Slashdot Mirror

Reports in the late 1980s found the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface had declined by 4 to 6 percent since 1960. Suddenly, around 1990, that appears to have reversed.
"When we looked at the more recent data, lo and behold, the trend went the other way," said Charles Long, senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." - (True) (Not Sure) (False)

That pretty well eliminates the entire micro-vs-macro camp. I have never heard of any "microevolutionist" who accept humans as being "micro-evolved" from an earlier animal. Accepting human as being evolved from earlier animals pretty well eleiminates the entire motivation for rejecting the effectively UNANIMOUS scientific conclusion on evolution.

Anti-evolutionists go to great efforts to present a public image that there is a scientific controversy over evolution, and a large and growing number of scientists doubting or rejectign evolution, but it's just not true. The doubt and rejection of evolution has fallen over the decades to - for all intents and purposes - zero. The development of genetic science and genetic analysis has unleashed a gargantuan flood of evidence in the last decade or two, genetic evidence that absolutely and irrefutably and conclusively supports evolution. DNA analysis establishes the evolutionary tree of common decent just as powerfully and as conclusively as DNA analysis can be used to analize and establish your personal family tree.

According to newsweek magazine there are about 480,000 earth and life scientists in the US, and only about 700 who give any credance at all to Creation Science. That is almost 700 to 1, in other words no genuine scientific controversy at all. Even if we only look at scientists who are actively Christian... somewhere around half... that's still only 700 out of 240,000. That's 340 to 1 earth and life scientists on the evolution side. Even amongst Cristian scientists there is absolutely no controversy over evolution. Effectively 100% of Christian life and earth scientists accept God and accept evolution, accept evolution as the valid and true mechanism in and of God's creation.

The number of biologists who reject evolution is approximately equal to the number of astronomers who reject the theory of a nuclear fusion powered sun. Perhaps you have seen the occational Electric Universe stories that (for some bizarre reason) have occationally shown up here on Slashdot? A tiny handful of crackpots who claim that the sun is powered by electricity. There is no genuine scientific controversy in astronomy that the sun is powered by nuclear fusion, and no genuine controvery in biology over the fundamentals of evolution.

The majority of Christians accept evolution. The majority of people (in the western world) who accept evolution are Christians.

Anyone who assumes or claims that evolu

As I understand it, there are still people getting killed now and then.

Then unfortunately you don't understand it at all. The last deaths actually at the DMZ happened in 1992, when a small gun battle erupted between North and South Korean troops. Three North Koreans were killed, and two South Koreans wounded. Previous to that, two American soldiers were killed in 1976 due to a dispute over a tree near the border. This certainly does not qualify as "now and then". I've seen the DMZ with my own eyes, and am in fact crossing the border into North Korea in two week's time on a hiking trip.

While the border is no doubt heavily militarized, and tensions exist, it is not as volatile as your FOX-infused imaginations would have you believe. The way I see it, this gun is much more about getting military hardware contracts for Samsung than it is about defending the border.

Here is an article about the wildlife in the DMZ of some interest.
Here is the place to go if you want to take a short trip across the border
Here is the standard Wikipedia article on the DMZ. Which I wish more posters in this thread would have read.

Yeah, because see, all these rocket scientists, they are well known for bein' stoopid. Ain't that a shame to pollute them purty stars.

Let me help you understand what's at stake here. This quote is from the TFA, that you obviously haven't read:

Tools and other gear have accidentally floated away during spacewalks. But NASA has shied away from intentionally jettisoning gear off the ISS in the past because of the threat of space junk hitting the station or other spacecraft. Even tiny flecks of paint have cracked the windows of the space shuttle orbiter because they zoom around Earth at thousands of kilometres per hour.

Total cost of the ISS (so far): close to US$35 billions (source). The collective face NASA is going to make when the ISS is made unusable by some medium-sized space junk: priceless. Added points for the irony of being hit by space junk that comes from the ISS itself. So, yes, allow me to say it again: throwing junk overboard without thrusting is bad policy, and it is stupid.

If all you needed to deorbit something thrown from the ISS was a "small amount of thrust", don't you think that atmospheric drag would have already deorbitted the ISS itself?

Oh wait, are you talking about the same ISS that needs an extra orbital boost from time to time due to atmospheric drag? Hmmm... Interesting... That means the ISS is slowly being dragged toward the earth. Amazing, isn't it? Who would have thought?

