failure

Duh ! Stupid comment. FWIW I got a good English teacher that year too and got another grade 1 in Eng Lit. The point was how much a teacher influences your learning btw if you forgot.

Graham.

Look at it this way: antibiotics generally target specific life processes of the bacterium. That's why they are often specific to particular diseases. When a patient receives the antibiotic, most of the bacteria are targeted accurately, and fail to reproduce before they die. But others, which have a slight variant on that particular process, will survive. Now it seems clear that the variants may well be less efficient under normal circumstances than the normal bacteria. Hence they are less successful- they are fewer in number.

But after the antibiotic, they are the only players left on the field. They reproduce rapidly- every hour perhaps. If there are a thousand bacteria left, after 48 hours there could be a kilogram of them....

The variation that's lurking is in fact that of the failures. The meek bacteria shall truly inherit the earth. A possible useful lurking variant in humans is dwarfism. It's easy to imagine circumstances under which being short but strong could be very advantageous.

It is commonly said that evolution is smarter than you are. Genetic scientists hopefully take this fully on board.

Paul Burke

Idiot.

Paul Burke

I believe this is incorrect. Polydactylis involves non-functional fingers, almost always without even bones in them.

The 1917 Balfour Declaration from the British Foreign Secretary has to be the significant action that eventually resulted in the creation of Israel. It was contradictory to promises made to their WWI Arab allies. Under the British (with a 'Mandate' from the League of Nations) there were waves of legal and illegal immigration ('colonization') from Russia and Europe.

BTW, Balfour had originally been in favor of giving the Zionists a virgin chunk of another place they controlled at the time-- Uganda-- but they wouldn't go for it.

Of course, then as well as now, there were strong geopolitical forces at play that trumped other considerations. Plus, unfortunately, nobody seemed willing to take large numbers of ordinary Jews as refugees. At times the British tried to keep them out of Palestine as well, as the locals could see quite clearly the way things were going and were becoming increasingly difficult to keep pacified as their interests were threatened. During WWII The British had the rather threatening Nazis to contend with, so dealing with recalcitrant Palestinians and militant Jewish extremists was somewhat of a distraction.

"The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis - again, an interesting history for us, but not an honourable one"

-- Jack Straw, UK Foreign Secretary, speaking in 2002

The UN partition, war of independence, and subsequent history merely follow upon the unholy mess left by the British in the wake of two devastating world wars, the collapse of Empire and decades of the implementation of the policies called for in the Balfour Declaration.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I read in sci.electronics.design that Richard the Dreaded Libertarian wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Wed, 28 Sep 2005:

The USA isn't killing them now: Saudi and other Arabs terrorists are.

I think minority governments can be a very good thing in a parliamentary system. Makes it so they can't try anything really stupid without a consensus between parties. Usually things are going pretty well, and a few years of fairly steady on the rudder is not a bad thing.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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

No, of course not. But democracy doesn't work when there is such a close balance. Germany now has that problem. We could have it in Britain if Ken Clarke gets the Conservative leadership. The Ditherall Lemoncrats will hold the balance of power.

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

They aren't always defective. While extra fingers can be a problem (gloves!), extra toes can be left if they don't cause any problem.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Paul Burke wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Wed, 28 Sep

Colonizing Jupiter, for example,. (;-)

I read in sci.electronics.design that David Brown wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Wed, 28 Sep 2005:

But speciation is in no way evidence AGAINST evolution by natural selection, it's one of its major bases.

The Galapagos finches and tortoises were what gave Charles Darwin the original notion of evolution.

There seem to be fewer examples of this, but it's certainly possible.

Actually the concept of 'species' is beginning to be considered unsatisfactory. The cases of the yellow/grey wagtails and herring/lesser black-backed gulls have been know for a long time. The latter involves only two 'species' that are not really distinct, but the wagtails are numerous in their variety. Now more and more cases of fertile hybrids between other species are known, which detracts from one of the main criteria for differentiating species.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Charlie Edmondson wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Wed, 28 Sep 2005:

Evolution by natural selection need not be slow at all. You need to bring your knowledge in this area at least into the 20th century, even if you can't manage the 21st.

Look up 'punctuated equilibrium'. It was painfully slow to be accepted, for no good reason that I can see. There isn't ANYTHING is evolution by natural selection that says it must proceed at an extremely slow rate.

While it wouldn't create a new species, if a supernova dosed earth with strong UV of the right type, only some of the dark-skinned people would survive. In one generation, 35 years, not 35 000 years or 35 000 000 years, the white version would simply cease to exist. And human generations are some of the longest there are.

I read in sci.electronics.design that David Brown wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Wed, 28 Sep 2005:

Not a mistake; the Jews didn't bother too much about virginity, but to the Greeks and Romans it was very significant. So it was an easy 'mistake' to make.

But the Immaculate Conception is another thing. This is the tenet that Mary had never sinned before she was impregnated by the Holy Ghost. I don't see anything about that in the gospels: it seems to have been invented much later.

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

Ever since the Battle of Jericho (which apparently never happened). Two branches of the family of Noah have contended over the land ever since then.

I don't think we should tell you.

Have you taken your blood-pressure pill? Sit down then. Calm! Calmmmmm.

It was United Nations resolution.

Do you contend that DNA does *not* execute extremely clever algorithms?

John

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

There's nothing of half-measures about it, it's the full anti-tism.

message

the

Why would you say that? I was concerned about your "A species is optimized for its environment" definition of "Darwinian." That strikes me as a kind of 6th-grade-science definition. Darwin noted that variation exists within natural species, and that some variations may tend to give reproductive advantages. No change in the environment is necessary for evolution, just time and statistics.

But while we're at it, by what mechanism does DNA "execute an algorithm"?

I read in sci.electronics.design that Richard the Dreaded Libertarian wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Wed,

Yes, eight million of them voted for it, in spite of the risk of being killed at the polling station.

Bacteria isn't a good example by which to make your case. Unlike the "higher forms" (bacteria are arguably the dominant form of life on Earth), they can release and exchange plasmids via protein encapsulation that may insert an immunity into other bacteria that contacts it either in such a way as to allow it to replicate as the cell divides or else only for the lifetime of that receiving bacteria. Adaptation occurs not only by way of mutation events, in bacteria.

Jon