Ophiolite

Since we seem to be going through a brief silly phase could I just say that I used to have a wetas, but it was because I kept falling down in the rain!

Would you agree that a consequnce of our cultural evolution has been its impact on our environment and consequently upon what constitutes fittness in an evolutionary sense? And that feeds back to impact on our genetic evolution. It could then be argued (and I do this as a thought exercise, not a statement of belief) as follows: hallucinogenic drugs >> promote development of shaman and religous rituals >> encourage tribal unity >> more effective interaction with environment >> origin of civilisation

I'm impressed. I'm almost half convinced (though I am just working on my autobigraphy' date=' tentatively title [i']Gullible's Travels[/i]).Then I googled 'Janet Watson" and the first item I found was an biographical sketch that noted her marriage to Sutton. And you have a reasonable take on the Iapetus closure, but let me ask you. Why do you sound more like a poet than a scientist? (Yes, I know, there is a little poet in all of us.) The principal reason many of the posters don't believe your claims isn't what you say, but the way you say them. If you have the education, experience and position you claim, you should be able to post in a structured, logical, intelligible fashion (and still let the poetry and the passion shine through). Why don't you? And as Sayonara said, don't stress. Stress is for moving mountains.

Likewise to all the above raised to an appropriate power.

Can you clarify what you mean 'found in all areas of the earth'? The only original mention of Atlantis is in the Timaeus, written around 355 B.C. by Plato. All other references to Atlantis are references back to this work. If you are talking about the universality of flood myths, that is an altogether different topic, not relevant to the Atlantis question. Edit: Nobody picked me up on my obivious error: Plato continued his description of Atlantis in the uncompleted Critias written, probably, in the year before his death.

While we await Sayonara's take on Temporal Mechanics cast your eye over this little gem - How to build a Time Machine. http://www.beyond-the-illusion.com/files/Physics/Temporal-Mechanics/ Best be seated before you begin reading it.

They are not mutually exclusive. We have to attempt both. Getting the balance right is the tricky part and it isn't right at present . Consider this simplistic example. Annual global expenditure on makeup $18 billion Annual expenditure on pet food (Europe and US) $17 billion Annual global expenditure on perfumes $15 billion Annual expenditure on ice cream (Europe) $11 billion Total - $51 billion [source:"]http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2004/01/06/#a1] Cost of manned expedition to Mars $30 billion [source: The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin ISBN 0-684-82757-3] And this eloquent declaration We choose to go to the moon! We chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.... This is in some measures an act of faith and vision, for we do not know what benefits await us .... But space is there and we are going to climb it. John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1962

I think the light levels would be more than adequate. Venera 8' date=' for example, ….. [i']confirmed the earlier data on the high Venus surface temperature and pressure returned by Venera 7, and also measured the light level as being suitable for surface photography, finding it to be similar to the amount of light on Earth on an overcast day. [/i] Extracted from: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/venera8.htm Shardsofnarsil, you may already have found this one, but it might be generally useful on the Venusian environment http://www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr/mars/esadoc/aopp/venus.pdf

Not just the Amphibians. We are arguably in the midst of a major extinction event. "The rate of extinction today appears to be similar to, or perhaps greater than, the rate during the five 'classic' extinction events in deep geological time, such as the Permian extinction that extinguished some 90% of the Paleozoic biota, or the Cretaceous extinction event that eliminated all dinosaurs (except for the birds) at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. The Holocene extinction differs from all previous extinction events in that it appears to be caused by humans." The above is an extract from this article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction_event

I recalled hearing that the Neolithic (New Stone Age) painters of the cave art at Lascaux in the south of France, likely used hallucinogens. Similar claims have been made for ceremonies associated with stone circles such as Stonehenge and Orkney. Here are some links I turned up after a very quick check. This one mentions the discovery that poppies (from which opium is derived) were being cultivated in Switzerland around 2600-3200B.C. http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi001a.htm This article briefly mentions the possibility that one function of megaliths (e.g. stone circles) was to try to simulate the effects of drugs. (They don’t discuss why, but it is likely related to the recently discovered sonic properties of these constructions. That is worth reading up on.) http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Megalithic%20art But if you really want to get into it have a read of this. http://www.oubliette.zetnet.co.uk/Intro.html It looks like it may be heavy going, but just dipping into it I found a lot of interesting obse4rvations. It’s a dissertation for an MA titled, Exquisitely Simple or Incredibly Complex: The Theory of Entoptic Phenomena. It is worth wading through the Introduction at least.

Interesting item. I'm all in favour of it myself. If one is dumb enough or lazy enough to eat heavily processed food then there are going to be consequences. Why this might tie in nicely with a thread elsewhere discussing whether or not humans were still evolving. An argument used there was that the environment today was so controlled there was no longer a question of survival of the fittest. The vegans may actually be onto something. (Couldn't find the 'irony' face. Just imagine it here.)

Not quite sure what you are looking for. Do you mean do all amphibians (frog sized) do it? Or, what is the duration of the hibernation; what temperaures can they tolerate; what environment do they choose to hibernate in; how long do they take to come out of hibernation; what signals trigger the two responses; do these vary between species, beween genera, etc; does failure to hibernate impact on breeding cycles? Or do you want to flip it on is head and think about estivation? Give us more of a clue as to what you are after.

