[UFO's]

This is one answer to Einstein's Universal equations. It might be closed, and what ever path you would take in the Universe, if you follow a straight path, you'll end up where you started. But, there is a metaphysical problem with such answer : if there is finite space, where does it finish? It may have no border conceivable in our three common spatial dimensions, but finiteness is bound to an end.

Yet, if the Universe is a closed system, there's no need to know it to understand the Universe. If something has no influence on our Universe, it can be thought as if it wasn't there at all.

[Science Classes]

Well, as for science class, I'll have a class about phonetics (you know, all those marvellous sounds that a human mouth can utter) (I'm with a minor in linguistics, with my East-Asian culture major)

[Untitled]

Funny how much people from Montreal gets somewhat know around the world...

In Quebec, drinking and driving has always been an issue, especially during Winter Holidays (but, it still happens at any time of the year).

As for sound, it was indeed a great one. Slow, simple, but crying out. This was a great choice for something tragic.

As for image, the best part was actually how they showed the crash. When the two cars touched each other, the image switched to "daily life"and it's that daily life that is all messed up : a car accident messes up life. There is something create in the choice. What's good about it is that they don't try to hide the force of the shock : you felt as if daily life was crushed as in a car accident. I think that this part is the best part of all.

[Act III - A Day of Joy, A Day of Pain]

It's funny how fast we came to all remember a lot of other deaths...

It reminds of another certain date, on which I came to think, quite quickly : hey, three thousand people died, but there are millions elsewhere...

Where does all this hate come from, the greatest question ever.

[Happy Canada Day!]

It is, for Canada. It is the day that the country officially began its existence with its proper constitution. (It wasn't yet completely independant though.) they also celebratedthe 25th anniversary of the officialisation of the Canadian Hymn. (With so much controversies )

[Act III - A Day of Joy, A Day of Pain]

I am disgusted.

Yesterday was so much a joy for UK and Londonians. They got their olympics, and so everyone was happy.

And now, today, terrorism comes back to remind us what was done, and how our world really is. At first, i couldn't believe that such strange attack happened, but then, on our national radio (I don't have TV, in my room), they didn't stop speaking of those attacks in London. I heard there were at least six bombs, in buses and the underground.

Again...

I am disgusted.

("Act I" is "Twin Fall" and "Act II" is "Misleading Speech")

[The Geologic Column]

Mythos Ruler :

You have given the best site ever I'm still reading it. It has a lot of interesting details, and my brains keep on learning, thinking and applying, oh such marvel

And life from rock or mud, none of them existed 12 billions years ago, according to the Big Bang theory. What existed, at that time, is, mainly, large clouds of hydrogen and helium (yet, not a lot of helium), with sparklings of lithium, not more. The bigger elements formed within the first large stars of the Universe, those large stars giving supernovas, laying down all other natural elements to be found in the Universe. (Life, according to Big Bang, took some time before it could even begin.)

[The Geologic Column]

For God to have created the earth, no one could have been there ecxept himself, obviously. But you can turn this around and deduct from evolution and decide for yourself just how absurd it is. For a mutation to be beneficial, it is said to be liken to dropping a fine watch off a tall building and expecting a better watch as a result. Darwin himself stated, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which cannot possibly have been formed by numerous, succesive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutly break down." Darwin addmitted that the idea of evolution forming complex structures like the human eye "seems absurd in the highest degree." A century and a half of study has shown just how absurd it is. How bacteria moves with their flagellum has been a mystery to us until it was discovered that it runs on a extremely small, reversible electric motor! This cannot be explained by a series of minute, underected steps. These things must have had a designer. How could anyone look at the universe and say, "All this is a result of random undirected steps for millions of years!"? Take, for instance, a building. Do you look at the building and say, "That building just happened."? No. There was a designer, and a builder for it. But at the same time you can look things so sophistocated as people and animals and say, "Oh, yeah, those just happened." What? What sense does that make? Evolutionist Ann H. Morgan has this to say: "We do not know how life began."

Finally, something from the other side.

For God to have created the earth, no one could have been there ecxept himself, obviously.

Where can we observe that YHWH (his first name, it seems) created Earth?

For a mutation to be beneficial, it is said to be liken to dropping a fine watch off a tall building and expecting a better watch as a result.

