NavajoEverclear

the Sarus crane was the bird i was thinking about, its actually not the largest bird in the world (sorry i thought i read it was), but the largest in India.

http://magazine.naturecom.de/text/beo.html

This site says that currently the Hill Mynas main habitat is Sri Lanka, aren't there several species of Myna though? Are some of them still around in India?

I bet those peacocks are terrifying. I remember one chasing me around when i was little (they let them run free around the local zoo)

thanks for the advice. That issue about the rhetoric was important too. I was realizing today as was explaining my political views to my sister (who asked) that I didn't really know how to express myself, and that if i were to try to convey my ideas to other people, i'd better find a more efficent way. I'm sure that those with enough knowledge give very meaningful speaches and all, but what we really need are some quick, too the point principles and facts that can be spread around simply to lots of people. Simple and too the point pieces of information are more likely to spark interest anyway.

So i have some things to work out. I'll see about joining a local group, it probably wont be hard to find, a few of my friends are enviromentalists anyway, (and more of them becoming enviroment conscious), so theres even a good possibility of being able to start a group.

Good luck to a fellow enviromentalist. I'm out

all i can say to that is holy shit. But hey i just found a solution to the enviromental problems the u.s. causes--- invite all the pothead idiots to one big national party, and give them a drug that kills them all. They wanted to die anyway. Well there would still be a lot of sober assholes left, we can work with illiminating them later.

Just one question, amoral? reading your post you sound a lot like a mormon, until you talked about all your sex. How is your sex NOT amoral? I'd say its a lot less immoral than the drugged up sex accompanied with the abortions, but where exactly do your morals lie if its OK for you to promiscious? Not telling you what you should think or anything, i'm just a little confused by your choice of words. Actually, i dont really care if you reply or not, but if you do it'd be nice if you explained yourself

ho! thats a hilarious story. I'd like to hear the whole story from the birds point of view.

apologies my last post was probably unbearably large. I myself get impatient with long posts, so i know how they can piss people off. But i needed to say everything I did. I'm hoping more people will respond to this thread. There are few things more important. Society needs to change quick or we wont get a second chance.

there are some really cool India birds. No i dont live there, just a boring american, but i'm accumulating bits and pieces of knowledge about India during my study of Hinduism. The Hill Myna has incredible voice mimicking capabilities, much greater than that of a parrot, but their harder to keep captive. India also has the largest bird capable of flight, some type of crane i believe. (its not of unusual intelligence, just interesting enough to be worth mentioning)

I have two pet ducks, only had em for a couple of weeks. I dont know if they're smart but they do poop a lot.

Coquina- Like the idea, it would work even better with an even more conservative (conservative of resources) focus. People should live in smaller amounts of space, only what is needed (some extra space obviously, but no mansions), along with whatever else can be done to maintain the enviroment. It would also help if we got more energy from natural forces- solar power, wind mills, water turbines.

Badchad- very true. Sparks the imagination to think how such extinction may work as an evolutionary tool as the most capable humans survive on as little as possible. Think there may be any major divergences in lineage? ---- That is for the imagination however. I know i originally mentioned population being a problem, and it is, but realized it is more important to identify who is doing the most damage to the enviroment. The mass of the population is in unindustrialized cultures and countries, they don't have a very devasting impact on the enviroment, while the U.S. alone consumes 75% of the worlds resources that are being used (might have been U.S. along with Europe or something, but it still shows that the countries with the biggest populations have the smallest hand in pollution and depletion of nature). Just because we are the rich and safe in our cities for now, doesn't mean we'll be protected forever. We are high on the food chain, and we depend on everything and everyone below us. We cant survive if they die out.

Nice idea Lance, you most certainly have won a seat in the New World Order.

