Scientific Myths

This may not be on track for the Coriolis discussion, but I have used gyros for navigation while fishing in Alaska and understood this--

Aboard The TSGB Day 4 The 8 to 12 bridge watch celebrates the crossing of the equator while on their watch.

The Equator is an imaginary line that divides the world in two half way between the north pole and the south pole. We crossed it late last night and entered the southern hemisphere. The first thing that everyone notices is that is very hot on the equator as it receives more sunlight on a constant basis than other areas in the world. Because it is so warm, the air rises and causes a lot of afternoon thunderstorms. Because the air is mostly rising vertically, the horizontal component of the air or wind is very light.

The old but traditional way of navigation by use of magnetic compass must have and adjustment made when the ship crosses the equator. You can see our second mate and Cadet Moss inside the magnetic compass turning the heeling magnet to orient it for the southern hemisphere. Cadet Moss goes to a more modern Gyro compass and make the adjustment to it by flipping a toggle switch.

The so called "Bradley Effect" falls in line too

Great, more misinformation about Ethanol.

During farming the stalks are left on the field and rot returing their nutrients to the ground. If you harvest these stalks, you're going to have to replace these nutrients with extra fertilizer. You also will run into erosion problems.

It's simple people. Plants take nitrogen and carbon out of the ground and some out of the air and convert that into stalk carbon and nitrogen and edible carbon and nitrogen. We take the edible nitorgen and carbon (Corn) and turn it into human nitrogen and carbon (fat, energy), the stalks are left alone(rot) and become ground nitrogen and carbon again. If you take the stalks instead and make ethanol (fermented carbon and nitrogen), you have to replace the carbon and nitrogen that would have come from the stalk with fertilizer. Fertilizer comes from oil. So in conclusion, you take stalks and ferment them in an inefficient process so that fuel is created and use fuel and covert it to fertilizer to replace the nutrients the rotting stalks would have put into the ground anyway had they been left alone.

Hang on, I'm trying not to smash my computer. It's gonna be ok. It's gonna be ok. People are smart, they will figure this out eventually.........

Not working, I'm gonna have to go to plan B, smashing my head on my desk, see you guys in a little bit.

BREATHE, Roger, breathe...

Wait, I just had a great idea of how we could generate more oil. We could kill whales!. Whales have lots of oil and they reproduce so we'd never run out. What could possibly go wrong.........

What's that? We tried it?......Oh......Have we tried Dolphins yet?

We haven't tried Pork Barrels, have we?

How dare you! Kiefer Sutherland is a good actor, Bacon on the other hand had only one good movie where he plays a midget who moves to a small town where dancing is forbidden and leads the local teens in a rebellion the culminates in a prom filled with extraordinarily bad dancing:

What's that thing hangin' out his ass? Does he joust?

When you think these people can't get any dumber, wait five minutes.

Ethanol is a great and practical solution, but purely chemical speaking, Methane is the closest to hydrogen in terms of energy-to-weight ratio, the cleanest burning of the whole alternative fuel stock.

Some landfill dumps already use Methane extracting drills feeding complex piping systems to harvest decomposing organics with high efficiency, but all-in-all the Methane profile in the media is mostly associated to ozone destruction by free methane loss evaporating into the atmosphere.

IMHO, methane being such a high energy content clean-burning fuel should attract much more R & D funds for practical, popular utilisation.

There was an actual study done that concluded Aussie cattle fart too much.

That and your post got me wondering...

Plumbing. That's it! What we need is the right kind of plumbing! Before long you'll be seeing gas stations (literally 'gas' not 'petrol') with names like "Bar-S" "Rocking-R" and so forth right next to endless acres of plumbed, cud-chewing cattle feeding on the best Aussie prairie grass money can buy.

Yuval, do you know any venture capitalists? You're gonna be rich, dude!

Apparently the Brits were picking on Australia when they sent cargo off to the colonies..."Lessee, that one looks good for Canada. Oops, she farted, better move her to Australia. They've got all that desert; nobody'll notice."

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/2000/34/i15/abs/es990578c.html

I'm too old to get involved in the get-rich rat-race. Besides, you know me, I'm an old hippie. Money is for them old square dudes...

