Moontanman

http://the-scientist.com/2012/07/20/rights-for-cetaceans/ Rights for Cetaceans An animal rights law group plans to renew law group plans to renew the fight for recognizing certain species as persons. The Nonhuman Rights Project, a nonprofit organization advocating for legal rights for animals, is planning on filing two lawsuits on behalf of captive animals in the United States by the end of next year, according to Wired Science. Although the group has not yet decided which species will be targeted, highly intelligent social animals such as bonobos, chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins are strong contenders. The head of the organization, animal law scholar and attorney Steven Wise, has made it his mission to have the US courts recognize certain species as persons instead of “things,” and as such, they would have rights to basic privileges such as freedom from imprisonment and captive breeding.

I feel very strongly the opposite is true, if there is a god and he communicates with men in any way there should be only one such god and only one book of his writings. No human author could possibly compete with such a being and he should tell every human being the same thing, all beliefs should reflect the fact there is a god... one god... all the same god but instead we see the opposite religion continuously splinters into ever more groups as humans struggle to understand what they feel must be true about god... this tells me they are all most probably wrong... why would god be so obtuse that any two humans have a difficult time really defining god in a way that agrees 100% with each other? I think the evidence of so many people believing so many different things about so many different gods points to it all being made up.....

I have to ask JohnB, you say only or mostly left wing organizations accept money from foreign powers but I ask you since Hitler was defeated what right wing foreign power is there? Hitlers Germany most certainly did have right wing groups here they were paying, they weren't any more successful than left wing groups have been, still a small percentage of the total right wing group members but the extreme right still marches around and worships Hitler... neo NAZIs are still with us and there is some hint of foreign support for them, Argentina maybe? my point is that there is no right wing type power trying to subvert us I know of but I sure these extreme right wing groups would take the money if it was offered...

I see what you mean, and to be honest if indeed some being claiming to be god moved planets around I would still be thinking some sort of technology we can't understand...

I've tried to find out about this and I can't seem to remember where I read it but for some reason it was postulated that beings in a universe with 4 spatial dimensions would have to have six eyes to be able to see the 4d equivalent of depth perception.... I thought it was a book but it might have been a magazine of some kind...

I don't see how anyone can deny the reality of religion, there are many churches within just a few miles of me and they are, if not full, then well attended and rake in lots of money to be used to proselytize their religion in some way. Religion is real no doubt... I'd like to have just the billboard concession...

I'm going to have to disagree, while science can't investigate with out gods cooperation it's also true that some gods are famous for doing things that science could test as evidence. Stopping the sun in the sky would be a neat trick and quite convincing. Imagine some evangelical preacher who announces that his God is going to swamp the orbit of Mars and Venus to make them more habitable, he gives the time and date and it happens... yeah Yahweh!!! I think this is very true, at the time of those men not believing or at least not professing to believe was not a viable option... If god exists and he can and does affect the natural world wouldn't his intervention be obvious? If the test for prayer had shown unequivocally, that prayer works if you pray to the right god wouldn't that have been very telling?

Sorry I forgot it the first time... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081231005355.htm

WOW! What blatant fear mongering, yeah, gotta fight giving money to poor people so they can get heath care and decent schools so they can have a chance to move up in the world... we persecuted rich people can't allow that... horse feathers... More fear mongering, yes those poor persecuted rich people, i feel bad for them now for sure... Complete strawman... Yes, we think American companies shouldn't get tax breaks to outsource jobs from our people... Hire all you want who ever you want but you shouldn't get tax breaks for outsourcing jobs... simple as that. Again, who is arguing this? yes, those poor pitiful rich people... being taxed! How horrific! So the rich should be taxed less than the poor... because they are rich and practically have absolute control of everything? makes us pricks for wanting a bit more of a level playing field? The rich are a down trodden minority? I hope this was tongue in cheek, hard to believe someone could be so wrong about so much and not be trying to be funny... no one is saying the rich should be taxed excessively but why should they be taxed less than everyone else, why are they in such desperate need to tax relief? I get paying those huge grocery bills is killing them, and the price of gas... how can you fill up your gas tank when you only make $250,000 a year? has to be difficult.... I once had a rich relative tell me that that i needed to live within my means, he gave me along hard speech about how we people needed to be satisfied with our economic system and how we needed to live with in a reasonable means... he of course and this is no lie, owned four cars, a vacation home, a large RV, a huge regular home on a golf course, he collected antique motorcycles, I could go on and on but the point is that he and his wife owned more stuff than I could imagine and he was saying we all had to live with in our means but still cried like a baby if his taxes went up even a tiny fraction because he was afraid the money might go to some welfare queen, his words... Now I don't really begrudge him his stuff, he earned them one way or another I am sure but his insistence that "us people" needed to learn to live with less pissed me off... He had no idea of the struggle necessary to make ends meet when you make a tiny fraction of what he made and how "little things" like health care or student grants can make a huge difference in peoples lives for just a small fraction of his income in taxes. he was so consumed with protecting what he had he was totally unaware of the struggle to live that poor people go through, he assumed they were all free loaders and deserved what they got... if that... i would never advocate a crushing tax blow to any group but the rich can afford to pay more in taxes if they would just throttle back on their spending... don't you think... easier for them than me, cutting back for me would mean living under a bridge someplace... yeah I know ParanoiA I am not in your league when it comes to politics and I know you will wear me out in a debate but the idea that the rich are being persecuted is just silly, they have had the ball in their court for quite sometimes and as they gained more and more control and tax breaks the economy has gone down. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-14/news/30093395_1_tax-rates-tax-shelters-income

