has2k1

I see it this way. You have to accelerate the mass to the escape velocity. You also have to achieve a net effect of being in orbit (some distance x above surface of earth). The most direct vector to that distance is perpendicular. The two combined should give you the minimal energy requirement. Any engineering (and aerodynamics) creativity cannot give you anything better.

When you look at the successes of nature you cannot help but marvel at it's ingenuity. But then you look at it's failures and you can only marvel at it's stupidity.

Nature is just like a password cracker tries all possible combinations of characters. Most tries are wrong and the clock is always ticking.

A convenient theory for longevity is, late menopause implies a selection (in the history of the species) against all of forms early age killers. So, I find it fascinating that a warm blooded (or even cold blooded e.g turtles) animal with an early menopause can ward off cancer for that long.

Keep it up. An order button for a Persian rug from my design would be nice. :)

According to the professionals of the field, there is little hope for ever preventing cancer. For a protein life that has sufficient complexity, cells have to divide/replicate to maintain the life of the protein machine, e.g a human body. Stuff can go wrong with the division/replication, it can be inaccurate in so many ways but what matters most is that the replicates can also replicate.

Some cells die before they attempt a single replication. This could be due to a disease attack, vulnerable imperfect replicate, plus plus. As long as those that get to replicate can make up the numbers for those that die early. Cells that are resilient and can replicate fast and frequent enough before they die tend to pass on forms of this attribute to their imperfect clones.

With time, many types of cells in the whole protein body get to attempt replications faster and faster. Pure natural selection at work -- a concrete example, smoking kills lung cells, so for the lung cells to maintain their numbers they have to replicate early enough in their life time and frequently.

Most environmental pressures seem to force the biology of the cells in this direction, which increases the likelihood of replication eager cells aka cancerous cells.

That is why at this moment in time, prevention seems bleak.

He was probably inspired by a sub-plot in Sydney Sheldon's "If Tomorrow Comes" (1985).

Indeed, I did not make that clear.

All farmers - Not nihilistic, Not stable

All pillagers - Nihilistic, Not evolutionary stable

Some ratio of pillagers:farmers - Not nihilistic, Evolutionary stable

Where nihilism means that the society is very self defeating that it collapses instantly. And evolutionary stable means that the society can maintain it's general composition for a long enough time period.

P.S: There is probably a better word than nihilism for what I have chosen it to mean.

Morality can be involved in strategy to survive. First and foremost, morality is just specific behavioural patterns. Behavioural patterns can be encoded in DNA, e.g you could have a genetic variation that leads you to feel maximally rewarded when you fight back after some slight on your character.

Then you might wonder, "why does/doesn't every member of the species have that variation?". A suitable answer as I have come to understand is, it depends on whether it is evolutionary stable for every one to have the variation or not have it. Plus you can expect some error margins.

For example, while every one can farm, every one can't be pillaging, a society of all pillagers cannot be stable. You can also see that in a society of all farmers, a randomly introduced pillager will have a blast while not necessarily upsetting the balance. But start introducing more pillagers and the stability will break down at some ratio of pillagers to farmers.

Please note that this is not "selecting what is good for the species", that is only a consequence.

On the whole, drug resistant bacteria will likely remain as capable in other characteristics. Due to the complex nature of DNA (specifically gene functions), genetic codes tends to be multipurpose. When select for any one attribute (e.g drug resistance) you could potentially affect zero or more other attributes. You just won't know which ones (based on today's bio-genetics understanding). So there is no reason to expect drug resistant bacteria to be weaker.

You are right bacteria have proven very cable at appropriating useful DNA from across the species. Also, we can reasonably expect drug resistant bacteria to spread just like other bacteria spreads (i.e varied methods and levels of difficulty). Among the factors that affect the spread of bacteria is the mobility of the host. If a host dies in timely fashion the bacteria spreads less and if they linger around longer the opportunity to spread increases. Like other infectious pathogens, this is mainly species dependent. When a multitude of antibiotic resistant bacteria spread around sufficiently are a common stay in the ether then they become part of the random bacteria that would likely infect if you just got a cut.

I think that is where "cultural fit" comes in, where everyone has a sense of ownership of everything for which they possess the required skill-set.

If that is so then the real magic happens at the hiring stage.

I mentioned the difference

"a structured/formulaic way to think about and build graphs"

This is what plotting using the "grammar" provides. Each plot is a like a sentence, for a sentence can be composed using some of the following - verb, noun, adverb, adjective, interjection, pronoun, proposition, conjunction. Alike, ggplot2 allows you to think of a graph in terms of layers, which layers can have different components that describe the "geometry" or "statistics" of the plot. Plus, there is a lot more.

You could probably describe your favourite plotting package as structured and formulaic, but an experience with ggplot2 would convince you otherwise.

Atoms are tightly bound and hard to split, they are even harder to build. Up one level and starting with atoms the ease with which the next structures (molecules) can be created goes up tremendously (of course with a lot of variation depending on which atoms are used).

Prime numbers are can only be split (factorized) in one axiomatic way (1 and the prime itself). This is with multiplication(or it's inverse division) as the building (splitting) operation. Primes are tough to deal with, yet with them you can create (through multiplication) all other numbers. This is the fundamental theory of arithmetic.

The correlation is apparent. Though as explained with atoms we are creating structures that are made up of atoms but are not classified as atoms themselves (fusion can give you atoms from atoms but it is not easy business), but with primes numbers we make other numbers that are not primes.

But what is it good for?

Well we have a lot of ideas! One thing that we did, for example, was to apply clustering to discover the ``typical'' approaches to this problem. This allowed us to discover common failure modes in the class, but also gave us a way to find multiple correct approaches to the same problem. Stay tuned for more results from the codewebs team!

I recall watching him sometime back explain it as follows.

In the guts of string theory lay error correcting "code" similar to some of the error correcting codes used in computer networking algorithms.

Nice little bit of New Age Physics.

Given psi(x, t), if the relation between x and t is not non- linear. Then you can have a time-independent Schrodinger equation with a time-independent wave-function i.e psi(x).

However, you do not need start with a time dependent wave function to justify the time-independent wave function.

It is possible that Gravity as we know it is an illusion. For example, the Newtonian take on Gravity was that it was a force. That according to Einstein was illusory, Gravity was really a geometric manifestation due to the curvature of space-time. With that take Gravity as we know it is different from the Gravity as was once known. However the Newtonian view that Gravity is a force can and still does facilitate useful everyday computations.

The go to illusion when we think of illusions is the mirage, you can see as water complete with the wavy nature of water and if you had no way of getting closer to inspect it, it might as well be the real thing. Depending on your philosophical take either it is always an illusion, or it becomes an illusion when you find out that it is not water.

A note of agreement with what seems like your main query, we might as well drop the word illusion when it comes to the physical description of the universe. Any framework of description is full of illusions that may never be proven otherwise.

I took QFT some years back and it also went over my head. There is still that mental gap of where the only way you can think about time is via time-(in)dependent wave function.

Genetics are more fundamental than behavior or cognition. The prediction of a biological outcome using genetics tends to be more damning than if the predictor were something else. Genetics carry a lot of weight, you cannot teach them away, nor think them away and still in 2013 you cannot replace them. You are damned by them.

Plus, you cannot genuinely critique a revelation based on an article aimed at the general audience. That is a cheap shot with the potential to mislead self.