Nonlocality everywhere

From the 4th of December edition of 'Science': "Today, all experiments conclude that Nature is nonlocal".
If true, all ramifications of this may well turn the world as we know it upside down...

Restricted choice in adult H. sapiens

In any given situation in an adult's life, the amount of physically possible actions that one should NOT take is gargantuan.

Run Baby run

Forget 'Call of Duty' ... here's the true massacre!
http://www.break.com/games/tiger-woods-wife-outrun.html

Progress

In old times the saying went:
"Wherever you go, there you are."

now it is:
"Wherever you go, you are in your blackberry."

More Memory anyone?

From last week's Nature;
We can create mice with enhanced memory. These animals are very anxious and have a higher chance of getting cancer.
Forgetting seems as necessary as forgiving for a happy live.

Civilised religion

I wonder: is religion just the attempt to reattain a thoughtless state we had before using our brain so much that we had to create civilisation?

Worry out of Eden

I wonder: was the garden eden just a time when humans didn't think (and hence worry) so much? Sometime before the first settlements, during the happy hunter and gatherer period, say before 50,000 BCE?

Laws of happiness

I wonder: what would be the minimum number of laws that, if strictly observed, would lead to violence-free happiness and justice?
10,000? more? or just one, such as 'do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself?'

The Inexorable Sophistication of Technology

The rational of technology is to make a solution to a problem increasingly sophisticated until it doesn't work any more. Then you have a new problem, much more sophisticated than the first one, for which one finds ever increasingly sophisticated solutions, until ...

Sex in Monte Carlo

Is sex in evolution what Monte Carlo is in simulated annealing?

A prolific equation

I wonder how many scientists get cancer because they do cancer research (cancerogenous products, stress).
Do we create more cancer than we cure?

The Darwin-year God of Creation and Evolution

Dear Mr. Harun Yahya

A friend recently gave me your Atlas of Creation (Vol I), thinking I might find it inspiring.
This is indeed the case.
I am sure God will be pleased that you devote so much energy to prove his existence through making and distributing this wonderfully crafted book.
And it does indeed very convincingly prove God.
When looking through these pages, one can but feel that it is simply DIVINE, that all these fascinating and diverse creatures have, in fact, evolved from one single cell!
Because if God exists, then He/She is not only limited to 'Creation'. Man can create cars, and they will always be cars; Man can create houses that will always be houses. Man can even create new races of animals or plants. But Man can not create a single cell that evolves into a whole biosphere of a whole planet. We are limited, but God is everything, or God is not. Thus if God is Creation, He/She is also Evolution. 
Thank you for pointing this out to so many of us with your Atlas!
Yours
BLT

PS: In case you want to make an additional volume of this exciting series, please consider making an Atlas of Embryonic Development. It is fascinating how the embryos of all animals reproduce, in their mothers womb, the hundreds of million years of evolution of their species. From a single cell to their present state, including, for us, stages with webbing or a tail. And this is so much better documented than the sparse fossil record, and happens million times every day around us! The fact that the simple existence of you, me, everyone on this planet proves that God is Creation and Evolution, is certainly worth an Atlas.

Inner Answering-Machine (I AM)

autistic and enlightened humans, as well as probably animals use often a sort of instinctive, not directed cognition to find answers to complicated problems. They don't really think, they just listen, or see. Should I try and trust this first 'inner intuitive answer' for complicated and important matters?

>NO< says my inner intuitive answering machine.

So what? says my rational guided thought: If instinct answers NO, don't believe it, then the answer should be YES, believe it...!?

oh bugger.

dilemma of faith

As a rational scientist, having judged all arguments, I came to the conclusion that it is favourable for the human being to be religious.
So rationally speaking, I have to be religious.
However 'religion' is a matter of faith, not of rationalism.
oh bugger.
any suggestions for available Gods suitable for rational scientists?

H. sapiens, limited edition

The problem of science: our senses and brain are adapted to survival, not to perceive the absolute and objective truth of all things.

Nature of Paradise

Our brain was big and complex for about 1 million years before we actually started to use it for complex actions and thoughts (tools, burial rites, social structures). Is that epoch the Paradise referred to in the Genesis? Is the apple the consciousness? Or the civilisation?
Paradise lost because consciousness gained?
Paradise lost because civilisation gained?
What about 'uncivilised' tribes? Do they die of stress, of fears? Do they hate their neighbours an does this stop them from sleeping? Are they as afraid of failing to hunt pray as we are of social failure? How afraid are they of disease and death?
In becoming civilised, we have lost the connection with Nature that they had. We have gained civilisation and consciousness instead. Fears of Nature have transformed into fears of civilisation. Have we advanced, or just shifted?

