Mokele

I'm not so sure it does, though. If we were to stop using X amount of animals, and thus needed Y less space (for the animals and food), wouldn't that space simply be taken up by nature, which involves more breathing, excreting animals? Plus, if there's the animals and the plants that feed them, surely the net oxygen/co2 balances out and then some, since the animals are passing on CO2 that was originally taken up by the plants. If so, while it'd be a waste of space, it'd have no net climatological impact, yes? Or am I oversimplifying? Mokele

Well, I'm personally very fond of analogies. However, some things need to be kept in mind when using and reading them. First, they usually only apply to one or a few aspects of the system. "Life is like a box of chocolates" works quite well with the conclusion "you never know what you're gonna get" and less well with the alternative "it may be recalled by the State Health Department on account of an unacceptably high content of rat feces". Second, analogies are not arguements, but rather illustrations. Sometimes you draw a picture to show what you're talking about, other times you use an analogy. Third, I'd argue that analogies are only a fallacy if used as the arguement itself, rather than merely an illustration. A bad analogy not used as an arguement is really no worse than a bad picture used for illustration; it's distracting, confusing, and makes you look inept, but doesn't actually impact reasoning. Using an analogy for an arguement is *usually* fallacious, though, due to the differences in the systems. The only time I'm aware of it *not* being a fallacy is when the systems are extremely similar on account of working on the same basic principles (like comparing two types of jet engines, or two chemically similar reactions, or an evolutionary convergence); however, this could be considered inference rather than analogy. Mokele

google "population genetics" or "Hardy-Weinberg" and you'll find everything you need to know. Initially, you have a gene frequency of .5 for the dominant allele (4 alleles on 2 heterozygotes), which declines to 1/(2-p) each generation. Thus the next generation would have a frequency of 2/3rds, the next one of 3/4, then 4/5ths, and so on. There's copious information online about these (see above google searches), and this stuff is actually the foundation of a lot of modern evolutionary biology. Mokele

Why bother? It's not science's job to disprove every crackpot theory that comes along.

While there's a technical difference between the above and the concpet of Shrub just making stuff up, I'm not entirely sure there's a moral difference. Whether you're telling people things you know are false or just giving the information a slight spin, you're still presenting the information in a biased manner that's specifically designed to manipulate opinions based on something other than the intrinsic strengths of the arguement. If I were to publish totally fabricated data, or to publish "cherry-picked" data from a genuine data set, either would be intellectually dishonest and result in me working as a janitor for the rest of my life. And, while I would agree about owning up to the responsibility of having fallen for it, I'm not sure your analogy is valid; we have good reason to expect a street vendor to try to cheat us in order to get our money, but to expect *any* branch of government to spin (or otherwise present in a biased manner) information to lead us to war? If we, as citizens, need to take that kind of attitude about the government, then IMHO it's time for an outright rebellion; burn it to the ground (metaphoricly) and start over, because any government whose de facto motto is 'caveat emptor' is clearly too corrupt and twisted to be salvaged. (Not that I have any plans or anything, but FYI, be on the lookout for roving armies of killer squid robots...) My point is, we shouldn't *expect* to be fooled by *any* part of our government, and that things have gotten so bad that we need to is, IMHO, a very, *very* bad sign of where we're going both as a country and a society. Mokele

Not anymore he can't.

Why not just actually *use* wikipedia, and add articles for all the species you want? Granted it's not the most authoritative thing, but you'd have *lots* of help.

It depends on the program. MD is 7 years or so, I think, and other medical style degrees are similar (like for pharmacy, dentristry, vet school, etc). PhDs depend on the field, the research, your advisor, etc. 4 years is possible, 5 more likely, 6 common, and, well, let's just say that 'eternal student' isn't always a joking term. Actually, a few weeks ago at a graduate student lunch, one of the doctoral students was telling us about a guy who took 24 years to get his PhD. He worked on it for 3, then his folks died and left his an assload of money, so he just lived off that for over two decades while bumming around the entomology department of the school's museum. Then the money ran out and he was forced to actually graduate. For most of the hard sciences, though, 4-6 seems to be the duration for most people. Mokele