In order to deorbit something, you need a very considerable amount of thrust, with an engine and propellant brought up from Earth at enormous cost. Left to its own device, a low-density object such as a bag of trash is going to slowly lose altitude due to atmospheric drag, then burn. No need for propellants. Good old air envelope does the trick.

Which, of course, is in complete contradiction with what you just wrote about the ISS, right? Oh well, what's a few inconsistencies between friends? Besides, the goal is precisely to avoid filling the Earth outer space with dangerous, slow moving bags of trash. If you had read TFA, you would know that the golf ball that was to be putted by a russian cosmonaut is no danger, precisely, because hitting that little golf ball with a gold club is enough to send into the atmosphere, where it will burn harmlessly. Which, again, completely contradicts your previous statement that it takes a lot of thrust to de-orbit trash.

On the other hand, the real heart of the matter is, of course, that even if there is never another rocket launch, the outer space around the Earth will be filled with junk until at least 2055:

The model predicts that even without future rocket or satellite launches, the amount of debris in low orbit around Earth will remain steady through 2055, after which it will increase.

That was one of the the links I posted. But, let me guess: you did not read any of these either, right?

(me)there is no reason not to incinerate their trash. Incinerate? Whaaa?? Look, this is space, ok?

Fine, that sentence should have been: ... there is no reason not to incinerate their trash IN THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE . Happy? I may sound dumb, but I am not THAT dumb, thankyouverymuch.

As for reusing it, I'm afraid that a sizeable fraction of the trash is, er, astronaut dung. I doubt the reuse value of human waste is very high in space, until we have complete hydroponic gardens.

Still, there i

They could pack their trash and, with minimal thrust, send it on a quick reentry path in which it will burn in higher atmosphere a few days or weeks later.

I think the US should change from "we only care about economics and hate to pay for others" into something more responsible.

Or we could read the news from national geographic ...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/06 1026-neanderthals.html

Which say the opposite.

"It's clear that something is going on. Polar caps on both Earth and Mars are shrinking, by roughly the same percentage. In spite of all the doom sayers, sea level is not rising measurably. (Unchanged in the last 200 years, to within the margin of error.)", YetAnotherBob

"Over the entire period from 1870 the average rate of rise was 1.44mm per year. Over the 20th Century it averaged 1.7mm per year; while the figure for the period since 1950 is 1.75mm per year .. the scientists behind this study say they are the first to verify the trend using historical data"

"You should remember that a lot of the organizations on both sides of this 'debate' have an agenda. If you don't know the agenda, you won't know the 'researcher' bias", YetAnotherBob

I figure those opposing are big Oil and the corporations as anything done to reduce human impact on the environment would impact revenue. What hidden agenda do those finding evidence for global warming have? You claim it's only about funding. Are we to believe that Scientists would fake research data and big Oil exectutives only ever tell the truth.

"Take the headline here on Slashdot a day or two ago that in 30 years there won't be anything living in the oceans", YetAnotherBob

I do know that edible fish round these shores have all but disappeared. Of what's left, the average size of catch is about one third of what it used to be. The seasons also seem to have disappeared. Doesn't get very cold in 'winter' and doesn't get very warm in 'summer' except when we get two weeks of a heat wave followed by a semi tropical hurricane.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/05 15_030515_fishdecline.html http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=367

"The best solution at present seems to be more study and analysis"

Let's do nothing ..

"the result will be like Kyoto. Lots of camera ops, a few minor efforts, a few major hold outs, and total world wide failure"

Kyoto 'failed' because the US out of all the signaturities refused to ratify it.

"I'm beginning to think that the real problem is politics. From all sides."

The only politicking is coming from your side.

re Re:Anybody remember (Score:5, interference)

Thanks for making me take a second look at the graph.

The midline is not supposed to represent any sort of "norm". It represents the 1961-1990 mean global temperature, nothing more. If anything, the norm they chose understates the nature of the change.

Now, as you're intent on pretending that climatologists are overreacting to a 0.5C change, let's put that half degree into perspective. The difference between our current climate and the last big ice age was a whopping 5-8C, and our global climate has stayed within a 0.7C window since it ended. Half a degree every twenty years should start to look like a big deal, unless you're amazingly shortsighted.

Finally, saying "water might rise" severely understates the magnitude of the problem. Do you know how many trillions of dollars of... screw it. Do you know how many cities there are located less than eight meters above sea level? If global warming ends up melting the Antarctic and Greenland caps, take a look at the new state of Florida. While it might not happen suddenly enough to cause direct loss of life, we can't just sit idly by and let this happen. America just can't deal with that many blue-haired refugees.

