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Scientists Find Preserved Dodo Bird Bones
nz17 writes "BBC News is reporting that a team of Dutch and Mauritian scientists have found what appears to be a mass dodo bird grave. From the article: 'Little is known about the dodo, a famous flightless bird thought to have become extinct in the 17th century. No complete skeleton has ever been found in Mauritius, and the last full set of bones was destroyed in a fire at a museum in Oxford, England, in 1755.'"
That would be neat if we could clone the birds somehow, I'm not sure if that's possible any more, but maybe in the marrow or something...
Now this flood deal, the science of Waterworld aside, where did all that water go? If the earth has been realitively unchanged in the last six thousand years as they claim where did it go? The water tied up in all the glaciers would raise the oceans a couple of hundred feet. Not even enough to cover the majority of the US. A number of states would even be high and dry. According to the bible even the highest mountains were covered. Everest is nearly 30,000 feet above sea level. Any event that could remove that much water from the surface would sterilize the planet and leave a comet the size of the moon. There isn't enough ground water to account for it either.
Untruths are easy to spot they tend to be houses of cards with easily found holes. The difference between Intellegent Design and Evolution is whatever holes there are in Evolution they are slowly being filled. They same holes will still be there in a thousand years that there are now in Intellegent Design.
I live in Mauritius. There is word that a team of researchers, mostly foreigners, recently-discovered Dodo bones on a dig site at Mare aux Songes. These bones are said to have been sent to Holland without authorisation from some local authorities who deal with issues of National Heritage. It was not known if these remains were stolen or sent abroad secretly.
Now, at least we know where the remains are.
Note: Till date, not enough bones have been found to build a complete Dodo skeleton.
WTF over? I posted this to the MSNBC thread - BEFORE the dodo bird thread was even active.
Mauritius is also famous for having a great many highly endangered species. (Think numbers in the single digits.) They're also infamous of having released some, after rebuilding the population in captivity, only for the locals to devour them back out of existence.
The entire island is heavily overpopulated with humans, the environmental concerns are badly neglected (or deliberately overlooked), yet the biodiversity that still exists - albeit in captivity in hopelessly underfinanced, understaffed, underequipped shelters* - exceeds that of virtually the entire USA combined.
*By this, I do not mean they can't go and buy a billion dollar gadget once a week. Accounts usually depict the staff involved in saving the native species as being borderline starvation cases, constantly under threat of one kind or another - particularly of malicious closure, and probably earn less in a month than a kid in a Nike sweatshop can make in an hour.
It is precisely because of conditions like that that I am not the least bit surprised that Dutch scientists would have smuggled out anything they could. You know what? I'm not the least bit sorry for Mauritius. When you treat scientists with enough contempt - hey, scientists are human too, and even the most professional will eventually return the compliment.
I doubt anything will change - except maybe for the worse - in my lifetime. My only hope is that there is something left to salvage by the time attitudes change.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Also some interesting research has been surfacing and it seems that soy (one of the most frequently eaten veggie foods due to versatility - over 2/3 of the soy running around the world is GM, though) is not particularly good for men. A UHawaii study showed an increased alzheimer's risk. The issue with it is that the plant's hormones are highly similar to estrogen...
The best argument for humans as omnivores is that our body is not only clearly designed to consume and digest meat as well as plants, but that our body is clearly not designed to digest only plants. Our stomach in particular is poorly designed for the job. Humans are omnivores and any attempt to diverge from that path is certain to be fraught with trouble.
Granted, you can eat whatever the hell you want, and I won't care. But I think the point that vegetarianism is silly is as well-made. Both plants and animals practice evolutionary chemical warfare against one another, which is fun to think about. About the only good argument for vegetarianism or veganism is one of impact. It takes a lot more cropland to raise animals (ineffiency is everywhere) and agriculture is the single largest factor of human impact on the earth, more than greenhouse gas emissions or nuclear waste. Egypt used to be green! Over time humanity is converting Terra into a desert, and the mechanism used to do it is called agriculture.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"