Arzakem's Biotopia

I'm back

2006-08-13T08:19:00.000+08:00

Wooh, I'm back from a year of slumbering. :D Involved much time on my other blog. Got a lot of things and photos to show in a few days - yes I will.

It's a Snowy Love Affair [Episode 2]

2005-11-11T21:37:00.002+08:00

"Hmmm... where could Rose be? She's off with the frantic guppies again? Maybe not. A pity, I really wanted to take her off to the rockies."

"Oh, there you are my lovely. What's with you here?"
"Jack, I'm sorry I didn't notice you. I was looking at the moonlight..."

"It's lovely! But nothing lovelier than you..."
"That's flattering."
"I have an idea, why don't we head to the rockies. The moonlight

shines brighter in there..."
"Uhmmm... ok... that's great."

alt="albino ice blue cichlid"/>

TO BE CONTINUED... ;(

It's a Snowy Love Affair

2005-11-05T19:23:00.001+08:00

I'm getting ready for a hundred babies!

Yeah, and my Albino Ice Blue Metriaclima could be delivering much in a few weeks. I'm in so much wishful thinking here but I just found out that my two "ice-blue's" are in a love affair. Mr Ice-Blue is chasing Ms. Ice-Blue from all over the pond so I had to remove them to be put in my so-called "Love Aquarium". Wish me or us luck and I'll be rearing youngs in a few weeks.

Leaning over the aquarium I overheard a love story (Scoundrel! You're eavesdropping!!!):

"C'mon Rose, I know you like me..."

"Uh, I'm sorry Jack but I know I'm needed somewhere..." "Wait!"

"So you think I won't come after you? I would even if you're far away."

"I'm sorry Jack... maybe some other time?" "I couldn't help it but I'm gonna wait...(sigh)"

"If you only knew Jack, if you only knew..."

To be continued!!!

A Fish Farm Trip

2005-11-05T18:21:00.000+08:00

Just about 10 kilometers from our place is a fish farm that has been breeding tropical fish for aquarists and fish fans for a long time already. I had the chance to visit it as I was searching for newer species for my ponds. It was a wonderful trip and I was longing for more foot energy though because I haven't visited everything as it was just plain enormous.

It was also incidental since I saw the largest Pleco in the farm. It was about 30 inches and it just costs 50 PP or about one dollar. I wanted a Pleco for my pond but not a monster like this. Anyway, I bought the shorter one though it still costs the same.

Romaing around, I saw all types of Cichlid. Cichlids are actually not only very beautiful fishes but they are perhaps easy to breed and are not very demanding fishes. There were peacocks (Oscars), Angelfish, Auratus, Pindani, Ice Blue, Yellow Labs, and Zebras. There were also live-bearers like swordtails, guppies, mollies, and platys. There were also bettas and they're all long-finned. I've been breeding bettas in the past and the bettas I saw there were just amazing. I could be planning on breeding with these later.

The only thing I need is more energy and foot muscle. :) Really. I just couldn't see it all. As the caretaker who was acting as a guide showed me farther, I simply turned my head. I've got another day or perhaps another "days".

Here goes some pictures. A pity though, that in my excitement I forgot to take pictures!

Those white things are young Albino Blue Ice cichlids. Great sight!

These are the smaller ponds that contain the cichlid youngs of all colors.

These larger ponds teem with angelfishes.

Occasional greens accent the ponds filled with young Pindani.

Frankly I never liked swordtails, but this sight changed the story.

Ubiquitous as they are, Japanese koi fishes are a great pond species.

Slimy Pond Pet

2005-10-31T17:21:00.000+08:00

I was surprised yesterday by my cousin's new pond entity - a common river eel. He took the eel from a river about 22 km from us. Actually he wasn't the one who caught this. He only paid some kids on the area to catch something for him. He was surprised when they came back with the eel. If he hadn't paid for it the eel would surely find its way cooked and eaten by these kids as this is a usual catch for them. Talks of larger eels stimulated our interest into going back to the place again. Let's just see if there's something bigger waiting for us there.

Eels can live on ponds as long as there is water movement and rocky crevices where it can hide in solace. I've had fire eels in my aquarium 2 years ago and it's fun to watch them pop their heads out to look for food.

My cousin supplied apple snails to feed it. I doubt it takes that but normal fish pellets could be better alternative.

This eel is about 18 inches long. A Big-headed slimy pet.

I hope you're not serious!

2005-10-31T16:58:00.000+08:00

Got this from unexplained-mysteries.com and it made me laugh.

One Fine Day

2005-10-28T09:20:00.000+08:00

Last night was irritating - imagine a road traffic to hold you for about an hour. And there's that strong rain that soaked me up while I crossed the streets. Moreso, I never had any jacket with me because I thought there won't be any rain since it was about 30 degrees Celsius yesterday morning. When I arrived home, I forgot to bring the DVD I was supposed to watch. "There goes another boring day...", I thought while slowly losing reality in 40 winks.

Morning arrives and I woke up in one of the best morns I've ever had. Birds chirp, roosters cock, and those turkeys cackle from our neighbor. Immediately I grabbed my phone and took some shots...click...

Here comes the sun, do-do-dodo, here comes the sun...

I sure hoped that coconut trunk could have grown leaves.

These carps are having coffee while that clam is waiting for cookie crumbs to fall over. I thought these clams won't survive but they did. It's a nice addition to my species-rich pond.

This Albino Oscar loves to eat from my hand. He's got a personality and I love it.

I wanted to have a shot with the dew but the camera won't work.

I always thought potatoes grow underground. This proves me wrong. These potatoes just grew from our backyard and it creeps up these trees and now it's having fruits. What? Potatoes are fruits?

I can hear this tree shouting, "Free me from this prison!!! Please!!!" It could easily get an Emmy.

I think I have to rename this blog by the way. I don't get any more dark thoughts with a fine day. And it's nice to have a brighter disposition. :D

Will you please send me your Pond pics?

2005-10-27T22:14:00.000+08:00

I'm definitely starting on another blog. This time it will be on my long-time interest - garden ponds. I find the hobby time-spending but very much stress-relieving. Somehow, I couldn't find any ponds around town except on some aquaria stores and they're not really that good. I've seen great pond pictures from other pond websites but never on blogs. If you could hand me over some pictures I would be very much delighted. My email is arzakem@gmail.com.

Perhaps if anyone can send me their own pictures then I could start on posting on my "pond blog" as much as possible and with enough data ;). Please help me on this.

Nice setup... shot from a garden shop

Another garden setup... lesser water though

Fairy mosses from my own pond

Two bettas after a roundbout. The other one's hidden (red)

That bright blue thing is my Yellow-tailed Acei

Rosa Parks and equality

2005-10-25T11:40:00.000+08:00

My post would be worth giving tribute to a woman who has inevitably brought forth racial equality in the most powerful of nations. A woman of great courage and fair judgment, she will be missed and honored by the world as one of history's most important persons.

I only hope that what she died promoting would forever be in our minds and that we may never get back to what we were before. I would always consider racism as deeds of barbaric and uncivilized nature. People like Mrs.Parks make us think better and go on living peacefully and beyond wars.

Me and my Moto

2005-10-21T21:40:00.000+08:00

Life has been cruel to me - all I can afford taking pictures is a Motorola e398 and it's not a digital cam. Huh, but that wouldn't stop me from taking pics with everything. And should I tell you that my cat is also named Moto? That's a revelation - I'm promoting Motorola mobiles and cool-named Cats.

Great week it was... here are proofs:

This is Moto. And he's looking at me (of course dumbo!)

I should call this "The Mysteries of Creation" (???????)

Raining Friday. I believe this road leads to nowhere but getting wet!

What could be ruining a beautiful natural shot?

A view at the pier after island hopping

Moto on a watchful eye over my tropical fish pond

And this is my Flowerhorn fish. Not named yet. Maybe I'll call him Rola.

I'm no professional photographer and I still wear glasses so don't ever judge my picture takes. Send me a digital camera if you won't stop complaining. :)

Not just a Jedi Mind Trick

2005-10-06T19:00:00.000+08:00

The Star Wars saga is over and the book is closed.

Somehow, it brings me to some realizations that Lucas' mindpot had been cooked and served to us in terms of character unknowingly. Do not fear! Yes indeed to the padawans of the multitude, Yoda whispers in the wind, "do not fear, fear begets anger, and anger begets aggression". Actually, it's a reference to all religious that classify themselves as "God-fearing". Will fear bring anger? That might be of no sense but if you fly for a bird's-eye view of the current sociological climate, it would seem that anger springs from too much of being "in fear". Afraid of losing power, a politician resort to ordering the massacre of his people; afraid of losing business monopoly, a conglomerate would absorb the few small-scale striving workers; afraid of being sent to a hellish place, a pastor would lead his followers to his personal infallible theories; afraid of losing everything, a man would willingly sacrifice his dearest.

