I don't know the truth of this. Some of it just sounds too rapid to believe. But here it is. As I mentioned earlier, I haven't had the chance to go over things with a fine toothed comb yet, so I could be being hoodwinked.
The Attempted Proofs of Directed Evolution Many experiments have been performed with to prove directed evolution. Only a few of them will be mentioned, and most of them have their critics and alternative explanations.
Epigenetic inheritance systems, in which the phenotype (observed appearance of an organism) that expresses cell information is modified by environmental stress, have been noticed as modified phenotypes appearing in subsequent generations.
In 1988, a team of Harvard biologists under the leadership of Joseph Cairns challenged the previous experiments performed by Luria and Delbruck in 1943. The early experiments seemed to prove that all mutations occurred randomly and none could be directed. Cairns group reasoned that in the earlier investigations the bacteria had been given too lethal a dose. They died before they could develop and propagate self-directed mutations.
The Harvard experimenters used bacteria that could not grow in a specific environment because they lacked a working gene for an enzyme needed to metabolize the only available food. By genetic engineering, the bacteria were given versions of the necessary gene in which the coded message was, in effect, scrambled and therefore useless. Most, if not all, the bacteria failed to grow. After a few days they began thriving, feeding and reproducing. The distribution of bacteria colonies that survived showed that many bacteria had unscrambled the code and performed self-directed mutations that corrected the deficiency.
Barry G. Hall, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Rochester, NY, damaged cell DNA by two different forms of genetic damage. Mutations that might occur to repair either of the damages were not sufficient to benefit the cell. Both damages required repair for any benefit. In one of two 1991 experiments, which are too complicated and lengthy to describe in this space, he showed that the cells repaired themselves by producing the correct mutations at a rate billions of time sooner than if chance alone had caused the changes. (Washington Post, April 20, 1992, p.A3)
Note: Both of these investigations were criticized as lacking effective controls, and ascribed to known physiological processes. Subsequent work by Hall with more controlled experiments eventually led to experimentally verified acceptance. (Johannes Wirz, Progress towards complementarity in genetics, Elemente der Naturwissenschaft, 64(1), 37-52 1996)
Epigenetic changes, which are alterations in gene expression, can be passed from mother cells to daughter cells. However, it had not been shown that subsequent generations inherited the same properties. Evidence is accumulating that the epigenetic changes are not erased. This phenomenon has been observed in plants, fruits and yeast. (Was Lamarck just a little right? Michael Balter, Science, April 7, 2000)
Geneticist Enrico Coen and others at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, U.K. reported that a mutant version of the toadflax plant (flowers radial rather than bilateral) was due to an epimutation in which a gene was not expressed. The gene state and and the flower characteristic were inherited by subsequent generations of toadflax plants. (Nature, September 9, 1999)
Inherited epigenetic changes have also been observed in mammals.
Mohan Raizada at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida and others inserted a therapeutic gene into a modified virus, and delivered the gene into the hearts of rats that are predisposed to high blood pressure. These rats and two subsequent generations were protected from hypertension. "Our data support the notion that the AT1R-AS is integrated into the parental genome and is transmitted to the offspring. The proposed germ-line transmission of the AT1R-AS is consistent with previous reports
Organisms designed by evolutionary processes can have analogs that are engineered, but they won't be identical. I agree with you that those differences aren't crucial.
And while I fundamentally agree with your stance, I think Kurt Vonnegut said it best in Player Piano (an old but very well written book about people being replaced by technology and the trouble it causes. )
"What are people for?"
What are people for, anyways? What are robots for?
I think that people are ultimatly defined by their functions, whether that's reproducing or worshiping God or what have you.
Robots do only what people design them to do, and have always served, to date, exclusivly as tools of human beings and extensions of the human will. They are designed to be predictable rather than unpredictable, obedient rather than desiring.
In the subject object dichotomy, humans are subjects and robots are objects which serve the needs of subjects (humans) and gain their value thereby.
