Scientists can reverse aging in mice.

[martin-w 3,235]

21 hours ago, birdguy said:

Yeah, twice a year at the senior center.

Noel

 

Nope, its an entire TV series in the UK and a pastime shared by all ages. Strictly Come Dancing. BBC. In fact I think its aired in the US.

https://www.areyoudancing.com/dance-styles/ballroom/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m8dq

https://www.quickquickslow.com/blog/3-reasons-why-ballroom-dancing-is-not-outdated

Professionals and amateurs.

 

[birdguy 3,943]

Well Martin, where I live it's only a once a month thing at the senior center.  Watching it on television is not the same as doing it.

Noel

[martin-w 3,235]

The other link Noel... ballroom dancing is alive and well in the UK and other parts of the world. Its a proffesional endeavour as well as amateur.

You guys in Roswell are too busy hunting alien spacecraft wreckage to have time for dancing.

Admit it... you have alien anti-gravity plating in your shed. 😁

[birdguy 3,943]

Actually, Martin, I am one of the observers.  I'll probably get in trouble for this but I was put here with my parents in 1948 when I was 15 years old to observe what you call humanity.

You see, ages ago my forefathers came to earth and found a pristine planet in perfect balance and harmony with nature.  They wondered what would happen to the planet if intelligent were here.  So they injected primitive chimpanzees with humanoid genetic material.  Several hundred were selected and genetic material from the galaxy with races from three different planets were used.  And their development has been observed and reported to our scientists over the millennia.

All these centuries you have been under observation from families like mine that were put here, and are continuing to be put here, to observe you.  Thats what the UFOs you see are doing.  They are replacing  old XXDRFRTians (don't try to pronounce it) who have passed away with new families who live out their lives here.  And they are picking up all the data we collect.

Noel

Edited June 11, 2022 by birdguy

[Wildblue 245]

20 hours ago, birdguy said:

Actually, Martin, I am one of the observers.  I'll probably get in trouble for this but I was put here with my parents in 1948 when I was 15 years old to observe what you call humanity.

You see, ages ago my forefathers came to earth and found a pristine planet in perfect balance and harmony with nature.  They wondered what would happen to the planet if intelligent were here.  So they injected primitive chimpanzees with humanoid genetic material.  Several hundred were selected and genetic material from the galaxy with races from three different planets were used.  And their development has been observed and reported to our scientists over the millennia.

All these centuries you have been under observation from families like mine that were put here, and are continuing to be put here, to observe you.  Thats what the UFOs you see are doing.  They are replacing  old XXDRFRTians (don't try to pronounce it) who have passed away with new families who live out their lives here.  And they are picking up all the data we collect.

Noel

Wow! My thoughts exactly! Paradise was already on earth before WE came to disturb it all.

[martin-w 3,235]

47 minutes ago, Wildblue said:

Wow! My thoughts exactly! Paradise was already on earth before WE came to disturb it all.

 

Not exactly. 😀 The natural world might be visually akin to a paradise but in reality the natural world is jam packed with animals that suffer greatly. The "wild" is a very harsh place for most animals.

[birdguy 3,943]

3 minutes ago, martin-w said:

The "wild" is a very harsh place for most animals.

But, in balance.  There are predators and prey.  There have to be for a balance to be maintained.

The prey animals have eyes on the sides of their heads so they can look all around themselves to spot prey.  Prey animals, including humanoids, have eyes in the front of their heads for binocular vision to judge distance.  And they only kill for food.  It's not a vegetarian planet.  If it were it would soon become overpopulated with grazers who would denude the planet of grasses and trees.

But despite the wild being a harsh place it was in balance.  The living creatures before we came and introduced humanoids who, by the way, were and are harsher on animals than the animals themselves (wild feline species and canine species only hunt what they can eat in a meal.  They do not kill to mount heads on a wall).

And wild animals do not pollute the atmosphere or cut down forests or fill the seas with plastic waste.

So, Martin, despite the fact that there are predators and prey they live with, and are part of, the harmony of nature.  In fact they are necessary to maintain nature's balance.

Our experiment has shown that intelligence is detrimental to a planet's natural harmony.  The quest for machines and the invention of money and the wars they precipitate upsets the natural balance.

Noel

 

[martin-w 3,235]

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

But, in balance.  There are predators and prey.  There have to be for a balance to be maintained.

 

Balance doesn't negate suffering though. Predation causes suffering for the prayed upon animal. And then there's starvation in that most animals are hungry most of the time, disease, natural diesters to worry about. 

 

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

And they only kill for food.  It's not a vegetarian planet.  If it were it would soon become overpopulated with grazers who would denude the planet of grasses and trees.

