Edtharan

you know that is a bit of a strawman. There are many things that are anoying and not dangerous (like loud music at night) that are banned. So one could turn your argument around and ask why they are banned and not smoking? You are applying blinkered sight to your position. Things are banned that are annoying, and is usually based on how annoying they are. Smoking, to non smokers can be more anoying that loud music at night, more offesive the people breaking wind, etc. These are not acceptable and have banns, but you don't stand up for the rights of people to play loud music at night because it does not have any medical effect on people. One can not say that one can't ban something because it is annoying, as there are many things that have been banned. This Slippery Slope" argument is completely unfounded or we would already be living in a "1984"esqe world. Remember this is not a proposed ban of all smokeing, but baning smokeing where it causes a negative impact (wither health or annoyance) on others. Smoking in places where it won't cause an negative impact on nonsmokers is posable today. It just means a small extra effort on the part of smokers and respect for people that don't smoke. Non smokers do respect the rights of smokers to smoke, but many smokers don't seem to reciprocate this respect, and choose to smoke where it negatively effects us non smokers. If you want rights, you also have to accept the responsabilities that come with them. I would say that it is the responsability of smokers to respect the rights of nonsmokers to not have to put up with secondhand smoke, weather it is dangerous or not. It is also the responsabiltiy of nonsmokers to allow areas for smokers to have a smoke if they choose. I gladly accept this responsability and if I have friends over who do smoke I make sure that there are places where they can do so without effecting those that don't. Here in Australia, there are places that smokers can go to smoke (in bars there are ventilated rooms, etc), but they are usually a bit out of the way (otherwise they would be in the main thoruogh fare wher ethe nonsmokers are), but they are almost never used. The smokers will usually make a token effort and stand outside the main doors of any building, where we have to walk. This is the smokers showing little respect or acceptance of responsability. The fact that smokers don't show this respect means that laws have to be made. And even then, they complain that their rights are being troden on, etc. They are already treding on my rights.

I find the smell of smoke very offesive (I have been know to vomit at the smell of cigerette smoke - I am allergic to it). But if I was to make a less offesive odur (say breaking wind in public places) it would be frowned on. If smokers claim the right to produce such offensive oduers (and this is beside the debate over weather second hand smoke causes desease or not) then I also claim the right to make ofensive odures. Maybe all the nonsmokers should start a "Baked Beans" stance against smokers. When ever smokers polute the air with their smoke we should "Let Loose" and take a page out of their books and say that it is our right to do so. It is only natural and there has been no scientific link with Second Hand Farts and deseases, so they shouldn't complain. Actually what I said above about the Baked Beans stance is just to encourage thought in those that do smoke and don't care of the effect on others. The fact that they smoke in public places and the odure of cigerette smoke is very offesive (and carries a long way) and they take no thought as to the effect it has on nonsmokers. They talk about thier Rights to smoke and their Freedom to choose to smoke where they like and even make statements that baning smoking from all public places is a slippery slope to totaitarian government regualtions on what we can or can not do. But what about My fredom not to loose my lunch because they whant to polute my air with their smoke. What about my right to have the freedom to go to nightclubs and bars without having to only go to smoke free ones. Their push for their rights will inevitably crush my rights. If people choose to smoke they should be allowed to. But not where it will effect others.

You know for my year 11 computing project I made an evolution simulator. The user could enter any word or sentance (up to 80 characters - this was in the old DOS days) and it would try to evolve it. The way I did this was to initially produce 100 random strings of the requiered length. Then I would select the best strings. I did this is 2 ways: 1) I would count the numbers of each letter in the string. The best were the strings that had similar numbers of the letters in the target string (ie if the target string had 5 letter "F"s then the closter a string had to that number of "F"s the better it was) 2) I would check the positions of letters. If a string had more matching letters in the same position as the target string the higher it rated. I then weighted the two conditions above (#1 was weighted slightly higher) and then chose the best 9 and discarded the rest. I then mutated them (transposed letters, changed letters, etc) and made 10 coppies of each. For the remaining 10 strings (in the set of 100) I would populate with purely random strings. This would usually reproduce the desier target string in less than a minute. Now unlike real world evolution, this is a directed evolution with a specific goal. But one could see this goal as a section of DNA that is the most efficient at doing it's job (eg: to produce the best protien shape, etc). For my year 12 computing project, I made a few changes. Instead of having a preset string, the user would choose, after each generation, the strings that they though best matched their desiered target string(s). I also used around 200 strings for this one. The "evolution" simulator on the webpage is just a random string simulator. With no Selection it can never come close to simulating evolution.

