Overheard in an electronics showroom:
Customer: So you tell me that this air-conditioner is the latest and the best. Does it give out Chlorofluorocarbons?
Salesman: Madam, yeh sab tarah ke carbon deta hai, isme sab kuchch inbuilt hai, fully automatic hai, aap ko kuchch karne ki zaroorat nahin hai....
God bless the salesman!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
A survival machine's reflections
I write this after reading a chapter of Richard Dawkins' bestseller titled 'The Selfish Gene'. The first two chapters are breathtaking and I guess more posts will follow.
Dawkins starts the second chapter of his book by referring to the hitherto unsolved mystery of the origin of life. He cleverly hooks on to results of experiments that point out the presence of four compounds in the early universe - water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane. How these came about is altogether another mystery. Amino acids, purines and pyrimidines have been found as the predominant products of subjecting a mixture of the above-mentioned compounds to electric spark. This gives us some idea of how complex molecules could have evolved.
Dawkins speaks about stable molecules and defines three parameters of stability - longevity, fecundity and accuracy of replication. Oh! Before this this he also gives birth to the idea of replicator molecules - smart molecules seemingly created by a stroke of luck that can multiply. Then he describes how these replicators (could be of more than on kind due to errors in replication) compete for their building blocks. In this struggle for survival, they discover means of attack and defence. Attack - by cleaving the bonds between constituent building blocks of a different (rival?) replicator; and defence - by developing a protective coat around itself - the most primitive survival machine. With time, replicators developed better methods of attack, survival machines became complex and life evolved.
Genes are the modern day replicators, you and me and all forms of life on earth are mere survival machines programmed to behave according to the wishes of our double hellical masters!
Remarks: Interesting thought! It never struck me that we living beings were utterly powerless.. but who is this 'we'? If the replicator inside you and me is our supreme ruler and dictates every action of ours, are we any different from it?
Dawkins starts the second chapter of his book by referring to the hitherto unsolved mystery of the origin of life. He cleverly hooks on to results of experiments that point out the presence of four compounds in the early universe - water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane. How these came about is altogether another mystery. Amino acids, purines and pyrimidines have been found as the predominant products of subjecting a mixture of the above-mentioned compounds to electric spark. This gives us some idea of how complex molecules could have evolved.
Dawkins speaks about stable molecules and defines three parameters of stability - longevity, fecundity and accuracy of replication. Oh! Before this this he also gives birth to the idea of replicator molecules - smart molecules seemingly created by a stroke of luck that can multiply. Then he describes how these replicators (could be of more than on kind due to errors in replication) compete for their building blocks. In this struggle for survival, they discover means of attack and defence. Attack - by cleaving the bonds between constituent building blocks of a different (rival?) replicator; and defence - by developing a protective coat around itself - the most primitive survival machine. With time, replicators developed better methods of attack, survival machines became complex and life evolved.
Genes are the modern day replicators, you and me and all forms of life on earth are mere survival machines programmed to behave according to the wishes of our double hellical masters!
Remarks: Interesting thought! It never struck me that we living beings were utterly powerless.. but who is this 'we'? If the replicator inside you and me is our supreme ruler and dictates every action of ours, are we any different from it?
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