Anyone remember the iron enrichment experiments? This is just as ridiculous- not all of the side effects are known but let me assure you, there's plenty.

I think you need to read the aptly-timed November 2006 National Geographic article "A Fin Is a Limb Is a Wing: How Evolution Fashioned Its Masterworks". It describes how the same genes (Hox genes, if I skimmed the article correctly) shared among many otherwise very differennt creatures produce species-specific results. For example, the same genes create fins in a fish, wings in a chicken, and limbs in a human (insert graphic, page 115), or control the length (or lack of) neck in a mouse, goose, or python (insert graphic, page 121).

At least for a limited time, the article is even on the web for you to read:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0611/featur e4/

Take a look at the typical chemistry found by the MER rovers. check out those nice thick drifts of magnesium salts just below the surface (both rovers have ploughed into soft talc-like drifts of white salts of various sorts. ) Nah, if there's microbes still living on Mars they're much more likely to be way below the surface. (There's also the UV and high-energy cosmic rays to contend with, oh and water subliming away immediately... )

(and New Zealand, damn that place was MADE for wind farms)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 09_020509_belch.html

the article states that lower levels of testosterone are linked to diabetes, so could higher levels of diabetes in the population be a factor in the lower testosterone?

what about the higher levels of artificial hormones in the environment? could all the estrogen we are dumping make us less manly?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/03 01_040301_genderbender.html

At least the people in the second-most-recent wave of immigration don't demand reparations from the people in the most recent wave of immigration, unlike the people in the third-most-recent wave of immigration, who were somewhat more thorough in their genocide.

Love it? I've been up in Arctic Sweden, three days walk from the nearest road, and come across a bothy. Apart from the sleeping quarters, there are two other buildings: the outside earth closet with expanded polystyrene seat; and the bastu. They must helicopter the wood in!

I think what's more interesting is that they want the sequences to be 98% accurate, but according to a national geographic report I found here chimps and humans are only 4% different anyways. So they only want an accuracy of half the difference between people and chimps? What's the genetic similarity between Stephen Hawking and Larry King? Probably 99% or more.

So on balance, I have no trouble with society using as much oil as it's worth for us to pay for.

So you have no problem with society spewing out tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and exacerbating the demise of a sizeable number of species?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/01 07_040107_extinction.html

Dude. Plug your mouth and your car's exhaust. You're spewing a lot of sh!t.

I would not be so sanguine about "This peak oil fearmongering is just silly." Here are some points to consider:

1.) We are still using 6 barrels of oil for every barrel that is found and it is getting worse.

2.) The tar sands require a lot of natural gas. Lee Raymond, ex-CEO of Exxon-Mobile thinks we may have peaked in natural gas production in North America (http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2005/06/exxon_na tural_g.htm, http://www.energy.ca.gov/naturalgas/documents/2005 -04-19_WIEB_workshop/Dave%20M-Overview.ppt - slide 23). This means that we will have to import ever increasing amounts of LNG from the Middle East. This puts us at a strategic and economic disadvantage.

3.) In the mid 1980's, OPEC decided based their quotas on proved reserves (Ref:http://www.theoildrum.com/storyonly/2006/3/1/ 3402/63420). These are the reserves that you are very confident that are in the ground. Saudi Arabia went from around 170GB to 261GB. Kuwait went from 67GB to 99GB. Recently, Kuwait announced that their biggest field, Burgan was in decline. The Oil Minister was called in by the Kuwaiti Parliament and asked if they had 99GB or 48GB in the ground. The Kuwaitis believed their inflated numbers!!!! A similar question is being asked of the Saudis with regards to Ghawar and their other gigantic, but very aged, oil fields. Recent leaks of graphs concerning Ghawar do not bode well. Ghawar at its peak was prodcuing 5.4 Mbpd. Recently, the official estimates are down in the 4.x range.

4.) With regard to my statements in 3, the National Geographic published an article entitled: The End of Cheap Oil. On page 92 was a graph of orange boxes showing the oil reserves from around the world (Ref: http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/featu re5/). The squares represent the sizes of the oil fields ***when they were full.*** You'll note that National Geo used the inflated OPEC numbers...

5.) The Oil Shale of Colorado should be called Wax Shale for a better descriptive title to the actual consistency of the hydrocarbon. When oil gets expensive enough to actual make the Wax Shales profitable, we will be in a world of financial hurt.

