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As I said in my original comment, I personally don't agree with the taking of whales as I believe that they are sentient creatures and do not think they should be harvested. If you scroll up you can read my original comments on that and the problems of removing cultural practises and food sources. In another point, bowhead whales are not on the endangered list, and the IWC has limited the aboriginal peoples of Alaska to approximately 2.5 whales per villiage per month over the next 5 years. Hardly a dent in the population of bowheads.

As it turns out, in other whale populations worldwide, some whales (Eastern Grey whales in this case) may be evolving / happening on a happy solution to the whole 'whales as food/resource' problem. If it turns out not to effect them health wise in the long run, Stinky Whales may just convince hunters to stop hunting them, and may turn into an effective defense strategy.

And all it takes to find it is pretty much a google search with the word "linux" in it. For example, "Linux video editing software" or "linux accounting software", ad nauseam.

So when it the last time you authored a DVD movie on Linux? How about using a TOPO map program such as Back Roads Explorer? How about the bundled program to upload maps and POI to your GPS Nav unit? What do you recommend to replace Turbo Tax Small Business Edition?

Compare Q-Light to Freestyler. Compare TOPO State series on Back Roads Explorer with anything Linux.
http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/product/1488.ht ml
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Artistic-Software/Q -Light-Controller-8523.shtml

I'm hoping someday Freestyler will be ported to Linux.
http://users.pandora.be/freestylerdmx/

Ouch! Ouch!.... I feel like I supporting the MS monoculture.... No! No!.. I'm supporting a diverse environment.

My router, servers, and most desktops run Linux. My favorite desktop distro is Ubuntu. My old 386 is dual-boot for when I need to upload maps to a new area to the NAV unit. (Windows 98 assigned a blocked by the router IP address for obvious reasons..It is not permitted online). I picked up a new (larger) hard drive for my laptop. I stuff the old Win 2K drive in it when hitting the backroads and I want to use Back Roads Explorer in the country or when doing a lightshow using Freestyler. For online, it's back to Ubuntu. Someday the old Windows 98 and 2K applications will go with the old hardware, but in the meantime it's dual boot or Hard Drive swap.

In summary.. Find the hardware and software to meet your needs. You can no longer expect it to all run on a single general purpose computer. You may need other hardware. Prime evidence of this is MS released Vista. They also released X-Box. Neither is a replacement for the other.

The NG Project won't net you immediate relatives but show your oldest roots.

Phorusrhacids (marketed as Terror Birds!!! by the ever highbrow Scientific American) are cooler giant extinct birds. I like the way in the SciAm pictures they have a thoughtful, confident expression too, like they're thinking "I could bite that dude's head clean off. I don't think he knows that"

E.g. see the picture here -

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/08 01_050801_terrorbirds.html

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a BBC Documentary (notorious right wing Oil loving company there) featuring many people whom I consider credible people within the scientific community, including the Co-Founder of Greenepeace Patrick Moore who show that the Global Warming movement is primarily political in nature, and is more about being anti-corporate than pro-environment. This is largely the reason why Patric Moore resigned from the organization he confounded in disgust. Regarding the so called consensus, regarding global warming, they have an interview in there with a scientist who was on a list of 2500 climate scientists who contributed to a paper regarding the human origin of global warming who had to sue to get his name removed from the paper. They told him he'd contributed, so his name would be listed, but he told them they didn't listen to anything he was trying to tell them. If you don't thing people get anything out of believing in global warming, that is just flat wrong. If you try to do science suggesting global warming is caused by anything other than man, your funding tends to get pulled real quick. Now I'm not saying global warming is not occurring. You're right, the data clearly shows that. The degree to which it is human caused is widely debated, however. It seems obvious to me that anyone with even a cursory training in science should see that climate is an unbelievably complex field, and we aren't even close to understanding how it works. Occam's Razor tells us that variations in solar output are of far greater importance that anything man is doing. Currently, global warming is also occurring on mars as well as Jupiter. Now before you set out to write your flaming response that I am a shill for the Oil Companies, or I am just selfish, or have my head up my ass, thing to yourself, "Is that a scientific response?". After doing thorough research, I have come to several informed conclusions:
1) Global warming is occurring.
2) Humans are contributing to global warming (how could we not be, again, Occam's Razor)
3) The amount by which we are contributing to global warming is vastly overstated by the Global Warming Movement.
4) The Global Warming movement is primarily an anti corporate movement which uses the scare of global warming to motivate change which is ultimately good, but when taken too far, can cripple economies not only here in the first world, but with even more tragic consequences in the third world.
5) The Global Warming scare is like telling someone that for every Big Mac they eat, they will lose one day off of their life. It may motivate people to make changes which would be good for them, but it does so by telling a lie which may have drastic consequences for third parties.
6) The illusion that environmentalism doesn't hurt anyone, and therefore we should do anything possible to that goal is plain wrong. There is no sense of balance in the debate over what to do about it, and people who don't mouth the party line are branded a heretics.

