I have fucking MUSE tickets. Floor.

That is all.

A response to this blog by Chris. I left this as a comment but ended up writing so much that I think it's worth its own posting here.

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AUSTRALIAN PATRIOTISM

You happen to have been born here, and not, say, Iraq, so maybe you should count yourself extremely lucky, for one thing?

Your family came here for a reason, and that's because they thought this country would give them & their future family a better life than they had in their home country. There's another reason you should consider yourself lucky.

If you don't like it here, why would you stay? Really? No-one is forcing you to stay here, and if you don't love the country you were born in, you are free to leave. That is one of the advantages of being in a country as free and democratic as Australia.

You should revere the country you live in. You don't have to hold it as infallible, because it's most certainly not, but you should respect that it has helped develop the person you are today. It has taught you what you know, it has provided a safe and healthy society for you to grow up in. It has allowed you freedom of choice. It allowed your family to be free from the oppression they escaped.

Countries may be transient, but culture is not. Culture is developed by a population living together over a long period of time, and you cannot just abolish it overnight. People hold their cultures close to them - can you seriously suggest that we just get rid of it and be a homogenous people? You should also realise that whilst Australia's white history is only 200 odd years old, for the Aboriginals it is much more than that, although their style of life is next to gone. So imagine being born somewhere like Japan, India, England, France - any country which has had its own cultures, traditions, and mostly borders for thousands of years. You know as well as I do that I do not necessarily advocate keeping traditions sacrosanct above all else, but there is a beauty in each culture. If we lose this, where is the interest in travelling, in meeting people from different countries, of learning new ideas?

Countries do not necessarily have to be in competition with each other, and with the exception of a few, I really don't think that most countries are. Does not a world state pave the way for one giant government that rules all of us, one set of rules by which we all must abide? Can you really see the all the different cultures merging to do so? Do you really think that's a good idea? It's a step towards taking away individuality and identity.

I have trouble identifying with what it means to be Australian sometimes, given that my family have been here for maybe 150 years. My blood is English and Irish, my family lived there for as long as we can record. And it is no doubt more difficult for those whose ethnicity is not the majority here. But it does not mean you cannot love the country you were raised in. You love the people, you love the way of life - or else why would you stay? In fact, if you cannot identify with something, why go *anywhere*? There is always somewhere that will be home.

I do not think boundaries are always a good thing, but there is nothing wrong with patriotism. It means respect for your ancestors. For your own way of life.

Borders between countries or not, these do NOT stop you from being a citizen of the world. You may travel and live where you wish, experience what you wish. Do we necessarily need a world governing body to appreciate the many different cultures our world provides? Do we need this union in order to love and respect all other mankind? I think not. If anything, it makes us stronger despite our differences.

Also, I fail to see what is wrong with the caption "Young and free" beside the Australian flag. We ARE free, we are lucky, particularly compared to countries in Africa, the Middle East, etc. What is wrong with appreciating this? What is wrong with appreciating our society?

You need somewhere to call home. If not this country, you can make it somewhere else, but do not abhor those who choose to live in a society which has served their ancestors well for many decades past.

There's a reason you don't come off anti-depressants unless the doctor has told you that you should. Even if you have no money or can't be bothered going to the chemist.

Because once you feel better on them, life is ridiculous without them.

I feel so out of control and like nothing's working like it should. I know I should just go get my next prescription, but what disheartens me is how I still feel pretty fucked up without them. The good news is that I don't feel horribly depressed or anxious, hopefully being on them has allowed me to develop more positive thinking habits.

Maybe the reason I feel out of control is not the meds or lack of...

I cut my hair. It's awesome. It looks better straight.

But straightening short hair with an iron does not work.

Note to self: purchase hair straightener.

Honours makes life so hectic! If you'd told me earlier this year that I'd be in the lab til 7 or 8pm most nights...or that I'd be in on Sunday evenings....well OK you probably just would have scared me a little bit. But really. Working (relatively) long days, then going to work afterwards or on weekends, plus footy is back*, plus new people to go out and have a social life...I have no time for me! At least I don't have bloody homework/study anymore.

