You are right. The NewDarkAgesâ are upon us, while most people are blissfully ignorant. We stand a little chance to prevent this, and Free Software et al. are some of the forces that oppose this darkness. But we are but few, and we probably lack the power to win.
Science, real free science, is over, I'm afraid, an thie PLoS is just too little too late.
Science™ was never peer reviewed!
on
Who Owns Science?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Traditional science is NOT peer reviewed, it's censored. The famouns `peer review' is a fraud, it's neither, it's editorial censorship, editors who decide who and what will get published (they may ask the opinion of reviewers (your `peers') but editors have final decision). This is not true science, nor stops fraud.
Peer review---real peer review---means no editors (editors are not you peers) and no consoring, that is, publish first, and what you publish is reviewed by you peer. That's science.
>If it is public I mean, then couldn't anybody submit and be published?
Well, yes, that's true science. Publish, be reviewed, get grilled by your peers. Just like Free Software.
But no, this proposal is not that. It's just the same ol same ol, but just make sure that the `papers' are available for free (after six months!). This proposal is not good enough; and it won't save science.
This, and the so-called ``peer review'', which is neither, but editorial censorship, and that has never been shown to be a good method of quality assurance (quite the opposite, the last frauds have shown!) but does allow the existance of cliques, black lists, and the censoring of most revolutionary science.
I'm afraid it's the the paradigm of science itself that is obsolete; science-as-we-know-it has survived its usefulness.
>The author was of the opinion that the life sciences are not as rigorous in testing the veracity of research results. I do not know if this is true, but it would be not be surprising -- biological systems are much more complex and harder to control.
In my experience, the author is quite right. The day biology `gets audited' a lot of ugly stinking stuff will be exposed. How many professional `biologists' can even define life? So much pretense!
A huge portion of funding for biology goes into `research' which only purpose is to justify itself, and that generates no novel knowledge but only kills trees to print worthless `papers' and foster these pseudo-researchers' careers.
Dura veritas, sed veritas. Hard is the truth, but it is the truth.
Once again, we see the need to push science to Version 2.0. See you there!
>"Escaping suppression," my ass. The only thing that's suppressing them is a lack of evidence supporting them.
And what, exactly---besides your ass---is the evidence coming from a failed attempt to falsify the Neodarwinian theory? Neodarwinism has never been put to the test, what is not surprising in the least since it not a scientific theory, but a pseudo-scientific myth. There is no evidence for Evolution by Natural Selection, only a bunch of observations that fit the theory (those observations that don't fit are discarded), but that can more easily be explained without any need of fantastic Natural Selection. Evidence for evolution, plenty of it, but evidence for evolution by Natural Selection, zilch.
If you disagree, please point me to the refs. I'd love to know of a true attempt to test Neodarwinism.
And yes, any other evolutionary theories are suppressed, and if you ask for evidence you are labeled as ``Creationist''.
>Most people are practical, not on an ideological crusade like RMS and his ilk.
Whether something is ``practical'' or not depends on what you want to practice. I, for one, want to practice freedom, efficiency, economy, self-improvement, privacy, peace of mind, and overall I want to practice enlightened self-interest. Linux fits the bill, Macinto$h does not, Micro$oft does not. Linux is the practical choice.
For what I want to practice, I am a very practical guy, so I use Linux. You may want to practice something else, so Linux may not be practical to you.
BTW: RMS is a very practical guy, too---he practices freedom. Perhaps you might find it instructive to ask yourself what do you practice.
All in all, I've been forced to use Macintoy$ now and then for a while now, so I have built an opinion: Mac$ SUCK. The new MACOS X sucks a little less, but that's because it's Unix.
But worst of all is the effect prolonged exposure to Mac$ has on the human mind; Mac$ make people stupid. Oh yeah, Mac$ are simple to use! What that means is that Mac$ are only fit for simple uses. Mac$ suck because they make people limit themselves to simple things. Get a few teenagers, introduce a group of them to Mac$ and another to Linux. Wait six months. See what kind of stuff each group is doing.