Most of this is covered quite well in the first link I provided. Watch it, it may just change your mind. Assuming your mind is open to change.

I have a modest proposition for you....
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/11 25_031125_turkeyoil.html

I don't even know where to start with this. You read a book which is clearly anti-china, and a defense journal, and you somehow think you understand the big picture of what's going on in China? Then when anyone tries to disagree with you, you say, "by disagreeing with me, you have thereby proved my point."

Reasons China is not communist:
- Most of the farmers own their own land, and can sell it if they want to.
- Most of the companies are privately owned, and there is PLENTY of competition (check out this month's national geographic for a clear picture of the competition.)
- The government has been selling off the businesses they do own.
- If you actually go there, you may get the feeling all anyone cares about is money.

Your issue is not that China is communist, it is that China is authoritarian. You can't even get your terms straight (communism is not necessarily authoritarian at all). No one disagrees that an authoritarian China is a bad thing, however, you cannot deny that the situation is much better than it was in 1979 (read Wild Swans and you will see how much better it has gotten). The hope is that with prosperity the situation will ease, and the Chinese will become more free and less authoritarian in a peaceful manner, much like what happened in Taiwan and South Korea in the 80s.

In the end, China IS going to become an international power, that cannot be stopped anymore than a center break can be stopped in chess when it is ripe. Of course they want a strong military to match the US. No one in the world likes to be pushed around by us. But what are we going to do to stop it? Bomb them? Bad idea. Stop trading with them? That will slow them down, but they have enough other trading partners that they would still grow rapidly, and it would hurt us more than them.

The only thing we can do is accept the fact that China is going to become a world power in the next few decades, and adjust our strategy appropriately. For better or for worse China is coming, and we are much better off spending our energy preparing for it than wasting our time in a hopeless effort to try to prevent it.

The first question to ask is what is the cost of rebuilding the three-dimensional infrastructure of a city the size, scale, age and complexity of New York. New York Underground

Thus there was an advantage to ID biologist who would have the opinion, 'cells are an incredible biological computer with beautiful design, this is great fun reverse engineering it all, and there won't be Junk DNA because that goes against God creating life, so lets keep looking for its purpose'

For those who may not know what you are referring to, Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project, is a believer in Christianity. There was a really good writeup about him recently in National Geographic where he discusses how his scientific research and religious beliefs can work together.

The year of the report is 2002. The report proceeds to note the similarity between Indian culture and Islamic culture.

Note that "5000" is the number for only murdered brides. That number does not include the many Indian women murdered by Indian man for supposedly shaming the Indian family.

Also, according to a disturbing CNN report, Indian has 3 million prostitutes, of whom many are the victims of trafficking. Of these victims, at least 40% are children; 40% translates to 1.2 million Indian children working as prostitutes, who are raped numerous times, per day, by Indian customers.

The parent article tries to paint India as a Western nation. The facts indicate otherwise.