* Hey go Bombers :D Two weeks in and we've won two thirds of the games we won last year...let's not get our hopes up too much, but they really do look a different team this year. Much to look forward to. <3 my bombers!

So how is my project going? Well it started off pretty slowly, I had to do some bioinformatics (sequence searching and analysis) for the first few weeks, and also so I could find the right information for what I want to do for the most part of my project - mutating the sequence so I can find out which bits are important (mutagenesis). The last few weeks have been good, everyone in the lab is so helpful, but very frustrating as I just couldn't get these particular yeast to grow...

BUT...

yesterday...

ta da! It looks like my yeast are finally growing! I don't know what it is that made it work this time, I added some different stuff and didn't purify like I should have (sshhh) which is where I think I was losing something essential...anyway...cross your fingers! I've got a couple of colonies which I'm going to streak out and see if they grow like they should. Now if I could just solve the damn problem of the bacteria not taking up the DNA like they should...little bastards...

I guess that's what being an honours student is all about....not being able to do things that seem relatively simple! Oh, that and contaminating stuff that you borrowed from your lab mates...and having weird stuff growing in your own growth mediums...I don't think I ever want to know what that was...

Oh and see the Pixies down there...my lab supervisor went to see them! (How cool is that.) I am so jealous. Well hey maybe they'll come back....one day...perhaps....

Rightio, back to lab duties, it's my week for cleaning and sterilising stuff. I guess I should consider myself lucky that they're not exploiting the honours student and making me do it every day for the rest of the year...but hey if they did that I could always contaminate their stuff in revenge. Mwahaha.

(I'm nice. Really.)

...are fucking annoying.

In the last hour, five people have told me they won't be making it to my birthday. In one hour. The invites were only out yesterday. That's to add to my tally of people who already weren't going to be able to make it, a few of whom I really, really, really wanted to be there.

Why the fuck is my birthday not a priority for people?? They know full well that I wanted to use this as a kind of test, to see who my real friends were. They know that I wanted this, my most important birthday, to be, for once, something that works for me. And all I got is a million different reasons why people can't come.

I know I can't expect everyone to come, but it's bloody depressing with the number who can't come already. I just feel blah. :(

8. The most complex phenomena known to science are found in living systems. Detailed studies of various animals have also revealed physical equipment and capabilities that cannot even be copied by the world's best designers using the most sophisticated technologies. Examples include the miniature and reliable sonar systems of dolphins, porpoises and whales; the frequency-modulated radar and discrimination system of bats; the aerodynamic capabilities and efficiency of the hummingbird; the control systems, internal ballistics and combustion chamber of the bombardier beetle; the precise and redundant navigational system of the arctic tern; and the self-repair capabilities of practically all forms of life. All evidence points to "intelligent design," not random processes.

This is an awfully long way of saying "I don't understand how it happened, so let's say god did it." For an anti-evolution group on my space I just wrote about 2000 words on the evolution of the eye, one of those 'irreducible complexity' arguments. And I don't even know about specifics of eye evolution. I am sure there are people out there who can explain these 'complex' things. For what it's worth, what's so hard to understand about a dolphin making noises that only other dolphins can hear?

I also would have thought that the most complex phenomena known to man are things like quantum mechanics, not evolution. Evolution is an incredibly simple theory, when you look at it. However we cannot expect to replicate life with man-made technology until we know much more.

9. All living species are fully developed, and their organs are fully developed. There are no living lizards with scale-feathers, leg-wings, or 3-chambered hearts. If evolutionary processes were the norm, these intermediate forms of development should be observable throughout nature. Instead, they are non-existent.

What a ridiculous statement. Of course all living species are fully developed - things don't just appear overnight. An extra leg isn't just going to come from somewhere. Minor details accumulate as gradual adaptations, until a group under one set of selection pressures can no longer mate with another group, and this is speciation. And then when they can no longer breed, this reinforces their differences and allows further divergence.