>What part of the word Primer eludes your understanding.
Well, perhaps what's the relationship between DNA and life, I mean, what is life, actually, and how the structure of the DNA polymer is related to how livings systems work.
Yes, I think that's the part that eludes my understanding: what exactly has life to do with all that chemistry you wrote about?
Or perhaps, what eludes my understanding is that little nagging question no one seems to want to answer: What is life? Everyone seems to know, at least a lot of people are writing about it, you wrote about it. But no one says what it is.
Or does that eludes your understanding?
>I challenge you to write an essay that short that 1) is coherent and an gives introductory analogies, 2) addresses the question asked 3) is as comprehensive. 4) is not just jargon
No, thanks, I pass on that---I know it can't be done, and won't give written proof of that. Any attempt will fail, it will be too gross an oversimplification.
>Crick's central dogma is still essentially correct.
True. And it's also essentially irrelevant. The Central Dogma explains proteins, nothing else. It's biochemistry---and good biochemistry indeed---but not biology. That's the whole point, Crick's Dogma also works in vitro---there is no need for life to work. So it's biochemistry, that plays a role---a fundamental one, sure---in biology.
Again, what's life?
>The current state of biology features a massive shift away from in vitro experimentation (and looking at fixed specimens) towards an in vivo approach.
Again, can you define ``vivo''? What is really the difference?
That's what is being taking for granted, oversimplified, the `un-living'.
Yes, I know of the ``major shift''. It's towards complicated things, not complexity. Complicated simple things---simple models that are patches to patch patches of holes in patches. Just like Windoze-98; simple and complicated. Cruft, in other words. Yes, biology is getting crufty, no doubt.
How far outside we need to step? Well, as far as necesary to answer that little question: what is life?
>Maybe you're hanging out with bad scientists, because anyone who doesn't realize this obvious truth isn't all that smart.
I know I was---that's why I bailed out. But the problem is with the whole science, not just the people I had around, some of which were truly exceptional. Indeed, I bailed out the moment I realized just how exceptional they were. Sorry, it's the core of biology as a science that is rotten, if not science itself. We need something new.
>This would mean that everyone disagrees with the central dogma and according to you, no one would ever receive any funding.
You are absolutely right. I did not mean just that; I did not write clearly.
But the Central Dogma as actually understood in practice involves far more: DNA makes proteins, proteins make organisms, DNA is a blueprint for organisms, genes (alleles) are selected by Natural Selection, mutations are random, &c. There is nothing else involved, just `exception', as you pointed out youself. The Central Dogma (expanded) includes also the Modern Synthesis, and other pre-cybernetic minor dogmas (ecology that separates organism from its environment, for example).
Step outside that Dogma and you will see what happens.
>Everyone understands the complexity and variety seen in living organisms.
I would be hard pressed to think of a statement I disagree more strongly with than this one. Sorry, not at all, not even remotely so. Traditional biology is the biology of the un-living.
BTW: could you please define life? Most `biologists' can't.
Well, I heard it all the time in graduate school, biological sciences. Go figure. (I never used it, I knew better.)
>There's no magic,
No, the `magic' part in traditional biology comes in the black box of going from protein synthesis to metacellular organization. All that automagically just happens.
>and no one is suggesting the intron pattern itself is significant.
Yes, some of use are. You just won't listen. In any case, if not introns, then the so-called non-coding regions.
>We... have a pretty good idea how cells assemble themselves into organs!
That's plain bullshit. Only to a certain extent, and even that little only for Coenorhabditis elegans, and that's only because C. elegans is totally simplified, a trivial case, i.e. most things that are needed to make, say, a vertebrate, just do not happen in that silly worm. So, it's a model you can use to lock yourself into a oversimplified model that actually explains nothing but that does fool you into believing you understand anything.
>We don't need fractal dark magic to explain the protein synthesis in antibody production, it's just protein, and protein is coded directly by gene exons.
No, but from protein synthesis to an adult human... well, I bet you'll leave that as an excersise for the student.
Again, the dark magic part comes from proteins `automagically' generating a fig tree or Amy Weber.