It can be absurd, indeed. I can understand how much trys it would need. Thousands, millions? Yet, life had a few millions years as well. Can you grasp those few million years? Let's say... A billion year. With my life (20 years), I could have lived 50 million times... With so many times, I could have probably find a better way to live. Also, Earth, though small, is not THAT small. There are a few million km to try out life, and we all know how big a cell is. You don't need much place. So, a few trillions of places with a few millions of years, you have a whole lot of tries.

And some biochemistry scientists are thinking that the chemistry of carbon is quite common, and may not be that difficult. That is, the try is not merely to join some elements, the elements would somehow naturally link together.

Also, the cell, as far as fossil show us, took 2 billion years to evolve. (Cambrien and "the explosion of life" (biodiversity caused by sexual reproduction) only comes in the last 600 million years...) So, it is not an automatic project.

And you analogy is not quite that. You're taking something that works and make it fall. That is, you're likely to destroy it. Also, a watch is not proactive : it will not include anything without anything outside. A cell is proactive, and will try to reach things to eat and use. And it doesn't fall, it meets with elements.

And the massive change is to be found in DNA, after the cell was working, that is, not exactly the mechanism, but its plan. Place some random lines on a plan, and you might fall on a better plan (and, indeed, plans that fail and some planswhere it changes nothing).

Darwin addmitted that the idea of evolution forming complex structures like the human eye "seems absurd in the highest degree." A century and a half of study has shown just how absurd it is. How bacteria moves with their flagellum has been a mystery to us until it was discovered that it runs on a extremely small, reversible electric motor! This cannot be explained by a series of minute, underected steps.

Where is that century and a half of study where it was shown that this is just absurd? Where are those studies that implies so? (And, it doesn't seem absurd, when you take in account the number of possibilities, at least, to me. The logic of how it came is quite easy to find for me.)

This cannot be explained by a series of minute, underected steps.

And now, the best question of all. How can it not be explained by a series of minute, undirected steps?

How could anyone look at the universe and say, "All this is a result of random undirected steps for millions of years!"?

I can look at the universe and say that all this "came up naturally from the beginning of the Universe". Yet, I cannot say random and undirected. I could have said random, but elements do not randomly combine in all ways imaginable. You will not find something like "CO6", it is chimically impossible. (I wonder how it would be possible...) And the same goes for undirected. The reason why science and a though about future can exist is that, some way, the Universe has laws that can predite some happenings. What I can say though, is that It (the Universe) came out of some probabilities.

Take, for instance, a building. Do you look at the building and say, "That building just happened."? No. There was a designer, and a builder for it. But at the same time you can look things so sophistocated as people and animals and say, "Oh, yeah, those just happened." What? What sense does that make?

How much time did it take to build that building? Kheops' Pyramid took 20 years, it is said. 20 years... 50 million times the time the cell had to build itself. (And the cell is the center of life, at least for me, I exist because my cells exist, not the other way around.)

"We do not know how life began."

Our book is the Universe, but do you know how big it is to read? 12 billion years of history (not merely 6000) and more space that one could ever imagine (counted : approximately 1,13E32 cubic light-year (one light year = 9,5 trillion (000 000 000 000) km), to compare to merely 6,4E13 cubic km...) We only had 500 years to read it, and our eyes are still to small to see most of its details... I think it's normal that we yet haven't understood a few details...

[The Geologic Column]

I will not hide it, I am something really close to an atheist. I do not believe in some kind of thing as a god (though I do have faith, but it is placed somewhere else.) But, if someone say that my reasoning isn't true because my faith is not placed on a god, this is an attack ad hominem, the easiest sophism to do.

Life appeared on earth more than two billion years ago;

Do they actually know this? Were they there? Are all things buried at the same rate?

I'd rather say that, according to what we see, the oldest living beings lived at least 2 billion years ago. If there is no fossil, that doesn't mean there is no life : it means that nothing fossilised. But, if there is a fossil at some point, we can say that there was life since those billion years. It could have appeared 4 billion years ago, without leaving any prints. But, we know that it has at least 2 billion years.

Life forms have changed and diversified over life's history;

Oh, really, and do they have transitional forms to prove this point?

They have. The most famous transition among paleotologues to be observed is reptiles to mammals. The most publicized is the famous Archeopterix, between dinosaurs and birds. There are some problems for insects, but this is because they actually don't have any bone, so don't leave us strong fossils.

Species are related via common descent from one or a few common ancestors;

Creatures such as Great Danes, German Shepherds, and poodles are dogs, not any other kind of animal. They stay dogs, and do not change kind.

Yet, Wolves and Dogs can interbreed, and the offsprings are still fertile. They are of the same kind. But about ants, what you probably classify as ants, you have dozens, not to say hundreds of spicies of ants. They have close aspects, similarities, but they are different spiecies. Those similarities can come from a lot of possibilities, but, when we look at genetics, we find that more the similarities, more the relationship is close, and that those similarities come from common ancestors. (You look like your parents, at some point). Yet, the further the relationship, you can see that differences are larger : between Dogs and Wolves, there is a somewhat larger difference.

And this is how the logic of common ancestry comes : with all primates, we have similarities : we all have hands, long limbs, a front vision. With Apes, we can see that their babies have quite the same skull than ours. Generally speaking, our brain is divided the same way (ours being only larger and more convulated). With Chimps, we share "culture", that is, our behavior, for us and them, comes also from individual's work, not only biological instinct. Finally, with the late genus Australopithecus, we share our standing position. We have similarities, so we can think that it came the same way that about the similarities with our brothers and sisters : they're only a little (A lot, one would say) further, because our common ancestry is way older than the one I share with cousins.

Distinctions between species remains clear : unsuccessful breading. We cannot mate with Chimps, of if we did, the result will not be fertile, or would dieat birth. This, according to genetics, is because the genetic coda is too fardifferent to be compatible.

Natural selection is a significant factor affecting how species change.

Natural selection is not evolution!

It is not, but it is the factor that decides what passes and what doesn't. If something doesn't breed (for one or other reason) its coda will not pass on. This is how we explain the place of an anti-malaria gene in Africa : the gene will be found among a part of the population, but you'll not find a lot of people, because, if one happens to have two versions, he's deeply ill and die before breeding. But, the gene itself endures because people with it have morechances to breed, not dying of malaria.

Creationism is neither theory nor fact; it is, at best, only an opinion. Since it explains nothing, it is useless.

SUre, they're the ones to say that, aren't they?

I'm waiting someone with observations. Where's the data that supports the idea that the world was created at X moment by Y being. I'm awaiting observations.

Yet the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is still a fact.

Gravity maybe, but the "theory" of evolution looks like Swiss cheese.

In fact, there seems to be some gaps as well about gravity, the two Voyager, still sending data, are said to have been a little slow compared to what they should have been. That doesn't dismiss gravity, it dismisses the way we think it actually, some details need to be clarified. This is the same about Evoltuion theory : Darwinian evolution had great holes, and couldn't explain some details. People rethought it, ever and ever. There are some observations that showed great change : within Human evolution, the debate turned around the brain's size with cultural involvement, yet, Homo Habilis had tools with him (and his brain is no bigger than a Chimp's). Another was the large visual lobe in Homo Erectus's brain. He probably had a better vision than ours : why did he evolve such thing, and not us? (And, quite funny enough, our vision gets ever poorer now : we have glasses for that, now,hwat's with vision?) We have smallerjaws than our prehistoric ancestors (only 12 000 years ago), why? And some people are loosing a few teeth in the process... All this can puzzle us, and we thinkit over, again and again. And life is nothing simple : you have quadrillions of beings, all slightly different. It's quite difficult to resume everything in a few pages... (And theorists about evolution took thousands and thousands of pages...)

[The Geologic Column]

The analogy with the candle is a fallacy :

In a bone, you know it's quantity, at the beginning. The decay of carbon 14 doesn't compare to the decay of parrafin in a candle.

First, when you observe the bone, years after its end, you know its initial dimensions. This, you do not know with the burning parrafin. Next, in a bone, you know how much the proportion of carbon-12 and carbon-14 are at death. This proportion can be tested on our own bones, on bones of people or animals just deseased, and this proportion is fairly the same. (The same is true about other elements) This known, you know how much, on a just deceased bone, there should be carbon-14 compared to the bones' mass. If there's 1 kg of bonish matter, you'll have a certain amount of carbon-14 at the beginning. (The mere guess is not a guess, it is calcuted with those just deceased bones.)

