Wow! No I didn't. Do you know what changes so that we lose this ability?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Obviously the trachea and esophogus grow together... it might be a length thing, I dunno. Only learned about it when my firstborn came along.


(edit: gah! stupid little smiley icon didn't appear! just the URL. Removed and put in regular emoticon)

I forget the term, but whatever flap it is in the back of our throat that prevents the esophagus and trachea from being open together isn't in the right position in those first few months.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

my bold
From CNN.com

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

The Epiglottis?

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

Thats the one I had in mind, but I wasn't sure enough to post it...

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

GOOD ...

I'm Glad, to Help!!!!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

It's the epiglottis.

The reason the condition exists at birth has to do with breastfeeding. Without, babies would choke on mother's milk.

Not a very good thing for the survival our species... Nor for the propogation of God's chosen people.

HEY!, I'm neutral, here! Just trying to present both sides of the story... Back off, man - I said back off!

Seriously, folks - there are always two or more sides to a story. Why we tend to voraciously devour one side while heinously defending the other is beyond me.

I'll let the powers that be duke it out.

Sometimes, one side or the other is just flat wrong. No, but really. We don't have to give equal time to both sides. We don't have to teach that Charles Manson is a misunderstood musician. We don't have to teach that the Holocaust is a Zionist conspiracy. And we don't have to teach ID.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, he Was a Misunderstood Musician, Who Also Killed, a Lot of People!!!

And, we DID, Get our Own State, Out of The Holocaust's Aftermath, But, 6 Million Lives, Does Seem, a Big Price, to Pay!!!

Hmmmmm, Maybe you Have, a Point!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

And "Zionist conspiracy" doesn't cover my cousins, who weren't Jewish to begin with!

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes - it's far too often overlooked that 3-5 million other (non-Jewish) civilians (mostly Poles) were deliberately targetted and exterminated by the Nazis, and another 8-10 million civilians and POWs (mostly Russians) were killed outside of camps via starvation or casual brutality without deliberate targetting. So appallingly the Nazis not only attempted to wipe out the Jews in The Holocaust that everyone knows about but they also committed another two Holocausts on Gentile noncombatants.

I was googling for some evolution type stuff, and hit this site. I was at first VERY confused because it is a bulletin board with the same format as this one. The content however is not. In fact it made me sick, and only sicker when I saw the number of members and people logged in at the moment. I considered sticking around to troll, but the pure and complete ignorance was disturbing. that and I didn't feel like getting put on some kinda big brother list by activating an account someplace like that.
It seems a bit relevant to the last few posts.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/index.php

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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
--Isaac Asimov

Stormfront is a well known Nazi hangout (I don't see the point in the 'neo-' prefix when their ideas don't seem to have significantly progressed from the last lot) and is watched by most of the relevant authorities and anti-nazi groups, so I can't say I'm surprised.

Returning to the epiglottis change, I believe it is necessary for speech development, so isn't just a dumb evolutionary backwater.

Chicken and egg question for you. Did some of our ancestors find a way to force the epiglottis down, or did we take advantage of the change when we started advancing our hoots and calls into more complex language.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

My non-scientific wild guess: it's a fairly simple mutation, but until someone came up with a way (complex communication) to outweigh the increased danger of choking it was a disadvantage and kept to a small section of the population.

I would have to say ditto to this, from my semi-scientific guess. It is a funny thing though. One of the reasons teaching babies sign language has become kinda hip. We're discovering that babies have the ability and desire to communicate earlier than previously thought, they just can't form words. They can use rudimentary sign language though. So the evolution of the epiglottis and the development of speech go pretty hand in hand.

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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
--Isaac Asimov

heh, any parent should be able to tell you that (of course, that's not scientific..) My wife and I generally understood what the boys were asking before they learned to talk... I think it's mostly body language reading.

Rturning to the mass murdering - everybody gets all up in arms (well, everybody sane) about the Nazis murdering millions. I have no problem at all with that - but virtually *nobody* says anything about the 20+ Million of his own people that Stalin had systematically murdered.