Martin-- same thing as I say to badchad, population isn't the worst of our problems

Thales-- We need to work together in the revolution. But it cant be sloppy or it will die just like the hippies, but we cant afford to be choked out. My hopeful philosophy I've grown, is hope that making individuals aware of our direct connection with nature which we are destroying will be enough to overpower the greedy voices of the corporate world. The bigots suck their power from the masses, but what if we refuse to give them it? A sort of idea i've devoloped is that the whole world be broken up into communities which are self sufficient. In these seperated units, those who want to suck resources will have to go begging one community at a time to support them. The bigots will have to compromise. They wont go extinct immediatly, but their power will me much more limited. We will not allow them to take advantage of us.

This does not neccisarily mean dissolution of the country/countries, it means that the countries will be broken smaller groups that will unite because of trust, not fear. No centralized government making decisions for everyone. Any groups who have the drive to try to dominate the others, will simply be cut off until they learn their lesson.

A very naive and impossible idea, but something could evolve from the concept. And it could start with the youth. Youth have and always have had a drive for rebellion, whatever the cost. The youth could support the movement and make a loud voice. The trick is taking it beyond the youth. Making sure its not just another short lived hippy rebellion. There must also be a way for the idea to transcend all cultures. Perhaps different models of the the rebellion to appeal to different groups of people.

thanks for the props, but navajoeverclear is not a she. However this point is forgivable.

I was a little skeptical about that tree idea until you said they dont look like regular trees, i ought to check it out.

I hereby patent the idea about evolving the perfect shade of reflectiveness. That dude can create his trees, and i'll have my . . . . things.

excuse, even ignore my ridiculous propositions about how to change the world. I'm not entirely serious, i would definately think out a more structured movement---- though if anarachy can save the enviroment, maybe that would make it a good thing, guess its a matter of opinion. Though that sounds a lot like the 'means justifies the end' philosophy, which we know didn't work out with communism. Social chaos would not be my prefered tool for saving the planet, but ignore that what i think about the issue completely.

What do YOU think about it? What do YOU think we should do? To me the question seems more like, do or dont you care? The evidence is clear that we're headed for deep shit at an exponential acceleration. You just going to enjoy the ride until a self inflicted armagedden? (i by the way do not believe in the christian armageddon idea, but scientifically there is plenty of evidence to show that we are highly capable of exterminating ourselves)

with the scale of damage going on, it could be hundreds of years before we see the results of attempts to heal. So i think its best that we start with not continuing to damage. Not to mention there may not be a way to fix some problems, mainly atmospheric. We can replant trees, but plants dont make most of our oxygen anyway. Do you think it will be possible to fix the ozone in time? My guess isn't that we'll destroy the ozone, but we'll die out before we have a chance to do that much damage. The planet will eventually recover from our extinction, but i'd rather that the future includes humans.

Population control isn't even the most important step. So lets ignore that for now. For now lets just stop driving cars, stop all dumps, burnplants, and powerplants, stop building houses, stop harvesting cows and other farm animals (they consume way too much food and all they do is give us colon cancer). In short stop consuming so much crap. Fine if the effects wont reach developing countries, its the developed countries that consume the majority of everything (by far).

Counter-culture to extreme? Think of the chaos that could become in 50 years if we keep pretending nothing is wrong and that we have plenty of resources to last forever. Well it'll last a lot longer if we get over all the unneccisary stuff.

I said too much. The money used on space crap should be used for services that actually benefit the public.

First off, why is there not an enviromental science forum section?

Anyway, i am taking an enviromental science class this year, and recently we had our first big class discussion about all the damage that our technology, pollution and deforestation and everything is turning the enviroment into shit. Sure we're alive now (a lot of people(none here obviously)) are in terrible impovershed positions. I am not totally against this. In a Richard Dawkins book i read that this is the way it has alway been, that the majority suffers and dies. Also i love diversity, i dont want everyone to have all the same technology crap and all the same lifestyle. But the thing is, our population is out of control, and industrialized countries consume vast more resources than all the people unindustrialized lives.

In 50yrs our population will be fricken doubled. I've heard that the planet will be uninhabitable by then. Probably who said that was blowing some statistics out of proportion, but common sense and accepting the evidence will show that there is at least definately going to be a major extinctions of most larger life forms, obviously including humans.----- unless there is a drastic revolution in our relationship with the enviroment.

