Just for perspective, this trench is 7 miles; the Earth's diameter is 8000 miles. If the Earth were shrunk to the size of a billiard ball this trench would be about 2/1000 inch deep. It is one of the only earth features that could be felt by a human at that scale. It would be a very faint scratch that you _might_ be able to detect it with your fingernail. Overall, the Earth's surface is smoother than most billiard balls.

Makes me think of Verona, Italy - home of "Romeo and Juliet". Or maybe "West Side Story".

Maybe it's a natural step in the progression of social systems.

I will say that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are actually pretty healthy. The peanuts and wheat together provide pretty complete protein and most of the vitamins you need, and the jelly provides vitamin C. And of course there is sufficient fat and carbs. Long ago the FDA or somebody kept an annual report on the minimum cost to feed a family of four - they may still, I don't know. Back then the cheapest way to get a complete diet was basically PBJ sandwiches and a bit of vegetables.

Back when the Getty Museum was sitting on over $1 billion in money, some of which had to be spent every year by law, I sent a letter to them suggesting that they could fund a project much like this. My thought was to go deeper and inject concrete. In this way they could use the money as intended, saving important art, and they were the only ones at the time that might have both the cash and the interest. They declined.

Ah, the joys of central planning.

I will note that music majors tend to be pretty good programmers. :) It's all about the patterns.

I had an instructor in CS one time - he got a PhD in abstract algebra, then discovered that there were a grand total of two teaching positions in abstract algebra in the US at that time, and they were both filled. So he went back and did a postdoc in CS so he could get a job. He was not the best CS instructor I ever had...

Fun experiment!

My take on the original question is similar to Berhard:

At some point in the past, two non-chickens (by whatever definition) mated, and the result, due to recombination and/or mutation, was the egg(s) that grew up to be the first chicken(s).

Ergo, the egg must have come first.

Of course, unless this was a serious bit of punctuation in the evolutionary equilibrium, the line between non-chicken and chicken was a very fuzzy one, so it's hard to say at what point the series went from non-chicken to chicken. But unless a bird magically changed from non-chicken to chicken in the middle of its life, the egg had to come first.

The problem with the avalanche theory is that from the pictures there doesn't seem to be snow on top of the tent, etc. An avalanche that could cause those injuries would have buried the site many meters deep, or left other evidence that the presumably competent investigators at the time would have observed.

One thing that isn't mentioned here - the show was originally invented and promoted by Bruce Lee, who expected to use this as the vehicle to bring him mainstream fame in America. But the producers stiffed him, because they wanted an American 'name' actor to get ratings - they didn't think an Asian would be accepted in a lead role on American TV. Or so I read somewhere.

I recall seeing (somewhere on the interwebs) a piece of Potter story, with the 'd' in wand substituted by 'g'. It made for very amusing reading!

AJW - I think the space race will never end, so nobody can 'win' it. The moon and the present situation are merely points in time, on a continuum that has barely begun. Humans will do some things cooperatively, some things competitively, perhaps violently (I hope not). Just as we don't really say who 'won' the race to the Americas, in future we won't say who 'won' the race into space - we will all win, if and when we go.

I hope he gave some of the money to his client.

Hmm. It seems to me that in many ways civilization tends to reduce individual fitness. For just one example, the availability of orthodontics allows children with bad teeth to (in effect) hide that fact, get married and have children with bad teeth.

Also, I would think that in a larger community it would take longer for a given genetic change to propagate from one person to the rest of the community, unless it is classically dominant. So there would be little visible effect for many generations. But then it might show up among a larger fraction of the population rapidly once the probabilities of two parents both having the gene achieve a sufficient level. If it's a 'good' change, then all is well. But if it's a 'bad' change, then it could cause a large scale problem.

World's largest singles bar! I can just imagine the conversation:
"So, Jim - how's your fish allergy?"
"Better. My beak isn't stuffy any more. The doc gave me these pills, and they work pretty good. Have you seen Sally? She's supposed to be here but I haven't seen her."
"With this crowd it's hard to find anybody. This places has gotten to popular with the 'in' crowd. I liked it better before they put the ferns in the windows, and got rid of the spittoons."
"Wanna play pool?"
"Nah, did you forget? We've still got no arms."

All species that survive are invasive until they settle in, diversify, and the locals figure out how to eat them.

I think it's a centering thing whose name I forget - insert it into a drilled hole in Part 1, put parts together, tap on the end and it puts a dent in Part II, exactly where the corresponding hole needs to be drilled.