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TigerCloning
BeaverWise writes "Looks like puss and boots is coming back.
The last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, died in captivity in 1936, but a team of Australian biologists believes the animal's extinction may simply be a 70-year hiccup. DNA from a Tasmanian tiger has been found, and cloning is under way."
Is for someone to bring back Dire Wolves!
"What a cute lil puppy" "Munch! Scarf! Yum!"
Pirst Fost!
Best Slashdot Co
And give me some sabretooth aswell. Imagine 2020 when your daughter makes some tasy dront for thanksgiving...
I wonder if they'll have to repair the Tiger DNA with that from frogs, then we can have spontaneous sex-changes and let them reproduce!
What on earth does this refer to? Some Oz kids show or something?
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Tazmania Park is frightening in the dark
All the thylacines are running wild
Somone shut the fence off in the rain
I admit its kinda eerie
But this proves my chaos theory
And I dont think I'll be coming back again
Oh no.
I cannot approve of this attraction
'Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kinda mad
A huge tazmanian tiger ate our lawyer
Well, I suppose that proves...they're really not all bad
Always been a fan of this bizarre kitty. Glad to see they're bringing him back. Kinda makes up for the fact humanity hunted 'em out of existance. Of course, now here comes the flip side: What if our killing off the Tasmanian tiger *WAS* a natural product of Darwinism -- acted through humanity as a whole? What if we start doing this to a bunch of other animals? What happens when we finally bring back wooly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers or even dinosaurs? (Assuming viable DNA can be found.) What sort of kinks will be throwning into the evolutionary process? My 0.02$.
Where's the submit button??
Aren't they trying to do something similar to this with the Wolly Mammoth? If they success, the days of a real Jurrassic Park may be near.... Kewl!
Power corrupts... absolute power is kinda neat!
This is sure to bring up A LOT of ethical questions. If we can bring back a certain species of animal then what role does God play? I am not a very religious person but this kind of thing scares the hell out of some people. Think about it, religion is about God making all of the decisions, who lives, who dies, what species keeps going, what species becomes extinct, etc. If we start making these decisions the people that spend every sunday in church will have to look at things differently. It is just 1 BIG can of worms.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
Haven't we learned our lesson about this yet?
...to what extent do you repopulate the wild? Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?
This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly. If it does, it'll have a significant impact on the Endangered Species list - don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more! It might do more harm than good in that respect.
Evan
So dinosaurs are next!? Darn, I thought those mainframes will become extinct once and for all.
Does anyone have a link to some pictures of the Tasmanian Tiger pleas?
Which, in a way, is probably a strong argument for keeping dead babies in jars.
dinosaur comics
Just want to know your opinion:
how will all this cloning interfere with evolution (according to Darwin's theory)? Shall we claim cloning is the next step in evolution so we could take back extincted species, or shall we be worried for the fact we are doing some sort of sabotage to nature's law?
Cheers!
Don't they see that with the limited DNA there has been created a genetic bottleneck where only certain traits are possible? The end result is like forever inbreeding: rampant disease and disfigurement.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
What, you mean the second law of thermodynamics?
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Gotta catch you all!
These cloned tigers will be either put in wild life very early, but they would need support as they have no parents, or later but then, they'll not be trained to survive in the wild and risk to be extermined by other races (not speaking of men).
They could also be put in Zoo... But then, what good is it to bring them to life ? Born to be prisonner is no good.
I'm not some kind of technology-fearing Luddite (as the fact that I read /. should prove) but IMHO this isn't the right thing to do. Why? Because as much as we might like to, you can't turn back the clock - a principle made abundently clear by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Whilst the original loss of the Tasmanian tiger was a tragedy it makes to sense to recreate the animals just to satisfy the collective guilt over the original incident. Times have changed, and there isn't a place for the tiger in modern Australia - shown by the fact that it was a dangerous menace which was hunted in the first place. Even if these scientists manage to recreate a viable population of them, where are they going to go? Back into the wild where circumstances will echo what happened in 1888?
There are valuable uses for medical technology like this, but attempting to correct the sins of the past isn't one of them. Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on.
This reminds me of something I read a long time back... September 16, 1997, in the New York Times, there was an article about scientists trying to bring back the quagga. Some of them, if memory serves, were just trying to breed red horses, while others were trying to extract DNA from a mummified quagga (or something like that). Anyone know how they're doing? ;)
Maybe they should try quaffing a plaid potion...
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Cute little bastard isnt it...(just look at that Pic)
HELL NO!!!
Jainith
Now if they clone one of the big ones the bengals or siberians then i'd be intrested...
Beware (dog) Man eating Tiger...hehe
If this works, we could bring back many of the species that we drove into extinction through our ignorance. We are destroying the Earth with our technology -- we're learning this the hard way. We need to start using the technology to reverse the damage we have done, while learning how to eliminate the effects of our new knowledge on the environment. This is one start among many.
I didn't read the story very closely so I don't know if it mentions how many tasmanian fetuses (fetii?) they have. If it's a small number, though, this exercise is relatively pointless. Let's say it was one female and one male. They make 50 copies of each and breed the males with the females. The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons.
Two females and two males are only slightly better--the children will consist of three groups: full siblings, half-siblings and strangers. But the grandchildren will be (carry the one, add two) all full and half siblings? Anyway, you can see my point. They need a "breeding population of genetic samples" if they want to do more than a publicity stunt.
I should also note that while the animal produced IS a tasmanian whatever, this extinction/cloning cycle will probably result in long-term speciation. That is, X years from now (for some X less than the "normal" amount) these tasmanians will be a different species than the original. Why? Because we chose a non-random sample AND subjected the new animal to new conditions (unless they plan on releasing them into the wild).
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This is so not going to work. Sorry to be a nay-sayer, but cloning mammals is still very problematic in the best conditions.
Dolly the sheep has been in bad health for a long time; and other clonings report similar results. Injecting DNA from one organism into an egg does not give the same results as natural conception; it appears likely that some DNA damage may be occurring.
Also, the DNA by itself isn't sufficient to reproduce an organism: there are lots of proteins involved in reproducing DNA, and the environment in which the embryo grows is crucial. Even if we produce a clone of something, there's no guarantee it'll be an actual Tasmanian wolf; it might be smaller, bigger, whatever.
No matter how you nurture the clone, it is not going to be in an authentic womb, and things like the oxygen and nutrient supply, hormones from the parent animal, the womb physiology and the gestation period will all have unpredictable effects on development.
My prediction is that they will be highly unlikely to get any form of live offspring, but if they do, it certainly won't be a Tasmanian Wolf as your 19th Century hunter would know it.
If you're a jock, inflict some pain / If you're a nerd then use your brain - DAPHNE AND CELESTE
... is here. I kid you not.
Oh. Really? Wow. OK. Well done, that cat.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
... about attempts to clone mammoths are here and here. The second one was the first /. story I ever read IIRC. That takes me back... :)
But I very much doubt this will work. The reason: there's only one tiger that can provide suitable DNA.
The problem with this is that you can clone the tiger as many times as you like, but they all have identical DNA. That's what cloning is. For starters, that makes them all the same gender, but even if you overcome that barrier you still have inbreeding taken to its most extreme level. That would be even more destructive to the species than the unrestricted hunting of the past was.
You could try engineering genetic drift into the species, perhaps, but there are two problems with that. First, expense. You'd have to make literally hundreds of clones, all of them different, to recreate the species at a viable level. Second, you have to map out the genome to do this reliably, and for that you need multiple specimens (which the scientists don't have). So all you can do is more or less blind guesswork (or at the least, really myopic guesswork).
Then there's the woolly mammoth experiments, where they want to reconstruct the species by interbreeding clones with elephants. Again, interesting, but if you take this route have you really recreated the species, or just a fairly good facsimile? You've created something that looks like a mammoth, and maybe even acts like one to the best we can figure out, but is it really a mammoth?
Yes, it'd be a nice idea to bring back extinct species, particularly the ones for which humanity is to blame for their extinction. But the fact is, there are things that, once done, just plain can't be undone. It's a shame, but everything, even science, has limits (maybe those limits are really, really high, but they exist all the same).
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I not sure we should go around resurrecting whatever species we feel like.
But we are free to kill them off whenever we like? By your logic, we should bulldoze all hospitals and allow people with easily-treatable diseases to die.
I am all for the protection of endangered species, but something about bringing to life what was history through science gives me that "Don't mess with the time-space continuum, Marty" feeling.
For starters, this is science, not science-fiction. There is not time-travel involved. If humans killed a species off, why can't they bring it back?
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
Actually, we can turn back the clock (i.e., bring back the tiger). You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't because we can't. That's just silly. We can and we will.
Actually, there is no cosmic plan; we learn what we can about the world through own own brains and try to get along as best we can. And humans deal with nature not by adapting (in the sense of passive adjustment), but by understanding and adapting it to us. Tiger extinct? Let's learn to bring it back. Hell, we're close to bringing back the Wooly Mammoth from the last ice age, 10k years ago.
Using science to figure out the universe around us is what we do. This is just one more example--and if it brings back a tiger, then it's a net benefit, so I don't see the problem.
SteveMaking a viable specimen of a Tasmanian Tiger in vitro wouldn't necessarily mean that they would be able to create anything close to a stable population, nor is it possible to say if the animal would be behaviorally viable, that is, be able to "act" like a Tasmanian Tiger. A significant portion of higher mammalian behavior is learned; any successful specimens from these trials would more or less have to "figure it out on their own." This does not point to any sort of large-scale animal repopulation possibility yet, so don't start flipping out over "Nature's Prime Directive" yet. If anything, this probably could lead to several laboratory specimens, even a small breeding group, but repopulating the wild would be a long ways off, if indeed it is at all possible.
