Sorcerer

Ok, I think alot of the people in this thread have misinterpreted evolution, there seems to be some underlying idea that genes can think and know what is the best option for their survival, this is not so, genes just "do" and when they happen upon the best option for survival this one wins out. Now as for death, genes themselves are eternal as long as they have a means of replication, they do not care what happens to their host, in fact they can't care. Instead they program their host so that they have the ability to spread and multiply the genes, because this is the most successful method of replication. Martin I think mentioned that amoeba are immortal, this is not so, their genes are immortal, except for random mutation errors. The original "mother" amoeba will die eventually as oxidation and other enviromental effects take its toll on the cell. The "daughters" however will have fresh cells which will last longer, these too divide and over time the original amoeba is no longer present, but its genes may be (provided no mutation). Since it is far easier for genes to build a new host than prolong the life of its present one eternally, death is the most successful option. I think reverse had it right in his second post. Genes that don't die are successful, these are the ones that replicate eternally, the host for the genes is only a vessel required untill replication has taken place. The more replication, the more successful; however once two progeny have been produced if the cost prolonging the life of the original host outweighs the cost of its progeny replicating then immortality will be less successful; since it is this way it seems that immortality is a less successful route (sorry for the circular argument there).

Yes, melatonin is produced in response to UV light, it is our skins natural defence mechanism from sunburn, if you have enough UV to burn then you've had more than enough to produce your vitamin D requirements. Hair on the otherhand tends to bleach in sunlight... hair is UV protection too.

I think thats called the whiteout-manufacturers-dream-effect

I can do anything sleepwise, but it catches up....... I tended to slip into night-time habits when I was student, and miss my lectures, but when its important I'll get up any time, 4hrs sleep will do. On the weekeds I sometimes do 36 hours awake and 12 asleep. I don't have any preference, I just do what suits best, sleep when I am tired and get up when I feel refreshed.... or when I have to.

Perhaps, but anything I have to say is only post-judice not prejudice, I didn't state anything about the homosexuals I haven't met, except maybe things which I have reasonable proof for which concerns ALL HUMANS.

Finally, exactly what Ive being trying to make you see, I agree that it cannot be reversed, but my point was that environmental factors trigger the genes so that an otherwise disadvantageous genotype is not expressed, only when the family size (or perhaps the population size) is increased so that in a non-agrarian society resources would be stretched to maintain the current generations offspring would a celebacy and/or homosexuality gene be advantageous because they could increase the fitness of close relations offspring.

When I was a kid they encouraged us to go collect cans here in NZ, called comalco for kids..... anyway we used to spend hours collecting cans and had a whole heap, the depot was miles away and the gas alone to take them out there was more than what they gave us in renumeration..... well all that money they wasted on the ads and the promotion packs..... got them 1 weekend of recycling from us..... I mean how its THAT economically feasable if the petrol costs more than the cans!

A family group with both parents being homozygous for a dwarfism gene?

But from what I read they found one skeleton which was the consistency of paper mache and a tooth from another individual, if they are using the tooth to determine that the other is an adult, it doesnt make sense. How can they analyse structural changes in a gooey skeleton? And which structural changes do they analyse.

How do they know these are a distinct species and not just immature H. erectus/java man. How do they tell that these are tiny adults, and not children?

I don't care, get back on topic, you always do this.

By comparing the parasympathetic fuction of breath and sexual arousal you point out that these are involuntary, however everytime I get an errection I do not use it, this is where the choice lies.

The points I am making is: "Homosexuality isn't predetermined by genes" : this is because no behavioural trait is predetermined by genes, it is a combination of genes and the environment that produces a phenotype. Therefore just because you have a homosexual gene doesn't mean you will express this phenotype; ie it doesn't mean you will be gay. Likewise, not having the homosexual gene doesn't mean you won't be gay. "Homosexual behaviour is a choice" : this is because even if the desire to do an action is there, we have control of our choices, the example was of a man who was supposedly "gay" not showing this behaviour untill after a long marriage and having children. Thus he chose to show heterosexual characteristics even though he was always supposedly "gay"...... Ophiolite, I don't care what you think, one ad hominem attack deserves another (insert insult here). I never said such things and was very careful to show that I wasn't implying them, learn reading comphrension, Mr read between the lines thinks hes a psychoanalyst.

