I've changed 1 word in the debate title (**Evolutionists** to **people**) to hopefully discourage discussions about the meaning of words and help people focus on the topic. 

Basically extinction is as natural to existence as death is to life.  That being the case, shouldn't we just let endangered species die out instead of trying to save them?  I mean there's a good reason why they're endangered right?

A piece of food drops to the ground. You pick it up and make one of life's most difficult decisions. Is the 5 second rule valid or not?

The five-second rule is that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it. Suprisingly, a federal judge has decided that a 30 second rule in fast food resturants is both reasonable and fair.

"Food gets dropped", said Fast Food industry spokesperson Eton Moore. "Lots of it would go to waste without the 5 second rule. If we had to throw away every food item that hit the floor, that would slow down our service and drive up our costs. However, more than 5 seconds would also slow down service and it would put our customer's health at risk"

Friends of the Handicapped has a different view. "Not all of the people working at a fast food restaurant can retrieve a fallen food item in just 5 seconds", says FOH spokesperson Floe Down. "Some people need more time".

FOH brought suit in federal court to force the fast food industry to allow workers more time to pick up fallen food.

Judge Ima Judge ruled in favor of FOH. She cited the testimony of Anne Bernhard, an assistant professor of biology at Connecticut College who put the 5 second rule to the test.  Bernhard's research team dropped apple slices, a wet food, and Skittles, a dry food, on the cafeteria floor and measured the results. The research results showed that 30 seconds was probably safe for moist food and up to a minute could be safe for dry food. Berhard concluded that it would be safe for a burger to be on the floor for 30 seconds and a bun for 60 seconds.

Citing the need for reasonable accommodation for handicapped workers while still protecting public health, Judge Judge ruled that 30 seconds for retrieving fallen food was a standard the industry should follow. FFI spokesperson Moore says they plan to appeal the decision.

If people descended from apes, then why are there still apes? The truth is, apes descended from people!

Remember when you were a kid and you'd make a funny face and your mom would say, "Don't make that face or it might get stuck like that"? Well that's what happened. An ancient tribe of mimes liked to pretend that they were apes, and then couldn't stop!

Also, the 13th Tribe of Israel is not lost; they are just all stuck out in the desert somewhere in an imaginary box.

Hey Guys!

I was going over this topic with my friends the other day, and so now I've decided to ask around.

Let me know whole-heartedly what you think. Is it humane? Is it right? Is it safe? Let me know.

I say that we shouldn't, which I'll fill in later. Thanks, and Happy Debating Everyone!

Nobody likes bisexuals. They can have twice as much sex as anybody else. Any body.

That's not exactly fair now, is it? IS IT????? [shaking fist to the heavens].

And thats really sad, because bisexuals love everyone!

Bad bad Bad!

"The world's first penis transplant performed in China has failed because of the recipient's wife's psychological rejection of the organ. Even though the postop conditions had been fine, surgeons removed the penis at the patient's request."

What he should have done is:

What makes a person? The answer to this question will undoubtedly be of great moral relevance in issues such as abortion, as well as hypothetical future situations such as artificial intelligence and or extraterrestrial life.

thoughts?

"Did the earth move for you?" is not just a question to ask in bed or in an earthquake zone. Apparently, the earthquake in Chile shifted the Earth's axis by three inches!

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth's axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.

Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth's rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.

"The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second)," Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. "The axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches)."
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What is interesting to me is that this article was published in Business Week. Business Week. Why? Are some businesses planning to dock their workers pay because they worked a 1.26 microsecond shorter day? And would that be fair? I mean, on Wall Street, traders are earning billions of dollars every microsecond, right? Every microsecond.

Damn. I want to join their union!

SUVs = evil

Consider this editorial, written by the editorial board of The Denver Post:

"President Barack Obama has requested more than $14 billion to fund the drug war at the federal level in 2009. State and local enforcement costs drive that figure far higher.

