why we, and everything else we observe today, are made of matter and not anti-matter
Call me crazy, but I bet that if we and everything we observed were made of anti-matter, we would just call it "matter".:p
Seriously, though, doesn't it have to be one or the other (since a mix will lead to annihilation)? I'm assuming the real question is why what we call "matter" managed to beat out anti-matter instead of a balance of both kinds being made at the beginning, which would then annihilate.
Just from your review I understood that it was not at all a "regular person" kind of book. Sounds rather interesting, but seems to require a lot of knowledge ahead of reading. I'm sure there are a few/.ers that are genetic specialists and microbiologists that can enjoy.
And high school biology teachers only a background in marine biology and no formal training in genetics, genomics, and molecular biology to the extent presented in the book...
When this book first came out on Amazon, it was free for a period, and I managed to nab it then. It is an outstanding book, but it IS a long, heavy read (I imagine so, even for the experts, but maybe not). It probably really helped that I had read several of Dr. Koonin's papers over the years and was familiar with his style of writing and some of his work (I may be a mere HS biology teacher, but I'm nerd enough to enjoy reading research papers for fun). It also helped that I am fascinated by the subject and have done my best to get caught up on the latest stuff happening, both for my own understanding and for teaching to my students so they will have some idea what is going on in the field *now* when they graduate.
Anyway, FWIW, I left a review on Amazon. Here is what I wrote:
This book is targeted at the experts but can be understood well enough by knowledgeable amateurs with some background in genomics (even unofficial; mine comes from my hobby of reading research papers because I am fascinated with biology). Having already read a good number of Dr. Koonin's papers as well as several others referenced in the book helped.
Anyway, this was a fascinating, thought-provoking read, though it was also rather difficult. Koonin's writing style, which serves him quite well in academic papers, doesn't translate extremely well to a full length book. For the sake of comparison, because both books seem to be targeted at a similar level crowd, it is not as readable as "The Extended Phenotype" by Richard Dawkins.
However, the ideas are fascinating, and this book seems to be an excellent overview of modern genomics research and what it tells us about what we understand and misunderstand about evolution. I certainly learned a lot about these topics as well as directions that future research will be taking. While I was less than impressed with some of the conclusions near the end (for example, the appeal to MWO and weak Anthropic Principal seemed to me to be a cop-out and at best should be a hypothesis of last resort).
However, I am not an expert, just an interested knowledgeable amateur, so I am not in the best position to judge Dr. Koonin's interpretations of the various data and research. But, whether his interpretations are spot on or not, they are certainly quite thought provoking, and will certainly serve science by creating discussion and lying groundwork for real testable hypotheses of all of the topics of genomics and evolution he discussed.
If you are very interested in biology, genetics, genomics, and evolution, you will want to read this book.
All in all, it's a good book. However, many will find that it isn't worth the $40 price tag unless they are actually people really interested in and fairly familiar with this field. It's definitely targeted at the scientists, not the general non-expert public.
In modern classification, there is no Protist kingdom. Protists are polyphyletic, which means they have representatives in many different groups (or Kingdoms, if you want), and each group is linked by a common ancestor. Though they are still working out the actual branches of the Eukarya tree (a lot of the early branching is difficult to resolve because of so much genome re-arranging and duplications, insertions, and deletions), one fairly recent paper suggests at least 6 "Kingdoms": Opisthokonta (which includes fungi, animalia, and some of what were previously thought of as protists), Amoebazoa (amoebas, slime moulds, etc), Archaeplastida (plantae, red algae, and green algae), Chromalveolata, Rhizaria, Excavata, and some groups that aren't clearly in those groups. This paper by Roger and Simpson from 2004 has a good summary:
I'm sure there has been more work since then, but that paper is accessible to non-experts and a good overall read (though I recommend having wikipedia open to see what organisms they are talking about when they list names).
Modern classification is a bit of a mess, because Nature doesn't fit into the neat hierarchical classification system that we grew up with. A good example of this is the idea of the Animal, Fungi, and Plant kingdoms of old. If Animals and Fungi deserve their own kingdoms, then at the same hierarchical level, each plant "phylum" should actually be a kingdom. Or something along those lines. But anyway more modern classification uses monophyletic groups (groups in which all members have a common ancestor; e.g. Eukarya is monophyletic because all eukaryotes share a common ancestor, but Protista is polyphyletic because there are protists which have a more recent common ancestor with animals than they do with other protists).
----------
About the article, man that thing is a mess. Is it a translation problem, are the journalists who wrote it completely clueless, or are the researchers who discovered this organism extremely out of date with their classification? It reads more like a discovery from 1970 than 2012.:-/
I live in Thailand, so I'm really getting a kick...
mcgrew said...
I'm pretty sure that in Thailand's case, it's not to keep people from saying bad things about the government, but to keep them from saying bad things about the king.
The problem with this is that the government is treating criticism of the government as criticism of the King, so they use the lese majeste laws to stifle their opponents. It is my understanding that the King does not even agree with the lese majeste laws and has pardoned a good number of people who have been convicted under them. However, he tries to keep his hands off political things because that would (apparently) ruin the constitutional monarchy he is intent on having (which doesn't really exist, what with all of the corruption and coups and such). Also, he is really old and basically on death's doorstep, and so probably doesn't even have the capacity to say anything about these abuses now, or may not even be aware of them.
So, instead the extremely corrupt and petty Thai government gets to have its way with these laws and use them to stifle any criticism of government they choose.
