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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Spontaneous Degradation of DNA

I heard a crash in my outer office. I knew what had happened. My cool space-filling model of DNA is 33 years old and it is spontaneously degrading as the plastic connectors become brittle. This is very, very, sad.

I don't think it can be replaced because I can't find anything similar on the internet. Besides, I figure it would cost over three thousand dollars at today's prices.

I can't bear to look at it anymore. It will have to go in the garbage.




23 comments :

Anonymous said...

Goddidit.

Diogenes said...

Of course YOU would think DNA is junk!

The Rat said...

I thought DNA had a 521 year-old half-life?
http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555

Dave Bailey

Anonymous said...

Maybe it will reassemble? I mean, it is widely believed throughout the scientific community, that lifeless and mindless matter has done it at least once in the past. Anybody here good at math? What's the probability?

Diogenes said...

There's a pile of dirt in my garden. Maybe it will turn into Adam and Eve? It's widely believed by Christians that happened at least once in the past. Anybody here good at math? What's the probability?

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Good question. Here's a good primer:

http://youtu.be/SxxolSyWd6Y

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

One could ask, what is the probability that inanimate and lifeless matter will spontaneously assemble itself into Mt. Everest?

Go back to the primordial supernova remnant from which our solar system formed. Start from there, then calculate the probability that Mt. Everest, exactly as it is down to every atom, will exist 5 billion years later?

Praise the lard!

Andre said...

Just like our own code is getting degraded, and being mistaken for becoming simple to complex, just like this designed DNA model is being affected by the second law so are we, deletions on the increase, mutations causing more cancer. Everything will have an end...

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

Sad but true. If only an immaterial and eternal wizard really loved us and would intervene and save us...

JimV said...

Speaking as an engineer, never underestimate the power of super glue and duct tape. Seriously.

Faizal Ali said...

It's just an innocent, lighthearted post. And still some creationists feels compelled to inject their idiocy into it.

The whole truth said...

Yeah, maybe Larry should ship his DNA model to Red Green at Possum Lodge. Red does wonders with duct tape. :)

http://www.redgreen.com/

Diogenes said...

The Second Law of Thermodynamics "entropy" argument originated in the 1920's in George M. Price's book Back to the Bible. Price's belief in "universal degeneration" was clearly inspired by his belief that non-white races had degenerated from whites, and his belief that society was degenerating.

Which it has, no Ku Klux Klan anymore burning crosses, society is going to hell...

Anonymous said...

There's a reason why this guy's last name is "Gross." Gross stupidity, Gross misunderstanding of entropy, gross ...

Anonymous said...

Yes, Dominic, yes, that's exactly what the scientific community thinks. All those years of education, research into how nature works, painfully performed experiments, while surely nobody in the scientific community thought of doing some "simple" math, how odd ... yet all it should take is a bit of prayer and done! We would have figured the "right" answer much earlier. Just like you did. Oh well, live and learn.

Anonymous said...

NegEntro: You are wrong... way off ...I'm not against "so called scientists like JW's. I can see and accept the reality. Don't you think I HAVE NOT DONE THE THINKING...I DID

Anonymous said...

"Negative Entropy Wednesday, April 10, 2013 4:40:00 PM
Yes, Dominic, yes, that's exactly what the scientific community thinks. All those years of education, research into how nature works, painfully performed experiments, while surely nobody in the scientific community thought of doing some "simple" math, how odd ... yet all it should take is a bit of prayer and done! We would have figured the "right" answer much earlier. Just like you did. Oh well, live and learn."

Sorry but this does not convince me. I need proof for science, because that's what science claims to be based on. When it comes to faith, I don't have to have proof. That is why it is called "faith" and not proof based of scientific evidence... Well the real problem is when science claims to have proof but "wants us to believe it in rather than providing the proof..." uff...

Anonymous said...

Convince you of what? I was agreeing with you that scientist surely don't learn any math. What else do you want? If you think that we don;t learn any math, then that's it. We don't learn any math. We just imagine that there was an origin of life "by itself" based on nothing. The chemistry of self-organization is pure imagination too, of course, the properties of clays, of crystals such and such, what happens with simpler chemicals exposed to energies such as electric discharges, all pure imagination, the whole field of thermodynamics is imaginary except if it can be misinterpreted to creationist's liking, that part does have math, but any other parts don't, We also imagine that there was evolution, start publishing articles saying so for no reason whatsoever, publish books called "population genetics" and "evolutionary analysis," with no math, of course, the whole field of physics does not have math either unless it is about constants that had to be very precise before it were possible for a universe to bear life, then it has math, not otherwise, fossils? come on, dating is imaginary, no math involved either unless it comes from some creationist charlatan who pretends that the whole of geology was formed by some global flood, but normally science does not involve math. Origin of life is all about imagining whole organisms putting themselves together in absolute randomness from atoms to humans in one go, with no evolutionary processes involved. No sir, it's all about randomly putting together whole organisms, and don't tell me otherwise. Evolution? Oh, it's just saying "no gods, no gods, no gods." That's it. Darwin's book is just that repeated over and over, chapter after chapter, except when Darwin can be misinterpreted to deny his own theories.

See? It's easy. All we do is imagine and publish with no evidences and no math anywhere to be seen because we scientists do not know one bit about either. We are trained that way. This is why it's so easy to become a scientist. All it takes is saying so and we get accepted into the community. We have to promise to never learn math or about evidence though. We get even better acceptance if we deny gods.

You've got us all right.

steve oberski said...

Well done Negative Entropy, now that you've let the cat out of the bag the super secret scientist cabal will have to kill us all.

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

I'd like to invite the both of you to a super secret conference... in a super secret place. Never mind the knives..

Juan Pablo Luppi said...

I find it kind of beautiful.

Eugen said...

Larry

http://www.thednastore.com/dnastuff/dnamodels.html

They even sell DNA neckties. Incredible.

AllanMiller said...

Hee hee - I was going to post a Poe about it self-assembling, but I see I've been beaten to it.

Different forces operate at the molecular scale, DN, which may modify one's intuition about what is possible. For example, mix actual DNA complementary sequences and they hybridise, spontaneously. Mix accurate scale models and they don't. You can pick up gold leaf with a plastic comb, but not a gold bar with a very big comb. etc.