And who is to judge what is an intermediate structure? Why should we expect to see 2 chambered hearts? If 4 is beneficial, we don't have go to 1---> 2 ----> 3 ----> 4 - if a mutation for 4 develops, then why can't we go 1---> 4? Nature does not count intermediates. It does not know what is evolving. It solely produces structures that the environment either eliminates or favours.

10. All living creatures are divided into distinct types. There should be a myriad of transitional, un-classifiable creatures if evolution was the norm. There is no direct evidence that any major group of animals or plants arose from any other major group.

No, they are not classified into such distinct types. This is one of the major problems in taxonomy, actually, of where to draw the line. There IS a myriad of 'unclassifiable' creatures, but the nature of taxonomy (classifying living things) is such that we try to group them, so even if the grouping isn't perfect, they belong somewhere. We can only put a species with its closest relatives. In a sense, all the different species in a family or genus are the transitional forms. And all species themselves are transitional - one form A might be able to breed with the next, B, who can then breed with C - but A cannot breed with C. Thus, B is the transitional. Each species can be said to be gradually evolving (remember, evolution is still happening), but it doesn't just occur overnight. Taxonomy has developed many different definitions for species, because we do not know where to draw the line - there is too much variation, we cannot classify everything into one group. Some of these are the ecological species concept, the biological species concept, others based on patterns of morphology (i.e. their appearance) and others, if you want to look them up. We cannot define things into a perfect group, it is false to claim otherwise, and only someone who has not in fact studied evolution/biology would twist the words to make it appear this way. Biology explains many things that creationists choose not to hear about!

11. Created kind are only observed going into extinction, never coming into existence.

We have only been observing evolution for so long. It takes a much longer time for speciation to occur. We don't expect to see a fully functional life form just emerge from the dirt in our garden overnight, as creationists would appear to believe evolution works this way.

As an example, in a particular experiment, scientists have bred Drosophila (fruit flies) on different food sources for many many generations. They found that, after all this time, the two different groups had adapted to using their own food sources, and when they put the two groups back together, each showed a preference for mating with flies from the same group, rather than those from the other food source! This is the start of speciation. If these flies continue to breed with each other in such a selective way, we can assume that eventually they will accumulate enough unique differences so that they are unable to breed with each other at a later point.

12. The fossil record contains no transitional forms of animals, only extinct forms. The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that it is safe to conclude that the alleged "gaps" or "missing links" will never be found.

Again, see above for my 'what is a transitional form?'

It is a ridiculous claim to see that the fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that nothing else will ever be found. It is the bible which is final, not science. We are still finding fossils. At any rate, there are many fossils which appear as ancestors to animals we find living today. Look some of them up - there are so many I'm not going to bother. However, it's also misleading to look at the fossil record alone. It is difficult to make a fossil, you need the perfect conditions. Given that the likelihood of ONE fossil forming from ONE species is low, why should we expect to see one or more fossils from every single species that has ever lived? Some organisms cannot fossilise, others are in the wrong conditions to be fossilised (open areas, predators, hot weather, etc), some fossils are destroyed by man or by nature - the possibilities are endless. It is not definitive and will never be. Which is why we have other evidence - DNA, comparative studies, dating techniques, geological studies, etc.

13. The so-called "evolutionary tree" has no trunk. In the earliest part of the fossil record (generally the Cambrian sedimentary layer), life appears suddenly, complex, diversified and fully developed.

There are two types of trees: rooted (with one common ancestor), or unrooted. The unrooted trees simply show the relationships between all species living today, and their ancestors as we know them, but it does not draw back to one single point. Imagine a line with many other lines coming perpendicular to this. This tree of life shows our relationships, not our ancestors. The ROOTED trees do in fact have a trunk: and hey presto, this is our common ancestor, the original bacterium from which we evolved! Sigh.

