TheSilence

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Posts by TheSilence

• 
  29

  I need a good book to read...

  by liquidsky in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it's cold and rainy and i'm out of reading material.

  i need a good book to read.

  any suggestions?

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  TheSilence

  The Red Tent is also a good book, though I can't recall who wrote it.
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  29

  I need a good book to read...

  by liquidsky in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it's cold and rainy and i'm out of reading material.

  i need a good book to read.

  any suggestions?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  TheSilence

  The first is actually a series of 5 books starting with 'The Clan of the Cave Bear'. Some people find it difficult to get through the first few chapters, but once it picks up they can't put the book down.

  Jackie
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  29

  I need a good book to read...

  by liquidsky in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it's cold and rainy and i'm out of reading material.

  i need a good book to read.

  any suggestions?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  TheSilence

  The Earth Children Series by Jean M. Auel

  Snowflower and the Secret Fan by, I believe, Lisa See

  The Secret History by Donna Tartt
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  10

  Evolution and "Missing Link" theory

  by Mile 0 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  not long ago, i caught the tale end of a show where this biologist believes that both apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor.

  therefor there is no so-called "missing link".

  has anyone heard about this theory?.

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• 

  TheSilence

  From:
  
  http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/10/12/1128796590142.html?from=top5
  
  

  Hobbits turn out older, smaller, curiouser and curiouser

  
  By Deborah Smith Science Editor
  October 13, 2005
  The hobbit-sized humans who lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores until 12,000 years ago may have had a very ancient family history.
  
  A new study of bones from more members of the tiny species suggests they descended from an unknown primitive ancestor related to australopithecines like "Lucy", who lived 3 million years ago in Ethiopia.
  
  This would mean human-like creatures must have left Africa much earlier than thought - almost 2 million years ago.
  
  Australian and Indonesian scientists stunned the world a year ago with their discovery in a cave on Flores of the skull and partial skeleton of a new kind of human, dubbed hobbit, who was about a metre tall with a brain the size of a chimpanzee's.
  
  "We now have evidence for at least nine individuals," the research team leader, Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, said yesterday.
  
  Independent scientists who were not members of the discovery team said the latest analysis of the finds, described today in the journal Nature , confirmed the hobbits, Homo floresiensis , belonged to a new species of humans, and were not merely pygmies or diseased modern humans, as a small number of sceptics have claimed.
  
  "This clinches it 100 per cent," said Dr Colin Groves, of the Australian National University.
  
  Daniel Lieberman, of Harvard University, said excavations in Liang Bua cave showed it had been inhabited for more than 80,000 years by people hunting pygmy elephants, making stone tools and using fire.
  
  If they were just small, modern humans with brain deformities, they would have had to survive for a very long time.
  
  "Such possibilities strain credulity," Professor Lieberman said.
  
  Peter Brown, a member of the team from the University of New England, said the newly described remains, which included a second jaw, the right arm of the original skeleton and other leg and arm bones, showed some of the adults were even less than a metre tall.
  
  The team had initially thought the hobbits had descended from a more recent human ancestor, Homo erectus , who underwent a dwarfing process on the island similar to the pygmy elephants.
  
  "But increasingly the evidence is pointing towards an ancestor with the same body size and brain size as australopithecines ," Professor Brown said. With long arms, thick bones and small brains, these people had body proportions "exactly the same as Lucy's".
  
  The new fossils were found last year, but the researchers were unable to dig in Liang Bua this year following a custody dispute with a leading Indonesian researcher over the priceless remains, which resulted in them being irreparably damaged.
  
  Instead, Professor Morwood and his colleagues excavated in the nearby Soa Basin and found "very exciting" evidence, including stone tools that pushed back the known human occupation of the island to at least 1 million years.

  ---

  Text below adapted from an article in National Geographic, April 2005: At first we thought it was a child, perhaps three years old. But a closer look showed that the tiny, fragile bones we has just laid bare in a spacious cve onthe Indonesian island of Flores belonged to a full-grown adult just over three feet (one metre) tall.
  
  This tiny human relative, whom we nicknamed Hobbit, lived just 18 000 years ago, at time when modern humans - people like us - were on the march around the globe.
  
  Yet it looked more like a diminutive version of human ancestors a hundred times older, from the other end of asia. (Homo erectus).