L'enfer, c'est les autres

Is it that our brain is so complex because our social system is so complex, or is our social system so complex, because our brain is so complex?

A better place?

I wonder what our world would be like if it was ruled by Australian aborigines.

From Kafka to Douglas Adams: bureaucracy goes US

Dear John,

As you can read below, the institutes' administrator says my French diploma of a doctor is not enough to certify the award of the diploma of a doctor. She wants an original transcript showing all the grades.
I replied that the diploma of a doctor can not show "all the grades", simply because there are no grades; you can only pass it (with certain distinctions), or not pass it. And this is clearly written on it.

She replied that she would then need "a certified letter [in English] from the University stating that they do not provide transcripts with grades and that the diploma is the only source of documentation used to confirm that. "

Needless to say that the lady that deals with this stuff in our University is a) not good in English, b) out of work because of a broken wrist. She may still kindly agree to state the above obvious, and to help her, I suggest the following phrasing for the letter:

"I certify that the University of Montpellier I does not provide original transcripts showing individual grades for the diploma of a doctor, simply because there are no individual grades for the diploma of a doctor.
I certify also that the ‘Diplome de Docteur’ delivered by the University Montpellier I is the only source of documentation used to confirm that the diploma of a doctor has been delivered by the University Montpellier I."

Importantly, this all is NOT to needed certify that I have obtained my diploma of a doctor, because my degree has already been certified by an official US credential evaluation, delivered by a certified (NACES) company.
Yet, even this official credential evaluation appears not enough as an official credential evaluation, because, for the institute, it also needs to contain all the four points:
1) a translation of my diploma
2) verification of accreditation of the foreign university
3) the equivalency of the non-US degree to a US degree
4) my attendance at and graduation from my university

However, my initial credentials evaluation company replied that a credentials evaluation is exactly that. It naturally includes all of the above. The company suggested that my administrator may call them to see what they actually want.

She did not call them, but replied to me "Our department must cover all four points that was provided below." And she suggested that I should use another evaluation company.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

The Unterpants of Cultural Heritage

Untergunther are an underground organisation of a dozen members specialised in the clandestine restoration of hidden cultural heritage. They only restore pieces that no-one can see. They got a trial for repairing a monumental clockwork that was piled up somewhere in the attic of the Parisian Panthéon . However the process got adjourned, because the court decided that restoring heritage is not an offence. Annoyed, Pascal Monet, the administrator of the Panthéon, took away a central piece of the clock, so that it stopped working.

The Right Choice

Just noticed that Google Ads have chosen to advertise for Retractable Urinals on my blog. I'm not sure that this a compliment for my writing ...

An Ongoing Mess

If after 2 million years of Human evolution most (!) men and woman still can't form harmonic and stable relationships (neither live happily with continuously changing partners) then this means:
a) that this is in fact the best reproductive strategy (i.e. semi-stable relationships produce the highest off-spring rate, due to adultery sex or serial monogamies).
b) that this is an obligatory negative by-product of another very favourable trait (e.g. the difference between men and woman, or individuals in general, allows specialisation into different tasks, which is important for a community).
c) that we have not yet adapted to our current condition (overpopulation and high mobility means extremely frequent encounter of attractive potential partners)
d) that the Gods like to have a laugh sometimes.

India's greatest gift to mankind

Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois ('Guruji') taught ashtanga yoga for 70 years. Until he was about 60, he barely had any success at all, having only five or less students a time. As he died yesterday, aged 93, his teachings have improved, directly or indirectly, the health and happiness of millions.

May I talk to your inner chimp?

Taken from Nature Newsfeature 29/01/2009: "much of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices, but by mental processes put into motion by their environment" [...] "humans lived in social groups long before language evolved, and the language function presumably exists on top of a more archaic brain system for non-linguistic social signalling."
So despite our sophisticated linguistic communication, it's still our inner chimp that rules our world. Of course we're clever enough to exploit this knowledge to "improve sales success by as much as 20 %". 20 % more of things we neither want nor need, now that's fantastic progress; congratulation, Homo!

