Oligo

You all look like a bunch of wankers...

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (nordin dk @ June 13 2002,16:44)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Ach, you are wrong! Even if God is omnipotent, it does not mean that he interferes everywhere and all the time. In theory, he could have created man with a free will, and then left us to see what would happen. But that he would then punish us for sinning, is like letting your parakeet of the cage and then punishing it for shitting on the armchair But generally speaking, free will is a difficult thing to imagine, if you have a view of the world that's is based on traditional linear thinking. Where does an idea come from? Does every idea and decision arise from a physical need. or is there such a thing as independent inspiration - Â a sudden leap of faith in your brain synapses connecting beforehand unrelated items. Can you train you brain to think original ideas? I think that free will is an illusion wether you believe in a god or not. Anyone who has discovered they're adults, but still have little control of the circles they run in, will know what I'm saying.<span id='postcolor'> I'm glad you brought all of this up. This is really a question between the "clockwork universe" and the "chaotic universe". You know that earlier people thought that the universe is a clockwork, which always goes the certain way once started with certain initial parameters. But nowadays all this proof has come to suggest that there is an inherent degree of randomness in the universe and that everything doesn't go exactly the same way once started with certain initial parameters. Now if asked, I'd say that the human mind operates partly in this realm of chaos. Of course the mechanism of human thinking is not yet understood to the fullest, but there is a some kind of understanding of the basic structure. Ideas and solutions to problems seem to come from a certain area in the brain which just throws out a wild bunch of different stuff, electronic noise really. The rest of the brain filters out the moronic bulk of the content and leaves the "intelligent" ideas. Or so they say, I'm sorry I don't remember any references, so I might remember incorrectly, ok? Anyway, what I'm saying is that if you give the same brain the same initial parameters, it probably will come up with different stuff during different "runs". So free will is indeed an illusion, because your thinking is slaved to randomness. How do we fit god into this? A god which is not omnipotent fits nicely, because this god would be unable to predict the unpredictable. But we were talking about omnipotent gods. Thus, a hypothetical omnipotent god would be able to predict even the chaotic universe to the fullest. He would be able to set the initial parameters of a brain and know beforehand what will happen during the following "run" (does the person accept Jesus or not). Therefore free will cannot exist with an omnipotent god. Oh yes, if god chose not to know what will happen (a kind of stupid he'd be to do that), it would be like you said: "Letting your parakeet of the cage and then punishing it for shitting on the armchair."

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Duke_of_Ray @ June 13 2002,16:27)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">So whats the explanation for the universe? Was there just a "big bang" and it was created? Well maybe so, but the Big Bang happedn becuase God had it happen that way. How can you not realize there is a higher being? Look all around you and you can see al that God has created. Hell is a horrible place and if you do not accept Jesus Christ into your life you will go to hell and burn for eternity, but by asking Jesus into your life you will be granted the gift of GOD which is eternal life.<span id='postcolor'> You know, it doesn't matter whether big bang or whatever it was was initiated by some divine being or just happened. What proof there is that it was the god you believe in who did it? What if it was the moslem god or some of the bazillion hindu gods? Or maybe it was Odin or Ukko or Zeus or Ammon Ra or whatever? What if it was some divine being who then went the hell away and nobody knows about? Another thing: I don't want an eternal life and I don't want any hell either. When I die, I just want to cease to exist. The beautiful thing about such death is that there are no regrets, because how can you regret something when you are no more? Death is the only thing in life you can do and have no regrets.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (WKK Gimbal @ June 13 2002,10:24)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">If you want a good example of how FUCKED UP some christians can be, look at this site: http://www.hom.net/~angels/ That guy is a total psychopath and he uses an ancient tome to back up his arguments. Such stuff can really get my piss boiling.<span id='postcolor'> Well, he might be a psychopath, but he is logical. His main statements "god does not love everyone", "there is no free will" and "god cannot be judged and can do whatever he wants" make up a pretty nice logical construct. He claims that god has preset who will sin and who will not, who will go to hell and who to heaven and that god hates some people and loves some people. I admit that if such a god existed, it would explain the way the world is. This god would be petty, jealous and full of himself. The question is whether this kind of god (a cruel monster) is worth of worship or belief? I say if god is like that, I'd rather believe and hope he does not exist, because he would be the last thing mankind needs.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Duke_of_Ray @ June 12 2002,22:11)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">It is not God's fualt that man sinned. God said to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of good and evil, I believe thats what it was called. A serphent diceved Eve and she ate the fruit God told her not to and Adam also ate it and thats where men's troubles started. God may not have knewn what was going to happen, but If he didn't know it was becuase he chose not too know. God can see the furture if he wants or chose not see it, God loves you but he hates evil and for defeat over sin he sent us Jesus,his son and Jesus is the way to Heaven! Look at my post before to see how to get to Heaven.<span id='postcolor'> I have read the bible, you know, because what is in it still affects the world very much. And all you're doing is quoting what it says. Apples and serpents, blah blah. The point is, if there is an omnipotent god, free will cannot exist. If god is not omnipotent, the basis of christianity sort of falls off. But I don't care. Man is capable of accomplishing many things by himself. And we don't need any gods or devils to push us along. Why do you think a hypothetical god has a right to judge us, his creations? "Judge not, lest thee be judged thyself", like the bible likes to say.

Oh, come on people. Even the russians admit nowadays that if Hitler did not attack them first, russia would have attacked Germany. Then we would have been really fucked.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Duke_of_Ray @ June 12 2002,01:42)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">It is sad to see how some of yall make a joke about this. Ill will say this ,though. There is only one true way to get to heaven and that is throught Jesus Christ, God's one and only son. Jesus did die for us and through hime we can reach Heaven. God created the world and then created man for some companionship, but then man sinned an well look at the world today. Even though man sinned God still loved him enough that he sent his own son to die for us. Don't tell me their is not a God becuase there is and he is alive and well!<span id='postcolor'> That's something I never understood. Christian morale teaches us that people are responsible for what they create. Let's say you build a bomb and it blows up, killing a bunch of people. Then it is YOU who have committed murder, not the bomb. You claim god created man, so according to the morale taught by god, god is responsible for what man does. If man does sin (breaks against the arbitrary rules set up by god), then it is god who is responsible, not the man. And don't give me the crap about god giving man a free will. This statement merely implies that god did something and then stepped back to observe what happens, therefore not knowing beforehand what would happen (does man sin or not). If he didn't know beforehand what will happen, he is not omnipotent (as claimed in the bible) and thus a worthless god. Nope, being omnipotent, god must have created man to sin intentionally. Then he judges us for doing it. What kind of sick shit is he?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tovarish @ June 09 2002,06:57)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The fact that we're the only species to singlehandedly rape the whole planet the way we're doing perhaps? But seriously, if you go by Christianity, only humans have souls. why would God deny all his other creations from paradise?<span id='postcolor'> We're still not worse than the other animals. There have been several global crises in the history of Earth, caused by animals. For example: When the first single-celled organisms capable of rudimentary photosynthesis emerged, they polluted the world with oxygen. Since all organism back then were anaerobes (does not need oxygen for living or even tolerate it), there was a huge mass extinction caused by oxygen poisoning. But the survivors adapted and now most organisms NEED oxygen to survive.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (advocatexxx @ June 07 2002,18:13)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">If an alien being came to our planet and observed us, and it would ask us why is murder punished, what would we say ? Â How could we show or proove to it that murder is wrong ? Â We could present what we think would be facts, arguments and counless array of diverse blabber, but in the end we would have no real way of convincing it that murder is wrong, yet we all believe it is. Â <span id='postcolor'> Right and wrong are just concepts. We wouldn't need to explain these concepts to the hypothetical alien. However, it would be easy to explain why murder is punished: We have finite lives and each individual has a self-preservation instinct. Thus, not many people want to die. Thus we do not generally take life, since it causes distress. In the set of behavioural rules accepted by most of us, murder is prohibited. It is not some kind of universal truth that murder is 'wrong'.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (WKK Gimbal @ June 07 2002,13:30)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Interesting read, though I'm surprised by the "let's pack up and go home" mentality of those scientists who seem to think they've found the truth. Such things would require major unquestionable facts before being accepted scientifically. It's not enough to just say "we can't think of other options, so this must be it".<span id='postcolor'> They didn't give up. It's just that the religiously motivated article claimed that. There are new theories coming up all the time and new experiments performed. The debate is still raging on. Also, it is pretty irrelevant whether god started big bang or not. What is relevant, however, is that god (if there ever was such a thing) no longer affects things. Nobody has yet to produce any reliable proof of this.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Longinius @ June 07 2002,11:27)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Where did the big bang come from then? And what existed before it?