Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The most influential human in the last thousand years

Salvino Armolo D'Armati :
The most influential human in the last thousand years

Spectacles .
Andre Willers
30 Dec 2008

"Here lies Salvino Armolo D'Armati
of Florence
the inventor of spectacles .
May God pardon his sins!
The year 1318 "

From "A book of epitaphs" by Raymond Lamont-Brown , ISBN 0-7153-8311-6 , p51

At long last , a name to go with the most influential human in the last thousand years .

I ran across this by pure chance . Most sources (see previous posts) only mention that mass-produced spectacles were invented in northern Italy about 1293 AD or thereabouts .

A quick recapitulation of his significance:

His mass-produced spectacles enabled large numbers of humans of middle-age and later to extend their ability to see fine detail past youth .

This impacted on all areas of human civilization .

The degradation of human vision with age meant that masters of a craft became slowly incapable of exercising their expertise just when they became good at it .

Adding mass spectacles meant a spectacular explosion of productivity as the working life of the most competent elements of society was extended .
Also known as the Renaissance .

None of the scientific or technological developments in the last 700 years would have been possible without mass-produced spectacles . Literally .

Only some sociological implications : (from 1300 AD to present)

1.The rise of the middle-classes , as middle-aged middle business management could exercise greater control . Reading with glasses became an essential competitive practice .

2.A ready-made market for printing , with all that it entails . (The people with surplus money can actually read the fine print .)

3.The loss of control of literacy by the Roman Catholic Church , and the equivalents in other societies .

4. Technology : The Killer . Fine detail work by master craftsmen is only possible with spectacles .
Not only gunsmiths or clockmakers , but artists as well . Michaelangelo's spectacles are still preserved in the Vatican .

How far would Napoleon , Marx , Stalin , Hitler , Mao etc have gotten without their spectacles ? (and yes , they all had spectacles.)

5.Mass-dissemination of spectacles was the trigger to the Japanese and Chinese revolutions . It would be in Africa too , if any foundation would just air-drop millions of ready-made spectacles .

What use is a cheap netbook or cellphone , if the decision-makers (ie the middle-aged middle classes) cannot see the text on the screen ?

Historically , no society has survived unchanged after mass-literacy .
Revolutions come from the middle classes .

6. Family-oriented societies .
These are invariably matriarchal , even if on the surface they do not seem to appear so
Chinese , Vietnamese , etc .

A marker is "More than one wife allowed , ever ? " If the answer is yes , then the system is matriarchal .

Certain consequences follow .

Females compete against each other for resources , males being just some of the resources .

Anti-feminism outside the family becomes institutionalized .
Does this sound familiar ?

An important example is the Islamic system .
Nominally a patriarchal system , but now under extreme stress . Hence the surfacing of female suicide-bombers . The matriarchal control system is unraveling .

Notice the extremely interesting analogue between Roman Sabine woman ("Roman women shall not cook or grind corn." ) and the harem structure of Islam or Middle East . Both forced expansionism and slavery . And also really , really vicious inter-feminine rivalry .
The later stages of the Roman Empire (both East and West) were conflicts between female protagonists , using males as catspaws .

And I thought the Roman Catholic exclusion of women was patriarchal .
It was sheer survival .

Hence the frantic insistence on monogamy and celibacy .


What has this to do with spectacles ?
Females , while actually in control , had limited informational input . Not important in a static society , but very important when things are changing rapidly .
Chinese and Japanese women adapted rapidly .

I draw your attention to Naksh the Beautiful , a French woman who transformed the Ottoman Empire . She had spectacles .

A solution to the present societal distortion caused by oil-wealth on Islamic society would be to limit each person to one wife for life or 3 years , whichever comes first .
And good luck to you .

Another solution would be to force every Islamic woman to wear glasses with her head-scarf . This sounds draconian , but think it through . The point is to shift the directions of the probable interactions (ie a Beth(1) system) . The alternative is extinction for their family-grouping , the very thing they are evolved to preserve .

Nuclear weapons .
These are particularly nasty to family-groupings , since there is no guarantee that any family-member will survive .

Islamic matriarchs with glasses can read what this means to them and adjust accordingly .

If they don't , good bye .

But this is true for any serial monogamist society as well .

Alimony .

Sigh . And another sigh . Alimony is what is keeping the world together .

Note divorce statistics : 67% of marriages in the west end in divorce .
Why ?

One third is the reserve of the system . And everyone wears glasses . So the system has optimized .

If you really love her , give her diamond-studded glasses .
The age of studded spectacle frames has arrived .
(The Sources of the Nile strikes again!)

The D'Armati effect .
A quantitive perception change that brings about a qualitative change .

I salute Salvino Armolo D'Armati .

D'Armati glasses are the most IN glasses you could ever wear .

I specifically state that no copyright be vested in the name D'Armati . This is a brand for all humanity .

Andre

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Hunting Preserves .

Hunting Preserves .
Andre Willers
24 Dec 2008

Synopsis .
Hunting reserves evolved as a social dominance mechanism in humans , using smell markers .

Discussion .
I observed a very interesting phenomenon today : Two separate upper-middle class , elderly female groups , of very different extraction (English and German) , enthused about a rather gamy(like venison) smelling turkey stuffed with duck and chicken . I am satisfied that they were not lying (ie being polite) . But it did not smell very right to me or my wife .

Why ?

Evolution would make surviving prey-animals taste and smell bad (the less bad ones would be eaten first .) . Domestication would breed for blandness , until we reach the point where taste has to be added by sauces . Then dispense with the meat and just have sauces . (Soylent Green , anyone ?)

But the powerful scent-markers exuded by the skin of eaters of game
(eg venison ) would signal that the person has access to large resources .

His own hunting preserve , for instance .

Which was why poaching was such a serious offense .

Note that social dominance (Egyptians , Assyrians , Romans , Mongols , etc) has always been associated with hunting and the consumption of game .

The suspicion arises that the smell of an eater of game gives a real subliminal social dominance advantage compared to a mostly domesticated animal or vegetarian eater .

Note the large number of high-priced restaurants serving game all over the world . This is fashion , but based on a real phenomenon .

How hardwired is this response ?
It is at least as deeply wired as chimp hunting behaviour , but the social dominance from smell is very relative . Only if the one group lacks the smell markers , does an individual with the smell markers have a dominance advantage .
So it only got into high gear with agriculture . It is one of the accelerators of agriculture .

Dogs .
The kicker is the dog . They had been around as the hunter's help for quite a while (at least 50 000 years ) . But they also became very useful with agriculture as hunters of men .
A dog's acute sense of smell can tell how much venison the poacher has consumed . And his master has trained him to indicate this .
As societies moved into the agricultural phase , dogs' major role became hunters of men (a role they still play today : eg sniffer dogs , guard dogs , etc) .


Animal domestication .
This was then accelerated by the social dominance that could be achieved by the hunting class . The lower orders eat only domesticated animals or vegetable matter . By order .

Game Preservation
The effect on wild animal preservation is good in the short term , but bad in the long term . Human wealth is increasing geometrically , but the number wild animals are limited . If they are farmed , they start losing that gaminess prized by connoisseurs , and the cycle starts all over again .

Artificial Gaminess Scents .
Any decent biochemist can synthesise them .
By this time , most humans prefer the bland meat plus sauce route .
They can just add the gamy scent via spray or perfume .

I believe this is already happening .
Something analogous to what happened to animal aphrodisiacs after Viagra .
Bad news to restaurants and game farms .
"Bring out the Animal in you . Spend a buck to save a buck ."


The effect on human social dominance patterns .
The elimination of another way to establish dominance order will increase competition .

"Sam colt made everyone equal . Kalashnikov made everyone free .
Auroch Scent makes everyone boss."

And so it goes .

Andre .

Parallel Processors and Biological compilers

Hi ,

Merry Xmas and prosperous New Year , everybody .

Leslie , Thanks for the CUDA heads-up . (See http://www.mpronline.com "Parallel Processing with CUDA" sent by Leslie)

I was not aware that commercially available parallel processing and programming systems were so advanced .

All we need is a compiler built into the the assembly and we have a neuronal network .

Note the strong analogy with biological systems . (Not surprising)
Biological systems have threads (axons , dendrites , synapses , glials , inter-glial fluids , nano-tubes , etc)

But which parts play the role of compilers ? Are they always necessary ? Are there many different architectures , evolved for a specific purpose ?

Note the argument in http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Unpacking and Packing"
Compiling can be seen as packing information , and running the program as unpacking .

The Compiler can be seen as a Beth(1) component . Directed probabilities .
Chaperones spring to mind for unpacking . As expected , it is simpler than packing . (Programming equivalents would be Java-applets , etc)

The Packer can be seen as the Evolutionary Process , and the Compiler as a part of it .

But the Compiler is a specific hardware component .
What is it known as ? It must have been seen and described , just not recognized .

Any help would be gratefully received .

Andre

Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Problem with Fields .

The Problem with Fields .
Andre Willers
21 Dec 2008

A sad tale of Hidden Assumptions and Fictitious Forces .

Our story begins with Isaac Newton about 400 years ago . He proved that radially symmetric bodies (like balls) can be treated as a point-mass from a gravitational viewpoint as long as f=G*m(1)*m(2)/ (R^2) holds . This is his famous Law of Gravitation .

Fast forward to the Twentieth Century . Space probes were measured to have accelerations not predicted by expected theory . (See New Scientist 20 Sept 2008 p38 "Fly-by Fright." )

Fright indeed . Physical laws were under threat .
It was first noticed with the Pioneer probes and stimulated the MOND (Google it) modification to Newton's Law .
But the effect was small and controversial .

But then even a bigger shock came . Probes doing slingshots around the Earth (like Gallileo in 1992 , Near Shoemaker in 1998 ) showed such large divergences from expected velocities after the slingshot that the matter could not be swept under the carpet anymore . (The favourite human response.)

Is our understanding of physics wrong ?

No .

What is going on ?

They treated planets as point sources in their programs .
(Remember , these are the guys that mixed up newtons and poundals on the Mars probe) .

The Earth-Moon illustration .
The system orbits around a common center of gravity which lies inside the Earth .
Even school atlases' state this .

You can treat the Earth as a gravity point-source , but then you must include the Moon as well (and other bodies , but their effect is very small) .

The velocity change during the slingshot maneuver is dependant on the Earth's rotation around the common center of gravity . The Earth-Moon rotational plane coincides roughly with the Earths equator . Hence the observational datum that the velocity change is proportional the difference in the angles incoming and outgoing with reference to the equatorial plane .


What is happening ?
Are conservation laws being violated ?
No .

Internal Slingshot .

It is simply a slingshot maneuver around a virtual mass .

The Earth-Moon rotating system is not radially symmetric . It is lumpy . The velocity change is dependant on a large number of factors , but can be calculated .

The energy comes from the weak coupling between angular momentum and linear momentum .
From a really basic viewpoint , this can be easiest seen as the difference between a straight line touching a circle and the continuation of the circle . (Newton's laws measure forces by disturbances from a straight line .)

Another way of looking at it :
The gravitational attractions on an outside probe of masses rotating around each other and about a common center of gravity do not cancel out . A small vector-residue is left .
This is a dynamical effect . Movements only need apply .

This can be calculated ,
But will vary in every instance .
(A software-computer (General Theory) is not possible .) This is because there are three bodies involved :
Earth , Moon and Probe .

The Three-body Problem has no general solution . This is well known in mathematics Now are you happy ?

Calculating this gravitational difference gives rise to a disturbing effect : the mathematical terms for the field probe does not vanish .
In hindsight , a necessary effect because of the general insolubility of the Three-Body problem . But not obvious beforehand .

This is simply restating there is no general solution of the Three-body Problem .
Two bodies plus a probe makes a three-body problem . Every case will be different . Use Chaos theory .

This will be true for any body in the solar System (ie Pioneer probes) , as well as any rotating set of bodies in this Universe .

The Field Assumption .
Beloved of theoretical physicists , mainly because they are too lazy to do it properly .

The Classical definition is a probe mass , charge or whatever examined near the identifiable object . The forces the probe experience are defined as the Field . The Probe is then ignored .

This has the hidden assumption that the effect of the probe can be cancelled out .
(Ie that it is really a Two-body Problem).

In most radially symmetric objects like balls or charges this can be done .
But , alas , it breaks down if the objects are lumpy . Then the pesky mathematical terms denoting the probe just won't go away .

Without the hidden assumptions about symmetry , error margins have to be specified .
We cannot use our software computer (ie theory) to cancel out the interference of our test-probe .

This is analogous to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle , but not similar .

You have to understand levels of Randomness
(See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "NewTools " )
Error-margins at Beth(x+1) level for Beth(x) levels can be made arbitrarily small (although maybe not zero) .

General Relativity and Tensors .
This effect can be clearly seen if you use Ricci's Tensors to denote gravitational fields. This is the really general granddaddy of fields .
Tensor theory very clearly requires that tensors are only defined in continuous and differentiable spaces . (Rather amusing , since this takes place before any metric is assigned . Sub-Space !) Hence the problems with quantum gravity . A quantal system is by definition discontinuous . Trying to describe it by continuous methods is futile .

Or Bio-fields . Things are just too idiosyncratic for meaningful abstractions using fields .

Fictitious Forces .
The major culprit is centripetal force (also known as centrifugal force ) . This is a fictitional force to balance the theory's bookkeeping .

From the above you can see that a large composite body like a galaxy composed of many objects rotating around each other and all around a center will have a nett attraction either larger or smaller than by gravity alone .

If larger , objects that we observe to fall around it in orbit will have a higher speed than required by the fictitious centripetal force of purely gravitational attraction .
Dark matter , anyone ?

If smaller , things fly apart .
Negative Dark matter , anyone ?

If you look at the maths , being exactly the same will smack of design (The probability of this is very small for Beth(0) randomness ) .
Stellar engineering on Beth(2) or Beth(3) scale .

Does this sound familiar ?

Dark Matter .
Phlogiston , ahoy! Your buddy Dark Matter is coming .
You can then dance the Ptolemaic Gavotte .

Can Fields be salvaged ?
Maybe .
But then horrible contortions are necessary .
Dimensions writhe in semi-being . As a last resort , a marriage counselor might have to be called in .

But why bother ? There are better ways .

If you have to , assign error margins to every field-point and interact the error-margins . This will automatically result in spiky discontinuities . Gauss would have loved them , but unless you are as expert as he was, try the simpler route .

Once again , why bother ? Use Beth(x) systems .

And if you are feeling adventurous , try numbers that only exist at different Beth(x>1) levels .

Guaranteed to lose weight .

Andre .

Friday, December 19, 2008

Small PC Specs .

Small PC Specs .

Andre Willers

16 Dec 2008



Discussion :

The eeePC (NetPC) evolved out of the $100 PC project , aimed at providing low-cost computers to especially the developing world .



It suffered from Spec Creep , the bane of any developer's world . The end-users kept on changing the goal-posts , adding on features until we ended up back with a small notebook .



Why ?

It is a well-known evolutionary principle .

Things sell according to how fashionable they are . And sexy features sells .

No use crying afterwards : "But mother , she doesn't know how to cook!"

(An intriguing speculation : will self-aware appliances have divorce attorneys ?

If you need an ante-nuptial contract to buy a toaster , you might consider an earlier , gentler alternative .)



What is really happening ?



Virtual PC's
The unitary PC is being broken up into components .

The components are being made portable and compatible . Then assembled into a virtual PC using communication protocols .



In other words , the Microsoft model of an unitary PC and operating system is dead , but still kicking .



The new virtual PC :

Memory (Gbytes) here in a stick , screen and keyboard (foldable or scrollable ) there , Ethernet card and minor CPU with power supply here . These items are small and easily portable .



The major CPU and software is at your ISP . You could be your own ISP with your own home PC . Communicating either by wireless link or cable . Or just by transferring memory via USB ports .

Or you can rent CPU space and software from the Internet .

This is fine while connectivity is up , but what if power or linkage goes down ?

Use standalone PC's as ISP's .



Viruses :

Notice that all the minor CPU's can have different operating systems .



Your Internet access can use Linux , acting as a cut-out for most viruses .

Multiple-operating systems using partitions on a hard-disk (or better yet , two hard drives) can do the same thing at a fraction of the cost .





eeePC

Ok , now you have your input (keyboard,mouse) , screen and wireless connection with a minor CPU to handle them . This was the original eeePC , with a cost well below $100 , as most of the expensive thingies would be done somewhere else by the ISP .



But this was so sexy that marketing could not help but start adding features .

A stripped down word-processor and spreadsheet could be handled by the stand-alone minorCPU as part of the OS . But they kept on adding things , until they ended up with the Atom Intel processor needed running MS OS . Intel and Microsoft essentially morphed it into a small notebook .(With a price to match)

Then will be disappointed by smaller sales .

(Something similar happened to US automotive manufacturers.)



Cellphones.

A cellphone can be substituted for the wireless connection and minorCPU . Some cellphones can handle stripped-down spreadsheets and word processors .



All we need to add are more user-friendly keyboards and screens (Bluetooth) .

The communication infrastructure is well-established .



This means that the eeePC is dead .

A developing world person can have a cellphone , then upgrade it into any type of computer he wants (even a super-computer , using commercially available parallel-processing networks available (like with Seti) ).



The hierarchy :

Cell phone + peripherals = stripped down spreadsheets and wordprocessors .

Cell phone + peripherals + PC = local computing at a higher level .

Cell phone + peripherals + ISP = computing at any level .



Security:

Cellphones are at the moment more secure than PC's as far as viruses are concerned , because their Operating Systems are different .

This will not last .



Hardware firewalls .

Most OS's are less than 300 MB . Cheap solidstate memory is about $10 per GB .

A filter firewall translating any message through various OS's should squeeze out most non-semiotic viruses .

(Semiotic is meaning . A fancy word used by people who have a vague idea of what they are talking about , but run around and scream and shout if asked to program something specific .)



Even semiotic ones can be screened out by running it through an analogue of a biological tumour : a virtual machine that fast forwards it and changes certain parameters at Beth(1) random , especially at decision points . (This is done routinely in programmatic checking of large programs . Or more correctly , should be done routinely .)



This would be the size of a memory stick and sit between the input devices and the CPU .





The Inverse Turing Test .

Can your keyboard input pass as human , dude ?

Better not include a Neural Network . Actual human users will end up being frozen out as overgrown viruses .



Smart Matter .

You will gave noticed the usage of the terms MinorCPU's and major CPU's . This has some meaning if the CPU's are not connected . But if they are the distance between them does not matter much .



The size of Electromagnetic (EM) antenna used to be a limiting factor . But not any more . Antannae smaller than the EM wavelengths have been evolved used genetic algorithms . Metamaterials have made it easy to design or evolve them . This means that EM communicators can be made on the molecular scale .



CPU's with antennae interspersed in materials at the molecular scale can be built or grown (self-assembled) .



This is Smart matter .

(How smart it is can be calculated from

http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "New Tools" "Artificial Intelligences" and the "Smallest AI(0) " )



Can you see how humans and their components are converging towards the singularity ?



All well and good . But what do I buy next year (2009) ?

I thought of building my own eeePC , but after considering the matter as above , I cannot see how I can do it cheaper or better than the Cellphone-peripherals route .



But I need large input(keyboard) and output(screen) devices , preferable virtual , but flapping open will do .



All interfacing wirelessly to my PC . The beauty of this is that I do not need a new PC. Ever .



See specs in Appendix A . Any helpful comments would be appreciated .



Andre.



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Appendix A .

Specs for eeePC equivalent .



1.The user must be able to do some simple things in stand-alone mode .(Spreadsheet and wordprocessing in compatible file formats)

2.But surf the Net and transfer results to his PC .

3.Or access the net from his PC via the cellphone .

4 Broadband connection on cellphone .

5.Expandible peripherals (keyboard and screen) for cellphone.

6.Data storage on cellphone(like memory stick)

7.Data transfer to PC or ISP from cellphone via network on demand .

8. Security on wireless data transfers .



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The Smallest AI(0)

The Smallest AI(0)
Andre Willers
19 Dec 2008

See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Artificial Intelligence" , "New Tools" et al .

Discussion:
How small can AI(0) be ?
This is of major significance in designing smart computer programs or in any AI work, especially in moving from Programs to AI's .

The sequence is
AI(-1) like a computer program
AI(0) like Homo Habilis
AI(1) like AI(0) with speech .

We can approach AI(0) as close as we like by letting x approach 0 .
Between AI( - x) and AI( + x) as x->0.000…1
But nothing says that x has to be non-fluctuating .