I say stop the nonsense. This isn't science, it's cruelty. Clone something that can have some use and let the memory of a human falacy stay. Some great way to satisfy human curiosity.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
This brings me to another point. Who would you clone if you could bring anyone back? Like what would Lincoln say if he were alive today? I'm pretty sure it would be this:
"AAAAAAAHHH!! GIANT METAL BIRD IN SKY!!!!"
hehe.
thelocust[dot]org
I think the concern with upsetting Darwinism is pretty unecessary, since both technology and globalization have forever unbalanced any 'pure' form of evolution. Without freighters and airplanes, there would be no rabbit problem in Australia, no Dutch elm disease in the States, no zebra mussels destroying the foundation of our freshwater ecosystems. No chance that, with an appropriately engineered pathogen and a normal day of international air travel, a global epidemic could de-speciate the whole blinking planet at any given moment.
But more importantly: human control of the biosphere is total. We could clone out a whole flock of sabertooth tigers and seed them over the planet with cargo jets...but the disruption to local ecosystems would still be minimal compared to other pathways of human intervention (habitat destruction, de-forestation, etc.) Other than the transient choas in the urban areas, of course.
I disagree with the commentators above about the morality of reviving extinct species. Especially recently extinct species. Fact is, the biodiversity of our planet is been killed off at a breakneck speed, and it is creating all sorts of other environmental problems.
For example, Tasmania (and the rest of Australia) has a real problem with rabbits. These were an introduced species which have run riot mainly because thier traditional predators don't exist in Australia. So would not reviving an Antipodean predator be a tentative solution to this problem?
It's all to easy to say, well, we shot 'em out back in 1880 cus they was killing our sheep, but fact is, the thylacine is a native to the ecosystem there and clearly has a definite place within the ecology. Just because we're largely ignorant of what is is (mainly because we never bothered to find out!) doesn't mean that the position doesn't exist.
We're all to quick to impose our view of the world and the functioning of its environment onto our long-suffering planet, but we clearly don't have any idea what we are doing and we are definitely going to suffer adverse effects.
Greater biodiversity adds to the quality of our lives, not detracts from it. And it's our fault that species like the Tasmanian wolf were eradicated - don't you think we should at least make an effort to restore it if we can?
I think my brain is dribbling out down the back of my legs
"...IMHO this isn't the right thing to do."
"There are valuable uses for medical technology like this..."
And just how do you think we are going to get to the point of medical technology without experimenting on animals? And what more dramatic demonstration can you think of than "resurrecting the dead"?
But even the core of your argument "Like it or not, life follows a plan, and once something has happened we need to deal with it and move on." makes no real sense in this context. Tasmanians were part of an ecological structure. It may be that the structure no longer requires this element in which case we are OK. But it may be that the structure does (or will) require this element in which case we better get cracking.
Consider your argument in terms of building materials: "So we lost a beam. Like it or not you can't turn back the clock--it's the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Sometimes beams just break or get removed. It's all part of The Plan. There are valuable uses for construction technology in learning how to create new beams, but attempting to correct the sins of the past isn't one of them."
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I'm not trying to be anti-science here, but we all know whats going to happen to that poor creature once they DO bring it back. Regardless of the reasoning behind why they bring it back, its going to have a very miserable existence. First of all, the media and the businesses are going to go into a frenzy. The media is always looking for stuff like this. But the real pain is the businesses. Lets face it, just about everything is all about money. I can just see all these zoos and other buisnesses looking for ways to cash in on this new development. Secondly, do they plan to re-release this thing into the wild? How will they train it to survive? Or are they hoping that it will have an inbuilt instinct and know what to do? Chances are, most of these tasmanian tigers (atleast for the next 20 or so years) will be brought up completely in captivity. They will be put on display for people , thats it. Third. There was an article about this on another site (cant remember which, think it was CNN) , that mentioned that the scientist when asked if he was playing God, retaliated by saying we were also playing god when we wiped it out. I disagree, it has been the case through out evolution, that when one species got an upperhand on the others, it would multiply and drive the others to extinction if the others themselves did not evolve and adapt. I'm not saying that human extermination of all kinds of life is a _normal_ evolutionary process, what I am saying is, that human kind has achieved such a great advantage over the other species that this process of extermination can reach catastrophic proportions. It is just like economics really, think of all our species as competing for the resources of this planet, the biggest and baddest, loose to the smartest ..
Its one thing to _conserve_ what we have, its another to bring back extinct species for the sake of monetary gain. I'm not gonna make judgements on if its wrong, but I think they are different agendas and will have different outcomes.
Sorry, No sig!
I know about puss 'n' boots. What does it have to do with Tasmanian whatevers?
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this technique is actually the scientific basis for the Second Coming
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Now Kellogg's will be able to get their hands on this technology. Imagine a future where there is a Tony the Tiger on every street corner peddeling Frosted Flakes. (There GGggggreat!) What a scary future indeed...
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Well, the Tasmanian Tiger isn't the only creature that they could use this sort of thing on. Over in South Africa, there's a painstaking project to re-create the Quagga, or Cape Zebra. They've spent the last ten years breeding regular zebras focusing on breeding animals with quagga-like traits, to get something that is as close as possible to what died out a hundred-odd years ago.
There are a few quagga pelts still around the world, so what are the bets someone just goes and clones one, just when this project is about to get results. Hahaha!
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
I guess he could play hide and seek with what DNA he doesn't want us to have ? ;-)
/* Wayne Pascoe
Slightly OT here - does it bother anyone else that they're bringing back the wooly mammoth, a creature from the ice age, to the present, where the north pole is melting and the greenhouse effect is raising the overall tempurature? I can't do much but shake my head over this whole story...good breeding questions from you guys. One can only hope the professionals in charge have an answer.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Yes you are a technology-fearing luddite - and with good reason, you see how it will mess with your silly religious-type idea of a "plan". Face facts - there is no plan. People killed the tiger, people are bringing it back. "We can't turn back the clock" hmm? Bull. And thermodynamics has nothing to do with it; nobody's violating entropy by cloning some usedta-be-extinct beastie. As to putting them back without public friction - that is the problem of the recreators, and I expect they'll work out a solution.
IOW: Heck yes, we should "play god". Anyone who says otherwise is a silly superstionist.
I think all of these cloning efforts for endangered / extinct species is great, but where are we going to put all of these newly resurrected species? A small team in a basement lab and a one-day media blitz makes for a feel-good story today, but who's going to pay for the thousands of acres these efforts will need for habitat to REALLY bring the species back? Slashdot runs stories for us geeks on cloning and Planet of the Apes movies, but I haven't seen any stories here about how orangs are about to go extinct due to the Indonesians destroying their habitat. That's the REAL problem /issue, and I sure don't know what the solution is - except maybe acceptance/ resignation that extintion isn't just forever, its inevitable.
god creates dinosar, god desetroys dinosar, god creates man, man destorys god, man creates dinosar, dinosar eats man.... hello?!?!? did we learn *nothing* from mr. chrighton? if an animal is extinct, it's usually for a good reason.. ps- speel cheaker knot workeing.
--DV
"Kermit the frog, cuz he gets all the hos!"
--DV
In this day it is safer to be a ninja than a samurai
The energy of the universe is constant, the entropy of the universe is continuously increasing.
Therefore we cannot post on Slashdot.
Uhm.. why do I suddenly sense the universe folding in on itself??
I plan to plan / Dutch course in The Hague
"No matter how you nurture the clone, it is not going to be in an authentic womb, and things like the oxygen and nutrient supply, hormones from the parent animal, the womb physiology and the gestation period will all have unpredictable effects on development."
I was going to mention this same point and then it occurred to me: what about subsequent generations? If we can get the first generation out accurately enough then the second generation WILL have an authentic womb. Of course, the DNA damage problem still exists...
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By your logic, we should bulldoze all hospitals and allow people with easily-treatable diseases to die.
Keep in mind, humans in hospitals are either alive or in the grey zone between dying and dead. I don't think extinct qualifies as being in that grey zone. Being extinct means you are definitely crossing a threshold to reinstantiate thier life on earth again.
And bridging over that "70-year hiccup" isn't that far from time-travel in the sense that you are assuming that all changes in the enviroment are trivial since the last time this tiger was domininate. What if the world has adjusted since then?
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
I'd have to agree with you. Everything I learned in my high school biology class indicates that you need a wide base of DNA to avoid all the problems that incest brings. Let's be honest, how many dead thylcines do they have just laying around to pull genetic matter from? not a whole lot I'd guess. And How large a population will they have to create to avoid inbreeding? Pretty large I'd say. Anybody know the mathamematical formula for this?
Who are you? Where are we going? And what's with the handbasket?
Purple Power
Oh, that's right, I forgot. If a beaver builds a dam, that's nature; if we build a hydroelectric plant, that's science. Humans are intrinsicly evil and have no place on this planet. [end sarcasm]
All that's happened is that we've got a workable intelligence, so instead of creatures evolving to the environment, we're creatures changing the environment to suit ourselves. I still don't see why this kind of thing isn't considered nature. People seem to act like cloning is against the rules, to which I say, what rules?
(Yes, that really is me, just last week, actually. If anyone wants the full exaplanation, feel free to write me for one.)
For all those who are sayting that this shouldn't be done - it really isn't bringing back the tiger.
First, it wouldn't create a large enough population to sustain itself. Second, this is a long way from introducing them to the wild.
However, there is a value of preserving these creatures in captivity. Perhaps they may be particularly useful for studying a certain biological phemonenon. Outside of that, they should be preserved in recognition of the ultimate worth of biological diversity.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Vote!
The "Tasmanian Tiger" is actually not a tiger at all. It's more similar to a wolf.
Confused me, too, but as long as it's a completely useless fact, it's worth memorizing since it could win me a game of Trivial Pursuit someday..
seven two six five
seven four six one seven
two six four two e
If we're to take a pre-determinist view, the same argument, from the other perspective, is "life follows a plan - if we weren't meant to do it, we wouldn't have advanced to the point of being capable of it."
Maybe it was meant to die out. Maybe it's meant to come back. Maybe neither's true. I'm certainly not the one to say, but quoting only one half of an argument doesn't guarantee you the correct answer either.