This is an easy one to answer: Apes are evolveing today. They would not have to have been seperated, if they had similar areas of occupation, they would have competed for resources and thus they would have stronger evolutionary pressures on them because of this. These pressures would have selected for greater difference between them. As each group found it's own niche they would then have pressure to take advantage of that niche better (be come specialists). There would also have been pressure (most likely from changing conditions) to become generalists. These conflicting pressures is what can cause the variety of spieces that exist.

Here is an easy way to compare your quality of life: Id today worse or better than yesterday? Is this week worse or better than lst week? And so on. Another more complex way is this: What would I like my life to be like? How does this compare with how my life is now? And What is the worst life I can imagine? How does my life compare with this? So it is easy to make these comparisons if we use our memory and our imaginations.

The Eye is an amazing and complex structure. It can seem that it could not possible evolve. But it can. Some chemicals involved in biology react to light, some more so than others. Many of these chamicals have other functions than just reacting to light. SOme of these reactions results in a chemical or electircal cascade. If this occured in a nerve (like) cell, this would then be able to be picked up by other nerves and so pass the signal along. This woulld be a big advantage to a createure. Having cells that could determine if they were in light or shadow would allow a create to detect if it was night or day, or if another creature was near them. Please note at this stage there is no eye, just patches of the organisms that can detect if their cells are in light or dark. Any improvemnts to this setup would be an advantage. If a creature, instead of having these patches distributed around the body, had them in regual places, this would enable it to direct this vision and so operate much better. Improvements of this would be good too. Maybe layers of cells from over it to provide protection. If the cells became clear it would also be better. Once you have layers of cells over the eye patches, then you can have them form structures that would eb benificial (like a lense). These first lenses would most likely be something thathelped concentrate light rather than focusing the light, but the better the focus the more advantagious it would be to the organism. Once it "Lense" is able to focus light effectively, we have what most people would recognise as an eye. So by simple steps, and each step provides an advantage to the organisms, eyes can evolve. I have heard of an experiment where they simulated this process on a computer, each step they allowed the computer to produce multiple, biologically possible, changes to the structure. They when from cells that chemically responded to light right up to a human looking eye. On the computer this took around 1,000,000 generations. In the real worlld, this would have taken longer, but it is therefore plauseable that the eye could have easily evolved in organisms (and could even have evolved multiple times and probably has).

What if the station was created taround a cosmic string? If you get too close to one the gravity would definiylt pull you apart, but if you were carful about the distance might one not get a similar gravity to Earth's? This could also be used to power the station too.

I have an idea that might beable to determin at what level the mind emergens from. It probably couldn't be performed today due to lack of computing power, but one might do a smaller version of it with todays computers. In engineering ther eis the concept of a "Black Box". What this means is that you don't need to know the exact internal mechanisms of a process, as long as you can repeat the conversion from input to output. Using this we could det up an experiment that attempts to reproduce the output od conciousness/mind from the top down. So we start by seeing if its the way the brain body interacts, then the way neurons interact, then intracellualr interaction etc. At one point there will be a breakdown where we can no longer get the expected outputs from the inputs. Once we map all these, we then have a map as to where we can start looking for the emergance of the Mind. An interesting conclusion cna be drawn if this breaks down at ever level is that Mind is supernatural in origin. I have a simpler experiment to do: At what point does the black box breakdown in the operation of a neuron (as someone who is interested in artificial neural networks I have pondered this many times). This experiment would attempt to replicate the input to output of a real neuron with an artificial neuron in a computer. One would have to start at the lowest resolution (ie not including anything about how the cell works, etc) and add detail to the modle untill one can replicate the behaviour of the neuron. This experiment would actually form part of the larger experiment as layed out above.

