god I hate that show. I was into the whole religion and alien thing long before that show made it cool. I can't seriously offer my opinion on such subjects anymore without someone mentioning that show.
Not like my opinions/theories were a serious science before the show but they had more credibility before the ancient aliens meme

Yeah. That what I just said. ......

Okay. There is a law of economics in evolution. Bascially this prevents a tree to become a squirell even with millions of years of evolution. There are some evolutionary landmarks that are permanet. Like Central Nervous System. This will be present for millions of years to come. Or concider early amphibians that had 4,5, 6 or 7 fingers on each of their feet. Only those with 5 fingers survived and still a permament thing in mammals today.

Surely an entire hypothesis doesnt live or die with one scientist? There must be others working on the same subject?

In any case, I thought that the notion fitted the peculiarities of our form pretty neatly, which is why I like it.

Agreed.

What we consider as "fact" today may turn out to be complete crap tomorrow.

Whos to say that instead of a Universe its not a multiverse? We know so little and yet pretend to have a great and vast knowledge.

I personally find the whole "we evolved into a bipedal creature because we were a squatting gatherer" idea laughable. This is my opinion though and it seems like this is a touchy subject for some, so dont take it as an insult.

No, I don't really care I was just saying, here is the pretty clear alternate idea.

It is probably best to not mention it unless one wants to go on about aliens being the higher beings that created us.

I hate that show too, but maybe for diferent reasons. They never (or at least in any of the episodes that I have watched) provide any sort of evidence for their statements. Every time that I see it I end with the urge of hiting someone.

The http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm by Asimov someone linked above really does explain why this is a fallacy very well.

You are making an assertion. That's far from theory. You are adding 2 new assertions to our list of three basic ones.

The original 3 +

4) There is a creator

5) We can prove his existance

So by OR I cutted this to the essential 3. This is really basic philosophy.

I am not debating the existance of an Absolute here. It's in bad taste for one and if someone is an Atheist or a Theist every philosophy book will end this debate with "We don't know, ok? Do what you want, Jesus" For the sake of science we cut off the "Creator" part because it multiplies our questions and provides no real answers.

Yeah. There was a paper last year in "Science" I think. This is still disscussed, but in all seriousnees I won't hold my hopes out that it will turn to anything big.

I theorized my assertion, so now it is my theory of assertion of the Crea-tor that I have theorized in accordance to the theories that have been theorized for years that you and others are going on about, theoretically.

That would be the most boring alien invasion movie ever.

Was there a book that had illustrations of what extraterrestrial life might look like on other planets... I vaguely recall something with large ears that shielded it from solar radiation.

Are you thinking of Barlowe's Guide to Extra-Terrestrials, by chance? It is basically an illustrated text book of notable creatures from the world of sci-fi.

It would depend on the planet and its conditions to form a guess as what an alien might look like there.

The book took that in to consideration as it had multiple illustration...

Nah it sort of looked more photographic higher quality in a large book it was years ago though around 1988... around the time I also read crazy ghost books

Evolution is a fact, not a theory. "Darwin's theory of evolution" refers to his theory on how evolution occurs, namely natural selection and "survival of the fittest."

Asimov is basically supporting that "facts are crap" (as the poster put it) by saying that right and wrong aren't absolute. He shows how contradicting theories are both right and wrong at the same time with different degrees of how right and wrong they are.
how does that explain the fallacy of "facts are crap"?

If that is what you got out of that article then Im afraid youll need to read it again.

It goes to describe how facts are not crap, but constantly redifined ever honing in on that illusive perfection. There are, in fact, gradations of crap and as time goes by and knowledge increases the crap decreases exponentionally.

Which is something else entirely as what you seem to be saying.

ha i'm not denying that we grow closer to the truth but I also don't believe that we'll ever be able to say something is 100% fact. Asimov calls it "incomplete" and I'm agreeing that it's crap because I believe that it will never be "complete", especially when we theorize about things beyond our grasp. I don't think any amount of growing and learning will get us to completion, I believe the opposite will happen as we tend to create more questions as we learn to understand the answers to older ones.

In the words of six Machine in From Dusk Til Dawn, "You mean like a Time-Life book?"

Are we still debating whether the jerky is an extraterrestrial or not? I'm more interested in knowing why it looks like it does. It's still confirmed to be 6-8 years old when it died, right?

I still cant figure out if its real or fake.

Might have been some NASA concept art about what ET would look like along with planets... googling for it is pretty worthless due to the amount of garbage that exists.

you had me at jerky ha because I know what you're talking about

I'm still skeptical that it's real but wouldn't be suprised if it was somehow confirmed

Why is that Futurama episode known by everyone? Sure, it's awesome, but who remembers crap like that aside from me and everyone on the gamesas CD forums? And every nerd alive? Also,my wife says she knows it but I'm sure we watched that episode while drunk last Monday morning at 12:30 am cuz she's a punter and I don't trust her memory of nerdliness to be that good outside of like D&D and Batman.

Figured as much when you said the photo-realistic bit. If you remember what it was I'd be interested.

I was reading an update on IO9, where another researcher is suggesting it was essentially an aborted baby that mumified in the desert.
Thats why the lowest set of ribs is missing.
http://io9.com/is-this-the-real-story-behind-the-atacama-alien-myste-498559392