"Life Could Have Evolved 15 Million Years After the Big Bang, Says Cosmologist" And I could have gotten up on the other side of the bed today.....but I didn't. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.... So again there is no proof. Just assumptions that must be true otherwise the lies become exposed and you all look like fools. That can't ever happen so the lies must be perpetuated. But at best we just hear "could have", "must have", "may have" to represent the extent of "evidence". Pathetic and yet you people hang on every word of these scientists so long as they continue giving you the slightest sliver of hope that you won't have to resort to acknowledging a god may exist that created everything instead of chance. Quit putting faith into Man trying to create a theory specifically to deny the existence of a god while accusing those who do have faith in the same god of being stupid for having faith in something they cannot see. Normal people call those people hypocrites. Carry on with believing in the load of lies that Satan throws at you. And may God have mercy on your souls for being so ignorant.

It's used when you don't want to be too precise about such things.

It's used when you want to read more into something than you should (hint: there is only 1 kind of human, there is no "modern" vs "early" human) specifically for purposes of spreading doubt about Creation and facts (but not evidence) that attempt to explain a theory that has yet to take shape. There, I corrected that for you.

Researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA from the femur of a 400,000-year-old hominin

By the way, did anyone verify the measuring "stick" used to verify the 400,000 year age of this bone to ensure the measuring "stick" was itself accurate? I didn't think so. Carry on with your delusions and your faith in something that can't be proven by the best scientists that mankind can offer.

My pet peeve is that many people don't know that timezone names change when DST kicks off and on. So EST turns into EDT and so on. So using EST throughout the entire year is wrong. Lack of education I guess?

I'm unsure why some people deny the gift of free will. I guess because indirectly it allows them to deny the existence of a Creator who gave us that gift because they hate all things religious. It may also give them the ability to do whatever they damn well please by using the excuse they couldn't help themselves (i.e. weak minded). Criminals try taking advantage of this quite frequently. Many people like to view free will such that they have choices concerning whether or not to do something good but that free will magically stops at those actions which are evil. Again, that merely just proves they would prefer to satisfy their own agendas and bias to avoid punishment, retribution, etc. for their bad/evil/immoral/unethical actions brought on by their choices. But in the end, if you don't believe in free will then what's the point in having any moral code whatsoever? If you don't believe you can control what your mind tells your body to do then you should be able to argue that you have no reason to be held accountable for any wrongdoing, whether deemed wrong by you or society. Therefore what's the point in deeming something moral if you can't be held accountable for the immoral?

For those who deny free will, I ask you to prove it. Every decision you make on a daily basis proves you have free will. The mundane decisions in our lives don't disprove my statement. The fact that someone who knows you may be able to guess what your decision will be for any given choice doesn't force you into still making a specific choice, because you may still change your mind at the last minute. For the times when your friend is right when guessing what your choice will be it simply shows they know your tendencies and can infer based on their knowledge of you what you will choose. But *you* still have the final say. This is true despite your current emotion and is true despite your DNA, contrary to what criminals and homosexuals (notice 2 *separate* categories: criminals and homosexuals) would have you believe.

Free will is our greatest gift and it is also one of the fundamental properties of being a human being that so many people would prefer to ignore or outright deny as fact. Let me put it in the most basic terms possible for the laymen who choose to deny it: if we, as a species, didn't have free will, none of us wouldn't have the ability to choose when to wake up in the morning, when to eat breakfast, when to go to work, when to take vacation, when to take a new job, when to buy a new car/house, who to work for, with whom to go on your first date, who first to kiss, with whom to first have sex, whom to marry, etc. You may think that you can disprove the existence of free will by merely believing in [the Christian] God long enough to argue that if He is all powerful and has a plan then He is what defines what happens to us but you would be wrong again in your incorrect understanding of Christianity because even if He, for example, presents us with a new job opportunity He still leaves the final decision to us. He can't force us to accept the new job. Just as well, if Satan tempts us with drugs or money, we have the same free will to accept or deny those material desires. The mere fact that we have decision-making capability dictates we have free will.