The American south was very tolerant of blacks... provided that they acted in the customary submissive fashion. Tolerance of subordinates does not mean treating them as equals.
There was a power structure to be maintained.
The more blacks behaved as they were expected to behave, i.e. as unintelligent, courteous and submissive, childlike, obedient, etc. the more that they were tolerated.
I'm not supporting this at all. I'm simply saying that if people see somthing they're used to treating as an object or tool suddenly striving for power, they can react negativly.
While I don't agree with the religious component of ID, I do believe that there's more to genetic diversity than "random variation" and the ID argument that genetic diversity is not the result of purely random variation may have some merit.
There's a sort of neo-lamarkism going around among legitamate scientists and I've been wanting to pick up a book for a while and get deeper into it. So pardon my poor explanation.
Animals have been shown to change far faster than evolution would predict and then pass on their changes to their children. i.e. they seem to be able to rapidly revert to previous evolutionary states because 'the genes are still there' and then to pass on these changes, even though 'natural selection' may not have had time to play its part.
Some areas of the genetic code are more likely to vary than others, and are more likely to vary under stress.
Immune cells can be passed from parent to child. Possibly this allows acquired changes to be inheritied. (can't elaborate too much here as I'm not familiar with immunology)
I don't know all the mechanisms which could contribute to this, but each suggests sources of genetic diversity which are not totally random, and which may involve the inheretance of some acquired changes (lamarckism)
Honestly, I'm a Christian, and I've never met another Christian who spouted crap like "God put them there to test our faith". That's just flaming stupid.
Really? I have.
Not being a geologist, I wouldn't know. Some of the geologists present care to elaborate?
I have a biotech background, but don't practice in the field. When radioactive elements are found in rocks, the ratio between element and decayed element can be used to measure the age of the rock. If the ratio is constant throughout the sample, it's a good guess that the sample was originally pure, and not a mix to begin with.
Rocks in the same layer, if they are layered, are usually close in age. This isn't the only method for dating rocks, but it was one of the earlier ones used (by Lise Meitner et all around 1910-20, roughly) and the one that I know about.
However, most IDers look at it with something like Occam's Razor in mind - why would God introduce that much extra complexity to his creation process? If you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, evolution seems like so much wasted effort.
So, for that matter, would historic religion. Why wait a few thoudand years to redem humanity. Why wait to send a savior?
Occam's razor is seriously overused. The simplest explanation is often not the best. But if you have two explanations that are equally good and equally complex, only then would you choose the simpler.
Thanks for all your posts, dude. I just had to do a training module for eDiscovery at work. It's interesting to hear a real lawyer go over the finer points.
Though if he does have multiple secondary hard drives, it seems like it would be possible to be evasive. Not sure how they'd look for that. But then, I'm not a hardware geek. And I don't know how adept the techs for the RIAA would be, or how hard they'd try on an individual case.
The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions.
Also, consider that pigs are very immunologically similar to humans. Influenza in the past was massivly lethal, and often moved into the human population from the avian population (particularly ducks) through a pig intermediary.
In addition to STDs, I'd imagine various sexual laws were also intended to confine pregnancy to marriage.
in order to force a population increase in their followers
Of course, Judiasm put a huge emphasis on large families, just as the Catholic Church did. Prior to WWI or so, most cultures, with the exception of hunter gatherers like the native Americans or Tibetan Buddists put a lot of value on increasing their populations.
Before WWI and widespread industrialization, increases in population were critical to increasing the power of one's organization.
Nowadays, access to resources and technology seems more critical to maintaining power than manpower or individual ability. Which, perhaps, is the conenction you were making between patents and the modern world? Or maybe I've mischaracterized your argument by attempting to see it in my own terms.
Okay, I should have previewed my post before, but it gets confusing if I don't have the correct italics.
Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general??
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)
The types of temperment are; Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have. Social - Is this what everyone else is using? Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor. Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.
Many people are a mix of more than one type.
Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.
I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.
Anyone else got a theory?
(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.
Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general?/i?
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)
The types of temperment are; Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have. Social - Is this what everyone else is using? Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor. Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.
Many people are a mix of more than one type.
Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.
I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.
Anyone else got a theory?
(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.
If the prize was a government-set mandatory liscensing fee for patent usage, with the intent of insuring noone bought a patent to sit on it, then maybe.
But there would be a lot of things that would have to be worked out. Specifically, how do you fairly set that price point.
Besides, the biggest problem with patents is that they're given away like candy. With a 'let the courts sort them out' attitude.
I see what you're saying. Thanks for the info. I agree with most of it. The only part I'd question would be
The problem with the theory is that it treats harvest time as the phenotype of a single gene (or perhaps a few genes). This is absolutely false.
If it became important for a plant to reach or not reach a certain stage of growth at a certain time, it could have a gene which would suppress other genes in a dominant fashion under the appropriate conditions. Such a gene could potentially make corn more uniform in the same way that a lawn mower makes grass uniform, by placing a limit on height, growth, etc. that would only be activated under particular conditions. (my thoughts, not Lewontin's)
But yeah, either way it would take a few generations more than purebreeding + crossbreeding. And it would probably, as you said, be non uniform for things like corn thickness (which I honestly hadn't considered.) But once developed, it could be adapted more readily through cross breeding.
I suppose my problem was that I kept hearing people talk about how crossbreeding of purebred strains dramatically increase the bounty of the plant, which is what comentators always focus on. And I just got sick of it.
Since you replied as an AC and probably aren't reading this, I'll be quick.
here we strip away the trivial particulars of whether or not we use hybridization etc. and arrive at the core of the opposing arguments you presented: crop uniformity and economy of scale vs. genetic diversity in production populations
That's not my point at all. That's your point it's a false dichotomy. This dichotomy is based on the unsupported notion that crops cannot be made uniform in the required ways without drastically reducing their genetic diversity.
Lewontin's point was that while hybridization allows certain advantages (simultaneous harvest among them, though I dont think he touches on this) that this can be selectivly bred for without reducing all the genetic diversity in a cultivar. You can selectivly breed a plant cultivar that always ripens at exactly the same time without seriously reducing the genetic diversity from the cultivar population. If selective pressure for ripening at a certain time is strong enough, and applied for enough time and under varying conditions, you'll get your plant. This cultivar will be more gentically diverse, and thus more resistant to various pathogens.
The problem is that such a plant, once developed, could be replanted and bred by farmers, whereas a hybrid between two homozygous purebred strains could not be replanted without a prohibitive decrease in yeild. So you have to buy more seed.
Or at least Lewontin said that there wasn't any legitimate scientific evidence to indicate the contrary.
As for the safety of GM foods in relation to potential allergies, that is a valid concern, but you have to take it in context. Many major products--wheat, rice, peanuts, milk, etc--would fail an FDA review if not for the fact that they are grandfathered in under the "generally considered safe" rule due to the millions of people with (often fatal) allergic reactions to them.
I have no problem with branded GM foods in the same way I have no problem with milk labeled as milk. If I'm allergic to a certain brand of GM tomoatoes, I won't eat them. The problem, in my mind, is when "apples" are no longer apples. If the ingredient labels on food kept track of the varieties of crop used (This product contains flavr savr tomatoes beefsteak tomatoes, etc. may contain mixes of the following breeds of wheat...etc) , this wouldn't be a problem. Genetically modified foods are actually more standardized than "normal" varieties.
But keeping track of things this way is its own problem. It's not enough to separate into "GM" and "non-GM."
of reading. I can see how this might help with people who don't read greek, but with machine translation, that's not an issue.
As the saying goes; a month in the lab can save you a whole day in the library. Is this really new in a good way? Given the fact that many plants have alternate names, some have the same name, etc. it seems that familiarity with one's subject material is not a particularly useful thing to shortcut-out. Consider, for example, the parable of the 'mustard seed' in the gospels. A grown mustard plant is described as a great tree. Huh?! Even when people are familiar with the text, translations of old plant names are often difficult.
