why are you an atheist?

[Baruch]

Oh, almighty Bob, I haven't had my hands on a VT52 terminal in 35 years...

VT100 terminals were quite good, particularly if you got the green phosphor kind ;-)  And yes, that was over 30 years ago ... though we still had them even 15 years ago.  Once software was "graphical" that was the death of a really practical no-nonsense user I/F.  Damn you Mac and Windows!  If you can't express yourself in ASCII, then don't even bother!

[Hydra009]

My only concern about living in a simulation would be whether the equipment we're running on is good enough that we don't get unfortunate glitches. We don't need no stinkin' glitches!

[GrinningYMIR]

If we’re in a simulation then I must Complain about he lack of a major content update, weapons packs are all well and good but the half finished space dlc was annoying and we haven’t seen a new race since 56000 BC. We want new races mods

[Hydra009]

If we’re in a simulation then I must Complain about he lack of a major content update, weapons packs are all well and good but the half finished space dlc was annoying and we haven’t seen a new race since 56000 BC. We want new races mods

No race stuff, plz.  Complaints about perceived racial trait imbalances practically destroyed the community last patch (documentation is nonexistant, so we're going by people's guesstimations from experience, which isn't particularly reliable)

What we need are quality of life fixes  - fixing the happiness drain bug (it decreases faster over time than it should), improved recovery times (no one should be out of mana/energy after logging off for 8 hours), and the rare but widespread bug where people randomly get a severe damage debuff despite not actually taking damage or being in combat at all.

[Jason78]

Oh, almighty Bob, I haven't had my hands on a VT52 terminal in 35 years...

I was hacking my way through the internet at a very young age :)   

Dial up account without a shell?  No thanks :D

[trdsf]

I was hacking my way through the internet at a very young age :)   

Dial up account without a shell?  No thanks :D

We weren't even Internet-connected back then—the VT52s were terminals onto our VAX system.  There were two VT52s, and twelve to sixteen VT100s (or similar) in the computer room in the basement of the library.  And a terminal in each dorm building.  Yes, I did mean a terminal.  Per building.

[Cavebear]

If we’re in a simulation then I must Complain about he lack of a major content update, weapons packs are all well and good but the half finished space dlc was annoying and we haven’t seen a new race since 56000 BC. We want new races mods

What some people consider to be "races" are merely slight differences in skin color as our same ancestors adapted to changes in sunlight in different ways as we all explored the world.  In some places, we adapted evolving pale, yellowish, or reddish skin.  Apparently all those adaptation worked well enough since people of the same origin are still living.

I might well think that some people with bluish or greenish skin started to evolve (as equally random mutations) but it did give much of an advantage.

So we have differently colored skins that seem to have worked where we lived, and it doesn't much matter today.  We can all live well anywhere due to modern society (we all mostly lived inside structures), and so skin color doesn't make any difference.  With globalization, we are all going to be some shade of moderate tan soon enough.

[Baruch]

I would be concerned that green people might wither in the Fall ;-)

[SGOS]

I would be concerned that green people might wither in the Fall ;-)

The structure of a hemoglobin molecule is almost identical to chlorophyll, with one atom of iron, instead of manganese (or is it magnesium?).  I saw the molecule diagrams for them in biology side by side, but I noticed other structural changes besides just that one.  We must be related to plants.  Well of course we would be.

[Cavebear]

The structure of a hemoglobin molecule is almost identical to chlorophyll, with one atom of iron, instead of manganese (or is it magnesium?).  I saw the molecule diagrams for them in biology side by side, but I noticed other structural changes besides just that one.  We must be related to plants.  Well of course we would be.

I had to look it up, but I was interested enough to do that.

Hemoglobin and Chlorophyll have similar structures. The main difference is that hemoglobin is built around iron (Fe), where as chlorophyll is built around magnesium, (Mg).  The primary function for hemoglobin is to transport oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body.  Hemoglobin is composed of four elements- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. All four are organized around iron. Chlorophyll is composed of the same elements, which are organized around magnesium.

[trdsf]

I had to look it up, but I was interested enough to do that.

Hemoglobin and Chlorophyll have similar structures. The main difference is that hemoglobin is built around iron (Fe), where as chlorophyll is built around magnesium, (Mg).  The primary function for hemoglobin is to transport oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body.  Hemoglobin is composed of four elements- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. All four are organized around iron. Chlorophyll is composed of the same elements, which are organized around magnesium.

I love waking up to a fact I didn't know.  :)

[SGOS]

I had to look it up, but I was interested enough to do that.

Hemoglobin and Chlorophyll have similar structures. The main difference is that hemoglobin is built around iron (Fe), where as chlorophyll is built around magnesium, (Mg).  The primary function for hemoglobin is to transport oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body.  Hemoglobin is composed of four elements- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. All four are organized around iron. Chlorophyll is composed of the same elements, which are organized around magnesium.

Assuming animals evolved from plants or some ancestor to both, it's hard to understand the evolutionary advantage of what seems like a very simple mutation.  Chlorophyll and hemoglobin being so similar, there must be a connection of some sort.  But how does that mutation become an advantage? 

Now here's this flower happily going about manufacturing its own food, which is far more efficient than hunting and gathering.  Then one day it's DNA gets zapped by a cosmic ray, and suddenly it's making hemoglobin instead of chlorophyll.  Now it can no longer make it's own food, but it has this useless new molecule, and evolution taking a long as it does, there isn't enough time for the flower to grow arms and legs and teeth and a nervous system to run those required gadgets before it dies.

So instead of a flower, it must have been a giant sequoia, with a life span of a thousand years.  Now it has plenty of time to evolve into an ape.  Yes, I'm beginning to understand it now.

[Cavebear]

Assuming animals evolved from plants or some ancestor to both, it's hard to understand the evolutionary advantage of what seems like a very simple mutation.  Chlorophyll and hemoglobin being so similar, there must be a connection of some sort.  But how does that mutation become an advantage? 

Now here's this flower happily going about manufacturing its own food, which is far more efficient than hunting and gathering.  Then one day it's DNA gets zapped by a cosmic ray, and suddenly it's making hemoglobin instead of chlorophyll.  Now it can no longer make it's own food, but it has this useless new molecule, and evolution taking a long as it does, there isn't enough time for the flower to grow arms and legs and teeth and a nervous system to run those required gadgets before it dies.

So instead of a flower, it must have been a giant sequoia, with a life span of a thousand years.  Now it has plenty of time to evolve into an ape.  Yes, I'm beginning to understand it now.

SGOS, surely YOU are not asking me for a brief history of evolution... 

You know slight changes in DNA can make weird differences in the long term.

[SGOS]

SGOS, surely YOU are not asking me for a brief history of evolution... 

You know slight changes in DNA can make weird differences in the long term.

Sorry, I just like to write absurd nonsense from time to time.  I try to make it absurd enough that people will recognize it's intentionally absurd, but I try to avoid such an extreme so that it might actually sound like something someone might say out of ignorance.

Actually, from what I just googled, it's more likely that the evolution seems to be that animals evolved to eat plants, and then evolved some mechanism that uses chlorophyll to manufacture hemoglobin.  It was not a detailed enough explanation to explain if the chlorophyll is a catalyst or a building block in the process or exactly how it is used.  The part about eating plants first and then using the chlorophyll itself is conjecture on my part.  I have no actual knowledge of the order of the evolutionary events.

Happy now?

[trdsf]

SGOS, surely YOU are not asking me for a brief history of evolution... 

Well, he was talking about plant evolution, so I suppose what he was really after was a brief history of thyme...


...sorry, I *really* couldn't resist that.