Boy I tell ya. I work for a company where they give lots of vacation hours, and now that I've got a huge stack of them ('cause I'm such a company slug) I can't make up my mind what to do with them! The days are passing by, it's getting harder and harder to save money when each week brings new cool things to buy, and if I don't make a plan now I'll likely get stuck on some projects that have me too busy to use it! Then I'll end up being forced to take it all at once at the end of the year!
I do have two small trips planned in mid summer, though, and I'm hoping to get somewhere for Christmas this year. That still leaves me with nearly a month of vacation left over...Grrr...
The things people complain about, right? :)
One suggestion was that I start taking off days of the work week. Like, take off every Monday next month. That would be kinda cool. There's perks to sticking around the office Friday, but Monday totally blows 'cause of the horrible commute and everyone trying to get going again after the weekend. I could just kick back and relax, or do something I want to do, while everyone else rats around.
I could also pick a time to take a big vacation. I failed to get up to New England this past year for the Fall, so this would be a great opportunity. I'd also like to take a trip out to the west coast, to Monterey, where I used to live.
The problem is funding. I'd rather not chalk everything up on the ol' credit cards, and lately I seem to have been on a bit of a spending spree. Oh well, I'll figure it out.
In other news....Evolution and Aliens.
Like I've said before, I spend a bit of time dabbling with science fiction, and wondering what the future will be like. That of course sometimes tips onto the subject of aliens. That, and extra-terrestrial life.
There's an interesting argument going around about what aliens will actually look like. Sure there's all that creepy stuff from horror and sci-fi films, but what happens when one takes into consideration evolution?
The problem really depends on how you view the process of evolution. Geerat Vermeij, a paleontologist who spends a bit of time thinking about this, believes that aliens will actually end up looking a lot like us. I follow this point of view probably more than any other, though probably not as strictly. Anyway, the theory is that evolution creates animals and plants based on the needs of the environment. Given that life is predicted to only be found on planets with environments similar to that of Earth, it can be logically construed that the same challenges will face organisms living on the alien world. While exact likeness is statistically probably unlikely, similarities are sure to abound. Many things are likely to be very similar, such as plants being predominately green, due to the biological trends of photosynthesis and the development of chlorophyll.
On the other side of the argument is the theory that, if the time-line of the Earth could be rewound, evolution would evolve wildly different than how we know it. This is a theory promoted by the late Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard biologist who also spent part of his time thinking about this stuff. Gould, and those who follow this theory, believe that evolution is entirely random, and that the challenges that faced our evolutionary ancestors could be resolved in a number of ways. The fact that we are the way we are is purely due to the particular random path our evolution took. If evolution started all over, it is entirely possible that things could turn out completely different.
Of course, the problem with the later theory is that there's no fossil proof to support it. We can see life evolving in the fossil records, but in truth more often than not we see creatures mutating into new forms, and survival of the fittest cleaning things up. If there were multiple possible solutions, those solutions would evolve right along side the known solutions, and not only would there be fossils, but there's a very good chance that we'd see more examples of alternate evolutionary solutions coexisting in the same environment. About the closest thing we have to an example of this happening at all might be the existence of creatures such as bats and birds. Both have developed flight as a way of overcoming the challenge of height and distance, yet at the same time it can be argued that both bats and birds fly but they developed these abilities out of different needs.
So what do you think?
All I know is that if we one day make contact with aliens, and they turn out to be just as screwed up as us, I'm nuking everything...
Personally, while I believe evolution will lead alien life down similar paths as ours did, I don't believe that alien life will be "human." I'm intrigued greatly by the idea that sentient life could take many other forms, leading from the same creatures we see around us that, for lack of a better description, "just didn't make it."
The fossil record shows that human evolution nearly ended in disaster several times in our primitive history. At one point there were almost too few of us to form a viable gene pool. (If you ask me, "almost" is being optimistic.) So what would have happened if primates had died off, or primitive man went extinct? Who would be next? This is one reason why I enjoy the concept of anthropomorphism so much. The idea that other animals could evolve into erect, sentient creatures, is a fascinating idea, and personally I believe makes for more interesting people...