I'd just as soon read a machine translation of the bible or tartouffe than rely upon this technique. In fact, I'd sooner read a machine translation of the bible. Even if it mistranslated things, at least it'd be less likely to gloss the text. But that's not so much a problem with ethnobotany.
"Text mining" is a solution which found the wrong problem.
pardon me. Hybridization could have been replaced by selective breeding, not open pollination. Selective breeding would still produce a genetically diverse population with the desired traits.
While I consider myself an environmentalist, please consider this;
The current climate flies in the face of +90% of the climate models from 1990 for what the earth was supposed to look like in 2005. The sea level was supposed to have risen 10 inches. It hasn't.
Nobody is saying that there isn't global climate change. The question is whether our effect on global temperatures is actually being mitigated by unpredicted forces or if we're approaching some kind of tipping point where a heat sink gets filled up, the dam breaks and change is sudden, decisive and irreversable.
Consensus in the environmental sciences is not as valuable a thing as in most of the other natural sciences, because there are too many damn variables and you can't test anything.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know the truth of this. Some of it just sounds too rapid to believe. But here it is. As I mentioned earlier, I haven't had the chance to go over things with a fine toothed comb yet, so I could be being hoodwinked.
The Attempted Proofs of Directed Evolution
Many experiments have been performed with to prove directed evolution. Only a few of them will be mentioned, and most of them have their critics and alternative explanations.
Epigenetic inheritance systems, in which the phenotype (observed appearance of an organism) that expresses cell information is modified by environmental stress, have been noticed as modified phenotypes appearing in subsequent generations.
In 1988, a team of Harvard biologists under the leadership of Joseph Cairns challenged the previous experiments performed by Luria and Delbruck in 1943. The early experiments seemed to prove that all mutations occurred randomly and none could be directed. Cairns group reasoned that in the earlier investigations the bacteria had been given too lethal a dose. They died before they could develop and propagate self-directed mutations.
The Harvard experimenters used bacteria that could not grow in a specific environment because they lacked a working gene for an enzyme needed to metabolize the only available food. By genetic engineering, the bacteria were given versions of the necessary gene in which the coded message was, in effect, scrambled and therefore useless. Most, if not all, the bacteria failed to grow. After a few days they began thriving, feeding and reproducing. The distribution of bacteria colonies that survived showed that many bacteria had unscrambled the code and performed self-directed mutations that corrected the deficiency.
Barry G. Hall, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Rochester, NY, damaged cell DNA by two different forms of genetic damage. Mutations that might occur to repair either of the damages were not sufficient to benefit the cell. Both damages required repair for any benefit. In one of two 1991 experiments, which are too complicated and lengthy to describe in this space, he showed that the cells repaired themselves by producing the correct mutations at a rate billions of time sooner than if chance alone had caused the changes. (Washington Post, April 20, 1992, p.A3)
Note: Both of these investigations were criticized as lacking effective controls, and ascribed to known physiological processes. Subsequent work by Hall with more controlled experiments eventually led to experimentally verified acceptance. (Johannes Wirz, Progress towards complementarity in genetics, Elemente der Naturwissenschaft, 64(1), 37-52 1996)
Epigenetic changes, which are alterations in gene expression, can be passed from mother cells to daughter cells. However, it had not been shown that subsequent generations inherited the same properties. Evidence is accumulating that the epigenetic changes are not erased. This phenomenon has been observed in plants, fruits and yeast. (Was Lamarck just a little right? Michael Balter, Science, April 7, 2000)
Geneticist Enrico Coen and others at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, U.K. reported that a mutant version of the toadflax plant (flowers radial rather than bilateral) was due to an epimutation in which a gene was not expressed. The gene state and and the flower characteristic were inherited by subsequent generations of toadflax plants. (Nature, September 9, 1999)
Inherited epigenetic changes have also been observed in mammals.
