Diche Bach

Wow. That dude would've given Genghis Khan a run for his money! Famous quote, which Genghis purportedly conveyed to his generals at one point. They were supposedly talking about what they enjoyed most in life . . . beautiful women, good food, being a leader, etc. Genghis said

Don't think the coal industry provides suicide pills to miners or dozer drivers, so I'm not sure why astronauts would have them

One more entertaining video pertaining to the question of "what is human?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbpRJaJ_tc8

Monkeys definitely are proficient tool users and even do it spontaneously in the wild, i.e., not under experimental conditions provoked by humans. But the following experiment is amazing in showing just what some species are capable of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThJWvJ2YNI Octopii and various birds _use tools_ spontaneous sequential tool use by a crow ADDIT: just to elaborate a bit further. It is quite clear that a number of monkey species are capable of transmitting and maintaining simple cultural traditions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-euMlL9O1Kc Wild Chimpanzees have extensive inter-population cultural differences http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ghocsuXVVU

Well, I'm no expert in muscle biology, so I can't really say you're wrong. However, I know that some of my former colleagues have published extensively on paleolithic peoples musculature and my understanding is that the take-home is that: Europeans between 12,000 and 50,000 years ago (modern humans) were _much_ more muscular and robust than modern populations. Whether that means that they exceeded even the musculature of the _most_ muscular modern humans I cannot say. Also, I'm not so sure that it is necessary to use exogenous steroids to achieve maximum musculature for a modern human. It may make it easier, but I'm not sure that the 'range of possibility' is necessarily widened using such drugs. Anyway, we're getting a bit off topic now. Maybe start a new thread on it! ADDIT: just as a point of reference. Chimpanzees are 4 to 5 times as strong as a human and much faster too.

Interesting . . . Wow. I should make proficiency in the maths to do that one of my goals in life . . . right after I get a new job

Ah I see. Well, I don't tend to see a clear distinction between 'public' and 'private.' The fact that you guys are permeated with public and now finding yourselves threatened by intrusion into the private is emblematic of that false dichotomy to me. I wasn't arguing that an effort to curtail or even reverse such things is 'futile.' Merely that, it seems like the 'momentum' is very much there in UK society and as such it is a bit late in the game to have much hope of reversing the trend. I'll have a look at your petition and see if I can sign it

True. It would've been a harsh life, and mortality from basic problems that modern humans in advantaged countries don't even blink at would've been serious. But that doesn't mean that everyone in the human lineage prior to Hammurabi's Code was struggling to put on some muscle bulk. For example Homo ergaster seem to have been profligate big game hunters. There are many skeletons that show healed trauma's and the guys that specialize in them put forth a pretty compelling argument that they were very effective at hunting some of the fearsome Pleistocene megafauna. The muscle attachments show that they were wicked buff mofos; there is no question about that. Not quite as buff as chimpanzees but, the central value in the range of muscle power for adult male Homo ergaster was likely at or above the range of the average NFL linebacker. I choose that position because they are a pretty optimum tradeoff between power, speed and agility. Not as fast wide-receiver, not as powerful as a lineman or a fullback, not as agile as a quarterback, but a nice happy medium. Even pre-agricultural paleolithic modern humans were way more buff than their descendants who settled down to agricultural lifestyles some few thousand years later. That was probably as much to do with diet, and lifestyle and less to do with genetics as in the earlier hominins.

