Ermm...No? Besides the topic was what came first the chicken or the egg - I cared for that topic, hense my presence here.

I didn't say they couldn't help, stem cells aren't the origin of life though, otherwise scientist would have stopped searching.


What? What do you mean what's my point? It was kind clear and in your face with that line, no?
Point is; I still care not about knowing the origin of life, simply because it's unnecessary to me and my life.
I hope bolding the key areas will help you understand the point of that line...

How do you explain the "poof! Wola! You have life from nothing!" moment? There was no life, then there was
Best explanation of it is the Big Bang theory, or at least something that would create a rather strange and "life-giving" chemical reaction.

I didnt say they were. I said they were useful, and they are something Pistolero said he would be using if he got his dream job. If he researches them, and their uses he is helping humanity progress.

Then I must have misread his post or just not commented about Stem Cell research.

Stem cells are the thing from which we start developing into humans. What is so fascinating about them is that we know only so little - how they function, why, and how they transform stage-by-stage into more specialized cells. In medicine they are indeed proving to be useful in gene therapy and curing cancer, and in fact I dare say if a reliable cure for cancer is ever found it's found from stem cells.


Quite true, and I know this, but the problem is that we'll be dragging half the world down with us. When humans run out of food it will be bad news for the environment. I'd rather not have the great diversity of our world endangered just because some pesky Africans didn't know to stop breeding when they should have.

You do know that Africa's population growth rate is around 1%, down from 3% it was half a decade ago, right? Your sentence just comes off racist...

He could be talking about people from African countries living elsewhere.

Well stuffs going to get ruined anyway. The technology we have today is just so destructive, so even withthe population under control we would still have a war, and end up [censored] things up.

I don't give a rat's [censored] ass what skin color they are*. Africa is still overpopulated and their horrible political situations (caused by colonial overlords screwing up with the maps though I wouldn't blame everything on them) makes it only worse. Of course, Asia is also a horrible offender and perhaps even worse so. However I'm most concerned about Africa's environment and endangered species being poached (much like Indonesia).


*Considering global warming and ozone layer thinning, dark skin color is actually superior since it offers better protection against UV radiation.

Asia isnt too bad. China has the one child thing, and a cultural preferance for males, their population will plumet.
Japan has a issue with not enough people being born, I think S Korea may be in the same boat.

The rest however, probably not in the best state.

This. I don't care what comes first as long as it eventually ends up in my belly.

Agreed. The reason I dislike Africa so much is because nations like China are organized enough to take some care of their surroundings. I don't even want to know how quickly the Pandas would have died out if they lived in, say, Congo instead of China.

The worst Asian nations I think are India because of its huge population increase and Indonesia because it finds so damn much fun in cutting down its rain forests (where the orangutans live). Japan never had much of an environment to begin with so they are a small offender, though their whaling business should be destroyed at once.

How does it come that people always end up discussing things like this?

There is a very clear link between poverty and population growth. It's in poor countries and communities you see more people being born for a number of reasons. One is a high child mortality rate, and another is that children is basicly your substitute for life insurance. The best way to fight overpopulation is simply through economic and social development, not to mention women's rights. In most of Europe growth has slowed down, and Japan's career-obsessed corporate culture represents the other extreme.

Because I don't care about the inane yawp that's flooding the past 2-3 pages over humans and genetics, I'll help Tallest try and veer this back on topic.

I'd imagine the Chicken came first. When we evolve, we are a new unique species right? So that'd mean we'd have to come first to reproduce and make more of us.

I'm not going to argue with you about the political situation in Africa, as that is the source of their problems, but overpopulation isn't one of them (inadequate resource sharing due to already mentioned politics is). Africa's total population is less than that of India while simultaneously having more resources (as a whole, not in ratio to land area, since Africa is a lot bigger). Africa has a high birth rate, yes, but also a very high death rate, hence why they need a high birth rate still. Poor African women have also been faster to adopt birth control medication than other groups have (when they have it available to them).

Hence why your argument is flawed. It is true for very specific African countries, but as a whole is far too overlooking of key aspects while simultaneously both overestimating their population and underestimating their natural resources. In fact, if trends continue as they are now, Africa as a whole is on their way to having a small stage two of population growth (before the sudden jump in death rates caused by AIDs, they were already on their way to getting out of stage 2)

Pandas deserve to die out. They're fundamentally useless creatures who won't breed even when we corral them into one place so that their stupid mating seasons match up with the rare occasions when they meet one of their own kind.

Please get this back on topic - if you are not sure what that is - read the thread title.

Again, evolution happens in reproduction and thus the egg came first. Also, the transition to the chicken we know today took millions of years and there is no definite moment we can say "this, gentlemen, is a chicken!"
I'll need to do some googling before going on this further. But for now I accept your point and I stand corrected.
And of course, this has derailed too much already. Let's drop this then shall we?

Technically the modern chicken was domesticated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken years ago - not millions of years ago. That said, its ancestor looks almost identical to a modern chicken.

As I said before, the first chicken hatched from an egg. Thus the egg came first. A non chicken may have laid that egg, but I contend that it was still a 'chicken' egg because a chicken hatched from it. Whether a wild-jungle-fowl or a sophisticated laboratory creates said egg - if a chicken hatches from it, it's a chicken egg. It's defined by what's in it - not what laid it.

Evolution is the answer. First there was a bird that wasn't a chicken, but then eventually turned into a chicken. And since you have to be an egg to turn into a chicken, the egg came first. (an egg laid by a not-chicken)

DEFRON saves the day with logical thinking once again!

What I'm saying is that the answer is obviously "neither," but once you say that we're going off-topic. It's a silly question that cannot be answered, yes, but saying, "well, it's really about speciation" is changing the subject entirely. Of course if you look at the big picture an individual chicken or egg (regardless of how they're defined) are irrelevant to how the chicken as a species came about. That, however, doesn't entertain the classic question...it just says that the question doesn't make sense. While that is logically sound, it's less fun than debating the question. In order to actually debate the question the parameters must be more clearly-defined, which is why I say it's a matter of semantics.

I don't think anyone here is thinking that one night a pheasant and a pigeon got loaded and had a go resulting in a chicken. If we're having an actual biology discussion then you're absolutely right...however, if we're just having a laugh...

The rooster came first.

I've noticed that no one even questioned the article - personally, I don't believe it. I believe that a chicken could have had an egg and not been able to pass it, but I have trouble believing that a live chick could result

Snap!

Yes I do, but you seem not to:

Darwin's pangenesis theory was complex as he tried to explain the process of sixual reproduction, passing of traits and complex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_biology phenomena, such as cellular http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_%28biology%29.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-Geison69-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-Jablonka05-2} His pangenesis theory was criticised for its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarkism premise that parents could http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_of_acquired_characters in their lifetime. Lamarckism fell from favour after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Weismann research in the 1880s indicated that changes from use (such as lifting weights to increase muscle mass) and disuse (such as being lazy and becoming scrawny) were not heritable.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-ImaginaryLamarck-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-4} Some Lamarckian principles, however, have not been entirely discounted and some of Darwin's pangenesis principles (in this regard) do relate to heritable aspects of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotypic_plasticity, while the status of gemmules has been firmly rejected. Darwin himself had noted that "the existence of free gemmules is a gratuitous assumption"; by some accounts in modern interpretation, gemmules may be considered a prescient mix of DNA, RNA, proteins, prions, and other mobile elements that are heritable in a non-Mendelian manner at the molecular level.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-Geison69-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-West.3DEberhard08-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis#cite_note-Liu09-6}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis