A picture and a headline I never, never need to see again
(The story is just the usual from the Middle East)
An afterthought…
Following up the analogy of individual to cell, species to organ, and biome to organism, and probably taking the metaphor to a place where it should never, never be allowed:
We might wonder what the functions of the human “organ” are in the system. If indeed the entire planet can be thought of as a single biome, the only way it could ever reproduce itself would involve seeding its particular biota onto other planets; so it could be that the urge for space travel is really a reproductive urge.
That’s right, we may well be the Earth’s gonads.
(This is not meant to detract from the actual serious intent of the previous post, and I am actually interested in comments and discussion on that one – this is just something that came up during a conversation last night)
Thought on reproduction and the meaning of species
I was recently reading a short story by Samuel Delany, which included the statement
“The reproductive function, was it primary or adjunctive? If… you
consider the whole ecological balance a single organism, it’s adjunctive, a vital
reparative process along with sleeping and eating”
This has been bugging me somewhat ever since, and I believe I’m starting to get a handle on why.
A thought on the perspectives of biology
Whew.
The past few days have been spent on speed optimizations of code. The sort of really hard-core optimizations that I haven’t done in a few years – the ones where you say things like “*five* integer assignments?!” and worry about indirect versus direct references.
It’s certainly been a learning experience. It’s also involved writing something like 2500 lines of code in the past 36 hours, with a similar dose expected for the next 36.
After this, I suspect I will need a nap.
Your random spam subject line of the day
Rolex – obliterate tahiti
Wow. It’s amazing what high-end watches can do nowadays.
Was the Constitution written in vain?
MSNBC is reporting that Tom Ridge wants to suspend the election in November if a terror attack occurs near that time.
Comment
Note to self
Any optimization idea that starts with “That’s okay, we’ll just change the way the iterators work” is going to be a pain in the ass.
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 