You see it's all about fear. I was raised in fear and I grew up with it. Perhaps Lucas never really grasped into the oblique reference of his thinkings reflected into the characters of the Star Wars Universe yet he did made up something that made sense. Dividing that Universe into a Dark and Light Side was meant to be like the real world. Though it seems that being a Jedi, sans fear, sans love, sans emotion, is Utopic in nature - it is the very opposite of the Lighter side of reality. Maybe it explains why anger and aggression occurs everywhere. It's just that we were raised to be fearing and recessive that the darkness of hearts are bursting in silence. And who can tell that the Sith represents the aristocratic rule of reality? Was it that Love was associated with being with the darker side? Perhaps deceit occurs as ubiquitous as love and fear precedes them all.

I have to live without this fear. It shouldn't be a Jedi mind trick only but a better way of life.

In the defense of Evolution

2005-10-03T21:54:00.000+08:00

(The Defender's Guide may be reprinted or distributed, in its entirety, without alteration, but not for profit. All distribution must be made free of charge to the recipients. Anyone displaying a copy of the Defender's Guide at another web site is advised to check back periodically to see whether a new edition is available.)

Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism: IV: Evolutionary Biology

Mark I. Vuletic

[Last updated 17 January 2005]

Introduction
While creationists may disagree with one another about the age of the universe and the age of the Earth, they are unanimous in rejecting evolution. Strictly "biological" arguments are dealt with in this section, but arguments related to the fossil record are discussed in section V, and moral, theological, and philosophical objections are treated in sections VI and VII.
Index of creationist misunderstandings

4.1: The perfection of structures like the human eye is proof of creation.

4.2: "Irreducibly complex" things could not have evolved by small steps, and evolutionists have not even tried to show that they have.

4.3: There is no explanation for how the bacterial flagellum could have evolved.

4.4: Evolutionists cannot explain how feathers could have evolved.

4.5: Evolutionists cannot tell us exactly how most organisms and biological structures arose.

4.6: Evolutionists cannot explain how butterfly metamorphosis could have evolved.

4.7: The genetic variation exhibited in microevolution was put in deliberately put in place by the creator in advance, and did not arise from mutation.

4.8: Homologous features do not prove ancestral relationships between any organisms, because all classifications above the species level are man-made and arbitrary.

4.9: The peppered moth does not demonstrate evolution because no speciation occurs.

4.10: Mutations are always harmful.

4.11: Mutations are rarely beneficial, so they cannot drive evolution. Would you want your house built by a carpenter who made 99 bad houses for every good one?

4.12: Mutations never increase the amount of genetic information.

4.13: Chromosome numbers cannot change without producing harmful effects.

4.14: Punctuated equilibrium posits massive mutations which cause an organism to give birth to a radically different organism, like a reptile giving birth to a bird.

4.15: There are plenty of mutations that cause birth defects, but none that cause "birth improvements."

4.16: The rate of mutation is too small for mutation to serve as a source of variation.

4.17: Regardless of mutation rates, the rate of microevolution is too low to account for the macroevolutionary change observed in the fossil record.

4.18: Macroevolution remains unproved because no one has observed it. In fact, macroevolution is in principle unobservable, so evolution is unscientific.

4.19: No one has ever seen one species arise from another.

4.20: If evolution were true, fish would have evolved into amphibians and land animals more than once.

4.21: Sexual reproduction could not have come about through evolution.

4.22: There is no evidence for the rapid development of new species in nature.

4.23: Natural selection is a tautology: the fittest survive, and those who survive are the fittest.

4.24: Given uniform population growth rates, there could not have been humans before 10,000 years ago.

4.25: Haldane's Dilemma proves that human could not have evolved over the time span evolutionists say they did.

4.26: If humans had evolved from apes, there would no longer be any apes around.
Analysis

4.1: ASSERTION: The perfection of structures like the human eye is proof of creation.

RESPONSE: (i) The human eye is actually quite flawed, as evidenced strikingly by the fact that the photoreceptors in the eye are embedded upside-down in the retina. The photoreceptors face away from the lens of the eye, so that their attached blood vessels and bipolar cells (neurons that convey information from the receptors to the brain) rest between the receptors and the lens. This causes deficiencies in human vision, most notably a blind spot in the visual field of each eye caused by the holes where the neurons exit the eye.

The squid eye, by contrast, does not have this problem: its photoreceptors are wired in the correct way. This raises the question of why a creator whose crowning invention was the human being would make such a grave engineering error in the human eye but not in that of a presumably less important creature. As the title of a Jared Diamond article puts it, "If the creationists are right, God is a squid" (Diamond 1985).

Imperfect engineering is, of course, apparent in far more than the human eye. Useless and inefficient structures abound in the natural world; for instance, the hollow bones of flightless birds, the clumsy "thumb" of the giant Panda, and the vestigial pelvis of pythons and whales (Futuyma 1983:198-200). If these structures were created, they must have been designed specifically to look like they had evolved.

(ia) Some creationists argue that the bizarre wiring of the human eye is designed to filter out ultraviolet rays, and that the squid has normal wiring because it lives at depths where ultraviolet rays do not penetrate. Frank Zindler responds:
First of all, what good is it to protect the photoreceptors when the neuronal fibers coming from them are subjected to greater amounts of supposedly damaging UV radiation? (The neuronal fibers run in front of the photoreceptors.) The UV would be just as damaging to the neurons as to the photoreceptors. In fact, the major damage done by UV appears to be to the lens at the front of the eye. Why couldn't god have designed a cornea that reflected all UV, protecting all the internal parts of the eye? Now THAT would be a sign of design!
Secondly, the tiny difference in thickness between the photoreceptor layer and the anterior surface of the retina is of no significant importance with respect to UV protection.
Thirdly, and this is probably the most important point: If water absorbs UV so efficiently (and it does), why is it that fishes -- like all vertebrates -- have THEIR retinas on backwards also? (Zindler 1998)

(ii) But could biological structures as complex as the human eye, even admitting its imperfections, arise via evolution? Naturally, no one has observed the evolution of the eye in a laboratory because of the timescale involved, but one can look to the gradations in the present world for clues. In fact, nature displays progressions of simple to complex visual structures (Ecker 1990:65-66), such that one can see how the eye could have gradually developed.

(iii) Paul R. Gross explains how a model by Dan Nilsson and Sussanne Pelger has bolstered the case for the natural evolution of the eye by small steps:
In a 1994 theoretical paper, Nilsson and Pelger modeled one possible evolutionary pathway to the geometry of a fish-like eye from a patch of photo-responsive cells. There were already such cells -- among the oldest organisms on Earth -- a billion years before there were eyes. Nilsson and Pelger used pessimistic estimates of the relevant parameters (such as the intensity of selection) for their number-crunching. The point was to determine how many plausible, populational micro-steps of variation would be needed, under minimal assumptions, for very weak selection to yield a fish-like eye -- and then under reasonable assumptions to convert micro-steps into generations and years. The order of magnitude answer was 350,000 -- a geological blink of the eye. (Gross 2003)

There has been a strange controversy about the fact that popular writings by Richard Dawkins have incorrectly described Nilsson's and Pelger's work as a computer simulation, when it is in fact a mathematical model. Creationists appear to be very worked up about this, but as Nilsson himself explains:
I have not considered this to be very serious, because a simulation would be a mere automation of the logic in our paper. A complete simulation is thus of moderate scientific interest, although it would be useful from an educational point of view.
The Nilsson and Pelger (1994) paper remains scientifically sound, and it has not been challenged in any scientific journal with a peer review system. (Nilsson 2003)

4.2: ASSERTION: "Irreducibly complex" things could not have evolved by small steps, and evolutionists have not even tried to show that they have.

RESPONSE: According to creationist Michael Behe, who coined the term "irreducible complexity," an irreducibly complex system is "a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (Behe 1997). However, there is no reason at all why such systems could not evolve. Allen Orr explains:
An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become -- because of later changes -- essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. (Orr 1998)

As Orr notes, gene duplication often provides the route by which irreducibly complex processes arise:
Molecular evolutionists have shown that some genes are duplications of others. In other words, at some point in time an extra copy of a gene got made. The copy wasn't essential -- the organism obviously got along fine without it. But through time this copy changed, picking up a new, and often related, function. After further evolution, this duplicate gene will have become essential. (Orr 1998)

Not only are there mechanisms whereby irreducibly complex systems can be gradually evolved, but Russell Doolittle (who was unfairly criticized in Behe's book) also describes experimental proof that one of Behe's favorite examples of an irreducibly complex system (the blood-clotting process) is not even irreducibly complex to begin with:
Recently the gene for plasminogen was knocked out of mice, and, predictably, those mice had thrombotic complications because fibrin clots could not be cleared away. Not long after that, the same workers knocked out the gene for fibrinogen in another line of mice. Again, predictably, these mice were ailing, although in this case hemorrhage was the problem. And what do you think happened when these two lines of mice were crossed? For all practical purposes, the mice lacking both genes were normal! [A footnote here refers to Bugge et al. 1996.] Contrary to claims about irreducible complexity, the entire ensemble of proteins is not needed. (Doolittle 1998)

As for the claim that evolutionists have not even tried to posit and research mechanisms whereby allegedly irreducibly complex systems could have evolved, John Catalano (2004) gives short shrift to that claim.