Mohan Raizada at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida and others inserted a therapeutic gene into a modified virus, and delivered the gene into the hearts of rats that are predisposed to high blood pressure. These rats and two subsequent generations were protected from hypertension.
"Our data support the notion that the AT1R-AS is integrated into the parental genome and is transmitted to the offspring. The proposed germ-line transmission of the AT1R-AS is consistent with previous reports
Organisms designed by evolutionary processes can have analogs that are engineered, but they won't be identical. I agree with you that those differences aren't crucial.
And while I fundamentally agree with your stance, I think Kurt Vonnegut said it best in Player Piano (an old but very well written book about people being replaced by technology and the trouble it causes. )
"What are people for?"
What are people for, anyways? What are robots for?
I think that people are ultimatly defined by their functions, whether that's reproducing or worshiping God or what have you.
Robots do only what people design them to do, and have always served, to date, exclusivly as tools of human beings and extensions of the human will. They are designed to be predictable rather than unpredictable, obedient rather than desiring.
In the subject object dichotomy, humans are subjects and robots are objects which serve the needs of subjects (humans) and gain their value thereby.
The American South was more racist.
The American south was very tolerant of blacks... provided that they acted in the customary submissive fashion. Tolerance of subordinates does not mean treating them as equals.
There was a power structure to be maintained.
The more blacks behaved as they were expected to behave, i.e. as unintelligent, courteous and submissive, childlike, obedient, etc. the more that they were tolerated.
I'm not supporting this at all. I'm simply saying that if people see somthing they're used to treating as an object or tool suddenly striving for power, they can react negativly.
Fool! Those were Lore's lies. Disbelieve him! Or he will do to you as he did to the Borg.
While I don't agree with the religious component of ID, I do believe that there's more to genetic diversity than "random variation" and the ID argument that genetic diversity is not the result of purely random variation may have some merit.
There's a sort of neo-lamarkism going around among legitamate scientists and I've been wanting to pick up a book for a while and get deeper into it. So pardon my poor explanation.
Animals have been shown to change far faster than evolution would predict and then pass on their changes to their children. i.e. they seem to be able to rapidly revert to previous evolutionary states because 'the genes are still there' and then to pass on these changes, even though 'natural selection' may not have had time to play its part.
Some areas of the genetic code are more likely to vary than others, and are more likely to vary under stress.
Immune cells can be passed from parent to child. Possibly this allows acquired changes to be inheritied. (can't elaborate too much here as I'm not familiar with immunology)
I don't know all the mechanisms which could contribute to this, but each suggests sources of genetic diversity which are not totally random, and which may involve the inheretance of some acquired changes (lamarckism)
Honestly, I'm a Christian, and I've never met another Christian who spouted crap like "God put them there to test our faith". That's just flaming stupid.
Really? I have.
Not being a geologist, I wouldn't know. Some of the geologists present care to elaborate?
I have a biotech background, but don't practice in the field. When radioactive elements are found in rocks, the ratio between element and decayed element can be used to measure the age of the rock. If the ratio is constant throughout the sample, it's a good guess that the sample was originally pure, and not a mix to begin with.
Rocks in the same layer, if they are layered, are usually close in age. This isn't the only method for dating rocks, but it was one of the earlier ones used (by Lise Meitner et all around 1910-20, roughly) and the one that I know about.
However, most IDers look at it with something like Occam's Razor in mind - why would God introduce that much extra complexity to his creation process? If you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, evolution seems like so much wasted effort.
So, for that matter, would historic religion. Why wait a few thoudand years to redem humanity.
Why wait to send a savior?
Occam's razor is seriously overused. The simplest explanation is often not the best. But if you have two explanations that are equally good and equally complex, only then would you choose the simpler.
Thanks for all your posts, dude.
