FACTOIDS

President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of each November as a National holiday for Thanksgiving. FDR moved the holiday to the 3rd Thursday of November to allow retailers more time to cash in on the Christmas season.

(So much for the "good old days" when business didn't influence politics.)

 

time isn't the top source of biological information... however, this is correct. (double checked at genome.gov)

while we're talking molecular biology...

98% of dna is noncoding, or commonly called 'junk' dna.

experiments on mice show that they live without this junk dna.
-Nobrega M A, et al. (2004) Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice. Nature 431: 988-93

however, this is not to say this dna has no function. it may be regulatory in function or play a role in aging or natural selection.

 

Hey --- No fair actually knowing something!

 

In 1896 there were only four cars registered in all the United States. Two of them collided with each other in St. Louis.

 

The movie "Fargo" had nothing to do with Fargo. It takes place in Minneapolis, and in and around Brainerd, MN.

Source: I watched the movie.

 

I'm going to relay one I've heard from a naturalist friend, in the hopes that it can be either confirmed or disproven, hopefully without being caught in the middle of a riot.

"There's not enough oxygen left to burn all the oil that's left. There's no oil shortage, there's an oxygen shortage."

 

the whole time i have been alive, Thanksgiving has been on the 4th thursday of november

 

That's funny, I've always thought it was the second Monday in October. We must live in parallel countries or something...

 

President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was proclaimed by every president after Lincoln. The date was changed a couple of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who set it up one week to the next-to-last Thursday in order to create a longer Christmas shopping season. Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date two years later. And in 1941, Thanksgiving was finally sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

A wild turkey has a field of vision of 270 degrees. Turkeys can also run 20 miles per hour and burst in to flight at speeds of 50 to 55 mph. They CAN fly but for only short distances. They spend the night in trees.

source: aristotle.net

 

But oxygen is being constantly replenished by plants. Fossil fuels form at a geological snail's pace.

As we continue to pump out the shallower oil, the remaining (deeper) oil becomes exponentially more expensive to extract. We may never "run out" of oil, but when it hits a thousand dollars a barrel because the remaining oil is miles deep, who's going to be able to afford it?

 

"Even if you could burn every single drop of oil on the planet there would be more than enough oxygen."

That is from science.ca
http://www.science.ca/askascientist/viewqu...on.php?qID=2219

Don't know if they are legit or not?

 

Well, yes, but only during the day when the sun is shining. And there are a lot less plants around than there used to be.

 

Thank you, GreenMachine, that would appear to answer the question. I will point this source out to my naturalist friend.

 

The Oxygen Concentration Problem.

Why does present-day oxygen sit at 20%? This is not a trivial question since significantly lower or higher levels would be damaging to life. If we had < 15% oxygen, fires would not burn, yet at > 25% oxygen, even wet organic matter would burn freely.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalch.../evolution_atm/

 

This comes from thinking the US "is" the world. Uh, can you say "southern hemisphere". What do you define as "a lot less plants"? Trees??? There are now urban "forests" where there used to be fields. Just want you to think.

 

Ahhh. You beat me to it. The sun is always shining. Just not always in the same place. When it's dark here, the sun is shining on the other side of the world.