Turkana boy, member of what they call Homo ergaster. Same genus as modern humans, but different species. He died at about age 10 years around 1.5 million years ago near Lake Turkana in the Kenyan rift valley. Couple different soft-tissue reconstructions of him . . . They used to argue that he was 12 years old, and exceptionally tall for his age, and that he would've grown to be in excess of 1.85m tall. But somebody else redid his measurements and remodeled the growth trajectories and came up with only 1.63m. Still, pretty tall and well within the range of modern humans. Post-cranial anatomy is in large part, functionally human, though with MUCH more robust musculature (these guys probably would've made professional NFL linebackers seem like wimps). ADDIT: That is a _very_ interesting idea. Certainly if such a thing did exist, and assuming it was (a) not fully global in its extent; and ( did not leave 'permanent' evidence of its tools and structures [kind've hard to imagine] then perhaps such a fanciful idea could remotely be a tiny slim chance for the "pre-human civilized sentient being" the OP asked about. Let me impress here though that, the chance of this having happened is extremely tiny indeed bordering on impossible for a couple of key reasons. To my knowledge there are no multicellular eukaryotes that are fully anaerobic throughout their entire life cycle. I know that some relatively small parasitic animals (nematodes and the like) may live through a life cycle stage where they are anaerobic, but I'm not aware of any "fully" anaerobic multicellular eukaryotes. What this means is that, the functional possibilities for complex information integration between multiple cells, which is the foundation of a nervous system, would seem to be something that is beyond the possibility of an obligate anaerobe. Obviously sentient life. as we think of it, cannot exist in a unicellular critter. Moreover a nucleated cellular structure, if not cells with LOTS of internal organelles is likely to be requisite for the sort of complex intra-cellular and physiogical processes necessary to 'host' a nervous system (much less an advanced neocortex integrated with older 'emotional' brain regions). Some archae and (if memory serves some bacteria) form into 'colonies' these are really aggregations of symbiotic individuals. They exchange genetic material, and nutrients, but beyond that, I'm not aware of any sort of integration of their sensory apparatus. In sum, they do not even show much capacity for rapid, efficient, differentiated and directional exchange of information that is even remotely antecedent to a primitive neurotransmitter.

How the heck did it get way out there!?

Not that I disagree, but . . . bit late for it isn't it? I was under the impression you guys (at least in most metro areas) were more or less living in a 1984 sort of surveillance state already? I mean, is it possible to do anything in London in a public place and NOT be captured on camera?

Acetone is a ketone that is very useful as a solvent and high-strength cleaner and, while it and its fumes are an irritant (and highly flammable), it is not particularly toxic. Very useful for getting the grime that standard cleaners won't touch off of showers and bathtubs.

I read the same thing; not sure though if it is true. Also agree that, had those guys found themselves in the lethal situation they likely would've kept their cool. Even if they weren't combat veterans, just having been trained military pilots is enough to have given them sufficient basis to keep a clear head. I've been in a couple situations while caving where I was quite aware that me and/or my buddies very well might die (nearly cut rope, self-rescue after a dislocated shoulder, flood entrapment for 19 hours). I have to say, those incidents were overall less scary than the 'run of the mill' first time experiences with danger, e.g., first time abseiling, first time negotiating a water crawl. The first time I abseiled without a belay was probably the scariest moment of my life, even though I was completely under control and it wasn't actually as dangerous as the later accidents. I think familiarity with danger and risk, makes anyone able to cope with it. It is when it is unfamiliar or the person hasn't managed to 'habituate' to it that it seems to cause the ungluing effects that you refer to lajoswinkler. Obviously by the time they are on a space craft and heading up, anyone, even someone from a civilian background, is likely to have had enough training and experience to be able to handle things pretty well.

Klaus Nomi, wow. Never heard of him before. Fascinating character, what an amazing voice range! Will have to clue my wife in on that guy; she loves misfit artist types.

I'm sure you're right. If I had grown up using metric I'd not see Imperial as being more intuitive. Some great points in here. Sheeze, who could've guessed that measuring was so complicated!

@ Kerbart: I dont' think any of us who have asked "why?" are saying that there either (a) was no value to the Apollo missions, nor that ( there would be no value in future Moon landings by humans. For me at least, it is really just a matter of priorities, and no I don't mean "take NASA money away and give it to charity else military or something else." I tend to agree that more expenditure in space program(s) is a good thing. I don't imagine that transferring the current U.S. military budget (or even half or one-quarter of it) would necessarily pay a proportional return on investment; although that is an interesting question in and of itself: what is the maximum efficient monetary investment in space travel. Actually I expressed some thoughts on this in the "What if you were the Head of NASA thread" To me something like this list of five points (or at least the first four) are the key "why" questions that I don't hear clear answers to. Major institutions tend to have mission statements and even if they are cliché or hypocrisy at least they define the goals. I'm not aware of such things for any modern space programs, nor for how they define their role with respect to addressing current or impending future problems. It is almost just like they 'ad hoc' come up with what seems like an 'interesting thing to do' and then try to scrape together the money for it. Sending people should have a set of very well defined (though perhaps rather open-ended) short-, mid- and long-term goals. It should clearly define success at those goals (and there could be lots of them but the entire raison d'etre for the thing should BE those reasons). The vague reason that, it promotes science and technology is IMO lame. Solve a problem(s) achieve an important milestone toward a future goal (e.g., asteroid mining or a moon base or whatever).