If you are unwilling to really try to answer these questions, then by all means bask in self-congratulatory praise, but please get out of the way.
>If they are so important how come the gene products from bacteria minus introns is the exact same as plus introns.
Well, that's why you can't build metacellulars in a test tube. Proteins is all you usually can build, virii at the very best. And often even that does not work without twiking (e.g. removing introns), as you pointed yourself.
No, the guy has a point. We have known this for quite a while, but the mainstream biology silences this kind of research.
This guy has a point. There are fractal patterns. And you forget the cytoskeleton, and that DNA-binding protein complexes could ride on it to put to close contact regions in the DNA that are linearly far appart. `Junk' DNA can compute this perhaps, and many other things, like non-random crossing-over. Indeed, many `random' mutations and reorganizations, and gene duplications, may very well be decidedly not random.
Besides, there is more control needed for complex organims that just the Central Dogma provides for. But after all, the Central Dogma is a DOGMA---you disagree, you are left out of the game of Science, Inc. I spell it out for you: NO FUNDING.
And if you ever dare to think about putting the reality of Natural Selection to the test... well, you better start running for your life (no need to worry about your career, you no longer have one). No, evidence won't help you.
But it's nice to see that the Great Wall Of Silence is cracking after all these years. At least the laymen will know that something is being hidden by Science Inc.
Fisrt, to answer your question, whatever happened to science: Science (as we know it) is dead. RIP.
Second, the patent is bull, there is prior art. This is certainly not new, but I can see his point: it's the only way to get funded for this kind of research---you'll never get a grant proposal past the Cabal in biological sciences.
All this stuff is not really new, it's just that the Cabal that has almost complete control over what is accepted in biological sciences has been succesful in silencing this kind of research for quite some time (some 30 years). There is a lot more of this, but you won't see it published, or taught in the `official' channels, and certainly not ever funded. It's just that biology that incorporate ideas from the early 1970 onwards (cybernetics, autopoiesis, non-linear systems, post-Darwinism, fractals, &c.) has been pushed to the fringes, those researchers silenced and often left with no careers. The Cabal can do this because of something they call ``peer review'' system, which is neither: it's not done by your pears but by editors, and it's not review but censorship---you can't re-view what hasn't been published!!!
And remember its Publish or Perish. And the Cabal won't let the new stuff be published... you figure the rest yourself.
And did you notice that there are still in 2002 very very few biology papers on the web, and almost no online publications, and even those are not open? Check archiv: no biology. It's an Ol'Boys Club----invitation only.
Often this is not even done on purpose, the unwitting members of the Cabal just know you are wrong; no need for any evidence. And since you are known to be wrong... Why fund you? Why read you papers? Why even let them get published---just wastes paper, right?
Sorry; some of us, we try hard to improve this sad state of affairs. I myself decided to bail out of biological sciences to have the freedom I need to do real biology. We could use some help, BTW.
Anyone got a mirror of the text of the aticle? So I can read it?
That means I have not read the article. Still, I know something from personal experience: an awful lot of science is suspect, at least in biology. It's just that the traditional scientific model of doing research (closed, journal-based, elitist, without true peer review, heavily censored, &c.) is no longer viable, and it almost makes fraud, poor research, and lightweights inescapable. I'm afraid science-as-we-know-it has survived it usefulness, and has become the worst hindrance to real Scientia. This version of `science' is just another Micro$oft: kills innovation, bludgeons competing theories, cheats, steals, avoids addressing real questions (you kill your career that way!). And it will only get worse.
I believe we should all go for Science version 2.0---I myself already have. Sorry, version 2.0 breaks compatibility with version 1.0.
>Are we leavin' every other country in the military dustbin or what? I can't think of any country that can wage war with America anymore.
No, it will just make the rest of the world feel even more threatented, i.e. make sure they can fight the USA. In the end, someone someewhere somehow will hit gold (or rahter Death) in the way of a radical novel technology. So overnight all your wonderfull battle tech isn's worth it's weight in scrap. This kind of shit always happens: you make the perfect sword and some yahoo invents the handgun. Happened many times in history; how many examples of UltimateWeapon® can you name in a minute?
When you have so many people feeling threatened and trying trying... Bingo! Eureka! Look, if you do [this] they die!
And then it's a new game altogether. You die.
Probably it will involve some kind of nanotech, and probably based on biology---not infectious agents, mind you, but some supertech based on the way life works. Think Alien meets the Borg. Are you scared already?
Rule of History: be overconfident and you're history. All your bases are rust 'n dust. Enemy archaeologists will have a field day.
>If there indeed *is* bacteria discovered on Venus it would suggest the dice of the universe are heavily loaded with a bias towards generating life. It's that bias which would determine not just whether we are alone but just how crowded it can this universe get after a while. On the other hand, the Venusians have quite a few hundred million years to catch up with their Terran cousins.
The problem here is the loose (read ``lousy'') definition of the term bacterium. It means so much that it means almost nothing. It is usually said of anything small, kinda cellular and simple, with no nucleus. Even on Terra there are 2 very different kind of organisms (out of 3 kinds total!) that are called ``bacteria'' but that are of very different types and are not related (one kind is more related to humans than to the other, and this other is more related to mitochrondria than to the first kind). The 2 groups (Domains) are now considered distinct and currently named Bacteria (eubacteria) and Archæa (archeobacteria), but they were previously taken as the same thing, i.e. ``bacteria'', and still are often called that.
So, be careful with that term; it can be terribly misleading.
Re:Hybrids: fertile and sterile and m×2×n
on
Mule Gives Birth
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· Score: 1
>However, from memory, I think that the number of chromosomes of triticale and similar hybrids is the sum of the number of chromosomes in the parent stock, not the average.
Yes, it's called hybrids stabilized by polyploidy. Common in plants. The new number is (obviously) even, so there in no problem during segregation of chromosome pairs (this is what screws up gametes of some hybrids).
But this is not alwasy neccesary; many related species have the same chromosome number, so there is no problem to begin with.
Are there known hybrids/half-breeds can have normal fertility, as opposed to requiring a "miracle" to occur?
Short answer: YES. There are very many recorded cases of animals and plants of different species hybridizing and the descendants being fertile. Depends on the species involved, some hybrids are sterile, some are not. They often are. But that hybrids are sterile is a myth.
The concept of science, or just how it is used by dodgy companies?
I give you the best answer I know, from epistemology: Science is what those who call themselves scientists do.
Using that definition, science is rotten to the core. Now, the idea that gave rise to science is alive and well, thank you; the spirit of free inquiry that was embodied in science is still with us and going strong, it's just that it has moved on away from science, and is incarnating in new things. Free software is one; there are others, and yet others we have to create. Free inquiry is still with us; it's just no longer happening in science for the most part.
May be we should think of science as an expended booster rocket: it got us here, it did a marvelous job, but it cannot take us any further. Time for us to discard it and move on. An new era of discovery is waiting...
Is there any proof of your "negaentronpc dissipative machines" either?
Oh, yes! It's called thermodynamics. Ever heard of it?
Does your nega-thingy theory fit into paleological and genetic data gathered so far regarding the development of species?
Again, oh yes it does. And it's not mine.
Selection does [fit the data].
No, it does not. Or perhaps it does, but then natural selection is not testable. Just a nice fairy tale that fits some of the observation for evolution. Most evolution simply does not fit with NS. ``The slaying of a beatiful hypothesis by an ugly fact'' and all that. Sorry.
You yourself say that successful organisms survive, but at the same time say that the idea of advantages is faulty.
Of course they survive that survive! But about them getting selected or having advantages... does not follow. Natural selection cannot be neither the cause nor the process of biological evolution, it's the result of evolution. You got your causality backwards, sorry again.
I don't know why I'm bothering to talk to you.
Same here; I have a phylogeny to solve, and then I have to solve the species problem. Bye!
