It's the Balance duh

When raising children, there is so many competing obsessions related to the child's well being that it really is a minefield. eg:

Food health - obsess that foods they eat are the healthiest possible.
Fitness health - make sure these kids get enough excercise.
Dental health - make sure that teeth are brushed, water is fluoridated etc.
Sun safety - sun exposure between birth and 20 yo means high risk for melanoma.
Money management - kids must learn to manage money early so they don't risk debt traps etc.
Social learning - obsess with kids able to interact one on one and in group situations.
Stranger danger - recognise dangers with strangers.
Abusive relationships - recognise dangers with non-strangers.
Academic learning - achieve as well as possible academically.
Clean room - learn how to manage one's own space tidily and usefully.
Smoking/drugs - Avoid the trap of getting hooked and counter peer pressure with solid knowledge.
Alcohol - moderation.
Disease - Up to date immunizations and good hygene.
Road safety - Bike helmets, seat belts, alertness.
Swimming safety - avoid the toddler killer of drownings.

So often one sees children of parents obsessing in one (say academia) and so obviously has ignored another (say, weight gain). The examples I have seen are endless, and some such as fitness are notoriously hard to balance with others such as sun safety for instance. It is quite easy to see as an outsider of the failures of these obsessions, often with some being overdone and others seemingly completely ignored. I urge everyone to aim for the balance - see which ones your children are weak in and concentrate on those for a while. Are we spending too much effort on diminishing returns? Walk the fine line, dear friends.

Peak oil = peak food?

(lame peak oil satire)Peak Food is the point in time when the maximum rate of global food production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, a food crisis may develop because the availability of conventional food will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically. M. King Hubbert first used the theory in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. His model, now called Hubbert peak theory, has since been used to predict the peak food production of many other countries, and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.

Some observers, such as food industry experts Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons, believe the high dependence of most modern humans, agricultural and industrial systems on the relative low cost and high availability of food will cause the post-peak production decline and possible severe increases in the price of food to have negative implications for the global economy. Although predictions as to what exactly these negative effects will vary greatly, "a growing number of food industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of tonnes of food that can be supplied every day."^[1]

If political and economic change only occur in reaction to high prices and shortages rather than in reaction to the threat of a peak, then the degree of economic damage to importing countries will largely depend on how rapidly food imports decline post-peak. The Export Land Model shows that the amount of food available internationally drops much more quickly than production in exporting countries because the exporting countries maintain an internal growth in demand. Shortfalls in production (and therefore supply) would cause extreme price inflation, unless demand is mitigated with planned conservation measures and use of alternatives, which would need to be implemented 20 years before the peak. (/lame peak oil satire)

What to Blog... What to blog

The US election stuff bores me to tears, and I have no interesting opinion about the candidates.

I was going to talk about the local council elections, because I feel violated in that preferential voting was thrown out the door, and no explanation nor correspondence was entered into. First past the post significantly devalues votes for anybody other than the front contenders. I would reccommend throwing out the state Labor government but it appears a near certainty anyway.

Kevin Rudd appears to be in his element on a diplomatic world tour. He is uniquely placed to bring up the issue of Tibet appropriately. Meanwhile Julia Gillard can knuckle down getting that unemployment rate back up from its continuing record lows.

I was going to say more about brass banding, but all I've got is that I was offered a trumpet part in "Thouroughly Modern Milly", a local theatre production, and I turned it down.

View From the Back Row

(24/3/08)

I have just come back from the Brass Band Championships held in Brisbane over Easter. The euphoria of winning the street march, something quite rare for Townsville Brass was tempered by our faltering somewhat through our Test piece later that same day. Being a second cornet player and therefore stuck in the row behind the "Solo" cornets who get to play all the showy bits, is not too taxing on rehersals, but still critical during contests. That suits me just fine and I had a great time.

Life lessons

When I was young but starting to control my own food choices, I used to have a great time teasing my mother by choosing foods with artificial colours (flavours etc.)She was one for believing all artificial substances in foods should be considered "bad" and to be avoided, even if all available research pointed to them being 100% safe. I would be into jelly, cordial, soft-drink, lollies and all those things that I was deprived of as a young child. This extended into my own children, where it would give me pleasure to feed them froot loops just to annoy my mother. That was until Zac came along. We were quite sure some foods were making him hyper-active. The before and after drinking creaming soda at Sizzler was quite stark. He liked banana lollies, so we moved towards using them as "bribes" like we did for the other children to help control behaviour. Lo and behold, his behaviour got distinctively worse when we tried that tactic. Then one day we had fed all the kids froot loops, and Zac too since he would have been jealous if he had missed out. Not long after he started being particularly loud and got cranky at the slightest provocation. We were having a party later that day (he was about 2 and a half years old then) but he refused to get dressed, insisting he stay naked. He wasn't much into clothes and we had a lot to do, so we moved on after a half an hour of screaming. When relatives arrived for the party they mostly felt his nakedness to be unacceptable, which led to another round of screaming for 30 minutes at a time as various relatives thought they knew Zac behaviour and felt they could convince him otherwise. The behaviour, if anything, intensified and the screaming started happening with any interaction. The party was a complete disaster, but Zac hadn't quite finished with us. The screaming and hyperactivity kept going and going through the evening. It stopped only when Zac crashed to the ground in complete exhaustion and fell asleep suddenly. As can be expected, the froot loops hit the bin. We converted to the all natural confectionary company, which has been a bit of a godsend. We made a mental note of every single food-stuff which triggered hyperactivity, to determine the additives and commercial foodstuffs to avoid. Things like artificial banana flavour, bright blue and red food colouring, some preservatives. Confectionary is a minefield of probable triggers. At home we stock only the all-natural lollies and that is working quite well. There are a raft of complications outside of home, with friends, teachers, parents etc. casually unaware of the risks.
It is easy to generalise, and put the blame of other's hyperactivity on artificial additives, but it is a lot more complicated than that. That said, additives are a significant contributing factor to a scary proportion of diagnosed hyperactive and autistic cases. It is impossibly hard to narrow down triggers when they are different for every individual, and behaviour profiles are often a lot more subtle and there are time delays, and for some behaviours, diet can have a residual effect that lasts weeks, and is not necessarily isolated to artificial substances. One rule of thumb is that it isn't the sugar that gives a sugar high, but the artificial stuff that goes with it. Zac can have sugar all day and still be in control.
Suffice it to say that this issue has gone full circle for me, and now I obsessively check every food we buy for additives. We avoid them for the whole family. If they have this much effect on Zac, surely they can't be that good for the rest of us either!

Evolution - The scientific method

I believe strongly in the development of evolutionary science, and I have new hypotheses that ought to be tested that don't contradict any experiments done, nor do they contradict the overall modern evolutionary synthesis. However, these hypotheses, if proven, may open up some arguments thought long ago settled.

The role of random mutations is well researched. These are well observed and are thought to be the basic unit of truly new, potentially beneficial adaptations.

DNA repair Is a process where damage to the DNA is fixed. This process is imperfect, however and failure in repairing mutations is a variable source of mutations. The process of DNA repair is blind to the function of the gene it is repairing. Thus, resulting mutations tend be in random places, and the build up of mutations on sections of DNA that don't change the function of the gene happen at a well defined rate. Thus, a process of feedback of information whether the gene is functioning properly, is the only way to account for genetic drift NOT occuring on important functional elements of the gene. Natural selection acting on whole organisms holding that gene is the only feedback commonly agreed on by evolutionary biologists to occur. However, my view is, that with a hierarchy of genes (ie. genes that control a bank of genes, that each control a set of basic genes that relate to a phenotype), there needs to be a hierarchy of feedback to ensure that the lower level genes are functioning. Ie. there needs to be a form of selection within an organism such that each basic gene can be selected or rejected based on its function independently of all other genes. The corollary being that lower level genes that are suppressed in some way by some higher level genetic action, can have its function ensured with the same process of feedback.

There are a number of mechanisms that could be at play to ensure functional integrity of genes, that are not natural selection between whole organisms. One of the mechanisms proposed, which is quite likely to be involved in some way is through the selective properties of sperm. In this mechanism, sperm act as selective proxies for the organism but specifically for genes lower down in the genetic hierarchy. Thus, every lower level gene affects the selective aspects of sperm, and that which gets to reproduce has fully functioning lower level genetics.

In this sense, this hypothesis is not concerned with the genetic variability due to the shuffling of phenotypes that follow the laws of Mendelian Inheritance, but only the functionality of the individual allele itself. This hypothesis takes it as a given that the spread of mendelian traits is the primary source of variability in phenotypes that are subject to selection in a standard Darwinian way. This hypothesis is concerned with: 1)How "improved" versions of alleles arise.
2) How stress triggers greater mutations.
3) How latent phenotypes not visible in a species can become common again.
4) How many "truly new" genes are involved in speciation, and how many genes are latent ones that are re-activated (or de-activated), or inserted via horizontal gene transfer, or are just a previously unobserved combination of mendelian and non-mendelian traits.

More Rants

There are clearly other biological hypotheses that have somehow graduated to the orthodoxy, such as Earthly abiogenesis. The hypothesis that non-life to life transition happened on Earth is a reasonably testable one, but a lot more mileage is given to experiments that assume early Earth origins (ie. that somehow Earthly origin is almost certainly the "truth"). However, I will concentrate on those biases against anything that remotely appears Lamarckian or like intelligent design (even if the intelligence is held within the DNA and/or the organism itself).

Now my thesis is that although the main feedback of information back to the DNA of how well it is doing is via the brute force of "natural selection" - that is a comparative between individuals with different DNA. However, my thesis is that there clearly is processes that are very much like selection that is also giving a feedback of how "fit" the DNA is. There are tens to hundreds of millions of sperm that are competing for an egg. The male is producing these and there may be a selection process from that side which strengthens those sperm with particular mutations and weakens others depending in part on the level and type of stress he is under. On the female side, the same thing is bound to be happening, with body conditions slowing down sperm with some particular mutations and letting through others depending on the level and type of stress she is under. As a final error correcting check, particular important sequences of genes are tested in the controlled conditions of the ova. The ova has been fully formed since before the mother-to-be was born. This is a rudimentary "archive" that checks on crucial DNA sequences to make sure there is no changes to those. Thus, a great deal of crucial environmental and/or competitive information is fed back to the DNA, as well as strict error correction on crucial segments during and even before conception. Thus the new organism will have had extensive pre-birth selection to give its genes the best chance of survival.

This might yet be uncontroversial - But it really depends on how sophisticated the stress to mutation-selection link is. To me it is plausible that there is a simulation engine powered by the subconscious mind that does intense calculations on how well any particular mutations may benefit particular constraints. Information can flow through the conscious mind, seeing certain genetic consequences, and the subconscious could translate it to stress information that would be selective for sperm proxies of the same genetic consequences. These would be really, really smart mutations - Much smarter than any genetic engineer could ever hope to become in following millenia.

The difference between the orthodox view and my view can be illustrated by a fashion paradigm. In the orthodox view, fashion designers make random changes to existing designs and force models to wear them. If they sell, they make more of the same. If they don't, the clothes get thrown in the bin and they don't make anymore of that crap.

In my view, what (successful) fashion designers do is that fashion designers make random changes to existing designs - show them to a test audience (of horny males, apparently :)) - changes that show some approval get kept. Process is repeated as many times as the exhausted sewing machinists and test models can cope with and then the surviving clothing is forced onto the model and onto the catwalk.

In my more sophisticated fashion design view, the machinists and models are given a break and all the experimentation with random changes happen on the computer (or a drawing board) and get shown to the test audience. By the time the design gets on the catwalk, the design looks "worked" and unlike the designs it may have been based on. To an untrained eye, it might still look like random changes, but those that *actually* put random changes straight on to the catwalk don't win the fashion show.

Additionally - to look at it another way the *winner* of the fashion show can gloat and make grandiose claims about his *creativity*, when in truth he just had a more sophisticated system of randomised changes with good feedback loop.

Rant

My research on modern ideas on Lamarckism has led me to Edward Steele, a controversial Australian Molecular immunologist. He has (indirectly) demonstrated a counterexample contradicting the Weismann Barrier. Now my instinct (as was his) was to suggest that the Weismann Barrier is therefore disproven, and we should be looking more closely as to when, why (or why not) there would be information feedback from somatic cells to germline cells.

