Dak

wouldnt it be easyer to copy the file to cd, delete the file from your pc, and then hide the cd? sounds alot easyer than doing all that, plus i guess you could also encrypt the file and remove the extention before coppying it to cd for added security.

nipples arent uninportant. nipples are uninportant to males, but are quite inportant to females (or rather, the offspring of the females). men and women initially develope the same, but the presence of androstogene will make small modifications to the foetus, to result in a boy. i guess, as androstogene triggers a complete removal of the womb in boys, it could also trigger a complete removal of the nipples, but what would be the point? is it more efficient for men to have no nipples, or for men to have no nipple-removal prosess in the womb? if women ever stop using their nipples, then nipples will probably atrophy and disappear, but untill then, the fact that females use nipples will create evolutionary pressure for humans to maintain nipples - and as long as man-nipples arent actually detrimental, there will be no selective pressure for men to get rid of their superfulouse chest adornments. ok, i cant resist it any longer, i have to say it... hehe, nipples

i think the point that i was trying to make was that 'being empathic' is nothing supernatural, its just a normal thing that everyone has - just to different degrees. if you have it to a high degree, then you have to learn to control it to stop it being a problem, same as any aspect of the mind if posessed in high amounts. like coquena said, you have to disassociate yourself. (oh and yeah, i used to get the knots/feeling unwell thing) i said that i always let go and emphasise with my friends, well this is not actually 100% true. if a friend is upset, then i can emphasise/sympathise with them, and understand how they feel - but i can also detatch, so that im calm and rational enough to help them. you have to be able to

ok, heres a bug report:

its +314.55 Kj/mol. [1] as for how you work it out, its been a while since iv done any chemical equasions but i believe youd work out how many mols of NH4Cl you have, measure the temperature of the water, ditch the ammonium chloride in the water and measure the temperature change. translate this temperature change from K to Kj, and divide by the number of mols[NH4Cl] to get Kj/mol. now flip the sighn, and thats your {delta}Hf [NH4Cl] i think...

everyone is empathic to some extent. (the next bit sounds flippant, but it isnt) if a man gets kicked in the testicles then every man and quite a few women who see it will feel his pain. if someone throws up, then its quite common to feel sick in responce, even if you were completely fine before hand. most people feel sad if they see someone who is upset or happy if they see someone who is laughing, its just that people are empathic to different extents. some people barely emphasise with even close loved ones, whereas some will emphasise strongly with strangers and animals. i am quite emphatic, and when i was younger i would get really upset whenever i saw someone suffer, even if i didnt know them or know why they were upset, i would just know and i would feel as if whatever had happened to them (even tho i didnt know what had happened to them) had happened to me. and it is still unplesant in the extreme when i notice from someones eyes that they are deeply unhappy, or when i see/hear of someone suffering. but like sorcerer said, the trick is to suppress it when its unplesant. the empathic feelings are still there, and theyre still unplesant, but i wouldnt give up the feeling for anything, even tho it is unplesant. take this thread for example. when i read about how upset you were and the way your empathy makes you feel, i instantly started to, i dunno, a little part of me started to immagine it was you so that i could feel how you might feel about this, and it wasnt particulaly pleasant, and out of reflex the feelings got squished down small -- i can still feel them, but theyre not overwhelming. and thats why i replyed, cos i sympathise with you -- and thats why i wouldnt give up the empathy, because it makes me notice other people and care, and makes me try to help when i can, but the ability to suppress it --callouse as this may sound -- allows me to not care when i cannot do anything, which is a very useful ability. with loved ones, though, i always let go and empathise completely. with strangers, i feel my ability to empathise makes me treat them with care, and with people i can do noting to help -- im still aware of their feelings, but i can ignoor them -- theres no reason to suffer just because someone else is, especially if theres nothing i can do for them. and when you empathiise with a happy person, espesially a friend, then it more than makes up for it. just seing a friend smile or laugh is enough to make me euphoric usually. id suggest trying to learn to suppress the feeligs when theyre bad. allow yourself to empathise, but keep your emotions from overwhelming you when you are upset, which is something i learnet to do along time ago so i cannot remember how exactly it was that i learnt it, sorry. but i think a part of it was not shying away from the bad feelings; allow them to wash over you, embrase them, understand them, and then learn tosuppress them when they are too strong and unjustified. but that might just be me, im a bit odd in some ways (as we all are) sincerely hope that is of some small help