For extensive links to articles by and on Michael Behe and his cavalcade of irreducible complexity, see John Catalano's "Behe's Empty Box" at www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm. For a beautifully illustrated critique of Behe along the same lines as Orr, see Keith Robison's "Darwin's Black Box: Irreducible Complexity or Irreproducible Irreducibility?" at www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html

4.3: ASSERTION: There is no explanation for how the bacterial flagellum could have evolved.

RESPONSE: I refer the reader to an article by Ian Musgrave on the evolution of the bacterial flagellum, at www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrave/essays/flagella.htm.

4.4: ASSERTION: Evolutionists cannot explain how feathers evolved.

RESPONSE: (i) The standard view is that feathers evolved from reptilian scales. One can see how this might have happened when one looks at gradations in the present world, where there seem to be intermediates between scales and feathers, often on the same bird. Christopher McGowan explains:
If we examine the wing of a penguin, we see a wide range of covering structures, from small structures that look like scales at the leading edge, to structures that are obviously feathers at the trailing edge. There are all shades in between. (McGowan 1984:119)

McGowan goes on to point out that
feathers and scales are essentially just variations on a theme; both are formed of a horny protein called keratin, and they both develop along similar embryonic pathways. (McGowan 1984:120)

4.5: ASSERTION: Evolutionists cannot tell us exactly how most organisms and biological structures arose.

RESPONSE: Evolutionists can account for many biological structures with considerable ease, as long as they are not held to the unreasonable standard of absolutely exact knowledge. For instance, as Douglas J. Futuyma writes,
One of the most amazing aspects of evolution is how easy it is to account for major transformations through rather simple changes in developmental processes. Most of the differences among different kinds of mammals are quite simply accounted for by changes in the relative rates of growth of different parts of the body. Speed up the elongation of fingers to get a bat wing; slow down the development of teeth or legs to reduce or eliminate them in whales; slow down the growth of the lateral toes and increase that of the middle one to get a horse's hoof. (Futuyma 1982:63-64)

4.6: ASSERTION: Evolutionists cannot explain how buttefly metamorphosis could have evolved.

RESPONSE: The evolution of butterfly metamorphosis is not especially well understood, but this is hardly damning evidence against evolution, since butterfly metamorphosis itself is not especially well understood. It is unfair to criticize evolutionists for not having an evolutionary explanation for a process, when the mechanisms underlying the process have not yet been detailed. Since evolution accounts so well for other processes and structures, it seems that the burden of proof in the meantime must be on creationists to demonstrate that butterfly evolution is not possible, which they have no hope of doing at this time, since they do not know the mechanisms underlying butterfly metamorphosis either.

4.7: ASSERTION: The genetic variation exhibited in microevolution was put in deliberately put in place by the creator in advance, and did not arise from mutation.

RESPONSE: (i) Since the kinds of creationists who tend to make this claim also tend to be Biblical literalists, it is worth pointing out that the claim cannot be true if the story of Noah's Flood is true. According to the Flood story, only two of each kind of creature (or at least of most kinds: there is disagreement between certain verses of Genesis) were taken onto Noah's boat, while God sent the rest to a watery grave. Since individual organisms can have at most two alleles for each gene locus (we are excluding plants and assuming that Noah did not have Klinefelter syndrome), this means that each surviving kind of organism could have at most four alleles after the Flood, regardless of how many alleles were created by God in the beginning. But we now see far more alleles per locus for many loci in the populations of most organisms, which means they could only have come into existence by mutation.

In fact, the creationist claim is even incompatible with the story of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve could at best hold four alleles per locus in their combined genome. But, as a typical example, locus HLA-DRB1 (one of the genes in the human leukocyte antigen complex) has 59 alleles (Ayala et al. 1993:78), which must have come from mutation.

(ii) More importantly from a scientific standpoint, experimentation with bacteria has shown that antibiotic resistance can and does arise from beneficial mutation, rather than being already present in the bacteria. Douglas Futuyma explains:
Joshua Lederberg did an experiment in which he grew thousands of colonies of genetically identical bacteria from a single bacterial cell that was unable to survive in the presence of streptomycin. He divided each colony of cells in two, and grew one half with and one half without streptomycin. A few of the colonies survived on streptomycin, because they carried new mutations for streptomycin resistance. (Futuyma 1983:137)

Since the bacterium from which the resistant colonies evolved was not itself streptomycin resistant, Lederberg's experiment proves that resistance is generated by a mutation, and is not a quality that needs to be present in bacteria from the start.

4.8: ASSERTION: Homologous features do not prove ancestral relationships between any organisms, because all classifications above the species level are man-made and arbitrary.

RESPONSE: Where taxa with fine differences are concerned, the classification of a given species may be a bit contrived (as is the case with transitional forms, which usually could be filed as easily under one class as another), but there are clear major differences between most taxa from genus to kingdom level. Still, the homologies persist across taxa, so either they were made by a deceitful creator who wanted to deceive everyone into believing evolution occurred, or else they constitute real evidence of the ancestral relationships between various kinds of organisms. While classification is a human endeavor, the similarities and differences between various organisms caused by their degree of relatedness constitute a reality independent of the choices we make in our classification system. (Ruse 1982:309-310)

4.9: ASSERTION: The peppered moth does not demonstrate evolution because no speciation occurs.

RESPONSE: Industrial melanism in the peppered moth was never intended as an example of speciation in the first place, bur rather as an example of microevolution through natural selection. If the standard account of the peppered moth is correct, then industrial melanism does in fact constitute an example of evolution -- one must simply be clear about exactly what is being claimed.

I should comment briefly on the recent flap surrounding the peppered moth experiments. A few respectable scientists argued relatively recently that the original peppered moth experiments were flawed. In typical fashion, a number of disreputable creationists seized upon this and blew it all out of proportion, claiming that the experiments had been hoaxes, or that they did not demonstrate natural selection at all. One should read the following letter by Bruce Grant, one of the reputable scientists in question, who rebuts the charge that fraud was involved in the peppered moth experiment, and affirms that the original experiment does indeed demonstrate natural selection quite clearly, at www.pratttribune.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2000/December/13-653-news92.txt. Ken Miller also privides a very readable presentation of the whole matter at www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html

4.10: ASSERTION: Mutations are always harmful.

RESPONSE: On the contrary, some mutations have been shown to be extraordinarily beneficial. For instance, consider the following report by George Bakken:
Microorganisms have acquired new enzymes that allow them to metabolize toxic industrial wastes never occurring in nature (e.g. chlorinated and flourinated hydrocarbons), and are an increasingly important method of pollution control (Ghosal et al., Science 228: 135-142, 1985). Susumi Ohno (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 81:2421-2425, 1984) found that one such new enzyme, nylon linear oligomer hydrolase, resulted from a frame-shift mutation. Frame-shift mutations scramble the entire structure of a protein, and so the enzyme is a random construct! As would be expected, this new enzyme is imperfect and has only 1% the efficiency of typical enzymes, bu the important thing is that it works (Bakken, n.d.)

Since the mutation documented by Ohno allows the microorganisms in question to consume short nylon oligomers as a primary food source, it certainly qualifies as a beneficial mutation. It is interesting to note that the acquisition of this new metabolic activity has been duplicated in the laboratory (although it is not clear whether it involved the same kinds of microorganisms, the same frame-shift mutation, or the same enzyme). Richard Harter reports:
In the experiments, non-nylon-metabolizing strains of Pseudomonas were grown with nylon oligomers available as the primary food source. Within a relatively small number of generations, they developed these enzyme activities. (Harter 1999)

Another example comes from researchers working with the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, who have identified "four genes, that, when mutated, can make these worms use energy more efficiently, feed and swim at a slower pace -- and live many times their normal life-span. Some of the experimental nematodes lived for almost 2 months, far longer than their expected 9 days" (Pennisi 1996:949; see also Lakowski 1996:1010-1013).

Yet another example, pertaining to humans and AIDS resistance:
Population geneticist Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute, his NCI colleagues Michael Dean and Mary Carrington, and their collaborators provide strong confirmatory evidence that people who have two mutant copies of the gene for CCRS (also known as CKRS), the chemokine receptor that HIV uses when it initially infects white cells, are highly resistant to HIV infection. Another, entirely new, finding is that people who get infected with HIV, but have one mutant copy of the CCRS gene, progress to AIDS more slowly than do people without the mutation. (Cohen 1996:1797)

Even some of the most seemingly deleterious mutations can have great adaptive value in certain environments. For instance, mutations that cause stunted wing growth in Drosophila increase the fly's ability to survive on islands where high winds are present (Ruse 1982:92). This explains why decades of irradiating Drosophila in the laboratory produced only less fit mutants: in a population's normal environment, virtually all mutations must be neutral or deleterious, because the population is already extremely well adapted to its environment (Moore 1983:11-13). But the same mutations that are deleterious in the organism's normal environment may become beneficial on the geographical fringes of a population, or in the event of environmental change throughout the entire geographical range of the population (a hurricane might wipe out all of the winged Drosophila on an island). It also offers a partial explanation why evolution should be expected to proceed in a punctuated manner on the geological time scale.

