mossoi

There's another one landing in 3 days so it's not too tragic a loss if it doesn't come back.

Indeed - I've recently installed some sound cards in PC's at work that cost around £3,000 each. I've also installed one £7,000 graphics card in our graphics department. Expensive hardware is very common but isn't advertised in the same way as the standard stuff. I don't think they are kept secret and only sold to those who are 'connected'. If I made a piece of hardware I would want everybody to buy it!

LMAO - This guys is great - does he do standup!

Hmm - this sounds interesting and if I'm get what you're looking for it's not a neural net that you're trying to create, you are just modelling something that can follow a programmed set of rules in order to perform an action based on the input. This is quite easy to do and can be implemented as a web app. allowing access for several developers and possibly even human trainers to get through the leg work of data input. I might be interested in this as a project depending on your time scales etc. Let me know if you're still interested in doing this. You can get hold of me through my site, http://www.lobsterweb.com, if I'm slow to respond here.

It was almost certainly as prevalent over the past several centuries but wasn't diagnosed correctly. Genetic conditions have previously been viewed with suspicion and were commonly attributed to demonic possession and withcraft in more extreme cases or were confused with other ailments. Something like narcolepsy is hard to spot even today. Also, we sleep a more unnatural rythym than our forefathers and are prone to suffer disturbances in our sleep pattern than those who rose at dawn and went to bed a dusk thereby keeping their body clock closely in touch with the levels of melatonin in the brain. As for catatonics. They were generally assumed dead as the condition is extremely hard to spot. This led to a tendency to tie a bell to the hand of corpses so that should they find themselves alive but buried they could ring it to alert somebody (often once they were disintered they were beheaded for being undead but the thought was there).

For a start the article that you have linked to is so badly written and ill-educated that I would dismiss it almost immediately - but I'll give him the benfit of the doubt and do it scientifically. The layers cannot be different ages - well that's speculative at best and almost certainly wrong as his reasoning that all strata are formed by floods is entirely misinformed. Organic matter does not need to be fossilised to be preserved, lack of oxygen can do the same thing even in a wet environment. How can a tree be found upside down traversing several strata? I don't trust the validity of any of the assertions in the article but let's suppose it's true. A tree blows over due to a storm and falls into a stagnant lake. This lake has high concentrations of sulphur, methane and CO2 but no oxygen. The tree will float for a while and become waterlogged at which point it will sink to the bottom of the lake and lodge upside down. It can remain in this submerged state for a long period of time without decomposing even if it isn't buried (the Mary Rose is an example) while events above the surface of the lake cause layers of sediment to be deposit gradually building the lakebed up and over the tree. Now it's sealed and won't decompose even if the lake ceases to be. Over time the fossilisation process will preserve it for evermore and the result is a fossilised, inverted tree. Like I say, I don't trust Dr. Kent Hovind's scientific reasoning, sources or objectivity so he may well have elevated a rare event into something that can be found everywhere. Maybe he would offer his sources so that the trees can be carbon dated to see if they all died at the same time regardless of where they were in the world. I suspect he won't but that would help him to prove his great flood theory.

You cannot directly affect your genes by learning although it may help to improve the genes of your offspring. Your knowledge and learning may help you to find a naturally more intelligent partner so the chances of your offspring being more intelligent increases. As for the question "Does the environment affect genes" - it most certainly does but not in any immediate, spontaneous way. Imagine a situation where your community is exposed to a toxin that affects some people more than others. Over time those that are affected the most will die off and be removed from the gene pool while those that are immune will take their place. Or a ridiculous example: take a community of humans that are suddenly forced to live high in the tree tops. Those that are too heavy to climb or cause the branches to break will ultimately perish while those who can be supported will thrive. The weight of people is both genetic and environmentaly controlled so over time all of those bloodlines who are genetically heavy will be removed along with some lighter bloodlines who are heavy for reasons other than genes. Even though individuals from both groups will be eliminated the overall effect will be to remove the heavier individuals over generations.

I have a feeling that this is more likely to be an effect on the taste buds rather than the actual creation of a sugar. Tabacco contains natural dextrose - not much but it's there. I have a feeling that the copper is making your taste buds more receptive to the dextrose that is present. One experiment that's quite interesting to try is to introduce sugar and banana flavouring to the mouth at the same time (this is best done using a strong solution of each with air bubbled through the solution to the mouth). Do this for 5 minutes and you will have a very strong taste of sweet banana (pretty obvious) - now remove the banana flavour and keep tasting - you'll still be able to taste banana, not just a residue from earlier but a strong enough taste so that you think the flavour is still being fed to your mouth. Stop for a while and try again and you'll still be able to taste banana. So what's happening is that the brain/tastebuds are linking the taste of sugar with the taste of banana - this is more common than we think and happens with lots of flavours hence our tendency to habitually combine certain types of food and drink during meals. It's possible that the effects of a strong copper taste to the taste buds plus the smoke is triggering a strange "taste connection" in the brain and is either falsely reporting the presence of sugar or is emphasising the sugar that is present. This to me is more likely than a chemical reaction that is actually creating sugar in the mouth. I'm gonna see what else I can find out about this one as it's only a hypothesis at present.