"Simulation?"
How do you create a working simulator without any data on the actual processes?
"Testing on willing human volunteers?"
Logically impossible in this case. Remember we are creating clones. How do you obtain the permission of the human you are about to create? Or are you thinking that the clone and original are somehow the "same person" and that asking the permission of one gives the permission of the other? If so, I guess it would be OK if I asked one of a pair of identical twins if I can experiment on the other one.
"Life is not like a plank of wood..."
Yes it is. Hey! Making assertion without proof or reasoning is easy! I'm going to give up that "using logic and data" thing I've been doing.
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I live in Tasmania, and so I feel this is quite close to home. When White Tasmanians came here, there was a thriving population of Tasmanian Tigers, or Native Wolves as they were called back then. It was thought that there population could cope with the amount of hunting that was going on. However by the late 1890s, They were becoming scarce. They weren't as easy to find. The last of the species died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. It was thought that the Thylacine was extinct, as no confirmed sightings have occurred since then. There are many unconfirmed sightings every year. Some people think that there is still a small remainant colony in some parts of Tasmania, mainly the SW World Heritage Area because of it's remoteness. That part of Tassie is still very wild.
The Thylacine would probably benefit from being ressurected. If there is still a wild group, this may help to boost their numbers. I think the tiger should be brought back, not just because it is an extinct animal, or possibly endangered (unlikely tho), but because it represents a group of mammals (I think is) unique to Tasmania, The Carnivorous Marsupials. Most carnivorous marsupials that developed on mainland Australia were squeezed out by the dingo, a close relative of the dog. The dingo did not reach Tasmania and as such its CM populations were left undisturbed. The Tasmanian Devil is also a CM. However the thylacine was the only active hunter. I just hope that enough genetic diversity can be found among the 'samples' to provide a stable population.
In principle (given sufficiently advanced genetic technology) it might be possible to identify and eliminate the recessive lethal alleles from the tiger gene pool. It would then be safe for cloned animals to interbreed. Of course, this is still a long way off. But then again, I'd guess there's some way to go before technology is advanced enough to do this cloning, anyway.
There's a separate issue, given a population founded from just a few individuals, genetic diversity will be extremely low, which could make the population rather vulnerable to environmental changes and disease. Again, this might not be an insurmountable problem -- it might even be possible to add some genes from closely related living species to some individuals, in order to boost diversity in critical areas (like the immune system). But once again, we're still a long way off.
My two nucleotides, and probably completely wrong...
I feel no pity at all for you if such a thing happens, it would be quite a funny piece of irony.
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
Go to the ARKive project and search for thylacine.
I think the article is a little vague about what we're actually capable of doing right now. First of all, all we actually have is dead, preserved tissue. Current cloning techniques need intact, living cells to serve as a nuclear donor. It sounds like what they want to do is sequence the Tasmanian Tiger DNA, and then clone (in a molecular sense) portions that can then be grafted onto the nucleus of a living relative, until you've reconstructed the Tasmanian Tiger.
This means a massive, high-accuracy sequencing job (Possible, very very expensive--but the price is dropping), and the ability to insert large numbers of lengthy sequences in a targeted fashion (Barely possible, but currently not nearly feasible for a project this large).
The replacement of Tasmanian Devil DNA (Or whatever species they start with) will almost certainly have to be done piecewise, over several generations of Devils. Current cloning techniques almost certainly will also be used, since you need to get those modifications into the germ line (There are other methods besides cloning from somatic cells, but they don't work too well).
Why stop with an extinct animal?
Think of the ramifications and benefits of cloning extinct people as well?
For instance, we could DNA from his now frozen brain and clone Hitler. We could then finally put him on trial for crimes against humanity during the war. Heck, we could televise it for ad revenue. Afterwards, we can have him put his face through a board at carnivals and allow people to throw pies at him.
We could clone Jesus Christ from the Shroud of Turin and start a whole new industry recreating "What Christ Really Looked Like". Wow, we might possibly have to repaint the Last Supper and hundreds of velvet paintings in people's homes.
We could clone up new versions of Alexander the Great, Augustus Ceasar, Ghengis Khan, and Abraham Lincoln and see if one of them would make a better president for the U.S.
We could bring back Andre the Giant and the Von Erich brothers to kick all these new wrestlers' butts.
Heck the possibilities are endless. Get writing your congressman and local cloning board!
The Tasmanian devil is Yahoo Serious.
Sean
here is a video of an Tasmanian tiger from 1933
How do you create a working simulator without any data on the actual processes?
Because you know the principles behind it? This isn't guesswork you know. It's a logical progession of scientific knowledge.
Logically impossible in this case.
You were talking in general, so was I.
Yes it is. Hey! Making assertion without proof or reasoning is easy! I'm going to give up that "using logic and data" thing I've been doing.
Wow, could have fooled me!
Besides, that also brings up the question of cross-breeding. Imagine crossing a Mammoth with a modern elephant. Forget the dog-sleds and mules. Give me a walking behemoth with a natural (well, sort of) winter coat!
-Kriticism
-PARANOIA is fun. D20 is not fun. The Computer says so.
-The Computer
"Because you know the principles behind it? This isn't guesswork you know. It's a logical progession of scientific knowledge."
I ask, for the third time, where do we learn these principles if not from nature? They are not obvious a priori. Cloning is an old idea but a new technology. Experiments must be done.
"You were talking in general, so was I."
Regardless, the fact remains that human volunteers for a full-clone-creation experiement are useless. Given that simulation is also useless (as shown above), please explain where we get the requisite DNA.
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No, we're just not intelligent enough to understand His plan. These things happen for a reason.
This has got to be the most pointless circular argument i've ever heard.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Why would the SECOND law of thermodynamics be Natures PRIME directive? Well... Somebody was gonna ask!
Please be patient, I'm a work in progress! --Alan Jackson
This Universe is Mine.
I am God Here.
I define superior morals as follows:
All people shall bow down and worship Me.
All people shall pay homage to Me, and believe in Me, despite the contradicting physical evidence I shall create to sow confusion in their souls. If they should question my capricious moods and inconsistent demands and proclimations they shall be cast into a dark, hot, fiery place, to be tortured for the rest of eternity.
As God, My Superior Morals allow Me to take great delight and pleasure from this. Thou shalt not kill, but I'll waste as many of you little pricks as I like.
As a final insult to the inferior beings I have created, I shall have sex with one of them (call it bestiality or incest, My Superior Morals allow me this luxury), cause her to have a child, who will suffer and be crucified, then later worshipped.
However, since I have already commanded these inferior milk suckers not to have any other god before Me, and this includes My Son, they will all be damned for worhipping him, be it in place of, or simply in addition to, Myself.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. And a damned fine way for Me to counter the ennui of endless time, being enterained by their pathetic efforts to satisfy my impossible demands, sqaundering their own pitiful and short lives in the process. Delicious irony and fantastic entertainment for the hosts of heaven.
Now sing My praises, bitch.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It'll happen to us one day. There are some hard questions that need to be asked such as where is this animal's habitat now? Has another species thrived in that area with this species absence? Are we sacrifing one species for the sake of another?
There are many good cases for cloning, but to bring back an extinct species isn't one of them. A better use is to clone endangered species to increase genetic diversity.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
They died out for a reason. Could they even survive now? They won't bring any of their diseases back with them, since that's not inherent in their DNS, but they may be easily susceptible to our diseases. Great potential value for immunology research, environmental adaptibility studies, increased knowledge of genetic engineering (insert link to spider-silk producing goats here).
If we prove that we CAN do it, will we also prove that we SHOULD NOT have? If openning the Panama Canal had very dire consequences on the ecology of both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and introducing rabbits into Australia was a disaster, and introducing lamprey into the Great Lakes is a major problem, and dumping an exotic aquarium into a local lake is inviting trouble, and you can not transport live fruit to another country... What might the consequences be of introducing into the wild, an animal from a different millenium? What if, after successfully cloning a mammoth, we try the Velociraptors after all? Did Divine Providence remove them for a reason, so we'd have a chance?
And, will the ability to bring the dead back to life make us more cavalier about how we handle our ecology? Will we be less careful with deforestation and developing the wet-lands because, after all, we now have an "UNDO" button? The government is storing seeds of our staple crops, just as they store printed materials in the LoC; just in case of a disaster. Will they also store animal DNA - so we can recover the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus after it goes extinct?
And lastly, will this ability to rewind evolution encourage us to hack human DNA, and take human life more lightly than we already do because... Hey.. We can always reinstall the previous version of your child, since the upgraded 'genius-athlete' model developed cancer at the age of three.
But, the problem is that for all the speculating we can do, we simply can not know the consequences without walking that path in rigorously controlled, laboratory conditions - to see what lies on the other side of the door. We need to do this; but we need to realize that we may not be able to close the door again, and so we should not open it unless we're willing to accept whatever comes through it.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
The Wooly Mammoth was not a dinosaur.
They're Grrrrreat!
"It's all right, it's ok. There's something to live for" - Uncle Bill
Kentucky Fried Dodo anyone?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
What makes you think any humans would want to fuck with you? Onion
http://twitter.com/onion2k
well, we now have the cover animal for the o'reilly book. :)
Well, the only real natural laws are the physical laws. Evolution is not a law but a pattern that tends to be produced by the laws of physics.
We are breaking that pattern, but so what? Evolution is a very slow process. Genetic engineering can work much more quickly, even at its earliest stages as it is now. Were some global disaster to occur, we could repopulate the world within centuries, rather than the eons that it would take for "Nature" to do it.
Also, as far as philosophical or moral issues are concerned, I think it's important to keep in mind that the universe is a natural thing, and man is a part of the universe. We are not some invading alien force from another dimension, so we are natural, just like the rest of the world we live in.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Bingo! I wish I had moderator points already. When people say how "vulnerable" the giant pandas are, I laugh. They're more powerful than white sharks. They have the ability to mesmerize the most powerful species on the planet into protecting them... all because of their appearance!