More importantly, free will is completely separate from instincts and that is why humans are not animals. Of course, many people would prefer to deny that because again, it would lead to a mental conflict that involves having to accept the existence of a God that created Man and beast as separate entities rather than a natural process called evolution that created both as one in the same. Animals can only act on instincts; Man however, can choose whether to kill based on his moral compass. Only Man is held accountable for those same actions. A lot of people *hate* that they are held accountable to a higher power so they simply deny those concepts/theories/etc. that lend credence to a Creator and instead believe in those concepts that support their personal worldview of how to live without a higher authority that will eventually judge them, having naively rationalized that their choice (GASP! free will strikes again) to not believe in a God somehow would change God's rules. Satan gains a little more power every time a human believes they can outwit the system because that's one less person to follow God. Does failing to outwith the "system" (i.e. God's plan for us) mean there is no free will? No, it simply means one has chosen (by free will) whether to take God's side (and abide by His plan and rules) or to take their own path as influenced by Satan by outright denying God, creating their own moral code, denying they have no free will to do what's right/wrong, etc. Anyone who is against God is implicitly for Satan, whether or not they believe in either one.

So the real issue you have is that other people have a problem with your decision. Okay, that makes sense and I'd be pissed off if someone had issues with a choice I made and went so far as to chastise or persecute me for it. If I know ahead of time that there are, unfortunately, ignorant people in this world then that needs to be one of the factors I take into consideration for making a decision and acting on it; that's just a fact of life. There are, however, people who will disagree with you on fundamental grounds that it is still a choice to change your sex. They won't persecute you for it. They will still accept you as a person but that doesn't mean they have to accept your decisions or your choices, nor are they obligated to do so. You may claim that lack of acceptance in and of itself is persecution but you would be wrong. It's called disagreeing. And it is a part of everyday life that everyone needs to realize and be able to recognize so that person who are surprised that not everyone accepts their actions (I'm still only talking about the people who do so respectfully) don't go crying back to mommy or the government demanding that person A or group B who disagreed with said action be punished for the disagreement.

These statements also are true for the LGB portion of the LGBT group.

If you want to share your side of things with someone who can relate to the problems you face, try talking to a Christian sometime, specifically one who has been chastised for their beliefs, ridiculed, silenced, maybe even attacked physically (because they are expected to not fight back and then are ridiculed if they do).

Ultimately, these are all still categorized as male or female despite the various combinations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_disorders

It is not a choice. It's who someone is.

Your genetics aren't a choice but *how* you live your life and portray your gender *is* a choice because all those things rely on our actions, which we all have control over. "it's who someone is" is inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say "it's who someone wants to be". If you disagree with that then I'll have to deem you a bigot.

A piece of software can't take into consideration EVERY POSSIBLE CHOICE THAT HUMAN BEINGS CAN MAKE ABOUT THEIR LIVES because 1) it takes too much time to code up all the choices that would rarely occur [ but apparently Obamacare has tried to accommodate in its coding system all the reasons that someone needs medical treatment and that's a mess, not to mention a waste of time], 2) the number of possible choices we could ever make in a general sense are infinite anyway and 3) even if you want to speak of limiting the possible choices that humans can make about their lives to a specific question, such as marriage in this case, you still have to remember that we're dealing with choice. Everyone else isn't responsible for ensuring any given individual's choice is recognized just to make them feel better.

Case in point, since when do we need more than 1 bit of information to store the possible values associated with gender? Gender is binary: male or female. Even the disorders listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_disorders still ultimately categorizes the person's resulting gender into male or female. And more to the point of my argument regarding choice, if you want to change your gender, that's your decision. Don't expect everyone and everything else to accommodate that choice. That changing is only skin deep anyway even if you have surgery. As someone else already stated, it doesn't change your genetic code. I'm unsure why we have to muddy the waters with what people look like as the method for defining sex rather than looking at genetic code, which doesn't change.

People have been bringing this up at city council meetings only to be told by the council members that this type of activity is necessary to keep us safe - the typical GOP line.

Hate to burst your bubble but that isn't relegated to just a GOP anymore (if it ever was). Liberals are pushing more and more for a police state, not the GOP. Liberals like having control and a police state gives them control.

Yay, more info to make the liberals and eco-crazies tell the rest of us how we must live in order to save the planet at the expense of our bank account and/or our comfort. We are more worried about the so-called issues the polar bears are experiencing than we are about the million babies aborted each year, which is REAL, not propaganda. Anyone who believes this is actionable info has their priorities messed up.

I'm in north central wv as well. I was outside from 5 to 930 and saw nothing but the usual stars.

This is supposed to be a phone I can carry in my pocket not a home theater in my pocket. I'm not an Android fan anyway but I wouldn't want any phone to have a 5" screen because I'm not going to use it to watch TV/movies. Granted, I watch youtube videos sometimes on my iphone 5 but I don't need a 5" screen to do that nor would I want one. It wouldn't fit comfortably in my pocket.