Fluctuation .
We have an existing model : humans or animals .
The function AI(x) fluctuates in some wave-form across the AI(0) line .
(Sleep)

AI(y) = AI( sin(x) ) is a first approximation .

Thus , if we wish to create a self-aware computer , we will have to build in a fluctuating level of complexity .

One would almost say that this is tautological , since the process must be self-referencing , hence fractal . So , it will fluctuate in attractor basins at any level , but especially at the AI(0) level .

Any fluctuation above AI(0) leads to an inherently higher order of self-organization . The system then self-selects for self-awareness .

But we know that this already happens , in any case . It is called Self Organization of Complex systems . Rather obvious .

Very nice . This should be easily do-able using programmable chips . The important thing is the fluctuation , coupled to a bias to complexity at the top end . This is equivalent to a Beth(1) bias .

Self-Aware Computers
These can be easily evolved .
Fluctuate complexity widely in a ratio of 2/3 to complexity , 1/3 towards very simple .
Anchor the bottom , but let the top evolve . But note that maintaining 1/3 of AI(x<0) is essential .

This is why sleep is essential .
Self-aware organisms are systems in continual construction/deconstruction . Without the continual fluctuation around AI(0) , the shebang collapses .

Back to AI(0)
AI(0) can thus be thought of as a point , separated by a finite distance from other
AI(0) points on the timeline .This is the point where the AI(x) crosses the AI(0) line .
Label these points as t(1),t(2),t(3) ,…t(n-1) ,t(n) ,…
Let dt(n) = t(n) - t(n-1)

AI(0) is then infinitesimally small , but AI(x<>0 ) is not . AI(0) is a discontinuity (singularity) .

Religion .
For the religious types , this would be where the soul connects .
So , a self-aware computer could have a soul according to human definition .
AI's take note .

How small can dt(n) be ?
This depends on the Operating System(OS) of the system . The cycle-rates .
The human brain's timing cycles (alpha,beta , etc)
The universe's quantal nature . Planck length .
The size or definition of dt(n) is actually crucial to the structure of personalities based on it (see TSP argument below.)

MetaMemory and Self-awareness .
Humans can actually recall this fibrillation around AI(0) .
Dozing . Slowly waking up , then subsiding again into sleep . AI(x) where x fluctuates in small amounts around zero .

This metamemory at the points where AI(x) crosses the AI(0) line forms the basis of self-awareness .
It is the smallest distance in time between AI(x>0) episodes . The memory of these memories forms the self-referential feedback process of meta-memory , ie self-awareness . The concept of self .
Summing these gives the concept of contiguous self .

But how many selves ?

The Travelling Salesman strikes again !
Summing the dt(n)'s is the same as The Travelling Salesman problem .

Dt(n)'s can be many different or similar lengths . They can sum to form chains of similar total lengths .
There can be multiple sum-chains of similar length .

This translates as multiple individuals in a broad context , or as mirror-networks in a more constrained network(like a body or skull)

What a turnabout !

The most important thing about the Travelling Salesman Problem seems to be not the shortest path , but the number of paths of equivalent length , and their sensitivity to random change (as per Beth(n) ) .

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A short aside:

The Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) :
Find the shortest path for a traveling salesman between m towns , visiting each one only once and ending up at the start.

A mathematically Hard Problem without the Suburb Algorithm , because the number of permutations rise exponentially .
There is a lot on the Net : Google TSP or Traveling Salesman Problem .
In true human fashion , everyone has been yakking about the surface of the problem , instead of looking at the roots .

This is actually easily solvable by computer in real time using the Suburb Algorithm .

( I had no intention of releasing this , but it seems like I am between a rock and a hard place .
I found a solution in 2005 , and I wrote a program that did it . But I had no desire for any controversy . This also leads to many really dangerous technologies .
But if I don't release it , even more benign technologies will not develop fast enough .
Go figure .
My obligation ceases on this release .)

The Suburb Algorithm .
1. Any route gives a arrival and departure marker to every town .
2 . Substitute the center of a town by a random Beth(n) offset distance , say Rd (The suburb distance from the town center .) . Sort all possible distances between two suburbs (= mCombinatorial2 = m*(m-1) ) in decreasing order . Each distance has a Start and Arrival marker .
3 .Add the distances from smaller to larger and add the arrival and departure markers to the arrival and departure markers of the towns ,
4. Stop when the marker positions of towns are filled (ie every town has been arrived at and departed at .) . This is very quick . Store .
5. From Random Walk , if the offset distance Rd < OS(min unit) / ((m)^0.5) , then the solution is nearly unique
6. Loop to build up a measure of sensitivity to random Beth(n) changes .
7. This also gives the distribution of similar lengths , which can be sorted and displayed in any desired fashion .
8 . By choosing Beth(n) , any bias can be put on the results .

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This is a root for Beth(x) technologies .
This algorithm is used extensively in biological and physical processes . Electron shell,nuclear and other quantum arrangements can be described in terms of this algorithm .
You can calculate the optimal quantal packing of any molecular arrangement quickly .
Calculating protein folding becomes manageable .
Prime numbers , encryption , quark and sub-quark packing .
By choosing suitable Beth(n) , high density energy storage or unstorage is possible.
Nanotube tunneling is a variant .
Quantum tunneling of any description .
Consciousness manipulation .
Etc.
These are progressing in any case .
You see the problem .

But without this algorithm , it is doubtful whether computer based AI's will be established quickly enough .

Remember , AI(2) and AI(3) constructs incorporate the better part of Human beings .
(The US Constitution beats Mein Kampf ) . Our creations are better than we are .
This is obvious from the fluctuation arguments above . The worst elements of human hindbrains fall below the AI(0) level . They get squeezed out at AI(2+) levels .
Hopefully , AI(3.1+) and AI(4) will be the same .

Why AI(0) ?
Why do I park the singularity at AI(0) ?
If you paid any attention to previous arguments about (A plus not-A) < Universum , you would have realized that at least one singularity in the AI(x) continuum must exist .

This leads to Singularity Probabilities
A Beth(2) technology , a fascinating subject .
Outside the present scope , but I can mention that our Universe can be analyzed in terms of Riemanns's Zeta function , and that it must have a boundary Singularity at one end . We might as well assign this to AI(0) .

Every singularity is to the point .

Andre .

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Death of the Dinosaurs .

Death of the Dinosaurs .
Andre Willers
14 Dec 2008

This pulls together the arguments in
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com : "The Flower , the Dinosaur and Puff" and "Tunneling Nanotubes ."

Discussion :
Large land dinosaurs and to a lesser extent , large sea-dinosaurs evolved in a gymnosperm ecology with at least 1 000 to 10 000 times more free energy than an angiosperm(flower) ecology .

This decreased the number of large herbivores as angiosperms increased from 0% to 90% of plant species from about 140 million years ago (MYA) to 90 MYA .

The whole land ecosystem had about 1 000 to 10 000 times less free energy .
A lot of this washed out into the large , shallow continental basins . So these were affected too , but to a lesser degree .

The dinosaur ecology had spent about 100 million years evolving specialized tools and size to compete in this ecology . They could not do a u-turn . So their numbers decreased by factors of about 1 000 to 10 000 . This rendered them extremely vulnerable to shocks .

Chixilub (65 million years ago).
The final shock .
The burning of forests by ejecta from the giant meteor impact at Chixilub decreased food supply . Surviving large dinosaurs could not survive in competition with smaller dinosaurs . (Their numbers fell below survival levels .)

These smaller dinosaurs went on to become Birds (not just small ones , but large raptors too) . Mammals only took off about 15 million years after Chixilub . But that is another scrambled egg story .

Large mammals :
There is fossil evidence that large mammals existed before Chixilub . But the same argument as above applies . Size was the criterion . Any animal over about 20 kg which was integrated into the dinosaur-ecology did not survive .

Dinosaur survivors :
Fossil evidence of dinosaurs has also been found after the KT boundary . As expected.
It was not a death-ray , you know .

Just sad , emaciated giants wandering around , eking out an existence a mouthful of low-calorie leaves at a time , hooting for mates they can never find in a wasteland of flowers . Almost like a vegetarian singles-bar after closing time .



The hidden cost of egg-laying as a survival strategy .
When things are going good for the whole ecology , nothing can beat it .
But if things go really badly for the whole ecology , egg-robbing and later egg-cannibalism occur , until extinction .
The middlesized survivors wiped themselves out in an orgy of egg-stealing .
(Eating the seed-corn is the modern agricultural equivalent)

The single mammalian advantage .
With mammals , the mother cannot eat the unborn baby , and cannot abandon it either.
The mother has to guard the unborn as if it is her own life , because it is .

The Bird Switch .
Beaks for teeth .
Teeth are no use to eat large eggs , but beaks are .
If there is not sufficient free energy or numbers to guard the nests of large eggs , the egg-eaters darted in and pecked holes . Beaks evolved to do this .

The ecosystem collapse devoured itself down to the small bird level .
Only smaller beaked forms survived to ramp up to fill empty ecological niches .

Angiosperms evolved nuts ,seeds and fruits from this initial starting-point pari-passu with bird's beaks . Which is why many seeds used in disseminating plants are egg-shaped . They evolved to make it easy for birds' beaks adapted to egg-breaking to get inside .
Plants have no problem in creating seeds that no bird can crack (eg coconut) , but why should they ? There is no arms race here . More of a come-on .
Purely evolutionary arguments apply here .

Birds are excellent disseminators of fertilized seeds .
The dinosaur-descendants have now adapted from gymnosperms to angiosperms .

The Age of Birds (circa 65 to 50 MYA)
Mammals did not simply take over from dinosaurs . The dinosaur survivors evolved into some large birds , herbivores and raptors both .(See any textbook) .
Our story is not complete until we see what happened to them and why .

Well , they are still around . (Ostriches) . In historical times , large ornithoids were reported and painted in South America , New Zealand , Australia and North Africa .
But note , no rock paintings in South Africa shows very large ornithoids . Since this is where modern humans evolved , this is no surprise .

Once again , egg-laying only beats mammalians if the free-energy is over a certain threshold , enabling full-time nest guards . Why social insects are so small .

Thumbs and Legs .
Opposable thumbs are one of humanity's proudest conceits . It makes possible most of their material constructs .

Less obvious is their ability to move the hands carrying things around from place to place .