Let's say we bring back the Tasmanian Tiger. What good would it do? Every species has a time and place... and the Tasmanian Tiger's time is over. Perhaps we could bring them back, but nature would have to adjust itself to accomodate the immediate re-entry of an old player. Other species may die off from being hunted by these creatures. We may even end up hunting them back into extinction again. Who knows what will happen, but who cares? Either way we have a delicate balance of species that will be upheld. We can bring back one species, only to kill off another. New species are popping up everyday and at the same time many species are dying off. One day it will be our time to die off as a species and have a new species replace us.
I think I've seen you on an IRC channel somewhere :>
:-)
I encompass all things.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Similar to the movie 'Dogma', where those two fallen angels couldn't undo what happened to them, because it would cause the whole universe to collapse. What happens when we bring back a creature that was supposed to be dead? Does that undo everything?
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
...But can we use this to bring back the ThunderCats?
Thunder-thunder-thundercats!
Dear my! What are those things coming out of her nose?
Spaceballs!
Does anybody have a checksum algorithm for DNA?
Tiger Tiger burning bright,
Two left paws? Now thats not right!
Bob.
IMHO, this is really where the alleged morality in religeon breaks down. When the God character rhetorically asked the Job character, "Where were you when I made the world?" the authors were copping out, because the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the story was that the God character was evil by man's standards. They couldn't figure out any other way to end the story, so they tried the "You just don't get it" angle.
Ethical and rational humans simply must have concepts of good an evil. If a man's (even if that man is a believer in God) concept of good and evil is flawed, then that man must be wrong about some things. His senses are wrong, his logic is wrong, and his faith is wrong too. How can you, apparently a believer, say that anything is right or wrong (including cloning Tasmanian Tigers) when you yourself admit that you don't know what is right or wrong?
If you can judge Man, you can judge God by those same standards. If you can't judge God, you can't judge Man. So what's it going to be: when you want to know if something is right or not, are you going to think for yourself, or are you going to quote what philosophers wrote thousands of years ago before even the most basic principles of the universe were understood?
Aha! Now I see where this is going... God created the ribosomes that transcribe genetic code triplets into proteins as a "technological device that effectively limits access" and humans that tamper with it, without authorization, are in violation of DMCA. (And when Watson and Crick reverse-engineered the genetic code, they were publishing God's trade secret.) But didn't He implicitly grant authorization when he sold--
NO CARRIER
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Then you're not intelligent enough to understand His plan, and you are incapable of knowing right from wrong. So what is your basis for ever objecting to (or supporting) anything?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If I am not wrong, the first population of Tasmania (similar to Australian Aboriginals) was massacred / died from illness totally after the arrival of white colonists.
It is one of the best cases of a human population totally exterminated not leaving even mixed-race descendants.
Maybe you could clone some old Tasmanians.
Am I wrong?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
And we'll have to ask the same questions. So I think tampering with genetics, bringing back extinct species ranks right up there with time travel issues too. (It's just that one came before the other).
Rader
Odds are if these scientists revive this species, they will eventually send them to various zoos. Imagine the turnout any zoo will have if they display a Tazmanian Tiger! Who in their right mind would miss something like that? It would be the most popular zoo animal ever. If a zoo nearby had one, I'm certain that anybody that has ever seen that famous black and white footage of the last one in the cage would make it a point to see one live.
There is a cosmic plan.
Existance of such a plan was confirmed by Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode 1 as he tested out his pod racer.
"It's working!"
Obvious reference to the grand cosmic plan, as if he couldn't win the race, he wouldn't get off the Tattoine, become a Jedi, turn to the Dark Side, and turn back again.
Part of the grand cosmic scheme.
The tigers part, was to be killed off, and then a preserved fetus would garner up the DNA to start a new strand of the tiger.
That is the plan. Always has, and always will.
Wolly mammoths will prove to be a folly. The plan is for them to come back, and then not procreate as they can't adjust to the changes in the earth since their time. Within 10 years all wolly mammoths will be again extinct. Man will not pursue the dinorsaurs in seriousness. It's not in the plan.
Full copies of the plan are available by contacting Cosmic Plan Publishers, and requesting "The Cosmic Plan: a visionary record of the past, present and future." Volumes 1 to 7,000,000,302 are currently in stock. Volumes 7,000,000,303 to 7,000,000,305 are temporarily out of stock (shortage is explained fully in volume 3,396,128)
Prices and full ordering details are explained in volume 1.
Yep, the Coelocanth, a giant prehistoric fish that was once considered extinct was found to be very much alive in the 1930's. Same thing could happen again to any number of extinct animals.
Correction: we upset their environments with great care.
I'm sorry, but if building a Best Buy causes the spotted owl to go extinct, then see-ya-later spotty! It isn't our job to make sure that the spotted owl, or any other animal for that matter, lives forever.
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It is possible for your mind to be so open that your brain falls out.
Does this mean we can now splice a pig's DNA with that of an Elephant? You know, like a pot bellied elephant you can keep in the house?
If these biologists are going to insist on bringing animals back...
why can't they start with the tasty ones?
Atheists are pretty much impossible to offend because they don't put faith in myths and fairy tales. Religious people get offended almost as a type of instinctive response to having this fact pointed out to them.
Call a theist's beliefs silly and he will get offended. Call an atheist's beliefs silly and he will laugh.
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It is possible for your mind to be so open that your brain falls out.
Hell of a presumption. That should read "if the christian God exists he also defines what is right and wrong and there's no way around that." Hindu gods don't define what is right and wrong, the deist god does not define what is right and wrong. Other gods, like the Islamic one, have a different definition of right and wrong.
Also, acording to Christianity there is a way around it; simply beg for forgiveness, get baptised, or go to confession depending on which sect you believe in. All your actions right or wrong will be forgiven by your kind and mercifull god. Handy way to excuse acting like a total shithead.
"We are not in a position to judge him."
Speak for yourself. Even if it was shown that the god of the christians exists I would still spit at the twisted nasty piece of work that he is. The christian god is a god of slaves, I am a free man and will not bend knee to any tyrant; mundane or divine.
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
Will the Thylacine know how to hunt or raise its young? For that matter, do these biologists have the DNA to make enough males and females to forma viable breeding population? Do they even have DNA for both sexes?
The poor creature will end up a scientific curiousity, an example of making something sheerly because we can, and not because we have a goal beyond demonstrating our own self-importance.
All about me
(sigh)
Here we go indeed, with the same tired old "science will invalidate faith" schtick ...
The same role He plays and always plays. This is a non-sequiter -- the same question could be asked (and probably has been on Slashdot) about any technological innovation: the computer, the Bomb, antibiotics, all the way back to fire and the wheel.
"Religion" in general is not about such things. There are a whole host of religions which don't postulate an omnipotent deity.
That said, Christianity does believe in an omnipotent God (as do Islam and some strains of Judaism, but I'm not as familiar with them). But all you've managed to do is to rephrase the old "omnipotence of God / human freedom" paradox that has been well-chewed by theologians for millenia now. Nothing earthshattering there.
Hardly. The fact that people have the ability to effect real changes in the world is hardly news to Christianity. Cloning the Tasmanian Wolf from fossil DNA is just one more example of cleverly pushing matter around in new ways, but hardly a challenge to God's omnipotence or to the Christian faith.
Your argument was much more persuasive before you started preaching:
Times have changed, and there isn't a place for the tiger in modern Australia - shown by the fact that it was a dangerous menace which was hunted in the first place. Even if these scientists manage to recreate a viable population of them, where are they going to go? Back into the wild where circumstances will echo what happened in 1888?
That was your original argument...what happened to it?
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It is possible for your mind to be so open that your brain falls out.
Our killing of TAZ was *not* part of a natural Darvwinian process. Human beings are no longer part of the nature. They often kill just for the fun of it. Eventually they'll destroy all life on the Earth and themselves in process. I'm sorry to say that but even Linux won't survive.
This is true of Black Bears, many of which I have seen close-up in the North Woods of Minnesota. Beautiful creatures. Of course, they are still wild canine animals and every couple of years a human is attacked by one, but aggression by most types of bear is a very rare occurrence.
Gizzlies are different. They LOVE meat. Ask Bert Guthrie, who lost over a dozen sheep to ONE BEAR over the course of a few short nights (until it was finally captured). Some were eaten, some were just playfully swatted to death and left bleeding on the ground... not even killed for the food, just for the hell of it.
Ask the family of Craig Dahl, and experieced woodsman who was killed an eaten by a grizzly two years ago.
Grizzlies are fast, huge, strong, with powerful jaws, claws that can get up to six inches long, and can be just plain mean. They prefer scavenging flesh that is dead already (they are drawn to the smell of rotting fat faster than anything), but they must eat about 60-70 pounds of food a day prior to hibernation. You can't get that kind of food intake from blueberries and rock bass.
Defending against an angry grizzly is almost futile. Shoot one with anything less than a deer slug to the brain, and you will most likely die before it does, because a grizzly that is shot in the body will continue to try to kill you until the flow of oxygen to the brain finally stops.
You obviously know a fair ammount about bears, but you do not appear to be aware of the traits that makes the grizzly much more dangerous than her genetic cousins.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Yeah, that's the really interesting thing about evolution, it's really a giant game of level-N mediocrity. And there's no way to know what the "right" level is to play on.
If you're an individual parasite or germ, you win by reproducing. But if you reproduce too much, you kill your host before your children can jump to a new one and... you lose. If you're an elephant and you eat some trees, you win, but if your herd eats all the trees before the drought... you lose. If you're a human and you hunt some game, you win, but if you kill just about everything, well...
These days, ecologists thinking beyond "charismatic megafauna" (like pandas and whales) haven't really agreed on how to prevent humans from losing, or even, what winning or losing entails.
As a stopgap, many people have come down on ecological diversity with the general idea, if we don't know what we're going to need, let's keep as much as everything possible around.
