Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
In the Pipeline: Don't miss Derek Lowe's excellent commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry in general at In the Pipeline
Science Magazine is celebrating its 125th anniversary with 125 big questions that scientists will face in the next 25 years. You can read them all for free here. For the 25 biggest questions, the editors commissioned short essays. I addressed the minor matter of how and where life began.
Fortunately, I get to ask the question. I don't have to provide the final answer. A science writer's prerogative.
"If life does turn up,(on Mars) the discovery could mean that life arose independently on both planets--suggesting that it is common in the universe--or that it arose on one planet and spread to the other."
You overlooked the really interesting question. If life is found on Mars (or elsewhere), is the genetic code the same? The chances of the same genetic code arising independently at two separate locations is astronomically unlikely, so it would support the second scenario.
However, the chances are even better that life is endemic throughout the universe and spread to earth and Mars from elsewhere. This begs the question: "how did this life emerge elsewhere, it must have evolved somewhere?"
But we must also consider the possibility that life and the universe have always existed and that asking the question "where did life come from"? may be no different from asking the question "where did matter come from"?
Besides, evolutionary biologists do not feel that they have to explain the origin of life (abiogenesis) to promote their theory of evolution so it seems fair that folks like me, who advocate for Cosmic Ancestry (panspermia) shouldn't have to explain where the extraterrestrial life originally came from.
All of the available evidence supports the notion that life did come to earth from elsewhere with all of the information present that was necessary for it to evolve into it's present form.
And by "elsewhere" I don't necessarily mean "above". There is growing evidence that at least some life forms may have had their origin inside the earth.
2. Torbjorn Larsson on July 1, 2005 12:46 PM writes...
"Besides, evolutionary biologists do not feel that they have to explain the origin of life..."
Biology describes life (of course), not the prehistory. But evolution is applicable in the transition from chemistry soup to cellular life.
"... so it seems fair that folks like me, who advocate for Cosmic Ancestry (panspermia) shouldn't have to explain where the extraterrestrial life originally came from... "
Not to prove panspermia. But panspermia is not proved.
"... life did come to earth from elsewhere with all of the information present that was necessary for it to evolve into it's present form."
But this is not panspermia but creationism, a belief system which has no explanatory value. How does your belief system account for where the information come from?
Also, panspermia is based on the robustness of simple cell spores. How does your belief system account for that complicated cells with 'the necessary information' survived cosmic radiation for a very long period?
Besides, evolutionary biologists do not feel that they have to explain the origin of life (abiogenesis) to promote their theory of evolution so it seems fair that folks like me, who advocate for Cosmic Ancestry (panspermia) shouldn't have to explain where the extraterrestrial life originally came from.
Although you're right in that, to hypothesise that life came from elsewhere it's not necessary to identify precisely from where it came, you would need to at least show evidence that it did indeed originate "elsewhere" for the hypothesis to gain any validity. A "preponderance of evidence" is only possible with the existence of any actual evidence, for starters.
Re: characterization of evolutionary biologists. Charlie and his ilk apparently think its clever to insinuate that biologists need to "promote" the theory of evolution. This, as opposed to studying and testing the model's various components, which they constantly do, and allowing it to evolve, which it constantly does. The theory of evolution is not a political initiative or a marketing game; it's an amazingly robust and ever-maturing model of biological life, which does not need to be "promoted" a la popularity contests.
More CW:
All of the available evidence supports the notion that life did come to earth from elsewhere with all of the information present that was necessary for it to evolve into it's present form.
I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong about Panspermia - although I personally am not in agreement - but "All of the available evidence"?!
What are you smoking, CW? You didn't really mean to use that phrase, right? :-)
What I find most interesting about your comment though, CW, is the suggestion that all biological evolution on earth has rolled out pre-loaded like a genetic time-release program of some sort. That's a doozy. Is the theory that the roll-out is now complete and that of the billions of years of mutation or switch-flipping or whatever, this is an intended end result (fantasticly, just as we humans have finally mapped the human genome)? Or, fast forward 2 million years from now, life as it exists on earth at that point, is that part of the program too? Is that the intended end result? Is there a point of "/evolution" in your scenario?
