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[TD1]

Ugh, Biology A Level was disgusting. I only got a C in it. Though, to be fair, that's probably because I was sorta ignoring it in favour of my "main three" subjects.

[Sheb]

This review might help?

[Trekkin]

Are there any guesses as to how ant agriculture originally came about?

I'm doing an essay on the evolution of it, and can't actually find anything on the origins, besides the fact it's thought to have evolved in South America 70-50mya. Got plenty of stuff on the further evolution of agriculture, but nothing beyond that on the origins.

There's phylogenetic evidence that the actual fungal domestication is a continuous process.


Here's an article concerning the sequence of events that led to ant agriculture and the evolutionary pressures driving them. In brief, they got dependent on eating fungus first, and then the fungus evolved to feed them, and then they coevolved from there.

I'll keep looking, but at a guess, you might have some success in arguing that they could transition from collecting dead matter as food directly to collecting it as food for their food with minimal adjustment in their behavior patterns, and from there toward gathering behaviors that were fungus-optimal, and thence to fungus dependence. Compare the preferred environments of the wild-growing precursor strains of cultivated fungus to the conditions in an ant colony and see if that kind of incidental growth is plausible before going all-out on it, though.

[GiglameshDespair]

I read a sci-fi story online once. Humans were in a war against relatively humanoid aliens and losing. Human society decreed everyone was equal - completely equal. Society and thus advancement has stagnated.
The protagonist betrays humanity and goes over to the alien's side. With his help the aliens win even more. Under his advice, they conquer a human world and execute everyone in it - hanging them from lamposts or something like that.

This results in kicking humanity into gear and the war goes against the aliens. The traitor's fleet is defeated, and he reveals to his alien friend this was his plan all along - by showing one human is supposedly much more evil than the rest, then people are not completely equal in all ways after all. The change in human society that results allows them to advance again and so they outtech the aliens.

Finally, he fakes his escape and incinerates himself, so his body would never be found, so he'd always act as a boogeyman to keep humanity on its toes.

The story ends with the other humans resolving that while one can be better than others at some things, no man is better than others at all things.

I can't remember the name, however, so does this ring any bells for anyone?

It was quite an old story - a short story put on the internet rather than written for the internet, if that makes sense.

E: Never mind, found it.

[Parsely]

Link it you slag have you no netiquette

[Paxiecrunchle]

I read a sci-fi story online once. Humans were in a war against relatively humanoid aliens and losing. Human society decreed everyone was equal - completely equal. Society and thus advancement has stagnated.
The protagonist betrays humanity and goes over to the alien's side. With his help the aliens win even more. Under his advice, they conquer a human world and execute everyone in it - hanging them from lamposts or something like that.

This results in kicking humanity into gear and the war goes against the aliens. The traitor's fleet is defeated, and he reveals to his alien friend this was his plan all along - by showing one human is supposedly much more evil than the rest, then people are not completely equal in all ways after all. The change in human society that results allows them to advance again and so they outtech the aliens.

Finally, he fakes his escape and incinerates himself, so his body would never be found, so he'd always act as a boogeyman to keep humanity on its toes.

The story ends with the other humans resolving that while one can be better than others at some things, no man is better than others at all things.

I can't remember the name, however, so does this ring any bells for anyone?

It was quite an old story - a short story put on the internet rather than written for the internet, if that makes sense.

E: Never mind, found it.

What was it

[GiglameshDespair]

Link it you slag have you no netiquette

Here you go slut
The Highest Treason by Randall Garrett

I link to it because apparently the copyright was not renewed.

[Yoink]

If you tell someone the colour of their dyed hair resembles mould, does that count as a compliment?

[GiglameshDespair]

No

[TD1]

If you tell someone the colour of their dyed hair resembles mould, does that count as a compliment?

Depends on whether or not they're a fun gi.

[Andres]

What's the nerdy, scientific way "fire colour change"?

[Egan_BW]

Delta pretty shiny?

[Comrade P.]

What's the nerdy, scientific way "fire colour change"?

"A visible change in the emission spectrum"? You could come up with a more sophisticated turn of phrase if you were to dig in more into atomic emission spectral analysis initialised by the flame.

[CABL]

What is a good website where I can see statistics on how many copies of a game were sold overall? SteamSpy is out of option, because I need the whole sales data, including consoles. It would be also good if the site has an option of filtering the amount of sold copies by the years/months/days/ and "How well the game A was sold in the country B".

[EnigmaticHat]

Apple's developer rules for the app store state that your app's payment plan should be clear, the rules being designed to make sure developers are going through apple rather than using their own payment systems.  But can people put up apps that just don't make money at all?