LucidDreamer

The main reason that there are poor people is because a capitalist society forces a certain percentage of the population to be poor. Yes, you heard me right. America could not support 300 million Bill Gates. In a capitalist society you will have a certain percentage of rich, of middle class, and of poor people. The individuals are sorted according to ability but they are also sorted according to circumstance. There simply are not enough stupid lazy people to fill the ranks of the low-income jobs. Therefore society recruits more people by circumstance: some were born into poor families, some were abused as children, some have to support family, some have chronic illness, some catch a bad break and can never get out of the rut, etc. But contrary to some peoples beliefs, most of these people work hard and they are not lazy bums that sit on their asses in their government paid houses and live off of the fat government checks. They work very hard at low-paying jobs, often working two at a time for more hours than a good portion of the rich and middle class. The rich have become rich because they used the system to their advantage. They are rich in part because of ability but also because of circumstance. They have thrived in a capitalist society and most of them come from middle class or upper class families where at some point one of their ancestors worked hard and moved up in society. If it wasn't one of their ancestors then it was them. This is only possible in a society that promotes upward class mobility. In order for there to be upward movement in class the rich and very upper middle class must make certain concessions. One of these concessions is the graduated tax. If the poor people's children are not helped out they will grow up in such a destitute environment that they will never get out. If the poor are not given a chance to move up with these government benefits then the upward mobility disappears, resulting in an elitist society. In an elitist society the amount of people who are poor only increases and the middle class drastically shrinks. The amount of people who are rich also decreases with only a few very rich people who own almost all of the wealth. A certain amount of socialism offsets the natural tendency for the rich to acquire all of the wealth, which results in elitism. One of the important socialistic counterbalances to this tendency towards elitism is the graduated tax. Most societies where only a small percentage of the population owns all the wealth are very poor on the whole, while societies that ensure the existence of upward mobility and have a large percentage of the population in the middle class thrive. The graduated tax helps ensure that the upward mobility exists and that a healthy trade system with a large middle class produces a prosperous society.

Certainly possible, but its hard to know how likely it is for that to happen considering there are so many unknown factors.

Ok now I'm confused budullewraagh. Does the number 38 include the two lost during glycolysis?

No ATPs are made during fermentation. 4 from glycolysis, 2 directly from the tca cycle and approxitmatly 34 from oxidative phosphorlyation, minus the two used in gycolysis and the result it 38. There is actually a range of 30 to 38 total made because the amount made by oxidative phosphylaton varies.

Four total molecules of ATP are formed during glycolysis. Two, however, are used during the glycolysis reactions. So the net gain is 2. Its the same thing for the total Atps made. 36 are made but some are used during the reactions.

Bush is using the excuse of trying to reform a complex system to try and cloak his true agenda, which is to lower the taxes for all of the rich corporations and rich friends that got him into office. Think about it. Republicans want to appeal to religion and business; it’s who gets them into office. The government system is full of complexity. Why would he be concentrating on taxes? Because he is going to try and reform it so that corporations and rich people get tax breaks, which means that the poor and middle class will have to take the burden. That’s so completely obvious that I don't see how anyone can argue with it. [sarcasm]But of course this means that rich people can set up new businesses and hire more people and it will all trickle down to the poor people and we will all be rich because we make the rich people richer.[/sarcasm]

