Evolution

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by garbonzo, Feb 20, 2015.

  1. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Freudian slip or deliberate?
     
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  3. Kajalamorth The Doctor Registered Senior Member

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    Maybe, maybe not. Nothing prevents it or pushes it. Evolution is a random process. There are no wants and needs. One of my teachers made a joke in a class of mine going along the line of : even if your are better adapted it doesn't mean you will not or cannot be mauled by a bear tomorrow.

    Nor did humans in neolithic knew how to make rockets, or glass... or metal. Knowledge and intelligence are two different things. You are stating that we are intelligent and you use our knowledge as proof for the statement. I guess you could be right. But humans are the only species that exhibited these behaviours. There is nothing to compare us to.
     
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  5. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    790
    This debate takes enough time as it is. It would take less time for you to recognize your own words (which is easy for me, I don't know about you) than it would for me to go back and check who said what. Plus, you are free to comment on my response to another person as you have.
     
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  7. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Then I will lay in a complaint every time you mix responses from different people into the same post, you will probably accrue infraction points, and at some point you may find yourself getting short bans for infractions of site rules. I do not advise this - particularly not if, as you say, you find it easy to recognise my own words (your comment is bolded, above) despite your supposed time problems with the site (also bolded). If it's so easy for you to recognise my own words, then it should be no real additional trouble to identify them in a posting. I don't like other people putting words in my mouth, or assigning viewpoints to me that I don't myself endorse. That is false representation.

    Thanks.
     
  8. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Deliberate. I forget the phrase for this.

    I was going to write "Deliberate Freudian slip" but.. the hell with it. Who cares about the joke, anyway? What the fuck is the point of all this?
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

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    It is a matter of politeness and from a forum standpoint, avoids instances where you could attribute words or arguments to people who never wrote such words or made such arguments and thus, avoids flame wars, and threads being thrown off topic as people will naturally want to correct the obvious mistakes you would have been making. This would mean that the subject matter falls to the side and instead, the focus becomes who said what and when.

    No one is asking you to address each sentence. If you are responding to a person, just type in their name and then perhaps hit enter twice on your keyboard and formulate your response. It takes no effort or time, is a more polite and correct way to address people and it will avoid threads being closed down because of off topic posts or huge fights. Normally if you are quoting their posts, then we would expect and it is more polite to have their name in a position that ensures readers who and what you are responding to. It makes for a more cohesive manner of discussion or debate.

    If we find ourselves being inundated with reports because you fail at such basic levels of communication, which involves identifying who you are addressing, or if threads veer off topic as a result of your refusal to put names to who you are addressing or quoting, then you will end up facing moderation.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Can they? Definitely. Will they? Probably not.
     
  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, just you see post #176. Harrumph.
     
  12. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    This sounds amazingly lucid. Would this really work? Is it a good idea? Is there a reference for this? I mean, given that this would be a good idea, it sounds fucking brilliant, Billy.
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Evolution is not a random process.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, Yes, No* & and thanks, I think so too.

    * It is my idea, after some thought, but hard to believe I am the first to suggest this - it is so obviously the correct solution.** I have posted it at sicforums several times before.
    ** I think it is not worth the trouble and risk to store them with hope of later processing for useful radioactive isotopes. Most, but not all, can be made as cobalt 60, is by "cooking" proper element in a reactor. In some cases that may require a two step process: Absorb alpha particiles to make next element two up in the periodic table, then add neutrons to it to make it the radio active isotope you want.

    Gravity feeds three bottle mass blobs of glass that, still by gravity, go to four "blower lines" each with 12 blower sections each making three bottles at a time. Amazing to watch in person.
    My wife's older brother is primary owner of glass bottle plant that uses this German made machine, which is more than three stories tall and counting the annealing, optical inspection, and packing lines is about 100 meters long. It makes 18 Million bottles each month and never stops - a continuous flow process. It is fully automatic, except about every three or so hours a man with fork life must replace the large diameter, rolled up, thin, plastic tube that is pinched off and heat sealed to make plastic bag every couple of seconds that automatically then covers the square stack pallets of about 5,000 bottles each to keep them clean, even sterile until sold.

