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Peterkin

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Everything posted by Peterkin

  1. Sounds good. however, both propositions are rather nebulous. More concrete description and illustrations would be helpful.
  2. They seemed to have a pretty lively community. Lots of talk about how to raise children and where best to live. They had pot-luck parties and outings - no different from any group of people with something in common. It's not their fault my friend and I - both single and political - didn't fit in.
  3. Every society developed the religion that reflects its mores and lifestyle. Every deity represents an aspect of the rulership or cultural values of its society. What they all have in common is the human love of ritual: ceremonial display, hallowed places in which the community celebrates or mourns its significant events. Hindu rituals are very picturesque, and seem to me more life-affirming than the Abrahamic ones, even while the ultimate desire is supposed to be for non-being. I'm not that familiar with the intricacies of Judaism and Islam, but Christianity is a death-cult: it venerates sacrifice, obedience, self-denial in the service of eternal life... Feasting and fasting - it seems to me all organized religions have an internal contradiction. Like humans.
  4. Tea always contains some arsenic, even green tea. This is what the teacher was talking about: long soaking in cold water leaches out more of it. Three minutes in hot water is supposedly recommended; I generally do even less, since I drink it without sugar, lemon or (ugh!) milk.
  5. That's not the Mensa test I was given, sometime back in the bronze age. That took an hour and half, went on and on. One of my fellow inductees scored 152. She was a lively, interesting person, while the membership we encountered was mostly trendy young couples with whom we had nothing in common. We dropped out pretty soon - no loss.
  6. Of course it's possible. I don't know which particular test has a 160 ceiling, or how it's calculated. There are many to choose from. The most commonly used when I was in school was Stanford-Binet, which has a top score of 160, so that's probably the one on which you were measured; but I believe it's been supplanted since by the The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, which tops at 155. The highest measured score I know of, back in 1968 or so, was 190 +/- (off the normal scale, it becomes less and less definitive). The young man in question had serious mental health issues, though perfectly lucid and articulate, he was in and out of hospital with severe depression from about age 17 to when I knew him at 25.
  7. Sure you can, even from a very little stream, as long as it keeps moving. But how much power it gives you depends on the equipment you use, the volume of water and speed of the current. Your biggest problem may be elevation: ideally, there should be a considerable fall. http://ergysaver/planning-microhydropower-system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjEgFlngZ04
  8. The ones that are alive today survived: blue eyes have not been bred out of the human population. Nor are they restricted to northern latitudes: while less common in southern climates, they do occur and the odd pair still appears in Africans. Of course not! Nor have all brown-eyed people. My partner and I both have hazel eyes and no intention to reproduce. How, in light of all the recombinations that take over time in an ever-increasing gene-pool relevant to the continued existence of a non-harmful variant? I meant the trait was not filtered out. I can't remember what specifically prompted my response and don't consider it important enough to search for.
  9. They have survived. No filter sieved them out.
  10. i had mentioned that there are more light-skinned and light-eyed people in northern latitudes. Yet the de-pigmentation of irises still occurs in Africa and the affected individuals seem to manage all right. It's one of those genetic situations that prevail without making very much difference to survival ; it can be studied, recorded and quantified, but it's ultimately not significant.
  11. I doubt it would figure in that filter. Some other traits with which it is associated might but there is no evident survival drawback to eye colour. On the contrary, since it does appear to be sexually attractive, especially among people where it's uncommon, blue or grey eyes could well be an asset.
  12. I hope it's way deep down in the cheek, because the implications are not auspicious for the psychological health of such a society.
  13. It probably was caused by a mutation that prevented melanin forming in the iris. It still shows up once in a while in brown-skinned people. It may have been part of a genetic package along with desirable other traits and was not itself harmful, except in that blue eyes are more sensitive to light. This would not be a disadvantage in northern climates. In small, isolated populations, blue-eyed (and probably grey-eyed) people naturally occurred and met one another. It didn't need to be specifically selected for, though it may have been attractive as a novelty, and there was no reason to reject grey- or blue-eyed people as mates.