Money, like Prayer, changes things. That's what accountants are for (the financial counterpart to clerics, I suppose). You let them worry about the gravy whilst you partake of some serious hookah on the expansive balcony of your palatial pad.

No dog worries, either, unless you get one just for old times' sake. <hehe>

Yuval

Do you know of any work done on cracking the CH4/CO2 obtained from anerobic decomposition into octane or cetane?

Rather than mess about with ethanol, why not use the sewage our cities produce in vast quantities to produce petrol?

I agree with Roger Pink that extensive use of ethanol will create more problems than it will solve.

Actually cracking is about breaking up longer molecules into smaller ones. Both methane and CO2 are single carbon atom long. heres a link:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/oil-refining5.htm

milo

Milo

Strictly speaking you are right, however, in a cat cracker, material "cracks" both ways, most to lighter fractions , with some going heavier, sometimes going as far as to form tars.

That's the general idea !

The main hinder here is lack of media attention, to motivate fund channeling into practical R & D

Ethanol is fine, but was portrayed in the mass media as a crop (maze, corn) distribution and growth problem, something to the effect of "the more corn you grow for ethanol, the less you can feed people with" which frankly is bullshit. More resource allocation is all that is needed, just like was done with wheat in the fifties, to feed the third world of post WW2

Agreed about food crops for fuel. WHat must have gone through the mind of the last guy on easter island after they cut down the last canoe worthy tree was cut down?

milo

How about the myth of the Theory of Evolution? The theory presupposes the uniformity of nature but cannot account for it nor its origin.

No it can. They just haven't made a television special about it for you yet. You have to actually read the books (not gonna happen, I know).

Heck, Roger, there is a video. Even educated people use Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w57_P9DZJ4&feature=related

Roger

Have read the books.

1. Unless the first living cell had all the genetic information required for all subsequent life, how was information gained? All evolutionary processes quoted so far lose information. Mutations, often touted as the source of new info, have a net loss of info. In fact, they accelerate the loss.

2. Where are the stage 3 supernova remnants in the universe? This is the isothermal stage of expansion. There should be thousands of them. The fact there are none gives an upper limit to the time for which the universe has been producing supernovae of less than 200,000 years! All proponents of the theory ignore this limitation.

These 2 points should be enough to chew on. I've looked for verification of evolution all over the place, but have been unable to find anything conclusive or even convincing when looked at critically.

In the process, I've found large amounts of hard evidence that make it extremely unlikely.

A Universe merely 200,000 years old? Okay, let's explore this a bit.

Just to break the ice, let's pick on Andromeda.

The Andromeda galaxy is Earth's nearest galactic neighbor and lies a paltry 2.2 million light years distant. It is a mature, fully-formed large spiral galaxy with an estimated stellar population of 200-300 billion stars. Not only is Andromeda our closest neighbor, but it is getting even closer and is on a collision-course with our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Andromeda is getting closer which, of course, means that in the past it was farther away than it is now. Kinda obvious. But if the Universe is 200,000 years old, how is it that Andromeda got to wherever it used to be? Even more so, how is it even possible for us to see Andromeda at all? Remember, the light we're seeing now left her 2.2 million years ago.

Now let's pick on another galaxy a little closer to home: our own.

Current estimates place the Milky Way galaxy at 200,000 to 300,000 light years across. If the Universe is so young as you imply, then the light reaching us now from the far rim left roughly the moment the universe was born. At that time, of course, there was no Far Rim for us to see and so, the form and structure we see of it today is some kind of grand illusion?

And what about our galaxy's shape? For our galaxy to even have the shape it has now involves a process taking several billion years, at a minimum. That shape has a lot to do with the galaxy's rotation and, quite frankly, it takes far longer than a paltry 200,000 years for our galaxy to rotate even once about its axis. Our galaxy's age is far in excess of 200,000 years. Compared with our galaxy's age 200,000 years is as the wink of an eye.

Finally, how do you explain that we can beyond our own galaxy? See well beyond even Andromeda? How are we able to see, for example, the Virgo supercluster, whose members (like that of the Local Group) are gravitationally bound and yet inhabit a space several hundred million light years across? How do these galactic members 'know' of each other gravitationally if there hasn't been enough time for their gravity to be felt across the gulf between them? How can we see the Virgo supercluster at all? If what you say is true, there simply hasn't been enough time!

