You do make a good point. Symmetry doesn't dictate all, after all we may have two kidneys, but only one liver, and damn wouldn't two livers be handy.

I humbly request many more gifs of Hitler telling bad jokes.

This analyses seems a bit backwards to me. We are symmetrical because of the way we 'unfold' during development. This is true of almost all multicellular life, and especially true of our 'branch' of the tree. This symmetry is a much, much older part of our genetic history than even the ability to smell. So that…

Wow, they are making new Watchmen art and not in any way messing with a perfectly self contained story? I LOVE IT. Let me know when I can buy prints.

Is it actually published in Life? Because if no one can comprehend it then I don't really think it should have made it past peer review. That's more of a shop it around conferences for feedback sort of stage.

The original show had a lot of tones of romance novels/sexy pulp. It wouldn't take much to update the setting and keep the original mood.

One more show I don't have to bother watching.

Well I'm not a fella.

Lactation in human males is rare, and has not be proven to be real lactation or some abnormality. Outside of humans true lactation has been documented.

The only thing you really need to keep a woman lactating is the stimulation on the nipple. That is the trigger that produces the milk (which is actually why proper breast milk doesn't come in until a couple of days after the baby is born, before that is is a pre-breast milk substance triggered by the late stages of…

As long as it's a sunny island.

There are some good things out there. I read an alt-universe comic where Vader raises her as a Sith and then she switches to the light side. Not actually that well written, but a very cool idea.

I'm not usually one to jump on the OMG MUST HAVE tee-shirt bandwagon but,

Something linear is something that starts at one set point and ends at another. Families are not really like that, or to the extent that they are it is artificial. You can pick a point to start, but if you go back more than two or so generations (which is an artificial place to stop), there is no point where you can…

A fractal is a complex pattern based on a simple algorithm repeated, just like generational growth. So, you start with one point in the model that is the first generations, as the children have their own children and the shape grows, the edges of it are defined by their offspring and so on. Because they will not all…

While that graphic is accurate, it does very little to convey the actual issue. The only this it shows us is that families get mixed up and messy. While that is true, it's not very enlightening. I would contend that is because it is stuck in the old paradigm of a linear tree. I don't want multiple nods filled with…

Sorry, one more point that I hope will clarify what I'm saying. When you say we have 33 million ancestors 25 generations back, that looks like a paradox on a 'family tree' (even though it is not). As we know we have that many ancestors, but they are not unique.

There would be ancestors, they just would just not branch in the traditional way of a family tree. Like your first cousins example, there would be no empty nodes, just multiple nodes filled with the same people. To make a good graphic of this we would need to abandon the linear family tree model (which is what I…

That is a very good way of explaining it. The thing that bothers me is to make it something most people can understand we often talk about it in the context of only the one generation, Eve, when in truth this happened over many, many generations. That is the part that starts to get a little too big for people to…

Again, I actually don't have trouble understanding it. It makes perfect logical sense, no confusion. What I can't do is look back in history and 'see' the tree of relatives and how they relate. I can't draw a mental map of my ancestors turning into me, even though I can understand how those lines worked. All I…