Vietnam is more Western than India. Honor killings are extremely rare in Vietnam. It has a much lower rate of children prostitution than India because Vietnamese law enforcement actually punishes the customers of child prostitutes. Note that Vietnam is still a relatively poor nation, so poverty cannot explain the popularity of honor killings and children prostitution in India. The explanation is in the non-Western culture of India.

And - said polar caps are too warm to be dry ice. Voilà H20! Duuh ... This has to be some sort of psychological test or time-wasting run-around to see just how ignorant and gullible the general populace is, or can be. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/02 13_030213_marspoles.html

National Geographic has a story on it. If you'll notice, the article says that there is evidence that they were swimming (not wading) in 3m deep water, but that evidence that they were swimming in deeper water would necessarily be absent (if the water is deep enough that they don't leave tracks, then there are no tracks, and it's really hard to study the absence of tracks). Futhermore, other research I've read (I can't find it right now) mentioned that their small forearms were sometimes indicative of species that were adapting to a more aquatic lifestyle. Not conclusive, but definitely an interesting hypothesis (with semi-aquatic, not full-blown aquatic, being the hypothesis). Additionally, with their body shape they couldn't run very fast. If they stumbled at high speeds, their arms wouldn't be able to stop the accompanying 6g deceleration rates.

Also, you'll note that I did couch my original statement with the safety word "might". I'm definitely not claiming this is a settled issue, or even a widely accepted issue - just an interesting new theory. Again, I'm no expert, and I'm not even reading the original journal articles.

I was just arguing that a very large animal can survive on plant matter alone. Furthermore, T-Rex's body might have been suited in part to help it adapt in the water. The tendency towards small forearms is common in animals that have become more aquatic than their ancestors. (Note: the latter supposition is both new and not widely accepted. However, neither should it be considered "fringe".)

Please, please don't get me wrong. I'm definitely not arguing that T-Rex was ever a vegetarian. The part about the teeth is absolutely true. I just felt like getting picky. ;)

Its body DOES seem built for, however, chasing down other large creatures.

I'm no longer sure about this. It might have swam down other large creatures. I mean, just look at those pathetic forearms! (I'm also not a paleontologist.)

Here are two interesting articles on T-rex:

• T. Rex, Other Big Dinosaurs Could Swim, New Evidence Suggests
• http://www.gogira.com/Tyrannosaurus/encyclopedia.h tm

The first helicopter landing on the summit occurred in 2005. So it's definitely possible.

Hey buddy, you are dead wrong.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/11 10_051110_warming.html

"Evaporated H2O is a known greenhouse gas--a gas that absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation in Earth's atmosphere, thereby increasing temperatures"

http://www.greenfacts.org/studies/climate_change/l _3/climate_change_8.htm

"The Earth's surface temperature would be about 34C (61F) colder than it is now if it were not for the natural heat trapping effect of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor. Indeed, water vapor is the most abundant and important of these naturally occurring greenhouse gases. In addition to its direct effect as a greenhouse gas, clouds formed from atmospheric water vapor also affect the heat balance of the Earth by reflecting sunlight (a cooling effect), and trapping infrared radiation (a heating effect)."

I won't even begin to discuss how the role of tropical, or, any forest for that matter in CO2 uptake, might be overstated. That is, if you plant a tree, it will consume CO2 while it grows, but then, it stays even, dies, and rots, and releases methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2 is. To some extent, one could argue that chopping down all of the trees and making boards out of them would be the best way to sink carbon - if you knew trees would go back to take the place of the ones you cut down. The problem is, in the rain forest, they don't grow back, because the soil sucks.

i agree. next thing you know they will say there are only 8 planets and pluto is just a dwarf planet...http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2 006/08/060824-pluto-planet.html... ahh crap

People will laugh at this hysteria the same way we laugh at the global cooling hysteria of the 1970s.

You'll note the dead silence at the news that Mars is warming just as fast (or faster), and by just as much, as the Earth is.

People will laugh at this hysteria the same way we laugh at the global cooling hysteria of the 1970s.

