grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

Clearly the problem here is one of lack of property rights. If only plants in highway medians, that little strip between the sidewalk and the road, and national forests were privatized and sold to the highest bidder, any of you socialists who want a bunch of plants around to produce oxygen could simply buy enough of them. All others should be harvested and burned by some sort of federally-subsidized corporation or other to fuel machines to crush Priuses.

Let's face it. It's a battle for suvival. Plants hate us for our freedom of mobility. Just because the Plantae kingdom is older some believe that we should respect and revere its members. These pacifist hippie types completely ignore the long term anti-Animalia agenda that the plant kindom has long displayed.

While "life diversity" spouting appeasers like Stevo point to some small contribution of the UPK (United Kindom of Plants) the chlorophyll bearing enemies of all that is good and holy have been developing and deploying chemical and biological weapons. Not only for use against our natural allies in Protista, but ultimately to conquer us as well.

The CIA has documented "slam dunk evidence" of innumerable biological and chemical weapons production sites that are hidden in forests and fields, using innocent species as plant shields! This is a blatant violation of the Geneva convention and yet some fools believe that we can "negotiate" our way out of it. They would wait until more major world cities like this one and others to numerous to list here are conquered by the sunlight devouring weeds.

Yes! I call them weeds. I know it is an ugly word not usually used in polite company, but weeds are what they are.

I have to call out Jake and Stevo on this. You are either with Animalia and our coalition allies Protista or you are against us.

I know the plants are conspiring against me. How? Because anything I *try* to grow in the yard dies, and everything else that I *don't* want to grow grows like... uh... weeds. The grass, it grows absolutely everywhere *except* in the lawn area. It's a conspiracy I tells ya!

Since they don't contain chlorophyll I'd say no. I can say that cyanobacteria are basically prokaryotic (lacking a cell nucleus) plants. Don't we have a resident biologist here? I'm trying to learn basic taxonomy for fun and viruses just don't seem to fit into the five kingdom model.

Hell, I'm not even sure if viruses are considered life by the biology community.

Ask and you shall receive. Thanks.

I was deep into enemy territory today. I drove through the White Mountains today.

Actually, I am just kidding. I do love forests, (green) nature and the outdoors. Today was particularly nice (with some light rain, which always gives a nice effect). I could already see early Fall foliage in Northern NH, VT and QC.

Back on topic. Vegetation is evil. It grows, dries out, catches fire and burns down whole neighborhoods. These recurring "brush fires" and "forest fires" also kill numerous other members of Animalia. This barbaric tactic of using "suicide arson" is deplorable. These are tactics that the all civilized life kingdoms unanimously deplore.

They treated me well today when I was among them. And this vegetation up north, man, they are BIG and BAD. Just HUGE and everywhere. Still, being one of the enemy, they treated me well.

Okay, so now can you explain why Butternut Squash tastes so bad and why we should tolerate a) people who eat it and b) people who serve it?

Catching up late ...

I only have Internet access at work at this time. Due to lack of time, which is only partly caused by hanging out too much on said Internets, my living quarters are quite neglected at the moment. In fact, they are getting kind of Unabombery.

I wish I could find a woman who would talk to me like this.

I found one once, a research biologist -- but she was married to one of my co-workers. At happy hours, we would talk about the behavior of slime molds. (One of her specialties.) She was cute, too. Sighhh.

I have a dream. A dream that someday, organisms will be judged, not by their mitochondria, but by the content of their nuclei.

I knew this thread could only get hotter. Sooner or later someone would mention vaginas.

Oh I know, that is what I meant:

See, I used the past tense?

(Unless you meant someone already did, earlier than that -- in which case I apologize for misunderstanding.)

I think we tolerate it as some sort of balance of terror situation.

Say it ain't so, Stevo!

Take it back NOW!

PLANT WORSHIPING DEATH CULTIST!

A nice pair of melons is not to be feared by anyone with a healthy psyche. Even a not-nice pair of melons can be easily avoided by simply bypassing the produce section.

Now, look, Stevo. I try to be reasonable in my explanations. I even avoid threads like this one because I know this is going to come up and I know that certain of you just won't leave me alone about this. You insist on personal attacks and generalizations. I'm arguing for a nuanced position in places where the Non Initiation of Fertilizer principle just doesn't apply - like Brussels sprouts.

You can like normal plants and still think that the act of cultivating or for god's sake actually consuming Brussels sprouts should get you sent directly to gitmo. There are some things we legitimately should be worried about, and some so called "american citizen" waltzing undeterred across state lines with a suitcase full of friggin' alien brain stinky ass sprouts is one of those things.

briefly, the three domain system breaks down like this:

Domain Bacteria: includes "eubacteria", the bacteria most people think of when you say bacteria - pathogens and quite a large number of beneficial bacteria, e.g. "staph", "strep", E. coli, the aforementioned Rhizobium leguminosarum. also includes "cyanobacteria", formerly called "blue-green algae". all are prokaryotic cells.

Domain Archaea: all are prokaryotes, typically living in extreme environments: extremely hot, extremely salty, etc.

Domain Eukarya: all eukaryotes. at the moment, still taught as being comprised of four kingdoms: Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia. Protista will eventually be divided into several kingdoms, possibly 11 or more. other changes will occur at the margins of groups as more information becomes available and more people accept "cladistic" reasoning for taxonomic analysis. most recent changes involve what groups belong in Protista vs. what groups belong elsewhere, since Protista isn't a "natural group" - it is not monophyletic, consisting of a common ancestor (hypothesized and extinct, often not observed, even in the fossil record) and all the descendants of the common ancestor. Animals, plants and fungi are descended from protistan ancestors, but are not included in the group Protista, making it invalid (paraphyletic instead of monophyletic because it lacks some descendant groups of the common ancestor).

If you absorb Margulis and Schwartz's book, once the details of the new system settle down, you'll be able to absorb those readily. Eventually, there will probably be something like 15-20 kingdoms. One problem is that what constitutes a kingdom and every taxonomic level other than species is subjective. For species, only sexually reproductive species can be defined objectively, and usually that is a temporary phenomenon, thanks to evolution.

Here is something I learned when I had to teach a freshman biodiversity course this summer: the former protistan group called microsporidia is now believed to belong to the Kingdom Fungi, thanks to evidence from DNA sequence data.

Also, animals, fungi and a group of protists called choanoflagellates (choano=collar) form a monophyletic group called the Opisthokonta. Eventually, this might be a subdomain or superkingdom, unless the phylocode people have their wicked way and the Linnean system is junked entirely.

It was fun looking under a wet bank on Dominica and having the botanist unsure what kingdom a greenish gelatinous mass belonged in. Also saw glow worms.

Why split the prokaryotes? Why do some belong in a different domain?

Sandy, higher level taxonomic groups should represent more ancient divisions among lineages. bacteria and archaea, although both prokaryotic separated into distinct lineages long enough ago that they represent two of the three fundamental groups of organisms. arguably, under cladistic reasoning, Domain Archaea is paraphyletic, which is considered an inappropriate reconstruction of a group, because some of the descendants of the group, namely the Domain Eukarya, are not included within the group. the ancestral eukaryote is now thought to have been an archaean which engulfed, by phagocytosis, a proteobacterium (from the Domain Bacteria lineage). the descendants of that proteobacterium are mitochondria. the first evidence for the ancient, distinct lineages among prokaryotes was analysis of the ribosomes. archaean ribosomes and bacterial ribosomes are distinctly different, with archaean ribosomes more similar to eukaryote ribosomes.