onoway

Is this a regular thing? The forums are so huge now that I haven't looked in this area for some time and knew nothing about it until I saw the game in progress .

ok understood that what happens at other tables affects results. I was just trying to isolate the player as much as possible by restricting the other players at that table to GIBs, which presumably are consistent, not subject to sudden lapses in concentration, flights of fancy and so forth. If those are your results I would imagine that an intermediate..in the real sense of the word, not at either extreme of the spectrum, would likely be quite a bit lower average. How many hands out of that (almost) 600 would it take to establish/reflect your average, roughly? And, btw, I really appreciate your response. thank you.

Playing only with and against GIBS, what sort of average score should a solid intermediate expect to get over, say 20 hands? Would 20 hands be enough, and if not, how many to get a fairly valid assessment? Put this here because I didn't want anyone to get depressed or angry or defensive. And sometimes, especially for the diehards who insist on playing on the download version, the GIBS appear to do some very odd things. However, on average, how well should an intermediate player expect to do? Would there be an expectation that they would do better with MPs or imps, or no difference?

If you have concerns about how a tourney may be run, a good general rule is to stick to the ACBL, with all certified directors, or possibly other paid tourneys. If a paid tourney is run in an unsatisfactory manner, then avoid that tourney in future. If a tourney is free, try to be grateful that someone is volunteering their time and effort to provide a tourney at all, instead of being critical that it doesn't meet your standards. Another possibility, if a free tourney, is to offer the club or person some occassional help to run future tourneys. A few TDs may not know how - or when- to make adjustments, aside from sometimes getting swamped with issues you may not have any idea are going on at the time.

This is likely on a forums someplace but wasn't able to find it. How can I change the notification on the club news page, or even just add a sentence? I am on download version in case that makes a difference.

Yeah sinister in the same way that the development of the personal computer was to IBM maybe

The person who first brought bitcoin to my attention thinks that it is only the first step, sort of like early computers showed the way, new digital currencies will spring up if not to replace bitcoin, certainly to expand the idea and perhaps take it to new levels. This would appear to be happening already. The next ones may be more adept at hiding themselves than this guy apparently is. His family is obviously totally disrespectful of his well known wish for anonymity, presumably so they can bask in the glory of their 2 seconds of reflected fame.

"Investing" in a kickstarter campaign seemingly doesn't have a lot in common with the term as it's usually meant, with a view to making a monetary profit. It's usually more to do with giving people some money who have (in the "investor's " eyes), a worthwhile project which deserves some support. What's worthwhile, is of course, a totally subjective thing. It's actually quite amazing what results it can have, I know of one project which raised over $250,000 from contributors in the first campaign, and supposedly almost half as much in the second. Now they are running a third...and the contributors will never see a solitary penny back for any of it. The 'return" for large contributors in the first campaign was a set of videos which now sell for around $100, and in the second one specially designed playing cards which now sell for $20 a deck. I suspect that by far the majority of campaigns are looking for only a fraction of that amount of money and are much smaller in scale. Generally it seems as though unless you give at least $25 what you get is basically a thank you card with some sort of reference to the project, but it's all made abundantly clear in the project proposal. Projects which don't reach funding goals have the money returned to the donors. Projects which reach or exceed the goals pay a small % to the kickstarter people.