Why would a Canbodian society make monuments in the pattern of a European constellation? I'm sure they had their own, different constellations. Additionally, the map in the first post does not seem to gel particularly well with the constelation. Numerous points are left off, including what appears to be a large, significant central temple. To me, it seems more like a case of "If you have a bunch of points, and you can pick them and their order, you can draw almost any silly shape you want". As for the shared "end of the world" date, that was, iirc, simply a significant astronomical occurence. Given that both civilizations probably had knowldge of the stars, that they would pick a significant yet far off (at the time) date for their "end of the world" isn't terribly suprising. Mokele

The attached image was just huge, so I took the liberty of cropping it down for you and running some very mild compression (I took care to make sure the image detail didn't suffer in any appreciable way). This should be much more page-friendly, even though I didn't resize it (again, to preserve the details).

I think one very important thing to realize is that, while Wikipedia's open-access system allows vandalism and mistakes, I've seen some pretty crappy, insufficient entries in actual encyclopedias, including ones with blatant errors. "All reptiles lay eggs" my ass. Wikipedia, due to it's online nature, can house more information with trivial cost than print encyclopedias, and more media types (which allows superior communication of knowledge; I have an animated gif up there which I made myself to demonstrate how sidewinding works, since it's a lot easier than trying to explain it via text). The way I see it is that there's probably more mistakes, but there's also more information (*much* more), and so the actual signal-to-noise ratio is probably *better* than print encyclopedias. Plus, frankly, I wouldn't reference a print encylopedia for *anything*. They're so superficial in their articles as to be practically useless, especially compared to wikipedia. Mokele

oooh, but apparently Kinchi works too! mmmm, kimchi...

It's so flawed as to be worthless. And if you were paying attention, you'd notice how myself and others have shown how it's far, far inferior to the current state of affairs. So you want to force this horribly flawed and misconceived plan on us, insisting that the flaws aren't that bad? Have you ever considered working for Microsoft? Call me old-fashioned, but I happen to think that an idea has to be able to stand on its merits to be worthy of consideration, rather than simply sucking less than the alternative. However, I'll follow Phi and declare this as my ideal for you to compare to. Given we've already shown your idea to be far, far worse than even the worst nightmare of the world as it is (I *meant* it when I said your idea is worse than slavery), I'd say I win pretty handily. Now, do you actually have anything *useful* to say, or are you merely going to dogmaticly insist your idea still holds water, no matter how many holes we're punched in it. For someone so down on religion, you have an awful lot of blind faith. Mokele

One thing you should probably add is the definition of science (testable, falsifiable predictions of a hypothesis), and how ID does not fit that definition. IMHO, that's be a pretty good starting or ending point.

Just make a sign with a silhouette of a lizard with waves going into it, then an arrow, then a silouhette of Godzilla. If anyone doesn't know what that means, they've been living under a rock for the past 60 years. But I'm biased. Mokele

Wikipedia says that actual vitamin C is the l-enantiomer of ascorbic acid, and that the d one is harmless but useless. I know in many living systems only one chirality is ever produced (amino acids, I think), while in a chemical reaction, both are equally produced. Maybe that's how you tell them apart? Mokele

You can click on any member's name to send a PM. Just PM me or any of the moderator staff (names in bold) and we'll gladly help with any questions. Mokele

Well, this crank is now silenced (for being a moron), but I do agree with you, and additionally would note that, since AFAIK we don't typically delete crank threads, a good rebuttal will help prevent other users from finding this thread and thinking the poster has a point. Mokele

Typical IDiot. Closed due to total lack of intellectual merit.

Lame jokes are not going to distract us from your inability to counter any of the points raised against your plan.

Yeah, that's wrong, and you're right, it should be density.