The King of Thailand is actually quite a decent guy who has done a lot of good things over his reign. The people love him, and with good reason. However he doesn't actually rule the country (though he easily could, and the people would support him), so the government has its own way and he keeps his hands off. And the Thai people get to suffer for it (unless they have the money to pay their way out of any trouble).
They insist their God, Science, can indeed answer the big questions of Life, the Universe and Everything. But of course it can't.
Uh no. It's more likely that we disagree what the big questions actually are. But, just to be sure, why don't you give us examples of questions you feel that science can't touch, and we'll see if those are actually big questions about the universe or just questions that flatter the human ego.
As someone who grew up on Marathon and remembers it well as it was, the original Marathon did NOT have mouse look. It did have free look of a sort. Unlike Doom II, which had no actual vertical aiming and instead auto aimed any shots up or down, Marathon had vertical aiming, and you actually had to aim at things to hit them. Add to that that the game had no targeting reticle and it made for some difficult moments. It also had quick glances left and right, which were really dangerous if someone became proficient at them. You could run off a ledge in one direction, quick glance to the side while in mid-air and snap off a rocket or a grenade to take out an opponent, and quickly be accused of cheating by those who didn't know about or know well how to use the controls.;)
But, the original game did not have mouse aiming and was fully keyboard controlled.
Fun fact: the game also never had jumping or crouching. Fun fact #2: the game invented the grenade-hop. Doom II gets credit for the rocket hop, in that you could used the rocket launcher to give you a slight horizontal speed assist to get across a larger gap than normal (it also had no jumping, along with no aiming), but Marathon with it's vertical aiming invented the modern grenade hop and rocket hop or using the blast from an explosion to give you a boost.
You don't have to have the ability to replicate in order to be alive. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate. Or even some people who many not be fertile for whatever reason.
Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.
This is a very narrow, organism-focused view point. Every cell in bees and other "dead-ends" such as all of your somatic cells, are full of replicators, evolved in such a way to enhance the further replication of the germ-line into future generations. Without genetic replication, life as we know it cannot exist. So, yes, replication is a defining aspect of life.
As for the "ability to evolve"... it's not a definer, but more of an emergent property of any and all systems with error prone replication.
In the real world, in the absence of government, I could walk up to you and smash you in the head with a rock killing you and then take everything you have without consequence. There's your "inherent" rights.
That is only true in isolation; that is, only if you and your victim are the only people to witness. Otherwise, there will probably be consequences. Do that to someone in your same hypothetical absence of government in front of the victim's friends or family or other such group that we humans have evolved to form so readily, and I highly doubt that you would be walking away "without consequence".
So called "inherent rights" and "natural rights" are not necessarily, clear, discrete properties of an organism or a person or however you are defining us. Rather, they are more like emergent properties that will emerge naturally from being the gregarious social organism we have evolved to be. Rights appear because of the "social contract" of being such an organism.
And if you still think those rights are "inherent" then I suggest you take a trip to Somalia or Afghanistan or Syria or Bahrain.
And if you think in such a place a person can do anything like you suggested in your hypothetical example, you are also much mistaken. There will be consequences. Take away someone's "right to life" and unjustly kill them in front of anyone, friend or family or other, who thinks fondly of them for feels you are being unjust, and you may just find there are consequences to infringing on someone's so-called rights.
That's certainly nice of them (and quite unexpected from previous experience) to finally have some settings default to privacy. I would be interested to know if it stays that way the next time FB fiddles with the ToS or the privacy options. That's not minding the sheer number of privacy options and settings which makes all the harder for the less technically inclined to set correctly if they didn't give up immediately.
That's why I pretty much scramble for the privacy settings every time I see a news story about a new FaceBook feature. However, either a.) I've been lucky and they overlooked setting "on" as default for new features in my account or b.) they somehow actually take into account the privacy amount of current settings and make the new setting in line with that (e.g. if someone has everything shared with everyone, then the new thing defaults to "on", but if someone is like me and has things fairly well locked down and controlled, then the new thing defaults to "off"), or c.) something else.
I don't know how they do it. All I know is that whenever a story hits and people start freaking out about what FaceBook is doing to their privacy, I check my account settings and find I have no obvious cause to complain. Of course, the closet conspiracy theorist inside me suggests the possibility that the settings aren't actually protected when it comes to sharing data with advertisers or for other purposes, but he has no evidence of that yet, so I tell him to shut up.;)
This is about automated, mass identification for profit without a clear way to disable it, opt-out, or delete the data, nor do people really know who ends up with this information and what those buyers can do with it.
Account menu -> Privacy Settings -> Customize -> "Suggest photos of me to friends" Settings -> Disabled
Seems pretty clear to me, as it is a logical progression through the menus and pages. It's not hard to find. It is easy to disable. It's probably already disabled for many people.
And, at least on my account, it was disabled by default. i.e. As soon as I heard about this feature, I went immediately to my account privacy settings to turn it off and found that it was already turned off.
I've found that most people can't grasp how big space is. I can on a intellectual level but most people don't seem to understand just how distance even the closest stars are. I've met a few who thought a lightyear was the distance it took up to travel in a year in a modern space shuttle. But wow Voyager is going itno the black, I hope it doesn't turn into a Reaver.
Indeed. I always felt like I kind of "got it" on an intellectual level of matching big numbers to huge differences. But I realized that I didn't really get it until I started playing with Celestia, a free space simulator that lets you move around the universe using actual astronomical data. Everything is to scale in that program, and it really does give you a feel for just how big and empty space really is.