 

True but killing for food results in a suffering victim. The natural world is still replete with suffering for animals, that's not defined as a paradise. 

 

Quote

So, Martin, despite the fact that there are predators and prey they live with, and are part of, the harmony of nature.  In fact they are necessary to maintain nature's balance.

 

True again Noel, but the suffering of prey, starvation, disease, natural diesters like drought and fire for example, are still a fact. Balance doesn't negate that. The natural world is not a paradise no matter how you look at it, not the way we humans and our dictionary's define it anyway. 

Paradise is defines as: a place or state of bliss, felicity, or delight. 

Check out any documentary on  Lions for example. They spend most of their time hungry, suffer disease, parasite infection, thirst. Cubs die young, either from disease or because they get eaten by one of the male lions in the pride, or a lion attempting to take over the pride. They suffer accidents and die a painful death. Hyena's have a violent hierarchy and literally bite chunks of flesh off each other.

So to us, when we look at  a picturesque vista, untouched by humans, replete with forests, lakes, mountains, we think "paradise", but no, its actually not paradise for the creatures that live there at all. A miracle of evolution yes, a wonderful thing yes, but no, paradise isn't the right world.  

It can only be defined as paradise by us, subjectively, visually, if we experience bliss, delight, felicity, when w look upon the scene.

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by martin-w

[birdguy 3,943]

Paradise is a subjective term.  I use it as a comparison to what the planet would be without mankind to what it is with mankind.

I think the predation, natural disasters, and the suffering of prey animals is relatively minor compared to what mankind has done preying on each other be it warfare or economic deprivation or starvation due to both natural and manmade causes or willful killing of certain groups of people.

Yes, predators animals capture and eat prey animals.  But they don't do it to each other like mankind does. 

We have people living in the streets and begging for money.  We have people dependent on illegal drugs.

We have a homeless problem which wild animals don't have.  We have a drug problem which wild animals don't have.  We have a hunger problem which wild animals seldom have.

When I was younger I spent many days backpacking in the wilderness.  Away from the hustle and bustle and traffic and crowds of the city where I lived (Denver CO).  And I was a predator.  I fished for trout for dinner.  Or I shot a grouse with my handgun.  Some of those were the best days of my life.

We have predators in our cities selling drugs, mugging and stealing, hustling prostitutes, engaged in bait and switch con games, or simply annoying you begging for money. 

You can't look at the history of mankind and tell me Planet Earth would have been better off without us despite your empathy for a rabbit caught by a coyote.

The other night I watched a nature show on BBC.  It was about a mama cheetah raising three daughters.  But the scene was contaminated by the hand of man.  Mama cheetah and one of her daughters had radio collars on them.  In one scene a hyena stole their kill.  That hyena had a radio collar on it.  I realize scientists and naturalists want to track these animals.  But why not use those chips they inject into the necks of pets to identify them if they get lost instead of huge collars around their necks?

Noel

 

[martin-w 3,235]

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Paradise is a subjective term.  I use it as a comparison to what the planet would be without mankind to what it is with mankind

 

The word itself has a dictionary definition. The way animals suffer in the wild isn't compatible with the definition of paradise in the dictionary. Which was why I said "not the way we humans and our dictionary's define it anyway." None of the words used to define the word in the dictionary relate to the suffering animals experience in the wild.

I accept what you are saying though, in that human beings mess about with the semantics and assign their own subjective meaning.

 

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Yes, predators animals capture and eat prey animals.  But they don't do it to each other like mankind does.

 

True but not related to whether paradise is the right word to describe the experience of an animal in the wild.

 

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

You can't look at the history of mankind and tell me Planet Earth would have been better off without us despite your empathy for a rabbit caught by a coyote.

 

No I cant, and haven't. But the natural world isn't paradise according to the dictionary definition. That's all I've said. 

 

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

But why not use those chips they inject into the necks of pets to identify them if they get lost instead of huge collars around their necks?

 

I know, I'm not find of the collars either. 

The chips we inject into animals necks aren't long range transmitters though Noel. They are just transponders. When the vet puts the transmitter close to the chip in the neck it activates it and it flashes back the data. So low powered that no batteries are required. They aren't capable of translating over any kind of range. Aircfat transponders are of course because they are larger and have a decent power supply. 

[birdguy 3,943]

You may not like the word 'paradise' to describe the wilderness the world was before mankind developed civilization Martin, but I do because I have been there.

