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Pastimes : SARS - what next? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Niman who wrote (932)	11/24/2004 2:16:05 PM
From: semi_infinite	Respond to of 1070

Morgan Stanley released comments on SE Asia countries' economic and currency prospects. No mention of flu virus impact at all.

To: Henry Niman who wrote (932)	11/24/2004 3:27:53 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1070

Thanks Henry. This recombinomics business is a lot of fun. Thanks for the explanation on drift and shift and viral mating. I think I have it. Drift is when man meets woman and they swap their genes and the human gene pool is stirred up again and another variation tried out to see if it will work. Mutations occur and those that contribute a useful new angle, such as a Google-like memory, proliferate and propagate throughout the whole population provided they are in contact through geographic proximity and the Romeo and Juliet effect isn't too strong. Shift is when a woman meets a rhinoceros and a very horny new bloke is born who can charge into battle and defeat all comers. Or, she hooks up with a giraffe and a very successful apple-picker is born. Or, she mates with an owl and the child is great for night-vision and can fly in behind enemy lines. Or, she falls in love with a dolphin and the oceans become habitable. In the human realm, species miscegenation leads to failed foetal development or perhaps the sperm won't even combine with the egg [I'm not up on this stuff]. But in the H5N1/sars/influenza viral realm, they can mix and match hidden away in the safety of somebody's hijacked cell. Since trying all possible angles is the name of the game, it seems obvious that miscegenation would be a big part of what goes on in the viral world. I'm surprised that viruses unzipping and rejoining an H5N1 head, with an influenza body, perhaps with a sars digestive system, is news. If they could team up with AIDS they'd really give us a run for our money. One would think that the DARPA people would be up on this. After all, they should be looking for the terrorist gene. If they could come up with a virus which infects everyone but kills only the terrorists, that would be a lot better than firing cruise missiles all over the place and dropping Daisy Cutters on camels and farmers. Nature has obviously been using viral symbiosis with humans as a genocidal technique = send in Juliet, give Romeo a kiss and kill off his whole tribe, making room for the viral carrier. Of course Romeo's tribe has their own viral buddies and the kiss can go both ways = it depends on which side has developed the most lethal virus. It never occurred to me that kissing is an act of war. Look what AIDS is doing to Africa. A vast destruction of humans who are vulnerable to it. Whether it's a cultural or genetic vulnerability doesn't matter, it will create vacancies for other humans to move into. Memes and genes are being destroyed by the million. Moslems for example are doing very well in Africa. They murder anyone who disobeys their sexual ethics, so AIDS doesn't get much of a grip on them. But the virus is cunning, as one would expect with quantum computing on such a scale. It has found genetically immune people in Africa and those people will be the ones to propagate and take over the vacancies. Of course, the other tribes might defeat them anyway, because they'll now have the numbers to militarily take over, or just move into the vacant space. The new human owners will mate with those who are left, and who they don't kill [usually the females], and the anti-AIDS people with their successful cultures will then run the show and grow again in numbers, ready for the next war. So the outcome is that one tribe takes over from another, using the virus as their weapon. The virus is thus performing a useful function, unless one happens to be in the unsuccessful tribe. I suppose the same principle applies across the species kingdom, as is obviously the case with hens, tigers, civet cats, ducks and so on. Those who have good DNA or cultures live to fight another day and those who don't are recycled into CO2 to start again at the bottom of the food chain being eaten by chlorophyll. Viruses kill off LOTS of things, but require only a minuscule amount of carbon to do so. So they are very efficient. They are like a catalyst in evolution to keep the pot boiling. When immune to a virus, we don't even notice it. We just carry it around ready to do battle with some other vulnerable species or person. Viruses have been doing a great job of keeping evolution on the go. Left to ourselves, we'd all just sit around in trees eating bananas or on the couch watching Days of Our Lives, but with viral war on the go, we are constantly having to adapt or die, with one tribe taking over another. Now I can see how the idea of bowing to each other in greeting, instead of kissing, has been a successful cultural norm in Asia. Hollywood air-kissing is obviously here to stay. Swapping precious bodily fluids sexually has obviously been an act of war too, never mind the battle of the sexes. An excellent cultural adaptation is to invent vaccines, but a better one would be to prevent viruses getting into any humans in the first place. We are obviously a long way from that, so I suppose we are stuck with vaccines for now, or just dying off and admiring the wonders of evolution in action. SWALK [sealed with a loving kiss], in the romantic days of snail mail takes on a whole new meaning. I wonder if H5N1 can combine with a rhinoceros. Imagine that thing charging around crowded streets. Mqurice