Crick and Orgel and molybdenum...

Crick and Orgel proposed their Directed Panspermia theory at a conference on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, organized by Carl Sagan and held at the Byuraka Observatory in Soviet Armenia in 1971. This theory which they described as an “highly unorthodox proposal” and “bold speculation” was presented as a plausible scientific hypothesis. Two years after the conference they published an article in Icarus on 1973.

Crick and Orgel were careful to point out that Directed Panspermia was not a certainty; but rather a plausible alternative that ought to be taken seriously. In thepaper Crick and Orgel recognised that they “do not have any strong arguments of this kind, but there are two weak facts that could be relevant”. The 1973 paper focuses on the universality of the genetic code and the role that molybdenum plays in living organisms (I am likewise working on a history of molybdenum and the origins of life) which is more than one would expected given the abundance of molybdenum on the earth’s crust.

Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel. (Circa 1993)

Crick and Orgel used the universality of the genetic code to support the theory of directed panspermia because if life had originated multiple times or evolved from a simpler genetic code one could expect living things to use a slew of genetic codes. Further, if there was only one code, Crick and Orgel reasoned that as organisms evolved they should evolve to use the same codons to code for different amino acids.

We can draw a parallel to language: while many human populations use the same symbols (letters), they combine them in different ways. These different languages use the same alphabets but different combinations of the same symbols to denote different objects (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan) as opposed to different codes (languages which uses different alphabets like Spanish and Mandarin); however, what we find is analog to a single universal language.

Their most convincing argument was the importance of molybdenum in organic processes and its relative scarcity on Earth. They had argued that living organisms should bear the stamp of the environment in which they originated. Organisms, Crick and Orgel held, would be unlikely to develop a dependency on elements that were extremely rare as organisms that relied on elements which were more abundant would be favored by selection.  An organisms that was able to substitute the rare element for one which has similar biochemical properties but is more frequent would have a clear advantage.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/01/09/the-origins-of-directed-panspermia/

The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing - Part 1 of 2

The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing - Part 1 of 2

Embedding Disabled by request...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyusnGbBSHE

Inverted Totalitaranism

"the democracy of the United States is sanitized of political participation and refers to it as managed democracy. He defines managed democracy as "a political form in which governments are legitimated by elections that they have learned to control". Under managed democracy, the electorate is prevented from having a significant impact on policies adopted by the state through the continuous employment of public relations techniques."

and

"the essential role that propaganda plays in the system. According to Wolin, whereas the production of propaganda was crudely centralized in WWII Germany, in the United States it is left to highly concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a "free press". Dissent is allowed, although the corporate media serves as a filter, allowing most people, with limited time available to keep themselves apprised of current events, only to hear points of view which the corporate media deems to be "serious""

via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Albert Camus

‘Every act of rebellion expresses nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.’
[Albert Camus]

Albert Camus (French: [albɛʁ kamy] ( listen); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was an Algerian-French Nobel Prize winning author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay "The Rebel" that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy ofnihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.

Although often cited as a proponent of existentialism, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label.^[1] In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."^[2](However, upon reconsideration, Sartre later accepted the association to existentialism).

Camus was born in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family. He studied at theUniversity of Algiers, where he was goalkeeper for the university team (association football), until he contracted tuberculosis in 1930. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement after his split with Garry Davis's Citizens of the World movement.^[3] The formation of this group, according to Camus, was intended to "denounce two ideologies found in both the USSR and the USA" regarding their idolatry of technology.^[4]

Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".^[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

Bitcoin is political, deal with it. Welcome to Dark Wallet

MIT Godel Escher Bach Lecture 1

Sławek's Leap: Hövding Crash Test