Slashdot Mirror
You are right. The NewDarkAgesâ are upon us, while most people are blissfully ignorant. We stand a little chance to prevent this, and Free Software et al. are some of the forces that oppose this darkness. But we are but few, and we probably lack the power to win.
Science, real free science, is over, I'm afraid, an thie PLoS is just too little too late.
Peer review---real peer review---means no editors (editors are not you peers) and no consoring, that is, publish first, and what you publish is reviewed by you peer. That's science.
>If it is public I mean, then couldn't anybody submit and be published?Well, yes, that's true science. Publish, be reviewed, get grilled by your peers. Just like Free Software.
But no, this proposal is not that. It's just the same ol same ol, but just make sure that the `papers' are available for free (after six months!). This proposal is not good enough; and it won't save science.
I agree. That's why science is diying
This, and the so-called ``peer review'', which is neither, but editorial censorship, and that has never been shown to be a good method of quality assurance (quite the opposite, the last frauds have shown!) but does allow the existance of cliques, black lists, and the censoring of most revolutionary science.
I'm afraid it's the the paradigm of science itself that is obsolete; science-as-we-know-it has survived its usefulness.
Time to go for Version 2.0
In my experience, the author is quite right. The day biology `gets audited' a lot of ugly stinking stuff will be exposed. How many professional `biologists' can even define life? So much pretense!
A huge portion of funding for biology goes into `research' which only purpose is to justify itself, and that generates no novel knowledge but only kills trees to print worthless `papers' and foster these pseudo-researchers' careers.
Dura veritas, sed veritas. Hard is the truth, but it is the truth.
Once again, we see the need to push science to Version 2.0. See you there!
And what, exactly---besides your ass---is the evidence coming from a failed attempt to falsify the Neodarwinian theory? Neodarwinism has never been put to the test, what is not surprising in the least since it not a scientific theory, but a pseudo-scientific myth. There is no evidence for Evolution by Natural Selection, only a bunch of observations that fit the theory (those observations that don't fit are discarded), but that can more easily be explained without any need of fantastic Natural Selection. Evidence for evolution, plenty of it, but evidence for evolution by Natural Selection, zilch.
If you disagree, please point me to the refs. I'd love to know of a true attempt to test Neodarwinism.
And yes, any other evolutionary theories are suppressed, and if you ask for evidence you are labeled as ``Creationist''.
Perhaps we should make it ``anywhere that a suitable liquid is present''?''
Anyway, it's good to see this `submerged' theories surface at long last (bad pun intended).
May be there is hope to see the `new', post-neodarwinian evolutionary theories (only 30 years old) escaping suppression before the end of this decade?
How do you get a nonliving cell??? What characterizes a cell a cell, if not that it is a living system?
Besides, this `new' theory is not new. Not at all. I've learnt about those ideas like 10 years ago.
Again (and just to be nasty :p )
Before we argue about the origin of life, shouldn't we be able to define what life is first?
Whether something is ``practical'' or not depends on what you want to practice. I, for one, want to practice freedom, efficiency, economy, self-improvement, privacy, peace of mind, and overall I want to practice enlightened self-interest. Linux fits the bill, Macinto$h does not, Micro$oft does not. Linux is the practical choice.
For what I want to practice, I am a very practical guy, so I use Linux. You may want to practice something else, so Linux may not be practical to you.
BTW: RMS is a very practical guy, too---he practices freedom. Perhaps you might find it instructive to ask yourself what do you practice.
All in all, I've been forced to use Macintoy$ now and then for a while now, so I have built an opinion: Mac$ SUCK. The new MACOS X sucks a little less, but that's because it's Unix.
But worst of all is the effect prolonged exposure to Mac$ has on the human mind; Mac$ make people stupid. Oh yeah, Mac$ are simple to use! What that means is that Mac$ are only fit for simple uses. Mac$ suck because they make people limit themselves to simple things. Get a few teenagers, introduce a group of them to Mac$ and another to Linux. Wait six months. See what kind of stuff each group is doing.
XMLterm!!!
I think this is the coolest GUI idea I've seen in a looooong time, the Graphical Command Line.
