Interesting news item

[AngelBaby]

Posts like the ones above are the reason Seriously has his own forum section.

[eamon angelface]

I don't know much about Mr Seriously.

From what I do know he's homeless and likes to rant about science and crazy metaphysical things.

Serisouly,

Are you an aged black man with an afro and are you standing outside my building right now asking passers by if they "goooot a looooonie?!?"?

[lswalker]

the compact disc is 25 years old

[exelis]

Yup. I feel old now.

[grey_foxxy]

I Remember seeing Cube 2 on tv late one night, and the characters realized they were trapped in a tessarect. This was like a week after the first heard about one through Seriously's posts.


I had a good laugh.

[The Deadly Superman]

I Remember seeing Cube 2 on tv late one night, and the characters realized they were trapped in a tessarect. This was like a week after the first heard about one through Seriously's posts.


I had a good laugh.

Yeah, i heard about that, haven't watched it yet.

Am I the only one who thought the first Cube was fucking awesome?

[exelis]

"Cube" was an indie classic. Excellent flick. I never got around to "Hypercube". Guess I'll have to rent it.

[efilflah]

The first was the only one I actually thought was watchable.

Hypercube and Zero were both dire.

[AngelBaby]

The original Cube was definitely the best of the bunch.

By far.

[Mike]

It's funny you're all talking about "Cube", because I just recently saw it. It was pretty good, but that cop turned out to be a major douche.

I downloaded it from http://cinemageddon.org/. I actually get a bunch of obscure movies from there. Good stuff.

(Cube)
http://cinemageddon.org/details.php?id=222

[AngelBaby]

This is more interesting to me than some physics wonks maybe getting light to speed up a tick between a couple of prisms.


wtf twelve nucleotides?

I think we need to be a little cautious with our tinkering here...

[Seriously]

One of the things that turned my brain inside out in middle school was how deoxyribonucleic acid was composed of base pairs.

My teachers thought I was fucking with them when I asked them about it.


Ha ha ha, homonyms.



One would figure the reason we have four (is it just the same four for every living thing?) is that all the other combinations were attempted a long long time ago and found wanting.

On the other hand, I hate it when people use evolution as a conveinient way to explain away something and then forget about it.


So I guess it's a good thing. Unless they make the erythrobacteria


Actually I like this idea, I bet there's a more efficient way to make DNA work, I always thought six feet was just ridiculously long. But if you could use other letters in your sentence I bet you could find ways to code for traits using less letters overall.

I always wondered why programmers don't just use complete sentences when they program, don't they get tired of typing all those ones and zeroes?!

Of course, then this new, shorter DNA (would it even be DNA anymore?) would be a whole lot more susceptable to mutagens and normal wear and tear I guess, unless you could engineer truly badass checker thingeys, which I bet you could do that too in time. Everything could be done, in time.

Maybe you could also build in redundancy by having different base pairs code for the same thing so something that effects one of them doesn't necessarily affect the other (I don't know if it works like that or not, though).


OR

We could find the absolute best combinations for a particular environments.

And then use that faster than light travel to send them to other planets such that when humans get there it'll be all terraformed for them.

[exelis]

Wrap your head around this: I don't know if you have learned the principle of chirality of molecules. Basically, for most complex molecules there are "left-handed" or levomorphic molecules, and there are "right handed" or dextromorphic molecules. If you look at your two hands, it's easier to understand... same composition, different orientation. If we could take all human DNA and flip it chirally (which amounts to reversing the helices so that they corkscrewed the other way), we'd be immune to virii, and would otherwise, theoretically, be human in every other way. We'd have to take supplements of all vitamins and amino acids that were chiral, but it'd be doable.

At least, that's the idea that I came up with and asked my prof about, and he confirmed and broadened it for me.

[gulliver]

NEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDSSSSSSSSSS!!
















I've got nothing better to say, so what? Smart bastards <_<

[Seriously]

Wrap your head around this: I don't know if you have learned the principle of chirality of molecules. Basically, for most complex molecules there are "left-handed" or levomorphic molecules, and there are "right handed" or dextromorphic molecules. If you look at your two hands, it's easier to understand... same composition, different orientation. If we could take all human DNA and flip it chirally (which amounts to reversing the helices so that they corkscrewed the other way), we'd be immune to virii, and would otherwise, theoretically, be human in every other way. We'd have to take supplements of all vitamins and amino acids that were chiral, but it'd be doable.

At least, that's the idea that I came up with and asked my prof about, and he confirmed and broadened it for me.

But wait, if this happens could lefties and righties breed? I'm just assuming if we put this into practice it would be a little at a time.


Plus I could see there being random virupusses out there that go the wrong way just looking for a toehold to exploit, and I bet dexy people might have very poor immune systems because they don't get much chances to level them.


Not to mention they would obviously be fucking evil.

Are there any examples of non-chiral complex biological molecules? Are they successful at all?


This is great, I never even suspected there was something like this going on.