March 12, 2015
In a dynamic and self-organizing state, open-endedness is most pronounced at the point of bifurcation: the critical or singular moment when a system has the potential of entering one or two or more available states. - Nigel Clark
Painting, Architecture,Literature, Dance and Theater were invented to reduce the anxious gradient between the dionysian joy, passion, terror and sublimity of nature and civilization.
The arts are analogous to life; both are meant to reduce gradients: for life, it is the gradient between solar energy and cosmic darkness, for art it is the gradient between the terrifying freedom of nature and the somewhat benevolent prison of community.
A Hollywood maxim purports that one can measure status in the entertainment industry by measuring the elapsed time between placing a call and having it returned. Spielberg calls and his call is returned within a minute. If you are Mary Schmo you wait for months and probably until you stop caring, i.e. you do not exist in Hollywood.
If you call your new honey and she returns your call in a minute or two, you might think less of her - was she hovering by the phone? Is she needy? If she returns your call in half an hour or in a few hours - all’s cool - you’re still a happening couple. If she waits until the following day or two or three, she is sends a message across her ocean of silence that howls like a rime-encrusted banshee: “minimize this man” Timing carries a heavy freight of meaning in all things: embryo development, protein synthesis, house building, watercolor painting and human relationships.
In a growing fetus, the brief window of time during which neurons emerge in the head are, of course, critical. How does the fetus know when to start making brain cells, when to differentiate them into their respective 160 brain regions, each with its own vital function? Is there a clock? Is the clock in the mother’s chemical messaging? Is the clock inside the placenta or outside? Are those extra genes on that longer second Y chromosome regulating fetal development?
Timing is crucial in all phases of all orders of life. The sequence of events in living cells is measured to the femtosecond in all of them. If the timing is off, a less than ideal message is conveyed, perhaps a disease is initiated, a mutation, a shock to the system, a seed is planted. Humans have 100,000 unique proteins each with a specific time-sensitive function. You wouldn’t call in the finish carpenter before the wiring is installed. You wouldn’t frost the cupcakes before they are cooked or while they are piping hot. Imagine a kitchen at a fancy restaurant where there are 100,000 ingredients in play 24 hours a day - each playing a role in a nutritious, flavorful menu.That a substance exists or words are spoken is an armature but useful meaning is a product of timing. See: Good Timin’ - Jimmy Jones - 1960
Information is timing. “Stasis IS data”. The brain had to evolve before the neocortex
When the scientific establishment in a specialty gets excited by a new discovery or theory they go into kill mode not out of hostility, but out of love, excited that the new idea may be true. They must test the idea and its bearer with loving blasts of doubt, derision and denial. The author ought not take offense at this natural testing process-the world is rooting for you and your new baby. See: All paradigm shifters: Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, McClintock, Margulis.
Questions:
- Is RER (rough endoplasmic reticulum) a constantly moving conveyor belt? does it revolve around the nucleus in a clockwise direction north of the equator and counterclockwise south of the equator? Does this movement have an effect on phenotypic expression?
- Do proteins under construction at the RER shift to more than one location once at the RER? as pieces in an assembly line? Or does the entire matrix of RER move to drop off proteins at the golgi apparatus or when just sending them on their way outside the cell?
- Why do scientists refer to the K-Pg extinction ( meteor @ Chicxlub 65MYA) as a catastrophe when it threw 10,000 doors wide open for the evolution of mammals? It was a propitious event for many.
- If the moon had not broken off from the earth due to meteor impact and the Earth still contained the moon’s mass - would life have evolved on this much heavier planet? would this greater mass have changed Earth’s orbit diameter around the sun?
- We should breed several new species of bacteria, archaea and viruses that could create an atmosphere on Mars as they did for Earth 3 billion years ago and turn the red planet green.
- Might some of our “junk” DNA be DNA stored by ancient and more recent viruses in our genome for activation by relatives of those viruses when revisited today and now manifest as transposons/jumping genes?
- Did Gene Vincent or Gene Autry know of Gregor Mendel or of Crick-Franklin-Watson?
- Quantum effects in biology are like a geared sphere the size of a pea spinning at the speed of sound in 10,000 directions in constant contact with a larger geared sphere the diameter of Earth orbit around the sun - the nucleotide.
- DNA is the alphabet, proteins are the words, the individual is the work of fiction, the individual’s interaction with the total taxonomic hierarchy of environment is the author from the cosmic ray to the Milky Way.
- I love the way nature says: “OK - Let’s roll with it! A frog, cougar, pine tree, human, praying mantis or squid then she pulls out ALL the stops for 100 million years if necessary to ensure its success. We end up with a lot of weird animals and plants but by god they work !
- Can neuronal cortical input be transmitted to inguinal neurons and mutate this DNA into heritability?
- In a toxic environment for bacteria and viruses all of their DNA, formerly highly conserved, gets thrown into play - it is now loose, accessible, mutations occur and play out in the toxin - one of ten million survive - let’s go with it ! Onward.