How is any of what we see in the heavens possible in a 200,000 year old Universe? Are you suggesting that all this just sort of popped up out of nowhere, fully formed? Like some sort of a cosmic-scale practical joke on Mankind? Seems a bit of out-of-character for the Maker to pull something like that, don't you think? Is that what you're asserting here? Fess up or I'll have to send in the Black Helicopters.

Hi Europium

Glad someone's thinking and rising to the challenge.

If we all stick to the facts we should have a good debate on this one.

You still haven't explained the complete absence of type 3 supernova remnants.

Some theoreticians have postulated that the speed of light has decreased with time. Apparently this postulate has enabled a number of problems with relativity to be resolved. I don't know enough about the subject to do more than mention the postulate. One such theory actually predicted the fine structure of Saturn's rings and the rings around Uranus and Neptune before they were discovered.

I will post a reference later as I don't have it to hand at the moment.

I think these theoreticians would probably choke on only 200,000 years for the universe.

When observed facts conflict, it is time to start re-examining theories. Many cherished hypotheses need to be abandoned.

We need to be open minded and realise that our knowledge is incomplete and probably predominantly wrong.

We need to be open minded and realise that our knowledge is incomplete and probably predominantly wrong.

Or we can continue painting a scenario.

Europium

A GA for that one.

My mistake, I should have referred to as a third phase remnant or something similar, when the expansion of the remnant has slowed to the point where it is now isothermal, whereas before it was essentially adiabatic.

Responses so far have been interesting. I am learning a lot.

Thanks.

Yup, euro, good job.

:...the speed of light has decreased with time..."

?

"...these theoreticians would probably choke on only 200,000 years for the universe..."

Not 5000 ?

Mystery de-tour of the magic number perhaps ?

- - - -

A few years ago, we had this conversation where "The universe is only five thousand years old" popped, to which I replied "Does it seem likeky to you, that all that slow star and planet evolution instantly appeared as a finished product to present us humans with a ready-made universe, as if it was some birthday cake ?"

To that I was replied "We weren't here five thousand years ago, how can we be shure it didn't happen this way ?"

To which I replied "You're right. We can't. But wait, then on the other hand how can we be sure it did happen this way ?"

- "We don't have to. It's written in the Bible"

- - - -

And now, the bomb:

Could the universe be older than the bible ?

Hey, I'm not postulating, just humbly asking

:...the speed of light has decreased with time..."

?

This does raise a good question: "If the speed of light changes over time, how could we tell?"

Well, in the astronomical case the spectra of very distant objects should be different, but this has not been observed. We have red-shifted spectra where the shift is quite extreme, such as seen with light from distant quasars, but the relationships among the spectral lines are just the same as they are in your neighborhood laboratory. Hydrogen spectra from the farthest reaches of the Universe has exactly the same characteristics as hydrogen spectra here. The only difference is in the redshift.

<flame on>

I've heard this "the speed of light changed and this pretty much explains it" argument before, and it doesn't wash. Not even close. Assume the speed of light had changed? What of it. It still wouldn't explain many -- perhaps most -- of the other features of the Universe, such as the formation and structure of galaxies, for example.

The Universe is ancient, and boy do I mean ancient. This business of restating the age of the Universe in order to fit a preconceived misinterpretation of time in the book of Genesis really chaps my ass. These arguments do nothing but discredit their own proponents in the eyes of non-believers. They'd be far better off saying nothing at all. This Creationism vs Evolution argument is little more than a Hell-inspired red herring that distracts from the far more weighty issues while parading its proponents as complete fools before the very audience they want to reach. IMHO.

<flame off>

And why not "the speed of light decreases over distance" ? or "increases over the weekend" ?

Take the only true constant known to man and flex it. What's the harm in that ?

Europium and yuval

The only point of anyone postulating things like "speed of light has decreased with time" (or distance etc), is to see where the hypothesis leads.

If, as part of a more comprehensive theory, it enables prediction so it can be tested, it is a valid scientific approach.

This doesn't necessarily mean it is right. Further tests of the new theory should be developed.

All this is standard scientific method.

