I have both Eneloops and IKEA Ladda AAs and AAAs. They perform exactly the same, and I read an article a couple years ago that said they were all made in the same Panasonic factory. I believe it, and even if it's not true, I buy lots of Ladda batteries at IKEA.

$120 for shipping is crazy, though I will point out that the USPS considers batteries hazardous. UPS should handle them, though.

First, I will give you credit for finally finding an objective and scientifically respectable source. That said, the article you cited describes the earliest protolife reactions as originating from chemicals AMONG rocks in hydrothermal vents, not FROM rocks. And it specifically says that this is one of many ideas as to how it may have happened.

In effect, you still have no basis for saying that I believe we evolved from rocks.

And in answer to your second assertion, NO, nothing it that article means that "all the water was once underground," any more than the fact that hydrothermal vents are currently venting water means that all the water is now underground. Just because there is SOME water underground in no way implies that it was all underground. There is no logical chain from A to B there.

Again, find me ANY respectable geologist who will support that. And don't say Walter Brown. He's NOT a geologist, and his MIT degree in mechanical engineering doesn't make him one. And his ideas (which don't rise to the level of evidence to be called a scientific theory) aren't even supported by Answers in Genesis, much less any scientists.

Do you really think anything on youtube is acceptable as source material? Really? You can find fifty things for and fifty things against any position you choose. And all it offers is an assertion, "Lucy is an ape." No proof. Not even a respectable attempt at pseudoscience.

You'll need to do better than that.

And the government had nothing to do with the studies of Lucy. Which, even if it did, hardly backs your accusations of fraud.

Do you have even the first inkling of research procesures? Do you know what primary source material is? And if so, do you have any?

Wasn't me. MauiMoto keeps saying things that he has decided I believe.

Actually, it IS true about scientists agreeing on climate change.



So how does the "hydroplate theory" meet this criterion of "observable and repeatable" in any way whatsoever? When even other young Earth creationists like Answers in Genesis reject this wacky idea?



Really? Who are they? Because I'm still waiting for you to name a single respectable geologist who subscribes to this "theory". Feel free to throw in any respected mathematicians, geneticists, and astrophysicists who support it.

And I'm also waiting for you to back up your assertion that "Lucy" and other hominid fossils were "proven" to be fraudulent. But I'm not holding my breath, because you can't prove anything.

As far as there is any indication, he has no formal training in those fields. He apparently was an Army Ranger and held academic positions in the Air Force - both worth respect, but neither of which qualifies him in geology, genetics, or astrophysics.

He does seem to blissfully ignore some consequences of his postulated events - for example, he states that the waters bursting from under the earth would have had energy equivalent to 1,300 trillion 1-megaton bombs. This would have put enough energy into the biosphere to raise the temperature of the oceans to 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, which would have cooked Noah, his family, and all the animals in a matter of seconds. (In fact, the oceans would have boiled off, leaving the Earth a sterile and lifeless rock.)

For what it's worth, even prominent other young Earth creationists, including Answers in Genesis, find his ideas unbelievable.

He lists himself as the Director of the Center for Scientific Creation, a fine-sounding title until you learn that the Center has a staff of two - himself and his wife.

Walter Brown is the young Earth creationist equivalent of Erich von Daniken or Immanuel Velikovsky.

And here, for those brave enough to read it, is a detailed analysis of Walt Brown's book, "In the Beginning."

http://paleo.cc/ce/wbrown.htm

Still waiting for a respectable geologist...

Evolution is not based on human introduction of new genetic material. That's a recent development, as you obviously know. I doubt Darwin ever imagined direct manipulation of the genome would be possible. Evolution has been going on for hundreds of millions of years before humans existed.

Evolution is based on the accumulation of natural mutations in the genetic sequence - some beneficial, some negative - what used to be called genetic drift. Negative ones tend to die out; beneficial ones tend to prosper - what Darwin named natural selection.

In breeding different dogs for different characteristics, we have manipulated the canine gene pool - and to some extent artificially isolated breeds into separate gene pools through controlled breeding. (But not fully, because there are still plenty of mixed mutts out there.) If you were to put all the German Shepherds on one island, all the dachshunds on another, and so on, in a few thousand years you'd find that A) the dogs in each isolated population would have diversified to fill various niches, and B) there's a good likelihood that dogs from one island could no longer breed with those of another. They would have formed different species.

In nature, we've seen canines partitioned both by niche and geography, resulting in wolves, coyotes, foxes, dingoes, fennecs, dholes, jackals, and more. These are individual species, but all arose from the same canid ancestors. You can call them the same "kind" if it makes you happy, but that won't make crossbreeding viable.

The example of tyrannosaurs evolving into larger forms was deliberately brief, intending to show that speciation is, to some degree, a naming convention imposed on a continuum of organisms - in that example, a continuum across time rather than space or niche. I could have easily expanded the sample given to include older and more different forms such as Aublysodon, Lythronax, Alioramus, Gorgosaurus, Raptorex, and many more, but I thought three were sufficient to demonstrate the point. These quite demonstrably changed form as evolution requires - as humans also did, between Lucy and modern man.