"you would need to at least show evidence that it did indeed originate "elsewhere" for the hypothesis to gain any validity."
There is evidence. A lot of it.
Most of it is circumstantial, but you can make a very strong case. The rapid appearance of major classes with no apparent precursors is the main clue. The 1.4 billion year period during which there was no evolution beyond unicellular forms, followed by the rapid appearance of most of the major animal phyla in a very short period of time is suggestive.
One major prediction of cosmic sncestry is that genes should be older than the organisms that use them, whereas evolutionary theory requires them to be expressed immediately so that selection can operate. This prediction has been shown to be supported by empirical data such as Carl discussed in jellyfish. Recent molecular analysis of several metazoan genes has confirmed that they appear to have "diverged" from their respective common ancestor genes much longer ago than the Cambrian explosion. Many genes, including those that operate at the most fundamental level are being shown to have preceeded the organisms that use them.
In January 2006, the "Stardust" spacecraft will return to earth with material it sampled from comet Wild-2. This may give us new insights into the possible transport of living/organic matter around the extraterrestrial environment by comets.
Certainly, cosmic ancestry is not a proven mechanism, but it is scientific and it is testable. In fact, NASA has devoted substantial resourses to it's investigation. As Feynman says, science is not about proving things, but deciding what is most likely. Right now, I think any informed person would easily come to the conclusion that it is much more likely that life came to earth from elsewhere than that it arose de novo on a barren, primordal earth.
Like the mayfly larvae that lives at the bottom of the pond and cannot know nor does it have the capacity to understand the world above the pond, so we humans may be existing in a universe that we cannot know and possibly do not have the capacity to understand, and there may well be intelligences in the universe as far above us as we are above the bacterium.
"Right now, I think any informed person would easily come to the conclusion that it is much more likely that life came to earth from elsewhere than that it arose de novo on a barren, primordal earth."
So, it's "far more likely" that life arose and developed originally on a different barren planet and evolved and then it travelled across the vast reaches of space and somehow survived the trip and then dropped onto the earth where it perfectly adapted to the environment here and fabulously fit in with the pre-existing unicellular life here, then evolved to the point we're at right now.
I don't say that's impossible but, you say "any informed person would easily" come to that conclusion? If ever there is an opportunity to properly apply Occam's Razor, then this is it!
I'm a layman, but nevertheless the above appears absurd. Am I mischaracterizing the process you propose somehow?
But it also looks like you're leaning on the - and again, I'm a layman - debunked assumption that there was no real complexity until the Cambrian. Am I wrong about that too?
But finally, by what you say above it seems that you accept that at least unicellular life developed here on earth, on its own, right? Well, but isn't that the big hurdle?
If you don't have any objection to the facts that abiogenesis occured here on the barren primordial earth, and a billion years of unicellular life shows that, then where's the problem? The only problem you're left with is the Cambrian Explosion, which really is far less of a "problem" than abiogenesis, right?
If two main scenarios here are that either that unicellular life evolved over some 900 million years to our current complexity, vs. the superspores from another orb travelling across millions or billions of light years and impossibly dropping in at just the right time, why so much effort to infer from the "circumstantial" evidence that that idea is the right one? Rather, the reason I'm replying here, how is it a "far more likely" scenario?
"If ever there is an opportunity to properly apply Occam's Razor, then this is it!"
I agree. All of our experience supports the view that all life comes from pre-existing life. So it's much more reasonable to think that the life forms on this earth came from pre-existing life forms than to think (absent any reasonable explanation) that they arose from nothing on a lifeless and barren primordal earth.
If an explorer in the 19th century came upon a remote island inhabited by large numbers of living organisms would he make the assumption that these life forms bootstrapped themselves into existence from the raw materials on the island, or would he assume that they had migrated from elsewhere? We don't have to know where they came from or even how they came to be to make this assumption.
Life came from space because life comes from life.
"it also looks like you're leaning on the - and again, I'm a layman - debunked assumption that there was no real complexity until the Cambrian. Am I wrong about that too?"