Finally, even certain classes of macromutations can be neutral or beneficial. Richard Dawkins presents an example with snake vertebrae:
The number of vertebrae in different species of snakes varies from 200 to 350. Since all snakes are cousins of each other, and since vertebrae cannot come in halves or quarters, this must mean that, from time to time, a snake is born with at least one more, or one fewer, vertebra than its parents. These mutations deserve to be called macro-mutations, and they have evidently been incorporated in evolution because all these snakes exist. (Dawkins 1996:103)

(iii) The young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis has declared this an argument that "should definitely not be used" by creationists. They advise using the argument critiqued in 4.12 instead.

4.11: ASSERTION: Mutations cannot be responsible for evolution, since they are usually deleterious. Would you want your house built by a carpenter who made 99 bad houses for every good one?

RESPONSE: This kind of criticism simply rests on a bad analogy, something like saying that since you stand little chance of winning the lottery with one ticket, therefore you stand little chance of winning the lottery with 10 million tickets. Here is a better analogy for the way mutation and natural selection work to improve things:

Suppose your house is able to reproduce itself at no cost to you. You allow it to reproduce until you have 100 new houses. Then you ask the carpenter to work on each of the houses, trying to improve them. If the creationist is right, the carpenter will damage 99 of the houses, but will improve one of them. So you throw away the 99 damaged ones, and keep the improved one. That one then reproduces itself 100 times. The carpenter goes to work on the 100 copies of the improved house. He damages 99 of them, but improves one of them further. It is simply enough to see that if the reproduction is fast enough, you will soon end up with a mansion.

The problem with the creationists' analogy is that it assumes that there is only one chance for mutation to produce a good result. Naturally, if God offers to mutate your DNA, you should refuse, because you are liable to end up worse. However, you can be pretty sure that if God mutates the DNA of every person on earth, someone is bound to end up better than he or she was before. It probably will not be you, but again, evolution does not require everyone to become improved, since even a single improvement will spread as organisms reproduce and compete with one another.

4.12: ASSERTION: Mutations never increase the amount of genetic information.

RESPONSE: It is unclear how to evaluate this claim without a definition of "genetic information." If the term simply refers to any functional sequence of DNA, then mutations that duplicate functional sequences of DNA obviously can very easily increase the amount of genetic information in a genome. If novelty is also required, then it is worth noting that point mutations to the duplicate sequences can generate novel functions without impairing the original function. This is, in fact, how hemoglobin evolved.

4.13: ASSERTION: Chromosome numbers cannot change without producing harmful effects.

RESPONSE: The first thing to note is that chromosomal aberrations are not universally harmful. As William Klug and Michael Cummings point out, there is normally diversity in chromosomal structure within single species:
While the chromosome number is commonly regarded as invariant for a given species, the arrangement of chromosomal material is often polymorphic through chromosomal inversions and translocations. These chromosomal aberrations usually have little direct effect on the phenotype because gene content is rearranged but not altered. (Klug and Cummings 1983:528)

Likewise, chromosome number can change without altering gene content through the fusion or fragmentation of chromosomes. The second edition of Colin Patterson's book Evolution contains a striking pictorial example, showing how the chromosomal patterns of Drosophila pseudoobscura and D. melanogaster can each be derived from the chromosomal pattern of D. subobscura by chromosome fusion: D. pseudoobscura by one fusion, and D. melanogaster by two (Patterson 1999:33)

4.14: ASSERTION: Punctuated equilibrium posits massive mutations which cause an organism to give birth to a radically different organism, e.g. a reptile giving birth to a bird.

RESPONSE: This is simply false. Punctuated equilibrium does not require macromutations (or "saltations"). It requires only that evolution proceed rapidly on the geological scale, with long intermittent periods of stasis. This is entirely consistent with ordinary rates and mechanisms of speciation, since "rapid" on the geological scale and "gradual" on the biological scale, are compatible.

4.15: ASSERTION: There are plenty of mutations that cause birth defects, but none that cause "birth improvements."

RESPONSE: As Edward E. Max writes:
Does the fact that we know many human detrimental mutations but essentially no clear ones mean that there have been no beneficial mutations in human history? Not at all, since there is a clear bias in what medical scientists have studied. The human mutations we know most about are detrimental because medical scientists preferentially study illnesses that cause significant morbidity and mortality. Consider the theoretical possibility that a beneficial mutation has occurred in a particular human gene; even if this mutation were identified by a comparison of the mutated gene in a child versus the unmutated version of the same gene in both parents, there is no way that this mutation would ever be recognized as beneficial. If the mutation increased intelligence, strength, longevity or specific disease resistance, this would never be apparent without long-term breeding experiments that could obviously never be done on humans. Therefore, since such beneficial mutations in humans could never be recognized in humans, our ignorance of examples cannot be taken as evidence that they don't exist. However, the experiments necessary to demonstrate a beneficial mutation can be done with laboratory organisms that multiply rapidly, and indeed such experiments have shown that rare beneficial mutations can occur. (Max 1999)

The situation is in fact somewhat better than Max describes, as there are known beneficial mutations in humans. For instance, as pointed out in 4.10, one mutation in the gene for CCRS causes one to progress slower from HIV to AIDS, and two mutations in the same gene increases one's resistance to infection by HIV in the first place (Cohen 1996:1797).

4.16: ASSERTION: The rate of mutation is too small for mutation to serve as a source of variation.

RESPONSE: According to Philip Kitcher:
The charge that mutations are rare depends on confusing the mutation rate per locus (on the order of 1 mutation per 100,000 loci) with the rate per zygote (of the order of 1 mutation per zygote) or the rate per population (of the order of 1 billion per population). From an evolutionary perspective, it is the last of these rates that is important. Hence, although [it] is right to claim that mutations are rare (in one sense), [it] is quite wrong to think that this spells trouble for evolutionary theory. Indeed, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory insists on the rarity of mutation at any individual locus, claiming, for this reason, that natural selection is a more powerful force than mutation (if mutation were extremely frequent, then selection would play a less crucial role). (Kitcher 1982:97)

Although mutation without natural selection is not expected to substantially transform a population (though it certainly can have an impact), natural selection causes beneficial mutations to spread quickly through a population. Moreover, if a mutant allele is only detrimental in homozygous form, it will take many generations to eliminate it from the gene pool, even if the homozygous form is lethal (Ruse 1982:79-84). This, as well as the common phenomenon of heterozygote fitness (cases in which the heterozygous form has an advantage neither homozygous form has, as with the malaria resistance conferred by a single sickle-cell allele), helps to keep populations supplied with a reservoir of mutant genes, some of which will have an advantage over the "normal" alleles in the event of environmental change. Populations do not have to wait around for lucky mutations to occur after the environment changes - the mutant genes, now beneficial, are already in the gene pool.

4.17: ASSERTION: Regardless of mutation rates, the rate of microevolution is too low to account for the macroevolutionary change observed in the fossil record.

RESPONSE: Philip D. Gingerich makes a few observations about this point, using the "darwin" (d) as a factor of change (1 d = change by a factor of e per million years, e being the base of the natural logarithm: see Gingerich 1983:159):
[R]ates [of evolution] on the order of 400 d probably characterize speciation and radiation in new adaptive zones...Microevolutionary rates measured on the scale of tens or hundreds of years are much higher than phyletic rates derived from fossils. A microevolutionary rate of 400 d is sufficient to change a mouse into an elephant in 10,000 years...Evolution on a microevolutionary scale is invisible in the fossil record, but this does not preclude microevolutionary processes operating over geological time from producing macroevolutionary change on the longer time scale. Microevolution and macroevolution are different manifestations of a common underlying process. (Gingerich 1983:161).

4.18: ASSERTION: Macroevolution remains unproved because no one has observed it. In fact, macroevolution is in principle unobservable, so evolution is unscientific.

RESPONSE: Although information in experimental science is acquired through observation, the observation of a great amount of indirect evidence of a process makes as good a scientific case as the direct observation of a process. As Michael Ruse asks, "[t]he evidence that I have a heart is all indirect, neither I nor anyone else ever seen it, but does anyone really believe that it is not a fact that I have a heart?" (Ruse 1982:58). In the same way, there is sufficient evidence for macroevolution that it can safely be considered a fact without direct observation of the process occurring in our time. We need not, as many unsophisticated creationists put it, observe cats changing into dogs right before our eyes, in order to have a good case for macroevolution.

4.19: ASSERTION: No one has ever seen one species arise from another.