I would also suggest that the Central Dogma of molecular biology should not be taken as gospel in evolution. It is not a proven fact as such - it is a simplification that demonstrates the orderly passage of genetic replicative information. It says nothing at all about the exceptions to this process (mutations). However, it is the very exceptions to the process which drives evolutionary progress. Natural selection is the big feedback loop for information about the environment to (indirectly) affect DNA. I am certain that there is extensive natural selection between sperm - However, this isn't exactly comparing one's fitness with others, because they are all from the one organism. An elaborate error correction mechanism (to obtain the best possible duplication of genes) is not actually selecting at all. It must be practically a simulation of how fit they will be in the environment - letting through genes and mutations that "pass the test" which must be indicative enough of adequate fitness through a living body.

Dillemma - Conviction Rant or Scientific Method

I am not sure whether to use this blog to state what I believe the scientific truth to be, or whether to methodically and scientifically (with citations) demonstrate why I am right.

At this link - The crux of the matter is laid out a plausible genetic mechanism for "smart" mutations that would clearly be a superior response to stresses than "random" mutations. If that kind of response is actually possible in an organism, those organisms that express this response would clearly be "fitter" than those that don't. In a purely Darwininan way, those without capability for "smart" mutations would not exist anymore.

Selective stress-breeding to create a long-neck

Background: This system presumes that my theory is completely correct (I do). Artificial selection is all well and good and has a proven record of succeeding in breeding stock with desired characteristics. However, the characteristic in question must exist in the population to start with. This is highly unsatisfactory and there is just no way you could, say, breed an antelope with a considerably longer neck (or taller all round, like a giraffe) without triggering appropriate mutations first.

The trick would be to find the same stress/mutation trigger that caused (say for the giraffe) those mutations required to be more prevalent, which allowed natural selection to have something useful to select from and speciate a taller (long-neck) animal.

The first condition is to pick an animal that feeds on leaves. There is not much point picking a carnivore or a herbivore that only eats grass/fruit etc. because there is no natural situation in geologic history in which a long neck would be the difference between life and death for such. I choose the antelope in this case - it eats leaves and lives in the same continent, so might share the required triggers and responsive genetics.

The second condition is that the breeding stock must be in some kind of stress. This is considered animal cruelty, so I suggest any experiments are done in a subsaharan country that is in a state of war: Nobody notices any cruelty that happens in those countries. Stress is well known to trigger mutations and is highly necessary to accelerate the process of artificial selection.

The third condition is to pick a stressful situation appropriately. Adaptive mutations happen as a mutation response that succeeded in the geologic past. They may not be apparent in the animal because they eventually reversed in the normal cycle of things - hopefully numerous times in the species' history such that it reinforces the response(s). In the case of the antelope, the stressful situation might have these features:
1) Near-starvation. This is known to also have physiological responses of delaying maturity, among other things. It is likely to trigger responses that might achieve it more food for its progeny in analogous situation.

2) Declining and/or isolated population. This reinforces that it is likely to be a long term stress, and which migration is unlikely to resolve. Inbreeding and polygamy might be physiological indicators of this.

3) Visual cues that food is plentiful higher up. Perhaps just out of reach, or even selective cues like seeing that taller relatives are better fed.

4) A lack of predators. Predators are known to put selective pressure towards earlier maturity thus smaller form.

I don't know if penning up antelopes, while at the same time putting heaps of food just out of reach of all but the tallest is an ethical way to prove Lamarck right - But I think that is exactly the sort of thing that led to Giraffe's long necks, and could be demonstrated within the space of a few lifetimes.

2nd draft "Marconomic Theory of Regressive Evolution"

Mainly for clarification, disambiguation and to match experimental evidence?

My theory, is concerned with "Macro mutations" and in its plainest form just expands on what is already known. I will use the term DNA subroutine for a gene that can be switched on or off to express the macro mutation in question.

Fact: an organism under stress exhibits considerably higher mutation rates.

Theory: Different types of stresses will confer different spectrum of mutation - ie. the mutations will favour more likely beneficial mutations for a predicted future requirement which the stress would signal.

