Mokele

IIRC, they've got a pretty hefty screen between you and the fan. Keeps you safe and serves to laminarize the flow a bit. Mokele

They already have them, and have for a while. They had one at my old uni a few years back as part of a fair-type celebration. Basically it's a huge fan, big enough to generate enough wind to hold you up. Mokele

Well, I wanted to call it something else, but it's generally inappropriate to have post titles which are logically congruent with a sub-title of "Relax: it'll only hurt for a moment..." Well, there's only so many hands; Posts get cleaned up, either deleted or sorted to other forums, with the few that ask legitimate questions left behind. The only thing more hard-line I can think of would be deleting any and all creationist threads, which might be less effective. Deleting may be read as "we're silencing you", while sending threads/posts into a forum about Yeti and Perpetual Motion Machines sends the message of "We think your ideas only have value as humor". You mean something like a 'Skepticism' forum? On one hand, I can see the use, as a place to put threads about whether or not X or Y is true. On the other hand, given that this is a science forum, shouldn't we expect logical and critical thinking in *all* the forums? Mokele

Well, of the mods I'm probably the least willing to give creationism any sort of consideration (and I tend to be quite ban-happy and delete-happy on the topic). Personally, what I've been doing is one of the following things: If a thread is just about creationism *anywhere*, I dump it in the 'Speculations' section. The faith involved no more warrants consideration than someone claiming that God gave them the blueprints of a perpetual motion machine. If it's a real question (rather than creationist trolling), I (or someone else) answers it. If it's just a question in a thread, and it might derail the thread, I split it out. However, post or thread, if it's just "Here's why evolution is wrong", I delete it without a second thought. Trolling is trolling. Last but not least, if someone shows up posting creationist drek, and I look though their post history and see no actual science posts, they're gone. Those who actually contribute in worthwhile ways will be told, in no uncertain terms, that this is a board for serious science. Personally, I do my best to keep creationism and such crap from overrunning the forum, and a heavy hand is often necessary for that. However, I doubt they'll be missed. Mokele

This has already been extensively addressed in a thread in the Bioethics forum, which I'm too lazy to actually search out. Mokele

Brian: Will you all just listen? I'm not the Messiah!! Follower: Only the true Messiah denies his divinity! Brian: Well what sort of chance does that give me?! --Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian'

Well, I'd only buy a hybird if it was a sturdy car; I'll willingly admit that I'm not a very good driver and as a result I conisder major accidents to be a large possibility, and I'd prefer to live through them. That said, in spite of my car burning gas, I'd not get rid of it because it's more efficient not to: I drive approximately 3 miles a week, and if I sold my car and bought a new one, I'd probably go through 3 years worth of gas in the process. Oh, that and I refuse to ever, ever buy a new car. They're a total waste of money. Best to wait for about 5-10 years and buy them then, if it's a good brand and hasn't fallen apart by then. Mokele

I'm sorry, but 50K? What do you actually need 50K for? I live in a quite nice apartment, care for my menagerie of pets and my carnivorous plants, and have plenty of money left over for fun and eating out and such, all on 16K. Now, granted, if you have to drive to work or have a house, you might need more, but not over 3 times that. I'm with Pangloss, this is about keeping up with the Joneses, not basic survival. Mokele

I'm with Phi on this. I used to be in your position, herme3, all the way up until college. Then the best bad thing to happen to me happened: my ex. I wound up in a long distance relationship going nowhere, and stayed in it for 4 years, because I was in the same state of pathetic desperation. The effect of this has been very important: it meant I spent that entire time not on the lookout for a relationship (well, not much), learning to be social and to interact with women (attractive and otherwise) without any pressures of me trying to get them into bed. I actually developed social skills (or something approximating them), and felt confident talking to women. This confidence and ability paid in dividends when I met the woman who is now my fiancee; I was able to talk to her in a serious manner, or just have fun, without humping her leg like a desperate horny dog (or lizard, in this case). My advice: kick back, relax, and realize none of this really matters that much. Once you do that, you'll find everything so much easier. Mokele

Well, think of a string of mRNA that's going to be translated into protiens, and where mutations could be and what the effects would be. If the mutation is in an untranslated section of the gene that's snipped out before translation, the mutation will have no effect. If it's in the translated portion, but the change doesn't alter which amino acid is coded for at that point (due to the redundancy), it won't matter. If it does alter the amino-acid used, but it substitutes a polar AA for another polar AA, it'll have no effect on the final protien structure. And last but not least, protien design is constrained by the fact that it's all in a line that's folded up, so, while it can be optimized by selection, some bits won't actually be useful, and are essentially just holding everything together (and thus, it doesn't actually matter what AA is there, only that there is one there). So, in all of those ways you can see mutational differences between homologous protiens in different species. Hemoglobin's important, but you still see differences between fish, turtle and human hemoglobin, especially in the portions of the molecule that aren't particularly useful. Mokele

