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Last login: 10 hours agoLaodan: laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA.; Likes 1,599 pages, 24 videos, 8 photos • 228 fans • Received 65 reviews; Member since Aug 08, 2005

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How to Save the World: Jun 7, 2007 9:41am 1 review evolution, complexity, chaos, order
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2007/06/06.html; The Immune 'Setwork': Our Body's Other Brain, and What It's Telling Us in How to Save the World by Dave Pollaerd
Varela's point is that the immune 'system' is actually a combination of: * a relatively simple, mechanistic system (called clonal selection, illustrated at right, by which stem cells form into lymphocytes ready to respond to many types of antigens, and then, when they actually encounter antigens, neutralize them and clone themselves to be ready for reinfection by the same antigen), and * a more complex, dynamic network (a learning, evolving, self-regulating network with the intelligence to, as Varela puts it, "know and select what it should pay attention to") He calls this a 'second generation network', but there should be a name for a combination of a system and a network, integrated together. Since there isn't one, I'm coining one: a setwork. ... when environmental changes occur faster than setworks' ability to adapt to them, the result is called Extinction. Perhaps Gaia will learn from the mistake of "letting the apes run the laboratory for awhile". Perhaps the next evolution, after our extinction, will be a creature with a smaller brain, or at least without an opposable thumb, one that will evolve 'culturally' at a pace that its physical evolution can keep pace with. The Immune 'Setwork': Our Body's Other Brain, and What It's Telling Us This tempest in the tea-cup of immunity appears strangely similar to the foundational rule described in the Tao: "all have 2 sides" like 2 sides of a coin. And "all change" as the tension, resulting from the balancing of the interests of the 2 sides, accumulates into chaos where appears a point of bifurcation leading to... well change. (no good, no bad) In his conclusion Dave posits that the re-balancing of the side-effects of modernity shall be concluded in favor of Gaia the whole, The apes, its rebellious constitutive particles being mutated into submission to the whole.... I suggest that there is another way of seeing this drama unfolding. Gaia has innumerable particles and the "apes presently running the laboratory" are only one of this multitude. I posit that the re-balancing of a particle gone out of order happens at the level of its own sub-ensemble and not at a higher systemic level. The human particle functions as its own polar system: individual particles and societal groupings. And what do we observe presently? Human societal groupings (societies) have completely lost their capacity to auto-regulate. They have been overtaken by a mechanism that lays out of the will of their human particles. The loss of auto-regulation at the level of the human ensemble will not go far, for, the adjacent ensembles will freeze it in its steps leading it in chaos till it reaches a point of bifurcation where humanity rediscovers societal auto-regulation through the interaction between its polarities. And for sure the bifurcation point from chaos to order emerges out of disruption and pestilence bringing about their lot of mutations in the multiple sub-ensembles of the human ensemble.

Mass Extinctions - Our Own Planet&039;s Detox? | Science Blog: Mar 9, 2006 10:46am 1 review environment, chaos
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mass_extinctions_-_our_own_planets_detox_10172...; Mass Extinctions - Our Own Planet's Detox?
What to say? Remembers us that what's going on here on earth can have staggering consequences for the principle of life.
in ScienceBlog from University of Leicester:
""" Earth history has been punctuated by several mass extinctions rapidly wiping out nearly all life forms on our planet. What causes these catastrophic events? Are they really due to meteorite impacts? Current research suggests that the cause may come from within our own planet - the eruption of vast amounts of lava that brings a cocktail of gases from deep inside the Earth and vents them into the atmosphere. University of Leicester geologists, Professor Andy Saunders and Dr Marc Reichow, are taking a fresh look at what may actually have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and caused other similarly cataclysmic events, aware they may end up exploding a few popular myths.""" URL: Mass Extinctions - Our Own Planet's Detox?

Salon.com Technology | I, Nanobot: Mar 8, 2006 7:13pm 1 review evolution, technology, chaos
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/03/09/nanobiobot/; I, Nanobot
Take the time to read this long article. It's about the human extinction...
in Salon, by Alan H. Goldstein:
""" Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier -- creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready.
... Long before we can melt the polar ice caps, or denude the rain forests, or colonize the moon, we will be gone. And we will not -- definitely will not -- end with a bang or a whimper. The human race will go to its extinction in a state of supreme exaltation, like an actor climbing the stairs to accept an Academy Award. We will exit the stage of existence thinking we are going to a spectacular party.
...Prometheus has returned. His new screen name is nanobiotechnology. "" URL: I, Nanobot

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs: Feb 28, 2006 9:17am 1 review politics, international-relations, chaos
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC01Ak05.html; An eye opener! Remains you to be sceptical of what you hear and what you see in politics. in AsiaTimes by mark Levine: """ The Bush administration's Israel-inspired strategy is to generate enough chaos in Iraq so that the US can dig itself in and leave Iraqis in no position to tell it to leave. But the wages of chaos are steep: they could spell the end not just of a united Iraq, but of the Bush administration's imperial ambitions. """