I like the simplicity of this site also. And, P.S. You do not have to fill in your email address to see others in your area. Just leave it blank. You can also enter a place name like "London" instead of a zip code to see peers in that area.

Are any real people near you? Check here.

btcnearme.com/

Forget mining. What about selling something, or providing a service?

  That song actually had flow!

I fear we missed our opportunity to take the high road. It would have been so much easier to address the legitimate concerns that terrorists latch on to. Economic unfairness, policies that end up hurting regular Muslims.  Instead we decided to play the hand they dealt us. ...Stupid.
The Base had very few friends on 9/11. They were seen throughout the Islamic world as nut jobs. They made ridicules claims about the USA. "They want to steel your oil and turn your women into sluts and kill you." No one believed it.
Terrorism is an effective technique for goading someone into an irrational overreaction. GW Bush obviously did not understand this and did just what the base wanted. He launched a child like war against a people he knew nothing about. A lot of innocent people got killed, un-holly oil contracts were signed and, despite the fact that Afghanis did not want it, we decided they need to treat their women differently. What a fiasco.
Today the base is more powerful than ever. You will not hear this much, but it is true.

Love, friendship. That is how you fight terrorists. War is how you make terrorists.

no   but i will, i promise.

Fascinating stuff guys.

I like to think there is other life out there. However I am not down with the UFO nuts. If some lander ever found a life form in space, my first question would be; Is it DNA based? If yes then I would assume it is related to Earths life forms. Perhaps part of a panspermia system.
If it is not DNA based I would tend to think that life is all over the universe and that there are many paths to achieving living status. I would also think that wherever life comes from is deeper than chemistry. Maybe life is a sub-atomic/quantum phenomenon?

I have a lot of reading to do.   

I also doubt that life on Earth is a One-off. Since planets and stars everywhere look similar, why should life here be special? Maybe it did not even start here.
What I want to know about the amoeba is... Is it conscious? Or perhaps, when is the benchmark of consciousness crossed? A human is clearly conscious, an amoeba could be considered to be; but what about a chemical reaction? My guess is that consciousness and what makes something alive are closely related. 
P.S. Don't get me started on the epigenome! Wow, there a lot of undiscovered knowledge on that topic!

I stand for the pledge. But if there were a rule saying I had to, I would sit with my back to the flag. This is what being an American is all about. 

I hope Sabu understands that he is now subject to his own rhetoric. He should not be forgotten or forgiven.

 

A "new world order"? Oh, I would love that! In fact any sort of order in the world would be great.

I had to look up agorists. 
My "clown" remark was in reference to trotting out the birther issue just in time for election season.

Even a PhD. in biochemistry would not answer our questions. That is what I like about this topic. The true, spooky unknown. I'll have to watch that video when I get home. Thanks for linking to it!
If we did succeed in making a living thing, it might be only the second time such an event has ever happened in the history of the universe. Or it may happen in every solar system. 

WTF? Oh, yes election time. Send in the clowns!

I have to say that I mostly agree.

1. People who are dedicated to their cause and beliefs are dangerous.
Such people are dangerous, and that is one of the reasons I support them. Only people who have an awful agenda need to fear ideas. Ideas spread when they have merit and that is a threat only to wrong doers and hypocrites.


 2. The passionate revolutionaries who started this country are terrorists and should be looked down upon.
They did practice terrorism and shockingly cowardice battlefield tactics. Sniping from the forest, refusing to march in a phalanx. Hell, they were called terrorists at the time. Just like the Taliban all that will go away after a victory. The difference between a terrorist and a hero can be no more that who wins.

Well, Venter's project did not create life from non life. He created a molecule that, like DNA, can be read by a living cell. This synthetic DNA is then placed into the body of an already living organism. As the code is transcribed a hybridized organism is created. Kinda cool, but not a true second Genesis.
As to your other point, your right. "A molecule became alive", may be to crude a description. But a chain reaction is also not sufficient to explain what is going on. One of Hammeroff's interesting observations is finding "ordered" water in the cells of plants. Quantum effects can create ordered water and could be responsible. I can't defend all this research, it is just to early to know what is being discovered. This rabbit hole could be very deep indeed.

Here is something to think about. You probably learned in school that you think with your brain. signals are sent along neurons and processed by vast arrays of cells. That makes sense, but it can not be entirely correct. Consider the amoeba. It is a single celled organism with no neurons at all. Yet under my microscope I can watch them hunt, avoid things, even make choices about what to do next. How?

F#(K if I know???
 

That's what I learned in school. However life's secret chemical formula has yet to be discovered and the whole theory is under increasing attack. There is something missing from that concept and even thermodynamic law comes into question when you posit a chemical reaction that does not seem to be subject to entropy.
It may still turn out to be a runaway chemical reaction. It's just not known. The only thing that seems clear is that once upon a time a molecule became alive, and it still is.  It has diversified and now includes potatoes, giraffes, mushrooms, germs, and you.  No one has ever been able to reproduce this phenomena, or even explain it. Does it happen all the time in the universe? Does it always lead to consciousness? Is consciousness even in our bodies, or do living thing just tune into it?
These questions may not be answered until we can create life from non-living material.

All true. But I didn't want to get into the weeds and confuse a simple question with a alien answer. I try to imagine I'm explaining it to my Mom. 

I hope someone does try this. I will sell mine for $1000/BTC.
Of course that will leave our hypothetical rich guy with all the coins. At that point they will be worth nothing.

Just a note the original poster. Don't take it personally that everyone is suspicious of you. It is just that you are not known yet.

That is correct. The wallet.dat is like a real wallet. Lose it and you have lost the money inside. Put it in another install of the client, and it is like putting it into a different pocket.