Hey I know this/. and primarily computing people like to comment on everything but some knowledge of genetics is helpful. Even if there are no patents and no fancy mol. biolgy methods used to generate new crops. And even if these strains are NOT pestiside resistant, or drought proof or any other evil thing construct but just have a higher average crop yield. And if these crops were created only with classical NON GM methods, then we would still be buying seeds every season. The reason is that high yield crops are predominantly hybrids produced from crossing two very inbred strains. The first generation crops produced from this mating are usually very robust and high yielding. Subsequent generations are less viable and productive. It takes a lot of genetic tampering to produce strains that inbreed and then for 1 generation outbreed. That's why high yielding crop seeds are always bought each season, because they are freshly generated to be as productive as possible every season.
Of course we should all give up this evil science stuff and run back into the forests were everything is happy and kind and nurturing as soon as possible. But until that time, first world farmers are going to have to front up and pay for seeds if they want the highest yields and the west will remain the bread basket of the world until the mass die off before the happy people can return to the forests.
Once Rupert gets his hands on WSJ, it will turn into the same POS that everything else becomes that he touches. A vitriolic, nationalistic, jingoistic, oversimplified propaganda sheet. When is he going to die anyway, he's had a good run. The world will be a better place when he's gone (for at least 10 milliseconds until the next evil tyrant emerges to take his place).
>People are getting sick of MS all on their own. As long as we keep harping about it to our friends and families and keep introducing them to alternatives, and getting our schools and churches and places of business to try alternatives, we're fine.
So? Has anything changed? Linux has been going to take the desktop next year for how many years? So people don't like Vista, well they didn't like XP or win98 or... but they still bought it because all the paths lead to MS products. In high tech once your established all the doors slam shut on your competitors. There are so many barriers to new entrants. Is it any wonder linux took of in the server market where MS didn't dominate. Of course Linux not being a company helps because it can't be bankrupted by questionable MS business practises.
Like it or not the market has NOT been able to change MS or promote any competitors in its established markets. And MS has been able to continue to grow regardless of quality (lack thereof) in new markets because of its huge cash reserves. The only thing that has come close to stopping the more nefarious MS business practises has been big governments ie US and EU. The bigger the country and thereby government the more clout. Sorry if this upsets all you libertarians but real life has a way of doing that.
E.coli is the workhorse of molecular biology. It can be grown in a huge range of carbon sources (from acetate to glycerol to glucose etc) and a range of nitrogen sources (from ammonia to complex proteins). It also needs some phosphorus and a small amount of trace elements. In other words it will grow happily in human waste. Let me restate this, E.coli grows in (as well as making up) SHIT.
So what these guys have done is engineered E.coli to make hydrocarbons. E.coli is the most well understood organism in all of Science. It doesn't need light to grow so is not bound by seasons. It grows very fast and as mentioned it can thrive on simple carbon/nitrogen sources. This is a fantastic development and doesn't need land the size of Texas or whatever is claimed in some posts below or to be fed corn or some such. Some processing of organic waste and perhaps a conversion of sewerage waste treatment plants to include biofermentors and E.coli could become a supplement to biofuel production. Sure not a panacea but an efficient supplement.
Many USians feel threatened by the EU. In an unchanging world the EU and US would sooner or later come into conflict. But China (and India) are on the rise. The natural ally of the US is the EU. In order to promote common western values (and reforms) the US and EU will need to work together to influence the rising Asian nations. Some people in the EU haven't realised how much the world has changed believing their small yet glorious little nations are still world powers with influence and strength, especially the UK.
My predictions. I believe there will be formation of an EU military because historically all big economic entities have their own military. Democracy will be further extended into EU institutions because this is the only way to stop encroaching bureaucracy. US and EU will grudgingly work together to offset China and perhaps India. And all along little european nationalists will descend into deeper fantasy world about how their country would rise and rise if only the EU would disappear. The EU will serve as a scapegoat for those who don't want to see how much the world has changed and how insignificamt their little countries have become. Why is this bad? Because weak nations have always been the playthings of stronger nations, a lesson not yet learnt in the UK.
As for who won WW2. US money and UK spirit helped tremendously but Nazi Germany was outfought and broken by the ruthless tyranny of Soviet Russia. The rest was a sideshow. That's not something that we in the west want to admit. As for Japan, credit to the US.
>Generally Chimpanzees are considered on par with the intellegence of a five year old child
How many chimpanzees can read? Talk? Have concept of mind (look it up)? I don't know who this generally person/institute is but how about sticking to obvious facts. Human children at 18 months of age out do any of the apes/dogs/pigs/etc in cognition.
>Nor does it account for people who switch from atheist to religious, or vice versa. It also fails to explain why some religions are mutually exclusive.
You have a (not uncommon) misunderstanding of the biological basis of psychology. Any genes involved in determining predisposition to religious belief would simply be something that affetcs the cocktail of neurotransmitters/neurons and their interactions in our brain. There is no `belief in god' gene. The brain of people prone to religious belief would perhaps respond more strongly ie more pleasurable feelings (endorphins, etc) upon given stimuli. For instance, rhythmic dancing is known to release endorphins so perhaps these people get a bigger buzz.
Why is this important? Consider that most of human evolution occured during our hunter/gatherer phase. Communal dancing aided in group bonding/solidarity so a more enjoybale experience during this ritual could have solidied the group. This could have been explained as resulting from possesion by spirits and so enhancing the experience even more. ie the group could have felt blessed and favoured by spirits and so more confidently gone out into the world to hunt/attack hostile neighbours, etc.