I think the answers to these questions are fairly simple. Say I was collecting 1 trillion dollars in taxes from the American people. I could either create a flat tax or a graduated tax. If I create a flat tax then everyone pays the same percentage of their income to reach the trillion dollars. Let’s say 30%. This is going to drastically affect someone who makes 20,000 dollars a year lifestyle but it will not affect someone that makes 750 thousands dollars a year very much. The person that makes 750 thousand dollars a year will give more money but it will not really affect how much health care he receives, what kind of foods he eats, whether he can have a car, whether he lives in a house or an apartment. Every one of his needs can still be met with the 30% tax. However the person who makes 20,000 will be drastically affected by the 6,000 dollars that he no longer has. His kids will have to go without new cloths for school, they will not be able to visit the doctor, they will not be able to afford a car, they will have to eat macaroni every day, they will live in a roach infested apartment, etc. If you made a graduated tax then the wealthy person would have to pay an extra 10% to allow 20 poor families a tax reduction. This means that 20 poor families get to buy their children clothes for the new school year but the rich man has to put off buying his second corvette until next year. The rich man benefits from the flat tax and the poor man benefits from the graduated tax. Most of the counter arguments against the graduated tax were created by rich men who want to obfuscate the issue so they can get that new corvette. The rich man benefits from the government the most. To truly examine this issue you would have to compare the rich and poor man's lives with today’s government to their lives if there was no government at all from the times of their births. You can't still allow the rich man to keep his wealth because he acquired that wealth using the trade market that is only possible with a government. Without a strong government the technology, trade market, banking, and electrical power would not exist to allow Bill Gates to make billions. Given a case of anarchy both the poor man and the rich man would have to live off of the land. Since the poor man's standards of living were already low then the rich man has benefited most from the government because there would be a very large difference between his standard of living with a government and without.

You bring up good points but I still think it's possible to define a reasonable set of characteristics and then judge the animals by it to determine a ballpark figure. By including the results from many kinds of tests you can diminish the effect of some of the issues you brought up. And yes I think speed of thought is a factor of intelligence. Of course its hard to determine whether a speedy good answer indicates more intelligence than a slow excellent answer. Of course we are just talking about simple problems here. I don't think Juju the parrot or Fido the dog is going to come up with an outside the box solution to getting a piece of food from under a box. They are going to dig a hole, knock it over, or chew through it. They are not going to set the box on fire or call UPS.

Could this be caused by inflammation? How long ago was the surgery? How long was the time period separating the surgery and the point that he noticed paralysis in his arm? Was the paralysis gradual or immediate?

Too late. Its called Ebay.

I grew up with spellchecker and really never learned to spell. I use to be a human calculator as a child but once I started using the graphing calculators I gradually lost the ability. I use to be able to multiply and divide large numbers with decimal places in my head. Now I reach for the calculator for very simple multiplication.

I agree with Twjian and Mokele to some extent but I believe that certain characteristics of intelligence can be defined and then the animals intelligence can be measured by how well he scores in different categories (Characteristics). Ex. You could create mazes for the animals and see how long it takes for them to discover an alternate route. You could scale the maze to the animals’ size and factor out the differences in physical speed. At the end of the maze you have a suitable treat. You could also create a series of problems for the animals to solve and record how long it takes them to solve the problem. It would of course only give you limited results but it might still prove useful. I would put my money on the dog beating the rabbit.

They are not anywhere near that accurate.

Ah, that would be useful if it had a scientific word dictionary.

I'm a spelling moron and I will copy a long post into word and use spellchecker so no one knows how dense I am--oops now they do. An onsite spellchecker sounds nice but I can’t see it being much use under most circumstances. Most of the time Word or another program is handy to check it and I imagine the word processor spellcheckers are better anyway.

Prediction: It doesn't work nearly as well as they claim it does. The law enforcement groups and lie detector operators have been claiming that lie detectors are accurate for years because its in their best interest to claim so. I don't know if the brain fingerprinting is any more accurate but I will bet you that it doesn't work as well as they claim it does. The research administered by the FBI, the police, and the inventors of the technology always seem to give better results than the tests done by independent investigators who are not somehow invested in the technology. But I guess we will see how this technology pans out.

The protein sub-units involved in ATP synthesis or ADP Phosphorlization are not rotating like a top or a carousel; they are embedded in the membrane of the mitochondria. The ATP proteins pass an electron from protein to protein and the resulting electrochemical imbalance powers the phospholization of ADP to become ATP. There is another part to the creation of ATP called the Citric Acid Cycle. It doesn't rotate either; rather there are a series of reactions that lead back to the starting compound. That is why they call it a cycle. This produces the electron carrying units that power the creation of ATP. Any particles that you attached to the sub-units of ATP synthesis would not really be magnetic particles; they would just be charged with one or a few negative or positive charges. They would have to be very small molecules and you could not make a molecule that would just bind to the different ATP subunits and not the other molecules of the cell. If you could then you could not get the subunits, arranged chaotically throughout the cell, to uniformly rotate.

