scrappy

A triple contradiction seems evident in Carrie Prejean’s failed attempt to become Miss USA: 1. She had her boobs artificially altered to enhance her sex appeal and performance in beauty pageants. Is that fair? 2. A-Rod (apparently) took steroids to enhance his baseball performance. Why isn’t a boob job equivalent to an athlete’s use of performance-enhancing drugs? 3. She disdains same-sex marriage on the principle that it offends the natural order of things. Natural? Is this surgically bosomed woman caught up in a web of contradiction?

I watched most of the video, which, in my case, is just so much preaching to the choir. I'm surprised that Thompson didn't mention bicameralism. Julian Jaynes, with all his faults and adversaries, still said about the same thing Thompson is saying, but about 30 years earlier. I like Jaynes' approach a little better because he emphasized the role of symbolic language in the evolution of human consciousness.

I always wondered how Noah kept peace on his arc with a pair of T. rexes on board. If he hadn't done his job as ship captain it could have been a floating version of Jurassic Park.

Thank you for the education.

Just a dumb question here: Does the House have the same filibuster rule as the Senate?

cameron: The “how?” question you are asking is merely a lab-tech question. Here is how scientists replicate hepatitis C virus in laboratory. From the article: “The NIDDK group used a strain of HCV that would have applications to the greatest number of people - genotype 1, the major type of HCV of human infections worldwide and the type most resistant to current therapies. They constructed an HCV replica using a DNA copy of the original HCV single-strand RNA genome. They placed the DNA copy between two ribozymes, RNA molecules that have enzymatic function and can cleave RNA sequence at specific locations. These two ribozymes were designed to generate the correct ends of the HCV genome and to act as start and stop buttons to gene activity. The construct was "naked," meaning that it contained only nucleic acids, the genetic material of the virus, and did not have the HCV viral envelope, a protective shell of lipids and proteins that surrounds the viral RNA in fully-formed HCV. The naked HCV construct was then placed into human liver cells in a cell culture medium.” The short answer then is that they used live human liver cells to culture their virus (“in vitro”). Whether or not viruses are alive is a great question. Clearly, they are not living organisms (they cannot reproduce autonomously). But virologists and microbiologists usually differentiate live viral cultures from a dead ones, making the issue confusing. You may recall the big flap in the 1950s over Salk’s polio vaccine verses that of Sabin. Salk vaccinated with live viruses while Sabin used dead ones.

Would you believe mail-order genetic kits? Quoted from the article: "A small group of US researchers reported on Thursday they had built an infectious poliovirus from scratch, using only a genetic blueprint from the Internet as a guide and mail-order, and tailor-made sequences from a laboratory supply service to assemble the deadly virus. The man-made virus led to paralysis or death in mice engineered to carry the human receptor for poliovirus…It is the closest anyone has yet come to creating life in a test tube — although the scientists deny a virus, which is not a living cell but which can replicate itself, is alive in the same sense as a bacterium, plant, or a human being." Also worth noting here is the assertion that a virus is not a living cell. There are many good scientists who would disagree with that assertion. Nevertheless, in a very specific way not unlike computer viruses, they are digital parasites.

No, I’m not saying an intelligent designer is needed to make life. That would be just another unexplained black box in the abiogenesis hypothesis. What I am saying is that scientists know of no principle that allows for the reduction of a chemical processes to any kind of digital code in any system. (When I say “digital” I’m following Dawkins’ assertion that genes are “pure information,” and that they are assembled out of just four kinds of information bits—nucleotides, i.e. digits). There is no doubt that digitally genetic information emerged at least once, somewhere somehow, but we haven’t enough knowledge about it to understand how it happened during abiogenesis, here on Earth or elsewhere. I also take the position that there is only one kind of biological life—digitally genetic life—and that, in itself, may tell us that abiogenesis was a one-time phenomenon. Others will tell you that as soon as the first life form emerged it eat up all of its competitors, leaving not a trace of them. I also think this is a risky assumption. At least you're getting two POVs: genes first v. metabolism first. It will take a lot more knowledge to see who's right.