Fear played a major part in the life of early man so anything that took the edge of it while still allowing for caution would have been advantageous. I am not saying that this is what occured but only to illustrate that your example reflects a very mechanical view of the biological basis of psychology. Whithin any population there is much biological variation. We would expect that there are those that are strongly influenced by enhanced `religious' feelings, some that have only moderate such feelings and some that have weak feelings. For people to change their minds is indicative only that the sentiments are not that strong. A similar thing occurs with smoking ie some find it easy to give up, some very hard but doable and some impossible. This pattern reflects normal biological variation (and environmental variation).
A biological basis for the tendency towards religious feelings is highly reasonable and no doubt highly frightening to religious people. Can you imagine being given a drug to tone down religious feelings!!
>Historically, the establishment science has be wrong far more often than right. Historically, REPUTABLE scientists, believed the earth was flat and believed in spontaneous generation of life and other crap that was later shown by a single person to be just that, crap and wrong. There have been many, if not most widely held 'accepted' ideas that were eventually overthrown by the lone researcher who found some embarrassing evidence that refuted the then current ideas.
Bullshit
If it was true that the scientific establishment was mostly wrong and often being overturned. Then how, HOW could science progress????? This idea of yours is so fanciful it's not even wrong. It is extremely rare for a lone individual to come up with some revolutionaty theory that contradicts the established science. That is why we make such a big deal about them when it occassionaly happens. As for the flat earth which reputable scientists? Science is a modern construct. Anyway who do you think came up with the notion of a spherical earth, the poets. Spontanoeus life, they were/are right. Or do you believe in ID and creationism. What you seem to miss and this is common to many people outside (but not exclusive) of the scientific community is that theories may change, be revised., amended, abandoned but information becomes more reliable.ie New theories gain favour not because they replace wrong theories but because they account for the data (both old and new) better than the original theory. Science never abandons reliable data and all theories must account for it. Those that account for it the best become the scientific dogma of the day. That's why Newton wasn't wrong, his theory on gravity isn't adequate to explain galaxy formation but its excellent for interplanetary predictions.
The British government is reaping what it has sown. Often the most dangerous people are the well-intentioned few who know no bounds when it comes to implementing things for our own good. To them the ends always justify the means. The government has given the police the power to search almost anything in almost any way they see fit so of they go biting the hand that feeds them.
You accuse someone else of FUD and yet you clearly have not thought through your own claims.
Making crops herbicide resistant, so that we can use stronger and more toxic herbicides on our crops
Have you ever considered that there is more to GM than just making plants herbicide resistant? How about increasing the nutritional quality of a food crop by balancing the content of the amino acids in its edible parts. Or making plants more drought tolerant and so diminishing the need for irrigation and its subsequent problems like salinization. Or how about the holy grail of GM, making plants able to fix their own nitrogen and so removing the need for fertilizers and removing problems like eutrification, and soil depletion (some plants already do this so no knew problems there). But what about using all those herbicides? Are you aware that plants make their own toxins to ward of pests and competing plants. These are so nasty that we have evolved novel biochemical pathways to cope with these poisons. That is why we are able to clear modern medicines from our bodies. When plants aren't treated with pesticeds, they just make more of their own
Breeding animal genes into crops makes the crop a problem for humans who are alergic to certain animal-specific proteins
Well don't introduce the gene coding for the protein that induses an allergic response. That's right you are not allergic to fish or nuts or beef but to specific proteins that are produced in said organisms. So don't introduce those specific allergenic proteins, you see there is no special etherial force which is carried along from one with the DNA from one species to another species.
Affecting the protein chains of staple crops to simplify post harvest processing, particularly for ethanol production, could make the crop inedible
Well don't eat it. We can have some plants for making edible food and some for making bulk products. We do this now. We have been able to keep all manner of variants going for wheat, rice, apples strawberies, etc etc etc why will this not be possible in the future is it because these plants will have a special GM quality that will make them want to break out and conquer the world? Are you aware that if we make a GM herbicide resistant plant and we don't use the herbicide that that plant is now at a disadvantage. YES A DISADVANTAGE because it is making something that is unneccessary and so it will be outcompeted by rivals that don't carry the extra gene.
The reason we are here today, why you can have the opinions that you do and why I can disagree with you is because humans have sought to alter their environment. Just like EVERY other organsim. We can modify it and insodoing we have built an environment that has alowed us to take a step away from the constant struggle for survival and so indulge in ridiculous philosphizing. Humans have modified their environments for millenia, we have genetically engineered plants and animals for millenia. If you doubt this then become a hunter-gatherer.
You have included a remarkably large number of misconceptions.
we've been selecting from natural evolution what crop survived better (which would have happened anyways)
Wrong, "natural" variants are not going to make oversized tomatoes, or huge watermelons etc etc because they are a waste of energy for the plant to produce and so will be outcompeted by natural variants. Humans have over the centuries, selected for new variants of edible plants etc by in some cases mixing species (modern wheat strains are a mixture of at least 3 original wheat species). Almost all consumable plants are the products of human selection and these strains would not survive in the wild. As an example, commercial corns (and many, many other plants) are produced by the crossing of two inbred lines producing a hybrid that has very high crop yield. The creation of inbreed lines that can outbreed for only one generation requires some fairly advanced genetics.
