@Ponygurl  I just wondered.  It seemed unlikely that such a common plant from the English countryside would have a range that extended as far as Florida.  Maybe someone has deliberately introduced it on the other side of the Atlantic.  I don't know.  Of course, I don't expect you've spent your entire life in Florida.  But Americans in this country appear to spend more time in cities than in coming to grips with the less welcoming woodland flora.

Yeah, we used to call them 'blackberry bushes' when I was little.  It was only later that I came across the word 'bramble'.  I think it's fairly definitely an old world plant, and must have been introduced into America.  (We gave you blackberries, I suppose, you gave us potatoes.)  If it can thrive in both England and Florida, it must be able to tolerate a wide range of climates.

"America's got the crazies and you've got to let go, you know".

Urban_Tribesman said:

The 2nd best things are usually very expensive.

You ain't just whistlin' "Dixie."

Some of the worst, most useless, wastes-of-space in the world of art are very expensive.  What was it, a Picasso that looks like a demented retard drew it, sold at auction for the most in history.  The value of money.

Yeah, I read that, though I think the two forces were a bit different.  Very nice.  On G+ there is a couple of communities for wolves with some very good pictures.

I swear, the more distant I get from our money-obsessed, consumer-oriented, politically-driven, media-programmed existence, the more amazed I am by the tranquility that can be invoked.

I also was reading about the Fermi Paradox not long ago, in which he showed that, within a very short period of time (a handful of tens of millions of years), even without conquering the speed of light, a sentient species should be able to completely populate any given galaxy.  So, the question is why haven't we run into any other species.  I started thinking that, maybe, the answer is a species must either transcend this existence or destroy itself at some point before population of the galaxy could happen.  If you've ever read "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke, you'd see where I'm coming from.  Brilliant book.  Also, a great song by Pink Floyd.

Ponygurl said:

As far as other sentient species are concerned, I have no doubt they exist..but like all species- they are communication specific.

No.  The point of the Fermi Paradox is that we would be stepping all over any sentient species that has been sentient for a hanful of millions of years....in a universe that is ~13 billion years old.  We wouldn't need to communicate with them, they would be sitting in our backyard.  We would be stepping all over them.  They would be running out of space in the galaxy if they were more than a few tens of millions of years old.  No, it seems obvious that the grasping, grabbing way of our species either changes or we fail.  It's about life, not about green pieces of paper and how much one can accumulate in this level of existence.  No, I am more and more convinced that this plane of existence is just a stepping stone and anyone that puts all of his chips down on this being the end game is losing the biggest bet there is.  A species (or, a few of its members) transcends this level of existence or fails.  It is so much easier to sit in your chair and assume that what one sees around them is the all and everything.  Attempting to figure out what could possibly be beyond that which is self-evident is the real trial.  Not making shit up and proclaiming to the world for one's own edification.  "I know who God is and everybody else is wrong!" and shit like that is not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about doing the work.  Trying to shed the bullshit paradigms that some dumbass, ancient ancestor with his knuckles scraping the ground made up.  And, not just the bullshit llke "I know who God is".  But, also, bullshit like "science can explain everything".  Yeah, right.  Keep trying.  We have no idea what potential we have as individuals.  And, also, bullshit like "Guys are limited in their ability to keep it up."  I've proved that one wrong already.  We have so much shit piled into our brains at an age when we just accept it without blinking (Yeah, think "Another brick in the wall" - Roger Waters was one savvy son of a bitch) that it is staggering.  All that shit is so built into us that it is nearly impossible to shed it all.  But, it's time to try, dammit!