I mentioned before that I have spent many days backpacking and living in the wilderness...even car camping and observing bears, deer, elk, moose, wolves, coyotes, squirrels, conies, and other wildlife.  Now none of the animals I've mentioned have a concept of paradise, but I do.  And when I am in such a place the peace of mind and the natural surrounding and the slight whistle of the wind in the pine and fir trees and the calmness of a high mountain lake you can only hike to is as close to a paradise as I will ever get.

It's hard to describe paradise to someone who hasn't been there.  I doubt there are large areas of wilderness in the UK, but there are in the US.

This is an excerpt from one of the stories I was publishing here a few years ago.

It was hot.  The trail was dusty and the pack was getting heavier with every step up that long, steep trail that followed French Creek up the mountain.  I began to wonder if this had been a bad idea.  It was the summer of 1949 and I was fifteen years old, skinny, and weighed 120 pounds soaking wet.

It hadn’t take us long to find the trail and we started hiking up the Kern River valley.  It’s pretty level and I thought this was going to pretty easy.  There we were in the wilderness.  Nobody else was around.  Whenever we stopped to rest we could hear the rushing waters of the Kern River.  It was paradise.
    We finally got the side trail that led up to Hutchinson Meadows, our destination.  We camped there and took out the Mason Jar of beans that had been soaking in water all day and poured the contents into mom’s pot.  Dad scraped out a fire pit and started a small fire.  I was assigned to gather firewood.  When the fire had burned down to just coals Dad put the pot of beans on to boil and sliced a couple pieces of bacon from the slab and put them into mom’s skillet.
    The bacon started frying and the beans were boiling.  The pine smoke smelled wonderful and our beds were laid out just waiting for us.
    Soon the bacon had fried up and the beans were semi-cooked. We sat around and ate out of the pot and the skillet and Dad started to talk to me about when he was a boy.  He had some wonderful stories to tell.  We had never had time to talk like this before.  I learned more about him that night than in all my 15 years.
    Before long it was dark and we climbed into our bedrolls and went to sleep.  The hike and semi-lack of sleep the night before caught up with me and I dozed off quickly.
    Then sometime in the middle of the night I woke with a start and it sounded like a thousand dogs had surrounded us baking and yelping and carrying on like they were going to attack us.  Dad laughed and said they were just coyotes to ignore them and go back to sleep.  Eventually I did and woke up to the smell of hot coffee.  
    Dad had breakfast ready.  Not much, just the cold left over bacon and beans from last night and some fresh coffee.  We had to get back on the trail because it was a long hike to Hutchinson Meadows.
    I cleaned up the dishes on the banks of the Kern River while Dad began to repack our gear and lash my bundle to my pack frames and stuffed his gear into the borrowed pack.
    The trail to Hutchinson Meadows was long and steep.  This was not going to be the walk in the woods yesterday was.  My steps grew shorter and the pack grew heavier.  I just plodded along behind Dad.
    Periodically we stopped to rest whenever French Creek was close enough to the trail for us to get some cool water to drink.  Then Dad would say, “We’re wasting time.  Time to go.”
    We finally made it Hutchinson Meadows, the place we would call home for the next 3 days.
    I gathered fire wood and dad started cutting down pine boughs for our bed.  He stick them into the ground at a forty five degree angle, one beside the other, until he had a nice, comfortable, pallet made.  We would sleep on those for the next three nights.  He place one tarp over the boughs and our bedrolls on top of it.  The other tarp would be our cover in case it rained.  But it never did.
     We had extra beans and bacon that night and did a lot more talking.  My dad and I were becoming friends.  We sat around the fire, each of us poking at the coals with a stick.  The night was quiet.  And I learned how people could just sit quietly with each other without the need to speak and not be awkward.  Just being together was comforting.
    The next morning dad made the apple sauce and pancakes.  That was it.  In the days before freeze dried breakfasts and dinners meager rations were the order of the day.
    After breakfast I cleaned up the dishes.  Dad filled the Mason jar with water and put in the beans to soak all day.  He wrapped the food in one of the bedroll blankets and tied it off with a rope.  Then he swung the rope over a high limb of the pine tree and hoisted it up and tied it off so the bears couldn’t get to it.
    Then we went fishing.  We climbed over the boulders up to the benches above the meadow where the little lakes were.  And we caught Golden Trout.  Canary yellow Golden Trout.   Creatures of beauty.  And they would supplement dinner tonight.  Dad would also salt some to take home with us.  He knew how to do those things.  He was kind of a mountain man but I never knew it.
    We spent three days at Hutchinson Meadows.  Three days that would map out the rest of my life.  We never saw another soul up there.  The world belonged to Dad and I alone.  Wilderness camping got into my blood. 

One of the definitions of paradise in the Oxford dictionary is 'An ideal or idyllic place.'

