^ A Vast Left Wing Liberal Conspiracy (VLWLC) would have all news outlets talking about the possibility that John McCain was brainwashed while he was a P.O.W. in Vietnam, which originated from anonymous spam e-mail.

Clips of John Hagee calling Catholicism "the Great Whore", along with Rod Parsley would dominate the news cycle for at least a month, solid. Whenever McCain's numbers rise, the media dutifully brings the topic back up again, ad nauseum.

Rachel Maddow would be the most famous Talk Radio personality (aside from Howard Stern, who would still broadcast on terrestrial radio), and would constantly complain of a right-wing bias in all news outlets. She'd have had a successful smear campaign; most conservatives would be reluctant to use that term, it now has such a negative connotation in common discourse.

President Gore, would of course, time his policy to aid Obama as well, rolling out a report in October on how carbon emissions are now in decline, globally, for the first time since they've been keeping records.

Too bad there ain't no Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, just the right wing kind.

However, as Colbert points out, reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Cant remember the season, but either 2006 or 5 I think. I've seen it a few times on terrestrial and I so want one.

Now how about it being taught in schools? It contradicts the Bible, so are you going to deny it being taught? What about other stuff that contradicts the bible? Are you going to make gay people illegal? Stop space exploration, stop the search for extra terrestrial life, it all contradicts the bible.

God these people are too stupid to run the damn country.

The people best suited to running countries and leading men don't want to, and the people who want to are always least suited.

Semi-offtopic rant over.

harry - speaking for england/britain and what i know of it, it isn't an issue to us. We accept that evolution is extremely likely to have been true, and move on with it. We don't even seem to have archaic and vehement christians shaking their crucifixes at us and telling us that we're wicked for believing in evolution. Most of the christians i know believe in evolution, and if i said to them "what about it contradicting the bible?" they'd just say something like "well god may have put it there to test us for all you know, but i admit that based on the evidence we have evolution is highly likely."

They'd also probably say something about the bible having been written by humans, and it having been subject to translation and manipulation over the years, but the core of it is what's important and true.

We just don't have it. No big fat psychopaths who scream about "TEH DARK SIDE!!1111" or whatever it was. I forget cos i watched Star Wars straight afterwards.

*promote

Wow.

I just realised. Those aren't extra terrestrial aliens. Fullerenedream, my impeccable fiancee just pointed out- this video depicts the first 45 seconds of a hard takeoff singularity

It turns out the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute is right around the corner -- last time I visted for a fundraising art show they held, Dr. Arroway (Foster's character) was just hanging out with the 6 of us that showed up. Nice woman, interesting work.

From the Bad Astronomy blog, www.badastronomy.com, which just named this as one of the best astronomical images of the year: "Studying the Sun seems like a pretty good idea; as the major source of light and heat for our planet, it’s a good thing that we try to understand it. And the Sun is a star, with all that implies: it’s huge in size, and frightening in its energy production.

To better understand it and the complicated nature of its surface activity, NASA launched a pair of satellites that can take pictures of the Sun simultaneously from different angles, providing a 3D view of our nearest star. They’re called the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or (haha) STEREO.

One satellite orbits the Sun ahead of the Earth, and the other behind. They stay in the same orbital plane as the Earth does in its travels around the Sun, and that means that sometimes you get interesting geometric situations which arise. The STEREO team realized that there would be a time when the Moon would pass in front of the Sun as seen by one of the spacecraft. Solar eclipses are rare on Earth, but from STEREO’s vantage it would be even more unusual.

From the Earth, the Sun is about 400 times farther away than the Moon, and is also about 400 times the Moon’s physical size. These two characteristics cancel out, meaning the Sun and Moon are about the same apparent size in the sky, so every solar eclipse has the Moon slipping in front of the Sun, with the dark disk of the Moon just barely (if even) covering the bright disk of the Sun.

That is, every solar eclipse as seen from the Earth.

But STEREO was receding from the Earth and Moon. To it, the Moon appeared much smaller than we see it, stuck as we are on the surface of our planet. The Sun, however, was still at about the same distance, and therefore looked the same size as we see it. This means that, to STEREO, the Moon appeared far smaller than the Sun.

Not long after launch, the situation arose that the Moon would pass directly in front of the Sun as seen from one of the spacecraft. STEREO turned its eye that way, and recorded what may be the most remarkable footage of a solar eclipse ever taken".

*promote

1: The Great Global Warming Swindle was on tv, so not really a "lolol only pro global warming on tv lolol"
2: Seems you're not just a global warming denialist, but also a greenhouse gas denialist: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It, in addition to water vapor and other gasses (others which only amount for 8% of the greenhouse effect), holds infrared radiation in the atmosphere which in effect heats the surface of the earth. It's why we have a climate and there is any life on this planet in the first place. You increase the concentration of it and you hold in more radiation, causing temperatures to go up. This was all taught in any middle school science class across the country. Now that we have that little misconception cleared up, please continue.