I just had to do a training module for eDiscovery at work. It's interesting to hear a real lawyer go over the finer points.
Though if he does have multiple secondary hard drives, it seems like it would be possible to be evasive. Not sure how they'd look for that. But then, I'm not a hardware geek. And I don't know how adept the techs for the RIAA would be, or how hard they'd try on an individual case.
as the rules governing the profession are greatly concerned with misleading actual or potential clients and the public.
I love the ambiguity in this statement.
The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions.
Also, consider that pigs are very immunologically similar to humans. Influenza in the past was massivly lethal, and often moved into the human population from the avian population (particularly ducks) through a pig intermediary.
In addition to STDs, I'd imagine various sexual laws were also intended to confine pregnancy to marriage.
in order to force a population increase in their followers
Of course, Judiasm put a huge emphasis on large families, just as the Catholic Church did. Prior to WWI or so, most cultures, with the exception of hunter gatherers like the native Americans or Tibetan Buddists put a lot of value on increasing their populations.
Before WWI and widespread industrialization, increases in population were critical to increasing the power of one's organization.
Nowadays, access to resources and technology seems more critical to maintaining power than manpower or individual ability. Which, perhaps, is the conenction you were making between patents and the modern world?
Or maybe I've mischaracterized your argument by attempting to see it in my own terms.
Okay, I should have previewed my post before, but it gets confusing if I don't have the correct italics.
Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general??
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)
The types of temperment are;
Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have.
Social - Is this what everyone else is using?
Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor.
Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.
Many people are a mix of more than one type.
Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.
I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.
Anyone else got a theory?
(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.
--
Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general?/i?
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)
The types of temperment are;
Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have.
Social - Is this what everyone else is using?
Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor.
Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.
Many people are a mix of more than one type.
Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.
I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.
Anyone else got a theory?
(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.
If the prize was a government-set mandatory liscensing fee for patent usage, with the intent of insuring noone bought a patent to sit on it, then maybe.
But there would be a lot of things that would have to be worked out. Specifically, how do you fairly set that price point.
Besides, the biggest problem with patents is that they're given away like candy. With a 'let the courts sort them out' attitude.
It's at goatse.cx.
Dude, this is so not the kind of black hole that the astronomers were talking about.
There's a difference between your government reading your email and your neighibor doing it.
People will gladly tell strangers things that they would never tell close friends.
Of you could just stick with the classics. Mail a copy of Fermat's theorum and include the just the note "Fantastic proof..."
"Agressivly chaste"? Oh man, that's even better. "I'll beat your ASS if you try to have sex with me! And not in a good way!"
Hmm...and if that's what he meant, I have an ex-girlfriend who might have been doing recruiting for them.... dammit.
Perhaps he meant "agressivly chaste." You can't get a job there simply by sleeping with a recruiter.
Which is great for the hiring process because we all know that the best programmers don't have the skill to seduce a recruiter anyways.
I see what you're saying. Thanks for the info. I agree with most of it. The only part I'd question would be
The problem with the theory is that it treats harvest time as the phenotype of a single gene (or perhaps a few genes). This is absolutely false.
If it became important for a plant to reach or not reach a certain stage of growth at a certain time, it could have a gene which would suppress other genes in a dominant fashion under the appropriate conditions. Such a gene could potentially make corn more uniform in the same way that a lawn mower makes grass uniform, by placing a limit on height, growth, etc. that would only be activated under particular conditions. (my thoughts, not Lewontin's)
But yeah, either way it would take a few generations more than purebreeding + crossbreeding. And it would probably, as you said, be non uniform for things like corn thickness (which I honestly hadn't considered.) But once developed, it could be adapted more readily through cross breeding.
I suppose my problem was that I kept hearing people talk about how crossbreeding of purebred strains dramatically increase the bounty of the plant, which is what comentators always focus on. And I just got sick of it.