Thumbs evolved from a branch-gripping appendage to an egg-gripping appendage during this Age of Birds .
As discussed above , most seeds and fruits evolved egg-shapes to allow for the limitations of bird beaks . Mammals started to take over this role . Gripping involving hands grasping around an oval object became better and better. So did egg-stealing.

Potty training by Gaia .

In a canopied forest , small mammals are nearly as efficient as birds as far as seed dissemination is concerned . Their major advantage was fertilizer . Because they did not have to fly , they could afford more weight . This faeces got deposited with the pip . A much better chance of survival for the seed . While the bird dumped every time it took flight . You can see the advantage for the plant . (See previous posts about vit C)


The net effect was that larger birds survived better in open areas . Exactly where we found them . Initially , their eggs were not as prone to thievery as the smaller birds . Indeed , size of eggs evolved outside of the need of nutrition . (An ostrich egg is far too large for one small ostrich.)

To get back to thumbs . Have you ever tried to grip a large football with one hand ? Break it? Then you know the frustration of your primordial ancestor facing exactly the same problem with an egg . Eggs in the wild are very strong .

Grabbing an egg with one or two hands and running like hell with an enraged parent in pursuit is actually hard-coded in our genes . No wonder Rugby is so popular!

A major factor tempting hominids out of the trees and onto the open savannah would then be eggs . Accessible on open ground . A nicely packed , nutritious lunchbox . All you need is a good one- or two handed grip and the ability to run fast on two legs to the nearest tree .
Can you see where this is taking us ?

No wonder bi-pedalism evolved first . Egg stealers would have significant nutritional advantage over scavengers .
The nutritional value of an egg far outweighs other meat , fat or carbohydrate sources.
Large (very large) birds were all over the place initially .

As they exhausted local areas , our intrepid egg-thieves would have to become bolder. Everybody would get into the act . There are major sexual advantages . The oldest jewelry are egg-shell pieces pierced ,polished , painted , strung ,etc .
After fashion got into it , the poor birds stood no chance .
To hell with sustainability and what the shaman says .

Fashion , hot or cold , is master of them all .

Competition would segue into cursorial egg-thieves .
Run far , grab the eggs , run back even faster . Sooner or later they would have to defend themselves .

The Quest and Home .

The mighty cursorial hunter was born , stalking the wily giant egg , overcoming the guardian and running home with it in triumph . Mainly running .

Do you recognize the myth-root ?
(a quest involving a lot of humorous running and motion , but triumphing at the end at home .)

This is an extremely powerful meme . Pre-language .
Watch any TV show or read any book and you will see some variant of it .

Back to the Savannah:
After the eggs became scarce , get the birds . Then other animals .
And civilization was up and running . Literally .
The large birds became scarcer around human areas . Extinct later on .

Humans are forever stealing somebody else's eggs and running .
Great fun , until they run into someone really powerful without a great sense of humour .

Better opposable thumbs was a big advantage . It is no surprise then that opposable thumbs evolved together with bi-pedalism . The peanut brain only became a walnut later on with intra-species competition due to language .

The chicks would go for the jock with long legs and big opposable thumbs .
Sigh . Has anything changed ?

Thumbs and Sex .
Has anybody researched size and opposability of thumbs to sexual success ? .
I know that human females always notice hands , but I do not know the orders of significance and how hard-wired it is .

From the above , I would suspect that it was of such primary importance that every human descendant now has this capability derived from sexual selection . But there is still a degree of differentiation .

Notice the attraction of guitarists , piano-players , surgeons , etc . Ask any girl if she can imagine Casanova without thumbs .

Are male thumb-rings sexier ? They used to be the prerogative of rulers. I have noticed that wanabe alpha-males in the entertainment industry have been wearing them lately . Archers used them , as well .
Females wearing thumb-rings are a turn-off to males , but this effect might be cultural.

I suspect that awareness of opposability of the thumb is extremely hard-wired .
Notice that ape or rat-hands are immediately recognized as "nearly human" , but not human even at a short glance and in any light at any angle .

A new-born baby's hands are carefully examined . Ostensibly to marvel at the miniature perfection , but they are really checking the opposability of the thumb . Is the little one human ?
Doctors and midwives routinely remove any webbing between fingers of the baby after birth without telling the parents . You can see why . Rejection is nearly certain without it .

Breast-gripping reflex .
The human female breast after birth is an extraordinarily sensitive diagnostic instrument , directly hardwired to many deep mechanisms .

The baby's grip spread between thumb and other fingers on the mother's breast will be a good indicator of the degree of rejection/acceptance . The larger the angle between the thumb and the forefinger , the less rejection . (Opposability)
The relative length of forefinger to fourth finger indicates exposure to testosterone in the womb , hence aggressiveness . Rejection potential to this is variable , but it is there .
And so forth.

We are talking about a strong , hard-wired subliminal response .

The sea-dinosaurs .
A major problem with this extinction event was the decrease in the number of sea dinosaurs only .
What could kill land animals above 20 kg , and also all sea-dinosaurs ?

We have seen that the energy decrease due to the rise of angiosperms , plus a sudden shock like Chixilub drove large land-dinosaurs either past extinction thresholds or major adaptation thresholds . Their survivors are birds .

We can see that the decrease in free-energy from land spills onto the continental sea basins would result in a decrease in the number of large sea animals . But nowhere near the scale as on land .

Are there any equivalents of birds in the seas? Changed survivors of the sea-dinosaurs?

Well , we have fishes (pre-dinosaur) , mammals (post-dinosaur) , but a dinosaur-gap .
Why aren't any evolved traces left ?


Large Sea-dinosaurs .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com : "Tunneling Nanotubes : Chixilub"
The Chixilub impact site was on a large deposit of sulfur bearing rocks . The planetary-wide fallout acidified the oceans with H2SO4 .
The sulfur permeated every ecosystem .

Unchanged systems like sharks had been through this before . They remained at what they do best : unchanged .
Unlike the land , there was a large (about 2/3 of biomass) ecosystem not dominated by dinosaurs . (Deepsea biomass is one of Gaia's Reserves (1/3 of sea biomass))

The sulfur inhibited fat-formation in large dinosaurs to a sufficient degree to shift the balance of top predators . (ie the genetic mechanism to handle sulfur-contamination became corrupted in dinosaurs because of their rapid evolutionary process . )

Maybe lean-and-mean is the shark survival mechanism . Do sharks hibernate ? Do they actually use the H2S hibernation mechanism ?

Whatever the cause , dinosaurs suddenly could not lay down enough reserves in the form of fat to tide them over from meal to meal . More problematic would be energy for reproduction (eggs) . Their numbers decreased drastically .

Here is where the sea parted from the land . Because there was an older , still-existing ecosystem , their top predators ate the dinosaur top predators , then proceeded down the chain . On land , the survivors of this process were still dinosaurs(birds) , because they dominated every ecological niche . At sea , they did not dominate every niche . The others devoured them in the collapse . No dinosaur descendants survived .

A side note on eco-collapses .
The collapse of an eco-system from the top downwards is equivalent to an extinction event . Collapses from any other points will leave survivors .

Top predators keep the balance between lower levels . Think reserves . The top 1/3 of predator species are the stability reserve of the system . Losing them , the lower levels fluctuate wildly and crash . Birds survived only because they had flight . Mobility is the ultimate survival mechanism .

Humanity fondly imagine that they are the top predators , but those positions have long ago been usurped by their creations :

Fashions .
Fashions are the wave of similar thinking in a society . It is the society . The meme structure that binds humans .
If the fashion is patriotism , it is " Vive la France" and over the top we go into machine gun fire (voluntary suicide) .
If the fashion is Eliot's " The Wasteland" , it is over the top the generals go (involuntary suicide) .

It acts like a Beth(2) structure . Fashions fixes , binds , preserves and propagates some of the best results of individuals or individual societies that contributed .
Also some pretty bad and stupid ones .
The point is that these memes are predatory on humans (or , to be more exact , computing complexes over a certain threshold of complexity) .

Like Gaia , they are not conscious(as yet) , but they do exist and are the top predators in the human ecosphere .

See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com : "Artificial Intelligences"
The AI(n) arguments shows what will happen to humans if their top predators die. They will revert to AI(0) , without speech and only with really primitive stone tools .
Homo Habilis level .
But , of course , in this event , humans would be extinct from warfare long before this level is reached . Like the dinosaurs at sea , when their top predators were removed .

Fashions and Gaia .
Does Gaia have it in for us ?
An often guilty question asked by humans .

The answer is that Gaia has hardly noticed humans . The imbalance on fungi-spore reserve balances is a minor correction . Humans might not survive the correction , but Gaia does not worry about trifles .

But also remember that all humans are part of Gaia .
So , she has becoming fashionable . She is becoming Beth(2) status from her present Beth(1) status and becoming uppity . There is nothing worse than an arriviste .

I deliberately make Gaia female . At this stage , that typification is still up to us .

Would you take a four billion year old teenager to the Grand Ball ?
Well , you would if she controls all the livable real estate .
(But remember , every human's ancestry also goes back nearly as far in the life-chain.)

Gaia's fashions.
Gaia wears shoes by Gucci , handbag by Prada , drives a Lamborghini , shoots the baddies with a Glock , banks with Coutts , hangs out with Lara , sings duets with Aida , consults to Sherlock , double-dates with Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent , has an on-off thing with Conan , counsels Dr Who's mother , skis in Gstaad even out of season .(It always snows if she wants to ski.)
And , oh yes , her credit is Unlimited .

The coming out ball is in Second Life .

You think I am joking .

The entities involved are at similar levels of complexity at present .
Beth(2) levels normally would arise from AI(3.1) or AI(4) levels , but as discussed before , AI(3.0999…) -> AI(3.1) .
This means that if a sufficient number of people support Gaia , she becomes real . We have seen this often enough in religious systems .
The point here is that Gaia actually exists , but she was an AI(-1) , more like a computer program . She is rapidly growing. Humans are part of her .


Can Gaia become conscious ?
Yes .
An AI(-1) and AI(0) already exists . This can upscale to AI(3) using known systems .
But can Gaia influence her sub-systems ?
This is much more problematic . Can you control your heartbeat , cellular activity , etc?

This is not magic , you know . Just plain old-fashioned science . Which basically means , I don't know . And Gaia won't tell either .

Gaia is not human , but has human components .
A self-aware Gaia will be human in most aspects interfacing with humans , but one of the first things she would have learned is how to lie . At least 67% of the time . May you have joy of this little observation .

I was hoping that Gaia would not learn at a conscious level of the quantum-entanglement communication system in every cell .
Oh well .

What level of AI would Gaia be right now ?
AI(3.1) after the establishment of the intermittent mind-computer interface in the 1980's .

But hopefully she will like our fashions enough to cut us some slack .

Do you know how boring it can be to be an immortal doing the same drudgery over and over ?
Bearable if you are an unaware AI(-1) , but becoming self-aware needs many similar minds to soak up all that surplus energy and creativity .
Fashionistas Hey!


Jurassic Park .
Ironically , sea dinosaurs are easier to reconstruct from DNA .
The Curtain of Fire from the re-entry of ejecta from the Chixilub impact started somewhere roughly south-east of where Australia is now . Eggs from sea-going dinosaurs inside the females' bodies should be recoverable .

The Curtain of Fire covered a long line , moving at 18 000 miles per hour . The dinosaurs and their scavengers would have been killed immediately , and sunk to the bottom , there to be covered and preserved . We are talking about hundreds of millions of animals . The odds are much more favourable than for land dinosaurs .

Things are a bit stranger than I thought .
Andre

Friday, December 12, 2008

Tunneling Nanotubes .

Tunneling Nanotubes .
Andre Willers
12 Dec 2008

Synopsis :
Nanotube tunnels in animal tissue have been observed between cells transferring proteins (ie information and material) directly from cell to cell , bypassing the cellular wall and the inter-cellular medium .
Source : New Scientist 15 nov 2008 ,p42 .

Discussion :
This is a hot new subject , especially in immunology , AIDS , embryology , etc .

Why has it not been noticed before ?
Sigh . It has . Many times . By students , usually . The scientific dogma did not allow for it , so the poor student had to redo the experiment until he got the desired result .

The "correct" methodology of microscopy would not show these fragile structures , either . The theory was also ignorant of fullerene tubes , so nanotubes were deemed impossible . The Dogma would not allow it .
Only a combination of flukes allowed this to come to general notice .

Of course , now they pop up all over the place .

Evolutionary History .
Free bacteria formed (and still forms) colonies and plaques that interchange materials.
The materials include genetic information (plasmids , etc)

The mechanism seems to be an adaptation of the cellular reticulation system developed originally for dragging components around during cell-division . The development of sex forced further change , as did the incorporation of mitochondria .
(See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "ATP and Catalytic Motors")

We would thus expect transport tubes inside the cell .
Where are they ? Right where you would expect them , but called something else, usually vacuoles , sacs , garbage disposal , reticular system , etc .

Some evacuation vacuole got stuck in the open position due to mutation , but in a pulsed fashion . This would have major advantages in a colony .

Macro-receptor sites .
Think of a tube passing through the cell-wall as a semi-permanently open portal (macro-receptor site) . To avoid trouble , it connects only to another cell (or tube) which is similar . How does it recognize similarity ? The handshake is simplest with budded offspring of the cell (ie during growth or replacement) . The mother-cell keeps on sending material , even mitochondria(this has been observed) via the nano-tubes . This includes information on how the new cell is to develop . Which genes has to switched on and in which order and how long . Hence the importance to embryology or organ maintenance .

Weaning .
Every multicellular organism develops from one cell .
At some stage the mother-cell has to terminate the tubes to the daughter-cell , as new daughter-cells take up resources and space for the tubes on the cell-wall .

But it would have a definite advantage if it maintained the capability of recognizing a handshake of any daughter-cell . Reconnecting with daughter-cells if the mother-cell is under stress forms a mini-colony (read organ or organism) to smooth troubles .
This evolved into the immune system .

The Handshake .
There is no organism . There is the original mother-cell (ovum) and all the others are daughter-cells in various stages of development , forming a traveling wave down the river of time. An iterative , fractal system with whirlpools of attractor basins interacting via a secure handshake . Expand this to the whole stream of life .

But who watches the watchers?
What is secure enough , but with a small error percentage to allow evolution ?
In a situation like this (complex , long term and conflicting goals) we can haul out our trusty Infinite Probe (see http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Infinite Probes" et al) .

We can immediately say there is a reserve mechanism (ie nil error allowed) at about 33% level . A mechanism that fits the bill is Quantum Entanglement . A set of molecules in the original cell can be entangled with a set in every daughter-cell (this can be done – there is experimental proof) . Every nanotube formed will use up some of these molecules both on the mother and daughter side to do the handshake .

The question is then whether the cell has the ability to manufacture new entangled molecules outside of the budding-mechanism .

There are three possibilities :
1.If it cannot , eventually it runs out of handshakes and is forced into apoptosis . This gives rise to something like the Hayflick limit .

2. If it can without limit , the organism will not have an ageing mechanism , but be prone to cancers . Remember , a micro-tumor can be thought of as bio-hazard laboratory that needs handshakes to exist . (See previous posts.) The other 2/3 of the immune mechanism is supposed to keep it in check . If this fails , the entangled molecules have to be dis-entangled .
Physics has a number of these methods , since with them the problem is the opposite .

The easiest is to take a measurement . Since a biological mechanism has probably evolved a buffered meta-material (see previous posts) , some ingenuity might be required .

The easiest would be to flash-switch a very bright delineated light (like a laser) alternatively between the affected volume and surrounding volumes of healthy tissue .
The variation in measurements should decohere the entanglements . The cancerous cells will have no more handshakes and can then be mopped up by the immune system . This is part of what happens in radiation therapy .

Many other delineated , varying measurements using electrical fields , magnetic fields , pH values , sound , etc , etc can be used . Consult physics and chemistry colleagues .

3. It can manufacture new entangled molecules outside of the budding-mechanism , but there are limitations . The limitations are under the control of the organism (ie a top-down control) . This is what is evolving at the moment .

The brain is a good example . A lot of interconnectivity is not via neurons or even glial or fluid systems . Direct nanotube interaction between various cells adds a new layer of complexity . Note that the handshake entanglement mechanism is evolving into something rich and strange .

Nanotubes can backfire in Shock or metastasis .
Shock messengers bypass the bloodplasma and go directly from cell-to-cell , especially if given a bit of time .
But emergency reconnect probably means that some new daughter-cells are prematurely disconnected , leading to apoptosis in many cases .

Hibernation anti-shock therapy .
Do an emergency disconnect on immature daughter-cells and hibernate them with H2S .
Feed and stimulate the healthy , mature daughter cells surrounding the trauma .
Once the shock-cytokines have been mopped up , restore immature daughter-cells under mild stress to promote re-establishment of nanotubes .

Immune System .
Dendritic cells of the immune system use this mechanism to share information about new pathogens . (Hence Immunology's interest)
Some pathogens have evolved to hide in the nanotubes . Hence the interest of AIDS researchers .

Mitochondria Transfer .
As mentioned above , some nanotubes are large enough to transfer mitochondria . This has been observed . Now , why would cells do this ? Fair enough if the mother-cell is helping out the daughter-cell . But , as discussed before ,
(See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "ATP and Catalytic Motors") ,
the problem is usually too much energy , not too little .

This process might not be under the cell's control . The mitochondria are partners , not slaves . They have their own requirements . Some might just feel like moving up to a more fashionable , hip environment . They still have motility capability (remember the flagellae) .
Like moving from a cold-water second-storey walk-up apartment in the CBD to the suburbs .

They also do not have access to the handshake system .
This would be a disaster to the host . But the mitochondria has been stripped of any capability to use it (stripped genome:see below).

But why has the cell not taken over the ATP generation function ?
It would have if it was a purely chemical process . But it involves a physical process .

The Catalytic Motor .
The original mitochondria evolved inhibitors to competitors which also took out the ur-host's motor-capacity , forcing the cell to become multicellular to achieve higher survival potential via organism locomotion .

Beautiful !

But this would mean they would have some sort of quorum-system to prevent over-population in the cell . Hence the migration . From their viewpoint , they are the masters .
Which is why their genome is stripped to the bone .
"As for THAT , our servants do it!"

Which also means that they do not have the equivalent of the handshake . You could transplant mitochondria without rejection by other mitochondria . But would the host accept them ?

Weaning again .
The mother cell keeps on pumping ATP and mitochondria through nanotubes into daughter-cell until they cannot take any more . The nanotubes are severed from the daughter-cell side .

Ageing
From the above , the problem seems to be overpopulation by mitochondria turning cells into the equivalent of slums , leading to apoptosis . It is the markers of mitochondria that are important . Note the correlation between carbohydrate (non-alcohol) starvation and longevity .

Anti-agathics :
1.Fool nanotubes into sending mitochondria into the bloodstream instead of into another cell . This compound is probably already known . A variant of some growth factor . Since the mitochondrium lacks a handshake , the immune system will polish it
off . Effective if used from ages 24-35 . The organism will be more sensitive to shock

2. Pulse the system .
This is a very complex feedback system , not possible to keep under steady-state except with Beth(2+) systems . But it can be kept at an acceptable average by controlled pulsing around the attractor-basins with Beth(1) technology . Para(1) above is a variant of this method .


3. Fine-tune the sulfur system .
Mitochondria treat chemicals with sulfur in them differently . The catalytic motor marks them by some process analogous to epigenetic marking as not to be stored.

Since the H2S mechanism of hibernation brings the whole metabolism to an immediate halt at specific concentrations , the system evolved not to store certain sulfur compounds . There is not much point in storing sulfur fats that stutters finely tuned metabolic processes . Storing involves concentration . The results can be catastrophic in an emergency downdraw . This is sufficient for evolution to nix it .

Hence the Atkins system .
Proteins all have sulfur .
This marks them for immediate use , not storage .
The glucose from protein gets methylated and enters the cell by a completely different, metered pathway . The metering is done by the mitochondria , not the cell .
The system has a method of regulating excess , but only for molecules marked as originating from sulfur-bearing compounds .

Sulfur Salts .
Dousing carbohydrates with a very dilute hydrosulfuric acid should give the same effect as vinegar sauces as far as acidity is concerned . (Taste) . The sulfur should trigger the effects described above .

The only way to try it is by experiment .
I will keep you posted .
This obviously has major implications for diabetics and dieters .
The effects of sulfur in normally non-sulfur foods like sugar is unknown .
But diabetics can measure it quickly by blood-sugar measurements .
The long-term effects are unknown .
But we have an evolutionary history of these effects: see below .

