Notice the adjective "self-sufficient" in the GP. You think building a self-sufficient settlement in Antarctica is easy, and it's only a problem of nobody wanting to do it? Here's a hint: The "permanent presence in Antarctica" you speak of is nowhere near self-sufficiency. Were it not for a continuing cycle of supplies (food and fuel, primarily) periodically arriving by boat or plane, everyone there would die. So no, not easy at all.

But why is manned space exploration necessary for any of the progress you describe? To the contrary, it seems to me that if the goal is to create new medical breakthroughs, spending loads of cash on human spaceflight is, at best, a rather inefficient way to achieve that objective. If the goal is to slow aging, preserve vision, or whatever, I can't think of any reason that Earth-based research wouldn't work.

Now, as to your point about the incredible amounts of money we waste on things that ultimately do very little to improve our lives, I wholeheartedly agree!

As the Slate piece points out, the argument about continuing manned (and womanned) space exploration because "we might need to leave Earth in the near future" seems to be quite popular right now, especially with all of the buzz about the Mars One plan to establish a semi-permanent colony on Mars. I was disappointed, though, that the Slate article didn't really address the core of the issue: believing that, if Earth were to actually become uninhabitable, we could simply colonize Mars, or Venus, or any other distant rock, is absolutely preposterous. This idea has been thoroughly discredited.

For an excellent summary of why this is nothing more than magical thinking, I suggest reading physicist Tom Murphy's excellent post on the matter. As he alludes to, if we convince ourselves that we need to spend unfathomable resources on human spaceflight so that we can "save ourselves" some day, we simply avoid fixing the real problems here on Earth, where we are very much stuck for the long haul. Pretending otherwise will only hasten our demise.

I looked around on the site a bit and watched the introductory video, and underneath the shiny veneer, there really is not much there. The video, for example, certainly looks pretty, but contains no useful information. Instead, it has a few amusing text bites, such as, "FAREWELL CREW... BEFORE YOU DIE... YOU MAY SHOW US LIFE". The whole thing seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. After seeing the site, I really wonder if it is a joke intended to point out how ridiculous the "one-way trip to Mars" plans are. I suspect the site is intended to drum up a lot of interest and volunteers (much like the call for Mars trip volunteers), so that the punchline can be delivered later when it is revealed that the whole thing is based on a completely silly proposition.

Or, perhaps I just hope that this is a joke and not for real...

Exactly. When I'm curious about a film I've not yet watched, I almost always look for Ebert's review first. I also like reading his reviews after I've seen a movie -- even if I disagree with his conclusions, I feel like I learn something from his insightful and interesting commentary. It's really sad that he's no longer with us.

From what evidence did you draw this conclusion? I'm not personally qualified to assess Ramanujan's brilliance (and neither are you, I suspect), but G.H. Hardy, the western mathematicion who worked most closely with Ramanujan, certainly was. What did he think? "I have never met his equal, and can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi." By all accounts, Ramanujan's abilities went way, way beyond "not much brighter than what we consider reasonably bright". He possessed one of the most gifted mathematical minds in recent history.

Love it! If I could mod your post up "funny," I would.

From TFA: "Good software, misleadingly, is usually easy to read, but it’s not easy to write."

What is misleading about that? The same could be said for any of the formal mechanisms we've invented for expressing our thoughts and ideas to other humans. Good oratories, good lectures, good books, good journal articles, and so on, are all easy to consume, but speaking or writing well requires tremendous effort and practice.

Well, I would start with a bunch of nucleotides (A, T, G, and C), then assemble them into a DNA strand such that the same short sequence of nucleotides is repeated over and over again in the strand. That's all you need for a microsatellite, really. Doing this will not be easy, of course, without access to some very sophisticated lab equipment... Oh, wait -- you aren't talking about that kind of microsatellite. Moving along...

You have an excellent point, but unfortunately, even encryption provides far less protection than it used to. The original vision for the Internet was a decentralized network where individuals controlled their own information, but today's reality is that the Internet is increasingly centralized, with tremendous amounts of personal information held by a relatively small number of players. Combine this with the fact that the vast majority of people are willing to pay for services with their privacy, and you have a situation where point-to-point encryption doesn't help much, at least not as far as state-sponsored privacy invasion goes.

For instance, Facebook is moving to require SSL for all of its users (or has already done so), but does this really do anything to allay concerns about institutionalized survellance? I would say, "no," because all of the users' personal information is still being neatly filed away in Facebook's storage facilities, same as before, and it is just as accessible to those with enough power as it ever was.

It is interesting how in the early days, before governments knew what do with it, the Internet really was a bastion of free speech and thought. Now, it is not much of a stretch to say that it has become one of the most powerful surveillance tools ever devised.

Please remember what you said in one of your earliest posts on this topic.

You asserted that: 1) The definition of evolution accepted by all evolutionary biologists is "B.S." 2) Evolution "does indeed require a selective force". 3) Some nonsense about "statistical importance" (which has no bearing on whether evolution is happening) and "slope" to genetic drift driving mutations (you have repeatedly conflated genetic drift and mutation, but they are separate processes).