Problem with cloning and sticking things in is: any time big changes happen (hurricanes, volcanoes, humans killing things, humans adding new species to an ecosystem) things tend to get simpler and less diverse for a while. If these happen regularly on a long term scale (like hurricanes) this lower diversity on one scale can lead to more diversity on a larger scale (there's that level-N thing again). But if not, things get more screwed.
So, the question is--- is the "natural Darwinistic act" of an intelligent species evolving and destroying things before going extinct something that happens every several millioin years? If so, no problem! First the sleestack, next us. I think the crows are next in line. They look like they're bored, overly smart, and waiting for something.
If a bear is interested in your campsite, but not you specifically, you can sometimes scare them off just by making a lot of noise. Most species of bear prefer to avoid confrontaion with something that sounds dangerous, and banging on your pots and pans makes you sound pretty fierce to them.
Better still is to not get them interested in the first place. Don't keep food in your tent in bear country. Hang your food pack in the air (but not close to a tree, some types of bears are good climbers), and don't leave greasy or dirty pans lying around.
I know of a chef in Babbit, Minnesota who lost half his shed because he was storing a vat of cooking fat in it. A bear came into town during the night and ripped the wall off the shed to get at it. Even with no wind, they can smell stuff like that from miles off.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I know a bit more about these things, as it's not just esoteric speculation, but a matter of life and death for me.
...to what extent do you repopulate the wild?
As much as possible. As soon as possible.
Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?
I find it quite insulting that people think of putting wooly mammoths in zoos as some kind of dumb animal. You fools! Once my kind was the ruler of the Siberian wilderness. I would honk, and thousands of reindeer and assorted Russian nomads would scatter in all directions. Those were my days of glory.
Alas, these days I lie in old caves being thawed by hair dryers and endure comments about "wooly mammoth cloning". A mild curiosity for bored geeks, paleontologists and genetic engineers with research grant money and no projects.
This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly.
I hope so, for your sake....
don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more!
This is supposed to be some kind of clever punchline, right? Another jibe at the old endangered/extinct species.
Oh, pardon me, Mr. human sir, you talk of "they", but exactly how do *you* people "make more"?
It might do more harm than good in that respect.
Based on past history, I think worries about endangered species overbreeding are vastly exagerrated....
In any case, all I'm saying is - give us a chance! Wooly mammoths can be quite amazing and wonderful creatures, which can bring back excitement into this dull post cold war era. Just imagine the merchandising possibilities!
* Cute cuddly wooly mammoth bears will give a run for the money for the stupid Winnie the Pooh monopoly.
* McMammoth Meal - buy one, and bring back a mammoth to life!
* Godzilla vs. Wooly Mammoth.
* Gamera vs. Wooly Mammoth (well, you get the idea).
I sincerely hope you will overcome your fear and/or condescending mild curiosity about cloning extinct mammals. In my case, there are many reasons why it's a good idea. If you still have doubts, what can sum it all up and make it worthwhile to unleash the wooly mammoth? One word - wool.
w/m.
Hmm...and it worked.
w/m
:
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Uhh.. the reason tigers got hunted to extinction was a bad habit of eating introduced species (sheep etc) essential to the economic survival of the most recent wave of immigrants (europeans). Tigers were basically shot on sight by farmers.
I'm gonna be curious to see what happens when someone starts releasing cloned tigers back into the wild & the buggers start getting into the sheep again. The farmers still have guns..
As an example, the Scottish Fold breed of housecat all trace their ancestory back to a single cat with a mutant gene that gave it folded ears. The breed was propagated by breeding that cat's kittens with their own siblings.
A small gene pool isn't going to be a problem for a resureccted species. By keeping the animals in captivity for several generations before releasing them into the wild, you can clean up their genotype by ruthless culling of each generation to eliminate bad recessives. This is simple animal husbandry as has been practiced since before recorded history. The only thing that's different is the particuar characteristics you are trying to conserve and the ones you are trying to eliminate.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
IMHO, this is really where the alleged morality in religon breaks down
Read Heinlein's Job (aptly titled) for an interesting, witty exposition of the same concept you're expounding on here. RAH's deus ex machina ending is one of the best I've ever seen. Hint: he answers the question "who judges God?".
But didn't He implicitly grant authorization when he sold--
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You've gotta be careful when dealing with irrational deities. This reminds me of the wonderful lovecraft fanfic quote: "What a useless scroll... all it says is Hastur! Hastur! Hast- aaaaaargh!"
Can't remember where I saw that, unfortunately...
Rev Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
Lemme rant a little here: I really love when slashdot has "News For Nerds" and not "News for a subset of nerds concerned with Linux and Open Source; who probably would prefer going to freshmeat where they can get there news AND the newest software in one package";). BUT I guess if there's not enough pan-nerddom news, you've gotta fill it with something; why not linux, huh? >sigh
What? Morality? Oh, right... there's an ethical reason why we should or shouldn't do something... that's a good one; forget logic, forget science... bringing back an extremely unique (well, can something not exist and be unique?;) species which *we killed off in the first place* (how's that for you ethics; the least we could do is bring them back) would be absolutely horrible. Why? It's unETHICAL! Riiight;). Wake up; even if it *is* (how, don't ask me), people do unethical things all the time... this, in my opinion would be a more desirable "unethical" thing than adultery or genocide or getting on Napster;).
"Ooh!! Oooh!! Jurassic Park! Nooo.... baaad!" What, are we going to be overtaken by marsupial wolves? (I'd like to point that out: they were more closely related to canines than felines, in a sense). Oh, gosh darn, no! NOT MARSUPIAL WOLVES! C'mon, folks... get real; we seem to be alright with the wolves running around now...
The darwin arguments are cute... really. Philosophy's a good time-killer, but save the science for the scientists guys;). Darwinism is a (albeitly very good) *THEORY*, for one. For two, it's usually applied to species who survivability depends on *adapting to their environment* ie- ANIMALS. People *adapt the environment to themselves*...
It may seem like splitting hairs, but Darwin's main point in his work stated something along the lines of, "Better adaptations are survived in the offspring, and gradually the species as a whole benifits by this change." Not exactly the same as, "One species kills off another with projectiles and by introducing competitive species". so saying, "They were less unfit for their environment, they deserved to die, we must not bring them back... it's the law of selection. We're the better species" seems pretty ridiculous. We adapted that environment by wiping them out. It wasn't really a darwinistic struggle; people wouldn't die from a lack of sheep;). Granted, eating sheep and making clothes out of them might have been *convenient*, but I think the human race as a whole would have continued onward without the little cloven critters.
Here's the big one... ladies and gentlemen; if you think this is great, the future's gonna be a wonderfully interesting place for you. If you think it's horrible, life's gonna seem pretty shitty to you... because stuff like this (and probably even more bizarre) is going to be happening ALL THE TIME. No, sorry, you can't fight it. You can complain and do a lot of hand-wringing, but the biosciences are gonna keep marching forward for "better" or for "worse". Right now the U.S. is letting experiments be conducted on human egg cells (which we were, "Never, NEVER going to do"... huh, must've been an election year;).
Hmm... could I take a vote? All of you hand-wringers out there; how many of you realize that we're studying biology so that we can understand organic processes, control them, and use to our benifit the knowledge gained? Those with your hands down; well, it's true. Those with your hands up; then why're your panties all in a bunch? This is the purpose, people... not this specifically, but to use the technology for learning MORE.
One thing I'm curious about: How many people think that it's ok to advance computer science when it could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction(nukes) or special biological/chemical warfare agents or to spread misinformation? Well, 3 out of 3 have already happened, not to mention probably worse things to come. This is NOWHERE on par with any of those; it doesn't threaten us, and I'm sure it'd enrich the lives of more than a few. So realize that the propensity for good and bad is no different from any other technology.
Remember folks; cloned marsupial wolves don't kill people, people kill people.
Life: a sexually trasmitted disease that has a 0% survival rate.
This has to be one of the best (and most offensive) summations of Christian beliefs I've seen in a long time. (Although Al Pachino's speach at the end of The Devil's Advocate ranks right up there.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Oh, BTW...
I was a bio geek long before I got into computers.... for the folks who wanna know; having X females and X males is kind of a moot point. If you can bring back one, you could bring back a whole slew of 'em. Now, it DOES matter if you're talking about a sustainable breeding population... that depends, BUT..
They could expand the gene pool by manipulating the DNA in vitro... to make a viable organism, you need half a set from one parent, half a set from another. If they got ahold of two live females, they could take an egg (with half the full chrom. # in each) insert the chrom. into the same egg to make a full complement, and a new baby girl wolf with two mothers could be born... cool huh? Father? Not even necessary. But the same goes for two males... they could pull out two sperm (as long as they were XX or XY) and have a pup from them. The key here is how many distinct individuals can they get to adulthood, the more, the better chances for survival.
Life: a sexually trasmitted disease that has a 0% survival rate.
Heretics? Heracy is just a slightly different delusion than orthodoxy. ("If orthodoxy is my doxy, hetrodoxy is simply my neighbors doxy." Nepos was a freak, but a funny one.)
I'd sooner be buggered by a flock of heretics than by one deity. (Imagine, if you will, the size of the deific schlong!)
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
Will the DoDo bird be next?
Just to cut through the FUD regarding humanity's place in nature (nature is that which is created by God. So neither a beaver's dam nor a hydro-power dam are natural, but the man and the beaver are), God made it quite clear very early on about people's relationship with animals:
[Then God said, "Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life - the fish in the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals."] - Genesis 1:26
-Orb
"One day, even science will be obsolete"
even if you overcome that barrier you still have inbreeding taken to its most extreme level. That would be even more destructive to the species than the unrestricted hunting of the past was.
How can anything be more destructive to a species than extinguishing it? Than a total holocaust?? An existing population must be better than a non existing one, even if it's not in the best health.
In time, we might find new Tiger DNA to spiff up the gene pool, or come up with some other workable solution.
Just don't give up before we've even started. Sheesh...