2-10 is an 8% variation, my hypothesis would suggest it was effected by local population size, more specifically the size of the family group, the number of older brothers. I still maintain that behavioural traits are not 100% deterministic based on genes, the enivronment plays a large part in sculpting the phenotypic expression of the trait. I'm just saying that it is possible to overcome urges, it was an example, I don't really often feel this way and would never act on it in a way which harms another person. So like I can overcome an urge to rape and even abstain from sex. Why is it that homosexuals can't overcome the urge to sodomise.... the point is its not that they have no choice, its that they don't want to make the choice. Not saying theres anything wrong with that, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. However it still shows that its a CHOICE.

Yeah, kind of went on a bit of a tangent, perhaps I could open a thread in hmmm philosophy(?) "should autonomy be a defence?"

No, I was commenting on you point that we cannot make a scale if the universe is infinite, then saying that we could if we just used an arbitrary scale, eg assigning the hubble volume as the boundary even if its not. So what are these scales then set by these fundamental theories?? And what is the smallest possible unit under these fundamental theories?? Could it be the planck length? If so, see the first post, then repeat endless loop.

The kernels the good part its where they hide all the cyanide.... *num num num*

Well, so? We cannot use any meaningful distance scale at all, but we can assign an arbitrary scale. I don't think infintesimal is really a meaningful unit for a scale anyway. If you wanted to argue against it I wouldve started with infintesimal being 1/infinity, I said that this would be a unit in an infinite universe, you could have said that since I was assigning 1 to the universe, which is actually infinite, then it would be infinity/infinity which is 1. Also an infinite ammount of infintesimal parts is only 1. So basically I come to the new argument that the if the universe is infinite it is made up made of an infinite number of finite parts (whatever scale you choose to assign to those parts is arbitrary). Edited for a blatant error which nobody picked up on: thank god.

The black bit will be a necrotic core, no oxygen/water/nutrients can diffuse into the center so all the microbes in there will die. I'm thinking just some kind of bacterial colony.

This trait is one which was formed before modern society, it becomes prevalent when the population size grows large, this is a result of it being recessive and also part of the evironmental conditions needed to trigger it. Before we had argriculture, large population size meant short resources. Homosexuality is an advantageous trait where a family member gives up his reproductive fitness to altruistically enhance the fitness of close kin. I would like to look at that study where they found a correlation between older brothers and homosexuality, then see if there was any significant difference where the older brothers were still alive, or alive at the time of sexual maturity of the homosexual individual. Because males have a very different reproductive strategy to females and perhaps with a little statistics the optimum ammount of reproducing sons could be calculated. Thats a great way to contradict your argument, homosexuality isnt exactly conducive to reproduction, unless you look at it latterally, I'm not trying to argue morals or ethics, I am just pointing out how it can logically fit with evolutionary theory. Behavioural traits are never 100% deterministic in humans, in fact you give me an example below. Yes, he may say that, and perhaps I could take that as the truth. BUT it still means that he can override his urge and make a choice to do something different. I am a rampant heterosexual, whenever I see a hot chick bend over I get this urge.... I don't act on that now do I. Overpopulation, the ammount of older siblings and thus the relative ammount of available resources for the next generation. All the evidence has been given, including the argument for how homosexuality can be a favourable trait.

[acr=What The Fiddleedee]WTF[/acr]

We were probably more agressive........ and obviously bigger........ at the time there were no guns, so I think brute force would win in a fight, over tactics, doesn't matter how good your tactics are if your outnumbered and overpowered your gonna lose.

Its been used here in instances where the offender has used a drug, in this case took GHB and didn't know what it was..... then commited grevious bodily harm, since he wasn't incontroll of himself he got off.... thing is, if I drunk two bottles of spirits, I'd be basically in the same state, but alcohol can't be used for the defence, its a pretty stupid system.

Well ok, scratch that, but what about the rest of the argument then?

I would say so. Thers a water potential set up from outside to inside, the outer cells are like the tap, and the inner ones like the end of the hose, pressure is greatest at the tap and tapers off as it extends along the chain.