I very much doubt they think the human race is going to die out, nor am I suggesting that. I am saying that we are headed for a massive disaster and it will likely cause a great deal of suffering and indeed deaths on possibly a global scale. In any case, it likely won't affect them so why should they care? Mollison tells a story about a conversation he had with a man who told him that in a few years there'd be very little real meat, milk, etc, everything would be made with soybeans. When Mollison asked why he would want that, the guy laughed and told him, "oh I won't be eating soybeans but you and everyone else will." The host of a BBC investigative series on GMOs interviewed soybean farmers in Brazil who were raising GMO soybeans. The health issues were frightening but nothing was being done to mitigate the causes, rather, anyone who complained lost their contracts and were left to deal with the health issues as well as everything else with no income. It's exactly the same thing that used to happen to coal miners in Cape Breton who developed black lung disease and were unable to work. Unless a son would take his place in the mine, the family was literally thrown out on the streets, kicked out of the company houses and left to fend for themselves. Big and small companies have both historically often (NOT always!!or even usually!) been abusive to their workers but the bigger the corporation, the more likely it seems to be that people who work for it are considered as no more important than the car. If it starts developing problems, get rid of it, there will always be another. I'm not suggesting that this is the case here, BUT...there is no reason in the world to think that people with the yen for power of a Ghenghis Khan or Hitler no longer exist in the world, nor that if such people did exist that they would automatically gravitate to politics. Economic power is so much tidier and simpler...bribe a few folk here,buy that company over there, manipulate public opinion where it will be effective, encouraging people's fears and offering them your solution as the only possible one....once you control the food supply, you have power that most governments can only dream of. Think of Stalin and the Ukraine. These companies already control something like 95% of the food supply globally, right from the fertilizer and seed companies through the companies which buy and sell food commoditities, to the companies such as Kraft who manufacture or process and distribute it. I am still waiting to think of or learn the reason Monsanto bought a company of mercenaries. There are plenty of examples throughout history right up to today in places like Syria that it would seem as though people are hurting or killing a whole lot of people in the process of trying to get or keep power, sometimes even possibly acting in ways contrary to their own best interests. Quite a lot of people are matter of fact about their belief there are already too many people in the world anyway. It's a whole lot easier to feed the world if there are a whole lot fewer to feed. Actually I don't think this is part of any deliberate scenario but it could be. I'm not at all sure that the people running these companies don't believe their own press releases. Again, I'm not suggesting this is the case, but just because someone runs a giant and successful corporation doesn't guarrantee they are NOT a psychopath. As someone was once supposed to have said of Howard Hughes, insanity is a term that only applies to people not rich or powerful enough to create their own reality. The point of the exercise is that none of those possibilities matter, what matters is protecting our soils and water and food supply and these companies, for good reasons or otherwise, are actively pursuing policies which mandate against those things.

The thing was not only was everyone relying on potatoes but they were relying on the same variety of potatoes, so it was a double whammy. There used to be a saying, it isn't a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, and monocropping huge acreages with one variety of crop, or even various varieties of the same crop which share most of the same genetic material, is simply a disaster waiting to happen. There was a thirty+ percent failure in the corn crop in South Africa, not even because of pests or disease, but a failure to provide sufficient fertilizer. The price of fertilizers has climbed every year..some are double what they were about 5 years ago. What happens when a farmer cannot AFFORD to put on the amount of fertilizer that the crop demands? We know what happens.. India has shown us, with thousands of farmer suicides (frequently done by drinking the pesticides designated for use on the crops.Ah yes, how healthy this food is for human consumption!) Even so, that isn't the major problem, the companies can simply walk in and buy the land - which is apparently useless to anyone who cannot afford the chemical support for the crops, because the soil is now sterilized by the chemicals to one degree or another. So now you frequently not only have a suicide you have a dispossessed family, often with no means to support themselves, as the value of the land is only a fraction of what it had been years before, when it was still fertile.

possibly the development of a navigational system based on the stars. Those go back a very very long time, although again were developed in various parts of the world independantly.