Then, what you look for is how much there actually is carbon-14 in the bone. Then,you compare the mass of C-14 according to basic proportion (right after death) with the mass present. Then, the principle of halflife is clear. After each half-life, half of matter left has overgone transformation. So, if there is 1/4 of the original mass left, two half-lives have passed. 1/8, 3. 1/16... 4. 1/32... 5 etc. until only one atom is left.

[The New World Trade Center]

Perhaps we should be building shopping malls over Civil War battle sites then?

Yikes!

* Yiuel cries in pain, seeing that awful Shopping Mall!

Shopping Malls are probably the worst invention in urbanism. In fact, you'll barely see any such thing in a decent city. They eat space, they use it unwisely (though there are some examples where they do use the space somehow more wisely than it iscommon). Urbanism and utility is also planning the use of space. As I said, Earth has limited land, even if we wenton colonizing the whole oceans : Earth is not infinite. (Does any one here though see the Coruscant image here...)

Using land with efficiency is not only a matter of creating buildings ust because they seem useful and wisely devised. It is to take into account a lot more parameters. This includes environment : in the first years of Middle-Age, you can see that the villages had some urbanism planning : if you had tothrow your trash away, it wasn't in a river, and it was always on the downhill side of the village (so it won't come in the village itself, with rain). This can include history : Athinai (Athens) was an example, in Classical era : the Parthenon was consacred, and then, it was also historically destroyed by the Persians. So, they decided it was to be made a public place, and a place to hold festivities, and where they would celebrate and trace their history, from myths to their present day. And, indeed, we must think about the actual needs : New York is a fully urbanized place : if you can construct, do it.

Sidenote : In Canada, we even have a worse version of those malls, they call them "Mega Center", and it's full of huge shops like Wal-Mart,each seperated from each other with large parking lots. Awful, Awful, wants to vomit. (I prefer downtown's underground shopping mall, along the underground walking streets.)

[The New World Trade Center]

I have some problem with "in memoriam" places. IF we had to remember everywhere each disaster that occured, you would have any place left to build and live. You can notice events that occured with signs, remember something with some remembrance, but, as there is only 365 days in a year, there is only a limited place on Earth. Should we barren all of Rwanda because of its panrwandan genocide? Past is not something to live (we all know people who try to live in the past...), Present is what is to live. Future is to imagine, and Past is to remember...

(That doesn't mean that I have no remembrance place in my urban plans : there is such place, but it would be a general place about history : not only showing one event, but all the events that led to what we are today.)

[The New World Trade Center]

Urbanism... Oh, urbanism, when you hold me.

In fact, all project submitted here have something to be "nostalgic". With the "Freedom tower(s)", you get nostalgia with its name. With every twin tower idea, you get the effect with the name "twin". And not building it is to admit deep nostalgia.

Urbanism has no purpose to show greatness or nostalgia. It has the purpose to plan an inteligently built city. We can ask ourself if this project would make the city "better". I know that in Montreal, if there was something to put money in, is to build a wider underground city, and make it more pleasant. This is something useful : less traffic, better winters for citizens, and maybe some underground parks.

Want to show the greatness of some place? You can indeed invest in the buildings, and make them higher and bigger, but you can also make "more useful" project and make them grandiose in the same way. There is no other purpose to build some great tower at the same place then pure remembrance : as far as I know, the Twin Towers were "out-of-center" (Pretty much like the Radio-Can tower up here in Montreal) : towers closer to the center would maybebe more useful. (Or, generally, building a few buildings maybe smaller than the WTC, but large towers everywhere would create more useful surface.)

Well, in Montreal, even if we had Independance, I wouldn't build an Independance building. I'd rather create the "Independance Urbanism Plan", and developp the city more widely than mere isolate towers. At first, it would seem small, but, in time, it would create something really grandiose. And again, useful to everyone as well

(Hate my keyboard)

[HoI Topic Ideas]

The name is catastrophism, the idea that catastroph may have changed the Earth along time. (Noah's story is catastrophism, K/T's meteorit is also catastrophism.)

[Temporal Energy]

I have found recently a theory, that suggest that there is no time.

(Yes, it seems crazy, but...)

