Radical Edward

yes, they're called men.

symbiants don't kill one another really. If you want a look at symbiosis (of a fairly simple order) then look at the little birds that live on the hides of elephants and hippos. There are also some fungi that live around the roots of certain trees which have a more complex relationship with their hosts. Indeed us humans have symbiotic partners in the form of bacteria such as e-coli which live in our gut.

indeed. Symbiosis is two organisms living together for mutual benefit.

the deer don't keep limits on their population, it's just that when there are more deer there are more wolves, which eat more deer so there are less deer and some wolves die. There isn't any symbiosis or 'instinctive equilibrium' occurring as such, it's just because the deer have a predator. humand don't have a predator, if we did, there would be loads of them in china and india munching away on people, and not so many in wales, and hence the population of china and india would drop, and wales would incraese.

no, as they grew to large numbers, predators killed them off, we don't have any predators. we also have agriculture, which allows us to artificially increase the resources available to us. the fact that the planet isn't really big enough to cope with our numbers doesn't really have anything to do with symbiosis, it is tjust the mthods we use are a tad effective. CFC's you mean? and I do believe that hole is shrinking too.

I know those theoretical physicists are an odd bunch, but here is an interesting one... mirror matter - a kind of matter that is pretty much the same as our own, but not. heh. see what you think: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2463143.stm

I shall check my girlfriend on a daily basis.

largely because they have the control. While women would probably be more likely to negotiate ofver issues like land and property, when it came to Ideology, I'm not so sure. Looking at areas like palesting, even the women seem pretty militant when it comes to it. Another aspect would be female bitchiness... something that doesn't really exist to the same extent in men. Cliques would still form, and conflict would probably still end up taking place. anyway, it has drifted off the point. I don't think we have really come that far from evolution.. There was a very interesting program on the BBC lately about instinct by Prof. Robert Winston, which was fascinating. So many of the things that we do are a result of thousands of years of living in the wild. While intellectually we like to think we have advanced, In terms of general instinct and so on we definitely havent, and this would probably make a single-sex society that used an artificial method of reproduction completely unworkable.

indeed. I have a couple of little things on my neck and ears (no - not the rest of me ha ha) that are entirely useless, but haven't been bred out of the family for generations so far as I can tell. Who knows, in my offspring they could be the key to vast cosmic intelligence

more war seems to be caused by religion and ideology as far as I can see.

owt that's not rap. I even listen to J-Pop, and that is pretty extreme stuff. heh.

exactly, and this is one of the arguments aainst excessive use of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections.... say you have a bacteria which develops some resistance to an antibiotic and it is sitting there, say in someone's throat. If they don't take antibiotics and just let the illness run it's course with the body doing all the work, then it is likely that particular bacteria will not have any distinct advantage over it's neighbours, and will not survive long enough, and produce enough offspring to become an infectios agent for someone else. so it dies out. However, if you flood the system with an antibiotic killing all the others, then suddently it is the only one that can survive and breed, and hence that resistant bacteria will be the one that spreads. Pretty much the same can be said of any other variation.. they are useless unless there is some evolutionary forces at work, so something like sexual reproduction may be a great advantage when it comes to dealing with things like infection, since a particular organism with say a resistance to a virus or somesuch would spread it's genes around, rather than produce almost identical offspring. In effect, advantageous mutations in several different organisms can be mixed and spread around, producing an organism with a multiplicity of advantageous characteristics, which would probably not have come about purely by asexul reproduction alone, giving these particular organisms a distinct advantage over their less well equipped brethren.

he's talking about it in the sense of mathematical theorems, I don't think he really implied what I thought.. I could quote whole passages, but there wouldn't really be much point

I don't think war is that likely. Saddam Hussein is a bit clever for that I feel, since the US Govt. has made it apparent that it is looking for an excuse to kill him, which wasn't a particularly bright move strategically, as it means that if he is about to be killed, he might just do something realy nuts like inflame the whole of the middle east by launching missiles at Israel..... at least that's what I'd do if I were in his position. It's been quite fascinating though, looking at thins whole conflict between the US/West and the middle east from the perspective of Sun Tsu

I've just been reading The Emperor's New Mind by Rger Penrose (A damn fine book, and one you should read) and it mentions a theorem put forward by a chap called Godel. Basically, what he showed was, any precise system of mathematical axioms and rules of procedure, provided that it is broad enough to contain descriptions of somple arithmeic propositions, and provided that it is free from contradiction must contain some statements that are neither provable nor disprovable by the means allowed within the system. This got me thinking about the universe generally, which can be represented as a mathematical set of rules... would the same apply? would there be things that can not be proved within the system, or is my understanding of this theorem somewhat flawed? I haven't really been able to look it up anywhere, and if anyone could mention a decent source, that would be most helpful

blike : not nescessarily. sometimes an individual can be more important than several people, depending on the situation.

think of the probabilities in terms of opacity, instead of using another axis to describe them. or think in 4 spatial dimensions. your choice.

for a slightly less professional looking website. look here: http://www.lsr.ph.ic.ac.uk/~plenio/lecture.html beware though, this one is pretty heavy, as it is a 'foundations of quantum mechanics' course. - not for the faint hearted.

I strongly hope you've read Sun Tsu, the Art of War. It's an absolutely fascinating read, and it's a shame more generals don't take heed of it's thirteen chapters. Furthermore it is applicable in a metaphorical sense to many other things, from business to life itself.

I wonder if the mechanism could be in some way be related to the takeup of mitochondria.

Yup. It's called fluoresence lifetime imaging, and the people who are developing it are doing so in a room just down the hall.

Ju-Jitsu, Aikido and Kung Fu... drawing cartoons, reading cartoons, reading books, watching anime, walking, going to the pub, learning Japanese and German, Medieval History, Politics, Programming.... and other stuff. not sleeping though. I get about 6hrs a night... too busy to waste time

aman wins a cookie . did you look that up?

have you thought about the twins paradox?

I thought it was something to do with the two halves of the brain not talking to one another properly.