Acme
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More head scratching now...
I thought gluten was a constituent of wheat, not something that forms by kneading.
And in my ignorant opinion, yeast dies at over 44ºC. And as a suspicion, recipes calling for hotter water to dissolve yeast is to take in account the cooling effect by bowls and utensils and ambient loss of heat to keep it as close as possible to the optimal temperature.
And baking powder already contains the acid. Baking soda does not.
Well, am skidding off my own topic, but learning is learning.
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
The acid in a baking powder can be either fast-acting or slow-acting.[7] A fast-acting acid reacts in a wet mixture with baking soda at room temperature, and a slow-acting acid will not react until heated in an oven. Baking powders that contain both fast- and slow-acting acids are double acting; those that contain only one acid are single acting. By providing a second rise in the oven, double-acting baking powders increase the reliability of baked goods by rendering the time elapsed between mixing and baking less critical, and this is the type most widely available to consumers today. Double-acting baking powders work in two phases; once when cold, and once when hot.[8] Common low-temperature acid salts include cream of tartar and monocalcium phosphate (also called calcium acid phosphate). High-temperature acid salts include sodium aluminium sulfate, sodium aluminum phosphate, and sodium acid pyrophosphate.[9]
I had thought kneading was more about making gluten and making the dough elastic than anything else. ...
In addition to Acme's comment about baking powder / soda, I would also add that the yeast in the dough makes it taste good (IMO).
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.
There are some proteins in the dough that end up cross linked and deformed to give gluten. This gives an overview of what I am talking about.
...
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. ?
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More an art than a science, am trying to do it the science way
Found that making the dough, I have failed too many times because e v e r y ingredient should be by ~43C (110F) and the room temperature too ! Unless am still wrong. Can anyone confirm please ?
Question 2 : If the plan is to freeze the dough for later use, is it fine to mix/make the dough at everything by ~15C (60F) so the yeast will not awake ? Or, which way allows to safely freeze the dough ?
Question 3 : If the rise of dough is yeast farts making the bubbles; why baking powder does not work or not used for bread ?
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.
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Acme,
My math capabilities seem to have passed me by sometime in that 12 to 24 year old range, when ones math skills are said to be at their peak. Its a language I find a bit perplexing in that you can't understand it unless you can conceive of the notion, and if you can conceive of the notion, writing it down in arbitrary symbols that stand for this or that does not seem to aid the notion for me, but to restrict it and simplify it and abbreviate it, until its unrecognizable to me, as the notion.
I from time to time would argue with my calculus professors over limits and the size of integrals required for a particular job because I was always looking for math to tell me something I did not already know, and not require me to already know a thing and then describe it in the function. Was rather disappointed to find out, that after taking all sorts of measurements and making all sorts of estimates and arbitrary approximations and running a bunch of equations together, that if you did it right, you could come up with a close approximation of the volume of a standardardly curvy three dimensional thing. Seemed easier to just build the shell of the thing, fill it with water and then pour the water into liter beakers and see how much it could hold. A system and solution that would be more efficient and accurate especially when the objects curves and dips an crevices were not standard.
So I am a little like Mike. The Maths are fine, they do the job, but they are not required to have an notion, they are more an after the fact, detailed description of something you already know, that you put in terms someone else who knows the language, will understand. To communicate your notion, not to discover anything. That, combined with the fact that I have books already started and not finished, and the fact that your author seems on the sentimental side to me as well, leads me to pass on the need to read his mathematical basis for believing in something that is already apparent to me. (in general)
I am of the opinion that the truth will remain the truth, whether I know about or not, and whether someone has an equation for it or not. Equations tend to be simplifications that don't really tell you anything about the intricacies and reasons of a thing. An equation is more of a model of the thing than the thing, and you might be able to manipulate the model in a certain way, that works in the model, but would not work in the thing.
So you might be able to put a metric to skewedness in a solidly, backed by proven statistical methods, probability theory, and chaos theory manner, but in the end it is still talking about that about the universe, that operates in Mike's "toward progressive change" in the feedback loop way he has had the notion with which he started the thread.
I can do without the God requirement, and the sentimentality as well, and require that Mike provide us with the metrics that he is measuring things in, so that we understand what he is talking about, that we can try out ourselves and place similar things viewed from similar starting points, on the same scale from the same perspective on the same graph, but I am already confident that we will find reasons and explanations for the emergence of Suns and stars and life and snowflakes and great attractors and such, without magic and Gods, because all those things are here, as are we, modeling and sensing the stuff, so there MUST be an explanation, and the God of the Bible is not it, and magic pixies did not do it. We had to have pulled ourselves up, by our own bootstraps, its only the mechanisms we need to notice and embrace, and describe to each other.
Regards, TAR
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.
