"And how many of the couples who manage to stay together for the long haul have done so by resigning themselves to sacrificing their eroticism on the altar of three of life’s irreplaceable joys: family stability, companionship, and emotional, if not sexual, intimacy?" Sex at Dawn: Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality", the book that Dan Savage calls "the most important book on human sexuality since the Kinsey Report," which makes the argument that, while fidelity may be very well and good, it is in fact fighting evolution and human nature.

@TheGenk @Skeeve @Boise_Lib @gwiz665 @packo @IronDwarf @MaxWilder @westy @BicycleRepairMan @shuac @KnivesOut

Evolution is pseudo-science. It exists in the realm of imagination, and cannot be scientifically verified. At best, evolution science is forensic science, and what has been found not only does not support it, but entirely rules it out. I don't think any of you realize how weak the case for evolution really is. None of them quotes, as far as I know, are from creation scientists btw

No true transitional forms in the fossil record:

Darwins theory proposed that slow change over a great deal of time could evolve one kind of thing into another. Such as reptiles to birds. The theory proposed that we should see in the fossil records billions of these transitional forms, yet we have found none. When the theory was first proposed, darwinists pleaded poverty in the fossil record, claiming the missing links were yet to be found. It was then claimed that the links were missing because conditions conspired against fossilizing them, or that they had been eroded or destroyed in subsequent fossilization.

120 years have gone by since then. We have uncovered an extremely rich fossil record with billions of fossils, a record which has completely failed to produce the expected transitions. It has become obvious that there was no process that could have miraculously destroyed the transitionals yet left the terminal forms intact.

The next theory proposed was "hopeful monster" theory, which states that evolution occurs in large leaps instead of small ones. Some even suggested that a bird could have hatched from a reptile egg. This is against all genetic evidence, and has never been observed.

The complete lack of transitional forms is not even the worst problem for evolution, considering the big gaps between the higher categories, and the systemic absence of transitional forms between families classes orders and phyla.

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?"

Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History (and a hardcore evolutionist), in a letter to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979 admitting no transitional forms exist.

"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory."

Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216

"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?"

-Charles Darwin

"In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

-Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University

Fossil record disputes evolutionary theory:

According to evolutionary theory we should see an evolutionary tree of organisms starting from the least complex to the most complex. Instead, what we do see in the fossil record is the very sudden appearance of fully-formed and fully-functional complex life.

If you examine the fossil record, you see all kinds of complex life suddenly jumping into existence during a period that evolutionists refer to as the "Cambrian explosion".

None of the fossilized life forms found in the "Cambrian period" have any predecessors prior to that time. In essence, the "Cambrian period" represents a "sudden explosion of life" in geological terms.

Evolutionists try to disprove this by stretching it over a period of 50 million years, but they have no transitional fossils to prove that theory before or during.

"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed"

-Paleontologist George Gaylord

What disturbs evolutionists greatly is that complex life just appears in the fossil record out of nowhere, fully functional and formed.

A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.

-Paleontologist Mark Czarnecki (an evolutionist)

"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and both reject this alternative."

-Richard Dawkins, 'The Blind Watchmaker', W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, pp. 229-230

Evolution can't explain the addition of information that turns one kind into another kind

There is no example recorded of functional information being added to any creature, ever.

"The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus)."

Species just don't change. Kind only produces kind:

"Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible distress. ....They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it."

Evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University

Not enough bones:

Today the population grows at 2% per year. If we set the population growth rate at just 0.5% per year, then total population reduces to zero at about 4500 years ago. If the first humans lived 1,000,000 years ago, then at this 0.5% growth rate, we would have 10^2100 (ten with 2100 zeroes following it) people right now. If the present population was a result of 1,000,000 years of human history, then several trillion people must have lived and died since the emergence of our species. Where are all the bones? And finally, if the population was sufficiently small until only recently, then how could a correspondingly infinitesimally small number of mutations have evolved the human race?

"Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."

-Professor Louis Bounoure, past president of the Biological Society of Strassbourg, Director of the Strassbourg Zoological Museum and Director of Research at the French National Center of Scientific Research.