Just a thought

I don't agree. For example, from this page (genocide in the 20th century):
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths

Never forget.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I don't think running and weight lifting are "inappropriate." I know if you're not careful you can hurt yourself, but I don't think they're to be discouraged. Just encourage people to do them correctly.

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It's woo-woo's all the way down.

Yep Stalin was a bad lot too; although I don't know how far he actually set out to kill the people, he surely will have known they were dying and changed nothing. And there's that 6 million figure for the Nazis again - Swift, see my post above, should be more like 20 million.

And Rwanda, while roughly only one million dead, was at an unprecendented speed - two months was it? less?

I thought the nazis killed 11 million? 6 million Jews, 5 million "others". That's what was listed on Band of Brothers at least.

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Uh... Charles Manson is a convicted murderer. Enough said.

In case you missed it, I was talking about the development of the epiglottis, which most of you "scientists" failed to mention as a reason for a baby's ability to breath and suck at the same time for several posts.

See what I mean about how quick (and inaccurate) most of you are to judge others? Any mention of one's faith invites an acute attack, totally disregarding any and all previous contributions involving science over the years.

You're worse than wolves, folks. Wolves don't attack unless they're hungry.

Why are you so hungry? What's lacking in your diet? Why are you so empty that you would jump to such ridiculous conclusions?

I'm a scientist, DAMMIT!!! I have been since the 6th grade. I studied biology, chemistry, and physics at my university and graduated with a B.S., not a B.A.! I've two master's degrees, an unbelievable plethora of on the job "advanced study," and will shortly begin working towards a doctorate for a teaching position at a university when I retire from my current job in a few years.

Grow UP, folks. Just because someone has a different religious belief than you doesn't make them any less a scientist, or capable of rational, logical thought. Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of receiving derisive comments from (thankfully) a few other board members simply because I make a slight allusion to my religious beliefs.

The overwhelming vast majority of my posts (>99.9%) have been totally devoid of my personal beliefs, something I can't say is true more than 50% of you.

BA used to be a board where, so long as someone was propounding rational and logical thought the others could care less about their personal beliefs.

It appears things have changed. BAUT seems to be a club for atheism, not science.

If I'm wrong, speak up. That's my challenge to you all, and I encourage each and every one of you to distance yourselves from responding derisively on the basis of anyone's personal beliefs.

Instead, respond to what's posted. Engage in the logical discourse we all learned in school, fighting presuppositions with facts, countering ideologies with logical discourse.

I know that's not to much to ask.

Gene'

I've a friend of mine who did a two-year missionary tour in Rwanda between 1992 and 1993. She said she was "glad she did it, as it opened her eyes to the horror of human cruelty."

That's all she would say about it.

Gene - I may have missed it (I kinda just skipped along until I saw your post).. but I don't see anybody attacking your beliefs on this thread. Or maybe I'm just reading the posts wrong.

Granted, nobody really went anywhere with the epiglotis (thank you for remembering what the heck it's called), but there was some response to "there's two sides to every story". I have to agree with Gillian, though - sometimes one side or the other (or even both) is flat wrong, and as such don't need to be given the time of day.
I don't think she brought up the holocaust as any kind of attack, but as an example of an argument that has two sides, one prettty obviously patently wrong.

Or maybe I'm as laid back as Californians claim to be (but aren't) and this is a problem...

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I am a Jelly Donut! (JFK)

Somewhere between 9 and 11 million targetted killings (ie. selected on some basis - Jewish, Polish, disabled, etc.). Another 9-13 million killed "incidentally" (these are all non-combatants, although it does include a lot of Soviet POWs worked and starved to death). Almost certainly at least 20 million.


Which predated the genocide - d'you think she was talking about conditions which contributed toward it or the first flickerings of the genocide itself?

And just to see how far off-topic we can get - see http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/jfkberl.htm to debunk this one.

When religious belief can be demonstrated to be disprovable by evidence and observation or those involved in religious belief come to their senses, I'll throttle back. Until then, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Wicca, Paganism, Crystal Waving, Buddhism, Shintoism, and all the rest get shelved in the Mythology department right next to Norse pantheism, Greco-Roman pantheism, and Scientology.