Complexity is not the issue. The issue is organization. unicellular life existed for billions of years with no evolution to metazoan forms. In the Cambrian, metazoan forms emerged rapidly in numerous phyla all over the world in a very short period of time. No darwinian mechanism can explain this rapid and widespread advancement.
"by what you say above it seems that you accept that at least unicellular life developed here on earth, on its own, right?"
Don't know, but my guess is no. All life on earth (IMHO) came from pre-existing life it did not arise from nothing.
10. Wayne Francis on July 6, 2005 02:49 AM writes...
For those wondering about CWs view point let me give you some details from months of reading his posts.
Charlie believes the Universe, against the available evidence, is infinitely old. I'll expand on this since there are some cosmological models that say the universe may technically infinite. Charlie Wagner’s infinite universe is infinite in that its always been like we see it now...conducive to not only atomic structure but complex life.
Charlie believes that a complex alien life has existed for this entire time and that it is responsible for seeding life everywhere in the universe.
Charlie believes that no life can become more complex. The super aliens are the top of ladder when it comes to complexity and even they can not create something more complex then themselves.
Charlie believes these aliens are not supernatural nor do they possess the ability to exist outside our known universe.
Charlie does not believe, contrary to all current evidence, that the universe had any type of big bang.
So Charlie's hypotheses breaks down at the first point that the universe is infinitely old.
Charlie's on the panda’s thumb he equated this super alien to the Q from Star Trek.
Note also if you've visited his web site you'll know that he also doesn't believe cholesterol (spelling) doesn't contribute to heart disease and other….let us say… novel ideas.
I might pay some of his ideas a bit more thought if they didn’t run up against fundamental facts we know about the universe and its origin. Charlie’s understanding of cosmology is very lacking.
11. Wayne Francis on July 6, 2005 02:53 AM writes...
"Don't know, but my guess is no. All life on earth (IMHO) came from pre-existing life it did not arise from nothing. "
I hate when people say that life could not come from 'nothing'.....it didn't....organic compounds came from simpler molecules.
Just like molecules came from atoms atoms came from sub atomic particles(P/N/E) they came from even smaller components. Currently strings are just one theory on what the smallest structure might be....but as history shows us the closer we look the more we see....so maybe if strings turn out to be true then strings may have some components they are comprised of.
12. Torbjorn Larsson on July 6, 2005 01:11 PM writes...
The first time I read a CW thread he came over as a regular IDiot crackpot.
This time he introduced panspermia seemingly out of the black ;-), so I pegged him as borderline; they tend to change topic at their indiscretion and expand agendas infinitely.
But from the CV on CW it seems he _is_ crackpot, just an infinite one. :-)
Panda's thumb - thanks for the tip. Also the quick course in sesamoid bones I had to take to handle the handle! (The aha experience from things like this may be close to what people feel when they have religion hardwired into their brain.)
"then strings may have some components" - branes. Apparently strings are branes in an embedding M theory.
But we must be careful here - the russian doll syndrome invites to another infinite confusion for people like CW.
I think string/M theory may level the Plank limit to the ground but it claims to maybe be the selfconsistent Final Theory ("TOE") road block instead.
Anyhow, I don't think physicists believe in the russian doll scenario anyway for very good reasons. (Probably lots of unreal infinites cropping up.)
13. Torbjorn Larsson on July 6, 2005 01:31 PM writes...
Come to think of it, isn't it funny that people believes that infinities are real?
Obviously they are not - to measure one you need either infinite short time/high energy (russian doll) or infinite long time/low energy.
In real life (that we can measure or experience or live in) quantum & Plank limits takes care of the energy perspective. And Big Bang and entropy death frames the time perspective. (And even if we had an infinite clock to measure infinite time or length, who would care to wait for the result? :)
So infinities are idealisations that are convenient but untrue. Like gods for 'explaining'. But since they are convenient and untrue I guess they are 'evil'. Hey, a proof that gods are evil! :)
Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
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We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
Science Magazine is celebrating its 125th anniversary with 125 big questions that scientists will face in the next 25 years. You can read them all for free 
1. Charlie Wagner on July 1, 2005 09:23 AM writes...
Carl Zimmer wrote:
"If life does turn up,(on Mars) the discovery could mean that life arose independently on both planets--suggesting that it is common in the universe--or that it arose on one planet and spread to the other."
You overlooked the really interesting question. If life is found on Mars (or elsewhere), is the genetic code the same? The chances of the same genetic code arising independently at two separate locations is astronomically unlikely, so it would support the second scenario.
Permalink to CommentHowever, the chances are even better that life is endemic throughout the universe and spread to earth and Mars from elsewhere. This begs the question: "how did this life emerge elsewhere, it must have evolved somewhere?"
But we must also consider the possibility that life and the universe have always existed and that asking the question "where did life come from"? may be no different from asking the question "where did matter come from"?
Besides, evolutionary biologists do not feel that they have to explain the origin of life (abiogenesis) to promote their theory of evolution so it seems fair that folks like me, who advocate for Cosmic Ancestry (panspermia) shouldn't have to explain where the extraterrestrial life originally came from.
All of the available evidence supports the notion that life did come to earth from elsewhere with all of the information present that was necessary for it to evolve into it's present form.
And by "elsewhere" I don't necessarily mean "above". There is growing evidence that at least some life forms may have had their origin inside the earth.
2. Torbjorn Larsson on July 1, 2005 12:46 PM writes...
"Besides, evolutionary biologists do not feel that they have to explain the origin of life..."
Biology describes life (of course), not the prehistory. But evolution is applicable in the transition from chemistry soup to cellular life.
"... so it seems fair that folks like me, who advocate for Cosmic Ancestry (panspermia) shouldn't have to explain where the extraterrestrial life originally came from... "
Not to prove panspermia. But panspermia is not proved.
"... life did come to earth from elsewhere with all of the information present that was necessary for it to evolve into it's present form."
But this is not panspermia but creationism, a belief system which has no explanatory value. How does your belief system account for where the information come from?
Also, panspermia is based on the robustness of simple cell spores. How does your belief system account for that complicated cells with 'the necessary information' survived cosmic radiation for a very long period?
Permalink to Comment3. Don S on July 1, 2005 01:28 PM writes...
Charlie W comments:
Although you're right in that, to hypothesise that life came from elsewhere it's not necessary to identify precisely from where it came, you would need to at least show evidence that it did indeed originate "elsewhere" for the hypothesis to gain any validity. A "preponderance of evidence" is only possible with the existence of any actual evidence, for starters.
Re: characterization of evolutionary biologists. Charlie and his ilk apparently think its clever to insinuate that biologists need to "promote" the theory of evolution. This, as opposed to studying and testing the model's various components, which they constantly do, and allowing it to evolve, which it constantly does. The theory of evolution is not a political initiative or a marketing game; it's an amazingly robust and ever-maturing model of biological life, which does not need to be "promoted" a la popularity contests.
More CW:
I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong about Panspermia - although I personally am not in agreement - but "All of the available evidence"?!
What are you smoking, CW? You didn't really mean to use that phrase, right? :-)
What I find most interesting about your comment though, CW, is the suggestion that all biological evolution on earth has rolled out pre-loaded like a genetic time-release program of some sort. That's a doozy. Is the theory that the roll-out is now complete and that of the billions of years of mutation or switch-flipping or whatever, this is an intended end result (fantasticly, just as we humans have finally mapped the human genome)? Or, fast forward 2 million years from now, life as it exists on earth at that point, is that part of the program too? Is that the intended end result? Is there a point of "/evolution" in your scenario?
Permalink to Comment4. Charlie Wagner on July 1, 2005 04:39 PM writes...
Don S wrote:
"What are you smoking, CW? "
Acapulco Gold, when I can get it ;-)
"you would need to at least show evidence that it did indeed originate "elsewhere" for the hypothesis to gain any validity."
There is evidence. A lot of it.
Permalink to CommentMost of it is circumstantial, but you can make a very strong case. The rapid appearance of major classes with no apparent precursors is the main clue. The 1.4 billion year period during which there was no evolution beyond unicellular forms, followed by the rapid appearance of most of the major animal phyla in a very short period of time is suggestive.