I highly recommend playing with it, for anyone who really wants to try to grasp the hugeness of space.:)
"This is a necessary first step in the process," said Parker. "We wanted to answer the question: Can you build a circuit that would act like a neuron? The next step is even more complex. How can we build structures out of these circuits that mimic the neuron, and eventually the function of the brain, which has 100 billion neurons and 10,000 synapses?"
Uhhh... That number of synapses is off by about 10 orders of magnitude. I assume the number of synapses was meant to be a "per neuron" number, but that's a pretty glaring thing to leave out of that sentence.:-/
I'm not satisfied with your job. That's not really your fault, of course.
To be fair, unless you live in Bangkok, Thailand and have run into some of my former students, then I highly doubt you've ever run into the results of my job.:p
It's never about critical thinking. It's never about solving real life problems. It's always about passing the next test or quiz.
And, again, you miss the point. I apologize if I didn't make that clear. It's not about directly solving real life problems. It's about learning the STYLE AND WAY OF THINKING LOGICALLY in order to solve real life problems.
The way math classes make you do this is by doing math problems, because math problems can only be solved by logical thinking and a logical application of mathematical properties. Doing this again and again, building in complexity over the years, doesn't just teach you to solve math problems, it teaches you HOW TO THINK about any problem. Just like muscular exercise builds up muscles that are used repetitively for some task that you want to be stronger at doing, the kinds of problems you do in math are brain exercises that build up, through repetitive use, the pathways that are useful for logical thinking.
I'm sorry if your teachers didn't make this explicitly clear to you. A lot of teachers don't. I, for one, do explain this to my students, because I understand very well that the level of math we are doing is not very interesting, the types of problems we solve with it are very contrived and not realistic (because the math required to solve "real" problems is way beyond these basics, but you must master the basics if you want to learn to do the advanced stuff), and a lot of the actual things we do in class are not very applicable themselves in real life. For most people, math is not exciting or interesting. But learning it gives the gifts of clear and logical thinking and the ability for sustained chains of reasoning.
I'm sure not many of my students get this, even though I have explained it to them, but that's simply a product of them being young and inexperienced with the world. If even a few of them come out of this class as clearer, more rational thinkers, then I've done my job well.
Meanwhile, I have not used the quadratic formula since I finished Calculus, let alone had to recite a proof of it. I have little doubt that knowing what the formula is and how to use it is relatively important. However, I would like to see a plausible theoretical situation in which one would need to recite a proof of the quadratic formula, without the use of any references.
There are a lot of posts like this, so apologies for singling you out... But, as a math teacher I have to say in response to the "but I never use this" ideas...
Though doing such things is required as class, mathematics is NOT and has never been about memorizing formulas, or even about using specific ones. Yes, we all know you probably don't use the quadratic formula in real life, nor to you have to find the rules for number sequences, nor do you have to find all of the number patterns you can in Pascal's triangle, nor do you have to use Pascal's triangle as a convenient shortcut for binomial expansions, nor do you have to do proofs using all of those uselessly memorized names and properties from your various classes, etc. Yes, you probably had to do all of these things and more in your math classes, but believe it or not, learning math is not really about these things.
Mathematics is (or should be) the class where you learn how to think logically, and use logical and critical thinking skills to solve problems. Not just math problems, but ANY kind of problem you are likely to encounter in life. No, you won't ever use pythagorean theorem to solve relationship problems in your love life, but the logical and critical thinking styles you gained in your mind from solving problems in math will apply to you finding reasonable and logical solutions in real life.
Not only are you learning how to think in math, but you are learning how to break down your thinking so you can check it step by step to make sure there are no flaws. THAT is why we math teachers make you show your work. I, for one, don't care if you get the correct answer or not. I care about how you arrived at your answer, if you can show me the process you used to get to it, and if, in the case of an incorrect answer, you can find the flaw in your thought process that lead to your mistake. Tell me the ability to explain your thinking or the process you intend to engage in to reach a particular outcome is not an important and necessary life skill!
The fact that we use mathematics to try to teach these things is a side effect of what math is. But math class is not just for learning math. It is the class where you exercise your brain so that logical thinking and sustained reasoning become easier in all aspects of life.
And that is why learning to prove the quadratic formula, rather than programming the answer into your calculator, is important.
Borderlands was flawed (lame level scaling, inactive NPCs, weak story, etc) but it was fun as hell. I'd love to see a Borderlands 2 fixing those flaws but keeping the cool design and graphics, the quirky humor, the bazillion guns, and so on.
Like any game, it's not for everyone. But, Borderlands was awesome and you suck for not thinking so.:p;)
Where is Portal 2 60 bucks? Because accessing the Steam store from Thailand, I see a price of $49.99 with a current pre-order discount of 10% plus a free copy of Portal 1.
As I understand it, life evolved QUICKLY on Earth. I mean, we went from a barren rock with magma flows and some water to teeming lakes of bacterium in the blink of an eye. (Relatively speaking). Only 500 million years after the heavy bombardment from meteors, and a mere 25 million years after the moon formed, Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes formed. As far as the universe goes, that's hardly any time at all.
The best explaniation for this rapid growth is that life didn't actually have to start here, but came from meteorites.
Again, I am not an expert, just an interested college student. Anyone with real knowledge, please correct me.
Your numbers seem off...