  
  Photo: National Geographic April 2005

  
  

  
  Photo: National Geographic April 2005

  
  

  
  Photo: National Geographic April 2005

  
  

  
  Photo: National Geographic April 2005

  
  

  
  Photo: National Geographic April 2005
• 
  10

  Evolution and "Missing Link" theory

  by Mile 0 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  not long ago, i caught the tale end of a show where this biologist believes that both apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor.

  therefor there is no so-called "missing link".

  has anyone heard about this theory?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  TheSilence

  From:
  http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/27/1098667841536.html?oneclick=true
  
  Lost race of human 'hobbits' By Stephen Cauchi Science Reporter
  October 28, 2004
  
  

  A painting of a male Homo floresiensis.
  
  Artwork: Peter Schouten
  
  The story of man is being rewritten. Australian and Indonesian scientists have dug up skeletons of a previously unknown human species - real "hobbits" that stood only a metre tall - that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores, west of Timor, until relatively recently.
  
  The scientists found the first skeleton in September 2003 in Liang Bua, a large limestone cave on the island. The one-metre-tall female, aged about 30 and dubbed "Hobbit", lived about 18 000 years ago.
  
  Six similar skeletons were later found, some of whom lived in the cave just 13 000 years ago. The scientists have speculated that the species may have lived on Flores - which they dubbed the "lost world" - until the 16th century.
  
  They were dark and hairless with sunken eyes, a flat nose, large teeth, a projecting mouth and no chin.
  
  Despite having a small brain, the species could cook, hunt large prey and build rafts, the scientists say. Stone artefacts and animal remains were found with the skeletons.

  
  The new species has been officially named Homo floresiensis, and it is the most recent living human relative by far: until this week, the only other human species known to have coexisted with modern humans (Homo sapiens) were Neanderthal man and Homo erectus. Neanderthal man lived in Europe, becoming extinct 30 000 years ago. Homo erectus lived in Asia, becoming extinct possibly 100 000 years ago, although this figure is disputed.
  
  The discovery is published in this week's edition of Nature.
  
  One of the scientists and a co-author of the Nature paper, Bert Roberts from the University of Wollongong, told The Age the team was stunned by the discovery.
  
  "It's come out of left field," he said. "No one was predicting this. It's one of those big leaps forward as opposed to the incremental advances we make most of the time.
  
  "We were expecting to find the remains of early modern humans. Instead, what we found is a completely new species of human."
  
  Professor Roberts said the discovery would redraw the human family tree. "It's one of the most important (discoveries) because it shows there was diversity among humans until very, very recently. If you go with the previous models, people say for the past 30 000 years we've been the only human species to inhabit the planet, whereas in fact that's rubbish.
  
  "For most of human history, there's been more than one human species. Right now, it's unusual for us to be the only one around. In actual fact, that's been the case even more recently than we ever believed possible."
  
  "They've got a brain the size of a grapefruit, yet they can make stone tools just as well as we can make them . . . they were cooking, they were making fire and they were hunting those little stegodons, those little baby elephants . . . they were intelligent and almost certainly had language."
  
  The Liang Bua cave was inhabited from 95 000 years ago, he said, but archaeological evidence indicated that the species arrived on Flores hundreds of thousands of years before. They would have needed rafts to get to the island, but they were probably much bigger than they later became - genetic isolation over the millenniums causing them to shrink.
  
  The scientists have dismissed the possibility that they found children or dwarfs and say the skeletons are those of fully grown adults.
  
  By contrast, pygmies - the shortest members of Homo sapiens - are about 1.3 metres tall.
  
  The excavation team was led by Peter Brown and Mike Morwood from the University of New England and included scientists from the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology.
  
  A major unresolved question is whether the new species shared Flores with Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens left Africa about 100 000 years ago and had reached Australia, south-east of Flores, about 50 000 years ago.
  
  Professor Roberts said a layer of volcanic ash at the site suggested a volcanic eruption killed the species 12 000 years ago.
  
  But they may have survived elsewhere on the island. "There are lots of local folk tales in Flores about these people which are consistent and incredibly detailed. The stories suggest there may have been a grain of truth to the idea they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s," Professor Roberts said. "The stories suggest they lived in caves. The villagers would leave gourds with food out for them to eat, but legend has it they were the guests from hell - they'd eat everything, including the gourds."
  
  He said isolated Flores was a fascinating "lost world", home to a range of exotic creatures extinct elsewhere, often morphed into giant or dwarf forms through lack of genetic diversity. These included a dwarf form of the primitive elephant stegodon, giant rats, Komodo dragons, and even larger species of giant lizard. The scientists say Homo floresiensis is descended from Homo erectus, who first arrived on Flores about 840 000 years ago, after leaving Africa about a million years ago.
  
