Category Archives: …and other stuff

miscellaneous postings by Lawrence R. Spencer

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, LIVES, MOVING PICTURES, READING MATTER, SOUNDS, UNIVERSES

WEAPON OF MASS HYPNOSIS

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This documentary reveals how television is used as a population control device. “Mass Media” mind control methods are a very ugly and uncomfortable reality of our “electronic society”. George Orwell predicted that “Big Brother” would use television to create a global totalitarian state in his book “1984”.  The book was published in 1949, about ten years before television became a common household item.  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four  )

In my lifetime television has become universal on Earth, and the totalitarian mind-control state described by Orwell has become a reality.  Digital Television sets and programming services are now MANDATORY in most of the countries of the world.  For example, as of January 1, 2013, whether you want to or not, even if you don’t have a radio or TV set – and now a computer or tablet – in your household, you are required to pay a monthly fee to help finance Germany’s public broadcasters.  This kind of “mandatory TV” legislation is being enacted in many other places as well.

It is not pleasant to watch this video. However, if you never turn on a television set again, it may save your sanity and your spirit from the intentional degradation contained in the “programs” shown. How can we defend ourselves from this “weapon”? If we don’t own a TV, don’t buy one.  If we own at TV, don’t turn it on!

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THE CREATOR IS A BEETLE (OR A STAR)

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80-beetles

The evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane Is famous for having repeatedly said that “the Creator must have an inordinate fondness for beetles, for the simple reason that there are just so many varieties of beetles on Earth.” (He also noted that the Creator also was “endowed with a passion for  stars” – again, because there are just so darn many of them.)

Stephen Jay Gould added to this by noting:

“God is most likely to take trouble over reproducing his own image, and his 400,000 attempts at the perfect beetle contrast with his slipshod creation of man. When we meet the Almighty face to face he will resemble a beetle (or a star).”

The Coleoptera /koʊliːˈɒptərə/ order of insects is commonly called beetles. The word “coleoptera” is from the Greek κολεός,koleos, meaning “sheath”; and πτερόν, pteron, meaning “wing”, thus “sheathed wing. The Coleoptera include more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known types of animal life-forms. About 40% of all described insect species are beetles (about 400,000 species), and new species are discovered frequently. Some estimates put the total number of species, described and undescribed, at as high as 100 million, but a figure of one million is more widely accepted.   ————–

stars

According to astronomers, there are probably more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable Universe, stretching out

into a region of space 13.8 billion light-years away from us in all directions. And so, if you multiply the number of stars in our galaxy by the number of galaxies in the Universe, you get approximately 1024 stars. That’s a 1 followed by twenty-four zeros.  That’s a septillion stars. But there could be more than that.

It’s been calculated that the observable Universe is a bubble of space 47 billion years in all directions. This is a minimum value, the Universe could be much bigger – it’s just that we can’t ever detect those stars because they’re outside the observable Universe. It’s even possible that the Universe is infinite, stretching on forever, with an infinite amount of stars. So add a couple more zeros. Maybe an infinite number of zeroes.  That’s a lot of stars in the Universe.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/102630/how-many-stars-are-there-in-the-universe/#ixzz2uK83T2IZ

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HOW BIG IS YOUR GENOME?

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GENES

(According to Earth “scientists”), genes are the fundamental units of inheritance in living organisms. Together, they hold all the information necessary to reproduce a given organism and to pass on genetic traits to its offspring.

Biologists have long debated what constitutes a gene in molecular terms but one useful definition is a region of DNA that carries that code necessary to make a molecular chain called a polypeptide. These chains link together to form proteins and so are the bricks and mortar out of which all organism are constructed.

Given this crucial role, it is no surprise that an ongoing goal in biology is to work out the total number of protein-coding genes necessary to construct a given organism. Biologists think the yeast genome contains about 5300 coding genes and a nematode worm genome contains about 20,470.

But the number for humans has been the subject of constant revision since biologists first began the task of estimating them in the 1960s. Then, they believed humans could have as many as 2 million protein-coding genes. But by the time the human genome project began in the late 1990s, the highest estimates put the number at 100,000 and the number has continued to shrink.

That’s an interesting result that is partly a reflection of the state of genomics. The human genome is by no means fully defined and biologists are still in the process of refining their gene models and withdrawing genes in the process.

Indeed, in the most recent update of the genome release, geneticists have withdrawn 328 of the 2000 genes that Ezkurdia, Tress and co identify as potentially non-coding.

And on this evidence, the human genome is set to get smaller still. “Our evidence suggests that the final number of true protein coding genes in the reference genome may lie closer to 19,000 than to 20,000.”

Which means that humans have fewer protein-coding genes even than nematode worms.

Geneticists long ago debunked the idea that more complex organisms require more genes. The water flea, for example, has 31,000 genes, the most in any animal, while the organism with the largest genome is thought to be the Paris jabonica, a rare flowering plant native to Japan.

The fact that the human genome is so parsimonious raises an interesting question. What exactly is it about the human genome that gives rise to our staggering complexity, in the brain for example, compared to other animals such as monkeys, worms or even water fleas?

A good answer to that question will win prizes!

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1312.7111 : The Shrinking Human Protein Coding Complement: Are There Fewer Than 20,000