Try to debunk this if you can
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=tYLHxcqJmoM&feature=PlayList&p=C805D4953D9DEC66&index=0&playnext=1

More fun facts:

There are no records of any human civilization past 4000 BC

"The research in the development of the [radiocarbon] dating technique consisted of two stages—dating of samples from the historic and prehistoric epochs, respectively. Arnold [a co-worker] and I had our first shock when our advisors informed us that history extended back only for 5,000 years . . You read statements to the effect that such and such a society or archeological site is 20,000 years old. We learned rather that these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately; in fact, the earliest historical date that has been established with any degree of certainty is about the time of the First Dynasty of Egypt."—*Willard Libby, Science, March 3, 1961, p. 624.

Prior to a certain point several thousand years ago, there was no trace of man having ever existed. After that point, civilization, writing, language, agriculture, domestication, and all the rest—suddenly exploded into intense activity!

"No more surprising fact has been discovered, by recent excavation, than the suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. This discovery is the very opposite to that anticipated. It was expected that the more ancient the period, the more primitive would excavators find it to be, until traces of civilization ceased altogether and aboriginal man appeared. Neither in Babylonia nor Egypt, the lands of the oldest known habitations of man, has this been the case."—P.J. Wiseman, New Discoveries, in Babylonia, about Genesis (1949 ), p. 28.

Oldest people/language recorded in c. 3000 B.C., and were located in Mesopotamia.

The various radiodating techniques could be so inaccurate that mankind has only been on earth a few thousand years.

"Dates determined by radioactive decay may be off—not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude . . Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand."—*Robert Gannon, "How Old Is It?" Popular Science, November 1979, p. 81.

Moonwalk disproves age of moon:

The moon is constantly being bombarded by cosmic dust particles. Scientists were able to measure the rate at which these particles would accumulate. Using their estimates according to their understanding that the age of the Earth was billions of years, their most conservative estimate predicted a dust layer 54 feet deep. This is why the lander had those huge balloon tires, to be prepared to land on a sea of dust. Neil Armstrong, after saying those famous words, uttered two more which disproved the age of the moon entirely "its solid!". Far from being 54 feet, they found the dust was 3/4 of an inch.

Evolution is a fairy tale that modern civilization has bought, hook line and sinker. Humorously, atheists accuse creationists of beiieving in myths without any evidence..when they place their entire faith in an unproven theory even evolutionists know is fatally flawed and invalid. Evolution is a meta physical belief that requires faith. Period.

Evolution is false, science affirms a divine Creator
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Books,%20Tracts%20&%20Preaching/Tracts/big_daddy.htm

Though most of this is undisputable, I'm just getting started..

I've seen little in WoW that has surprised me. There are a few things here and there, but it really is a game copied from another game that, that game copied from yet another and then they polished it. And..as The Mythbusters proved you can polish a turd; so taking this old-outdated-prehistoric-you-get-the-point concept of go fetch times 5 per level and go gather times 5 per level plus the times 5 per level go kill stuff -- this is WoW's main feature o'fun and is the core to leveling.

The items are okay, some quests are awesome: there's a Plants vs. Zombies type quest that is well done and VERY refreshing, some of the NEW new newbie areas (goblins and furry humans) have great opening quests and have "phases" which are essentially instances "on the run" -- you don't notice it load and others don't know your in it unless they're grouped -- essentially a personal instance, there are a few "red pill" vs. "blue pill" such as making you realize you need to jump off a cliff to complete it, some of the class specific are great due to their obvious care and attention to detail in teaching you how to play your class effectively (the rogue has some of these that are a joy to play), etcetera -- oh wait, there isn't really much beyond that except instances, raids, and "PvP".

Instances can be great with your buddies and when the group size is a nice manageable size, but the fact they don't have randomized group size and level based dungeons is ridiculous, with this much time having passed. The fact that some of the boss fights start of at super hard and never bother to ramp up is stupid (as wiping should minimized to affect only idiots; trust me it doesn't matter if everyone has l33t gear, everyone should have the chance to have a character they feel is special and a force to be reckoned with). Where the hell are unique, non-soulbinding items; i.e., there are these "named" (I know they've made a few, laughable, *requires a raid* to get the guild leader the super item, which means you've got a better chance to win the lottery if you're an average player ) items that could be made into the thousands available (non-soulbinding so that they can be sold on the auction house -- which would fight gold-farmers and allow ANY player to get: THE GOODS) that drop once per server and have a 100% chance of being found for everyone...?