We feel something, like a serie of events. And what if it wasn't time, but distance. That is, the further the event has to cross. And energy, even it at'S its max, proportionally (light), cannot make an event go further than the speed of light. (Time is no more, hence, a dimension, in which one advance : it is an effect, past is what passed you, future is what has not.) The further the object, the further the effect will come from. You do not go further in time, futher things come at you (and closer things have already passed you and may again pass...) And nothing in such theory can go against time, as time is nothing (only a mere relation between events) : something quicker than light will not have occured in the past : it will only occur before light will come (you'll feel its effects before seeing it...)

[The Geologic Column]

Well, at least, I gave my arguments that went for stratigraphy.

The Geologic Column, as you see in the example, is divided into four eras, each of which covers several hundred million years. Eras are divided into periods, which are subdivided into epochs.

Those divisions are based primarily on the type of rocks. A few periods are quite original :

Carbonifere : This period is when petroleum and coal mainly forms. That is, the greatest fields will be hold in that kind of rocks. (Dig deep though, it's quite a few meters below surface!)

The T/K division is also a special layer : a few centimeters wide, it has a high density of iridium, a matter quite alien to Earth's surface. Only two events are creators of Iridium on Earth : volcanos and meteorites. What happens with this layer is that it can be seen almost everywhere. Generally speaking, dinosaurs (except birds) will be found only below.

Certain fossils, known as index fossils, are considered characteristic of a certain period and are used to identify rock layers in the field.

Those fossils are indicator because their represents are supposed to have lived when the layer was surface. There are some kinds that are very specific (as far as I can remember, Trilobites, a kind of crustacean, will only be found in Primary era rocks. We can generally associate Vertebreans with layers over Precambrien : no fossil of bone will be found below. We can say that dinosaurs will be found in the Mezozoic rock layer, while no dinosaurs will be found outside. No mammal will be found in the Primary era, as reptiles haven't diverged much in that layer, it seems (you cannot distinguish any specific kindsof reptiles, in that level).

Although it is presented as conclusive evidence for evolution

As far as I have learned, it is not. You must combine researchs about the temporal meaning of those layers (what I have described in my first post). That is, you can say that on each layer, we find this. Now, you must proove your point that they had lived (bones are the proof here), then, you must show how those layers have formed. This done, you can say that Precambrien is indeed "before Cambrien", that Jurrasic is before Cretacy, and that Paleolithic is before Neolithic. And, we only know here that those layers relate in time, but what about their living kinds, we know nothing.

Here begins biological comparaisons between the bones. Some are closely ressembling, some have minor differences in general aspect (A Brachiosaurus will have protuberant headbones, what Diplodocus doesn't have). So, this done, you can see that some individual are closer to other, and further from others. Dinosaurs (and with them, Birds) have a resembling aspect (it is called the "brechet" in French). They have something close to crocodiles, and them together something close to mammals. So here, what we can say, is that there are similarities.

But we aren't done. We still have to look how those bones change according to time. What we can see, and I take the dinosaur example here, the one I knowthe best, is that the brechet aspect has wide variations in Cretace, but not asmuch in Trias (200 millions years before). At some point in Trias, we can only see one kind of fossil with such bone, and some other kinds with close bones, yet, not similarly developped. So, we can infere that, in the past, there was only one genus that had the special bone, and, alone time, more genus came to have those bones.

What we see then is that those genus seems to have close bones. Their shape are somewhat similar, only differing in some special aspect. Then again, further in time, you have some genus that, if you compare, are quite close, and some other that are quite close as well but, if you compare thosetwo groups, there is a difference, and this difference exists in the preceding two genus. So, what can we imply? This is where evolution begins, not before. (And, this is what paleontologues have seen in those bones, similar features grouped as a tree in their characteristics.)

The first problem is that this succession of fossils occurs nowhere in the world. There is not a place on the earth known to man where you can see the complete geologic column at one time.

Fossilisation is not an easy task for nature. Only sedimentary rocks will show you fossils (and layers, because it's the only kind of rock to create layer) : this is why Rock Shields (as the Canadian Shield) is not a good source of fossil : it has barely any sedimentary rock. Those sedimentary rocks mustn't be disturbed much : Earthquakes will destroy about everything. Yet, Volcanoes, if far enough, can do great things. (Closer, they will only destroy) Some places will have developped a sedimentary accumilation only in some period of time : You will find fishs in the Appalichian mountains, but never will you find dinosaurs : their sedimentary rocks are too old (but, they are precious datas about fish, nevertheless, Miguashish in Quebec is a marvellous site for old fish fossils).