To respond directly to the claim that the medical profession and all scientists are all in favor of GMO foods. a couple of quotes:(my highlighting) British Medical Association, “Governments should ensure that non-genetically modified foods continue to be widely available and affordable to consumers, and that GM foods are labelled in a consistent and understandable manner.” and “The precautionary principle should be applied in developing genetically modified crops or foodstuffs, as we cannot at present know whether there are any serious risks to the environment or to human health involved in producing GM crops or consuming GM food products. Adverse effects are likely to be irreversible; once GMOs are released into the environment they cannot be subject to control. It is therefore essential that release does not take place until the level of scientific certainty is sufficient to make the risk acceptable.”http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/genmo-cn.htm3. xxxxxx Public Health Association of Australia : “GM foods should not be assessed as safe to eat unless they have undergone long-term animal safety assessments utilizing endpoints relevant to human health and conducted by independent researchers.”, “The labelling system should be improved to the standards desired by consumers, so that consumers can easily identify foods containing ingredients originating from GM animals and plants, and from animals fed GM feed.”, “There are no surveillance systems set-up to determine the effects of GM foods on health, and no-one is paid to look in existing surveillance systems for problems.” and, “The precautionary principle should be applied in developing GM food as it is not certain whether there are serious risks to the environment or to human health involved in producing or consuming GM foods or their products.” http://www.phaa.net.au/documents/policy/GMFood.pdf xxxxxxxx Chartered Institute of Environmental Health(CIEH) : “there are no robust techniques available to monitor the impact of genetic engineering in the food industry or on health or on the environment. Genetic engineering should not be used in the production of human food or animal feeding stuffs or released into the environment until such techniques are in place.” http://www.cieh.org/uploadedFiles/Core/Policy/CIEH_consultation_responses/Response_GM_final.pdf. xxxxxxxxx World Health Organization(WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) co-sponsored WHO, FAO and UNEP report involving 900 participants and 110 countries from all regions of the world : The safety of GMO foods and feed is controversial due to limited available data, particularly for long-term nutritional consumption and chronic exposure. Food safety is a major issue in the GMO debate. Potential concerns include alteration in nutritional quality of foods, toxicity, antibiotic resistance, and allergenicity from consuming GM foods. The concepts and techniques used for evaluating food and feed safety have been outlined (WHO, 2005b), but the approval process of GM crops is considered inadequate (Spök et al., 2004). Under current practice, data are provided by the companies owning the genetic materials, making independent verification difficult or impossible. Recently, the data for regulatory approval of a new Bt-maize variety (Mon863) was challenged. Significant effects have been found on a number of measured parameters and a call has been made for more research to establish their safety” “There is little consensus among the findings from the assessments of economic and environmental impacts of GMOs.” – Global Report http://www.unep.org/dewa/Assessments/Ecosystems/IAASTD/tabid/105853/Default.aspx/ xxxxxxx Technical Expert Committee (TEC) : ”TEC recommends a ten year moratorium on field trials of Bt transgenics in all food cops(those used directly for human consumption)” http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/365248/interim-report-of-the-supreme-court-technical-expert-committee-in-gmos-pil/ Over 250 scientists support this committee. http://indiagminfo.org/?p=649 xxxxxxx Viennese Doctors’ Chamber : ”The release of transgenic species in nature must still be strictly opposed as the results can neither be estimated nor reversed.” http://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/6412156-genetically-modified-maize-doctors-chamber-warns-of-unpredictable-results-to-humans * *......~~~~~~~~ I can supply more..and there are even more of them which call for clear and obvious labelling of GMO foods.. but this clearly shows that the claim that there is consensus about GMOs being safe and that they are supported by all respected organizations is an outright lie. This is equalled by the lie that GMOs are the hope for the future or agriculture as they are not sustainable in any form presently being used to grow them, and they have a violently NEGATIVE effect on soil health and fertility. I will go on to those when I have some time. *

Some bad decisions are easier to overcome than others. A bad decision about having a (usually unexpected) child too young is a whole different kettle of fish than dropping out of school, although one often leads to the other. And sometimes no matter how hard people work and how carefully they follow all your rules, stuff simply happens, as Ken said. Sometimes the choices people make are the right ones at the time but circumstances change Most of us get away with the occassional bad decision, nobody is right all the time, but the one a person didn't get away with might have totally unforeseen circumstances. People do not live in a vacuum, what other people do has an impact. It may have been a bad decision to get gas at that particular service station where you got shot and ended up paralyzed, but hardly one you could be held responsible for not anticipating. Automatically telling people who are struggling that in effect, you made your bed, now you deal with while I stand by and tell you you can do better is not only blaming the victim but adding to their burden with guilt and shame. There but for the grace of god, as the expression goes....go any one of us. Don't think it can't happen. It's happened to a whole lot of people who had reason to think that they were "secure". I know people who have as their mantra, tell me your troubles, it will lighten your burden. Well, no it won't if what is needed is tangible help, it simply smacks of a sort of voyeuristic sadism and a self congratulatory satisfaction at not having those problems. Telling someone you're sure they can figure it out when they are having to decide between paying for such things as insulin or food isn't a lot of help. OTOH cheering people on as they are trying to do better as well as giving whatever tangible help is necessary to make their efforts bear fruit is likely enormously helpful.