    Even just watching that sealing up is hypnotic: The machine slightly separates the two open sides of the bag it has just made at ground level then swings it up high, filling it with air and making it inverted over the pallet. Then quickly pulls the just right size bag down over the pallet stack. Then there is a second or less pause while some air is sucked out from bottom and bag is heat sealed to plastic sheet that the first layer of bottle sat on. All in only in about 4 seconds 5,000 bottles are in air tight plastic conformal wrap on wood pallet base a fork lift could pick up, but they they just flowed away on conveyer belt system to some spot on at least an acre storage area that I could not see for storage until sold / loaded on big flat bed trucks, I assume, later.

    My brother-in law's machine did not box the bottles, as last part of video shows, just made these "Pallet stack" layers with bottle next to bottle on each of about 10 layers with thin sheets of "press-board" sheets between each layer. (Would be less than 10 layers if for example making "long neck" beer bottles.) Also men with truck loads of SiO2 (and some glass being re-cycled) arrive at the front end where whole truck is picked up to dumb its load onto mixers input conveyer belt.

    Compared to this, the automatically making the glassified disks I described is less than "child's play."
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 23, 2015
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Well actually, evolution is the result of a series of mutations, which are generally caused by random events, often an error in the replication of a gene, caused by several kinds of perturbations, including cosmic rays.
     
  16. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    790
    You misread. It is easy for people to recognize their own words. I'm not misrepresenting anything, when I reply I don't usually say who I'm responding to because I don't know myself. This is why there are no names in the quotes.
     
  17. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    790
    I have a solution. Will do it next time I reply.
     
  18. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That's only part of it, natural selection is the other part, which is not random. Minor point, I'm sure you get it.
     
  19. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Either way, make sure that the names are included in the reply. Thanks.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, it would work. When it works.

    There are going to be - in the dreams of the nuke proponents - four or five hundred reactors generating this waste in the US alone. They are not all going to be near the ocean, they are going to have on site temporary waste storage of their own, and so the first observation is that this does not solve the TMI/Chernobyl/Fukushima/ problem. It does not solve the misdirected into dirty bomb problem. It does not solve the transport accident problem (how many of these glassification plants are we planning to build?) It does not solve the tech spread problem. It does not solve the central control/big brother problem inherent in nukes. And it does not solve the large cost problem.

    Thing is: if your bottle maker screws up a batch, breaks down, has a small fire, you lose some money. If your nuke waste vitrification operation screws up, you might have to evacuate everyone for five miles around. The standards of reliability and operational integrity necessary in the nuke business are difficult and expensive to meet.

    So they are not, in practice, met.

    In addition, it is as of now the latest entry in the long list of disposal sites for nuke waste chosen on the basis that we didn't know much about them so we couldn't see any problems with using them as waste dumps. At one time, for example, the Sellafield plutonium production waste was being piped into a nearby deep part of the ocean where in the absence of research it was assumed it would remain on the bottom until degraded.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield ) Subsequently, it was discovered that there were occasional strong currents, landslides, and so forth, capable of mobilizing the stuff in that part of the ocean. It was also noticed that the sequestration and separation and pipe delivery setup was not perfect. There is now a considerable cleanup operation on land at Sellafield, with the ocean deposition simply written off in the hopes that wherever it ends up it won't hurt anything, and several waste pools and so forth posing serious and expensive engineering problems. Norway is not happy, neither are various islands and people with fishery interests in the region.

    Sellafield has been vitrifying nuke waste since 1991, btw.
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Well sure. But without the random events that provide the mutated genes, there would be nothing to select from.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I disagree. Vitrification doesn't make waste safer or less radioactive; it just contains it. Thus if they screw up they will likely have to take the (just-as-hazardous) waste and do it again.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Depends on the nature of the screw-up. An explosion and fire in the intake facilities - the physical location to which hot waste from dozens of reactors all over the continent has been transported in various forms and by various means - might present certain difficulties in the "taking" of the waste. Or even the finding of it.

    Which might have an effect on evolutionary processes in the affected regions, reaching for thread significance.
     

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