Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate

I think I've sussed this one out ...

The dry biomass of the earth is ~ 3 quadrillion kilogrammes.An emperor penguin's egg weighs ~ 500g.An egg is ~ 75% water.Hence it would take ~ 24 quadrillion eggs to sequester the Earth's biomass.The world population of emperor penguins is something under half a million, and they lay one egg a year. Only half of them are female, so let's call it a quarter of a million eggs per year.Obviously they need to maintain their numbers in order to carry out what would necessarily be a very long-term plan. However, even if we were to neglect this factor, it would still take them 96 billion years to convert all life on Earth into penguin eggs. Yes. They're just not very good at it. While the threat from their egg-laying activities is minimal, there is always the possibility that they'll think of some more efficient way to destroy life as we know it. It would therefore be prudent to take some pre-emptive measure such as the annihilation of all penguins.There will be the usual protests from animal rights activists, so I suggest that we kill them too. You can't be too careful.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

When this icon appears on my taskbar ... ... I've never found any way to get internet access again except to restart my computer. There must be a better way, does anyone know of one?Thanks.

Alas, it says: One possible reason for this is that when I opened up the command line, it said:

I didn't forget, I'm just too ashamed. Begins with a V ...

Ah-ha ... on Vista I have to be running cmd as an administrator.I managed to get it to do the release and renew thing. Now all I have to do is wait for my connection to go down and see if it'll solve the problem.

What time is it at the North Pole?

Alfred Russel Wallace (yes, that Alfred Russel Wallace) engaged in public controversy with the flat-Earthers. His method was as follows. Take a long straight canal (the water of which provides you with a perfectly "flat" surface). Take three sticks (Wallace used sticks four meters long to avoid refraction effects) and erect them along the canal so that each protrudes the same distance perpendicularly from the surface of the canal. Now if the Earth is curved, then if you stand at stick 1 and look at stick 3 so that the tip of stick 3 is coincident with the tip of stick 1, then from that point of view you should see the tip of stick 2 sticking out above the tips of sticks 1 and 3, whereas if it was flat it would be in a straight line with them.

I don't think it's just you; the unmanning effects of alcohol are notorious. OK, so it's not peer-reviewed.

I have found no way to solve the problem, which now occurs so frequently that I have had to switch to using an inferior computer which however has the merit of a wire running directly to the modem.

"Awesome".

I just stood a broom on its end. It was surprisingly easy. As I had not been sweeping with it, static electricity was not involved.

Behold.

If they've not done post-doctoral work, it's not clear that they even count as scientists; and since Trixie was explicitly asking for scientists with "experience in biological sciences", then scientists not fulfilling that criterion would not count as an answer to her question.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You can see objections to all sorts of things go unanswered so long as you are careful never to make the objections within earshot of people who know the answers.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.