Peterkin

That's what I assumed. A tiny animal will generally avoid provoking a big animal, unless it's quite sure that big animal has no culinary or hostile inclinations toward the tiny animal. Once amicable or at least laissez-faire relations are established, communication and some degree of accommodation can take place. I wouldn't put it past him. But i don't suppose the crab is intelligent enough to get that.

Not to much effect, I'd wager, unless the octopus were obliging. I have to suppose the crab had reason, through previous interactions, to expect co-operation.

The same way you know the blackbirds are telling you to stay away from their nesting site, or the dog tells the cat to get off his bed or a goat tells a horse to come and play: body language. Needs, wants and feelings are common to all life on Earth. The closer two species are in brain complexity, lifestyle and habitat, the more they can understand of one another's expressions.

That may all be so and worth discussing, but it's a much bigger discussion than the scope of this thread, and belongs in a different category.

In my case, it was another way of saying I don't want to hijack the thread. No, it wasn't about that. It was a simple caution against focusing on the details of a desired physical type, rather than individuality. There is more to engage with in a slightly homely woman who is interested and friendly than a supermodel who keeps looking at her own reflection. People who are born into the right sort of body also have, more often than not, to make peace with their own physical imperfections. People who have to make a superhuman effort to achieve the type of body they should have been born into are at greater risk of diluting their internal identity in the process. It's important to find the point at which you've made enough change to your appearance and retained enough of your original personality.

Yes and no. On one hand, the price of procedures reflects the cost of research plus the cost of training the practitioners and furnishing the facilities, so every breakthrough has to bring commensurate returns - and be predicted to bring worthwhile financial returns before the people who control money invest in it. Once a procedure is established and has a steady market, the cost of tools and training deceases, competition increases; in theory, that should bring the price down. Doesn't seem to apply in many areas of medicine, which remains highly specialized by field. I don't know what research is going on, or how the pandemic situation has retarded its progress. Really, the future of bone surgery is speculative. I'm simply not informed enough to address that question. "***" I suppose they have their reasons, legal, moral and religious. Medical research needs to be controlled, because Frankensteins do exist. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726839/ Technically, I have no quibble with the advancements you're suggesting. For sure! Within reason. I would just caution you - and everyone who wants to change their physical appearance for whatever reason - about the risk of too deep an emotional investment in body-image. But that's not about anatomy; it's about psychology. It was an idle aside - i.e. off topic; thus' another can' - a speculation on the very complex question (thus 'can of worms', facetiously euphemized) of what motivates resentment from people who have no stake in the matter; nothing to lose (metaphorical slang idiom: 'skin off nose or ass'). Nothing to do with actual body parts. Sorry! I get a little carried away with language sometimes. "***" Quote option is really clever on this board. Highlight the passage you want to quote, it turns blue, wait for prompt: 'quote selection' (might not happen on first try) hit the button. The new quote pops into your reply box, exactly where the cursor was. Make sure there is clear space between it and any text below, or the quote may appear in the middle of your own sentence. (This, too, is off topic - there is a section for help with technical issues.)

It says I have no intentions.

OK then. If Human Destiny demands it, the scientific tool-kit must serve it.

project, not process You've given a remarkably one-sided and ideological view, yes. This is not scientific; this is a creed.

That's what zealots of Beetlejuice told the skeptics before they launched that black glass brick full of corona virus. It was intended for Europa, but overshot - just like the first time they tried it, 3 million years ago.

No, what? Of bleeding-course it's the humans! Who else?? Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Conclusion: all people should own guns. "It" doesn't speak; it doesn't breathe; it doesn't bleed; it doesn't breed.

None of the above. Science has no priorities, no responsibility, no will, no purpose and no consciousness. Science is nothing more than a methodology, a set of tools, wherewith humans - imperfect, subjective humans - achieve whatever aim their needs, wants, ideals and ambitions demand from moment to moment. Their injudicious, selfish, shortsighted, (not to mention downright evil and sometimes even the best-intentioned) applications of the scientific tool-kit has ended or blighted billions of lives, extinguished many thousands of entire species, committed genocide on groups of its own species and done irreparable harm to the only planet we know for certain to be habitable. I, as a human being, rather than a spokesman for Science or any other lofty Concept, am of the opinion that any meddling on our part has the potential of doing harm to other potentially habitable planets.

Your obsession with Earth based ideologies are clouding your sensibilities. I don't believe either of has been exposed to any ideologies that are not Earth-based. Where we differ is in our views on priority, responsibility and entitlement.

Whoooa! Round the twist, off his rails, and the most influential thinker in the world. Well, that should tell us something about where the world is going.