I've posted this on my website at http://www.duskglow.com/godbitch.html. I think it's great! Please let me know if you want attribution or don't want me to...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I mean, just because we are no longer hunting some animals to extinction doesn't mean they will thrive in the wild anew. First, there's not nearly as much wild left, and the people probably aren't going to move away. Second, there will be no proper parents to teach proper tiger behavior to these pups. This is just a feel-good solution to a real problem - we're running out of space for humans and animals in general.
-Ben
The strongest reason I think it's all instinct is people, actually. My son was born five months ago, and I was amazed at the instincts he came bundled with. There are so many behaviors that well all have that we think are learned and conscious that really just came pre-programmed. A simple, but profound, example is yawning - when he was only a few weeks old (certainly before I'd exhibited this behavior in front of him, and in any case before he was old enough to mimic my actions), I saw him yawn, and then smack his lips three times. It's such a normal, human action, and it just stopped me in my tracks to realize it's not something learned - for whatever reason, we come preprogrammed to smack our lips after we yawn!
It has been amazing to see the pre-programmed instincts he's come with, from the instinct to grab things to the more esoteric ones like "close your eyes and hold your breath when someone blows in your face." Most of these instincts, in humans, lead the way toward learned behavior. The random, instinctual movement of his limbs right after birth leads him to learn how to control them, consciously. But, in non-sentient animals, complex behavior in adults is more and more being shown to be pre-programmed.
This is not to say that learning isn't involved. Tasmanian Tigers, no doubt, hunted and their offspring learned a lot of the idea and mode of hunting from watching their parents. And it does seem likely that a Tasmanian Tiger brought up by a Tasmanian Devil would have an "accent" to its hunting style.
So, it's true that today's Tigers won't hunt exactly the way they did a century ago. I'd be willing to bet the social structure will be similar, though. Think about how housecats regularly fail to become a part of human social structures, while dogs (whose social structures already fit ours) fit in well - even if these animals are rasised from a very young age in the absence of others of their species.
But, it seems to me that bringing back an extinct species that is 90% the same as the original is extremely worthwhile. Obviously, it would be better to keep them alive, to begin with. But, if we as humans are ever going to coexist with the creatures around us, making these kinds of amends is a good start.
Actually, I think this is should be mod'd (-1) off topic and (-1) flame bait.
And here I thought that geeks, being the subject of persecution by the "norms" were supposed to be a better, more understanding lot....
Well, some of us are anyhow...
The Doctor is Out...
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Not that I agree with the implied belief, but it was funny.
--- Submission is feudal.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Personally I believe that cloning to keep a species alive shouldn't be done just because it is dying out. I think that one should allow cloning, if we can now for sure that the animal in the spotlight would have avoided extinction without human interference. Animals like Apes and that sort, I would disagree with cloning because they just do not have the capabilities to survive. I say let Darwinism take its path, without human interfernce... Ofcourse, that doesn't mean that we have the right to kill off a dozen species, but extinction is just a part of nature... If we keep on ressurecting dead species, evolution won't continue the way it is suppose too. As we know, extinction has might give uprise to new animals, that's why we are here you know :).
Why do we clone?
The simple answer is that we can produce the animal in mass quantities to exploit features, a.la. slavery.
We already cultivate animals and slaughter them for food, but I think that cloning will provide a broader way of dealing with issues such as amount of space a unit animal takes up, etc.
But cloning an extinct animal goes too far.
The whole purpose (arguably) of life is to fufill the place in the gene pool, each life is a test of one specific set, much like brute forcing.
When you add more then one animal to an environment, you get other variables, but that's beyond the scope of my argument.
Now when an animal goes extinct, it means that the entire species couldn't produce enough quality/quantity of offspring and died off.
So why do we want to regenerate a species that's already died off.
This goes too far.
Furthermore, there's the entire discussion of humans and fufilling their in the genetic pool.
Why does our cloning technology have to push soo far as to directly effect the life cycle of a species other then our own.
This is a very imerialistic act on the part of humans, another instance probably revolving around the grand ole $$$.
But I'm just sitting here for a Genesis, Revalation, or 46+2 machine =)
Let's stop enslaving ourselves to technology, exploiting our human design.
Let's cherish the technology, use it as a resourcce, and make something of our lives.
Peace
http://siokaos.org/
This is an incredibly interesting idea, and I'm intruiged. Even if nothing ever comes of it, it has the potential to be a great story.
:)
I think, though that there's several passages in the Bible that tend to point to the second coming being something else besides a birth (virgin or otherwise):
Luke 21:27 "...they shall see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud of power and great glory..."
(Mark 13 and Matt 24 contain similar refs)
Acts 1:11 "...This same Jesus, who was taken up
from you into heaven, will so come in like manner
as you saw Him go into heaven..."
1 Thessalonians 4:16 "...for the Lord himself will
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice
of an archangel..."
These point towards the concept of a not altogether quiet decsension from the heavens. Other things that I've heard include an appearance at the mount of olives during a war. The mountain will split and the conflict end. I don't have a reference for that one; it could be a recollection from a Jewish traditional text or LDS (Mormon) source, since I read those too.
Of course, all of this presuposes you beleive in the Bible. But if you don't, I find it hard to beleive you'd care about a literal second coming (until it happened, anyway...
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Two guys (we'll call them Linus and Eric) were walking through the woods when they came across an angry, rabid-looking bear. Eric freezes in place. Linus, who is a jogger, immediately kicks off his hiking boots, pulls his running shoes out of his pack, and slips them on.
"You idiot," said Eric, "don't you know you can't possibly outrun a bear? That thing is as fast as a horse!"
"I don't need to outrun the bear," said Linus, "I just need to outrun you."
As for your food-bag technique: that works fairly well. If a branch like that is not available, another good way is to tie a rope between two trees, and then suspend the bag from the rope. Make sure it is at least 12" off the ground. Even higher is better if you can manage it.
I have heard of the rare occation when a bear was smart enough to figure out that cutting the rope will bring the food down, but most of them will just give up and look for something easier. (i.e. the camp down the shore who didn't know to hang their food bag at night, or the half-eaten candy bar next to your sleeping bag... this is why you don't take food into the tent!)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
obviously, you haven't read the Bible. cite me one scripture where it says that you will be eternally damned, or burn in hell for not believing in God...you won't.
"Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:"
-- Numbers 14:22-23
" the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die. And the men, which Moses sent to search the land, who returned, and made all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up a slander upon the land, Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by the plague before the LORD."
-- Numbers 14:35-37
And, your kids aren't going to be too well off:
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;"
-- Exodus 20:5
As for the burning, that seems to be what God resorts to whenever he gets pissed off:
"And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them:"
-- Exodus 32:9-10
Hell, you get eternal damnation for working on Sunday!
"For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people. And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people."
-- Leviticus 23:29-30
And he wasn't just joshin', he MEANT that:
"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses."
-- Numbers 15:32-36
So be careful gathering them sticks!
I'd go on here for another several thousand words, but I have work to do...
The year: 2020 The experiment: To clone the penguin tux that was destroyed in early 2005 by the monopolistic corp. microsoft. The battle wages on around the fundemental question, was it natral selection?
Jurrasic park has come true. An extinct species is now being brought back...could dinosaurs be next?
In challenge to the reasoning used in some of your arguments:
"IMHO, this is really where the alleged morality in religeon breaks down. When the God character rhetorically asked the Job character, "Where were you when I made the world?" the authors were copping out, because the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the story was that the God character was evil by man's standards. They couldn't figure out any other way to end the story, so they tried the "You just don't get it" angle."
Tell me, can you percieve the 4th dimension? 5th? 6th? Our best mathematicians say the evidence points to a 10 dimension universe - but I cannot perceive, much less conceive the idea of 7 more dimensions. Or how about infinity? Being a finite being makes it impossible to truely understand such things. Sure you can say you 'get it' but you can never truely understand it.
"Ethical and rational humans simply must have concepts of good an evil. If a man's (even if that man is a believer in God) concept of good and evil is flawed, then that man must be wrong about some things. His senses are wrong, his logic is wrong, and his faith is wrong too. How can you, apparently a believer, say that anything is right or wrong (including cloning Tasmanian Tigers) when you yourself admit that you don't know what is right or wrong?"
Now I'm sure you've seen a magician before. While your senses may tell you "hey, he pulled a coin out of that guy's ear!", does that mean your reasoning capabilities suddenly surrender to what you see? (I should hope no one in this forum is so inclined!) For most people, of course not - they're trying to logically deduce what happened to explain what they sensed. Faith would only come in where you truely believed (or didn't believe) he used magic. If you believed he used magic, then your logic would reflect that faith. On the other hand, if your faith tells you he is no magician (or that there is no such thing as magic) but your logic fails to explain how he did it, is your faith flawed or your logic?
"If you can judge Man, you can judge God by those same standards. If you can't judge God, you can't judge Man. So what's it going to be: when you want to know if something is right or not, are you going to think for yourself, or are you going to quote what philosophers wrote thousands of years ago before even the most basic principles of the universe were understood?"
That is like saying that because you are a Linux guru, you are fit to give medical advice. God(s) are usually considered to be beings of infinite capcity: power, knowledge, presence. Mankind has been, and will likely always be finite (aka mortal) beings and as such cannot grasp concepts that exist beyond what our minds and senses tell us. Or to use a parable of sorts: Say I'm a windows user. I know how to install programs and even setup and installed my own printer. Now I come over to you, a Linux hacker, and start telling you how you should be working on your project. I may think I know alot about computers, but by comparison, I know nothing. I think it's wrong to judge people regardless of circumstances. I prefer to inform "I think this is how it should work", be informed "No, it has to work this way because..." and collaborate/compromise.
Just because somthing CAN be done, does not neccesitate that it MUST be done. Reasoning should entail the premise, the solution and the conclusion. In other words, if a there is a problem: extinct animal, and we have a solution: cloning, what is the conclusion from implementing the solution? An animal that is no longer viable in it's former habitat? Unlimited zoo exhibits? Pets for the rich and powerful? Exotic dishes at 5 star restaurants? Or we could try this: We have a problem: people using email to facilitate crime, a solution: carnivore, should we just roll out the barrel and hope for the best? Or should we take a serious look at this and say "should we even consider doing this?"