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What is this 'friends' of which you speak?Acme
I wish you stop keep taking offence, Where none is intended or meant. My mind genuinely went to my First 10 years of life , Lifting problem ,[ When I read the Link to Loftstead.,] it fired up my memories where I struggled to get my head around , why when running down a grass slope could I not put my hands between my legs, and pull like mad , and take off, as I ran down the grassy Slope ( clearly a miss spent youth,} So no offence meant. The only bit, a post or two ago, was about " revival salts " for you because of Tar and I's .way out speculations. But that was meant as a friends jest . I thought, after you started talking to me about ART we had bonded and become friends. { I hope so] .
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.-- Now back to warring debate! --
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Terraforming for terraforminglink :-
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.Self-organization is a process where some form of global order or coordination arises out of the local interactions between the components of an initially disordered system. This process is spontaneous: it is not directed or controlled by any agent or subsystem inside or outside of the system; however, the laws followed by the process and its initial conditions may have been chosen or caused by an agent. It is often triggered by random fluctuations that are amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized or distributed over all the components of the system. As such it is typically very robust and able to survive and self-repair substantial damage or perturbations. In chaos theory it is discussed in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability.
Self-organization occurs in a variety of physical, chemical, biological, social and cognitive systems. Common examples are crystallization, the emergence of convection patterns in a liquid heated from below, chemical oscillators, swarming in groups of animals, and the way neural networks learn to recognize complex patterns. ...
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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.Don't get all up tight!
I just thoroughly read your sitation about hofstead. I thought about it . I don't happen to have the book . And kindly took your invitation to read it. Which sounds a good suggestion on your part.
When I have taken of the waters you kindly led me toward. I will get back to you. Give me chance! I have not even got out of bed yet . It's only 6 o'clock in the morning here , and I have taken the trouble to answer you , before I have got up. Pitty sake !
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.Here is studios link re maths not used to prove a point .
Link. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82082-sound-question/
Posting a couple links does not a conclusion make..An interim conclusion :-
link :- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming for terraforming
link :- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_entropy for Entropy
mike
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Just read your ref. about the strange loops.
Sounds a little bit like " pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. " which used to fascinate me as a boy , ' why can I not pick myself , up ? ' .
Interesting ! I am surprised that you like it . As you do not seem to like , some of my speculative ideas.
I , have never been embarrassed to say " what if ? ". Even if it often proves WRONG. As without ever 'trying the what if ' One could miss out on a possible good idea , that would otherwise get overlooked , for fear of sounding stupid or misinformed!
However, it seems to raise your 'ire ' if that is the right word. Not trying to offend. Just eager to make some form of progress.
I should never have offered the smelling salts !
Here look at this interesting pattern I saw on the same rock face yesterday/ today !
Some life getting together !
Pic :-
Mike
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.
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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
Definitions[edit]
A strange loop is a hierarchy of levels, each of which is linked to at least one other by some type of relationship. A strange loop hierarchy, however, is "tangled" (Hofstadter refers to this as a "heterarchy"), in that there is no well defined highest or lowest level; moving through the levels, one eventually returns to the starting point, i.e., the original level. Examples of strange loops that Hofstadter offers include: many of the works of M. C. Escher, the information flow network between DNA and enzymes through protein synthesis and DNA replication, and self-referential Gödelian statements in formal systems.
In I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter defines strange loops as follows:
And yet when I say "strange loop", I have something else in mind a less concrete, more elusive notion. What I mean by "strange loop" is here goes a first stab, anyway not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one's sense of departing ever further from one's origin, one winds up, to one's shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop. (pp. 101-102)
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!!
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Acme,
While I will admit that it is unlikely any wonderful, unconsidered insight will arise on a talk board, I do not see any harm considering possible "solutions" to unanswered questions, or debate in areas where there is some "disagreement", as to what is required, and what is impossible or unworkable.
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.
Mike and I are sort of in a similar boat on this issue. We have seen the requirement that there be an organizing "principle" to counter disorganization, or otherwise we would have by now, only disorganization and no organization, on any level to consider, or more importantly would not ourselves be here to make the consideration.
There is no requirement of an organizing principle. You just think so because you are here.
Mike is a man of science.
I'd say Mike is a man who talks about science. This is as opposed to a person who does science.
I am more a layman, with only muses and opinion and a little reading here and there to go on. We are both nearer the ends of our lives than the beginnings. We were both once 18 and once 35 and every other age between 0 and our current ages.
On the age thing, I don't buy into the old-justifies desperation, wild speculation, etcetera. I'm no Spring chicken myself.
I have much respect for persons who study the place and report their findings to me. Especially those with more horsepower in the brain department, and the work under their belts, to earn my respect and admiration. Ophiolite's link was about another man of science who did work and made determinations and had evidence about some organizing principles.
