Thank You Alex!! !

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Thankyou, alex. I finally have a place to post, without having to read stuff about things that I don't know about, such as the latest video games, or stuff about psoting or pwning. I have the mind of both, a 50 year old and a Londoner, and I'm thrilled to see a forum that appeals to us more dignified folk.

...or their bowels

Let me tell y'all 'bout my 'roids.

Oh...WOW!! I didn't know we'd gone and gotten it!

Alex, thank you!!

How old are you again? If your pushing 40 that makes you a Dino

So no more more snide comments about "old people" out of you please.

Eh, TheMachine is young at heart.

Yeah, but he's old chronologically and so are you so stop being in denial about it

I'm just in my second childhood.

To Willem,
Thanks for showing me the article. I'm familiar with the work of Margulis. From experience, and now from brain research scans, I know how hard it is to even hear something that is outside of a worked-out worldview, let alone understand it, and then to break off a piece of worldview to graft on another. Whew!
The part about physics envy cracked me up. And I really liked reading other people's comments on her work. Maybe not Dawkins. I've not been able to find anything by him I could have any respect for, unlike Gould who impressed me mightily. But even Gould did not change my changed mind.
I lost my faith in evolution when I studied it in college. In chemistry, carbon-14 dating, potassium-argon dating, in biology the cladistics chart of cytochrome-C, the entire skeletal structures of supposed links versus picked pieces of structures, the krebs cycle. I said, "Something's wrong here!" and so I've been reading different evolutionists trying to see if I can be converted back, and Gould has come the closest, but how new types of limbs or new organs are formed has never been truly explained. I was on a panel in a science-fiction convention discussing some idiot's book (Jeremy Perkins? I can't remember) about how genetic manipulation was going to destroy the biosphere when I mentioned my loss of faith. I saw an entire roomful of people nearly go into cardiac arrest.
The part about extra-nuclear, extra-mitochondrial DNA being disputed surprised me. I had thought it accepted, as well as the fact of non-DNA factors in fetal and cell development.
To DeaconBlues,
I'm going to need to get that Brin book. By the way, at SF cons, Brin is one nice guy.

taa alex

It's the lead story in the collection "Otherness" (which also has an interesting essay on memetic conflict, as well as a hilarious alternate take on UFOs).

Deleting so I don't get banned.

Last edited by MsTriste on 06 May 2007, 4:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, Alex you are so wonderful, thank you for your time and effort for us old people. You young folks are so cool and hip with all this technology!

Merle

Last edited by sinsboldly on 06 May 2007, 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Merle you made me smile for the first time today! Thanks - mwah!

Bizarre:
I'm pushing 65 and I don't know any old people. Old is a state of mind. Fortunately, I still have my mind. Or parts of it anyway....and everything else works just fine, thank you very much. So if pushing forty make you a Dino, then I guess I'm a Trog. However, that means I crash around and break things a lot, and that's fun. And if I'm in a horrible mood, and I want to swear at people on the street, they put it down to my being old (little do they know that it's because I'm crazy), because I'm a little too well dressed (though not by much) to be a street person. Has its advantages.

beenteredonethat (and I have, believe me).

Thank you to Alex, for expanding/rearranging.

New forum has not been hard for me to find in the index, or adjust my seeking pattern to-most transitions are difficult for me to navigate, just not this one.

Imagine WP as a municipality, whose size has increased vastly, especially recently. Just a comparison, not literal. Population was 2,000 (2 short years ago), like a small town. Now, it's almost 11,000, like a small city.
Town might only need so many businesses or cultural outlets, one each of a library, post office, grocery store, nursery school, restaurant.
City has increasing demands made upon services, new groups & buildings called for: another grocery store (perhaps a healthfood co-op), a senior center, more low-income housing, maybe even another p.o. because of greater population.
In other words, the structure & subforums that WP began with were sufficient to the needs of the members. Then, as membership increased, additional sections were requested because the existing options were insufficient. Makes sense to me.