Tuesday, June 10, 2008

AMAZING STORY

Some of us have known this for a long time, but it seems science is now proving it.

15 comments:

JIm said...

Interesting article. Another illustration that scientific debate is a good thing. Acceptance of a, supposed, scientific fact that is not open to question and debate is a bad thing.

Harryn Studios said...

anomalies abound ...

Anonymous said...

Michael, I can't help but view this post as related to the other posts from this week (except the Ponies post, and what, no Godfather reference?) — we, the human species, operate just as these plants do. We seek out those who live and think as we do — our "family members" — and we give preferential treatment to those people.

The greatest difference between the Republican and Democratic parties — as they exist now — is who they view as "family."

Democrats, beginning with JFK's time, sought to EXPAND the definition of family in this country, i.e., African-Americans, women, immigrants, the poor, the uneducated, as deserving of an equal place in the US "family" — deserving of equal treatment and care. Truly the party of "change" in its most far-reaching sense, and Obama it's best representative.

The Republican political party has become a refuge for the most xenophobic, jingoist, and fundamentally intolerant people of this country, people who cling to old notions of who gets to participate in this democracy (uh, white, white, white and male).

As the rhetoric of the Right increases, and their tactics become more criminal and sinister, I can only view it as their last, gasping efforts to maintain their hold on the world.

JIm said...

The Kid,

You have gotten it exactly wrong. Democrats divide peoples into groups.They say certain groups should be treated differently or given an advantage over other groups because of past abuses or special situations. Thus the Democrat party pushed affirmative action. Crimes against gays become "hate crimes". Crimes by whites against blacks are civil rights violation. I don't know if a crime by a black against a white is considered a hate crime by Democrats. A crime is crime and should be punished. The punishment should be neutral for all groups. Republicans are generally and Conservatives are always for, equality before the law.

Jingoism and intolerence is showing up more on the left than the right. The Fairness Doctrine to cut off free speech is favored be the Democrat leadership. Intolerence as witnessed on this web site and in the Democrat party for scientists and those,who do not accept the "Holy Writ" of man made global, is rampant.

The old notion that you describe as "Who gets to participate in this democracy", is the basic premise that everyone should obey the laws of the land including illegal aliens as well as citizens. As far as sinister tactics, there is nothing more sinister than an expansion govt. poweres through more and more aspects of the private economy. The expansion of the Mommy society threatens to make the US look and act more and more like Western Europe at a time when Western Europe is actually giving off glimmers of hope, with relatively conservative govts in Germany, Italy and France. The Labor Govt. in the UK is in severe danger of falling.
Enough said.

Harryn Studios said...

when anything is threatened by extinction for whatever reasons - special consideration provides opportunity for survival - or natural evolution ...
i speak of honey bees, of course ...

Anonymous said...

Botanical warfare. How human.

Some things are just instinctive, not logical.

Lally said...

Jim, your idealistic concept of what the Republicans and so-called "Conservatives" have stood for in the past decades, but in particular in the past seven years, is so silly we should all just ignore it. But it's hot here and your party line references to "Mommy" says it all and also bugs me. If any party has intruded on the privacy of its citizens and not treated people equally before the law it is the "conservative" Republicans. American citizens held without access to lawyers and/or their lawyers' having access to the evidence the charges are supposedly based on (the most frightening case being the Oregon lawyer, an American born American citizen who is a convert to Islam and whose fingerprint was supposedly found on part of a bomb that blew up those trains in Spain. The Spanish authorities, thankfully, kept looking for matches even after the FBI assured them they had found their man, and when the Spanish police found the actual person whose fingerprint it was, the FBI still admitted no wrong doing or mistake, even though the charges would have brought the death penalty to an innocent man who was not allowed to even see the evidence against him, which is only one example of how this administration has thrown out so much of what makes this country's legal system great, the one Jim refers to, as if fighting for the civil rights of those whom the lawy ignored or oppressed for centuries is the same as throwing out habeus corpus and access to lawyers and evidence and a jury of their peers and everything else this administration has done, starting with its use of the Supreme Court to enthrone a president who was not elected by the people and who would have lost had the vote count in Florida gone on as any one who supports States Rights would have wanted it to, oh, unless you're a supposed conservative republican Supreme Court justice in which case all your years of ranting about states rights suddenly change mean nothing when it comes to gaining power in the executive branch etc. etc. And as for gloabl warming, get off it Jim, that train left the station, and as for the plant story and what I knew when, I'm a poet Jim, poets have been writing about this stuff for centuries, milleniums in fact.

JIm said...

In times of war, bad things happen. Lincoln arrested congressmen and private citizen alike, for sedition, and held them without trial. Woodrow Wilson started a propaganda ministry, set up a gestapo like corp to spy on and encourage private citizens to spy on their neighbors and family. Upwards of over 100,000 citizens were arrested with little or no due process. The Democrats wanted to continue it beyond the WW1, but the American people would have non of it. FDR was brilliant in the prosecution of the WW11, but he fell short in the human rights area as American Japanese will attest.

As far as fighting for human rights, I am all for it. I am against special rights for special groups. I am against the government picking winners. Equal rights for all under the law.

Every recount in Florida, confirmed that George Bush won. The Supreme Court acted properly. Gore won the popular vote, Bush won the Electoral College vote. The Electoral College winner is the winner. Don't you just love the Constitution!

Just because both presidential candidates profess belief in man caused global warming, that does make it true. The evidence is shaky at best and scientific debate is always open until a thesis can be disproved. There is more than enough evidence to throw the whole man caused global warming theory out.

JIm said...

FYI-I offer without comment. I wouldn't want to become tiresome.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609124551.htm


Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots
ScienceDaily (Jun. 9, 2008)
Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't like weather forecasters; They can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period, from approximately 1650 to 1700, occurred during the middle of a little ice age on Earth that lasted from as early as the mid-15th century to as late as the mid-19th century.

Anonymous said...

Jim,

Affirmative action,"hate crime" legislation and labeling some crimes "civil rights violations" were specifically crafted to acknowledge centuries of culture and institutional discrimination —they act as a signal to the courts, the lawyers, the judges —all who participate in judgment and sentencing —that THEY are being watched, and to prompt them to do their jobs without bias.

These laws and labels are a temporary measure and I look forward to the day they are no longer necessary. If you think that day is already come, then you've obviously never had any experience with any of our lovely state or city prisons. Do you imagine that the grossly disproportionate number of incarcerated African-American males in this country is mere coincidence? Or maybe you think it's a product of kids being raised by "a welfare state."

And no doubt you meant the term "Mommy society" to be pejorative (which speaks volumes about you right there!) and evoke the image of mom rifling through my underwear drawer — but are you f-in kidding me?? This administration has their heads so far up our collective asses I taste BBQ sauce!

We could use a more "Mommy-led" society, with leaders whose inherent integrity lends them authority, not their big, strapping WMD.

JIm said...

I here by swear off BBQ sauce forever after your comment. At the risk of repeating myself from an earlier post; the black community has suffered from a tacit agreement with the Democrat party. In return for the vote the party has pushed the idea of victomhood and entitlement which is a weakening concept. Multi generations of welfare has weakened many families in the black community. A bargain with the Democrat party includes a pact with the teachers union. The union is dead set against school choice, which brings competition to the school systems that put parents in charge rather than politicians and administrators. A good education is the ticket out of youths making bad choices. Additionally, drug use is the source of most of the criminal activity in the black community. Spineless politicians of both parties have refused to recognise that prohibition does not, has not and will never work. It failed with the prohibition of liqour and it has failed with drugs. There is an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that is working for drug legalization, taxation and rehabilitation for those who would be rehabilitated. For more info go to http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

JIm said...

Clarification- "The Mommy Society"

The term comes from the fact that the Democrat Party believes and espouses programs that will take care of citizens from cradle to grave. It is a belief, that collective action of government is more desirable and effective than individual and private enterprise is in the betterment of the human condition. This is not a new idea. In modern history we can trace the idea from the French Revolution to the Bismark's Germany to Woodrow Wilson, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, the New Deal, the New Frontier and the current Democrat Party. Some past efforts have resulted in tremendous loss of life. The American efforts had at best, mixed results. There is good evidence that FDR's programs prolonged the Depression. Welfare turned out to be a scourge of the black family. Civil rights is the one thing that comes to mind that was exempliary. Of course a good part of the Democrat party fought against that and it would never have passed without Republican support.

Harryn Studios said...

hope everyone enjoyed the reading of the 'kucinich resolution' to impeach george bush last evening ...

JIm said...

Kucinich never fails to amuse. He representative of all the govt. expertise in the Democrat Party.

JIm said...

FYI Global Warming

http://www.acuf.org/issues/issue109/080607cul.asp

31,000 Kyoto Skeptics
by Dennis Avery
Issue 109 - June 11, 2008
In 1998, Dr. Arthur Robinson, Director of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, posted his first Global Warming skeptic petition, on the Institute’s website (oism.org). It quickly attracted the signatures of more than 17,000 Americans who held college degrees in science. Widely known as the Oregon Petition, it became a counter-weight for the “all scientists agree” mantra of the Global Warming crowd.
Recently, with America being dragged toward Kyoto-style energy limits by cadres of alarmists, Robinson mailed a new copy of the petition to his original signers, asking them to recruit additional qualified scientists. Now his list includes well over 31,000 American man-made warming skeptics with science qualifications. More than 9,000 hold scientific PhDs. Almost 32,000 thousand skeptics happens to be twelve times as many scientists as the 2,500 scientific reviewers claimed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to form a scientific consensus.
Last week Robinson held a press meeting at the National Press Club in DC, followed by a luncheon on Capital Hill, to which members of Congress and their aides were invited. Not surprisingly, attendance was low.
Robinson’s petition states a truth: “There is no convincing evidence that human release of CO2, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will cause, in the foreseeable future, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”