- Do golgi apparatus work in both directions to assemble proteins travelling away from the nucleus and dis-assembling them back to reusable aminos and nucleotides as they migrate or get sucked back toward the nucleus?
- Do ribosomes shift once they travel from the cell nucleus into the RER or do they move within the cytoplasm via whole continents of RER drifting? or both?
- RE: NEURONS - Does the point at which incoming signals arrive ( dorsal, ventral, caudal, distal) affect the nature of the neuron’s response i.e. its outgoing signal? If so by what mechanism? How does it distinguish in order to send the correct neurotransmitter. Where in the cell is the array of neurotransmitters stored? Are they floating free near the open end ( say nucleus is the brain) of the synaptic microtubules and axonal microtubules or do they just float around anywhere between nuclear membrane and cell membrane?
- If there are up to 100,000 inputs to a single neuron, then the neuron must count these and locate stochastic locus of origin of these signals in relation to location on neuron membrane in order to prepare proper biochemical response via phosphorylation, methylation, pseudouridylation to send to ,RNA to RER to Golgi to microtubule end - up the axon to terminal/growth cone.
- How do neurons count / measure incoming signals? tally them up? as to rate, volume ( frequency of occurrence) amplitude ( strength of electrochemical signal, etc.?
- Is this counting-measuring performed at neuron nucleus? At RER?, SER? Golgi? or other location?
- How does a neuron know which of hundreds of neurotransmitters to produce?
- Does single neuron register pain as well as pleasure? sweet as well as sour? loud as well as quiet? hard and soft? rough and smooth? fight or flee? etc ad infinitum.
- Bottom line: Does it matter where on a neuron’s global surface its geography a signal arrives from beyond the neuron?
- Do neurons form school’s like herring or locusts and work in unison? Do they use electricity or chemistry or both?
- Can a signal be sent away from a neuron back out the dendrite? or are ALL outgoing signals through the axon?
- Can a synaptic terminal at end of axon shaft receive signals?
- IDEA: If incoming nerve signals cluster at lower-right rear quadrant of neuron then “X” molecule is prepared for transit up axon, if incoming signals aggregate at upper left front then this neuron prepares ( using alkylation) neurotransmitter “Y” from this quadrant’s assigned menu of W, X, Y, Z
- Does the point of impact on neuron’s membrane geography determine which neurotransmitter is sent and its amount?
- Do neurons send signals, either electrical or chemical using other than known neurotransmitters?
- Is any signal that crosses the synaptic gap by definition a neurotransmitter?
- How many different neurotransmitters are named? Are they all proteins?
- Is all neurotransmitter transport up the axon via microtubule?
- Does the neuron nucleus move within the cell? does this movement relate to any protein activity - synthesis, de-construction, delivery to axon?
- Do adjacent neurons have awareness of one another only via dendrite contact? Any signalling via membranes touching? they are jam-packed in all cases ver very tightly - never as shown in diagrams all spread out like fingers of a hand.
- Does the location of the nucleus within the neuron affect the products of a particular cell? or rate of production of anything -protein, lipids?
- Are neurons in cerebral cortex stacked top to bottom i.e. skull to center? how many layers of neurons? just one or 100,000 ?
- When does the last neuron in a chain of neurons receive the messsge? what is its response time? knee-jerk quick, pull hand from red hot stove quick, call from gf-return call - slow
- Are all neurons voltage-gated ion channels?
- Do all neurons use sodium, calcium and potassium to control action potential?
- How can dendrite morphology be shaped by intrinsic programs with the cell’s genome if it is still a stem cell? what starts the neuron development ball rolling in fetus? an adjacent organ? the mother?
- How many golgi bodies in the average neocortical neuron?
- Axon terminals must touch dendrites if they are so densely packed unless there is some magnetic force repelling them.
- 30 billion neurons in human brain with 1,000 synapses each for a total of 30 trillion synapses
- Does action potential arriving from one side of the neuron have to travel all across the cell and through all stuff to reach the axon? or does it travel around the surface of the neuron avoiding the intracell congestion? somehow guided to the axon - how would the incoming signal know the shortest route or does it matter?
- Are all ribosomes in a given cell identical? if not…
- How many different types in the typical neocortical neuron?
- One ribosome type for each one of 10,000 different proteins?
- Can the function of a single ribosome be changed during the life of a single neuron?
- Are ribosomes the seat of most heritable genetic mutation?
- Are ribosomes the seat of epigenetic program for a neuron’s function
- Is GABA produced by a specific type of ribosome i.e. one ribo-one product?
- Easy to get “mandelbrotted” (JB neolog) while researching - Russian doll syndrome - the internet rabbit hole / rabbit warren of information links
- Could a chunk of fresh neurons from a young child be installed in a void in alzheimer’s brain and begin to function?
- Do tissue cells other than neurons use microtubules for protein transport within the cell?
