Jimmims, there are generally four types of knowledge that exist in the world. Specialized, whereas only a few people highly interested in the subject would know. The burden of proof lies with the claimant to prove claims he/she makes. (E.g. What are each and every vitamin and mineral found in a GNC multivitamin?)

Then there is uncommon knowledge. Again the burden is with the claimant. (E.g. What are the names of twenty-five out of fifty-one Presidents, not including the last five Presidents. When did America go to the Gold standard—year and month.)

Then there is accessible knowledge. Not everyone knows, but many do and all can with a little research. The burden lies fifty-fifty, sometimes with the claimant, sometimes not, just depends on the situation. (E.g. Rain water is not pure water and contains parasites. Fermentation is a process that produces energy, not just alcohol.)

Then there is knowledge everyone should know—common knowledge. (E.g., Humans need calcium.)

Between the last two is where Stand Your Ground falls. The burden of this knowledge should fall on the reader to know. In no way should a claimant be responsible for providing it. Stand your ground is common knowledge or accessible at the least. It is in the newspapers, on the internet, court records, etc. When someone states, "He is going away for a long time," then it is on them to prove this claim, since SYG has commonly been known to acquit these types of cases. I find it strange, especially in light of this, that you do not ask other people to prove their claims.

I think the acquittal of Zimmerman proves that this was common knowledge in the first place. But wait, here is a link to the acquittal, in case you did not see the not guilty verdict, since I must prove even common knowledge. (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/protests-george-zimmerman-verdict-gallery-1.1398497)

Second, and last, I was snarky with no one personally—I even stated that I was being broad with my comments and did not apply them to the poster. And yet you were snarky directly with me, personally. That is why I thought you were mad. In all reality you made it seem like I was ignorant. That is why I asked you to calm down.

"...You parasitic piece of crap"

-Said Ayn Rand

Interesting. I've got a semi-relevant story, but I get long winded so feel free to skip to the next comments if you like.

My wife (Thai) and I (American) had our first daughter this year. When she first got pregnant, one of the doc's first priorities was to get us both tested for "Thalassemia", which I had never heard of before. Apparently it is a blood disorder that affects hemoglobin production and therefore red blood cells -- if both parents carry the (rather rare) recessive gene, it can be a pretty bad deal.

It turned out that my wife is in the 1% or so of Thais that carry the gene (but she doesn't express / suffer from it, it is recessive and she has the dominant gene also). I had to get tested as well, but they said it would be incredibly unlikely that I'd be positive and I wasn't. So, our daughter has a 25% chance of being a carrier like my wife but zero chance of suffering from the effects of it.

Anyway, I was curious about the disease and asked the doc why it is a big deal here (every pregnant couple MUST get screened for it here when getting hospital/prenatal care) but I'd never even heard of it in the US. It turns out that the disease / genetic mutation arose only in places with high rates of malaria. As it happens, the genetic effect on your blood cells that the mutation has makes you more resistant to malaria -- full-on exhibitors of it (two recessive genes) are far less likely to die of malaria than people that don't have the gene. That is, assuming that you don't have the extreme variants of it that make it very unlikely to survive early childhood. Basically, if you have the disease and yet are healthy enough to survive to adulthood, you're close to malaria immune (that's overstating it, but ballpark). The malaria parasite can't survive and reproduce properly on your funky Thalassemia-affected red blood cells.

I thought that was a pretty interesting evolutionary response that must have arisen from some populations being pretty much decimated by malaria back in pre-recorded history. Current carriers like my wife are probably the descendants of lucky folks that survived a deadly outbreak in history by virtue of having a disease/mutation that is, under normal circumstances, slightly or even extremely bad in species survival / reproductive fitness terms. I thought that was kinda cool -- but I'm glad that neither my wife nor my daughter are/can be full-on expressors of the gene.

Brain parasites, this otter is having an episode. Someone should get those rocks of it's chest or it'll be there for days.

It's actually even more vital than that, the snails in question carry parasitic worms which cause deadly snail fever. I wish I were making that up.

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126031

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

Also, this kid is on a roll, he was also on Science Friday this week.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/04/12/2013/the-teenage-troublemaker-fighting-for-science.html

We already give women (and men) control over their reproductive habits. It's pretty apparent that a large portion of these men and women don't deserve that control, since they reproduce without any thought or consideration to their impact on the rest of society. If everyone were mature and responsible, there would be no such thing as abusive or negligent parents. Parenthood should be a privilege, not a right. As an aside, in 2010 the divorce rate in the U.S. was over 50%. If 50% of married couples aren't even mature or responsible enough to sustain a marriage, how can these people be expected to raise mature and responsible children? Hell, how many of those couples had kids before they divorced? You ask me to have faith in people but the numbers really don't give me any reason to.

As for these young men, I'm guessing they had lousy parents who never taught them to respect other people or the law. That's probably why they raped a girl, peed on her unconscious body and took pictures of it all. If they hadn't been caught, do you really think they would have regretted their actions and turned themselves in? No, they would have just continued life as usual, grown up, had kids and raised them with the same twisted values. It's a vicious cycle that exists because we have no regulation over reproduction. Instead of wasting taxpayer money trying to rehabilitate them (and very likely fail; the vast majority of sexual predators can't break their habits), why not just end the cycle right then and there? Humanity is hardly on the verge on extinction, so getting rid of the trash and cleaning up the gene pool would only help make life better for future generations.

All that said, you're right that issues like poverty, lack of education, etc, are all relevant here. But would those still be issues if everyone were raised to be contributing members of society, as opposed to worthless parasites that exist solely for the sake of existing? There are a finite number of jobs and classrooms out there. There aren't enough to accommodate every living person. That's why we need population control. If you extend yourself beyond your own means by having kids you can't afford to feed or send to school, you're just making the problem worse.

I quite enjoy relieving myself from parasites. It seems like our friend on the trunk at 0:50 also had an object in beak. It definitely took up the most time on the windows.

Tempted to anthropomorphize too but it could be something less fun.. relief from parasites or such..

Or the spiders are infected by a parasite that WANTS to be eaten: http://bioteaching.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/parasites-affecting-insect-behaviour/

I know it's not an insect, but if it wants to attract a bird to infect the bird by being swallowed, this is exactly how it'd go down.

There are similar spiders, in the genus Cyclosa, that use debris to create a line in their web so that when the spider sits atop the line it is almost impossible to detect, as it looks just like a piece of debris. This protects the spider from two of its main predators: birds and parasitic wasps.

This could be a similar situation, but slightly modified (i.e. evolved), so that the web debris is not just a line, but lines radiating out from a central point. Now, those predators that would've preyed upon or parasitized a small spider (such as the one living in this web), are not drawn to the web of such a large-looking spider.

Yeah, that was no botfly larvae. Wonder what type of parasite that is.

I have been trying to convince my wife to get rid of the cat precisely to avoid myself becoming this mouse. She doesn't believe he has "butt parasites that will turn us into zombies" but i do!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

This. As has been noted before, I never miss a chance to chime in about my favourite parasite.

or parasites looking to ride the mousetrain to eternity.

>> ^Kofi:

Its this kind of entrepreneurialism that makes America the nation it is today.


This seems more like parasitism, which is the opposite of high-contribution entrepreneurship like Dropbox and Tesla Motors.