Also, the Cambrian is not when life appeared. The Cambrian was an explosion in the diversity of life, for reasons which are not entirely clear yet (atmospheric conditions perhaps, or maybe one particular mutation which was incredibly advantageous it allowed lots of organisms to evolve in different ways, rapidly). There was life prior to the Cambrian explosion, however it was mostly primitive. These organisms for example all have eyes which appear to have evolved from trilobites, so it is possible that a trilobite managed to evolve an eye and its ancestors gave rise to many other different species in a short (OK millions of years, which is short in evolutionary time - the Cambrian explosion didn't happen in an hour!) time.

14. Insects have no known evolutionary ancestors.

Yeah, god just stuck insects here randomly to piss off Adam and Eve.

I don't think so.
Take your pick:
http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/courses/eeb286/ArthPhy2.jpg
http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/courses/Eeb477/Hexapod2.jpg (unrooted)
http://www.tolweb.org/Hexapoda/2528 (website about insect evolutionary relationships)

I've worked with simple constructions of trees like this myself, at uni - trees that look like this, showing a basic relationship of a group of insects (eg all the different types of Drosophila) to another organism (say, a nematode worm). http://insects.eugenes.org/species/news/genome-summaries/gene-phylogeny/arthro-dmord4pheno-fitch.gif

Type insects + phylogenetics into google and see what you get!!

15. Many different forms of life are completely dependent upon each other (symbiotic relationships). Even members of the honeybee family, consisting of the queen, workers, and drones, are interdependent. If one member of each interdependent group evolved first, it could not have survived. Since all members of these groups have survived, they must have come into existence simultaneously. The only possible answer for their existence is "intelligent design".

Symbiotic relationships develop in the same way as complex structures evolve, as I outlined in part 1. In short, the two creatures were probably not dependent on each other to begin with, but having an organism which helped it out meant it was allowed to accumulate some changes that meant it couldn't survive on its own, simply because those mutations didn't matter so much if they were still reproducing. Then over time, they lost the ability to remain independent.

"Intelligent design" simply means one does not know how to explain a phenomenon, or does not understand it, because they are uneducated. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean there isn't a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for it. (Which is, sadly, the basis for most religion.)

16. It is impossible to conceive of an evolutionary process that results in sexual reproduction. Complementary male and female systems must have completely and independently evolved at each stage at the exact same time and place. The millions of mechanical and chemical processes, as well as behavioral patterns and physical characteristics, would all need to be compatible. Even leading evolutionists admit they cannot explain this.

Bacteria have sex mechanisms. They sense other bacteria and put out projections through which they swap bits of DNA. These are F bacteria, and those that can't mate are not F. F bacteria can turn non-F into F. This is a very primitive form of sex.

Yeast can mate with each other by the existence of a single site (locus) on DNA called the MAT locus - they are 'a' or 'alpha'. They can only mate with an opposite type. This operate through relatively simple mechanisms. I can explain further if anyone is interested, but honestly it took a few lectures even at third year level to explain, so I'm not going to sit here and outline the mechanism by which it works. Basically yeast with one copy of DNA (called haploid cells) mate with another haploid yeast, to form the diploid (two copies of everything). Under certain conditions, the diploid cells can then halve again to go back to haploid. Now, if you look at it, this is a primitive version of what humans do: our gametes (egg and sperm) are haploid, they each contain one copy of everything. When an egg and sperm fuse, they go on to form a haploid embryo, from which a human develops. Does this sound like a reasonable outcome from developing from single-celled yeast and bacteria which already had sexual mechanisms in place? We just took it further by harnessing other genes to this particular mating site in yeast over th course of evolution, so that we ended up with one whole sex chromosome rather than a single sit, and males and females in place of 'a' and 'alpha'!

So that's all we have time for today folks. Stick around for part 3 in the next few days (I have all the time in the world now). Also, if anyone wants my 2000 words on the evolution of the eye, leave a note asking, I'll post it up. Alternatively look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye which explains the facts (mine is more conceptually based).

So here it is, part 1 of reasons to refute idiots who refute evolution.

