This little book:
Crop Circles: Evidence of a Cover-Up (An Orbis Enigma Book)
by Nicolas Montigiani
argues that crop circles are evidence of the testing and development of high powered, computer guided, laser or microwave beam weapons.
I know it sounds crazy, but if he's right about the evidence, it sure make more sense than all the new age nonsense about ufos and aliens.
And it also implies that one of these days we'd be seeing a story just like this one in the news.
You wrote:
"I would like to see the US gov't protecting it's workforce, by the usual means (tax breaks for companies using american employees, trade negotiations, etc). Our governments priority is to take care of its citizens first, then the rest of the world. Right now we appear to be protecting shareholders and investors (who are the only ones who really benefit from offshore labor) at the expense of the average joe."
Here's the official position from the Bureau of International Labor Affairs:
From: Ward, Diane - ILAB
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:13 PM
To: zzILAB-ALL GROUP
Subject: Letterhead
This message is to inform you that we have been asked by the Secretary [of Labor] 's office to no longer use the Bureau of International Labor Affairs letterhead that has "Working for America's Workforce" at the bottom.
Please call me if you have any further questions. Thanks.
Early (non-living) cellularity was explored in "Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis" by Harold J. Morowitz, Yale Univ. Press, 1992...so this idea is not exactly news...
Morowitz postulates that the first step towards the origin of life was the spontaneous condensation of amphiphilic molecules to form vesicles (or protocells)... which would have served to isolate the chemistry of the stuff inside from the environment outside... So it's not that cells came first, but rather CELLS WALLS came first...and then the chemicals isolated inside were able to evolve metabolism, self-replication, etc.
In other words, it was the EGGSHELL that came before the chicken or the egg...
As for what life is...the seriously curious should explore "Investigations" by MacArthur "genius award" winning author Stuart Kauffman (Oxford Press, 2000). This and his earlier books - "The Origins of Order: self-organization and selection in evolution" (Oxford University Press, 1993) and "At Home in the Universe the search for the laws of self-organization and complexity" (Oxford University Press, 1995) constitute the best thinking I've seen on the difficult questions of what life is, and how it may have come about.
Kauffman doesn't pretend to have the answers...but he sure has a better grip on the question than a whole barrel full of arm waving theorists (and creationists too, for that matter.) If you can follow even 10% of his thinking, you will as well...
Kauffman's ideas don't lend themselves to any sort of sloganized quick summary, so you'll just have to check it out if you are really curious. "At Home in the Universe" is (relatively speaking) the easier text to start with; and in "Investigations" Kauffman's approach to defining what life is starts with asking what it is that living things do. They co-create the environment (biosphere) that also co-creates them...
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This little book: Crop Circles: Evidence of a Cover-Up (An Orbis Enigma Book) by Nicolas Montigiani argues that crop circles are evidence of the testing and development of high powered, computer guided, laser or microwave beam weapons. I know it sounds crazy, but if he's right about the evidence, it sure make more sense than all the new age nonsense about ufos and aliens. And it also implies that one of these days we'd be seeing a story just like this one in the news.
You wrote: "I would like to see the US gov't protecting it's workforce, by the usual means (tax breaks for companies using american employees, trade negotiations, etc). Our governments priority is to take care of its citizens first, then the rest of the world. Right now we appear to be protecting shareholders and investors (who are the only ones who really benefit from offshore labor) at the expense of the average joe." Here's the official position from the Bureau of International Labor Affairs: From: Ward, Diane - ILAB Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:13 PM To: zzILAB-ALL GROUP Subject: Letterhead This message is to inform you that we have been asked by the Secretary [of Labor] 's office to no longer use the Bureau of International Labor Affairs letterhead that has "Working for America's Workforce" at the bottom. Please call me if you have any further questions. Thanks.
You gotta be kiddin...apples grown for consumption are always cloned.
Early (non-living) cellularity was explored in "Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis" by Harold J. Morowitz, Yale Univ. Press, 1992...so this idea is not exactly news... Morowitz postulates that the first step towards the origin of life was the spontaneous condensation of amphiphilic molecules to form vesicles (or protocells) ... which would have served to isolate the chemistry of the stuff inside from the environment outside... So it's not that cells came first, but rather CELLS WALLS came first...and then the chemicals isolated inside were able to evolve metabolism, self-replication, etc.
In other words, it was the EGGSHELL that came before the chicken or the egg...
As for what life is...the seriously curious should explore "Investigations" by MacArthur "genius award" winning author Stuart Kauffman (Oxford Press, 2000). This and his earlier books - "The Origins of Order: self-organization and selection in evolution" (Oxford University Press, 1993) and "At Home in the Universe the search for the laws of self-organization and complexity" (Oxford University Press, 1995) constitute the best thinking I've seen on the difficult questions of what life is, and how it may have come about.
Kauffman doesn't pretend to have the answers...but he sure has a better grip on the question than a whole barrel full of arm waving theorists (and creationists too, for that matter.) If you can follow even 10% of his thinking, you will as well...
Kauffman's ideas don't lend themselves to any sort of sloganized quick summary, so you'll just have to check it out if you are really curious. "At Home in the Universe" is (relatively speaking) the easier text to start with; and in "Investigations" Kauffman's approach to defining what life is starts with asking what it is that living things do. They co-create the environment (biosphere) that also co-creates them...