Ophiolite

But that is a self correcting situation, especially if the Scot is from Glasgow. Since rights are a consequence of value judgements there is no way in which they can "just be there". Assertions to the contrary are illogical, Captain.

That's good news. I can move forward with my plans then.

I was basing my monosyllabic response on the following logic (colloquial variety). If we think someone if going to commit a murder, then we have some evidence pointing in this direction, or we shouldn't be in crime prevention. If we have evidence pointing in that direction it may well be sufficient to justify a charge. Pending trial on that charge they can be locked up.

Yes.

I have always thought that one of the strengths of the Western society is its ability to be strongly self critical. Therefore "West bashing" is an inherently healthy and self referential activity. You are asking, how can we encourage the same response within the ME. A good start might be to stop fucking with them. Edit: It appears I have said the same thing as DrmDoc, though less politely.

Interesting.

Mike, you would be wise to accept that no one does know "what's going on". Anyone who claims they do (and believes it) is a nutter. The universe does not function in the way that you believe it should. Your intuition in this regard is as relevant as useful as a soiled napkin for navigating across the Pacific. There is no problem in looking at things artistically, but all art is a metaphor, and you are mixing yours.

Brilliant war plan. No plan for peace. Many decisions made in the after math of the war led directly to the current situation. The Marshall plan, in the wake of WWII, saved Europe. The constitution and direction provided to the Japanese after WWII allowed a proud nation to rise again and prosper. In Iraq the coalition (and I blame mainly Bush and Blair) acted like incompetent, indifferent, ignoramuses. Perhaps they acted that way because that's what they were.

On reflection I realise I am over 3.5 billion years old, at least as far as the living part of my ancestry goes.

Exactly so. It is a cliche that a clever person learns from experience. However, the truly clever person learns from the experience of others. That other experience is generally called knowledge. Yet, if we do not understand the meaning of that knowledge, if we are unwilling to accept it as true, then it is of limited value.

I am tempted to suggest you go get fucked (and trust me, I would be very serious), but then that's your objective, isn't it. I see three possible explanations for your OP: 1. You are trolling. 2. You are a sociopath 3. You are just an unpleasant narcissist I do hope it's number 1, for your sake.

So that's a de facto NO. Thank you for conceding that.

So it should not have been a problem to include the link in the first place. Have you acknowledged in your expostulations that your proposal is an adaptation of earlier ideas on planetary formation that were abandoned because they did not work?

The corollary of this suggests that betting on Brazil could cause a God to come into existence.

Thank you for clarifying. As a general point I think it is important when pitching an idea to be meticulous in ones phrasing. Otherwise pedantic assholes will attack with all the vigour of a mongoose when they spot a snake.

I see it differently. It is the ability of some humans to think in the terms of advanced maths that is being questioned. I am mathematically dumb. Simple arithmetic operations, back of the envelope calculations without an envelope are a breeze, but real maths some people "see" is beyond me. That's nothing to do with learned behaviour. I've learned a bunch of other things, but not the clever stuff.

I'm not sure how to be more specific. You have made a very clear and definitive assertion. "At some point, they became resistant to external selection pressures..." You did not say "they became less influenced by external selection pressures", or "internal, social selection pressures came to be more important than previously". I would not have any particular trouble with those statements. However, that is not what you said - your point was "they became resistant to external selection pressures". As written that means that external selection pressures had no practical effect on them. Famine, plague, unfavourable climate changes, etc. no longer acted as significant selection pressures. I just cannot by that without some solid research material to back it up. If you just worded it badly, I can accept that and move on. But if you meant it, as written, it rings warning bells for me.

I've read all, or almost all of his fiction. I can't think of any examples there. Were you thinking of his non-fiction work?

You got to it first!

I stopped reading at this point. It would require substantial peer reviewed literature to convince me that this was a valid statement. If the statement is an integral part of your thesis, which it appears to be, the whole thesis is invalidated by this, currently, unsubstantiated assertion.

Isn't Mercury's rotational period a consequence of gravitational interaction with the other planets, especially Venus? If this is the case then were it true for PCb we might expect to have seen evidence for these other planets, since we may presume they orbit in a similar plane and should therefore also produce a detectable dimming?

Welcome to the human race. John Dunne declared that 'no man is an island', but many of us are certainly peninsula's with a very narrow isthmus, often covered at high tide. There was a key phrase in your post "there just seems to be world out there...." Although you have given some details of your life they are insufficient to give certain advice, so I resort to a generalisation. Find opportunities to offer help to others in anyway you can. Make sure you do not force this help on them. It can be as simple as opening a door for someone, or as time consuming as driving them to another town because their car is being repaired. And do eight and a half times as much listening as talking. The world only seems to be closed to you. Make sure the barriers you think are there were erected by others, not yourself. You might be surprised by what you find.

Your question is ambiguous. You note that this "modification" is to occur post-zygote, but you do not say when post-zygote. I don't think it would be common practice to refer to a dog embryo two cell divisions post-zygote as a dog. We should likely call it a dog embryo. I put modification in quotation marks, since if you change the DNA to that of a bear, you haven't so much modified it, as replaced it. Are you therefore asking if the other celullar machinery, such as mitochondria, would fail to properly interface with the proteins generated by the DNA? If so, I would have thought the answer was yes: no bear. But I am not a biologist, so I may be surprised by a properly informed answer.

Didn't you post last week?

That looks highly plausible to me. I couldn't see that when I read the original, but with your interpretation it makes sense. Good job!