Most all decent cereals (excluding the ultra-hippy) come in a box. But that cereal is not contained in a box, it is contained in a bag inside a box. Why the redundant containment? I’m guessing there was some governmental mandate put in place to test the capacity of our nation’s landfills. Cereal companies are just doing their part, you know. The bags are these plasticy pillows with a milky translucence - except for Fruit Loops. These fuckers are some sort of silvery paper made with what can only be asbestos. Why the difference? Why the opaqueness? Are Fruit Loops somehow reactive with photons? Does light dull the unicorn-shit intensity of the colors? And what’s with those colors? When I was a kid they came in two different colors: Brown and light-brown. Now the box advertises its contents as “a rainbow of carcinogens.” It’s unfathomable that parents would buy this for their kids, but it’s equally perplexing why they would let them zonk out in front of anime - anime for chrissakes!

Good news! Another beauty queen has been accused of having sex with one of her students! Thing is, this time the student is 18. Law is (in Texas, where this happened) you can’t have sex with public school students no matter what, but in light of this case lawmakers are considering a change. My gut says that high school teachers shouldn’t hit on their students and this new legislation could change that. I’m sure this 18 year old was stoked to have sex with his 25 year old contestant for Ms. Texas. Detractors for the new laws I’m sure are imagining worst case scenerios of creepy shop teachers making young girls awkward with talk of French Curves.

In the eyes of the law these 18-year-olds are adults and able to make informed consent. What would Keep Sex Legal say? Of course, my gut is based on my experience teaching high school and my own personal moral compass pointing in the direction of “no, don’t do that.” That’s a myopic view and I’m sure there would be cases where it would not be fully informed. Like, for example, in the totally-would-never-happen type scenerio where a beauty queen would hit on a budding young frat boy.

I’ll leave this open for now. Comment if you have a stance.

So this weekend was no big deal.  I ran a 5k and had lunch with the guy who isolated serotonin.  I achieved all of my running goals: beating Heidi, 24minutes and that cocky looking older guy who looked like a Cary archetype.

The meal proved to be an interesting insight into the field of chemistry, or really science on the whole.  Science is advanced in a sequence of educated guesses and lucky turns.  The path to that most famous of neurotransmitters began with rabbits ears and cows blood.  Giant vats of cows blood filtered with cheese cloth.  (Meredith wouldn’t stand much of a chance of being part of PETA and still hanging out with her family.)  Serotonin was originally researched as a vascular constrictor, the effect of which was quantized by injecting the substance into a severed rabbits ear then measuring the flow of the drops on the return.

Let me take you to a glittering tv set complete with studio audience, gameshow host and three glittering doors.  Behind one door is that newest sports car you’ve had your little eye on.  The other two have goats and your are allergic to goats.  You want that car.  You are told by the hypermelanic host that you can choose any of the three doors.  Since you yourself are #1 you choose door #1.  The host - that clever needle-toothed imp - knows where the goats are.  It is now his job to open one of the other doors which has a goat.  He opens door #3 and tries to stand in a way that he thinks looks cool but in reality is really freaking you out.  You now have to option to change your guess.  Is it advantageous to flip to door number #2 or is #1 better or does it not matter?  Want the answer check out the Wikipedia entry on this type of problem!

Put it on your car bumper.  Wear it as a slogan on your chest.  Attempt to speak it out loud!  It’s the brand new meme straight from Lance!

Seriously, Google Earth is blowing my mind. It has a Terrain mapping feature which allows you to get into your map, not just view it from overhead. I tried that with Stone Mountain, GA and was surprised to see that the bas relief carving of the confederate generals and those poor horses were totally visible! Like I was on the ground looking at the side of the mountain! Here’s the Google Earth file.

Asia Carrera is in Mensa? Her (SFW) FAQ doesn’t exactly read that way.

Dancia McKellar (aka Winnie Cooper) is now every math-geeks dream-girl.

Wireless Camera Hunter! Set your voyeristic fantasies loose and peer into the cameras people have set up in their own houses!

What purpose is it that the Komen NC Race for the Cure has allowed people born in 2015 to enter? Nonetheless, I’m running the race. My race page is here if you want to make a contribution in my honor. Also, just for the heck of it, I signed up to get an adult-small shirt. We’ll see who I’m kidding.

Google Spreadsheets! Got ‘em all printed out on my bedsheets! You can work on the same spreadsheet from home as at work! Multiple people can work on the same spreadsheet at the same time! It’s a veritable turn-key solution! (!)

The Universal Software Radio Peripheral could be the step in the direction of turning our computer into a general media center. From Bluetooth to HDTV, it’s all radio signals. There’s no reason you can’t use your lil’ compy to watch TV and then open your garage door.

A Hollywood Math-Club is visited by the David Bowie of math.

Why didn’t this guy use the Sharon Stone/Basic Instinct defense of “why would I write a book about a crime and then commit that exact crime” and then flash his crotch?

From an evolutionary perspective, the cost of sex must greatly outweigh its benefit. To better understand the benefits that sex brings to the table let’s consider the costs. A mature individual capable of asexual reproduction is guaranteed to reproduce. Now let us imagine ourselves as a math nerd in junior high school. Suddenly the advantages of sex don’t seem so good, now do they?

The difference in power between asexual and sexual reproduction is like the difference between a billion computers all trying to solve a problem vs. a billion-node super-computer. If one of the solitary computers makes an advance, that’s it, the computer must then make another advance on its own. In the super-computer, all the nodes can communicate advances with each other.

In my last entry, Difficulty of Re-evolving a De-evolved Trait, I speak of the generally destructive force of mutation. Getting one beneficial mutation is extremely rare and getting two in one offspring is astronomical. I see the purpose of sex as a kind of good mutation aggregator. Let’s say the two most fit individuals of a population each carries a different beneficial mutation. Let’s say the mother has stronger legs and the father has stronger arms. With asexual reproduction it would take a strong-armed heritage a thousand years to discover the strong-legged mutation. With sex on the other hand the children of those two parents will have a good chance of possessing both strong arms and strong legs.

“A cave was recently found where they discovered two new species,” Meredith said.  “One of them is pure white and blind!  Once a fish has lost its eyesight through evolution, do you think it would be able to re-evolve it if the species were exposed to light?”

My first thought was that that a blind fish in lighted environment would be like a fish out of water.  With every other species having such a supreme advantage as the gift of site, our poor cave fish would soon be extinct.  However, let’s say that light were somehow introduced to this sealed off cave.  All the cave species - which are ostensibly blind - would be on equal footing, but now light is part of the equation.  Would their dead eyes hold any chance of regaining vitality?

“This is a job for genetic algorithms,” I shout, fist pointed to the air.  We were then asked to leave the theater, which was no skin off of our noses as it was already like four hours into the Da Vinci Code and it showed no signs of stopping.

I had to go to work, so rather than constructing a GA,  I did some thought experiments.

How easy would it be for a lost, de-evolded trait to re-evolve?  It is obviously heavily dependent on the fitness function, but my thought is that once something is gone it is nigh impossible to get it back.

Think of mutation as always happening and being largely destructive.  Imagine a gene as a painting and mutation as putting a random color dot at a random spot on the canvas.  Now, on rare, rare instances that color dot will actually improve the painting, but by-in-large that dot is going to look totally out of place and actually be detrimental to the painting.

It is because of this generally destructive property of mutation that evolution has the “use it or lose it” (UIOLI) property.  For example, put some fish in a cave with no light.  If some fish offspring have eye mutations which are a detriment to their eyesight, it won’t affect these baby fish’s ability to survive in the least.  It’s a completely dark cave; what do they need with good eyesight?  These bad eye genes will propagate and eventually mutation will again strike and make the eye genes even worse.  Again, what do those fish care?  They can’t see anyway because, as I may have mentioned, the cave is ttly dark.  This process continues from fish generation to fish generation until - heavens to Betsy! - the fish are blind!

Now, imagine trying to reverse this process.  Let’s go back to the painting metaphor.  Let’s say that the painting was beautiful except a mutation caused on very unattractive yellow dot to appear right in the middle.  The only way you have to fix the painting is with a button that says “mutate.”  If you push that button, it is your hope that the mutation will happen right on top of that yellow dot and it will change it to just the right color to make the painting as it was.  Do you think that will happen?  What seems more likely to happen is that the new mutation dot will land on some other part of the painting making the panting even more ugly.  If you keep hitting the “mutate” button, determined to change that original yellow dot, by the time luck has it that you correct that mutation, he rest of the painting is now covered with randomly colored dots.

I’m thinking it is a similar story with our cave fish’s eyes.  Let’s say that there is just one mutation (which is a lot more likely to correct than two, three or more mutations) causing their blindness.  Each of the fish have this mutation as all of them are blind.  By the time random mutation has corrected the original mutation, it has decimated the rest of the eyesight gene.