DNA mutation rates?

Vox Day has a couple new books out about how fast DNA can fix mutations. It’s based upon well-established science following the evolution of e. coli in the lab. These asexual bacteria split every half hour or so, so it’s fairly easy to track how many generations it takes for a captive population to fix a mutation. The answer, established by multiple experiments and just a touch of very simple math, is one mutation fixed per 1,600 generations. That includes parallel fixation, by the way.  (40,000 generations / 25 fixed mutations = 1,600 generations per fixed mutation on average.)

How many base pairs does e. coli bacteria DNA have? 4,639,221. Do the math, and that gives a fixed mutation rate of 7423 generations per million base pairs. Let’s call it 7,500.

So, let’s extrapolate that to a much more complex, multicellular creature - the cichlid fish of Lake Victoria. Their DNA has about a billion base pairs, and they breed sexually. Sexual reproduction doubles the chances of mutation in offspring (there being two parents, each of which may pass a mutation). So we have a sexual reproduction mutation fixation rate of 3750 generations per million base pairs.

Cichlids have a billion base pairs. That’s 1,000 million. So we expect a total of 3.75 fixed mutations per generation. Cichlids breed at two years of age. Lake Victoria has been an isolated breeding ground for at most 100,00 years. That’s 50,000 cichlid generations. 50,000 times 3.75 = 187,500 fixed mutations in that time. The average DNA spread between each of the over 400 different species of cichlids is about 750,000 base pairs. So there has been, at best, 1/4 the time needed to produce such biodiversity, given the DNA experiments with e. coli.

You’ll notice I have made no attempt to explain how 3.75 mutations would fix across an entire population in one generation. I’m just doing the math.

By the way - humans have a little over 3 billion base pairs. That would result in 11.25 fixed mutations per generation. (This obviously does not happen in modern humans.  We would have noticed.  But let’s ignore that simple observation.) There are 20 million mutations between humans and chimp common ancestry. That evolution happened in at most 9 million years. Assume one generation to be 20 years, and that’s 450,000 generations. Multiple by 11.25, and you get 5,062,500 fixed mutations. Again, one quarter of what’s necessary.

Does sexual reproduction result in a rate of beneficial (or at least neutral) mutation fixing at least 8 times faster than asexual reproduction?

(Vox's error is, in a computing metaphor, to assume that the number of cores working to parallel process information is irrelevant.  He assumes that 4 cores process the exact same amount of information as 3,000 cores.)

Different forms of Hell

The pain hell is physical therapy for frozen shoulder. When we got to about the 90% mark in the third month, my physical terrorist changed tactics. He pulled my arm up behind my back like a bully or mugger. I thought I knew what a 9 on the pain scale was before that. I was wrong. I discovered whole new realms of pain, from “Mommy make the bad man stop!” to “I can’t breathe!” to “Please just let me die.”

The hot hell is walking off the back of the C17 and into the jet exhaust, carrying your kit plus 120 pounds of gear, onto the black asphalt that’s been soaking up the sun all day, into 143 degree heat and not a cloud in the sky. (Baghdad, July 2003)

The cold hell is patrolling all night in 40 below snow. (Trivia - that’s the same in F and C.) With two, three-round magazines. Taped over. In the ammo pouches, which were also taped over. Stupid Lieutenant wouldn’t release the parkas because “we might get them dirty”. Stupid terrorists got themselves caught at the base of the hill that we were halfway up. (West Berlin, January 1991)

The bitter hell is being PNG’d1 from your base, away from your team, after complaining about the base commander actively ignoring2 (as in locking down the gates to prevent us from going out to help while he and his XO listened to the fighting on the radio while laughing3) an attack on an American convoy on the MSR just outside the base, and being sent as a spare body on convoys for three months where the other NCOs have been told to ignore you, even though you’re senior to all of them. And then watching three good NCOs get railroaded by a corrupt, incompetent, incomprehensible4, abusive5 asshole6 of a Lieutenant. (northern Iraq, Aug-Nov 2004)

1

Persona Non Grata

2

UCMJ Article 92 section 3, dereliction of duty

3

UCMJ Article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer

4

Nigerian born and raised, then moved to Moscow, then moved to Paris, then moved to the USA and somehow got a commission as a counterintelligence officer despite not actually being a citizen. His accent was so thick and English so bad that we had no idea what the moron was saying most of the time.

