Week Six
How would you distinguish between living and non-living systems?
This seems to be largely a matter of perspective. From the perspective of a sub-atomic particle, could anything that it enlivens be considered more alive that dead? How about the bicycle in my back yard that is oxidizing as we speak, is that non-living? Everything is in a constant state of change, either being created or being destroyed and re-patterned and re-structured as something else.
Perhaps from the cellular perspective there must be, "a ceaseless flux of matter through a living organism. Each cell continually synthesizes and dissolves structures, and eliminates waste products."
We might be better off in the long run if we consider the possibility that a living magical energy animates everything we can lay eyes on and much, much more that we can't see. I fear we are like the fish in water who are searching for the ocean, it cannot be found because it is clear and we are in it and it is in us. I am really alive, do I actively engage in any autopoietic activities? or do they all happen for me? If I were responsible for beating my own heart, regulating my own hormones etc. I assure you, it would get put off or delayed by the snooze button. Clearly there is something larger at play here. I often chuckle when I hear speculation about whether life exists on other planets, of course it does, the whole universe is alive after all and we exist in it.
"DNA doesn't determine race. Society does". The human race is the only one I know of, but we humans do all manner of things to each other don't we? This discriminative function of the mind is always at work labeling, measuring and judging, add a little ego and the rowdy rabble and trouble will ensue. I think next to reducing poisoning and destroying the environment, working together to create a just world needs to be our next priority.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Week 5
Chicken or the egg, chicken or the egg, chicken or the egg? To get to the other side of course!!
I cannot imagine this question to be anything other than some sort of zen koan, designed to exhaust the intellectual mind and put it in it's rightful place. I mean, my system starts to overload when I even start thinking about this. As a guy I used to work with often remarked in frustration, "Ugh, if I was only 30% smarter!", which is quite a bit.
How do new species emerge? I lean toward survival of the best adapted species. It seems that nature is willing to play the numbers game and hedge all bets, create a couple million of something and hopefully 2 will survive and reproduce, adapt and mutate. If that doesn't work, according Hindu mythology, just wait several cycles of several billions of years and start all over again. No hurry, no worry the cosmic play just continues on and on and on and on, stop! or maybe it doesn't.
Perhaps changes in the surrounding environment necessitate changes in a particular species or favor certain mutations that become adaptive traits to be passed on. In the case of a virus it might be necessary for survival for the species to jump species and even create some symbiotic relationship with the new host. Like some form of adaptive plasticity, that any organism can stretch it's pattern of forming to the outer limits but still stay within range.
Chicken or the egg, chicken or the egg, chicken or the egg? To get to the other side of course!!
I cannot imagine this question to be anything other than some sort of zen koan, designed to exhaust the intellectual mind and put it in it's rightful place. I mean, my system starts to overload when I even start thinking about this. As a guy I used to work with often remarked in frustration, "Ugh, if I was only 30% smarter!", which is quite a bit.
How do new species emerge? I lean toward survival of the best adapted species. It seems that nature is willing to play the numbers game and hedge all bets, create a couple million of something and hopefully 2 will survive and reproduce, adapt and mutate. If that doesn't work, according Hindu mythology, just wait several cycles of several billions of years and start all over again. No hurry, no worry the cosmic play just continues on and on and on and on, stop! or maybe it doesn't.
Perhaps changes in the surrounding environment necessitate changes in a particular species or favor certain mutations that become adaptive traits to be passed on. In the case of a virus it might be necessary for survival for the species to jump species and even create some symbiotic relationship with the new host. Like some form of adaptive plasticity, that any organism can stretch it's pattern of forming to the outer limits but still stay within range.
Week 4- The Pattern of Life
Many abilities that we attribute to super heroes are skills possessed by animals all around us. The ability to fly, run extremely fast, hear things undetectable to the human ear. Perhaps animals don't have human intelligence but that presumes that we are the pinnacle of evolutionary development. Even different people differ in intellectual capacity and the like, but we afford everyone the same dignity and respect don't we?
Or maybe we don't. Of course we don't, perhaps as individuals but not as a species.
If animals were less intelligent and we treated them poorly just because of that, wouldn't that say more about how pitiful we are? Perhaps the technocratic ruling elite trained us so well that anything that doesn't rank high in the service to the system is rendered less than or even useless.
Many abilities that we attribute to super heroes are skills possessed by animals all around us. The ability to fly, run extremely fast, hear things undetectable to the human ear. Perhaps animals don't have human intelligence but that presumes that we are the pinnacle of evolutionary development. Even different people differ in intellectual capacity and the like, but we afford everyone the same dignity and respect don't we?