Guess we'll just have to wait and find out, huh?
I do have two small trips planned in mid summer, though, and I'm hoping to get somewhere for Christmas this year. That still leaves me with nearly a month of vacation left over...Grrr...The things people complain about, right? :)
One suggestion was that I start taking off days of the work week. Like, take off every Monday next month. That would be kinda cool. There's perks to sticking around the office Friday, but Monday totally blows 'cause of the horrible commute and everyone trying to get going again after the weekend. I could just kick back and relax, or do something I want to do, while everyone else rats around.
I could also pick a time to take a big vacation. I failed to get up to New England this past year for the Fall, so this would be a great opportunity. I'd also like to take a trip out to the west coast, to Monterey, where I used to live.
The problem is funding. I'd rather not chalk everything up on the ol' credit cards, and lately I seem to have been on a bit of a spending spree. Oh well, I'll figure it out.
In other news....Evolution and Aliens.
Like I've said before, I spend a bit of time dabbling with science fiction, and wondering what the future will be like. That of course sometimes tips onto the subject of aliens. That, and extra-terrestrial life.There's an interesting argument going around about what aliens will actually look like. Sure there's all that creepy stuff from horror and sci-fi films, but what happens when one takes into consideration evolution?
The problem really depends on how you view the process of evolution. Geerat Vermeij, a paleontologist who spends a bit of time thinking about this, believes that aliens will actually end up looking a lot like us. I follow this point of view probably more than any other, though probably not as strictly. Anyway, the theory is that evolution creates animals and plants based on the needs of the environment. Given that life is predicted to only be found on planets with environments similar to that of Earth, it can be logically construed that the same challenges will face organisms living on the alien world. While exact likeness is statistically probably unlikely, similarities are sure to abound. Many things are likely to be very similar, such as plants being predominately green, due to the biological trends of photosynthesis and the development of chlorophyll.
On the other side of the argument is the theory that, if the time-line of the Earth could be rewound, evolution would evolve wildly different than how we know it. This is a theory promoted by the late Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard biologist who also spent part of his time thinking about this stuff. Gould, and those who follow this theory, believe that evolution is entirely random, and that the challenges that faced our evolutionary ancestors could be resolved in a number of ways. The fact that we are the way we are is purely due to the particular random path our evolution took. If evolution started all over, it is entirely possible that things could turn out completely different.
Of course, the problem with the later theory is that there's no fossil proof to support it. We can see life evolving in the fossil records, but in truth more often than not we see creatures mutating into new forms, and survival of the fittest cleaning things up. If there were multiple possible solutions, those solutions would evolve right along side the known solutions, and not only would there be fossils, but there's a very good chance that we'd see more examples of alternate evolutionary solutions coexisting in the same environment. About the closest thing we have to an example of this happening at all might be the existence of creatures such as bats and birds. Both have developed flight as a way of overcoming the challenge of height and distance, yet at the same time it can be argued that both bats and birds fly but they developed these abilities out of different needs.So what do you think?
All I know is that if we one day make contact with aliens, and they turn out to be just as screwed up as us, I'm nuking everything...
Personally, while I believe evolution will lead alien life down similar paths as ours did, I don't believe that alien life will be "human." I'm intrigued greatly by the idea that sentient life could take many other forms, leading from the same creatures we see around us that, for lack of a better description, "just didn't make it."The fossil record shows that human evolution nearly ended in disaster several times in our primitive history. At one point there were almost too few of us to form a viable gene pool. (If you ask me, "almost" is being optimistic.) So what would have happened if primates had died off, or primitive man went extinct? Who would be next? This is one reason why I enjoy the concept of anthropomorphism so much. The idea that other animals could evolve into erect, sentient creatures, is a fascinating idea, and personally I believe makes for more interesting people...
Guess we'll just have to wait and find out, huh?
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