Sinfest

Mr Gary · Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 4:25 am Post subject:

I've often been thanked for ingesting my own balls, but you're welcome anyway.
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Usagi Miyamoto

Bug powder causes male bedbugs to stab each other to death with their penises

En garde!
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The reward for a good life is a good life.

Jinx · Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 4:39 pm Post subject:

Homosexual stabbing rape, at its finest!
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The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin

LD! · Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 11:27 pm Post subject:

Do you mean that because they're gay or because there is only one sex involved?

Usagi Miyamoto · Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 7:34 am Post subject:

WheelsOfConfusion · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 11134 Location: Unknown Kaddath

V'ger probes still unlocking secrets of the Universe.

mouse · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 15446 Location: under the bed

the voyagers make me happy on many levels, not least because they keep finding new stuff.
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aka: neverscared!

WheelsOfConfusion · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 11134 Location: Unknown Kaddath

Confirmed: Ginkgo biloba does zilch for your brain.

WheelsOfConfusion · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 11134 Location: Unknown Kaddath

Mad Cow Disease can evolve, without any DNA or RNA.

picturesofsky · Joined: 13 May 2008 Posts: 3074 Location: England

mouse · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 15446 Location: under the bed

The Highlord · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 555

Well, that's exactly what makes this study such an attention-grabber, mouse. You mention that evolution involves a gene pool: this is an article about how that isn't necessary. Novel mutations do pop up in the prions, and selection pressure changing the modality of a population is very much evolution, even if no mutations leading to new traits are involved.
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mouse · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 15446 Location: under the bed

if there are mutations in prions, then that fits with my definition of evolution. i understand that prions don't have genes, but they do have a specific order of amino acids that can be duplicated and reproduced. if you have a fixed number of specific patterns in a population, and you alter the percentage of those patterns, this, to my mind, is not evolution. it is a necessary _step_ in evolution (selection of advantageous forms) but it's not the whole thing. you don't actually get anything new, you get a change in the population proportions until (presumably) one form swamps out all the others - and then it stops.

but if you are getting changes in the forms in the population; i.e., new forms coming into existence which can then be acted on by selection - then, you're talking evolution.

to my mind.
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aka: neverscared!

WheelsOfConfusion · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 11134 Location: Unknown Kaddath

That's a good point, if new topologies aren't really generated but just an existing set of them shuffled into predominance under certain conditions, there's not really anything new coming out of it.

The Highlord · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 555

To which I'll cite Darwin's finches. New mutations aren't required for the beak sizes to shift: the variation in beak size is already present, and selection pressure shifts the modality of the population towards larger or smaller beaks. A bird suddenly evolving a corkscrew beak isn't necessary for it to be evolution in action.

Evolution is much more than just changes leading to speciation, of which mutations are a very important impetus. Just stirring the pot can lead to incredible diversity without new mutations being required due to redundancy and level of expressiveness of genes: except in the case of prions, it's due to protein-protein interactions.

I also find any discussion of information when it comes to lifeforms incredibly muddled and tangential. It's an abstraction that everybody has their own definition of.
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There is a luxury to self-reproach.