failure

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Tue,

That's my point; you can't understand WHY the equations are the way they are without simple calculus. And the WHY is much more interesting.

Yes. The bacterial species had multiple variations readily available to be called up in times of stress; there wasn't time, in a few days, to mutate from one optimized, uniform equilibrium to another. People of Darwin's day didn't appreciate the "punctuated equilibrium" of Earth's climate.

Consider the AIDS virus, or malaria, or any number of simple critters whose DNA (or even more insulting, RNA) is "smarter" and more adaptable than our immune systems or all the drug companies on Earth.

John

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Tue,

It varies tremendously. This young guy leaves school and thinks 'No more algebra'. Then he gets a job in electricity or electronics and meets V = IR and W = VIcos[phi]. And he finds that at least some of the older techs, who loved school just as much as he did, and may even have dropped out, can handle those beasts with no trouble. So why shouldn't he?

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Tue,

It is precisely and exactly Darwinian. Why do you think otherwise?

Darwin: A species is optimized for its environment. As the environment changes, mutation and subsequent selection steer it back towards optimization.

Shouldn't DNA evolve, itself, to be smarter than that? If the cellular Game of Life can be simply set up to build glider factories, and people can write compiler compilers, shouldn't DNA be able to possess some extremely clever algorithms?

John

A decent teacher can *transform* your performance. I never really excelled at history until my 'O-level year' when someone new joined the staff.

Quite unexpectedly I got a pass at Grade 1.

Sadly my German went the other way. I got a poor teacher that year. :-(

Graham

I can't speak from experience about Egypt, but I have spent a fair amount of time in Jordan, and there is a large community of displaced West Bank Palestinians there in all walks of life - including refugee camps.

Bob

and on and on...

I don't consider self-defense as atrocities. Shoot at me and I will shoot back, but I'll take aim at you who shot at me... very good aim.

Could you give me a count of SB's that were Israeli's?

How many of the 9/11 bastards were Jews?

And you ARE anti-semitic.

...Jim Thompson

I don't disagree with your general drift.

However having a deficit in the maths departemnt is likely to be more of a negative issue than in either of the other subjects.

Graham

At A-level, I recall that much Maths and Physics went hand in hand. The teachers used to work together in fact to provide the best overall curriculum.

Graham

The advent of mathematical cad packages like MathCad has totally revitalised my use of more interesting maths.

At last it's sensible to perform complex differentiation, integrals etc and consider really 'complex' complex numbers.

Without the original grounding, I'd have been utterly lost of course. I wouldn't even have known where to start, or even that such problems could be resolved using maths.

Graham

GFY!

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

Ok, on the evolution theory. The problem is, Darwin looks ok, but the fossil record doesn't support it. Darwin would indicate a cone-like structure, where diversity would slowly get larger and larger as new species develop from prior ones. Instead, what we get is catastrophyism, where a fairly stable group of species, that don't change much for millions of years, gets hit by a disaster, and then suddenly, there is all kinds of change everywhere! Darwin's slow, gradual survival of species doesn't cut it. Something else must be going on.

Now, a lot of evolution theorist do a lot of hand-waving at this point, but this is where the ID folks have an upper hand. They can have some agency at this point step in, and create a lot of diversity very quickly, and then stabilize. It is hard for the Darwin folk have something that can create entire new species overnight, but then have those species be stable for a million years afterwards...

Charlie

message

"Darwinian"

Where did you study biology?

Translation from Greek to Latin seems to have been the problem. Parthenos could mean 'young girl' as well as 'virgin'. It was translated as 'intacta' which apparently only means virgin in the mechanical sense.

IMHO, the only miracle about the virgin birth is that anyone believed her.

Paul Burke

Darwinian evolution has two fundamental concepts - each new generation is based primarily on the previous generation with a chance of random mutation, and that the organisms best equipped for survival in their environment have a better chance of spawning the next generation.

