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No. Everybody should be skeptical toward their religion.

That's demonstrably false, but makes a snappy sound byte. Most religions place their deity at the top, and then rank all the pious in order of worthiness, with church leaders high on the totem pole, church patrons below them, regular church members below them, members of false religions are further down, atheists are down there too, and everyone else in the world they don't like somewhere below that. Why should anyone respect a hierarchy that judges them disrespectfully, that doesn't take their humanity into account but instead berates them for it, using humanity as a synonym for "flawed" and "weak" and "sinful"? Or lack thereof.

Then you either misunderstood me, or perhaps it is my own fault and I gave off the wrong vibes here. This thread started off on the topic of UAPs, and how these may or may not be of extraterrestrial origin. We then spoke about how probable and improbable it is that such civilisations exists, followed by some general comments on their possible motivations for coming here to visit us (or not). I then stated that I am personally partial towards the Dark Forest scenario, and this was meant as a possible solution to the Fermi paradox, since, in the absence of further data, it is one of the few conjectures that has at least some scientific grounding (ref game theory). Several aspects of DF were then discussed in more detail, including how pre-emptive strikes across interstellar distances could be practically implemented - my aim here was simply to show that this cannot be ruled out on technological grounds. Please take careful note of the highlighted bit above. The entire discussion was about DF as a solution to the Fermi paradox, which, in my opinion, is a valid discussion topic on a science forum. I also stated that I am partial to this particular solution, and I meant this in the context of this solution as opposed to other possible solutions of the paradox. I did not imply that, on a personal level, I somehow advocate violence, mass destruction or genocide. Under no circumstances have I ever personally condoned, nor will I ever condone, any such acts - and quite frankly, I am astonished that someone would have understood my posts here as being indicative of my advocating genocide. So, just to make this perfectly clear: on an ethical and personal level, I find the DF scenario to be abhorrent and frightening, and would gladly rule it out as a possibility if I could; this, however, is not a valid argument against this scenario, since a) we can’t know what kind of - if any - ethical systems alien civilisations would abide by, and b) in a scenario such as DF, acting ethically might seriously compromise your prospects of survival, so even a moral civilisation may still choose to prioritise survival over all other considerations. In such contexts we need to be able to have difficult conversations at times, even if they go against our sensitivities; and more importantly, we need to resist our natural tendency to assume that alien species must necessarily be subject to similar psycho-ethical motivators as ourselves. What I advocate in our present state of ignorance is caution, since we have no way of knowing who or what is out there, and how they might relate to us; hence I find it unwise to loudly proclaim our presence and location through sheer carelessness, which is unfortunately what we are doing right now (and I don’t just mean radio silence, which is only a small part of this). If a direct encounter of some kind does happen (inadvertently or otherwise), then I would advocate every possible effort at peaceful communication - but this may prove extremely difficult, due to the constraints placed upon us by the laws of physics, and also the compatibility problem. Note again that all of this is purely conjecture. We’ve talked about this earlier on this thread. By not advertising your presence, or at least not your exact location. There really isn’t any other effective defence, since you can’t know what precise form such an attack would take. This has already been discussed earlier. This has also been discussed already. Population growth is not one of the three basic assumptions in DF. It’s too late for this, since we’ve been leaking EM signals for the past century or so. On the other hand, as someone has pointed out quite rightly, it would take some extraordinarily sensitive equipment to detect these at distances larger than a few LY. Well, I would think that they are either too far away, that they don’t use electromagnetism as the basis for their technology, or that they are just far enough away so that their signals are already here, but they are too faint to be distinguishable from the radio background. Or, perhaps, there just simply isn’t anyone out there who’s on par with or ahead of us. It is at least conceivable that we could, in fact, be the most technologically advanced civilisation in this galaxy - which is another possible solution to the Fermi paradox.

I'd invert your logic, for better effect: Every religion should respect everybody.

In short, "just-so stories."

Absolutely. The problem with these types of questions is that they are very difficult to test. Therefore, narratives alone are pretty much worthless, which is why folks advocating thermoregulation created some models to check whether they make sense (and there has been some back and forth). But as always, the situation is highly multifactorial and a lot of things can play a role, including stochastic effects (e.g. drift) or something that occurred during that time, but for which we won't find any fossil evidence for. For example, one could speculate that at some point there was some extremely severe skin disease or parasite where somehow loss of functional hair provided a benefit. We cannot prove it either way, but clearly it does require some level of substantiation. Similarly, sexual selection has been mentioned by some, but as these also do not leave records, it is not a terrible useful model.

The two ways I've tried to this, in neither case from scratch I have to say, were reproofing a Barbour jacket with wax ( a tricky process involving melting a tin of proprietary wax in hot water and applying it with a cloth) and spray proofing a raincoat with Scotchgard, which I think is a silicone. It sounds as though with your gloves going the Scotchgard route would be the thing to try. I found it needed several applications to be fully effective and even then was not 100%, but it's a lot better than nothing.

Boy I completely misinterpreted what this post was about!

I live in tropics, and we have rainy season. The rainy season is wet, but certainly not cold. I often sit under a tree and enjoy the sound and the smell of rain.

Imagine you're ten, you have a fever, and you have to live out in the open for a week in Arica in the hot and dry season, covered in hair and no way to cool off. How do you think you would do? We all have imaginations. Unfortunately they don't really mean anything unless we've got some evidence to back it up.

Let me see if I'm following this so far: you got a coin sooty and this will get you into outer space. If you send me five hundred dollars, I will propel you into a higher plane of wisdom.

I've heard that the constipation ward in the local hospital need someone who is good at working things out with a pencil. Good luck !! (the old ones are the best)

And do their kids sleep outside in the rain, in the cold rainy season? Some of your posting is sadly lacking in logic.

Regarding this, I want to add something important and related to the original topic: In my opinion, the most probable and viable choice for an advanced civilization is to send inteligent robots in all directions, aiming all the habitable planets. The robots should be able to repair and duplicate themselves and their ship, in order to resist the whole trip and to diverge to multiple "targets" that should appear in their way. Once arrived at a habitable planet they may "seed" it with DNA from the original planet, in order to make it habitable for the people who sent them, or, if there is already life on the planet, to monitor it, for scientific, defensive and entertainment purposes (data feeds sent home). Such robots may be sent billion years ago and we may have several observers/"creators"(?) here ... If the original planet become overpopulated or in some kind of danger, the people may be transported to the "seeded" planets, possibly using hibernation. Sorry. I read it (page 4) after I posted my message. Ok, I believe you 😃 but you elaborated too much on the offensive point of view and never mentioned how we could defend from the specific strikes you envisioned. It sounded much of an offensive thinking than defensive. I never expected something like that from you, or from any human involved in science, because when you understand how we get here (theory of evolution + all Earth history), it's hard to even think, not to mention discuss with such ease, about wiping out the whole life, including intelligent, from a planet.