I could go on, but I think my point is made. There is little thought going into game creation and mechanics. Everyone stole from the MUDS, Ultima Online, and what little originality Everquest had; and no-one ever looked back. I know it will take some hard work to make a NEW TYPE of MMO that isn't guaranteed to be a slight upgrade in graphics, item crafting, or *pick your one "special" thing* the next MMO does...

So many of the current crop of MMO's have their own original and great ideas. If it would be sifted through and made into a "best of all worlds" (which is what WoW did, but they left in aggro which is a HUGE disservice to ALL players) we might get something unique and great; it would only need expansions as the core would not need much change ever (unless the engine becomes the "hindrance" to development).

Right now the aggro system n e e d s t o g o . It's archaic and mystifyingly still used though it was made for games that couldn't handle AI running (Ultima Online, Everquest,etc...) full-blast. But, with the power servers have available plus the bandwidth and the users' computer this should be a very easily solved or solvable issue. Second, comes two things that walk hand in hand: dungeons and loot. I addressed both above and what I propose should solve a lot; but imagine semi-random dungeons created that lead to great cities (very doable just from what I've seen in Warhammer and WoW's "phasing"), think: D&D's Forgotten Realms - Undermountain™, anything approaching something that massive would be equal to creating a dungeon the size of the world map, but every-time you enter you procedurally move forward to a new creation (so if you join a party your "dungeons" join to make a "seed" that is unique to those to characters. I'll stop there as it would into full-on programming techniques that aren't used either because of the complexity, non-skill, or doubt that they can make a "performance" acceptable version. Items have just as much ability to be enhanced (their own level-ups with skills, AI weapons, vehicular type, etc...).

Quests are the last concern. Fetch should only be around if you're character is going there anyway. Collection type quests should ONLY be used if you are keeping some of said items and are useful in some way. Hero quests do need to teach you to be a better "x = your class + type of class + modifiers", using instances or "phasing" (which I like more as I hate load screens). Quests need to have an main-arch that branches, but it needs to available to even the solo player; not the 60 man raid (which is a joke in the first place). Quests need to be rich in diversity: send, fetch, lead, fight, find, steal, games, test, challenge, dungeon, redemption, vengeance/wrath, ability, skill, un-lockable/lockable, class, species/race, race/time, item, creation, destruction, defend, follow, help, should I keep listing....?

I hope the programmers, I don't really care who hits the trump card first (although a low monthly cost team would be nice), figure this out. As it is getting boring even though there is "more" to do, how it's presented in WoW makes me less inclined to get involved, because it requires dedication and at that point, as he pointed out is almost as fun as shooting yourself.

As @MilkmanDan points out there is a lot of content that I don't use and at the lower levels I believe this to be fine as you'll make a mage, a shaman, a warrior, etc... Doing the same quest over and over is terrible. However, much of the high level content you CAN see, but you'll never get the riches (lottery again) and doing THE SAME EXACT DUNDEON 30 times to find that one head piece is ridiculous -- that is their idea of fun "high-end" content. F*%K YOU! This is all due to the notion (and I believe you see this in action at the auction houses, if you can compare the past to present) of inflation; the numbers go higher for the sake of going higher -- if it's higher it's better, right?!?. I'm better due to a number increase and I'll add to that number continually, mainly, because as is said above I'm now level 10 and no longer 5. I want the numbers to be in a "set" range so that you know, whenever you find or get something new, immediately how this new addition (or subtraction) will affect you. (Ultima Online got that partially correct and it made fighting on their a unique experience, STILL, although Warhammer Online uses a set number of action points instead of mana so it has a fun PvP experience, but ultimately fails due to the level problem. Oh and PvP is a joke as level and gear are the deciding issues in battle (which is funny as the winners get the better gear, thus making them win more and you can see where that goes...) and as long as you aren't stupid your talent specs (you really can't screw this up anymore as Blizzard decided that you can only go down one tree at a time rather than all three, until you've got talent point 32).

