Believe it or not, that's false. Your HR department would have you believe otherwise, but in the United States the National Labor Relations Act makes it illegal to fire workers for revealing their salaries. I believe the only exception is if you do it during working hours and/or on company property. On the other hand, I'm not a lawyer, do don't blame me if you get your ass fired.

Can you explain B a little more? You're saying hypothetically the nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea attained more advanced metal-making abilities than their neighbors because...why? Because before it was a seabed, the underlying land was rich in metals they could turn into gold and high-carbon-silicon steel?

And if that's the case, is the modern seabed also rich in these metals? What's the evidence against Welles' theory?

It's pretty obvious once you know the argument. It's due to light-scattering. There's so much energy in the sky all day that it doesn't matter what color you absorb, there's plenty at any visible wavelength. But during sunset and sunrise there's predominantly red light in the sky, and a green plant would be more efficient at absorbing red light (they're complementary colors) than if the plant were another color. This blog entry goes into it:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog. view&FriendID=187945&blogMonth=9&blogDay=24&blogYe ar=2006