If you WTFV you'll see that the central part holds the gubbins, like speakers and power and processors etc...

I fail to understand the entire fire concept! Why would I want to go to the bother of creating fire when I can digest raw meat and berries, scare of animals with a big nasty stick and keep warm by huddling together in a corner? Can someone explain, please?

And the central part is also the speaker and has the power socket.

" ... My expectation is that if there were any really good ways of gathering and storing energy, then lower life-forms would be able to exploit these without having to go through the trouble of evolving into higher lifeforms and then figuring it out ... " The lower life forms are some of the most successful lifeforms on earth. They have little problem with energy.

So, presumably, if teachers have it so good, you have given up your job and become one then!

Depends what side of the sun the two are on.

We are discussing Mercury, not Uranus. Please keep up!

no, actually

" ... or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms ... "

so they can't discriminate against cheese-eating goblinists either.

... MS and google (who would use the patent system to protect their own ideas) are trying to crush another patent for someone else's technology they don't want to pay for. Greater good? really?

Marquee of blinking text

If he is submitting a paper for submission and it is accepted, won't he have more chance of getting funding from somewhere?

Have you ever stopped to wonder exactly why everyone outside your conspiracy theorist buddies in your mother's basement thinks you're a nutjob, and why nobody takes you seriously?

TFTFY!

... it was a motion-detector switch and when it detected any instability in the country it turned off access to the internet! :-)