Moontanman

Really excellent !!!

Evolution... Scattered across the sky, points of light to the naked eye Fiery orbs of red to blue, storms of violence unimagined to the mind Magnetic flames caress companions held in gravity’s bond Creating colors of heat-less flame in the sky Curtains of light shimmer and race Evidence of magnetic defense from the companion’s heart Allowing a strange twist of entropy to multiply, exist and expand Defiance! Of the law that binds time and space Order and arrangement, chemical reactions grow more complex In spite of the necessity to become simple and scattered Things that move and should not exist, Mostly their form is no more than specks Competition spawns in entropy’s mirror Cooperation magnifies the mirror’s effect Forming masses of pulsating beings with no sense of time Neoteny allows the young to steal from the old, that which is superior Complexity drives the defiance of law Soon awareness of surrounding space Drives the increasing awareness of self and others The more aware leads the less to their maw While others escape to new spaces the aggressive can’t pursue Other less mobile forms raise antennae to absorb All the energy of the glowing light from the sky Competition is fierce between the motile and those that look to the blue Competition and cooperation step up the pace What will grow, multiply, dominate, or die Soon the liquid that dissolves the chemicals from others No longer surrounds those that have moved to the surface The surface is dry most of the time Requires sex cells to become motile When the rain comes, unknown and unseen, sex covers the wet earth Sex cells swim up the trunks of trees allowing growth to dizzying heights The ones that move will not be left behind in this assault on the land Hatched in the water but able to walk and slither Animals join the plants in conquest of the land Eating not only the tall forms that feed on light but each other as well Eons pass neoteny makes the grade again and again Animals revert to their larval forms again to hasten change Soon warm beings rule the cool dry land First four legs then two strut out of the forest and across the land On of these tall neotenic beings walks into the morning sun His mate and child walk with him Large brains, opposable thumbs, reach for the ground Pulling up a flower yellow as the sun The man holds the yellow sex organ of the plant and sees beauty His mate smiles, they turn to continue on towards domination of the world

Cactus In the middle of the desert, a top a cactus tower Grows a bud, swelling larger, soon to be a flower No one but me sees the beauty, of the desert tree In the blistering sun, only i, foresee the fantasy In the unforgiving heat, thunder heads spread and grow Driving rain falls, a rare event, in this land i know The tower of spines drinks, water stores have been low Until it is heavy with liquid, should it dare to grow? Later, when the sun has slid over the low desert hills Only then does this giant show it's beautiful frills The buds open, slowly one by one, fragrant and sweet Growing heavy with nectar, calling night fliers to meet Their leathery wings, flutter in the icy star light Their tongues probe the blossoms sweet inner delight Again and again, they visit, tongues lapping nectars sweet fire The cactus stands immobile, unable to show its sated desire When the sun rises on another day hot and much dryer The cactus blooms enclose the gift, brought by the night flier The fliers have delivered life, begun anew in the flower The cactus has given its juices, pure and sweet, atop it's tower Both have benefited from this exchange, mindless passions sated Can anyone expect as much, from friends or lovers, we have mated? Michael Hissom

It is important to note that brain size between dinosaurs and mammals might not be a very good way of measuring the ability of each against each other... Birds such a crows have small brains compared to mammals but are capable of far more intelligence than similar brain sized mammals. I see no reason to assume that dinosaurs were not capable of everything mammals have accomplished given time. I am not really sure i understand your reasoning on this, while some research has indicated that large dinosaurs might have been in decline dinosaurs had been in decline before and managed to come out the other side. It is important to point out that not all and maybe no significant numbers of dinosaur species were ectotherms, much like mammals most were endotherms. It should also be noted that mammals and dinosaurs evolved at about the same time, it may be argued mammals evolved a bit sooner, but dinosaurs were superior to mammals in many if not most ways and this allowed them to limit the evolution of mammals to speciality niches. The double hammer blow of asteroid and the lava flood in India was probably the reason that dinosaurs of larger size didn't make it. It should also be noted that like most extinctions serendipity played a part as did the survival strategies of the survivors. Endotherms and ectotherms survived the event but animals that hibernated (which some birds do) like crocodilians, mammals, and amphibians or were able to live in microhabitats and eat carrion appeared to be more likely to survive. It should also be remembered that ocean dwelling organisms took a hit as well. I think it is a bit misleading to say that some dinosaurs survived and became birds, birds had already evolved and been around for many tens of millions of years. In fact it's safe to say that birds went through the eye of the extinction barely. The abundance of birds was greatly diminished with only one of the many "types" of birds surviving.

So all religions are equally likely to lead you down the correct path? More importantly the correct path is more likely to be chosen by religion? What god and which religion is immaterial to the assertion or do you have a favorite? Blame the Swastika? A symbol can be asserted to mean anything... religion is a symbol or is symbolism but more importantly neither one has any more influence than we choose to give it but once we have decided to give it that influence what it represents can be anything...

