Ophiolite

The more pertinent question is why do trees have trunks? Answer:To get the leaves nicely exposed to the sunlight. It's back to YT's surface area. (Do you have a large surface area YT, or am I getting too personal? )

Brevity is the greatest skill. Edit: If it's not baroque don't fix it? Well, reverse, I think the reverse applies.

Since no one seems to want to address your query seriously (probably because people have run out of ways to say 'Have you googled it?') here is a half ways decent one: “Living organisms are autopoietic systems: self-constructing, self-maintaining, energy-transducing autocatalytic entities” in which information needed to construct the next generation of organisms is stabilized in nucleic acids that replicate within the context of whole cells and work with other developmental resources during the life-cycles of organisms, but they are also “systems capable of evolving by variation and natural selection: self-reproducing entities, whose forms and functions are adapted to their environment and reflect the composition and history of an ecosystem” from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life/

Ah! Excuse me for being thick. I think this is a clear indication it is time for me to catch up on lost sleep.

I guess that's the uncertainty principle at work.

Tinyboy is not so much complaining about the 'bad news' communicated in 'graphic detail', but rather is asking why is "everyone all of a sudden show(ing) a sadistic side" by taking an interest in it.My contention is that there is no change. Tinyboy may have 'all of a sudden' taken a 'sadisitic' interest in bad news, but he is incorrect to extrapolate this sudden interest to the rest of the population. [And before anyone asks, NO - when I pass an accident on the motorway (freeway, autoban) I do not look for signs of carnage and bloodied bodies. I deliberately look away.]

Why would you want to do that? Other than the delight of being uneccessarily complex. If you want to use a computer as a wind tunnel I recommend finite element analysis.

I understand, but I am suggesting that this is no different to the situation ten years, twenty years, fifty years ago. Some people are attracted to the unpleasant or shocking. Newspapers, and the other news media, pander to, and doubtless exacerbate, this morbid interest: but I believe it has always been this way. Now, the details of what is portrayed may have changed - perhaps people are less easily shocked today - but I believe the underlying tenor remains the same.

I see no evidence for your contention.Can you cite statistical evidence in support of this notion? On the face of it you appear to be falling prey to the 'the past was so much better' syndrome.

If Blair were to spring a surprise referendum on the consititution next week the vote would almost certainly go in favour. Why? There is no way the average Brit would wish to be seen publicly agreeing with the French. Vive la difference.

Q: what is the definition of life? A: Hotly debated.

"Bizarre" is a relative term. Each generation of TV watchers has had there own version of "extreme TV", which today would seem tame. Reason for existence: striving to gain market share. Effect on morality: if anyone can give me a single convincing reason to demonstrate that Big Brother is morally elevating I'll buy them dinner. Demonstrations of the reverese are unecessary.

Its success (and apparent quality) seem to support the notion that if you give people total freedom they will, generally, behave responsibly. Shame it didn't work for capitalism.

What you are asking is not clear. The answer to what you appear to be asking is:Distance = pi * D /360 If this is not what you are looking for (and your own suggestion of pi/40 suggests it is not) then please clarify.

So, he's squarely in the Intelligent Design camp, then. More sub-cutaneous, anti-evolution propaganda.

It's the bandwagon effect. Consider how it works: one is motivated to predict the end of the world. What is the motivation? 1) To feel important. To provide a sense of power. (Knowledge is power.) 2) To sell a book and increase the rates for after dinner speeches. 3) To acquire followers and build a cult. (See 1, above) 4) To compensate for a dull, drab existence. 5) And so on.... Regardless, I now have to choose a date. By the way I happened across some old documents the other day, in latin, written, rather beautifully on parchment. A secret order of monks, based originally in the Auvergne, know when the world will end: March 18, 2173. Now, you see the problem. Who cares. It's too far away. We'll all be dead. It has to be a convenient date within the next ten years or so. I've lost count of the number of world endings I've lived through in the last 50+ years. What I can tell you is nobody was talking up 2012, until the millenium was getting close and a couple 'spiritual people' started to panic, less catastrophe did not descend. Examine the facts and you'll find the only one of significance is the Maya one, and it is more in the way of a New Year celebration than a cataclysm. Rest easy.

That's a relief: irony and arcane humour are sometimes interpreted as stupidity. (Often with good reason.)

Matt if you deconstruct my statement I think you will see that I am agreeing with you, rather elegantly I thought, 100%. Those who have difficulty with math also seem to have difficulty in reading comprehension. I shouldn't worry - geologists have to deal with creationists- it's worse.

1. The Earth gets peppered with a rain of rocks that it hasn't seen since the heavy bombardment period 3.9 billion years ago. These produce global devastation from impact (crater's five, ten miles across); tsunamis (a mile or more high); superheating of the Earth's atmosphere (all terrestrial life is incinerated); evaporation of a substantial volume of the Earth's oceans (perhaps all of them); increased vulcanicity and seismicity; blocking of all sunlight by a combination of dust and cloud, so that any surviving photosynthetic organisms perish. 2. Once things settle down in, say, 10,000,000 years the chance of life making it back to land is diminished because tidal range is a small fraction of what it was. It took 2 billion years for life to go from some small enclaves around black smokers to produce science fiction writers. This time we only have 1.5 billion years before the sun heats up enough to generate a runaway greenhouse effect. Apart from these two small drawbacks, I am also curious how blowing up the moon is meant to produce the desired effects on the Earth. I applaud your efforts to aid RhenMyster: however, my personal take on this is that the S in SF should be as rigorous as we can make it. Liberties may have to be taken, but they should be held to a minimum. [Now if you want to do something interesting with the moon then hit it slightly off centre with a series of Oort cloud comets. These will (a) provide it with an atmosphere and hydrosphere, and (b) spin it up to a 24 hour day. Doesn't seem to effect the rain though.]

Yes, but it takes an eternity to do it.......

In 13 years, when you look around you, you'll find that was nothing to boast about. . Thanks for asking the question: I learnt a good deal from the replies.

That's a damnably interesting question! There must have been studies. It's a well known fact that psychologists and psychiatrists will use any excuse to look at pornography. (Glider, I am sure will attest to this. ) What does strike me (as a wholly uncontrolled comparison) is that the birth rate in mainland Europe, where pornography has been pretty freely available for three or four decades, is significantly lower than it is in the UK, where pornography has generally been suppressed to some extent. I assume when you are talking about fertility rate you are actually meaning birth rate /1000 women, rather than the the percentage of those women wishing to have children who are succesful.

Sarah, my organic chemistry is some distance in the past: I don't know if this will be of any help to you. My battered copy of Feiser and Feiser assures me that formation of salicylic acid by Scmitt's modified Kolbe process occurs "in close to the theoretical ampunt"; that it (the Kolbe process) when applied to other phenols usually proceeds in good yield"; and that the acetyl derivative (aspirin) can be prepared efficiently. These vague, qualitative remarks do, nevertheless, suggest your achieved yield may not be unreasonable. Good luck.

Smart ass.