They are splicing in genes from otherwise incompatible plants and fish and still want to do more. Alergic to fish? Guess what? Damn good chance your alergic to said food contaminated with such genes.
What? Unless you are allergic to the product of that gene then you will (and more importantly) your body will not detect that the gene has originally come from fish etc. Just as your body cannot tell when it eats chicken that the chicken DNA includes segments that have had their origins in viruses, fish, amphibians, reptiles etc. Yes all DNA of higher organisms contains integrated viruses amongst other things. You see there is no magic quality that follows DNA around like a passport telling what its distant origins are. A gene incorporated into any organism will take on the DNA modifications of that organism. You body cannot differentiate it. Besides, our digestive system has evolved for the purpose of breaking down all macromolecules to their constituent parts (including DNA). That is why no cow has emerged that can photosynthesize despite the vast tons of grass consumed by cow-like creatures over the millions of years. If you have evidence to refute this then let me know as I am a research scientist with 20 years experience and would love to do some research that is so opposite to everything that is known about molecular biology that it would guarantee a nobel for me.
This rest is the usual self contradictory fear, the ecosystem will be destroyed unless we stop what we're doing. You might be interested to know that all the modern strains of every damn crop do not, repeat do not compete well in the wild. Yes our modern strains do well in well fertized, irrigated, pest-controlled environments but when grown in marginal lands, the wild-type strains just crap all over them. You see we haven't been able to make a plant that can take over the world, just plants with high yields in optimal environments.
>remember all those reports about Al Qaeda reportedly escaping into India through the mountains?
Everything was OK until this point. Al Qaeda and Taliban went into Pakistan. Taliban was partly created by Pakistani military afterall. Also India is not so sympathetic towards Islamic fundamentalists due to continuing problems since Partition, Kashmir, etc. Indeed India is currently beginning a slow realignment with US/West following half a century of suspicion due to its continuing concerns/resentment of treatment during its period under the British empire.
Are you USian? If so, it is very important to consider your news sources. US is going through a bad period in terms of its news coverage. There is a lot of misinformation concerning Pakistan, Palestine/Israel and general middle East and more recently and very worryingly Eurasia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc). Check your sources were possible. The worst of governments are often presented as benigh if they are supportive of US and vice versa.
Friend, my advice to you is get on a plane, any plane and fly to any country in the western world other than the US. You will then find a vast system of public-funded healthcare in many, many countries. And not one of them requiring guns to coerce people. That's right, people doing their job for a proper wage, even health care workers.
Oh for C...sake! Weapons of mass destruction of the chemical variety in particular consist of highly reactive chemicals. Get that, Highly reactive , that's why the're dangerous. They react with compounds in our body. The fact that they are highly reactive means they don't last. Repeat THEY DON'T LAST BECAUSE THEY ARE HIGHLY REACTIVE. So whatever Saddam had in the early 90's has already broken down and is no longer dangerous. Get it, they exceeded their useful (for death purposes) life years ago.
Of course the Bush admin knows this as do all the experts, perhaps even some of the war monger reporters know this (assuming they bothered to ask just how long are these compounds dangerous for?). So why do we/they go on about it? Why would the admin be going on about weapons that are no longer dangerous. Gee I don't know, why would the US be concerned about an oil rich country that is a threat to Israel go on about weapons that are no longer dangerous?
Of course he could have gotten more ie made more of these weapons. That's right directly under UN weapons inspectors noses and a trade embargo and a continous military presence with periodic bombings Saddam could have imported large quantities of precursors for his WMD. The fact that country went from quite wealthy and good standard of living to third world with little food, medicine, technology, etc at this time doesn't mean he couldn't have smuggled in what he needed. Afterall the US, UK, Israel and UN were inspecting him both externally and internally at the time. Perhaps he had some transdimensional whatsit that bent space/time to retrieve these precursors or black magic or the illuminati or aliens or.. all could have been helping Saddam.
Strangely no evidence for anything getting through for WMD or anything else has appeared to date, no doubt because those pinko appeasenicks have botched the analysis and clever Saddam has hidden his tracks. Oh well, time will tell but who to believe today? As for why lie gee let me see, he fought a ten year war with Iran were he used WMD out of desperation, then following gulf war 1 he had a reduced military capability but Iran still hated his guts and he had nothing to scare them off apart from rumours of WMD's. All this speculation, who to believe, the simple facts or Bush and the gang?
Your post is very informative and I agree with most of it. However I want to point out that militant Islam was not stopped 1300 years ago. I expect you are refering to the battle of Poitiers in France. This is a common misconception whereby western European countries try to overstate their role in preserving western culture during what was the dark age of western Europe. A casual glance at a map indicates that a battle in France could not have been the only or most-important battle or anything other than a side-show to Islamic advance. Arab expansion continued for centuries. They were stopped not in France (the most indirect route) but in the eastern mediterranean and not just once but for centuries by the eastern roman christian empire otherwise known as the byzantine empire. The byzantines fought the muslims for centuries sometimes winning sometimes losing but they managed to hold them off from entering Europe (through the direct route)for centuries. They only lost when after an unprecendented successful period they cut back on their centuries old miltary committments (relying on mercenaries) and neglecting their own forces because they thought they were invincible and secure. Just in time for a new Islamic invader from the east to arrive, the Turks. The west has managed to all but erase this achievement and somehow convince itself that 1 battle stopped the all-conquering Arabs for hundreds of years!!
