Weight Watching

Thank you, Mr. Malthus.

 

Might be the Rise of the Insects. Mankind will succeed in poisoning the
oceans and it'll be Goodbye Flipper. No more cute jumping through hoops
at OceanWorld.

 

wessie wrote:
Dolphins will rule the largely aquatic rock.

Only if the mice let them.

 

What a loser!

But I can't, I'm a loser.

I will look into this and see if I can improve this aspect of my new found
posting skills.

 

[just had a couple of pain au chocolats (always feel a twat saying

Errr. Huh huh. Eeerr. uhuh, huh

1) I have no idea. Even after visiting dictionary.com, I have absolutely no
idea.
2) Not that I'm aware of. But you never know. I do feel rather special
sometimes.

 

Absolutely.

 

As in 'bus'?



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Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
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www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Viruses mutate faster than humans.

 

Bit academic then, isn't it? Unless some other form has evolved enough
to be able to appreciate history from 50 million years previous.
Evolved cats maybe.

"These sediment results from the 21st century are fascinating, Zongcat.
Those humans really screwed things up. Pass me my coffee would you? USE
TWO PAWS..! Damn, you idiot. Go and make me another one"

 

<relaxes>

 

edited HTH

 

And you, sir, are ugly. But in the morning I'll be sombre. Or something.

 

I haven't, no, but I think I get the primordial message

 

Well, I've been to Devizes, but I didn't...


Waitaminute. Those used to be human?

 

Rubbish, twaddle and codswallop.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3 (slightly broken, currently missing)
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

Thank **** for that

 

Glad you said that.

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7 75 TS 156 TS S2
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Ace may well have a different / more accurate take (see disclaimer), but
the development of immunity by a host is a completely separate process
from the mutation of the virus.

Also, while you are sort of correct that it *may* not be in the *best*
interest of the virus to kill it's hosts too quickly, to suggest that
the essentially *random* mutation will tend to produce specifically less
dangerous forms is obviously flawed.

The amount of time that many viruses have been around would mean that
they were all pretty much harmless.

Since the mutations that cause 'evolution' are essentially random, the
successful phenotypes will be determined by selective pressure in the
environment. *Some* will be less dangerous, some will be more
dangerous, some will be roughly the same and some will be non-viable.

Disclaimer: I last studied this in 1992 and I wasn't particularly good
at explaining it then (as my degree will attest) Although I'm pretty
sure the above is accurate, it may be badly phrased, or not particularly
comprehensible

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7 75 TS 156 TS S2
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Not really. Yes, random mutations will tend to produce, given enough
time, more and less virulent forms of a virus, but these new forms,
assuming they are reproducable, will only be favoured if there's some
strong pressure on the existing form that favours the new one.

In the case of a highly successful virus like HIV there's clearly no
barrier to the virus's procreation in the current environment, given
that it takes months or years to kill its victims, during all of which
time they remain highly contagious, so why would a less virulent form
be any more successful?

This could occur, but only in the most extreme cases, where for
whatever reason the virus both caused the death of the host and
guaranteed its lack of infectiousness within such a short timescale as
to render it impossible to pass on to another host. Clearly this is
not the case with a nearly pandemic virus such as we're discussing.

If nothing else, it seems that you're falling into the trap of
thinking about evolution from a design perspective. One might argue
that if virus A developed characteristic X it would have a greater
chance of survival, but for this to happen there must be a clear chain
of events, starting with the ability for a small genetic mutation to
cascade into the 'required' physical changes, coupled with there being
some noticeable advantage to survival for every link in the chain.

Examples where this can be observed are in antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. All the normal ones are killed off, so only those very very
few that have somehow mutated such that they're not so vulnerable to
the antibiotic will survive at all. In this situation, particularly
coupled with inappropriate or incomplete treatment, strains of the
bacteria with stronger and stronger resistance can be produced.

It's perhaps worth pondering on the number of times this _doesn't_
happen (i.e. 99.99999999% of the time).

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3 (slightly broken, currently missing)
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`