Ever heard of autopoiesis? More to the point, of molecular autopoiesis?
Well, perhaps what's the relationship between DNA and life, I mean, what is life, actually, and how the structure of the DNA polymer is related to how livings systems work.
Yes, I think that's the part that eludes my understanding: what exactly has life to do with all that chemistry you wrote about?
Or perhaps, what eludes my understanding is that little nagging question no one seems to want to answer: What is life? Everyone seems to know, at least a lot of people are writing about it, you wrote about it. But no one says what it is.
Or does that eludes your understanding?
>I challenge you to write an essay that short that 1) is coherent and an gives introductory analogies, 2) addresses the question asked 3) is as comprehensive. 4) is not just jargonNo, thanks, I pass on that---I know it can't be done, and won't give written proof of that. Any attempt will fail, it will be too gross an oversimplification.
But now, I challenge you: Define ``life''.
True. And it's also essentially irrelevant. The Central Dogma explains proteins, nothing else. It's biochemistry---and good biochemistry indeed---but not biology. That's the whole point, Crick's Dogma also works in vitro---there is no need for life to work. So it's biochemistry, that plays a role---a fundamental one, sure---in biology.
Again, what's life?
>The current state of biology features a massive shift away from in vitro experimentation (and looking at fixed specimens) towards an in vivo approach.Again, can you define ``vivo''? What is really the difference?
That's what is being taking for granted, oversimplified, the `un-living'.
Yes, I know of the ``major shift''. It's towards complicated things, not complexity. Complicated simple things---simple models that are patches to patch patches of holes in patches. Just like Windoze-98; simple and complicated. Cruft, in other words. Yes, biology is getting crufty, no doubt.
How far outside we need to step? Well, as far as necesary to answer that little question: what is life?
>Maybe you're hanging out with bad scientists, because anyone who doesn't realize this obvious truth isn't all that smart.I know I was---that's why I bailed out. But the problem is with the whole science, not just the people I had around, some of which were truly exceptional. Indeed, I bailed out the moment I realized just how exceptional they were. Sorry, it's the core of biology as a science that is rotten, if not science itself. We need something new.
You are absolutely right. I did not mean just that; I did not write clearly.
But the Central Dogma as actually understood in practice involves far more: DNA makes proteins, proteins make organisms, DNA is a blueprint for organisms, genes (alleles) are selected by Natural Selection, mutations are random, &c. There is nothing else involved, just `exception', as you pointed out youself. The Central Dogma (expanded) includes also the Modern Synthesis, and other pre-cybernetic minor dogmas (ecology that separates organism from its environment, for example).
Step outside that Dogma and you will see what happens.
>Everyone understands the complexity and variety seen in living organisms.I would be hard pressed to think of a statement I disagree more strongly with than this one. Sorry, not at all, not even remotely so. Traditional biology is the biology of the un-living.
BTW: could you please define life? Most `biologists' can't.
Well, I heard it all the time in graduate school, biological sciences. Go figure. (I never used it, I knew better.)
>There's no magic,No, the `magic' part in traditional biology comes in the black box of going from protein synthesis to metacellular organization. All that automagically just happens.
>and no one is suggesting the intron pattern itself is significant.Yes, some of use are. You just won't listen. In any case, if not introns, then the so-called non-coding regions.
>WeThat's plain bullshit. Only to a certain extent, and even that little only for Coenorhabditis elegans, and that's only because C. elegans is totally simplified, a trivial case, i.e. most things that are needed to make, say, a vertebrate, just do not happen in that silly worm. So, it's a model you can use to lock yourself into a oversimplified model that actually explains nothing but that does fool you into believing you understand anything.
>We don't need fractal dark magic to explain the protein synthesis in antibody production, it's just protein, and protein is coded directly by gene exons.No, but from protein synthesis to an adult human... well, I bet you'll leave that as an excersise for the student.
Again, the dark magic part comes from proteins `automagically' generating a fig tree or Amy Weber.
If you are unwilling to really try to answer these questions, then by all means bask in self-congratulatory praise, but please get out of the way.
