Promethien Burnout

Hey everyone,

I just got back from watching Prometheus and it left me shaking my head on how many scientific mistakes were made, the movie was ok though regardless but only in respect to the special effects since a lot of the show was mediocre to say the least, things just need to be said about it.

I was reading an examination of the show by 5 scientists who were interviewed for their opinions on the movie which was done by Forbes here. This video they linked to definitely asks a lot of questions that I was asking myself pretty much through the entire video, it's pretty funny so I recommend that you watch it too. Another good rant from someone who actually works with DNA can be read here.

There's so many good rants out there already about the show so I can only contribute a little if at all in respect to them, so here's my amendment / rant thing:

The biggest mistake made in the movie was related to pretty much the entire story of the aliens making humans and ignoring the s*** tonne of evidence for evolution and the fact that we are 98.8% or so similar to apes due to our evolutionary ancestry, additionally you wouldn't get a 100% match with the aliens DNA since there were extreme differences in their make-up; the eyes, the extra muscle, their 8 foot tall height etc would have all contributed differences in the genetic sequence similar to us and apes or even another human. You'd either have to throw away all notion of natural selection which has happened for around 4 billion years or so, ignore all the fossils and other myriad of evidence laid out like a banquet in front of you which would end you up getting an F in biology but either way you won't get a job in science. The story would have been better had they said they made all life unintentionally leading up to the humans etc and not this arrogant "we are superior to animals since the creator's made us" anthropocentric way of thinking like most religions like to imagine, derived from some kind of superiority complex or narcissism and pandered by creationists who intentionally miss inform and lie to you and the less informed public while knowing full well what they are doing for political and personal gain. The story would have been better if everything related to the creator's story simply described how the aliens came about from being in their ships, escape somehow and then turning into the alien we recognise once inheriting the right genetics through chest bursts which by the way is a form of mutation related to the very system that founds evolution ironically in which the alien changes its look depending on the creature that had the egg laid inside it, simply scrap the part about the humans entirely.

We are far from superior in all honesty and there's evidence that certain species are much better than us at certain things; take for example the test being done on apes having a far better photographic recollection of where a set of numbers were on a quick flash screen. Species that can hear below or above our hearing range, species of birds and lizards that can see ultra violet light which exceeds our vision, not to mention the species of mantis shrimp that not only see visible light and ultraviolet but also polarised light; both linear and circular, these animals have eyes a million times better than ours and we say we are superior? There's a myriad of species that can run faster, think and react quicker, live longer or forever etc and even dolphins understand what the term zero means. Personally I think just saying we are superior; this arrogant thinking process is enough evidence to prove we are not in any way shape or form and personally makes me sick. Don't people realise that we wouldn't even function if it wasn't for all the bacteria in our bodies that we take for granted which we have a symbiotic relationship with to keep us alive? How dare we marginalise the amazing species of our beautiful planet and call ourselves superior just to feel better than them and polish our ego, we are their equal; each animal is great at something but there is definitely not a species that is great at everything and I think that's a good thing personally. We are so far behind it makes me laugh; we still have wars, still deprive others of equal rights based on bigoted prejudices. A "superior" species if ever one came about would have left these primitive notions behind a long, long time ago where they belong.

Now I'll let that settle for a moment while you watch this video of a bird fishing with a piece of bread. Don't get me wrong, there are many wonderful people in this world many that I look up to and admire but they are sadly few and far between but they exist and that's what matters. We as Humans have our own beauty just like each and every animal on this planet and thanks to our evolutionary path to abstraction and lateral thought we can now take advantage of nature and as the expression goes "Those who have power have great responsibility". Though dependant on nature to keep us alive we can push the boundaries, speed up evolution by enhancing our lives, we express ourselves through art, music, literature and voice to the world we share and thanks to the internet, we can see that we are all the same and many of us have a strong will to make our world better; I guess you could call me an eternal optimist. Sadly there are many who are corrupted and desire money, fame and power all of which are fleeting just like that of fossil fuels. We can love and express our emotions but we are still part of nature, still an animal like all the others so let us not belittle them and subjugate them to lesser ideals. In order to learn and discover things we have as a result caused some damage to this world but we can be forgiven due to our ignorance and our ancestral desires for we have the ability to make things right again. I feel technology has matured enough that we can reverse this damage and restore our world, emulate nature by mimicking what nature has solved over millions of years. Science has given us the tools and we now have the ability to bring back the myriad of species that have unfortunately been made extinct to our endeavours. Hopefully we aren't too late to reverse global warming by implementing green technologies to remove the dependencies on fossil fuels, we just need to use our money more wisely and get solar and other free sources of energy into every home. We are still young as a species but we are responsible for our world, responsible for all the life forms that inhabit it. We are Earth's guardians in a sense and I'm humbled to be apart of that and to do what I can even if it's small; if we all work together it will all add up in the end and the future of our children and those of other species will be all the better for it.

Thanks for reading,
Ashton.

Quickfix - Arduino Pro Mini's not Syncronizing

Hey everyone,

A little while back I bought an Arduino Pro Mini (5v version) and was planning on using it to make small devices like remotes or human interface devices to control my computer. Everything was going well, I soldered connections to all the pins and was ready to program the device using a USB to Serial converter (which is also rated at 5v to match my Arduino) that you can see here:

So I plugged it in and everything seemed fine, but as soon as I tried to reprogram the Arduino from the default blink project that it came pre-programmed with, I received an error saying that I couldn't synchronise with the board and that Processing couldn't upload my new code. I spent a good day looking up solutions on the internet and nothing helped, there was even two images of the same serial board I had attached to the Arduino forwards and backwards which wouldn't help anyone who was looking for solutions and I was sure I had the boards matching up correctly so that wasn't it, you'll find there's two version with the BLK to GRN switched so just make sure that your particular version is aligned correctly to the serial converter. Eventually I found my own solution utilising a method I use when debugging in C++ / C#; I connected up just the power and ground then slowly introduced each pin until I was able to commit my code to the Arduino. The solution was simply to remove one of the pins that said ground (Since the BLK pin was also a ground pin) on the Arduino Mini Pro which was connecting to a pin called CTS on the Serial board as you can see here:

As soon as I removed the pin everything just worked, no more sync issues with Processing and I could finally begin developing with the Arduino board :)

I recommend that you try connecting wires first before removing the pin; just in case your mini has a different reason than mine for not syncing, if yours doesn't have the same problem then it would be safer since the small board doesn't cope well with repeated application of heat from a soldering iron.

After solving the problem I read up on what the pin does, it's called CTS (Clear To Send) and was responsible for serial handshaking. Since the pin is omitted from the Arduino Mini Pro, I'm guessing they no longer need that pin and was used with older systems that didn't come with a self reset feature for programming; older Arduino's required you to reset the board just before the serial command to reprogram the board was sent. The USB to Serial Converter must have kept it for backwards compatibility with older boards and other serial devices. For additional information for those who are curious you can read about the flow control system here.

My Arduino Mini Pro seems to have the connections reversed from the one specified on the Arduino website here which may indicate that my Arduino may be outdated or perhaps it's a difference between the 3.3v and 5v versions. This being the case, if your version has the connections similar to the website then I can't guarantee if this solution will fix yours since I've never used that version but if my theory about the CTS pin being pulled to ground is correct which causes interference with the re-programming then I do hope this solution helps you too.

Thanks for reading,
Ashton.