<span id='postcolor'> Are you joking? Considering that we live inside this universe, it's pretty hard to extrapolate further than the big bang, at least with the current knowledge. Our point of view is maybe a little too involved? Anyway, I think that even if somebody manages to come up with something predating the big bang, your question will just be moved backwards: Where did X come from then? The ultimate answer to this quetion might well be: Whatever you believe. If it is a god you believe caused the big bang, you go ahead and believe it.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (foxer @ June 07 2002,11:09)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">ok,Where did earth come from and why did it end up in a perfect location ? Luck ? One in an billion ? Â <span id='postcolor'> Earth came from the gas and dust left over from the birth of sun with gravitational condensing. The gas and dust originally came from the Big Bang, which created matter out of energy, but the particular matter that created our sun has earlier been part of some older star, which blew up. And the reason Earth is in a perfect location is simple. Stellar creation spawns a load of planets of different size and position (also proven by observation). Considering that there are a ridiculous number of stars in our galaxy alone, there are also an even more ridiculous amount of planets around. Of these planets, some of course are in a nice location and have a nice size for life to emerge. Earth is one of such planets. It's not a matter of luck. If you throw dice a hundered times, you're bound to get at least one six. And our galaxy alone threw one big pile of dice.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (foxer @ June 07 2002,10:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Who cares if we came from chimps/monkeys,Where the hell did the monkeys come from ? Outta space ? Germs ? What,Where did germs come from ?<span id='postcolor'> A short explanation: Planetary creation (the condensation of planets from the dust and gas left over from the formation of starts) also chemically spawns a wide array of organic compounds. This has been proven by observation of "stellar nurseries" and also by simulating the conditions in a lab. These materials are the same that make up all living beings. On the primordial Earth, light, water, thunder, carbon dioxide and warmth was abundant. In these conditions, a couple of things happened. Some RNA molecules that formed chemically, were able to replicate themselves in the water solution. This is called self-catalysis. Also, fatty acids spontaniously formed "bubbles", which enriched other organic compunds inside them. Both of these things have been proven in a laboratory by simulating the condisitions of primordial Earth. With time, more complex RNA replication systems emerged. Eventually, other organic compounds were recruited into the cycle. Simple single-celled organisms flourished and diversified into predators and prey. From single-celled organisms came multi-celled organisms and eventually humans. The relations between all species on Earth have been proven with sequence homology, that is, the similarity of the sequences of DNA from different species.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (WKK Gimbal @ June 07 2002,00:52)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">And that's what I believe drives all religion. A search for something to fill the eternal emptiness in the human heart. To have someone who understand our every thought. I don't think it's because people are dumb. Animals are dumb, yet they don't show any evidence of worshipping a god.<span id='postcolor'> It would probably interest you to know that there have been hints of religious practice found in animals. You probably know that rudimentary human religions worshipped forces of nature like the sun (in hot areas) or the thunder (up north). Some behavioural biologists have found interesting practices performed by a tribe of chimps in an area, which has a mighty waterfall. The chimp go to the waterfall again and again and just stare at it. They also grab vines and swing themselves over the waterfall in an almost ritualistic way. The chimps are definitely not doing anything relevant for their survival (no washing, grooming, fishing, foraging, screwing is being done). It's almost like they are worshipping the waterfall (an impressive force of nature). This could be the root of religious practice at work. There are also other studies, which have discovered the mechanisms of religious feeling in the human brain. When a devout christian is worshipping in a church or a buddhist monk is meditating, some areas of the brain shut down. These areas, incidentally, are among other things responsible of making the distinction between your own body and the rest of the world. It seems that the human instinct for religion has evolved just like the other instincts. This implies that religion enhanced the survival of early humans, thus being beneficial. Why it is so, it's hard to say. Maybe it's like Wobble said: Intelligent animals (us) need something to lean to in order to give us a feeling of usefulness and to explain away the randomness of world.