There have been various attempts at this experiment (usually by having a dieing person lieing on some form of scales). The experiemnts I have heard about gave these results due to either fruad or more commonly bad experiemtnal design and error. When these experiments are repeated the results can not be reproduced. Thi8s is an important part of good experimental results, they must be reproduceable and none of these experiments has been able to do this (it's a bit like the "Cold Fusion" experiemnts that were done).

This is wrong. The competition between members of the same species is much more influential than between predator/prey. Think about this: To escape the Lion, you only need to run a bit faster than the next person (of course once their gone, you are the slowest ). If predator evolution was more influenced by it ability to catch prey, then why hasen't "the ultimate predator" evolved that coudl alwayse catch every prey it chases? This is because if such a preadtor evolved it would be too good and it's population would soar. This increased amount of predators would soon reduced the population levels of the prey to a point where the predator could not survive. Now each predator that kills prey is removeing the ability of another predator to eat. They are now in competition with one another. Eventually the uberpredators will eat the last prey available and then die of starvation. If an area (isolated so it doesn't get the super predator invading) didn't evolve this uberpredator and only had the more nonuberpredators, then this situation would not likely occure (it still could if the predators were too good at chatching prey). So, natural selection favours those predators who don't catch a too much prey over those that are too good. The nonuberpredators will ofcourse experence death from starvation, but that will act as a negative feedback to keep the population in check. One might as well ask "Why does gravity play fair?". It pulls all objects equally. This is not ment as a snub (there are no stupid questions, just stupid answers). It is just that to provide a "Nonstupid" answer is complicated. First: To ask the question "does evolution play fair?" has built into the assumption that it could "Not play fair", that it (or a designer) has some choice as to how it works. This is not the case. Second: Evolution works by selection of the fittest. What fittest means is "an organism that can successfully reproduce the best". It makes no judgement on the physical attributes of the organism, only that in it current environment it can reproduce successfully (and the more the merrier ). Organisms that reproduce more will have more offspring that reproduce and so on. So being able to reproduce the most is an advantage. In sexually reproduceng species, only 2 offspring are needed to, themselves, produce offspring (grow to a reproductive age and then reproduce) to maintain the population. If more are produced then the population grows. If less are produced the population shinks. If a population grows too far it will outstrip the environment's ability to suport them. This will cause an increase in deaths and less of the population will be able to reproduce. If you think about this a bit, you will see that this will lead to a stabilisation of the population so that you will get 2 offspring reaching adulthood and reproduceing for every 2 adults in the population. This is why, nomatter how good an organism's defence is ther will always be those that do not make it. And to make sure that at least 2 offspring make it to reproduce themselves, most organisms hedge their bets and produce lots of offspring in thier lives so that there is a chance that their offspring will be the ones to reproduce. The same applies for predators. If they get too good at killing prey, the will wipe put their prey and then starve to death. This at first might sound like there is a mysterious "Hand" that guides them, but there is not. Populations of predators will become too good and they will then wipe themselves out. Evolution will produce these uberpredatos, but they will not be able to survive, wher as the nonuberpredators will (and therefore that is what we see today). We also get booms and busts in the prey species too. Think of a locust swarm. This is where the ability to reproduce outstrips the ability of the environemnt to suport the organism. They swarm over the landscape consumeing all the available resources, and eventually, because there is no longer any food to keep them alive, the die.

LOL. I just used http://www.Dictionary.com Although I voted for : "The mind is material but primarily involves other systems besides the thalamus/neocortex". This is not exactly my position. I experimented with Artifical Neural Networks on the computer a bit a while ago. From these initial experiment, I came to the conclusion that it was not just the way the Neurons were connected, but also was the sequance tha tthe neurons fired in. For a simplistic example: There are 4 neurons A, B, C and D. Neuron A is "wired" to casue B to fire but suppress the fireing of C and D. Neuron B is "wired" to casue A to fire but suppress the fireing of C and D. Neuron C is "wired" to casue D to fire but suppress the fireing of A and B. Neuron D is "wired" to casue C to fire but suppress the fireing of A and B. Now with the exact same layout for the neurons, there are 2 stable states this net work can be in: A->B->A or C->D->C The pattern of fireing is therefore important to the functioning of the neural network. Thus, my position is that although the wireing in the thalamus/neocortex might be what leads to a "Mind" (but I am still undecided as to what other sections of the brain and body are nessesary), ther exist (semi intangeable) fireing patterns that are essential to the functioning of these areas.

