Greetings,
Many times in history, humans have been astounded by facts that topple our world view. Things that change our concept of life, our doctrines and beliefs. Often, we naturally violently reject these truths for they threaten our mental security. From the persecutions that follow evolution theory, the fate of Galileo and Aristotle, the denial of the holocaust, to name a few. Even the great Einstein himself admitted to being foolish to have denied the facts when quantum physics presented to him what is now known as the uncertainty theory.
Often, what these facts do is challenge beyond doubt the conveniently comfortable assumptions we have made in our lives that nature can be categorized, and described by man. As such shame us with our arrogant ignorance.
Today elame abducted lun, zk and me to a Christmas church service at expo organized by her church, city harvest. Me? At a church service? Yes boredom has brought me to new heights once again.
The event was very impressive. Very. As expected, the story goes about the meaning of Christmas… the birth of Christ and its related histories. But the way they managed to bring out the story was outstanding! The stage acting was superb and they must have really spent a mammoth effort to get the atmosphere to be just right! A big hand to them! =D
Some things said during the service caught my mind and kept me thinking... In the story, a big hoo-hah was made for the virgin birth of Jesus Christ as so was said in the text of old. In the past this used to seem so much a biological impossibility to me as to be a fantasy to sanctify his birth.
However, recent news that scientists reported two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact made me think again. Tests revealed their eggs had developed without being fertilised by sperm - a process called parthenogenesis. Previously, it would have been nonsensical to claim that Komodo dragons can reproduce this way. As nonsensical as it would be to claim humans could as well.
“Richard Gibson, an author on the paper and a curator at the Zoological Society of London, said: "Parthenogenesis has been described before in about 70 species of vertebrates, but it has always been regarded to be a very unusual, perhaps abnormal phenomenon." It has been shown in some snakes, fish, a monitor lizard and even a turkey, he said.”
But can such an abominable phenomenon occur in humans? It seems that this might actually be possible, given how nature always stuns us with its revelations. Would the story then, of the virgin Mary, actually be true??
Many times in history, humans have been astounded by facts that topple our world view. Things that change our concept of life, our doctrines and beliefs. Often, we naturally violently reject these truths for they threaten our mental security. From the persecutions that follow evolution theory, the fate of Galileo and Aristotle, the denial of the holocaust, to name a few. Even the great Einstein himself admitted to being foolish to have denied the facts when quantum physics presented to him what is now known as the uncertainty theory.
Often, what these facts do is challenge beyond doubt the conveniently comfortable assumptions we have made in our lives that nature can be categorized, and described by man. As such shame us with our arrogant ignorance.
Today elame abducted lun, zk and me to a Christmas church service at expo organized by her church, city harvest. Me? At a church service? Yes boredom has brought me to new heights once again.
The event was very impressive. Very. As expected, the story goes about the meaning of Christmas… the birth of Christ and its related histories. But the way they managed to bring out the story was outstanding! The stage acting was superb and they must have really spent a mammoth effort to get the atmosphere to be just right! A big hand to them! =D
Some things said during the service caught my mind and kept me thinking... In the story, a big hoo-hah was made for the virgin birth of Jesus Christ as so was said in the text of old. In the past this used to seem so much a biological impossibility to me as to be a fantasy to sanctify his birth.
However, recent news that scientists reported two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact made me think again. Tests revealed their eggs had developed without being fertilised by sperm - a process called parthenogenesis. Previously, it would have been nonsensical to claim that Komodo dragons can reproduce this way. As nonsensical as it would be to claim humans could as well.
“Richard Gibson, an author on the paper and a curator at the Zoological Society of London, said: "Parthenogenesis has been described before in about 70 species of vertebrates, but it has always been regarded to be a very unusual, perhaps abnormal phenomenon." It has been shown in some snakes, fish, a monitor lizard and even a turkey, he said.”
But can such an abominable phenomenon occur in humans? It seems that this might actually be possible, given how nature always stuns us with its revelations. Would the story then, of the virgin Mary, actually be true??
Experiments have been made whereby rabbits (mammals) were induced to reproduce through parthenogenesis. No experiments of human parthenogenesis have been report so far...
Surely such an event occurring in this time and day would be shocking. Ok… so it is possible that due to some absurd biological glitch all animals can reproduce asexually. Fine, another one of our dear assumptions about nature slapped in the face. Surely there must be some things that we can be sure of about our humanity right? Surely a guy is a guy and a girl is girl right? Wrong!!
“In this day in age, most of us understand that gender identity can be pretty complicated from a social, cultural and psychological perspective. But the idea that gender can be complicated from a physical perspective -- that a female athlete can be deemed non-female for the purposes of competition -- seems a bit bizarre.
As it turns out, gender is as much a physical puzzle as it is a social one. There is no one test that can determine with scientific certainty whether someone is male or female. There is only a battery of tests that can evaluate the various aspects of physical gender distinction, and there are various opinions about which of those tests should count the most.
In a recent case of an athlete failing a gender test, in December 2006, 25-year-old Santhi Soundarajan was stripped of her silver medal for the 800-meter race in the Asian Games.”
Indeed as it turns out, even if you were born with XY chromosomes, making you genetically male, it does NOT necessary mean you will be male. If your Y chromosomes are defective, and not expressed, poof! you become a female. Even if the chromosomes were okie but downstream expression of the genes, the production of its subsequent proteins were distrupted, poof! you become a female too.
Our DNA serves as a guide which makes us what we are. What gives us our traits are our genes which are segments of our DNA. These genes need to be deciphered (transcripted), and read (translated) before they eventually become proteins. The product proteins themselves also need to undergo various foldings and alterations before they are useful.
So should any of these steps fail, the genes are not expressed. This is one way a XY person can become female, because the genes were not expressed.
So even if you have breasts, a womb and other feminine features, who knows, you might just be a defective male after all. =p
Speaking of bizarre. For those of you who have watch Animatrix, you would know of how the story of the movie blockbuster “The Matrix” came to be. How the artificial intelligence managed to enslave humans and so on. There was also the movie “AI”, where a robot was made so human, it felt. It can feel.
These fictitious movies seem other worldly, far-fetched, even if somewhat logical. Surely it would not happen in life, now would it? Apparently, some politicians think otherwise… and I would say with good reason.
Robots could one day demand the same citizen's rights as humans, according to a study by the British government. If granted, countries would be obliged to provide social benefits including housing and even "robo-healthcare", the report says.
"We're not in the business of predicting the future, but we do need to explore the broadest range of different possibilities to help ensure government is prepared in the long-term and considers issues across the spectrum in its planning," said Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser. – BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6200005.stm)
Yes, Deep Fritz, a chess-playing computer, has beaten human counterpart world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik in a six-game battle in Bonn, Germany. And a furry robotic seal in place of actual pets has been used for therapy in nursing homes to help people relax and exercise by the Japanese government. Robots and AI have always been improving by leaps and bounds but still they are I would say, far from human.
Still it is without doubt that our brain too, can be considered as one immensely complicated computer. Prone to glitches and viruses and needing a patch once in awhile. Spirituality aside, perhaps one day as our politics above have mentioned, we might just inherit the world to robots…