What do you think about this? Do you think we'll have population controls in all countries in time to save ourselves? (like in the Ender books).

I am seriously considering starting a counter-culture on a crusade to destroy technology and break down all centralized governments and corporations. Break humans into small communities and our combined forces wont be so destructive. We'll have to work directly with the enviroment and think about what we're doing.

Well tell me your thoughts. There is no denying we have a huge problem, what are we going to do about it?

this is a really interesting topic. I wish i could say i was more musically acomplished. Guess its just a matter of work, that i intend to get around to someday. It would be really cool to see what kinds of things you could do if you figured the right way to consciously apply more complex mathmatics concepts to music. What these are, i'm not sure. Math is kinda like magic to me, as is anything you dont know much about. Pre-calc is about as far as i've gone. I'd definately be interested in learning more if there was a good program or book to read or something. I had an awesome pre-calc teacher, so i loved that. Then my calculus teacher friggen sucked, and i dropped out at the semester. I'm in Stats now, which is cool, but mostly just about entering in a butload of numbers (far as i can tell, but i've only been in school a couple of weeks

oh yay this ones back. The way i pictured it, the organism would have a large shell, and the biological creature in its center, or perhaps a protected colony. It could even use radiation or whatever that the shell picks up to power its processes.

However, what hades said is very true. It would require a whole friggen lot of energy to keep all the systems working in such an enviroment.

But i as i was thinking about the shell just now, i got another idea, dont the solar panels of sattelites get extremely hot in space? And then you know that the moon is thousands of degrees in sunlight, negative hundreds in darkness---- something like that anyway. So saying that things freeze in space is absolutely not true in the right circumstances. Maybe this organism could evolve to have a shell of the optimum surface area (i imagined it to be a disk like shell, maybe even like a sea shell) and the perfect shade of reflectiveness so as to keep it not too hot, not to cold. Along with the capability to go dormant when its cold (cause these organisms would orbit , so they'd be in the dark half the time right?)

Hold on, that cell phone concept is the most important--- how can you explain that? If you need some evidence, i was on a plane a few weeks ago, and after they said it was ok to use electronic devices, my dad tried his wireless internet on his laptop. Not surprisingly, it didn't work. So i'm pretty sure those cellphone calls were impossible. Cell phones can be really difficult to use inside certain buildings. Its really easy to get disconnected from service down here on the ground. So how the hell did they get such good service in a speeding plane? Also why the hell didn't they make a bigger deal about this. Its so obvious i feel stupid not to have noticed and questioned it myself.

sorry i worded that wrong. yeah i meant the stats page. but after thinking about it, i agree with thales

For the reasons I mentioned in my last post i decided against suicide a while ago, so dont worry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wotanaz

Thales:

All actions, even the "altruistic" ones, are based on selfishness.

 

thats not true, you often here of selfless acts, such as saving a life at the risk of your own, thats selfless and is also an action, therefore that quote isnt technically right.

I'm not sure myself if there is such thing as an unselfish action. Depending on the maturity of your thought process, you may no longer care for your own rewards, but in all the time and paths leading up to that were surely covered by actions for the benefit of yourself. Its just instinct, theres nothing wrong with that. There are many actions that are good for yourself and others. Infact i think it can be selfish to put too much emphasis on trying to be unselfish. I'm not sure how to explain why i say that, but i'm sure some of you understand what i mean

If you are like I was, you probably walk around with your head down, looking at your feet. If you make eye contact with someone, do you have a "hangdog expression"?

Well i haven't been like that in a long time, i actually do have quite a few friends, i just do a very good job of hiding my depression. ---- i'm getting tired of talking about my own depression now that i see its pretty much a universal thing.

I've been postponing this question for fear of being punished. I know i shouldn't care, but i did pride myself in the title of being the 6th top thread starter, and now you take my credentials? how dare you! or did you just relocate it and i'm just too stupid to find it?

I realized that dead is dead - whether you believe in the afterworld or not' date=' you sure don't have another shot at this life.