RESPONSE: As one example, in 1964, Dr. D. J. Reish removed 5 or 6 polychaetes (Nereis acuminata) from Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor, and grew his sample to a size of thousands. in 1986, four pairs from this group were brought to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; the population at Woods Hole thus had gone through two bottlenecks, which are supposed to help drive evolution through genetic drift. In 1977-1978, two new cultures of N. acuminata were gathered from nearby Long Beach and Newport Beach, and grown under the same conditions as the Woods Hole sample. The three populations were later crossed, and it was found that the only crosses that would not produce viable offspring were the crosses involving the Woods Hole culture and the two new cultures. This signifies nothing less than speciation, and all in the laboratory as well. (Weinberg et al. 1992)

(iii) The young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis has has declared this an argument that "should definitely not be used" by creationists.

4.20: ASSERTION: If evolution were true, then fish would have evolved into amphibians and land animals more than once.

RESPONSE: First of all, many populations of fish are in fact continuing to evolve. One should not, however, expect them to again evolve fully into amphibians, because the niche they would be exploiting is already occupied by amphibians. D. H. Patent explains:
Many animals of today appear to be in transition between like in the water and life on land. These organisms can survive at least for limited periods of time in either environment. But we cannot say what the future holds for them. We do not know if they are "on the way" to a terrestrial existence. The chances are, in fact, that they are not really evolving away from an acquatic existence. A species cannot take over a niche that is already occupied by another unless it is in some way better adapted to that niche. Since present land animals have been evolving for millions of years, they have become about as well adapted to land living as possible; a newcomer which is trying to "fit in" is not likely to displace them. (Patent 1977:58-59)

4.21: ASSERTION: Sexual reproduction could not have come about through evolution.

RESPONSE: I will leave this question to Don Lindsay, who takes it up at www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/sex.html.

4.22: ASSERTION: There is no evidence for the rapid development of new species in nature.

RESPONSE: Here are two examples: (i) 3,500 years ago, a small lake was separated from Lake Victoria by a sandbar. There are now five species endemic to the new lake; they have evolved from the original species in a geological instant (McGowan 1984:29). (ii) A population of Nereis acuminata isolated in 1964 was no longer able to interbreed with its ancestors by 1992 (Weinberg et al. 1992).

4.23: ASSERTION: Natural selection is a tautology: the fittest survive, and those who survive are the fittest.

RESPONSE: (i) Fitness is never defined in terms of an organism's ability to survive; rather, it is defined in terms of the organism's reproductive success.

(ii) Robert Pennock explains a second problem:
Consider the formula: May the best man win. It seems harmless, but the creationist now points out that we determine which team is best by seeing which wins. If that is what it means to be "best," then the expressed wish seems to reduce to "May the team that wins be the team that wins." It is thus vacuous dogma, objects the creationist, to subsequently explain who won in terms of one team's being "better" than the other. However, we sports fans are not fooled into abandoning the game by such arguments. Of course we do determine which is the best team by looking at its record of wins , and we would certainly explain why it won the trophy by noting its superior record over its rivals. But we understand that this is not the end of the story...even though we do judge on the basis of record, we do not doubt that it is the physical traits of a team, its superior characteristics and playing ability, that make it better than the others. Understanding this, we also understand that it is possible that the best team might not win...This parallels the distinction that biologists make between evolution by natural selection and evolution by natural drift, and the mere fact that we recognize such distinctions is by itself sufficient to show that the tautology objection does not hold in either sports or evolutionary theory. (Pennock 1999:101)

Pennock is pointing out what Mills and Beatty explicitly state: that fitness is better described in terms of an organism's propensity to leave offspring, than in terms of the actual number of offspring that organism leaves. Quantitatively, fitness (relative to an environment) should be understood as the expected number of descendants to be left: "the weighted sum of [possible numbers of descendants], where the appropriate weights are the probabilites of [leaving that number of descendants]" (Mills and Beatty 1979:11). Since the idea of fitness as propensity to leave offspring does not entail that an organism will in fact leave any offspring at all, the idea is thus not tautologous.

To put it yet another way, alleles that increase in frequency in a population do not necessarily do so because they confer greater fitness upon their hosts - some alleles increase in frequency because of genetic drift and bottleneck effects. Organisms that reproduce more than their peers due to sheer luck and happenstance are not automatically fitter, even though they are the survivors.

(ii) The young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis has declared the argument that natural selection is tautologous "doubtful, hence inadvisable to use" by creationists.

4.24: ASSERTION: Given uniform population growth rates, there could not have been humans before 10,000 years ago.

RESPONSE: Population growth rates are not uniform. Robert Pennock elaborates:
While application of the principle of uniformity makes good sense when speaking of radioactive decay or random mutation, it does not work so simply given what we know of the history of human population size...Data on other animal species in nature reveal that population size is typically highly variable, with cycles of increase and decrease that average a growth rate of zero, which is what scientists believe held for most of the early history of the human species as well. It was only the advent of agricultural production, the development of permanent settlements and cities, and the introduction of mechanization that allowed the rate of human population growth to depart significantly from this norm to achieve exponential increase. (Pennock 1999:225)

4.25: ASSERTION: Haldane's Dilemma proves that human could not have evolved over the time span evolutionists say they did.

RESPONSE: I have not been able to assess this claim myself, so I refer the reader to two other sites that discuss it:
Robert William's very technical response at www.gate.net/~rwms/haldane1.html.
Mark L. Bakke's comparatively non-technical response at http://www.bakkster.com/r_crea18.htm.

4.26: ASSERTION: If humans had evolved from apes, there would no longer be any apes around.

RESPONSE: (i) Nothing in evolutionary biology says that humans evolved from apes. Rather, humans and apes both evolved from a common ancestor which (as it so happens) is not around anymore.

(ii) Even if evolutionists did claim that humans evolved from apes (because there are instances when evolutionists claim that a species is descended from another species still in existence today; apes and humans are just not one of these instances), to say that such evolution is impossible because there are still apes around today would be like arguing that an American cannot have Japanese ancestry since there are still Japanese people around.

(iii) The young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis has disavowed this argument as an argument that "should definitely not be used" by creationists.
References

F. J. Ayala et al. 1993. MHC polymorphism and human origins. Scientific American 269(6):78-83.

G. S. Bakken. [n.d.] Creation or Evolution? Berkeley: National Center for Science Education. [Pamphlet]

M. Behe. 1997. Molecular machines: experimental support for the design inference. www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_mm92496.htm.

J. Catalano. 2004. Publish or perish: some published works on biochemical evolution. www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publish.html.

J. Cohen. 1996. Receptor mutations help slow disease progression. Science 273(5283):1797-1798.

R. Dawkins. 1996. Climbing Mount Improbable. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

J. Diamond. 1985. If the creationists are right, God is a squid. Discover 6(6):91.

R. F. Doolittle. 1998. A delicate balance. bostonreview.mit.edu/br22.1/doolittle.html.

R. L. Ecker. 1990. Dictionary of Science and Creationism. Buffalo: Prometheus.

D. J. Futuyma. 1983. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. New York: Pantheon.

P. D. Gingerich. 1983. Rates of evolution: effects of time and temporal scaling. Science 222:159-161.

P. R. Gross. 2003. A scientific scandal. www.talkreason.org/articles/blurred.cfm#scandal.

R. Harter. 1999. Are mutations harmful? www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html.

P. Kicther. 1982. Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. Cambridge: MIT Press.

W. S. Klug and M. R. Cummings. 1983. Concepts of Genetics. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill.

B. Lakowski and S. Hekimi. 1996. Determination of life-span in Caenorhabditis elegans by four clock genes. Science 272(5264):1010-1013.

E. E. Max. 1999. The evolution of improved fitness by random mutation plus selection. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/fitness.html.

C. McGowan. 1984. In the Beginning...: A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists are Wrong. Buffalo: Prometheus.

S. K. Mills and J. H. Beatty. 1979. The propensity interpretation of fitness. In Sober 1994:3-23.

J. A. Moore. 1983. Evolution, education, and the nature of science and scientific inquiry. In Zetterberg 1983:3-17.

D.-E. Nilsson. 2003. Beware of Pseudo-science: a response to David Berlinski's attack on my calculation of how long it takes for an eye to evolve. www.talkreason.org/articles/blurred.cfm#lund.

A. H. Orr. 1998. Darwin v intelligent design (again). bostonreview.mit.edu/br21.6/orr.html.

D. H. Patent. 1977. Evolution Goes on Every Day. New York: Holiday House.

C. Patterson. 1999. Evolution: Second Edition. London: The Natural History Museum.

E. Pennisi. 1996. Worm genes imply a master clock. Science 272(5264);949-950.

R. T. Pennock. 1999. Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

M. Ruse. 1982. Darwinism Defended: A Gudie to the Evolution Controversies. London: Addison-Wesley.

E. Sober (ed.). 1994. Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology: Second Edition. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

J. R. Weinberg et al. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory. Science 46(4):1214-1220.

J. P. Zetterberg (ed.). 1983. Evolution versus Creationism: The Public Education Controversy. Phoenix: Oryx Press.

F. Zindler. 1998. www.2think.org/hii/message15.shtml.

Copyright © 2005, Mark I. Vuletic. All rights reserved.

