wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Amdrewsarchus is often described as wolf-like but it isn’t related to canids at all. It is actually a big nasty pig. It went extinct in the Eocene likely due to climate change and competition from smaller, faster predators called creodonts.

————-
Pig? Ok, then I’m off the Andrewsarchus bandwagon.

Weren’t there any mega-wolves?

w
v

There was the dire wolf which was about the same size as a grey wolf but had a really powerful bite.

Maybe the nastiest predator during the Pleistocene was the giant short-faced bear. It had long legs for a bear and likely could run as fast as a horse. It was about 5 to 6 ft tall at the shoulder when standing on all fours. It didn’t spend a lot of time rooting around for grubs and berries like most bears. It was strictly carnivorous and preyed on big animals. There’s speculation that the first small bands of humans to come across the Bering land bridge were probably wiped out by these bears and that humans couldn’t gain a foothold here until they came across in larger numbers due to the strength, size, speed and voracity of this bear. Just speculation though.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by nittany ram.

Amdrewsarchus is often described as wolf-like but it isn’t related to canids at all. It is actually a big nasty pig. It went extinct in the Eocene likely due to climate change and competition from smaller, faster predators called creodonts.

Zooey wrote:

It doesn’t matter.

This was the window. It is now shut. And the planet is doomed.

Sanders cannot go again. And, in any event, the establishment will be ready next time, and Hillary – sitting presidents just don’t get defeated in their party’s primary. Unless she gets impeached, which isn’t likely. This was the golden opportunity, and it’s gone.

Yeah, unfortunately you are most likely correct. The ember of hope has been stamped out by the size 13 boot of establishment politics – probably for good. The next election cycle will feature the standard mainstream style candidates whose sole purpose is to ensure nothing changes.

Oh well, we still have football…

Well I’m done with the GMO and vaccine topic. I find the science behind then fascinating but I’m not interested enough to waste anymore bandwidth on them. Everyone knows my position.

I’m sorry for your loss, Mac. Statistics aren’t so abstract when a loved one is among the numbers. I never meant to imply that those few that are hurt by vaccines don’t matter. You are right that most of the initial testing and clinical trials are conducted by the pharmaceutical companies themselves, and most new vaccines fail during these tests. But vaccines that are approved by the FDA are continually monitored by the CDC, universities, foreign governments (if the vaccine is sold overseas), etc to ensure their continued safety. But I’m not a pharmaceutical company shill, I was just weighing the good of vaccines vs the bad. I work in a clinical lab in a hospital in Vermont, a state where there’s probably a larger anti vaccination contingent than in most places. Here you can refuse to vaccinate based on philosophical and religious reasons. You begin to lose the benefits of herd immunity when vaccination rates drop below 90 percent. In some areas of Vermont the rate is below 60 percent. Because of that, we see pertussis outbreaks here every few years and a lot of children suffer needlessly (although the pertussis vaccine isn’t nearly as effective as others). Anyway, I view vaccines from the perspective of someone who works in healthcare and sees the results of not vaccinating, not as a father who lost a child due to a reaction to a vaccine so if I seemed unfeeling, I apologize.

bnw wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

Zooey wrote:

Jesus made the plants the way they are, Nittany.

Yeah but he didn’t make them productive, flood resistant or pest resistant enough to feed all his children.

Fortunately the devil came along and created GMOs. Thank God.

I think it is weird that the two of you viw man made global warming as the ultimate disaster to mankind when the very food supply for your survival into the next month is truly threatened to become a monopoly of a few corporations. So odd.

Fear not. Patents expire. Generic GMOs are here.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539746/as-patents-expire-farmers-plant-generic-gmos/

bnw wrote:

I know that patenting genes is a bitch slap to common sense. Of course GMO isn’t good. It is a racket to OWN the food supply. It is the ultimate power play against mankind.

I don’t know what Monsanto’s motivation is. I want them treated like any large Corp should be treated in my opinion …heavily regulated and scrutinized. But Monsanto isn’t the only player in the game and GMOs are being used for all sorts of purposes including fighting disease. If cancer is ever cured it will likely be due to a GMO virus. A GMO virus has already been used to cure a patient of skin cancer.

And this is all good stuff…

“GMOs have the potential to up crop yields, increase nutritious value, and generally improve farming practices while reducing synthetic chemical use – which is exactly what organic farming seeks to do. As we speak, there are sweet potatoes are being engineered to be resistant to a virus that currently decimates the African harvest every year, which could feed millions in some of the poorest nations in the world15. Scientists have created carrots high in calcium to fight osteoperosis, and tomatoes high in antioxidants. Almost as important as what we can put into a plant is what we can take out; potatoes are being modified so that they do not produce high concentrations of toxic glycoalkaloids, and nuts are being engineered to lack the proteins which cause allergic reactions in most people. Perhaps even more amazingly, bananas are being engineered to produce vaccines against hepatitis B, allowing vaccination to occur where its otherwise too expensive or difficult to be administered. The benefits these plants could provide to human beings all over the planet are astronomical.”

PA Ram wrote:

Many plants are patented, GMO and non-GMO alike. The terminator seed is a name given to the sterile seed technology by anti-biotech activists. They are actually not being used anywhere.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted

Well, that is interesting and something I didn’t know. I think that’s a good thing because I’m all for using technology in positive ways–as long as we don’t create a “Frankenstein” along the way.

The growing population is something we will certainly have to deal with and no one ever seems to talk about that problem.

One thing I think regarding that is that I will not spend thousands of dollars to freeze my head so that in the future they will be able to unfreeze it and then clone me a body because–let’s face it–the future population will be worried about feeding itself. They ain’t bringing back PA Ram to feed. Unless they DO bring me back and then turn me into Soylent Green by cloning me a plump 600 pound body.

Doctor: “Welcome back, PA Ram! Glad to have you with us again.”

Me: “Doctor? Why am I so fat?”

Doctor: “Let me ask you–are you a fan of old Charlton Heston movies?”

Me: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone? We could feed the masses and be environmentally friendly by killing and eating invasive species…you know, species that aren’t native to a location but were introduced and now are proliferating out of control. There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of that in the US from the European Starling that displaces native hole nesting birds to Japanese Knotweed which is choking our river banks. “I’ll have the baked starling and a knotweed salad with balsamic vinaigrette…”

Actually I’m only half kidding about that.