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité; For the French, this is not a motto, it is a ranking.
Liberté (to do what ever you want to do, regardless if it harms or annoys anyone): that's the most important!
Far, far behind, there is Egalité (meaning equally low; it is not because you work your bum off that you get more than those who do nothing).
and at the end of the list, there is Fraternité. Nobody knows what that means, really, but it comes at the end, so it shouldn't be important anyway.

SUEs

Unfortunately, our memory of persons tends to be dominated by Single Unpleasant Events (SUEs). Maggi is the one who farted during yoga class, Celine the one who burped at the beginning of a sentence...

Publicity

Publicity, adverts, displayed, played, popping up, appearing everywhere, all over, ever more agitated and noisy. Somehow it feels that these are the last hectic spasms of a dying system. Dying because it at last managed to bite its own bum.

Cacophonie

Science is about observing and deducing.
CONTEXT: The toilets in our new institute are sufficiently hear-through to allow, sitting on one, establishing statistics for the other.
RESULTS: With N>50, I now report that only about 5 % (+/- 2 %) of all toilet visitors wash their hands after usage.
CONCLUSION: While this explains with good confidence the impressive recurrence and spread of gastro-enteritis infections in our institute, further studies are needed to link this behaviour with the reputation of French citizens to be scruffy.

Petri Heil

Petri said: Spirituality is not something you do once in a while in a candle-lit room, wearing baggy clothes and burning incense, but something you do in your daily life.
Here we go.

Majority Problem

The problem of the French: they all want to be in the opposition. they want to be against. All of them...

Give way

This grey morning, I gave way to a lady in the street, in a small passage.
She looked at me and said: "Thank you"
I was surprised.
And then I was surprised that I was surprised.
2012?

Hug a Grandmother

Hey it's Grandmother's day today in France.
Don't forget to hug one on your way home!
Yep, anyone will do. They all deserved to be hugged, especially those with a pink perm.

Convulsive intelligence II

Is the major part of our mind solely devoted to finding remedies to problems our mind itself causes? By inflating our brain beyond reason, our species also inflated our emotions beyond reason. More than any other organism, we love, we hate, we envy, we miss, we regret, we stress, we fear, we are bored, especially on a Sunday, and oh well, and we want more, much more. Homo drama queeniens. As a result we need law, police, the military to regulate, we need science, medicin and psychology to cure from stress, accidents, wars, polution, and we need entertainment. And if nothing helps and we are still unhappy, then we need religion, we need yoga, to calm our mind, and we need drugs. All sorts of drugs.
No other species needs so much fuzz to live and survive happily in big societies. And we're not even particularly happy! Because the more we get the more we need, that's simply how our sensory organs are conceived; only changes are sensed, and only increase is success, keeping the same level means regression. That's how our senses work, and that's how our happiness, our economy and stock exchange fail to work, at least at the moment. No other animal is as much fooled by it's own emotions as we are; but we still think we're more advanced than everybody else. Ask ants if they want our brain -
Ok, I need some holiday!

21st Century Boy

Was opening my email inbox today, silently hoping for some exciting new messages;
There was a greatly followed-up email threat on "Stereo projection with Coot"
and
Araiza Wein sent a message entitled: More orrgasms
and
Lucie Ladika sent a message entitled: More orgaasms
... oh well ...

Cycling like God in France

Bicycle lanes in France are used as (in order of frequency):
Dog-poo depository
Place where to smash empty wine or beer bottles
Speedway for motorbikes and pizza-delivery mopeds
Short-to-middle term parking spaces for vehicles of all sorts
Place where pedestrians can walk, while listening to loud music and staring at their feet (to avoid dog-poo)
Bicycle lanes

Intranet

As the internet gets faster and bigger, the new capacities get increasingly (ab)used by spam, malware and publicity. How long will it take for that the internet is so filled up with crap that it becomes both, highly dangerous and virtually useless?

Indian Wisdom

John and Ellen Derby called their first son Shankara, their second son Krishna, and their third son Derek.

Convulsive intelligence

Is human intelligence just a human's illusion? Does human intelligence only help to remedy problems it creates, and to explain hypotheses it invents? Human intelligence produced modern medicine, helping people to survive after injuries from wars and car accidents; helping to cure cancer and depression, created by stress and anxiety; helping to cure auto-immune diseases coming from poluted environment; helping to correct problematic eyesight from staring too much at computer and TV screens. Does human mind just investigates a universe itself creates? Without theories of big bangs, would we need to search for signs of it? Is human intelligence convulsive?