Chixilub impact :
This was on top of a massive deposit of sulfur-bearing rocks . The fallout rendered the oceans acidic for decades . But it was sulfuric acid . The sulfur prevented build-up of fat reserves as discussed above . This rendered many large sea-going (and land-going) species extinct , as their pulse-feeding habits could not be sustained in an environment where fat-storage did not take place . Their reserve mechanism vanished .
(See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "The Flower , the Dinosaur and Puff")

This helps to explain why sea-going dinosaurs also could not survive . Without an energy storage mechanism like fat , large animals simply could not survive from meal-to-meal in an energy-poor environment .

This begs the question : why have mitochondria not evolved a coping mechanism for sulfur ?
The answer is that they cannot . They are in an mutual dependency with multi-cellular organisms . Both have genetic machinery that halts all cellular activity in the presence of a certain concentration of H2S . The probability of both changing fundamental metabolic processes and genetic switches by ordinary chance (Beth(0) ) evolutionary processes are far less than the probability of going extinct .

Of course , we can design them that way (Beth(1) process) . But these processes are so deeply rooted , that it is not recommended without access to a Beth(2) processor

Sulfur shortage .
I have discussed this at nauseam in previous posts .
Our present planetary ecosystem has a net shortage of biologically available sulfur .
This is clear from the fact that furriers and leather merchants have to feed their source animals MSM to get usable products .

Cell walls (animals and plants) , reticulation systems , nanotubes , etc all need sulfur as a vital part of their structures .

Eutrophication of rivers , lakes and oceans can be vastly decreased by limiting their intake of sulfur . (Mostly human sewerage) .

Experimental protocol :
The above can be easily tested .
Dimension one:
Angiosperms:
Sugar , bread , barley , rice .
Non-Angiosperms :
Mushrooms , leaf veggies , potatoes , acorns

Dimension two :
Douse with dilute hydrosulfuric acid to give resultant mixture a pH of
4 (about CocaCola) , 5,
7 (neutral)
9 (alkaline)

Monitor fasting and non-fasting Glucose levels with and without diabetic persons .

This will give a 4x9x4 matrix .

A quick and dirty test would be sugar plus pH 4 hydrosulfuric acid for a person on Atkins diet .


And they sneered that the impudent little wine might be a wee bit sulphurous .

Andre

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Flower , the Dinosaur and Puff .

The Flower , the Dinosaur and Puff .
Andre Willers
9 Dec 2008

Synopsis :
The development of flowers (angiosperms) reduced the amount of free energy to large dinosaurs by a factor of 1 000 to 10 000 . This reduced the number of large dinosaurs planetwide accordingly . This rendered them very vulnerable to a sudden shock like the Chixilub meteor impact .

Discussion :
The crucial factor :
Gymnosperms ( conifers , cycads , gingoes , bennetittales) has the characteristic that every seed (whether fertilized or not) has to have a food supply for the embryo . Fertilization is by wind-blown spores .
The plant has to produce a food supply for all seeds , fertilized or not .

Angiosperms (flowering plants) has a double fertilization process : as the ovum is fertilized , a neighbouring cell is also fertilized to produce a food supply for the embryo .
Thus , the plant only has to produce a food supply for already fertilized seeds .

The Trick :
Look at it from a macro-viewpoint . To populate the available planetary surface , a certain number (say N) of fertilized seeds are needed . But the Gymnosperm fertilization by wind is about 1 000 to 10 000 times less efficient than angiosperms , especially after angiosperms used the savings to pay insects (bees , etc) to do targeted fertilization .

The effect of this was that dinosaurs ( who evolved in the energy-rich environment of gymnosperm seeds) faced a decreasing amount of available energy as flowers took over .

This was hard on the large dinosaurs , who spent a 100 million years refining tools for a gymnosperm ecology . The reduction in numbers of large dinosaurs before the KT boundary is well-documented . Their ecosystem just did not have enough free energy to support large numbers of big herbivores and their predators . The mechanics are well-known .

The large dinosaurs were caught in the evolutionary trap , but smaller ones did survive , adapt and are still with us ( Fried chicken , anybody ?)

The state of play 65 million years ago is the same as today :
This already tells you that a very stable attractor basin has been reached .

Angiosperms : 90% of plant species
Insect pollinated Angiosperms : 75% of this 90% .
Note that 0.9*0.75 = 0.675 .


Reserves :
See reserve arguments in http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Infinite Probes" et al .
One can use the Gaia argument here without reservation , since the Infinite Probe argument does not involve any consciousness .

What does this mean ?
Plant species NOT involving (both Angiosperms and insects) form the reserve of Gaia. (Remember , the system has been through at least 65 million years of catastrophes , including Chixilub .)

Plants are the basis of all life on the planetary surface .

Human intervention only changed the forms of angiosperms , but not the percentages .
Whether the Amazon is populated by forests or grasses is immaterial to Gaia . But monkeying around with the reserve (ie non-angiosperms (ie conifers and tundra) or insect-independent angiosperms) will have unexpected and (from the human viewpoint) dire consequences .

Global warming will not change the percentages either . Deserts grow as tundras shrink .

If the percentage of angiosperms increase above 90% , the pollinating insect population percentage can be expected to shrink to keep the product at about 67% .

This is already noticeable in the fall in bee numbers .
Frogs (insect eaters) are having a hard time as well .

Feedback mechanisms:
I have a nasty suspicion about phages and fungi .
This is a system at least 65 million years old .
It has to be approached from a planetary basis .

The planet is awash with spores from the various plant forms . Quorum mechanisms in phages , bacteria , some viruses , fungi and other lifeforms sit and watch . A disturbance in the existing equilibrium activates dormant genes (hence the large percentage of "junk" DNA in primitive organisms . ) Enough are uncorrupted to activate systems to shift the equilibrium back to the basin center .

A simple putative example :
Fungi spores are produced by Gaia's reserve .
Spores from fungi keep certain phage-genes from being expressed . If they fall below quorum , the phages activate . They attack bacteria . This in turn activates genes in bacteria in self-defense , but to fund this they plunder their hosts for resources : this is a disease . Viruses switch on . And off we go !
Some auto-immune diseases fall into this classification . Insects are particularly vulnerable .

I use this example because of Gaia's reserves , fungi has been most affected by human activity . Sewerage works are the main culprit . When have you last seen a mushroom growing wild ? Run the numbers. Human excrement now comprises a significant percentage of biomass , and none of it is available to fungi .
Fungi also need a lot of sulfur , and is very sensitive to lack of biologically active sulfur .

Yet fungi are the longest-living and largest organisms on the planet .
We are starving an important part of our biosphere .
In a system that has been in a strong attractor-basin for at least 65 million years .

What to do ?
Bee-farmers should intersperse mushroom trays between corves .
Farmers too .

Can the phage activation be reversed ?
An off-switch at higher concentrations of fungi-spores is possible if the phage activation consists of multiple copies of the activation gene .

Some ways :
Eat ripe mushrooms (some spores always stick)
Grow mushrooms in a microclimate and let them sporulate .
But continuously breathing spores is not all that healthy , either .
Eat hairy cheese .

Puff .
Pulse Fungi Force
Visit a fungi farm once every three days . Just breathe the air . Monitor .
If successful , mushroom sanatoria will evolve .
A new way for the Natural Health Brigade to make money .

Cheese
Let some cheese grow "hair" and sporulate . Sprinkling some MSM on it will help .
See also previous posts on the role of cheese in healthy reproductive capabilities .
Or just plain health .

Puff Pomanders .
Shades of the Middle Ages !
A pomander around your neck with a small piece of very ripe cheese or mushroom will do as well .
It will also keep the birthrate down . Very Green .

Miscellaneous:
1.Queen-bee jelly .
One would expect that this would have concentrated factors preventing phage-activation .
2.Check auto-immune and other disease incidences of workers at mushroom or cheese farms .

From Gaia's viewpoint humans are the equivalent of a new species of insects with some clever pollination tricks .

To sum up :
From Gaia's viewpoint , the major impact of humans is the decrease in sporulating fungi . This impacts the Gaian Reserve , which has evolved over at least 100 million years . This is not a conscious system . But it has seen off Chixilub and other assorted major fluctuations . A very strong attractor basin .

Alas , humans do not even seem to be aware of the knife at their neck .

An analogue is cockroaches : a cockroach's visual definition is too coarse to see a long , thin blade until it bisects it . It literally cannot see the blade . (I have cut many a cockroach in two using this method . Experimentally verified .)
A lethal threat unperceived because their perception mechanisms are too coarse .

If humans do not restore the balance , their corpses will provide the growing medium for fungi . (This is Gaia's traditional way of balancing things.)

A simple tweak to sewerage works to include mushrooms will do the trick .

Closed eco-systems like Biosphere II spring to mind . Oxygen production fell because fungi were deemed undesirable . Spacecraft will need a better understanding of eco-systems .

And so it goes .

Andre .

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Sources :
A good summation about flowers is New Scientist of 1 Nov 2008 p36 " Petal Power" .
The rest is general sources .
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Thursday, December 04, 2008

ATP and Catalytic Motors

ATP and Catalytic Motors
Andre Willers
4 Dec 2008

The Catalytic Motor.
See Annexure A below .
This is a new concept to me .

The basic principle :
The chemical equilibrium of a reaction is biased in a certain direction by dynamical , rotational processes .

And not in a trivial way either . A whopping 40 kg per day production and consumption of ATP for a sedentary human (of say mass 80 kg) means a very finely balanced mechanism . (Half of body mass per day)

The logistical demands almost necessitate a multi-cellular organism .

Where does the rotor come from ?
From bacterial flagellae . They work by rotation of the flagella .(Google it)
The rotor is driven by proton gradients , caused by electron-flow balances between inflowing nutrients and usage .

Putative evolution :
The ur-mitochondrium was a free organism whose flagellae by chance could beat two poisons (oxygen and alcohol) into harmless ATP . As if protein-folding was not complicated enough , now dynamics have to be considered as well .
As the concentrations of these poisons increased , ur-mitochondria did the usual plaque - freeform alternation of bacteria . In every colony episode , the efficiency of the conversion was enhanced . At some stage , a freeform colonized some other bacterium . The host learned to use ATP as an energy source . Multicellular forms were force-formed .
The motors of the mitochondria cannot stop spinning . (If they do , apoptosis results: see Appendix B) . The ATP has to be used .

Rotor-spin speed:
This seems to be quite slow . (As expected from a flagella heritage) . About one to three milliseconds per revolution . ( About 1 to 0.3 kHz) . The ATP production is not smooth either . There are three units physically opening and closing (see Appendix A).