umm, no. Eating gives you nutrients, not sleeping. Blood carries the nutrients from your gut to the various organs of your body. Sleeping (or not) does not greatly effect the transportation of nutrients to the brain.

err, sorry, I haden't had much sleep lately. What scicop was saying was that there exist stable sequances of genetic code, that if changed much, stop a viable organism developing. There can be more than one viable, stable sequance tha tperforms the same function and the chance that a sequance can spontainiously mutate from one to the other is verry low. If two similar organisms are found, one can use these sequances to trace their ancestery to see if they are genetically related. If the sequance is the same then the chances are that the two organisms are closely related. If the sequances are different, then the chances are that they not related (but could still be, but it would have to be before that sequance was evolved in them). I hope this helps.

Yeah, it is not the same as two distinct cell lines, but as far as I know it is still called chimerism. Actually, in women cells from a baby will enter the mother and remain there for the rest of her life and function as they were intended. This makes all Mothers, Chimeres. This is because during pregnancy, cells from the foetus will cross the placenta. The mother has a suppressed immune system (otherwise it would attack the foetus and cause a misscariage), and this allows the cells to survive. Even after pregnacy these cells seem to still be accepted by the mother without rejection.

I don't know if lack of sleep kills brain cells, I do know that lack of slee can kill you. It can kill you faster that lack of food will (from what I have read). Your brain does do more repair when you are asleep than when you are awake, but I don't know that it actually causes damage (I have not read or heard anything to that effect). Different people need different amounts of sleep. Some can quite happily survive on 6 hours of sleep (but these are rare), although many would function better on more sleep. As someone who has extremely erratic sleep due to chronic pain (I have had this for over 6 years due to an injury), I can say that you can operate on 4 hous of sleep for a few months, but you will definitely be opperating well below you ability (when I was like this I would not have felt comfortable driving due to the state I was in - even if my injury allowed me to). Lack of sleep can degrade your performance more than alchol can (and take longer to recover from). And I will admit that sometimes my posts on this forum can seem a little vague, and that is usually because I have not had much sleep in the few days previous.

If you just read the words then it seems anti American, but if you look just at the pictures you see that it is makeing parralels with both China and America. I think it is actually saying that even though there exists the perception of difference between the two countries and cultures, that there are essentially very similar in many ways.

Also gene sequances that can be in one of several stable motifs, but there is only one that can be found in organisms also evidence common ancestory. And where organisms have evolved the equivalent (but non identical) motifs it shows that the two species must have no common ancestor scince the motif evolved (thus proving a certain seperation).

There is a phenomina called Chimerism (spelling?), where you have 2 different geno types expressed in the one body. There are several way to reach this ranging from fraternal twins that merged dureing early gestation the two different genese expressing in differnt areas of the body. I have heard of more servere chimmerism where the skin colour in differnt patches on the body can be noticeably different (and apparently it is more common in women than men - and more common than you think). I even have heard of people having two distinct sets of genes in differnt parts of thier boddies (that is if you took a sample of genetic material from one part of the body it would be different to that from another part of the body).

Just because one trait is advantagous to one species, does not mean that it would be equally advantagous to another. At the root of it this is why humans have a much larger mental capacity than other animals. However there is a lot of mitagating circumstances, but they rely on a case by case analysis. Looking at why chimanzes didn't develop bigger brains (as they are most closely related to humans) is different to why a crocodile didn't. Untill we can acutally look at another intelligent species (at least intelligent enough to comunicate with us), then it is unlikely that we will be able to reach a conclusion to this, other than because it was advantagious for us (in our circumstances) and not for others. The fact that Intelligence is not rampant in other species leads to the conclusion that intelegence (or at least minor rises in mental capacity) is not nessesarily a good survival trait. 100,000 years (roughtly the age of Homo Sapiens) is a flash in the pan when it comes down to geological time. If we anhialated our selves (or got wiped out by some natural disaster) we might not even leave much in the way of evidence that we were ever here in a million years time (though there might be some space junk still around - maybe).

