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Moontanman

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Everything posted by Moontanman

  1. See the above posts, in each of them you are trying to insinuate the USA is in trouble because we are a democracy, then you turn around and say all democracies fail, then you change your tune yet again and say it's only true democracies that fail then you turn again and claim we are not a "true" democracy. At best you are being disingenuous with those arguments, at worst you are trying to sow political misinformation I again i disagree that anything like what you insinuate is going on, no one is promising handouts and socialism is not an evil, without social programs our society would fail. As I stated before the government has a vested interest in a great many social programs not to mention putting controls on capitalism, lack of controls over the banks, business, and concentration of wealth in the hands of far too few people is what caused the "great depression" and this depression we are now in. Also please define what you mean by public dole, I do not see a large sections of society on the public dole and i don't see large sections of the public demanding such things.
  2. To be honest I think you should read the paper....
  3. There is some validity to the idea that archea are ancestral to Eukaryota http://norlx51.nordita.org/~brandenb/astrobiology/docs/Poole+Neumann2011.pdf There is also the idea of a "shadow biosphere" made up of organisms from a separate origin of life. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/is-there-undiscovered-weird-life-on-earth-worldleading-expert-says-it-could-be-biggest-discovery-sin.html
  4. If your car were traveling at the speed of light time would have stopped for you, among other totally weird things like being infinitely massive and flattened infinitely in the direction of travel, but say if you were traveling at some outrageous fraction of the speed of light like 99.9999999999999...9999999% of c, from your perspective the head lights would shine away from you at the speed of light....
  5. Our common ancestor? Humans are apes which are a subset of monkeys yada yada yada eventually back to bacteria which also had more primitive or possibly more accurately simpler ancestors, I don't see any reason to deny our relationship to the natural world other than the words written by bronze age goat herders. I'll go with deep time and evolution for the win...
  6. I think I'd have to see some evidence of this assertion, there is considerable evidence that fungi predate trees and green plants in general. Also the idea that only fungi could decompose wood needs some support as well.
  7. I don't think the fundamentalist theists who are screaming they are under attack from secularism fail to understand the culture, in fact they completely understand and know how best to manipulate people into a frenzy to gain power for themselves...
  8. Higher plants have evolved from green algae, the pigment chlorophyll reflects green light and absorbs blue and red (simplification) There are algae that use pigments that make the cell look purple and some complex algae are red and some are brown. If i had to just guess I would say it's because the pigment of choice was best at allowing the plant to use light. Plants don't just absorb light the pigment absorbs light of a specific wave length due to factors that control the chemical processes involved. It's not just a matter of absorbing the most light, the light has to initiate a particular chemical reaction. The pigment is what initiates this reaction. Purple sulfur bacteria use light but don't release oxygen, then there are the blue green cyanobacteria, not to mention other green algae that don't release oxygen. Red algae use blue light, they evolved from using light that had been filtered by sea water, brown algae come closest to absorbing all the light they get. Many of the algae if not all still contain chlorophyll but they use other pigments to augment the collection of light... now I feel confused, much of my information comes from years of growing various types of algae under various conditions. But the root of the idea is that first of all not all plants are green and simply absorbing all the light is not the idea, using light to initiate chemical reactions is the idea... and the pigment is what the plant uses to harvest the light and certain pigments absorb certain wave lengths of light. It is quite possible that no suitable pigment exists that would allow plants to absorb all the wave lengths of light emitted by the sun... On a side note, there are some unusual bacteria that live around deep sea vents that use infrared light as well.
  9. None of this is relevant to the discussion and is a personal attack, go back 100 years and you wouldn't recognize the USA either, go forward 100 years and i doubt you will either. Change has to happen, if the USA doesn't change to meet the new challenges of the future the USA will not exist at all. I think we are living in what the future will consider a real turning point in our society, much like the civil rights movement or unionization or maybe even the civil war. Simply sticking your head in the sand will not help and neither will screaming no no no like a small child to hold back progress. The government is owed by the banks and big business, far too much wealth is concentrated in far too few hands, taxes are totally unfair, and government services lag far behind public needs. Privatization, the holy grail of conservatives is not the answer, there are some things that just can't be trusted to private hands due the inherent greed of humans. The government has a vested interest in certain aspects of society, things like not letting old people starve in the streets or letting the population die due to lack of medical care, putting out fires, education, controlling crime, building infrastructure, and not allowing a significant part of the population fall below the poverty level, if enough people go back to extreme poverty the government will fail no matter how many may be screaming socialism, that is a cop out, it ignores reality and the flaws of capitalism. doG I don't see how you can justify arguing a point from two different directions, first you say we are in trouble because we are a democracy and will vote to put everyone on the public dole then you say we are not a democracy, can you pick a side here? Your professed voting record speaks volumes...
