Professor Know It All

It really makes me want to punch them.

Obviously evolution. But in trying to convince someone who rejects evolution by the argument from design, I want to cite some of the countless examples of systems that naturally occur or self-assemble / self-organize that appear designed but clearly are not designed by any form of consciousness. Everything I can think of relates back to life science, but if I use that as an example they'll just say, God designed that. For example, ant colonies, or even the symbiotic relationships between ants and other nonconscious life forms like aphids or fungi ARE examples a self assembling non-conscious design, but not good for making the argument that design doesn't need a conscious designer, because people think there WAS a designer of living things.

do people really enjoy coffee for taste alone? I mean I drink coffee most days, but no caffeine woud undermine its entire reason for being. There's a reason no one ever invented non-alcoholic moonshine, "yeah I just drink it for the revolting gag reflex."

Ebay or any online exchange seems like a HUGE pain in the *** because condition is so important to buyers and its seems like a world of problems settling that remotely. I can just imagine, "this scuff here makes it 'fair" not 'good' I want my money back!!" Multiply that times a few hundred comics and I don't know if it would be worth the money I'll have to fight for in return.

Is Barack Obama NOT light skinned? Does he NOT speak in a "non-black dialect?" Those are indisputable FACTS, not opinions.

2ndly, black people aren't even upset about this. The only people making noise about this are Republicans who seize upon any opportunity to attack and discredit any Democrat they can set their Gotcha! sights on.

Black people are saying, "yeah! We've been trying to raise these discussions in the public forum for years! Why is it that a majority white electorate will only vote for a black man if he eschews all black culture for "white" image? Its because racism is still very alive in this country!"

But not in Harry Reid, in the people who wouldn't vote for a black politician if he had dark skin and a "blacker" dialect. America is racist, Harry Reid is just calling them on it.

AL Sharpton and Jesse Jackson came out to defend him. Enough said. They came out to attack Don Imus and Trent Lott and all the other ACTUALLY racist comments. Harry Reid said nothing that isn't an OBJECTIVE FACT.

The core tenet of Tea Partyism seems to be outrage over the fact that our government is more akin to corporate fascism than a democracy of the people. Wall St, agribusiness, and the health care and energy industries completely own Washington, and the have been pillaging the wealth and prosperity of middle class working Americans for the last 30 years. The middle class lifestyle has been eroded down to nothing, its nearly impossible to buy a home in an area with good schools, let alone send 3 kids to university. Where has all the middle class wealth gone? To the rich, with the help of our corrupt Senate who've been getting a piece of that action.

Well I have news for you teabaggers, this is exactly what liberals are most pissed off about too! Its not really the war or the environment or anything else as much as it is this corporate fascism in Washington that makes any kind of progress for working people impossible.

Can't we put abortion, gun control, and xenophobia aside and join sides against the forces that have been raping the both of us? We're all populists, this IS CLASS WARFARE, being waged on US. We share the same vulnerabilities and a common enemy. The fact that the tea baggers aren't Progressives politically, seems to me to be only attributable to ignorance or some right wing spin machine that has intentionally confused them in order to divide and conquer. I mean really, what's more important to you, obstructing a marriage between two people you'll never meet, or losing your job, home, retirement, kid's future, and life because the mining company dumped a bunch of toxic waste into your ground water.

Government corruption is the most important issue of all.

I am a liberal and I too am mad a Obama, not because he is a "socialist" or any misinformed nonsense like that, but because he has sold out the interests of the American people to Wall Street and the Health Care industries. Can't we join forces about that and save the social issues for another election?

What should I make sure not to miss? We will be hitting Redwoods, Prarie Creek, and Jedediah Smith parks. Also, we won't be camping the full week. We want to break it up with a night in a cute motel or B&B every couple nights, any suggestions on lodging?

I just heard a bunch of stories from old backpackers about how there are an incredible amount of remote, pristine lakes in the Sierras that offer some of the best fishing to be had, but you have to backpack in and many of them are a mutli-day journey. I don't have the time or the atheleticism to make such a hike, I'd rather just pay a lot of money and be dropped off in the middle of nowhere via helicopter and have them pick me up 3 days later. Does such a thing exist?

I actually have the skis, but I need boots bindings and poles for my wife and she needs a good sales person to help her with boots. I'm a snowboarder and I'm not familiar with any ski shops and surprisingly I haven't found much in the LA area. There's Ski Haus in Santa Monica, that's all I know. I'd just go into Footloose once we get to Mammoth, but I imagine you pay a premium up there.

all the apps on my iphone (Twitteriffic, Vlingo etc) allow me 160. I though twitter WAS 160. Then I actually posted from my home computer, (kind of defeats the purpose, I know) but everywhere I look on wikipedia etc, it seems that Twitter is famous for its 140 characters, not 160. But I can post at a length of 160 from my phone. hmmm...

If every dog breed today evolved from a single species of wolf over the course of 10-20k years, obviously dogs with hair (like my Maltese) got it through parallel or convergent evolution (as wings are on bats, birds, and insects--not sure what the proper term is) but somewhere in the family tree, a branch of dogs broke off that had human-like hair rather than fur. I'm curious what evolutionary theories are out there that might explain this difference and how its possible. Obviously its artificial selection rather than natural, but it logically follows that fur can mutate into hair. Is the difference between hair and fur just a small modification to the folicle, or is it the much bigger morphological difference that I assume?