Khanacademy.org is also a great place, but mostly if you want to learn math. It has stuff on science, economics and the humanities also, but it's a fantastic resources for teaching yourself math.
JonathanH
JoinedPosts by JonathanH
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173
What is the spark that powers Evolution?
by N.drew ini have no idea, that is why i'm asking.
i did mention on another thread that need might be involed, but they said no.
so what powers evolution?
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173
What is the spark that powers Evolution?
by N.drew ini have no idea, that is why i'm asking.
i did mention on another thread that need might be involed, but they said no.
so what powers evolution?
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JonathanH
I have cosmolearning bookmarked, I love that place. I love free lectures, but there is always a difference between getting to watch a free lecture and spending months doing assignments, research, and being forced to memorize terminology and write papers using it. I liked biology before I started college, read books and watched lectures, but in a few months of actually taking a college biology class, my knowledge has increased dramatically. Namely because I've been forced to learn things that before I would've skimmed over because they were boring, or looked too confusing. Knowing all those little pieces that I would've skipped before has given me a much more thorough knowledge of the topic, which will be immensely benefical going forward in my studying and reading. I am definitely intrigued to go watch some biology lectures though, now that I understand alot of things better than I used to. I love college, everybody should go.
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173
What is the spark that powers Evolution?
by N.drew ini have no idea, that is why i'm asking.
i did mention on another thread that need might be involed, but they said no.
so what powers evolution?
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JonathanH
That sounds awesome new chapter, and I would've loved to have been there.
Personally I feel a bit uncomfortable when I see gorillas and chimpanzees in zoos. Watching them, they just seem different from a cheetah or a bison. They look like they are really thinking and feeling in a way that is more like us than other mammals. I kind of wonder if future generations will look back on us as being so arrogant when dealing with other creatures.
What are you majoring in by the way (not to derail the topic, I am definitely still listening N.Drew)
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What is the spark that powers Evolution?
by N.drew ini have no idea, that is why i'm asking.
i did mention on another thread that need might be involed, but they said no.
so what powers evolution?
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JonathanH
All true newchapter, there are many causes that generate speciation. For the sake of simplicity I gave a single possible scenario, but evolutionary biology is a rich and endlessly interesting field of study. I regret I don't get to spend more time with it in college, hopefully I can sneak a few more biology classes in there somewhere, but we will see.
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What is the spark that powers Evolution?
by N.drew ini have no idea, that is why i'm asking.
i did mention on another thread that need might be involed, but they said no.
so what powers evolution?
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JonathanH
There is no finished function, and evolution is blind. Mutation is random, and natural selection selects from what is present. Why do you think there is a "finished" function? What would you consider an "unfinished" function?
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Getting back little pieces of your life that they took from you.
by JonathanH ini sometimes feel like i lost so much because the first two plus decades of my life were spent in that stupid cult.
but occasionally i find a little piece of something they took from me, and i get to keep it so it's like they never took it from me at all.. tonight i got out of class (i'm in college working towards a b.s.
in engineering and/or mathematics), and it was a chilly autumn night so i decided to go to a little coffee dive downtown i hadn't been to since i went out in service and would go there for coffee breaks.
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JonathanH
I sometimes feel like I lost so much because the first two plus decades of my life were spent in that stupid cult. But occasionally I find a little piece of something they took from me, and I get to keep it so it's like they never took it from me at all.
Tonight I got out of class (I'm in college working towards a B.S. in Engineering and/or Mathematics), and it was a chilly autumn night so I decided to go to a little coffee dive downtown I hadn't been to since I went out in service and would go there for coffee breaks. I sat at a table with other college students all around me. There was a study group discussing some book for their english/literature class, and a few girls on their apple macs working on some kind of projects in the corner. The barista was some young girl with a lip ring and dyed black hair working on her degree in economics. And I just sat there with my laptop and a latte and worked on homework. A chilly autumn night downtown, working on homework (about evolution no less), sipping a latte, surrounded by young college students, listening to some quiet hipster alternative rock that they had playing. That is something I didn't get to have because I was handing out magazines when I should have been studying and going to school. And for a couple years after I left, I was saddened by the idea that I would never have that. They did take it from me, but they didn't get to keep it. I got that experience back, and I get to keep it now.
There are some things they took that I may never get back, but they don't get to keep it all. And I'm going to take as much back from those bastards as I possibly can. It felt good, it really did.
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173
What is the spark that powers Evolution?
by N.drew ini have no idea, that is why i'm asking.
i did mention on another thread that need might be involed, but they said no.
so what powers evolution?
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JonathanH
The question seems vague. What drives evolution? What causes something to function? Are you asking what makes things evolve, or how did life start? The second we only have a hypothetical framework for, the first is broad but answerable. But in the broadest sense I guess the closest approximation is chemistry drives evolution.