Year after year, a few hundred thousand people end up in court and prison as a result of drug crimes. Our overcrowded prisons are just one reason to take another look at some of our drug laws.

Granted, there are still many dangerous drugs out there. Highly addictive drugs like methamphetamine or crack cocaine swept through our nation's cities and suburbs and rural communities like epidemics.

But legions of studies have shown that marijuana isn't addictive.

And as recent U.S. presidents have shown, use of the drug, even when inhaled, doesn't in and of itself ruin a person's chance at achieving full and productive lives. Yes, pot users face risks as potentially as devastating as other drugs. So do drinkers of wine and beer."

2009 marked the 8th Annual Blogger Boobie-Thon.  Bloggers from all over the globe send in photos of their boobies (covered and uncovered) to help raise money for Breast Cancer Research. Covered shots were placed on the main page while photos of uncovered breasts are on a pay-to-view page. To date, the effort has raised $50,000 for Breast Cancer Research.

Mrs Rotifers explains, "Bdelloid has a 'micro-organism', if you know what I mean. After a few hundred years of micro-orgasms, we gave up the sex thing."

According to a small sect that claims to be followers of God's twitter account, God explained for them a couple of things about climate change and the disappearing polar bears.

Apparently, we really and truely are experiencing climate change, but it is caused not by human activity, but by God. He plans to build a Hawaiian-style resort community for Himself and some of his best buddies in Alaska. The sect members explain that with the climate getting warmer and warmer, eventually Hawaii itself will be like hell -- which is a good thing as hell is getting full and God needs an overflow area. Alaska will be just the right temperature for a tropical paradise for Himself and His bevy of bikini-clad angelic beauties.

The polar bears are disappearing not because of the disappearing polar ice, but because God issued a recall notice. The plan is to replace them with dolphins, just like we can see in the waters around Hawaii now. Polar bears just don't fit in with the whole tropical theme according to God. Who could (or would dare to) disagree?

Speaking about the polar bear recall , a spokesperson for the sect proclaimed "If God sees fit to re-call a species He created, who are we to question his divine judgement? The spokesperson explained, "God created the dinosaurs, killed them off and turned them into oil. I'm sure scientists would have asked that the dinosaurs be covered by the Endangered Species Act as well!"

Well, maybe now the Algorites will shut the fuck up and let God have his way with the climate. I mean, what other choice do they have really?

Multiple Personality Disorder. It's more common than you think!

Who helped the world more

Even thought I am a vegetarian, I am against vegetarianism.  Why? I don't think this diet should be any kind of "ism"

I don't judge people for what they eat. I don't discuss my diet unless someone is sincerely interested and asks about it. I'm available as a resource for information and practical tips, but I don't try to "convert" anyone. I don't even expect everyone to adopt this diet. However, I think there is an approach to this issue that would help improve people's health, the humane treatment of animals and the environment.

When I was Director of EarthSave International, I had the opportunity to have a chat with the organization's founder, John Robbins. He is the author of Diet for a New America, which has been described as the vegetarian bible. (Yikes! We don't NEED a bible!)

He said that we can imagine people's dietary choices on a bell curve with people with a meat-centric diet on one side and vegan/vegetarians on the other. He said that if we could interest and assist the vast majority of people in the center of the curve move even just one step closer to a plant-based diet, we would be doing more good than if we tied converted people to a "pure" vegetarianism, which would only persuade a few.

It was a unique and persuasive vision.  Unfortunately, too many vegetarians and vegetarian advocacy organizations are too militant and judgmental, believing that we can shame people into changing their diet. Not a good strategy. 

Have you encountered an obnoxious vegan/vegetarian advocate? What specifically did they do that was so rude?

On the other hand, have you observed or experienced prejudice against vegan/vegetarians? We are not all assholes you know.

After hearing about stolen emails proving that man-made global warming is a scientist-made hoax, the world's glaciers promised to stop melting and the waters of the ocean pledged to stop rising.

"I didn't want to melt, honestly", said one anonymous glacier, "but climate change scientists told me I had to, because humans were making the world warmer. Now we find out it was some cruel hoax!"

All because of their belief in the scientists' lies, glacier's around the world have been retreating, permafrost disappearing, Arctic sea ice getting thinner and covering less area and ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic getting smaller.

Climate change debunkers have conclusively proven to the once large but increasingly smaller masses of ice known as glaciers that the overwelming consensus of almost all of the world's climate researchers is wrong. They were not only wrong, they conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

For example, in one email exchange, some scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming -- because the papers were based on bad science. It happens.

And what did these scientists do then? What terrible, cynical, underhanded, and foul misdeeds were undertaken by these dastardly Doctors of Climatology? In an important report to the world, they referenced and discussed both papers. [1] Fuck! What incompetent fools! They know nothing about subverting the truth!

Non-the-less, the glaciers pretty much accepted the climate change debunkers' claims that, true or not, global warming was really, after all, just a scam.

"No more will we melt to satisfy the demented demands of the worlds best and brightest bodies of climate change scientists, no matter how much their data is independently confirmed by multiple, robust lines of evidence!"

"I'm really POed". said one glacier. "No more melting. Get ready for another ice age, you fuckers!"

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html

Current thinking divides history into two eras, the Flintstone and the Jetson. The Flintstones era runs from the beginning of time through the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages, on up to about 1800. The Jetsons era begins with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and culminates in a utopian future in which (Jane, stop this crazy thing!) machines do everything.

We have seen tremendous strides in technological and scientific research and invention in the last 150 years. Who would have ever imagined that men would walk on the moon or that open heart surgery could be performed with robotic assistance? And yet, we still have plenty of problems in this modern age. Going back to the caves is not the answer. Neither is dragging the Stone Age along with us as we move into the future. We need a new religion for a new age.

As people sit in traffic jams across the country, more than a few people have wished they could simply rise up off the ground and zoom past the tangled mess. They think "Flying cars - where are they"? Many even ask, "To whom should we pray to get us some flying cars?" Sadly, the God of Betty, Barney, Fred and Wilma is not answering.

Do you believe in life out of earth?

Does adding 1 and 1 equal 2?

"When a biotechnology patent involving an altered product of nature is issued, the patent holder is required to deposit a sample of the new invention into one of the 26 worldwide culture depositories. Most DNA-related patents are issued by the USPTO, the European Patent Office, or the Japanese Patent Office.

Currently over three million genome-related patent applications have been filed. U.S. patent applications are confidential until a patent is issued, so determining which sequences are the subject of patent applications is impossible. Those who use sequences from public databases today risk facing a future injunction if those sequences turn out to be patented by a private company on the basis of previously filed patent applications." (source: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/patents.shtml#3 )  (What is genetic engineering?  http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/WhatisGE.html )

I don't expect anyone to be a professional in the fields of Patent Law; Biotechnology; or Genetics, but I did want to present something that should be of concern to the General Public.  This is the patenting of gene sequences and manipulated gene variations by biotech companies.  (let me add that much of the evidence, sound scientific inquiry and methodology, points to concern-much beyond concern impacting human health, the environmental impact, and biodiversity of different species-included in this is extinction due to herbicide use.  

What are the consequences of allowing the right to patent "nature"?  

What are the consequences of using bacteria as an agent to create these modifications?

Should we allow the right to patent genetic modified foods without proper testing? (many foods allowed for human consumption in Europe and the US have been approved without any sound science)  

What would constitute as proper testing?  Who would be responsible for this?  Where could funding come from?

When science is used to prove the benefit to society, but is highly funded by biotech companies should these studies be considered? ( http://www.sgr.org.uk/SciencePolicy/SGR_corp_science_full.pdf  )  

What do you believe could be the benefits of genetic patenting?

Benefits of genetic engineering?

I have many more questions and would love to go more into issues of ethics, the science behind genetic engineering, and the politics behind the biotech movement.