Socially Unacceptable

My today's socially unacceptable business idea: Ask Ricky Martin to do a "I kissed a boy, and I liked it" cover version of Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl", and sell it to gay clubs.

Catch me if you will

That’s the catch 22 of our species. The very same human features that made us dominate the world will prevent us from doing so in a sustainable way. Without them, we wouldn’t be where we are today, but because of them, we will not be able to remain here for much longer.
I guess I just should stop listening to the news.

The Better Choice

I wonder what would have happened if Jesus had dictated his New Testament, word after word, to his disciples, rather than letting a bunch of people compile it according to their own ideas, long time after his death. A bit like the Qur'an. But in a way that would not allow abusing his teachings to support acts of violence. Probably impossible - we are a bunch of clever people. And Jesus wasn't lawyer, but a poor carpenter. Yep, a clever lawyer would have been better. Given all the atrocities that were carried out in his name, over the centuries, did God chose the wrong guy? But then, wouldn't this mean he probably wasn't God. Maybe just the milkman?

Tickle That Rat

Truly seen on TV: There was this grey-bearded serious scientist, who spent two years tickling rats on their bellies - and found out they liked it. And there was this biologist, who recorded elephant sounds in Africa, and played them to elephants in a European zoo - and found out they were intrigued.
No, this was not a poorly known Monty Python sketch, this was a serious TV report on animal's feelings...
It's been 150 years that the Origin of the Species has been published, and still experts in the field are surprised to see that other mammals behave and feel in a way very similar to us...
Poor Darwin.

Quo Vadis Homo Sapiens?

Ironically, even among us, the only intelligent being on earth, according to our own standards, aggressiveness and competitive behaviour hold the key for success, not intelligence. A strong dumb people can always crush a weaker but more intelligent one. And does it. It’s a pity. We would know enough now to guarantee a happy life for every being on this planet. But humans are selected for aggressiveness, and we can’t jump over our own genetic shadow. Evolution can’t restart an organism from scratch. We can’t change human nature. And if we don’t change we won’t make it for much longer. Another ten thousand years? Highly improbable, considering the damage we have caused in only the last one hundred years. It’s obvious, it’s silly, we all know what humanity would need to do; but we don’t. We know it and we don’t. And there will always be war, and there will always be someone cutting the last tree and fishing the last fish. That’s the hard limit of our type of intelligence. That’s where the primate grins. And so be it; Homo sapiens sapiens, creation’s self-nominated crowing glory, and the last representative of the genus Homo, will not even have delved on earth for half a million years. An extremely short-lived evolutionary flop. After all, it really wasn’t a good idea to make this brain just that little bit bigger. Just a little bigger.
(Taken from BLT: 'This Monkey's Gone To Heaven')

Geopolitical Minimiser

As I write these lines, many die and suffer in Gaza (and elsewhere in our happy world), to satisfy the political and personal interests of a few. Again, without surprise, the UN did not come to a conclusion about concrete actions. Facing human incapability for intelligent and 'humane' decision making, I wonder if one couldn't just program a 'Geopolitical Minimiser'. Feed it all data concerning a particular conflictual region, and let it find a solution that minimises all constraints (available surface area, access to resources, ethnical compatibility, necessary displacements of persons, etc...). And accept the solution!
However, I fear that the intelligent objectivity will be smashed in pieces by human stupidity and drive for power and money. Quo vadis Homo sapiens?

Scientific Stream of Conscience II

In an initial RNA world, Protein would have tended to gather around RNA. Nucleic acid binding as one of the oldest traits of proteins. Going over to more protein-based function, did evolution proceed by create proteins that substituted for central RNA/DNA. Scaffolding proteins as replacement? Protein signalling complexes evolved from protein-Nuc. acid complexes? Look for similarities in Nuc. acid binding features and protein-protein interactions. Maybe it's not directly linear in evolution, but more as a derived feature, using already existing traits. Signallosomes as loose ribyzymes?

Scientific Stream of Conscience I

Cellular networks share characteristics with social networks. Use social simulation program to test hypothesis on cellular networks. Use character traits (Sticks moderatly to many, sticks specifically to one, attracts many non-specifically, inhibits actions (fatigue), stimulates actions (alcohol)). Use floating, gaussian distribution of strengths of traits. Allow mutations, and combination of traits (or combining single characters). Allow for parallel, overlapping actions. Is there any computer game that could be used? Auto-Sims? For deterministic History, could removal of persons be compared with removal of nodes in protein interaction network? Hitler as a GPCR? Einstein as p53?