Couldn’t binary data theoretically last forever? You’d probably have to have some kind of human hands at work, of course, but unlike, say, a decaying medium like a vinyl record or the shroud of Turin, you could always take a DVD that hasn’t been completely ruined and make a new backup of the exact same binary data, but with zero corruption. Keep repeating the cycle every so often, and you have information that lasts forever. Or maybe you could make a really big CD made out of pure diamond and bury it in an airtight time capsule for 1000 years…could that ever work?
Annoying nitpick: Technically, we aren’t “more” or “less” evolved than anything else. Human beings have had the same amount of evolution as an amoeba, namely, a few billion(?) years.
Taking the layman’s meaning of the word “evolved,” though, one theory I have is that television is a huge leap in the evolution of our species - for better or for worse - and we have only begun to understand its true consequences.
One crazy theory I have - more of a “What if?” than a real theory - is that the percieved acceleration of everything in the universe away from everything else might be something else entirely. Specifically, what if everything, including the fabric of space itself, was shrinking at a constant rate? If our galaxy and the galaxy next to us are both half the size they were 5 billion years ago, and yet they’re almost the same distance apart, wouldn’t that be indistinguishable from what would happen if they were twice the distance they were 5 billion years ago? I suppose the speed of light would also have to shrink at the same rate in order for that to work. I don’t know enough about the big bang theory to say if there’s anything wrong with that theory, but what if?
The laws of physics aren’t absolutes but depend upon local environmental conditions.
For instance, the speed of light is not a constant. It is much higher when away from a star’s gravity well. This also explains “gravitational lensing”. The star’s mass does not curve space-time so that the “straight” line followed by the light becomes curved. Rather, the speed of light drops near the star, so the light is refracted towards it, just like light does when it crosses an air/glass boundary.
When you are Doing What You Shouldn’t Be Doing (applying to men) or Dressed Like A Hag ( applying to women) your brainbox sends out Guilt /I Hope Know One I Know Sees Me rays. Like a beacon of ESP to the most obscure peoples of your life to make them suddenly want to go to Target and walk directly down the skin care aisle and see you looking at Industrial Strength Zit Creme for reasons that are more than painfully apparent.
I hypothesized that some dinosaurs had feathers long before any paleontologists were saying so. I even wrote a letter to National Geographic about it once.
Vindication is sweet.
My other hypothesis is about Indian mounds. Almost everything written about them says they were built for “ceremonial purposes.” Bah. All the Indian mounds I’ve seen are hard by rivers, and built on flood plains. I say that the mounds were built as a place of retreat for times when the river flooded unexpectedly. They may have also been used for ceremony, or as home for a chief, but they were built primarily for a utilitarian purpose. IMNSHO
So in my years of observing the fairer sex, I have come to a few conclusions about them.
All women have inherant lesbian qualities. Perhaps they are born predisposed to liking other women, and then learn to like boys. The evidence: Women are, on the average, more affectionate with each other than men. When two lifelong women friends meet, they might hug…men might punch each other in the arm. In addition, it seems that women are more likely to admit that they are attracted to the same sex, but not consider themselves homosexual or bisexual. For instance, in the severla threads we ahve had about ‘who would you go gay for,’ women dopers seem to respond more and with more vigor than male dopers.
Al women love cheesecake. Evidence: Do i really need any? Just look around people!
All women love chocolate. See #2.
I have met no woman that contridicts #3, a handful that contridict #2, and only one that contridicts #1. That same woman also contridicts #2. When I say I have met only one woman who contridicts #1, what I mean is that in my lifetime of noticing this phenomenon, only one woman I have met that I have probed about this said she doesn’t find any women attractive, ever. She does not like being ‘touchy-feely’ with other women, and certainly wouldn’t ‘go gay’ for any woman, since she doesn’t find any attractive.
(please note: I’m just being silly. I’m sure they are plenty of women out there who hate cheesecake, chocolate, and other women…well, ok, not chocolate, but the other two certainly.)
McDonalds made a huge claim that they switched their oil used for their fries to make them “healthier.” Come to find out, they are still using the same trans fat oil they were using before.
To make themselves look better, they agreed to pay the American Heart Association 7 million dollars for educational purposes.
Whether that money will actually be used for such causes remains to be seen, however it just goes to show how full of crap corporate America is.
My theory is that the government and political figures take advantage of the fact that we have a bi-partisan system and know that they could never exsist without an opposing party.
Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats for all the ills of government. With this scape-goat they always have a place to put blame instead of fessing up to the fact that government as a whole is doing a shitty job.
The public, rather than taking a stance of either “the government is succeeding” or “the government is failing” is forced to take a stance of chosing a side and then giving their side credit for successes, and blaming the other side for failures.
Dems and Reps know they need eachother, for if they didn’t they’d run the risk of complete public disapproval.
I have a theory that the nation state is heading for extinction. The reason is that the extremely destructive weapons these states have developed will more and more fall into the hands of people intent on disrupting the state (and its economy). Whereas in the past states were able to absorb the relatively small scale attacks that occurred, in the future they will be unable to do so.
I have a theory that all it takes to attract women as a man is to not be weird - and I don’t mean weird like quirky and unique, I mean just weird. A lot of my friends just do strange things that freak women out… say strange things, do strange things… all you have to do is be normal, and you will get your fair share of dates.
Bertrand Russell once reported receving a letter from a woman (in response to a debunking of solipsism in an editorial) who claimed that not only was she a solipsist, but she was suprised that more people were not, as well.
Er, lady…uh…you know, there’s…um…kind of a…oxymor–ah, heck, never mind.
That everything has some form of a finite, discrete manifestation (the molecules that make up a table, the number of stars in the universe) – including time.
That corporate-bought politicians of both parties are cutting education in order to deliberately dumb down the population and make it easier for the upper-upper classes to retain power.
That human beings are the “pinnacle” of evolution. In fact, we’re an evolutionary mistake, creating intelligent beings that can manipulate the natural world and therefore eventually destroy it.
Death is either: (a) nothing more than a minor loss of information from the viewpoint of the cosmos, a byproduct of chaos or (b) a gateway into reincarnation-- but not as an individual “soul” (floabw), more like a comingling of souls, a chunk of which becomes part of a newborn. This assumes that a person’s memories, learning, etc. follows something like the laws of thermodynamics.
Related to bouv’s theory, I’d like to suggest that men view cheese as women view chocolate. Both substances probably cause similar alterations in brain chemistry. All I need is a grant and my SO and I will immediately begin testing this theory on each other.