TeledyN - there are verses about this - Comments

heh .. first time I've ever

mrG — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:42:00 -0400

heh .. first time I've ever been cross-checked with my own comment :) In my defence, I'll just point out that tying that post to this one supports my cautionary claim over there, that the e-coli simply reasoned its way out of an evolutionary dead end. Which is kinda, well, intelligent really, and makes one pause to wonder just who is the smart one on this planet :)

As for evolutionary bottlenecks, to quote an old bad joke, what do you mean we, Paleface?

If the experts are correct,

a stranger — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:29:30 -0400

If the experts are correct, then our cultural habits are producing climate change i.e. the environmental crisis we are facing is fuelled by our own excrement.

Overpopulation means over-pollution which means that we will potentially and eventually suffocate on our own gases just like Little Saccharomyces cerivisiae. Little Sacc gets too excited by bountiful glucose, over-reproduces, starts competing for limited resources and drowns in the ethanol he produces. Humans, hopefully, have a larger range of adaptivity. It is probably why we are the last remaining hominid (out of 20odd other hominid species now extinct).

No doubt, the pollution we excrete will make some other species happy in the future like the effluent of Little Sacc (i.e. Beer) does for us. The only reason we are nostalgic about the evolutionary bottle-neck that we are facing, is because we are most likely one of the species that will not make it through. There are some even cuter little cretins that probably won't make it through too. Poor little tikes! But let's not get teary, it's all part of nature!

http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/09/11/the-adventures-of-little-sacc/#comment-3111

Ahau-ho, I see you have been

a stranger — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:30:00 -0400

This comment has been moved http://blog.teledyn.com/node/2502#comment-4185">here.

interesting! Back in the

a stranger — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:54:56 -0400

interesting! Back in the hippy-60s the only place I knew of to experience the scent of real frankincense was in Catholic churches, which used it in those little metal thingies --censers-- during special ceremonies. I always found this
kind of incense a lot more sensual than those yucky-scented sticks they sell on the street...anyway, I had my altar boy
brother "borrow" a few lumps for me. Glad to hear you can get it on Ebay now.

The image shows

mrG — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:59:11 -0400

The image shows kevlar-packed flac-jacket camoflaged officers (plural) combing the woods with a German Sheppard, their quarry? A frightened 14 year old boy 'armed' with only a knife and explicitly "not believed to be a danger to the public" but hey, what a GREAT opportunity to drive home the 'importance' of the lunacy of the Lockdown Drill. Welcome to the future.

"They know who he is, there's no issue there," Const. Steve Starr, media relations officer with the Grey County OPP, said in an interview. "It's just a matter of making an arrest in due course of their investigation."
[ Grey Bruce - Ontario, CA ]

Just to recap: Multiple armed officers and their dog, grade-school boy who is not a threat, a school full of needlessly frightened children. Let that sink in, and then I'll tell you about the little 8 year old girl who was fine with general police/army imagery until the first fake terrorism-attack exercise in her school; now she reacts to such images with a full-on panic attack.

I expect the authorities will recommend we drug her.

Too true to be funny. The

a stranger — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:19:00 -0500

Too true to be funny. The anti-terrorist measures I see being taken don't actually _do_ anything, other than scare the very people they're supposed to protect.

Current score: Terrorists 1, population 0.

Sir Ike is news again. His

mrG — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:52:00 -0400

Sir Ike is news again. His 2060 enddate rates a side note in a new exhibit opening in Jerusalem, and again, while they do note his extracurriculars, there's no mention of his free-basing mercury habit ...

A famed rationalist, who secured a royal exemption from the ordination in the Church of England that was normally expected of academics of his day so he would not have to follow its teachings, Newton nonetheless based his prediction on a Biblical text.

Working from verses in the Book of Daniel, the elaborator of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics argued that the world would end 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire in western Europe in 800 AD.

The letter, on show at Jerusalem's Hebrew University as part of an exhibition entitled "Newton's Secrets", is part of an array of papers of the British scientist bequeathed to the institution by a wealthy collector of scientific manuscripts.

The university said it was the first time the letter had been put on public show since 1969.
[ Isaac Newton saw end of world in 2060 ]

Via the ever-watchful Grail News word on are a few more details in the USAToday, including this page from the letter and a link to the Virtual Exhibit for the Newton's Secrets show.

"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

In another document, Newton interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ends. The end of days will see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom," he posited.
[ Papers reveal Newton's religious side - USATODAY.com ]

And how many haven't? You

mrG — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:25:38 -0400

And how many haven't? You have, no doubt, heard of MtLake Toba, seen the fused rock in the once-tropical Sahara and noticed how the once lands north of Australia are now very much submerged: Truth is, such catastrophes have happened, and by all statistical accounts, we are long overdue for the next.

So, for the record, when you say Earth, keep in mind that you don't imply anything about the creatures living on it, you are only talking about the rock itself. If you check the geological records, Mass extinctions are not only possible, they are distrubingly common.

It's all just numbers.

mrG — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 07:56:12 -0400

It's all just numbers. Integers.

While we're on the topic of rewriting neuroscience, a new blog-like site has appeared called Rewiring Neuroscience and exploring some other research avenues where the current Standard Module is unable to go. For example, a flying bat swerves to avoid a new obstacle faster than would allow for any neuron firing sequence implying that organic brains must obtain real value information from just one pulse.