Don't allow your faith (that organized religion is evil) blind you to reason. Faith and reason both have their places.
The Doctor is Out...
In terms of God's role (and with that capital 'g' I refer to the Judeo-Christian god...
What's with this Judeo-Christian god thing anyway, that people spew every so often so as to sound smart? You may have noticed that the islamic god is essentially the same, holy liturgy and all, right? So why people keep on insisting on this notion of Judeo-Christian God, Judeo-Christian values, Judeo-Christian this and that, to the exclusion of Muslims, as if all those three monotheist religions didn't stem from the same roots? Don't you think that whole thing plays a role in the general public perception of all Muslims as rabid fundamentalist fanatics bent on destroying the West? Don't you think it sort of reinforces that prejudice? Just think about it.
Disclaimer: IANAM nor do I play one on TV.
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Ok heres my rant... I see alot about humans destoying the world and killing and such. and the practicality of bring back the tiger ect. I realy think that anything that advances knowledge cant be all bad because knowledge helps us humans evolve socialy which is realy what needs to be done and is what is happening(just look around and look at history people are changing in small numbers but those number grow). and for those of you that say this is against God do you realy think that god would go through and map out these clues to life and create all life with DNA that can be decoded. or is it possible that these things are there to help with our learning and struggle ling to become more after all are we not the children of God. mabey we are to grow up one day? as children do. So anyway I say clone and treat each other with great respect for mabey one day the human race will be evolved to the point where we do not need to harm others to make us feel better and at that time all the knowledge we have will make us great. sorry for the rambleing I do it some times
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
And here I thought that geeks, being the subject of persecution by the "norms" were supposed to be a better, more understanding lot....
It is precisely this understanding which causes the rest of us to chortle at the irrational ravings and intellectually bankrupt posturing of the religious zealots who seem inevitably attracted to stories regarding any kind of genetic engineering or manipulation.
We chortle in much the same way we chortle at an adult who continues to profess a belief in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny long after childhood has past.
Think about the argument (and pseudo-logic) being applied to the argument to which I posted my harsh, but accurate, parody of Christianity.
Posit: God exists and is superior.
Therefor humankind is inferior.
Inferior beings cannot presume to judge the morality of a Superior being.
Therefor, no matter how reprehensible his actions may be, we cannot judge God. In fact, we are expected to sing his praises no matter what.
Now substitute "Nazi" for "God" and "the rest of us" for "humankind":
Posit: Nazis exist and are superior.
Therefor the rest of us are inferior.
Inferior beings cannot presume to judge the morality of a Superior being.
Therefor, no matter how reprehensible their actions may be, we cannot judge Nazis. In fact, we are expected to sing their praises no matter what.
Anyone else see the insidious danger this kind of mindset represents to all of mankind?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ronald Reagan mate with a dodo.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
That makes things even more complex in your explanation. (She fucked both her Father and her son.) But I don't remember any implication of sexual congress in the Bible... I thought God just made her pregnant, you know, by magic. ;-) Your explantion is better, though. More reminiscent of Greek mythlogy, where Zeus was sort of like a Mediterranean Austin Powers.
But you don't have to believe in Christ's divinity (which, of course, is the definition of being Christian) to believe in a Christian God. Just convert to Judiasm. (Jesus was Jewish; why not?)
Not that I'm trying to sell either one. I'm an atheist.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
This takes us one step closer to understanding how DNA works.
I can't wait for self-modifying DNA.
MS-DNA install anyone?
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
this technique is actually the scientific basis for the Second Coming
Isn't it weird that the Spanish pronunciation of Jesus is, "Hey, Zeus!"
-thomas
"And like that
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
I think it's great that they're bringing back extinct species. Those of you who view this as a bad thing need to get your heads out of your buttholes and stop watching Jurrassic Park reruns.
As my old commandant said, "Horror movies are my favorite genre, but there's no animal on Earth I can't stop with a well-placed gunshot".
As we can see, we are all being overwhelmed by religious zealots here. Truly, truly overwhelmed.
The best part of your post is that you voiced a logic that is owned by religious zealots everywhere. If only they'd realize that they are at risk of distributing their logic to the acceptance of Nazism.
This truly is a brilliant cultural insight.
[end sarcasm]
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
To continue this excercise now let's rearrange the scenario:
;) and personal truths (UNIX/Linux/MacOS/WinXX is the one true OS, there is(no)God, blue is pretty). Some things can be scientifically demonstrated (Ex:the sun/earth relationship) while personal truths for the most part are taken on faith alone.
:)
I am a Joe Windows user, I can install programs, surf the 'net (AOL) and made a web page with last years vacation pictures.
FreeUser is a Linux advocate who knows C, Java, etc and is developing a web-based application (not in any way related to what I am doing).
I think I know alot about the web, after all, I have a web page I built myself! I go over to your cubical and say "Hey FreeUser, you're doing that all wrong! You should make it work like this..." and proceed to tell you how your project should go even though I know know nothing about web developement.
So, do you:
a) believe that you, a knowledgeable web developer, should bow to my wishes even though I am not involved with the project and don't know what I'm talking about
b) say "That's nice" and proceed to do what you know is best?
I'd have to say that 'b' would be your (and most people's) choice. Since I was not involved with the project, and did not have any knowledge that was useful to the project, how can I judge what you are doing is wrong?
Answer: I can't. I do not have the authority (technical knowledge/project involvement) to say what you are doing is right or wrong.
On the other hand, if I were trying to do some java script on my web page and you came by my house and saw I had written the code incorrectly, you WOULD have the authority to say I was wrong because you have the technical knowledge to fix the problem. You would also have the power to a) fix what was wrong, b) show me how to fix the problem or c) point me in the direction of some good java resources to learn for myself what was wrong and how to fix it. (Assuming you are a friend and wished to help me)
Now, do I have the right to judge you on your java skills? Heck no! I don't bring enough knowledge to the table to put my two cents in. I could criticize your handling of the situation "Why'd ya have to push me out of the way?" but not the java coding itself.
There are theologians and philosophers far more learned than I that can discuss the concept of authority in the deitific/metaphysical sense better than I but these examples show that "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
I won't even go into the judging thing. I believe it is not right to judge other people. I do believe in leading by example and lending help where it is asked for (or offering help where I think it is needed). If they don't like the solutions I offer, I help them find the solution that does help them.
Too often we forget that there are common truths (water is wet, Brittney Spears bites
To correct someone on a common truth (the Earth is not flat) is doing them a favor, to attack them for a personal truth is foolishness. Even more so is to berate someone for what they believe is right, by beating them over the head with what you believe is right.
One last thought: What was that rule about arguments and Nazis? Oh yeah, first one to mention them loses.
The Doctor is Out...
Tazmanian Tigers? I don't believe they exist.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Then it's okay if I kick my cat, because I am (supposedly) a 'superior being'?
Didn't think so.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
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no physical evidence? go look in the mirror, if that isn't enough evidence for you that God exists, i don't know what is.
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That's like saying, "Look at that rock over there. If that's not evidence that a purple three legged midget put it there, I don't know what is".
Logic doesn't look like that. Along with your chosen form of mythology, there are a number of other people willing to provide their own explainations. In fact, there are hundreds of billions of 'potential' origins for the human race. A proponent of any one could say what you said above and make just about as much sense.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
A very old philosophical arguement to be sure have you really thought about the logic of what you have just said.
It eventually if taken down to its constituent parts becomes a tautology
God commands what he commands essentially. A very weak premise to be arguing from. In Formal Logic this is actually called a very very weak arguement. It would be far better and more defensible if you are a theist to argue that God's command's are moral because the things he commands are moral or good of independant of him.(kinda that old Platonic thing-look it up it's pretty fucking cool stuff)
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
"to believe in a Christian God. Just convert to Judiasm. (Jesus was Jewish; why not?)"
This gets my goat all the time. How can he be a Christian God if you are Jewish?? Come on people use your grey sells. Jehovah was the God of the Israelites way way before he was the God of the Christian people's......
PS I am an agnostic...so don't start with any defending the faith and all that shit with me....
I think both sides of the debate are as much full of shit as the other
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
I would love to hear your empirical evidence for such a sweeping claim
Are you telling me that the Christian's have killed more than 100 million people
Don't forget there where 23 million Russians at least 40 million Germans etc etc etc....
Well how about the great claim to fame of an atheistic society - how many people where killed in the Soviet Union under Communism. Do you even know??, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pulpot, The French Revolution -need I go on!!
Invoking Godwin's Law I am calling you an ignoramus!!
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
And my advice to you, after reading this reply and your other reply to one of my posts today, is to calm the fuck down and don't take everything you read so literally. You sound like a Baptist minister.
Ignoramus, indeed.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
You aren't going to get a breeding population from this. The foetal thylacine they have is _female_. That means no Y chromosomes to make males! -Gareth
Well you certainly found me out! For a start I wasn't being irrate I just hate reading posts by knowitall's who think they know everything on any given topic. Secondly I'm not your boy!! I wouldn't want to be associated with a conceited pig like yourself. (By the way as I am writing this I am personally very calm. Your the one that needs to use foul language in his posts what run out of words to use??)
At least I know how to keep my facts straight. If you choose to make fun of people at least make it moderately logical or funny at least your's is neither.
Lots of love
The Ignoramus Baptist Minister
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
More like Haad up ass!!
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
I betcha Linux would survive. Even if there was a nuclear war, I'm sure there is a heavily sheilded computer somewhere in Canada that would survive. It might not be turned on, but eventually it would become intelligent and clone us. I hope by then we will have finally one this war with nature.
Re: baptist minister. For God's sake, stop reading everything so fucking literally. I was making reference to certain Baptist/Fundamentalist ministers that interpret everything in the Bible literally. As opposed to symbollically (sp?). You've proven my point without even trying.
