Moontanman

I'd be in big trouble, my family has little to no facial hair, I'm glad I live here where i can be a heretic in so many ways and be ignored equally.

I would like to see some evidence for this idea, I know there is huge amount of evidence that says that it is impossible for this to have happened. Do we have to trot all that out yet again? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged These mountains have been in place for many many millions of years, this is a non starter. How did echinoderms manage to survive this deluge of rain? If you can explain that I have a great many other species that could not have survived such a deluge. All I can say is no there is no evidence of anything like this happening at all ever. Again what is your evidence for this?

Well they tried concrete.

I think it's quite possible that at the temps and pressures at that depth liquid nitrogen would come rather close to being a liquid already. I'm not sure it would have the impact you are looking for.

Well at 55 it would appear I've got all of the facial hair I'll ever have.

This is very interesting, I am of native American ancestry and I have almost no beard, none at all at my temples a tiny bit on my chin and sparse mustache. What little bit of facial hair I have is quite clear and has to be quite long to even been noticed. My grandfather who was Cherokee had even less beard than me, he could "shave" with a pair of tweezers, just yank out a few hairs that grew around his moles he was clean shaven! I guess the next question is how would these religious groups deal with men who had no facial hair?

That would be how humans dressed up the story so it matched their own preconceptions. The fact remains that the shiny naked humans were the linage down through which humanity was passed. In the bible it would have just been the Jewish people but at the time I thought the bible was a larger story than just the Jewish people, a larger story that took place many tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago not just 6000 years. It turns out there is not much to my young theory but there are a few amazing match ups or so i recall thinking at the time. Although the one above is the best I remember. Much of the stuff is obviously stories from other religions or times earlier than the Jewish religion. Sorry this is way off topic, if we want to continue to discuss this King a new thread should be made.

In certain religious sects having lots of facial hair in the form of a thick flowing beard is necessary or is indicated as being necessary to being a man. What if you were a male with very little facial hair. Could you still be a member? I'm just curious because I have very little facial hair but all the Taliban seem to have long full beards, is this religious or cultural or both? Americans who work closely with people from Afghanistan all wear the full beards to gain the mens trust. It occurred to me I would stand out like a sore thumb! So what is the real status of the beard thing?

Then your take on this would be even more important to me. I remember the first time i heard this story, I was about 12 years old. i immediately looked it up in the bible and the thought occurred to me that this could be an analogy of when humans took the world from Neanderthals. At the time I was convinced the bible was a text on the way the earth and man had evolved but primitive humans had not the scope of or the idea of science and they interpreted the words of God in a completely different context than they were meant to be understood.

Oh boy, where I live a tropical depression formed just off shore last week, very early for this. We got some wind and rain, nothing bad...yet. Most people seem to think, and the news concentrates on this, that hurricanes form off the coast of Africa and then come across the Atlantic to hit North and Central America but they also form just off the shore of South Eastern USA in the Gulf Stream as well. It's been several years since we had a major storm, let's hope NOAA is wrong

No, hollow wise sounding bite type analogies only serve to impress those who are not experienced enough to know it's nothing but physco babble. From my point of view your analogy is nothing more than a lie to cover up yet another lie, the lie being the existence of god to begin with. Don't try to baffle me with BS, I've heard it all in dozens of small fundamentalist Christian churches to large more secular churches, your analogy falls flat. Tell it like it is, don't try to cover up a lack of real knowledge by babbling sound bites that sound wise simply because they are unclear and confusing. Of course he didn't get fired, how could he fire himself? DrDNA I've heard those confusing analogies all my life, i stopped being impressed by them way before puberty. if you truly have something to say that is indeed wise don't try to cover it up by being obscure and trying to confuse the issue with false superiority. if you think you have wisdom i think we are all capable to judging that sans the obfuscation.

I've often thought the idea of Sapiens and Neanderthal mating was interesting, i see no reason to think that Neanderthals were inferior to us mentally but they were definitely different, their culture shows almost no sign of trading or commerce between distant places and Sapiens was all about trading for resources between distant places. This trading by it's self would have given Sapiens a leg up simply due to being able to get the materials for tools in trade rather than having to find sources of tool making materials close by to survive. I think this idea of commerce is what separated us and them and led to their decline and extinction. King you like to look to the Bible for historical data, I can't recall the scripture but at once point the a man had two sons, one was hairy and was a great hunter the other was not so hairy and was a farmer. the father favored the hairy wild son but his farmer son connived to take the harry brothers blessing from his dying father. it resulted in the farmer brother taking the birth right of the hairy wild brother. This has always reminded me of the Sapiens vs Neanderthal and how they first encountered each other in the land now call Palestine. Could this story have been an explanation of how Sapiens stole the birth right of the Neanderthals? Also Esau was covered in red hair and Neanderthals were though to be redheaded to some extent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esau

Sure no problemo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek

I think it's a positive step leader coming from the ground that has been cut off from both the ground and the clouds. In other words a ball of positive plasma. Or remote control alien drones...