How did life start? Autocatalytic feedback loops of organic compounds. Say you take a group of chemical compounds that attract like chemical compounds, and then when it bunches up together, splits forming two seperate sets of similar groups of compounds. What you have is chemistry replicating imperfectly. When you have replication with variation, then natural selection takes place because those that replicate more successfully will outnumber those that replicate less successfully. What followed would be a complex web of chemistry producing primitive protocells.
What drives evolution? That same chemistry acting today. Your DNA has four letters that form a code, ATCG (Standing for the nitrogenous bases Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine). Groups of three of these letters such as TAC code for particular amino acids (TAC for instance, after going through processes called transcription and translation, produces the amino acid methionine). Strings of amino acids form proteins which make up your cells, and cellular functions. Slightly changing a DNA code can have drastic effects, or barely any effect depending on what it's coding for.
DNA replicates itself before the cell divides, and then passes that copy onto a cell that is produced asexually from the parent cell. Sperm and egg cells develop through a process call meiosis, in which copies of your genetic code are put into special cells to be used for reproduction. An important thing to note is that DNA replication is not perfect. It's very accurate, but not perfect. Sometimes during meiosis the replication does not work perfectly and letters in your DNA code may be changed. This is called mutation, and when this happens in meiosis it means that your sperm or egg will contain these mutations which get passed to the offspring. These offspring will have variations in their body that the parents may not have. That's the fuel for natural selection. And over millions of years these small changes in DNA code add up.
Another important thing to know is what speciation is. Why can a deer mate with a deer but not a moose? They are both fury, four legged, hoofed mammals after all. The answer is genetic difference. Even if you could convince the two to mate, or just take their sperm and egg into a lab and inject one into the other, it wouldn't work. The genetic code would be too vastly different to get the process of cell division started to produce a viable zygote. So if you have a population of a species of say....lizards and they start to spread out over a large area, say hypothetically there is a river and there are lizards on both sides of it. Now lets say there is a slightly different selective pressure on each side of the river. Both populations of lizards would begin to accumulate different mutations, the lizards would gradually begin to look different as they adapted to their circumstances on each side of the river. A million years go by and the river dries up, and now the lizards can intermingle. But now they cannot mate any longer because their genetic differences are too great, and they look so different they aren't even interested in mating anyway. This is called a speciation event, and it was caused by what is know as allopatric speciation, or speciation because the population was divided for an extended period of time. Repeat this for a hundred million years and you've got a bunch of different species that only bear a passing resemblence to the original species.
So what powers evolution? Energy from our sun, plus the stochastic nature of chemistry on a molecular level, the rest is just the law of natural selection wherein those that reproduce more edge out those that reproduce less when there is a limit on the resources provided.
Does this answer your question at all? If not, what is it left that you aren't clear on? I will be glad to elaborate further.
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JonathanH
What astounds me is that those who are against abortion think that people who are pro-choice are in favor of third trimester partial birth abortions. That abortion clinics are these mad scientists with chainsaws and vats of acid in a room full of severed infant body parts. If your only method of making an argument is to make a ridiculous and not even believable portrait of the other side then you have already lost, you've become a parody or satire of your own side.
This is not a work of art.
This is not a baby.
If you want to make an argument for your side, don't act like an insane person who doesn't know the first thing about the topic you are discussing. You'll win no one that way.
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What's the latest status on ol' Brother Prince Rogers Nelson?
by NoRegrets ini was last affiliated with a minneapolis area congregation a few years back.
we saw prince and the larry graham entourage at a sunday meeting once and at many assemblies and conventions.
i know he was affiliated with a congregation in a city named chanhassen at one time.
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JonathanH
@thetrueone
Don't call people fags. It's 2011, civilization grew up.
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Do You Consider yourself an Atheist / Agnostic / or Christian? Reasons ?
by flipper inafter having been raised in the jehovah's witnesses for 44 years ( getting out 6 years ago ) i have now come to peace with my view of what i personally feel about the existence of god , or no god, or whatever is flying around up there in outer space.
i am basically agnostic for sure / perhaps leaning atheist and i've come to that decision based on the years and years of unfulfilled false promises of being in a mind control cult ( jehovah's witnesses ) claiming to represent an alleged " god " or " jehovah " saying there would be a paradise, and armageddon to destroy 99% of the earths population.
also- i enjoy helping others without thought of being rewarded for it.
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JonathanH
Technically agnostic, but I say for the sake of convenience atheist. Namely because when I say that philosophically "god" cannot be proven or disproven, people assume I mean there personal theistic god, which I don't. I refer to a deistic necessary existence that begins a contingent universe or universes, or perhaps something more like spinozan deism. Religious theism is an insane relic we haven't managed to get rid of as a civilization yet. Having some obtuse father figure protecting us in ways that we cannot suss out with any logic or reason, only with subjective emotion is just an infantile security blanket that we are beginning to outgrow as a species. But if I say I am agnostic then that means to most religious people that I am "on the fence" and maybe I will accept jesus, but I'm just not dog gone sure about it yet! That train left the station, so for the sake of simplicity I just say "atheist."
