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Magpies Are Self-Aware
FireStormZ writes "Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals. It had been thought only four species of apes, bottlenose dolphins, and Asian elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror. But German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies, a species with a brain structure very different from mammals, could also identify themselves. It had been thought that the neocortex brain area found in mammals was crucial to self-recognition. Yet birds, which last shared a common ancestor with mammals 300 million years ago, don't have a neocortex, suggesting that higher cognitive skills can develop in other ways."
Aves FTW!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
|_| Get showered
|_| Have breakfast
|_| Pack briefcase
|_| Get girlfriend
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
God or no God, the USA is the best.
If there is a god, then, the USA is the best because we are following His will to spread liberty throughout the land and let people discover Christ of their own volition. Thus, it pleases God that George Bush invades Iraq to bring the flame of liberty.
Now, if there is no god, there is no notion of equality, because equality is a logical construction of the soul that says we are equal because the most important thing we have is the thing we cannot measure.
So, we measure.
We look at men and women, different ethno-cultures, and we can see that each has had varying degrees of economic success and skills. It's only natural then that better cultures should dominate the weaker and, rather than calling imperialism evil, it only seems rather fitting that the advances made by superior cultures should be imposed upon the weaker.
Given those measurements, one can easily see that in per-capita GDP, size of military, number of cable tv channels, that the Iraqi culture was inferior and it was good that George Bush the GREAT invaded Iraq to bring American capitalism to them.
The point really is, of course, that even if you succeeded in getting rid of God, you'll never get rid of imperialism. If anything, you'd make it a lot more arguable. If we got no souls, there's no point of safeguarding them through self restraint.
Yes, you can be one of those libs that equates jumping at a strange sound like it might be the cops when you are all high and then realize it's the pizza that you forgot you ordered.. but, that sort of paranoia and trying to make some kind of a culture out of it is just silly for those who don't smoke weed or don't like pizza.
This is my sig.
Pray tell, where does this "soul" of which you speak go after we leave this place?
Out to lunch.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest