost always belly up. I don't think it'll be substantially higher, especially when you take into account other animals may have thicker skins. Most of skin in either a network of collagen fibers or keratin. A mammal skin has a lot of collagen and alpha keratin. Reptiles have more or less the same, but with a *very* thin layer of beta keratin. This will alter skin resistance, true, but not as much as just having a thicker skin will (and skin thickness can vary tremendously in the animal kingdom). Why? There's no point to such an experiment. We know what happens when they have a seizure/spasm, regardless of what induces it, and it doesn't match the behavior you describe. I've already given you a perfectly plausible explanation for snakes' reaction (hearing on a very low frequency), why the obsession with electrcity? Also, if it is electricity, why wouldn't other species, like salamanders, respond to it? Or the numerous electro-sensitive freshwater fish? Mokele

I do biomechanics and animal locomotion, specifically on arboreal snake locomotion, which has never before been described. My first chapter was on the kinematics (cycle duration, etc), and my second will be on the muscle activation patterns. Mokele

For which he's been warned. This is a forum for debate, not misogynist proclamations.

JohnB, your own links on microwaved blood say the problem is hemolysis. Hemolysis *definitely* occurs during digestion, therefore there is no a priori reason to expect illness from microwaved food. The problem is injecting lysed cells into the blood, not eating them. Mokele

Actually, two-headed reptiles are a common birth defect, usually caused by improper incubation temperatures or mold on the eggs. This is basically just proof that ancient reptiles were just as susceptible. Mokele

Sidestepping the whole global warming partisan hackery, if the sea levels do rise substantially, Orlando (including Disney) is basically screwed. Most of Florida isn't very high above sea level, and it's *very* flat, so a slight rise in sea level would result in substantial areas of land becoming underwater. Mokele

Proving that intelligence is genetically determined is really quite simple: try teaching a goldfish calculus. It sounds flippant, but think about it: if there was no genetic basis for intelligence, species would not vary in their intellectual capacity, or evolve towards greater or lesser degrees of intellect. The mere fact that humans are smarter than other species, even our closest relatives, proves there is a genetic component. Of course, that doesn't deny an environmental component, only that there must be some sort of genetic component. Mokele

Well, being shocked is really sensory except in that you're percieving the damage done and muscle spasms, etc. There's no actual transducer, no cell that converts electrical or magnetic stimuli into nerve impulses, in snakes that we know of. It's never really possible to confirm an inability. We do know they have no observed sense organs for electroreception, and display no abnormal behaviors when near electrical devices. In terms of the latter, sharks will react to live insulated wires or other electrical devices in their environment (and have been known to bite undersea cables) but snakes display no reactions to electrical equipment beyond that due to warmth. The measuerments on snake hearing are indeed old, but that's because, well, they aren't interesting most of the time. Hearing doesn't seem to be an important sense for snakes like vision or smell, so nobody's bothered re-doing the studies. The former; perhaps their sensitivities extend to areas our instruments lack or just don't look for. As in their electrical properties? It'll be the same as any other animal, since they're made of the same stuff (meat, bones, water). Mokele

IMHO, that means the the most likely result is we've mis-measured their hearing capacity and they can detect things before our sesmic instruments can. No, no, I think you misunderstood. Snakes can be shocked, but they don't have special electroreceptive organs that allow them to sense ambient electric fields like sharks do. Basically, sharks can find buried fish by electrically sensing the fish's heartbeat, and knifefish can communicate using pulses of electrciity, but snakes have no such sensory ability. Mokele

"Selfing" is essentially inbreeding at the strongest level; if you self a plant (or other species which can self) over multiple generations, you get the same effects of inbreeding (homozygosity, depressed fitness, more errors) faster than any other method. As for lizards, that's what's known as parthenogenesis: the female produces an egg which doesn't divide completely at the second mitotic phase (IIRC), and as a result, the offspring are totally homozygous. So it's not really clonal, and it's not really selfing, but another oddity. Mokele

One thing I hear a lot of, especially from conservatives and libertarians, is that X or Y should be privatized or the domain of private industry rather than the government, with the reasoning that because of competition, private companies will be more effective / efficient / faster / insert performance metric here. But then you actually deal with private companies, and realize how accurate Dilbert is: the heads of the company are often clueless, the management can be staggeringly inept, and they waste billions of dollars on things like "team building" or obscene CEO salaries / perks. So, my question is, has anyone actually done real studies to compare which group really is the most efficient / effective at various tasks? Obviously, one would have to compare similar agencies and companies, but there should be some overlap, especially if this is expanded to any country. Are private companies really better? I know all the reasons why they should or should not be, but this is a science forum, and in science, predictions and theories are tested. Does anyone know of any data testing this theory? Mokele

Actually snakes climbing is what I'm doing my thesis on, and it's a really exciting area, since nobody else has done squat on it. It seems that most species can climb pretty well, and many are very good. Specializations of the body, scales, and musculature have convergently evolved in multiple lineages. Plus, their climbing is interesting for a special reason: like primates and racoons, their grips are friction-based (rather than using claws or adhesion). Friction-based grips depend upon the arc of the perch over which the animal can apply force. For a given diameter, primates have a given maximum force (defined by muscles and hand-span) and a given number of grips (4 hands/feet). However, snakes can strengthen their grip by encircling more of the perch with their bodies, but in doing so, they use up body that could be used for more grips. So they have a tradeoff between number of grips and strength of grips, while limbed animals with frictional grips do not. Mokele

It does and doesn't. If the gene has a huge effect, like albinism, then it gets seen. But if it has only a minor effect on selection, say a 1% average increase in offspring, the effect is often not noticeable and the gene frequency is simply subject to genetic drift. For more on this, look up "neutral gene theory" and "nearly-neutral gene theory" along with "haldane's paradox/dilemma". Mokele

It's unlikely they'd be able to sense anything electrical or magnetic. Their sensation of earthquakes is mostly due to their inner ear (they lack an external opening). However, they don't have anything for detecting electrical stimuli or magnetic fields. Mokele

I'd need to see a lot more details of the methods. If even 1% of the rats in the shock-pool experiment perished, there would be a major selective force for increased learning rate. Hell, even if they didn't perish, there could be selection, since females who took less time to find the ramp spent less energy swimming and can thus spend more energy on their offspring. That a control group did better than the experimental group first did is also meaningless, since that could be purely by chance; that can only be solved by multiple experimental and multiple controls. Without much more detailed accounts of the methods, it's impossible to say anything. Mokele

I think I've brought up this objection before, but I'd love to see where this characterization of "poor" comes from, and, more to the point, I'd love to see numbers attached. You can get a car for $500, a house for $15k, and a DVD player for $20, if you buy third-hand and aren't picky about quality. And perhaps the maxed-out credit cards are maxed out because of the need to pay the lease, pay for the cars, etc. I agree we ain't exactly Somalia, but I think your characterization is disingenuous, especially since it doesn't mention the value or quality of the items listed. Mokele

Actually, no. The first multicellular animals seem to have evolved independently from the first multicellular plants. Those first animals were rather wormlike, and somewhere along the line, the worms with and internal supporting notochord did better in one niche. Mokele