Wednesday, October 24, 2007

#1

~EVOLUTION~
[adapted from The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel]

When people say 'evolution', they mean merely that there has been change in a species over time, but that's not an accurate description is it?

Absolutely not! If that's all there was to Darwinism, then there wouldn't be any controversy, because it is common agreement that there has been biological change over time, that all organisms within a single species are related through descent with modification. This occurs in the ordinary course of biological reproduction. Darwinism claims much more than that - it's the theory that ALL living creatures are modified descendents of a common ancestor that lived long ago. It claims that every new species that has ever appeared can be explained by descent with modification. Neo-Darwinism claims these modifications are the result of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations.


The Images of Evolution


Image #1: The Stanley Miller Experiment

What?
Stanley Miller, a graduate student at the Unversity of Chicago in 1953, used laboratory apparatus to artificially produce the building blocks of life. By reproducing the atmostphere of the primitive earth and then shooting electric sparks through it to simulate lightning, Miller managed to produce a red goo containing amino acids.

Scientific assessment

Common consensus among scientists that the early atmosphere of the earth was not at all like the one Miller used. Miller chose a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapour, which was consistent with what many scientists thought back then. However, there is no evidence for this primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth, but much against it. Most geochemists since the 1960s would say that the earth's early environment was totally unlike Miller's, with the current hypothesis being that there was very little hydrogen in the atmosphere as it would have escaped into space. Instead, the atmosphere probably consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapour. Even two of the leading origin-of-life researchers, Klaus Dose and Sidney Fox, confirmed that Miller had used the wrong gas mixture. Science magazine said in 1995 that experts now dismiss Miller's experiment because 'the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation'.

What if you replay the experiment using an accurate atmosphere?

Some textbooks say that you still get organic molecules, but these organic molecules are actually formaldehyde and cyanide. Formaldehyde is extremely toxic and destroys proteins all over the place, just from the fumes. It even kills embryos. (These organic molecules that are formed can actually make embalming fluid) While it's true that a good organic chemist can turn formaldehyde and cyanide into biological molecules, it is not possible that they give you the right substrate for the origin of life. Whatever it is, you do not get amino acids from this experiment, that's for sure.

If a scientist someday manages to produce amino acids from a realistic atmosphere of the early earth, how far would that be from creating a living cell?

Incredibly far! That would be the first step in an extremely complicated process. You would have to get the right number and sequence of amino acids to link up to create a protein molecule, then dozens of protein molecules in the right sequence, to create a living cell. The odds against this are simply astonishing, the gap between non-living chemicals and even the most primitive living organism is absolutely tremendous.

Why is Miller's experiment still published in textbooks then?

It is becoming clearer that this is materialistic philosophy masquerading as empirical science. The attitude that life had to have developed this way because there's no other materialistic explanation. When origin-of-life expert Walter Bradley, a former professor at Texas A&M University, who co-authored the landmark 1984 book "The Mystery of Life's Origin", was questioned about the various theories advanced by scientists about how the first livin cell could have been naturalistically generated - including random chance, chemical affinity, self-ordering tendencies, seeding from space, deep-sea ocean vents, and using clay to encourage prebiotic chemicals to assemble - he demonstrated that not one of them can withstand scientific scrutiny. Journalist Gregg Easterbrook wrote about the origin-of-life firled, "Science doesn't have the slightest idea how life began. No generally accepted theory exists, and the steps leading from a barren primordial world to the fragile chemistry of life seem imponderable." Bradley not only shares that view, but said that the mind-boggling difficulties in bridging the yawning gap between nonlife and life mean that there may very well be no potential of ever finding a theory for how life could have arisen spontaneously. The absolutely overwhelming evidence points toward an intelligence behind life's creation. In fact, he said, "I think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there's an Intelligent Designer."

