Larger and stronger at a younger age would seem to be a good survival trait, not a bad one. It doesn't seem like the benefits of parental protection instincts for young children would outweigh the negatives of being weaker and smaller, purely on the basis of survival traits.

It is axiomatic that, as far as Homo sapiens is concerned, evolution disagrees with you. I believe the reason is you limit what survival traits are to less than what they truly are.

They ate fruit when they could get it, which was almost never (e.g. berries in late summer, a few dried berries other parts of the year).

Nope. May apples, mulberries, currents, chokecherries, rose hips, elderberries, cherries, apples, pears, persimmons, hawthorn apples; I just took you from spring into late fall after frost and didn't even cover all the available fruits.

I've picked and made jams, pies and such out of all of the above. (You haven't truly lived until you've had chokecherry or elderberry brandy.)

I do believe you have an odd definition for excellent.

FTA :

"(RoboEarth's files have to be processes and organized by humans)"

Coffee is connected to mugs, as well as to the motion-planning related to pouring liquid.

The bot, a two-armed, highly-dextrous PR2, queried the system, and discovered that affogato was an italian dessert composed of ice cream and coffee. Without any human nudging or intervention, the robot located the coffee, figured out how to get it out of a dispenser, and poured it over the scooped ice cream.

Notice it queried the system, not the videos themselves. "Without any human nudging or intervention" simply means "at that moment", in other words, it's programmed, not learning on its own. Also it didn't discover it was an Italian dessert, it didn't give a crap about the national origins and in all probability didn't even have that in it's database - it's just word padding to make things seem more human-like.

Except, of course, the distinctiveness is rather shaky instead of "very". It reads as a weasely accusation.

Yes it is. I sent my daughter to an MS. It was a drain at the time but worth every penny. An aside - she now teaches mid-school physics and physical sciences with an elective in robotics. She's in heaven.

That is moronic. Both counts.

"Yeah, as long as other people are allowed to physically remove a person smoking from their vicinity..."

What's the vicinity, chum? If I'm smoking a cigar outside and you walk up and lay a hand on me, there's problems.

Nawh. Your qualifiers won't do it. I play a lot of one specific game. Quite a bit actually. Yet I've been called a casual player because I have no interest in exploring every nook and cranny, taking every detour and acquiring every tiny reward, and most importantly have no interest in PvP (mostly because of the attitudes).

Assuming that the civilization advanced enough to build a Dyson Sphere wasn't also advanced enough to recapture IR before it broadcast.

Look ass-hat AC, I'm a Rep and I find the teacher's, school's and police response intolerable. Most Rep's do, by the way. We're not the ones freaking out over any mention or play acting concerning a gun.

That the "pet" is an imaginary creature suggests he might have serious guilt problems associated with having killed a real pet, or even a human; or witnessed such a crime.

Oh bullshit. Stop playing psychologist, this wasn't some six year old. Every time I was asked to write about myself I fabricated stuff and made it plain that I did. It's not a teacher's job to investigate a kid's psyche.

Just don't sing their praises and make sure they understand it's only one component of who they are and can easily be out-balanced by bad traits. Or, similarly, as it once told my daughter "Remember, a pretty bitch is still a bitch."

The goal should be guiding them towards being a decent and well-adjusted individual.

Oh hell, Jamie and Adam are guilty of the same thing - missing the obvious. I just watched the stripped down version of testing the myth that being in the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex 'dumbs you down'. Test was read the color of the word and not the text. On the second time through, both sexes' scores improved. and J&A were surprised. Wow. The same people taking the same test a little later in the day (usually called practice) improved. They simply concluded the myth was busted and didn't at all consider the practice session. There are a number of other episodes where the obvious was ignored as well.

That is why Adam Savage is a part of the show.

Ack. I think he's a douche. I'd rather watch Jami any day. Alone? Correctly no. But Adam is just too much.