Comments by "" (@tekannon7803) on "Big Think" channel.

Getting educated on fascism is an excellent way to see the world through new lenses. Thank you Jason Stanley.
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What I think we all need to do is tune in to Professor Jim Tour's explanation of a simple cell. The membrane of the cell has 10 to the 78 billion possible combinations and only one works. The carbohydrates on the membrane of a cell are more complex than the RNA and DNA combined. When a cell wants to transport material from one part of the cell to another part, it builds a tubular transport system where the material is delivered and then the tubular transport disappears. All of the parts of a cell have to be put together at a specific moment for the cell to function. What am I getting at? I am saying that a simple cell is one of the most complex systems imaginable and since 1952 when they started investigating how cells work, they have still not found out how the most basic parts of a cell work let alone be created. The primordial soup hypothesis is not how cells came to be is my analysis. We are composed of a trillion cells.
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Ian, I have only seen a few of your vocasts, but this one was very, very easy to gather the pieces up and sort them out nicely in my brain. You have upped my understanding of many things about the world in your excellent presentation of the birth of a new global order. The question that is only beginning to be asked but surely will be asked when the Russians have been beaten and have to retreat from the Ukraine and Crimea is this: will Putin come back with battlefield nukes? Ian, I hate to say this, but I think we in Europe are going to see the first limited, battlefield nuclear weapons exchange before too long.
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Dear Mr Dennett, Thank you for your insights on evolution. I have no problem with believing our species evolved into modern man. That we came from the apes or a sub-species of apes eons ago makes perfect sense. What throws a wrench in the works for me comes from a lecture I heard Dr James Tour give about the simple cell. Do you realize that---and I am paraphrasing---one of the simplest cells, a yeast cell I believe, has an outer membrane that has 10 to the 78 billion combinations of possible ways it could form, but only one combination works. Ditto for the components of a cell that have incredibly precise requirements for them to be made and that they all must fit together in a specific way for the cell to function as a living organism. Dan, what makes my head spin is how in the devil could a cell have formed in the primordial soup that was the Earth all those billions of years ago. The complexity of the carbohydrates on the outside of cell are more complex than the DNA and RNA combined, if I have that right. It's off-the-charts: life forming by chance is possible of course, but the utter combinations of possibilities for it to happen are just beyond what my mind can fathom as possible.
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There is a peaceful way to end the hostilities in Gaza and the middle east, and if you will bear with me, Robert and Ian, I will stick my foot squarely in my big mouth and make a fool of myself, but that is my job: I am an artist. Here goes and please understand I do not want to rain on anybody's parade but here is what I would do if I were in Guterres' shoes from the UN. First, the Palestinians have 26 Arab nations that are their brothers and sisters and again, if I were in Guterres' shoes, I would ask them to put aside their prejudices to all parties concerned and find enough land for these poor people who have been kicked around and stuffed into what your former President, Jimmy Carter, called an open prison. I have never been to Gaza, but it is obvious that because of the Palestinians' dismal plight, extremist groups gather like vultures to prey on people suffering to the point where that if the devil himself offered to help them, they would probably accept. So; Gaza is 145 square kilometers and there is no excuse for not finding a patch of land to house the entire Palestinian people so that they could raise their children in dignity and live in peace and become a sovereign nation in their own right. Extremists’ groups cannot thrive where abundance and happiness and people living good healthy lives are the reality. Second; we have an opportunity here to stop armed conflicts across the globe between warring factions by converting Gaza into a wildlife sanctuary for endangered species of plant, animal and aquatic species. It would become a sort of Galapagos of the middle east that would attract tourists from the world over and this could be a legacy we could hand down to future generations. This could be a template for solving even the most intractable and horrific wars between nations. Building nature reserves would ensure peace by creating a buffer-zone that would be impregnable to armed factions because every known group in the world respects mother nature and would never destroy a wildlife sanctuary. Lebanon and Israel could build a nature park on their borders as a symbol of peace. What I am saying is that we can create nature reserves for endangered species and it would offer a chance for warring peoples to work together; it would save countless species on the edge of extinction; it would bring in tourists which would help the economies of the surrounding countries. This is doable; it is also a logistics and humanitarian challenge of epic proportions, but it would save lives and we would all be proud to leave our children's children with wildlife sanctuaries as a way of ending disputes that have no place in modern society. All that is needed for the Gaza strip to become nature reserve cum Galapagos of the middle east is the generosity of the Palestinians’ Arab brothers and sisters to make this happen.
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Thank you for some excellent and honest advice. Can you tell us if there are three things you would say to an actor in performing a scene for example?
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Sean, beyond entropy and how the universe began, Professor Jim Tour at Rice University in Houston is the person that has thrown a stone in the proverbial pond of how things all began, at least for me! Professor Tour has more than 55 patents and is a synthetic chemist and his description of a simple cell simply beggar's belief and in one lecture my whole conception of life changed forever. First, you need lipids which form the membranes of the cell, then carbohydrates or sugars, then nucleic acids RNA and DNA and then you need Amino acids, 19 of one category and 1 of another. The carbohydrates on the outer membrane are more complex than the RNA and DNA combined. The outer membrane has 10 to the 78 billion possible combinations and only one will work. That is 10 with 78 billion zeros after it! Professor Carroll, there is no way the simple cell came together in a prebiotic pond and even if all the components came together in exactly the right temperature and arrangement, what puts the spark of life in it; what makes it come alive?
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@shreyas5886 GGGGGGGGGGGreat to hear from you. This is why it is important to keep an open mind when one is not a student or researcher of a particular field. What I really believe is that our world was terra-formed and our species certainly aided in its evolution by outside sources.
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What throws a stick in the spokes about life starting in a primordial pond in the early days of our world is something that I learned from Dr James Tour at Rice University in Texas, USA. Listen, I don't know if he's right, but the simplest cell has these elements in it: lipids, which form the membranes, carbohydrates or sugars, nucleic acids RNA & DNA, 20 amino acids, 19 of which are cyro---a term describing their makeup. The outer membrane of a cell has 10 to the 78 billion possible combinations, but only one will work. That is 10 with 78 billion zeros’ after it. The carbohydrates on the outside membrane are more complex than the DNA and RNA combined. On top of that, all of these elements have to be formed at the right time and temperature with their exact placement in a cell, for example. The liklihood of everything coming together at the same time is mind boggling. The carbohydrates can caramelize and would need to be made again. Even if all of these elements come together as a cell, there is still one problem: how does it become alive? What makes all of these chemicals suddenly become a living organism? Our bodies are built with enzymes, but we have no idea what life is or how it started. To say that life began one afternoon in a swamp is ridiculous. This is why we must realize that life permeates the universe and just because we cannot see proof of it from our tiny blue dot doesn't mean we are the only bastion of life in the universe.
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How about looking at time this way? Let’s first look at a cell. What is necessary for the cell to function? Yes; of course, all the components inside. But even if you have everything you need for a simple cell to function, it won’t work without the membrane. Perhaps time is the membrane of the universe? What if it simply holds all of the components in place for them to function and be in synch? One thing for sure is that time as we know it lubricates all the moving parts in our lives. We move through it knowing we are going to use up all the time we’ve been allotted one day. And then, some would say we move into a new dimension where time has no past, present or future. Maybe heaven is really the place where time as we know it exists in all its forms at once? It's late, time to go to bed...
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Dear Dr Walker, Thank you for a peek inside your universe. My own conception of life changed with one lecture by Dr Jim Tour. When he explained how the most simple cell you can find is composed of parts that have to be united at exactly the right temperature, the same time, etc., and when the outer protein covering of a simple cell has 10 to the 78 billion of possibilities for it to work, but only one combination can work, right then and there I realized that our idea of how life formed on Earth could not have been from the primordial soup we all grew up with believeing in from biology class. The sheer odds of getting all the elements of a basic cell to be in place at the right time blows away any possibility of chance playing a role. And even when you have the RNA, DNA, lipids, carbohydrates etc., how does it turn on and become alive? Dr Tour has completely made me literally go back to the drawing board and I'll be sketching out ideas till the day I die, because there is something that has to be explained about how the first cell was formed. If the most simple cell requires that the carbohydrates on the outside of the cell are even more complex than the DNA or RNA of the cell you can not continue on with your old way of thinking life just happened here in an accidental situation. I am paraphrasing Dr Tour, but I think you see my point. Lastly, I think the alien life out in the universe will come to visit Earth when our planet has been weaned off of capitalism. Sara, I think it's too expensive to come to Earth to fill up the tank on their spaceships with the profit margins off-the-charts on our wierd little planet. I think they're waiting until either capitalism gets shelved or prices for food and fuel hit rock bottom. It's a theory and it's my joke and we wish you a Happy New Year and a brilliant career.
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@panda123id GGGGGGGGGGGGreat to hear from you. There is propaganda from both sides in any war, and it takes two to tango. That being said, we must remember that under international law that was signed by Moscow, all the treaties say that sovereign countries get to choose what alliances sovereign countries belong to. Treaties like the UN Charter was signed by Russia. The 1975 Helsinki agreement was signed by the Soviet Union. The 1990 Charter of Paris for a new Europe was also signed by the Soviet Union. The 1997 NATO Russia Founding Act was equally signed by the Russian Government. All those documents were signed by either the Soviet Regime or the Russian regime, which is the legally recognized international inheritor i.e., successor of the Soviet State. The fact is those agreements are still in place and they clearly state that sovereign countries can freely choose their foreign policy and what alliances they want to join. For the President of Russia to warn western nations not to help the Ukrainians defend themselves is pure hypocrisy and insulting to the free world writ large.
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@mojojojo1529 GGGGGGGGGGGGGGreat to hear from you. There are as many points of view as there are people. The one thing that makes you unique in the universe is your point of view, because no one else can have it. Have you noticed that even when you want to give your point of view away, there are no takers? You can't even give it away. In my point of you the western powers have sussed out that Putin must be stopped at the gates of Ukraine's or else Europe will no longer exist. However, this is totally unacceptable to the Russians and I believe they will use atomic weapons with Lucashenko pulling the trigger if need be to show us their point of view. I predict that WW III will be coming as soon as the valleys are hushed and white with snow.
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@mojojojo1529 GGGGGGGGGGGGreat to hear from you. It would be so interesting to be a fly on the wall at NATO command, NATO'S allies command, and of course in Russia's President's war room. We keep hearing that Russia must occupy the Dombas because the people there speak Russian. I live in a French-speaking country but we don't want to be French. Quebec are French speaking, but they don't want to be French. Russia is a country that is 9,000 kilometers long with 11 time zones. They don't need more land and I'm sure the soldiers fighting for Russia could care less about expanding their territory. But Putin has told us that after 145 days, things are just beginning to get interesting. There will be atomic war coming out of this, because for all practical purposes there are probably tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use only, so it may just stay localized. No one is capable of predicting how this war is going to go. I say Ukraine wins back their territory and then Lucashenko lets loose with a missile with nuclear warheads to win it back!
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