mistermack

Well spotted, I think that's nailed it. I was tempted to call fake, but it does look real. I was leaning towards somebody faking it using real components, but wasn't convinced.

Without doing any research, I would say that it wouldn't be heat that would be the problem, but radiation. Even in the central bulge, the nearest star is likely to be just a tiny speck in the sky, the distances are so vast. So direct light irradiation from neighboring stars wouldn't be a problem, but I vaguely remember reading that damaging cosmic radiation levels would be too high for life to exist.

The carbon problem is only a small part of the damage the current population levels are doing to the planet and it's genome. The main ones are habitat destruction and species extinction. While I'm fond of humans, I don't value them so highly that they are worth the extinctions they are causing. We are far to self-centered putting our own comforts over the existence of others. The only way to reverse the damage is to reduce our numbers, and it really pisses me off that hardly anybody gives a toss. As if making a difference is impossible, when it's actually highly possible. I personally put extinction of species way above human rights, because there are eight billion of us, we are in no danger, whereas things like Amur Leopard and Tigers are most definitely on the way to extinction, it's just a matter of time. Given the power, I would make sure that every country had a falling birth rate. If religions were against it, I'd ban the religions, and introduce compulsory birth control education in the countries that need it. Human rights vs extinctions? No contest in my book. However, none of that will happen. The population will hit 11 or 12 billion, and tens of thousands of species will go extinct. But most of us won't be here then, so who cares ?

Not very likely

That would make more sense, so long as you could carry the right ones, and find the place where they would be able to survive and reproduce. But what would be the point? Why would you go to that trouble, for a payoff that will take billions of years to arrive?

Not very likely.

Eight, Eight, Eight, I have Eight in the room. Any advance on Eight ? Do I hear nine ? ? It's only a handful of countries that are driving population expansion. Many other cultures have shrinking populations without any sort of compulsion. Just make birth control free and available to all, but especially to the countries with expanding populations. Of course, new inventions in birth control methods would make a big difference. The forecasts are that population growth will eventually end, so the experts think it will happen naturally in the end and top out around 11 billion, and then start dropping. There are plenty of ways to try to accelerate that process.

What's the most important thing ? Ask God, he might know. "God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply." That's what he wanted. Unfortunately, he didn't leave instructions for what to do AFTER all that. The multiplying has gone ballistic and now there are seven billion of us. We are filling the Earth and subduing it. We are ruling over every living creature that moves. But God obviously forgot about viruses, bacteria and fungal infectious agents. My own "important thing" would be to rein in the multiplying, get it back to five billion and falling.

Especially the ones that kill people for showing disrespect.

WD40 is supposed to repel moisture. And on the subject of fishing, I used to have a tin of stuff to coat a fly line with, supposed to make it float on the water. Nowadays, they are probably manmade fibre manufactured to float. Petroleum jelly is supposed to repel moisture too. It's used on leather as a water repellent. Shoe polish is another option. I use it on a pair of thin fabric gloves that I use in summer for motorcyling. It works well if you apply it regularly.

I think the timing is not clear at all. The evidence is generally for other stuff, and needs interpretation which ends up as a matter of opinion. There are so many possibilities of how fur was lost that it's not going to be possible to nail it down without some new kind of evidence. Was it sudden, or gradual? Did it happen just once, or several times in seperate populations? Was sex an influence? My own instinct says that it happened early, millions of years before fire use, along with a gradual change in climate and environment. Along with the new situation, where our ancestors were habitually walking upright, and their hands were freed to carry stuff. But that's just guesswork. On the subject of increased nerves feeding hairs, maybe it's a question of leverage. A relatively big hair might give more nerve stimulation than a small fine one, for the same touch event, so the nerves increased to compensate. Just a possibility. On lion cubs, their fur obviously does the job, as they generally survive the weather. It's not really similar to wet clothing, it's evolved to not get soaked. There are oil glands to improve moisture repelling, and I believe they have a layer of finer fur that stays dry under an outer layer of coarser fur that guides the water off the body. That's a common model, but I don't know the actual details of lion cub fur.

Interestingly, the only mammal that I've been able to find, that is in our size range and hairless, that doesn't live in caves or underground, is a weird pig in Sulawesi, the Babirusa, the one with tusks that grow in a huge curve back into their heads. They are mostly hairy, except the population in North Sulawesi, which is mostly hairless. I looked up the Sulawesi climate, and the minimum temperature is 23/24 degrees over the whole year. It's a humid island climate, never more than 20 miles from the sea.

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

Well, in the case of humans, you only need to die once, in the first dozen years of life, and your genes will probably be lost to existence. Imagine you're ten, you've got the flu, and you have to live out in the open for a week in Africa in the cold rainy season, naked with no clothes or shelter. How do you think you would do? There are about 6,400 species of mammal. I can think of less than 20 that don't have a fur coat. And those are either huge, or live underground or in caves. So why do YOU think the 6,380 species all maintain the fur? And of course, you can multiply that, if you add the birds. Feathers do much the same job in the protection against the elements. Birds and mammals are both warm blooded, that's the link.

