Extinction Events and Disease

'Infectious Disease, Endangerment and Extinction'

       The authors, Ross D. E. MacPhee and Alex D. Greenwood have produced a paper which proposes that, "...the role of disease in historical extinctions at the population or species level may have been underestimated."   What this means is that the agent of disease, may have ended the successful selection of particular species on our planet.  Asteroid strikes, massive volcanic activity and the like can explain mass extinctions.  Yet these ideas can't justify why totally different species emerge from their catastrophe.  Why not simply re-populate with the same groups of species?  Why should evolution head down a totally different path?

      Natural Selection and Darwinism hold a logical explanation for why it should be that species might appear and disappear.  Smaller more efficient species simply take over as the larger ones simply use up too much stuff, better flyers get the food etc.  Darwinism has an explanation for total transformation of the type of living things that exist or cease to exist over long and shorter periods of natural history.  Darwinism suggests a kind of free market theory, where independent evolutionary forces operate politically to generate the greatest efficiency and evolutionary skill.  

      However the reality might be more complicated than this free-market competition.  Cancer research has shown that cancer cells develop a staggering 66% of the time, independently of lifestyle and genetic makeup.  This would mean that the agent of disease is operating against that span of natural selection which is thought to be the location of Darwins evolutionary free market.  The activity of disease can skew the selection of viable species and render evolutionary goods that are superior, extinct.   So we do not have the unstoppable forward moving virtue of free-market competition between independent evolutionary actors.  Our market of evolution is attacked and debased by the activity of disease.  The action of disease is arbitrary and opposite to goods that would otherwise be viable in natural selection.  

      Why shouldn't I have the sense of smell won by a dog?  Why shouldn't I have the hearing of a bat?  By what process are goods won by natural beings, denied to travellers further down the evolutionary scale of history? Are our senses won, in life and death struggle so ebullient, and so acute that they are sought to their destruction by a fearful agent of disease?  From which rationale are these super achievements of evolution so impinging upon the welfare of disease that they must be mitigated against, compensated for etc?

sourced from

Ross D. E. MacPhee and Alex D. Greenwood, “Infectious Disease, Endangerment, and Extinction,” International Journal of Evolutionary Biology, vol. 2013, Article ID 571939, 9 pages, 2013. doi:10.1155/2013/571939   

Science 2 January 2015: Vol. 347 no. 6217 pp. 78-81 DOI: 10.1126/science.1260825            

Smooth the Paths.

Are earthquakes as natural as we think?

      The agents of cancer act separately to the genetic makeup and lifestyle of individuals.  Cancer occurs in the opposite direction to the content of states of being in nature.  So should we believe that earthquakes are inevitable geological phenomena?  We could think instead, geology in earthquakes is affected against what nature would have.  The act of geological process injured by disease and disorder.
     Bushfires are the disordering of natural systems.  Are earthquakes actually necessary for the maintenance and renewal of geological process?  Taking a sign from the temperature germination of Australian plants... Is there some kind of signal system that triggers earthquakes?  A trigger system that is responded to by myriad living organisms sensing the need to reproduce?  Some kind of quantum polyps, coral polyps make corals, that generate minerals?
    Certainly without massive geological process we would not have the planet Earth itself.  All the continents and islands where we live are generated and shaped by things like volcanoes and earthquakes.  The enormous task of geological construction would infer a degree of 'like it or lump it' to the effect that a 'colony' of rocks would not prohibit a larger 'country' of geological forms occurring, and in that area itself.  Yet we have evidence the natural process in plants and animals encounter disease and disorder to the opposite affect of their nature and struggle for survival.  It is not ridiculous to suggest the same is true of geological process.
    The question then may be, what would geological process be without the effect of disease and disorder?  Hellfire and destruction or smooth and smoochy garden of Eden?

Originally sourced from an ABC news article, 6 Jan 2015

" Magnitude 6.0 earthquake hits New Zealand's South Island, epicentre near Methven " ABC/AFP http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-06/new-zealand-south-island-earthquakes/6001566?section=world

Also sourced,

P. Cianfarra and F. Salvini, "Intraplate Transtensional Tectonics in the East Antarctic Craton: Insight from Buried Subglacial Bedrock in the Lake Vostok—Dome C Region," International Journal of Geosciences, Vol. 4 No. 9, 2013, pp. 1275-1284. doi: 10.4236/ijg.2013.49122.

A New Blog for a New Era, Real Edges for Real Times.

                 

Upon a theory of war, a fully fledged enemy.

                             This is a new blog for a new era.  It is called "RealedgesTime."
             It is a free-spirited blog which will bring hard hitting views of Today's world to you.
                 
                     I have degrees in political science and history.  I had been prevented from taking part in the world of politics and history from the very month I graduated university.  Prevented not by the CIA, the special branch or some weird race law, but directly as a result of being attacked by the agent of disease.  Having spent the years since 1998 attacked  and afflicted twenty four hours a day, I have had a unique opportunity.  The opportunity to appreciate the depth and scope of the activity of the agent of disease on the political science and history of our planet.
                   How the true scope of the activity of disease affected history already took all my mental energy before I graduated university.  After I graduated, as though by tactical conspiracy, the agent of disease attacked me very seriously indeed.  Far from mere bacteria or chemical imbalances, I had uncovered an entire realm of being, the enemy of ease and order on our entire planet.  A realm of being with millions and billions of years experience diseasing and disordering the earth.
                  I will attempt to use this intimate knowledge of the activity of disease to deconstruct various issues.  I will try to give historical events and current affairs greater meaning by including the true scope of the activity of the agent of disease.

