Tag Archives: DNA

December 20, 2023

Hand-Me-Down Genes

I’ve mentioned before that, after ten years of retired idleness, this year I’ve applied myself to getting some long-standing items off my TODO list. I’m a lazy beaver, not a busy one, but I’ve been less lazy than usual in 2023. (Perhaps, in part, because, on several counts, I can’t believe it’s actually 2023. I remember a time when 2001 seemed far off… in the future.)

One long-standing item off my “Gee, I Oughta…” list was doing one of those DNA assessment things I’ve seen advertised for years. I was adopted as an infant, so I’ve never known my genetic heritage.

Now, at long last, I do. And a bunch of other stuff besides.

8 Comments | tags: ancestors, DNA, genetic code | posted in Life, Science

November 28, 2019

Thanks for Patterns

By Wyrd Smythe

The Thanksgiving holiday we celebrate here in the USA has some unfortunate overtones regarding its colonial origin. Still, the idea of a festival of thanks is an ancient one — thanks for a good harvest or a good hunt. Or, in our case, thanks for helping us not die last winter.

As with Christmas or the Copenhagen interpretation, we tend to take a “shut up and calculate!” approach to the holidays. “Shut up and shop!” in the case of the Winter Solstice, and “Shut up and give thanks!” today.

One thing we can be very thankful about is patterns…

4 Comments | tags: atoms, DNA, electrons, entropy, Mandelbrot, Mandelbrot fractal, photons, quarks, Thanksgiving | posted in Life

February 16, 2016

The Next Fire

By Wyrd Smythe

Credit where credit is due, both the major ideas in this post come from Fareed Zakaria on his CNN Sunday program, GPS. If you follow TV news at all, you know Sunday mornings have such long-running standards as Meet the Press (on NBC since 1947!) and Face the Nation (on CBS since 1954). (Or was it Meet the Nation and Face the Press?)

Zakaria is one of the good ones: very intelligent, highly educated, calm and measured. He’s well worth listening to. (I’ve realized one attraction to TV news is the chance to — at least sometimes — hear educated, intelligent talk. It’s a nice respite from most TV entertainment.)

Two things on Zakaria’s last episode really rang a bell with me.

23 Comments | tags: AI, computer code, digital computer, DNA, electrons, Face the Nation, Fareed Zarkaria, fire, genetic code, genetics, internet, interweb, language, mechanical physics, Meet the Press, printing press, quantum physics, robotics | posted in Science, The Interweb, TV

December 12, 2014

Reality IS Virtual (probably)!

By Wyrd Smythe

virtual reality One of the things I mentioned in my recent Material Disbelief post was that, if you accept everything physics has discovered in the last 100 years or so — and if you believe in philosophical materialism — you are faced with the very strong possibility that all of reality is some sort of simulation or machine process.

Not only does all the evidence, as well as some basic logic, seem to point in that direction, but as a model of reality it provides easy answers to many of the conundrums of modern physics (e.g. Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” and some basic questions regarding the Big Bang).

Today I want to lay out the details of the arguments for this.

31 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, Bell's Theorem, DisneyQuest, DNA, EPR paper, Leopold Kronecker, materialism, metaphysics, Philosophical materialism, physicalism, reality, simulations, virtual reality, Zeno's paradoxes | posted in Physics