[spawnofjaws]

I COULD!!!!
That'd be funny, but someone else would have to color it.....
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Hoffman icon courtesy of my very good friend, Isaymakebelieve, on LJ, check her out! http://community.livejournal.com/isaymakebelieve/
In my brain, I'm someone famous AND important!
Dubbed 'Egg' by ASA, but also responds to "spegg"...
Keeper of Oliblish and Teh Poodle Stick....
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[TheBritishInvasion]

...Ok that's it. I'm makin a chibi!
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Britland as dubbed by AsA
Avatar courtesy of Footloose
Keeper of Tengu's electricity and Willow's 'what did you just say' eyes.

[spawnofjaws]

huh?
By what do you mean?
_________________
Hoffman icon courtesy of my very good friend, Isaymakebelieve, on LJ, check her out! http://community.livejournal.com/isaymakebelieve/
In my brain, I'm someone famous AND important!
Dubbed 'Egg' by ASA, but also responds to "spegg"...
Keeper of Oliblish and Teh Poodle Stick....
[/url]

[Tinalles]

[Squeeself]

Squee's with Tin. Fire might be necessary for our civilization but...it doesn't take much imagination to come up with alternatives. Including an alternative form of civilization

[Virturealm]

What did fire do, really? I guess it's always cited as the epitome of cave-niftyness, but all that I can think of it being useful for is migrating x degrees further north, and cooking probably cutting back on some diseases.

The chaos is probably a bigger deal though. Things don't change often enough underwater for adaptability to be as effective an asset as it is on land. And when things do change quickly, everything has a tendency to die.

You know what else is helpful for evolving civilization? Being an omnivore. It occurs to me that I don't have the faintest idea whether or not anything underwater really qualifies.

[Nem]

It let us do most of the interesting things with material sciences, so better weapons, eventually new forms of industry and more developed agriculture. Fire is also one of the easiest ways to put energy into a system which made it of great importance in some of the things that have historically needed energy, trains, power stations, etc. Even today most of our electricity comes from burnin' stuff.
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Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Tinalles]

Virt, I'm puzzled as to why you think things don't change underwater. As evidence that things DO in fact change, I point to the Cambrian Explosion and the ongoing destruction of coral reefs.

As for fire, yes, fire made it much easier to make stuff -- having a source of heat that you control makes all kinds of stuff possible.

1) If you char wood carefully, it gets a hardened surface. Better spears (pre-stone-age, anyway).

2) If you do it carefully, you can use fire to hollow out a large log for a canoe. It's a lot easier than chipping out the interior with a stone adze. Though of course probably you want to use the adze for the last stages -- let fire take care of most of it, then use the adze for the last inch or so, for a smoother finish.

3) Fire can be used to fumigate a cave. Pile a whole bunch of fuel in the cave, set it on fire, let the ashes cool, and then you've got a shelter which doesn't have any nasty poisonous things in it, because they A) left, or B) got toasted. Might not want to stand too close to the cliff face in the process, though, as there's a possibility it the uneven heating might make it crack and send splinters or chunks of rock at you.

4) Cooking. Applying heat to raw food starts the process of breaking it down into its component chemicals. It doesn't make the food more nutritious, but it DOES make it easier to digest, meaning your body doesn't have to expend quite so much energy on digestion. Also it opens up a whole new world of tastes. Hot drinks on a cold night.

5) Fire can be used as a weapon. Many wild animals are scared of it. Shove a flaming torch at a saber-tooth tiger, and maybe you'll scare it off even if it's as large as you are, only with razor sharp seven inch fangs. Other uses involve setting a controlled burn in prairie type areas in order to cause large grazing animals like buffalo to stampede into a trap. Think of all the time and effort you can save on hunting by, say, scaring a herd of grazing animals into running madly over the edge of a handy cliff, where the rest of your tribe can finish off the (severely wounded) survivors and start butchering the rest.

6) Of course, that kind of hunting is likely to get you far more meat than you can possibly eat before it rots. Fire, however, is handy for drying or smoking the meat, meaning that one really good cliff-stampede could potentially support an entire tribe for a good long while. Ditto for preserving essentially any meat, plus some types of fruits.

7) Fire is extremely handy for doing all manner of unpleasant things to people you don't like.

It also has medical applications, in that a good fire can keep an ailing patient warm. Also handy for heating up a stick, rock, or a piece of metal with which to cauterize a wound that might otherwise kill, either by bleeding too much or through infection.

9) Heating. Mighty cold during those ice ages, I hear. Fire helps keep you from freezing to death.

10) Slash and burn agriculture is an effective means of converting forest land into productive farming land. Of course, it's also got severe ecological consequences when practiced on a large scale, but for much of human history there weren't enough of us for it to cause serious problems.

11) Oh yeah, and it helps people stay awake after dark. Sounds like a little thing, but especially in parts of the world with short days, that's a big thing. It means you have longer to get stuff done, including important things like teaching things to the kids.

And so on.
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Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli

[Virturealm]

[Tinalles' party has KO'd enemy Virt]

[You got 15 EXP]

[You found a smoke bomb]

[Tenshi]

And in another direction completely... either we're getting more porno spam bots than normal, or I'm just online when they attack lately. I mean, for the longest time we didn't seem to have any (none that I noticed at least). Now I see several a week...

Or maybe I need to spend less time waiting around on ES... ::chortle::
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. Dubbed "Usagi" by AsA .
Keeper of the Siderean Swords

"If by chance some day you're not feeling well, and you should remember some silly thing I've said or done, and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled."
Red Skelton

[Tamir]

I'm working on it! >_< They don't seem to give up.

[Tenshi]

I wasn't trying to pick on you, Tam, I was just commenting that they're getting more persistent.

The evil hordes of unwashed filth are attacking the purity of our forums!

We must retaliate!

Everyone, grab a torch or a pitchfork!

We shall storm the gates!

::looks around, shrugs, wanders away dragging his soap box::

Please return to your regularly scheduled random thoughts of the day.
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. Dubbed "Usagi" by AsA .
Keeper of the Siderean Swords

"If by chance some day you're not feeling well, and you should remember some silly thing I've said or done, and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled."
Red Skelton

[Tamir]

I know you weren't trying to pick on me, I'm just kinda frustrated with these darn spammers. ^^;;

[TheBritishInvasion]

You kow I've alwasy wondered how many averaged sized helium baloons it would take to lift a small child.

Seriously.

I think I looked it up on the internet once but I can't remember if I found anything.
_________________
Britland as dubbed by AsA
Avatar courtesy of Footloose
Keeper of Tengu's electricity and Willow's 'what did you just say' eyes.

[spawnofjaws]

** old weird sci-fi music**
I don't know Britland....I just don't know....
**put pipe in mouth**
_________________
Hoffman icon courtesy of my very good friend, Isaymakebelieve, on LJ, check her out! http://community.livejournal.com/isaymakebelieve/
In my brain, I'm someone famous AND important!
Dubbed 'Egg' by ASA, but also responds to "spegg"...
Keeper of Oliblish and Teh Poodle Stick....
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