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Mimicking Materials and Structures In Nature
eldavojohn writes "From special organic molecules to organic surfaces with special properties to organic concrete, MIT's Technology Review takes a look at inspirations in nature that materials scientists are currently mimicking for human purposes. You may be able to name other fields that have turned to evolution for inspiration as well."
Other fields like ID/creationism have been evolving their arguments over time?
Although Nature is random and haphazard in its designs, it still has to follow the laws of physics. So large structures like trees, termite hills, and basalt cliffs are structured to be very strong.
Structures that must hold their form like honeycombs and coral reefs have interesting geometric structures.
And things that must be flexible, lightweight, and resistant to breakage like spider webs use multiple methods of increasing tensile strength.
If they didn't, physics would force them to break. So for each iteration of Nature, you get some strong and some weak structures, but due to the constant barrage of forces only the most adaptable survive. If genetically controlled, these traits get passed down to subsequent generations.
For those veterans who served their country by fighting pointless wars in third-world countries against people who weren't a threat to us (no WMDs after all), in order to expand American imperialism, I say: HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY! We sure were getting distracted by domestic issues until we had another pointless war to fight. Hey, war's good for the economy right? It's especially good for companies that get no-bid contracts for reconstruction in the war-torn areas.
Vets, I hope it was worth it. Remember, "Iraq" is Arabic and it translates to "Vietnam". Was that freedom you thought you were fighting for? HA HA HA it'd be funny if it weren't such a sick joke. If it was freedom then why was it an offensive war and not a defensive one? Now go beat the drum of patriotism and tell us the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms. Nevermind that we use our intelligence services to overthrow their elected governments and install ruthless dictators who are favorable to our economic interests. Not like that might be why they're so pissed at us especially when they think our government represents us (oh, right, you signed up for military service, so in your cases it does). Nevermind that Saddam Hussein was a CIA-trained asset and so was Osama bin Ladin, your short memories won't permit that. Nevermind that the Arabs don't want us to conduct the socioeconomic warfare against them (what Theodore Roosevelt called Dollar Diplomacy) that we used against most of South America (but hey, Pepsico got a cheap plant out of the deal so that makes it okay!). It's our great freedoms they hate us for. Yeah. Just keep telling yourself that so you can sleep at night and keep wondering why something just doesn't feel right. So sign up for the military and fight some sand niggers today! After all, we need all the useful idiots we can get!
"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder." - Thomas Paine. Guess what? That means if you voluntarily sign up to go overseas and kill a bunch of people for political purposes who were never a threat to you, that makes you a murderer too. But they won't call you that, they'll call you a hero and that'll make it okay. Right?
The only thing sadder is that you will read this and know it is true, or maybe you'll use a search engine and figure out that it's true, and your only reaction will be to get annoyed at me for saying it and you'll mod me down ASAP to try and shut me up. If it's true, what's wrong with saying it? Oh right, it might upset someone, and God knows that's more important than facing reality. God knows that not offending anyone is so much more important than being honest about the decay of a nation and its rot from within.
Regardless of ones theological views i've always found the field of biomimetics fascinating. Looking at systems in the world around us to find better ways of doing human things creates novel solutions for oftentimes complex problems. Personally i believe in an intelligent Creator, and to me i cannot help but marvel at the inherent wisdom in these complex systems and the incredible harmony they share. Again for the sake of the hypersensitive evolutionists out there, i'm not trying to change beliefs here, but from my perspective this is an especially interesting subject.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
Humans are really quite bright and can think. Evolution has one serious advantage over humans: Evolution has had millions of years to try stuff out. When you've got millions of years of mutation and natural selection you are still going to do better than humans who've only been thinking about these things for a few centuries. The one serious advantage of intelligent entities is that we can look at the solutions used elsewhere and adopt them to our purposes. Nature doesn't have that option.
Though not strictly a physical material, this got me thinking. /.
What would be the underlying metaphorical model for
?
Ants, piranha, beavers, jellyfish, cats?
Leave It to Beaver, The Honeymooners, Star Trek?
The school lunch room, D&D party, After work at the pub, French salons on hypnotics?
Logical / illogical anarchy at its finest?
?????
Speaking of mimicking natural materials for human purposes, the invention of velcro is a good example as it is based off of hitchhikers.
Check out the bio-mimicry database: http://asknature.org/
Here's the really interesting TED talk where the founder introduces it, and describes some examples of nature's engineering at work: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.html
Name an example where chaos and entropy designs something..... Evolution is a sick joke.
I'm reminded of the movie, "The Last Mimzy", not the short story. There was a scene of a group of spiders building a bridge, together. Talk about communicating to an alien intelligence. What a Thesis to read, something about mimicking spiders in space to create a tether for space elevator applications.
You thought the MAFIAA was bad. Just wait until Mother Nature sues you in a natural court of law for copying her works without compensation...