J'Dona

I'm afraid you might get a very stiff response if you say things like that on the forums... If it's so simple to make, then don't you think one of the millions of others in the past who've tried to build a perpetual motion machine would have found it?

A few more things about A-Levels: You can choose whatever A-Levels you want, although which university courses are available to you depend on which ones you get. Students who want to do a degree in, say, biochemistry, would probably want to do biology, chemistry, physics and maths A-Levels (typically four subjects are taken in the first year, called the AS-Level, and one subject is dropped in the second A2 year, though this isn't always the case). Individual A-Levels are split into different modules, some of which are flexible and some of which aren't. For example, if you were to do chemistry at A-Level, you would have to do all of modules 1 through 6 as there are no others; 1 to 3 in the first year and 4 to 6 in the second (or in this case, 4 to 5 because module 6 for chemistry is coursework and a multiple-choice exam). Some A-Levels are flexible; Fruther Maths requires an additional 6 modules from the 6 in a normal A-Level, but there are many modules to choose from, so on top of a few standard ones the student may choose the extras. And about universities... they don't have major or minor courses in the UK. Taking a degree in a certain subject means you only learn from material actually related to it, which makes sense. A degree in biochemistry means you spent the whole course learning about things to do with biochemistry and nothing else.

I know it was posted almost a year ago, but I very much agree. Recently (last year again) there was a case when a very wealthy man was donating about half a million quid to a particular Oxford college for some years. Then his son applied to it. The son was rejected because he wasn't good enough; the father cut funding and that was that. Just goes to show that these places aren't just accepting the morbidly affluent. And Oxbridge does indeed cost the same as most other universities at the moment, unless youre a foreign student. And then there's been all the noise lately about foreign students being favoured over UK students for that very reason...

Well... dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. Human civilization has only been around on the order of thousands.

J'Dona pleads no! T'was a way to stay the fray, And keep in the flow

Bloodhound loses head! Is there something we have missed? Like a point to thread?

Ah, so it controls things like the heart and lungs, so that the person stays alive? Sorry, hadn't read that part. Um... I'm not sure what they'd think. If you think about it, to them they would be the only thing in the universe, so as far as they're concerned they might be God. They just couldn't do anything... or maybe they could; they would have no concept of movement, sight, sound, smell, touch, and so forth, but only thought, so in their own mind they could do whatever they wished through thought, whatever it might be (I've certainly no idea). That's actually a rather interesting philosphical situation. It's either that or they'd go insane. I don't think humans would cope too well cooped up in their mind like that, because of instincts running against it; they'd be trying to do things that they couldn't and they might get confused. Or I'm just not being objective enough.

If it was cut off from input, wouldn't the person not know when they needed to breathe, or how, and then fall asleep and die from oxygen deprivation?

Sayonara cubed, Doomy Doom is done to spam, I obey the fist!

Phi for All bears wit, The Official Jokes Section, Exemplifies this

Macro at my thumb, No new posts in last minute, Hit F5 again

I don't think radiation from Jupiter wouldn't really be an issue anyway, at least not for the people on the base; all the Galilean moons are in synchronous orbit, so the far sides will always face away from Jupiter and its radiation, so a base built there should be fine.. It would still be a problem for transports, of course, and Callisto is the furthest out fo the three... though Europa might prove better as a base in other ways if it does have liquid water underneath its surface.

Aside from the Sun, I might say Zeta Reticuli because of all the sci-fi hype around it. If not that, then maybe Alpha Centauri (the three together) for all the hype around them. Or Barnard's Star, being one of the fastest moving, closest, and probably dimmest stars that they know of.

My brother's done some of these; he's at level 8 so far, which is apparantly at the level of most corporate security.

The difference between humans and chimpanzees is roughly equivalent to the difference between horses and donkeys. The latter can breed to creates a new species; they're called mules. Mules are sterile, as are human-chimp hyrbids, or "humanzees" (I forgot to mention that in my earlier post, so that would obviously have an effect how evolution progresses after that point, i.e. it stops). It has something to do with the number of chromosones, but I'm not at all informed in genetics so I don't know why. Also, according to the link I gave, humans have 46 chromosones whereas chimpanzees have 48. I'm not sure how a difference of two can still allow for a genetic makeup that is thought to be 99% similar, so I'd imagine that the chromocones are just slight variants.

Didn't know you had a livejournal! I'd post mine in retaliation (or submission, given the quality), but instead I'll play a wild card and post my sister's: Kenket's Journal Unfortunately, she checks her livejournal weblob stats every day or so, and she'll trace this link and find this post, and then I'm messed up.

Erm, yeah... I noticed that after I found the link and posted it. :/ I forgot to change the post...

Nope, just science fiction. Or cheap blog fodder with lame prose and zero plot or character development. Whichever is better thought of, really (probably the latter). I've given the link through PM's to a few people here, but I hope to god that they haven't read much because I really don't like it, as I havenm't been able to get any feedback to improve various points, because I told so few people about it. Hopefully the community will help there; I'll post the URL for that when it's up though.

Interestingly enough, they think that humans and chimpanzees can procreate. It's just that nobody will, although there have been rumours: http://www.rotten.com/library/cryptozoology/humanzee/ If they did, then they'd produce a human-chimpanzee hybrid, thus leading to another form of evolution by introducing a new species.

Certainly humans have evolved; just look at the changes in human physical features between different areas on the planet, over only a short time since the first humans moved out of Africa. People might not be evolving toward anything particularly adapted to one area now that travel across the world is widespread, but they're still evolving. It's just not been very long. I'm confused though, why would sentience necessarily stop that?

Will I be breaking some law if I make a post here with more than one line? No seriously, when dave said: "Bloody English summers" I had to laugh, because usually that's "Bloody English weather" and associated with rain. But then it does rain in the summer here in the UK. It snows, actually, or at least it does more than in winter (about twice so far this summer, for a few seconds each time). So far the summer's been going all right for me. I spent the first few weeks writing bad fiction and posting it on a livejournal, the URL for which I'm not giving anyone. Just in the last week though, I've started setting up a livejournal community for other writers, where writers can come and share stories and feedback on a regular basis (was just writing up the rules and FAQ now). Also, four days ago I started my first job. It's at a bookstore where I can spend most of the time reading because there are no customers in, and in two days I earned £35 (about $60), which is about two years' worth at my previous income: £15 per annum through birthday money. I'm planning to blow the new money on t-shirts and then save it in a back account until I can spend it on a laptop or some such, or more likely forget about it and discover a few decades later that I'm several thousand pounds richer. Or I'll re-read "The Richest Man in Babylon" and do something smart with it.

Whoa. I'm with dave on feelings about that. How could they ever think of going back earlier than Enterprise? They must be trying to find out how far the fanboys are willing to go before they can be sure about sacking the creativity department. What's it going to be about? Zephram Cochrane? World War Three? The Eugenics War?

For a pretty complete description of the different problems associated with being in zero-gravity for a lenght of time, take a look at the last half of this article: http://www.permanent.com/s-centri.htm Some might be adapted to if you were born in space, but humans evolved to live in a 1-g environment so I wouldn't have thought that they'd last as long... the list includes: fluid redistribution fluid loss electrolyte imbalances cardiovascular changes red blood cell loss muscle damage bone damage hypercalcemia immune system changes interference with medical procedures vertigo and spatial disorientation space adaptation syndrome loss of exercise capacity degraded sense of smell and taste weight loss flatulence facial distortion changes in posture and stature changes in coordination In relation to the original post though, the main reason that people wouldn't want to live forever is that they would get bored. I suppose that with the field of genetic doctoring open after one or a few more generations (cloning to pass the time) you cold explore all sorts of lives and not become bored for a long time (change gender! Even species!) Of course, you'd have to think of the ethical side of it, and the political. Only the rich could afford these procedures, and I think we can all figure out that having rich, immortal people running the poorer, mortal ones isn't an ideal solution, if you know what I mean. It's not something that should just be ignored though. The first people to become clinically immortal in the future could very well be alive today (if I sound dark, please don't take it that way. I'm not taking it seriously either)

Ah, I thought that that was just the "energy" of a particular photon. I didn't realise that the energy of a photon was the kinetic energy... Now that I think about it, photons have momentum, and yet classically momentum requires mass and photons have none, so my previous point was clearly rubbish. I need to think more before I post. I think I'll pull out of this one.