  However, Colin Groves, of the Australian National University, said the skeletons had some extremely primitive features, and could be related to an even earlier human ancestor, Australopithecus, which predated all Homo species and was thought not to have left Africa.
  
  Professor Groves, who was not involved in the discovery, called it "very significant . . . absolutely fascinating".
  
  Alan Thorne, also from the ANU, predicted a worldwide storm of controversy over the skeletons, especially with regard to their exact ancestry.
  
  Professor Roberts said the team would continue to dig on Flores and other isolated Indonesian islands to see if other human species existed and whether Homo sapiens may have lived alongside them.
  
  "It's a real lost world . . . until so recently there would have been these tiny little people running around," he said. "It would have been fantastic to see."
• 
  56

  grammer and spelling

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i noticed someone correcting spelling for a couple of posters.

  it reminded me of a couple of things that really bug me.. "momentarily" as in "thank you for holding.

  someone will be with you momentarily.

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  TheSilence

  And for the record, when it was brought to my attention I changed my post, even though people would know from the posts below it. Silly pride, I know. lol

  Jackie
• 
  56

  grammer and spelling

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i noticed someone correcting spelling for a couple of posters.

  it reminded me of a couple of things that really bug me.. "momentarily" as in "thank you for holding.

  someone will be with you momentarily.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  TheSilence

  Isn't that great? I pick on other people, and screw it up myself! What is it I have seen folks write: roflmao? That's really funny! Should I edit it or leave it as it is?

  You can change it if you want... but people will be able to tell from the replies below your original post. Let us hope a simple spelling error is not held against you ;) Jackie
• 
  56

  grammer and spelling

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i noticed someone correcting spelling for a couple of posters.

  it reminded me of a couple of things that really bug me.. "momentarily" as in "thank you for holding.

  someone will be with you momentarily.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  TheSilence

  It can be annoying, but we all make mistakes from time to time. For instance, I was upset the other day and used 'memorandum' instead of 'memorium'. Or, for example, it is spelled grammar, not grammer.

  Jackie
• 
  16

  ...The Length of your Shaft...

  by OUTLAW in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ..for all of you who logged onto my thread for all the wrong reasons ..good for you!!..lol!

  !.....the "bristle" dart board is considered the best dart board.others are made of compressed paper or composition.the earliest dart boards were made of elm.....in very poor villages that had no wood.they would lay the village idiot over an empty beer barrel and use his bum for a dart board.as long as his beer glass was full he didn`t mind..theres an advantage to using a village idiot`s bum as a dart board.you always know when you got a bulls-eye!the village idiot would get a very suprised look on his face,raise his shot glass and shout"whu-hoo!

  "..anyone who got a bulls-eye had to buy the village idiot a shot of whiskey..it was only fair..lol!

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  TheSilence

  I don't know why the link above doesn't work... but if you type it in it should take you there.

  Jackie
• 
  16

  ...The Length of your Shaft...

  by OUTLAW in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ..for all of you who logged onto my thread for all the wrong reasons ..good for you!!..lol!

  !.....the "bristle" dart board is considered the best dart board.others are made of compressed paper or composition.the earliest dart boards were made of elm.....in very poor villages that had no wood.they would lay the village idiot over an empty beer barrel and use his bum for a dart board.as long as his beer glass was full he didn`t mind..theres an advantage to using a village idiot`s bum as a dart board.you always know when you got a bulls-eye!the village idiot would get a very suprised look on his face,raise his shot glass and shout"whu-hoo!

  "..anyone who got a bulls-eye had to buy the village idiot a shot of whiskey..it was only fair..lol!

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  TheSilence

  Should I get a longer shaft,for a heavier dart?

  I asked Mike, my significant other, who has played a lot of darts and is very good. We have trophies all over the house. He says, "The best dart you can get is a black widow. They come with steel and soft tips. Just pick a higher gram. The shaft length is more about how it feels and fits in your hand, not about the weight. If you have a large hand you will probably want a longer dart. If your hands are small, a shorter one. If you are throwing at the dart board and your aim is high you will probably want a heavier dart, if it's low, a lighter one."

  If you want to look at the black widow darts he recommends the following website for dart supplies:

  www.horizondarts.com

  He says they also make silver widows if you would rather have a silver barrel.

  Hope this helps.

  Jackie

  He says P.S. let him know when you're ready to play for some money