FFVII: Advent Children (Warning - Spoilers Ahead!)

2005-10-02T11:30:00.000+08:00

When I've watched FF: Spirits Within years ago, I was a little desperate - this ain't the Final Fantasy movie in my mind. But seeing FFVII: Advent Children is a masterpiece and this might be the one final fantasy we've been waiting for!

The movie itself captures my nostalgic moments of playing it in the good ol' PSX reminiscing my casual irks defeating Final Weapon. It was like being into the world off FF7 again - seeing familiar faces, places, summons, and even ubiquituous moogles. When Kadaj, the lead antagonist character, summoned Bahamut and seemingly would want to summon another, I admit I had wished it was Leviathan. Anyway, the excellent piece is movie-long and wouldn't leave you longing for more. But I still wished there were more and it was longer, like a 3-CD set game.

For a list of familiar appearances, I have listed it below. And if you're someone who grew up playing the game and living up to defeat and finish Sephiroth off, here's your final fantasy to see that you never buried him deeper than one foot in the ground. The story happens almost about 2 years since the playstation game.

One thing - no chocobos were seen in the game.

**Familiar Characters who appeared:
Cloud Strife
Tifa
Aerith
Zak
Sephiroth
Barret
Marlene
Vincent
Yuffie
Red XIII
Cait Sith
Cid
The Orphans and Denver
Rufus (he's alive really)
Rude & Reno
Shion & Elena
Jenova (never in the flesh)

**Familiar Places:
Midgar
Shinra
The Slums
Frozen Crater
Outskirts of Midgar
Ajit and the Forgotten Capital
Zak's home
The ruined Church where Aerith's flowers grow

**Familiar Things worth noticing:
a moogle (?)
materias
Cloud's sword collection
Shinra motorcycles (cool!!!)
Tifa's store and exact surroundings
Cloud & Tifa's limit breaks
Cid's Sierra

And here are the 8 battle scenes (that's right - EIGHT) I've counted. These battles would make the Matrix look like an old Chinese DragonballZ movie.

1. Cloud vs Kadaj's boys outside Midgar
2. Tifa vs Loj inside the ruined church
3. Cloud & Vincent vs Kadaj and his boys at the Forgotten Capital
4. Rude & Reno vs. Kadaj's boys at the Midgar Plaza
5. Cloud and his allies vs Bahamut at Midgar
6. Cloud vs Kadaj's boys off a motorcycle fight
7. Cloud vs Kadaj
8 Cloud vs Sephiroth (yeah!!!!)

To all FFVII fans, never ever miss this movie/DVD. It's a helluva dream come true.

The Greatest Love of All

2005-09-30T19:55:00.000+08:00

A month ago I saw this man, he was on his bareskin clothing. He's got scars all over his body and he's howling and talking to himself. Lately on my way home, I saw him with hands on his pocket and wearing a jacket and with a hidden face he walked past by me. Folks in the neighborhood treat him good-for-nothin' and his wife went away defeated by her purpose of bringing her husband back to reality. He doesn't care.

A few years back this same person used to borrow Nintendo rom cartridges from me. I'd laugh thinking old people also had time for playing. He'll play with his youngest son till their thumbs would ache. He's proven to me a few times that he's a man of few words. He doesn't talk long and he just say what he thinks. That's particularly rude for me, though.

Gone crazy he could be but that does not remove my respect to a man who once saved his eldest son's life in no regards to the condition that he could be paying it for his own. So many years back when I was still too young for old talks, this person came home from work only to be faced with the screams of his neighbors that his son has fallen down a 15-foot deep well near their house. Exhausted by the day's work yet his spirit was forced to act in the swiftness of time, he jumped into the well. Perhaps he overheard from his neighbors that his son had been floating down under for too long a period of time that he never thought of losing another second. His jump was perfect, his reflexes were keen and he hugged his son from down under perhaps reaching for a ray of life from his face. He was crying maybe yet his tears were submerged with the freezing water from the well. Perhaps he was swearing on why his neighbors never looked for a rope or tie somethign down upon which his son can grasp into. They were both well afterwards. Seemingly well.

A couple of years passed and he changed. Perhaps the shock? Or maybe the revelation that nobody really cares? He's got to learn from it and he did.

Somehow he's born under a bad sign and just for another year or two later he lost his youngest son. The darkest thought of which is water. I'm not superstitious and I just don't want to subscribe by it but in the most unpleasant of things, his youngest son died by drowning in a pit filled with rainwater! I am no father but I would want to tell from his eyes that night we visited the wake that he was swearing and raising one hand unto God, screaming in his darkest thoughts, "Why? Why? Why?". But no - he did not. He looked at me and softly spoke in a manner he I rarely hear him, "God has His plans for my little Magie. He's supposed to have done his part." I left a sigh out.

Lately, he's been seen walking around in barenaked clothings with scars all over his body and yet he care no more. Maybe he was thinking everyone doesn't care really. His wife left to live with his eldest son away seeing and believing his husband to be out of his mind. He lived alone afterwards.

I couldn't think of a better title for this post than to put it that way - a father loves his son with everything in him he wills to give. Perhaps this could be the greatest love?

I couldn't say. I had to be in the position anyway.

New Flash Clock design

2005-09-28T22:24:00.000+08:00

Ok, here goes another simple flash clock that can be in your blog like mine. For a good example of this clock, see my current clock on the right. Currently, I'm still working on my flash templates for blogs. It's just a very busy month for me and I can't seem to find more time for such. I'm not a complicated Flash coder so sorry if you find my clock bland. Anyway, it looks simple and fit for me. :P

For the codes, please see my previous post.

Type 2 Red and Type 2 Blue

Here are my links:
Type 2 Red: http://my.opera.com/arzakem/homes/files/2red.swf
Type 2 Blue: http://my.opera.com/arzakem/homes/files/2blue.swf

Please download my flash files and upload it on your own server because at any time I might be removing it when I ran out of space.

Get my Flash Clocks for your Blog

2005-09-22T21:53:00.000+08:00

Would you like these clocks on your blog?
(See my sidebar for working clock. The following are just still images)

If you think they're cool you can put it into your site by putting the following tags on your template e.g. your sidebar or wherever. [Note that you must change the line in red with the URL of the clock you liked as given below and that you can personalize the size of the clock by changing the values in red]:


  <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
   pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
   width="176" height="200"
   name="clock" src="PUT-LINK-OF-CLOCK-HERE"
   bgcolor="#FFFFFF" quality="high"
   swLiveConnect="true" allowScriptAccess="samedomain">
  </embed>

Links for each clock:
A. Red Clock
URL: http://my.opera.com/arzakem/homes/files/redc1.swf
B. Blue Clock
URL: http://my.opera.com/arzakem/homes/files/bluec1.swf
C. Purple Clock
URL: http://my.opera.com/arzakem/homes/files/purpc1.swf

I'd be adding more colors and more digital/analog types of clock soon. If you have anything to suggest however, feel free to leave a comment. :)

My Aquarium Pets

2005-09-21T21:26:00.000+08:00

ARZY the Archer Fish

Lately I've been engrossed with my aquarium fishes. It's a great stress reliever considering that I work 12 hours and commute 32 kilometers every day. At home I have a pond and an aquarium that I put my much attention nowadays second to my PC. No more guitars and that concludes my post last July. This night I made a flash movie for my fish and I started with Arzy, my archer fish. He should have a partner but the poor thing died when I put them both in my pond. Arzy got well and he's a great shooter. Last Sunday, I was surprised when he spit-shot me while I was watching him. See my swishmax-done flash for Arzy by clicking here to download or view.

CHICO the Betta

Here's my majestic fighter. Actually I have many fighting fishes but I like Chico most. He's definitely not afraid of anything, even Oscar the Cichlid. Bettas or fighting fishes are abundant here in my place and cost very cheap. Chico had been with me for 4 months already and I made a flash of him capturing what he always do best --- floating.

See him on the sidebar or download/watch here.

Flash on my Blog Template

2005-09-19T20:58:00.000+08:00

Now I just got tired of looking into my former "lifeless" Blogger template. Moreso, I needed to change and improve my dirty old CSS-infused template. Actually, this CSS-infused Template is a sort of Mr. Frankenstein to me - being made up of so varied CSS stylings I took from other templates. Okay, anyway, here it is and I don't know if you like it. Well, conceit as I would always do but I really liked it. I mean it's "alive", it has sound and you can turn it off anytime, and it has that gloomy look. I was experimenting for almost an hour already and finally it's done. What got me into much reencoding was when I tested it to too many monitor resolutions. I'm planning to create free templates (CSS/HTML) with Flash content like this. Sound's good? What do you think?

