Comments:

1. MozesJan on October 2nd, 2008 at 23:03:

   But, but, but… I’m not an American…

2. John Sinteur on October 2nd, 2008 at 23:08:

   Mooi, dan kan je de volgende keer dat je wel mag stemmen dat zooitje dienstweigeraars met zwakke knieën dat hier voor een kabinet door gaat de deur wijzen….

Comments:

1. Roland Hesz on October 2nd, 2008 at 14:20:

   I read the answer to the answer, and while I don’t agree with the ID, I found this bit funny:
   “But here’s the funny bit: your average engineer, tasked with building a human being, would not separate the entrances to the trachea and oesophagus with a movable flap tagged with an instruction not to breathe while you eat”

   Indeed, if he ever saw some average consumer product – or even a high-priced piece of software – that’s what average engineers do all the time to reduce cost.

   Thanks for the link, it was a funny read.

2. mynym on October 4th, 2008 at 6:11:

   But here’s the funny bit: your average engineer, tasked with building a human being, would not separate the entrances to the trachea and oesophagus with a movable flap tagged with an instruction not to breathe while you eat

   When an engineer designs a machine that can run on plant and animal products, has teleological principles written into it, self-replicates in ways that approach an infinite diversity while maintaining typological unity which also sometimes sings and dances in joy, writes Mozart, etc., then maybe such an engineer could set himself up to judge the design of Homo sapiens.

   Or how about a “simple” fly? The irony of the hubris typical to us is that if a person designed a flying machine based on nano-technology which was half as efficient and elegant as that already in use in actual flies then such a structure would be looked at as one of the wonders of the world. Yet flies already exist, so why is it that human technology is a wonder of the world but technology already in use isn’t?

   Part of it: “How do insects fly and hover? Initially it might seem that the aerodynamics involved would work against flight. For instance, how is it possible for a bumblebee to fly given that its wings are too small to support the lift required by its weight? Moreover, insects, unlike airplanes, continually flap their wings—and this is hard to square with theoretical calculations. Michael Dickinson points out that fruit flies, which know nothing of aerodynamics, nevertheless utilize vortex production, delayed stall, rotational circulation and wake capture as they effortlessly stay aloft while flapping their wings about 200 times a second.”
   (The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God, by Roy Abraham Varghese :103-106)

   Note that the notion of flying isn’t drawn from “analogies” to mankind’s technology or knowledge of flight, it already existed as a fact of Life for millenia and we’re only just now getting around to imitating and understanding some aspects of it. Mankind’s technology is analogous to the technology already in use in Nature which we only observe at another level as our microscopes and telescopes imitate the lens of eye which has a superior design and so on. Not to mention that the biological world unfolds from information storage technology that is quite efficient:
   “One of the accomplishments of living systems which is, of course, quite without any analogy in the field of our own technology is their capacity for self-duplication. With the dawn of the age of computers and automation after the Second World War, the theoretical possibility of constructing self-replicating automata was considered seriously by mathematicians and engineers. Von Neumann discussed the problem at great length in his famous book Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, but the practical difficulties of converting the dream into reality have proved too daunting. As Von Neumann pointed out, the construction of any sort of self-replicating automaton would neces sitate the solution to three fundamental problems: that of storing information; that of duplicating information; and that of designing an automatic factory which could be programmed from the infor mation store to construct all the other components of the machine as well as duplicating itself. The solution to all three problems is found in living things and their elucidation has been one of the triumphs of modern biology.
   So efficient is the mechanism of information storage and so elegant the mechanism of duplication of this remarkable molecule that it is hard to escape the feeling that the DNA molecule may be the one and only perfect solution to the twin problems of information storage and duplication for self-replicating automata.
   The solution to the problem of the automatic factory lies in the ribosome. Basically, the ribosome is a collection of some fifty or so large molecules, mainly proteins, which fit tightly together. Altogether the ribosome consists of a highly organized structure of more than one million atoms which can synthesise any protein that it is instructed to make by the DNA, including the particular proteins which compromise its own structure — so the ribosome can construct itself!
   The protein synthetic apparatus is also, however, the solution to an even deeper problem than that of self-replication. Proteins can be designed to perform structural, logical, and catalytic functions. For instance, they form the impervious materials of the skin, the contractile elements of muscles, the transparent substance of the lens of the eye: and, because of their practically unlimited potential, almost any conceivable biochemical object can be ultimately constructed using these remarkable molecules as basic structural and functional units. The choice of the protein synthetic apparatus as the solution to the problem of the automatic factory has deep implications. Not only does it represent a solution to one of the problems of designing a self- duplicating machine but it also represents a solution to an even deeper problem, that of constructing a universal automaton. The protein synthetic apparatus cannot only replicate itself but, in addition, if given the correct information, it can also construct any other biochemical machine, however great its complexity, just so long as its basic functional units are comprised of proteins, which, because of the near infinite number of uses to which they can be put, gives it almost limitless potential.
   It is astonishing to think that this remarkable piece of machinery, which possesses the ultimate capacity to construct every living thing that ever existed on Earth, from a giant redwood to the human brain, can construct all its own components in a matter of minutes and weigh less than 10^16 grams. It is of the order of several thousand million million times smaller than the smallest piece of functional machinery ever constructed by man.”
   (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton :337-338)

3. onein6billion on October 4th, 2008 at 15:28:

   “A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton”

   I would have thought that your long collection of sentences had a point to make. Then I saw where you copied them from and realized why there was no point. Then I saw it was mynym and realized that there was never any need for a point.