Just a quick note: the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service has requested that Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Institute run a course for their clients. This as a result of feedback from a course he ran last year, and as an acknowlegment that what the US exports most of is soil and that desperately needs to be stopped. Permaculture is a scientifically based design system which goes far beyond soil reclamation but that is often the primary and most urgent reason for looking at it. It has been estimated by scientists that traditional agriculture, monocropping, etc is responsible for the loss of up to an inch a year of topsoil. American land that had topsoil meters thick lost much of it during the "dirty thirties" but the loss continues unabated. It's been suggested that the natural resources, including the massive amounts of fertile soils which the Europeans found when they colonized America, is the main reason why America grew so quickly and became so prosperous. Losing the topsoil threatens the ability of the country to feed itself, and has been implicated in the fall of various empires and civilisations before now. Permaculture methods have been proven not only to produce equal or higher amounts of food per acre but will create and build healthy topsoil and often increase both water quality and quantity while doing so. It has been proven in deserts and jungles and temperate climates from China to the Dead Sea to Austria to Australia. It has been proven to work in very large farms and small lots and can even be applied to growing things in apartment balconies, and in all these diverse areas adherance to the principles of permaculture design has had a positive affect on lives and soil and water. The only thing it doesn't have is a huge budget to promote it, because it is a system which first of all calls for ethical treatment of the earth and of people and that means a creative commons approach to things. People make a living consulting, practicing and teaching it, but for anyone willing to put in the time and effort, all the information is available for free.

short answer: lack of biodiversity leads to starvation. That hurts too. The Irish potato famine is a prime example.

To get back to the topic :) this was sent to me today. Interesting and fun read..possibly even pertinent. http://www.coindesk.com/cash-invented-seen-media-today/

Plants and animals have always freely hybridized between close relatives...such as the horse and donkey producing a mule, or squash plants freely interbreeding to produce new and unique squash offspring. Generally for mammals these are sterile and so they don't become much of an issue in the long term scheme of things. Any mutation..(which is an entirely different thing than a hybrid and reflects a change in the DNA or RNA), which shows up in the course of time in any species either copes better with the environment in which it finds itself or it doesn't, those which can't cope with the environment generally don't get to produce offspring and die out. However, nowhere in nature is there ever any such thing as a fish and a tomato sharing genetic material. This sort of thing is the basis of patents being awarded for life forms designed by biotech companies. Genetic modification is an attempt to short circuit the process and develop species according to our desires, and without consideration of how they fit into the larger scheme of things. There is enormous potential in the idea but the allowing of patents has meant that largely any altruistic effort has been superceded by the opportunity to make massive amounts of money. An example of just one of the problems is that many of these species have absolutely no resilience. They are carefully and artificially supported, so that they don't react appropriately to stresses that non gmo plants have learned to cope with.It's the same thing as raising pigs or poultry in biosafe environments..one germ gets in and it can wipe out the entire bunch, they have no resistance, it's like bringing smallpox to America. So companies such as Monsanto said, fine, we'll make sure that no germs (weeds, bugs) get to bother our plants, we'll embed poisons in their genetics that'll kill the bugs that try to eat them, or include genes which prevent the plant from dying when it takes up the poisons sprayed on the ground to kill off anything but the crop. Thus chemicals which became redundant if a war wasn't being fought somewhere could now be embedded in plants and they would be able to produce more as they wouldn't be bothered by competition from weeds, or bugs and so forth. A win win for the company with excess chemical and for the producer...maybe. That worked for quite a while but then it became apparent that the bugs and weeds had not only come back but had come back with immunity to the poisons and a vigor they hadn't had before. The same sort of thing that's happened with warfarin resistant superrats or the diseases which are now returning which are not affected by antibiotics anymore. So now these companies will modify the genetics of the plants yet again to contain more virulent poisons and to resist succumbing to those poisons. This, as well as embedding genes from totally unrelated species such as jellyfish genes into potatoes is the sort of genetic modification people object to and isn't found anywhere outside a lab. There's a whole lot more to it but that's the core of it. There are a whole lot of issues which come up out of it all but will leave it there for now.