Oh Oh Oh you hurt me so much with your cutting replies. I noticed you haven't mentioned anything about you need to comment about things you have a superficial knowledge of. Of course any criticism of you is just jealousy on my part and proof I'm a nazi of sorts of course. Afterall, you karma maxed out years ago and so your knowledge is therefore unbound. In respect of your high points, I'll mod you up whenever I can. Afterall the rest of us tend to restrict ourselves to things we know about but you well, we NEED to know your opinion about everything.
>Dumbass, a translation product of DNA is a protein. DNA is transcribed to RNA and the RNA is translated to a protein.
Do you even understand what you have written? Did you look up an answer and not understand it? DNA is NOT translated. DNA is transcribed. So DNA does not have a translation product, it encodes a gene (may or may not be a protein.)
So you THINK you have found a fault in my reply and that qualifies me as a dumbass whilst your post is full of wrongly-understood missinformation and somehow you can be the critical expert.
So how did you get such a high score, including for this reply? Do you have other accounts and do you give yourself higher scores? Maybe you should spend more time finding out about the topics your writing about and less time seeking useless karma.
Wow, your wrong on every point. Well done. Do you know any protein chemistry?
> What would be an example of a "protein family" in this context?
well defined name for groupings of evolutionarily related proteins that often have similar function.
> "Common structures and functions" could mean several different things.
protein chemistry 101. see ANY mol.biol. book about proteins and the 50 year research into how protein's structure and function correlate. Hint. it's one of the BIGGEST fields of research in biology.
> Of COURSE proteins with related functions share specific patterns of amino acid selection rules or they wouldn't work.
WRONG there are many ways for enzymes to do similar reactions. the end structure of an enzyme is not just the perfect vehicle for that reaction but also reflects its evolutionary history. So there are many variations in enzymes that essentially do similar reactions. THOUSANDS of examples.
> Translation from stupid-articlese: in vitro the translation products of the artificial DNA folded into shapes similar to wild type proteins.
DNA fold to similar shape as portein shape BWAHAHAHA. WTF!!!!!! Basic dogma in Biology: DNA to RNA to Protein. Some examples of reverse transcription (RNA to DNA) and some catalytic RNA. Examples of Basic dogma. Vast examples found in any low level text on Biology. As for how they did it. Look up another field called bioinformatics which involves thousands of programms available all over net and in house to analyse, convert, alter DNA/RNA/protein sequences, predicted primary, secondary, tertiary, etc structure , etc, etc, ETC, ETC.
Rated 3 interesting, by essentailly describing how you have LESS than an elementary knowledge of molecular biology/protein chemistry. Jeez.
>the concept of "species" is a completely man-made concept and actually rather arbitrary. Nature does not make any such distinction.
Not true species, is the only testable (ie scientific, ie non-arbitrary) classification. All the rest are arbitrary. A species is defined as a population of organisms which have reproductive isolating mechanisms which prevent the production of a viable (including sexual) offspring. ie two organisms are members of a different species when they are unable to reproduce and/or produce a viable offspring.
>If nature wouldn't have allowed certain individuals to reproduce, and yet modern medicine/technology/whatever have, their "faulty" genes are allowed to continue past their naturally selected "use by date", so to speak. How in the hell is this not a bad thing for the population as a whole?
I'm always amazed at the apparent self confidence in people who make comments such as this. So the gene pool is being contaminated by the genes of people who shouldn't reproduce. Guess what? we've been doing this for a long time. Most people writing on slashdot should not be alive. Do you think that weakling dweebs were the great survivors of the long hunter-gatherer stage? Perhaps that is why young fertile women are drawn to geeks, they have evolved to recognize the superior male. Do any of you wear glasses? You should be dead or do you think there wear short-sighted people avoiding predators, hunting and combating rival tribes during most of Homo history.
Sorry if this sounds like a personal attack, it actually isn't. Most of us would not have survived the childhood diseases that we currently vaccinate against. We have evolved to help each other. This has led to many, many changes in our genetic composition to the point were we are the top predator and most adaptable organism. The price we pay is a slightly higher load of deleterious alleles that we are mostly able to handle.
Overall a genetic bargain because we have out competed every organism that only relies on Selection whereas humans sidestep it.
Thanks for your reply. I think there has been some confusion about what constitutes a byzantine. Your right that they were Romans in nationality and not in ethnicity. The term byzantine is a relatively modern construct to stop them being identified with the ancient Italic Romans.
My point was two fold. Firstly that the Greeks as in descendents (not in some pure superrace type) just intermixed descendents of the original Greeks were a significant portion of the empire and as the empire shrunk they became the dominant ethnic group. Of course the Greeks were not restricted to mainland modern Greece but had expanded into what is now Turkey and beyond following the conquests of Alexander, so they were all over the eastern meditteranean.
Secondly, the renaissance benefitted from Greek emigres following the fall of Constantinople. The renaissance really took of following the vast wealth generated by the Italian city states by trading in byzantine territoris and spheres of ineterest (at the expense of the empire itself).
The 'Latins' you speak about were those who invaded the empire during the 4th crusade (1204). They were outsiders from Italy, not Byzantines.
I realize they were Italians (Latins was the term used for them). The point is there was a final cultural revival amongst the byzantines following the expulsion of the Latins from Constantinople.