Apparently Dr Russell Humphreys proposed this model and some of his predictions proved to be correct. I'm not sure which predictions have not been right, but it should merit consideration, however brief, before either rejection, acceptance or "sit on the fence". I'm currently sitting on the fence, so would welcome factual input.

Sceptic, I'm all for such discussions. I've often wondered about the constancy of the speed of light and whether it does, in fact, change over time. How would we know? What experiments might we devise to accurately measure such change? It's not just a simple matter of seeing how far light travels in such and such a time. It's way more subtle than that. The speed of light figures into all kinds of things and involves other fundamental constants as well (take a look at Maxwell's equations, for a sample of what I mean). A changing value for c may change the rate our clocks run, for example.

Yeah, I think about these things sometimes and I'm hardly averse to exploring such ideas. It's not that at all. Not even close.

It is the application of a changing c to justify a foregone conclusion that the Universe is young. Really young. You know what I'm talking about.

There really is a lot of material out there, much of it with a built-in agenda. Here's a pretty good list of objective books from the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024&page=31

It should be noted that Sigma Xi overwhelmingly supports the NAS position on evolution.

For a little insight into the supernovae contraversy, it's covered pretty well here

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/supernova/

The first living cell didn't have to have all of the genetic information that a modern cell has, and in fact, wouldn't likely have needed it. Not all mutations are deleterious, and changing conditions are the driver for natural selection. It's far more complex than I care to discuss here (at least right now, maybe more later), in fact, I took an entire semester course on the subject and only got the basics from that. However, consider this: organelles, which are structures in cells, like the nucleus, mitochondria, chloroplasts, and others are thought to be primitive cells that grouped together, either as symbionts or as parasites, and co-evolved into what today appears as the cell. Another theory to chew on...

Sceptic,

I think you're a bit confused as to how evolution works. Before we get into what came earlier, lets look at the variety of today. As you may or may not know, Humans have 46 chromosomes in total per cell. Here are the number of chromosomes found in some other species (source).

Amoeba- 12 Chromosomes
Barley- 14 Chromosomes
Chicken- 78 Chromosomes
Pigeon- 80 Chromosomes
Shrimp- 254 Chromosomes

Just so we are clear, a chromosome is basically a bundled up, packaged, DNA strand. This statistic can be misleading since some animals carry DNA in duplicate (2x), 4x, or 6x, in their cells (Known as Diploids, Quadruploids, and Hexaploids, respectively). Lets instead look at the relative lengths of genomes, the number of base pairs contained in the sum of the chromosomes of the animal in question:

Human Genome has 3 billion base pairs
Amoeba dubia Genome has 600 billion base pairs (source)

Here are the relative sizes of the Genomes of Classes of Organisms.

In general in the chart above you can just multiply the C-value (pg) by 1 billion to get the number of base pairs (978 million if you want to be closer to exact, my point doesn't require such precision). Please notice that there are many classes of animals that can have 10 to 100 times larger genomes than Humans (or mammals in general).

My point is that genomes can vary greatly and a large genome simply means more complexity. This complexity in the genome accumulated over time. The first living material was no doubt bare bones simple with a short genome (a few thousand base pairs). Bacteria developed which has a few million base pairs. Finally as the genome grew from generation to generation over billions of year, complexity grew as well, first as innovations in the cells and then the quantum leap jump to multicelled organisms.

Roger you make a very erudite point which can be appreciated by a specialist, but will probably whiz by a less informed audience. A "simple reading" of your graphic would say, "Hey these things at the bottom have a lot of "cvalue," the human on the top has only a little, therefore the general trend is that since the more primitive stuff on the bottom has longer lines, the first organism must have had the longest line of all."

I think that was his original point/question. You correctly point to variance (look at the length for rotifer) of the c values, but that attribute of the data is likely to get lost by the pretty obvious trend of long lines at the bottom of the chart vs short ones at the top. 600 billion base pairs (amoeba) is greater than 3 billion base pairs (human) so with that kind of thinking, this chart unfortunately doesn't make the needed point.

The original question was "how," if all traits were'nt included in the first "alpha" organism genome, could new traits arise?"

The answer to that is 1) mutation; combined with selective advantage by expression of mutation in phenotype, resulting in accelerated expression of the advantageous gene in the larger population. and 2) Reproductive disadvantage in deleterious mutations resulting in their genes not being sustained in the population.