So far as I can tell, aside from slaughtering, bribing, cajoling, torturing and buying its way into success in the modern world, none of the current generation of monotheistic religions have in any way demonstrated they're any different from their pantheistic/animistic predecessors.

For a Christian to invoke God in the realm of science carries about as much weight to me as someone in a toga invoking Zeus in the same context. Nada.

To me, religion is the enemy of reason, there is no common ground to be found, ever.

Christianity's assault on evolution is the same trite nonsense they've been pulling since they assaulted Copernicus and Galileo for daring to question the Earth's place at the center of the universe. The only difference that keeps this fire burning beyond its time is that now the battle comes right down to humanity itself.

Declaring the Earth as nothing special, that's easy to get over, its still a pretty special planet without being the universe's center. Try knocking humanity out of its "image of God" status and declaring us to be nothing more than advanced animals, for some reason, those of faith seem to have real issues grasping this one. Its the most bitter nail those who live by reason and knowledge have ever had to drive into religion's coffin, but its a nail we will drive eventually.

Its not a question of common ground or co-existance, its a question of fact versus fantasy. Its the trap no religion will ever escape, at the end of the day, its just a lie thats been told so often that its become ingrained in our psyche. A fable taken to the extreme.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

You talked about more than that, if that is all anyone was supposed to comment on then you should not have included any other statements.

Who disregarded Science? The thread started as a response to Kansas BOE changing the definition of science to include a non-science topic. Mention of support of that non-science topic will get people a bit riled up.

Ridiculous conclusions? That ID is wrong? Well that was posted as an opinion, one based on the inability to support it as a scientific theory. If you have scientific evidence please, give it. There are a lot of quiet scientists who are not atheists, that currently don’t support ID. If you could demonstrate it as a legitimate scientific argument you might be surprised at the response. I do hear you trying not to discredit evolution. You aren’t the one being attacked. ID as it is being pushed, originating from biblical literalists whose goals are hidden on the surface, but not unknown from anyone willing to do a little research into it, is a deceitful way of first eliminating evolution from science, and followed by teaching the bible in all public schools. That is the true agenda. Hidden and deceitful as it is, and scientists are defending their postition from attack.

Great, I still didn’t see anyone attacking your scientific knowledge.

And I’m sure you were expecting to draw those comments by making the allusion to your beliefs. Besides I didn’t see an attack on your religion, I saw a comment about creationism. As I said already it’s not science, how can you present two sides to a scientific argument when one side isn’t science?

So why did you make the reference to begin with?

This is the problem isn’t it. The wedge theory in action isn’t it, to introduce comparisons of religious beliefs into scientific discussions. Sway the public into thinking science as we know it is just a club for atheism. If that is what you would like the public to believe science is, or beyond that the teaching of evolution I hope you are not looking to introduce God into your future science teaching to over come this thought.

If you are upset about the comparison to teaching creationism in classrooms and chuck manson, or the holocaust as a Zionist conspiracy, you are probably right it was inflammatory, but the point is, there are people out there that believe those things, and want them taught in schools. Those thoughts have about the same credence being taught in science classes.

Here are a couple others; Alchemy, Crystal-mysticism, Astrology, spell making, and feng shui. Plenty of folks include them in their personal beliefs, do they have a place in a scientific debate? After all shouldn’t we give them equal credence and hear both sides of a story? Wouldn’t you be wrong to just dismiss them as being wrong?

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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
--Isaac Asimov

That's patently incorrect, Gene. The rules, which have been mentionned repeatedly over the past week or so along with a number of locked threads says that discussions about religion (particularly partisan ones) are not welcome here because of their clearly contentious nature. That includes, I imagine, partisan and/or militant atheism.

Gene, take this from someone who genuinely cares what you have to say (most of the time, anyway ), this would be a very good moment to take a walk, get some cool November air, breathe a bit, and think carefully on your next tack, because I'm seeing shoal water ahead for you, friend.

Doodler, you might want to ease up a bit 'till we all get calmed down a bit. There's probably no saving this thread at this point, but there's no point in seeing folks banned over something this ultimately pointless.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.