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.
It makes me feel like my uncertainty about accepting natural selection, without a description of such a thing being a requirement, might have some basis in reality, as a reasonable requirement to hold.
What difference does it make what you accept? What difference will it make if you 'know'?
Besides, the "insight" does not have to appear here, it has to be had by somebody with credentials and influence in the scientific community, and such a person might just be on the board, and be able to discern the same need and requirement for an "opposite" to entropy, as Mike is proposing. Mike has not put his finger on the exact nature of the requirement, he is just proposing that the requirement seems required.
Regards, TAR
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.
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Acme,
I wouldn't throw out the bell curve just yet.
I have not purchased read and understood any of the Author that Ophiolite gave us, but the Wiki article on him provides us with this.
"In 1971, Kauffman proposed the self-organized emergence of collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, specifically peptides, for the origin of molecular reproduction.[1][2] Reproducing peptide, DNA, and RNA collectively autocatalytic sets have now been made experimentally.[3][4] He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for applying models of Boolean networks to simplified genetic circuits. His hypotheses stating that cell types are attractors of such networks, and that genetic regulatory networks are "critical", have found experimental support."
autocatalytic sets are probably somewhat akin to Mike's feedback loops, and far-from-equilibrium dynamics are suggestive of something special happening out in the outlier area near 0 where life hangs out
just saying
Regards,TAR
Current score, by my reckoning: Life 0, Entropy 10.
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_KauffmanSome biologists and physicists working in Kauffman's area reserve judgment on Kauffman's claims about self-organization and evolution. A case in point is the introduction to the 2002 book "Self Organization in Biological Systems".[12] Roger Sansom's Ingenious Genes: How Gene Regulation Networks Evolve to Control Development (MIT Press, 2011) is an extended criticism of Kauffman's models. Kauffman's recent work translates his biological findings to the mind body problem and issues in neuroscience, proposing attributes of a new "poised realm" that hovers indefinitely between quantum coherence and classicality. ...
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
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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.References
1.Lerosey, G., de Rosny, J., Tourin, A. and Fink, M. Science 315, 1120-1122 (2007). | Article | ISI | ChemPort |
2.Lemoult, F., Lerosey, G., de Rosny, J. and Fink, M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 203901 (2010). | Article | ChemPort |
3.Lemoult, F., Fink, M. and Lerosey, G. Phys. Rev. Lett. (in the press)
4.Sukhovich, A. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 154301 (2009). | Article | ChemPort |You might aslo try contacting the original researches directly. It all sounds pretty kewl. Good luck!
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Acme,
As order and disorder seem to exchange based on the scale one is considering, and as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and as energy can be neither created or destroyed and any closed system you consider will increase in entropy I often wonder if it not OK to consider that the universe is not a closed system.
What I am suggesting here, is that there might be something to Mike's bell curve, with the ordered energy lost by the scale below is gained by the scale above, and the ordered energy lost by the scale above is gained by that below. The ability to do work that is lost by a considered system, is "tied up" in the atomic structure. The system is being considered closed, but it is isolation from only the scale above that is being considered, and no isolation from the scale below. This might work out mathematically to mean that entropy will increase, but what if you take the lid off, and consider the effects of the system on the scale above as well.
...
Regards, TAR
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
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Bacteria are actually responsible for producing B12(cobalamin).v
Interesting!
Requires bacteria living in animals or artificially grown bacteria to produce it.
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?I do find the generally used semi-artificial form(cyanocobalamin) somewhat dubious personally since it can leave trace amounts of cyanide. My own thoughts though, I'm sure I've had it already with no noticeable effects, especially considering the Veggie MRE's I've eaten(more candy on average).
And what do you think of the article and claims from the opening post?
...The paper is interesting. I'd be keen to hear some reviews from people who understand enough about statistical analysis to comment on the veracity of their methods. ...
Here ya go. Scroll down to the comments: >> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-meat-cheese-bad.html
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I didn't write the article in MedicalxPress, or do the related research.
No, but you drew unfounded conclusions and made what amounts to a medical recommendation.
There are millions of people who live vegan life styles, including many Buddhists. I think there is no proof that a vegan life style is unhealthy.
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
Vegetarian and Vegan Diet: page 3
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 is attached to the protein in animal foods. There has been considerable research to determine if it is also found in some plant foods. Unfortunately, the B12 that has been found in plant foods can't be used by humans. Supplements that have been made with the plant sources have been shown to contain B12 analogues, compounds that are structurally similar to B12 but do not serve the same function. Research has shown that using supplements with these analogues can actually compete with vitamin B12, inhibit its metabolism, and increase the risk of B12 deficiency.