A couple of people have expressed the idea that GMO's are harmless and in fact the hope for the future in terms of feeding the growing population of mankind. So I have started this thread as a way of keeping that discussion out of other threads. I'll start first with Dustin's comment that the media is responsible for the distrust of GMOs. Not exactly true. The media IS responsible for reporting such things as Monsanto being found guilty of bribery and corruption. It reported accurately that Monsanto forced at least one farmer into bankruptcy although the farmer was eventually found not guilty of any wrongdoing. It is known to send people into farms and threaten farmers with doing the same to them, farmers who are operating perfectly legally, in at least one instance, in a seed cleaning business which was a third generation business. The media did not have to point out that for Monsanto, trespassing and stealing material is a standard business practice, it has been made abundantly clear from the court cases which have come up. The "media" in terms of traditional reporting is not responsible for establishing that Monsanto is known to hire companies to watch for any mention of Monsanto and or GMOs and to respond to the comments, in many cases pretending to be people they are not and suggesting that they were forced to go the GMO route after repeated problems with non gmo crops. That was established by a "watchdog" company. I have run across a few of these people. In one case someone was claiming to be a permaculture teacher and what she was saying was all entirely untrue but might have sounded convincing to someone not familiar with the system. They have successfully lobbied to be made at least temporarilly above the law in the U.S., in that it is for the time being, illegal to sue them, although they are free to use the courts however they please. Scientists who have arrived at negative conclusions regarding GMOs and/or the chemicals which are integral to the production of GMO crops have been threatened with job loss unless they retract the findings, and preferably the whole study. This has happened to at least two I know of, a university scientist in NY who reported findings that cattle fed Roundup dessicated hay had much higher rates of abortion but also to the scientist who published results of feeding GMO corn to rats. Negative results are not widely publicised as then the grants which go to the institutions will be cut off. Many studies which were possibly pertinent to the question have "disappeared". Years ago I ran across a Scottish study which showed that feeding gmo food to rats changed the bacteria in the gut, although at that point they were unsure what that might mean. I have been absolutely unable to find it again when I was looking to see how that fit in with a much later study in a different country which found bacterial changes in the gut to be a precursor to diabletes. The link was on a computer long gone. There was another study done by a multinational scientific group around the same time which looked at Roundup and that family of chemicals in tomato production in Ontario. What they found was horrific, the claims of it being inert and harmless once it hit the soil were absolutely untrue and men who used it consistently in greenhouse work had a MUCH higher incidence of prostate cancer, while women had a much higher risk of miscarriage. There were also other health risks I don't now recall. To have such studies disappear is not unusual. They refuse to allow GMO labelling because they know people do not want it. They refuse to allow/encourage independant and or long term studies (because they know/suspect the product in many cases cannot stand the scrutiny?). It seems to be impossible to track the former Monsanto scientists who left the company in dismay, saying that the downsides of GMO's outweighed whatever advantages they offered. The strong arm tactics they are known to use, put whatever positive spin on their products, including by people who have "seen the light" questionably credible, to say the least. It has recently bought a company whose ONLY business is to supply mercenaries to whomever can afford to pay for them.(Well, ok, th media did report that.) Why does a company involved with the production of chemicals and GMOs involved with food production need a company of people whose only job is to intimidate, hurt or kill people? These activities are not those of a company whose product so much better that we should give control over all food production to them. They are more like the Mafia trying to sell the idea that what they have is better for your health as if you don't go along with it your health will suffer (but not necessarilly from food). Monsanto itself is responsible for 99.9% of the suspicion people have of GMO's because of their Mafia-like tactics, and that has nothing at all to do with the products. I'll go on to that in another post or 5 :)

Ok I am going to start a thread on this.

Dustin I didn't answer your post directly as it is off topic but it has been bothering me that I let it pass. I will happilly discuss your conclusions as they are imo and with evidence, absolutely wrong. I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this topic but if you want to start a thread on it I will certainly engage with you on it. I would be most interested to see exactly what you have to offer in terms of GMO's being established as safe and sustainable agriculture, as there is a whole lot of evidence to the contrary.

This is actually an interesting idea. Go back further and consider. Trading with or having interactions with other tribes or groups which did NOT involve clubbing each other on the head would indeed have had an impact. What a concept. Many species drive the male young away so as to prevent too much inbreeding in the group but that seems to be a fairly haphazard situation. Formalizing such arrangments in ways other than raids would presumably lead to cooperative efforts between groups in other areas as well. Such arrangements lasted down well into "modern" times and indeed may exist yet in places which still practice arranged marriages. Trade in other areas as well would seem to suggest a beginning of some sort of economic model, though I am out of my depth in those waters. It would also seem to suggest an interest in other than the here and now which is where most other creatures appear to live, and could have given rise to what eventually developed into science through the introduction of things outside the group's experience. Even back then, there were probably people who wanted to investigate further and others who screamed the equivilent of "witchcraft, bop (him, her, it) on the head or it will cause the end of the world as we know it!" :blink: I think Sharon has a very good point. Again it sits somewhere on a continuum, but then most things do, it seems.