My point throughout this thread has been that your 1st and 2nd assertions are wrong. Evolution does not require a selective force, and non-selective forces, by themselves, cause evolution. The post that started this whole thing claimed that "acquisition of mutations is not evolution." That is just plain wrong. Mutation changes allele frequencies in a population, which is evolution. That is the only reason I made my original post on the matter. Many people think that evolution is only "natural selection," but that just isn't true.

Now, you seem to have abandoned the above positions with your latest post. Instead, you now want to argue about the relative effects of genetic drift in humans, and the human evolutionary rate. I assume this means you have finally agreed that selection is not required for evolution, which is the only point I've been trying to make. If you want to call that an "interpretation," fine, but it is accepted evolutionary theory. Multiple posts here, from you and others, have claimed that selection is "required" for evolution. That, and only that, is what I have been refuting. I have never once made any statement about the relative importance of drift, mutation, natural selection, or anything else in humans.

To that point, though, you might be interested to read about neutral and nearly neutral mutations. Even in large populations, there is some evidence that substantial portions of the genome can be mostly under the control of mutation and drift. And as your quoted Wikipedia article goes on to note, "When the allele frequency is very small, drift can also overpower selection—even in large populations." So yes, drift can matter, even in large populations.

And I really don't know where you got the notion that I've taken "one course in population genetics" and now consider my understanding "infallible." I have repeatedly encouraged you to read a text on population genetics so that you better understand what you are talking about; I still encourage you to do so. But frankly, when people claim that evolution "requires" natural selection, realizing why that is completely wrong doesn't take a deep knowledge of pop. gen. It only requires an understanding of the modern definition of biological evolution.

Anyway, I hope you now understand that the definition of evolution I have been using is not "B.S.," that evolution does not "require a selective force" of any kind, and that non-selective forces, such as mutation and drift, also cause evolution. Evolution is easily one of the most misunderstood major scientific theories, even among people who "believe" in it and think they understand it. One of the most common mistakes is to think that evolution is only "natural selection," and that everything else is just "noise" (as you and several others have put it). I have tried to explain why that view is incorrect.

As to the rates of human evolution and the relative importance of selective and non-selective factors in human populations, that is not my area of expertise in biology. I will have to leave the topic of human evolution to others. I am sure you are correct, though, that modern transportation has (and will have) dramatic consequences for genetic structure in human populations.

At this point, I suspect you are intentionally trolling ("bucko"?), but in case not, I'll repeat what I said above.

1. Evolution is the change of allele frequencies in a population from one generation to the next.

2. Allele frequencies can and do change in the complete absence of any natural selection, usually due to one or more of: mutation, genetic drift, or gene flow.

3. Therefore, evolution does not require natural selection.

If you can provide any substantive argument for why the above is incorrect, I will happily listen. And no, the sentences you plucked from the Wikipedia article about the modern synthesis do not refute this point. To the contrary, had you spent a bit more time with your Wikipedia searching, you would have discovered this, right in the article about evolution: "Even in the absence of selective forces, genetic drift can cause two separate populations that began with the same genetic structure to drift apart into two divergent populations with different sets of alleles." That is exactly the point I've been trying to make. Are you seriously arguing that this doesn't count as evolution for some reason?

Let me restate that: genetic drift, all by itself, can cause a population's genetic structure to change over time. That is a fact, plain and simple. And that is, by definition, evolution. I made no statement about the relative importance of natural selection vs. any other evolutionary force, and am not disputing that natural selection is often the most important factor in genetic change.

Again, please carefully consider points 1), 2), and 3) above. Non-selective forces do cause evolution. This is a fundamental result of modern population genetics, and your continued persistence in denying this demonstrates you know not of what you speak. As I've suggested, please read an introductory text on population genetics. It will explain all of these points far better than I can in this limited space.

Unbelievable. Sometimes "as simple as possible" still doesn't work. Genetic drift, by definition, changes the allele frequencies in a population. So how are 1) and 2) not connected, again?

My definition of "evolution" is the one that is accepted by virtually all evolutionary biologists. And it is absolutely indisputable that populations can evolve in the absence of natural selection. This is not an opinion or blind assertion. It is a fact supported by a vast body of theory and empirical observation. If you truly don't believe this, please do yourself and the rest of us a favor and read a text on population genetics, then reconsider what you said in your post. You will see (I hope) that it is nonsense. "Statistical significance" has nothing to do with whether or not a population is evolving.

No, it isn't. I'll make this as simple as possible.

1. Evolution is the change of allele frequencies in a population from one generation to the next.

2. Allele frequencies can and do change in the complete absence of any natural selection, usually due to one or more of: mutation, genetic drift, or gene flow.

3. Therefore, evolution does not require natural selection.

This conclusion is supported by a mountain of theoretical and empirical evidence. If you don't accept 1), then you are rejecting the definition of organic evolution used by virtually all contemporary evolutionary biologists. If you don't accept 2), then I strongly encourage you to read an introductory text on population genetics. Regarding speciation (something you comment on in later posts), population genetics models show that even speciation can happen in the total absence of selective pressures, due only to non-selective evolutionary change.