First of all, the people from Byzantium used the Greek language but were not Greek.
Really, what not even one of them? What were they Chinese? This is one of those arguments that seems to have emerged in the 19th century. There are no Greeks left (as descended from the Ancients) therefore the inheritors of the Graeco-Roman past are those that are more understanding and appreciative of it ie the Germanic peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Therefore the real Greeks are the English/Germans and their descendenants. Hooey!
Population Genetics has shown that the modern Greeks are NOT fully Slavic nor Turkic nor Albanion nor Arabic. So why is it unlikely that they are not in part the descendants of the peoples that called themselves Greeks in the ancient past? Afterall they have lived continously in the eastern mediterranean/Black sea coast for millenia and have identified themselves as greeks.
Second, way before Byzantium was finally conquered by the Muslims which founded the Ottoman empire, it was overrun by crusadors and they effectively destroyed the city and its institutions. The Ottomans just finished the job there.
After the latins were kicked out of Byzantium in 1261 there was a revival in culture including ancient philosophy (the Paleologian revival). when the Turks took Constantinople in 1453 many prominent families fled to Italy taking with them better manuscripts of ancient treatises. These treates were better than the Arab translations. Many of these prominent Greeks became lecturers in Italian Universities presenting more accurate versions of Plato in particular. Did they start the Renaissance, of course not but they were good and opportune teachers at a time when many thihgs were happening in Northern Italy.
The main thing that kicked of the Renaissance was the great wealth accumulated by the Northern Italian seafaring states that allowed more resources and people to be engaged in scholarly and artistic pursuits. This wealth was achieved on the back of the generous financial arrangements provided by the Eastern emperors to secure Latin allies against the Turks (who only entered the territory known as Turkey after the battle of Manzikert in 1071).
Slashdot Mirror
I have read many posts over the years and this is the best!!
Of course we should all give up this evil science stuff and run back into the forests were everything is happy and kind and nurturing as soon as possible. But until that time, first world farmers are going to have to front up and pay for seeds if they want the highest yields and the west will remain the bread basket of the world until the mass die off before the happy people can return to the forests.
Once Rupert gets his hands on WSJ, it will turn into the same POS that everything else becomes that he touches. A vitriolic, nationalistic, jingoistic, oversimplified propaganda sheet. When is he going to die anyway, he's had a good run. The world will be a better place when he's gone (for at least 10 milliseconds until the next evil tyrant emerges to take his place).
The sound of the joke as it passes over your head.
So? Has anything changed? Linux has been going to take the desktop next year for how many years? So people don't like Vista, well they didn't like XP or win98 or... but they still bought it because all the paths lead to MS products. In high tech once your established all the doors slam shut on your competitors. There are so many barriers to new entrants. Is it any wonder linux took of in the server market where MS didn't dominate. Of course Linux not being a company helps because it can't be bankrupted by questionable MS business practises.
Like it or not the market has NOT been able to change MS or promote any competitors in its established markets. And MS has been able to continue to grow regardless of quality (lack thereof) in new markets because of its huge cash reserves. The only thing that has come close to stopping the more nefarious MS business practises has been big governments ie US and EU. The bigger the country and thereby government the more clout. Sorry if this upsets all you libertarians but real life has a way of doing that.
So what these guys have done is engineered E.coli to make hydrocarbons. E.coli is the most well understood organism in all of Science. It doesn't need light to grow so is not bound by seasons. It grows very fast and as mentioned it can thrive on simple carbon/nitrogen sources. This is a fantastic development and doesn't need land the size of Texas or whatever is claimed in some posts below or to be fed corn or some such. Some processing of organic waste and perhaps a conversion of sewerage waste treatment plants to include biofermentors and E.coli could become a supplement to biofuel production. Sure not a panacea but an efficient supplement.
My predictions. I believe there will be formation of an EU military because historically all big economic entities have their own military. Democracy will be further extended into EU institutions because this is the only way to stop encroaching bureaucracy. US and EU will grudgingly work together to offset China and perhaps India. And all along little european nationalists will descend into deeper fantasy world about how their country would rise and rise if only the EU would disappear. The EU will serve as a scapegoat for those who don't want to see how much the world has changed and how insignificamt their little countries have become. Why is this bad? Because weak nations have always been the playthings of stronger nations, a lesson not yet learnt in the UK.
As for who won WW2. US money and UK spirit helped tremendously but Nazi Germany was outfought and broken by the ruthless tyranny of Soviet Russia. The rest was a sideshow. That's not something that we in the west want to admit. As for Japan, credit to the US.
How obvious does it need to be ????????
How many chimpanzees can read? Talk? Have concept of mind (look it up)? I don't know who this generally person/institute is but how about sticking to obvious facts. Human children at 18 months of age out do any of the apes/dogs/pigs/etc in cognition.
You have a (not uncommon) misunderstanding of the biological basis of psychology. Any genes involved in determining predisposition to religious belief would simply be something that affetcs the cocktail of neurotransmitters/neurons and their interactions in our brain. There is no `belief in god' gene. The brain of people prone to religious belief would perhaps respond more strongly ie more pleasurable feelings (endorphins, etc) upon given stimuli. For instance, rhythmic dancing is known to release endorphins so perhaps these people get a bigger buzz.