Exposing bacteria to toxins and discovering that you later get a new strain that is resistant, is a perfect example. Bacteria grow and breed rapidly and in huge numbers, so evolution takes place very quickly, and is therefore easy to see (look at multiply-resistant TB bacteria, for example). For a simpler and slightly slower example, look at the fruit-fly breeding experiments done in high school biology classes.

Only the last of these could be called a "hole" in the theory of evolution. The others are from the separate, but related, field of the origin of life. There is plenty of strong scientific evidence for the prevailing scientific theories for the origin of life, but no scientist will tell you he knows how it happened. Once the initial conditions for evolution occurred (i.e., an organism that could live and breed, passing on inherited mutable "genes"), evolution took over (although obviously it does not preclude the possibility of different lifeforms forming independently).

If you want to invoke some divine interference in the story while retaining at least a shred of rational justification, then the "creation" of the first lifeform would be the place to do it. Until, of course, science has more concrete answers in this area too.

As for the "how did species split" (or rather, how *do* species split, as evolution is an ongoing process), that is a more relevant question. There is no claim that the theory of evolution is a complete answer to everything relating to the development of life - it is an ongoing field of research, with new ideas and new developments all the time. There are a number of ways I can think of for species to split - people more knowledgeable in the field could give you more. But a simple way would be if two groups of a species became physically isolated over a long period of time - each group would evolve separately, and if their environments were different enough, they would gradually evolve into different species. Another method would be more dramatic mutations. Normally, mutations are small, and it takes many generations for effects to build up. Dramatic mutations are normally fatal, but occasionally such mutations would lead to rapid changes in a group.

Far more interesting questions regarding evolution would be "why are there so many species"? And "why are there so few species?", which is equally hard to answer. But these are not "holes" in the theory - they are simply questions that are not fully answered. Perhaps in the process of answering them, the theory of evolution will be disproved, or at least significantly modified. That's part of the principle of science and scientific theories. A "theory" is nothing more than a rational explanation that fits the facts, and that satisfies certain basic requirements - it should match the physical evidence, it should be as simple as possible, it should not require the invokation of external "fudge factors" or other non-scientific explanations, it should make predictions that can be tested, and it should be possible to disprove it by finding contradictory evidence. Evolution satisfies all of these requirements, while "intelligent design" satisfies none. The "theory of gravity" is another good example of a scientific theory - effects near the speed of light disproved the theory, demoting it to the status of a useful simplification, and superceeding it with the theory of relativity, which itself has been shown to be an oversimplification.

"Theory" is not a dirty word, as long as you know what it means. Unfortunately, "ID" and creationist fanatics have brainwashed the masses into thinking "theory" means "an idea", and thus the "theory of evolution" is just an idea, just like "intelligent design". By all means teach about religion in religious education classes - religion is part of our culture and our history, and formed much of the social structure we live in. And let the kids choose themselves what they want to believe in. But stick to science in science classes. After all, in geography you teach that the earth is round, even though some people believe it is flat, and in social science you teach that all people are of equal worth, even though some believe themselves superior to others.

Wasn't that down to an early translator mixing up the original word for "young woman" with the word for "virgin" ?

Well, you didn't specifically ask me, but I'll tell you anyway. You somehow have rationalized murdering thousands of people half- way across the world by calling it "defense". This is just plain not right.

"Defense" is how I protect myself when you are attacking me. You think killing Iraqis is a good idea or something, regardless of the fact that Iraq had essentially nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attack. And, strictly speaking, since there was no declaration of war, the 9/11 attack was really a matter for the police, since it was really merely seriously aggravated vandalism/parallel murder, much like the bombers of "abortion clinics", or the Murrah building in OK city, which was a police matter.

Isn't there some worldwide police organization, like "Interpol" or something? Are the Americans so bloody arrogant that it's impossible to cooperate with _anybody_?

The way I see it, if you want world peace, stop making wars all over the world.

Thanks, Rich