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User: Katep

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  1. Damn Yankees on Review: "Mission To Mars" · · Score: 1

    This might sound like flame-bait, but it my opion and I think it's an important point. Does anyone else get the impression of "Earth is All-American" from this movie? I mean, USA is a nice country and all, but there is a very large portion of the Earth's population that isn't from the United States. Considering this, why is it that everytime earthlings go ANYWHERE, they're erecting American flags all over the place? Why can't they come up with some sort of Earth-flag to put on other planets? I mean, Earth is not just American, nor is space; it would be nice if Hollywood would remember that once in a while.

  2. What the H***? on Update on 'Blame Canada' and the Oscars · · Score: 1

    Okay, this is going WAY too far. I understand the apparent need for them to censor the words rhyming with "witch" and "luck", there are certain words that just aren't said on something that's supposed to be G-rated, however ironic that may be.

    I can't understand, however, why the word "fart" should be a problem. It's a common, non-offencive word! Since when has that been considered a swear? Are we going for something that has the rating level of "Sesame Street", or what?

  3. Re:The changing landscape on Is Usenet Dying? · · Score: 1

    Alright, wait a minute, here. I, myself, am one of those newbies. I have a IQ that's much higher than 50, and I have no idea what these machines do. If you unplug our computers, we will never have a chance to acheive your level of understanding. You were once a newbie too.

    Newbies unite and fight for your internet rights!

  4. Supervirus on the way? on New Antiviral May Cure Common Cold · · Score: 1

    I remember once, reading the book The War of the Worlds. In the book, alien invaders from Mars come to earth, landing in England, and proceed to destroy the human race. And just when it looks as though they're going to move to the main land and kill us all, they all die, killed by the common cold because they had never previously had a cold. I hate to say it, but that could be very prophetic for the human race.

    I think that the question that we should be asking ourselves is not whether or not we can cure the common cold (which, apperantly, we now can), but rather, whether or not it's worth it. The common cold is the main thing that stands between us and being suseptable to a lot more infections and diseases. If we were to start taking this drug for the common cold, we'd effectivly be weakening ourselves. And what about the virus? Viruses have been around since life on earth began, what makes us think we can stop them? They'll just evolve over the decades, make themselves immune to this drug, and then attack a generation of people with weak immune systems.

    Now, I'm not by any means, saying that we shouldn't use this new drug at all. This is a marvolous breakthrough that will benefit thousands for whom there was no hope. There are many instances in which we should use it, like meningitus and the other viruses mentioned in the article. But to use it against the cold or flu just isn't worth it. We have to ration ourselves. If we over-use the drug, viruses will become immune and the good things that could have come from the drug won't be able to. For one thing, who really has 50-100$ just to throw around for some drug? It's not as if we can't deal with being sick for three more days. I personnally feel that this drug should not be put on the market for use against colds.

  5. Re:oh yea, first post of the millenium on Y2K Rollover - Post Your Experiences Here! · · Score: 1

    Social Darwinism, you see. If they haven't realized that it is not the new millenium, it is for the betterment of society that they be taken out...

  6. Re:oh yea, first post of the millenium on Y2K Rollover - Post Your Experiences Here! · · Score: 1

    AH! Dammit. You want to know what my New Year's resolution was? To punch out every idiot who says "Happy New Millenium". Damn people...

  7. Retiring for the new millenium? on Boris Yeltsin Resigns · · Score: 1

    Does this mean that Boris Yeltzen is not Y2K compliant?

  8. Re:local moon IS brightest on Brightest Moon Fallacy · · Score: 1

    LOL! Hello Clark Griwald!

  9. Re:A little known fact - Q's real name on James Bond's 'Q' Dies · · Score: 1

    I don't think that it's very likely that they'll try to find another Q. They've already retired him, there's really no point in finding another one just so that they can kill him out of the series. Besides, I don't think that the public would take a new Q too well.

  10. Re:Not that far fetched... on Scientists Manage Interspecies Birthing · · Score: 1

    You're right, this isn't far fetched at all. However, this isn't really like the mules and the ligers at all. This is having two animals of the same species (i.e. two wildcats) breed and produce an embryo. The embryo will then be tranfered into an animal of a simular species (i.e. a house cat) and that simular animal bear the young. The young, though born of an animal of a different species, are still wholy one species, and will be able to reproduce. This really isn't a new idea. It has been in the works for a long time, with various veterinairians trying it with different types of animals, but the procedure of tranfering the embryos from one animal to the other was proving very difficult. I, myself, am working as a research assistant for just such a project. In our project, we are attempting to plant the embryo of an alpaca into a llama. It's a fasinateing thing to be a part of. The application of this, at least in the llama/alpaca trade, is fanominal (Yay! I can speel!). Alpaca's are worth about 8 times as much as llamas because of the quality of their wool (You might remember alpaca sweaters?) Both alpacas and llamas can only bear one chia (baby) each year. However, with this new embryo transplant technology, you could essentially have one breeding pair of alpacas, and a whole lot of female llamas, you could continuously take the embyos out of the alpaca and put them into the llamas and have cheap little llamas produceing purebred alpacas. As you can probably see, this will likely come into question sometime in the near future, but until then, people like me will benefit from this knowledge.

  11. Re:Old News on Life on the Moons of Jupiter? · · Score: 1

    Oh good. So I'm not just some crazy psychic... I was certain that I'd heard this one before. I don't think that anyone should be the least bit surpised about any of this. We live in a universe that, as far as we can tell, is infinite. To assume that this planet is the only one that is able to support life or that our definition of life is the only one, is just evidence of humnkind's pompus attitude about our importance in the big picture. Just look at Earth itself and the amazing diversity of life here. We have animals living beneath the ocean that neevr see the light of day, and survive in te super-heated waters around volcanic heat vents. No one had any idea that this was even possible. We really don't know what is possible and what isn't. There probably is life on other planets, prehaps even on Mars, the fact that we haven't found it is probably due to the fact that we don't really know what we're looking for. I have a feeling that if we find life on Europa, it'll probably rewrite the very definition of life as we see it, but that's just as well because to define life in the first place is futile