Why is this important? Consider that most of human evolution occured during our hunter/gatherer phase. Communal dancing aided in group bonding/solidarity so a more enjoybale experience during this ritual could have solidied the group. This could have been explained as resulting from possesion by spirits and so enhancing the experience even more. ie the group could have felt blessed and favoured by spirits and so more confidently gone out into the world to hunt/attack hostile neighbours, etc.
Fear played a major part in the life of early man so anything that took the edge of it while still allowing for caution would have been advantageous. I am not saying that this is what occured but only to illustrate that your example reflects a very mechanical view of the biological basis of psychology. Whithin any population there is much biological variation. We would expect that there are those that are strongly influenced by enhanced `religious' feelings, some that have only moderate such feelings and some that have weak feelings. For people to change their minds is indicative only that the sentiments are not that strong. A similar thing occurs with smoking ie some find it easy to give up, some very hard but doable and some impossible. This pattern reflects normal biological variation (and environmental variation).
A biological basis for the tendency towards religious feelings is highly reasonable and no doubt highly frightening to religious people. Can you imagine being given a drug to tone down religious feelings!!
Bullshit
If it was true that the scientific establishment was mostly wrong and often being overturned. Then how, HOW could science progress????? This idea of yours is so fanciful it's not even wrong. It is extremely rare for a lone individual to come up with some revolutionaty theory that contradicts the established science. That is why we make such a big deal about them when it occassionaly happens. As for the flat earth which reputable scientists? Science is a modern construct. Anyway who do you think came up with the notion of a spherical earth, the poets. Spontanoeus life, they were/are right. Or do you believe in ID and creationism. What you seem to miss and this is common to many people outside (but not exclusive) of the scientific community is that theories may change, be revised., amended, abandoned but information becomes more reliable.ie New theories gain favour not because they replace wrong theories but because they account for the data (both old and new) better than the original theory. Science never abandons reliable data and all theories must account for it. Those that account for it the best become the scientific dogma of the day. That's why Newton wasn't wrong, his theory on gravity isn't adequate to explain galaxy formation but its excellent for interplanetary predictions.
Must end have run out of cliches.
Making crops herbicide resistant, so that we can use stronger and more toxic herbicides on our crops
Have you ever considered that there is more to GM than just making plants herbicide resistant? How about increasing the nutritional quality of a food crop by balancing the content of the amino acids in its edible parts. Or making plants more drought tolerant and so diminishing the need for irrigation and its subsequent problems like salinization. Or how about the holy grail of GM, making plants able to fix their own nitrogen and so removing the need for fertilizers and removing problems like eutrification, and soil depletion (some plants already do this so no knew problems there). But what about using all those herbicides? Are you aware that plants make their own toxins to ward of pests and competing plants. These are so nasty that we have evolved novel biochemical pathways to cope with these poisons. That is why we are able to clear modern medicines from our bodies. When plants aren't treated with pesticeds, they just make more of their own
Breeding animal genes into crops makes the crop a problem for humans who are alergic to certain animal-specific proteins
Well don't introduce the gene coding for the protein that induses an allergic response. That's right you are not allergic to fish or nuts or beef but to specific proteins that are produced in said organisms. So don't introduce those specific allergenic proteins, you see there is no special etherial force which is carried along from one with the DNA from one species to another species.
Affecting the protein chains of staple crops to simplify post harvest processing, particularly for ethanol production, could make the crop inedible
Well don't eat it. We can have some plants for making edible food and some for making bulk products. We do this now. We have been able to keep all manner of variants going for wheat, rice, apples strawberies, etc etc etc why will this not be possible in the future is it because these plants will have a special GM quality that will make them want to break out and conquer the world? Are you aware that if we make a GM herbicide resistant plant and we don't use the herbicide that that plant is now at a disadvantage. YES A DISADVANTAGE because it is making something that is unneccessary and so it will be outcompeted by rivals that don't carry the extra gene.
The reason we are here today, why you can have the opinions that you do and why I can disagree with you is because humans have sought to alter their environment. Just like EVERY other organsim. We can modify it and insodoing we have built an environment that has alowed us to take a step away from the constant struggle for survival and so indulge in ridiculous philosphizing. Humans have modified their environments for millenia, we have genetically engineered plants and animals for millenia. If you doubt this then become a hunter-gatherer.
we've been selecting from natural evolution what crop survived better (which would have happened anyways)
Wrong, "natural" variants are not going to make oversized tomatoes, or huge watermelons etc etc because they are a waste of energy for the plant to produce and so will be outcompeted by natural variants. Humans have over the centuries, selected for new variants of edible plants etc by in some cases mixing species (modern wheat strains are a mixture of at least 3 original wheat species). Almost all consumable plants are the products of human selection and these strains would not survive in the wild. As an example, commercial corns (and many, many other plants) are produced by the crossing of two inbred lines producing a hybrid that has very high crop yield. The creation of inbreed lines that can outbreed for only one generation requires some fairly advanced genetics.
They are splicing in genes from otherwise incompatible plants and fish and still want to do more. Alergic to fish? Guess what? Damn good chance your alergic to said food contaminated with such genes.
