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Condor Chick Born In Wild
hank writes "Great news (Yahoo! News link) today on the endangered species front! A condor chick born in the wild is alive and well. Originally, biologists planned on interfering and giving "life support" to the egg; however, biologists were surprisingly pleased to see the father aggressively protecting his young. Wisely, they decided to let nature take control. The chick in Los Padres National Forest in Santa Barbara County is the first conceived, hatched and raised in the wild to survive more than a day. It was 4 days old on Monday. What does this mean for genetic cloning and incubation research? Can nature really repair itself? What do you all think?"
What on earth does a captive-released pair of condors properly incubating their egg have to do with cloning?
'(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Gayest story ever.
Get it in you!
Oh well, back to dowloading pr0n...
Pr0n K1ng
So, is that what the ugly ones are called these days?
"What does this mean for genetic cloning and incubation research?"
It means birds lay eggs and they hatch. I don't think it has much to do with cloning.
"Can nature really repair itself?"
If we leave it alone long enough.
"What do you all think?"
I'm no scientist, but doesn't this mean the bird would have to mate with its siblings to continue the species? Can this be healthy?
Wow! I didn't know the father's name was Nature. But seriously, nature doesn't control anything. Nature just is.
Gayest story ever.
How could it be "gay" when the story is about a wild chick?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
When I think of condors and chicks, I think of The Condor in SF - Former home of Carol Doda
That perhaps the mother is better @ telling which children have the best chance @ survival. "...the chick from the third egg was killed right after hatching last year by the same female mothering the latest chick..."
Think Greeks throwing defective children off cliffs. It was barbaric, but people of Greek descent are some of the toughest people I know. The condors could be doing the same thing.
In an interesting twist, it seems as if our coyote problem(these creatures are extremely numerous) can help the condors. Instead of culling coyotes and burying them we should instead leave them out in areas where condors are known to frequent to provide ample food for the scavengers.
(Why does genetic engineering and cloning seem as the answer to our endangered species problems. What does cloning and genetic engineering have to do with anything. The baby was born naturally, without our tampering. That is the way it should be.)
..nature can fend for itself and the ones that can't die off, lets do away with tree huggers now.
The Truth: There is no string:)
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
This is what the regular /. reader sees from the headline:
"****** Chick **** ** Wild"
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
...your mom is dating her!
Genetic engineering can be important because it can allow us to enhance traits that aid survival. Some endangered species are unlikely to recover unless we tamper with the genetic makeup of the population. For example, the reason the cheetah is endangered is because of a long history of inbreeding (which resulted from overhunting). This inbreeding resulted in a population of cheetahs that has a lot of health problems and very little genetic diversity (in ecology terms, this is called a genetic bottleneck). Loss of genetic diversity is bad for evolution because it leaves little for natural selection to work with. In the case of the cheetah, a large number of cubs are born with health problems and die before they reach maturity. Also, because of the loss of genetic diversity, there is nothing for natural selection to work with. So basically, there are two reasons genetic engineering and artificial breeding can be useful in preserving endangered species:
http://www.peregrinefund.org/conserv_cacondor.html
The radical conservatives who cannot "allow" a species to die off are the abarations. A species ceasing to exist is a perfectly natural act. The strong survive, the weak perish, and this is just as true for species as it is for individuals.
If the Condor cannot adapt to its environment, cloning or captive breeding are not going to improve the situation. Released birds will still fail to breed.
This story is of a healthy birth. Woopie, get over it.
Go back 500 years (if you can) and follow the population of the Condor. I would not be surprised if their populations were decreasing long before industrial humans were in the area.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
"The Omelette" - A retort to Malda's Omelette analogy.
Let me try to give you an analogy for Slashdot's homepage.
Yes, please liken something to something in a cliché staid analogy because we the reader are too stupid to understand any overly complex and high level reason why you can't explain yourself properly. Either that or you are full of crap, don't know what you are doing and are lucky as hell to have what you have.
It's like an omelette: it's a combination of sausage and ham and tomatoes and eggs and more.
It is a motley collage, a miasma, a montage or eclectic and seemingly unrelated things. It may be a myriad of unrelated things, related at only the most abstract levels. It certainly isn't an omelette.
Over the years, we've figured out what ingredients are best on Slashdot.
What critical acclamations have you had that makes you think this is so? Just because you get a lot of hits, and subsequently subject your readership to unwanted bandwidth consuming detritus, doesn't mean you know what's best. It is just like a Reynolds family member claiming they know what's best for them, nicotine and smoke are not unhealthy, and then they die of lung cancer. You are an egotistical megalomaniac. If this site was run based on a meritocratic method rather and juvenile selfishness, it would have serious potential.
The ultimate goal is, of course, to create an omelette that I enjoy eating: by 8pm, I want to see a dozen interesting stories on Slashdot.
The ultimate goal is to please yourself, to feed your id. You have no desire to please the community by which you make your living. You are selfish, sheltered and removed from your community. You are on a one way soapbox, a pulpit, and you talk at people. I would probably include you in a list of people I would kill if I could get away with it.
I hope you enjoy them too.
I do not.
I believe that we've grown in size because we share a lot of common interests with our readers.
Mobocracy is good? You would rather collect people without regard to quality. This means nothing. Budweiser is the most consumer beer, but its garbage. This is analogous to Slashdot, to stoop to your food and beverage analogy. Bud beer. Its good because a lot of people drink it. No, no. Don't bother trying to get critical acclimation. Don't bother, you know as long as you "control" Slashdot, you never will.
But that doesn't mean that I'm gonna mix an omelette with all sausages, or someday throw away the tomatoes because the green peppers are really fresh.
So serving rotten food is acceptable how? Its better to keep your silence and let people wonder if you are fool than to speak up and remove all doubt. "Gonna." Pathetic. Simply pathetic. This is a hick like expression, akin to something on the order of, "I'm gonna open a can of whup ass on him for peggin Mary Joe Susie Lee."
There are many components to the Slashdot Omelette. Stories about Linux. Tech stories. Science. Legos. Book Reviews. Yes, even Jon Katz.
Jon Katz is the worst thing about this place. If it isn't the wasting of my bandwidth that I pay for, its this that bothers me the most. On a sidebar, I would like to hold you and the rest of the scum who send ad banners to my connection legally liable for unwanted bandwidth usage. This crap half the time doesn't even come from your site. It would be less of an affront if you stored you vile ads on your own site, but you took the easy way out and decided to outsource the production of garbage to similarly-devoid-of-ethics people with slightly more intelligence and infrastructure to provide this illegal content.
By mixing and matching these things each and every day, we bring you what I call Slashdot. On some days it definitely is better than others, but overall we think it's a tasty little treat and we hope you enjoy eating as much as we enjoy cooking it.
Grotesque things are often of huge interest to people. This holds true with me in regards to Slashdot. I hate you, I hate Jon Katz, I hate most of the content here. Some of the best stuff is written at -1. You would suppress those who are different while you are "different like everyone else," just another marginally educated half assed "programmer" who on the scale of things lucked out even more so than Bill Gates (reason: I would assume your IQ is probably his divided by 2 or 3 and you aren't working at a McDonald's where you should be). Whenever you have participated in a discussion thread, you are obnoxious, rude and ungrateful. You policies are horrible, you content is basically a smattering of other people's work and you benefit from this. You web page reeks of someone who completes nothing that he starts. Your obsession with anime is a testament to how juvenile you are, your spelling is horrific, you grammar is oft questionable; you are a poor editor Mr. Malda.
I hope only the worst outcomes for any and all of your endeavors henceforth. I hope your fiancée or if you are lucky, your marriage falls apart. I hope your Jubei breaks. I hope you lose your job. I hope that you fail because you are displacing true talent.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/14/00
Cretin.
Birds lay eggs. Big deal ...
Even if this is an endangered bird, unless it was cooked up in a vat in some lab somewhere, it still doesn't say dick about cloning or cloning technology.
The bird laid an egg. So does this story.
Who's in charge around here, anyway?
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Simple fact: The better adapted, or better able to adapt, survive. Weak perish. If you cannot understand that, no wonder "global warming" is still being touted as "science".
I also find your blending of fields interesting. Darwin and ecology? Cause and effect. When ecological parameters change, that which can adapt to the changes survive and those which cannot die out.
Funny how your attempts at argument merely prove my point.
I would love to see how you would demonstrate that the singular cause of the Condor's demise has been industrial man.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Or perahps more accurately, "News for acceptably-left-wing politically-correct hippie tree-huggers who are still wearing 20-year-old Birkenstocks?" Can we post Grateful Dead stories too, now? I don't post much any more, mainly because I'm finding during the past year, most of my responses would amount to "holy crap Slashdot sucks".
What does it have to do with cloning? It means you don't need to clone animals to save a wild species, as some technophiles like to think. Of course, we already knew that. Witness the recovery of bald eagles, wood ducks, and the slow increase in the numbers of Whooping cranes, which were down to about 25 individuals a few years back but now number in the hundreds. Cloning to save a species is a silly idea anyway, because you need genetic diversity to survive diseases and changing environmental conditions. Jim Kling
Wine grapes were grown in England through early recorded history. It's too cold now to grow wine grapes in England, therefore "global warming" would be merely the return to the prior normal temperatures.
That is, if "global warming" exists as a human effect at all.
This is the sin of pride, that what you have experienced in your lifetime must therefore be "normal".
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I think it's a wonderful idea to study and document the fall, and rise (I hope), of these species.
.22 rifles would do it, but the Japanese have removed that as a legal option.
However, it is not "bad" that species die off. It's normal. Adaptation is normal too. The falcons nesting on the sides of tall buildings, returning to prey on pidgeons in the place that pidgeons flourish (human cities) is a really neat thing.