Important without question but hardly something for which (as far as we know) man was responsible. Or maybe those stone "astronaut" heads in Mexico are indicative of a totally unexpected/unknown bit of history.. :ph34r:

Actually a whole lot of humans still cannot digest milk..some in various cultures are unable to digest it at all, others lose the capacity gradually or otherwise after maybe the age of 2 or so, as their bodies stop producing the enzyme which allows them to handle it. Quite a lot of people have found as they grow older that removing milk and milk products from their diets also removed such things as arthritis. Another point is that the current theory is that possibly as many as 1 out of 100 are actually also allergic to wheat or at least gluten to one degree or another. Some dramatically so with celiac disease and others with a low level which leads to inflammation and again such things as arthritis. http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2009/June/Getting-out-the-gluten However, some suggest sometimes it isn't actually just the gluten proteins that are the problem. In the past the problem proteins and enzymes were apparently neutralized by the fermentation which took place as the harvested grain was fermented slightly in stooks before threshing. That fermentation no longer takes place and some theorize that's what's leading to the growing numbers of people having problems with wheat and sometimes other cereals as well. As a side note, I was interested when I found out about this as if you feed horses hay which has just been baled, and not let age or ferment for just a few days after being baled (and this is after it's dry enough to bale) you are very likely to have horses with severe digestive issues, which for horses are frequently fatal. Humans rarely have such dramatic reactions unless clearly allergic, but many theorize that arthritis and other autoimmune problems arise from a sort of low level continuous allergic response to "something" and more and more the "something" appears to be the food we eat. As another side note, the old forms of wheat, emmer and such, contained up to 30% protein, most modern wheats are down to about 12-16%. Again, some theorize that that's a partial cause of obesity, as diminished nutritional values in the quest for production and "travelability" is a very common trend in all modern foods, so people have to eat a lot more of them to get the same nutrition. Combine that with a decreased capacity to absorb the nutrients that are there... To get back to harping about GMO's this is one of the frightening things about it; humans have NOT evolved as much as we think we have in terms of coping with environmental stress, certainly we are kindergarteners in that race vs the Olympians such as bacteria and insects. We have no idea what the long term affect of deliberately ingesting minute quantities of poison daily is actually doing to us, nor to our children. Well, not true, actually, we do have quite a good idea through a whole lot of studies, and none of them are good news, but they are not widely publicised. Our brains have apparently evolved faster than either (the rest of) our bodies or our emotional capacities to understand and respect our limits, or even to push the limits with a degree of caution. This has led to wonderful things such as the eradication of smallpox, but also the development of such things as flesheating disease. Nevertheless, the development of agriculture is certainly deserving of being on the list. In my view this means grains, as that's what got people stuck in one place rather than travelling with animals so they had forage -which is a sort of agriculture but doesn't have the same sort of impact. Certainly open to opinion though.

That brings up an interesting question. Certainly spoken language in human terms is unique to humans but that would seem to be because of our physical characteristics. I would definitely argue that most if not all animals have "spoken" language in their terms according to their physical characteristics, so "spoken " language is not really a human acomplishment. Many species have vocalizations at a level which is impossible for humans to hear. I would suggest that some sort of communication between members of a species is pretty much essential if the species is to survive,(aside from those who reproduce asexually) and the more complex the social structure of the creature, the more likely it is to have "spoken" language in its terms. There are interesting incidents like the gorilla who was given access to an outside area for the first time in many years. She looked then signed "for me?" When told yes, she started to go out, then turned back and signed "thank you". This could not be taught to a creature who did not normally have a degree of sophistication in communication to start out with, but we have no idea what those gorilla noises mean. I'm pretty sure you couldn't teach a jellyfish to express gratitude appropriately or even at all, even if you did find a way to establish basic communication with it. There is also a video about a whale rescue where the whale lay quiet in the water without struggling when the guy chewed at the netting with a penknife and when finally freed, gave a long display of whale acrobatics before heading back out to sea. It might have been simply exercising sore and stiff muscles, or it may have been, like a little girl watching said, "she's saying thank you." Certainly whale and dolphin vocalisations are considered by scientists to be "language". At some point I read some very interesting studies done with either crows or ravens, (it was a while back) and the conclusions established that they also have "spoken" language in that they were definitely communicating through vocalization. Written language would seem to be a whole different thing, and specific to humans. I don't count such things as bears scratching on trees to establish territory as written language, though humans might have started out with something of the sort.