Well, now I'm at home, so time for the big haul, since my desk has lots of cubby-holes and such. Frames crocodiles photo, coral, shells, plastic dinosaurs, plastic deep-sea fish, head-bobbing vulture, newt preserved in plastic, bullfrog skeleton, fish skeleton preserved in plastic, plush shark, abandoned hornet hive, antique surveying scope, chinese dragon sculpture, meditation balls, gator skull, weaverbird next, casts of dinosaur claws, box turtle shell, plastic thresher shark, my aeropace and biology degrees, skulls of a python, 2 species of monitor lizard, rhino iguana, garfish, softshell turtle, and tree boa, fossil megaladon tooth, fossil gator scute, fossil crocodile teeth, fossil giant rattlesnake vertebrae, fossil triceratops frill fragment, fossil duckbill dinosaur tendon, mastodon tusk fragment, pterosaur tooth, insect in amber, pyritized ammonite, earings made of brown tree snake vertebrae, bushmaster vertebrae and ribs, various scraps of food and old cans, 5 yen, bobble-head gremlin, dissecting kit, tarantula in glass paperweight. That should be most of it. Mokele, atop a mountain of stuff

True, true, and I think that covers all seven.

I'll reply for now with what's cluttering up my office, then later reply with the contents of home workspace (which is *very* odd). In my office, aside from normal stuff (books, papers, forms, stuff to grade), there is: A chibi Boba Fett Mardi Gras beads A weeble (those little puff-balls with googly eyes and stick-on feet that get given away all the time) A plastic alligator and crocodile A plastic Styracosaurus One of those toys with a crocodile head on the end of a stick which closes its mouth when you pull a trigger at the other end 3 soapstone bookends of Thoth, the ibis-headed Egyptian god of wisdom The 1st season of Penn & Teller's 'Bullshit!' 2 unknown feathers 24 plastic jointed toy snakes, a box of straws and bags of rubber bands (for a project) A plush bookworm (from giantmicrobes.com) 3 vertebrae of a bushmaster (the longest viper in the world, usually over 8 feet) A shed skin of my 9 foot boa tacked to the wall and reaching to the ceiling A wooden jointed snake Comics (mostly farside) on the door A printout of the onion Intelligent Falling article Pictures of the muscular anatomy of 5 snake species taped to the wall A fishbowl-sized terrarium full of Cape Sundews (carnivorous plants), with a lamp, timer, and plexiglass cover. Of course, home has much more stuff... Mokele

Oh, look, back to defend your patheticly mis-informed ideas, are you, "Ice Demon"? I notice you avoided replying to any of my points. It's ok, it's hard to admit you were wrong about something, so take your time. As for your more recent efforts to salvage what remains: False analogy. You cannot analogize humans to a species which has a brain so tiny that, when it's head it cut off, it only dies because it starves to death. On top of that, ants are doing what they do for purely selfish, individualistic ends, via kin selection. If they 'rebeled' and tried to reproduce on their own, they'd have meager success, but if they all work together to ensure the reproductive future of their sisters (the queens spawned by the current queen, their mother), they derive immense genetic benefit, since each of those new queens is 75% identical to them (most hive insects have an odd genetic system called haplo-diploidy, in which males have only half the full complement of chromosomes, which prevents damaging effects of inbreeding and allows extremely high levels of genetic kinship between siblings). So basically, the only time high-level social interactions exist is when it's for the selfish benefit of everyone involved. In fact, as a side note, some species of bees produce psuedoqueens, workers that transform into queens in order to cheat the system. Even in your "ideal" of eusociality, it's all based on selfishness with occaisional cheating where possible. We work towards advancement just fine now. On top of that, you've totally missed the point: Why is advancement so hot? Why choose that over happiness? Especially when both can co-exist. And this makes it ethical to take those emotions away how? Let's rephrase what you're saying: "It's ok to have slaves, because after several generations, they won't be able to understand or desire freedom anymore, so it's fine." And before you claim strawman, I'd note that this analogy is actually *beneficial* towards you, since what you advocate is far, FAR worse than slavery, since slaves can still enjoy *some* meager happiness and possibly escape/rebel. Isn't it? Even my lust for scientific knowledge is driven by wonder, curiousity, and some level of competetiveness (and a dash of arrogance). I actually used to be in engineering, and never did well not because I didn't understand, but because without that emotional component, I just didn't care enough to do things like, well, my work. Mokele