Well of course he was. The neat thing about science, as opposed to say creationist xians, is that you're allowed to revise the theory as new evidence comes forward.
Dawin didn't know anything about molecular genetics - it'd be stupid to take his word as dogma. But evolutionist don't - which is why the modern evolutionist synthesis is such a powerful and successful theory.
"Yes horrible things were done (Crusades, Inquisition) by the Catholics (who many argue are not Christians). "
Oh wow. Catholics not Christians. Are they going to burn in hell then?
And which particular split of the xian church do you belong to then? Guess the one that just *happens* to have a direct line to the truth.
Jeez, zelots like you positively dangerous. The worst attrocities are committed by people who think they have a direct line to the truth. What, really is the difference between a xian and a muslim fundementalist - except you of course are saved;-)
It's you who have to open your eyes. You've been brainwashed by a cult.
Self-replicating systems are a cute phrase. Seen any outside living organisms lately? Wouldn't there still be a whole bunch of these around if they were likely to occur? What would make the old ones go away when new ones came along? Why are there none today?
Competition. Survival of the fittest. Out-bred by new more evolved efficient species.
Frog in Blender
Jeez. What a phenominally desperate argument. In what way are the post-blender conditions for a frog anyway similar to any conditions on the early earth?
The problem with your argument is your working a priori to establish life cannot have arisen on earth naturally. Then to promote this argument you insist that life must have arrisen in one go in the form that we now see it. Rather like inisisting the first flight was taken in a jumbo jet.
This is totally specious. We've got a whole planet surface and half a million years in which to work. There's all sorts of conditions - from black smokers at the bottom of the oceans to sundried pools to the deep rock in the earths crust.
All we have to do is create a self-replicating system. Proteins are not required from the word go - we need a membrane an information store and a process to replicate the information. Once we have that natural evolution does the rest for us.
I have no problem with religion itself, but your creationism is an insult to God is He exists. Let's ignore the fossil record - you have too many trite answers for that. Consider instead Woese and other's work on 16s RNA sequences from the 80's forward.
16s RNA is a highly conserved part of ribosomes. However is does show variation between species with changes in it's sequence. Most interesting if you analyse variation in 16s RNA across a range of species (and it's now been done for thousands) you can come up with an evolutionary tree which fits our evolutionary model remarkably well. Incidently this doesn't just include animals and plants but bacteria of all shapes and sizes too.
In other words we have good evidence of the evolutionary process completely independently of fossils - and unlike fossils 16s RNA analysis is pure number crunching.
Now for God to have set us up like this - with a world stuffed with evidence that directly supports evolution - but to have created us in a biblical fashion with the evidence put there just to test us reeks of a twisted mind. Positively malevolent in fact.
I wouldn't be suprised if God (should He exist) isn't positively insulted.
And when modern cells synthesis proteins they don't just create the energy needed to assemble the chain out of nowhere. Enzymes don't *do* anything magical to the chemical reactions going on - they're *just* catalysts. Proteins nowdays get assembled because of special circumstances in the interior environment of the cell.
Back on the primitive earth same thing would have happened - but in a much more primitive way
Besides this concentration on proteins is missing the point. Primitive life was more probably a lipid/rna combination. The wonderful thing about self-replicating systems and evolution is that all you have to do is assemble a basic replicating system - and you've got hundreds of thousands of years to do that across the whole surface of a planet - and once you have something that can grow and replicate then your on your way.
Proteins probably came later - assembled within the internal environment of your proto-cell. There's some interesting indications that tRNA molecules have a basic chemical affinity with the amino acids they code for - not needed now but a vestige of early evolution
The worst thing about this 'can't assemble a 250 amino acid protein in one go' red-herring is that it ignores the evidence about only needing simpler systems to get started. I've already mentioned the 'protenoids' where short amino acid sequences have catalytic properties. Further along in evolution we developed the ribosome and the whole protein assembly mechanism. Nowdays it's a massive molecular assembly visible through an EM, but over 20 years ago it was shown you could strip this back to a 1/100 of it's current size and still have a working, albeit less efficiently, process.