No I would not agree, a forest is wild and the trees are all unique, if all the trees are alike it's a tree farm. Lots of them around here. No moss, it's not a forest to start with, as i said a forest is a wild ecosystem with out all it's parts it's just a group of trees. Your questions make no sense to me in the context we are discussing.

המשיח הוא פשוט דרך אחרת לדת לשלוט ההמונים עבור אנשים שרוצים לשלוט I can use google translate too.

I have been told, by seriously religious people, that the bible is absolute truth, every word, and that to question is in any way is blasphemy, the same as calling god a lier. The idea that Gods word could be translated wrong, as in God would not allow this, is also blasphemy. If the texts differ it is because God wanted them to differ and wants the translation to be the way it is. To me this is crazy but to these people who truly believe it's the word of god exactly as God wants it to be. These seriously religious people take this concept very seriously. God cannot be wrong so if old documents are changed or destroyed it's because god wanted it that way. it's why only the Gospels we have now survived to be included as parts of the new testament and why we should not even try to look back and see what was because what is in the bible now is what god wants. Scary stuff for sure.

כן, אבל מה האמת היא שיש בדת

I have to agree with King here, at least to a small extent. I think it is indeed a mistake to dismiss out of hand the idea that something in the sky or about the sky has indeed inspired us to do lots of things. it could very well be that the ancient writings is inspired by no more than the planets and stars. No one can discount the effect the heavens has on humans. Similarly discounting what modern humans have seen is also in error. Billy Joe Jim Bob the redneck out drinking beer and smoking dope while he seduces his cousin in the back of his pick up truck is not the only person (or type of person) to have have ever seen a UFO that was simply beyond our understanding of what we like to call reality. Many trained observers have witnessed clear sightings of real metallic objects that defy the laws of what we think of as flight. objects that cannot have an earthly origin. men flying nuclear bomb carrying bombers have seen these things both visually and on radar. Verified by other ground radar and similarly trained observers on the ground who saw the UFO hovering over intercontinental ballistic missiles at a hundred feet above the ground and the UFO affected the electronic communication of the bomber, civilian aircraft that also saw the object and the object affected nuclear missiles in their silos. All in the same sighting! Now we can explain away the above sighting the same way the military did, every one saw the planet Jupiter or we can look into the evidence and give at least a realistic possibility and often something beyond our understanding of what we see on the earth is a possibility and not a distant one! On the other hand i cannot see taking the word of ancient scribes at their word because quite frankly they saw these things in the sky as supernatural, everything that occurred in the sky was supernatural. On the other hand Meteors and Comets were supernatural entities as well but they recorded them quite accurately. Why do we dismiss anything else they saw but not all of it? It's because we have been able to pin down meteors and comets as natural phenomena but UFOs remain unclassified. I think this is due to the way UFOs were investigated by the military and the way the military instilled the idea of UFOs being seen by people who were not quite right in the head or were poor observers. Remember that at one time "officially" rocks did not fall from the sky either. To suggest it could bring you into deep shit. It didn't keep rocks from falling from the sky, it just kept people from believing they did unless they saw one drop. Ridicule and dismissal of the idea of rocks falling from the sky kept people from the truth for a long time. I'd rather believe a Yankee professor would lie than believe rocks could fall from the sky! Any one want to debate the three main theories of the orgin of the UFO? ETI theory, EDI theory, and M&M theory (The best candy in the world comes from Mars)