5

Soliciting sex from a married female subordinate, then punishing her after she refused. Chaining a detainee to a fence, torturing him for a couple hours, then leaving him there to die and never reporting it.

6

When he found out the three NCOs were writing up a report about his abuses to give to the company commander (who, incidentally, believed all enlisted were scum), he proactively accused them of making racist remarks about him to get them sent home early for courts martial. I got home before he did, wrote it all up, gave sworn testimony to the trial court, and got all three released from confinement and immediate honorable discharges “for the good of the service”, including all future pay and allowances owed.

Vindication

I sometimes run across more proof that my theory about gravity is correct.  I watched this video by Veritasium the other day. Give it a watch. It’s worth a half hour of your time.  It's all about how the effect (gravity, electromagnetism) is not the cause (the potential energy fields).

Experiments with electromagnetism and gravity have independently shown that the field of potential energy is not only real, but is more fundamental than the forces we normally describe. You see, the potential energy fields have not only a slope, which we identify as a force, but an energy level. These energy levels can be indirectly measured, by comparing their differences.

I had no idea these experiments had already been conducted. They proved a great deal of my theory about the potential energy field and gravity.  That feels really good.

Color Revolution

Aside from Saul Alinsky’s1 Rules for Radicals, the Left has a playbook for revolution. It’s called Color Revolution. Here’s the general recipe, according to American Thinker.

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A“color revolution” ... is a modern form of orchestrated political upheaval designed to replace an existing government without traditional military invasion or civil war ... These operations follow a remarkably consistent playbook, refined over two decades by Western NGOs, intelligence-linked foundations, and State Department-affiliated entities (Open Society Foundations, USAID, etc.).

Authors describe seven stages of a color revolution. The stages include these tactics, which I’ll list in approximate chronological order:

• Portray the target government as illegitimate, authoritarian, corrupt, or “fascist.”

• Front-load allegations: accuse incumbent of planning the crimes the opposition intends to commit (rigging, regression, dictatorship).

• Fund and train NGOs, student groups, and opposition politicians to repeat a unified message.

• Create/amplify a unifying symbol or theme (e.g., Orange Man Bad).

• Manufacture an electoral crisis.

• Street mobilization.

• Public appeals to and moral blackmail of the military and police: “You’re with the people, not the regime.”

• Promises of immunity, future positions for defectors.

• Threats to those who support target government.

• Provoke a response, flood media with images of “peaceful protesters” being attacked.

• International legitimation as foreign governments and media recognizes opposition leaders as “legitimate” authority.

• Sanctions, frozen assets, diplomatic isolation applied to sitting government.

• New elections scheduled under international supervision.

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This is obviously what’s going on now in Minneapolis. It’s what has already happened in Seattle and Portland, which are now enemy-held territory. (Seattle 1999 anti-WTO riots.)

Those aren’t protesters out there attacking Federal law enforcement officers. They’re Leftist revolutionaries. And they are traveling from all over the country to do so.

Leftists organize. It’s what they do. They plot. They plan. They raise funds. They hold training sessions. They deliver supplies. (You don’t think all those professionally printed signs and pallets of bricks just magically appeared at Leftist planned events, do you?) They deliver crowds. (Dozens of charter coaches don’t just happen to show up at Leftist events.) They have their own communications networks. (Anybody else remember Journo-List?) They have medics and lawyers on standby. And they always, always have the media in their pocket.

Propaganda works. Terrorism is violence as political theater. Protests become violent in order to generate a response from the lawful authorities. You, the people watching and reading the news, are the true targets of all this violence and chaos.

1

Yes, Hillary Clinton really did work for him when she was young. Yes, she really wrote her college thesis on implementing his models for revolution.

By right of conquest.

"By right of conquest" is the main way land changes hands among nations.

If you don't believe that, ask the Germans in Königsberg.  Oh, wait, there aren't any, and it's now called Kaliningrad.  Free East Prussia!

A comic is worth 1000 words

I'm medically retired from the DEA, and I approve this message.

Stonetoss

International law and other myths

There is no such thing as international law. There are temporarily convenient agreements between sovereign governments. Laws, treaties, and contracts are mere words on paper without the power and will to enforce the intent behind those words.

A sovereign government is defined as that which holds a monopoly (or in some cases a plurality) over the use of organized force in its territory. (Disorganized auxiliaries are still part of the organization.) Might literally makes right - the right to rule over those without the power or will to oppose you.

“The Vexin’s mine because it’s got my troops all over it.” - Henry II, The Lion In Winter