Finally I can't resist the one about other things boinding to amino acids - err that's half the point! Amino acid chains are often useful because they can bond other molecules. To bring two things together here one of the short 'protenoids' I mentioned was a 30 amino acid chain bonded to a porphoryn - and guess what - it carries oxygen reversably just like haemoglobin! Crude - but effective.
It just doesn't work like that. You don't need to assemble everything in one go - all you need to do is assemble a set of building blocks that have a sufficent advantage so that some form of evolution can do the rest.
There's lots of literature on this stretching back to the 50s. Among things you might like to consider is that short sequences of amino acid - 10 or 15 - can show catalytic behaviour. The proteins we have nowdays are the finely tuned results of 3.5 billion years of evolution. When life started out it got along much more crudely.
Of even more interest is that you don't need proteins at all. Single strand RNA can also act as a catalyst all by itself. And you don't need DNA either - RNA will pass along genetic information as well. True it makes a lot more mistakes - but the systems are cruder so it doesn't matter so much.
At base all you need for some form of life is a membrane system (lipids assemble these automatically), catalytic molecules and a crude genetic system - RNA will handle these two functions. Once you have that biological evolution kicks in and does the rest.
Personally I think the most biggest stumbling block for earth, and human, like life is not creating life in the first place at all. Our earliest micro-fossils indicate there was life on earth just about as soon as it had cooled down sufficiently to support liquid water. The stumbling blocks instead seem to be evolving, eukaryotes, multi-celled organisms and intelligence.
Multicelled eukaryotic creatures only appeared less than a billion years ago - that's after over 2.5 billion years of single celled creatures only. Similarly self-concious intelligence only arose in the last 10 million years - after many hundred of millions of years of land animals. Both traits would appear to be only very weakly selected for.
Personally I'm betting on finding a lot of planets covered in slime out there.
"For example, I hate MSCE's, and we all know that they're inferior to the rest of us. "
Oh come on, this is just hyperbole. You don't really hate MSCE's in the same way we're talking about the neo-nazis hating jews, blacks and other groups. You wouldn't really go out and actively kill MSCE's, or put them in concentration camps, or gas them, or torture them.
Most people know everything when they're teenagers, but gradually learn thereafter that they really know less and less - sounds like you have some catching up to do:-)
Seriously my career adivice would be..
Get a girl/boy friend
Jump on a place and travel for a year using some of this money you've accumulated from being a hot coder. You should be visiting places like russia, iran and china - anywhere *interesting*
Get drunk with people you shouldn't - live to regret it.
Take casual job in a country where you don't speak the language - or one where you do but don't understand the culture.
etc. etc. etc.
The point? You've obviously been so keen on you 'career' you've forgotten what living is for. The USA economy is going into major recession and at the moment you are just another interchangable piece of cubical fodder. Go and grab some real life exerience while you still can, because in the long run it's what you learn and apply from that which is going to make your life and career worthwhile for the next 40 years - not being given some ridiculous company job title
You don't have to know about the history or the subject to do it, and personally it doesn't bother me if you don't
However not being interested enough to aquire the background knowledge in your subject - or indeed in history in general - is a good indicator that you are a throughly uninteresting individual yourself and not someone any thinking person would waste their valuable time on.
Good observations, but you missunderstand somewhat about Tolkien rehashing ideas - of course he did - that was the whole point!
Tolkien spent his professional life dealing with old and middle english epics like beowulf, gawain and others - he knew better than anyone else what the ur-themes were behind such epics were and how they appeal to us. So when he came to write his own epic he simply incorporated all the themes that made other 'real' myths and legends succeed in being passed down over generations. LOTR is compelling because it was designed that way
Yep, same family. If I remember correctly Philip Toynbee was an historian turned journalist - and one who garnered considerably more respect than his daughter.
I think your letting your prejudices show through somewhat on the Guardian though as it and it's predecessor, the Manchester Guardian, was on 'our' side for WWII and whilst being pro-detente was always highly critical of the soviets.
If you want a really traterous paper the prime example is The Daily Mail which was a slavish admirer of Hitler until about 1937. There's more than one Daily Mail editorial advocating virtual incorperation of Britain into the 3rd Reich!