Well, that's why you can't build metacellulars in a test tube. Proteins is all you usually can build, virii at the very best. And often even that does not work without twiking (e.g. removing introns), as you pointed yourself.
No, the guy has a point. We have known this for quite a while, but the mainstream biology silences this kind of research.
Sorry, but your Primer is far too simplistic.
This guy has a point. There are fractal patterns. And you forget the cytoskeleton, and that DNA-binding protein complexes could ride on it to put to close contact regions in the DNA that are linearly far appart. `Junk' DNA can compute this perhaps, and many other things, like non-random crossing-over. Indeed, many `random' mutations and reorganizations, and gene duplications, may very well be decidedly not random.
Besides, there is more control needed for complex organims that just the Central Dogma provides for. But after all, the Central Dogma is a DOGMA---you disagree, you are left out of the game of Science, Inc. I spell it out for you: NO FUNDING.
And if you ever dare to think about putting the reality of Natural Selection to the test... well, you better start running for your life (no need to worry about your career, you no longer have one). No, evidence won't help you.
But it's nice to see that the Great Wall Of Silence is cracking after all these years. At least the laymen will know that something is being hidden by Science Inc.
Fisrt, to answer your question, whatever happened to science: Science (as we know it) is dead. RIP.
Second, the patent is bull, there is prior art. This is certainly not new, but I can see his point: it's the only way to get funded for this kind of research---you'll never get a grant proposal past the Cabal in biological sciences.
All this stuff is not really new, it's just that the Cabal that has almost complete control over what is accepted in biological sciences has been succesful in silencing this kind of research for quite some time (some 30 years). There is a lot more of this, but you won't see it published, or taught in the `official' channels, and certainly not ever funded. It's just that biology that incorporate ideas from the early 1970 onwards (cybernetics, autopoiesis, non-linear systems, post-Darwinism, fractals, &c.) has been pushed to the fringes, those researchers silenced and often left with no careers. The Cabal can do this because of something they call ``peer review'' system, which is neither: it's not done by your pears but by editors, and it's not review but censorship---you can't re-view what hasn't been published!!!
And remember its Publish or Perish. And the Cabal won't let the new stuff be published... you figure the rest yourself.
And did you notice that there are still in 2002 very very few biology papers on the web, and almost no online publications, and even those are not open? Check archiv: no biology. It's an Ol'Boys Club----invitation only.
Often this is not even done on purpose, the unwitting members of the Cabal just know you are wrong; no need for any evidence. And since you are known to be wrong... Why fund you? Why read you papers? Why even let them get published---just wastes paper, right?
Sorry; some of us, we try hard to improve this sad state of affairs. I myself decided to bail out of biological sciences to have the freedom I need to do real biology. We could use some help, BTW.
Anyone got a mirror of the text of the aticle? So I can read it?
That means I have not read the article. Still, I know something from personal experience: an awful lot of science is suspect, at least in biology. It's just that the traditional scientific model of doing research (closed, journal-based, elitist, without true peer review, heavily censored, &c.) is no longer viable, and it almost makes fraud, poor research, and lightweights inescapable. I'm afraid science-as-we-know-it has survived it usefulness, and has become the worst hindrance to real Scientia. This version of `science' is just another Micro$oft: kills innovation, bludgeons competing theories, cheats, steals, avoids addressing real questions (you kill your career that way!). And it will only get worse.
I believe we should all go for Science version 2.0---I myself already have. Sorry, version 2.0 breaks compatibility with version 1.0.
Anyone for version 2.0?
>Are we leavin' every other country in the military dustbin or what? I can't think of any country that can wage war with America anymore.
No, it will just make the rest of the world feel even more threatented, i.e. make sure they can fight the USA. In the end, someone someewhere somehow will hit gold (or rahter Death) in the way of a radical novel technology. So overnight all your wonderfull battle tech isn's worth it's weight in scrap. This kind of shit always happens: you make the perfect sword and some yahoo invents the handgun. Happened many times in history; how many examples of UltimateWeapon® can you name in a minute?
