Farley Mowat, State rights, Slavery & consciousness, Molecular evolution, Biological Singularity

Jap whale killers are quaking in their boots, those famous "dangerous vegans" on "Farley Mowat" of the Sea shepherd group have arrived in Prydz bay.
Rammings by Japs may be answered back.
"When the Farley Mowat came within a half a nautical mile of the Nisshin Maru, the factory ship began to run north. They have been running all day and they have not been whaling. The whalers are now 17 miles outside of the Australia Antarctic Territory."
"We ordered them to leave, said Captain Paul Watson. "And they left."
whale100000
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Random Thoughts after Xmas

the "right " of free speech
has no existence
is an empty concept

What is real is the State deciding
to allow itself the censure
fine,imprison or death
against a local person.
The States right to punish.
Rewards for favourable speech are rare; medals, awards
Literary grants?
Salaried positions? lecturer lawyer?

'civil rights' are meaningless
Here I join with Anarchists
there are no rights,
merely limits to State power.

At this moment in history the State is rapidly granting itself broad powers to punish.
The few objections are couched in terms of 'our rights'
Arrest detention (trial court hearing) prison execution torture coercion disappearance

We permit the State to take out certain groups
into lockdown solitary sensory deprivation torture
Harsh treatment because it validates
the previous pronouncement
of the immanent arrival of the deluges

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Russian trucks in the Dakar rally
he approves despite the disgraceful waste and danger amongst a poor desert people.
Tough trucks seem a good

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Young Labor call for coercion, conscription
into military or community service,
forcing yout into the boy scouts.
two things:
1) its not possible to coerce community, its a thing that develops, or not
2) enforced situations can be happy, despite the proviso that happiness cannot be forced

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Consciousness as a social development
I recall a book titled "Burning water, smoking mirror"
the author claimed that Aztec sacrifice was not so terrible
because the Aztecs accepted that slaves & captives lacked an individuality,
merely being part of their captors person.
Another argument for recent consciousness is of course
Jayne's 'bicameral mind'
I have come to believe that the existence of slavery precludes the existence of consciousness.
While some are enslaved, the others cannot attain consciousness,
no matter how fully they believe they are conscious, they aren't.
If a few do attain consciousness, they experience it as a state of confusion and alienation,
which they strive to eliminate.
When slavery, including wage slavery, and gross financial inequalities are removed form the world
Then we may see true consciousness arises

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Molecular Evolution:
In embryonic development there are moments where symmetry is broken
eg the development of fore/aft, top/bottom, left/right,
The last development is not 'random', it appears to come from the rotation of cilia sweeping some signal molecule consistently to one side.
Obviously fore/aft top/bottom must have been established ('at random') before Left/Right has a meaning.
The cilia are built of L-Amino acids. This inbuilt asymmetry provides for a consistent meaning for 'Left'
always spin counterclockwise?
(It is surmised that life chose L-Amino acids 'at random' at the point of origin of life)
Anyway the thing that occurred to me is, that the moment of symmetry breaking is a point of molecular selection.
Consider a circular section of a worm embryo, just before it 'decides' the point which is to be Dorsal ('top')
We assume that every point on the circle is potent, potentially dorsal.
Suppose that some molecule acts as a repressor (falling level) or de-repressor (rising level)
At some point on the time-gradient one cell on the circle trips/triggers to become 'Dorsal'
This candidate must then immediately suppress all other candidates on the circle, so that there is only one Dorsal point.

What we have is Selection for sensitivity to the signal, the most sensitive cell on the circle is selected.
So we have a good tool, the most sensitive cell for that signal.
Prediction: that signal which triggers the specialisation should be further involved later on,
because we have a known good responder.
that same molecule should be used in other signal cascades.

nb this is not inherited, we are in a somatic pool, no gametes nearby
but those who take advantage of an advantage will have an advantage.
The age old tautology which taught us how to
sickle ears on Tigris bank.
His first love, molecular biology.
dense stock of signal molecules
diffusion limits signal slope.
(what is that word when ants lick, speeding up diffusion?)
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Biological singularity
An evolutionary event which only happened once
eg eusocial Termites emerging from solitary cockroaches
only happened once
('solitary' in the sense that sisters didnt cooperate,
not in the sense that they didnt occur in groups)
A biological singularity because it is
difficult to say how likely the event is
if we have only seen it once.
It may never happen again in a finite universe.

nb naked mole rats provide a mammalian simile.

The counter argument is? reproductive cheating?
Termites eat eggs not from the queen?
Diploid dilemma.
Any science detests single events
except as concrete counter-examples eg
thesis: no diploid insect could become eusocial
We have the single, decisive counterexample

the termite well disproves that thesis
but remain oddly flagellae licking sisterhood

Sisters work well in hives
the majority of sister-driven societies
hymenoptera,termites
naked mole rats, and wolves to some extent,
tend towards rigid, scent & vibration based total tyrannies,
top down, but proportional castes implies bottom up signals are also involved,
so maybe we have less to fear form female-anarcho-nestmound synarchy
scent vibration networks diffusing evaporation
time is a perfume evaporating
along a trail
belatedly recognised
when he realised he had lost it.
- re reading Bonner from the 70s
lacking sonic hedgehog, but full of ideas yet
Farley Mowat State rights Slavery & consciousness Molecular evolution Biological Singularity