Why am I doing this? Why does it worry me so much? Well simply because I believe in it so much, because I love it, because science is my passion. Biology is my passion. The theory of natural selection just makes SUCH perfect sense, and so much of biology has developed off the back off this 'theory'. I use the word 'theory' with caution, because scientifically evolution is as much a theory as atomic theory, quantum theory, and so on. It does NOT mean 'this is all we can come up with so far but we're not sure'. I should also point out that if anything is to be debated, it's the way by which evolution brought us here, not whether evolution is 'real'. Evolution is defined as the change in genetic make-up of a species over time. We see this. The modes by which it it has occured - natural selection and such - are what some people find dubious. If you're going to criticise science, at least get your understanding correct first.

Also, I'm going to spend the rest of my life devoted to this field. To making discoveries which hopefully will benefit the entire world. Because the things that biology brings us are incredible. People refute it and then still go and accept all the benefits it gives them? Get real.

So, part 1. Items on the original list of reasons to refute evolution are in bold italics, my answers are in normal text.

1. It is an established scientific fact that life cannot originate from non-living matter (the Law of Biogenesis).

To be honest I've never even heard of this. Any 'Law of Biogenesis' that exists would simply be explaining the fact that life gives rise to life NOW: i.e., that cells replicate. Also, evolution and natural selection make NO attempt to explain the ORIGIN of life. This is a different area. Natural selection operated once life came into being. Billions and billions of years ago, conditions on earth were much different. Abiogenesis (life arising from 'non-life') may have occurred then. (And obviously it did, because here we are.) At any rate this 'law of biogenesis' did not originate because we've got the Bible telling that God put us here.

2. The chemical evolution of life is impossible. No scientist has ever advanced a testable procedure by which this could occur. The Miller-Urey experiment, still shown in many current textbooks, has been proven to be irrelevant.

Why is it impossible? You are making claims without actually backing that statement up. However, to say that no scientist has designed an experiment to prove this, is crap. There has been much experimentation into this. The problem is recreating the original conditions. (Please note: a point I will do in a later part, point 25, will refer back to this. So remember that whoever wrote this list made a claim that scientists are failing to come up with any scientific evidence. It's important - and ironic, trust me.)

3. Mendel's Laws of Genetics limit the variations in a species. Different combinations of genes are formed, but not different genes. Breeding experiments and common observations have also confirmed that genetic boundaries exist.

Mendel's "laws of genetics" are as follows:
Mendel's First Law: The Principle of Segregation. The two members of a gene pair separate from each other during the formation of gametes.
Mendel's Second Law: The Principle of Independent Assortment. The factors for different traits assort independently of one another.

In layman's terms? OK, the first law. As you may or may not know, humans (and most species) carry two copies of every chromosome. We have 23 different chromosomes, and thus 46 in total. Therefore, we have two copies of every gene. However these two copies may be different (these different copies are called alleles). As such, you may have a gene for eye colour, but you will have alleles for blue eyes, or brown eyes, or perhaps one for blue and one for brown. (Dominance & recessiveness will determine what you end up having.) When an organism makes gametes (egg and sperm), they split a cell and its genetic material in half, so that one copy of chromosome 1 goes into one cell, and the other copy of chromosome 1 goes into the other cell. This means that an egg has half as much genetic material as a body cell, so when it combines with a sperm, it goes back to having the normal amount of genetic material. Mendel's first law explains this: one copy will go one way, with the other copy going the other way.

The second law, is independent assortment. It's worth mentioning that at the time, Mendel had no idea what DNA was or what chromosomes were. In fact, he didn't even know what genes were. He just called traits 'factors.' The second law explains that factors are not dependent on each other: that is, if a copy of chromosome 1 goes into egg cell 1, and the other copy goes to egg cell 2, then this does not affect what any other chromosome does. So where your genes for eye colour go, doesn't affect where your genes for, say, hand shape, go.