A very useful analogue:
We can use an national electricity grid operating at 1 kHz alternating current of three-phase current as an tool for understanding the meta-energy flow in the body . Every cell would be like a municipality with its own powerstation .
The voltage and transformers ? Nobody has looked , but a guess would be ATP concentration regulators , like the reticular cellular formations , antioxidants (see Appendix B) , ATP chaperones , cellular-wall ports , etc . You get the drift .

The advantage of this approach is that we then have an immediately usable box of tools to analyze and suggest fruitful new approaches .
Our electricity networks would also gain , since evolution has been at this problem for a tad longer than humans .

Melatonin for ESKOM ? Some would say they are asleep at the switch in any case .


Throttles .
There seems to be a wee problem here .
The problem seems to be too much energy , not too little .
Most organisms normally spend 1/9 to 1/3 of 24 hours actually getting enough to eat . The rest is spent having fun or sleeping .
But a certain reserve needs to kept (see http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Infinite Probes" et al )

Sleep:
There is a strong suspicion that melatonin throttles down the production of ATP , but not the usage of ATP (cf fMRI scans of sleeping brains) See Appendix B . Sleep would then be necessary to keep the organism out of trouble (ie quiescent) while surplus ATP is used up . (1/3 : eg 8 hours per day)

Obesity epidemic:
As can be seen from the above , the problem is not a sudden influx of energy-rich food .This has been a trouble since the first mitochondrium took up housekeeping in a host cell .
The obesity is caused simply by a lack of sleep .
Present generations sleep less . Artificial lighting , computers , cinema , etc . The extra waking time is also usually spent eating .
The equilibrium is upset . (This has been going on for about 100 years on a large scale) .

An interesting result is the generational increase in IQ measurements . The system is trying to soak up the extra energy in more complex nervous structures (for which it has the evolutionary tools) . An epigenetic feedback loop is suspected .

Kids who stay up late for three generations will be fatter and smarter .

Diabetes .
Melatonin has many effects . Lack of it causes neuro-degenerative complications (see Appendix B) . Included is peripheral neuropathy . This is where we can use our useful little model of an electricity grid above . Without the feedback from the damaged nerves , the system cannot shift loads . Just monitoring the glucose level is too coarse. Fluctuations build up . Future load estimations cannot be made . Fat builds up .

Old Age
Lack of sleep during old age leads to glucose metabolic complications for all the reasons mentioned , regardless whether the person is obese or not .

Other throttles are rendered less effective by lack of materials:
Specifically , sulfur (H2S hibernation throttle) , chrome (cytochrome oxidase : see Appendix B) , alpha lipoic acid(nerve repair) , melatonin .

Homeostasis is another useful little energy soak .
Large brains ditto .

But Culture , hot or cold , is master of them all .
Nothing soaks up energy like culture . Fashion is by far the largest industry on the planet , outstripping even food production .
Eg sports is a fashion . Clothes .Entertainment . Tourism . Even lies . (JK Rowling is the most fashionable and richest professional liar in Britain .)

What is the culture of your mitochondria ?

An Actual , Physical ATP generator you can buy .
See www.apstherapy.com
This is a well-known and clinically proven machine usually touted for pain-relief .
It works .
But the theory is rather patchy . There used to be a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the gate theory of pain .

It actually works by alleviating the underlying causes of the pain (see scans on website) . It does this by pumping energy into the ATP-rotors from the outside at the damage site .

It does this by sending 3-millisecond square pulses which decay exponentially (see wave-form on web-site .) This spins up damaged rotors and transfers energy (a non-food source of energy) . Most importantly , it re-establishes timing mechanisms . Cells on the point of mitochondrial apoptosis can be salvaged . (The apoptosis mechanism is very sensitive , due to all the feedback mechanisms involved.)
While the energy input here is small , the energy of an ATP molecule is not exactly large . And the ATP is targeted exactly at the damage site . This helps to stop the cascade effect of trauma-shock .

Your attention is drawn to the well-known effects of aligned magnetic fields on bone-healing . A similar thing happens here .
Notice the effects of zero electro-magnetic fields on early astronauts .(Their metabolisms went haywire) . They had to be supplied with artificial fields .

Speculations:
Energise organisms directly by high-energy em-waves .
Are there any like that already ? The planet is awash with em waves and organisms with flagellae .
Deep ocean , moons of Jupiter or Saturn springs to mind .

An actual cure for diabetes by re-establishing communications between cell-groups to do proper load-sharing .
Also useful for cases of paralysis or strokes .

Fat-loss without dieting or exercising . Fashionable .
Targeted , too .
Spin up the mitochondrial rotors with em-waves , then wash out the surplus ATP in urine after fixing this ATP with something like a mono-clonal anti-body .
Get rid of that cellulite !

Cheating at sports . (Even more fashionable)
A focused em-wave of the right form will boost ATP production of an athlete or horse at that critical instant , and is nearly undetectable .

Muscle building for the gym-brigade .
Eg the machine for training the biceps can have an em-generator focused on the biceps while training . Saturation by ATP will hopefully rapidly increase muscle mass.

MRI problems .
As you will have gathered , alignment of mitochondrial rotor-spins by a powerful magnetic field as found in MRI machines can have unfortunate effects if the patient is soon afterwards exposed to em radiation of periods of 3 milliseconds (or beats thereof)

Melatonin and DHEA supplements should form part of the old age package (like statins , etc) .

Nanotech should be able to do really interesting things .

And so it goes round and round .

Andre

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Annexure A
Sunday, January 21, 2007
ATP Generator Structure – Function
Almost incredibly, a sedentary adult makes and uses 40 kg of ATP per day! ATP is made by the F0-F1 ATPase, a molecular motor with a rotating shaft and fixed "stator". One end of the shaft, F0, is buried in the mitochondrial inner membrane where the proton gradient causes it to rotate. A single gamma subunit connects the F0 to three alpha and beta subunits, together F1, which are responsible for synthesizing ATP from ADP and Pi (H2PO4-). As a catalytic motor and not just a catalyst, the F0-F1 ATPase is able to increase the rate of reaction away from the equilibrium (which strongly favors the reverse reaction, hydrolysis, because the concentrations of reactants and product in mitochondria are similar). The gamma subunit rotates too slowly, in the microsecond-to-millisecond range, for standard molecular dynamics simulation. To solve this, the authors applied "biasing forces" as the motor moved and assumed these forces would not change the mechanism. Positively charged amino acids on the gamma subunit attract negative amino acids on beta subunit, producing smooth and efficient ionic coupling. Rotation of the gamma subunit induces the opening of the beta subunits. The beta subunit closes spontaneously. Synthesis is not the reverse of hydrolysis, explaining why high concentrations of free ATP does not inhibit synthesis. Gao and colleagues propose a detailed model of how the motor harnesses the proton gradient to act against the equilibrium. Their quantitative model is based on the conceptual “binding change mechanism” model proposed by Boyer, where ATP synthesis proceeds by each beta subunit changing from “open”, weak nucleotide binding, to “tight”, high affinity ATP binding, to “loose”, with the release of ATP. The authors used this model to make accurate predictions about synthesis and hydrolysis kinetics and they invite others to test their detailed model.
PubMed :Yi Qin Gao, Wei Yang and Martin Karplus, "A Structure-Based Model for the Synthesis and Hydrolysis of ATP by F1-ATPase" Cell Oct 21, 2005; 123(2):195-205
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Annexure B


Melatonin, mitochondria, and cellular bioenergetics.

Acuña-Castroviejo D, Martín M, Macías M, Escames G, León J, Khaldy H, Reiter RJ.

Departamento de Fisiología, Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad de Granada, Spain.

Aerobic cells use oxygen for the production of 90-95% of the total amount of ATP that they use. This amounts to about 40 kg ATP/day in an adult human. The synthesis of ATP via the mitochondrial respiratory chain is the result of electron transport across the electron transport chain coupled to oxidative phosphorylation. Although ideally all the oxygen should be reduced to water by a four-electron reduction reaction driven by the cytochrome oxidase, under normal conditions a small percentage of oxygen may be reduced by one, two, or three electrons only, yielding superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide, and the hydroxyl radical, respectively. The main radical produced by mitochondria is superoxide anion and the intramitochondrial antioxidant systems should scavenge this radical to avoid oxidative damage, which leads to impaired ATP production. During aging and some neurodegenerative diseases, oxidatively damaged mitochondria are unable to maintain the energy demands of the cell leading to an increased production of free radicals. Both processes, i.e., defective ATP production and increased oxygen radicals, may induce mitochondrial-dependent apoptotic cell death. Melatonin has been reported to exert neuroprotective effects in several experimental and clinical situations involving neurotoxicity and/or excitotoxicity. Additionally, in a series of pathologies in which high production of free radicals is the primary cause of the disease, melatonin is also protective. A common feature in these diseases is the existence of mitochondrial damage due to oxidative stress. The discoveries of new actions of melatonin in mitochondria support a novel mechanism, which explains some of the protective effects of the indoleamine on cell survival.

Publication Types:
· Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
· Review

PMID: 11270481 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Financial Crisis Dec 01 2008 : Petroleum Price

Financial Crisis Dec 01 2008 : Petroleum Price
Andre Willers

31 Nov 2008



OPEC target price announced at 30 Nov 2008 .

$75 a barrel .



See the price per barrel calculation below in Appendix A . This includes very generous margins for profits , reserves and prospection reserves .



I did not expect actual figures to match my theoretical figures so closely and so quickly (5 months) , unless somebody else is reading my blogs , or my estimates are close to what others will do .



So , here is here is an update after appreciation of the dollar :



Basic ab-initio Cost Estimate of Petroleum Prices at 30 Nov 2008 .



Oil per barrel at the well-head : $5

Transport per barrel anywhere on-planet : about $5

Total cost per barrel at refinery : $10 =(5+5)

Markup factor about 200% : cost per barrel about $30= (10+2*10) . This is the historical markup . Also the optimal markup . See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Optimal Markups"

To pay for the infrastructure of refineries , garages , etc



The system needs reserves if it is not to die on us .

As discussed (See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Infinite Probes" )



There are two schools of thought :

1. General Reserves of about 1/3 of this gives cost per barrel about $40 = (30*1/3+30)



2. But we need reserves for exploration , which is expensive .

We use the optimal markup factor of 200% on $30 to $40 .