If you look at it in a certain way, humans are just an intermediate form from an quadraped ancestor to something much more suited for bipedal existance. Thus it is not supriseing that we have structures that aren't perfect for bipedal locomotion.

Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. The common ancestor and the links that lead up to modern humans and modern apes are extinct.

The cones in our eyes come in 3 types. One for Red, one for Blue and one for Green. Each of these cones uses a chemical that breaksdown in light of the appropreate wavelength. When we look at something for a while these chemicals get depleated and take a short period of time to replenish. If we rapidly then look at something else (white works best) then the cones that had the chemical depleated will only give a weak (or nonexistant) signal to our brains. The cones that didn't get depleated will give a much stronger signal to the brain. For example: If I was to look at a green image for a while (30 sec is long enough) then I was to look at a white wall, I would see a Red+Blue (Magenta) image. The colours in the castle picture are chosen so as to depleate the cones of the oposite colour from the original picture (in most image manipulation software they have a function to do this). The black and white image is used to give the rods (they only detect the intensity of light not the colour) the corect brightness levels for the picture. An interesting side line of this, is that if you are able to keep your eyes completely still (this is almost imposable unless you use a muscle relaxent injected into the muscles around the eye - don't try this at home, it is usually done for eye surgery) then over a period of time the colour detection chemicals in your eyes will be depleted and you will no longer see anything. If something is moved (or walks past your vision) you will see it as it will activate the cones in your eyes that have not yet been depleted.

I think the word "normal" is used to attempt to polarise people on one side of the debate or other. I believe that asexuality is normal. It is not an unheathy sexual behaviour. By this I mean that it does not negativly effect scociety and does not harm the person who is asexual. This is the same with homosexuality. There are some that will debate this point of view and here is my response: Niether Homosexuality or Asexuality harms society, discrimination, however does. I would class a disorder or dysfunction as something that does harm to the individual or to society, and as neiter Asexuality or Homosexuality does, then it should be classed as an Orientation. It is a narrow view that only sees hetrosexuality as the only sexual orentation. But they have a range of strong emotions that you will never understand or experence, so by your reasoning you must also be mentaly unstable as you don't have access to these feelings. Besides not being able to experence strong feelings (or not experenceing them even if you can) does not make you mentally unstable. Have you experenced the strong feelings that deep meditation can bring? Not everyone can experence them or atempt to experence them even if they could. Are all these people mentally unstable?

Actualy, I think that ethics in this case is important. If you subscribe to Silkworm's view that ethics has no importance in experimentation, then I should be able to design a killer virus that will kill off all (or most) humanity, just because I am curious to see if it can be done. This might be an extreme situation, so you might just look at weather the ebola virus' lethality could be engineered into the flue virus and then, because ethics don't apply, release it in a public space because you need better data as to how it would propagate in a real world environmant. This is the reason we need ethics. To stop us from doing self destructive things. However, to much emphasis on ethics can stifle science and technological inovation. There is a point somewhere inbetween the extremes that we need to achive. What is also importanat to accept is that this optimal point will change as society changes. This cneeds constant debate and public discussion for as long as we continue to do research in these areas.

I voted that some things can be good and others are bad because GE humans can be used for both good and bad. It may (not nessesarily) lead to descrimination, etc. The big factor I think is humans. It is our capacity to exploit and only see in the short term, that may cause GE humans down a bad path. On the other hand it had great potential for good. It could be used to eliminate many deseases, give us better mental and physical capacities, extand life (and quality of life), allw injuries to heal better (it would be good if we could regrow limbs like some organisms can), etc. Personaliy modification is a big controvosy, even today. We have drugs that can change the behaviour and personality of people (eg antidepressants). This could be taken to extremes where all our behaviours are regulated to fit a concept of "Normal", or to the other, where people can just modify their personalities and behaviours at whim.