We seem to be forgetting about non-coding regions of DNA, which can mutate freely. When examining species which changed recently, you can examine these sequences to see not only how similar they are, but the rate of change with time (molecular clock). Also, most changes to proteins do nothing; they don't change the resultant amino acid, substitute it for one of similar properties, or affect a part of the protien which has no real function. Even functionally identical homologous protiens can have different genetic codes (and where they're *not* different can actually tell us where the important parts of the protien are). Mokele

The problem isn't the cloning technology or anything, it's the total lack of dinosaur DNA to clone from. Barring a time machine, there's just plain no way to get any, and if you have a time machine, you might as well just steal some eggs instead, because incubators are cheaper than genetics labs. Actually, that's not true; we have extracted both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA of mammoths, neanderthals, anda handful of other extinct critters. The trick is that all except the mammoth were from fossils less than 200,000 years old, and the mammoth was only possibly because it was frozen the entire time since it died. Even then, in all cases the DNA was badly degraded (thought it could still be peiced together). However, the chances of finding usable DNA in a non-frozen fossil over a few million years old is basically zero. Mokele

Sure, in precisely the way that if we assume faster-than-light travel, interstellar travel becomes easy. While cloning has obstacles, the primary obstacle in any JP scenario is the source of dino DNA. Someone wittier than I said that it would be like buying a lot of steel wool in order to knit a Lambourgini. Mokele

You have no idea how happy I am right now that my field has zero applicability, zero media appeal, and can be fully funded for a decade for less than the cost of a used car. Mokele

Oh, look, a pair of creationist trolls. ::Waves to them:: Bye! Have fun in Bansville!

Birds will incubate just about anything in the nest; some species are pickier than others, but not many are terribly bright about it. That's how the cuckoo gets away with other birds raising their babies, and why we give sandhill cranes eggs of the endangered whooping crane (they'll raise it fine and the whooping cranes will lay replacement eggs for those removed, massively increasing the breeding output of a given pair). After hatching, many baby birds imprint on the first trigger of a particular stimulus, such as the first thing that feed them. If it's a goose, they'll imprint on the goose and consider it to be 'mom'. It even works if it's a human, which is why when hand rearing birds that will be released into the wild, keepers feed it via puppets made to look like the parent species. Mokele

It's a waste of time. I mean, there may be valid points, but seriously, why is *anyone* wasting time and money over what's on the currency when our own government is full of religious extremists seeking to force their moral views on the country as a whole, regardless of whose basic human rights they violate in doing so. This case is like stopping to apply a band-aid to a minor cut in the middle of being chased by a huge, pissed-off grizzly bear. Mokele

Swansont has already linked top the poll. Why are you all still posting here? Mokele

YT, the correct line is "Curiousity killed the cat, but I have more hit points than a cat."

It's also important to realize that size is governed by a lot of alleles, and is *highly* variable between individuals; it's one of the fastest things to respond to natural selection. So, short and sweet, mutation and recombination create lots of genetic variation in size in all populations. If selection acts against large animals (or for them), then average animal size changes, often quite rapidly. Mokele

But of course, is there anything better to be?

All I hear is a bit of a whine that's just barely audible.

"Hey, baby, wanna find out if leprosy can be sexually transmitted?" "You have very pretty eyes. Can I have them?" "A penny for your thoughts? $20 to act them out?" Guaranteed they'll be too flabergasted and horrified to even manage to throw a drink in your face. Mokele

Someone needs to google 'cladistics'. Welcome to the new way taxonomy works. You're now a lobe-finned fish. Mokele

See, I disagree. Not that it's inflamatory (though honestly I don't care if it hurts their feelings), but that it's pointless. A good chunk of politics is winning the word game, creating buzzwords that are appealing to your side and getting your opponents to use them too; a war of definition memes, if you will. When you start using their meme, you've already lost, or at least suffered a major setback, because now they can discuss whatever it is without sounding like a loon, but you *do* sound like an extremist for attacking it and calling a spade a spade. Then there's the issue of debate; this is what these people want, to pretend that there's a legitimate debate, like the creationists. By acting as if they may have reasonable points, which they don't, it gives them a false credibility which makes the public (who, let's face it, will believe almost anything they're told) more likely to believe them. I fail to see how this is even remotely bad. So the truth is unpleasant and involves hurtful words. Does that mean we should avoid it? I say no. In fact, I see such things as productive, since they strip the layer of lies and euphemisms away and get to the real core of the matter. Most of all, though, I don't see why we should self-censor what you yourself agree is a legitimate characterization. This isn't mud-slinging, flaming, insulting or just riling people up for the sake of it; this is a legitimate observation that a particular bill/action/position fits the definition of something that is very, very bad. Avoiding that is just caving to the pressure to use their memes, hobbling yourself, and more importantly, refusing to state the facts. So, in breif, I don't think it's bad, I think it can be *more* productive than self-censorship for propriety's sake, and I think that being willing to bluntly call a spade a spade is not only a legitimate debate tactic, but a powerful one (which is why the most trusted news figure in the US is Jon Stewart; he'll cut away the garbage and go right to the idiotic core, albeit with much more humor). Mokele