No

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)

Imagine you're a lion living in the Serengeti. On the hottest days of the year, you see them visibly suffering in the heat, in obvious distress. And yet, they are still wearing a fur coat. They don't need the fur coat for most of the time, but they can't take it off. Why are they put through that ordeal by evolution? It's because on the odd occasion, the weather is so bad that they need a fur coat. Maybe just ten days out of the year, who knows? But ten days in a row might be enough to kill them, or kill their cubs at any rate. So they are forced to suffer in the heat, to be able to see out the worst weather. Lion cubs are especially furry, compared to the adults. Because little bodies chill quicker. From an evolutionary standpoint, lose your cubs to bad weather, and you're species is on it's way out. If only the lions could take the fur coat off when it's roasting hot, and just put it on when it's freezing cold and pissing rain, then they would have the best of both worlds. That's what we've achieved by making shelters and using skins, (or whatever is available for covering). You can sit out the worst of it, and then emerge and endure the heat without having to wear a fur coat. The date of clothing arriving is a bit of a red herring. It's shelter that I'm talking about, whatever the means. Anything that keeps the rain off. Skins, leaves, grasses whatever. Clothes would probably come much later.

But that really makes no sense at all. How did those furless children (and their parents) cope with a downpour, or a cold wet night without a coat of fur? The list of hairless mammals is extremely short, and they are generally very big, like elephants, rhinos and hippos. The list of mammals that are NOT hairless is absolutly enormous. In Africa, a lot of mammals suffer in the heat, but they still retain the fur. Why? Because they need it when the weather turns nasty. Our ancestors would have experienced the same problem. How could they evolve hairlessness, without some artificial protection against the elements?

True. Even an Orangutan can work that out. 😄

It might be a bit extreme, but where's the evidence it doesn't work? A friend of mine worked in Saudi some years ago, and currency traders would sit on the pavement, with great wads of cash of different currencies surrounding them. Nobody ever robbed them. And one murder doesn't mean that people aren't deterred by the death penalty. (although I'm against it) It might have deterred 19 out of 20, how can you be sure?

If I saw trash around a bin, I'd suspect animals. People are hardly going to carry their litter up to a bin, and then drop it next to it. That's why I support hefty fines. Hopefully, it would gradually change expectations.

I think the persistence hunt hypothesis is one of the more way-out hypotheses about human evolution, a bit like the aquatic ape. People get fixated on the notion, and start interpreting everything one way, towards the desired story. I saw the David Attenboro documentary that featured it, and some of the claims made were ridiculous. And tellingly, he also pushed the aquatic ape notion when he had the chance. The San hunters in his film were all wearing modern trainers, and carrying plastic water bottles. Why wouldn't they? And even with those aids, there was only one man who could actually run down the Kudu. And I was a bit suspicious of how that was done for the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o But anyway, take away the shoes, and let's see them run down a Kudu. In reality, the peristence element of hunting probably just involved walking down an injured animal, and that probably came very late in our history, after the invention of the throwing spear. Wound an animal, and then follow the trail of blood and tracks. No need to run. I think it's most likely that the sweat glands evolved after and because we lost our fur coat. No point in evolving new sweat glands, if the evaporation is restricted by hair. The sweat will just drip off the fur. But once the fur has gone, then the sweat glands could bestow a real benefit. Losing the fur I believe was down to building shelters, and carrying skin cloaks. Why does a Chimp need fur? Not for normal daytime keeping warm. It's for cold wet nights. Same as most animals in hot countries. The fur stops rain contacting the skin, so it's some protection against sudden chills in a downpour, or cold wet nights. Humans started making shelters and carrying skins, so they got the protection against the worst weather. Then, when the sun comes out, they came out from the shelter, threw off the cloak, and had no need at all for a covering of hair. So the benefit of losing the hair was better cooling, and also less hair for parasites to cling to. Once you have replaced the benefits of fur with shelters and skins, you are just left with the drawbacks, so the coat of fur disappeard over time.

I don't get it ? A blue ball means a ball that is blue when lit with white light. And in a dark room, it won't cast any shadow.

Was there a point? I stopped looking for a point in your posts a long long time ago !

Of course I was. I was just reliving what I felt like at the time. And I'm not exactly slim myself so I can't lecture people about weight. What was really maddening was that the kid littered on purpose. Not mindlessly but to be a "rebel". It was obvious because he laughed when the other kid shouted at him. But you can do that in this country, because there is no comeback at all. Maybe in the odd city centre, there are bylaws that get enforced now and again, but kids would just get a warning, nothing more. I would make parents liable for littering fines incurred by their kids. He could charge what he likes. A patent only lasts 20 years.