Or maybe we don't. Of course we don't, perhaps as individuals but not as a species.
If animals were less intelligent and we treated them poorly just because of that, wouldn't that say more about how pitiful we are? Perhaps the technocratic ruling elite trained us so well that anything that doesn't rank high in the service to the system is rendered less than or even useless.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Biology Week 3
1. Which of the following is not alive, but requires life to be able to reproduce?
Yes, a virus requires a living cell for reproduction, and cannot reproduce by itself.
2. Which statement best describes the function of the rough endoplasmic reticulum?
Rough ER is covered with ribosomes (causing the "rough" appearance) which are involved in the process of synthesizing proteins for secretion or localization in membranes.
3. Which statement best describes the function of the Golgi apparatus?
The Golgi apparatus processes proteins after they leave the endoplasmic reticulum.
4. In some diseases like cystic fibrosis, a cell membrane receptor fails to function. In the majority of cases, the problem comes from a change in the receptor so that it cannot reach the cell surface. The site in the cell where membrane proteins are synthesized and assembled builds up with the abnormal protein. This site would likely be the:
The site of synthesis and assembly of membrane proteins, the ER also seems to be able to detect proteins that cannot fold correctly. These accumulate and are degraded. For CF, 70% of the patients have a form of the disease where the receptor accumulates in the ER.
5. The following organelle is found in prokaryotic cells but not eukaryotic cells of animal origin.
Animal cells in contrast to the majority of bacteria lack a cell wall.
6. Mitochondria and chloroplasts both:
Contain DNA, are present in plants and function to provide the cell a source of energy.
“99.4% of the most critical DNA sites are identical in human and chimp genes”
Six tenths of a percent is not very much difference if we can assume that we indeed have calculated correctly. Then again there may be a lot that we still don't know. Though the percentage may be small it is significant when you consider the differences in the way that humans and chimps express themselves. That being said we do show our primate color when living in densely populated urban areas. I am reminded of Desmond Morris' book the "Naked Ape", when I at loss to explain the way I feel or behave whilst living in the human zoo.
It could be that there are other mechanisms at play here, concepts that we have attempted to explain away with genetics and DNA. I would have to say that the similarities are profound but the differences are staggering when we consider the potential that human consciousness holds.
Stem Cells
It is interesting to know that new ways to collect stem cells has been developed. I remember when this was a hot button issue when human embryos were the source of stem cell collection. It will be interesting to see what sort of developments will come along because of this new technology. Not so sure I am crazy about the idea of synthetic meat, but I am willing to stay open to the idea.
1. Which of the following is not alive, but requires life to be able to reproduce?
Yes, a virus requires a living cell for reproduction, and cannot reproduce by itself.
2. Which statement best describes the function of the rough endoplasmic reticulum?
Rough ER is covered with ribosomes (causing the "rough" appearance) which are involved in the process of synthesizing proteins for secretion or localization in membranes.
3. Which statement best describes the function of the Golgi apparatus?
The Golgi apparatus processes proteins after they leave the endoplasmic reticulum.
4. In some diseases like cystic fibrosis, a cell membrane receptor fails to function. In the majority of cases, the problem comes from a change in the receptor so that it cannot reach the cell surface. The site in the cell where membrane proteins are synthesized and assembled builds up with the abnormal protein. This site would likely be the:
The site of synthesis and assembly of membrane proteins, the ER also seems to be able to detect proteins that cannot fold correctly. These accumulate and are degraded. For CF, 70% of the patients have a form of the disease where the receptor accumulates in the ER.
5. The following organelle is found in prokaryotic cells but not eukaryotic cells of animal origin.
Animal cells in contrast to the majority of bacteria lack a cell wall.
6. Mitochondria and chloroplasts both:
Contain DNA, are present in plants and function to provide the cell a source of energy.
“99.4% of the most critical DNA sites are identical in human and chimp genes”
Six tenths of a percent is not very much difference if we can assume that we indeed have calculated correctly. Then again there may be a lot that we still don't know. Though the percentage may be small it is significant when you consider the differences in the way that humans and chimps express themselves. That being said we do show our primate color when living in densely populated urban areas. I am reminded of Desmond Morris' book the "Naked Ape", when I at loss to explain the way I feel or behave whilst living in the human zoo.