What? Unless you are allergic to the product of that gene then you will (and more importantly) your body will not detect that the gene has originally come from fish etc. Just as your body cannot tell when it eats chicken that the chicken DNA includes segments that have had their origins in viruses, fish, amphibians, reptiles etc. Yes all DNA of higher organisms contains integrated viruses amongst other things. You see there is no magic quality that follows DNA around like a passport telling what its distant origins are. A gene incorporated into any organism will take on the DNA modifications of that organism. You body cannot differentiate it. Besides, our digestive system has evolved for the purpose of breaking down all macromolecules to their constituent parts (including DNA). That is why no cow has emerged that can photosynthesize despite the vast tons of grass consumed by cow-like creatures over the millions of years. If you have evidence to refute this then let me know as I am a research scientist with 20 years experience and would love to do some research that is so opposite to everything that is known about molecular biology that it would guarantee a nobel for me.
This rest is the usual self contradictory fear, the ecosystem will be destroyed unless we stop what we're doing. You might be interested to know that all the modern strains of every damn crop do not, repeat do not compete well in the wild. Yes our modern strains do well in well fertized, irrigated, pest-controlled environments but when grown in marginal lands, the wild-type strains just crap all over them. You see we haven't been able to make a plant that can take over the world, just plants with high yields in optimal environments.
>remember all those reports about Al Qaeda reportedly escaping into India through the mountains? Everything was OK until this point. Al Qaeda and Taliban went into Pakistan. Taliban was partly created by Pakistani military afterall. Also India is not so sympathetic towards Islamic fundamentalists due to continuing problems since Partition, Kashmir, etc. Indeed India is currently beginning a slow realignment with US/West following half a century of suspicion due to its continuing concerns/resentment of treatment during its period under the British empire. Are you USian? If so, it is very important to consider your news sources. US is going through a bad period in terms of its news coverage. There is a lot of misinformation concerning Pakistan, Palestine/Israel and general middle East and more recently and very worryingly Eurasia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc). Check your sources were possible. The worst of governments are often presented as benigh if they are supportive of US and vice versa.
Friend, my advice to you is get on a plane, any plane and fly to any country in the western world other than the US. You will then find a vast system of public-funded healthcare in many, many countries. And not one of them requiring guns to coerce people. That's right, people doing their job for a proper wage, even health care workers.
Of course the Bush admin knows this as do all the experts, perhaps even some of the war monger reporters know this (assuming they bothered to ask just how long are these compounds dangerous for?). So why do we/they go on about it? Why would the admin be going on about weapons that are no longer dangerous. Gee I don't know, why would the US be concerned about an oil rich country that is a threat to Israel go on about weapons that are no longer dangerous?
Of course he could have gotten more ie made more of these weapons. That's right directly under UN weapons inspectors noses and a trade embargo and a continous military presence with periodic bombings Saddam could have imported large quantities of precursors for his WMD. The fact that country went from quite wealthy and good standard of living to third world with little food, medicine, technology, etc at this time doesn't mean he couldn't have smuggled in what he needed. Afterall the US, UK, Israel and UN were inspecting him both externally and internally at the time. Perhaps he had some transdimensional whatsit that bent space/time to retrieve these precursors or black magic or the illuminati or aliens or.. all could have been helping Saddam.
Strangely no evidence for anything getting through for WMD or anything else has appeared to date, no doubt because those pinko appeasenicks have botched the analysis and clever Saddam has hidden his tracks. Oh well, time will tell but who to believe today? As for why lie gee let me see, he fought a ten year war with Iran were he used WMD out of desperation, then following gulf war 1 he had a reduced military capability but Iran still hated his guts and he had nothing to scare them off apart from rumours of WMD's. All this speculation, who to believe, the simple facts or Bush and the gang?
Your post is very informative and I agree with most of it. However I want to point out that militant Islam was not stopped 1300 years ago. I expect you are refering to the battle of Poitiers in France. This is a common misconception whereby western European countries try to overstate their role in preserving western culture during what was the dark age of western Europe. A casual glance at a map indicates that a battle in France could not have been the only or most-important battle or anything other than a side-show to Islamic advance. Arab expansion continued for centuries. They were stopped not in France (the most indirect route) but in the eastern mediterranean and not just once but for centuries by the eastern roman christian empire otherwise known as the byzantine empire. The byzantines fought the muslims for centuries sometimes winning sometimes losing but they managed to hold them off from entering Europe (through the direct route)for centuries. They only lost when after an unprecendented successful period they cut back on their centuries old miltary committments (relying on mercenaries) and neglecting their own forces because they thought they were invincible and secure. Just in time for a new Islamic invader from the east to arrive, the Turks. The west has managed to all but erase this achievement and somehow convince itself that 1 battle stopped the all-conquering Arabs for hundreds of years!!
Oh Oh Oh you hurt me so much with your cutting replies. I noticed you haven't mentioned anything about you need to comment about things you have a superficial knowledge of. Of course any criticism of you is just jealousy on my part and proof I'm a nazi of sorts of course. Afterall, you karma maxed out years ago and so your knowledge is therefore unbound. In respect of your high points, I'll mod you up whenever I can. Afterall the rest of us tend to restrict ourselves to things we know about but you well, we NEED to know your opinion about everything.
Do you even understand what you have written? Did you look up an answer and not understand it? DNA is NOT translated. DNA is transcribed. So DNA does not have a translation product, it encodes a gene (may or may not be a protein.)
So you THINK you have found a fault in my reply and that qualifies me as a dumbass whilst your post is full of wrongly-understood missinformation and somehow you can be the critical expert.
So how did you get such a high score, including for this reply? Do you have other accounts and do you give yourself higher scores? Maybe you should spend more time finding out about the topics your writing about and less time seeking useless karma.