You'll note the dead silence at the news that Mars is warming just as fast (or faster), and by just as much, as the Earth is. You'll note that on earth, historically speaking, CO2 rises lag warm periods, not lead them. You'll also note that the evaporative cooling cycle - water vapor, rain, etc . - runs at many times the speed of the CO2 warming cycle and is temperature sensitive so that a warmer environment will make it run even faster. And of course, it is important to observe that the predictions of the climate models have been very, very poor, even completely failing in some regions. And no one can miss the fact that the media pump the idea that GW is anthropocentric without pause.

Here in the USA, it is critically important that the public be kept in the cycle of fuckarosis about terrorists, pedophiles, immgrants, and global warming. It keeps them from realizing their government is 100% in the grip of corporate and wealthy power brokers, that their constitutional rights are being eroded at an ever-faster pace, and that the entire political system is a sham. So don't disturb the rank and file. Shhhh!

We now return you to our normally scheduled, politically correct, hysteria-fest, with special guest, Al Gore.

It's not a hoax. It's gotten so bad that our blatant disregard for the environment is even heating up mars http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html It's obvioysly us that's doing it. Not that giant orb of fire we orbit.

Maybe thats why Mars has global warming too. Or maybe its the sun.

1) Train Yourself in Pakour. Become proficient.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbYtOEftc0

2) Get a hold of artificial spider silk + convenient dispenser
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/01 14_050114_tv_spider.html

3) Fashion a pair of Gecko setae gloves, boots and other convenient body areas
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3726

4) Fabricate a Kevlar Spidey suit
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=Quirks&artic le=UPI-1-20070416-18110300-bc-britain-hoodie.xml

5) Obtain DARPA Spidey sense

6) Profit! ...err save humanity!

Migration route of my ancestors: You may be interested to see the migration route of my ancestors: My Male Genetic Contribution.

That adds to the discussion of why there is a need for Vitamin D supplements, and my parent comment, by showing that much more can be determined about our general ancestry than most people know. The results shown came from The Genographic Project, an organization related to the National Geographic Society.

My guess is that, long before the 1600s, some of my Caucasian ancestors intermarried with Slavs, and before that, Arabs. That would account for my Slavic look and the Mediterranean shade of my skin.

There are some awesome pictures of a Mexican cave that looks like the movie version of the Fortress of Solitude.

According to a different article on the same study, the dinosaur mass extinction at the K-T boundary doesn't fit the pattern.

We've still got at least 10 million years before we enter the next cosmic ray cycle.

"How the hell does Jacko correlate the skill of properly aiming and discharging a firearm with moving a thumbstick and pressing a button on a control-pad? There is no link there! "

Oh, I wouldn't say that.

Our gaz-guzzling is so effective we are warming up Mars too!

muhaha ha ha ha.

Interesting you should mention the warming of Mars. I recently read an article that claims that Mars is warming because it has grown darker due to dust storms. This warming reinforces the dust storms, causing further warming.

-Aaron

This model, though, may require revisitation as IBM is currently crunching the genetic numbers and indicating a single common ancestor for all of present-day humanity living tens of thousands, rather than millions, of years ago.

It's an interesting project. More information on ibm.com as well.

...and 70 million year old dinosaurs still have soft tissue in their bones!!!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/03 24_050324_trexsofttissue.html

Do you have any clue how little the naysayers know? You can be intentionally arrogant all you want, but stop pretending you have even bothered to check any facts at all.

Got yelled at in the spring for standing on the sidewalk casting a shadow causing the sidewalk to cool causing the ice to freeze on the sidewalk. Noted that in spite of my shadow, the trees budding out and the end of studed snow tires on cars. Was accused of not reading a thermometor.

After having read said thermometor showing 30 degrees above freezing, but droping because it is evening, shook head and moved on.