To say these laws do not permit variation is crap. They simply explain the pattern of trends we see. Violations of the second law are seen in THE CREATION OF VARIATION. Two different genes - say one for eye colour and one for hair colour - might be located on the same chromosome (piece of DNA). Therefore they will probably be inherited together more often. This is called linkage. However, if two genes are far enough away on the same chromosome, they will get broken up - this is called recombination. When a cell splits into eggs or sperm, the chromosome pairs line up and swap bits. So let's say you have chromosome 1a from mum, and 1b from dad. Mum probably has different alleles than dad. So when 1a lines up with 1b before they separate, they swap bits, to generate entirely new combinations.

Also, Mendel did not know about DNA, so he did not know about mutation. Mutation is constantly introducing variation into a population.

There are many mechanisms with which to create variation. If you're interested, look them up.

4. Acquired characteristics cannot be inherited. For example, the long necks of giraffes did not result from their ancestors stretching their necks to reach high leaves, nor does a man in a weight-lifting program pass his well-developed muscles on to his child. No mechanism exists whereby the altered behavior of an organism, in an attempt to adapt to its environment, will produce a genetic change in its offspring.

I have no idea why this was on this list. This principle is called Lamarckism, and it was the theory proposed back in the 1800s before Darwin proposed natural selection. It basically said that an organism will change its genetic material (although they didn't know about genetic material back then!) in response to a requirement for that change. The theory has been obsolete ever since Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. As such, this point is a load of shit and does nothing to dispute evolution. In fact it backs it up: organisms cannot change their material, they are just more likely to pass on a trait if it is more beneficial, because having that beneficial trait means they're more likely to be alive!!!

5. Genetic mutations have never made a creature more viable than its ancestors. Mutations are almost always harmful, and many are lethal. More than 90 years of fruit fly experiments, involving 3,000 successive generations, give absolutely no basis for believing that any natural or artificial process can cause an increase in complexity and viability.

Yes, they have. Let's break this down.
70% of DNA does not code for anything. Yes, 70%. There are also points along DNA where changing a base (the unit of genetic information) will not change the protein that comes from that DNA. There are also regions within genes (called introns) that are cut out before a protein is made, these gaps generally code for nothing either. Therefore, mutations here are NOT detrimental to an organism. They are either neutral (as they don't code for anything, we're never going to see them, so changes don't matter), or they may at some point accumulate so far, just by chance, to produce something good. There are something like 5000 mutations per day in the human genome (don't worry, most of these are fixed!). There are, on average, 10 to the power of 16 cell divisions in a person's lifetime (each time a cell divides, it has to copy its DNA, which is the main time mutation can occur) - that's 10,000,000,000,000,000 times (of course these don't all occur in the egg and sperm cells, but it gives you an indication of the number of times a cell has to copy its DNA). That's a lot of chances for accumulating something good.

Mutations can of course be detrimental. This is when we see disease, or miscarriage, or infertility. Such mutations are generally removed by nature - logically, these traits are generally not passed on if a person dies before they can reproduce, or cannot produce children because an embryo/foetus has a combination of mutations which don't allow life - hey, presto, this is natural selection!

As for this fly thing, I'd wager the number of experiments with flies is a lot more than that. Thousands of times more. And flies have shown us just how well natural selection actually does work. I can provide links to research if anyone is interested, but there's just so much I'm not going to go into it.

Also, the 'increase in complexity' is not true. This is not what evolution is. Evolution is an increase in the proportion of a species who carry the advantageous trait. Natural selection favours advantageous traits, whether they're complex or simple. Occam's Razor would in fact suggest simple traits come up quite often. Why? Because natural selection is of course going to favour simple things that take less energy, than a complex pathway that takes more energy from an organism, if the outcomes are exactly the same. So yes, humans are more complex than ancient bacteria. But we still have many very simple pathways from our bacterial ancestors. One cannot make assumptions about complexity vs simplicity - it simply depends on the nature of the trait. Sometimes complex will be better, sometimes simple will be better. It depends what the environment is.

One final example: sickle cell anaemia and malaria resistance. Most people will have normal red blood cells. There's a disease, sickle cell anaemia, where haemoglobin is malshaped, and thus the blood cells go a funny shape. If a person inherits two bad copies of this (remember before, I said we have two copies of everything), then they have sickle cell anaemia.

