Depends what totem pole. The totem pole of "most like humans", then they are a little ways down, but still FAR above the 1/2 way point if you include non-mammals.

In terms of "most evolved" rats are exactly where humans are. If there was any argument to be made, you could say they are MORE evolved, since they have a shorter life span and more children - more chance for natural selection to work it's magic.

Evolution works towards optimizing a species for survival; not for "becoming human" or "becoming smart" or anything else that puts people on top. I don't mean to be "anti-human", but evolution doesn't care about those things.

Amen brother!

But seriously, I wish I had mod-points today.

Actually, HVDC can carry about 40% more power over the same lines, compared to AC. The main drawback is that you need to convert to/from AC on either end. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission

(I know, not that authoritative, but it cites lots of sources I can't be bothered to copy).

Have you ever tried to recycle your electrics?

I know I'm supposed to do something with them, but honestly, they expect me to drive to one location in the city, during business hours, and pay just to get rid of an old cell phone? Even for a computer, I'd feel guilty, but it'll go in the dumpster. I did take batteries back to one of the local stores that is part of a group that claims they take batteries back to recycle:
Me: Can you take these batteries for recycling, like your website says
Help Desk Guy: Ummmmm... (looks around).. I suppose I could throw them out for you..

When I can recycle my electrics as easily as I can recycle my tin cans, I will. Until then the land-fills are going to keep getting more toxic crap.

Fair enough - but you seem to be making a classic mistake. It's not so much what you eat, but how much of it, that determines your weight. Now, as someone who has to work to control his weight - yes, I envy my fiance, who can eat whatever he wants. But the difference isn't that he can magically eat way more than I can - it's that his appetite is more easily sated. Sure there are also metabolism differences, but in reality a very obese person is almost certain to be burning more calories than a thin person at a similar level of physical activity, because all that fat takes energy just to keep alive, and more still to move around.

Where I'm going with this is: sure, life isn't fair. It's more difficult to control eating for some than for others - but at the end of the day what you eat is a conscious choice. Helping teach, encourage, and in some cases force (depending on age, we "force" young kids to do everything) people to eat in a way that will lead to a healthier life can be justified.

Depends a bit on your perspective. To some extent less fuel-efficient vehicles tend to put more wear on the road (eg a pickup-truck vs a sub-compact). If you're thinking "Hybrid Prius" then consider that many places go out of their way to subsidize/mandate fuel economy. Between those two factors, a higher gas-tax kills 2 birds with one stone:
1. Tax for wear on highways that automatically factors in vehicle size
2. Subsidy for fuel-efficient vehicles (and penalty for gas-guzzlers)

You do realize that "Canadian"keyboard layout refers to the special bi-lingual layout (mostly for use in Quebec) ? This isn't some recent HP invention, as it's been around for more than a decade (I quite clearly remember it being supported by Windows 95, because I accidentally selected it). The "normal" keyboard layout that you're probably used to if you are an English-speaking Canadian is the US keyboard layout.

You've used quite the wrong metric, asking "what are the odds of this EXACT outcome in a fair contest". The right question is "what are the odds of at least this this much deviation from the expected outcome in a fair contest". In the case of your coin toss your questions would be "how likely is it that in 100 flips, I will get 52 OR MORE of either heads or tails" (note that if you were asking only about tails, you'd just get 1/2 the number, but considering the odds of 50 or more tails is only 50/50% it's a bit misleading that way).

To get this you would sum all probabilities in the range, eg
(100 choose 0)*.5^(100) + (100 choose 1)*.5^(100) + .... + (100 choose 47)*.5^(100) + (100 choose 48)*.5^(100) + (100 choose 52)*.5^(100) + (100 choose 53)*.5^(100)+... + (100 choose 100)*.5^(100)
which is about 76.4%.

That is, about 3/4 tosses of 100 coins will differ from 50-50 by at least two flips, this is very similar to the probabilities for these events in the recent US election, held up in the article as an example of 'normal' results.

Now if you'd gotten something like 38-62 you'd have results about as unlikely as this election (2%).

If you're familiar with stats at all, in general it's when the odds fall below 5% that you have an interesting result, 2% is quite interesting (though it depends on how often the event happens - 2% in an election that happens once/4 years or so is going to happen by chance with a mean period of 200 years).

Personally I think universities should abolish practices like course buyouts and TAs doing the actual teaching, and strictly require faculty to spend X amount of hours in front of a classroom every year.

I went to a university (Waterloo) that more-or-less does this. It has it's up side - you sometimes get taught by research profs who are amazing at why they do, on the cutting edge, and have amazing enthusiasm to impart. On the other hand, you also get research profs who begrudge every minute of actually teaching - student complaints fall on def ears (even more than normal) because "he's a research prof" (who may pull in millions worth of grants). I think that for the senior courses, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks; but the entry-level material is best taught by a good teacher who is competent in the subject.