Sayonara

Shouldn't I be killed when my superweapon overloads, or by a duplicitous subordinate, or eaten by my pet beast? You obviously haven't read the evil overlord guide.

Yup.

Blike.

I know you're not, but I am.

What do you mean "being killed"? And like I'm going to let YT get into my evil lair, c'mon.

I like the way nobody has bothered with "Who the hell has fancy dress parties with the theme 'Colonials and Natives' in this day and age? WTF is with that?"

Changing the attribution for a quote doesn't mean the person said it.

If you want to communicate in English, use "colour".

It's against the adsense rules for an account holder to solicit clicks, so "no comment"

Good argument (although with decreasing resources and increasing numbers of cells, there's an obvious adaptive solution.)

Can't I be the flaming sword?

Answer "not really, or at least not until you have lots of members". As Jordie said, the per-forum permissions can be a real bitch, especially when you're trying to work out which permissions (user, group or forum) take precedence.

Perhaps you sleeping in the day all the scientists sat down and decided that new proofs would change the current models.

"Duck Tape" is a brand of duct tape. Makes you think, huh?

Unless it's a reply to a Creationist, obviously.

Not of that nature, no. When did Derwentside get moved to Pittsburgh?

I believe it's a matter of minutes for HIV.

As usual a larger volume to surface area ratio will slow down the rate at which conditions in the spilled blood approach those of the surrounding environment, so the larger the globule of blood, the longer the virus will survive in it. If the blood was sprayed from the body, it would obviously be many smaller globules with larger surface area to volume ratios, so the virus would be quickly killed in that case.

In most cases there's no simple answer for why one animal lives longer than another, because the life history of the species is shaped by dozens (if not hundreds) of factors over many generations.

^

I haven't paraphrased anyone, whether in or out of context. I said that your first response to this thread was ambiguous and unhelpful, and I stand by it. Please try to keep the big bad glib out of the science threads, and in the politics threads where it belongs.

If nothing ever died naturally, ecology would be a hell of a lot more violent.

To answer your question, viruses are said to become 'inactive' or 'inert' when they cease to function in a way that will allow them to behave normally. HIV is (as has been mentioned) a fragile virus with a very narrow range of environmental conditions in which it can survive without being damaged. What actually happens to a virus on contact with air depends very much on the virus in question.

"You can't kill a virus" != "viruses aren't alive". You aren't making a lot of sense.

Assuming you're in the "viruses are not alive" school of thought, and not all immunologists or virologists are. "You can't kill a virus" as a response to someone who may not know that viruses are on the alive/not alive border is ambiguous at best.