This is a somewhat morbid thought but . . . its made me realize: we have yet to have any dead people in space, eh? Everybody has either come back to Earth (dead or alive) or burned up on re-entry. I understand that the remains of the two shuttle disaster astronauts were recovered. Wow, compared to nautical and aeronautical history, we have yet to really even 'go to sea' so to speak.

If you think school is a "prison" wait'll you get a load of the work place. Gulag of fun!

Maybe it is safe to say that the bonobos _are_ a preceding civilization? An Ape of Genius Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPDg4W01EgY An Ape of Genus Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVRsGcpmKYQ An Ape of Genius Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF3VYGjL3Mo

A couple of other comments about hominids and other close phylogenetic relatives to modern humans. The question of "what is a human" is really the central question in anthropology and you will get different answers from different anthropologists. As we go back in time, using the various methods at our disposal (archaeology mainly but also biological inference such as various 'molecular clock' techniques) a few things become obvious: 1. All living people today are the same species. Divisions of us into sub-types like "race" are bull**** from a scientific standpoint. If biologically valid sub-species taxonomies of modern humans were developed, there would likely have to be thousands of different categories. Race is a strictly socially constructed system of categorizing us. 2. The earliest unquestionable evidence for anatomically and culturally fully modern humans is only about 35,000 to 50,000 years ago (depending on how discerning you want to be with respect to the material evidence that shows without any doubt that modern human intellectual capacity was fully operative). Civilization (writing, cities, agriculture, social stratification, etc.) is only 6,000 to 8,000 years old, but the transition from 'pre-civilization' was likely a very gradual process, so there were long periods of time where civilization was incipient; for example, people were making extensive use of quite complex tools (including metals and pottery), people were actively engaged in domestication and exploitation of domesticated plants and animals, and permanent habitation of areas was occurring. 3. Despite this rather "recent' minimum time frame for unquestionably modern humans, we have been very human-like for a very long time. Here we start to get a bit more into the realm of opinion, but I happen to know that the opinions I will next express are not unique; other anthropologists have expressed similar things, though indeed others would disagree heartily. In my opinion, Neanderthals _were_ human (in a broad sense). They were a arctic-adapted sub-species, a real and true "race" of humanity, as different from their African Archaic Homo sapiens ancestors as any true sub-species is from another. This means that, the tropical dweling Homo sapiens heidelbergensis or however you choose to divide them up very likely would have been able to produce offspring which were at least somewhat viable. I tend to suspect that modern northern European populations have received a healthy 'dose' of Neanderthal ancestry, and I'm certainly not alone in that. The problem with these debates is that they rage quite fiercely for decades and then some discovery or breakthrough is made and *poof* the debate is over, the final answer becomes clear. Too many 'experts' are far too comfortable expressing too strong of opinions about things that we shouldn't be in such a rush to be absolutely sure about. 4. Prior to the domination of Earth by anatomically modern humans (the last Neanderthals or other distinctive sub-species may have been as recent as 30,000 years ago), it appears that there were a number of different 'sub-species of modern or nearly modern hominids who existed during overlapping periods and probably with some degree of overlapping ranges. Some of these different species or sub-species of pre-modern humans probably fought against one another and/or interbred with one another during the last 100,000 years. These taxonomies are being debated and revised year after year and the leading expert proponents for the rival models are constantly vying for the 'consensus' in the field. Slowly, as more evidence emerges, one model may prevail. Suffice to say, oral traditions of strange not-quite human creatures like 'ogres' may have some ancient basis in our ancestors interactions with one of the other sub-species which was either driven to extinction, or partially assimilated through interbreeding or a combination of the two. Personally I tend to think it was the latter with respect to Neanderthals. 