Even those who look askance at religious faith have been forced to conclude that the odds against the spontaneous creation of lfie are so absurdly high that there must be more to the creatio story than mere materialistic processes. They can't help but invoke the only ord that seems to realistically account for it all: miracle. It's a label many scientists loathe to use but which the circumstances seem to demand. John Horgan, one of America's leading science journalists, conceded in 2002 that scientists have no idea how the universe was created or "how inanimate matter on our little planet coalesced into living creatures." "Science, you might say, has discovered that our existence is infinitely improbable, and hence a miracle." Even biochemist and spiritual skeptic Francis Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA, said, 'An honest man, armed with all the knowledege available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which woud have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

whizzer; 8:31:00 pm

Monday, October 22, 2007

fuddy

awww val thank you so much!! i'm really really touched =s i think you're a very very nice friend =)

whizzer; 9:11:00 pm

Saturday, October 20, 2007

post-outing blues

whoo today is one of those times when i strongly want to blog. haha which is quite rare.

today was chorale outing to sentosa! and it just displaced some other less important day on my "year's 15 most memorable days" list. met deb, gerald, gen (in this order and gen was late!!!! =D) at bishan mrt first and went to buy snack food from NTUC, then met quan and val in the mrt and went to harbourfront. it takes about 25 minutes from bishan to harbourfront btw. then met kia liang, yong feng, isaac, joelle, charmaine, wenyi, geoffrey, julian at vivo and went to GIANT to buy water so we wouldn't shrivel up the beach. and i shall skip the part where i insisted half a dozen 1.5l bottles of mineral water were enough but turned out not to be enough etc etc.

after that we met geet, minsi, suet, clara, royce, joash, fried at the top floor of vivo where the ticketing counter for the monorail to sentosa was. waited forever and finally took the monorail across. haha and we saw the land where constuction was going on for the IR. oh and since it was my first time to siloso beach it was rather exciting :D then after we settled down and fooled around with the sand and threw fried's frisbee around a while, i went to join the people playing volleyball. hahaha more like sports for entertainment. we weren't very good compared to the super bronzed people around us who were quite pro...so gave up after a while after we managed to get 4 or 5 consecutive hits heh. went back to throw frisbee then when the volleyball people came back we played captain's ball. haha i think i'm becoming a lot more active and spontaneous during sports now. and getting a lot better at captain's ball. julian is not bad at catching..hahahahahaha. gerald isn't bad too. and yong feng can intercept too. haha not bad overall.

got bored after a while again, so went to find the girls playing with sand and making a really nice embossed sand "<3 chorale" and helped compact the sand grand piano charmaine and wenyi were making which was really nice. meanwhile the guys were trying to change kia liang into some mythical species hahahahaha. ok now comes the life changing moment. i was sitting by the water doing dunno what, then stupid ass tall person geoffrey pushed me into the water. RAWR. ok la wasn't THAT bad..considering i would have probably killed anyone who tried to dunk me. but since that took me by surprise i forgive him coz it was quite a good ploy which i didn't forethink -.- it was sort of fun swimming around in disgusting sea water though. although it wasn't very nice coz i was wearing a white t-shirt so only a bit translucent when wet. soon lots of people were wet so we swam around and played a bit in the water and some of us swam across to the island opposite to explore. ok skip the following repetitive events. geet and minsi left sometime before lunch.

the dry girls bought lunch back for us and we rinsed the eew seawater off under the showers and sort of dried off under the sun. that was around 3. suet had to leave before lunch for PW sadly, joash had to leave too, and joseph finally appeaered, and we celebrated geoffrey's birthday (1 day in advance). haha totally exciting with val cutting the cake and us giving him his conductor's baton and manuscript book. then we went cycling around the place which was quite bad coz there were too many vehicles around and no proper road solely for bicycles so we had to stop a lot. and my bike totally sucked. 1 of the brakes was spoilt so i had to rely on the backwheel brake. zzz. haha and we only cycled an hour, but since i take a long time to warm up for anything physical, my cycling was a bit shaky. kia liang's cycling is quite pro =D oh oh thanks kia liang for fixing my bike chain when it came out and getting our fingers greasy and stuff (:

when we got back to out base, gerald, julian, val, deb, charmaine, clara had to go home, so that left me, kia liang, royce, geoffrey, fried, joseph, yong feng, isaac, quan, joelle, gen, wenyi. we went to bathe and packed up and left wonderful siloso beach. geoffrey left to go somewhere after bathing. haha kia liang and i decided to wear our caps so our hair wouldn't look so exploded (in the end we had to wear it for the rest of the day coz our hair became really flat and my head looked like a ball with a fuse >.<) we returned to vivo, when joseph, royce and gen also left for their respective engagements. then left 8 of us. so we just walked around looking for a plce to eat and enjoyed our silent bonding time XD ate at banquet, then headed to the mrt. sadly the really great day was finally coming to an end. we all broke off at our respective stations to change mrt line and whatever, and i went back to bishan with quan since all the other bishanites and serangoonies had already gone home. thanks quan for giving up your car ride home to take mrt with me back to bishan =) and the rest of the going home story is a bit boring.

i feel like doing shout outs for chorale j1s now! hmm but i need to go write a card so i shall do some people first (:

Chorale shout-outs part 1 (in no particular order)

Wen-Yi: you're really really funny sometimes and nice to be around! and your diaphragm-pumping almost whistle-range laughter is quite funny too! yay i'm glad you joined chorale =D

Catherine: strong personality with a lot of initiative! thanks for all the times you volunteered to help with printing and laminating and helping out with miscellaneous stuff! haha likes to make fun of me but its ok i'm accomodating :D funny person who i don't disturb a lot for being a humans student XD maybe that will change soon :DDDD

Isaac: totally not self-conscious which is a good thing sometimes. resident bottomless-pit (i mean that in a good way :)) who doesn't mind doing people favours without expecting anything in return. he does lots of things which i roll my eyes at but we're used to it so its ok =)

Genevieve: hmm..not a bad welfairy la. i mean we're all still alive and surviving. so far. AHAHAHA ok but she gets things done. she's over the bimbo phase of her life (at least i think she is) and seems ALMOST normal nowadays but you never know =D my regular maths jokes target because the opportunities are simply too good to pass up XD ok i shall to lessen the hahaha-humans-student jokes. try. PUNCH

Yong Feng: nice quiet guy who is slowly exiting his shell and becoming more outrageous! ok maybe not there yet but getting there soon right! resident video man/camera man/art-related designer etc who is really good at what he does. occasionlly surprises everyone by doing un-yongfeng stuff like imitating chris' style of blogging which was super funny. haha yeah.


ugh i have ugly tan lines on my arms and my neck. must plan eoy chalet soon! i'm experiencing post-outing blues (which only comes after very memorable outings and events which i thoroughly enjoyed..like today!) and missing chorale people already. sigh soon we won't be able to have such fun anymore :( anyway i think i'm really blessed to have such wonderful friends, especially in chorale, and have most of my close friends stay with me since sec 1 <3

whizzer; 9:41:00 pm

Thursday, October 11, 2007

MVP

hullo! don't really feel like blogging much these days...

oh YAY i passed my grade 8 piano practical!! haha i'm totally grateful and thank God that i managed to get through it, considering i had to juggle piano practice and mugging for promos. heh and this morning when i woke up i was just thinkin that i hadn't thought about it for a while, so i was praying about it and promo results and stuff. haha super cool.

anyway today was quite fun. probably one of the top 15 school days of the year. 15 coz there were lots of really cool days at the start of the year =) had econs lecture by mr pan which was interesting (well seeing i paid attention and listened throughout the ENTIRE lecture which was 1 and a half blocks today, and actually understood the notes) and weiren' class was having lecture with us in LT1 so i sat with him and joash. then kia liang was busy preparing for OP dry run so didn't sit with us, and gerald was like miles away. tsk. math lecture was quite a challenge. to stay awake i mean. haha totally managed to pay attention the whole time except for the the 4 times i almost dozed off XD yay then towards the end of lecture when we were trying the tutorial questions for binomial expansion eric tucky and i were doing the basic questions like muggers. heh so fun. i won the mugger contest coz i did fastest!! hee ok maybe thats coz i didnt press calculator for the answers. yay anyway.