I'll stop there as I'm getting nauseated talking about this much (which is a lot). But, this is my view point on almost any RPG. Why is it so hard to make a fun system -- it seems obvious how to go after these issues. I think they're (the programmers and publishers) are lost in the woods with 100 foot tall pines and I'm on a outcrop that can see over the forest -- I see them occasionally, but even if I yelled (and I've made some of these points before) they'd still never gather a clue of what I mean. Or as it's usually said at this point:

"I'm afraid you can't see the forest for the trees."...

Damn, that was long, phew (hopefully a programmer reads it -- or I'll just cut & paste ) !

Oh man, they so needed to throw a button line in at the end there. There's so many to choose from:

"Back off man, I'm a scientist."
"Ok...so..she's a dog."
"That's a big Twinkie."
"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown."

You're >> ^bla
nkfist:

"much more easily than say, getting rid of 100% of the bad cops without some kind of telepathic superpowers or magically preventing 100% of the crimes that lead to victims sueing the police"
Exactly my point about breaking a few eggs to make your big government omelet. Statists may dislike the atrocities of government, but they see it as a necessary casualty. Every day we see cops doing downright untoward and malicious things to people, even murdering them, yet the system keeps right on going. Never does a statist say, "Shit, maybe this whole police state thing isn't panning out as expected."
It's always, "there are some good cops out there too." It's senseless Stockholm Syndrome battered wife apologies.
I love Watchmen because of this very notion. Tangent alert. Nite Owl II is your typical effete modern liberal and a sensitive intellectual. He believes violence is necessary to correct the social injustices, but believe it should be just. That doesn't stop him from continuing to work with people like the Comedian and Rorschach who use violence with a great deal less restraint. In fact, he enjoys Rorschach as a partner and accepts his overzealous violence. He may not condone it himself, but he sees it as a necessary evil. Breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.


You're not even making sense. No one said it's OK to have a few bad cops. They should be fired wherever they're found. But you can't catch all of them. You can't get rid of 100% of the bad cops without getting rid of 100% of cops in general, and if you did, there'd be a hell of a lot more violence. If men were angels, there would be no need for government, but they aren't. Anarchy = prehistoric tribal warfare, mob justice, etc.

First of all, let me say thank you for the reasoned arguments. As liberalsift's only "conservatarian" a heavy (voluntary) responsibility weigh on my shoulders. I'll attempt to address the talking points.


Native Americans practiced same-sex coupling. Thousands of years even before that, there's evidence of humans pairing off for mutual protection and cooperation - two prehistoric dudes have a better chance of taking down large game than if they worked alone. Two female cave girls have a better chance of surviving and avoiding being raped by cave dudes than if they were separate.

But what you're describing isn't marriage, and even if there were homosexual acts under these circumstances, it's not something the tribe would recognize. Even the ancient Greek pederasts scoffed at the idea of gay marriage.

Same-sex coupling has existed as long as humans have. Hell, even modern day penguins are known to engage in same-sex coupling.

We shouldn't be looking to the animal kingdom for comparisons, where cannibalism and killing other beasts' offspring is normal.

Before people cite the Book of Matthew, let me remind them that "Man shall not lay with another man..." doesn't refer to homosexuality. There wasn't even a word for it when the bible was authored. The line references how we are not to treat men the same way we treat women. And just how were women treated during the days of the bible's authoring? Like cattle - merely objects to be bought, sold, and bartered for. The line speaks that we should not enslave men the way we enslave women. The line speaks to institutionalized misogyny, and has NOTHING to do with homosexuality.

I have never heard this interpretation of Matthew so I remain...neutral.

The first amendment guarantees us freedom of religion. It also guarantees us freedom FROM religion. Every law needs a secular reason for existing. "God says it's wrong" isn't, nor will ever be, reason enough for a law. The 14th amendment guarantees equal rights and freedoms, even to people you don't like.

The First Amendment does NOT guarantee freedom "from" religion, this deliberate distortion is a 'gift' Progressivism. Equal rights and freedoms have very obvious limitations. You're free to ride a bicycle and you're free to drive a car on the freeway, but you're NOT free to ride your bicycle on the freeway.