6.) Yes Venezuela is sitting on top of some really large deposits of heavy crude/bitumen. This is expensive to refine. Projections are for it to grow at a 3% rate from a base of 600kbpd until 2015 and then it forecast to start to decline.

7.) Where are we exploring for more oil? The high artic, near Greenland, deep oceans, and there is talk of exploring in Antartica. The only place we have not thought about exploring for oil is the moon. The National Geo was right in its title. This is the end of **cheap** oil.


We could argue all we want to about how much oil is left and when the world will peak in production. The problem is that demand is increasing into a supply that is getting harder and harder to find and extract. Meanwhile, the results of using fossil fuels is contributing to wide spread climate change and environmental damage. We need to abandon use of fossil fuels and concentrate on using and developing alternatives.

My money is on: 1.) solar cells (http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/051904/Solar_c rystals_get_2-for-1_051904.html),

2.) long life batteries (http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communiqu e&newsid=10734), and

3.) fun EVs to drive (http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1 ). Note that a "100 mile pack" capable of 9,000 cycles is 900,000 miles of driving. That's about a human life time of driving...

But this just shows that there are lots of large gas giants. Maybe there's life on their moons...

If I'm not mistaken (TFA isn't very clear on this, and it's an awful website anyway), these new planets are all extremely hot Jupiters, so there won't even be life on their moons.

At least, that's what I wanted to reply. But a quick google showed that according to this, this and this, a hot Jupiter could actually mean that there are terrestrial planets in the same system.

Ofcourse that's still an untested theory. We have to actually find some terrestrial planets in such systems before we can be sure.

Even if this report is good science, how is it news? It was reported in March, 2005, a year and a half ago. See, e.g., Reuters and National Geographic reports from March, 2005.

Yahbut: all the ice cubes on the planet are not uniformly mixed together with all the rest of the water, else the whole planet would be uniformly 0 degrees C.

The trouble is that world weather is complex and counter intuitive. One of the predictions of a massive ice melt of Northeastern Canada and Greenland is that it could stop the atlantic warm/cold current cycle in its tracks, giving Europe a localized ice age. This would be caused by global warming. Just watch the Warmers of Mass Denial pounce on this if/when it happens!

National Geographic story on this:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/06 27_050627_oceancurrent.html

Another issue that dies out routinely in the press, although it recurs every year:
The *million people* who die of malaria each year in Africa.

You misread the article. The quote was referring to a "Hot Earth" which is similar to what a "Hot Jupiter" is, except earth-sized (i.e., really really close to the sun -- closer than Mercury is in our solar system). The habitable planet would be further away, in the habitable zone. Check out the picture.

Heated oceans are not the only component of a hurricane.

Warm water (a by-product of global warming) is only one of the components. This summer, I spoke with a local in Myrtle Beach, SC. He surfs in the winter (not sure how good the waves are) after the tourists go home. He said in the 40 years or so since he has lived there that this is the warmest the water has stayed during the winter (2005-2006). He gave a specific water temperature (I don't remember what) so this isn't a wild guess, it's hard numbers.

Record number of hurricanes or no, temperatures are staying warmer longer in many areas. This includes areas that this is a bad thing. It even includes areas that this isn't a bad thing in terms of a threat to humanity, but a great loss of an icon. We even have signs of a species going extinct from the heat. Not to be left out of the party, even humans are at risk.

I just wonder how much more climate-related disasters are needed before people stop and admit that there is a very strongly correlated statistical smoking gun that humans just _might_ be the central cause.

It's believed to be due to an upcoming polar switch (North and South switch polarities). It's nothing new, it's happened many times in the past.
National Geographic
NG#2
CNN
Space.com
New Scientist

Oh yeah, magnetic north (and probable south as well) is moving at an accelerating rate. The Magnetic North Pole is leaving Canada on it's way to Siberia.
CNN

Enough sources for ya?

It's believed to be due to an upcoming polar switch (North and South switch polarities). It's nothing new, it's happened many times in the past.
National Geographic
NG#2
CNN
Space.com
New Scientist

Oh yeah, magnetic north (and probable south as well) is moving at an accelerating rate. The Magnetic North Pole is leaving Canada on it's way to Siberia.
CNN

Enough sources for ya?

Heck, dolphins use tools.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/06 07_050607_dolphin_tools.html

One needs to examine not how many scientists and professors believe something, but what their conviction is based upon ... evidence, not personal authority, is what objective conclusions should be based on.