Order Out of Chaos

a massive fire burns uncontrolled on all fronts in the Adelaide Hills after an afternoon wind change

        


       Fire germinated plants have adapted to fire, not intelligently designed bushfire. Bushfire is not like a beaver's dam, or an anthill.  Animals derive no evolutionary benefit from being regularly burnt alive in large numbers, they merely adapt to its challenges. The rapid wholesale destruction of a bushfire is in fact intense disorder, like an asteroid strike.  It is nature turned inside out, like the acid of a giant stomach belched up to consume everything improperly.  

In a 1991 study, scientists studying fire germinating plants discovered that,

"Duration of heating was less important than temperature as a determinant of germination. Ordination techniques revealed that results from one duration across temperatures were comparable with data from multiple durations. This has significant applications in studying rare species, where seed may be in short supply."

       Plants do not need to be cooked for a period of time to sprout.  They merely react to a particular temperature for any period of time.  Plants also respond to smoke, smoke coming out of a conventional chimney at about 160-200 degrees celsius.  What this means is that there is no special character of the fire germinated seed that needs fire and smoke.  The fire germinating plant merely  takes fire as a signal to trigger its existing skill to reproduce.  Yes the plant is more successful at germinating when fire has passed through because there is generally more space to grow in, as older plants are burnt out, and plenty of 'fertiliser' is on the ground in the form of ash.  Yet the prime reality is the parent plant may be in mortal stress, that is set to die, hence the need to bear young.
     Ash is decent fertiliser, but mulch from unburnt material is vastly superior.  Mulch layers enrich soils and stimulate plant abundance.  Unburnt mulch layers support greater life systems and more diversity than any burnt, drier systems.  Any Australian who has seen the effects of a lot of bushfires will know just how horrific and undesirable fires are for native animals.  In short the idea that fire is a natural system designed and politically maintained by the natural ecosystems that endure and adapt to it is completely false.
      So natural systems are thrown into systems of preparedness, that are separate to the skills required for their biological needs.  Even though fire germinating plants don't need fire to produce a seed that could grow, they adapt to temperatures associated with fire as a signal of when to grow.  We should not interpret all things that occur to nature, even those without mankind's interferences, as inevitable and natural.  With this in mind, we should not class what may be classed as disorder and disease,  such as bushfire and starvation events as inevitable parts of nature.  Natural evolution has rights to  credentials which are independent from arbitrary disorder and disease.  Credentials which are the preservation of life on Earth, the opposite of calamity to life on this planet.

                                                 originally sourced from a story on
                                                 Adelaide Hills Bushfires, ABC NEWS

also sourced from,

AULD, T. D. and O'CONNELL, M. A. (1991), Predicting patterns of post-fire germination in 35 eastern Australian 

Fabaceae. Australian Journal of Ecology, 16: 53–70. doi: 10.1111/j.1442-9993.1991.tb01481.x 

Kitsteiner, J   (2013), Permaculture Projects: Chop and Drop Mulching, temperate climate Permaculture.   http://tcpermaculture.com/site/2013/11/15/permaculture-projects-chop-and-drop-mulching/   

Lawton, G  (2014), Desert Oasis : From Desert to Oasis in Four Years.  " Surviving the Coming Crisis."    geofflawton.com  http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/62176-desert-oasis.

Frew, W (7/01/2015) BBC News " South Australia Fires: 'Hundreds' of animals dead. " http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-30706391

Cancer and proactive division.

"only a third of the variation in cancer risk among tissues is attributable to environmental factors or inherited predispositions." - Cristian Tomasetti, Bert Vogelstein.



Cancer is basically an interference with the way our cells divide and multiply.  Cancer divides and conquers our cells.  The authors, links shown in the caption under the above picture, have published a new scientific article on cancer.  The study behind the article has shown the activity of cancer cells is independent from genetic and environmental factors two thirds of the time cancer develops.
When bad habits and 'bad' genes are only to blame for cancer, one third of the time, this is very serious for how we understand how cancer occurs.  Science will now have to look for an agile and pro-active agent of disease.  An agent which can attack and defeat what we believe is strength, prior to geriatricism or old age.  An agent of disease which is capable of giving a healthy person disorder and disease in spite of their will, lifestyle and genetic make-up.
Science must search for an agent that can generate cancer because it seeks to make cancer.  If an agent seeks to make cancer and can make cancer out of healthy individuals cells, that agent must have a rationale equivalent to the fight for survival.  If an agent has the rationale of a special kind of fight for survival, that struggle must have a rational explanation that can be understood in terms of its own history and political science.

from;
Science 2 January 2015: Vol. 347 no. 6217 pp. 78-81 DOI: 10.1126/science.1260825


Story originally sourced from the BBC article," Most Cancer Types Just Bad Luck"- James Gallagher, Health Editor BBC News Website. 2/01/2015