lots of things in the english language could actually be done away with: the word the: there arent that many instances where it cant just be dropped, and where it cant be dropped it can always be substituted (eg, "what, famouse brad pitt?" as opposed to "what, the brad pit?"). it sounds strange, but "want to go to pub?" or "wheres cat?" or "sayo's one of administrators for site" all are easaly decypherable and if it wasnt for fact that word 'the' exists, no-one would miss it the letter c WHAT THE **** IS IT FOR!?!?!?!?! theres no instance where it isnt interchangable with K or S, so why not just ditch it and use either k or s. call me a heathen, but why not kream, kake, sirkus and khips (yeah, i now kh isnt pronounsed 'ch' but then neither is 'ch'). plurals no-one gets confused about sheep. this is because you can always tell whether theres one or more sheep, even without the s. "look, theres a sheep" is obviously refering to one sheep, whereas "look, theres some sheep" is obviously refering to more than one. if your going to modify the article preceding the noun to indicate either 1 or not1, then also modifying the noun itself to indicate the same thing is redundant. capitals why? why complicate an alphabet by having 2 ways of spelling each letter? fish and FISH are both pronounced the same, they both mean the same, the full stop already indicates the transition from one sentance to another, and theres not really any valid reason to capitalise the initial letter of a proper noun, england and dak are both perfectly understandable -- theres no need for England and Dak. i could go on...

nice answres. just like to ad that, aswell as being considered non-living due to their incapacity to self-replicate, viruses are also considered non-living due to the fact that they are metabolically inactive, ie outside of a cell they do not metabolise, and inside a cell the metabolism is carried out by the host cell, not the virus.

i dont know if youv seen the 'myth of human evolution' thread -- it might be a special case (its about as long as the 'official joke thread', and just as funny in my oppinion) that sayo wants closed for good, never to be reopened again, and im not sure he'd be particullaly happy if i sparked off another willow v SFN pointless discussion, and he jus recently got rid of the superfulouse 'k' at the end of my name so im feeling nice and thought id chek first.

i could always start new threads to cover the topics that i feel were still open in the thread, i jus thought this might be considered cheeky ie curcumventing the fact that you closed the thread, espesially as one of the topics i was interested in continuing was the contradiction in the book of genesis which i assume would attract willows attention, and it could quickly degenerate to the same quality as the 'myth of human evolution' thread.

this ones for sayonarra: the 'myth of human evolution' thread by willow tree was recently closed by u, presumably 'cos it was going nowhere, but just before it was i think it opened up a few interesting points that everyone (except willow) were making productive posts to, eg macroevolution v microevolution, and the 'contradiction' in the book of genesis. so my question is, would it be possible to unlock the thread and barr willowtree from the thread, thus allowing those of us who are not insane to continue the conversation, and (by barring willow) stopping it from being pointless?

cheers sayo, you rock ass! ha ha. no.

boha capn refreshment, if you need any late additions to the cast, then count me in! sounds hoopy. or i could play all the bit parts, but wearing a different obviously false mustache/pair of glasses for each part to add some comic relief do the cast get input in what their carechtors do?

and heres one for dave: Q/ what did the mathematition do when he was constipated? A/he worked it out with a pensil

you know, i once gave simultaniouse sadism, necrophylia and bestiality a try. it was like flogging a dead horse

a thread that i was posting on got moved, and it took me ages to find it. what about a sticky in each forum (or just one in general chat) entitled 'recently moved threads' so that we dont have to hunt for our posts after theyve been moved? like they have on this forum? oh, and would it be possible to get rid of the last k of my name? i didnt mean to put it there, guess it doesnt matter but i would prefer 'Dak' if possible?

