Sayonara

A colour is only a label we assign to a mix of light. #000 is just as valid as #FFF.

Sophos!

What?

No it isn't. I don't see how the excerpt from John Busch's paper leads you to that conclusion, because the evolutionary ascension of one species does not necessarily require the "end of evolution" for any other.

Mods can only edit comments (IE, if someone says something really offensive). No idea about admins but it seems reasonable to assume they would have godlike powers

In PHP you use the function nl2br(), there's possibly a similar function for Perl here: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/pod/perlfunc.html#Perl-Functions-by-Category

Sephiroth? It takes a while to beat him down, but it's doable. You need to really think about who gets what magic and items etc, and go in prepared. It also helps to have that repeat/retaliate materia (can't remember what it's called) and the Knights of the Round Guardian Force. They aren't easy to get hold of but they're in the strategy guides.

Quite. Admittedly we are a bit removed from the situation and don't have houses beset on all sides by ravenous forest-dwellers, but it seems to me that it's a problem with the house, not the bears. OK, keep a gun as a last resort (given a choice in the matter, I'd rather see a bear dead than a human), but don't make it the only layer between you and them.

That's impossible to answer without any reference to the scripts you are using.

Especially when there are people like me watching like a hawk. A HAWK I tell you.

Basically yes. But I do suggest googling for microbiology safety resources.

lol +1 reference

Perhaps "inevitable" is a better choice of word than "certainty".

Well ok, 1 is still a probability. For instance (this is a horribly macroscopic example but right atm I can't go gallivanting around doing research) the evolutionary events bringing about the migration of a species or family from sea to land would most likely be transitory and a simple matter of chance. However they will necessitate future changes in physiology. Such changes are not due to evolutionary chance, but to selective pressure.

It's not Crichton verbatim - it's one of the characters from The Lost World doing the "I'll get us through this" precursor speech. I forget who.

My point was that evolution is not just a series of probabilities. This is of course approaching the problem with the advantage of hindsight, but there are plenty of examples of pure chance determining the next course for an evolutionary chain, while making the next significant step in the chain an absolute certainty. Obviously this does not make the entire chain a certainty, rather than a mitigated probability, but it definitely invalidates the "house of cards" argument against evolution being a process that requires no external co-ordination.

It shouldn't take monctur long to make 50 posts; I mean it's not like he has any actual work to do. (j/k Chris )

How do you mean by "more evolved"? Certainly we aren't better adapted to amphibious life than the hippo, or better at flying than wasps. I'll assume you mean something along the lines of "more evolved in terms of societal behaviour" since that can more or less be interpreted to cover everything humans are good at I haven't studied much anthropology but I'm guessing that the development of imagination and abstract thought processes would be directly linked to the development of language. As one becomes more sophisticated; so does the other. There's a significant survival advantage in being able to plan and co-ordinate everything from hunts to locating a new community, so abstract thought processes would have put significant selective pressure on early man to develop those abilities or be left by the wayside (that's actually kinda backwards but it's easier explaining it that way). I wouldn't put too much stock into the theory as told by a character in a fictional novel. As much as I trust Crichton has a firm understanding of evolutionary processes, you have to remember that the characters in his story are all serving their own agendas and will never be truly objective (otherwise they wouldn't be characters). The current model is easy to abuse. The anti-evolutionist claims that life is nothing but the accumulation of chance events, because this makes it sound less plausible. It's also a misinterpretation of the model. The accumulation of chance in this case is not linear; that is to say that the diversity and complexity of life is not due to a series of unlikely events stacked on top of each other. Some events will make others more likely, or even inevitable.

Yes, I agree. However I think improving the defensive structure of the house - while possibly more expensive than a gun - would be a bit more humane. Hurrah!

Are you sure they are ants, and not raisins? It's easy to confuse them.

I thought the mathematical definition of a sphere was "a continuous closed surface each part of which is equidistant from a central point". If one is to ascribe infinite sides to a sphere, why not correct people who claim a cube has 6 sides and tell them that it is infinite? It seems a bit random to me.

It wasn't compulsory for me (although it should have been considering the number of evolution-type modules I did), but it was recommended reading.

Like I said to Iglak, surely that would not be a sphere, but an infinitely tightly-packed mesh? (edit - I am of course assuming infinite sides == infinite boundaries)

Anyway, back on-topic: Must have been a slow news day - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3620119.stm

With an RS232 interface, YEAH!