5. Now we go back to the 'pre-human' forms, which in my opinion still can be thought of as being "human" in a number of ways. Homo heidelbergensis and Homo antecessor which are probably just the far ends of a geographic cline. These guys controlled fire, made camps, probably had a fairly sophisticated communication system. True 'language' maybe not, but even Chimpanzees have an exceptionally complex communicative capacity, so it stands to reason that these guys were probably quite capable of sophisticated communication. Some populations of these guys might have been really remarkable in being gigantic in stature (2.1 meters). But on the whole, I tend to think that if you dressed up one of these guys in modern clothing and stuck him on a bus somewhere on modern Earth, and 'tutored' him/her in how to behave, he/she would only draw some very intense and uncomfortable stares. It would probably be quite obvious that they were not 'normal' but at the same time, they probably would appear to be quite 'human-like.' Whether a human mating with one of these archaic extinct ancestors could produce viable offspring (the definition of species) is a good question, but it is certainly possible. So in sum, if you accept a broad interpretation of what is human, you could even include these guys, which takes us back 600,000 years and possibly as far as 1 million. 6. Then we got the "early" Homo forms Homo ergaster and Homo erectus. Smaller brains, more robust chimplike muscultature, but nonetheless a fire controlling, stone tool making (indeed fairly 'sophisticated' stone tools, not just rocks cracked in half like the Australopithecines made), hut making, cooperative big-game hunting, Homo erectus or ergaster, dressed up in modern garb would definitely 'stick out' in a crowd but again, seems pretty dang human to me, though obviously not a full fledged modern human. Capacity for quantification, even some arithmetic? With coaching I'm sure, because even Chimpanzees can do that. Ability to recognize and use symbols, including displacement (reference things remote in time and space) and creativity (stringing together novel syntax), almost assuredly, given that chimps can be taught to do these things. But at the same time, they may have had very limited ability to perform speech as we know it, and they might appear to be pretty stupid about certain things. Generally dim-witted and dull; hell no! Chimps certainly do not appear to be dim-witted and dull, if anything it is scary how smart they are. 7. The preceding forms, the Australopithecines are intermediates between a chimpanzee like ancestors, and the more modern Homo genus. These were the first of our ancestors to walk upright. I always think of these guys as: take a chimpanzee, reshape his pelvis and lower limbs a bit so he is a more proficient upright walker, now you have an Australpithecine. It is more than just that, but that captures the essence of it. There appears to have been considerable variability in these guys which roamed all over Africa for several million years (8 or 10 mya up to 1.5mya or thereabouts). They also made stone tools, but in this case fairly simple ones: take a rock and break it a couple times, use a sharp edge to hack a leg off of a carcass. Thing here to keep in mind is: modern extant chimpanzees are EXCEPTIONAL tool makers; it is now quite clear that chimpanzees have culture, i.e., socially-transmitted traditions about how to make tools and/or do things like hunt or extract termites, etc. Language and all its associated mental sophistication are quite simply not a prerequisite for culture, although culture is more elaborated, diversified and complex in humans than in any other animal we know of. Given that modern great apes are known to be culture bearing and tool making, we shouldn't be surprised if the earliest human ancestors were also sophisticated tool users. Lastly, I would say that, from an ethical standpoint it is very difficult to distinguish a chimpanzee or other great ape (bonobo, gorilla, orangutan) from a human. Intellectually, they are on average about equivalent to a human toddler (1.5 years roughly?) and the most exceptional Great Apes (e.g, Kanzi) are on a par with any six or seven year old human. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBlDGX95eys

