Get to know your staff! - Darwinian

[Darwinian]

If the world was going to end and you had to choose one member from the forum to reproduce with, one to just have as a friend, and one to keep all the knowledge of the world, who would you choose.

Reproduce with: Well, if Laura Tobin ever becomes a member, please let me know.

A Friend: I do actually have one friend on here already but apart from him I would have to choose Craveman. We met briefly at the Intelligence Squared debate and he seems like a pretty cool dude with an eccentric sense of adventure, much like myself . But, everyone here is a friend really

Keep all the knowledge in the world: Presumably then this person would have to survive the end of the world otherwise there wouldn't be much point. In this case I would choose myself because a) I don't really want to die and b) with all that knowledge I may be able to bring everyone back in some form or another and somehow sort out the worlds problems.. A new start.

What's the secret of your young looking skin grandad?

I have a genetic anomaly that means my telomeres always stay the same length. Also, I am nowhere near as old as you so I suppose that from your perspective, most people have young looking skin :p (whoever you are...)

What feature would you most like to see on Atheist Forums, if you could choose something without fear of it being too costly or time consuming to implement?

Well, I'd like the overview box to have a scrollbar so I can view more than just the past 5 latest posts.

It would also be pretty cool to be able to mark any of your posts with a special marker or checkbox so that anyone replying to that specific post would automatically send you a text message with a summary of their reply.

To be able to tell if a member is an atheist or not simply by looking at their member name. For example, a theist called fred would have a username that looked like this Fred┼ but the ┼ would only be visible to other atheists. This could be done with a simple question in the registration that asks if you're an atheist or not.

How about having your facebook status appearing on the forum somehow?

Still thinking..

If you could remove one thing from the face of the Earth, physical or otherwise, what would it be?

The ability for human beings to get violent except for reasons of protecting their family, friends etc.

On a scale from 0 to 10, how much do you fear your own death right now ?

0. Although I'm sure that if something happened to threaten my time here in the Universe that number would shoot right up and very quickly. To be honest, I fear the death of those I care for much more than my own. Anyway, as a loose subscriber to the many worlds theory there'll always be a reality somewhere with me in it

If you could travel back in time or forward in time. What time period would you choose?

First I'd go to the Cambrian just so that I could experience all life on Earth existing in the oceans and nothing, not even insects on the land. That would be so cool, knowing that wherever I walked that I was the only living thing there.

Then I'd pop over to the Permian and watch the rise of the reptiles and all those other lovely vertebrates, including the dinosaurs. I'd hang around for the Permian mass extinction before I headed over to the Cretaceous to see those Dino's in their prime. I'd also have to witness the asteroid that hit the yucatan peninsula.

Then I'd go back to 1973, when I was 6 just so I could walk around my home town to see what it was like then and how much it's changed. I'd also be able to see my parents in their prime and possibly me as a toddler.

As for the future. I'd go forward to this evening and see what the winning lottery numbers where/are and then come back and buy a ticket.

What was the last video game you played and when?

The first 'proper' video game I played was Elite for the BBC Micro in the early eighties and I have been addicted ever since. I'm now waiting for Elite 4 to come out. Apart from Elite I really don't have any interest in video games.

Have you (or are you currently) obtained any sort of university level education?

Nope.. Circumstances have conspired against me. Mind you, it's never too late is it?

If you had a choice between eating a banana, and arresting it, which would you choose? Either way: the banana loses.

Anyone can eat a banana so I'd arrest it. Then I'd put it on trial for being a banana for which it would be acquitted. We would then become good friends and it would invite me back to its home world which is completely given over to bananaoid life forms where I will spend some time living the banana equivalent of the good life working as a chauffeur for a family of Cavendish bananas. I would then return to Earth and write a book about the whole thing which, at the time, will quite capture the public's imagination until I repeatedly claim that the whole thing is true upon which time I will be locked up and declared bankrupt which is the usual fate for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.

Who is your favorite historical figure and why?

It has to be Carl Sagan. It was his sheer passion, not only for Cosmology but also for science in general and his love of knowledge, understanding and of course the human race that really focused my mind and showed me the path I wanted to take in life. He is very sadly missed..

I would also add Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Darwin and many others...