Beagle 2 Failure Theories

Grok Headline matches for Beagle 2 Failure Theories

Beagle 2 Failure Analyzed

Beagle 2 Failure Analyzed 05/22/2004 03:51 AM

ESA probes Beagle 2 failure

ESA probes Beagle 2 failure 02/11/2004 12:18 PM
Is there life on Mars?

"failure of the Beagle Mars probe being
possibly attributed to a crater landing"

"failure of the Beagle Mars probe being
possibly attributed to a crater landing" 12/30/2003 09:40 AM

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories 11/07/2003 08:47 AM
CBC's long-running series The Fifth Estate recently ran a very unsettling episode (in Canada) entitled 'Conspirac y Theories'. The show dealt with all manner of claims surrouding 9-11 including a possible US/Saudi/ Bin Laden connection, major intelligence breakdowns, etc. Their website provides further reading for those who like to believe the worst.

New tech theories two centuries old

New tech theories two centuries old 02/18/2003 03:14 PM
Search giant Google and Autonomy, a company that sells information retrieval tools, both employ Bayesian principles to provide likely (but technically never ...

Conspiracy theories springing up

Conspiracy theories springing up 02/03/2003 10:14 AM
One person on Google noted that shuttle debris came down in the general area of Palestine, Texas, while another observed that this was the first time that an ...

Management methods, models, theories

Management methods, models, theories 12/25/2004 05:20 PM
Management methods, models, thoeries Kick off 2005 sounding and/or being smarter than everyone else. Minds will spin given the amount of info available here.

On adaptive success and theories of
homosexuality...

On adaptive success and theories of
homosexuality... 01/22/2004 02:14 AM

The latest issue of New Scientist contains an article - "The In Crowd" - that is both profoundly interesting and yet totally unavailable online. Gradually, I'm delighted to say, this situation is becoming more rare and more of a surprise each time it occurs.

Anyway, the article - written by Joan Roughgarden - contends that: "Same-sex relationships are not a biological dead end. They are a glue that helps hold many animal societies together, and a fatal flaw in one of Darwin's central ideas." Here are a few choice chunks of the article that I think encompass most of the article:

Author Bruce Bahemihl, in his book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and natural diversity, has catalogued over 200 vertebrate species in which same-sex genital contact regularly occurs. In some species, homosexuality is not very common - around 1 to 10 per cent of all mating. In others, such a bonobos, homosexual mating occurs as often as heterosexual mating. In some species only males participate, in others only females, in still others both sexes. Sometimes homosexuality is associated with pair bonds that last for years, and in others with short-term courtships. This broad occurrence of homosexuality among vertebrates raises the possibility that if it has a genetic basis at all, it has some broad adaptive significance, and is not an aberrant condition just a few species happen to be stuck with.

In humans, moreover, homosexuality is much too common for it to be considered a genetic aberration. Real genetic diseases are really rare, and their frequency inevitably depends on their severity. A disease that is uniformly lethal must arise anew each generation, so its frequency is equal to the mutation rate, say one in 1 million. A disease that causes only a 10 per cent drop in offspring production (fitness) is 10 times more common than a lethal disease - about one in 100,000. Similarly, a mere 1 per cent drop in fitness leads to a frequency of one in 10,000. If homosexuality has a frequency of 1 in 10, the fitness loss could be no more than 0.001 per cent, which is completely undetectable. A "common genetic disease" is a contradiction in terms, and homosexuality is three to four orders of magnitude more common than true genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease.

All this seems eminently reasonable to me so far. I mean, clearly I'm no expert in evolutionary biology, so my opinion really counts for less than nothing. But on the other hand, as an engaged reader and a gay man I've at least got a legitimate interest in the subject and have found myself relatively compelled by the idea that if homosexual behaviour has a genetic component, that at least some of the genes that result in it must have some adaptive utility. The most commonly cited example is that perhaps a gene might exist that in an heterosexual adult provided a significant reproductive advantage of some kind - but which had the side effect of producing a certain proportion of children who were gay. As long as the cumulative effect was to mean that - on average - the familial line would produce more sexually productive offspring than a line which did not have the gene, then it would be clear that the genes that result in gay people had a reproductive advantage.