The Judicial branch did it's job - protecting the people from themselves. Just because the majority voted for something doesn't mean jack shit. If it's unconstitutional, it won't fly, no matter how big the majority.

A judge made up things for a non-existent "right", similar to how abortion was made legal by non-existent privacy rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, the ruling was inept and corrupt. There was a time when slavery was considered constitutional, so it's true that things change.

And why is it "Small-Government" types always try to use the government to enforce their religious views? Seems HYPOCRITICAL to me.

Some libertarians vouch for the "privatization of marriage" which means the State doesn't recognize any marriage but can only enforce contracts between (any) people. (Unfortunately?) we don't live in a libertarian society---far from it---and the State (with much thanks to Statists) has its tentacles in all manner of arenas and areas in which it has no business. The main reasons governments evolved was to preserve private property rights and keep enemies outside the gates. Marriage is a legal contract, and since it affects taxation and a slew of other things it is the State's business, for better or worse.

For me, the gay "marriage" debate ended with the arrival of civil unions. If a gay couple has the same legal rights as a married couple, then that is, in essence, the libertarian goal. As Elton John put it: "I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."

Obviously the 'loudest' gays are not happy with "civil unions", which brings me to my next point: there is indeed something special about the one man/one woman marriage. If there was not, these gay pawns (the latest pawns of Progressive Statist subversives) wouldn't be so adamant. Except for the fundamentalists, no one could care less about people's personal lives....but if you force a majority to recognize something as being on par with what they consider sacrosanct, then it will be received negatively.

I would be personally delighted if some judge ruled---against the will of the people---that all controlled substances drugs be made legal, prostitution be made legal, all excessive federal hurdles to owning firearms be abolished, perhaps the income tax be replaced with something else.......but it's not the way the system works. As a member of society I am as much a "victim" of traditional values as everyone else.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Society is stupid. A large community of people in Germany decided killing Jews was ok (Godwin seekers you can now leave). It's a big reason we don't have a pure democracy: because people are STUPID. They're ignorant, they're fickle, they're quick to react to things they're afraid of and it is just plain stupid put somebody's rights to a vote, if that right isn't violating another person's rights.

Society is indeed stupid, but not all the time, and therefore the accumulated wisdom of centuries of trial and error shouldn't be readily abandoned.

----------------------------------------------------
Well, this is just one sifter's opinions. At present about 70% of Americans oppose same-sex marriage. Perhaps in 10 years only 30% will be opposed and society's values will radically change.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Same-sex "marriage" remains part and parcel of the "making shit up" argument. It's something that did not exist until very recently, and has never existed in any religion or society except in extremely limited instances with zero far-reaching consequences. ...

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.


Native Americans practiced same-sex coupling. Thousands of years even before that, there's evidence of humans pairing off for mutual protection and cooperation - two prehistoric dudes have a better chance of taking down large game than if they worked alone. Two female cave girls have a better chance of surviving and avoiding being raped by cave dudes than if they were separate.

Same-sex coupling has existed as long as humans have. Hell, even modern day penguins are known to engage in same-sex coupling.

Before people cite the Book of Matthew, let me remind them that "Man shall not lay with another man..." doesn't refer to homosexuality. There wasn't even a word for it when the bible was authored. The line references how we are not to treat men the same way we treat women. And just how were women treated during the days of the bible's authoring? Like cattle - merely objects to be bought, sold, and bartered for. The line speaks that we should not enslave men the way we enslave women. The line speaks to institutionalized misogyny, and has NOTHING to do with homosexuality.

The first amendment guarantees us freedom of religion. It also guarantees us freedom FROM religion. Every law needs a secular reason for existing. "God says it's wrong" isn't, nor will ever be, reason enough for a law. The 14th amendment guarantees equal rights and freedoms, even to people you don't like.

The Judicial branch did it's job - protecting the people from themselves. Just because the majority voted for something doesn't mean jack shit. If it's unconstitutional, it won't fly, no matter how big the majority.

And why is it "Small-Government" types always try to use the government to enforce their religious views? Seems HYPOCRITICAL to me.

No problem! That video is hilarious

In reply to this comment by isosceles:
F Yeah residue! You rock! Thanks for the promote.