Mutation as we know can happen due to radiation, exposure to chemicals, and breakdown (or combination?) of genetic material; I'm sure there are other causes, but my interest was on the population side, not the molecular side. (A bad bet career wise, given the state of the research today.) But still an interest.

Thanks for trying to explain it.

hope this helps.

milo

I agree my explanation was a bit all over the place. The problem is the original question is so wrong it's hard to reconcile it with the truth.

There is so much misconception about evolution and genetics its almost impossible to explain it to people. For instance, DNA isn't a magical information storage device, it's a long molecule. A phosphate and sugar polymer bound by nucleobases to another phosphate and sugar polymer. Depending on the sequence of the nucleobases, certain sections of the DNA chain can have chemical properties unique that that particular location. These "sections" (genes) interact with proteins, RNA, etc. in the cell and cause a chain reaction that ultimately results in a particular type of complicated self sustaining chemical reaction (life).

The complexity of life isn't the result of some direct "evolution", it is more like an ice dam forming under a bridge. First a small piece of ice catches to one of the supports, than another piece of ice catches to the first piece, while this is happening, 1000s of pieces of ice are floating by and not getting caught. As the ice starts to pile up (over time), more and more ice gets caught and incorporated till eventually the river is dammed by the ice. Evolution is just happenstance spread out over billions of years. The reason why it seems so amazing to us now is because a billion years is a long time and a remarkable amount of complexity can develop simply from chance.

In my previous post I was trying to dispel two misconceptions at once (which is why I think it got real confusing). First, there is a general misconception that we are the culmination of evolution and thus we have the most complicated genome. This isn't remotely true. We are simply the most functional animal in this current world ecosystem. Secondly, there is a misconception that evolution consists of mutations to existing base pairs. That's true to a point, but there is also the addition (or subtraction) of more base pairs leading to the lengthening (or shortening) of the genome as can be seen by the wide variety of Genome lengths in the chart.

It's a horrible set of concepts to try to convey. I mean, how can you make someone understand that it took 3 billion years for single cells to develop to the point where they can become multicellular? That single celled organisms in their own way represent their own milestone in evolution to which our species development of "consciousness" pales in significance? It's just hard to get this stuff across. It is amazingly beautiful and unbelievably complexed all at the same time. Each of our cells in our body a remarkable symphony of interactions that require everything to be "just so" in order to work. The fact that it works so predictably well is staggering.

Well said. However, there IS one sentence I must take issue with:

"We are simply the most functional animal in this current world ecosystem."

In truth, apart from the taming of fire and making of tools, we have few if any advantages, and there are many animals which are demonstrably "more functional" than we are. We do not represent the pinnacle of creation, we are merely thin-skinned nearly hairless apes who don't climb trees well and who can barely outrun a decent predator on a very good day.

Yeah. Oh by the way, they finally found The Missing Link between the apes and civilized Man.

Us.

At least we can't say there's been no progress. Like, in every war we kill others in a new way.

I think that's a little cynical.....I mean, sometimes we kill each other the old ways too. It's just that that tends to get low ratings so CNN only puts the new ways of killing on tv, the newer the method, the better the ratings.

Not cynical. Dark humor.

A cynic is a person who, when she smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

By the way, I don't think CNN has yet got wind of the latest development: fly-by-wire trebuchets.

In general, if I say something is something, then I immediately out-something that something in the next sentence, I didn't really believe that that something was in fact something in the first place.

I think you already knew this, but honestly, that sentence above was so much fun to write that I figured I'd just write it anyway.

Yes, I understand. Hope you don't mind my oblique allusion to an ex-girlfriend with whom I'm having a court battle...

Our cognitive ability is our evolutionary advantage. We have no natural predators. Consider this, lions and tigers generally RUN from us. We are the most functional animal in this current ecosystem. Our genetic advantage has allowed us to construct tools that have subjugated all other animal types. It's true if we are caught without our tools and without a place to hide a tiger, lion, bear, etc could kill us, but that doesn't mean their species is in any way superior.

The fact that we have had debates on overpopulation is proof enough of our superiority, but we have become so dominant and adept we don't even really consider ourselves animals. That is telling itself. Our brains are the most lethal weapon nature has yet devised (for this ecosystem, our brains wouldn't function in some other ecosystems).

