Yes, it happened ~4-5 billion years ago. The Moon is the leftover debris from that event. The Earth itself did not form a solid crust for several million years afterwards, there is considerable evidence that the Earth lost it's entire atmosphere at that time. The present atmosphere is a combination of volcanic outgassing and cometary impacts. Any life that existed before that impact was completely destoyed.

The questions posed by this article are old news. Bakker settled this back in the early 70's. The maximal contact idea is dependent on the precise configuration of the junction of the nechk and body. In any case, I suspect that it is wrong. The area of maximal contact probably served as a limiting device to keep the things from dragging thier heads in the dirt and stomping themselves to death. The normal pose is more likely to be shown by the configuration of ligament rods and bone scars from the aforesaid ligaments.

The growth of the Internet into every office and home worldwide is the key to future prosperity, as more and more trade happens electronically and we shift from a society of material luxury to a society of digital luxury. From high carbon, low lifestyle, to low carbon, high lifestyle.

You've had too much cool aid.

The truth is we need to make stuff. If our manufaturing base here is sufficient to meet our needs with a slight excess then we are going to be a wealthy society. If not we will be poor.

Think of the heirarchy of needs. 1-Air, 2-Water, 3-Food, 4-Shelter, 5-Clothing, 6-Companionship, 7-Affirmation, 8-Love. The lack of each kills in the long term. For air this is approximatly 5 minutes, for love this is approximatly one generation. All these NEEDS must be met. Without farming we cannot meet need 3. Without manufacturing of some sort we cannot meet needs 4 and 5.

We need to rebuild our manufaturing base and stop trying to meet our needs by playing monetary shell games (The Service Economy!). Otherwise we will suffer the fate of every other empire (British, Roman, ...) that tried our present economic system, and we will realize to our collective horror that this was just the begining.

To use an analogy, when a user gets a virus on their computer because they believed the facebook message that says "You're perfect for this movie!" is that not the users fault? When things sound too good to be true, they generally are and I don't think you need to be particularly brilliant to observe this reality; you just have to be willing to ask a few questions.

Hey, I got that virus! Too bad it was a MS Windows virus. I don't do windows.

A MS Windows virus on a Linux system is a sad and pathetic thing.

They can't. The bankruptcy laws have been changed by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress back in '05 or '04 so that people can't use bankruptcy to get out of bad debts anymore. The people who are losing their homes are STLL saddled with all that debt, they just get a repayment schedule thats more affordable. The difference is now they will never be able to buy a house.