High School biology is mostly about memorization. Take psi's advice and buy some flash cards and quiz yourself often or get yourself a good book on mnemonics.

Intelligence affects the level of education that you achieve and vice versa. Mainly, the amount of education that you receive as a child affects your intelligence, and your intelligence will affect the level of education that you receive as an adult.

Your example of a child who scores highly on an IQ test does not support your argument. The IQ test is normalized according to age. If you are 12 then you have to get the same amount of questions correctly as the mean average of 12-year-olds to score a 100. One twelve-year-old child that lives in an intellectually impoverished environment will not do as well as a child who grew up in a very stimulating environment if the genetic abilities of the children are equal. Do you really believe that if I took one child and exposed him to the most intellectually stimulating environment possible, constantly challenging him every second of the day, that he would not end up with a higher IQ than if I sat him in front of the TV all day? Do you really believe that those southern states are full of genetically inferior people? Evidence that IQ is dependent on education: 1) The Carolina Abecedarian project: Several young children that were born into impoverished families were exposed to intellectually stimulating environments and their IQ's were periodically measured. Their IQ's were found to be significantly higher than the IQ's of children in the same environment without the program's intellectual stimulation. http://www.fpg.unc.edu/%7Eabc/ http://www.childtrends.org/Lifecourse/programs/CarolinaAbecedarianProgram.htm Similar projects that also showed increases in IQ: Harlem Training Project The Milwaukee Project http://www.nga.org/common/issueBriefDetailPrint/1%2C1434%2C1747%2C00.html 2) The Flynn effect: IQ scores have been steadily rising at a rate of 3-6 points per decade. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00037F65-D9C0-1C6A-84A9809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2 http://www.increasingintelligence.com/envir.html 3) SAT scores: There is a very high correlation (.80) between IQ scores and SAT scores. There isn't any great need for people to attempt to raise their IQs but SATs are very important for a student’s admission into a college in the US. SAT scores are easily increased with both regular schoolroom education and by special cram sessions taught by the Princeton Review. http://www.sq.4mg.com/IQ-SAT.htm A quote from the Princeton review: "Our students' scores improve an average of 140 points. The top 25 percent improve by 250 points or more. Your score is guaranteed to jump at least 100 points."

Children can answer fewer correct answers to score that same IQ as an adult. Some adults acquire an amazing amount of problem solving skills as they age. These skills do not, however, translate into scoring higher on an IQ test. This signifies that an IQ test does not accurately measure the intellectual abilities that we actually use in life. It does not mean that your intelligence does not change as you age. If that adult had been practicing IQ tests for 15 years instead of something useful he would score very highly. Everyone's brain will begin to deteriorate with age eventually and you cannot improve on physiological limitations (disregarding pharmacology and genetic engineering). Mental speed is especially affected by genetics. However, you can acquire an amazing amount of mental tools in your toolbox as you age. This does improve your intelligence. Facts and figures are not the only kind of knowledge.

For those of you that do not believe that IQ is affected by education I have a question. How is it then possible that IQ scores have been steadily raising at a rate of 3-6 points per decade? Is it that we are better educated or that we have evolved a 40% increase in our intelligence over the last 70 years?

People in rural, religious communities in the United States are generally less educated than people living in a rich suburb. Education does affect intelligence. Psychometric psychologists insist that IQ is independent of education but this is not true. For those of you that do not believe that IQ is affected by education I have a question. How is it then possible that IQ scores have been steadily raising at a rate of 3-6 points per decade? Is it that we are better educated or that we have evolved a 40% increase in our intelligence over the last 70 years? http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v4n20.html http://www.increasingintelligence.com/envir.html