Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

Proverbial Fairy Tales: Wolf! Wolf! – The Protested Barbecue

Once upon a time when big bad was being barbecued Save The Wolf Foundation organized a massive protest. Almost ten people showed up each flashing a sign for cameras to catch. They screamed, yelled and whined. Then they stood in line to get some of that yummy wolf barbecue.

Save The Wolf had often been diagnosed as “terminally miserable”. Today their taste buds protested by deciding to live happily ever after.

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Denise offers “sign” as the word to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Cosmic Photo Challenge: What’s Flowering Where You Are

Dale offers the prompt “what’s flowering where you are” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

I did find an unusual white blossom recently. The first two photos show it.

The last photo is of a palm tree that I have not seen flowering, but I like the shape of the leaves.

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I don’t know what this tree is, but it was blooming recently
This picture includes some of the leaf
This isn’t flowering, but it is growing where I am now

Abiogenesis and Dr. James Tour

This is the final video in a course on abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour. If the subject of the naturalistic origin of life from nonlife intrigues you, it may be good to keep in mind how unlikely something like that actually is. And yet here we are. How did we get here? If you don’t like Genesis, that question is not easy to answer and so far it has not been answered.

Regardless what you might hear in the media or the hype from origins of life researchers, no one has been able to create life from nonlife in a laboratory. They have done many amazing things with already existing life, but they have not started with nonliving chemicals and produced life. There are many reasons why this problem is difficult.

  • Life requires homochirality. Molecules do not naturally separate into left and right handed versions, but biological molecules have to for a cell to function without overheating.
  • Carbohydrates are the hardest to synthesize in a modern lab. How they could have synthesized in a prebiotic environment without lab equipment or trained technicians running that equipment is a mystery.
  • Peptides are also difficult to synthesize. Any partial success in the lab involves processes unavailable in a prebiotic environment.
  • Nucleotides may be easier until one tries to link them together, because they depend on synthesizing carbohydrates to get the ribose that joins them.
  • Lipids are sometimes said to form spontaneously. Tour said that “spontaneously” is an origin of life researcher’s code word for “I have no idea how that happened”.
  • Chiral-induced spin selectivity requires homochirality. It permits cell functions without overheating while maintaining the purity of the cell’s components.
  • RNA can not replicate enough of itself to be useful. Linking parts of it together leads to errors which make it useless. It is also unstable. The RNA World hypothesis that relies on RNA alone cannot even get started.
  • Life requires a non-random DNA code that can usefully direct the cell’s functions. Not just any random code will do. So even if you get past the other problems of synthesizing a cell from chemicals, the information problem blocks the process. How does mindless nature know what a useful code sequence could be?
  • Life is highly ordered with low entropy and high energy. How does nature produce life without violating the laws of thermodynamics?

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While writing this essay this morning I listened to one of Greg Bahnsen’s audio lectures, Amoebas, Apes and Adam that SlimJim referenced in his post Free Bahnsen Lectures: Getting Down and Dirty.

Even though Bahnsen’s lecture is some decades older than Tour’s course, Bahnsen’s chemical arguments against life coming from nonlife is in line with what Tour had to say. And Tour’s objections to abiogenesis reinforced Bahnsen’s assessment of evolution in general, not just abiogenesis, as a “grand fairy tale for adults”.

Proverbial Fairy Tales: Wolf! Wolf! Hungry Again

Once upon a time there was a big bad wolf who liked to eat. Big bad ate this and big bad ate that. Once big bad ate a lad who cried “Wolf! Wolf!” even when big bad was minding its own business.

Eventually, like always, big bad got hungry again and wondered what might be on the menu besides the garbage he’s been eating on the ground.

It’s surprising, but true, that ordinary town folk do smarten up given enough time and motivation and this time when big bad returned they decided to give it a taste of its own medicine by trapping it and – gulp – eating it in spite of protests organized by Save The Wolf Foundation.

When the town folk did as they planned to do and big bad got his just deserts, they all lived happily ever after except for the protestors who would have been unhappy no matter what happened, but that’s another tale I probably won’t bother to tell, although I just might.

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Denise offers “ground” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

In case anyone is wondering, as I was, there is no actual Save The Wolf Foundation. I searched for one and AI told me to stop wasting my time: The search results do not contain specific information about an organization named “Save The Wolf Foundation”.

Cosmic Photo Challenge: After The Rain

Dale offers the prompt “after the rain” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

We could probably use some rain where we are. There is usually sun in the sky.

The first photo is evidence that there is something called rain. The last two are a recent sunset with clouds, but no rain.

This would better fit a “during the rain” prompt
A sunset with just enough clouds to make it interesting
Another view of that sunset

Lachish

Lachish was a Canaanite city. Douglas Petrovich presents five significant archeological finds at Lachish in the process of giving you a history of this important biblical city.

The following map from Bible Mapper shows Lachish in relation to other cities during the time when it fell to the Assyrian Sennacherib.

Douglas Petrovich is active on Academia.edu where you can find many of his papers. He is also the author of The World’s Oldest Alphabet, Origins of the Hebrews and Nimrod the Empire Builder.

Proverbial Fairy Tales: Wolf! Wolf!

Once upon a time there was a lad who noticed how highly the town folk honored those who warned the town of the big bad wolf. Wanting some of that honor for himself, he cried, “Wolf! Wolf!”, even though there was no wolf to be seen.

He did get the desired attention and admiration and so the next day and the next and the next, he did it again and again and again. After the tenth day of this even gullible folk could read the mark on the lad’s forehead saying, Don’t believe anything this kid has to say.

One day the real big bad wolf reappeared and the lad cried, “Wolf! Wolf!” None of the town folk came to chase the wolf away, figuring it was imaginary, and everyone, except for the lad who became the main course of the wolf’s dinner, lived happily ever after – that is, until the wolf got hungry again, but that’s another tale.

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Denise offers the prompt word “mark” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.