Eyes Wide Shut

2005-09-17T09:13:00.000+08:00

Yesterday we succumbed into an emergency. My aunt next door was quivering and wasn't responding to us. Immediately she was sent to a hospital about 7 kilometers away. I was really surprised considering my aunt is a strong woman even at 62. It was such a revelation to me that every person doesn't have a clue about how healthy we are really and just at a sudden be crawling into a hospital. Life really is a mystery and more to death. Somehow, we are glad she is okay now and just this morning, my brother who was watching over her on the hospital exclaimed that she is okay.

I recalled my hospital rush yesterday and I just couldn't get a clue either to what I witnessed - it seems that there are more nurses and doctors than patients there. We were galloping on the halls of the hospitals and we couldn't see anybody around. The wards are in 4 beds but yet only one sets of the 4's are filled.

So why surprising? The hospital we admitted my aunt is a hospital labeled as "private". Here in the Philippines and even elsewhere, you can find private hospitals that give you most of your medical requirements for a good price as opposed to public hospitals who can give you free service yet you have to buy or supply the medical requirements that the hospital cannot provide. I always visit public hospitals and to an irony of much extent, you couldn't see a hallway but a crowded corridor of beds, patients unattended and yet unadmitted, nurses rushing to patients at a ratio of 1 is to 227, and doctors turning amnesiac due to the high doctor:patient ratio of 1:800. Good heavens, I couldn't understand why the line between wealthiness and poverty be kilometers apart!

I kept asking myself how this private hospital had so much space in it when the public hospitals are very very very very crowded. Could be the system we entrusted our fate be too far-fetched when government officials keep promising to provide more and more jobs? I want to keep the faith to the aristocratic system we chose but next week we'd be facing more price hikes as the expanded VAT will be in effect for the umpth time. Maybe the public hospitals would be much more crowded next week as many more Filipinos get into deep migraines as everything gets into higher value.

Mrs. Arroyo should stop looking outwards and ponder to his people for once - it just couldn't help sacrificing your own people for the price of a deniable utopic future for the country. You just shouldn't lead with eyes wide shut.

Tomorrow Strikes!

2005-09-11T20:36:00.000+08:00

It has just been announce - tomorrow we have a "national strike day".

Jeepney drivers, operators and other concerned NGO's will be back on the streets but in opposite directions with the thousands of students, workers and employees willing to go to school or go to job yet without any means of going there. If some have their own cars and other transports yet there will be vigilant "strikers" swearing to get the streets free of movement.

I don't like strikes. Why? Because "strikes" are bad for business - that I learned in college. Let me blurt out with my personal observations...

Strike means no class tomorrow. Students get blunt for a day;
Strike means no money for drivers of passenger vehicles;
Strike means violence (always a case here so don't argue);
Strike means business is down;
Strike means discontent;
Strike means injustice;
Strike means higher transport fare and lower peso-value;
Strike means politicking;
Strike means the rich gets richer;
Strike means minus to my salary because I will be absent forcibly;
Strike means noise in the streets;
Strike means I should stay home and sleep (that's not productive);
Strike means some people are being paid (strike-maniacs!);
Strike means our country is getting close to civil disobedience;

I am sorry for the local organizations that always strike and strike and strike. I believe they are doing something for the people but sometimes it's just not that way. I just heard from the radio last night that one head of an association of jeepney operators here declared that they just wouldn't join the strike tomorrow. I remembered this association official also declared full support to another strike just about a month ago asking for a 2-peso increase in jeepney fares. The fare increase was approved and at a big 3-peso rise. Tomorrow the strike will be to put down the law that was instrumental of these fare hikes and Mr. Official will not join it because it could lower the fares again. STUPID FAT HUNGRY CORPORATE SUCKERS! I believe these people control the strikes and the price hikes.

Enough for me to dislike strikes. I just can't get to thinking how most of the Filipinos got addicted to coming out into the streets. As for me I believe I'm just a job-addicted service-manic humble employee willing to teach my students the virtue of swallowing your bone of contentment, and am not blind either.

Tomorrow I'll be on the streets for the early rush of riding the morning transports to 16 kilometers ahead where I teach. At 6 AM the strike will start and I'd be staying in school until 6 PM when the strikes are going to end. At least, when my students arrive, they wouldn't go home saying "NO CLASS, IT'S A STRIKE!"

"Do not judge the moron who thought he saw something shine just because the wise never noticed so much they've both stayed long in the dark."

No crying, will you...

2005-09-05T19:52:00.000+08:00

I loved this young lass. She's a student of mine in Algebra 2. I always see her as a good, independent, and a fast-learning student. She would always ask me more questions after each lesson. It's as if my discussions weren't enough, she would draw an equation or a problem on a piece of paper and hand it to me for close scrutiny.

Not really the "teacher's pet" but I believe she would easily take the post. Physically, she doesn't have the looks. But she has guts and that's enough masking. I've known girls when I was young and admired there beauty and later just ponder on how... and why... good-graciously did I ever fall for such a mocking face. But looks don't discern what the mind can be capable.

She's my mathematical wonder, but I think I couldn't see any DaVinci Rectangle in her. To be of gratitude for giving me less time educating her (and sometimes making her the class tutorial session), I would always give advises to her and build up whatever she's building inside. But she's got too much guts, and sometimes she will act too sarcastic. For the Filipinos, respect is very much important. I believe she has less of it. Sometimes, maybe because of too much familiarity, she would cross the thin line between being a student and being his teacher. She would talk to me with no reverence at all. Her other teachers notice it also. Kids these days, that's just what I would say, of course saving enough chastity to my students favor.

Her classmates doesn't like her attitude too. She's got that egocentric attitude that would always be unwanted by her classmates. "I can do it!", that's a casual line for her.

To that I was much concerned. I believe in character as a saving grace for the feeble-minded. But not this way. My favorite Math wonder is spinning calculations easily but she's got no good soul in her. It's time for Super-ME to do something.

And so we planned. My other students, her friends also, devised a sneakingly good plan to make her cry. That's great, I was doing it single-handedly when I was your age kids! Naah.

It's our Math class and miss Math wonder is already there on her usual seat, and oh with that sly, demonic grin.

Of course, in a split of a second, after the very first question, the whole class deafeningly acknowledge her shrill, "Sir, I know that, I can do that! Pick me!!!" Okay, okay. Then she answered on the board. Then at the count, one - two - three...

Everybody yawned and dropped their heads on their desks. Nobody made a sound. I sat on my chair and looked away saying, "That's great." Miss Math Wonder wondered for a moment. What's happening? You can't do this... then she burst into tears.

I was cruel. We were cruel and we felt it. So we said sorry to her and explained why and what our reasons were.

After much explanations, she probably learned something from her and she said sorry to everyone.

Sometimes it takes a little cruelty to foster the necessity of change. My Math wonder really learned a lesson that day, and that lesson was more than what she nimbles in numbers easily - it's a lesson worth learning for the heart. ;)

Learning Intervention Materials

2005-09-04T22:52:00.000+08:00

This is actually something I should have posted weeks ago but I just had no time.

It's about a seminar I attended together with some colleagues. Actually, I believe I was just forced by our principal to attend. Being the youngest in the faculty really is a pain. With all the bullyings, they always work for me. The seminar, which was held in another school about 18 kilometers from us, was about the introduction of what the trainers call "Learning Intervention Materials". Not really a super-unique, stellar idea, but this is just worth a try. This so called "learning intervention materials" are actually teaching aids that are targeted basically on the most difficult parts of the lessons taken from each grading period. Before you would make such teaching aids, there are some things to identify first. The steps if you would:

     #1. Identify the question from the periodical exams that got the most mistakes.
     #2. Associate the basic learning objectives from the curriculum upon which that question falls.
     #3. Subtask the particular objective or in other words, further break down the objective into subtasks. For example, if the objective is adding monomials, the subtasks would include grouping like terms etc.
     #4. From the subtasks, create an interesting teaching aid which would be the "Learning Intervention Materials". In that case, it could be in the form of Comic books that hasten the learning, or a workshop at that.

This wasn't easy. Maybe it would have been easy for other subjects like English or Science but not in Math. Anyway, it took us some time to discuss on how to do our materials. First of all, we never had concrete exam results that time since the exams are still off schedules. Later we agreed on choosing by ourselves what topic or particular objective we should choose, not relying on exam results this time.

I chose multiplying monomials. It's not because it was easy, but because in my experience, it was really something my students in the past have gotten much confusions. After the day was over with much discussions and hoopla over the individual assignments, I went home but not after passing by a store to buy some materials that would include a clear book, glue, some color pencils, scissors, and some art paper. After arriving at home, I took some sleep (that was a 30-km trip!). After a while, I positioned myself on the computer and searched for ideas on the Net. What would I do - a comic book or a magazine? That's hard. Later that evening, after looking for some ideas, I got Marvin (the lazy robot from H2G2) and "Deep Thought" as my Math Comic Book Heroes. Yeah, they'll love it.