In reply to this comment by residue:
this guy needs some attention. what an awesome video

*promote

F Yeah residue! You rock! Thanks for the promote.

In reply to this comment by residue:
this guy needs some attention. what an awesome video

*promote

>> ^NaMeCaF:

In front of the kids? Those kids are gonna grow up to have a weird relationship with women for sure.


Hahahaha. Because for all the tens of thousands of years of prehistoric modern man, the biggest social challenge was naked women and the developmental effects on children.

Choggie's Christmas Wish-list:

http://www.choggie.org/
http://www.choggie.com/
http://www.choggie.gov/

Closest evolutionary relative *also known as a cunner-

Also rumored to have been an un-inlisted (General Studies paper does not qualify for UCAS Tariff points) British/French Legionnaire

and then there's THIS Urban Legend (see definition #4) in his own mind piece of internet knuckle-dragging trash, too fucking cowardly and douche-like to come back for another helping of "Shut the fuck up", who left this little tribute to his/her own pathetic and petty attempt at poking a prehistoric monolith. The truly pathetic factoid about this last one is that it was most assuredly some, how you saaaay.... asshat douchebag-left-in-an-orifice, Clondike bar from inside one's trousers?
Yeah, that's the cunt who wins an no-expense spared, vacation for one to "Back The Fuck At Ya!", chintz!

Choggies' anything if not your average asshole.

O shit, they had climatologists in the 300,000BC! Hell, they even measured CO2 and ice levels in the dark ages, black plague don't slow those folks down for science! The chart don't lie, we are all screwed! Let us consume our way out of this problem quickly!

I hope your sarcasm detectors are ringing, I was being quite hyperbolic. Measurements from prehistorical record are always intriguing to me, people can be very smart at finding the marks of the distant past in rocks or ice. However, you have to take that evidence for what it is it is, unverifiable. You can make neat models and predictions off it and try and get a sense of scale and scope for current models; trying to balance the equations that aren't working now with a window into the past. But you are peaking into what is essentially unscientific (I mean unverifiable). There is simply no way to be certain that evidence left behind in ice or certain geological formations hasn't undergone massive change over the hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of years that the evidence sample is supposed to represent empirically (or the extrapolations gained from this are accurate).

The bits of wisdom uncovered from the vast long history of this world are vital, but you always have to weight that with your rational skepticism which I feel is lacking in most summations of doomsday scenarios. To believe that no such levels of CO2 or ice melt values have EVER existed places far to much credibility on something that is essentially unverifiable (that isn't just for 100k years ago, but 500).

I think concern is wise, I think prudence is advised, I think writing a paper saying we are all fuxed and run for the hills is irresponsible. Empiricism is dead, long live manipulated staticism. (assuming a spherical cow, let us calculate its volume)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Massive, Sea Monster, Prehistoric, Paleontology, Fossil, Reuters' to 'Massive, Sea Monster, Prehistoric, Paleontology, Fossil, Reuters, predator X, Pliosaur' - edited by mauz15

I enjoyed BSG overall, but the idea of everyone in the fleet suddenly saying screw technology, lets destroy the fleet and get back to a short back breaking life of prehistoric subsistence agriculture in isolated homesteads dotted around a wilderness planet, struck me as laughable, only I wasnt laughing.

There is scarcely any biological difference between modern man and prehistoric man which respect to brain capacity. The only significant difference is knowledge. This guy may be the "smartest man alive" but for a smart guy he doesn't even understand what intelligence is or how to utilize it.

Intelligence is a rate of transfer. Like the resistance of an electrical wire, it dictates how fast how much goes in (learning) and how fast how much comes out (application). Yet without an adequate supply (knowledge) the capacity of the wire is irrelevant.

The knowledge we have today wasn't built by smart people sitting around being smart, it was built by stupid, average, and smart people putting effort into learning the knowledge of their predecessors, applying it to solve current problems, and reporting it to their successors. It doesn't matter if a smart guy spends 10 minutes learning something and a stupid guy spends 10 hours if they both show up with the same amount of information needed to solve the problem.

Going around talking about your 210 IQ while working as a manual laborer is like placing a wire on the table and bragging about how much electricity it could conduct if you hooked it up to a battery.