One major prediction of cosmic sncestry is that genes should be older than the organisms that use them, whereas evolutionary theory requires them to be expressed immediately so that selection can operate. This prediction has been shown to be supported by empirical data such as Carl discussed in jellyfish. Recent molecular analysis of several metazoan genes has confirmed that they appear to have "diverged" from their respective common ancestor genes much longer ago than the Cambrian explosion. Many genes, including those that operate at the most fundamental level are being shown to have preceeded the organisms that use them.
In January 2006, the "Stardust" spacecraft will return to earth with material it sampled from comet Wild-2. This may give us new insights into the possible transport of living/organic matter around the extraterrestrial environment by comets.
Certainly, cosmic ancestry is not a proven mechanism, but it is scientific and it is testable. In fact, NASA has devoted substantial resourses to it's investigation. As Feynman says, science is not about proving things, but deciding what is most likely. Right now, I think any informed person would easily come to the conclusion that it is much more likely that life came to earth from elsewhere than that it arose de novo on a barren, primordal earth.
Like the mayfly larvae that lives at the bottom of the pond and cannot know nor does it have the capacity to understand the world above the pond, so we humans may be existing in a universe that we cannot know and possibly do not have the capacity to understand, and there may well be intelligences in the universe as far above us as we are above the bacterium.
5. Don S on July 1, 2005 11:06 PM writes...
Charlie:
So, it's "far more likely" that life arose and developed originally on a different barren planet and evolved and then it travelled across the vast reaches of space and somehow survived the trip and then dropped onto the earth where it perfectly adapted to the environment here and fabulously fit in with the pre-existing unicellular life here, then evolved to the point we're at right now.
I don't say that's impossible but, you say "any informed person would easily" come to that conclusion? If ever there is an opportunity to properly apply Occam's Razor, then this is it!
I'm a layman, but nevertheless the above appears absurd. Am I mischaracterizing the process you propose somehow?
But it also looks like you're leaning on the - and again, I'm a layman - debunked assumption that there was no real complexity until the Cambrian. Am I wrong about that too?
But finally, by what you say above it seems that you accept that at least unicellular life developed here on earth, on its own, right? Well, but isn't that the big hurdle?
If you don't have any objection to the facts that abiogenesis occured here on the barren primordial earth, and a billion years of unicellular life shows that, then where's the problem? The only problem you're left with is the Cambrian Explosion, which really is far less of a "problem" than abiogenesis, right?
If two main scenarios here are that either that unicellular life evolved over some 900 million years to our current complexity, vs. the superspores from another orb travelling across millions or billions of light years and impossibly dropping in at just the right time, why so much effort to infer from the "circumstantial" evidence that that idea is the right one? Rather, the reason I'm replying here, how is it a "far more likely" scenario?
I don't get the reasoning, forgive me.
Permalink to Comment6. David Govett on July 2, 2005 01:52 AM writes...
The answers to all 125 problems are quite trivial. You'll see after they're solved.
Permalink to Comment7. Charlie Wagner on July 2, 2005 10:38 AM writes...
Don S wrote:
"If ever there is an opportunity to properly apply Occam's Razor, then this is it!"
I agree. All of our experience supports the view that all life comes from pre-existing life. So it's much more reasonable to think that the life forms on this earth came from pre-existing life forms than to think (absent any reasonable explanation) that they arose from nothing on a lifeless and barren primordal earth.
If an explorer in the 19th century came upon a remote island inhabited by large numbers of living organisms would he make the assumption that these life forms bootstrapped themselves into existence from the raw materials on the island, or would he assume that they had migrated from elsewhere? We don't have to know where they came from or even how they came to be to make this assumption.
Life came from space because life comes from life.
"it also looks like you're leaning on the - and again, I'm a layman - debunked assumption that there was no real complexity until the Cambrian. Am I wrong about that too?"
Complexity is not the issue. The issue is organization. unicellular life existed for billions of years with no evolution to metazoan forms. In the Cambrian, metazoan forms emerged rapidly in numerous phyla all over the world in a very short period of time. No darwinian mechanism can explain this rapid and widespread advancement.