No god is necessary for this to be true...

My personal take on this is that they are not visiting from another star, they are already here having colonized the Ort cloud or Kuiper Belt thousands of years ago. Slow boats with technology not far in advance of us could colonize the entire galaxy in a few millions years at worst. To me there are three main possibilities here... 1 They are all hoaxes or misidentified phenomena of some sort, natural or man made. (this would also cover hallucinations as well) 2 They are alien and coming here via technology that is magical enough to make Star Trek look low tech 3 They are alien and are already here in our solar system and visiting the Earth is not a big deal to them There are a few other options like time travelers or inter dimensional travelers but these would be covered by #1 I think. No matter, saying there are no clear photos or that they can't be here due to light speed limits is simply not true... Oh wait, i forgot about the intelligent dinosaur idea... just kidding... I'm gonna make a true believer out of you yet rigney

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718143917.htm Enhanced Royal Jelly Produces Jumbo Queen Bee Larvae ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — Scientists have discovered a way to make worker bees produce an enhanced version of royal jelly (RJ) -- the super-nutritious substance that dictates whether larvae become workers or queens, and that is also renowned as a health supplement for people. Scientists have discovered a way to make worker bees produce an enhanced version of royal jelly (RJ) -- the super-nutritious substance that dictates whether larvae become workers or queens, and that is also renowned as a health supplement for people. (Credit: © koi88 / Fotolia)

Religion May Have Evolved Because Of Its Ability To Help People Exercise Self-Control ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2009) — Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. Rural church. Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control. (Credit: iStockphoto/Philip Dyer) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081231005355.htm