The mechanism proposed is that over a window of genetic experience (say a million years) the DNA stores information regarding which mutations were more appropriate for the given stress and which ones weren't. A "bank" of hundreds of thousands of DNA subroutines that has built up over time and proved their worth are either expressed or switched off to save metabolic resources. If a subroutine has been switched off long enough it can be relegated to "junk DNA" status and will not further be trusted in the field due to it being no longer valid in the new context (or from an orthodox perspective become unusable due to genetic drift)

A word on micro mutations:

Micro mutations are classified as completely random errors in duplication of genes. These are strongly evident and well studied. However, the orthodox view is that the only way for these micro mutations to avoid eventually destroying the function of the gene in question is for them to be field tested by natural selection. To put it another way, the whole organism has to die before reproducing to avoid one crucial micro mutation from being copied. I find this argument incomprehensible. It is like as if the only way to avoid errors in programming the oxygen intake valve of the space shuttle is to launch it anyway, let it crash and avoid using those blueprints again. I call it the crash, burn and learn concept. It might be alright for a virus with millions of launches every second, but I don't think it would quite be so good for the Emperor Penguin.

This lends itself to my belief that there is something else at play other than natural selection. There must be some sort of error correction or testing mechanism on individual DNA subroutines, and if there is, they can just as easily apply to non-expressed genes (or, much more likely, there is a system that expresses these, but localises them for testing only, thus suppressing the evolved purpose of the DNA subroutine for that generation at least).

Marconomic Theory of Regressive Evolution

I will start with a generalised genetic disproof of inheritance of acquired characteristics from Wikipedia.Genetic disproof
There are many formulations of the genetic disproof, but all have roughly the same structure as the following:

Acquired traits do not affect an organism's genome.
Only the genome is passed to the offspring.
Therefore, acquired traits cannot be passed to the offspring.
While this proof may be logically valid, it suffers from the material fallacy of begging the question, since no one who believes in inheritance of acquired characters would believe both assumptions.


My theory throws these assumptions away and replaces them with this observation. The inheritance of acquired characteristics is not evident because the genome has embedded within it thousands of generations of experience as to what genetic traits are worthwile and those that aren't. In *general*, genetic mutations mimicking acquired traits do *NOT* make the organism any *fitter* to survive in nature.

Instead, the following rules of regressive evolution apply:

-Genetic mutations in offspring are a result of stresses on the parent(s).
-Mutations have a directed element that depends on the exact stress involved.
-The directed element is programmed into the genetic code via association between the stress which is acting as a trigger, and the mutation which has been "proven" to be appropriate to survive better under new conditions indicated by the stress.
-The strength of association between the trigger and the mutation is entirely dependent on the reliability of the trigger being an indication that the mutation is appropriate to the new "environment".
-Many of the mutations concerned are simply switching on or off complex functions that are permanently programmed in the genetic code whether they are active or not.
-Certain combination of stresses may create combinations of mutations without precedent in itself, but each mutation would have been "field tested" individually in distant or more recent history.

Examples that should be quite clear-cut:

Darkness stress: Species adapted to cave conditions or permanently underground (moles etc.) are uncannily blind whereas their closest relatives have full sight. The stress of being in darkness your whole life would cause a considerable proportion of your progeny to have genetic vision defects - all other things being equal.

Wetness/dryness stress: Kamerrers experiments on the midwife toad (Chapter 7 Panda's thumb) had some merit. Clearly, one must separate the selection pressure from the stress trigger to prove the point that mutations to switch back on genes that helped in water are not evident without the wetness stress. Experiments need to be formulated with this in mind. River-courses changing their path makes sudden changes in local environments.

Radiation stress: In Earth's history every single large scale event would have radiation associated with it. Volcanoes erupting, asteroid impacts, solar activity, and possible magnetic field fluctuations would all send rare radioactive elements in the atmosphere or increased radiation. Is it any wonder then that the most obvious, largest scale mutations are caused by radiation? It is a clear signal that radical mutations in any direction might cause some to survive better.

"Regressive evolution" as a term has been almost exclusively used in describing reduction of features, such as in the loss of eyesight and pigmentation in cave dwelling fish. In "Marconomic" terms, reduction in features is also the clearest example of it in nature. Switching off something that was there appears a backwards or downwards move, while the re-switching on of a previously inactive feature appears to be either a leap or not a truly new feature, depending on whether it had been observed before in related species. Philosophically speaking, backwards, downwards and leaps are artificial concepts based on thinking of evolution (falsely) as a ladder rather than the reality of it being a "bush". Switching on or off of features that are then passed on is adaptive either way. Thus I group losses and gains of such features in the same "regressive" boat.

I call it "regressive" evolution because the process almost always borrows tricks that have developed in the past with selection pressures optimising them. Switching them off saves resources when conditions dictate they are unnecessary. However, they are there for when they are required, and perhaps almost all of the evident "faster" evolutionary processes have borrowed perfectly working genetic tricks and combined them in new ways.

At first glance regressive evolution is not really evolution because it never introduces truly *new* changes. However there is such a large number of possible combinations of trigger-responsive genes that the number of species in the Earth is dwarfed by it. If there is a million genes that can be switched on or off depending on triggers, that makes two to the power of a million possible combinations. Virtually all of them will be truly new changes. Also triggers will almost always produce a spectrum of mutations - This is because the future cannot be predicted perfectly. Chance, probability and statistics is a big part of the process. Truly random mutations, however are almost certainly an evolutionary dead-end.

So I have said that in *general*, genetic mutations mimicking acquired traits do *NOT* make the organism any *fitter* to survive in nature. However, this begs the question: Is there any *specific* genetic mutations that do? (Mimick acquired traits that triggered the mutation)?

The trait/mutation would have to fit the following conditions:
A) The organism must be in a state of life or death stress or reproduction-challenging stress(1)
B) The "situation" must be very analogous to situations repeated in the genealogical history (2).
C) The mutation must clearly help progeny in analogous stressful situations more than just being shown/trained/helped by the parent(s) etc. (3)
D) The disadvantages of the mutation must be clearly outweighed by the advantages given assumed environmental constraints. (Needs a clear cost/benefit advantage)

(1) It is not enough, for instance, that a giraffe stretches their neck reaching for higher food. For a trigger situation, the giraffe must see other giraffes dying of starvation, be short in food itself, and endure the frustration of seeing lots of leaves just out of reach. (Using a well known Lamarckian example) If it isn't a life or death situation, the mutation will be both unecessary and resource-depleting.

(2)The "knowledge" associated with the trigger must be on firm statistical ground. The trigger will never be something only associated with proximal individual adaptation. For instance one 1930's experiment devised to investigate inheritance would chop of an insect's antenna that generally grows back. Any number of generations "experience" would not offset the natural experience of the insect, which is - that a more ideal regrowth of an antenna is unnecessary for survivability and reproduction in any conceivable natural environment. Even if it was - chopping off an antenna would not be an indicative trigger.

(3) It is tempting with certain features, to assume that if strength in one arm is important to survivability, and a person strengthens that arm for a greater part of their life to suit their job, and that their children are likely to have the same constraints - that a genetic mutation that would strengthen that arm without as much training would have evolutionary merit. However, if the feature is being passed on to the child by training from the parents, and very few are dying due the the arm being too weak, a mutation may be less reliable than just letting the parents train their children specifically.

A Rundown of evidence that supports my theories:

1) Experiments show that general mutation rates increase as a result of stress.
2) Humans and bacteria have some parts of their genome that are extremely similar. Even though these same parts are quite resistant to random mutations (ie. random mutations do no noticeable change to the organism). As with most parts of the genome, the specific functions of these segments are unknown.
3) Natural selection needs mutations to select from. Stressful situations lend themselves to particular mutations. This article lays out a clear example of adaptive mutation. Because almost no research is looking for similar adaptive mutations, it is unclear whether this is the exception or the rule.
4) My theories do NOT rule out random aspects to the process. Genes that *Are* under constant selective pressure will have (seemingly random) mutations and will use natural selection as a process of refinement, quality control and mutations that don't affect the purpose of the gene will build up in that gene over time -*at well researched rates*. Selective pressure is the error-correcting mechanism in this case and certain critical sequences can stay the same for Billions of years by this mechanism. This fits in perfectly well with my theories.
5) The apparent extension of this randomness into virtually all genes fits the data quite nicely. However, this should not rule out that the apparent randomness overall, is due to the randomness of the factors that cause mutation triggers. The orthodoxy is that the apparent randomness rules out environmental feedback causality of most of the overall apparent mutations. As pointed out in (3) there is some clear counter-examples to the orthodoxy.

In defence of the Apex Predator

A recent theme in ecological research has been the discovery that not all species are as important as eachother in a regional ecosystem. In fact, if one has to choose a species to protect, it is always the apex predator (top of the food chain) that should be chosen. For instance the extermination in the 1920's of the Wolf from Yellowstone National Park had been found to cause damage to the whole ecology without a single other animal or plant being damaged by human hands. This has been found to be true for all regional ecosystems. Thus the Crocodile really is due protection in the rivers, The Lion really is the king of the beasts in parts of Africa, Cougars, Bears etc. are very important in their ecological niches as well. In Yellowstone for instance, the elk (Reindeer?) are perceived by humans to be important because they are big and beautiful, but the Wolf is more important even though it is unpopular both with tourist and ranchers, and often kill weaker, though intelligent animals in very cruel ways.

Also in the Ocean this is found to be true. And the vicious killers of the deep blue are denegrated by a large swathe of the population. This is wrong, because even if they are natural born killers and kill intelligent and feeling popular mammals of the deep, they are more important than the species they are killing for food. Thus I believe the apex predator in this case - the Japanese whaling and fishing fleets - should be regulated to more mimic the activities of more conventional apex predators such as Great Whites and killer whales, and not be vilified for choosing to kill whales in certain circumstances. Whales are like giant Elk of the deep, and uncontrolled populations may devastate populations of lower species - especially if shark hunting continues uncontrolled!

Steve Irwin

I have been reading "My Steve" by Terri Irwin and it has given me mixed feelings about life, mortality, children and animal liberation. The way that he lived his life in some ways made me jealous. I used to think of him as a bit of a "Jackass" - the way he placed himself with dangerous animals in front of the camera for shock value. I realised more recently that he was just like that, and the fact that he made an impact at the same time suited multiple purposes. The crazy stuff I did in my youth I can just put down to my youth, but Steve certainly carried it right through his whole short life. He is a reminder that life is too short and one must take that into account.

Also the way Steve (and Terri) exposed the children to wildlife astonishingly early and had an expectation of them continuing the family "business" strikes a chord with me, as I have similar ambitions for our family business. I am concordant with Steve and Terri that experiences even just before or after birth have a significance in moulding an individual, especially with things to do with wildlife. I find the "wildlife warrior" message to be inherently inconsistent, yet noble and impossible to argue against. Animals they deal with have been elevated to human status, yet no quasi-religious arguments for vegetarianism are proffered nor a suggestion of laws needing to be changed. There is a distinct push for the purchasing land for private habitat reserves, and they put their money where their mouth is in that regard. New concepts like the "Crocoseum" have been wonderful.

Strategic analysis of Global warming

From Marconomica Principle #5 I've grouped entities strategically as countries. In the global scale, it is countries leaders making the commitments on behalf of all their citizens. The Dillemma's leaders of democracies face is that signed committments get votes now, but may lose them votes if they fail to achieve them later, or if it ends up costing more than voters are willing to pay. The over-riding strategic concern must be "the tragedy of the commons". I have imagined scenarios in which generalised fears cause emmissions to accelerate, with every country more or less blaming every other country. Individual countries obviously try to make any committments at such a long term as to ensure they won't lose personally by failing. As the long term committment nears maturity, the gap between the committment and reality will be so wide that no Government would accept responsibility. The proposed targets are framed in such a way that it is only the end result that is being argued over - not anything in between that will necessarily have to happen to get there (eg goals within an electoral term window). Examples that perhaps ought to be copied if we were serious about it, have their own horrors associated. For instance, Russia is the only Kyoto ratifier to obviously achieve their goal. Clearly, having an economy tank is an obvious way to reduce emissions, but no environmentalist is seriously suggesting it (except Peter Garrett before he became a politician:)). Also examples of rich countries with a very low carbon intensity exist (France), but this contradicts heavily with environmentalists hatred of Hydro and Nuclear power (and hatred of France). Having all but strategically ruled out strategies with proven records, my prediction is of a 10% increase in emmissions in developed countries by 2020 (from 2000 figures)