Ok, I admit. I believe I am one of those lucky few to have gotten a heavenly gift of drawing and sketching. I was a skillful artist from way back high school so it took me 5 hours (5 hours!!!) to make that "Learning Intervention Material".

I don't like bragging, but eventually, my work got flying stars the next day. Our seminar leaders borrowed my work for another seminar schedule on the South. "That's lovely," I smiled thinking I've got my signatures all over that comic book. Seemingly, the seminar was a success and we've had so much fun.

Really? Not really. Well, in the first place, not all teachers were as artistically inclined. Browsing through their works in the gallery, I could pinpoint some from the colorful works. Some that were just too plain boring, some that were just soo stupid, some that were just there for the sake of the Certificates we receive afterwards, and some just well done too cheap. At least they tried.

It's just not being productive after all. I mean, why does the Education Department make seminars like this? Maybe the Department was just expecting much from its teachers to be comic-editors, or publishers? I was lucky to be skillful but it took me 5 hours to do such a material. Why can't the Department just take some Master Teachers and fund a seminar like this of which the results would be published and delivered right to our classroom doorsteps. Could it be that the Department is just putting much load on us teachers by not spending on materials like these which could have been done by publishers with comic artists on the sketchpad? I believe it just wouldn't work that way.

Woah!!!

2005-09-03T11:19:00.000+08:00

[ read this on my Opera Journal ]

The Intramurals has just got over and I'm picking up pieces of confetti on the floor. Looking closer, of course, it wouldn't be confetti but cement sacks torn into bits!

Oh no, not my room again. This time the Public Works are totally bombarding my room with a smear-up campaign. But anyway, it's for my students own safety. You see my classroom is part of a 4-room edifice who seems to be a good example of how Corrupt Projects always happen in constructing Public Buildings. I could easily apply for the "2005 Search for Leaning Towers" with my classroom. This is why I am always worried. Inside the classroom, you'll easily sense that somehow the room is like inclined to the left in a few degrees. Hopelessly I just tell my students to refrain from jumping.

Seems like the cavalry has arrived. Our congressman funded for the repair (I could label it as a scaffolding! anyway thanks.) of the 4-room building. This time, they are making it right. My older co-teachers once explained how the funds for the old building got corrupted. It works like a simple subtraction to me:

Government will hire Contractor A for the job for x pesos;

Contractor A will hire Contractor B to do the job for him for the amount of x - a pesos;

Contractor B will hire Contractor C to do the job for him for x - a - b pesos;

Contractor C will hire Contractor D to do the job for him for x - a - b - c pesos;

God knows what's next.

It's a great formula for "corruptive engineering", I should say and here is the negative slope function f(x) = -x^2.

It's a bit comforting they're doing it right this time and I'm hoping so. I just don't want to get into delivering lessons and suddenly finding ourselves falling and crumbling down into debris and dusts like the WTC. For the student's sake, do your best this time!

Sketch Up!

2005-09-03T07:53:00.000+08:00

I've got nothing to do lately so I pour some brains out on a marvelous software like SketchUp. For those of you who has never met the software yet, it's pretty CAD-like, it's 3D, and what's so cool with it is the short learning time. You can draw a pretty good design quickly and with less effort. What's more, you can apply textures in your creations. Download more textures from their site above or you can use your own photos as textures to make your work look realistic. All its features are just what you need from any CAD software. Only thing, I don't know how to create spheres or maybe it just has no functions for it. Hmm?

Anyway, here are my creations (the first one is my Drugstore design with my logo on the side and the second one is my transparent 2-storey computer store plan).

Design 1. Arzakem's Drugstore

Design 2. Arzakem's Computer Solutions

Believe me but it took me just about 5 minutes for each design. Now, how do you find them?

Damé

2005-08-25T19:36:00.000+08:00

She will be missed. Certainly.
Damé (read "dam" with a goat's mee) left us almost 5 years ago. But she is missed and will always be. She was a charming stocky woman of humble height and complexion as brown as her garden soil. Her legs would arc like bows pressured against the ground. She had that noticeably black thick hair that would unfurl into a wavy length reaching her shoulders. She had finely-drawn pencil brows above her dark deep eyes that would give you an inch of fear in a single look. And who would ever forget her faved fashion - stripes and tucked in just above the belly? Damé wasn't really a charming woman, but she was my fifth grade teacher.

But this is not how I remembered my "maestra". There were much more to those thick dark lips.

There is more to those casual pinches she gave us. There is much more intimacy in what my "maestra" taught me than any other teacher I have ever had. Frankly, it wasn't the high grades either. She taught me how to be a better person - but never better than how she was.

The elementary years shouldn't be this reminiscing. I loved the sunshine as everyday our "maestra" would distribute the hoes and water containers and shovels to everyone and in her usual mumblings, "Get out of the room and into the garden!" We'd rush to it and side by side tackle the morning tending our Group gardens. You see, Damé loves to plant peanuts and tomatoes and eggplants. She would roam around pinching at every child she sees doing less. I wasn't the teacher's pet but I would always find my "maestra" standing beside me murmuring things sometimes I couldn't understand and sometimes I just don't wanna listen. I might be her favorite receiver as she broadcasts her witty remarks that would cover from Politics to Celebrities. I'd listen, or perhaps, I was just forced to listen.

One morning, she had us to another routine gardening. We were planning to plant peanuts that time and the garden is being prepared. It was like holiday that day and only a handful of us were present. I was over-eager that time as I loved peanuts. With my hands I scooped a handful of half-moist soil and sprinkle it back gently silting out dry roots with my fingers. Damé gave a frown as she looked at me with soil in hands. "That isn't done like that. You see, plants are like people, they wouldn't want spurs in their mouth." Then as if like a master of her own craft, she gently scooped a good amount of soil and using her fat fingers, gently silted the sand. As if good pupils, we found ourselves mesmerized by her skills and we soon found ourselves listening and watching each of her words. You see, it was special that day. We were few and our "maestra" is giving us the best times of our lives. Certainly, she wasn't a terror after all. She was famous for being one. Maybe it was just that because she was holding 40 students and it's more than what she can deal with? I had more questions afterwards.

She was teaching Filipino language to us. In fact, she was supposed to teach nationalism but she always ends up teaching more to character. I hate sermons so do everyone. When she's busy on the board writing, we would make fun of her. But she had a keen sense and she'll get down to her favorite pinchbag Arnold. "Ouch!", Arnold would say with one eye winked and tongue out. Damé wasn't very sensitive anyway. It was 1986 that time and the EDSA revolution was on the radio. We live far from Manila so we never mind about it. But our "maestra" was better than our other teachers, she said,"How about 10 points for telling us about EDSA?" She's giving it all away so I gladly raised my hand to volunteer. "Ma'am, Cory and Ramos are now hiding at Kamprame!" Of course I just overheard it from a radio on my way to school that afternoon. 5 years later I would know it to be "Camp Crame". But Damé did not say anything. She might have thought that those things never interest us. Or maybe she thought that that was enough to interest us? She was right twice.

The elementary was over and soon I found myself going back to her. But this is different. She already retired from teaching and I was a budding Education student. She was not my inspiration. I was sent to her house to help on cleaning things up. Being a faithful student, I helped her tidy things up. Sorting our her cabinet, I discovered that my old "maestra" had skeletons in her closet. Not really. She had the most complete Comic collection ranging from the time when comic books were published in only three colors. She had American Comics (novels only, no Capt.America) and Filipino Comics. I was a comic collector and so I was greatly impressed. Would you gladly give me some? "You can borrow them but you have to return everything." she answered. Smiles were drawn on my face. I love the wretched hag! After leaving with a carton full of reading goodies, she called out, "Can you let me borrow that Spanish dictionary of yours?" "Certainly ma'am," as I realized I was holding that dictionary which is a Christmas gift from a friend. "Why? What will you do with it?" I asked earnestly. "Sometimes, I have to review my past." she replied with a charm in her smile.

Five years later, I had to go to the Funeral Parlor. She died of colon cancer. The terror "maestra" left in her 70's. But she will be missed. Questions in my mind came like balloons popping as I finally realize what things I much have missed from her. What did she really taught us? Oh yes, peanuts don't like soft soil, ants would eat their way to the peanuts' seeds. People don't like soft words, they eat your heart out blindingly. Comic books tell stories, keep them faithfully. Sometimes people have secrets worth keeping and better left untold. There are still more to the woman I should have learned.

Looking into my life, I find myself walking into steps she had made before me. I was merely fitting my soles into these hollow engraves on the sands of time. I am now a "maestro" and I don't know if I bring terror into the eyes of my pupils. I can't say if my pupils listen to what I speak and mumble about. I can't tell if I was inspiring them something. These I don't know. But do they know about my valued comic collections in my closet? Do they know about my hidden interests in fish hobbying and blogging? Do they know that I was proficient in Spanish once? Certainly not.

Ma'am Damé, now I know how it was. Certainly you will be missed.