- Sad to report: discerned from drippy “Plant Intelligence” by Stephen Buhner. Now that the terms psychedelic and psychoactive have been stained by proven idiots like Timothy Leary et al and subsequent widespread disparagement of entire hippie, drugs as path to enlightenment project, there has emerged a new term for the same old shit: “neurognostics” god help us all. The neurognostic crew has also hijacked the term Gaia and tainted it with their toxic swarm of new-age claptrap divorcing it from honorable roots in James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’s writing.
- We need a word for a three dimensional web, a spherical network. How about a Gleb, Sphweb or Beb? Think globular spider web - to describe things like Internet global connections or while-earth webs of causality.
- How will the Earth restore its biomass once the rainforests and northern evergreen forests are gone?
- Perhaps our entire universe is a gradient reducing entity between a verrrry hot place we have no knowledge of and truly empty space - no dark matter, no stars, no gas, no nothin’
- I wonder why humans and other animals have such small roles to play in their own lives? What do animals actually do? eat, fight, reproduce, die with most behavior driven by instinct. we seem to be along for a wildly complex and stunningly beautiful ride but mostly as passengers, very minor players. the heavy lifting is done automatically and it’s taking 200 years and millions of smart people to figure out what happens inside a single cell. OK, we’ve spouted consciousness to enable us to even ask this question. Living stuff may be inanimate - why animate anything? What’s the point? does animation accelerate solar gradient reduction? The onset of entropy? Couldn’t this be achieved by non-life? say a cork-like rock?
- Do humans do one single positive thing for the planet after entertaining themselves and generally screwing things up? Many of our “greatest” minds have been enablers of the greatest destruction: Einstein, Bohr, Fermi.
- Does methylated always mean switched off? i.e. not active in cell for duration of particular cell’s life. can methylation be reversed in the life of a single kidney cell?
- Is it methylation that keeps a kidney doing kidney functions and a liver doing liver things?
- Do methylation or phosphorylation control or affect in any way instinct or behavior learned or otherwise?
- Is OCD syndrome a behavior controlled by motor neuron post-translational modification irregularities?
- NOTE: More methylation = less cell activity.
- Are the nerves activated in nose hair pull pain the same as those used for smell?
- There are 200,000 neurons in the human gut. Is gut post-translational modification at gut initiated by bacteria or viruses?
- Are certain gut microbial translations related to particular stages of digestion?
- JB experiment: 1. Get a vat of human liver cells 2. In sequence - add post-translational modifiers 3. get liver DNA to produce fresh neurotransmitters as if the liver cells were neurons...or….does a specific organ cell’s genome become completely deactivated upon its maturity. If so, could it be re-activated?
- Is the electrical signal set along the axon to vesicles specific for particular neurotransmitters? i.e. voltage level “Alpha” means serotonin, voltage A+1 = acetylcholine, X=2 = dopamine etc.
- Does memory involve some factor ( molecule or group of molecules) shifting to long term storage in a new brain location - the memory locker zone or does the memory remain in the neuron cluster where the external-real-world event was registered?
- Is all memory epigenetic?
- What is memory? Is it a stored rearrangement or addition to base pairs at DNA or RNA?
- Is there specific RNA at neurons to store memories?
- Does each sense organ have its own zone for storage of its memories? i.e. music, smell, sights, emotions
- Is there a base of olfactory knowledge - inborn instinct that enables olfactory distinctions i.e. to distinguish rot from food - must not be learned knowledge.
- There must be fields of sensory instinct neurons that are immediately accessible for registration / comparison / judgement and action.
- Does smell- taste sense matters of proportion related to the golden mean .618:1.00 or to the fibonacci series? or some mandelbrotian sensation of order? as exists with sound and vision ( music and architecture)
Response time is a fundamental aspect of all cell function, all life function. He was a day late and a dollar short.
A large part of anyone’s good luck is a fine-tuned sense of timing. Making microseconds matter in all human interaction, all business interaction. Successful Wall Street brokerages relocate their sales force from Manhattan to New Jersey to be closer to warehouse in new Jersey containing servers for stock transactions in order to save nanoseconds in computer-driven financial transactions.
A human brain is larger than a chimp brain so the human can make timing judgements crucial to success in a fundamentally stratified social order. One in which a person can be relegated to the bowels of a lower class due to a poorly articulated phoneme. “He comes in late with the suffix on his chesterfield, he’s not of our school” therefore no promotion, no bonus, no kids to Eton, life goes completely to hell.
The lower taxonomic levels in our hierarchy of causation are inaccessible but for theory. Who knows what is happening when a UV ray strikes a carbon electron? One can only guess. Things change. we see one in a million of these changes as it is manifest at much larger orders of scale. We live in a world of atomic residue - the aftermath of an ongoing storm that dances through the cosmic keeping immaculate time. We live in the pink crust on the inside of the cotton candy machine with our growing understanding of the fluff of life.
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