.[/quote']

 

thats a very important thing to realize, i decided a while ago that suicide wasn't an option. I mean what you want (what i wanted it to be, during a time i was seriously thinking about it) suicide to be, is the ultimate action that will make people start noticing you and start caring.--- but if you're dead you cant reap any of those benefits, and i've got enough things in life that keep me hopeful, and many good friends that i want to stick around for.

 

I still cant identify the exact trigger, but i realized that usually not noticing, i'm constantly placing no value on myself, and putting everyone else up on a pedestal, assuming they are so special because of something i wont be about to understand. ---- thats the way i see people before i know them. Then as i get to know them i hear about their problems i never knew they had and find out their not that dissimilar from me. Besides activities to keep active, i need to make a deliberate effort to stop looking at the world like that, cause i haven't realized how much this seperates me from everyone else, when i think i'm not trying and its just happening. Its actually kind of dissapointing to be disillusioned, but at the same time very refreshing.

Thanks for your advice, i have noticed that if i'm in some activity that my mood picks up. There are times when i just don't feel like doing anything, so that could be a problem, but i'll keep your advice in mind and work with it. Thanks very much.

And i wish i could identify a trigger, but i dont think there is ones. Some days i just wake up feeling really crappy about myself, and occasionaly i wake up feeling unusually energetic and social. Sometimes it changes in the middle of the day.

Anyhow, keeping active is very good advice, should have figured that out myself but thanks for your help

Depression sucks, how do you deal with it? I heard there isn't really anyway to change your natural chemical balances (or imbalances), obviously there are drugs (legal and illegal), but they all have crappy side effects.

I myself have a significant case of depression, that i simply wish would go away. I realize that there is no reason for my depression, but it doesn't change the way i feel. Maybe i'm some form of bipolar, because i have been known to be unusually happy on certain occasions, this is fairly rare though. Most of the time i'm not that depressed, but i am definately in deep depression more days than i feel good. If i want i can usually hide my depression by being completely emotionless and energyless--- but that usually bites me in the butt with deeper depression later.

Like i said this really sucks, i dont WANT to be depressed, it really gets in the way of my social life and the way i communicate with people. I don't have enough happy days to to make up for the damagage i do to myself when i'm depressed.

So just wondering, is there any way to deal with depression?

---- oh and dont worry i dont need urgent replies, i'm not sucidal at the moment, just trying to find answers.

My guess is it would have worked similarly to spoken language, you would visualize, or think of hand signals or whatever as your communication and thats how you'd see it in your brain. The evidence i have, is something you may not undestand but i'll try to explain.

For a few monthes, it just started out of doodles, then evolved into art, i've been drawing complex ink designs, consisting mostly of curves and spirals, an occasional straight line for diversity. You'd have to see it to know what i mean probobaly. Anyway, for about the last month i get developed visual ideas in my head spontaneously. I think its coming from somewhere unconsciosus. You've heard of similar things happen to musicians who suddenly just hear a song. This isn't exactly the same as language, but it illustrates the concept that you can think in terms of something other than verbal words, though just as fluently as verbal language

it works better if you ditch words and go with ideas.

 

it makes reading A LOT faster. don't say the words to yourself. when you are walking down the street and see bob' date=' you don't say to yourself "thats bob"; you just recognize him. do the same with words and you will go much faster. sorry for the off topic paragraph, but it kinda helped my point.[/quote']

 

I totally agree with that, i think putting language into our brains vastly limits the way we think, to what we consider capable of being put into words, even thought there are endless thought processes and emotions for which we have no words.

 

I have often thought giving things names is meaningless and simply provokes us to skip over details more important than names. But since we aren't telepathic, what option do we have? And you can recognize people without names, but without names how do you refer to someone who is not present. If they are present you can gesture to, or talk to that person. but if not, a name makes for a quick way to identify who you are talking about.

come on guys what about the Pumpkins? Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness rules

I love incubus, smashing pumpkins, AFI, Everclear (of coarse), Lots of others really, but those are some of my top ones right now

Well if i go half way, then you go half way, we can meet in the middle of Kansans for a date. What do you say?