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Xaotiq wrote: First and for most, humor.
Secondly, english is a fun and funny language.
I'm sorry, I just don't see the humour. Maybe it's me?
Xaotiq wrote: On that note, then isn't it obvious what he said? Or do you expect there to be life floating in the middle of space between Earth and Mars?
He said it's all here on Earth. Yes, obvious what he said. No, can't see the humour there. If I was to take things further, it sounds like what a midwest bible basher might say. I'm jumping to conclusions here.
Xaotiq wrote: But hey, I am here responding to you
What else are you going to do on a Tuesday night? 
The whole thing's rigged to blow, touch those tanks and "boooom"!
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Xaotiq wrote: Why would it need to be everywhere?
Why does it need to be anywhere, is a more pertinent question. If it's in one place, why not others?
Xaotiq wrote: For example, think of nuclear power and weaponry. Sure, many nations were researching and trying to get the tech but one got there first. Moreover, the research done propagated to other nations (allied and theft) to have them gain said technology or drive them to study it.
There are plenty of other human inventions that sprung up independently across regions: the wheel, shoes, clothes, eating utensils..
Xaotiq wrote: I think you are thinking about the event too closely to how humans behave socially.
The thing about thinking about how humans behave is that our thinking often reflects natural processes. The fact that multiple people across geographic regions and cultures can come up with the same thing implies that the same event can happen in multiple places, unless you believe that we're somehow "special", disconnected from nature?
Life starting from a single source at a specific time means that the conditions for life starting are extremely specific; in my book that means it's unlikely to the point that we probably shouldn't exist. The fact we do exist rules it out, at least for me.
The whole thing's rigged to blow, touch those tanks and "boooom"!
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Xaotiq wrote: If I drop my pen and you drop your pen what is the likely-hood they hit the ground at the exact same time?
Why not ask how many people in the world drop their pen at the same time as you? It's just as valid.
Xaotiq wrote: I chose an example of societal change that was more of an accurate comparison.
All of these comparisons are subjective - either of us can find examples to fit our argument. The fact is that on the original point, there is little or no evidence - everything is based on theories extrapolated from current thinking. Once the world was flat, once the sun orbited the Earth, once there was no water on Mars, etc.
Xaotiq wrote: You are dismissing the effect of society. If you took said people out of society they would NOT come up with the same ideas. They came up with them, because they existed in society leading them to that idea.
Isn't human society a part of nature in itself?
Xaotiq wrote: f it were as you say, we would be talking with aliens from the astroids, mars, venus, heck even life that just cropped up in the middle of space. That makes no sense. We know it must be somewhat rare as we are watching the sky and listening. Turns out it is pretty quiet. That's not to say there is no life out there.
I think I see your confusion here, you're thinking I'm talking about little green men. I'm not. You've got to decide as to what life actually is and where it comes from.
About the pretty quiet thing - I doubt we'll ever hear anything, given the constraints imposed by the laws of relativity and the distances involved, let alone the fact that we've only been listening for a few decades.
Imagine a civilisation sending out signals for a million years, before they died out and their signal stopped reaching Earth before we started listening. Or imagine that perhaps they were using a different medium to electromagnetic waves. We're looking for something we'll most likely never find, even if it does exist.
For me, I'm thinking about microbes across our solar system. If life can start and adapt to conditions here, then why not elsewhere? Perhaps we'll get lucky and find kind of invertebrate, or it might just be something coral-like or a fungus - but to me that counts as life.
The whole thing's rigged to blow, touch those tanks and "boooom"!
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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As any fewl kno -
Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 11: Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so.
All jokes apart, Genesis 1 is a pretty good allegory of how everything came into being - nothing - mater forms celestial bodies - planets form continents - simple life begins - animals - man - Gin and Party! Just a slight matter of who did it and how long it took.
Before anyone flames me, neither Anglicans or Catholics hold that Genesis is an absolute truth, just a biblical truth; which means its hocum, but good hocum.
veni bibi saltavi
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I believe it cant be attributed to a single event but more likely a certain timeframe.
Once conditions on earth was right and the first amino acids or what the most basic building blocks are called started to form my guess it would be that they formed a bit here and there.
Some destroyed and lost but because the conditions where right more were eventually created. During this time amino acids might have been found at several locations around the planet.
With enough time they could probably be found around larger areas of the planet, from these more advanced building blocks where created and most likely lost also. but again with enough time during the right conditions these early steps towards life would have spread enough that "progress" wasn't lost if a single puddle of water was covered in lava or ass blasted by an asteroid.
And then man walked out of a pool of mud and invented the first AI and life had evolved from organic in to something else. The rest is history.
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Maxxx wrote: the origin of life on Earth was a single event.
Not a single event, but a single thing. A turtle. The one on the bottom.
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...And a bunch of elephants on its top...
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
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Hallowed are the Ori
I'd rather be phishing!
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I think the idea is that all the life forms we see from bacteria through plants and animals right the way up to dolphins are based on DNA and evolution gives us an explanation of how each level of the tree of life could have branched from earlier ones.
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Marvellous myth, isn't it?
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Couldn't agree more. However nothing is made less incredible simply by the existence of other things which are even less credible still.
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"evolution gives us an explanation of how each level of the tree of life could have branched from earlier ones"
Simply put, what we don't know still far outweighs what we do. Evolutionary theory, especially the Darwinian understanding of natural selection, is self-evidently a comforting story to fill in the huge gaps in the fossil record. It still has no satisfactory explanation of any process beyond speciation. I don't have a problem with that as long as it doesn't claim to be fact that which is still unproven theory. It's the best story we've got - certainly more than adequate to dismiss fundamentalist creationist claims - but it is still a story as yet.
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Well speciation is really what we're talking about here. But evolution is so much more than just some bloke's idea to explain why there are so many species. It is a proper scientific theory that allows us to predict and test outcomes.
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racketeer wrote: Well speciation is really what we're talking about here.
No. We're talking about the origin of all life. Natural selection provides a basis for understanding how there came to be thousands of different types of birds and a lot of different types of cat all climbing thousands of varieties of tree. It less successful in is explaining how there came to be birds and cats and trees. It is becoming increasingly obvious that natural selection is neither efficient nor sufficient as an explanation of the entire evolutionary process but it remains less than obvious with what it can be supplemented or replaced with as the 'story' we tell. As a result the majority of the worlds children continue to hear the old one at school.
racketeer wrote: predict and test outcomes
Predict what exactly? I don't remember there being any prediction of an adaptation even so small as antibiotic resistance and the new 'bugs' that would arise. The only area in which macro predictions can be made (and then not always with entire accuracy) is in purposive directed breeding which (despite the many natural selection advocates who can't get the distinction straight) has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. What is there to test then and how would you test it anyway? It's called a theory (cf. the Big Bang) precisely because no matter how much confirmatory evidence may be found it remains fundamentally untestable (at least until somebody finally invents a time machine!) and thus equally unproveable.
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Prediction of a future adaptation may be difficult but given that the theory of evolution tells us that at some stage in the past, aquatic creatures made the transition to dry land, scientists were able to predict where would give the best chance of finding fossil evidence of this happening and this led directly to the discovery of tiktaalik.
I don't think you're grasping the definition of theory in a scientific context.
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How is that 'prediction' remotely related to evolutionary theory? It's a simple application of geology using the techniques by which coal and oil bearing rocks are discovered, for example. You cannot seriously believe that scientists have the ability to pinpoint where evolutionary events occurred millions of years ago when what land there was wasn't even where it now is? You look for fossils in the types of rock where fossils have been previously found just as you go to buy ice cream in what you have previously established is a shop that sells it. You don't stick a pin in a map and heartily proclaim, "Here be where fishes got legs, I'll be bound! There'll be fossils there for sure!"
The discovery of fossils is entirely serendipitous. That's why there are such huge gaps in the record. Nothing in evolutionary theory can tell you where to look or what you can expect to find. One of the greatest weaknesses of much palaeontology has been presupposition of this kind as Stephen Jay Gould illustrated so aptly with his reassessment of the fossil finds in the Burgess Shale[^] which I urge anyone who thinks they understand evolution and evolutionary science to read!
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Shift to erase car chip, encoded but easily broken. (6,6)
The answer is Caeser cipher[^] which is an anagram of "erase car chip" (encoded being a trigger word to look for anagrams) and is a shift-based cipher that is easily broken.
modified 29-Sep-15 7:23am.
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Good one! 
You have just been Sharapova'd.
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Jaysus that's quick.
Well done - you're up tomorrow.
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What?
veni bibi saltavi
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