Earlier this summer my cover story on the meaning of life (or, at least, "life") came out in the July/August issue of Seed. Now, at long last, the Seedsters have posted the story online. Read it here.
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Nicholas Carr set out to explore how the ubiquity of text on the Internet is affecting our brains, after realizing that his increased Internet use may be affecting his ability to concentrate on reading long, detailed texts. His essay is published in the July/August issue of The Atlantic
"Over the…
Following in the footsteps of Craig, I have a short piece published in the July/August issue of SEED Magazine for their Why I Do Science column. "On the Allure of the Ocean's Novelty" explores why I love doing the science I do. Just a hint, it doesn't have to do with the pay... Now go to your book…
Here is a selection of some of the writing I've done - Dave.
"True Encounters in my Research Career", The Walrus, September 2007 (with Chris Hutsul). (commented upon at The World's Fair)
"The Reason Is Math Bush Edit", Science Creative Quarterly, September 5, 2007
"Analyses of the Six Degrees of…
From Bruce Gordon, former Discovery Institute Fellow:
Design theory has had considerable difficulty gaining a hearing in academic contexts, as evidenced most recently by the the Polanyi Center affair at Baylor University. One of the principle reasons for this resistance and controversy is not far…
Intriguing stuff. I'll have to come back and read it again in a few days.
Ah yes ... the blond in Monty Python with the big ... no, wait - that was Carol Cleveland.
I'm sorry. I'll start again.
Intriguing stuff. I'll have to come back and read it again in a few days. One question that comes to mind - did you encounter any thoughts on how sharp or fuzzy the boundary between "life" and "non-life" can be made? In other words, is the expectation that everything can be explicitly sorted into either "life" or "non-life"?
Very cool article, and a very interesting etymological conundrum. It's ironic that chemistry is invoked more than once as a field which doesn't have the same difficulties with defining key principles (at least nothing as nettlesome as "life") when in fact many terms (i.e. "chemical" and "organic") have been bastardized by the masses to such an extent as to mean almost exactly the opposite of what was intended. Perhaps the same issue has intruded on the definition of "life". It almost seems that in an effort to make science understandable, we've allowed the language of science to become little more than slang. Don't even get me started on what it means to be "pro-life"...
Tibor Ganti and Eors Szathmary are sadly missing in this article. When Zimmer writes Bedau has been pondering just what those milestones might be. To qualify as fully alive, he argues, a system needs three basic features. Life needs a container; it needs a way to encode and replicate information; and it needs a way to capture and use energy., Zimmer might be quoting an opinion as favoured by Bedau that is already generally known, quite old and accepted, rather than a novel idea by Bedau. The clue should be in the 1999 book by John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary, The origins of life : from the birth of life to the origin of language, as well as in their larger 1995 book. These ideas go back to Tibor Ganti.
Life
(at the end of the day)
Life is force
driven by instinct
to necessity,
harnessed by spirit
where flesh provides ability
to sustain future process
beyond the next sunset.
(c)jfrancis
2.13.8