dancingpebbles

The quintessential pumpkin patch, harbinger of fall and all things halloween-ish and thanksgiving-ish.

       
Photo from Ginger nut on Flickr

Why do some countries drive on one side of the road, while others do the opposite? Nobody knows for sure, but this site has investigated the matter pretty thoroughly. Includes a handy list of countries and their left-or-right rules of the road.

I guess today is science day. In this article, celebrated scientist and thinker Freeman Dyson comments on an article by Carl Woese, who argues that the age of Darwinism may be over.

The idea is that natural selection was merely a phase in species competition, which

“came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change.”

In the future, he notes,

“biotechnology will be domesticated. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners, who will use gene transfer to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also, biotech games for children, played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of the general public, will give us an explosion of biodiversity. Designing genomes will be a new art form, as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and diversity to our fauna and flora.”

Yeah, and don’t forget those nanocytes.