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VNV Nations' new CD is his best yet, it is truly awesomely brilliant, exciting and all those types of things. It's still futurepop rather than the EBM that VNV started out as. It's a dark, brooding and yet pounding masterpiece. Likewise, Assemblage 23's new album is also pretty good. (Er, I've been to Resurrection Records... it's been ages since I got some CDs) Also I picked up a Icon of Coil remix CD, which is on-average better than their (sometimes badly judged) albums. I've also picked up (but not listened to) a Combichrist CD, and (more riskily) an Ayria CD because I liked "Horrible Dream" that I have on a compilation. I've finished reading Prof. Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976)... and well, it was so amazingly good that I'm going to have to write out my thoughts when calm, relaxed and objective. He is my greatest hero. Tags: assemblage 23, ayria, biology, combichrist, ebm, futurepop, genetics, icon of coil, music, prof. richard dawkins, resurrection records, vnv nation
Current Location: London
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Evolution: Vestigial Genes & Organs, Extinctions and Inefficiency all hint at Unintelligent DesignA small page at the moment, but I'll be adding more. Especially, some quotes from The Selfish Gene, which is my in-the-car reading book. We've been having dramas getting our washing machine and dishwasher working... the former is fixed now. Tags: appendix, biology, creationism, evolution, humanity, life, richard dawkins
Current Location: Monchengladbach, Germany
Current Mood:  happy
Listening To: "Hell" by Project Pitchfork
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For some reason, it has struck me as brilliant and wonderful, the history of how single-cell organisms evolved to detect chemicals in their environment (simply using lipid-membrane spanning molecules)... and that the same mechanisms are now the same methods that multicellular organisms use to co-ordinate activities between cells. It really struck home to me that we are (in Dawkins' words) " colonies" of cells acting together... I can imagine each cell "thinking" it is alone in the environment, simply not knowing that actually it is busily communicating with millions of other cells' products, rather than with the environment external to the body.  “The mechanism of chemical sensation that originally evolved to detect environmental substances now form the basis for chemical communication between cells and organs, using hormones and neurotransmitters.”
"Neuroscience" by Bear, Connors and Paradiso, p189</p>
Anyone else find this oddly inspiring and awesome? So simple... there wasn't two different paths of evolution for cellular senses, but one... which became used in two very different circumstances! I guess that is why some diseases which are basically single-cell sometimes react en masse or change their behaviour en masse. (We have found that sometimes a critical mass of a certain excreted chemical causes a group change in single-cell disease behaviour). I've added some of this to "The Evolution of Life from the Primordial Soup to the Cell" by Vexen Crabtree (1999) - the page really does need to be made scientific, rather than rambling! Tags: bacteria, biology, cells, evolution, hormones, multicellular life, neuroscience, neurotransmitters, psychology, richard dawkins, single-cell life, staphylococcus
Current Location: Monchengladbach, Germany
Listening To: "Try to Forget '98" by De/Vision
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New page: "The Food Chain: Esoteric Lessons From the Energy of the Sun" by Vexen Crabtree (2007), conclusion reads: "What appears at first to be a purely technical matter; studying the rise of energy from basic single-cell life forms through the trophic levels to the predators that gather food over massive areas, can lead us to some serious exobiological, philosophical and even theological debates. Firstly, advanced alien life is likely to find it hard to gain enough energy to survive from digesting us alone, so probably won't be inclined to try. But alien life may well use different metabolic pathways and different biological chemicals so we may find each other utterly inedible and potentially very poisonous. If life in the universe is generally carbon-based, then, it is possible aliens could digest at least parts of us. But they probably won't, as space-faring advanced species have probably out-grown genuine carnivorous diets, as perhaps we are doing by relying on increasingly processed food (eventually grown in vats) coupled with increasing care for animal rights. Now, dietary exobiology aside, the very fact that life evolved from its unconscious, automatic beginnings, to rely on a cycle of life and death (where life survives by killing other life) indicates that if the cycle of life has a 'designer', such a God is an evil one. Only an evil God would design life so that to stay alive, animals have to kill other animals. This 'victory of death' is the exact opposite of what a good god would have designed, where all animals and plants survive on mystical energy from heaven without need for killing or competing for food ('victory of life')." Tags: aliens, biology, death, earth, ecology, energy, evil, evolution, exobiology, food, life, predators, prey, satanism, sun, trophic, vampires, zombies
Current Location: German
Listening To: "Recoil" by Flesh Field
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Conclusion reads:
The historical battles between religious institutions and science, such as those in physics, astronomy and biology, indicate there is something wrong with the religious approach to the study of reality. The underlying problem extends to individual intelligence and education, and is not just limited to the actions of religious bodies. Hardly any of the several-hundred Nobel Prize winning scientists have been Christians. Only 3.3% of the Members of the Royal Society in the UK and 7% the National Academy of Sciences in the USA, believe in a personal God. The more senior and learnéd the scientist, the less likely they are to believe in God. This effect is not limited to scientists. The children of highly religious parents suffer diminished IQs - averaging 7 to 10 points lower compared to their non-religious counterparts in similar socio-economic groups. As you would expect from these results, multiple studies have also shown that IQ is opposed to the strength of religious belief. 39 studies since 1927 (out of 43) have found that the more educated a person is, and the higher one's intelligence, the less likely someone is to hold religious beliefs. Tags: anti-religion, astronomy, belief, biology, education, god, intelligence, iq, national academy of sciences, nobel prize, physics, religion, royal society, science, scientists, statistics, stupidity, theism
Current Location: Germany
Listening To: "Pushing Me Away" by Linkin Park
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Something interesting is going on neurologically, metabolically and biologically when the recently deceased become capable of getting up and trying to kill the living. Firstly, any pathological study must start with an examination of methods of propagation, so that the disease can be contained. Secondly, we look at the role of the cortex of the cerebrum in zombies and animals. A broken cortex results in more zombie-like behaviour, so, our description of zombie biology must account for the lack of a working cerebral cortex. Thirdly, zombie bodies are special. They do not feel pain, eat or drink. Normal humans die of thirst quickly. No zombie film has explained, really or fully, how the infection causes all of these unlikely symptoms. But we shall try... 1. The Methods of Propagation of Zombie Epidemics2. The Zombie Brain3. The Zombie Body4. Why Don't Zombies Attack Each Other?Tags: biology, neurology, psychology, zombies
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hopeful