lucaspa, I’ve read your recommended articles about protocells and pigmented proteinoids. Yes, they do speak to certain possible aspects of the “hypothetical participation of proteinoid melanoidin pigments in prebiotic evolution.” I have no quibble with this line of research. It seems important enough to me. But I struggle to understand why only chemical analogues are important to “prebiotic evolution.” Life—biological life, anyway—is more than just little cells full of vigorous chemicals…much more! But then I’m of a “Genetic First/RNA World” persuasion. I can’t so lightly pass over the obvious requirement of genes to make living things biologically alive. Still, I’ll respect your POV, made all the more credible by a recent article coauthored by Harold Morowitz. If you haven’t already read the article “The Origin of Life” in the May-June 2009 issue of American Scientist, written by James Trefil, Harold J. Morowitz and Eric Smith (not yet available on the Internet), you may want to, because it largely supports your POV. Whenever I see Harold Morowitz attach his name to something I pay attention; he of course is a major player in p-chem and biochem. I used his 1968 texbook “Energy Flow in Biology” in grad courses I took in the early ‘70s. It’s still on my bookshelf and I still use fairly often. The main point of Trefil et al.’s 2009 article is to add theoretical support to Albert Szent-Gyorgi’s claim: “Life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest.” And I find this article to be compelling…up to a point. Here are a few of my observations of this article: 1. The formation of protocells in the early stages of abiogenesis may not have been necessary, because the pore spaces in rocks could have provided the needed enclosure to facilitate certain aspects of prebiotic chemistry. 2. Morowitz and his crew prefer the “Metabolism First” hypothesis to the “Genetic First/RNA World” hypothesis, mainly because they see life as system of chemical analogues, with its perfunctory genetics coming along naturally and as needed in the course of abiogenesis (but just how that happened, they do not elaborate). 3. The authors see the citric acid cycle—the heart of all metabolic pathways—as a strong indicator of early metabolism (almost like a chemical “fossil”). 4. The authors are working in the area of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics (akin to Ilya Prigogine’s far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, I presume), looking for nonenzymatic chemical reactions that led to modern life. 5. The authors are predisposed to see abiogenesis as a chemical necessity rather than a matter of pure chance. Now, here’s my main objection to this hypothesis: Life, to me, is more than a system of chemical analogues. At some critical point in the process of abiogenesis—the point where biological life qualified as being truly alive—there had to be “invented” a genetic language capable of recording a cell’s building instructions in digital code. And not only that, but also a system had to be “invented” for transcribing and translating that digital code into a cell’s infrastructure. Do you know of any principle of nature—the kind of principle that scientists should be looking for—that accounts for the reduction of chemical analogues into a digital code? Not even Morowitz can persuade me to accept that such an incredible feat should be regarded as perfunctory in the process of abiogenesis.

You might say that a speciation is a kind of dead-end evolution, since every species that ever evolved has or will face extinction. But why even bother with the concept? In 5 billion years all kinds of biological evolution occurring on Earth will be toast...when our biosphere is obliterated by the solar red giant.

How about a one-sex marriage for the same-sexers and a two-sex marriage for the dif-sexers? But wouldn't that mean that a one-sex marriage is only half a marriage...if you can go all the way to two for the maximum effect?

Is this your own private theory? Do you have any references to offer in support of it?

Dak, iNow is correct: there is no direction to evolution, no progress, no attainment of anything. The fallacy of evolutionary direction was dispatched long ago. And what is this “shannon-filter”? I’m suspecting it’s some kind of imagined entropy filter. Please educate me.

Funny how one can write a sentence like this, and in the writing demonstrate all the difference one needs to...well...to see the difference.

Just think of the possibilities of "Save As."

I am assuming that all of this discussion is about the special consciousness of humans (HC), and not about dog consciousness or fish consciousness. Having read just about every book on consciousness that I can get my hands on, I’m still in a quandary about the role of a written symbolic language in emergence of HC. To me, it still seems that the appearance of our symbolic language is more of a precursor to HC than it is a result of it. The hummingbirds that come to my feeder are far more conscious than you might think possible. If the feeder is dry or the sugar water is stale they will fly at my door or catch my attention through the window to “signal the need” for me to get out there and do something about it. They “know” exactly what they are doing; and they “know” that I’m the one who is in charge of maintaining their feeder. My friend George, a farmer, has a lot more hummers than I do, and he is quite familiar with hummer consciousness. They even fly into his cabin when their feeder is dry and flutter in his face with the obvious appeal for a little service out there. And they will fly around his head and sit on his hands while he replaces the feeder. The size of a hummer’s brain is about that of a pea. My point: With such a small brain the hummers can do and learn an incredible amount of consciousness-like things, even to point of communicating with humans for their sugar fixes. But what don’t they have that humans have? A recordable symbolic language. Once a recordable symbolic language is invented a new condition is made possible: recursive thought and reflection, which (I boldly claim) is the key aspect to HC. That is why I am not so charmed by the imposition of fleshy analogues and big, fancy nervous systems. To me, HC still seems to have emerged with advent of our recordable symbolic language (which, btw, is digital). So I have this question: Is HC possible without a recordable symbolic language?

