asdlfj2sd33

Religion world wide does seem to follow a pattern of more complicated and more energy demanding religions being replaced by religions which require less effort. One god instead of many, and lately that god doesn't even want sacrifices, oh and peace is better then war... most of the time.

Obviously it not that simple, religion can spread through war, some religions make themselves extinct by demanding life long celibacy from everyone. And there's been some studies which found the us vs them pattern common in religious groups can decrease and/or slow the spread of disease.

There's one particular thing about Christianity though. Well OK, a couple of things, one it's kind of a modern less complex flavor of Judaism, no offense meant to any Hebrews reading this.

But the other thing is Christ's rather extreme love your enemies, turn the other cheek message. You have to see that in the context of the Roman empire and Roman culture at the time.

Rome was EXTREMELY pro war, violence and punishment. Think crucifixion, gladiators, pax romana etc. But even more then that, Roman culture saw mercy as a dirty animalistic emotion, to be surprised like all animalsitic and primitive urges should be. Reason was human, emotions, especially mercy were disgusting instincts not to be trusted, but to be fought against, with reason.

In short it was an extreme culture, that must have put some unique psychological pressures on those living there. Think how people in Japan who remember the end of WWII describe how the emperor announcing Japan's surrender felt like a bow breaking and huge pressure being relieved.

Christianity is like the perfect counter culture to the old Roman culture. No wonder it successfully spread throughout the empire. And from Rome to all of Europe, to the new world.

The other parts of the old world, have not turned Christian, and it's not for lack of trying by well funded Christian missionaries, suggesting there really was something unique about Rome and early Christianity.

Modern American Christianity is often quite, shall we say unique, why with the pro Gun, pro war thing.

Blue eyes are most common in Northern Europe and Central Europe and to a lesser degree in Southern Europe,North America and southern Central Asia; Afghanistan is a notable example.[30] They're also found in parts of North Africa,[31] West Asia, and South Asia[32], in particular the northern areas of India and Pakistan. It can rarely occur as far south as Sri Lanka. However blue eyes are not found within the population of East Asia, due to the major pre-dominance of the brown eye gene in the area.

Central Asians, people from the Caucasus, Afghans, Pakistanis, and even Indians darker then many an African are considered Caucasian. They are Caucasians. And North Africa is full of Caucasians, hell even German tribes, Goths if I recall correctly, settled there during Roman times.

So only Caucasians have Blue eyes. Again because of a gene mutation which control how much melanin is deposited in hair, skin, and irises.

Someone with a lot of melanin could have blue eyes, but they wouldn't appear blue do the the melanin. That's why blue eyes contain low amounts of melanin.

And low amounts of melanin are related to vitamin D, which is related to living in northern climates.

And melanin has many roles, sun protection being just one, the other is as a structural protein. Just compare how black skin ages vs. how a redhead of the same (advanced) age looks.

And why would Caucasians have a mutation which deposits less of such a useful protein? Vitamin D.

It is produced when UV light hits the skin. In northern climates with less sun, and skin being covered or you die of exposure, often even when the sun is up, people get a lot less vitamin D.

Inuit get more due to their diet, and modern man also gets much more again because of diet. And yet most people living in the north even today lack vitamin D.

Also, I thought all of the above is common knowledge which makes me question the whole article.

There's also the very long term damage from chemical fertilizer, things like hard-pan.

The super strains of wheat came from crossing a wide variety of diverse wheat species, just one example the sturdy stalk came from a Japanese dwarf variety.

But now the further refinement of the vast majority of these original varieties has stopped. If they still exists, it's only as a curiosity or as stored seed in vaults.

The new super strains, were bred by moving them up and down the globe to get more harvests each year. This made them able to grow almost anywhere. That's fantastic. But why did we stop there? Why not keep going and now refine them to the location?

Near the equator days are the same length year round and it's hot and humid. Near the poles in summer you can have almost continuous light. If we have one variety that can give high yields in both extremes, imagine how yield could be increased if we refined that variety and adapted it to the extremes?

Why isn't there a massive international effort constantly developing new better, higher yielding and more disease resistant verities?

It would be difficult to make private investment in this profitable. It takes a lot of time, a good bit of effort, and improvements are incremental. It's difficult to make that profitable, especially when you can invest in fertilizer instead.

She says it's under threat from the introduced phytophera fungus...

Sexual reproduction is a big sacrifice, instead of passing on 100% of genes, you only pass on 50% at a time. But on the upside, your offspring is more likely to survive new diseases.

Absolutely. Many drugs targeting one disease have been found to cure others. The list includes cancer drugs, antibiotics, antiviral compounds, etc. And that's just drugs, what about the research itself, isn't it obvious it has implications well beyond any one single thing. And isn't that the case for every kind of research, not just medical? To me this seems obvious.

All we need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants to destroy the human race.

Again, we already have that, it's called mother nature. HIV, Ebola, 1918 flu, current flu, etc, all natural.

Here's where I see the problem with your argument, it assumes great asymmetry.

Here's what I mean by asymmetry, I think you imply that if we have the technology to create super viruses on demand that does not mean we'll have anywhere near equivalent knowledge and technology to fight them.

I happen to consider that an extraordinary claim. To me the symmetry of knowledge is self evident. Almost as soon as we invent the nuclear bomb, we also invest nuclear power. Almost as soon as we can gene splice, we have gene therapy for humans which has already been successful applied.

If we have the ability to create super viruses on demand, then we also have the ability to create drugs for them, to detect them, to stop transmission, and most obviously to create vaccines for them. If you can manufacture the virus, it would be one hell of a cosmic improbability that you are also NOT able to manufacture a vaccine for it.

Alternatively if we don't have the knowledge to make viruses and vaccines on demand, that won't stop mother nature from her never ending quest to kills us all.

This was great, and I would like to add that any good programmer should know that it is easily possible to run out of stack space, especially with recursion.

Or to put it another way, what happened since bacteria have been around? Humans. Humans started out as single celled creatures like bacteria. And if we can get from that to humans, is it not reasonable to assume that bacteria have had the time to figure out how to multiply as fast as possible?

But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more research will only marginal increase life spans, and that we can't find cures for yet undiscovered diseases.

That's like saying in 1989 that in 2009 all the progress in the computer industry both hardware and software would only give us marginally better VisiCalc.

To me at least it is OBVIOUS more biotech research will radicaly change the world not just slightly improve things.

And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is mother nature.