Yes I have looked at the sunspot cycle. I have looked at the SOHO records. I have looked at the polar ice caps on mars back a few years. (I even provided a link from National Geographic, not Fox News) Being accused of following a conspiriocy theory instead of the facts is a WTF??? moment.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=59498
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/Mars99/docs/library/scien ce/climate_history/polar_caps1.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/mission_overview.ht ml
http://www.astrodigital.org/mars/timeline1.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/themes/display.cf m?Item=polarice
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://plan etary.chem.tufts.edu/MarsPolarCap.jpg&imgrefurl=ht tp://planetary.chem.tufts.edu/chronos.html&h=225&w =290&sz=10&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=TYj58QRSbsjd4M :&tbnh=89&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar %2Bice%2Bhistory%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%2 6safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. cosmiclight.com/imagegalleries/images/space/mars-p olarcap.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cosmiclight.com/i magegalleries/mars.htm&h=359&w=600&sz=16&hl=en&sta rt=9&um=1&tbnid=gBBAUkXCr9kpWM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&p rev=/images%3Fq%3Dmars%2Bpolar%2Bice%2Bhistory%26s vnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
NASA's and the Hubble Space Telescope images spanning from October 1996 until March 1997, show the viritable felting of Mar's polar ice cap, in just 6 months... Such an event would have been utterly devastating on our planet, making the Tsunami seem like a needle in a haystack in comparison.

March 7, 2007 Nat. Geo. Mars Has Cave Networks, New Photos Suggest

The AP coverage stresses that the ruling upholds the right of states to sue the Federal government over issues of global warming.

Maybe they will suddnly change the studies to show CO2 is only a small contributor to warming, say on the order of burning a candle in a house causes the house to become warmer.

After all, our global warming is the same as the global warming and loss of polar ice caps on Mars. It must be the sun that is the big factor, just like your house gets colder in winter and warmer in summer in spite of burning a candle. There is positive proof that burning a candle adds heat to a house. There is also proof positive that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and a contributor to global warming. How much it warming it causes is the subject of a lot of science and political debate.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html

Except that Evolution cannot explain certain unchanging species, because the reality is, if Evolution is true, then these species would HAVE to have changed, substantially.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/07 0124-sharks-photo.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth

Evolution cannot explain LACK of change in a SEA of change, because Evolution requires change, and the LACK thereof is very hard to explain. Of course Evolution doesn't really address lack of change, because it cannot, it just marks it as an "exception". Enough "exceptions" and the theory becomes less likely.

Another exception is the Cambrian (and Pre Cambrian) explosion.

"The question of how so many immense changes occurred in such a short time is one that stirs scientists. Why did many fundamentally different body plans evolve so early and in such profusion? Some point to the increase in oxygen that began around 700 million years ago, providing fuel for movement and the evolution of more complex body structures. Others propose that an extinction of life just before the Cambrian opened up ecological roles, or "adaptive space," that the new forms exploited. External, ecological factors like these were undoubtedly important in creating the opportunity for the Cambrian explosion to occur. "

So, here we have circular logic of Evolution. To prove evolution, they assume evolution. They cannot explain this "explosion" in fauna via normal evolutionary models, so they make a huge bunch of assumptions(guesses), all of which presuppose evolution.

Of course, there is no other explanation that evolutionists accept for it. Again, another "exception", whereby the theory doesn't explain the explosion, without first accepting the theory. Slow steady changes doesn't explain it, so they modify the theory to include periods of rapid changes without any facts to actually support two types of evolution (fast, slow).

"Scientists have also long been puzzled by its abruptness, and the apparent lack of obvious predecessors to the Cambrian fauna. Three questions in particular are of importance currently: I) is the "explosion" real?; II) what does it tell us about the origin and possible evolution of animals? and III) what were its causes?"

To claim that all creationists are ignorant (not knowing the facts) is a huge lie. I was once a Evolutionist, until I started reading the SCIENCE behind it. I once blindly accepted it as "Fact" until I read example after example of exceptions and holes in the "fossil record". And there are plenty of them.

Don't see that freaking us out ...
Don't see people rethinking the ethics
of animal testing and eating animals .. oh wait that is what PETA has been
talking about.