It would ease lots of minds if something would prey on the Tokyo crow, I can tell you. Training 12 year olds with
Darwin's discoveries drive rational ecology, not radical ecology. "Global Warming" scares and "human effects are by definition negative" are examples of radical ecology that treats humans as invaders instead of integral to the environment itself.
I'm all for Condors. I'm for saving them by the same methods that have saved cows, ducks, chickens, rhinos and emu have been "saved": Private enterprise.
(background: the most successful rhino breeding is being done for profit, for sale to zoos and hunters. elsewhere, rhino are in really deep trouble)
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
This article from Reason comes to mind:
All environmental problems occur in open-access commons -- areas like rivers, airsheds,
and fisheries -- that no one owns and no one has a responsibility to protect. Political
management has generally been the way we have tried to handle the problems caused by
the institution of open-access commons. The CPC is pointing to how private property can
effectively deal with environmental problems. "An owner who neglects or harms what he
owns is soon out of business and is replaced by somebody better," noted Smith.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I wave my hand and a car goes by. Did my waving my hand cause the car to go by? Gee, by your logic it does.
You might try this article for some actual science instead of "The CO2 Is Rising! Oh No!"
The particular part I like:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase could possibly warm the earth, but it is only about 3.5 percent of all greenhouse gases. Water vapor and clouds make up over 95 percent of greenhouse gases.
Funny thing is, if you "warm the earth", there's more white clouds which reflect sunlight. So is water vapor a "green house" gas, or an "umbrella" gas?
Wow! We need to restrict water vapor! It's a greenhouse gas! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Dude... How do you think they reproduced before we were around to help? :-)
I thought the left had the envior-wackos?
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
The hubris is hot and heavy. We are as much party to evolution as is the Condor. That we are able to impact evolution via gene manipulation makes us no less party to evolution than say a species in runaway that depletes it's food supply and faces extinction or change. Species die off and rise phoneix like from the dead as much without our help as with it. Walking the urban core at night I'm as likely now to meet the acquaintance of a racoon or a cyote as another person. There's an overabundance of false pride in a context that sets us up as having risen above the give and take of nature. Although we do have the responsibility of stewarts so there's an element of ambivalence.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Not just keystone species, it's a good idea to study why any species would become extinct. A change in the inanimate environment, or in competition, is a good thing to know.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
You could address the fallacy. Does water vapor trap heat, yes or no? Do clouds trap heat, yes or no?
If they are not "greenhouse gasses", can you create a definition of such compounds which excludes them?
Or, do you consider human interaction by definition "bad"? Since water vapor and clouds are not human creations (unlike CO2?), they therefore cannot be bad?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Blah.
People have practically built a religion around it!
Yes, I am aware that CO2 is a naturally occurring substance, required for plants to crack in order to produce carbohydrates, etc.
The point I was trying to make is that the "global warming" extremists cannot comprehend that the earths natural temperature has fluxuated greatly over time, far colder and far warmer. It is the sin of pride to assume that what has been normal for the last 50 years must be normal for everywhere through all time.
The extremists decry how human action is by definition bad, invasive, destructive. Point out that Mt. St. Hellens dumped far more crap into the atmosphere than humanity, they ignore it.
Point out that the nitrates being "fixed" by internal combustion engines, and the CO2 they produce at the same time, is acting as fertilizer for plant groath, they ignore it.
Point out that the forests are now far more pleantiful than they were 100 years ago, that the mid-atmosphere temp has been very stable for as long as it's been measured, or woe be it that humans making the earth unlivable for *humans* is a temporary effect at best, and they treat you as if you were the extremist.
That is why I phrased my statement as I did. The extremists decry how CO2 content is going up, and demand that this "human interference" stop, by force of arms against individuals.
It is not their motivation I call into question, it is the extremism of their conviction that they must inflict their judgement on others, but oh no never let anyone else effect themselves.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Some species of genetically modified plants were left to see if they would take over the surrounding natural area in an experiment in the UK. What they found was that the genetically engineered plants were incapable of survival in the wild without farming assistance, they died out within one generation. Something in the engineering process hadn't prepared it for the riguors of competition. Nature knows best.
Its one damn thing before another. (Dick Bird 1999)
How can you say all that and still say the following:
[T]his is creating a change that causes a long term (and even permanent if we don't reduce emmisions) temperature increase.
The sin of pride, again. Human beings cannot have a "permanent" effect on Earth. We're an aberation, a short-term species. Anything we could do, including total nuclear war, would be cleaned up and erased in less time than it took horses to go from three toes to one.
I'm pretty sure that the people 14,000 years ago at the end of the last ice-age, as their ice-caps were melting, were terrified of the global warming going on. Just like you are.
And with just as much of an attachment to reality.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
They don't even have a particularly good sense of smell. They find their stuff visually.
l
And they can't even tell when they're raising the wrong species, why whould they know one of their chicks from another of their chicks?
http://www.peregrinefund.org/press/condchic.htm
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL