tvashtarkatena

You bought a Brief History of Time and thought you were a quantum physicist, didn't you? No. I just didn't close my mind after 8th grade science. Being a Bug, I wonder if you'd take an example from the invertebrate world as a possibility for Martin Rees' conjecture regarding human evolution. Metamorphosis is common in the insect world. So the consideration is whether the human essense is consciousness apart from the body. The other question is whether on a larger scale (such as the phylogenic) that the transition is a natural development given the "run time" of the "program". The question of human essence and separateness is secondary to finding a way to consistently acheive new states of conciousness. Where humanity "resides" could be in the brain as a complex mechinism (pure science). If this is the case, the ability to push brain activity to new sectors is the active metamorphisis. The absence of "accessible" brain matter beyond what is currently utilized renders most primitive creatures unsuitable for metamorphing outside of environmental requirements of the physical body (present company excepted). Basically, bacteria through insects "communicate through chemical messages or signals. Very limited possibility for abstraction. So I would expect humans to retain the evolutionary advantage assuming we manage to survive the current mass extinctions. Work beckons.... Humans have an evolutionary advantage over insects? That's news... ...to everyone. Stepping away from the ridiculous, the jury is still very much out as to whether our intellect and technology will, in the end, prove to be an evolutionary advantage or mechanism for self-extinction. One thing is practically certain: whether humans eventually leave or die off, the earth in its final days, just before it's cosmic destruction, will be returned wholesale to those who have always ruled: the bacteria.

funny how they think Americans are the critters and varmen. livestock, more accurately

The most common time to pop a hemorrhoid is during strained defecation. The hairball/assbaby that causes this painful condition might better analogize KKK's role here than the condition itself.

The wars in Europe played the central role in creating the pirates of the Spanish Main. Pirating against the enemy was encouraged by all participating countries; when peace came, a flotilla of former privateers found themselves adrift, so to speak, and so continued the life they'd known and enjoyed...this time against ships of all flags. Merchantmen joined pirate ranks in droves to both to escape their dreary exploitation as an alternative to walking the plank. Former Royal Navy types, castoffs from the shrunken ranks, began to dip their beaks. And finally, the boucaneers; creole hillbillies from Hispanola, often former slaves, who made a subsistence living both on land and at sea filled out the ranks. Amnesty ended the Age of Pirates more than any other single event. Most pirates took the King's deal, including Black Beard, who married a noblewoman, bought a plantation, and became a man of stature in the colonies afterwards...only to continue his sea going recreation on the sly with the governor on the take, and eventually meet his famous end at the hands of a young British Lt and his crew.

Therewasthisbigbangandmaybetheresauniverseamillimeterawayinanotherdimensionorwe'reinabubbledarkmatterplanetarynebulawe'reinthemiddleofbigandsmallOKthnxbye

I got off a clear shot from the fantail earlier this evening.

OK. Whatever that means, I guess. As for humans having time to evolve (by any number of mechanisms), if that's groundbreaking to you, you definitely need to get out more. We don't have 6 billions years, BTW. We have between 250 million and a billion, max. The sun's getting hotter. Earth will be waterless (unless we move it outward, which is actually possible) long before it becomes a bright spark in a groovy looking planetary nebula. Personally, I think humans will develop the ability to shapeshift into forms that more represent their true natures using nano and other technologies. Who knows? When you call someone a douchebag a million years from now, the description may well be nothing more than a simple observation. Keith Richards will, of course, still be Keith Richards.

It's too bad they didn't have to amputate the lower half of your body... ...and throw the upper half away.

Wow, all this defcon-4-specops-speak is giving me an even bigger woody than I had from basking in the cyber-presence of the uber-monly John Frieh. Aw, shit, my pump action just came all over my 9 mil....

As for the video: 5 seconds of layman's overview for each of the entire range of cosmological subjects with absolutely no central point.

THAT was funny.

The Japanese have a certain, ummm, practical way of appreciating at the full range of human behavior.

What you may not realize is that gay couples HAVE that right in Washington. By law. I agree with many of the arguments made here about why gays should be able to marry but the fact is that T'vash's friend can visit his partner in the hospital and they in fact CAN have all the same rights that a heterosexual couple would have -- by law in the State of Washington. They have to register as a domestic partnership, but the same is true of heterosexual couples who have to get a marriage license and have the judge or pastor send the form back to the State after their marriage. Even before Washington's Domestic Partnership law, gay couple's could have had the same rights of visitation and consent and etc. -- or nearly so -- with a simple pre-planned healthcare power of attorney. Most states do not have as powerful of a domestic partnership law as Washington but here, at least, the legal functional difference between "marriage" and "domestic partnership" is mostly in name only. The emotional and publicly accepted differences, however, remain huge. Thanks for the recap of what I previously stated regarding the law in Washington.... The problem with most state 'civil union' laws is that they do NOT include the full basket of rights afforded to married couples. The minute a couple moves to another state that recognizes a different subset of marital rights, or none at all, they face a clusterfuck of galactic proportions regarding visitation, property, insurance, child rearing, and other rights. This is clearly a basic, constitutional issue that should be resolved at the national level. Affording full marriage rights, either by statute or constitutional amendment, to gay couples is clearly the simplest and most just way to do that.

I wouldn't worry about it, most of these inbreads here probably think Les Miserables is a new reality show. Could not ignore

In a room full of identical douchebags, such a question is irrelevant.

It's judgement that defeats us.

And for a moment I thought I was loved by someone....

Embrace the East Coast thing and Hook up with some sailors and sail the DelMarVa peninsula/Chesapeake Bay. Annapolis is a good base of operations for that. Take up squash.

If you encounter a fork in the road, plunge it deep into your breast and howl.

I've never taken a hiatus from climbing, but then again, I always wear an athletic support.

One need not harbor any ill feelings towards a douchebag. After all, it just is what it is.

You're all in a twitter because someone other than myself has discovered that you just basically suck.

They're happy now, but wait until they've been married a few years. Let gays get married. Misery loves company. ;-) THis was the jist of a great New Yorker cartoon, wherein a husband says to his wife from behind a newspaper "Gay marriage? Haven't they suffered enough?"

STP is simply observing the time honored tradition of associating victimless romance/sex between consenting adults with criminal behavior such as pedophilia. He also makes the false argument that putting the equal protection clause in actual use somehow forces non-participants into 'that lifestyle', so 'that lifestyle' shouldn't be allowed because it 'forces' others to 'think about it'. Um...no. Sorry if you don't approve of blacks marrying whites or men marrying men (same same as far as how much it 'infringes' on the rights of a non-participant), but that's what a free society's all about. Get used to it. You don't get to tell others how to lawfully pursue happiness. Sorry. Fucking control freak. Oldest tricks in the book, but, fortunately, much of our increasingly enlightened society just doesn't buy that bigoted shit anymore.

A napalm strike on that fucking strobe lit coffee dump near Index is also strongly recommended.