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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (4204)	5/26/2006 5:05:02 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 24210

let's see...the urban 'mother' now drives a behemoth monster truck to and from the grocery store, home, and to school, and in most cases in a climate the NEVER has adverse weather but is willing to drive and drive by herself or with some kids and is willing to pay for 14 mpg...? TOUGH COOKIES LITTLE SPOILED LADIES....ask for another credit card from HUBBIE

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (4204)	5/28/2006 7:13:45 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24210

Floating Down the River David Horton 05.28.2006 As I try to tease out the process of evolution in these fundamentalist end days I am frequently brought up short by some proposition that had never occurred to me before but which clearly contributes to the misinformation of many of the people molding the minds of fundamentalist children. Here is an example 'Natural selection assumes life already exists, does it not (see en.wikipedia.org. What am I missing here? If there is no life, how can the selection occur?' OK Bart, write on the blackboard tonight - 'Natural selection' is just the opposite of artificial selection, it doesn't mean selection of plants and animals' or 'natural selection is a process, the term is not related to the subject on which it operates'. A source of endless confusion, this one. Look, selection just means to select. Market forces work by selection. If there are two brands of toothpaste and more people like the taste of one than the other, then the more popular one will thrive and the other may disappear. Same with cars. Same with animals, which is the case that Darwin was thinking about that he called 'artificial' selection (meaning selection done by humans, as distinct from 'natural' selection which didn't require human or supernatural intervention) - keep selecting the biggest puppies in litters and you might finish up with a Great Dane, select the smaller ones and you end with a Chiahuaha. Farm livestock are selected for high milk yields, more wool, bigger rumps. A fast evolutionary process as a result of artificial selection. And it happens without intentional human intervention. If there is a bridge over a highway, then lorries that are not very high may pass under it, bigger ones will be forced to take a bypass. And it happens on a bigger scale in nature. In a dust storm, winds will carry finer dust particles further than sand particles. A fast flowing mountain river carrying all sorts of pebbles, sand and silt, will deposit these in order when it reaches a placid lake - pebbles deposited first, sand a little later, silt and clay over the top of them all. Chemical compounds that dissolve can be removed from soil by rain, insoluble ones will stay behind. Chemicals that can combine to form stable molecules will be favored over those that are inert. Chemicals that can be affected by electricity might be favored by lightning strikes. And so on. All of these kinds of natural selection processes were probably involved in the early stages of life on Earth. They don't involve selection by humans, or by a 'god' they just involve selection that happens because of the physical or chemical characteristics of soils and rivers and lakes. And, another popular misconception. What we finished up with was by no means inevitable. On other planets with different chemical and mineral compositions natural selection may well have come up with something called 'life' that bore almost no resemblance to life as it developed on Earth. There is nothing magical about life as it is here. Life here is based on carbon compounds and oxygen and water, and involves the properties of coming into being (in various ways), growing, reproducing, and, usually, dying. On other planets in other galaxies there may or not be similar processes representing a particular way of organising matter.