Of course while that theory has a certain compelling logic to it, it doesn't (perhaps shouldn't) have anything to say about what it means to be gay in this context. In other words - it makes no statement that homosexual behaviour is itself somehow useful or positive with regard to human behaviour, survival or evolution. Homosexual behaviour then, is not considered adaptively useful.

Now back to Joan Roughgarden's piece (carrying on directly from what was written above):

Indeed, I challenge the presumption that homosexuality leads to any reduction in fitness whatever. Throughout history and across cultures, homoerotic attraction has not precluded heteroerotic attraction. And there is little evidence that people who feel homoerotic attraction have, as a group, any less Darwinian fitness than those who don't. After all, many exclusively heterosexual people do not have offspring either. Even if those with homoerotic attraction did have marginally fewed children, they might make up for it by a better chance of survival - during wars, for example, when homoerotic bonds might lead soldiers to protect one another more vigorously.

So what then, is the adaptive significance of homosexuality? Homosexuality has many uses, much as the ability to speak does. Homosexual contact is a way to communicate pleasure. And I suggest that homosexuality is a social inclusionary trait - that is, it provides animals, including perhaps humans at times, with admission to social groups. It evolves, I suggest, whenever same-sex cooperation helps achieve an evolutionary successful life: to survive, find mates and protect one's young from harm. This plays out in different ways in different sexes and species. Sometimes, as with bonobos, same-sex cooperation provides group security and access to food that females need to successfully rear their young. For others, such as male Savanna baboons and probably some whales, it provides the allies they need to survive conflicts so that they may later mate. But the unifying principle is the same - homosexuality cements relationships that are crucial for a successful life.

At which point, I'm afraid, I think my scepticism comes to the fore. It seems to me that any theory of homosexuality that operates in direct opposition to people's experience of contemporary human sexuality seems to be at least flawed. While bonobo homosexuality might be seen to be useful in the creation of social inclusion, often exactly the opposite occurs in human society. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's classic book Between Men specifically talks about the continual need to disavow sexual components to male homosocial relationships (ie. male-on-male friendship / bonding relationships). We're all familiar with this kind of experience - that the most common and most potent sources of anti-gay tirades are tightly-bound social groups of men. At the very least more is going on in those situations than simple homoeroticism bringing those men together to express solidarity and closeness. Even at our most open-minded, surely we have to state that in those circumstances, the fact that any vestigial or situational erotics have to be so vigorously denied makes it clear that there's a distinction to be drawn between homoerotic behaviour, homosexual behaviour and homosexual identities that is much more complex than anything that Roughgarden supplies us with.

I will of course give her the benefit of the doubt in this case - the article is evidently a truncation of a body of work that no doubt includes a massive set of sample data from which to draw conclusions as well as the applied expertise of a lifetime of training. If I get the chance to read any more of her work, I will make sure that I do so vigorously. But in the meantime, I'm afraid I must remain interested but unconvinced.

Read the comments

Let a thousand conspiracy theories bloom

Let a thousand conspiracy theories bloom 12/17/2004 06:33 PM

I'm about to hit the sack, but current indications are that Bush has won Ohio by a couple of percentage points and thus has been re-elected as President of the United States.

Ohio. Isn't that the state that Diebold president Walden O'Dell promised to deliver to the Republicans?

I don't know if Ohio voters used Diebold machines. If they did, I'm certainly not about to say that the machines were fixed in any way. But the problem with voting machines without a paper trail is that there's no way anyone can be absolutely certain that the election wasn't stolen. In a modern democracy, that just ain't healthy.

Grand Central Transmitter Theories

Grand Central Transmitter Theories 08/31/2004 06:03 AM

Reader Morgan writes:

After reading about the Grand Central setups on Gizmodo I decided to take a look around when I passed through Grand Central on my way home tonight. First off, they're scattered all over the main concourse (one over track 27 and several along the departure boards were the most visible).

Risking a Homeland Security smackdown, I decided to ask some police standing around about them, and if they were indeed, cellular relays. After a studying look and pause the MTA officer said, "I have no idea what they are" and turned away. Eventually I found a Customer Service guy who after a few, "Why are you asking?" and, "I'm not supposed to say anythings" divulged that they were cameras.