Not only is it a distraction but it isn't worth focusing on.

Many minimum wage workers begin getting raises within their first year or so of employment because they prove to be valuable assets to their employer and therefore their employer wants to reward them for their loyalty, productivity, and potentially a growth in skill set. This is how people move up the ladder. Minimum wage jobs are intended to be entry-level jobs. That's why they pay the lowest amount possible. They aren't intended to be careers but rather jobs that people entering the workforce can acquire due to their limited, or in some cases non-existent, skill set. This also means that many of the minimum wage workers are teenagers who don't have a family to feed and live at home. This means they don't need a high minimum wage due to their lack of responsibility to others. Their lack of skill set also doesn't justify starting out at a high wage.

So based on those statements, there isn't that many people left who are actually making just minimum wage after a year of employment who actually need a much higher wage due to having to support a family. So with that said, does raising the minimum wage for EVERYONE justify raising it for the very small subset of people who happen to be using the minimum wage job to support a family? No, it doesn't. A small subset of people will find themselves relying on a minimum wage job, sometimes to support their families, in the cases where they were laid off and couldn't find anything else or for those people who are near the end of retirement. Even if someone possesses a master's degree or has IT skills, those skills don't matter when flipping burgers, so someone who used to make $50k but got laid off and then who complains that they need $20/hr at McDonald's to support their family of 4 may as well expect to never get by with that job. There will be people who will work for less because they don't need to support a family because they are just a teenager who is applying for that job because it is indeed an entry-level job that requires no skills.

This doesn't mean I don't have compassion for those who need to support their families. If I didn't have compassion then I'd advocate making minimum wage $50/hr so that people making hamburgers and cashiers at walmart can get $100k a year just like other people who actually *have* skills deserving of $100k a year. But I understand economics too. I understand that if you keep having to pay someone more and more and not get anything more out of them for that higher cost (as in, more skills, more productivity, etc.) then they are more of a liability than an asset. Eventually, an employer will let that person go and make do with the other employees, OR, they will raise prices in order to still try earning profit in order to prevent the ENTIRE BUSINESS from collapsing due to employee costs that end up outweighing revenue thus equating to a loss of money. If that goes on for too long then the business closes up shop. THEN EVERYONE LOSES. So why would we want that?

Now, an employer who recognizes an employee is an asset, will move the employee to a higher paying position with MORE responsibility. But the original minimum wage job must still exist because there is still the need to have unskilled labor. There is nothing wrong with that. Kids and adults alike need to understand that there is a job for everyone; they are all important. I have worked my way up the salary ladder. I didn't expect $20/hr as a dishwasher. I knew I had to work my way up. For those who say, "but inflation makes things cost more". True, but you can thank the gov't (notice I didn't point to a specific president because there isn't one) for printing money that causes it to be worth less and therefore makes oil cost more and therefore fuel costs more. But when we raise the minimum wage they are just feeding the inflation fire because, as I said above, employers not only then have to contend with rising fuel costs (due to inflation and supply/demand changing) but now they have to continue their profit margin by raising their prices to account for having to pay employees more who don't deserve it (much like a union where the union fights to get wage increases for EVERYONE, whether they deserve it or not).

So when we raise minimum wage to $10.25/hr or whatever it goes to, expect the fast food restaurants and other businesses that rely on those types of workers to either raise prices (again), lay off those employees (unemployment jumps back to 9%+) or do both. Then the teenagers who are still able to work will have to spend the extra money they make on the higher priced food they buy at those same businesses when they go out with their friends. The end result? The minimum wage workers don't have any net gain because the extra money is needed to now pay for the items that cost more to make up for their higher wage BUT now many more of them are laid off, making the absolute minimum wage of $0 / hr. And who can we thank? The liberals who believe that everyone should be earning the same amount of money regardless of their skill set.

When San Francisco raised their local minimum wage to $10.25/hr a while back the Subway restaurants in the area had to stop offering their $5 footlong deals because they were losing money on them. That is just a relatively benign result of rising employee costs. In addition, many restaurants have already announced they are cutting back worker hours to about 30-32 hours in order to avoid having to pay health insurance costs for them under Obamacare. Of course, some of those businesses just outright laid off workers. So Obama has forced the hand of businesses to lay off more people at a time when a record number of people are already on food stamps and while we're still battling an unemployment rate that is the same as it was 4 years ago when he first entered office. He has made no progress in that regard and yet we voted him back in.

to gather information to 'one-up' your competition or to make yourself look good to your friends then you aren't very good. And in this case, breaking the law by breaking into companies is cheating.