Studies indicate that humans and chimps are between 95 and 98.5 percent genetically identical.
source : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/05 20_030520_chimpanzees.html

Who Built the Pyramids?

Contrary to some popular depictions, the pyramid builders were not slaves or foreigners. Excavated skeletons show that they were Egyptians who lived in villages developed and overseen by the pharaoh's supervisors.

Rooted firmly in the popular imagination is the idea that the pyramids were built by slaves serving a merciless pharaoh. This notion of a vast slave class in Egypt originated in Judeo-Christian tradition and has been popularized by Hollywood productions like Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, in which a captive people labor in the scorching sun beneath the whips of pharaoh's overseers. But graffiti from inside the Giza monuments themselves have long suggested something very different.
[...]
Generations of scholars have painstakingly calculated how many laborers would have been needed to quarry, transport, and position the stones of the great pyramids. Estimates have ranged widely--from the 100,000 cited by Herodotus to just the few thousand posited by recent assessments that allow for decades of construction time. Yet Lehner and his team were not finding enough houses to accommodate even the low-end estimates. "Where are all the people?" he wondered. His graduate studies had taught him how other scholars of Middle Eastern settlement patterns had analyzed sites in order to come up with estimates of population size. Lehner was approaching the problem from the opposite perspective. He had a sense of how many people were needed to build a pyramid, and so could infer the size of the city he would find. But there were too few dwellings. The city seemed a ghost town.
[...]
The surprises were just beginning. Faunal analyst Richard Redding, of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, identified tremendous quantities of cattle, sheep, and goat bone, "enough to feed several thousand people, even if they ate meat every day," Lehner adds. Redding, who has worked at archaeological sites all over the Middle East, "was astounded by the amount of cattle bone he was finding," says Lehner. He could identify much of it as "young, under two years of age, and it tended to be male." Here was evidence of many people--presumably not slaves or common laborers, but skilled workers--feasting on prime beef, the best meat available.
[...]
Redding's faunal evidence dealt a serious blow to the Hollywood version of pyramid building, with Charlton Heston as Moses intoning, "Pharaoh, let my people go!" There were slaves in Egypt, says Lehner, but the discovery that pyramid workers were fed like royalty buttresses other evidence that they were not slaves at all, at least in the modern sense of the word. Harvard's George Reisner found workers' graffiti early in the twentieth century that revealed that the pyramid builders were organized into labor units with names like "Friends of Khufu" or "Drunkards of Menkaure." Within these units were five divisions (their roles still unknown)--the same groupings, according to papyrus scrolls of a later period, that served in the pyramid temples. We do know, Lehner says, that service in these temples was rendered by a special class of people on a rotating basis determined by those five divisions. Many Egyptologists therefore subscribe to the hypothesis that the pyramids were also built by a rotating labor force in a modular, team-based kind of organization.

"You know why? Because young Americans are still geographically illiterate according to this article. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/05 02_060502_geography.html.

It was also reported that about 23% of mature Americans cannot read a schedule! Further still, from one study, America's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs!"

Uh, huh. So in keeping with the posted story, by implication the people already on the internet can do all the above. So what does slashdot's grammer, spelling, and even math errors say? Maybe people don't want the internet because of all the arrogent SOB's they'd have to deal with, telling them they're too stupid to even own a computer let alone an internet connection.

It was also reported that about 23% of mature Americans cannot read a schedule! Further still, from one study, America's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs!

This is amazing because this nation has had "free" education for a long time - education that would have prevented these appalling figures.

With figures like these, why should anyone expect a different outcome when it comes to internet access? Populations like these cannot generate effective demand for services similar to those found on the internet.

There is a bubble theory of evolution. It works along this same principle, Evolution occurs within species and we didn't branch for the apes rather grew alongside them.

And after hundreds of millions of years of separate evolution, our independently mutating genomes ended up being 96% identical.

I won't even try to put a probability estimate on that.

Is it really so hard for some people to accept the fact that they had four-legged ancestors?