It was about 200-400 million years from the end of major bombardment to the first geological evidence of life on Earth. The moon formed before major bombardment ended. Approximate dates are 4.6Gya for Earth, 4.5Gya for the moon, 4.2Gya for the end of late heavy bombardment, and 3.8Gya for the first fossil evidence of life). The Wikipedia article on geologic time gives a pretty good overview.:)
As for the GPP, I agree. Every time they find something like this, there's always the "So Earth was seeded by these" speculation. It seems that such materials are rather common in our solar system, both here on Earth, on other planets, and on meteors and asteroids. If such organic molecules can form with relative ease in so many other places in the solar system, I see no reason why they couldn't have formed on Earth as well as it went through it's own geological evolution. Especially when geological processes for forming many complex organic chemicals abiotically have been documented. No doubt that stuff falling from the sky could contribute to organic materials on Earth, but I see no reason to believe that they are a major contribution.
As for TFS, I found this to be rather humorous:
Chemical analysis of the meteorite shows it to be rich in ammonia and containing the element nitrogen.
Well, I should hope so. I'd be very surprised and impressed if the meteorite were rich in ammonia but didn't contain nitrogen.:p
Pay attention to the Steam Sales. During the "Perils of Summer Sale", they had all 3 DLCs (at that time) for $9.99. I was stupid and didn't get them then when I bought the base game, because I didn't realize how much I'd end up liking the game.
I've actually bought each of the Borderlands DLCs at full price ($9.99 each), and for me they were worth the investment. Since I also got the base game for $9.99 during the sale, in all I haven't paid more than the GOTY edition.
The Borderlands DLCs are really good fun. I highly recommend getting them the next time they go on sale. I don't know if Gearbox will be willing to make all 4 available together for $9.99, but seriously, if you can get them all for $20 or less, it's a steal.
Don't feel so bad, the free DLC was only free on the PC.
Heh... oops. Sorry, I forgot that. ^^;;
However, isn't that more Microsoft's doing than Valve's doing? As I understand things now for the future, Valve would rather gamers not buy Portal 2 for Xbox if they want to get the best possible experience playing it, mainly because of Microsoft's limitations on DLC and patches and such. Valve could never do for TF2 on XBox what they've done for TF2 on PC, and the only reason for this is because Microsoft won't allow it.
I highly agree, except I won't say it's the "only" good DLC. Despite costing money, I've really enjoyed the Borderlands DLC. Great side stories with great humor, some good game enhancements, and most importantly MORE GUNS!:D
They are largely moot now, as buying the GOTY edition gets you all of the DLC... but they do seem to be guilty of making you actually download the DLC rather than having on the physical disc when you buy retail. This doesn't affect me as I bought the game and its DLCs previously, on Steam.
But, yes, Valve with L4D(2) and TF2 are a fine example of great DLC systems.:D
Yeah, you pretty much summed up my feelings better than my long-winded response below.
Regarding "what is a 'complete' game?", though. I'd say, a game that at least has a full story arc. Incomplete and using DLC for money grubbing would be something like releasing the first game as, half the story, and then having to buy DLC to finish that story. i.e. it wouldn't be an extension of the game; it would be building to the completion of the game.
Though not quite DLC, this is kind of how I look at Valve with the HL2 episodes. Episodic content is annoying like that when you have to wait so long to get to the next chapter. Even more so when you are really enjoying the story. (and I love the HL2 story)
Like I said in my comment below, "Borderlands" *might* feel kind of like an incomplete game due to its weak story, BUT it's such a fun game that you do feel you got a complete game in the base game, and the DLC then extends and enhances, as DLC should.
Also, like I said in the post below, I have never bought an "incomplete" game in the sense of this post, and I never intend to.
If I pay for a game, it damn better be a COMPLETE game. But these days, they sell incomplete games now and the missing parts later. DLC is nothing but a scam.
While I agree with this in principle, I have not yet bought a game that I felt the base-game was incomplete and the DLC felt like a money-grubbing scam. The closest was maybe Borderlands, mainly because the base game storyline was pretty weak. BUT, it was still a damn fun game, even only in the base game. The DLC enhances and extends the game and makes it significantly better, to the extent one might argue that the DLC should have just been part of the original, but I don't fault them too much for it. I think GearBox did alright with their compromise between putting out a game within a reasonable timeframe and putting out a game with all possible content (including stuff you may not have thought of or developed yet).
A lot of people hate on Bioshock 2, especially for PC after the recent no-DLC-for-PC debacle. For my part, I was very disappointed that Minerva's Den DLC was not coming for PC, mainly because the console users said it was quite good. But, I'd already felt I bought a complete game, so even with this, it was a case of missing out on truly EXTRA content. (And, apparently, they've decided to port Minerva's Den after all... someday)
And, as for DLC done right, one only has to look at Valve and everything they've done for TF2, L4D, and L4D2. And, they release it for free!
I agree that I hate the idea of a developer releasing an incomplete game and releasing the story piece by piece, and I WILL NOT buy such a game. I'm keeping my eye on Bioshock Infinite, and if it is anything like that or in any way heavily DLC based, I will skip it. I play games on my computer, and I'm not going to buy an incomplete game that also includes the risk of not being able to get the complete content. If a company does go the incomplete game, bit by bit route, then, assuming it does look like a really good game, I'll just wait for a GOTY edition that bundles all of the DLC and main game into one (and probably save a ton of money, too).
So, I hear you about wanting a complete game. I agree that DLC *can* be a scam. However, in my experience, DLC has been a good thing, for the most part (or, at least not a hindrance, in the case of BS2). And my money will only go towards supporting games which, if they must have DLC, do DLC right.
Slashdot Mirror
why we, and everything else we observe today, are made of matter and not anti-matter
Call me crazy, but I bet that if we and everything we observed were made of anti-matter, we would just call it "matter". :p
Seriously, though, doesn't it have to be one or the other (since a mix will lead to annihilation)? I'm assuming the real question is why what we call "matter" managed to beat out anti-matter instead of a balance of both kinds being made at the beginning, which would then annihilate.