I'd like to think cold fusion were a real possibility, but I suspect not. I have just run across this information that tends to support those who believe anyone who seriously believes in cold fusion is a couple of electrons short of a filled orbital. http://www.iccf11.org/ The 11th ICCF (that's The International Conference on Condensed Nuclear Matter) will be held from the 31st of October in Marseilles. Marseilles! You hold a conference in the south of France and you site it in Marseilles? It does raise questions! On a more serious note their keynote speaker is Brian Josephson (Nobel prize. Josephson junctions. even I've heard of them) who believes there may be something in it, so maybe.

You will appreciate that this is difficult (not impossible) for some of us to believe. I like to keep an open mind when possible. This is straining me. You may well feel, and are certainly entitled to feel that our belief or otherwise is of no interest or concern to you. I suspect that will lead to some, or many, ignoring future posts you make, and of course there is no reason that should concern you either. If this is the case I wish you well and say goodbye. Alternatively, you may passionately wish to convince us that your point of view has validity. In that case you have a definite credibility problem. 5614 has offered some suggestions for addressing this, which Sorcerer and Sayonara have pointed out the weaknesses of. May I suggest the following - submit a couple of brief paragraphs addressing one of the following: The significance of the friction angle in Mohr circles The role of osmosis in formation overpressures Current thinking on the final closure of the Iapetus Ocean Your own view on the upper limit of partial melt in the LVZ and why you chose that figure I recognise that these are pretty simplistic questions, but I am definitely not a Professor of anything, and these were the best I could come up with off the top of my head. Answer any one of these, with clarity and perception, and you will have convinced at least one person of your sincerity. Thanks, Philbo, for taking the time to read this. Edit: Or even quicker, and easier, since you came to the UK in '65, try these three, the last two with very definite structural connections: Who was Professor of Geology at Imperial? Who was Janet Watson married to? Had Al Wright moved to Birmingham yet?

Here's a site, with among other things, a liver cell, if you can figure out what the organelles are and get a typical size for a liver cell then you are in business. :http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookCELL2.html Edit: This site has roughly the same info, but on page 1 you can get the size of a liver cell:http://www.becomehealthynow.com/article/bodycell/709/ Edit2: This has some general dimensions of some organelles http://uzweb.uz.ac.zw/medicine/physiology/CELL.htm

Whoa, Sorcerer. Don't panic poor old Richard. I am not a medic, but would it not be more accurate to say 'it can be serious', if indeed that is what he has. It would make sense for him to mention it to his doctor, though.However, if you check Richard's profile you will see that all this is taking place on a holo-deck and we are constructs of the computer program he has chosen to run. So as long as he has all the safetys on he's in no danger. On the main thread, I still have lucid dreams, probably once a week or so. I got interested in dreaming in my teens - I recall reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams when I was fifteen. (En passant, could any bona fide psychiatrists out there confirm my view that Freud thought dreams dealt mainly with sexual represssion because his clientele were mainly sexually repressed Austrian ladies?) The dreams I least like are the unpleasant ones where I know I am dreaming and wake myself up to get away from the unpleasantness, apparently successfully, as I am in my own bedroom, only to discover I am still dreaming. I think my record for 'waking myself up' stands at four, before I got back to reality. (At least I'm assuming it is reality. Richard, don't touch that off switch!)

I'd vote HP in general because of the RPN (Reverse Polish Notation). The world seems to be full of two kinds of people: those who love RPN and those who hate it. (I guess there's a third, those who neither know nor care). I found it wonderfully intuitive. If you are leaning to HP make sure you try one out first to be sure you are comfortable with it. I say 'found' because several years ago I stopped using calculators when I spotted myself using one to subtract 7 from 22. Now if I can't figure it in my head then it's spreadsheet time.

Fives times in 19 seconds for a 3.8 second average. Then I had to stop in order to breathe in. I'm trying it in Russian now and I'm already up to two after only seven minutes!

Sayonara, this is the one portion of your rebuttal of Philbo's arguments(?) I found weak. He was making the claim that 'no scientist who wishes to advance in his career will ever analyse the site...science will not accept any data proving man in the dino age'. An overstatement yes, but scientists do not always act scientifically. There are cheats, liers, incompetents, self-deluders and such in the scientific community too. And there is a very definite reluctance to accept something novel, that goes further than simply 'exceptional claims require exceptional evidence'. Khun dealt with this thoroughly in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, introducing the invaluable concept of a paradigm shift. But in his scheme, if I recall correctly, the exisiting paradigm is first brought to crisis by significant ambiguous or contrary evidence, a revolution in thinking occurs and a new paradigm emerges. A poxy footprint in Paluxey doesn't quite make the grade.

Out of curiosity, how would you have voted if the poll had asked, The future of humankind is in space: Yes No Don't know I suspect most people who have voted yes to the 'race to space', would also vote 'yes' to this hypothetical poll. But are those voting 'no' to the 'race to space' doing so because they do not it believe it will contribute to our move to space, or because they don't think our future is out there, or some other reason?

Well, of course it wouldn't change things. Didn't you realise that's how it all started anyway?