This is the item to answer tough questions.  I'm the only
one who gets to ask the questions.

80 responses total.

First question:  What specifically causes mistakes?

lack of eternal perspective, I suppose.

mistakes cause mistakes.

Alternate universe shifts.  At some point in time and space
it wasn't a mistake but then everything moved.  I learned this
one from many a desperate screenwriter.

Mistakes follow from the Second Law.

Thank you for your responses.

Next question:  Why are people approximately symmetrical?

They aren't. The head does not resemble in any fashion the feet.

People are of course not symmetrical about any plane whatsoever.
But there is one plane for which they are.  The plane to which I
refer.

The tautological answer is, it is not of adaptive evolutionary advantage
to be significantly unsymmetrical about all planes. Several questions
follow from that.

And do not forget that I am the only one allowed to ask them.

People are approximately symmetrical due to selective
evolution.  Women who had one tiny breast and one huge
breast were shunned in favor of those with two breasts
of the same size.  So those with wildly different sized
breasts didn't breed as often.

From the research I've uncovered it's the shunning process
that gets interesting.  Mostly it's thought men didn't
want to think about which breast they liked, mostly they
just wanted to be sex machines.  So men being turning
into brain-dead penises during sex is part of why we
are symmetrical.

Don't ask.  I've lost the cites.

Most of the earlist motile multi-=cellular living creatures had planes of
approximate mirror symmetry. This is especially true of those with legs or
grasping organs, as mirror-image legs and grasping appendages are
especially adaptive.  Once the hox genes directing symmetries were
selected for some functions, they would have had a secondary influence on
other symmetries. Since symmetric body plans were especially advantageous
to the simplest motile organism, these systems have been conserved during
evolution.

#11 begs the question of why women have two breasts in the first
place.  It would make sense if the norm was to have children in
pairs, but that is the exception, not the rule.

But no matter.  I have another question:

Why do we have five fingers on each hand, and five toes on each
foot?  Why not four, six, or some other number?

Breasts are also under the control (in part) of the hox genes, which
dictate number and placement. See
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jmoore/publications/polythelia.html 
for examples of polythelia. The antiquity of this control is shown by
the absence of monothelia amount mammals. 

In regard to #13: because if we did have four or six or some other
number, you would ask the same question. 

Next question, somewhat related to the previous one:  If a mirror
reverses right and left, why doesn't it reverse up and down?

Wouldn't it depend on your point of view, or definition?

A mirror *doesn't* reverse right and left. Your left side is still on
the left in the image you see, just as your pate is still above your
jowl. 

I dunno; my jowls are usually above my plate.

Bon appetit.

If you're lying down on one side when you look in the mirror, it *does* 
reverse up and down.  

Okay, here's an easy question.

A man with a goat, a parrot, and a large bible arrived at the edge of
a river.  A small rowboat was available for crossing the river, but
there was room in the boat for the man and at most one of his items.
Therefore, multiple crossings would be necessary to carry all three
items across the river.  However, the man could not leave the goat
alone with the parrot because the goat would eat it.  For the same
reaons, the goat could not be left alone with the bible.  The parrot
could not be left alone with the bible because the parrot might
swear a blue streak and bring down the wrath of God upon everyone.
Therefore, seeing the impossibility of getting all of his possessions
across the river, what should the man do?

Re #20: not at all. The "up(down)" side of your face is "up(down)" in
the reflection. You must keep in mind that that is not an *object* on
the other side of the mirror: it is just a reflection across a plane.

Re: #21
Make sure he finds a way to make his parrot fly..:)

Re: #1 - on the cause of mistakes
ripples in the space-time continuum

Re: #15
A even better question would be why doesn't a mirror reverse in and out. Now
that'd be fun

A mirror doesn't reverse anything.

according to remmers (#15) a mirror reverses left and right

I never said that.

#17 responds to #15 IF #15 is an assertion and not a conditional.

I am still musing on the concept of reversing in and out.  It
sounds messy.

Re #29
potatoes, pototoes.. here's a question for ya
do travellers in time grow old with the same rate as 'constant' time
residents?

Ask a time traveller.

Umm ..isn't everyone a time traveller ? yesterday I was at yesterday , Today
I am at today .. Only that allof us are travelling at the same pace ....

Actually, we are not, since if we have any relative velocity there is
a difference in the rate of our internal clocks. So most everyone is
travelling at a different pace, just due to the earth's rotation, or in fact
by just walking. Astronauts that have been circling the earth do indeed return
younger relative to your age. The difference isn't easily noticeable, but
it is there. 

if that were true, wouldn't it also be true that we potentially have the
ability to control the aging process? if it were all dependent on the internal
clock that is
as for the austronauts, i do believe they come back taller, not relatively
younger :)

They come back relatively younger. It is an effect of just special
relativity. This has been measured by the atomic clocks in satellites, and
is a factor in synchronizing GPS satellites. It isn't a particularly
noticeable time shift, but it is somewhat mind boggling that the
astronauts have been "time shifted" at all, by virtue of their travel.

Yes, that is *theoretically* true - according to the relativity theory, and
probably almost everyone has heard of the twin paradox. However, for our
austronauts, for now, I doubt it it's even measurable.
I was actually wondering more on the practical side of it - if human beings
have the ability to 'adjust' their internal clocks. There are 2 phenoma I'm
aware of - that scientists claim can 'strech' time - extreme gravity and
extreme speed. Yet, there's so much people still don't know - and there are
legends and tails in different cultures about people being able to live a
thousand years. And guess what - recently there was an article about the human
genome that actually stated a human being have the potential to last for a
thousand years. So what if all those tails are not just
tails? Not that I'd want to live a thousand years, more like - what if we can
do more than we can ever imagine, now that's mind boggling

I think it would be pretty terrible if people could live 1000 years. What
about new people? Do you forbid births, so those living can hobble on for
1000 years? 

Anyway, that all pretty much idle speculation. I am more intrigued by the
fact that there are living among us people that have been time-shifted, even
if only for some nanoseconds. This means that there is nothing paradoxical
or even unusual about it - just another fact of nature. What it points up is
that we really don't understand "time" (and lots more about our peculiar,
quantum-structured universe).

i agree it would be terrible, but not because that'd mean no more births. on
the other hand, however, maybe progress and advances in any science will drive
much more quickly as people have more time to capitalize on their life
experience

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss