AzurePhoenix

Mentally fragile? From a psychological point of view Spidy has shown he is vastly more resiliant that Batman could ever be. From an intellectual angle, he is at least as intelligent as batman, and could be his superior depending on just how much of Batty's techno is of his own make or simply obtained through his vast resources.

If you are referring to what I said, then you are ignoring the most recent evidence, if I misread what you said, then I apologise and would appreciate it if you elaborated. Besides, none of this has to do with evolutionary theory in general, simply human evolution specifically.

Keep in mind that this typically applies mostly to large warm-blooded species. Reptiles and small mammals often show the opposite trend, increasing in size, such as komodo dragons, giant geckos and tortoises, and giant island rats.

I believe that that was what I was decribing. I was responding to when you said

Hmmm... she is cute, but ain't she a couple decades his junior? Also remember that when Batsy had a falling out with the first robin he upgraded to a newer, barely pubescent edition....

in terrestrial species it's used to navigate and orient themselves, but for sea critters, especially cuttelefish, it's communicative. Patterns of color change in ways humans can see, but patterns of polarization are also shifting across them.

himself in some peculiar way is what I heard. As for it being of some mistress he knocked up, I think historians are fairly confident that he preferred more... masculine... consorts.

He had to work to become a fighting machine, but he doesn't have "powers," nothing superhuman or such. In a straight up fist fight, spidy has the speed strength and agility to slaughter the bat, and I'd be hard-pressed to say which of the two is more intelligent/clever. Any edge Batman might have would rests solely in his tech, but I'll be the first to admit that it levels the playing field quite a bit.

just a small point I think is important...

hehe, cute, but he seems ethereal to me, like an extraterrestrial ghost

That's one good point, unlike nearly ALL other superheroes, batman had to work for his fighting ability. However, Spidy actually had to fight to build a real life for himself and hold onto it. Batman just had all his resources handed to him in a tidy inheritance. So where batman had one major disadvantage, he got one major one that put him ahead of many others. Without that, he's just chuck norris without a gun and with better looks. And you have to admit, spiderman had much less handed to him than other heros *disgusted cough* superman *cough*. ... One question, where is all this emo talk coming from? since when has spiderman been anything other than a happy-go-lucky cornball joker? Sure in the beginning he was a bit whiny, but who wouldn't be in his situation? Batman had NEVER stopped whining! He utterly stopped trying and escaped real life in favor of a grimly near-goth alter-ego.

DOn't forget that batman doesn't even HAVE a real life, the bruce wayne crap is more like some thin coverup for the real him, batman is just a brooding mopey man who can't get over his past and is trapped in a pit of rage-empowered depression. Spidey on the other hand struggles to keep a real life and just be peter whenever possible. His childhood was certainly as traumatic as batman's, but he at least TRIES to be upbeat about it in general. I find him more relatable. ... plus he has a wife/girlfriend more often than not and doesn't live with an elderly manservant and an orphan boy in tights.

I heard he carried it around with him everywhere for a while, whether that's some lame myth or not I know not. I always thought the damned thing was ugly.

Spiderman is a genius! He made all sorts of complex devices and frequently employs science and nerdy math strategies to beat them baddies' collective asses! He just doesn't have the resources to build the kinda snazzy stuff ol' bruce can afford. And spiderman can actually keep a girl interested for more than one mission... two in fact

Actually it doesn't say we evolved from MODERN apes that are still around. We broke off of the non-human ape-line straight from a crossroads with the chimpanzee's immediate ancestor, well after orangutans and gorrilas has already diverged. We most certainly did evolve from apes, and most serious scientists (in the field at least) will agree that we still ARE apes. I'm sorry if I sound irritated when I say this, and I know someone else mentioned the whole thing about lines breaking off that leave the parent species intact, but think about this -> if we evolved from single celled organisms, why are there still single-celled organisms? It's the same concept just on a much older scale. If evolution worked that way, it seems to me there would only ever be one species alive on the planet at a time. Giganto is a bit of a mystery because there are so very few fossils and it probably went extinct a bit earlier than the typical megafauna that went out in the last iceage that most people are familiar with, but I think the general idea is the old fallback explanation of outcompetition with mroe effective critters in teh same niche and climate change.

Chris LeDoux's "This Cowboy's hat" Don't know why, but it just really hits me like no other song.

I come from such a hick state Yeah, no doubt it's a bad idea. From a pessimistic point of view, I don't think we'd WANT to attract the votes of people who under normal circumstances wouldn't give a damn about voting for it's own merit.

Hawking has always had a good sense of humor about his sorta stuff, like an Onion article about him trading in his wheelchair for a super-killer mech suit.

I fully agree, I was simply pointing out that it (sexual reproduction) is not neccesary, and that parthenogenic reproduction does allow change to happen, ableit at a far slower rate. It is not the best method, and will likely fail in the long-term, but for now, it suits them very well. And in the whip-tail's case, failure isn't inevitable if the system changes, simply far more likely than for sexual species.

yes, from humans tracing back to much earlier than even our earliest spinal-corded ancestors, males and females have existed as separate sexes.

I won't try to delve into psychology of mother-offsrping relationships, but biologically the male sex is far older than the human species. "Males" and the sexual reproduction they're around for have been present throughout the history of cordates, and long predates them. And they're not actually a dominant form so much as a useful means for shuffling genes about. Male behaviors among humans and other primates are simply the behavioral role they've fallen into, in my opinion due to their expendability compared to the value of females. Whip-tail lizards did away with males entirely.

I know I was baffled when this "designer" baby just turned out to be a simple screened selection. If they keep this degree of overreaction the first real designer-baby is gonna be spun off in the headlines as "Geneticists Engineer Lab-Grown Monstrosity!!!" Mind you, the child will simply have been "cured" of a congenital heart-murmer or some such thing, but whatever.

I for one would point out that the sarcasm is a valuable point unto itself.