... the greater acceptance of scientific explanations of human origins among Icelanders than among Americans does not seem to hamper their simultaneous belief in the supernatural.

According to reports here, here and here, the Icelanders may just be experienced at distinguishing elves from trolls.

unfortunately this kind of cancer is not new, here in Australia, the Tasmanian devil are diying and will soon disapear. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/02 27_060227_tasmanian.html

Here's a question: is it right for us to stop it? This appears to be a natural weakness of Tasmanian devils. The article states:

Pearse noted that inbreeding, and the resulting lack of genetic diversity, may make Tasmanian devils particularly susceptible to this type of infection.

and so an unsuccessful species is dying out, as has happened many times in the past. Now humans are around to stop it (the government is quarantining them; there's even talk of cloning, should the entire population die), but is it beneficial to tamper with nature in this way?

No one said all cancer is contagious. That is for a sensationalist to use as straw man argument. The difference is so minor that (in the case of the Tasmanian Devil transmissible cancer):
 
  [The San Diego Zoo director of veterinary services] thinks that additional work may be needed to completely rule out a viral cause for the disease.

Just like people exposed to certain types of HPV may or may not get cancer, dogs exposed to certain types of infected cells may or may not get cancer.

It really is not a good idea to minimize the potential dangers of HPV when there is an effective vaccine against it. HPV is transmitted from human to human by physical contact, and it can cause cancer.

unfortunately this kind of cancer is not new, here in Australia, the Tasmanian devil are diying and will soon disapear. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/02 27_060227_tasmanian.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/11 11_051111_junk_patent.html

An interesting modern example of this aging, by the way, is the story of an Afghan girl who was on the cover of National Geographic some twenty years ago.

There currently are efforts underway to clone the wooly mammoth, which you can read about in the National Geographic

You can read about neanderthals from a number of different sites, wikipedia has a pretty decent page, as does talkorigins on hominid evolution in general. Reconstructing the neanderthal genome will be of great interest to science and medicine. Based on the morphology of the fossil remains and their location chronologically, evolution makes some very specific predictions about what that reconstructed genome should look like. It should be highly similar to modern H. sapiens sapiens, much more so than the couple of percent difference between our genome and chimps. If it isn't, then the theory of evolution has a very bad problem. There will not be any spin about it one way or another from the scientific community--just facts and reasonable interpretation. The neanderthal genome, if reconstructed, will also be informative on some issues such as whether or not they interbreed with H. sapiens sapiens, time of divergence with the same, and may also provide highly detailed information about their ability to speak and possibly higher brain function, which will likely be of medical interest.

No, what'll be more "histericcal" is how leading Intelligent Design pushers/Creationists will spin yet another blow to their superstition.

The common wood frog displays a rare trait called freeze tolerance. When the mercury falls, the animal becomes, to the eye and touch, a frog- shaped ice cube. The way it does this may eventually be copied to aid human organ transplants.

In reality, the frog's metabolism slows to a crawl, and its body temperature drops to between 21 and 30 Fahrenheit (-6 and -1 Celsius). The amphibian's heart and brain cease to function.

Something like this happened with the Gospel of Judas. It was found in the desert, preserved by the aridity, and passed through a few hands to a Swiss antiquities dealer. He wanted $3 million for it; when he couldn't get it he stashed it in a safe deposit box, for 17 years, where it rapidly crumbled away. Finally in 2000 it was sold and they spent 5 years reassembling and restoring it; but about 20% was lost.

If greed can almost destroy a gospel, none of our cultural heritage is safe.

This is nothing. There's frogs that can stay frozen all winter and then wake up fine in the summer. Me thinks we need to do some gene splicing.

Either that, or the crabs are growing.

"[T]he crabs can grow to 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and measure 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) across . . ." (March, 2004)

National Geographic did an entire feature about the caste system in India. Link to article

Branded as impure from the moment of birth, one in six Indians lives -- and suffers -- at the bottom of the Hindu caste system.

...

Discrimination against India's lowest Hindu castes is technically illegal. But try telling that to the 160 million Untouchables, who face violent reprisals if they forget their place.

...

The sins of Girdharilal Maurya are many, his attackers insisted. He has bad karma. Why else would he, like his ancestors, be born an Untouchable, if not to pay for his past lives? Look, he is a leatherworker, and Hindu law says that working with animal skins makes him unclean, someone to avoid and revile. And his unseemly prosperity is a sin. Who does this Untouchable think he is, buying a small plot of land outside the village? Then he dared speak up, to the police and other authorities, demanding to use the new village well. He got what Untouchables deserve.

