Stop Me Before I Vote Again

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/07/the-evolution-paradigm-shift/

this character is at war with dawkins !!!!!

cal him THE SHAP :

"(1) Cells act in what I call a cognitive way or an information processing way. Some people like to say “computational.” The only reason that I don’t use the word computational is that it doesn’t include the sensory aspect of how cells operate. And the sensing and it’s molecular bases are all very firmly established scientifically. There’s no question about it.

What we don’t understand is how everything is integrated, how the information is processed and how the cells end up doing the appropriate thing. We know a lot about the components involved in signal transfer and decision-making, but we don’t know how the whole system works. That I think is the key frontier in the 21st century. The research will not only impact biology, but it will possibly revolutionize computation as well.

(2) Cells engineer their own genomes and they do it in a wide variety of ways that are subject to sensory inputs and which can be targeted within the genome. I document that pretty extensively in the book.

(3) We know from the DNA record that natural genetic engineering systems have been important in the evolution of new life forms.

The key questions that I see in evolution science besides learning more about those three components are:

(i) What is the link between ecological change and genome change in organisms?

(ii) What is it about the natural genetic engineering processes and how they are regulated and controlled that biases them towards creating new functionalities?

We know we can stimulate rapid genome change in the laboratory by starving cells, or putting them under pressure or in high salt and other stress conditions. Similarly, by manipulating their genomes the way McClintock did so they don’t operate normally. Or by hybridizing, as in horticulture, having different species mate or different populations mate. All of those things will trigger very significant episodes of genome restructuring. And we know genome restructuring has played a role in evolution and evolution is marked by the appearance of biological functional innovations "