  14. Had those. Except for the odd missile crisis, they were delicious. Not likely again for a considerable while: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00679-w https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/countries-currently-at-war/ The present civilization - a couple of decades, if it's lucky. And it had better lucky, 'cose it sure ain't no stable genius! The species? Who knows? My guess is, some isolated human colonies and individual families will survive the collapse, but they may well be wiped out later by fallout, airborne disease, weather events or human marauders from the cities. What they will survive on, if they do, is still open to speculation. My personal hope is that the climate topples this house of madness and lies before the nukes have a chance to: that would leave more of the planet alive. Recovering from the enormous, inexcusable, catastrophic mistake of industrialization is not 'decline' in book.
  15. I thought climate apocalypse was a pretty familiar concept to everyone by now. But, okay: Plans and projects for climate change mitigation are formulated to start making significant improvements in 10, 20, 30 years. Within the next five years, we will pass at least one of the key 'tipping points' from which there is no return. Factor in uncontainable methane and ancient plagues that have been lying dormant under the melting permafrost that will contribute to future global pandemics. Wildfires increase in frequency and magnitude, as do tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards. The oceans get warmer and dirtier: fish die and wash up on the shores to rot. Farther inland than ever before, since the sea level keeps rising due to melted icebergs. Many populous islands disappear; many previously arable lands will become uninhabitable. Hunger, conflict, mass migration. Retreating glaciers will cause more rivers to dry up, which will precipitate more famines and wars, as well as loss of hydroelectric capacity and power blackouts, industries grinding to halt, cities in panic. Governments, unable to cope, will topple; the global economic network will tatter and civilization will crash. Lots and lots of deaths; lots and lots of deserts; lots and lots of people wandering around with guns, looking for anybody who still has food. Eventually, I expect some survivors to form new communities in different parts of the world - some of which may grow into new civilizations. But you can stop worrying about AI and forget any prospect of space exploration.
  16. Or, you can adapt to the planet, as other species do. Nature is heartless; it does not tolerate the weak and defective. If you insist on keeping alive a surplus population far beyond their productive years, you have to adapt the planet to your own needs. That works for a few thousand years, and then the planet can bear no more human activity and dies. Then you have to go look for another planet to alter. There is none better for the life-forms of this one: we are the products of this planet, and probably can't live anywhere else without massive technological aid. Certainly we do not have the capacity at present to go anywhere else that's even remotely habitable.
  17. As do animals, plants and protozoa. Carry them, like little packets of mail. If being carried is acting, then they are and do.
  18. Viruses are interesting in that way. Genes are not: they make no effort, have no perceptible influence on anything except as they manifest in stand-alone organisms, such as viruses. They're components, rather than entities. They don't act at all. They just sit there, like mail, being carried from one organism to another. Dawkins is a bit too fond of metaphors.
  19. Fine. But genes can't get themselves replicated without reproductive agents. One has to wonder whether they even have an independent existence.
  20. A-yup! The evolutionary prize is to survive long enough to make offspring to carry your DNA and raise enough of them to reproductive age. Individual specimens don't count; only species do.
  21. Because evolution finds an ecological niche for every possible kind of life-form. That includes predators, parasites and pathogens. A huge amount of scope for eating other life-forms, and for developing aggression, greed and ways to satisfy both.
  22. I very much doubt the difference is quantifiable, but most people do use stance, gesture, facial expression and touch to communicate more meaning than their words carry. For people who are not very articulate or confident in their verbal skills, adding those extra dimensions can make the difference being understood and a failure to communicate. OTOH, those expressions and gestures can also be used to mislead and deceive and they can, with skillful interpretation also be used to glean more from one's declarations than one intends to reveal. Certainly, it's more difficult to maintain a relationship through words alone - though people who have managed it successfully.
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