Stuart France
Active member
Let's get down to the nitty gritty: the Selfish Gene book mentioned above is about biochemistry really. All this geology and dinosaur stuff is a bit macro level for me.
The fundamental problem currently facing Civilised Society, as we know it, is RNA. It was a wrong decision in law. It was unstable and led to an unlawfully high mutation rate. Its successor (i.e. Life Version 2) was DNA - which runs us and things like us, well most of life as you can see it with your eyes, including dinosaurs - in their case now only as fossils. Well, I've noticed DNA is very stable with a consequent shortage of people with two heads or three legs, at least on a timescale of a lifetime or a few centuries, though horrifyingly that does happen but extremely rarely. But it's different with RNA, and thus RNA viruses that change a lot during human lifetimes. They are a throw back to the big bang of 'creation', and unfortunately are still with us in all their rapidly mutative wonder. DNA didn't obsolete them, indeed DNA still relies on RNA as quick-and-dirty kind of photocopier that purrs away under the cellular bonnet: RNA mutation rates then don't matter as unstable RNA photocopies of DNA quickly end up in the paper recycling bin of life.
So I call for a Royal Commission on self-reproducing chemicals.
Unlike the earlier dinosaur discussion, this posting has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, heaven forbid, which is the modernisation of the BCA, except that relatively rapid evolution is needed for it to avoid joining the dinosaurs.
The fundamental problem currently facing Civilised Society, as we know it, is RNA. It was a wrong decision in law. It was unstable and led to an unlawfully high mutation rate. Its successor (i.e. Life Version 2) was DNA - which runs us and things like us, well most of life as you can see it with your eyes, including dinosaurs - in their case now only as fossils. Well, I've noticed DNA is very stable with a consequent shortage of people with two heads or three legs, at least on a timescale of a lifetime or a few centuries, though horrifyingly that does happen but extremely rarely. But it's different with RNA, and thus RNA viruses that change a lot during human lifetimes. They are a throw back to the big bang of 'creation', and unfortunately are still with us in all their rapidly mutative wonder. DNA didn't obsolete them, indeed DNA still relies on RNA as quick-and-dirty kind of photocopier that purrs away under the cellular bonnet: RNA mutation rates then don't matter as unstable RNA photocopies of DNA quickly end up in the paper recycling bin of life.
So I call for a Royal Commission on self-reproducing chemicals.
Unlike the earlier dinosaur discussion, this posting has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, heaven forbid, which is the modernisation of the BCA, except that relatively rapid evolution is needed for it to avoid joining the dinosaurs.