Changes in the quality of nutrition will generally produce bigger and stronger individuals, as you mention, but that's individual development (ontogeny), not changes in the genome (phylogeny). In most cases, the five hundred years you mention aren't enough to see significant changes in the genome - though that finch study I referenced earlier, which you dismissed, actually was such a change. Such change usually takes tens of thousands of years, and there must be a survival pressure that makes the change beneficial. This is why we look to the fossil record, where we can compress time and see the changes across thousands of generations, or millions of years.

I said a RESPECTABLE GEOLOGIST. Walt Brown isn't a geologist, and no geologist in the world accepts his wacky "hydroplate theory." So no, that doesn't meet the standard of any objective proof.

I don't know what they've been telling you down at the Make America Hate Again rallies, but it's clearly some crazy stuff. Refuses the mark? Are you talking about some Antichrist fantasy? Because there's nothing like that in the Green New Deal. Nor about letting Monsanto control all the food. Nor about the right to life given by the state.

You need to stop listening to the crazy fools and do some real research - not just on far-right fringe websites.

By the way, who is your geologist and what is that book?

First, let's be clear that the development of most different breeds of dogs isn't a result of natural selection, but rather human selection. Bloodhounds were bred to enhance and maximize their sense of smell. Bull terriers were bred to kill rats and, later, each other in pit fighting. Greyhounds were bred for speed; dachshunds were bred to pursue burrowing rodents; huskies were bred to pull dogsleds across miles of snow, etc. The list goes on and on.

And even more recently, many breeds of dogs have been bred to meet some "ideal" conformation at dog shows. For a while these "ideals" tended to create problems, such as the hip dysplasia in narrow-hipped German Shepherds. Fortunately, these damaging breeding trends have been recognized and are being walked back.

My point in bringing up dogs was to highlight the human influence on a species' development. If all the humans disappeared tomorrow, dogs would go feral. Many would die, but the tougher ones would survive. Great Danes might breed with German Shepherds, but not chihuahuas. We have artificially diverged dogs from their wolf origins into many breeds, and this is right on the edge of speciation - the point at which two populations cannot successfully breed.

(Having said that, I'd like to point out that many zoologists are now regarding speciation as an artifact of our human drive to classify and name everything. Back to dogs - the Great Danes can't breed with chihuahuas, but they can with a Labrador Retriever, which can with a terrier, which can breed with a chihuahua. So it's a spectrum, a continuum, in which one end can't breed with another, but both can with the middle.)

Darwin, in his Chapter 6, wondered about the lack of intermediate species - because he accepted the strict Linnaean classification of animals as separate species, though mutable through natural selection. We now have a bigger picture of life than was available to him, and we know that there are, and have been, many examples of intermediate species - especially across time. We can track the development of tyrannosaurs, for instance, from Daspletosaurus to Albertosaurus to T. rex - mainly an increase in size over the span of a few million years.

So Darwin's "missing intermediate forms" in many cases have indeed been found. If my hypothetical future paleontologist named Great Danes and chihuahuas as separate species of the dog family, based on their wildly divergent skeletons, the "intermediate forms" would be abundant.

Flowing water erodes limestone, but not evenly. It will vary with the hardness of the stone and the pressure of the water. For example, if the river turns left there will be greater pressure on the far side of the bend. It will erode faster there than on the opposite bank, gradually digging into the canyon wall. This phenomenon is well understood in the formation of "meandering" rivers as they develop into braided river systems.

In a closed setting like a canyon, this erosion will result in undercutting the canyon walls, creating the beautiful sculpted rock walls, as well as eventually widening the canyon by causing collapses.

The process is well known. No flood required.

"Lucy", the Australopithecus afarensis fossil found by Dr Johansen in 1974, has been the subject of many documentaries. A few creationist productions have tried to claim the fossil is a hoax, but none of them have withstood scrutiny. Not only has the fossil held up under the most rigorous examination, but a dozen other fossils of her species have been found.

So, yes, Lucy was the subject of some documentaries.

If you're going to fight this battle, at least do your research. Deposition happens on land surfaces all over the world, building up gradually. That's why Rome was buried by the 1800s and had to be dug up - or did you think the Romans buried their city with shovels when they left?

As deposition occurs, yes, erosion also occurs - but it's not even and equal all around, or land would be flat everywhere. Rainwater rolls down into creeks, then rivers, to the sea. As rivers flow, they erode and carve the land, but only in their paths. The Colorado River is believed to have set its current path about 5-6 million years ago. The Grand Canyon is the result of 5-6 million years of river cutting away limestone.

And really, you should know all of this already.

Find me a single respectable geologist who will back that assertion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stratigraphy_of_the_Grand_Canyon.png



That is a scurrilous and false accusation. The burden of proof is on you. Show me your documentation.