October 30, 2005
October 30, 2005
October 29, 2005
New MP3 player
Here is a nice track i got from Dombart a while back…
check out the pop-up music page for browser friendly playback.
Installed A New MP3 player from:
http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/
And another from an amazing amsterdam musician i heard on the street:
been trying a shoutcast stream - but seems unsuccessful:
October 28, 2005
GMO
Wild what a search for vegatable based ink-jet refills can bring up:
A NOTE ON GENETIC ENGINEERING OF PLANTS
& OTHER GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMOS)
Although Ben studied genetic engineering at university, all of our breeding is by traditional methods only. On grounds of both safety and ethics we strongly oppose all genetic engineering and the patenting of plants.
The subject is very complex, but the dangers are very simple. We believe that, without exaggeration, the release of Genetically Modified crops truly is a dangerous practice that threatens the entire ecosystem.
It is simply not true that Genetically Modified crops will solve third-world food problems or require less pesticides. This is no more than advertising ’spin’.
Genetic engineering is NOT just a variant of what farmers and breeders have done for centuries. It is a completely new science that can give very odd, very different and highly unpredictable results. It is not ‘natural’ for a plant to have a fish gene in it, and there is no knowing what odd poisons the plant might make as a result of finding fish proteins floating around in its sap.
GM plants are probably unsafe to eat, but we don’t know for sure, because due to intense political lobbying, none of these plants have undergone any food safety testing(!) - which is why it is important that food should be labelled as to whether it contains GM ingredients or not. The only benefit of GM crops is to the large multinationals that are using them to take control of the worlds food supply.
We will not knowingly have anything to do with genetically modified seeds
Part of The Real Seed Catalogue at www.realseeds.co.uk
October 28, 2005
Belly of a Drunken Piano @ Coffee Blue
Coffee Blue presents the powerful OFF-Broadway Hit:
Belly of a Drunken Piano
A Tribute to the music of Tom Waits
featuring Stewart D’Arrietta and Band
Sunday November 6 8:30 PM
1000 Main St (corner of 10th Ave) Belmar, NJ
$20 in advance (let me know if you like me to grab you a ticket)
$25 at the door
October 27, 2005
evolution :: intelligent design :: creation
The odds that even that first bacterium in the primordial soup was due
to pure chance looks something like this:
1 protein is about 200 amino acids, there are 20 possible amino acids�
that makes a 1 : 20^200 chance that a single protein could emerge
properly from pure chance.
This is about 10^260 which is enormously* greater than the number of
atoms spread out in the observable universe (estimated at 10^80)
*Lets take a quick look at how enormously - 10^260 is equal to
10^80×10^180 which is 10^20 more than 10^80×10^80 (or 10^80 squared)
(side note � I just totally bugged out a business guy from Detroit
with this idea and by telling him that science and evolution via
random chance is basically impossible bullshit especially since our
point of observation is by nature NOT objective� he wasn’t exactly
ready to hear that, but I guess his dreams will be interesting
tonight)
One more time. There is about as much chance for a single protein to
randomly emerge as there is for you to throw an apple out into the
cosmos and it to bounce off of exactly 200 of the atoms in the
observable universe (and the 10^160 parallel universes) and return to
earth with your name written on the side of it.
OK so now we have a dilemma. DNA is verifiably the LANGUAGE of life.
Not only do we not know who what or how this language was/is/can be
written� we aren’t even looking for such an intelligent force.
Now lets just take a short breath back into the statistical mathematical realm.
The absolute MOST simple form of life (smallest bacterial genome) has
580,000 DNA letters/bases. Even with the ridiculous premis that the
introns (unknown undeciferable repetitive regions of DNA) are actually
“junk” comprising 97% of most genomes.. that leave 17,400 bases � 5800
amino acids (at 3 bases per aa) � 29 proteins.
So as if a 1:10^260 wasn’t impossible enough odds for you, lets make
that 1:10^260 x 29
:-) or is it (1:10^260)^29 ??
Ok back to the language thing. All this math is based on the premis
that the language and the letters already exist. ACTG � the building
blocks of DNA. Pretty complex molecules in themselves. We could launch
into another statistical exercise in combinatorial mathematics at this
point if felt like it� Something about the number of atoms in each
ACTG molecule. But lets ignore that for now, lets just assume that the
primordial soup was magically, randomly, chaotically, or just somehow
endowed with these 4 extrememly complimentarily organized molecules.
Lets imagine that this soup was so full of these little molecules and
they were bouncing into each other and ready to combine into DNA
(actually I’m not even sure if they would do so given the chance � but
lets assume they would and may have). [Again this is simply a
calculation about the random occurance of a meaningful string of
information in the language of DNA and it is “not to mention” the need
for a very specific system of complex proteins for transforming that
DNA into actual proteins]
How fast would they have to “try” different combinations to result in
that first super simple 29 protein bacterium???
Lets look at it from 2 time scales:
1. the currently accepted idea is that the earth is 4.5 billion years
old and our first records of single celled organisms is at 3.5 billion
years � leaving 1 billion years (3.2×10^16 sec) for random
combinations. That leaves 9.2×10^244 attempts per second. By our
current estimates that is 9.2×10^164 times the number of atoms in the
observable universe.
2. if we consider our estimates of the age of earth to be very wrong
and actually the earth is 9 billion years old and there has been life
for 4.5 billion years � that leaves 4.5 billion years (2×10^244 sec)
for life to emerge. Or a measly 2×10^164 times the number of atoms in
the observable universe.
The number of atoms in the observable universe (again 10^80) is _____
times larger than the number of atoms () on earth.
–note: please also take a brief moment to consider the difference
between atoms on earth and the existence of ACTG molecules which are
needed to even start the craps table that we are calculating about.
|
If you are still convinced (if you ever were) that life emerged from random chance, please explain how such a phenomenon as humans could have evolved from random chance if there aren’t enough atoms in the observable universe nor NEARLY enough time for those that do exist to try their chance at the craps table of primordial soup and result in a single meaningful protein (of which our genetic makeup codes for ~150,000). Once again not to mention the decoding system and protein construction system needed to do something about the tiny strand of meaningful DNA. |
