Where does life come from?

Pacey says:

If one would like to make a cool $1 Million (google: Gene Emergence Project), international fame, and, most assuredly, a Nobel Prize, all you would need to do is produce life on the lab bench, ex novo. One may have thought that, by now, scientists would be able to produce life in the lab, but this is not the case. It is true that scientists can replicate live, and mix two or more different living things to form a new living thing, but that is a far cry than starting with no life and producing something that lives.

There has been progress in determining how some of the building blocks of life may have occurred. In 1952, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller showed that many of the elements of primordial earth can 'self assemble' into amino acids which are essential for life when given a jolt of electricity from, say, a primordial thundercloud. However, these experiments have fallen short of showing how these amino acids become *alive* and not just mere amino acids.

Those who discuss the "RNA World" (where RNA is believed to predate DNA, and that RNA has both genetic and metabolic functions) fail to determine where RNA came from, and those who discuss Darwin's natural selection can only really comment on how these forces shape life. These theories remain silent with regards to the origin of life itself.

Maybe life evolved from alien RNA that was stuck to an asteroid as it crashed into primordial earth. That, and other strange possibilities, are still on the table when discussing the origin of life on earth.

Pacey is listening to The Tuss - "Rushup Edge" as he writes this, and is nearly convinced that the origins of this music is Richard D. James, an artist who thinks that coming up with a new alias will throw me off the track.

Music hoarding

Pacey says:

I have an obsession with music, and with recent technology that makes access to music easier and cheaper, my obsession has evidenced itself as the compulsive hoarding of music. Were it not for my hard drive, the office would probably look like this:



Seeing as how we move from city to city (too) frequently, imagine hauling that crap around. Thanks to technology, my music collection fits nicely on a multi-functional hard drive and a few DVD CDs.

I don't miss the good ol' days of collecting music.

we can find the US Americans on our flat maps

Penny Says:

Sherri Shepherd...


Q: Is the world flat?
Shepherd: I don't know I have never thought about it.


Sherri Shepherd is from the (canceled) show "Less than Perfect" is a new host on The View. She apparently doesn't know if the world is flat and if her son asks if the world is flat she will go to the library! Well at least she knows about the library, if only she would use it!!!

See the real video untampered footage! (~2 min)



This exchange followed her declaration that she doesn't believe in evolution. Too flabbergasted to type but this pic sums up how I feel

Philosophy of Goal Scoring

Pacey Says:

Not a great night at hockey, but I managed to score two goals by the end of the night. They were two different types of goals, which makes me think about which goal was more prestigious.

The first goal was scored about three feet from the net along the goal line, where I was standing alone. At the time, all of the players were standing still, anticipating what I was going to do with the puck. The goalie gambled by crouching low to cover a cross-crease pass or a low shot. I guess he figured I couldn't place a perfect shot to the roof of the net. He ended up being incorrect.

The second goal was all power. A two on one opened up and I received a pass that was a little high. I realized I had time to settle the puck down to tee up the big shot. The goalie knew what was coming, but was unable to stop the blast low to the glove side.

Now, the first goal was accurate, a perfectly framed shot that looked as if I had picked up the puck and dropped it over the goalie. With all the time in the world, the shot resembled a perfect putt. The second goal was a great shot, but did I actually aim it? Retracing my thoughts, I recall thinking to myself (in my non-linguistic self monologue) "low", as I settled the puck down. The fact that all went well may suggest I was lucky.

It makes me think back to a quote commonly attributed to the most consistent 50-goal scorer in NHL history, Mike Bossy, when asked "How do you do it, Mike? How come you score so often?". His response was brilliant and elegant in it's simplicity: "The net doesn't move." To some, it may seem to diminish the beauty of his scoring prowess, but I think it adds another element of mystique to his legacy.

Leaving hockey, nearly everyone was blaring rap or hard rock out of their respective automobiles. I am likely the only one who was kicking it to the classic Kompakt sound of Triple R's "Friends":



I hope my next post isn't so self-indulgent.

Mainstream religion vs. other religion

Pacey says:

I know you couldn't wait for my insight on this issue.

At this point in my life, I have read and heard it all when it comes to rationalizing religion. All. Every rationale ever put forward by religious cognoscenti and lay-folk alike for the existence of the supernatural reduces towards essentially two (often blended) categories, 'faith' and 'gap-filling' logic. In this sense, all religions are similar in being nonsensical and unnecessary, with the details of their particular beliefs being the only manner in which to differentiate among them.

So why is, say, a belief in Scientology more ridiculous than, say, a belief in Catholicism?

My theory is that since Catholicism/Protestantism/Jesusism/ is so prevalent in western society it is easy to have such beliefs taken as being true simply because if their omnipresence. But, if someone were to convert to some religion (Scientology) that does not have centuries of social cache, it leads me to believe that the individual actually considered the "evidence" and evaluated the merit between religions enough to switch.

Thus, the secular Catholic only suffers from complacent passivity, but the Scientologist is actively moronic, making an informed decision on which irrational beliefs they give their money to.