> What would be an example of a "protein family" in this context?
well defined name for groupings of evolutionarily related proteins that often have similar function.
> "Common structures and functions" could mean several different things.
protein chemistry 101. see ANY mol.biol. book about proteins and the 50 year research into how protein's structure and function correlate. Hint. it's one of the BIGGEST fields of research in biology.
> Of COURSE proteins with related functions share specific patterns of amino acid selection rules or they wouldn't work.
WRONG there are many ways for enzymes to do similar reactions. the end structure of an enzyme is not just the perfect vehicle for that reaction but also reflects its evolutionary history. So there are many variations in enzymes that essentially do similar reactions. THOUSANDS of examples.
> Translation from stupid-articlese: in vitro the translation products of the artificial DNA folded into shapes similar to wild type proteins.
DNA fold to similar shape as portein shape BWAHAHAHA. WTF!!!!!! Basic dogma in Biology: DNA to RNA to Protein. Some examples of reverse transcription (RNA to DNA) and some catalytic RNA. Examples of Basic dogma. Vast examples found in any low level text on Biology. As for how they did it. Look up another field called bioinformatics which involves thousands of programms available all over net and in house to analyse, convert, alter DNA/RNA/protein sequences, predicted primary, secondary, tertiary, etc structure , etc, etc, ETC, ETC.
Rated 3 interesting, by essentailly describing how you have LESS than an elementary knowledge of molecular biology/protein chemistry. Jeez.
BASIC ADVICE: KNOW FIRST, TALK SECOND
Not true species, is the only testable (ie scientific, ie non-arbitrary) classification. All the rest are arbitrary. A species is defined as a population of organisms which have reproductive isolating mechanisms which prevent the production of a viable (including sexual) offspring. ie two organisms are members of a different species when they are unable to reproduce and/or produce a viable offspring.
I'm always amazed at the apparent self confidence in people who make comments such as this. So the gene pool is being contaminated by the genes of people who shouldn't reproduce. Guess what? we've been doing this for a long time. Most people writing on slashdot should not be alive. Do you think that weakling dweebs were the great survivors of the long hunter-gatherer stage? Perhaps that is why young fertile women are drawn to geeks, they have evolved to recognize the superior male. Do any of you wear glasses? You should be dead or do you think there wear short-sighted people avoiding predators, hunting and combating rival tribes during most of Homo history.
Sorry if this sounds like a personal attack, it actually isn't. Most of us would not have survived the childhood diseases that we currently vaccinate against. We have evolved to help each other. This has led to many, many changes in our genetic composition to the point were we are the top predator and most adaptable organism. The price we pay is a slightly higher load of deleterious alleles that we are mostly able to handle. Overall a genetic bargain because we have out competed every organism that only relies on Selection whereas humans sidestep it.
My point was two fold. Firstly that the Greeks as in descendents (not in some pure superrace type) just intermixed descendents of the original Greeks were a significant portion of the empire and as the empire shrunk they became the dominant ethnic group. Of course the Greeks were not restricted to mainland modern Greece but had expanded into what is now Turkey and beyond following the conquests of Alexander, so they were all over the eastern meditteranean.
Secondly, the renaissance benefitted from Greek emigres following the fall of Constantinople. The renaissance really took of following the vast wealth generated by the Italian city states by trading in byzantine territoris and spheres of ineterest (at the expense of the empire itself).
The 'Latins' you speak about were those who invaded the empire during the 4th crusade (1204). They were outsiders from Italy, not Byzantines.
I realize they were Italians (Latins was the term used for them). The point is there was a final cultural revival amongst the byzantines following the expulsion of the Latins from Constantinople.
Really, what not even one of them? What were they Chinese? This is one of those arguments that seems to have emerged in the 19th century. There are no Greeks left (as descended from the Ancients) therefore the inheritors of the Graeco-Roman past are those that are more understanding and appreciative of it ie the Germanic peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Therefore the real Greeks are the English/Germans and their descendenants. Hooey!
Population Genetics has shown that the modern Greeks are NOT fully Slavic nor Turkic nor Albanion nor Arabic. So why is it unlikely that they are not in part the descendants of the peoples that called themselves Greeks in the ancient past? Afterall they have lived continously in the eastern mediterranean/Black sea coast for millenia and have identified themselves as greeks.
Second, way before Byzantium was finally conquered by the Muslims which founded the Ottoman empire, it was overrun by crusadors and they effectively destroyed the city and its institutions. The Ottomans just finished the job there.
After the latins were kicked out of Byzantium in 1261 there was a revival in culture including ancient philosophy (the Paleologian revival). when the Turks took Constantinople in 1453 many prominent families fled to Italy taking with them better manuscripts of ancient treatises. These treates were better than the Arab translations. Many of these prominent Greeks became lecturers in Italian Universities presenting more accurate versions of Plato in particular. Did they start the Renaissance, of course not but they were good and opportune teachers at a time when many thihgs were happening in Northern Italy.
The main thing that kicked of the Renaissance was the great wealth accumulated by the Northern Italian seafaring states that allowed more resources and people to be engaged in scholarly and artistic pursuits. This wealth was achieved on the back of the generous financial arrangements provided by the Eastern emperors to secure Latin allies against the Turks (who only entered the territory known as Turkey after the battle of Manzikert in 1071).