  10. Again, this makes your original post irrelevant to the discussion...
  11. So this remark was not related to the discussion and was therefor irrelevant?
  12. You made the assertion that all democracies fail, then it was all true democracies, then you suggested I find one that had been successful but you never showed any evidence your assertion was factual in any way.
  13. All democracies? Please elaborate...
  14. Again, I fail to see it that way, evidently I can't contort myself quite enough to see it from your perspective. I suggest you start a new thread with that theme to avoid derailing this thread.
  15. Um the prey has struggled so hard it collapses from exhaustion? Hard to struggle when your air is cut off? Predators tend to incapacitate their prey as quickly as possible if they grapple with it directly, trying to eat a still alive and kicking zebra is dangerous even for a lion so they tend to bite their necks and cut off the zebras air supply, an exhausted zebra should go out quick if it can't breath. If anything I would say that humans are odd because we go numb much quicker than a zebra would.
  16. Yeah, i really don't like doomsday type prophecies but... and while I don't think it's time to exactly stick a fork in the USA, we do seem to be uncontrollably driving in that direction at an ever increasing rate. I often look at some of the internet type movements to see if any real hackles are being raised by my sons generation. And I do see some glimmer of hope but the final battles will be fought long after I am a thing of this antiquated past we live in today. I often look back on the conversations I had with my grandfather, he ran illegal liquor, made it and sold it and went to jail for it. I remember some of the horrific things my grandfather told me about what happened then and some of the laws that were passed to limit local law enforcement, thinking back most of the time it was more a matter of actually enforcing our constitution rather than changing it but now days you hear from every quarter screams to change the document, usually to allow religion to continue it's advance. If you go back 150 years or so even though our constitution was secular a great many local laws were indeed based in religion. From laws that prevented birth control from being sold to putting people in jail for adultery, god help you if you were a homosexual, no one else would. What really frightens me is the combination of fascist elements, religion, and technology. There would be no escape if the government controlled all of modern information technology and allowed religion to control the government.
  17. Magic dust, the magic dust is what powers santa claus..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoSyCtD0WO4
  18. First of all I have to admit to a real bias here, extreme bias to be honest, but having said that I cannot see how the Christian right can claim that they are somehow loosing the war on religion or even that is a war. They make up a false war, use false propaganda to influence people and as was pointed out in one of the videos act like overly privileged children who have realized they are not the center of the universe and react by kicking and screaming it's not fair they can't continue to be the over indulged brats they are. They use this idea of a war on religion (read Christians) to falsely claim all sorts of nonsense to inflame the masses and make them think godless heathens are going around doing their best to bring down what they call a Christian Nation, making willfully stupid claims about nearly everything, the Rick Perry ad panders to this idea of Christians being persecuted by non Christians. It's a lie and all they have to experience to justify this idea is someone who doesn't believe the way they do, they go bat this crazy and claim that anyone who doesn't agree with them is somehow aggressively persecuting them. Yes, there is a culture war and much like the Iraq war it is composed of lies, fears, and people who use these ideas to induce people to rally around a false cause, there are no WMD's in the atheist arsenals... No matter how many "good" Christian people claim it's true... Pat Robertson included....
  19. If there is a culture war, and I think there is, who attacking whom? Here are a couple of videos portraying some of what has gone on this Christmas here in the US... Also this is for some of you who do not live in the US and cannot comprehend the news organizations being less than honest, several examples of this dishonesty is shown in these videos... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTqZ4ucH144 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qAR1Zx3Ng I wasn't sure if this belonged in the religious forum or not, if it does feel free to move it.
  20. merry Christmas to you and yours too Jimmy, my wife and I are having a quite Christmas at home alone tonight. Going to Ralieh to see the kids tomorrow and roast oysters,a family tradition at christmas, the guy i know who collects oysters dropped off two bushels a little while ago... mmmm

  21. I guess I should have used a smirky smilely face on that one, sorry....
  22. Better or more dangerous? oops, sorry I misread the post...
  23. I think I hope you are correct, I think.... Spoil sport, relying on reality to tell people what's possible.... what a concept....
  24. That's easy to answer Justin, I can't believe you don't know the answer... the other side is the one that always uses emotions and personal attacks because they have no real leg to stand on....
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