It could be that there are other mechanisms at play here, concepts that we have attempted to explain away with genetics and DNA. I would have to say that the similarities are profound but the differences are staggering when we consider the potential that human consciousness holds.
Stem Cells
It is interesting to know that new ways to collect stem cells has been developed. I remember when this was a hot button issue when human embryos were the source of stem cell collection. It will be interesting to see what sort of developments will come along because of this new technology. Not so sure I am crazy about the idea of synthetic meat, but I am willing to stay open to the idea.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Biology Week 2
It seems that evolution is a numbers game. Existence creates genetic variation via mutation and then takes a sit back and wait approach. On the human time frame millions of years of evolution seems like a long impossible, arduous journey but to the infinite universe it is a blink.
Not having a scientific mind it is hard for me to imagine segmenting DNA and breeding flies to learn how particular traits are passed on. I am quite happy to say that everything changes over time and move on, but part of genetic variation is that different minds function differently partly by nature, partly by nurture. The process of natural selection got us this far,the creation of all life as we know it out of the dust, so clearly we are part of a larger game.
Important to remind ourselves of and realize deeply is the adage that man did not weave the web of life, we are but a strand in it. Perhaps we are functioning precisely the way that our genes are telling us to, like apoptosis, programmed cell death, we have begun to kill ourselves off thru pollutions, overpopulation and altering our environment to make it uninhabitable to all but those who have the necessary new mutation.
:-)
John
It seems that evolution is a numbers game. Existence creates genetic variation via mutation and then takes a sit back and wait approach. On the human time frame millions of years of evolution seems like a long impossible, arduous journey but to the infinite universe it is a blink.
Not having a scientific mind it is hard for me to imagine segmenting DNA and breeding flies to learn how particular traits are passed on. I am quite happy to say that everything changes over time and move on, but part of genetic variation is that different minds function differently partly by nature, partly by nurture. The process of natural selection got us this far,the creation of all life as we know it out of the dust, so clearly we are part of a larger game.
Important to remind ourselves of and realize deeply is the adage that man did not weave the web of life, we are but a strand in it. Perhaps we are functioning precisely the way that our genes are telling us to, like apoptosis, programmed cell death, we have begun to kill ourselves off thru pollutions, overpopulation and altering our environment to make it uninhabitable to all but those who have the necessary new mutation.
:-)
John
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Biology Week 1
As I examine the interface between science, human biology and our technological evolution, time and time again it occurs that we are indeed animals ourselves. To often blinded by our primitive drives, we think we are civilized and fail to see the folly of our animal nature. Unable or unwilling to see our own shadow, we consider ourselves modern, evolved or civilized. We study and manipulate the physical world as if we are some how separate from it.
When we use scientific discovery to implant nano-chips to help restore sight, this is obviously a wonderful use of technology. I marvel how every time I read an article for example about moon phases or sleep cycles etc. it always comes as a surprise, we are intimately connected to the cosmos beyond which we can conceive. The fact that we would use narrow human intelligence to study animal intelligence and to try and out smart the infinite creation is a testament to our lack of conscious awareness of the interconnectedness of the web of life.
As I examine the interface between science, human biology and our technological evolution, time and time again it occurs that we are indeed animals ourselves. To often blinded by our primitive drives, we think we are civilized and fail to see the folly of our animal nature. Unable or unwilling to see our own shadow, we consider ourselves modern, evolved or civilized. We study and manipulate the physical world as if we are some how separate from it.
When we use scientific discovery to implant nano-chips to help restore sight, this is obviously a wonderful use of technology. I marvel how every time I read an article for example about moon phases or sleep cycles etc. it always comes as a surprise, we are intimately connected to the cosmos beyond which we can conceive. The fact that we would use narrow human intelligence to study animal intelligence and to try and out smart the infinite creation is a testament to our lack of conscious awareness of the interconnectedness of the web of life.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Hello All,
Been living in the Bay area for about the last year after spending two years living in Taipei, Taiwan.
New to this blog-eat-blog world so don't know exactly what to say.
Spent four years at the Academy of Oriental Medicine at Austin and now need a couple Western science classes to sit for the California Acupuncture Board. Great to meet some local folks and be in a learning environment again! Peace.
Been living in the Bay area for about the last year after spending two years living in Taipei, Taiwan.
New to this blog-eat-blog world so don't know exactly what to say.
Spent four years at the Academy of Oriental Medicine at Austin and now need a couple Western science classes to sit for the California Acupuncture Board. Great to meet some local folks and be in a learning environment again! Peace.
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