1. Subscribersonhouse
    Fast and Curious
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    21 Aug '17 19:251 edit
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime
    Evolution of terminology is something I can agree with.

    I began studying evolution in the early sixties. Was working and married (with children) in the late 70s so didn't have a lot of spare time to keep up with new developments. First got online mid-90s and was able to get back into it... so was out of the loop for about 20 years.
    A lot can change i ...[text shortened]... are calling and texting me like crazy... why I don't know, it's not like no one saw this coming.
    Where do you live? In totality ville? I am in the Pocono's and it was maybe 80% or so, maybe a bit more. I was surprised it was that much, but not as much as last one which must have been 25 years ago now, that one was almost total, enough to make the shadows of the leaves into crescents but not this time. I had the advantage of having a pair of 20X80 binoculars with solar filter cups to attach to the scope so you can view the sun full on. I even managed to get a half ass image with my point and shoot when it was mostly cloud covered, then the battery died so that ended the photo experiments, I thought I was going to go to Santee South Carolina, which is dead nuts center but wife went in hospital yesterday so that was that. It would have been a magnificent trip but no luck. Have to wait for the next one in the US in 2024.
  2. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    21 Aug '17 20:373 edits
    Originally posted by @sonhouse
    Where do you live? In totality ville? I am in the Pocono's and it was maybe 80% or so, maybe a bit more. I was surprised it was that much, but not as much as last one which must have been 25 years ago now, that one was almost total, enough to make the shadows of the leaves into crescents but not this time. I had the advantage of having a pair of 20X80 bin ...[text shortened]... would have been a magnificent trip but no luck. Have to wait for the next one in the US in 2024.
    I could have traveled a short distance south from Portland to witness the totality, but decided about a week ago that I'd rather not deal with traffic and finding a place to park and stay overnight and etc. etc. There was a significant dimming effect here in Portland I didn't expect to see... surprising, considering how little of the sun the moon actually covered.

    My brother looked around on google maps and found an isolated looking area where there are logging trails. He left last night shortly after midnight, and from what I can see in the pictures he sent he appears to have been the only one there. He asked me if it felt cooler where I am... he was smack dab on the center of the totality line, and he said it felt as though the temperature had dropped by 10 to 20 degrees.
  3. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    21 Aug '17 21:071 edit
    Originally posted by @fabianfnas
    So you are still an ignorant in the subject... 😞
    presumptions of _________ are usually rooted in _________







    No, avert thine eyes... don't even think about it !

    it's a trap
  4. Unknown Territories
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    21 Aug '17 21:29
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime
    I could have traveled a short distance south from Portland to witness the totality, but decided about a week ago that I'd rather not deal with traffic and finding a place to park and stay overnight and etc. etc. There was a significant dimming effect here in Portland I didn't expect to see... surprising, considering how little of sun the moon actually co ...[text shortened]... he totality line, and he said it felt as though the temperature had dropped by 10 to 20 degrees.
    And you just wanted to know if your brother felt cooler than you because he got to see it!
  5. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    21 Aug '17 23:411 edit
    Originally posted by @freakykbh
    And you just wanted to know if your brother felt cooler than you because he got to see it!
    ° Oh yeah, sure... In his dreams!

    He were cooler than me for a few minutes, but I'll betcha he don't even know what a pokeball is. I'm cool all the time. Ya know, like fer coincidence, Johnny Bravo.
  6. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    22 Aug '17 00:482 edits
    I was searching for basic requirements for life and came across this:

    https://lco.global/spacebook/what-are-requirements-life-arise-and-survive/

    Not what I was looking for, but it's brief and doesn't appear to have a creationist bias.

    What I'm looking for is a list or explanation of what needs to occur for there to be a successful abiogenesis event. Just off the top of my head I would guess a few of those might be:

    1. Self containment
    2. Ability to take in nourishment and expel waste
    3. The ability to reproduce (offspring)
    4. A viable internal operating system... as opposed to (for example) an organisms innards randomly moving around and for no apparent reason.

    * ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ahhhhhh... *

    Ohh, that felt good. Anywho...

    In my (not so humble) opinion the ability to reproduce is essential, because without that nothing else matters. Here today and gone tomorrow (extinction) would be the norm... albeit an untenable 'norm'.
  7. Standard memberapathist
    looking for loot
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    22 Aug '17 01:56
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime
    I was searching for basic requirements for life and came across this:...

    In my (not so humble) opinion the ability to reproduce is essential, because without that nothing else matters. Here today and gone tomorrow (extinction) would be the norm... albeit an untenable 'norm'.
    So mules aren't alive, and neither are you after that vasectomy.

    Sometimes we can't see the trees because the forest is in the way.
    In order to propagate, life must propagate. That doesn't say much about what life is in the first place.
  8. Joined
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    22 Aug '17 04:131 edit
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime
    I was searching for basic requirements for life and came across this:

    https://lco.global/spacebook/what-are-requirements-life-arise-and-survive/

    Not what I was looking for, but it's brief and doesn't appear to have a creationist bias.

    What I'm looking for is a list or explanation of what needs to occur for there to be a successful abiogen ...[text shortened]... ters. Here today and gone tomorrow (extinction) would be the norm... albeit an untenable 'norm'.
    Important to note that none of this "origin of life" business is or will ever be proven. It's always going to be speculation.

    Lifes complex, to be sure. An E. coli has 3,000 genes. Hard to imagine where that started, given that the simplest mechanisms of DNA replication require at least 5 properly-folded multimeric peptides working together. Chicken... meet egg. Enormous efforts have been underway for a decade to try to generate a synthetic organism from scratch. Even if you have all the building blocks synthesized and localized, as far as I'm aware, all have failed thus far.

    One origin hypothesis gaining steam. Viruses. But those folks have no container, which as you point out would probably not ultimately be a successful strategy. Given the protein requirement, Its really difficult to make replication work theoretically without a cell-of-origin. My favorite speculation is that lipids formed first, generating vesicles that could store stuff and eventually spawn other vesicles.

    Buut... once you have a vesicle, you need a way to get things in and out of it. That's really complex too.
  9. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    22 Aug '17 05:314 edits
    Originally posted by @wildgrass
    Important to note that none of this "origin of life" business is or will ever be proven. It's always going to be speculation.

    Lifes complex, to be sure. An E. coli has 3,000 genes. Hard to imagine where that started, given that the simplest mechanisms of DNA replication require at least 5 properly-folded multimeric peptides working together. Chicken... ...[text shortened]... ce you have a vesicle, you need a way to get things in and out of it. That's really complex too.
    I usually get lambasted for saying this, but the more I've learned about biological systems the less likely it seems to have occurred by happenstance.

    Too many factors all need to come together at nearly the same time, and in a particular order. No matter how I try to imagine it happening, it's like trying to imagine a tornado moving through a junk yard and inadvertently creating something far more complex than anything that got dumped in there. But then the tornado scenario actually seems to be the more likely scenario, because you're already starting off with the necessary preassembled parts.

    All the parts of a cell need to be assembled, fall into place (with precision) and set into motion before it can be a viable living cell. Much easier said than done when you consider how it would have just happened to happen... by happenstance. Also, the timing of assembling parts and getting them into place is critical.

    If you are building a machine timing isn't critical. You can take all the time you need for assembling the parts, putting them into place, and then start it up any old time you want to. Not so with living organisms. They either immediately start working (abiogenesis) or are already working, or immediately begin falling apart (decomposition).
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    22 Aug '17 06:344 edits
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime
    the more I've learned about biological systems the less likely it seems to have occurred by happenstance.
    are you talking here about abiogenesis or evolution?

    If evolution; evolution isn't happenstance but an inevitable process to continually occur to life (after the first life starts, of course).