DNRTFA.
Just from your review I understood that it was not at all a "regular person" kind of book. Sounds rather interesting, but seems to require a lot of knowledge ahead of reading. I'm sure there are a few /.ers that are genetic specialists and microbiologists that can enjoy.
And high school biology teachers only a background in marine biology and no formal training in genetics, genomics, and molecular biology to the extent presented in the book...
When this book first came out on Amazon, it was free for a period, and I managed to nab it then. It is an outstanding book, but it IS a long, heavy read (I imagine so, even for the experts, but maybe not). It probably really helped that I had read several of Dr. Koonin's papers over the years and was familiar with his style of writing and some of his work (I may be a mere HS biology teacher, but I'm nerd enough to enjoy reading research papers for fun). It also helped that I am fascinated by the subject and have done my best to get caught up on the latest stuff happening, both for my own understanding and for teaching to my students so they will have some idea what is going on in the field *now* when they graduate.
Anyway, FWIW, I left a review on Amazon. Here is what I wrote:
This book is targeted at the experts but can be understood well enough by knowledgeable amateurs with some background in genomics (even unofficial; mine comes from my hobby of reading research papers because I am fascinated with biology). Having already read a good number of Dr. Koonin's papers as well as several others referenced in the book helped.
Anyway, this was a fascinating, thought-provoking read, though it was also rather difficult. Koonin's writing style, which serves him quite well in academic papers, doesn't translate extremely well to a full length book. For the sake of comparison, because both books seem to be targeted at a similar level crowd, it is not as readable as "The Extended Phenotype" by Richard Dawkins.
However, the ideas are fascinating, and this book seems to be an excellent overview of modern genomics research and what it tells us about what we understand and misunderstand about evolution. I certainly learned a lot about these topics as well as directions that future research will be taking. While I was less than impressed with some of the conclusions near the end (for example, the appeal to MWO and weak Anthropic Principal seemed to me to be a cop-out and at best should be a hypothesis of last resort).
However, I am not an expert, just an interested knowledgeable amateur, so I am not in the best position to judge Dr. Koonin's interpretations of the various data and research. But, whether his interpretations are spot on or not, they are certainly quite thought provoking, and will certainly serve science by creating discussion and lying groundwork for real testable hypotheses of all of the topics of genomics and evolution he discussed.
If you are very interested in biology, genetics, genomics, and evolution, you will want to read this book.
All in all, it's a good book. However, many will find that it isn't worth the $40 price tag unless they are actually people really interested in and fairly familiar with this field. It's definitely targeted at the scientists, not the general non-expert public.
In modern classification, there is no Protist kingdom. Protists are polyphyletic, which means they have representatives in many different groups (or Kingdoms, if you want), and each group is linked by a common ancestor. Though they are still working out the actual branches of the Eukarya tree (a lot of the early branching is difficult to resolve because of so much genome re-arranging and duplications, insertions, and deletions), one fairly recent paper suggests at least 6 "Kingdoms": Opisthokonta (which includes fungi, animalia, and some of what were previously thought of as protists), Amoebazoa (amoebas, slime moulds, etc), Archaeplastida (plantae, red algae, and green algae), Chromalveolata, Rhizaria, Excavata, and some groups that aren't clearly in those groups. This paper by Roger and Simpson from 2004 has a good summary:
Simpson, A.G.B. & Roger, A.J., 2004. The real "oekingdoms" of eukaryotes. Current biology, 14(17), p.693-696. Available at: http://kfrserver.natur.cuni.cz/studium/prednasky/bunka/2005/simpson_eukevol.pdf. (PDF link)
I'm sure there has been more work since then, but that paper is accessible to non-experts and a good overall read (though I recommend having wikipedia open to see what organisms they are talking about when they list names).
Modern classification is a bit of a mess, because Nature doesn't fit into the neat hierarchical classification system that we grew up with. A good example of this is the idea of the Animal, Fungi, and Plant kingdoms of old. If Animals and Fungi deserve their own kingdoms, then at the same hierarchical level, each plant "phylum" should actually be a kingdom. Or something along those lines. But anyway more modern classification uses monophyletic groups (groups in which all members have a common ancestor; e.g. Eukarya is monophyletic because all eukaryotes share a common ancestor, but Protista is polyphyletic because there are protists which have a more recent common ancestor with animals than they do with other protists).
----------
About the article, man that thing is a mess. Is it a translation problem, are the journalists who wrote it completely clueless, or are the researchers who discovered this organism extremely out of date with their classification? It reads more like a discovery from 1970 than 2012. :-/
I live in Thailand, so I'm really getting a kick...
mcgrew said...
I'm pretty sure that in Thailand's case, it's not to keep people from saying bad things about the government, but to keep them from saying bad things about the king.
The problem with this is that the government is treating criticism of the government as criticism of the King, so they use the lese majeste laws to stifle their opponents. It is my understanding that the King does not even agree with the lese majeste laws and has pardoned a good number of people who have been convicted under them. However, he tries to keep his hands off political things because that would (apparently) ruin the constitutional monarchy he is intent on having (which doesn't really exist, what with all of the corruption and coups and such). Also, he is really old and basically on death's doorstep, and so probably doesn't even have the capacity to say anything about these abuses now, or may not even be aware of them.
So, instead the extremely corrupt and petty Thai government gets to have its way with these laws and use them to stifle any criticism of government they choose.
The King of Thailand is actually quite a decent guy who has done a lot of good things over his reign. The people love him, and with good reason. However he doesn't actually rule the country (though he easily could, and the people would support him), so the government has its own way and he keeps his hands off. And the Thai people get to suffer for it (unless they have the money to pay their way out of any trouble).
They insist their God, Science, can indeed answer the big questions of Life, the Universe and Everything. But of course it can't.
Uh no. It's more likely that we disagree what the big questions actually are. But, just to be sure, why don't you give us examples of questions you feel that science can't touch, and we'll see if those are actually big questions about the universe or just questions that flatter the human ego.
As someone who grew up on Marathon and remembers it well as it was, the original Marathon did NOT have mouse look. It did have free look of a sort. Unlike Doom II, which had no actual vertical aiming and instead auto aimed any shots up or down, Marathon had vertical aiming, and you actually had to aim at things to hit them. Add to that that the game had no targeting reticle and it made for some difficult moments. It also had quick glances left and right, which were really dangerous if someone became proficient at them. You could run off a ledge in one direction, quick glance to the side while in mid-air and snap off a rocket or a grenade to take out an opponent, and quickly be accused of cheating by those who didn't know about or know well how to use the controls. ;)
But, the original game did not have mouse aiming and was fully keyboard controlled.
Fun fact: the game also never had jumping or crouching. Fun fact #2: the game invented the grenade-hop. Doom II gets credit for the rocket hop, in that you could used the rocket launcher to give you a slight horizontal speed assist to get across a larger gap than normal (it also had no jumping, along with no aiming), but Marathon with it's vertical aiming invented the modern grenade hop and rocket hop or using the blast from an explosion to give you a boost.
You don't have to have the ability to replicate in order to be alive. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate. Or even some people who many not be fertile for whatever reason.
Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.
This is a very narrow, organism-focused view point. Every cell in bees and other "dead-ends" such as all of your somatic cells, are full of replicators, evolved in such a way to enhance the further replication of the germ-line into future generations. Without genetic replication, life as we know it cannot exist. So, yes, replication is a defining aspect of life.
As for the "ability to evolve"... it's not a definer, but more of an emergent property of any and all systems with error prone replication.
In the real world, in the absence of government, I could walk up to you and smash you in the head with a rock killing you and then take everything you have without consequence. There's your "inherent" rights.
That is only true in isolation; that is, only if you and your victim are the only people to witness. Otherwise, there will probably be consequences. Do that to someone in your same hypothetical absence of government in front of the victim's friends or family or other such group that we humans have evolved to form so readily, and I highly doubt that you would be walking away "without consequence".
So called "inherent rights" and "natural rights" are not necessarily, clear, discrete properties of an organism or a person or however you are defining us. Rather, they are more like emergent properties that will emerge naturally from being the gregarious social organism we have evolved to be. Rights appear because of the "social contract" of being such an organism.
And if you still think those rights are "inherent" then I suggest you take a trip to Somalia or Afghanistan or Syria or Bahrain.
And if you think in such a place a person can do anything like you suggested in your hypothetical example, you are also much mistaken. There will be consequences. Take away someone's "right to life" and unjustly kill them in front of anyone, friend or family or other, who thinks fondly of them for feels you are being unjust, and you may just find there are consequences to infringing on someone's so-called rights.
That's certainly nice of them (and quite unexpected from previous experience) to finally have some settings default to privacy. I would be interested to know if it stays that way the next time FB fiddles with the ToS or the privacy options. That's not minding the sheer number of privacy options and settings which makes all the harder for the less technically inclined to set correctly if they didn't give up immediately.
That's why I pretty much scramble for the privacy settings every time I see a news story about a new FaceBook feature. However, either a.) I've been lucky and they overlooked setting "on" as default for new features in my account or b.) they somehow actually take into account the privacy amount of current settings and make the new setting in line with that (e.g. if someone has everything shared with everyone, then the new thing defaults to "on", but if someone is like me and has things fairly well locked down and controlled, then the new thing defaults to "off"), or c.) something else.
I don't know how they do it. All I know is that whenever a story hits and people start freaking out about what FaceBook is doing to their privacy, I check my account settings and find I have no obvious cause to complain. Of course, the closet conspiracy theorist inside me suggests the possibility that the settings aren't actually protected when it comes to sharing data with advertisers or for other purposes, but he has no evidence of that yet, so I tell him to shut up. ;)
This is about automated, mass identification for profit without a clear way to disable it, opt-out, or delete the data, nor do people really know who ends up with this information and what those buyers can do with it.
Account menu -> Privacy Settings -> Customize -> "Suggest photos of me to friends" Settings -> Disabled
Seems pretty clear to me, as it is a logical progression through the menus and pages. It's not hard to find. It is easy to disable. It's probably already disabled for many people.
And, at least on my account, it was disabled by default. i.e. As soon as I heard about this feature, I went immediately to my account privacy settings to turn it off and found that it was already turned off.
I've found that most people can't grasp how big space is. I can on a intellectual level but most people don't seem to understand just how distance even the closest stars are. I've met a few who thought a lightyear was the distance it took up to travel in a year in a modern space shuttle. But wow Voyager is going itno the black, I hope it doesn't turn into a Reaver.
Indeed. I always felt like I kind of "got it" on an intellectual level of matching big numbers to huge differences. But I realized that I didn't really get it until I started playing with Celestia, a free space simulator that lets you move around the universe using actual astronomical data. Everything is to scale in that program, and it really does give you a feel for just how big and empty space really is.
I highly recommend playing with it, for anyone who really wants to try to grasp the hugeness of space. :)
From TFA:
"This is a necessary first step in the process," said Parker. "We wanted to answer the question: Can you build a circuit that would act like a neuron? The next step is even more complex. How can we build structures out of these circuits that mimic the neuron, and eventually the function of the brain, which has 100 billion neurons and 10,000 synapses?"
Uhhh... That number of synapses is off by about 10 orders of magnitude. I assume the number of synapses was meant to be a "per neuron" number, but that's a pretty glaring thing to leave out of that sentence. :-/
I'm not satisfied with your job. That's not really your fault, of course.
To be fair, unless you live in Bangkok, Thailand and have run into some of my former students, then I highly doubt you've ever run into the results of my job. :p
It's never about critical thinking. It's never about solving real life problems. It's always about passing the next test or quiz.
And, again, you miss the point. I apologize if I didn't make that clear. It's not about directly solving real life problems. It's about learning the STYLE AND WAY OF THINKING LOGICALLY in order to solve real life problems.
The way math classes make you do this is by doing math problems, because math problems can only be solved by logical thinking and a logical application of mathematical properties. Doing this again and again, building in complexity over the years, doesn't just teach you to solve math problems, it teaches you HOW TO THINK about any problem. Just like muscular exercise builds up muscles that are used repetitively for some task that you want to be stronger at doing, the kinds of problems you do in math are brain exercises that build up, through repetitive use, the pathways that are useful for logical thinking.
I'm sorry if your teachers didn't make this explicitly clear to you. A lot of teachers don't. I, for one, do explain this to my students, because I understand very well that the level of math we are doing is not very interesting, the types of problems we solve with it are very contrived and not realistic (because the math required to solve "real" problems is way beyond these basics, but you must master the basics if you want to learn to do the advanced stuff), and a lot of the actual things we do in class are not very applicable themselves in real life. For most people, math is not exciting or interesting. But learning it gives the gifts of clear and logical thinking and the ability for sustained chains of reasoning.
I'm sure not many of my students get this, even though I have explained it to them, but that's simply a product of them being young and inexperienced with the world. If even a few of them come out of this class as clearer, more rational thinkers, then I've done my job well.
Which average: the mean, median, or mode? :p :D
Meanwhile, I have not used the quadratic formula since I finished Calculus, let alone had to recite a proof of it. I have little doubt that knowing what the formula is and how to use it is relatively important. However, I would like to see a plausible theoretical situation in which one would need to recite a proof of the quadratic formula, without the use of any references.
There are a lot of posts like this, so apologies for singling you out... But, as a math teacher I have to say in response to the "but I never use this" ideas...
Though doing such things is required as class, mathematics is NOT and has never been about memorizing formulas, or even about using specific ones. Yes, we all know you probably don't use the quadratic formula in real life, nor to you have to find the rules for number sequences, nor do you have to find all of the number patterns you can in Pascal's triangle, nor do you have to use Pascal's triangle as a convenient shortcut for binomial expansions, nor do you have to do proofs using all of those uselessly memorized names and properties from your various classes, etc. Yes, you probably had to do all of these things and more in your math classes, but believe it or not, learning math is not really about these things.
Mathematics is (or should be) the class where you learn how to think logically, and use logical and critical thinking skills to solve problems. Not just math problems, but ANY kind of problem you are likely to encounter in life. No, you won't ever use pythagorean theorem to solve relationship problems in your love life, but the logical and critical thinking styles you gained in your mind from solving problems in math will apply to you finding reasonable and logical solutions in real life.
Not only are you learning how to think in math, but you are learning how to break down your thinking so you can check it step by step to make sure there are no flaws. THAT is why we math teachers make you show your work. I, for one, don't care if you get the correct answer or not. I care about how you arrived at your answer, if you can show me the process you used to get to it, and if, in the case of an incorrect answer, you can find the flaw in your thought process that lead to your mistake. Tell me the ability to explain your thinking or the process you intend to engage in to reach a particular outcome is not an important and necessary life skill!
The fact that we use mathematics to try to teach these things is a side effect of what math is. But math class is not just for learning math. It is the class where you exercise your brain so that logical thinking and sustained reasoning become easier in all aspects of life.
And that is why learning to prove the quadratic formula, rather than programming the answer into your calculator, is important.
Borderlands was flawed (lame level scaling, inactive NPCs, weak story, etc) but it was fun as hell. I'd love to see a Borderlands 2 fixing those flaws but keeping the cool design and graphics, the quirky humor, the bazillion guns, and so on.
Like any game, it's not for everyone. But, Borderlands was awesome and you suck for not thinking so. :p ;)
Where is Portal 2 60 bucks? Because accessing the Steam store from Thailand, I see a price of $49.99 with a current pre-order discount of 10% plus a free copy of Portal 1.
Are the prices different where you are?
I'm not an expert - so I may be wrong here.
As I understand it, life evolved QUICKLY on Earth. I mean, we went from a barren rock with magma flows and some water to teeming lakes of bacterium in the blink of an eye. (Relatively speaking). Only 500 million years after the heavy bombardment from meteors, and a mere 25 million years after the moon formed, Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes formed. As far as the universe goes, that's hardly any time at all.
The best explaniation for this rapid growth is that life didn't actually have to start here, but came from meteorites.
Again, I am not an expert, just an interested college student. Anyone with real knowledge, please correct me.
Your numbers seem off...