Pot please meet kettle, so far you have done nothing but repeat what is outdated material (when it supports your argument) and only repeat up to date material when it supports your assumptions. To be honest i am surprised you have gotten more neg rep than you have in this thread. I wonder if you are honest enough to reveal your agenda? You are difficult to pin down but you definitely have an agenda of some sort... BTW the current consensus is that modern humans have been around for 150k to even 250k for some sources. In fact the genus homo could be one species in the same way that various modern animals are only called separate species due to being geographically isolated. For humans this isolation is less than perfect due to our own wonder lust and some sources consider the possibility that many species of the genus homo were really just variations among a common gene pool that were separated geographically and slowly merged into a similar but still widely separated gene pool. So far we know for sure that we are a combination of at least three "species".

You are, from what i can gather on the net, wrong on nearly if not all of your talking points. Can you please give us some links to the assertions you keep making? http://www.livescience.com/38821-neanderthal-bone-tool-discovered.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior The section on tools is quite enlightening... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2013/08/12/neanderthals-not-homo-sapiens-crafted-the-oldest-known-specialized-bone-tools-in-europe/#.V-2lXPArKHs http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/neanderthal-jewelry-just-fiercely-cool-you-imagine-180954553/?

If you think six skulls allow you to draw a line then your idea is full of horse feathers...

Ok, you have made an unsupported assertion about the origins of my people. Something I have and continue to look into deeply. Please provide evidence that native Americans are derived from Europeans... Since i am a mix of native American an Scots Irish it may very well that neanderthal genes are part of my make up... I hope so... Six skulls do not a sample make, you missed my point completely...

Imaginary things can lead the way, they lead where ever you want them to lead. In history that path has lead to many very bad things as well as suffocating honest inquiry... I do not make the assumption god does not exist, yes i know my point has been made many times in this thread, I am of the opinion it cannot be made to many times. My point with my attempt at humor was that god is what ever you want it to be and that god is a concept, god, if real, cannot be the god that is described in any holy text that i am aware of and i am aware of quite a bit. The assertion that even an imaginary friend can lead they way has been acknowledged and put to use in the real world, millions of dead women who were condemned as witches, horrific wars over whose dogma was correct, not to mention airplanes flying into building can attest to this...

I do! I'd make a universe quite different than this one! UFP would be real!

Being of Native American ancestry I probably do not but cross breeding with different species is not what I am talking about. If you line up, not just the skulls, but the individual ancestors of humans, every one, there would never be a point where you could point to an individual and say this is an ape and the next one is human. If you went back to the time of denisovans and neanderthals the differences between them and sapiens would not be as great as you think. They did interbreed, must have been some similarities. I ascribe to the idea of gene pools flowing around the globe not individuals, the further back you go the more cross breeding went on and the line between species is quite blurry. Kind of like the idea that polar bears and grizzly bears are different species, they are beginning to interbreed due to climate change, the gene pool will contain both genes as this progresses. If climate changes back to favor polar bears their genes might be expressed again...

I didn't say line up a couple skulls, I said every skull of every ancestor, neanderthals are not our ancestors and you need to stop looking at individuals and start thinking of genomes. Genomes are plastic to the environment, individuals do not evolve, gene pools evolve. I have indeed kept up with recent research which is something you seem to have skipped...

Do you believe the communion cracker becomes the body of Christ when you eat it? Does communion wine really turn to blood?

Engineering problems guys... engineering problems only...

I have read it, I've read the entire OP, did I miss something?

Ok, God is a personal experience that cannot be demonstrated to anyone else, much like the bigfoot singing outside my window. He may be real to me but to everyone else he is just a unjustified assertion...

Hmm not obvious enough?

God is about as real as bigfoot! I can't prove there is no bigfoot, must be a bigfoot! I think this subject is about as... Wait! "I am the eye in the sky Looking at you I can read your mind I am the maker of rules Dealing with fools I can cheat you blind" Where is that voice coming from! Oh no a bigfoot is singing outside my window...

I'd like some clarification on this as well. If indeed a method of FTL became possible wouldn't that in of it's self change the laws of physics as we know them? In fact wouldn't that at least show that causality is at least not quite as written in stone as well... Much like encountering an infinity in an equation wouldn't this indicate a problem with the theory...

My advice would be to keep bees and sell honey, if that is not an option then you are probably going to have to let the wild flowers grow. What do you wish to grow on the wet land? Do you not get the option to mow at least once a year to keep trees and brush from growing? I'm not sure what you mean by this or why it is important: " But for 3 years, the amount of bees haven't fluctuated." What species of bees are involved? This is really a complex subject, a simple answer is probably not possible...

You are making the mistake of assuming that there is a cut off point of human and not human. If you could line up every "human" and human ancestor who ever lived there is no place and or time that you could point to and say that one is a hominid and the next one is human. The definition of what it means to be human has been in flux in recent years and you perhaps haven't kept up. Neanderthals were human, Denisovans were human so were a great many others who lived beside us. Our gene pool wasn't located in quite as exclusive a country club as many seem to think and interbreeding was more common than you seem to think. The further back you go the more and varied the occupants of that pool were... We became genetically isolated at some point to be sure but that point is still not exactly well defined...