On 7-7-2010 10:17, Invisible wrote:

>>> On a completely unrelated note, apparently in some animals the heart 
>>> is a single pump, and in yet others it's just a tube that sort of 
>>> squirts,
>>
>> In humans (and mammals and birds and probably also the reptiles and 
>> fishes) it starts out as a tube with peristaltic contractions only 
>> later the two separate circulations are formed. E.g. crocodiles have a 
>> single chamber, but don't make the assumption that therefore their 
>> heart is more primitive. For them that functions better than any 4 
>> chambered heart would do.
> 
> Well, the word "primitive" means "simpler", and it's sometimes taken to 
> mean "less evolved". And people seem to think that simpler is worse, and 
> more complex is better. 

A crocodile heart may be more complex than a human heart, it is e.g. 
capable of adjusting the mixing of oxygenated and non-oxygenated blood 
according to how much is needed. That helps in keeping submerged for 
long times.

> Then again, people think that worms are "less 
> evolved" than humans - but they severely out-number us, so they can't be 
> doing it that badly wrong...

All animals alive today have evolved for exactly the same amount of 
time. If you count generations, smaller animals are in general more 
evolved than larger

>> Pity that given your interest in this topic (and in e.g. MathML) that 
>> you seem to be stuck in MK.
> 
> Heh. I'm "interested" in many, many topics. Fractals, data compression, 
> encryption, statistics, artificial intelligence, digital signal 
> processing, sound synthesis, logic design, biology, evolution... the 
> list goes on.

About 70% of these would have been useful in a job application here.

> The GHC User Manual has a section "for over-interested souls". I think 
> this is possibly the term that describes me...

I think that would also describe me, although I prefer to describe my 
interests as broad but not shallow.

>>> In other news, I spent a really absurd amount of time on Wikipedia. o_O
>>
>> I think we noticed, and on WA.
> 
> Ah WA... Very cool, but not especially useful. Like the data glove, it 
> seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

Or a set of answers in search of a search.

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