3: and another thing: The Great Global Warming Swindle was made in the UK, shown on UK, and debunked in UK. It got debunked so hard Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. 'There was a fluff there,' he said. If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the NASA website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940—although that would have undermined his argument. 'The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find,' Mr Durkin said: The original, and corrected versions of Temperature data from TGGWS, along with NASA GISS data
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/341/86488206qk5.jpg

IIRC this show was banned on Terrestrial television in the UK, because it was nothing but a totally shameless plug to sell toys. OK so other tv shows did the same, i.e. transformers, but not in such a blatant way.

Actually, yaroslavvb, hypnosis does indeed work. Yes, the participant has to be willing, but the brain patterns displayed by those under hypnosis are not witnessed during any other state of mind, be it wakefulness, meditation, or any of the sleep stages. It is a state of mind that one must be willing to reach, but it is indeed a true state of mind. I didn't believe in hypnosis either until I actually took some classes and did some research on the subject.

As far as paranormal activity, supernatural events, and visits from aliens (the extra-terrestrial kind), well, they're bunk.

I knew a couple of people who ate those brownies once and it definitely went extra-terrestrial on their ass, do not doubt the power of the chocolate treat.

One has to wonder whether Casey truly didn't know the difference or if it was a last ditch attempt to discredit his whole argument by picking out a rather obscure and insignificant passage to make him appear hypocritical as the interview concluded.

Exactly , the whole thing was completely out of context, Dawkins wasnt making a simple "Aliens probably exist and they must be super-intellegent" statement, the whole point, which was preceded by a musing on how mind-bogglingly huge the universe is, thus making it probable that many planets have life, not just earth etc. Was to show how someone or something might be so intelligent and sophisticated they would seem like Gods to us, but that even so, we would instantly know they werent designed, they had come about, just like us, by gradual, natural selection over millions of years..

It wasnt by any means any serious measure or assumption of how probable extra-terrestrial life might be.

All in all if anything could be said about it, it is that Dawkins is the exact opposite of close-minded like some claim.

canned laughter and talk about suicide... ah corporate media conglomerates. (You won't be missed when terrestrial broadcasts are written into the history books)

This is the intro to the Japanese based cartoon series loosely based on the book "The Little Prince" that aired in Europe and North America in the 1980s. If you are wondering why I sifted the Japanese version it's because the dubbed one just fails for me, I like the song in this one. My mother gave the book to read a while back. I loved it.

The show was made by the Knack animation studio and first aired in Japan in 1978 under the title "Hoshi no Ojisama Puchi Puransu" (Prince of the Stars: Petit Prince). In it, the Little Prince often traveled to Earth to help people.

The Little Prince (French Le Petit Prince), published in 1943, is French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's most famous novel, which he wrote while renting The Bevin House in Asharoken, New York on Long Island. The novel includes a number of drawings by Saint-Exupéry himself, which are reproduced in most versions.

Ostensibly a children's book, it makes several profound and idealistic points about life and love. In it, Saint-Exupéry imagines himself stranded in the Sahara Desert, thousands of kilometers away from inhabited places, where he meets a young extra-terrestrial (though entirely human-appearing) prince. In their conversations, the author reveals his own views about the follies of mankind and the simple truths that people seem to forget as they grow older.

The essence of the book is contained in the famous line uttered by the fox to the Little Prince:

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" (It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye).

There are also two other main points in the book, both spoken by the fox. They are: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important".

Throughout the book the children's view on the world, on the main points of the human life and relations between people, which is represented by the Little Prince and partially by the narrator, is set off against the "grown-ups'" one, revealed in memories of the narrator and in the characters, met by the Little Prince on asteroids. But the author underlines, that the "'grown-ups' are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people."

The Little Prince has been translated into more than 160 languages and, to date has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and turned into an anime series that ran 39 episodes. It is often used as a beginner's book for foreign language students.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_little_prince

Fireflies like grains, seeds, and sugar granules?

Wikiepdia says: "The larvae of most species are specialized predators and feed on other larvae, terrestrial snails, and slugs. Some are so specialized that they have grooved mandibles, which deliver digestive fluids directly to their prey. The diet of adults is variable. It has been reported that some are predatory and some feed on plant pollen or nectar." Of course, you're not a larva.

What of 2001? Foundation? Childhood's End and my own personal favorite Dune? They all offer different takes on what a higher supreme being may or may not be. I mean it's perfectly possible that we are actually a large biological experiment run by extra terrestrials, who view us in the same vain we view mice, a baser animal that can be used to gain insights. Or perhaps it could really all be Douglas Adams like and the mice maybe running the whole thing... Or maybe there is a 'supreme architect' as the Freemasons put it, but thinking that his attention is purely focused on us would be delusional given the vastness and mystery of the Universe. Even then this superior intelligence would need a creator of and within itself.

But what's clear is that it's determental for human society to treat religious text as dogma, and the fervent word of God. Theologians themselves say that ultimately the Bible is an allegorical fable, put together over many year following the death of Jesus Christ, agreed on and put forward by the Council of Constantinople. See Dead Sea scrolls...