The idea of alien contact is extremely interesting and perhaps very telling, not necessarily about aliens but humans. I think UFOs are intimately connected with this, in historical times we went from seeing angels and demons to alien space craft but the descriptions are often very similar. This stuff has been hashed out many times on this forum but while our historical ancestors might not have had photos of the things they saw they did indeed paint them, from cave walls to Renascence paintings people have been seeing things in the skies and drawing or painting them for a very long time. In the late 1800's to early 1900's people saw sky ships with propellers and even anchors. Later they saw flying wings or discs, the battle of Los Angeles in 1941 was fought against glowing discs or airships depending on whether you are reading first hand accounts or accounts written later. I know it's not good science but IF you assume these phenomena are real and not part of the human Psyche it begs the questions who, what, where, and why. I will attempt to, if not answer, at least define these questions.. Who? Aliens or the human mind? This is the central question to me, are these things real or products of the human mind? There is a third alternative, a natural occurrence but that still plays into the idea of a human minds interpretation of reality. What? Lots of possibilities, from illusions created in the human mind to actual nuts and bolts space craft to multidimensional travelers, time travelers, and not to be ignored the possibility of natural phenomena. Where? Again, do they originate in the human mind or outside the human mind? If outside then the real possibility of alien space craft of some sort would seem to be easier to explain than time travelers or multidimensional travelers but some sort of natural phenomena can still explain what we are seeing but it cannot account for all sightings either now or in the past. I suggest they originate inside our solar system, a long term colonization of the galaxy, star by star, by other intelligent beings, quite possibly many different intelligent beings. Why? The $64,000 question and it is easy to answer. Any intelligent beings who have the built in urge to reproduce and expand their territory will eventually turn their gaze up... In a few million years, even without some magical technology, we will use the resources in our solar system to build artificial habitats and once we do we will eventually push the limits of our resources in our own region of space and again look outward. either that or go extinct as a species and leave no related species. But of course this again begs the question, are we alone and if not... where are they? My suggestion is that we are not first, in fact i think we are a day late and a dollar short. Most people concentrate on planets, Terra forming the ones we have access to and star travel to find more to colonize and or Terra-form the ones we find around other stars... I think this is a mistake and assumes that planets are the only place we can live or would desire to live, not only can we live in artificial habitats but such habitats would be far more compelling than alien planets. Alien planets might very well be dangerous, if the planet is filled with life enough like Earth for us to live there then we would have to worry about diseases and parasites but even something as common as allergenic particles could doom us. The long term effects of being exposed to alien viruses might doom any colonists just as surely as an immediately fatal disease. Artificial space colonies would how ever be under our, if not complete control, at least some semblance of control since we would know the organisms we place inside and our relationship to them. Such colonies would be space ships and once we mastered the ecology of enclosed environments star travel becomes a real possibility. To the inhabitants of such a hyper city (such colonies could enclose wilderness type areas as well) your proximity to a central star is less of a problem than if you have to live on a planet. Pared down to fundamental necessities very nearly all stars are colonize able by this method and estimates of how long it takes one species to colonize the entire galaxy is a mere blink of an eye in terms of geological time or even the life span of a species. conservative estimates are in the hundreds of thousands of years to a few million at most. This would seem to indicate that either one species colonizes the entire galaxy and excludes all others (which would indicate we are either nearly first or alone) or that different species can and do colonize the same stars, the resources are so abundant that warfare would only be an option to the most aggressive of species. So this leads us to the possibility that a great many stars have been colonized by many different creatures over millennia. This is where the idea behind alien contact and religion comes in. It is quite possible that either a series of alien species have colonized the region or that many have colonized our solar system concurrently with each other. Some of these aliens might have some concerns about what will happen when we achieve practical space travel and have either accidentally inspired religion or have intentionally experimented with manipulating us with the concept of religion. This could explain why so many different aliens have been described in sightings and why aliens would seemingly do inconsequential things like landing in farmer Jones's field and not contacting us in any bigger manner when star travel seems to be such a daunting endeavor. If they are already here and living in artificial colonies in the suns Kuiper Belt or Ort cloud visiting the earth isn't the huge investment in resources it would appear to be. In fact the Earths only interesting quality would be the possibility of collecting elements that are more concentrated in small areas on a planet like Gold or Copper. Some reports have aliens using humans to mine such materials in very ancient times but even if this is not true the colonization of places like the ort cloud make good sense because everything needed to construct such colonies would be there, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and other elements contained in the ices of the bodies in the outer solar system. An infrared telescope with the proper sensitivity should be able to detect such colonies with ease since getting rid of waste heat would be more of a problem than staying warm in the vacuum of space... Rigney, there are lots of very clear photos of UFOs, people tend to discount the good ones as too good to be true and discount the blurry ones because they are blurry. http://www.ufocasebook.com/bestufopictures.html I agree, any planet with complex life becomes interesting but if complex life is common then it becomes a bit more problematic. Some rare scientist that specializes in up and coming civilizations might be interested but why would they contact us? If they are indeed a million years ahead of us then we are no more than annoying creatures who happen to have primitive technology. Personally the Million years ahead thing doesn't seem as great a barrier as many seem to think. I think there is a limit on technology and no such vast magical technology barrier exists...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718131348.htm Neanderthals in Northern Spain Had Knowledge of Plants' Healing Qualities, Study Reveals ScienceDaily (July 17, 2012) — An international team of researchers, led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of York, has provided the first molecular evidence that Neanderthals not only ate a range of cooked plant foods, but also understood its nutritional and medicinal qualities. A researcher at work in El Sidrón Cave. (Credit: CSIC Comunicación)

Then again logically it probably means they are all wrong and it's all made up... Isn't it more like assuming the sun revolves around the Earth because it looks that way? How can something supernatural be investigated by a methodological process that relies on natural means? No wait there was that study of the power of prayer.... didn't exactly confirm anything supernatural...

