Acme

Thanks. As to your turn off, I think you are just making an argument from incredulity. I think it's a mistake to equate macro with superior. In terms of yourself, that is your body, is it superior to viruses that may kill it? Well, as they say, there is no accounting for taste. What interests a few may not interest a many. This all seems to begin to bear on consciousness and I think Hofstadter's strange loops, both the concept and the book, give a reasonable and well thunk accounting of that. I can only again suggest you read the book. The entire thing is more-or-less a single argument and fair-use notwithstanding there is no conveying it in snippets and clippets. If you don't want to buy it I'm sure you can get it at a library. I have a copy and am re-reading it sentimental goo and all. I wouldn't want to go misrepresenting Dougy in any of my assertions and while Mike expressed surprise that I should like such a book I got a lot from it on my first read a few years back. [i loaned it out for awhile but the loanee never read it so I recovered it. Again, there is no accounting for taste.] Trey kewl. Congrats all around! Regards, Acme

Just a note that my recipe does not call for dissolving the yeast in water first. Following the recipe, I combine wheat flour, honey, salt, butter, & yeast and use a mixer on low to combine them. Then a more-or-less like amount of white flour is stirred in by hand until the dough is no longer sticky. [The recipe calls for shortening, but that has soy in it & one of the kids has a problem with soy so I use butter] Anyway, after that mixing the recipe calls for adding the warm water. As to baking powder vs. baking soda. Baking powder contains baking soda [sodium hydrogen carbonate] and that is what reacts with the acids. Baking powder also contains different acid compounds that can react immediately when wetted as well as a delayed reaction when heated in the case of "double acting" baking powder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baking_powder Yes on the taste good! Moreover, the smell of baking yeast bread gets the taste buds primed. Nothin' says lovin' like bread in the oven. Reading your link it seems oxidation is key to developing the gluten. Perhaps this is why the kneading adding air, as I said, aids in the rising. ?

I have been baking 2 loaves of honey/wheat bread about every 10 days for the past year. Grandkids won't eat anything else now! So I'm experienced but not exactly an expert. #1 My recipe calls for having the water between 120º & 130ºF. At 120º I have found it does not rise as well as at 125º and at 130º it rises even less well. Altitude and barometric pressure can also affect rising so pay attention to each of these factors each time you bake. Write down or remember details when you have best result and try to repeat. Sometimes I still don't get a good rise and have no idea why. Thorough kneeding is also important as it works air into the dough. 10 minutes a must. One thing with bread, you can always eat your mistakes. #2 I don't know about freezing as I have not tried that. #3 Baking powder and baking soda need an acidic component in the dough/batter to react with and work. Yeast bread recipes usually don't have such an ingredient because they don't need it. There are soda-bread recipes you can look up. I recently saw one such recipe from Ireland on a cooking show. Apparently if not done right it can be quite dense. Think rock hard. Gotta run. Let me know if I was any help and let us all know your results. Be warned that if you have folks around in your house when the bread comes out it will be rapidly consumed.

I only hid all that to conserve space and simplify a response. Acknowledge all you wrote. On Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop, he purposefully tried to make it accessible to lay persons and if I can wade through the sentimental goo you may have it in you to paddle over the math goo. I think it's a worthwhile read whether or not you think it applies here as I have suggested. While the calculus was never my forte when it came to doing the calculations, I did & do appreciate its applicability. Contrary to what you say about math only describing, it does have extremely powerful predictive power. For example black holes are a prediction predicated on the calculus. Anyway, just as you may not know how your fuel injectors work and so entrust your engine to trained mechanics, you should also trust that trained mathematicians know what they are doing with your Universe. As an interesting side-note, before going in for philosophy Hofstadter started as a math major years ago and created a theoretical fractal map of the behavior of electrons in a magnetic field. Just recently it was confirmed by observation. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_butterfly To the rest of your reply I think my last post giving a link and description of self-organization covers my take. Let me know if I missed something. Regards, Acme PS Some art for art's sake.

What is this 'friends' of which you speak? As to seeming offended I plead old age and early rising as is the fashion. If anything, you guys should want a sedative for me & not a stimulant. What?! No art first? No worries, I have you covered this time. http://en.wikipedia....ki/Terraforming for terraforming link :- http://en.wikipedia....tion_to_entropy for Entropy Mike Just because something appears to you to be purposefully done does not make it so. self-organization: >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_organization Right then...some of my art. Let's see...something in an abstract of wandering wondering.

You might have said as much when you first replied rather than making the seemingly dismissive comment about children's boots. It is not Hofstadter's ideas that I find overly sentimental; it's his stylistic asides. His ideas that I find appealing however are founded between the anvil of logic and the hammer of mathematics and well worth the wade through the extraneous goo. You are mistaken in your assessment of Studiot's comment there. It is not that math is not up to the task, rather that no one has put the time and computing power to work on the specific issue of bells ringing. Posting a couple links does not a conclusion make.