"by what you say above it seems that you accept that at least unicellular life developed here on earth, on its own, right?"
Don't know, but my guess is no. All life on earth (IMHO) came from pre-existing life it did not arise from nothing.
Permalink to Comment8. David Govett on July 2, 2005 08:56 PM writes...
Since life is the absence of death, life on earth arose when some process (or god) eliminated some death, thereby providing a niche for life.
Permalink to Comment9. Traffic Demon on July 4, 2005 04:13 PM writes...
Nobody cares what you think Charlie.
Permalink to Comment10. Wayne Francis on July 6, 2005 02:49 AM writes...
For those wondering about CWs view point let me give you some details from months of reading his posts.
Charlie believes the Universe, against the available evidence, is infinitely old. I'll expand on this since there are some cosmological models that say the universe may technically infinite. Charlie Wagner’s infinite universe is infinite in that its always been like we see it now...conducive to not only atomic structure but complex life.
Charlie believes that a complex alien life has existed for this entire time and that it is responsible for seeding life everywhere in the universe.
Charlie believes that no life can become more complex. The super aliens are the top of ladder when it comes to complexity and even they can not create something more complex then themselves.
Charlie believes these aliens are not supernatural nor do they possess the ability to exist outside our known universe.
Charlie does not believe, contrary to all current evidence, that the universe had any type of big bang.
So Charlie's hypotheses breaks down at the first point that the universe is infinitely old.
Charlie's on the panda’s thumb he equated this super alien to the Q from Star Trek.
Note also if you've visited his web site you'll know that he also doesn't believe cholesterol (spelling) doesn't contribute to heart disease and other….let us say… novel ideas.
I might pay some of his ideas a bit more thought if they didn’t run up against fundamental facts we know about the universe and its origin. Charlie’s understanding of cosmology is very lacking.
Permalink to Comment11. Wayne Francis on July 6, 2005 02:53 AM writes...
"Don't know, but my guess is no. All life on earth (IMHO) came from pre-existing life it did not arise from nothing. "
I hate when people say that life could not come from 'nothing'.....it didn't....organic compounds came from simpler molecules.
Just like molecules came from atoms atoms came from sub atomic particles(P/N/E) they came from even smaller components. Currently strings are just one theory on what the smallest structure might be....but as history shows us the closer we look the more we see....so maybe if strings turn out to be true then strings may have some components they are comprised of.
Permalink to Comment12. Torbjorn Larsson on July 6, 2005 01:11 PM writes...
The first time I read a CW thread he came over as a regular IDiot crackpot.
This time he introduced panspermia seemingly out of the black ;-), so I pegged him as borderline; they tend to change topic at their indiscretion and expand agendas infinitely.
But from the CV on CW it seems he _is_ crackpot, just an infinite one. :-)
Panda's thumb - thanks for the tip. Also the quick course in sesamoid bones I had to take to handle the handle! (The aha experience from things like this may be close to what people feel when they have religion hardwired into their brain.)
"then strings may have some components" - branes. Apparently strings are branes in an embedding M theory.
But we must be careful here - the russian doll syndrome invites to another infinite confusion for people like CW.
I think string/M theory may level the Plank limit to the ground but it claims to maybe be the selfconsistent Final Theory ("TOE") road block instead.
Anyhow, I don't think physicists believe in the russian doll scenario anyway for very good reasons. (Probably lots of unreal infinites cropping up.)
Permalink to Comment13. Torbjorn Larsson on July 6, 2005 01:31 PM writes...
Come to think of it, isn't it funny that people believes that infinities are real?
Obviously they are not - to measure one you need either infinite short time/high energy (russian doll) or infinite long time/low energy.
In real life (that we can measure or experience or live in) quantum & Plank limits takes care of the energy perspective. And Big Bang and entropy death frames the time perspective. (And even if we had an infinite clock to measure infinite time or length, who would care to wait for the result? :)
So infinities are idealisations that are convenient but untrue. Like gods for 'explaining'. But since they are convenient and untrue I guess they are 'evil'. Hey, a proof that gods are evil! :)
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