When you have so many people feeling threatened and trying trying... Bingo! Eureka! Look, if you do [this] they die!
And then it's a new game altogether. You die.
Probably it will involve some kind of nanotech, and probably based on biology---not infectious agents, mind you, but some supertech based on the way life works. Think Alien meets the Borg. Are you scared already?
Rule of History: be overconfident and you're history. All your bases are rust 'n dust. Enemy archaeologists will have a field day.
All in all, I sure am glad I'm NOT an USAn.
>If there indeed *is* bacteria discovered on Venus it would suggest the dice of the universe are heavily loaded with a bias towards generating life. It's that bias which would determine not just whether we are alone but just how crowded it can this universe get after a while. On the other hand, the Venusians have quite a few hundred million years to catch up with their Terran cousins.
The problem here is the loose (read ``lousy'') definition of the term bacterium. It means so much that it means almost nothing. It is usually said of anything small, kinda cellular and simple, with no nucleus. Even on Terra there are 2 very different kind of organisms (out of 3 kinds total!) that are called ``bacteria'' but that are of very different types and are not related (one kind is more related to humans than to the other, and this other is more related to mitochrondria than to the first kind). The 2 groups (Domains) are now considered distinct and currently named Bacteria (eubacteria) and Archæa (archeobacteria), but they were previously taken as the same thing, i.e. ``bacteria'', and still are often called that.
So, be careful with that term; it can be terribly misleading.
>However, from memory, I think that the number of chromosomes of triticale and similar hybrids is the sum of the number of chromosomes in the parent stock, not the average.
Yes, it's called hybrids stabilized by polyploidy. Common in plants. The new number is (obviously) even, so there in no problem during segregation of chromosome pairs (this is what screws up gametes of some hybrids).
But this is not alwasy neccesary; many related species have the same chromosome number, so there is no problem to begin with.
What I want is the HOW-TO for a Linux-based orbital beam weapons platform.
Oh, wait! May be I should write the HOW-TO myself...
After all, what better way to fight The Evil Empire(TM) than with an Imperial Battle Station?
``Mr. Tux---you may fire when ready.'' :-P
Are there known hybrids/half-breeds can have normal fertility, as opposed to requiring a "miracle" to occur?
Short answer: YES. There are very many recorded cases of animals and plants of different species hybridizing and the descendants being fertile. Depends on the species involved, some hybrids are sterile, some are not. They often are. But that hybrids are sterile is a myth.
The concept of science, or just how it is used by dodgy companies?
I give you the best answer I know, from epistemology: Science is what those who call themselves scientists do.
Using that definition, science is rotten to the core. Now, the idea that gave rise to science is alive and well, thank you; the spirit of free inquiry that was embodied in science is still with us and going strong, it's just that it has moved on away from science, and is incarnating in new things. Free software is one; there are others, and yet others we have to create. Free inquiry is still with us; it's just no longer happening in science for the most part.
May be we should think of science as an expended booster rocket: it got us here, it did a marvelous job, but it cannot take us any further. Time for us to discard it and move on. An new era of discovery is waiting...
Is there any proof of your "negaentronpc dissipative machines" either?
Oh, yes! It's called thermodynamics. Ever heard of it?
Does your nega-thingy theory fit into paleological and genetic data gathered so far regarding the development of species?
Again, oh yes it does. And it's not mine.
Selection does [fit the data].
No, it does not. Or perhaps it does, but then natural selection is not testable. Just a nice fairy tale that fits some of the observation for evolution. Most evolution simply does not fit with NS. ``The slaying of a beatiful hypothesis by an ugly fact'' and all that. Sorry.
You yourself say that successful organisms survive, but at the same time say that the idea of advantages is faulty.
Of course they survive that survive! But about them getting selected or having advantages... does not follow. Natural selection cannot be neither the cause nor the process of biological evolution, it's the result of evolution. You got your causality backwards, sorry again.
I don't know why I'm bothering to talk to you.
Same here; I have a phylogeny to solve, and then I have to solve the species problem. Bye!