"Indefinite healthy lifespans" will not be possible in for biological entities. We are ephemeral critters, and that's all we'll ever be. Our job now as humans is to re-invent ourselves in a post-biological context. I'm not at all sure how we'll do this, but we'll do it anyway. My best guess is that we will take certain key features from our electromagnetic nervous system and render them operable and durable in a cyber context, which is already highly developed. (Our nervous systems and our computer systems both operate electromagnetically...and coincidentally, which may be a clue.) The biggest challenge that lies ahead is to gain a thorough understanding of consciousness—human consciousness—and reframe it without all the biological frailties.

Dang! I wish I had said that.

lucaspa, you are misinformed on what it takes to be biologically alive. To be biologically alive, your prebioants (which is exactly what they are) must be subject to natural selection. You are talking about prebioants that no doubt appeared as pre-biotic superstructures and housekeeping parts: protocells, protoproteins and other protochemicals that were needed to be assembled somehow for that splendid event of abiogenesis to occur. Sure, your protocells can make copies of themselves, but that's only a function of physical analogues, much the same way crystals "reproduce" themselves. Whatever they were, those protocells, they were non-living chemicals—biologically non-living, that is—and probably extremely rare. But they had to occur somewhere, sometime, somehow, so we let the imagined components of that “primordial soup,” prebioants and all, stand in for what we don’t know yet about that splendid moment (or moments?) when biological life kicked in and Darwinian evolution took over. I am talking about what was necessary for that splendid moment to occur—the one when a genetic language kicked in and those prebiotic protocells took on the job of genetic inheritance. That's when biological life began; that's when abiogenesis occurred. Please consider this from A. G. Cairns-Smith’s Seven Clues to the Origin of Life (1985, pp. 114-116): “First clue: Genetic information is the only thing that can evolve through natural selection because it is the only thing that passes between generations over time...” Now, he also mentions a fifth clue: “Fifth clue: Primitive machinery is usually different in its design approach (and hence materials of construction) from the later advanced counterparts…” I agree, of course, and that primitive machinery is exactly what he says it is: “primitive machinery.” As such, all biologically living things owe a debt of gratitude to your prebioants, but however splendid they are they don't represent what happened when abiogenesis became a reality.

Yes, I’ve taken biology. I have a Ph.D. in biology. Anyway, you say base pairs are “attracted to each other”? I never learned about any such "attractions" in the chemistry courses I ever took. You’re seeing protein synthesis as entirely tinkertoy chemistry; as such, in your eyes, all reactions are sterochemical. I think you’re viewing genetic transcription and ribosomal translation as if they were stereochemical all the way from codons to amino acids. So, I might ask you if you have every read the crucial paper by F. H. C. Crick, “The Origin of the Genetic Code” (1968, J. Mol. Biol., pp. 367-379). If you had you would see why proponents of the stereochemical theory face “grave difficulties”: If you could get a copy of this paper through your public library (I don't know of an Internet source) and read it carefully, you would see why the origin of the genetic code is not so easily dismissed as perfunctory.

Only one reason: the Washington state legislature has decided that same-sex civil unions do not qualify as “marriages,” owing to the fact that the Washington state legislature defines “marriage” as a civil union between one and one woman. But of course we've been all over this before.

After all is said and done, the final solution to this dilemma is for the government to no longer officiate over “marriages,” per se, but instead serve only the legitimate needs for establishing legal domestic partnerships. Why does the government need to declare people “married” if it can meet all of its legal needs by simply declaring them civilly united?

Thank you for pointing out my hang ups. And you are quite right: I am terribly hung up about the need for a digital genetic code to arise (however mysteriously) in the course of any abiogenesis event. If you don’t recognize that simple and obvious fact then we may not have enough common ground to stand on for a debate. Abiogenesis requires more than the propagation of chemical analogues in a fatty bubble; it requires also the propagation of coded instructions for the maintenance and development of whatever proto-organism has emerged. You cannot simply dismiss this part of abogenesis as perfunctory. Your little “prebionts” in their lipid bubbles, how do they accomplish reproduction without a genetic language? Just simply duplicating themselves in chemical composition is not enough; calcite crystals can do that. What makes abiogenesis so important is that the direct progeny of that special event carried along coded instructions on the development of the progeny’s chemical analogues.

YES! YES! YES! They are equally legitimate, just as Washington's new law makes them so in Washington. But that doesn't mean I agree that a same-sex domestic partnership qualifies as a "marriage." That's because I regard "marriage" and a DP between one man and one woman. Washington state got this one right!

Well, there is one issue here: Are you stating fact or theory or what? There is no commonly agreed-upon theory that "the role of 'genetic material' as a 'code' for protein synthesis only came about after the protobionts started 'replicating' through normal lipid interactions." That is just one of many hypotheses about abiogenesis that lacks any kind of empirical evidence to support it. Aren't you being just a little naive about the mysterious formation of a digit genetic language? Nothing in your theory accounts for that.