There is also a waeker detail (weaker in the sense that it has only little effect) is that something will not live everywhere. Kangaroos do not live everywhere on Earth, do they? Someone in the future, looking to our layer, will say : Ah, we can see that kind of bones, but only in this part of the land. You cannot expect that everything will live everywhere.

The geologic column is a hypothetical arrangement of fossils and rocks according to evolutionary assumptions.

It has nothing to do with evolution, it has to do what one sees in the layers. Evolution cannot be seen in static sceneries (what those layers are). They will only describe thelayers and whatwe can see. Evolution is one way to link the genus that have been found in the various layers (but itis not the proof saying that the lower parts are older.) You can refer to how much works it takes from the description of the layers too eventually think of some change within the kinds of bones.

Someone could say, instead of Evolution, that, (taking the Hindu vision of a cycle) : Each layer is a World, and each time, Brahma inspired himself from the previous level, getting rid of what always died and perfecting what was living, and then poofa new world, for each and every layer. This is not Evolution, this is a common view in a lot of mythologies, that there wasn't only one creation, but a few, each time destroyed because it wasn't perfect enough.

[The Geologic Column]

Stratigraphy, in neo-Greco-Latin.

The basic principle is that, in a surface of rock, undisturbed by sismic activities (volcanism, mountain formation), the lowest layers will always be the oldest layers, because each layer adds itself to the older layers. This was the first temporal guide that was invented to classify artifacts and fossils.

To answer Cloodhopper

Until the discovery of radioactivity, the only proof that we had that those layers were such about those layers were so disposed is our own artifacts. The oldest objects that we could find were always on the lowest layers. This is what we can tell in some places in Montreal. If you take a small squareof field in an oldly populated place of Montreal, the first layers you'llfind will be about the middle of the 20th century, then, a few centimeters below, you'll get to the 19th, then the 18th, then... till before the 16th. Those dates, we can be sure of, because sometimes there werepieces of money, or some artifacts that were replaced by others. If you generalize, each few centimeters (with always less centimeter each time you go further, because of gravity) will show you a century, a millenium, en era (Oh famous Jurassic)...

Since radioactivity is understood, we gained a new understanding about the times involved. The deepest layers were difficultly datable, because of the said effect of gravity (pushing down each layer, and make it denser). Also, Earth isn't, according to geology, a stable block of rock : it shakes (earthquakes) and moves around. This creates mountains (The Appalachians are amongst the oldest of them that we can see), which nullify the strat layer. (This is why China is so famous about its dinosaurs ; the deepest layers are revealed : This is the same reason why the Badlands are as much famous.). All those movements makes it impossible to date the layers precisely.

Radioactivity (with the know effect of half-life) makes it possible to know a more absolute datation. The half life effect is that given a radioactive matter, half of it will have transformed within a certain amount of time (differing for each radioactive matter, because of the stability of the atom). So, when you know the exact proportion of that matter, you know how much time has passed since it has been placed there. From this, the second proof for stratigraphy is there : when they measured, they had, for the deepest layers, the oldest readings (radioactive matter had lower levels...)

[UFO's]

There are things too small to see. Why not too big? (This is true as well about light and soung...)

This is the paradox of "Outside the Universe" : if there is something more, it is, obviously, a part of the Universe, what exists. Then, the true question is what influences us. If something doesn't influence us in some other way, then, it is irrelevant to speak about it. This is the quest of the Observable Universe : the part of existence that actually matters. If something has no effect, we don't need to bother about its existence... (and, even so, it couldn't show us its existence. This is the question about Tachyons and other unusual particals.)

Mr. Poco, I've got to warn you, although I'm not a community guardian, that the language spoken in the forums is English, and personal messages to me should not be posted in a thread, but with personal messages.

PM was the place for such message, and about the language issue, I don't bother much, as long as there's a translation, thus, giving it all in English either way.

[The New World Trade Center]

Titus: That's nothing to be ashamed of. If you can be proud of your State and is willing to build great things in it, that, go on. (On my side, with my ideas of Sevy, I quickly went on a very high-built city center, yet, I don't think I'm less liberal than you.)

The building's new name though really feels like propaganda.There could have been better.

