Sure, there's lots of life on Earth that uses hydrogen as part of its anaerobic respiration process. There are (IIRC) well over a dozen ways to do respiration. The problem is, they're basically all limited to unicellular organisms, and the very, very rare multicellular anaerobic species are basically simple chains…

I was thinking of that tool too. I'd guess that they used boats to head south. After all, clams, seaweed, and fish is a really nice survival diet.

Thanks for the update. I'm so clueless that I thought it meant that the science was way less impressive than the puff piece was making it out to be.

Meh. If they're stuck along the coast of Beringia, why not walk south along the coast of Alaska, Canada, etc?

Here's the abstract of the paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613

Given his size, that Godzilla must be a castrato to produce a note that high.

Another useful trick: aluminum foil, salt, baking soda, and hot water are a great way to take tarnish off silver. Gotta love electrochemistry.

Fortunately the collections have been reprinted at least three times. It looks like they're in print at the moment.

How about the Lord Darcy series by Randall Garrett? They're whodunnit murder mysteries, but they're set in a world where the laws of magic (which looks a lot like psychic powers set to ritual) were discovered before the laws of science were, and are used in their place.

Argh! First off: event? No. It's happened multiple times: mitochondria and chloroplasts for plants, for example. Some algae actually engulfed other eukaryotic algae, and so their "chloroplasts" actually have little degenerate nuclei bound into them. Other obscure organisms have their own, odd organelles.

Guilty as charged.

Alternative hypothesis #1: Optimistic science fiction isn't dead, Gene Roddenberry is. Perhaps the problem isn't "The Times," it's the practitioners. Much as I loathe the Great Man theory of history, when it comes to science fiction we've got to look at it. A lot of the movies today look and sound the same because…

Kattle Kays and the above make the fascinating assumption that the politicians know what to do with the information they get.

Context, context, context!

Here's one point we've been telling state parks: it's a really, really good idea to preserve old trees if they want to act as carbon sequestration banks. Conventional forestry tells them that only young trees sequester any carbon, and as a result, they disregard old growth forests unless they bring in tourists.

Not a representative democracy? Actually, I do have news for you. There is a lot of direct democracy out there, in the form of citizens' advisory councils, juries, and such at all levels. We live in a democracy. I hope you participate beyond voting and serving on juries.

Remember that companies can currently also donate all sorts of money to political causes. With no net neutrality and dying newspapers, how do we even pretend to have a democracy? Candidates who won't play the providers' games will not be able to talk with any potential voters.

Missed one reason. Hunter-gatherers often had a more diverse diet than do agriculturualists: if you're gathering, bugs, rats, snakes, and all sorts of plant parts (leaves, bark, roots) are considered edible. If you're an agriculturalist, you're more tied to your fields.

It would be amusing if they retconned some real science into it and had him use real ant pheromones (some of which are chemicals also found in gasoline) to communicate. Then again, ants make pheromone trails by dragging the pheromone organs in their butts along the ground. That might not be so heroic. Still, it…

Fair enough.