lpetrich

I'm not sure how much Martin Luther (the original Protestant) can reasonably be held responsible for Nazism.

But he had established a prominent place for himself in the long history of Xian anti-Semitism with writings like The Jews and their Lies.

Valentine Pontifex

This is silly. While there is no doubt that Luther was an antisemite, it is not true that he inspired the Nazis. I would be shocked if any Hitler had more than a passing familiarity with him. Furthermore Luther was merely expressing a view that common in his time and the centuries before him. Many popes before and after Luther were also antisemitic as were other political and religious leader of the time.

Happy Wonderer

Very interesting abstract, I wish I understood it! I suppose the energy used to bend each segment of flagella (sorry, can't help thinking of monks at this point) is the array of random variables, distributed across the total energy of the flagella. Or something like that. I'm incredibly impressed that we know enough about the mechanics of something as freaking small as a flagella that we can even begin to think of modeling it mathmatically.

Generally, this discussion gives me an 'aha!' insight -- perhaps when people see a measure of uncertanty such as Shannon's Entropy they jump to the idea that somehow this is the link between information and energy. Once again it is a problem of a weak analogy; ie math and computer people using a familiar concept as an analog for a slightly related unfamiliar one. "Shannon's Entropy" is a measurement, not a law. This is the same problem as when we talk about "complexity"; it doesn't mean we have a general law that applies to all complex things.

In fact there are several different kinds of "information entropy", which is not a characteristic that I think that "real" entropy has.


HW

This might help, although I doubt it would convince a creationist

Happy Wonderer

FYI:

Mein Kampf; Vol1 Chapter 8.

http://www.stormfront.org/books/mein.../mkv1ch08.html

Dr.GH

Another abstract pointed out to me by an associate ( much better informed on the current literature than I am ) that addressed the evolution/biochemistry of the bacterial flagella:

Jarrell and others have written a detailed review of prok. motility.
> Very useful article.
>
> ============
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
>
>
> http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/149/2/295
>
> Microbiology 2003 Feb;149(Pt 2):295-304
>
> Prokaryotic motility structures.
>
> Bardy SL, Ng SY, Jarrell KF.
>
> Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada K7L 3N6.
>
> Prokaryotes use a wide variety of structures to facilitate motility.
> The majority of research to date has focused on swimming motility and the molecular architecture of the bacterial flagellum. While intriguing questions remain, especially concerning the specialized export system involved in flagellum assembly, for the most part the structural components and their location within the flagellum and function are now known. The same cannot be said of the other apparati including archaeal flagella, type IV pili, the junctional pore, ratchet structure and the contractile cytoskeleton used by a variety of organisms for motility. In these cases, many of the structural components have yet to be identified and the mechanism of action that results in motility is often still poorly understood. Research on the bacterial flagellum has greatly aided our understanding of not only motility but also protein secretion and genetic regulation systems.

Continued study and understanding of all prokaryotic motility structures will provide a wealth of knowledge that is sure to extend beyond the bounds of prokaryotic movement.
>
> PMID: 12624192 [PubMed - in process]
> ============