It was about 200-400 million years from the end of major bombardment to the first geological evidence of life on Earth. The moon formed before major bombardment ended. Approximate dates are 4.6Gya for Earth, 4.5Gya for the moon, 4.2Gya for the end of late heavy bombardment, and 3.8Gya for the first fossil evidence of life). The Wikipedia article on geologic time gives a pretty good overview. :)
As for the GPP, I agree. Every time they find something like this, there's always the "So Earth was seeded by these" speculation. It seems that such materials are rather common in our solar system, both here on Earth, on other planets, and on meteors and asteroids. If such organic molecules can form with relative ease in so many other places in the solar system, I see no reason why they couldn't have formed on Earth as well as it went through it's own geological evolution. Especially when geological processes for forming many complex organic chemicals abiotically have been documented. No doubt that stuff falling from the sky could contribute to organic materials on Earth, but I see no reason to believe that they are a major contribution.
As for TFS, I found this to be rather humorous:
Chemical analysis of the meteorite shows it to be rich in ammonia and containing the element nitrogen.
Well, I should hope so. I'd be very surprised and impressed if the meteorite were rich in ammonia but didn't contain nitrogen. :p
Pay attention to the Steam Sales. During the "Perils of Summer Sale", they had all 3 DLCs (at that time) for $9.99. I was stupid and didn't get them then when I bought the base game, because I didn't realize how much I'd end up liking the game.
I've actually bought each of the Borderlands DLCs at full price ($9.99 each), and for me they were worth the investment. Since I also got the base game for $9.99 during the sale, in all I haven't paid more than the GOTY edition.
The Borderlands DLCs are really good fun. I highly recommend getting them the next time they go on sale. I don't know if Gearbox will be willing to make all 4 available together for $9.99, but seriously, if you can get them all for $20 or less, it's a steal.
Don't feel so bad, the free DLC was only free on the PC.
Heh... oops. Sorry, I forgot that. ^^;;
However, isn't that more Microsoft's doing than Valve's doing? As I understand things now for the future, Valve would rather gamers not buy Portal 2 for Xbox if they want to get the best possible experience playing it, mainly because of Microsoft's limitations on DLC and patches and such. Valve could never do for TF2 on XBox what they've done for TF2 on PC, and the only reason for this is because Microsoft won't allow it.
I highly agree, except I won't say it's the "only" good DLC. Despite costing money, I've really enjoyed the Borderlands DLC. Great side stories with great humor, some good game enhancements, and most importantly MORE GUNS! :D
They are largely moot now, as buying the GOTY edition gets you all of the DLC... but they do seem to be guilty of making you actually download the DLC rather than having on the physical disc when you buy retail. This doesn't affect me as I bought the game and its DLCs previously, on Steam.
But, yes, Valve with L4D(2) and TF2 are a fine example of great DLC systems. :D
Yeah, you pretty much summed up my feelings better than my long-winded response below.
Regarding "what is a 'complete' game?", though. I'd say, a game that at least has a full story arc. Incomplete and using DLC for money grubbing would be something like releasing the first game as, half the story, and then having to buy DLC to finish that story. i.e. it wouldn't be an extension of the game; it would be building to the completion of the game.
Though not quite DLC, this is kind of how I look at Valve with the HL2 episodes. Episodic content is annoying like that when you have to wait so long to get to the next chapter. Even more so when you are really enjoying the story. (and I love the HL2 story)
Like I said in my comment below, "Borderlands" *might* feel kind of like an incomplete game due to its weak story, BUT it's such a fun game that you do feel you got a complete game in the base game, and the DLC then extends and enhances, as DLC should.
Also, like I said in the post below, I have never bought an "incomplete" game in the sense of this post, and I never intend to.
If I pay for a game, it damn better be a COMPLETE game. But these days, they sell incomplete games now and the missing parts later. DLC is nothing but a scam.
While I agree with this in principle, I have not yet bought a game that I felt the base-game was incomplete and the DLC felt like a money-grubbing scam. The closest was maybe Borderlands, mainly because the base game storyline was pretty weak. BUT, it was still a damn fun game, even only in the base game. The DLC enhances and extends the game and makes it significantly better, to the extent one might argue that the DLC should have just been part of the original, but I don't fault them too much for it. I think GearBox did alright with their compromise between putting out a game within a reasonable timeframe and putting out a game with all possible content (including stuff you may not have thought of or developed yet).
A lot of people hate on Bioshock 2, especially for PC after the recent no-DLC-for-PC debacle. For my part, I was very disappointed that Minerva's Den DLC was not coming for PC, mainly because the console users said it was quite good. But, I'd already felt I bought a complete game, so even with this, it was a case of missing out on truly EXTRA content. (And, apparently, they've decided to port Minerva's Den after all... someday)
And, as for DLC done right, one only has to look at Valve and everything they've done for TF2, L4D, and L4D2. And, they release it for free!
I agree that I hate the idea of a developer releasing an incomplete game and releasing the story piece by piece, and I WILL NOT buy such a game. I'm keeping my eye on Bioshock Infinite, and if it is anything like that or in any way heavily DLC based, I will skip it. I play games on my computer, and I'm not going to buy an incomplete game that also includes the risk of not being able to get the complete content. If a company does go the incomplete game, bit by bit route, then, assuming it does look like a really good game, I'll just wait for a GOTY edition that bundles all of the DLC and main game into one (and probably save a ton of money, too).
So, I hear you about wanting a complete game. I agree that DLC *can* be a scam. However, in my experience, DLC has been a good thing, for the most part (or, at least not a hindrance, in the case of BS2). And my money will only go towards supporting games which, if they must have DLC, do DLC right.
Can I assume that you think the rating system for movies is equally pointless?