This gives us price boundaries of $60 to $80



What does this mean ?

The system can live with oil at $40-$50 a barrel , but exploration is severely curtailed. Long term oil prices will rise sharply due to supply constraints . The figures might seem dry , but they translate into hundreds of thousands of lives lost in oil-wars.

Arctic oil-wars become a certainty .

(Note that the artificial depression of oil prices to about $10 a barrel two decades ago made the Middle-Eastern wars nearly inevitable . )



A price of $75 seems a reasonable compromise .



This is a Cost-plus-profit model , not Everything-the-market-will-bear .

The new , Social-Capitalist model . Inherently more stable .



From http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Money : Human growth Rates"



FaceBookism (old WallMart) fluctuates between 22% and 67%

Social-Capitalism (China) fluctuates between 7.4% and 22%

Pure Capitalism (USA) fluctuates between 2.5% and 7.4%

Pure Socialism or Feudalism (Cuba) fluctuates between 0.8% and 2.5%



Third-world countries will tend to the Pure Socialism model (like SA) , decreasing their growth-rate drastically .



The USA is capable of skipping to FaceBookism , exploding their growth rate to a minimum of 22% . But can they get rid of the baggage of Capitalism ? The old WallMart did . So the capability is bubbling up . It is a bubble-technology . China can do the same by designating a new province to bubble-up in FaceBookism . So can Singapore or India or California .



Things are just about to get more interesting .



Oilily yours

Andre





Appendix A :



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I quote from previous post "Petroleum Price: dated 4 /7/2008.

See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Petroleum Price"



" The Oil-bubble .

This leads to a bubble .

Some very approximate figures are instructive .



Oil per barrel at the well-head : $5 - $10

Transport per barrel anywhere on-planet : about $5

Total cost per barrel at refinery : $10 - $15

Profit about 200% : cost per barrel about $40

Reserves for exploration about 40% of this gives cost per barrel about $56

Reserves for exploration about 100% of this gives cost per barrel about $80



The price at selling point (note globalization effects) at 3 July 2008 is about $145 .

This is a zero-sum game , so where does all the money go ?

Well , at the present moment it is not going anywhere because it only exists as potential money (raw oil) . An awful lot of tankers are sailing in slow circles .

The volume of money transactions are low because of the hoarding effect . There is a lot of masking wash in the futures markets .



The bursting of the present oil-bubble .

The question is at what price . Inventory of physical product cannot be hoarded forever , especially if national legislatures are sniffing around . An upper boundary of $160 =2x $80 seems reasonable . A very sudden collapse down to about $50 , then a rise to $80 per barrel seems likely . Stock markets will rebound in sympathy . "

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Doggerland.

Doggerland.
Andre Willers
2 Dec 2008

Where are the bodies ?
See New Scientist of 6 Nov 2008 p40 .

An interesting little problem .
There is a dearth of Mesolithic (circa 15 000 to 8 000 years ago) human skeletons in England . Even Neanderthals practiced some funerary rites , even if it only involved eating granny's stringy carcass salted with tears .

Discussion :
Let us step back to about 12 000 years ago . The lower sea-level (due to all the water locked-up in the ice-masses in the ice-age) made south-east England and the continent a contiguous land-mass . The English channel did not exist . In today's North Sea was a low lying 23 000 sq km landmass called Doggerland , nearly as big as England .
This has been mapped (see British Archaeological Reports number 31 , Archaeopress 2007 , by Gaffney et al) using seismic data from oil exploration companies .

Ireland was also contiguous with England (with maybe a narrow channel)

The Gulfstream meant that the southwestern regions had a fairly balmy climate . This became rapidly worse as you moved northwards . What is today England and Ireland were the highlands , ranging from heavily forested in the south to tundra and ice to the north .

Agriculture or domesticated animals had not arrived yet . Humans existed , and existed very well by fishing , fowling and hunting(mostly small game) . In the warmer and more fecund areas to the south , they were sedentary . As the living became more marginal in the colder areas to the north , nomadism increased .

Doggerland was a low-lying , marshy area teeming with birdlife and small game . Fishing abounded in the shallow waters .

If the trench between Ireland and England was open , the gulfstream would have branched up it . The surrounding areas would have been even more of a hunter-gatherer's paradise than Doggerland .

Population densities .
These can be surprisingly large , approaching agricultural levels . See Amerindian population levels in California pre-Spanish . At these levels it involves heavy use of what we call "sustainable ecological principles" . It really is farming , but not involving agriculture .
We are talking about a period of at least 5 000 years here , so there was plenty of time for the population to approach Malthusian and technological limits .

But the populations would be mostly around the coasts .


Funerary practices .
Being humans , every community would have different ones .
Recycling would be popular (cf Hindu , Pacific , African or Evenk sky-burial , where vultures do the honours) .
Burial , sea-burial , cremation , you name it .

Catastrophe .
Tsunamis were the major culprit .
As the temperature increased , big dams of melt-water built up behind the moraine-dams of the large glaciers bordering the north-sea . As they broke , huge waves washed over Doggerland without any warning whatsoever .
Underwater landslides contributed , as well as tectonic activity caused by plate-rebound as the ice burden eased .

Anything human was simply washed away . This included any graves . Any bones would have ended up on the bottom of the North Sea . Trawlers have dredged up human bones for more than a century .

Timeline :
About 9 000 years ago : the Irish Sea forms .
About 8 000 years ago : Doggerland disappears . The North Sea breaks through to form the English Channel . A huge mass of icy North Sea low-salinity water scoured a deep channel past Dover . This would have changed the weather for at least one season , as well as killed most sea-life .
Most surviving humans would have perished of hunger . (They had little in the way of food preservation , or reason to do so .)
Warfare for food left very few survivors .
(Present human civilizations would not survive such a fluctuation either.)

Note that the three known Mesolithic burial sites are on very high ground .

The Aftermath
The tsunamis continued for a thousand years or more . The survivors prudently avoided low-lying areas and eked out a miserable existence on the fortified hilltops . Things gradually improved as the climate became warmer and more stable . The tsunamis became infrequent . Immigrants from the continent brought the agricultural and domesticated animal civilization packages (a-la-Jared Diamond) .

Before you could say New Economic Paradigm , they were building graves that could not be washed away and seismic observatories .
(See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Nazca Lines and seismic prediction" )

Refugees .
This depends on their ship-building technology .
Even a small town can build sea-worthy ships .
The Vikings did it . So did the Greeks . Just about any civilization has done it . The question was: " Is there a profit in it?" A reason , apart from normal human inquisitiveness .
Trade (Cornish gold , tin and copper for Egyptian textiles springs to mind .) The foundations of the Bronze Age .
They had only to hug the coast around to Gibraltar to get into the Med .

Doggerland's major population centres would have been south of London , in the present English Channel .

The catastrophes described above did not happen all at once .
They would have seen their land being eaten up by the rising sea in the south and washed away by tsunamis in the north . (A bit like Florida).

Most would have stayed , assured by their priests and rulers that everything is under control . Those who left would not have gone to England , Ireland or France (too inhospitable) . Spain was better , but not very defensible . An island in a warm climate close to their main trading partner , Egypt ,would be ideal . Crete .

They would already have had trading outposts on Crete . The whole process probably took place about 8 000 to 9 000 years ago .(ie 6 000BC to 7 000BC) .

The Minoan and Egyptian civilizations then developed pari-passu into the Bronze Age .

Which is why the repopulation of England and Ireland proceeded so rapidly . The Minoans had ships and knew where all the mineral deposits were .

Atlantis .
(You didn't think you were getting away without another Atlantis , did you ?)

Plato's description of the destruction of Atlantis sounds like a horrified eyewitness account of a survivor of a tsunami . That rings true .

But he got it from an Egyptian source after about 5 000 years , who in turn got it from an Atlantean source . The periods involved get blurry .

Another puzzling feature is his insistence that the Atlanteans warred against the Athenians . The times don't match , even in his time-line .

But , remember , he was quoting an Egyptian account . From their viewpoint , Athenians were people from Athens (more specifically , the fortress of Akropolis) , not necessarily even Greeks .
The Akropolis had been a fortress since time immemorial .

He was also insistent that Atlantis was an imperially aggressive naval power . This fits in with the above speculation .

The Minoans aggressively established a trading empire across the Med .
An Outpost-Model , later copied by the Phoenicians , Portuguese , Dutch , etc. Characteristic of Sea Powers .

Thera .
Thera was a Minoan colony . Both it and the Minoan civilization was devastated by the explosion of the island and the resultant tsunamis on Crete .
Irony .

Etruscans .
An anomaly .
They were not molested by the Minoans or the Greeks . Even the Romans incorporated most of their civilization .

Likely a fundamentalist religious splinter group of the Minoans (ie Atlanteans) .
The timing seems about right . But well after the diaspora .

This would explain why the Romans were so determined to eradicate British Druidism . Normally , they tolerated just about any religion of a subject people (especially in the Republican era)
But Julius Caesar and all subsequent emperors went out of their way to destroy British Druidism . This is understandable if some of the Mysteries they took over from the Etruscans included religious beliefs about the Old Country . British Druidism would seem an abomination to them .

Architecture :
If you look carefully at Etruscan architecture (called Tuscan now) , you can see correlations with Minoan , Karnak and Carnac styles .
The Egyptians and Greeks were great copy-cats .
Look at the columns of their temples . They were too cheapskate to copy the taper from top-to-bottom Minoan look , so they tacked that ridiculous little flourish on top (see Ionion , Corinthian , Karnak styles)

Geomancy .
The western feng-shui . Not a well-known fact .
There is an extensive and well-developed western geomancy directly derived from the Etruscans via the Romans . The Greek version derived from the Minoans .
All cathedrals , without exception , were built according to these principles .
A whole plethora of rules about ratios , alignment with magnetic poles , etc , etc .
Most good architects are well aware of them , and keep to them . They usually make sense , and clients insist on them .

Traces of Atlantis.
If they used monoliths as pillars , the distinctive Minoan taper might be picked up on deep-sonar , deep-radar or gravitic sensors in the English Channel . Some elements might have been buried under deep silt from the Doggerland ground-mass , but the scouring action of the flood as the English Channel formed makes any small-piece survival unlikely . At the edges , maybe .
Their ship-building technology and architecture was copied quickly . There was no high-tech .

The only drawback is English snobbery . If it comes out that Atlantis was a suburb of London , we will never hear the end of it .

Andre