Altough I wasn't about to take any photos after flagging myself as the curious type, I noticed that there wasn't any visible lens on the device but there was something resembling a motion detector. Perhaps some kind of IR motion tracker?

More conjecture after the link.

Readers' Quantum Internet theories

Readers' Quantum Internet theories 12/30/2003 06:31 PM
Letters Enough goodness to go round?

Cassini Shatters Titan Theories

Cassini Shatters Titan Theories 07/04/2004 01:40 PM

Bird Brains Challenge Theories of Mind

Bird Brains Challenge Theories of Mind 05/15/2004 03:49 PM
A previously accepted difference between Humans and other animals was that only Humans could possess a "theory of mind" - that is, understanding that other beings have internal thoughts, mental states, and intentions. In recent years, higher mammals such as Gorillas have show evidence of having theories of mind. An article in the Economist summarizes two new studies in which biologists have found evidence of theories of mind in birds, a much older and more primitive form of life. One study by Berd Heinrich and others demonstrated that Ravens understood the significance of the visual behaviour of other creatures and were able to project gaze trajectories around obstacles. In a second study, Thomas Bugnyar and Kurt Kotrschal describe a strategy developed by a raven to deceive competing ravens in a way demonstrating understanding of the competitor's intentions. Oh well, we still have syntactic language and time binding.

Cassini's photos of moon support far-out
theories

Cassini's photos of moon support far-out
theories 06/14/2004 02:06 AM
USA Today Jun 14 2004 6:15AM GMT

N.Korea Blast Cause Unclear But Many
Theories (Reuters)

N.Korea Blast Cause Unclear But Many
Theories (Reuters) 09/12/2004 09:55 PM
Reuters - An accident at an underground munitions depot or a weapons factory was the likely cause of a huge explosion in North Korea last week, and there were possibly two blasts, South Korean media reports said on Monday.

Grokster scorecard: what theories of
liability do the amici endorse?

Grokster scorecard: what theories of
liability do the amici endorse? 03/19/2005 03:03 AM
Cory Doctorow: Jonathan Band, a copyfightin' lawyer from Morrison & Foerster, has created a great roundup of the amicus briefs in Grokster, the Supreme Court case where EFF will argue the right of P2P developers to make tools without having to anticipate and prevent copyright infringement in their designs. The highlight of this is a chart in which the various positions of each of the amici is summed up on a grid. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. 460K PDF Link

Game Theories: Are these virtual worlds
the best place to study the real one?

Game Theories: Are these virtual worlds
the best place to study the real one? 05/17/2004 08:55 AM
Game Theories: Are these virtual worlds the best place to study the real one? The Gross National Product of EverQuest, measured by how much wealth all the players together created in a single year inside the game. It turned out to be $2,266 U.S. per capita. By World Bank rankings, that made EverQuest richer than India, Bulgaria, or China, and nearly as wealthy as Russia. (by Clive Thompson)

New-Found Old Galaxies Upsetting
Astronomers' Long-Held Theories on the
Big Bang

New-Found Old Galaxies Upsetting
Astronomers' Long-Held Theories on the
Big Bang 01/08/2004 08:37 PM
Astronomers have found that the early universe, a couple of billion years after the Big Bang, looks remarkably like the present-day universe.

Flying Saucer Fever Grips Iran, Theories
Abound (Reuters)

Flying Saucer Fever Grips Iran, Theories
Abound (Reuters) 04/28/2004 01:04 PM
Reuters - Is Iran about to be invaded by little green men or are the Americans racing through the night sky in spaceships to spy on the Islamic Republic?