Paddlefish news! Lots of things have happened since I first posted this thread. I lost two more paddlefish, one to brown blood disease and one to being washed out of an outdoor vat by heavy rain. The remaining paddlefish is doing well in my basement but today I sprayed poison for fleas in my basement and I am worried the vapors might kill him. I have observed many things from my paddlefish, I have seen them stir up organisms like live blood worms from the bottom but not with their paddles. he will not touch dead blood worms or any other dead food that is not floating. I routinely feed my paddlefish feeder guppies now, he slowly but surely catches them in the 300 gallon swimming pool i have him in. The kiddie wading pool is perfect for him and he loves to swim into the current made by the filter pump. He is pretty good at catching small crayfish and ghost shrimp, but small fish are his specialty, he slow swims around them until they are all in a close group them he lunges into the group to swallow the feeder guppies. He goes through about 100 of them a month. he is 10" long, his hatch mates are in the 24 to 30 inch range by now. He still eats floating pellets well and ignores any fish on the bottom but top swimmers are in trouble. Anything alive interests him, i think he has complex electric sensors on his paddle. I would love to see his reaction to an electric fish like an elephantnose fish.... Now if he will just survive the poison spray in the basement...

I would say yes with no qualifiers at all. Close by? Hmmmm, I can think of scenarios to support a yes on that but no positive evidence. I agree. Being so far advanced they might not have any interest in us at all, do you stop by the ant hills in your yard to say hello when you go to the mailbox? We might be interesting to someone who specializes in ants but it still doesn't mean they would stop and say hello, maybe get a few specimens and anal probe them for information?

While it's true that internal combustion engines run quite well on hydrogen if they are modified to do so, anecdotal evidence would suggest that running a car on hydrogen would be as easy as propane or methane and if either are used to run cars engines last longer, this might be a plus... The energy density of hydrogen is quite low when used as a motor fuel... but even using methane over gasoline would improve pollution hugely.. http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/i6W09tDtK-48PTmzHazOuw/3.2.3.Jacobson_Golden_07.pdf However the above paper does not support this one, I'm not completely sure either is entirely accurate... Then you have the ozone problem, i get mixed results from this search but this one says it would result in a 8% decrease in the ozone layer. http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Hydrogen-Harm-Ozone12jun03.htm

Is this possible or is this blog just pie in the sky? http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/using-quantum-mechanics-we-can-reach-foreign-stars-in-a-human-lifetime

When my income goes up by 10X I'll begin to think of worrying...

I am a nuclear power enthusiast, nuclear will have it's day, but not unless we use new designs and use thorium as the reactant but that is another thread... Most of the reactors we are using should never have been built and are the result of nuclear weapon research instead of strictly energy propagation... Hydrogen does offer possibilities but it is not with out it's own problems not the least of which is it's very low energy density compared to oil, and coal... I can live with that assertion, I see no reason not to pursue renewables, it would be a hardship if it was forced on us but the writing is on the wall, oil will run out and is a vast misuse of, what should be, an important industrial feed stock...

I buy most of my fruit locally, that of course limits the type of fruit i can get but luckily in my area we have apples and peaches that are great, lots of pecan trees. You do have a good point about fruit and often vegetables, for shipping to the large scale commercial market they are often picked green and do not ripen as well as those left on the trees. There is also the problem of many new varieties being selectively bred to ship well at the expense of flavor as well. When i garden i go out of my way to obtain the seeds of the older varieties, called heirloom seeds, they make tomatoes that are exquisite compared to commercial varieties, corn is also good in heirloom varieties as well as many other vegetables, fruits are another matter, it's difficult to get heirloom fruit due to most trees provided now days are newer type and bred to be something other than tasty... I do get heirloom variety peaches where I live... hmmmm gooood... I am lucky enough to live near a large family farm that has been running for several generations, they grow lots of old style stuff, and cater to locals instead of shipping off to distant markets... oh yeah, we have pears too...

I, like you rigney, am a skeptic, it's just being a skeptic to me doesn't mean dismissing something because it goes against my world view or because the Military ridicules it. There was one sighting report in that video I am aware of which had much if any controversy around it and that was the sightings over DC, as extensive as they were the report that one of the interceptor pilots was surrounded by the lights is disputed... Most of the rest I was aware of, the helicopter incident, which was seen by people on the ground as well, is the type of thing the military uses to make people look stupid, a slow moving meteor... It's insulting and it shows the lengths the military at the time would go to debunk any report, the truth had no place in this for them... I still stand by the Tehran sighting as extraordinary and evidence of something inexplicable happening... The sightings around missile silos were very interesting as well. I did like the explanation of the SIGN report being dismissed due to simple in house politics instead of an effort to cover it up, it made sense...

It was 7,000 to 10,000 years ago but your following points remain... I think you are correct here Actually you can, Bananas are a case in point... But in Potatoes like Bananas any sterility was accidental not planned... This occurs due to hybridization which applies to potatoes in this context... I think you have a very good point here... I see no reason to mock you...