I think this Reid fellow is nothing but a nutcase. His whole blow up -scheme was obviously a some kind of cry for help, since what sane terrorist hell bent on success would try to light his shoe in the passenger cabin? How about going into the bathroom? This Reid fellow just WANTED to get caught. So his actions cannot be used to indicate any trends.

I used DELFIA, which is an immunoassay like ELISA, except the label is different. The principle, however, is all the same. I could nicely determine how the affinity between the antibody and the target protein had changed, because immunoassays allow for numerical affinity determinations (Scatchard plots). So I could nicely determine, whether the antibody bound the mutated protein with ten times or hundred or thousand times better or poorer than the native protein. Robust technique.

I thought all RNA viruses are supposed to reverse-transcribe their genome to DNA once they have entered the host, since the molecular apparatus of animal cells cannot replicate RNA. Then again, maybe the virus has it's own proteins for the replication of the virus genome. I'm really not the expert on RNA viruses. Anyway, I do know that RNA replication is very very error-prone. The mutation rate of the virus you modified must be phenomenal. From what you describe, I'd say that the molecular evolution you performed did not knock out the surface protein gene, but rather changed the amino acid sequence encoded subtly enough to prevent the antibody from binding, but retaining surface protein function. So you're probably going to find one or a few point mutation(s), which changes the encoded amino acid sequence subtly. The molecular evolution approach you used (incubation with antibody to knock out unwanted types of viruses) sounds very elegant. I've used similar techniques with phage display to select for proteins with certain characteristics.

Oh, so it's a marker vaccine that you made. Nice one. Since you talked about changing RNA, I assume it is a retrovirus, or? It's kind of interesting, since I also work with viruses, although for completely different purposes. I'd like to know (if you can tell) whether this virus you altered has a big genome (over 10000 bases) and if so, how did you alter the genome? Did you use recombination or restriction digestion (cut out the gene to knock it out)? Maybe you just knocked out the gene with point mutagenesis? Or something else? It would be interesting to know, because I have noted that changing viral genomes can sometimes be quite hard.

So what disease is your vaccine aimed against? Did you use something fancy like a DNA vaccine or is it just of the plain old kind (weakened or killed germs)? Or is this proprietary information?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Pukko @ May 16 2002,03:42)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">1. The 'representative democracies' we live in is IMO a very primitive government form. The ultimate utopia I can think of at this time is 'direct democracy' - where everyone has a electronic identity and have the chanse to give their opinion on all questions. This is for sure nothing that could be implemented today, since it would require a whole new form of citisens; citicens with time to give their opinion, with knowledge enough to do it and most importantly: Citisens whos only goal is NOT just to grow personally by reducing others - a society where everyone is BIG and not just a few.<span id='postcolor'> It's not that we even live in a representative democracy. Year after year, it's the same assholes representing their own interest in the parliament. If we want to have a REAL representative democracy, we should have a lottery where the senators are chosen at random from the whole population. Thus we would have a real average sampling of the people to make the decisions, not skewed by political advertising (=lies). The senators could make even hard decisions, because they need not worry about getting re-elected (almost no chance). Furthermore, the salary of the senators should be very low, so to make it almost a punishment to be assigned to the senate. That way we could eliminate any money hunger motivated meddling with the electoral lottery. Also, political parties could still exist, but this time the parties would have to convince the people, not the other way around. This kind of lotteries would be possible in all the countries where the state knows the name and address of every citizen from birth (like in Finland).

Everybody pays taxes. Nobody does it happily. Oh well, at least some of the money goes to goodish things. But what really makes me go ballistic through the roof is the support paid to the political parties from the tax money collected (at least they do that in Finland). I mean, some of my fucking money goes to finance the 'seminar' weekend of some party officials in some summer cottage, where the party officials get their cocks sucked by the secretaries hired with my goddamn money, drink booze bought with my money and eat fucking caviar, with MY FUCKING HARD EARNED DINERO! It's just disgusting.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Gorgi Knootewoot @ May 15 2002,15:10)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">First of all i am not and never will be a doctor. I am a biotechnician. I play for god.<span id='postcolor'> Funny, you have exactly the same reasons for becoming a biotechnician (genetic engineer) that I did. Playing god has such a nice ring to it, ahh...

"The point I was trying to make, but you obviously missed, was that the rights we have to day are very arbitrary. I bet even you could think something that you would rather have then the freedom to form your own party." Talking about political parties, why the hell are they allowed to exist in a healthy democracy? It just seems to me their main function is to make it easier for the dumbass citizen to vote, because they can just find a person from their respective party and vote, without even finding out what are the thoughts of the person in question. Also, parties are headed by a few key figures, who tell the rest of the members how to vote. Which means government policy is REALLY decided by the cabinet deals made by the party bosses (oligarcy). And these bosses have the audacity to whine in public, if somebody dares to deviate from the party policy during voting in the senate. We should strive to ban any sort of political allying, because it just promotes oligarcy. Just sometimes pisses me off...

Funny, funny... What I liked about that TheOnion article is the subtle way they avoided taking sides. Not a single issue was biased towards either side, quite a remarkable achievement.

Good news?