Paradise is a human concept, not an animal concept.  And the term is used to describe any place that a person find satisfying or fulfilling.

So I maintain that an earth without mankind to defile it is a paradise.

Now as far as the animals go in the original biblical Paradise, or Garden of Eden, what did the carnivores God created eat? 

Noel

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by birdguy

[Wildblue 245]

12 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Not exactly. 😀 The natural world might be visually akin to a paradise but in reality the natural world is jam packed with animals that suffer greatly. The "wild" is a very harsh place for most animals.

I meant 'paradise' in the sense that everything was pretty much balanced out on earth. Maybe, with another billion years without mankind planet earth would've been completely balanced out and allround perfect. We will never know this, nor will we ever know with what wonderful god-like solutions nature/evolution had come up with for still existing or new problems.

There's a series on tv called 'Evolve', maybe it's from the BBC, not sure. Now that's one series i happily follow! It's a must see for modern humans in my opinion. The central idea in it is; humans mimicking the solutions of 3 billion years of evolution. When i first saw it, for me it was like: Finally, someone found the right track to learn to cope with man-made threats to earth! See, i have always thought that earths problems caused by our technical skills will never be solved by more technical skills. Now it begins to look like my gut feeling about that was right and people are actually beginning to actively mimic nature's solutions instead. It's hard to contain my happiness about this development, wish i was younger, how i'd liked to be part of that.....for planet earth!

Edited June 13, 2022 by Wildblue

[martin-w 3,235]

12 hours ago, birdguy said:

You may not like the word 'paradise' to describe the wilderness the world was before mankind developed civilization Martin, but I do because I have been there.

 

Its not that I don't like it. Just pointing out that "objectively" the natural world is as far away from the dictionary definition of the word as you could get. 

 

12 hours ago, birdguy said:

And when I am in such a place the peace of mind and the natural surrounding and the slight whistle of the wind in the pine and fir trees and the calmness of a high mountain lake you can only hike to is as close to a paradise as I will ever get.

 

Yep, bliss, felicity and delight are emotions, you can experience them whenever you fancy. Animals  don't have an understanding of the human word paradise, but they do experience pain and suffering and negative emotions. Thus, if they understood the word, they wouldn't apply it to the experience they have daily. 

In short and in response to the natural world...

Noel: Paradise, bliss, felicity, or delight. 

Animals: Hunger fear, injury, thirst, suffering. And I'm sure that from time to time, when well fed and nourished, uninjured, fit and well, a solitary lion lies amongst the savannah grass and feels a semblance of those emotions too. But I bet not often. 

If we look at it objectively and generally, then no, the natural world is not paradise for the creatures that live there. That's all I'm saying.

But yes, you guys are fully entitled to subjectively experience bliss, felicity, or delight. whenever and wherever you like.

 

Quote

It's hard to describe paradise to someone who hasn't been there.  I doubt there are large areas of wilderness in the UK, but there are in the US.

 

I'm not in UK. 😀

I'm lucky, I literally live on the coast in a beautiful part of the world, by the ocean, a 3 minute walk away. And when I take a stroll along the beach on a nice sunny day, I most definitely experience those emotions too. Likewise when I take the cliff walk nearby. The emotions you speak of are not alien to me, specially as I've spent most of my life in a town in the centre of the UK, apart from occasional holidays to Devon Cornwall, and New Zealand. When I'm close to the sea, I do get that feeling that I want to stay there longer. 

I'm not in the UK, as I say Noel, but in terms of "wilderness" there is no true wilderness left in the UK.  However, the highlands of Scotland and the mountains of Wales and England do engender the feeling of wilderness. 

Edited June 13, 2022 by martin-w

[martin-w 3,235]

7 hours ago, Wildblue said:

I meant 'paradise' in the sense that everything was pretty much balanced out on earth.

 

Yep, I know what you meant. What I eman is fully explained to Noel above. 👍

[martin-w 3,235]

7 hours ago, Wildblue said:

i have always thought that earths problems caused by our technical skills will never be solved by more technical skills.

 

Its not necessarily our technological skills that's the issue, its the way we have applied that technology. The choices we have made and those choices, unfortunately, revolve around the acquisition of wealth. Technology can be good or bad, dependant on how we use it.

We have reached a point where a certain gas we have pumped into the atmosphere cannot be mitigated by just restraint, so we may have no choice but to use technology to remove that gas. And of course we need satellites and all manner of technology to study and monitor said gas. So yes "more technical skills" may be the answer, but the right kind of technical skills properly applied

I can't say more, as we aren't supposed to talk about climate change on the forum. You'd have to PM me for a fuller discussion.