Me, the whole oceans falling off the edge thing got to be a drag, the giant turtles kept drowning! Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Some arthropod breathing organs are better than others but i can agree with this, I pretty much said it in my post. Agreed Nope, you are ignoring the cube square law, land arthropods are not large because an external skeleton gets too heavy to support large animals. This is true but an intelligent creature capable of doing what we do has to have binocular vision to judge depth, Depth perception is part of the bag of tricks that allow us to effective use our intelligence for technology. We are talking about technological aliens here, fire is a prerequisite for technology like ours, aliens must spend at least part of their lives on land, and light is the easiest and best way to see on land. Crows are very smart, they use tools, even make tools out of other less suitable objects but they are severely limited by having to use their feet to grasp limbs and their beak has no opposable thumbs to multiply their grip. Birds as we know them would be at a big disadvantage in the "hands" department. Could a bird use a spear or flake rocks to make a knife? A bow an arrow? I'll have to admit it's a unlikely but still possible scenario. Again, under water, no fire, no space ships. Even if gravity was low enough to allow an octopus to achieve technology the air being thick enough to allow life forms under such low gravity seems unlikely. No they are not as I've pointed out. A head on a torso, binocular vision, two arms and two or more legs to support the body is humanoid. Even four arms and four legs would still be in the shape ball park. Yeah, it's one of my favorites but the crab is exaggerated in size quite a bit, the trash can is not a normal 30 gallon can, more like a five gallon bucket. Still a big crab but they are rare and cannot compete with introduced mammals in their environment. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged King, i really have some sympathy for your arguments here but so far as others have said you give no evidence at all and the idea that because we all shared a similar creation story really doesn't hold up. The idea of beings from heaven is not universal nor is the creation story of the bible, even though the bibles story is repeated in other cultures so are many other things in the bible. It might mean human brains are alike enough that we form similar stories when we try to go beyond what we know but some creation stories are simply not even close to what we westerners seem to think is universal. I think it's even possible that the idea of aliens comes from this universal need to appeal to a higher authority. In ancient times they saw gods or demons, now we see aliens. I think some of the evidence does point in the direction of nuts and bolts aliens, ETI, EDI or some other manifestation of some intelligence other than us but I cannot prove it yet. Your idea does dovetail quite nicely with mine but i don't think "they" are super beings we cannot conceive of in any way other than the supernatural and i really see nothing to even suggest "they" created us. I hope one day these things will be investegated seriously and maybe some good can come of it but for now we are speculating big time. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedBTW I hate this whole merged posts deal!

In the last few days a tropical depression formed just a few miles off shore where I live. Rather early for that to have happened, I live in a place where hurricanes for just off shore often. most time you think of hurricanes forming in the tropics but here in NC they can form just off shore and do so regularly. we get northeasters as bad as cat 1 hurricanes in the winter as well. We usually average a major storm every three years but we haven't had one in 7 years now, only tropical storms and cat one storms since then. I've been through a cat 3 several cat 1 and several cat 2 as well. Does anyone else live where hurricanes are regular occurrences? From a purely anecdotal perspective I'd say major storms are not as common in recent years but smaller storms are more common, any one agree or disagree? Any hurricane stories to tell? I have one... A family that lived close to me during hurricane Floyd reported that during the hurricane they heard a loud banging on their back door, it went on and on so they peaked out to see what was banging on the door. an alligator about 8 feet long was trying to get in the door! I guess the storm was too much for him and he wanted shelter!

I used to live in the city and the tap water if left in the sun would turn emerald green in a few days. It was great for raising Daphnia magna for fish food for my fish breeding business. i drank the water for 34 years and it never bothered me. Where live now i have well water it goes through a softener and it can stand in the sun for weeks and remain clear as a crystal but it tastes terrible and has hydrogen sulfide in it. if you by pass the softener the water turns red immediately on contact with the air and leaves a muddy bottom of iron sulfide when it settles out, it is very hard and stinks too. I'd rather have the water with algae in it...

Stars in the middle of our galaxy can be shown moving so fast a movie of their movements has been made. they are moving too fast to be in orbit around anything but a black hole. Stellar mass black holes have been detected by gravity lensing and by their effects on other objects. Theory suggests black holes should be fairly common. I am pretty sure a quasar and a galaxy are the same thing, a quasar is a galaxy that has an actively feeding black hole and what we consider a normal Galaxy doesn't.

Big change for such a small period of time. Must have been a huge amount of energy involved.

I've been reading this thread and I have to admit I'm not sure exactly what the argument is. part of it seems to be we have choices in Internet service providers. From what I understand the choices are more like levels of participation. You have dial up, yes people still have dial up, i do, and it's AOL, as far as I know I've never been restricted as to what i can view on the net by AOL, i can choose to be restricted and I've had some run ins with some sort of nationwide service that has told me how much they want to protect me from porn or unfamily friendly content but i told them to f**k off and they went away. I'm not sure where they came from or how they got access to AOL but i think it was someone who was trying to scare people off certain sites, in this case a pagan site i was talking to. Where I live there are many dial up providers, they are all equally slow and full of adds. Then they have somewhat higher speed providers, at&t being the only one i know of right off hand in my area but i am sure there are others. You also have people like dish-network but that's a different story, I'd have to set up a dish on the side of my house and it is grossly effected by weather and so on. Then you have broad band, in my area only Road Runner provides broadband.. Since i prefer to have a hard line instead of a wireless my options are limited. I used to have RR who has a deal with AOL or is owned by AOL or RR owns AOL or something like that so when i had to go back to dial up AOL still had all my stuff saved from RR. i probably got screwed by misinformation but dial up is pretty much dial up so WTF. It seems to me that in my area at least there is so little choice that saying you have options is putting the cart ahead of the horse. My options are limited from what I see, if I'm wrong them please school me on the subject but how can you allow providers to edit the content of the web if you can't get anyone else to provide the service? Is money the real factor here for freedom of access to the net? Do only people who can afford it in affluent areas where there are many servers have real choice?