Vitamin B12 deficiency causes a number of symptoms and problems, including weakness, tiredness, constipation, loss of appetite, weight loss, poor memory, dementia, depression, problems with balance, and megaloblastic anemia. You may also experience nerve problems, such as numbness and tingling in the hands and feet. Vitamin B12 deficiency can damage the nervous system even in people who don't have anemia, so it is important to treat a deficiency as soon as possible.
Vitamin B12 is found in seafood, dairy, eggs, and meat. Vegan diets have the highest risk of deficiency. There are many foods that are fortified with vitamin B12, so it is possible for vegan diets to contain adequate amounts of this nutrient with or without a supplement. The recommendations for reaching your vitamin B12 needs are to
1.consume food fortified with vitamin B12 two to three times a day,
2.take a B12 supplement if you are unable to consume an adequate amount in your diet or if you have an increased need for it (the elderly and pregnant and lactating women),
3.do not take excessive amounts of folate supplements, as this can mask a B12 deficiency,
4.have your B12 level checked by your physician.
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.
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My Goodness, Is this what you think I look like ! No wonder you think I should rest from my labours ?
Mike
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. :00 -
.
Ok. I accept what you say about scale and rigor.
I was rather hoping I could tease out mainly the order - disorder aspect of formal entropy , yet keeping it quasi scientific (namely in principle, but not particularly detailed quantitative ).
You indicate this is never going to be rigorous and objective enough, which I can see what you mean. I remember from carnot diagrams and calculations on systems were frightening mathematical. I was hoping to not need that approach.
Perhaps I should abandon the connection with entropy. But then I am in danger of loosing the science connection. There must be a simplified test one can do , say by drawing a line around a chosen entity . say a person . a living human adult. The summation of all inputs, ingredients including matter and energy.
As inert disordered minerals summation = X . entropy value 10 [ highly disordered ]
as an ordered living conscious thinking being, would have a summation =Y entropy value 0 [ highly ordered]
I know the numbers are not precise therefore not rigorous. But clearly with 'entropic glasses' on would you not agree in principle. Or is that not good enough ' And then could one not agree a simple scale like they do in market research.
EG the following gets used as data to produce market research results
strongly agree [ 5] moderatly agree [ 4] neutral [ 3] moderatly disagree [ 2 ] strongly disagree [1]
( could I not do that with my (0-10) values of [Entropy] or [Order- disorder] survey . ? Is this, although loose and not rigorous, but still count as Scientific ?
mike
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
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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!
]...Not only is excessive protein consumption linked to a dramatic rise in cancer mortality, but middle-aged people who eat lots of proteins from animal sources...
Emphasis mine.
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... The lives we lead are an abstraction; they are not natural, we do not live how we should live for the betterment of ourselves. It doesn't matter if we have improved, and the improvements themselves are not enough to counter our waste output. The only way to truly perfect planet Earth would be to destroy modern civilization and remove the human ego that separates us from nature-- give no aid to anyone, remove money and close down all shops, and allow humans to slowly return to natural living.
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.
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Your colleague acme. The post before you said go and paint it. Today I net to an art class doing drawing in pastels . The subject was folded cloth. So I thought I will try the order / not ordered idea with the material .
..
See here :-
Now the scaf was arranged crumpled one half, smoothed out flat the other end , I drew it like that . But which end had the higher entropy .? Which end had the low entropy ?
Drawing of it ? Bit naff though ?
Mike
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.
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sounds cool, but how can I be sure that's not just your secret identity! JK
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. 0 -
All
O.K. I will sort as much as I can of what you all say . But all I ask is to be reasonable.
All my threads are well thought up approaches to what I see as fundamental issues.
They are not coined lightly and my responses are pretty genuine usually.
I am. I believe, a genuine scientist. You just do not see it the way I do.
mike
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.
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Magnets in the ball.
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No we don't, that is what makes us pseudo-unique. We are more entwined with our own ego than we are nature, I guess to simplify it for you I would need to call it illness. We are anti-nature by worshipping natures anti-side, individuality, 'oneness', singularity. We have names, and this is not a tactical decision, this is to categorize us like cattle. We use words which are unnatural-- everything we do is unnatural but we have natural roots, we are still nature, but we deny it in so many ways, and are ultimately anti-nature. To nature, we are anti, and if it is all nature and nothing to do with any singularity then we are aligned to natures justice, we are an abomination.
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.
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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.
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It's not more real, we just have more documentation for it. many aquatic species were introduced intentionally, we know when and where and the spread is well documented.
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.
The biosphere has changed significantly since many species became locally or globally extinct. other animals have moved in to replace them or the habitat has significantly changed...
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.
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Is there evidence of " Cleverness " in Nature and it's processes ?
in Speculations
Posted
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