You should read some history sometime - I think you'll find that British social attitudes towards Hitler and Fascism in the 1930s - particularly among the ruling classes, somewhat suprising.
Jeez, you know at this rate Katz will soon be reviewing Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 as a stunning new novel. This has been out for three years now.
The Business is something of a light read by Bank's standards. IMHO The Crow Road is the best (and it starts with the immortal line 'it was the day my grandmother exploded'), with Complicity and Espeldair St being pretty good too.
If you ever get the chance go and here him speak too - terribly nice, funny and entertaining guy.
His non-SF novels are also interesting if you live in Scotland because they usually very much grounded in real geography - Complicity, Wilt and Crow Road in particular. One of my friends was actually the next door neighbour to the guy at Gilmerton with the multiple Austin 7's outside mentioned in Complicity (and the mechanic who looks after the weird off-road vehicle at Lix Toll Garage mentioned in the same novel also services my car). I know that doesn't give it any literay merit, but it is kinda interesting to see how his imagination uses and extends the local colour:-)
I considered making GenesisII - our Landscape Visualization System - open source just over a year ago and posted about it to various newsgroups. I decided against it because there was very little response.
Landscape Visualization has been the next big thing on and off for about 10 years now. I still think we're about 2 chip generations behind it being for real, plus a *lot* or work needs doing on basic 'real world' algorithms.
I've been doing this very successfully for two years now - before that I negotiated with my old employer and did it half time for 18 months (they new I was going to leave but figured they rather have me assured for a while than just straight out the door). I telecommute exclusively - from the middle of the Scottish Highlands,
I've never gone looking for work and often have more than I can handle. The trick is to get yourself a few reliable clients - if you do a good job for them they'll keep coming back and hopefully recommend you to others too. Also never miss the chance of making a contact - you never know when it will come in handy.
In the long run you're more secure working with a group of clients than in normal employment. If your employed and you loose your job then that's you completely out of work until you find another. In my case I effectively have about 6 employers, and my chances of loosing all of them in one go are a lot, lot less than conventional unemployment.
If you've been in IT for 15 years you've probably got all the abstract skills you need - you've just not got to get hung up on how they're instantiated at the moment.
I'm 41 next week and have been self-employed for nearly five years now. I code nearly anything - java, php, asp, c, sql etc etc. Never had a days training since I was taught COBOL as a trainee in the mid-80s and Oracle DBA skills in the early 90's. Instead I have a range of clients who regularly come to me for project development. Despite the wisdom that IT is a young persons game I find age a positive advantage - I've enough experience that I can talk on the right business level with clients, do the systems analysis and deliver the final product to time and budget. Also with the experience you don't misreact to problems in the same way as a kid with just a couple of years time would.
I also find that clients commissioning work tend to be in there 40's and 50's and generally feel more comfortable with an older person with a broader range of IT and Business experience than they would with a young kid.
So examine all the skills you have, look through your network of contacts, and think positive - experience does matter!
Americans routinely confuse Freedom with Liberty. The two aren't necessarily the same - and probably best summed up by attitudes to Guns and Health. I've met more than one American who thinks that gun-ownership is the ultimate freedom and without it all other freedoms are worthless. As a European who has never owned a gun - and certainly here in the UK doesn't have the Liberty to own a handgun, this argument is so irrelevant it's like a Linux user complaining they can't run Word - it just misses the point so completely it's incomprehensible.
On the other hand I take the freedom to enjoy my and retain my health because healthcare freely is available to all fundamental, and find it difficult to concieve how a society which denies healthcare to some because they cannot afford it can be 'Free' in any meaningful sense.
Some freedoms, such as freedom of speech, are observed by all countries which could claim to be free. However even here there's differences - I personally would go along with the European view that Nazi and Rascist literature should be censured - because I consider the freedoms of minorities not to be hassled by such groups as more important than the rights of the these people to complete freedom of speech. Most Americans would seem to disagree, but I can see the merits of their argument.
What REALLY does bug me though is the assumption by many Americans that there is only type of 'Free' society and the US of A is the shining example to world. That really sucks.