    If abiogenesis; the fact that we are here and life must have had a starting point is evidence for abiogenesis and that means the first life occurred by 'happenstance' although there may be some preconditions that came about to make it very likely or even inevitable to occur so "happenstance" is probably not the best word here because it is highly misleading.
  11. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    22 Aug '17 07:11
    Originally posted by @apathist
    So mules aren't alive, and neither are you after that vasectomy.

    Sometimes we can't see the trees because the forest is in the way.
    In order to propagate, life must propagate. That doesn't say much about what life is in the first place.
    "what life is" is an interesting question.

    Living organisms do not violate any law of physics or mechanics or chemistry or... you name it. Nothing that takes place in a living organism violates any known physical law. And yet the difference between animate and inanimate matter is so vast you would have to be a lump of inanimate matter to not notice the difference.

    So there is clearly a component of life that cannot be found in inanimate matter, and it (whatever 'it' is) only exists in living organisms. Even little bugs are able to sense the difference between a lump of dirt and another living organism. But if a person has difficulty sensing the difference it's not because he's stupid... more likely it's because he's highly intelligent and preoccupied by his own thoughts.
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    22 Aug '17 07:44
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime
    "what life is" is an interesting question.
    ...
    And yet the difference between animate and inanimate matter is so vast you would have to be a lump of inanimate matter to not notice the difference.

    So there is clearly a component of life that cannot be found in inanimate matter, and it (whatever 'it' is) only exists in living organisms. Even little bu ...[text shortened]... stupid... more likely it's because he's highly intelligent and preoccupied by his own thoughts.
    Even bugs don't know what differs life from non-life. He is just interested to find food. The smell leads him to the right thing.

    We know for sure objects not having life.
    We know for sure objects having life.
    But there is border where things can be questioned whether or not is living or not living.

    What about virus? What about prions? What about isolated DNA? What about things without DNA but another information carrier? And there are self-replicating molecules that certainly has no life but nonetheless reproduces.

    So do we have a good definition of what life is yet? No, I don't think so. But for normal people not interested in science, the general definition is good enough.
  13. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    22 Aug '17 07:49
    Originally posted by @humy
    are you talking here about abiogenesis or evolution?

    If evolution; evolution isn't happenstance but an inevitable process to continually occur to life (after the first life starts, of course).

    If abiogenesis; the fact that we are here and life must have had a starting point is evidence for abiogenesis and that means the first life occurred by 'happenstan ...[text shortened]... e to occur so "happenstance" is probably not the best word here because it is highly misleading.
    there may be some preconditions that came about to make it very likely or even inevitable

    At the time life is believed to have arisen the environmental conditions were very different. At that time it was considered hostile to life, so I can't imagine what sort of desirable preconditions you might be alluding to.

    the fact that we are here and life must have had a starting point is evidence for abiogenesis

    We are here, therefore we evolved?
    Yes, we are here. And as far as I know no one (in their right mind) disputes a starting point. But calling this "evidence" of abiogenesis is a bit of a stretch.
  14. Standard memberlemon lime
    itiswhatitis
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    22 Aug '17 07:551 edit
    Originally posted by @fabianfnas
    Even bugs don't know what differs life from non-life. He is just interested to find food. The smell leads him to the right thing.

    We know for sure objects not having life.
    We know for sure objects having life.
    But there is border where things can be questioned whether or not is living or not living.

    What about virus? What about prions? What about ...[text shortened]... hink so. But for normal people not interested in science, the general definition is good enough.
    What about virus? What about prions? What about isolated DNA? What about things without DNA but another information carrier? And there are self-replicating molecules that certainly has no life but nonetheless reproduces.

    You must have very keen eyesight.

    Are you a super hero? A visitor from another planet, who has come here to help us fight for truth, justice and the American way?
  15. Standard memberapathist
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    22 Aug '17 08:35
    Originally posted by @lemon-lime...
    All the parts of a cell need to be assembled, fall into place (with precision) and set into motion before it can be a viable living cell....
    I thought irreducible complexity had been debunked.

    The first cell is a myth. The components were bubbling all over the planet, and they wrapped up in a membrane millions of times, and died. Until they didn't. All over the place.
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