I don't accept that. The events in dreams are not random; they are the continuation of real life experience and/or cogitation and/or emotional preoccupation. Dreams have a narrative and an internal logic that has meaning for the dreamer. That meaning may be expressed in symbolic imagery and therefore, to some degree liberated from physical laws: You may be able to walk underwater or float among the clouds, but your motion is forward and below is down; the sacrificial lamb that has its throat cut bleeds red, though perhaps it does not die; it may speak with a human voice, but the language is one you understand. Some control. But this tends to happen only when one is close to waking, so the dream is already disintegrating when he takes conscious control. I do some of this, and have discussed t with others who do; have not yet encountered anyone who has total control, except at the beginning or end of a dream sequence; what happens in between is directed by the unconscious mind. The introspection would have to be consciously undertaken, visualized and focused on a specific subject area before falling asleep. Then the dream would begin to form during the NREM stage, so that the REM stage had a theme to take up. After that, unexpected events are likely to take place, but these might shed light on the issue that the sleeper is investigating, and might, in the semi-conscious end-stage be recalled long enough to record for conscious analysis. No, it's not someone else, though it may be one's own alter-ego. Most of us have several, some of us have many alter-egoes, or aspects of personality that play different roles in one's private, social and working life, or are are indulged only in fantasy, or suppressed altogether. There is no 'pure randomness'. You have definite images of known objects, and plausible events. Randomness has no meaning, while dreams are rich in meaning. The point of that is not being someone else (and even other characters don't do things randomly: they have motivations and aims) but the question itself. "Why did I do that?" Wish fulfillment? Frustration? Revenge? Aspiration? Fear of temptation? You have a reason for doing that in your dream: either the action was a response to something that happened to you, or else an experiment or rehearsal of something you might do in certain situations. So we in lucid dreaming have limited control over our actions, and some control of the environment, however we are not necessarily a true reflection of ourselves. What and where is a "true reflection" of any self? If you're controlling, as in conscious life, you are not considering at the same time. The introspection comes either before (What can I do? What should I do? What do I want to do? What am I prepared to do?) or after the action (What was I thinking?! Could I have done better? Would I have done that if I'd known...?) but not during. I don't see how. Every author knows about creating and controlling characters; every fictional character we manipulate has motivations and aims upon which we have reflected through introspection ("What would I do in his place?") and that thought-process doesn't either fuse us with our characters (who are already buds off our own) or confuse us in our identity. Isn't that psychoanalysis? Rorschach test, word association, mood journal, dream log, hypnosis...? Just so!!

It would be fun to see them duke it out for food-chain dominance. But what's the point of being a god if you can't see your creations suffer? Earth ideology imposed on other planets, the way European powers imposed Christianity on the savages of the New World, because they believed that it was good. Once you've contaminated the galaxy with plagues and pestilences, you'll establish a policy of non-interference (unless it's a tactical exception, or there's science to test.) How magnanimous! Remember, one of the many variables you cannot predict is whether there is already developing life elsewhere - maybe not on your target planet, but on a neighbouring moon, or solar system - another is whether your messenger microbes will evolve into virulent pathogens that hitch rides on comets, travel to other inhabited planets and wipe out the native species, who will not have developed a resistance to them. Life can be brutish and nasty.

It's science done in the service, not of potential new knowledge, but of ideology. Science is a method, a tool - it can serve whatever purpose people want.

If knowledge ever comes back. Otherwise, it's missionary work.

Anyone who understands the distances,time periods and variables involved.Even if you artificially speed up the process, by the time ET phones home, there will be nobody here to answer. is absolutely correct.

That's what happens when you put unpaid interns in the collating room! (Though it's hard to imagine poor Hungarian eel-fishers in hovercrafts to begin with.)

But Google isn't on the street, reading the sign. A tourist with a cellphone would read the google version; one with a pocket dictionary would not. In the making of signs, there are cultural and economic assumptions, just as there are in idiomatic speech. In the case of the lanes merging, the driver has no options: whatever it means, he has to squeeze into that one lane. In the case where someone is looking for a green space to have his lunch, he's found the wrong venue.

It can be from movies, I suppose. But the word 'park' is ambiguous in itself. In how many languages is it a verb? In how many languages can it be passive? In how many languages is it associated with vehicular traffic? So is 'attend' - that's a verb, so 'attendant' might be an adjective as easily as a person. 'Heated' is all right, translated literally, but which of the other things is being warmed, and why? They are also both metaphors. Neither is commonly used in my part of the world, where the second would be understood more readily than the first. Canadians have an appreciation of cold, but we're not particularly naval. Metaphors, either from the language of a specialized field, or from popular literature, enter idiomatic communication all the time and become an accepted part of the cultural medium of exchange. Then they don't need context or background, because everybody knows what they mean. Some are place-specific and relate to the history and lifestyle of a people, while others, like Biblical and Shakespearean quotations, are widely used. Of course, lately, broadcast journalist coin words and phrases that may be entirely devoid of meaning (Snowmageddon? Perfect storm of doubt?) yet instantly become familiar parlance through endless repetition.

It does mean both earthly and land-dwelling. I don't see the application to this thread, or to my quoted comment.

By 'we', you mean those familiar with the concept and practice of assisted temporary automobile storage.

The specific named characters, no. The circumstances* and conditions prevailing in the period, yes. Roman colonial history is quite well documented. I have never claimed more than conjecture based on available circumstantial* and historical evidence, most of which I cited. * yes, I do know what 'disinterested' means, and I'm also aware of how large a part circumstantial evidence (I know what that means, too) plays in historical reconstruction, scientific theory and criminal prosecution. Nobody's asking you to believe Christian lore.