[tt] [NSG] Meeting Announcement 7/17 -- formatted

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Fred Hapgood <hapgood at pobox.com> -----

From: Fred Hapgood <hapgood at pobox.com>
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:56:23 -0400
To: NSG <nsg at marshome.org>
Subject: [NSG] Meeting Announcement 7/17 -- formatted
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Reply-To: Nanotechnology Study Group <nsg at marshome.org>

Sorry. I forgot.


Meeting notice: The 070717 meeting will be held at 7:30 P.M. at the
Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of
Main St. and Mass Ave.  If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the
manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below.

Suggested topic: Thermodynamic selection

John Whitfield has written an interesting exploration of the idea that
what we call natural selection might be just a subset of thermodynamic
selection -- in his terms that in at least some cases, survival of the
fittest is better understood as survival of the likeliest.

Thirty years ago or so, as part of my introduction to Conway's Life, I
was shown the intersecting output of two glider guns set maybe a million
clicks apart. When the streams of gliders met they would create a cloud
of Life smoke, which would initially be kept in a tumbling instability
by the constant inrush of gliders.  After some long period of time, the
cloud would evolve glider eaters - - two little patterns that would sit 
in the middle of the cloud and eat the gliders as they arrived, thus 
allowing the cloud to cook down to a stable state. It seemed wonderfully 
biological at the time, but as the sainted Bill Gosper explained to me, 
all that was involved was the law of irrepeatability -- those states
that 
could not recur, did not.  Everything followed from that.

Ever since I have wondered just how far that law could be pushed -- how
much biology it explained. The article whose URL is published below
pushes these thoughts further than I have ever been able to.
Recommended.

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050142

or

http://tinyurl.com/2rolc4

<+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+>

In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the
moon.

                                -- Jules Verne, 1865

<+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+>

Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

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Legend:

"NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group.  The Group meets on the
first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which
refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little
else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a
sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg'  to
majordomo at polymathy.org.  Unsubs follow the same model.

Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to:
nsg at pobox.com. www.pobox.com/~fhapgood   www.pobox.com/~fhapgood
  www.pobox.com/~fhapgood
www.BostonScienceAndEngineeringLectures.com

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----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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