Cara.

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Posts posted by Cara.

  2. Posted

    ^I like the highway analogy, it so clearly shows how self-serving your objections are. If you can share the road safely with others, then you can drive any damn car you choose, and have any passengers you want in your car. You can even blast Celine Dion from your speakers, and wear a tie that clashes with the upholstery. NOBODY CARES, that's the whole point.

     

    It's when you run down pedestrians because they offended you, or because they were wearing blue jeans when you wanted everyone to wear plaid, or you decide to hog a whole lane to yourself because you are an INTELLIGENT MAN, that people may get irate. Or maybe you abducted the passengers in your car from the local Safeway, or maybe you are swinging your child out the window while speeding and drinking. Then you may have some trouble with the law.

     

    Your "intelligence" will show itself in what kind of car you drive, how you drive it, and whether you can get yourself from point A to point B safely, and maybe even help those who share the road with you get to their goals. Your "intelligence" won't be automatically acknowledged because you are a man, or you happen to have inherited a nice car, or because you say so.

     

    Your problem with democracy isn't that it doesn't reward merit. Everyone is equal before the law, is not the same thing as "equality on all levels". The idea is that everyone have equal opportunities, but there will be differences in achievement which should be rewarded by society. In school, teachers should be impartial and grade everyone fairly, yet there are students that get A's and students that get D's. But your idea of hierarchy would call for a teacher grading students based on whether they are related to her, or whether they are girls vs boys, or whether they are rich vs poor, rather than based on the actual work they do. I wonder why.

  3. Posted

    Easily Princess Mononoke!

     

    But I also love Nausicaa and liked Spirited Away. I keep meaning to watch Grave of the Fireflies but I heard it's incredibly heart-wrenching (it's Studio Ghibli but not a Miyazaki piece).

     

    I had no idea there was an Earthsea adaptation :eek:

  11. Posted

    Hello trollers!

     

    Free food index is an 8 today (2 meals + snacks), but so is the socializing index, so they sort of cancel out. I even had to dress up :(

     

    *Itchy pantyhose, what the hell are women thinking*

  12. Posted

    Hmmm, never really thought about it. How about out into space? Imagine your body drifting out past the furthest spot any human has ever been, sort of 2001: A Space Odyssey-like but without the freaky giant fetus business. But I guess it would have to be propelled to avoid spiraling into the sun? Bummer. I would want to be wearing only butterfly wings and a beatific expression. That way if there's intelligent life out there that discovers my remains it completely sets them off on the wrong track for a spell :D

     

    Other possibility: Crazy cat lady. They say a cat's hunger wins out over any affection for its former master in about 3 days (many dogs would sooner starve to death). Your scrawny frame might be a bit off-putting to Mr. Mittens though :D

     

    Which religion in India does the thing with the ravens (sky burial or something)? I always thought that had a grim poetry to it.

  14. Posted

    No they didn't :( They know I'll just ruin the fun by trying to calculate how many millions of dollars the quarterback is making standing around scratching his derriere. Meanwhile they have to pay for the big screen TV with what should have been their kid's college tuition.

     

    (I'm a party pooper and proud of it!)

  20. Posted

    Mavericksky,

     

    Cells are amazingly complicated and fascinating, I agree. But there ARE levels of complexity in cell structure, with different organisms possessing certain features to different degrees. Bacteria, for example, don't have a nucleus, mitochondria, golgi bodies, endoplasmic reticulum, etc. The differences in cellular organelles, their presence or absence in some organisms, their inter-relationships, all point to an evolutionary origin. If they didn't, cell biologists would be complaining, believe me!

     

    "Proteins don't arise from NOTHING" is a red herring. Even if you disagree with a theory, the least you can do is understand its basic ideas. No biologist suggests that modern proteins arise spontaneously, if anything theories of special creation are guilty of promoting the oh-so-scientific explanation known as "POOF, and then there were fully formed adult animals in an instant". Proteins evolved, just as DNA has evolved, over millions of years. Each protein in your body can be analyzed for similarity to other proteins, and the level of divergence correlates remarkably well with what we know about common descent. Just as you're more genetically similar to your family than to Kim Jung Il, so too humans are more similar to other great apes than to kangaroos or sharks. Why do you think monkeys and chimpanzees are used to test medicine before approval for humans?

     

    I see what you mean about quantum mechanics. Of course, the laws of physics at the quantum level also apply at the macro-level. If quarks are unpredictable and hard to pin down, that applies equally well to everyday experiences. If I throw myself out of a building, there's just as a good a chance I'll disappear and reappear on Mars as that I'll hit the ground outside the window. After all, that's predicted by quantum mechanics, right?

     

    which renders the old idea of 'show me and i'll believe' totally SO OUT OF DATE.

    So what's the alternative? Don't show me and I'll believe? Tell me babies come from storks and that's just as good an explanation as theories on human reproduction? What exactly is the practical outcome of insisting reality is not what it seems?

  22. Posted

    1. Darwin was aware of cells, and the cell theory was actually proposed before he wrote On The Origin of Species. But at any rate, how would cells pose a challenge for him?

     

    2. Darwin would have been thrilled with the discovery of DNA, since it supports his central theory that all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor. In fact, part of the impetus for discovering DNA was that biologists were trying to identify how heritability, an essential component of natural selection, occurred at the cellular level. How were genes passed down to the next generation? The discoverers of DNA, and the first person to crack the genetic code and pretty much every scientist since knows that evolution by natural selection is the single most powerful theory in the field of biology.

     

    3. So we are shooting down basic biology but embracing quantum physics? I guess that makes sense :confused: