wikipedia is wonderful

three topics have interested me lately--

1. the origin of life on earth. it seems we still cannot explain it, at least not yet scientifically. the whole series of articles i read was triggered by trying to learn more about biological viruses. fascinating little particles, these obligatory parasites. they inject a payload into an otherwise healthy cell and hijacks it. the virus forces the host cell to replicate the external agent, using whatever resources it can find inside.

while deadly (smallpox), viruses are an important cause of horizontal gene transfer, a critical element of biological evolution. fascinating!

they have genetic information, but viruses are not strictly 'alive'. they cannot self-perpetuate like living organisms can.

what is alive, then? certainly there existed a time on earth before life...

1. the connection between communism and totalitarianism.

for me, the 'last bastion' is lenin, and i have always considered him highly. was stalin an aberration? i think if you go down this line of thinking, the great man theory of history, you don't actually get very far. one of my mottos is 'the smallest unit of social agent is class'. this assertion goes for all methodological individualist philosophies, which, are ultimately liberalism.

1. the connection and interaction between the abrahamic faiths, especially in light of what's happening because of israel.

the more i read, them more i agree with edward said--we in the west treat islam as if it was an exotic form of barbarism. it is all a function of what he calls 'orientalism'.

i am delving deep into the life of the historical mohammed, as he lived and would have thought. why? i admit with shame that all i can pull out of my library on the topic of palestine is the qu'ran and a very battered old book on the prophet mohammed...