Survival strategies

Evidence 1 :- A plant's seed whose pod can float in water for months, lies dormant for years until conditions that are just right precipitate germination. To a scientist, it is evidence of survival strategy. A plant can colonise a new area far away from its original base.

Evidence 2 :- A bacterium or other organism can withstand being frozen in a vacuum indefinitely until jolted back into life when it hits, say a planet. To a scientist this is irrelevant detail and doesn't indicate that certain bacteria have evolved this feature so they can go planet-hopping when major collisions happen.

Origins of life on Earth

I find this Economist article on the Origins of life a fair bit presumptuous. One critical assumption is that no frozen or otherwise DNA infected organisms existed amongst the rocks, dust and gases of the solar system to begin with. This leaves the problem of how DNA originated to some other environment much more conducive perhaps. The only other questions remains on how DNA spread to our solar system and otherwise around our galaxy. This I find more easily explainable than the hodgepodge of theories of how "breakout" happened. And again I see this background of subliminal thinking of having to move "up" from ooze to amino acids to proteins to RNA to DNA etc. as another ladder rather than a "bush". Other non-life chemicals formed will surely have an influence on the life there.

Just as I was talking about democracy and Islam

The Economist comes up with this article regarding democracy and Islam. Needless to say, I was just saying that.

The point is, I believe it much more likely that a "Pax Islam" will come about via the back door as a treaty between democratic Islamic based countries rather than the front door of Iran's theocracy taking the lead and other nearby countries making some kind of islamic (Warsaw like) pact to be part of an expanded theocracy.