"scientists in Japan have discovered a
new sub-atomic particle that defies
current theories of matter and energy "

"scientists in Japan have discovered a
new sub-atomic particle that defies
current theories of matter and energy " 11/18/2003 08:58 PM

Albright's joke joins growing list of
Bush theories - The Washington Times:
Nation/Politics

Albright's joke joins growing list of
Bush theories - The Washington Times:
Nation/Politics 12/18/2003 02:24 PM
Madeleine Albright and some other Democrats are convinced of this and a lot of other wacky things .. Albright's joke joins growing list of Bush theories .. *

washtimes.com/national/20031217-115113-2173r.htm
track this site | 6 links

"Beagle 2"

"Beagle 2" 12/25/2003 08:59 PM

The Beagle Has Landed

The Beagle Has Landed 01/22/2004 02:37 AM
Unfortunately, it's not the missing European Mars lander but the latest computer virus. This one lets spammers harvest e-mail addresses and then bombard the unlucky account holder with their messages.

Open BEAGLE 2.1.0

Open BEAGLE 2.1.0 12/11/2003 06:11 PM
An evolutionary computation framework.

Distributed BEAGLE 0.8

Distributed BEAGLE 0.8 06/02/2004 01:07 AM
A distributed evolutionary computation system.

Still No Contact from Beagle 2

Still No Contact from Beagle 2 01/07/2004 07:08 PM
Many of you have submitted this, so this will be a condensing of the relevant information. WebfishUK writes: "The BBC has just released this story which ...

Sin noticias del Beagle

Sin noticias del Beagle 12/26/2003 12:40 AM

Open BEAGLE 2.1.5

Open BEAGLE 2.1.5 08/03/2004 04:22 PM
An evolutionary computation framework in C++.

Nothing runs like a Beagle!

Nothing runs like a Beagle! 12/30/2004 04:24 PM
The Beagle Bros Software Online Museum - "a tribute to the coolest software company of the 80's." These guys made my Apple II childhood just a little more magical. The museum includes their ever-informative diskette care warning labels and a less-than-useful but inside joke-filled FAQ. The Beagle Bros Wikipedia entry also has a lot of fun tidbits.

They also had very funny and clever ads (found on this great Apple II history page). The ads always contained these amazing little 2-liners, Applesoft BASIC programs that made my 11 year-old head spin trying to figure out the PEEKs and POKEs that turned Applesoft BASIC from a toy into a pretty powerful tool.

This bout of nostalgia started when I discovered, via this boingboing post, that you could play I/O Silver online (ActiveX)! (only the greatest puzzle game I've ever owned. And hard as heck, too.)

Bayley Beagle

Bayley Beagle 06/12/2004 12:06 AM

view.airbeagle.com/bayley
track this site | 6 links

Open BEAGLE 1.0.3

Open BEAGLE 1.0.3 03/20/2003 06:36 PM
An evolutionary computation framework.

Beagle To Answer Mom 's Call?

Beagle To Answer Mom 's Call? 12/27/2003 06:43 PM
CBS News Dec 27 2003 5:38PM ET

Final report on Beagle 2

Final report on Beagle 2 05/24/2004 09:20 AM
UK space agency and public cash required

Beagle 2 definitivamente perdido

Beagle 2 definitivamente perdido 02/12/2004 06:40 AM

Holding On To Hope For Beagle 2

Holding On To Hope For Beagle 2 12/28/2003 02:57 AM
slasher999 writes "Scientists are still keeping their hopes up that they will be able to revive Beagle via the Mars Express mothership on 4 January. On that ...

Fingers Crossed for Beagle

Fingers Crossed for Beagle 12/23/2003 11:47 AM
Adam_Trask writes "Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers. Beagle ...

Beagle Romps Its Way to Mars

Beagle Romps Its Way to Mars 12/20/2003 06:25 AM
A tiny British spacecraft named Beagle 2 is on its way to search for life on Mars. The umbrella-size craft, packed with state-of-the-art scientific instruments, is scheduled to land on Christmas morning.

Beagle II Successfully Separates

Beagle II Successfully Separates 12/19/2003 11:30 AM

Wanted: Lost Beagle

Wanted: Lost Beagle 12/29/2003 11:48 PM

Scientists cling to hope Beagle 2 will phone home: I'm sorry, but I think it's gone.

Europe's first Mars probe remained silent for a third day, but scientists clung to the hope Saturday that the Beagle 2 spacecraft had landed safely on the Red Planet and would respond to a call from its mother ship in about a week.

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Beagle 2 Failure Theories

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