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Posted
Cap'n Refsmmat said in post # :

Wasn't there a virus' life thing in another thread where we said it WAS alive, because of homeostatis?

The thread was there, yes. Viruses DON'T have any homeostatic system though.

Posted

We're not arguing.

 

You posted an irrelevant question, I answered it, you posted something else irrelevant that had nothing to do with my answer or the thread. Where's the argument?

 

Lice suck.

  • 2 months later...
Posted
I'm fairly certain it's caused by fungus.

 

ringworm is a missinomer.its coused by fungus,but clinically the leisoin looks like a worm burrowing inside ,hence called ring worm

Posted

this i think is the most deadly and it is rampant in the tropics.its multiplicative and survival capacities are hardly hidden by the statistics and u know what,it acquiring drug resistance.heard of bacteria acquiring it but a parasite and its fatal if u dont cure,have u ever had malaria?try it ones ull come to know

Posted

There's the odd outbreak of dengue fever around where I live, which is one of those delightful hemorrhagic fevers. We had to identify some mosquitoes in a class the other day and one was Aedes aegypti which carries it. Die you evil bastards, die!

 

I personally like blood flukes, the female lives inside the male, now that's a close relationship.

 

Ba-da-boom!

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Just think of the bacteria 'living' on your skin that make sure that the pH of your skin is around 5 and kept stable so that your skin is too acid for other micro-organisms to grow on it. If you wash yourself too much and kill those bacteria you'll be fucked over way worse by other bacteria and fungi ;)

 

Not all things living on us are bad..

Posted
We are if you consider how we treat the earth

No. That's not parasitism.

 

It's not some vague term you can bandy about at anything you think is badness; it has a specific biological meaning.

Posted
Is that a bribe?

 

not what i had in mind, but why? you want some? :)

 

while i realize i can go in depth why i feel human can be related and or called parasites, but i won't and instead give this

 

par·a·site ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-st)

n.

1) Biology. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

 

2)

a. One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return.

b. One who lives off and flatters the rich; a sycophant.

 

3) A professional dinner guest, especially in ancient Greece.

 

courtesy of dictionary.com. :rolleyes:

Posted

You're countering with a copy 'n' paste from dictionary.com? That's just insulting.

 

A dictionary definition (even one giving a quick version of its so-called "biology definition") is no substitute for the actual biological definition, believe me.

 

Even if I were to subscribe to your definition, which I don't (since it doesn't actually mention many of the defining characteristics of parasites), you'd still have to show conclusively that Earth is an organism.

Posted
par·a·site ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-st)

n.

1) Biology.

 

An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

 

let's start with this and move on.

 

 

An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism

 

yes, yes, yes and yes. the last one being the Gaya Hypothesis.

 

contributing nothing to the survival of its host

 

maybe not nothing, but contributins small or insignificant may be a better term to replace 'nothing'.

 

we've conqured the whole planet, other animals - including ourselves.

we've destroyed entire ecosystems - land(defforestation, ocean or land oil spills), and animal and even humans were wiped out because we thought that we had the right(by god in many cases) to do so. we use and usurp things that have been created by nature w/o it being specifically created for us(but we think we do and that it does belong to us) such as fossil fuels, metals, crystals, etc. we've significantly contributed to the greenhouse effect, as a matter of fact, we've created a whole new means of things that contribute to the global warming. nuclear and biological weapons test sites, etc. introduced unnatural object to the ocean such as the sunken ships and vessels of all kinds and types. etc.

destroyed the hunter-gatherer societies, destroyed the human values and came up with new one. advances in medicine by means of obtaining the materiel from the world about us. constantly and significantly adding more goodness to our landfills, erected unnatural structures eg: buildings, cities, etc.

 

on top of all that, we now have our sights on space. sending lots and lots of junk to space, etc.

 

what have we done to replace or replenish many of these things we've destroyed?

can we bring back from the dead many of the animal and plant species we've destroyed? how about humans - aka. native americans?

 

hence the word that will best cover everything we've done to reprimand our mistakes is minute as compared to all the damage we've done for thousands of years.

 

need i go on?

 

oh and by the way, please do not label me as a 'tree huger' 'cause i'm not and i've made some contributions myself and still make 'em. ;)

Posted

I know exactly what you mean, and I wouldn't go as far as to label you as being a 'tree hugger' just on that evidence (I assume you mean "one who has unreasonably idealistic demands that can be easily dismissed", rather than "one who hugs trees").

 

I'm just saying that 'parasitism' is the wrong word. Because it is.

 

Biology as a discipline does not recognise the Gaya hypothesis, and what we've done to earth is not relevant if earth is not an organism.

 

If it were there'd be no differentiation between our use of resources and the resource consumption of other species, and everything would be a parasite. Then we'd need a new word for describing the action of what we currently call parasites.

Posted
Humans aren't parasites.

 

You lose :P

 

I think you need to make an exception for the female of the species tbh ;)

 

(my gf is gonna kill me now)

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