It should be reasonably easy to tell an alien lifeform apart - the bochemistry would be expected to differ. Two examples - all earth life uses the same 20 amino acids to create proteins - these 20 were 'chosen' a long long time ago, but there's no reason why the exact same 20 have to be used (or even if it has to be 20). Similarly the genetic code that specifies amino acids in the dna is exactly the same for all earth life (with the minor exception of mitochondria inside cells). Again there's no reason why the code has to be exactly the same.
a. Work on cool stuff. OK sometimes you have to do other things to make raw cash, but so long as I get time to continue making software that does this then I'm doing ok
c. Don't necessarily want to be mega-rich, but enough for a decent house, good holidays, stuff for the kids, fun car will do fine. Programming is still lucrative, and seems to be getting more so.
I was also getting some pain from excessive mouse use - and sometimes really bad acheing in the joints of my index fingers. Switching to trackerballs basically cured it - I found the Microsoft tracker to be very comfortable, but tends to gum up easily and can't be cleaned. Currently I've two logitech devices on my main computers - one is the one with the marble operated by the thumb which is very comfortable - the other is a new device which looks a bit like a mouse but has the marble in the centre - operated byt the fingers - so far this looks really good
Slashdot Mirror
Well of course he was. The neat thing about science, as opposed to say creationist xians, is that you're allowed to revise the theory as new evidence comes forward.
Dawin didn't know anything about molecular genetics - it'd be stupid to take his word as dogma. But evolutionist don't - which is why the modern evolutionist synthesis is such a powerful and successful theory.
1. Light sensor.
2. Transmission of results of light being sensed.
3. Reception of the transmission
4. Interpretation of the transmission.
Duh. Nobody told this idiot that light receptors cells are modified neurons? You get the lot for free in one go.
Oh wow. Catholics not Christians. Are they going to burn in hell then?
And which particular split of the xian church do you belong to then? Guess the one that just *happens* to have a direct line to the truth.
Jeez, zelots like you positively dangerous. The worst attrocities are committed by people who think they have a direct line to the truth. What, really is the difference between a xian and a muslim fundementalist - except you of course are saved ;-)
It's you who have to open your eyes. You've been brainwashed by a cult.
Competition. Survival of the fittest. Out-bred by new more evolved efficient species.
Frog in Blender
Jeez. What a phenominally desperate argument. In what way are the post-blender conditions for a frog anyway similar to any conditions on the early earth?
This is totally specious. We've got a whole planet surface and half a million years in which to work. There's all sorts of conditions - from black smokers at the bottom of the oceans to sundried pools to the deep rock in the earths crust.
All we have to do is create a self-replicating system. Proteins are not required from the word go - we need a membrane an information store and a process to replicate the information. Once we have that natural evolution does the rest for us.
I have no problem with religion itself, but your creationism is an insult to God is He exists. Let's ignore the fossil record - you have too many trite answers for that. Consider instead Woese and other's work on 16s RNA sequences from the 80's forward.
16s RNA is a highly conserved part of ribosomes. However is does show variation between species with changes in it's sequence. Most interesting if you analyse variation in 16s RNA across a range of species (and it's now been done for thousands) you can come up with an evolutionary tree which fits our evolutionary model remarkably well. Incidently this doesn't just include animals and plants but bacteria of all shapes and sizes too.
In other words we have good evidence of the evolutionary process completely independently of fossils - and unlike fossils 16s RNA analysis is pure number crunching.
Now for God to have set us up like this - with a world stuffed with evidence that directly supports evolution - but to have created us in a biblical fashion with the evidence put there just to test us reeks of a twisted mind. Positively malevolent in fact.
I wouldn't be suprised if God (should He exist) isn't positively insulted.
Back on the primitive earth same thing would have happened - but in a much more primitive way
Besides this concentration on proteins is missing the point. Primitive life was more probably a lipid/rna combination. The wonderful thing about self-replicating systems and evolution is that all you have to do is assemble a basic replicating system - and you've got hundreds of thousands of years to do that across the whole surface of a planet - and once you have something that can grow and replicate then your on your way.