And I'm not a "know-it-all". I was simply trying to contribute to the discussion. As an ex-Catholic (baptised and confirmed, who knows loaths the faith), I think I'm more qualified to speak about such things than a lot of people reading this. Now you come along and try to start a fight!
Tell me exactly what I said that was so wrong. I was always told that Jews accepted the Old Testament. And Jesus was Jewish. So isn't Christianity up to the point where Jesus is born based on the same history as Judaism?
As for my comment about Nazis and Christians, I was trying to point out that an awful lot of people have been persecuted for their beliefs by Christians. The Nazis are horrible, but so are the countless white supremacy groups that back up their racism with Bible interpretations. (And, of course, the Spanish Inquisition. No-one expects them, right?) No-one is exempt from being made fun of. Perhaps you wouldn't have taken the post so seriously if you remembered Godwin's Law, which I mentioned. Godwin's Law in a nutshell is "Any thread of sufficient length will eventually bring up Nazis in one way or another." I'm sorry if I offended you, and I know that people get, well, a little "religious" about the subject ;), but you're going to have to get used to the fact that people make fun of Xianity, just like all religions, groups, products, companies, whatever... especially on this site.
I'm willing to accept that I was a little brash. But can we drop the flamewar? I'm not looking to promote hatred on Slashdot.
Dammit, can't we all just get along? Peace?
- The conceited, know-it-all ignoramus, with his head up his ass.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Christians, Jews, and Muslims beleive in the same God. Christians are Jews, Muslims are Christians(sort of). Muslims beleive that Jesus was a prophet, but not the son of God. The reason that people say Judeo-Christian is because they share a God. At the time people started using the word, there were exactly 4 Muslims in western society, none of whom spoke English. Then some of them started blowing our stuff up, so we snubbed them. Plus Muslimo-Judeo-Christian doesn't sound all that great.
Fair enough! I can understand people make fun of Christianity or anything else for that matter. To bad people can't make fun of people that make fun of people that make fun of Christianity (yes I am willing to accept the fact that this is an infinite regress- thank you for proving MY POINT!!)
Seems weird to me that you can make fun of these things but mention the open source movement, Linux or a dozen other "sacred" cows in a funny or disreputable light people like you begin acting exactly like wounded little bull's
You think you offended me?? Now who is the one acting like a 12 year old. Who is the one comparing their brand of humour to Python!!
OK Let's drop the flamewar once you've got the last of the insults off in a flurry of volley's!!
I didn't take your post seriously to begin with!!
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
Yep I'm willing for that peace bit now!!
C'mon get a bit of a sense of humour.
If you knew anything about me you would realise that I would have said the exact opposite things if I was talking to a Christian or anybody that is to rigid in their belief structure.
Yeh people have been persecuted for not "believing" in alot of things call that the human condition if you will
Yeh we can drop the flamewar.
But if your really serious about not promoting any hatred on Slashdot how about stopping with this type of nonsense as well.
The religious arguement has been going on since the time of Socrates perhaps earlier who knows (their records haven't survived though) I don't believe that you or I or anybody else is going to come up with the definitive answer
If you really want to read something logical on the situation I suggest you read alittle Bertrand Russell my favourite philosopher perhaps "Why I am not a Christian" or "A Free Man's Worship" or Nietzche or a dozen others. They can examine these issues without the diatribe
Heres hoping that your living a happy productive and unhatefilled life
Hail Eris,
Daala
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
Take a sprinter, who can repeatably run X distance in 13.5 seconds. Where is the 13.5 stored in him? To make him faster do you go and change the '13.5' to '13.2' or lower? No- that number is the product of all the different variables (body mass, muscle effectiveness, air drag on whatever clothing he's wearing, wind, air pressure at whatever altitude he's at and ability to use lungs to get oxygen from said air mid-race) that make the sprinter up. None of these variables are morally right or wrong- the fact of air pressure is not morally wrong. The fact that the sprinter has body mass is not morally wrong. All this produces the epiphenomenon of his repeatable sprint time of 13.5 seconds- which might take on great importance, but this doesn't change the fact that it's the product of all the variables that make up the sprinter.
By the same token, existence of the Tasmanian tigerwolf is an epiphenomenon. It wouldn't even be extinct if a bunch of humans with guns hadn't blown 'em all away. Its existence is neither more nor less important to 'natural selection' as any other animal- natural selection is an EPIPHENOMENON, it does not need to be cared for by wise humans in order to work- this attitude is much like insisting that people must _care_ that 2+2=4 or mathematics will be lost. 2+2=4 is an epiphenomenon of certain ways of thinking about number, and fits with the real world, explaining certain processes accurately. Natural selection is an epiphenomenon of ways of thinking about populations, and likewise fits with the real world, explaining certain processes accurately. It does not need to be _protected_. It is.
If the Tasmanian tigerwolf is reintroduced to the world, this too is an epiphenomenon- because the environment of wild animals _unavoidably_ includes what humans think about them. If humans think it is ecologically, morally, or even aesthetically better for some species to persist in the face of human expansion, and take action about it, that human opinion becomes _part_ of the animal's environment, and the epiphenomenon may be survival of that species. For whatever reason it would be 'fitter'...
I'm reminded of a SF story, Cordwainer Smith's 'Norstrilia', in which there are huge, deformed, sick sheep that produce an immortality drug. These sheep are tended by humans, like a crop. In those hypothetical circumstances, that is 'fitness'.
However, one needn't get fictional to find an example that contradicts people's simpler Darwinesque beliefs- look at the wolf. Wolves have formidable natural weaponry, yet the species also possess formidable 'mental blocks' against injuring a submissive member of their own pack. If a wolf rolls over and bares its throat, an attacking packmate will find it impossible to finish off the first wolf, no matter how important that might be to the attacker at the time. This is purely a mental block- Darwinistically, one might think that it'd be better for the attacker to get to kill all competitors and control the gene pool, dominate completely. Unfortunately, wolves are such deadly fighters that this would lead to obliteration of entire packs through infighting- and so the epiphenomenon of natural selection leads to wolves with mental blocks towards hurting submissive packmates- wolves whose _minds_ have a direct influence on the survival of other animals.
By the same token it is not at all unreasonable to suggest that the general ecological concerns of many humans are natural selection- on the one hand it may be the Tasmanian tigerwolf, and in other areas it may be a town objecting to the death of a river through intense industrial pollution killing other industries such as fisheries, or it may be the objecting to oil tanker spills and the dumping of contaminated bilgewater. The objections, the protests, are themselves part of natural selection, and in many cases they are as survival-enhancing as the wolf's suppressed killer instincts- they serve the _population_, without which there would be no individuals. If all the world was individualistic oil-dumping river-poisoning clear-cutting species-obliterating extremes of 'Darwinist' behavior, the planet would be more or less lifeless in not many thousands of years, because some types of self-interested behavior are _destructive_. And so, given the human capacity to think about such things, natural selection produces the environmentalist in increasing numbers, preying on the industrialist and keeping the whole 'pack' of humans going for the long term, much as the suppressed attack instinct of the wolf towards submissive wolves keeps the wolf population going for the long term.
It's not unthinkable that, with the human capacity for thought, natural selection begins to encompass the entire biosphere of the whole world- with environmentalists beginning to forge 'suppressed eco-obliteration' instincts in other humans, the survival trait being the flourishing of the entire ecosphere. There's huge benefit to the uncontrolled diversity of biology on the planet. It's not simply aesthetic benefit but scientific benefit as well, and also raises issues of whether it's an unsafe gamble to kill off vast numbers of species and reduce the complexity of the biosphere to a simpler, possibly unsustainable condition in the long run. NOW is the time to consider these things, not 100 years too late.
Let them bring back the tigerwolf. It should not have been eradicated so quick in the first place. We don't know what possible benefits there might be from having them 100 years on.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Heh heh heh... actually, I have other UIDs specifically for pointing out problems with OSS. I actually find it refreshing to see the other side of the argument. I bash OSS and promote stuff like NT to remind myself of NT's strengths, and then I go back and do the opposite to remind myself of GNU/Linux's strengths. Well, "remind" is the wrong word. Perhaps "clarify my perception of" is better. (It's easy, especially on this site, to start bashing MS for the wrong reasons. So it's helpful to step back and remind yourself that GNU/Linux sucks just as much as NT.) I find it makes me a better zealot, as I already have rebuttals to the opposition's questions.
(PS - No, I've never gone so far as to create my own thread with those UIDs. :-)
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Hiya Doc,
I think that understanding issues of morality is easier than your multidimensional universe example. Generally, almost all people are expected to understand it and make decisions regarding it, unlike physics/math. That's why when someone does something immoral (e.g. murder, theft, etc), we feel freer to flame them or even physically act against them. Compare that to the reaction someone would receive from merely being ignorant about math. "You miscalculated due to having an imperfect model? 30 days in the slammer!"
I think it's funny that some people can, on one hand, say that man should not judge God on the basis that men cannon truly understand what is right and what is wrong, and on the other hand, denounce moral relativism. Or even worse: they tell people that they will be punished in the afterlife if they do immoral things. "You will go to Hell if you are evil, but your puny mind is incapable of understanding what is evil."
I wasn't flaming religeon, that's an altogether different topic. I was flaming the actions attributed to God, both in religeous texts, and in a parent comment. His behavior, when viewed by most humans' standards, is bad.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Islamism is a fork of Christianism, which is a fork of Judaism. Or you can think of sub-classing, if you're of the OO persuasion.
I propose the term "middle-eastern monotheist" or "zoroastrian-derived" (since, I believe, they all derive from the old Zoroastrian faith, which is still alive, BTW). None of those ring as niftly as "judeo-christian", but that is probably because of media exposure. Plain old "monotheism" is perfectly fine also.
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look. For instance, using the current 6 digit userid system,
0+6+9+0+6+9 = 30;
30/6 = 5.
Methinks the goddess had a hand in this.
Rev Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been