The theoretical payoff is enormous. Suddenly the brain, which operates on impulses moving at velocities barely better than highway speeds %u2013 becomes in theory a dazzlingly fast and competent thinking machine. Which is, of course, exactly what the brain is in real life.
[ Rewiring Neuroscience ]

In effect, if not in fact, the neuron pulse, which is clamped to a fixed bio-standard voltage, may therefore be working simultaneously like a parallel-port ribbon-cable, moving many fixed-votage bits across many 'channels' to deliver a number. A number. This is the 'value' of the neuron message, one pattern associates to this message, that pattern to that.

"Die ganze Zahl schuf der liebe Gott, alles Ubrige ist Menschenwerk."

Which implies a disjoint between the signal and the experience (the Hard Problem) in that the brain's actual experience is flat and level, extracting the dynamics of the experience entirely out of the event change rate (for which the brain has limited ability to track due to the max-speed of only 200+km/hr) and the pattern value, ie the integer digit.

And how many people have

a stranger — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:08:26 -0400

And how many people have predicted the end of the world in the past and got it wrong? All of them. What makes you think you're any different?
The Earth is billions of years old. That's nine zeros. You'd think if some sort of gravitational tidal wave could've messed up the planets somehow, it would've happened by now.

Now the chocolate-bar

a stranger — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:10:47 -0400

Now the chocolate-bar companies can leave the epicatechin in, reducing production costs, and market the result as a healthy product — at a much higher price.

Rohan Jayasekera

TeledyN 50-50 turns back the

mrG — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 10:57:46 -0400

TeledyN 50-50 turns back the hands of time?

Not just one but a whole fleet of independent confirmations now telling us the TeledyN 50-50 Way To Trim and Slimness is also your ticket to a long life of wellness! I don't want to start sounding like the elk-antler info-newsercial barkers, but dig, adding a third to a lifespan spared from cancer and atherosclerosis? ... heck, I can't even say that last one!

Ok, ok, so, disclosure and disclaimer time, yeah, it's as true as it was on the lo-cals making us all fat, this all might be all well and scientific and maybe really is darn good advice ... especially if you're a lab rat.

after an average of six years on calorie restriction, people's hearts functioned like the hearts of much younger people. And a team from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge is reporting that six months of calorie restriction reduces two key markers of aging: fasting insulin levels and body temperature.
[ Thinner and younger ]

so maybe it's another case of "Further research necessary" but still, it might, it could, it may ... you just never know ...

'scuse me. I need a half a Joe Louis. Be back in a half a bit.

So is the world going to end

mrG — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:04:55 -0500

So is the world going to end in 2012?

Good question, and in answer, here's a page of collected clarifications hosted by a prominent charity aiding Mayan children. So what is in store as the world wheels the Sacred Round?

It is not the end of the Maya calendar, as their calendar projected ahead for over 60,000 years. What their records say about the calendar, is that in 2013 time as we know it will change. They aren't real specific about what the replacement will look like, only that it will not be the same - dramatically different in some way.
[ Will the world end in 2012? Mayan Calendar. ]

Ok. I feel much better now, but it does still scan like a bit more than simply the string of naughts across the odometer of human time.

Ok, ok, it's 2036. Like any

mrG — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:13:25 -0500

Ok, ok, it's 2036. Like any Man of Science, I too like to dabble in apocalyptic matters, and with all due respect to a mecuric talent like Ike, my sources say 2036, in April, on a Friday, the 13th -- and maybe not the total end of it all, but certainly in the books with good odds for being a Very Bad Day.

Having now watched the whole

mrG — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 22:20:07 -0400

Having now watched the whole season, I do see your point about the extension of not so much Davison, but certainly of the Doctors succeeding him, and that just gets us back to my point, not to lament any loss of icons, but just the observation through the looking glass of television art that the England today is a very different place than the England of Patrick Troughton, and with a very different common-sense morality on the Right to Play Judge, Jury and Executioner.

Modern Dr. Who plays in the Avenging Angel myth, Rambo with gadgets.

Doctor Who isn't written in a vacuum. Television doesn't create culture, it reflects it. TV shows are packaged and sold, and as such must be pallatable to the expectations of the viewing audience (an older age-demographic, the video-game years instead of the senior gradeschool audience of pre-Baker years). Like comic books, really, the Marvel sort, not Sandman or Archie/Veronica, but the everyday Batman now appeals more to a buyer who's seen a bit of gore ... and thirsts for it.

And it's not just the kids. Television show pitches must also appease the marketeers at the Beeb and other networks who had to see this thing and go Oh ... Wow ... Oooo ... Sizzle and all the other wordsounds they use when encountering material basically devoid of any value except lust or bloodlust.

As for bemoaning a lost youth :) ok, I do admit that my review here is not really without a sense of the loss of a childhood friend that I wish I could share with my own kids and grandkids; as much as this is a metric over the mores of modern England, it is also something valuable lost I think, and I'm not afraid to say it -- Sci Fi loses some credibility for me when I'm asked to accept that an exemplary individual from an advanced civilization is far closer in spirit to Tony Blair and George Bush than to Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King.

I like to think there's hope of evolving beyond our throwing poo at each other.

What solution should The Doctor have proposed? Exactly my point: as a piece of worthwhile stage fiction commenting on the state of the world today, what should the Superman do? True, Shakespeare's King Lear does what we expect, but where the play has value is in our seeing the consequences he then must bear. We go away questioning ourselves.

That's asking a lot of a children's show, I know. Especially one with a lust for special-effects budget approval.

Speaking of Davison, let's keep in mind the 'interviews' in the "Lust in Space" 'trial' where everyone involved in Colin Baker and on seem more than a little embarrased at the tittilation and sensationalism that had begun to infect an otherwise clever vehicle.