Since you replied as an AC and probably aren't reading this, I'll be quick.
here we strip away the trivial particulars of whether or not we use hybridization etc. and arrive at the core of the opposing arguments you presented: crop uniformity and economy of scale vs. genetic diversity in production populations
That's not my point at all. That's your point it's a false dichotomy. This dichotomy is based on the unsupported notion that crops cannot be made uniform in the required ways without drastically reducing their genetic diversity.
Lewontin's point was that while hybridization allows certain advantages (simultaneous harvest among them, though I dont think he touches on this) that this can be selectivly bred for without reducing all the genetic diversity in a cultivar. You can selectivly breed a plant cultivar that always ripens at exactly the same time without seriously reducing the genetic diversity from the cultivar population. If selective pressure for ripening at a certain time is strong enough, and applied for enough time and under varying conditions, you'll get your plant. This cultivar will be more gentically diverse, and thus more resistant to various pathogens.
The problem is that such a plant, once developed, could be replanted and bred by farmers, whereas a hybrid between two homozygous purebred strains could not be replanted without a prohibitive decrease in yeild. So you have to buy more seed.
Or at least Lewontin said that there wasn't any legitimate scientific evidence to indicate the contrary.
As long as we're dealing with the sad truth... ...maybe he should go dig up Leigh Brackett and beg her for help.
I meant selectivly bred rather than open-polinated and corrected myself in a reply to my post.
w ontin
Would you make the same argument that selectivly bred non-hybrid crops couldn't be made to ripen at the same time?
R.C. Lewontin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Le
As for the safety of GM foods in relation to potential allergies, that is a valid concern, but you have to take it in context. Many major products--wheat, rice, peanuts, milk, etc--would fail an FDA review if not for the fact that they are grandfathered in under the "generally considered safe" rule due to the millions of people with (often fatal) allergic reactions to them.
I have no problem with branded GM foods in the same way I have no problem with milk labeled as milk. If I'm allergic to a certain brand of GM tomoatoes, I won't eat them. The problem, in my mind, is when "apples" are no longer apples. If the ingredient labels on food kept track of the varieties of crop used (This product contains flavr savr tomatoes beefsteak tomatoes, etc. may contain mixes of the following breeds of wheat...etc) , this wouldn't be a problem. Genetically modified foods are actually more standardized than "normal" varieties.
But keeping track of things this way is its own problem. It's not enough to separate into "GM" and "non-GM."
of reading. I can see how this might help with people who don't read greek, but with machine translation, that's not an issue.
As the saying goes; a month in the lab can save you a whole day in the library. Is this really new in a good way? Given the fact that many plants have alternate names, some have the same name, etc. it seems that familiarity with one's subject material is not a particularly useful thing to shortcut-out. Consider, for example, the parable of the 'mustard seed' in the gospels. A grown mustard plant is described as a great tree. Huh?! Even when people are familiar with the text, translations of old plant names are often difficult.
I'd just as soon read a machine translation of the bible or tartouffe than rely upon this technique. In fact, I'd sooner read a machine translation of the bible. Even if it mistranslated things, at least it'd be less likely to gloss the text. But that's not so much a problem with ethnobotany.
"Text mining" is a solution which found the wrong problem.
pardon me. Hybridization could have been replaced by selective breeding, not open pollination. Selective breeding would still produce a genetically diverse population with the desired traits.
If I was Monsanto's competitor, could I legally produce and release roundup-resistant weeds to nullify the benefits of roundup-ready soybeans?
While I consider myself an environmentalist, please consider this;
The current climate flies in the face of +90% of the climate models from 1990 for what the earth was supposed to look like in 2005. The sea level was supposed to have risen 10 inches. It hasn't.
Nobody is saying that there isn't global climate change. The question is whether our effect on global temperatures is actually being mitigated by unpredicted forces or if we're approaching some kind of tipping point where a heat sink gets filled up, the dam breaks and change is sudden, decisive and irreversable.
Consensus in the environmental sciences is not as valuable a thing as in most of the other natural sciences, because there are too many damn variables and you can't test anything.