TrickyPeach

I think mainly university students, as far as I know. Do you not approve of it?

and the fact they have been around longer! Yes, humans are special, one of the main reasons is our ability to have causal thought, the ripping off of anything does not make us a class. We are mammals, check your breasts.

Or not, I haven't really heard any of this anywhere else, on the other hand most crazy people with some "facts" or factoids, like a hill shaped like a pyramid in this case, do get publicity because people love a mystery and a reason to speculate about it. Like we all have just proved

Is it any way to start?

I can't imagine why anybody would want to know how many there are, I understand asking what are their names, what do they do, but the their population surely is irrelevant?

Seems a bit unfair... you have the gold and the rainbows and I have...?

The present form of an organism was affected in two basic ways: 1. An acquisition of a random fluke that happened to be very useful, or more useful than not having it in the environment. 2. A modification in size, colour, or precision of an already existing organ to be more fine-tuned with the requirements for survival in the environment. You can imagine that a fluke, so case 1, could be for example the presence of tiny little horns, so basically a mutation that seems to benefit the animal in fighting, finding a mate. And then the horns would be expanded, made bigger, stronger, branch outwards becoming antlers etc with case 2. So it's not only the environment, it's also chance, random mutations happen over large chunks of time. The environment then kills off all the ones badly not fit enough for it, one way or another. So rerunning the Earth in exactly the same way, would probably not produce the same organisms let alone rerunning the Earth with a few parameters modified. (That makes the Earth sound like a program, have you read Hitchhikers Guide? the Earth was a computer in that, which is a very interesting theory to ponder)

I disagree, this may well hold for some people but I know many people, me included who actually are quite happy with some things not progressing the sense you describe at least. On another level I agree, it's the pull of time and the volatile memory we have that pushes us to get "bored" in a sense, but I don't think things fade to gray as often as you say.

Oh, that's very fortunate, looks like they are using a LED

Have you read the Selfish Gene? That would be a good starting place in my opinion.

You can write your own, so unlimited(?!)

I don't see how this is applicable at all, they are not MORE evolved to coping with less food or resources, their bodies may be less healthy than hours if they didn't get enough nutrition in childhood, and they also could have less body fat to consume when resources become even scarcer, since you say this is a global catastrophe it obviously affects all pats of the world. They may have the education, experience etc to live off the land, or to gather food from nature, though to be honest they probably don't more than anybody else. I fail to see the logic used here. Have I missed the point? Anyway, about the Selfish Gene theory: I really think reading the book is a complete must for anybody. I read it the first time I think when I was around 16 and it really opened my eyes to Dawkins and genetics, biology, human behaviour etc. It's an inspiring book, though I sometimes, after reading almost all of Dawkins books, find the way he writes slightly annoying. I love his ideas and the man himself and agree most of the time with him, but he does sometimes go on and on without progressing with the book.. meaning basically that he could sum up a lot of the things in much fewer words still getting the message across fully, has anybody else noticed this?

People like Linux so much because it has a lot of redeeming features (when compared to alternatives or not). A few that I can think of are: 1. It's free. 2. It's open source. 3. It's faster than Windows, when done properly. 4. It doesn't suffer from viruses, malware etc. 5. It can stay running on a machine for an unlimited amount of time, no reboots. It's much much stabler. 6. It can be fundamentally customised on basically any level. 7. It's maintained by a community. 8. It has a good following by scientists, which is appealing if you are in such an environment. 9. Another tempting thing could be the desktop effects, some people are in love with them. Compiz is much more breathtaking than anything Windows has to offer.

I'd go with LEDs because they use dramatically less power and need to be changed very infrequently.

Just wondering are solar panels actually cost effective ie how much will the cars price go up if you add a soler panel on the roof and is the energy produced worth the money, cause I'm assuming this is what car manufacturers will go on.

What do you mean here by belief system? I'm just intrigued by the usage and maybe I've understood what you are saying wrongly.

I think you are seeing something not there, you are reading too much into the bumping to the bottom of the list thing. I mean there are 2 columns, being at the bottom makes him more obvious since his contact details are 3 lines. How is this a PhD thesis? Doesn't really seem conclusive on any level. All it's basically saying is: we need to look into this more. Also it calls them hills (Bosnian pyramidal hills). I think this pretty much shows it's being over hyped to say the least.

Google earth would have spotted it. Surely that big of an animal would have been found by now.

Isn't it the same reason the earth is not a sphere, but actually "fatter" round the equator? Because like Mr Skeptic said: it spins, it's quite intuitive.

Sound advice If anything if people really want to know what's going on reading the PhDs you mentioned (link please?), I'm assuming you have looked at them? Those would be enlightening, bearing in mind who wrote them, when and what kind of university awarded the PhD.

What about reptiles? Dinosaurs, turtles, chameleons, crocodiles, frogs... they seem pretty diverse... it's a matter of perspective. Also you are only looking at things on our scale, go smaller, go microscopic and you'll notice pretty much the most diverse lifeforms on earth can be found in the most diverse environments. The way I see it: From reptiles birds and mammals evolved... nothing has yet to evolve from mammals.

Id like to see the Hilton on the moon first and then I'll decide whether we can colonise any other planet(oid). What would be the easiest/most suitable planet to colonise we know of? In regards to proximity to earth, gravity closest to ours, resources on the planet...

I would say don't install anything yet. I could either be a virus, adware, etc or it could just be a non-maliciously triggered pop-up and we need to find out which of the two it is. So I'm assuming you are on Windows so the chances of you having a virus are high, so run an antivirus and an antimalware to determine that. Also when do you get the pop-up, literally whatever you do? Just open the browser? IE or FF?

Yes, everything apart from the oraganism itself is the environment. And of course by adapting the organism changes the environment too. Obviously the organism comes into contact with others of its own kind. So you could say that even the organism itself is part of the environment.

The North. I'm trying to find a FAQ type area, is the only place like that the rules thread?