Marconomic Analysis of the state of play in Climate change

In Principia Marconomica
principle #2, I have stated that perception is not reality, and having a quick look at Wikipedia's Determining political spectra, the climate change state of play is that people's views are highly correlated on this, thus a one dimensional line is very apt to describe it. Principle #2 states that it is very likely that none of the points on the line reflect reality. The perception of the majority, including those that are uncertain, is that if the "alarmist" is right about one thing (say rapid increasing temperature prediction) that they will also be right about a correlated view (Disaster will befall the Earth). Similarly for "denialist" views.
Politics is certain to use this line to influence certain peer groups as units to obtain votes; activists are going to try to influence individuals to join their peer such as to increase their numbers and weight as efficiently as possible.
The unfortunate thing is that a set of views that is without peer almost always gets misunderstood, ignored or forever questioned. What we need is a set of scientists and other professionals that is unburdened by their peers or lobby groups. I just wonder whether "Peer review" leads to "peer pressure" when it comes to the spin on scientific research.

Trading Hot Air

I realise I have perhaps been too harsh to completely dismiss the current state of affairs with "Carbon offsets". I have claimed that these are a "bastardised" form of *allocation* trading. My reasoning is that trading allocations works because the number of allocations is finite and controlled. If one starts to use something like planting trees or buying incandescent lightbulbs, you can buy an infinite amount of these and obviously this would break down the system. Contrast this to a carbon tax, that like any sin tax will reduce demand for the sinful product (in this case carbon), punish bigger users in proportion, and if it replaces other non-carbon-proportional taxes, will be revenue neutral, thus there should not be any net capital flight away from the taxing country.

However, adopt cumulative palatable changes to this system and something strange happens. First, these offsets can move from being voluntary to being compulsory for a certain energy class. Say with electricity, an automatic calculation of carbon based on your electricity bill is used to bill you for the offset. Ditto with fuels. This would not be too controversial. Next, these could be further refined by more accurate metering. CH4, NO2 etc. levels could be monitored over different urban areas and these could form the basis for more compulsory offsets.

In the long term these offsets would be collected by the government and become quite proportional to the carbon usage. The offsets would no longer necessarily go to the lowest price, nor to the one decided on by the payer, but be decided pretty much like any other Government project. This way it would end up being indistinguishable from a carbon tax. This is just a pathway for the Government to sell the idea of something that is essentially increasing cost for basic utilities without any added direct value - generally a fatal policy move.

Chicago, Canada, Alabama, Key West

As part of our whirlwind 87/88 US tour, we made good use of our 15 day Greyhound pass to get around. I can't quite remember the context and dates for these :( Yes I can :).

These photos are all from early January 1988. After a chilly New Years Day stop-over in Fargo North Dakota (no photos), where we were locked out of the bus station and a kind beekeeper puts us up for the night so we don't freeze in the -40degree (Farenheit, Celcius take your pick:)) wind chill, we make it to Winnipeg Canada, where by the 3rd of January, I remember that we hadn't taken any photos so I take one.
Winnipeg, Canada We were walking to (Eatons?) shopping centre.

This next photo is a re-enactment of a very notorious scene in "Ferris Bueller's day off", where the youngsters risk their lives by standing on the railing and lean into the window with their head when they are at the top floor observatory! It was probably the 5th of January.

Sears Tower, Chicago Not as scary as it looks. Maybe the security guards knew something we didn't.


The next photo was taken in Birmingham, Alabama, where the trees had ice on them. Must have been around the 9th of January. We were awaiting our bus out of the place and I realised we didn't have a photo, so I demanded one next to the phone box because it looked a little interesting.
Alabama! I had my winter suit on, but the Doctor seemed to be warm enough without.

The next photo is the place at Key West which was rather warm in comparison, so we bought some singlets with stuff written on them. Must have been about the 11th of January?
Key West

Lesson: Do not throw snowballs at AMERICANS

Australian Andy should have learned the lesson I did almost twenty years ago.



















Trust me! It can never end well. This goes for Islamic extremists who like to throw something more substantial... eg. Suicide bomber, Aeroplane etc. etc.

Even if you lead a country and even hint at suggesting America may have asked for it, you are seen to be fair game.

25th November day

If you're going to have a day to remember - Have it twice. On 25/11/1987, we take off, have a stop-over in Sydney for several hours where we do some stuff, then get on a plane overnight to Honolulu, then have 25/11/1987 all over again. If I'm not mistaken, 28/11/1987 is when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was ousted by his own party after being premier for 17 years.