You make a good point about unintended consequences. However, we have to balance the unquantifiable future harms caused by this technique with the future benefits it promises. More than a million people a year die from malaria, ninety percent of them in Africa, and seventy percent of them children under five. Seven hundred thousand children are dying every year from this disease. That is the equivalent of seven Boeing 747s crashing into mountains every day of the year. At some point, we simply have to save as many of these lives as we can and deal with whatever comes.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/06 12_030612_malaria.html

We're constantly learning that animals can accomplish feats we've been too arrogant to suspect them of: reasoning, memory, abstract concepts, tool use, eleven dimensional bee dances...

Indeed. For anyone who hasn't seen any of the recent stories in the press or on TV, dogs are also said to be able to sniff out cancer..

A bit more useful to mankind than sniffing out polycarbonate disks in luggage, but what the hell. A dog's nose is pretty amazing, but I still like the cold and wet part best.

Most of the ones that are religious don't deal with the stuff that gets close to religious questions. For instance, those who deal with biology and evolution and such tend to be far less religious, than, say, those who do metalurgy or whatnot.

There is a very notable exception which also makes me wonder if the entire assertion is based on a false premise. Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project, is a professing Christian and involved in a field that most would not expect a Christian to be involved in yet alone leading. I highly recommend reading the linked article if you want to see how a Christian views the scientific world. I wonder, sometimes, if the reason why we don't "see" a lot of Christian scientists these days is due to the prejudice of the current scientific establishment.

And what iof nothing needs to be done about it?

From what I have been following recently, I think you are right on the money.

It is like noticing 2 tire tracks on a path and noticing they are never more than 1 foot apart and concluding that what ever made the tracks had small wheels that are no more than 1 foot apart. Then assumptions are made regarding what direction they tarveled and such.

When you look at the SAME data with the knowledge of a bicycle, you know the rear tire always points directly at the front tire. You also know the front tire is a fixed distance from the rear tire. Using that data, you can prove the distance is more that a foot apart between the tires by finding the distance the track of the rear wheel directly points to part of the path of the front wheel. Then you can with high accuracy tell which way the bicycle went as only one direction has the rear wheel pointing at the front wheel track at a fixed distance.

The Inconvienent truth film pointed out quite well the track of the CO2 and the temprature is related, but the film ignored the fact temprature led the CO2 level, not followed it.

A rise in temprature causes less CO2 to remain dissolved in the ocean. A drop in temprature causes more CO2 to be dissolved in the ocean.

Another thing the film does is totaly ignore other indicators. Take a look at the history of the Mars polar ice cap. Hmm our polar ice cap follows the exact same pattern. Who on Mars is screwing up their weather? Maybe there is another factor and the political machine simply chooses to ignore the facts.

Oh, Am I blowing smoke or is there data?

It is here;
For CO2 and temprature records;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792 811497638&hl=en
For Polar Ice and Mars;
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
A google search will bring up solar cycles in relation to Earth and Mars cycles for those who want the facts instead of the politics of the day.

Can you explain then why warming on Mars appears to also be warming? Please don't tell me that we already have SUV's running around there spewing CO2???

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17977

"Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun."

"the average surface temperature of the nitrogen ice on Pluto has increased slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius over the past 14 years."

"The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe."

"At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase," said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit."

You bet me to the punch :) Mars is not just the only other planet warming,,, But just to give our claim some credence, here are some reputable links.. MARS http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html PLUTO http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warmin g_021009.html JUPITER http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_j r.html TRITON http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html We now live in what i call the DisInformation Age, and not the Information Age. No one can doubt global warming is happening, but we sure can doubt the cause as being man made.

If the numbers don't add up then the science that claims to explain them is wrong.

That's how we measure science: by its ability to accurately predict the numbers.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/11 20_021120_raptor.html

Creationists try to deny this too, but there's concrete, physical evidence so you'd be a fool to deny it right?

Yes, those truly are "missing links" ;)

Nice fine nonetheless, here are the "non-missing links":

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/04 05_060405_fish.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/ph otogalleries/tetrapod/index.html