Useful Definitions

Would you consider the "Tower of Brahma" as a measure of the lifetime of the Universe ?

I was introduced to it as the Towers of Hanoi!.

No. To move the tower to another, pre-determined peg, one must plan in advance. The Universe does not, it evolves, it follows where the physics take it, it does not change purposefully.

Isn't the pinnacle of evolution self determination???...OOOOuuuummmmm

Your "OOOOuuuummmmmm" suggests a satirical meaning; but for the record, evolution does not have goals or pinnacles. Nonetheless, evolution started from low complexity, and higher complexity is ever possible.

There is an Amazon Discussions thread on "Can Evolution Produce a Supreme Being?" that may be interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-forum/science/ref=cm_cd_search_res_ti?ie=UTF8&cdMsgNo=1&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx1WQBMA22G06IQ&cdMsgID=Mx30KNZ00DZE9UV#Mx30KNZ00DZE9UV

I don't agree with that necessarily, evolution is driven by goals, goals to control one's destiny, once that has been achieved destiny becomes self determined and evolution at a crossroads, one may chose to continue to evolve or devolve...Just because time is passing, that doesn't mean evolution automatically continues, change maybe, but evolution, not necessarily....imo

I think you do not understand the scientific concept of evolution. Evolution is passive. To deem it purposeful takes an act of faith.

I don't think you understand, that we are made of the same stuff the stars and planets are made of....I don't think you understand that intelligence is a product of evolution...If you are not controlling your evolutionary path, then who or what is??

You need to make up your mind! Is intelligence the product of evolution? or is evolution the product of intelligence? We, humanity, did nothing to reach our present state, we arrived here because our forbears survived random trials of flood, drought, ice ages etc.; catastrophic upsets of the world, earthquake, tsunami, bodies from out of space to the extent that they were able to breed. Humanity didn't, nor does it now, control these events, and we only partially work for our survival from them.

Evolution is the result of Natural Selection, selective breeding is Unnatural Selection and not evolutionary.

You don't seem able to grasp the concepts here....I clearly stated that intelligence is a product of evolution(imo). The second point was that when a certain level of intelligence was achieved, evolution becomes self determined, a series of conscious, sentient choices...We as humans, with the tool of intelligence, have the ability to master and control our destinies...Do we have it yet? No....But we are on the path to achieve it...Natural selection is based on instinct, as we become more intelligent we rely less on instinct and more on conscious decisions based on a more societal based criteria...and I might also state that selective breeding is the definition of natural selection...

We are each, not listening to the other. I apologize.

You are using the most general sense of evolution, one that includes natural and unnatural selection; whereas I used it in the context of natural selection only. In my readings of the Darwinian world, most authorities exclude directed selection.

Here is the wiki

Being Indian (where zero was invented), i naturally go by the Indian name. We are pre-eminent mathematicians as the whole world knows. ^{_{No reflection on the Vietnamese or the French.}}

i still believe that this is a very real measure of time, at the other end of the spectrum from the Bananosecond (check out Tornado's link)

Do hands and feet count?

How about these?

Origins of Measurements - FactMonster.com

The beard-second is defined as the length an average beard grows in one second....5 to 10 nm

A donkeypower is said to be 1/3 horsepower...

1 milliHelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship.....wait for it..

Here are a few others.

Time keeping here is best likened to wearing an elastic band on your wrist and calling that a watch.

Appointment times are conceptual not concrete.

The smallest measurable unit of time is the "New York Second" defined as the diference in time between the lights changing to green the driver behind sounding their horn.

Until recently, anyway, evolution was only biological, and not purposeful. However, with plant and animal breeding, and now genetic engineering, human purpose has become part of the mix.