One night, while Maurya was away in a nearby city, eight men from the higher Rajput caste came to his farm. They broke his fences, stole his tractor, beat his wife and daughter, and burned down his house. The message was clear: Stay at the bottom where you belong.

Branded as impure from the moment of birth, one in six Indians lives -- and suffers -- at the bottom of the Hindu caste system.

...

Discrimination against India's lowest Hindu castes is technically illegal. But try telling that to the 160 million Untouchables, who face violent reprisals if they forget their place.

...

The sins of Girdharilal Maurya are many, his attackers insisted. He has bad karma. Why else would he, like his ancestors, be born an Untouchable, if not to pay for his past lives? Look, he is a leatherworker, and Hindu law says that working with animal skins makes him unclean, someone to avoid and revile. And his unseemly prosperity is a sin. Who does this Untouchable think he is, buying a small plot of land outside the village? Then he dared speak up, to the police and other authorities, demanding to use the new village well. He got what Untouchables deserve.

One night, while Maurya was away in a nearby city, eight men from the higher Rajput caste came to his farm. They broke his fences, stole his tractor, beat his wife and daughter, and burned down his house. The message was clear: Stay at the bottom where you belong.

Saw bits-n-pieces of this last weekend: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/ET/p opup/200607080100.html

What a joke -- Saddam wasn't as much of a threat as are the policies of the Monarchs in Saudi Arabia: their policies have led to a situation where over half the workforce comprises of foreign workers, and almost half the citizens are under 15 years old. Check this out.

A few months ago I stumbled upon an old National Geographic magazine which had an article about Saudi Arabia. Needless to say, it had the same numbers as the BBC article mentioned above, but provided a more in depth infromation. (I seriously suggest you get an old copy of NG and read; then you'll know that my comments below aren't just B.S)

A little fact that might interest you (as well as explain why there are so many foreign worker) is that the majority of students study Theology. Add to that the fact that the rulers are splashing money on the populace left and right in order to keep them happy, and you end up with young people who wouldn't even think of taking a non-professional job. So, that's why they need so many foreign workers: in order to do all the meanial work.

So, now you have country full of Religion-specialists which have nothing to do. Well, you know how people are when they get bored: they tend to do stupid things, especially young ones who haven't worked a day in their life, and are unfamiliar with the burden of responsability (remember, they have serious oil money over there, and the rulers are splurging it to keep the population happy).

Enter the fundamentalists -- combine bored, impressionable young people with hardcore islamists, and you end up brainwashed individuals ready to carry their leader's command.

So Saddam gave some change to terrorists. So does Iran, and Syria, and most likely other countries in the gulf. And if I'm not mistaken, the US has also financed some groups of questionable nature.

My point is that Saddam was managable, and contained. However, the invasion has spurred many people to fight the US; the invasion has given credibility to the fundamentalists' claims that the US is after ruling the world. Now the situation in the region is much more unstable, and if Saudi Arabia was to go down, then we'll really see how Saddam's hissy-fits were really insignificant.

In a couple decades somebody is going to start a great project to just check people's DNA and plug them into a world family tree.

You mean like this?

I am still looking for a reputable scientist that believes in global warming, and isn't caught up in the hype.

A few are quoted in this article, as are other people directly affected today:

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0409/featu re2/fulltext.html

What research has been done in the last few decades that has removed hope that dolphins are really as smart as we once thought?

2006: Dolphins have their own names 2005: Dolphin Moms Teach Daughters to Use Tools

However I doubt dolphins will be officially recognised as people any time soon, for any number of reasons (legal, religious, diet, greed, etc). It's hard enough convincing some folks that all humans are people (rather than slaves/menials/tools/fodder), let alone an entirely different one.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html

Couple this with:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17434-20 03Oct12?language=printer

and you get monkeys that can control rats with their mind!

I for one welcome our new monkey overlords and their army of mind controlled rats...

While we're being rediculous: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/10 05_051005_fuelcellcar.html

The May (2006) issue of National Geographic has an article titled "The Misery of Allergies", which lends a lot of credibility to your story. The article says scientists aren't sure what causes allergies, but there is evidence that shows that growing up in "dirtier" environments leads to fewer allergies.

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/featur e4/index.html