Horse Lets One Go

"You blew off didn't you?"
"No I didn't!"
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Funny Animal Photos

Capitalism is Bad for Us

Research shows that capitalism is bad for us. Since the 1970s there has been an increase in mental illness of adults and children. Indications are that it is due to capitalism because the rise has been noted in English speaking capitalist countries and not in non-English speaking non-capitalist nations.

An average 23% of Americans, Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians suffered from mental illness in the last 12 months, but only 11.5% of Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, Spaniards and Dutch which have more restrictive trading systems.

Selfish Capitalism has massively increased the wealth of the wealthy, robbing the average earner to give to the rich. But there is no "trickle-down effect". Real wages have decreased in the US over the last three decades. Governments have reduced tax payments of the rich, placing responsibility for payment on low income earners.
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Society

Roo Loses Car Keys

"Where did I put those car keys?"
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Funny Animal Photos

Parents and Children Hit by New WA Drug Laws

Western Australia is about to fill up its jails and children's care homes in the war on drugs. New legislation will jail parents and take away children for the cultivation of one cannabis plant. The jail terms are mandatory for the manufacture of small amounts of other drugs.

 The conservative government has certainly lived up to its ideals of trying to turn back the clock a century or so. Transportation to a far off land could be next for "criminals". An earlier Labor government had decriminalized minor marijuana use. Just why the WA government would want to change a situation that seemed to be working is the real question. The premier must know that tough regulation like in the US has failed, totally. If legislation worked, such action would be justified

Even in the UK, people found with a small amount of drugs on their person are given a warning the first time it happens. Only serial offenders are jailed. This is the best idea. Target the dealers not individuals who in many cases are experimenting. We let people damage their health by smoking tobacco. Allowing them to cultivate a small amount of marijuana for their own use is akin to that.
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Society

Tahr to the hairdresser

"I've been to the hairdresser. What do you reckon? Pretty good, eh."
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Rift Valley Created by Tectonic Event - Findings of Early Man Fortuitous

The birthplace of Mankind is believed to be the Rift Valley in East Africa. It was thought that the valley formed over a long period of time. James Cook University scientists in Australia have found that a tectonic event changed the flow of the Congo, Nile and other rivers thus creating the Ethiopian-Kenyan eastern segment, and the Ugandan-Malawi western branch.

Formerly the assumption was that this didn't happen at the same time. The eastern section developed up to 25 million years before the western segment. This was the prevailing theory.

The Australian evidence indicates that the tectonic event created the eastern and western branches at much the same time. Climate change models will now have to be reviewed.

Because the region is rich in fossils ongoing investigation occurs there. It is the only late Oligocene terrestrial fossil deposit in Africa below the equator. Though fossils of early Man have been found there, it may not be the actual birthplace of Mankind. If could just be fortuitous that evidence has been found there.
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Science

Dogs Taking Life Easy

"I reckon we should take life real easy."
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Elephants and Mammoths Have Much the Same DNA

Elephants aren't so different from woolly mammoths. DNA samples taken from mammoth hair shows they are much alike. Furthermore, there are indications that the mammoth population was so low toward the end that inbreeding took place.

If the unique mammoth genome can be isolated it can be inserted into elephant DNA to produce a woolly mammoth. It has also been found that differentiation between mammoth was only minor, so that a disease could have easily wiped them out.

Mammoth are more closely related to elephants than chimpanzees are to humans, which is about 99 percent. Evidence shows that there were two groups of mammoth. One group died out 45,000 years ago, the other 10,000 years ago.
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Science

An Alien Has Landed

Evidence of alien landings?
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Funny Animal Photos

Aboriginals Did Not Wipe Out Megafauna

The argument continues over whether humans were responsible for the extinction of megafauna. Giant emus, large kangaroos, marsupial lions and diprodons were destroyed by Aboriginals in Australia according to new research. This claim is based on fungi in dung of herbivores. For 130,00 years, despite dry periods, charcoal and pollen levels in dung remained the same until Aboriginals arrived. This means that climate change was not responsible for the extinction of megafauna 40,000 years ago.

There is a problem with this. When Captain Cook arrived in Australia the Aboriginal population was extremely low. Forty thousand years ago there would have been only a few hundred thousand of them. How could this low number possibly destroy all of the large animals? Some megafauna would have survived in regions where Aboriginals did not go. Australia is a very large continent.

It is claimed that when the megafauna died out the vegetation changed with more fires, and eucalyptus forests spread out killing off rainforests. Spores in dung is flimsy evidence to support a claim that human arrival led to the demise of megafauna. Rainforests being taken over by eucalyptus sounds very much like climate change. Furthermore. prevailing evidence shows no human remains among megafauna fossils.

Saying that the dung research proves humans destroyed giant animals is still not proven beyond doubt. Gavin Prideaux's announcement that the study "supported mounting evidence that climate change was not to blame" is premature.
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Paleontology