Thanks to you dave I now have an image of the arthropod version of 300...

Well, while that's a bit sassy you can't argue that while flies don't have a specific propose to us, they are to be eaten by frogs, which are going to be eaten next by the french.
It's an ecosystem and if you remove something it can go to hell... or not, but it's more posible what I said before.

Yes, ants not only have wars, they also take PoWs and make them work for them until they die. Animal also lie, Koko, a gorila who was trained to "talk" with hand signals (the one mutes and deaf use) made a mess in the lab where she lived. When the doctor who trainer her asked about the mess she blamed the doctor's assistant and, after he refuted that, blamed the doctor, after he said he didn't she acknowledged her mistake.

She also addopted kittens because she wanted, but that another history and everything may be unreadable because I have to go, I'll edit later =)

This post has been edited by Benoist: Jun 20 2009, 17:59

Ecosystems aren't the working of a higher power, they're just what stuff eats what! I'm sure flies haven't evolved exclusively to be eaten by frogs.



Hmmm... this Koko thing is interesting... perhaps if someone where to find a way to connect a voicebox to a gorilla, we could find out how smart they really were...


Of course, PETA would be all over that! Apparently this sort of surgery is unethical... madness I tells'ya!

No, no, no! Of course a higher power isn't involved (read about that would be so funny and-- er...), but you can't say that every little bug doesn't have a propose, just that they may not be useful (directly) to us.

Not sure where philosophy falls with regards to topic of the thread but will continue anyway:

By your logic, an organism's presence in (what is one of the most simplest views of an ecosystem) a food chain makes it's purpose in existing to be eaten. That would imply you were bred, or your genes evolved to produce a phenotype that would promote you being eaten which, quite rankly, makes no sense whatsoever. A phenotype does not arise to the point where it is common in a population if it is detrimental to the ability for an organism to survive to reproduce; I don't think I should need to explain why this is.

An ecosystem as basic as your example arises as a result of the presence of these organisms interacting with each other, in reality such a basic system would not exist a better analogy would have been a food web, even then as Dave has said it has no bearing in this discussion.

In the UK i'm pretty sure you could give it a shot, so long as you have the licence to conduct the experimentation and can get permission (proof animal/s being studied are being kept in conditions that'd be aproved and that the animal/s will come to no harm).

There are plenty of other things frogs eat too. Flies are nothing short of parasites of the highest level. I wouldn't be surprised that if you taught a frog to use sign language it'd tell you the only reason it eats flies is because they seriously piss him off

As pMASTER said:


I know, most of religion (specialy in places like Africa) are very violent, but I was saying that there is only one case of a Voodoo Zombie, not how spread is the religion/cult or what ever it is.

Exactly, that's my point and I don't understand why Dave "defended" them.

I'm not defending their actions. I'm merely pointing out that the BBC's reporting of these events is painting this to conform with the stereotype that all Africans are bloodthirsty tribefolk who'd murder you in a brutal fashion for being around when anything even remotely bad happened. It's likely that there's much more to this story than simply some folks grabbing an old lady and burning her no apparent reason. (That sort of stuff doesn't happen outside of France!)

As for the witch hunts during the middle ages, I wouldn't be surprised if there were rational reasons for these. (You have to realise that the idea of rehabilitating criminals is a relatively new one, not one that I expect to last either... the disappearance of executions and other corporal punishments has only happened in the first world over the last century.)

The vodou zombism thing. There have been multiple cases reported, and there is a solid scientific theory which conforms precisely with the religious evidence provided.

Religious View:
Man eats zombie powder
Man dies
Man comes back from the dead
Vodou priest digs up zombie
Zombie serves priest

Scientific explanation:
Man eats poisons
Man goes into coma
Doctor incorrectly diagnoses man as dead
Man is buried
Man wakes up from coma
Man quickly gets through air in coffin
Man gets brain damage, leaving him in a zombie like state.
Man gets dug up and put to work by Priest.



Just because there's only one documented case that you can find, doesn't mean this isn't widespread. You seem to be forgetting that:
A. As I pointed out, this idea was dismissed by pretty much everyone up until the mid 1980s as being nothing short of crazy tribefolk talk and B-Movie nonsense.
B. The practice hasn't been very well documented since then because the regions where the practice is most prevalent are particularly isolated.

It is my understanding that Vodou is practiced in West Africa, the event reported is in Kenya. Besides its all irrelevant, a women was still burnt to the stake without a state recognised trial witch or not.

This post has been edited by BigglesTrevor: Jun 27 2009, 16:25

I shouldn't have to repeat myself. I'm not saying they were right to do this. All I'm saying is that there's a good chance there's more to this than the BBC has reported.

I never said Vodou was practised in Africa. I was merely giving an example of a phenomena that is often disregarded as religious mumbo-jumbo when there is a good degree of truth behind the stories.

Oh man i love a good de-bunking. The BBC absolutly kicked the crap out of some pretty desperate 7/7 conspiracy theories. Honestly people need to get a life and some respect. I would recomend the program with anyone lucky enough to have access to the Iplayer.

This post has been edited by BigglesTrevor: Jun 30 2009, 23:57

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8149762.stm

Nothing new in the banking system. All that tax payers cash to make sure there bonuses are back to normal by next financial year!

EDIT : just noticed i wacked this in wrong thread, cheers for moving.

This post has been edited by BigglesTrevor: Jul 14 2009, 23:45

One would have hoped that the Obamadeus hype would have stopped when the guy had dealt with his first two or three months in office. At least our local press releases a headline every time he just scratches his butt.

I've got the impression it is the same everywhere around the globe, right?

Not seen much m'self, admitedly brit papers are a day behind here and the French ones seem to have a lot of internal and local stuff.

It's very much the same thing in Africa & Russia, especially in Africa. Eastern Europe..well, probably the same situation.
It's Obamamania.

Yeap, even his wife moves are "celebrated".

Not to mention the dog, "Bo".

Big Brother Obama anyone?

I honestly haven't heard much of Obama recently. I'm beginning to doubt if he's actually taken up office yet, or if he's going around doing Obama stuff... whatever that might entail...

That said, I do feel a lot safer not seeing Bush in the news!

Your clearly not a reader of the Sun eh? *ba dum tish* No, I agree. Not having Bush in the news is a good thing, that said the less about politicians in the news the better, sadly our press is still to infatuated with them for that to happen.