after school had pw meeting a while. well, no actually i relinquished my group leader position to shermin for today coz i felt completely sick of pw. haha sorry! i shall try not to attitude anymore. then played captain's ball!! yay highlight of the morning. i was amazingly pro today =DDD haha i think i'm quite good at being captain, like can catch the ball quite well heh. and i blocked a pass by jian hao which was nothing short of spectacular XDDDD seriously. haha i was super motivated after that and had lots of fun being enthu and running around a bumping into eew sweaty pigs. hahahaha but i had lots and lots of fun! played for almost 2 hours, the calories lost during the game being equivalent to my daily cycling routine. whoooo.

met deb on the way to staff room after the game, so we left to take bus home, since i she had to go home for piano lesson and i was going home. then met chng min and arnold at the bus stop. and we sat the new 156 bus! the one with the 2 seat bar thing with nice cushioned seats facing each other on both sides of the bus. haha but i only realised that there were quite few "stop" buttons so when it was my stop next i had to squeeze through the crowd to even get to the button 8-) yay

okay dinner time! oh i baked cookies this afternoon (:

whizzer; 6:26:00 pm

Monday, October 08, 2007

music in me

i realised some songs remind me of certain events and happenings in my life. i somehow link some songs to stuff that i've been through. like when i was listening to "She's No You" by Jesse McCartney just now i kept thinking about the chalet on 1 dec with chin ee and the other sec 4s. haha i even rmbr geoffrey trying to take photo of my shirt which was the same design as kia liang's >.< and barney stuff at the entrance of white sands.

anyway OP really sucks. and the organising of dry runs and scheduling is really stupid. what's the purpose of making us rush through to finish everything to try to get everything done by dry run when we have effectively 2 days to do EVERYTHING for OP coz we had Open House to settle too -.- after all dry run is for us to get everything nailed and to spot any problems we might encounter during the actual OP, but if they're not even going to give us a week to prepare then what do they really expect? super irritating la. rawr.

whizzer; 12:03:00 am

Saturday, October 06, 2007

tubsssss

ok promos are over. now the hard part. waiting for results. and results of my piano exam should be coming out soon. hello.

haha i feel super duper tired today for some reason. like quite lethargic and sleepy and the never sleep more than a few hours kind of tiredness. rawrz. the feeling sucks btw. anyway OP really sucks. ok. then played halo 3 in the afternoon til i got over my violent blast all the aliens moment. then cycled 20km while watching The Pursuit of Happiness, starring Will Smith and his son. its quite motivating and stuff but i think i was too shacked towards the end so it wasn't that impactful. but it was nice. thanks tubs (:

went to my cousin's house in the evening for his 1 week overdue birthday bash. catered food is nice when you're not trying to get into shape. but oh well nvm indulge once in a while. haha but then surprisingly after dinner i went to stand on the funky weighing scale thing in the house and i was 2 kg lighter than i used to be! (and the last time i weighed myself i wasn't stuffed with food too) YAY. ok i'm totally motivated to cycle more consistently. whooo i have about a week and a half left to get fit before my primary 6 class reunion thing with my teacher. hahahaha how exciting. i need to bake cookies to give my teacher so she will be less inclined to pinch my face.

anyway i still feel stuffed now and i'm surfing facebook which is lagging quite a lot and listening to unfaithful by rihanna. i remember daniel singing it along with the MTV in our room one morning in slovakia when i woke up. sigh i miss the trip again. i want to meet up and go out with them again .__. haha or i could just blade to daniel's house which is like 5 minutes away from my house to visit =)

okie i feel hungover so i'm going to sleep. PWO...P tmr. yucks.

whizzer; 11:28:00 pm