Not unless (a) they left virtually no record of themselves in the archaeological record, which at this point is pretty inconceivable; or ( their geographic extent was quite limited and we simply have not encountered the area where they existed. Another issue that makes it pretty outlandish that a preceding sentient species had existed on Earth is the fossil record. Paleontology and archaeology are all about "provenience," meaning the location of specimens or artifacts in space (lat/long/strata) and time. Hundreds if not thousands of scientists and amateurs have been collecting observations about what specimens can be found where and when for literally a couple hundred years. While there are places that remain largely inaccessible, most notably (i) the continental shelves which have been in the past, exposed by low sea levels during glaciation; (ii) areas under major ice caps (Antarctica and Greenland mainly); (iii) the deeper portions of the oceans which have been inundated for essentially the entire history of life. It is possible that all of the physical evidence for a past sentient species could be lying in one or more of these locations and we simply have not seen it. There are also areas of the world where there has been very little if any real fieldwork (major portions of Africa, South America and Asia). The main reason that it is very unlikely that the physical evidence is out there in one of these locations and it just hasn't been found is two-fold. First, very few species have ranges that are so circumscribed that they would only leave evidence of in such pockets. Second, and this is the really biggie, the fossil record is relatively seamless and it is difficult to know where exactly such a preceding sentient species would fit in the phylogeny of the animals. Presumably a sentient species, one that has 'civilization' as you've basically defined it, would never just emerge out of thin air (unless it came from space obviously). Sentience very likely necessitates: (a) Mammalian, or a very mammal-like reptile; ( strong mother-offspring bonding as a requisite for the evolution of complex social communication; © significant encephalization; (d) substantial capacity to develop tools, which for most animals tends to involve elaboration of distal appendages (although Crows do a pretty darn good job with their beaks too). At present in the fossil record, there is really only one 'branch' on the phylogenetic tree that shows all of these prerequisites for the evolution of civilization: the primates, and most especially the apes. Primates first appear in the fossil record about 60 million years ago, but with 'primitive' precursor forms perhaps as early as 85 mya during "Dinosaur times." Apes have only been around for about 23 my. Its just pretty hard to imagine that a whole evolutionary lineage that culminated in a big-brained, tool-using, highly social, sentient animal would have been missed at this point because that sort of thing would have presumably left a quite large 'imprint' in the fossil record, both in terms of geographic extent and in terms of temporal extent.

Ah, conversions from one unit of measure to another . . . such a 'small' thing relatively speaking but with such capacity to cause a bad, bad day; even to the tune of $655,200,000

Does that prognosis include or discount the possibility of strong solar flares, like the ones that knocked out MARIE? Just guessing that the rates of radiation exposure being talked about here are the ambient 'background' exposure that is inevitable without major shielding. Add the prospect of significant acute episodes of solar (or I suppose even cosmic?) radiation and instead of astronauts who are at increased risk of chronic illness later in life, you may well have astronauts suffering from acute radiation sickness?

Probably because my mind is fairly simple However, what boggles my mind about it is this. My fairly simple training in statistics has led me to understand that, the mathematical inferences one can legitimately make (particularly statistical inference) are constrained by the nature of the numbers involved. As a simple example, it would be invalid to use a nominal (categorical) or ordinal scale measure to calculate a square or a square-root, operations that are integral to many forms of hypothesis testing. There are of course nonparametric statistical algorithms, but those tend to offer more limited options. At least historically, there seems to have been some debate about whether it is safe to treat interval scale measures like Celsius temperature as if it were actually a ratio scale in this case. So I have for example, heard people complain that "You can't do a linear regression on anything that is not absolutely, positively a ratio-scale variable." For example, these issues are captured here in the wiki page on Levels of measurement. So here is where it boggles my mind: you've just pointed out that there may actually be nothing like "zero length" in reality. Zero temperature, zero electrical charge, sure, sure, those exist. But zero length? Zero 'time?' Zero energy? What if those are in fact "impossible?" Does that mean that our measures of these things are really nothing but interval scale measures and mathematical operations that assume they are in fact true ratio scales are actually erroneous? I'm fairly primitive when it comes to maths, and what little physical science I have is just sort of 'absorbed' over the years. So forgive me if I'm just being silly. Actually it has been a while since I've picked up a statistics textbook, and I do recall some of my more accomplished colleagues poo-pahing the argument that variables must be ratio scaled to do things like least-squares linear regression. I seem to recall "ratio scale" being declared as one of the operative assumptions of least-squares linear regression in my older textbooks, but I'm not seeing it mentioned as such in what appears to be a pretty nice and up to date wiki page on the topic.