And a glassy building doesn't fit the general urbanism of New York, and it would give to much visibility : it would darken the whole city. Either you "glassify" all buildings, or you darken the new tower(s). The height though canbe a little more, but don't make them the highest building : it would make those towers to off-sight, and dwarf the whole city. If you want a higher WTC, you need to have other buildings following the height, or you're city center will be unbalanced.

[The Treaty for a European Constitution]

States aren't natural things decided forever. They are artificially created institutions ruling artificially bordered lands. That is, at first glance, nothing oppose the fact to Europe becoming a State.

The myth of timeless States comes from Europe, especially France, where in its constitution, it is written that the State is undividible. But this is just a mere law, and nothing eternal : in the Past, France has been divided, in a number of States. The borders of France have changed over time (it once included Belgium).

For your argument, that States/countries may have different needs, this can also be applied to regions within a State. Let's take Norway as an example : I don't think that needs of the urban Oslo are the same than those of rural aeras that are common in Norway. As for my State, Canada, you have dozens of regions needing completely different things. I couldn't believe that Montreal (Eastern Canada), Vacouver (Western Canada) and Iqaluit (Northern Canada) needs exactly the same thing.

Yet, Norway and Canada manage (in Canada's case, not without problems) to get along as a State. There are ways to manage all differences. In Canada, you have provinces, that manages local issues, and the Federal, that manages things that all Canadians need equally. And you have cities, small regional governments that are there to manage the community's living. This could also be done with Europe without problem : the only issue is "how", and a lot of people couldn't agree on the EU Constitution, because of its very obscur ways. (And culture is not an issue here : France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Spain, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, almost all those African States... they are multicultural.)

[Dagor Dagorath]

"The Last Battle" is a recurring theme in litterature. This comes from the idea that there has been a beginning and that, therefore, there will be an end...

I also fell for the thematic, as one of my stories explicitely concerns the End of a World, and the Rising of a new one, titled simply "The Last World" (and, in Esperanto, it makes a great wordplay : La Malunua Militero, the Battle that is the contrary of the first...)

The thematic of the Dagor Dagorath (the battle of battles) I think is inspired by the alemanic Ragnarok, and the idea goes probably deeper in time (a lot of stories telled in the bible have earlier versions written in sumerian texts, 4500-5500 BP ...). Those stories are called revelations, but, some theories says that they might be remembrance texts ; that is, revealing a past action (how much is true of that past though is in debate), to seek remembrance, giving a revelation of our future if we follow the same path.

[UFO's]

It is?  What makes you believe this, and how do you know? lol

←

How do I know it's a shame? Because we, ultimately, don't know what's outside. We had a few glimpse of the Universe : with our planets, the sun, and some large astronomical features. Yet, what we know is certainly only the tip of the iceberg : the shame is that, if we're stuck here, we'll never know a lot more...

[So Summer is back, and so it begins...]

Well, seems summer passed unnoticed, so, let's all celebrate the zenithic Sun and the longest day! Oh, and lets all light big joy fires tonight! (This is a traditional way of celebrating the summer solstice in Québec)

So, some particular days you're waiting for this summer? Mine is on the 15th of July : the first time I'll celebrate my great day with my flag. Then, I can only wait for the end of August : Japanese courses will be back online. And I don't have anything planned this summer. The best time will be nest year (In Japan!)!

Oh, and Happy Saint-John-the-Baptist day!

[UFO's]

It's quite hard to screw up everything. And it's difficult to corrupt matter and space, so to pollute...

The warping idea (as you exposed) is a valid theoretical way. The classic rendering is a wave that crushes space-time except for a bubble in which you and your vessel is. This doesn't propel you FTL : light would cross the bubble as you do. It's only that space, for a short moment, is reduced to a lot less space. It could create disasters : imagine crushing a planet in the process... (Hopefully, stars are quite far from each other...)

I hope that we could go further that the mere speed of light. The Universe is so wonderful, and to be stuck on Earth, what a shame. I hope it will only be our birth basket...

[UFO's]

I'd wish the same hope, but about us. When we'll discover Xenanthropes, will we probe them? Was there some projection is those ETs...

I used to have SETI, but now my computer is too slow to even think about it.

And I'd love to bein contact with some other kind. Everything to have the possibility to discover the Universe (well, not everything, but at least, I could easily leave over some things to explore it)