I was a gov't contractor for 8 years and worked in small cube farms (when at the contractor facility) but eventually got located to the actual gov't facility where 3k+ people worked. There were certainly distractions in both situations due to people (including myself) talking to their coworkers about certain things, not always work related. Our work still got completed. However, given the nature of our projects where we had project mgmt, software engineering, system engineering (me), integration and testing, and the infrastructure teams all working together every day, we needed that face time where 2 or 3 of us would sometimes have ad-hoc meetings to hash out some issue that cropped up that involved using a whiteboard.

Fast forward through about 3-4 years of being onsite with the customer to when I took a job with a silicon valley company (I live on the East Coast). The first year of that position I was actually assigned to be an onsite tech for the same gov't agency and in the same facility I had been working as a contractor for the last 8 years. So not much changed. The contract expired last year and hasn't been renewed yet. So the plan was if that happened I'd just work from home as a member of the tech support team. So that's what I do now. Our structure is that the majority of the members work onsite in the silicon valley office. But even some of them don't commute everyday (if anything, due to traffic) and so work remotely from their homes. One person lives in the central US and only commutes every couple months and then there is me on the East Coast. I have only visited my company HQ 3 times since I started and will have a 4th trip next week.

How do things go in that situation? I won't deny that face time is always a good thing when working out problems but most of the time in tech support if you have enough experience then you can handle most issues on your own anyway. All of us sometimes have an issue we aren't sure about so we rely on IM and email to find out if someone has already encountered the issue before. We'll still chat over IM to still simulate the office banter to keep ourselves entertained but we are able to focus on support cases better, I think, because we can *choose* when to have the typical office distractions. Of course, our office distractions over IM are definitely more invisible than people laughing loudly in the cube next door. And, at least for me, 3 people carrying on loudly doesn't bother me because I'm at home.

Is working from home perfect for everyone and for every job? Definitely not. Even if someone has a job like I do in tech support their home life may not be conducive to the job and vice versa. Luckily, I have a reasonably well set up home office and I've worked out how to organize and layout everything with the space I have. My wife eventually moved her office downstairs away from me so we wouldn't distract each other. We don't have kids but we do have 3 dogs. So we don't have kids constantly running around and being loud but the dogs do need tending to. My job allows me to do that as a way to take a break from being on the phone with customers. An important item to note here is that our manager and our manager's manager trust us to work when we're not in the office. And they of course can see if we do by looking at our support case statistics. They understand that, at least for us in tech support, it can be stressful, and working from home can be a stress reliever (again, if your home life is conducive to that). Those who can't manage time wisely and get easily distracted will probably have trouble working in an office environment or at home. But if their family life isn't conducive to working from home then they will probably have a more difficult time at home because kids don't always understand that daddy has to be left alone for a while but co-workers do understand that (except for occasional office pranks).

Another thing that helps greatly in my opinion is that, since I'm in the tech support dept, most conversations that occur between us and the customers gets sent to an alias so other support techs can see the conversations. I use this both to help other techs out if I see a conversation take place about something I know the answer to but the reverse also works and can save me time because I may recall someone else working an issue so I just simply search through my mail or past case notes. This helps facilitate resolving issues as a partial substitute for those of us who aren't in the office and have easy access to others' quick experience.

Does telecommuting work for projects that require integration with many other people/teams? No, not if telecommuting is over 50% of your time and more than, I'd say, 25% of the team does it at any one time. Telecommuting can slow things down if you have to work with others in a many to many relationship. This isn't too much different than if some people on a team worked 9-5 but others worked 12-8. There are only a few hours there where "shifts" overlap. So on project-type work that occurs in phases and requires different teams to work together having offset hours (this could occur maybe simply due to time zone differences) makes productivity nosedive and projects take longer.

If your job entails being assigned personal projects, whether that is being the sole person working on a website design, being a blogger, working in tech support like me, etc. where you don't have to interface with many people every day then you at least have the type of job that would make telecommuting a non-issue. Then the second question is do you have the organizational and time mgmt skills and the motivation to do the job without supervision? Thirdly, does your home life also support that type of job?