In article <475c650d$1@news.povray.org>, nos### [at] nospamcom says...
> On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:52:40 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> 
> > Jim Henderson wrote:
> >> I think we could probably agree that a watch is unlikely to happen as
> >> the evolution of something geologic,
> > 
> > Any particular item is unlikely to happen at all. I don't think it's
> > that far-fetched to believe in something that keeps time based on
> > sunrise, sunset, or tides.
> 
> But something that keeps time accurately that you can wear on your 
> wrist?  Surely there aren't forests where those sorts of things grow on
 
> trees. :-)
> 
Hmm. Does it have to be human readable? lol Seriously, there is a fairly 
solid theory now that *most* of the behavior of insects is timing based. 
That, in essense, they have a lot of internal timers, which do 
everything, including providing a basic "clock" for movements, like 
flight direction, and that deciding to go left, instead of right, is, 
depending on circumstances, either a matter of interrupting the clock, 
or random glitches/permutations in the system. It might be a biological 
clock, and far more flexible in dealing with the unexpected, but for 
insects, there may not be a lot of "mind" there to start with, just a 
lot of purely statistical mechanics.

So, the questions really are: 1. Does it have to be human readable? and 
2. How accurate do you want it? After that, its just a matter to finding 
something, like a leech maybe, that will attach like a parasite, to feed 
itself, and whose "clocks" operate to generate some form of visible, 
easily read, timing. And, unless you get a mutant, it would probably be 
*way* more accurate, even in the dark, than any mechanical clock. ;)

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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