Proteins probably came later - assembled within the internal environment of your proto-cell. There's some interesting indications that tRNA molecules have a basic chemical affinity with the amino acids they code for - not needed now but a vestige of early evolution
The worst thing about this 'can't assemble a 250 amino acid protein in one go' red-herring is that it ignores the evidence about only needing simpler systems to get started. I've already mentioned the 'protenoids' where short amino acid sequences have catalytic properties. Further along in evolution we developed the ribosome and the whole protein assembly mechanism. Nowdays it's a massive molecular assembly visible through an EM, but over 20 years ago it was shown you could strip this back to a 1/100 of it's current size and still have a working, albeit less efficiently, process.
Finally I can't resist the one about other things boinding to amino acids - err that's half the point! Amino acid chains are often useful because they can bond other molecules. To bring two things together here one of the short 'protenoids' I mentioned was a 30 amino acid chain bonded to a porphoryn - and guess what - it carries oxygen reversably just like haemoglobin! Crude - but effective.
>toxic environment
:-)
What, like oxygen?
One of the most nasty, reactive toxic chemicals know. Good job there wasn't much about back then.
But you don't.
There's lots of literature on this stretching back to the 50s. Among things you might like to consider is that short sequences of amino acid - 10 or 15 - can show catalytic behaviour. The proteins we have nowdays are the finely tuned results of 3.5 billion years of evolution. When life started out it got along much more crudely.
Of even more interest is that you don't need proteins at all. Single strand RNA can also act as a catalyst all by itself. And you don't need DNA either - RNA will pass along genetic information as well. True it makes a lot more mistakes - but the systems are cruder so it doesn't matter so much.
At base all you need for some form of life is a membrane system (lipids assemble these automatically), catalytic molecules and a crude genetic system - RNA will handle these two functions. Once you have that biological evolution kicks in and does the rest.
Personally I think the most biggest stumbling block for earth, and human, like life is not creating life in the first place at all. Our earliest micro-fossils indicate there was life on earth just about as soon as it had cooled down sufficiently to support liquid water. The stumbling blocks instead seem to be evolving, eukaryotes, multi-celled organisms and intelligence.
Multicelled eukaryotic creatures only appeared less than a billion years ago - that's after over 2.5 billion years of single celled creatures only. Similarly self-concious intelligence only arose in the last 10 million years - after many hundred of millions of years of land animals. Both traits would appear to be only very weakly selected for.
Personally I'm betting on finding a lot of planets covered in slime out there.
Oh come on, this is just hyperbole. You don't really hate MSCE's in the same way we're talking about the neo-nazis hating jews, blacks and other groups. You wouldn't really go out and actively kill MSCE's, or put them in concentration camps, or gas them, or torture them.
Think before you post
So you'd rather the kids were left uneducated and likely to commit more crimes?
Seriously my career adivice would be..
Get a girl/boy friend
Jump on a place and travel for a year using some of this money you've accumulated from being a hot coder. You should be visiting places like russia, iran and china - anywhere *interesting*
Get drunk with people you shouldn't - live to regret it.
Take casual job in a country where you don't speak the language - or one where you do but don't understand the culture.
etc. etc. etc.
The point? You've obviously been so keen on you 'career' you've forgotten what living is for. The USA economy is going into major recession and at the moment you are just another interchangable piece of cubical fodder. Go and grab some real life exerience while you still can, because in the long run it's what you learn and apply from that which is going to make your life and career worthwhile for the next 40 years - not being given some ridiculous company job title
However not being interested enough to aquire the background knowledge in your subject - or indeed in history in general - is a good indicator that you are a throughly uninteresting individual yourself and not someone any thinking person would waste their valuable time on.
Tolkien spent his professional life dealing with old and middle english epics like beowulf, gawain and others - he knew better than anyone else what the ur-themes were behind such epics were and how they appeal to us. So when he came to write his own epic he simply incorporated all the themes that made other 'real' myths and legends succeed in being passed down over generations. LOTR is compelling because it was designed that way
I think your letting your prejudices show through somewhat on the Guardian though as it and it's predecessor, the Manchester Guardian, was on 'our' side for WWII and whilst being pro-detente was always highly critical of the soviets.
If you want a really traterous paper the prime example is The Daily Mail which was a slavish admirer of Hitler until about 1937. There's more than one Daily Mail editorial advocating virtual incorperation of Britain into the 3rd Reich!
You should read some history sometime - I think you'll find that British social attitudes towards Hitler and Fascism in the 1930s - particularly among the ruling classes, somewhat suprising.
The Business is something of a light read by Bank's standards. IMHO The Crow Road is the best (and it starts with the immortal line 'it was the day my grandmother exploded'), with Complicity and Espeldair St being pretty good too.
If you ever get the chance go and here him speak too - terribly nice, funny and entertaining guy.
His non-SF novels are also interesting if you live in Scotland because they usually very much grounded in real geography - Complicity, Wilt and Crow Road in particular. One of my friends was actually the next door neighbour to the guy at Gilmerton with the multiple Austin 7's outside mentioned in Complicity (and the mechanic who looks after the weird off-road vehicle at Lix Toll Garage mentioned in the same novel also services my car). I know that doesn't give it any literay merit, but it is kinda interesting to see how his imagination uses and extends the local colour :-)
Landscape Visualization has been the next big thing on and off for about 10 years now. I still think we're about 2 chip generations behind it being for real, plus a *lot* or work needs doing on basic 'real world' algorithms.
I've never gone looking for work and often have more than I can handle. The trick is to get yourself a few reliable clients - if you do a good job for them they'll keep coming back and hopefully recommend you to others too. Also never miss the chance of making a contact - you never know when it will come in handy.
In the long run you're more secure working with a group of clients than in normal employment. If your employed and you loose your job then that's you completely out of work until you find another. In my case I effectively have about 6 employers, and my chances of loosing all of them in one go are a lot, lot less than conventional unemployment.
I'm 41 next week and have been self-employed for nearly five years now. I code nearly anything - java, php, asp, c, sql etc etc. Never had a days training since I was taught COBOL as a trainee in the mid-80s and Oracle DBA skills in the early 90's. Instead I have a range of clients who regularly come to me for project development. Despite the wisdom that IT is a young persons game I find age a positive advantage - I've enough experience that I can talk on the right business level with clients, do the systems analysis and deliver the final product to time and budget. Also with the experience you don't misreact to problems in the same way as a kid with just a couple of years time would.
I also find that clients commissioning work tend to be in there 40's and 50's and generally feel more comfortable with an older person with a broader range of IT and Business experience than they would with a young kid.
So examine all the skills you have, look through your network of contacts, and think positive - experience does matter!
On the other hand I take the freedom to enjoy my and retain my health because healthcare freely is available to all fundamental, and find it difficult to concieve how a society which denies healthcare to some because they cannot afford it can be 'Free' in any meaningful sense.
Some freedoms, such as freedom of speech, are observed by all countries which could claim to be free. However even here there's differences - I personally would go along with the European view that Nazi and Rascist literature should be censured - because I consider the freedoms of minorities not to be hassled by such groups as more important than the rights of the these people to complete freedom of speech. Most Americans would seem to disagree, but I can see the merits of their argument.
What REALLY does bug me though is the assumption by many Americans that there is only type of 'Free' society and the US of A is the shining example to world. That really sucks.
There's lots of other more subtle examples.
Isn't there reasonable evidence that the atmosphere contained about 30% oxygen then? This would give muscle physiology and extra boost.
a. Work on cool stuff. OK sometimes you have to do other things to make raw cash, but so long as I get time to continue making software that does this then I'm doing ok
b. Control my Life. Programming and the internet allow me to live in the middle of the Scottish Highlands with my own company and talk to my clients
c. Don't necessarily want to be mega-rich, but enough for a decent house, good holidays, stuff for the kids, fun car will do fine. Programming is still lucrative, and seems to be getting more so.
I was also getting some pain from excessive mouse use - and sometimes really bad acheing in the joints of my index fingers. Switching to trackerballs basically cured it - I found the Microsoft tracker to be very comfortable, but tends to gum up easily and can't be cleaned. Currently I've two logitech devices on my main computers - one is the one with the marble operated by the thumb which is very comfortable - the other is a new device which looks a bit like a mouse but has the marble in the centre - operated byt the fingers - so far this looks really good