Goats do better at foraging than we do, cockroaches can withstand several times the dose of radiation we can, and thinking ourselves superior is, at bottom, a conceit of our more developed (supposedly) intellect. But how can we know the thoughts of another species when we debate over the thoughts of our own? Perhaps dolphins contemplate theoretical physics handicapped only by their lack of hands?

You don't find donkeys in antarctica, but you'll find man. You don't find roaches in the sahara, but you'll find man. In fact, aside from the deepest depths of the ocean, there isn't a region of this planet that man hasn't populated to some degree or another.

It is not a conceit to admit that we are the most successful species on Earth right now. This doesn't make us better and it doesn't mean we will always be the best. It doesn't mean our type of intelligence is the best and it doesn't mean we are in any way the culmination of evolution. It just means we are the most successful animal in the current world ecosystem, that's all.

We go through life are pretty much certain we are not going to be eaten by another animal. You can count the number of species who can say that on your hands. Bears, Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Whales, I'm sure there is more. The point is, all other species are constantly looking over their shoulder for who is gonna kill them and eat them. We live this way, not because we are the biggest or fastest, but because we are the smartest, or most inventive if smartest rubs you the wrong way (there is a valid argument to dispute the definition of smart to be biased towards mans type of intelligence).

We have no natural predators.

Each other ?

Predators, yes, but are we natural?

We are all born naked, and quickly adopt things as 'second nature'.

"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar"

Ordinarily we don't eat each other.

What?

As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. There is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they're to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up. And, finally, necrophilia is right out. Now, this expedition is primarily to investigate reports of cannibalism and necrophilia in ... this expedition is primarily to investigate reports of unusual marine life in the as yet uncharted Lake Pahoe. It is well known that we now have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the RAF who now suffer the largest casualties in this area.

And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden? Arabs?

Yours etc.,

Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.

PS: I'm the special, btw. Try me with some rice. Would you care for a glass of blood? Oh what a giveaway!

ROFL !

See, not only have you successfully countered my argument, but now, somehow, I'm thinking of Bacon again. This kind:

not this kind:

I'm confused. Why did you post a picture of Kiefer Sutherland?

No, that's a picture of a cooked bacon strip. Delicious, but not Kiefer Sutherland.

Kiefer Sutherland looks like this:

Ah. Is he kosher?

No, Roman Catholic.

Well, I suppose every man has his cross to bear.

Do you know the story of the US whaler Essex? It's sort of the plot for Moby Dick. One of the crew was a distant cousin who, having drawn the short straw, was shot and eaten. There's a family legend that a visitor to Nantucket approached an old sailor and asked if he had known Owen Coffin. The sailor replied, "Know 'im? 'ell, I et 'im!"

Some of the slower readers get a tad confused and mistakenly believe Moby Dick was some kind of venereal disease.

"First a small piece of ice catches to one of the supports, than another piece of ice catches to the first piece, while this is happening, 1000s of pieces of ice are floating by and not getting caught. As the ice starts to pile up (over time), more and more ice gets caught and incorporated till eventually the river is dammed by the ice. Evolution is just happenstance spread out over billions of years. The reason why it seems so amazing to us now is because a billion years is a long time and a remarkable amount of complexity can develop simply from chance."

It's a nice analogy, Roger, but how can I be sure this idyllic scene wasn't inspired by the current state of your office. It's a real mess, you know (I've been meaning to tell you).

Just let me know when it's convenient to bring in the HazMat team. We're very accommodating.

From time to time I hang around with biology types and I heard a parasitologist make the remark (I suspect he stole it from somebody else) that man is little more than a convenient storage and transport system for bacteria.

Cheers

I can certainly tell you that public schools should be classified as disease vectors, I kid you not.

Actually, all that we are is the Gamete's system for making more Gametes.

milo

Reading that in conjunction with C-value enigma may be useful. It's only a wiki-link, but may be useful for anyone delving further. I shall crawl back under my rock .

Very well said, Roger.

The wording in wiki is somewhat 'iffy'. I shall move from my rock, and sit upon the Steps of Sophistication whilst I ponder it all.

Rodan would be proud, but we ate him.

(Not this one)