when humans first entered west europe, we were quite unsuited to life here -- different predetors, different climate, different food availability etc. as xavior pointed out, these can cause a need to increase in size (heat retention, ability to store food in fat etc) if resorses were low, then this would also give a benifit to humans who were bigger, as they could take resorses off of the smaller humans, which would also drive the evolution of humans becoming larger. as east asia is closer in climate and conditions to africa (where humans come from), maybe humans had less of a difficult time surviving so their was less need for humans to fight amongst themselfs for resorses and so less pressure to increase in size

dispite the fact that he was drunk/stoned, he actually had a very good point. a common and forgivable misinterpretation of one of the central tennets of natural evolution is that traits get passed on based on their fitness to survive; ie, that the more a trait increases an organisms ability to survive long enough to reproduce, the higher the frequency with which it is passed on. in actual fact, the statement should read "the ability of a trait to get passed on is based on its ability to get the posesser of the trait laid" (you wont find it worded like that in a text book, but its pretty accurate anyway). so, traits that increase an organisms ability to survive to an age where they can reproduce will get passed on. the difference between the second statement and the first is that it highlites the fact that traits that make an organism more sexually appealing also get passed on, even if the trait confers no extra benifits and does not increase the ability of the organism posessing it to survive. so, if small size is considered attractive in east asia (because femail submissivness is concidered attractive), then this would be enough to promote the inheritance of 'smallness', and thus drive evolution to making east asians smaller/preventing them from getting larger

hi im dak iv posted here for about a month now, and i thought that id just take this oppertunity to appologise for my spelling so: sorree

yup. this is most likely evolution finding a use for something that has atrophied to the point where it no longer performs any other purpouse in no other area is this evolutionary recycling more apparent than in areas involving sex

i believe that an iq of <85 is something to be concerned about. 89 is really not that bad. anyway, iq is overrated. it is a measure of your ability to solve problems. its useful to have a high iq, but by no means nessessary. i have a few friends who i dont think would would score much more than 90, but they have no mental 'problems' as such, and function fine socially, have jobs etc

i believe we used to have tails?

because we do not use our appendix, there is no evolutionary pressure on it, ie it is free, by a prosess of random change, to do what it wants -- remain the same, improve, or degrade. in the spirit of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the appendix has been degrading/atrophying as it is more likely that random changes have a degratory effect, than that they have an inproving effect. so over time the appendix has been getting more and more malformed. it is only when something is in use (eg the heart) that it experiences evolutionary pressure -- if the heart mutates and is worse, then evolution suppresses this change from being passed on. therefore things experiensing evolutionary pressure are prevented from degrading (too much). without evolutionary pressure, things tend to crap out

agree, as 2 cannot =0. hmmm, i am increasingly beginning to think that we are arguing linguistics. i accept that certanty and uncertanty are absolutes, ie you are either certain or you are not. i agree that you cannot be 0.7 certain, anymore than you can be 0.7 of any absolute (0.7 infinite, 0.7 biggest etc) however, there is a very real and very useful way of measuring your level of certanty in a non-binary way. for example, immagine that the talles person in the world is 10M tall a person who is 9M tall is not 0.9 the tallest person in the world, as 'tallest' is an absolute. you cannot be the 0.9 tallest person in the world. you either are the tallest person in the world, or you are not. but you can be 0.9 the height of the tallest person in the world. with uncertanty, if you take it as an absolute, then ok you cannot be 0.7 certain. but you can be 0.7 as certain as you would be if you were certain to a level of 1. umm, not sure that last statement was worded well, so to further explain: when i say i am 0.9 certain that the statement 'X' is true, then what i mean could be viewed as: STATEMENT 1: i am certain, to a certanty level of 1, that statement 'x' is true STATEMENT 2: there is a 90% probability that statement 1 will be correct so ok, if you say that you can only be certain to a level of 0 or 1. but you have to accept that your assesment of your certanty may be incorrect, and the probability that you are incorrect is something that can be measured, ie STATEMENT X: the world will still exist tomorrow STATEMENT 1: i am certain to a level of 1 that statement x is correct STATEMENT 2: there is virtually 100% chance that statement 1 will be proven correct. so overall, taking into account our certanty and the probability that we are correct, we can say that we are almost 100% certain/confident that the world will still exist tomorrow. or in the case of the swans: STATEMENT X: all the swans are white (H2 in above example) STATEMENT 1: i am certain to a level of 1 that statement x is correct STATEMENT 2: there is 99.00990099% chance that statement 1 will be proven correct so, overall, i am 99.00990099% confident/certain that all 100 swans are white

well then your model would have a certanty of 0 for both statements? tell me, if we were to go back through these posts and replace the word 'certain' with 'confident', then would that be acceptable to you? eg, "after 99 white swans, we could be roughly 99% confident that the 100th swan would be white"