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- Better chow yields more milk: A more nutritious form of corn for dairy cows boosts farm profits, teen investigator finds
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Web edition: July 18, 2008
People like to think
they understand their world. They seek explanations for things that go well and
excuses for failures. “To swim against the current of human intuition is a
difficult task,” Mlodinow notes.
In this guide to
randomness, he explores how people misunderstand the power of praise and
punishment, hot and cold career streaks, and the luck in the lottery, all
because of a misunderstanding of the influence of chance.
But not to worry.
Mlodinow provides lessons on what he calls “a field of subtlety,” from the
basic laws of probability, to regression toward the mean and availability bias.
The lessons are thought-provoking because Mlodinow embeds them in a history of
seemingly correct but surprisingly incorrect thinking. He pulls in examples
from gambling and sports, and even explains how Apple had to make its iTunes
shuffle function less random so it seemed more random to listeners.
In the end, the
drunkard’s walk — that unpredictable stumbling — becomes a metaphor for
movement through life. Success does not reflect ability and ability does not
guarantee success, Mlodinow writes. But he does leave readers with a small
comfort. If a baseball player takes enough swings, eventually the player will
hit a home run. So, he writes, success is more about the number of times a
person goes to bat. —Elizabeth Quill
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Life Evolution Within Cosmic Evolution,
Design And Randomness
A. The Cosmic Drive and Purpose Behind
The Drive and Purpose Of Life
From chapter III of "Life, Tomorrow's Comprehension"
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(1) Again, Earth Life Is A Real Virtual Affair; it pops in and out of existence from its matrix, which is the energy constrained in Earth's biosphere. The totality of life in Earth's biosphere (the outermost part of the planet's shell, including air, land, surface rocks and water, within which life occurs, and which biotic processes in turn alter or transform. Wikipedia.) is a temporary grand store of constrained energy, and all living organisms are elaborate temporary energy storage containers and all genes-genomes are "Life quanta" organisms, carriers of "Life photons".
(2) Singularity (max density) and D-Infinity (max expansion, cosmic energy dilution) are the two cosmic border states. Their in-between is a metastable state. This corresponds to commonsense observation: the denser the compacting goal of material the more energy is required, and vice versa the more thorough the disintegration of material the higher the amount of energy released. It seems that E=mC^2 is a specific case of the cosmic (and universal) process
E=Total[m(1+D)]
where D is the Distance from Big Bang point and the sum is of all spatial values of D from D=0 to D=selected value.
[BTW, (Nov 9 2006), following Newton (1) gravity is decreased when mass is decreased and (2) acceleration of a body is given by dividing the force acting upon it by its mass. By plain common sense the combination of those two 'laws' may explain the accelerating cosmic expansion of galaxy clusters, based on the above E/ m/ D suggested relationship.]
(3) Life, and every and all objects and processes including natural laws, are - since their non-existence at singularity - products of evolution and are continuously further evolving. Everything in the cosmos is fractal, rehappens on many scales, and is continuously evolving. Each and every system in the universe continuously evolves within the total universal evolution and all the systems' evolutions are intertwined. Ergo (Big-Bang's) energy is the base element of everything in the universe and individual genes are the base elements of Life. Cosmic evolution is evolution of energy, and within it Life's evolution is the evolution of the genes/energy-quanta carriers.
(4) At the beginning was the energy singularity. At the end will be near zero mass and an infinite dispersion of the beginning energy. In-between, the universe undergoes continuous evolution, consisting of myriad energy-to-energy and energy-to-mass-to-energy transformations. The cosmos evolution process comprises, though, phenomena of forms of temporary energy storages, energy dispersion constraints. Examples of such temporary pockets are black holes of all sizes, and all forms of biospheres wherever they are.
The temporary constrained energy pockets are far-removed versions, up-fractionally evolved, scattered cosmic fragmants of singularity-akin energy storages. Energy stored in the temporary constrained energy pockets resists dispersion; we do not yet comprehend why. However, we do comprehend that we, all Earth life, are real virtual constrained energy pockets formed by Earth's biosphere energy store in the process of enhencing Earth's biosphere energy content and for resisting its dispersion by maintaining it bio as long as possible.
B. Life Evolution Within The Cosmic Evolution
All cosmic objects, processes and (natural) laws, not having been in existence at singularity, are products of evolution and are further evolving.
Life system(s) is a sub-system of energy. The evolution of Life(s) system(s) differs from the evolution of non-living system(s) in Design and Randomness.
Non-living systems evolve in accordance with laws that evolve during the systems' evolution, affected and selected randomly by the ambience. However, even this route of evolution, even if it 'enables' temporary diversions from the inavoidable one of thee two final end states of the cosmos, has a fixed overall direction and end state.
Whereas Life systems evolve with Design, with the design and culture, way of life, selected by the evolution of organisms for surviving as long as possible, for lengthening as much as possible the period of constrainig their planet's biosphere, even though yet in a hopeless, eventualy losing, struggle to maintain their planet bio.
Dov Henis
[Link was removed]
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