I think you just blew me off. IOW you have no intention of reading Hofstadter. Oui/no? Exactly how then do you propose to pass judgment on whether or not he has anything to say that bears on your issues, or that I was on topic by invoking him? Honest ignorance I can deal with, but willful ignorance I have little patience for. Perhaps TAR will fare better.

Yes I'm here along with the flowers and y'all, and no I don't need the salts. Just because I see no evidence -or need to look for- your wholy graily does not mean I have no appreciation for nature's patterns. Nor does it mean I don't investigate said patterns. Maybe I just have more knowledge/experience of/for what is and is not a windmill and what does and does not justify a good tilting. I don't suppose either of you in your fervors have bothered to look into the strange loops I have mentioned. Well, I'll try & lead you thirsty gents to some water one more time. Drink or not as you please. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop Now if you actually visit the link, that would be but a sip and there is no rehydrating save for getting the book and reading it all. I admit I don't care for a lot of Dougy's sentimentalities any more than yours, but as I said earlier he is at least on solid mathematical grounds. To arms!!

I'm not sure I would call it harm in general, but it sure strikes me as a monumental waste of time. So while it's not necessarily so, that wasted time may have been applied to something useful. There is no requirement of an organizing principle. You just think so because you are here. I'd say Mike is a man who talks about science. This is as opposed to a person who does science. On the age thing, I don't buy into the old-justifies desperation, wild speculation, etcetera. I'm no Spring chicken myself. I enjoy reading about research as well. However, Ophiolite's guy is a theorist and hasn't tested any of his theories if that's even possible. What difference does it make what you accept? What difference will it make if you 'know'? Mike appears to me to be just waving his hands; not putting a finger on anything. To each their own. By-the-by. Did you look into strange loops? Just theory too but at least it has a rigorous mathematical basis.

I reckon your reckon is as yet irreconciled. Don't count your chickens before there are such things. I'm not holding my breath on Mike's take, or anyone's posting some great insight/breakthrough on a forum to be honest. Just saying. I found something interesting in the same bio you quote though. I checked him out too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman What caught my eye was his looking at mind/body, and I earlier referred to an author writing on conciousness and that I might start a thread on his take on this. Well, I'm rereading his latest book and not inclined to start that thread, but I did post on the work here a couple years back. Here's a link: >> http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/62463-self-awareness-graph/page-2#entry647694

Have you tried playing a reverse recording as described in the article? Also, there are links at the end of the article where more info is given. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/11/how-to-make-a-superlens-from-a-few-cans-of-cola http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110708/full/news.2011.406.html The second link has more links given as references. You might aslo try contacting the original researches directly. It all sounds pretty kewl. Good luck!

TAR, Whether or not the Universe is closed is an open question. While math may give indications of what to look for, only the looking can settle the question. I don't see a Bell curve as offering any useful insight to that end. To what use would you put a definitive answer were you to have it? Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. ~ Albert Einstein

Interesting! I got from the source that I quoted that B12 humans can use was only produced in animals, but what is the B12 producing bacteria grown on/with otherwise? Is that semi-artificial form the plant analogues mentioned in the article I quoted? And what do you think of the article and claims from the opening post? Here ya go. Scroll down to the comments: >> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-meat-cheese-bad.html

No, but you drew unfounded conclusions and made what amounts to a medical recommendation. Did you look? I did, and found that you are mistaken. Note that 'vegan' refers to more extreme vegetarians who eat no animal products at all, such as cheese or eggs. This is important in light of what follows. http://www.medicinenet.com/vegetarian_and_vegan_diet/page3.htm So as I read it you/we need B12, no plant products supply it, and animal sources are the only way to get it. If a vegan or vegetarian is taking B12 supplements or B12 fortified foods, the source of that vitamin is some animal or animal product.

Nah. That just happened to be the Basquiat work given in the Wiki bio and I used it to show a painting that used words/lettering to further the message. In some manner of serendidioopious coinkydinkyeousness however, it rather resembles what I often feel like. :0

Our still dead but dear friend Mr. Twain said there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. But yes, there is such a thing as a scientific poll, but the categories you want to seed such a poll with are still subjective. Then too what makes a scientific poll scientific is not only well formed categoreies/data-points but selecting a proper/representative group of respondents. As to a circled human, even if you declare a subjective/appearance definition of entropy, such measures are constantly in flux. You might look like hell on rising in the morning, be all dapper a couple hours later, and buckled over from work by evening. All the while you are eating, sweating, pooping, drinking coffee, etcetera and so there is never any sort of constant energy balance either. It's that kind of uncertainty that I had in mind for you to paint. Not paint some 'thing' and describe the entropy/cleverness/what-ever-term, but rather start from your subjective impressions of entropy/cleverness/what-have-you, combine that with the uncertainty you have now learned about here, and paint what that looks like. Well, what you think that looks like, because it is after all subjective. If you want to convey something of numbers, paint some in. Paint in some words too if you like. Think Basquiat-esque. Don't try to explain the painting to people other than perhaps titling it; let the viewers decide what they subjectively think of it for themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basquiat Basquiat painting from Wikipedia

The article sounds more like a recipe for eating a balanced diet than a prescription to adopt vegetarianism. There is a lot more that goes into considering a risk of cancer than what one eats, and drawing the conclusion you do is without substantiation. Everything in moderation. ~ Socrates [died of vegetable poisoning! ] Emphasis mine.

And yet here you are fully engaged in technology and enjoying all manner of the comforts you despise. Sounds rather hypocritical to me. Shouldn't you be living naked in a wild somewhere and chewing on a cold pinecone? The arguments you give are as weak as the will you exhibit.

I just don't think entropy is the right descriptor. For one, as the others have pointed out, entropy is first/primarily/rigorously a mathematical artifact and only second/later/subjectively a term of order. Even as a term of order, entropy is not well-applied to the scarf or the painting of the scarf because the order 'seen' in the scarf or the painting of the scarf is relative to scale. Put either down the street from you and they look like nothing more than a blot. Put a microscope to both and they look busy. That busy is different for the scarf than for the drawing and even within each the busy may 'appear' ordered in one place and not in another. So what one 'sees' in the scarf or the painting of the scarf in the way of order is completely arbitrary by virtue of scale alone, whereas the prime/rigorous meaning of entropy is not at all arbitrary and not scale dependent. If 'subjective' were the same as 'objective', then one of those words would be redundant. It's not and neither is. PS Well drawn.

You caught me. But it's only one of many secrets. And say, if it wouldn't be too much trouble could you maybe post a pic or 2 of the finished project? I have had the chance to help out like this from time to time but never got to see how things turned out. Thnx.

OK. First, understand [we] all are reasonable as well. Consider that you just do not see it the way [we] all do. [The reverse of what you just wrote and a reflection on Swans on tea's earlier post about you having things backwards] While you may put a "lot" of thought into your threads, this is not equivalent to "well" thought up insofar as scientific thinking/reasoning accord the denomination "well". Even in my harshest criticism I did not suggest or think you weren't genuine in your convictions, and so I was likewise giving my genuine opinion(s). Now my genuine opinion on this thread is that your continuing with writing to it is beating a dead horse. But fear not, because you can ride on if you secure a new mount. ??? you say? Well Mike, you know the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words and it is your art work that draws me to your influence and not your rhetoric. You see I'm an artist myself and understand something of that sensibility. So my thought is you take not only your ideas about whatever it is you are trying to communicate here, add to it the overall confusion evidenced by all the posts, and paint it. Let the artwork speak for itself. Let the viewers take what they will from it. Don't get all balled up with trying to explain it. Get this particular idea out of your system and free yourself up [and the rest of us] to move onto your next inspiration. Rembrandt isn't around to explain his works and what's more we don't need him to appreciate them. I trust I communicated that all in a manner appreciable if not acceptable to all.

Magnets in the ball.

No; you are mistaken. Nothing is more natural than variation among or between individuals. Your fixation on illness is just one such variation. Good luck with that.

You set up a false dichotomy. Humans came from and remain a part of nature, so what they do must needs be natural. Moreover, long before we arrived on the scene, asteroids, fires, supervolcanoes, and other such natural disasters were destroying countless other natural ...well...things. I think, therefore I naturally argue. Que sera sera.

Well, I would need to see some real documentation that supports your assertion of more documentation, but it's no matter of great significance to me. In any case, it's no argument to favor one class over another. Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~ Seeathl Or as I like to say, nothing is not connected. I agree about changes, but by saying it as you have, you seem to imply it's just tough luck and/or that's progress, or too late to do anything about it. Or some such thought seems behind it given the context of this discussion. :shrug: While some flavor of that-all may be true for resurrecting ancient extinct species I don't think it applies to more recent examples. The American Bald Eagle for example was going extinct because of the use of DDT, and we recognized that and stopped using that pesticide and the Eagle has rebounded. In a rather sad twist in my opinion, it was human's warm emotional feelings that worked in favor of taking action to preserve/restore the Eagle, whereas in other examples such as farmers resisting planting hedgerows after the dust bowl days, the self-same clinging to human endearments was an impediment. Subsuming the will/wants of the few for the better good of the many is a principle we [Americans at least] embody in both spirit and law. We don't let people have a cesspool anymore just because they like it or don't want to pay to put in a septic tank or connect to a sewer; this is because the cesspool is a hazard to the larger population and per se environment in a number of ways. We would not have the Interstate Highways that we all use & benefit from without some individuals being forced to sell their land. [And yes, sacrificing some habitats as well.] So too will individuals have to surrender or otherwise lose some personal property and/or privelages if we are to carry out ecological projects that benefit all. Contrary to claims and suggestions otherwise, people can and do change attitudes and those changes can and do lead to positive actions that benefit all. To paraphrase an unattested French proverb, they who never undertook anything never achieved anything.