Until some stupid with a flare gun, burned the place to the ground!

(which was later fortuitously extinguished by said tsunami)

I appreciate your putting a figure ("gigabytes") to the quantity of stored genetic info, something I have been curious about, but have been unable to locate at the moment. That sounds about right by my estimation, and also sounds grossly inadequate to store all the information necessary to specify (practically any) multi-cellular organism. The only conceivable way that could work is if there's some kind of monster compression at work. I assume people (embryologists) are looking at genetic mechanisms of anatomical structure determination, but I have been mainly out of the field for a while.

We could go on arguing this forever. My main gripe comes down to many people seeming to approach science these days as though it were the new religion, which violates the whole intent and purpose.

Oh, and your point about what evolutionary theory encompasses seems a bit on the niggling side. Suffice it to say, MODERN (or molecular) evolutionary theory, or the molecular component of evolutionary theory. I know that Darwin came before Watson and Crick.

Oh, and the sperm cell is an interesting example. Here we have a simple organism that is directionally mobile and potentially equipped with chemo receptors for guiding it. That isn't something any simple (ie subject only to diffusion) biomolecule can reasonably be expected to possess. All I can think of in that regard is compartmentalization (ie. cells acting as localized bio-reactors) and driving structure by constituent molecule concentration (ie. Le Chatelier's principle), though that still strikes me as inadequate and wasteful (with regard to something that will ultimately be subject to diffusion).

I don't really believe there is such a thing as "my" or "your" theory, though I Iike to think there might be such a thing as "our" reality. Scientific investigation isn't like some kind of horse race where you bet on the one you like the most or think most likely to win, and until something has been proven I think it is important to admit what you don't know. The religious fanatics who would deny all knowledge are truly a horror, though the purported scientists who lie and misrepresent (or simply botch) what is known (also with their own agendas) aren't much better. In fact, they are worse, because the should, and, indeed, are basically licensed to know better.

Sometimes I do get to feeling a bit put upon by this whole (ie. "human"/life) situation. Take, for example, Okkam's Razor, which is generally extremely sound for nearly all of the natural universe, though I more prefer Heraclitus' "latent structure is master of obvious structure" when it comes to human experience and perception.

Cells have no will. They must be regarded as dumb machines. Where does all the info reside telling them to extend here or to retract there (eg. all the dendrites in the brain)? How many points of manipulation must that be? And all that on a single strand composed of a modest number of repeat units? Evolution definitely appears to have something (truly profound) to it, though there still seems to be some major pieces missing.

Yes, some of that work with quasicrystals is more interesting than all get out!

I can relate to your point about some potential pessimism in my fundamentally questioning the molecular basis of evolution (ie. based on the level of anatomic complexity in relation to the quantity of information able to be stored in the genes). Dawkins himself has said that even if proven, (molecular-based) evolution does not disprove the existence of Creator. It only shows that he covered his tracks. Also, I am reminded of something one of my professors said that was positive (perhaps a bit of an exception for him) and got me to thinking way back when (paraphrasing): "So am I to believe that there are some kind of traffic cops placed at every street corner, telling these molecules where to go?"

Also, those examples you mention are more about "general" building blocks (eg. something which solidifies a type of tissue throughout, or codes for a lone, mobile fluorophore molecule), vs the regulation of tissue structure differentiation.

Think of it in terms of scale. Sodium and chloride ions, and even regularly shaped protein globs, or cannon balls for that matter, stack very nicely to make a regular, 3-d repeat ("crystal") structure, and that same principle (ie. essentially "things stacking nicely") is posited to explain how biomolecules (eg. dna-encoded proteins) eventually join together to form anatomical (or even cellular-level) structures.

However, if you move very far way, for example, 1000 feet over a (regularly arranged) swimming pool full of bowling balls, it will look like just a glob. In fact, the only macroscopic products of large crystals which come to mind would be fracture planes, which are visible to the eye, though quintessentially simple (ie. a plane) in structure.

So, regarding bio systems, how do all those biomolecules just (through random diffusion) stack themselves together to make structures which are enormously larger than the dimension of the building blocks themselves?

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I think that is the general idea, but where does that information originate, so that each unique cell, and each unique biomolecule within each cell, can orient itself correctly? The genes, themselves, which would only seem to know how to encode what will eventually become free-floating proteins, wouldn't seem to contain that additional info. All the genetic information is contained within every cell, and I find it hard to believe that it could encode all the complexity, which increases like a nested exponential, at least not without some kind of massive compression mechanism.

Thanks, I will check that book. I started out as a biologist and am kind of glad I got out when I did. I wasn't too confident that most molecular biologists I encountered were actually realistic about the complexity of their systems, though I didn't even pursue it at the gradual level, opting instead for simpler material science systems. I was never too convinced that most researchers claiming to have identified a set of genes/markers or what have you in connection with some trait or condition had actually discovered anything, but still they keep on publishing in great volumes, almost seeming to make matters worse. Btw, the subject of embryology, which I was fortunately exposed to, makes an admirable introduction to the process of cellular/tissue differentiation, and that was 25 years ago for me.

of proteins leads to structural determination of organisms, taking place through a process of molecular recognition and self-assembly (following standard thermodynamic principles of minimizing the surface free energy of the constituent molecules).

However, when this occurs in a simple crystalline material, it appears amorphous at a scale about 3 or 4 orders of magnitude larger than the constituent molecules. Thus, how can this same process suffice to create biological structures often 10 or more orders of magnitude larger than the constituent molecules?

of patenting the "what" as opposed to the "how". (One click purchasing is a good example of a "what".)

Furthermore, due to the inherent flexibility of the (software) medium, patents used validly are largely inapplicable, because there is always many ways something can be done. I think software companies need to find ways to try to live with that, rather than perverting the legal protection of patenting.

Oh, and this article looks like mainly a hook to hawk more gizmos.

to overcome their obstacles, or reconcile themselves to living their lives as parasites (which imo would include a significant portion of business hacks). There really are no other options.

Nope. Ayn Rand is the only one who effectively tackled post-industrial America. She only lacked poor editing on Atlas. She understandably probably got to a point where she couldn't trust anyone enough for that.

Bukowski short stories. Shakespeare Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Aeschylus Oresteia. Hippolytus (Murray transl.) Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (excerpts). The Stranger. Canterbury Tales (Wife of Bath). The Idiot. Chekov. The Jungle. Short Happy Life of Francis Maccomber.

What if qualification level correlated with gender? Your statement appears to assume it doesn't.

Thanks for the info. Looks like they recently went down, though! :)

What I was really referring to was not the study's being flame baiting, but, rather /.'s sexism label.

From your valid point of this possibly being valid science, the /. title "Sexism and Science" is straight up flame baiting. Where the hell do they come off? It's that old inability to say things which, though true, are not politically correct. I did not see any effort to determine whether the study subjects were assessed for (unfair) bias. Without unfair bias, there can be no finding of sexism, only discrimination, and discrimination without unfair bias isn't wrong, it is laudable.

Is this flame bait?