Then they found that sickle cell anaemia occurs at higher frequency in environments where malarial parasites are found. Why? Because having one good copy and one bad copy (a 'heterozygote') means that a person can still make normal blood cells, but they also have a lot of misshapen ones, which malarial parasites can't use - and thus this provides resistance to malaria! So, yes, the mutation which caused the haemoglobin to change shape HAS been beneficial here. And the fact that sickle cell anaemia occurs more often here suggests that selection is keeping one copy of this 'bad' gene in the population because it can be beneficial.

6. Natural selection (or "survival of the fittest") actually prevents evolutionary change, it does not encourage it. Since mutations almost always contribute to a decrease in viability (survivability), the mutated animal quickly becomes part of the food chain.

Like I said above, mutations are almost always neutral. They generally will not contribute to a decrease in viability unless they just happen to hit one of the tiny portions of DNA that matter. So, this point is really just null and void now.

7. Mutations cannot produce complex organs such as the eye, the ear, or the brain, much less the intricacy of design found in microbiological organisms. These organs are not even imaginable, much less viable in a partially developed state. The principle of "irreducible complexity" demonstrates that a wide range of component parts and technologies must be simultaneously existent for these organs to function. In a partially developed state, they would become a liability to an organism, not an advantage. Moreover, most complex organs have interdependent relationships with other complex organs which enable proper functioning. These relationships must also be simultaneously existent.

This irreducible complexity thing really irks me. Isn't it the basis of 'intelligent design'? Anyway, it's a load of bullshit. People who spout this line, don't stop to think about the changes that are occurring. No, an eye might not work if you take out a few components. But it may still operate, just less well, if you remove one. Also, another component may have been different before, to compensate for not having a component. Then mutation eventually introduced a new, beneficial component, making the other part redundant. Multiple changes have occurred - many, many, many times over evolution - so there are thousands of pathways for something to evolve. The relationships must exist NOW, yes. But previously, things were DIFFERENT, things may have depended on others in different ways, or operated in a way where they didn't need something else - and thus they were OK without this interdependence. Then, when new components came along, this increased the viability of the organism, and bang, it had some fitness advantage over other organisms. And over time its offspring and their offspring outdid others. And because they only had this combination of genes, it meant that they were now stuck together and thus interdependent. THINK about it. Life is not stagnant.

As slightly inspired by, and promised to, Chris, I'm writing something about what I *feel* rather than what I *do*.

So what do I feel? Where am I right now?

I guess I could take a cop-out and say I'm sitting at my desk in my bedroom. In Brunswick, Melbourne. Yeah yeah yeah, Victoria, Australia, Earth, Milky Way, Universe. And leave it at that. That I don't wanna think about where I am cuz it scares me. The universe is a scary place.

But in all seriousness, I should address this kind of thing. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this lately, mostly because I'm trying to change my life at the moment, not to be that horribly depressed person I was for the last two or three years, and I guess I need to assess what's changed, what's still the same, what needs to go. I guess I can also be more positive about it since I had a breakdown two months ago and FINALLY went on medication (anti-depressants). I don't know about making me feel happier, but they make me feel a lot more rational, noticeably in my mind, and I find it a lot harder to be negative. When you're depressed, it's so easy to be negative. It's not only a habit, it's an addiction. You grow to like and trust and take comfort in being negative. It might sound stupid, but unless you've been there, you can't understand. There's something remarkably...'safe' in curling up and crying and thinking horrible things to make yourself feel worse. It's the not having to trust or hope or expect anything good. When you feel like that, you don't have to be disappointed. You don't feel like anything can GET any worse, so why not feel as bad as you can. Because you feel like you deserve it. In a way I guess it's like self-harm - maybe it doesn't draw blood, but there is some kind of release in hating yourself so much that you want to die.

And do I feel this way anymore? Well I thought I didn't. For the first half of this year, I was OK. After spending the last couple of months of second year forcing myself to go to uni because it was the only way I was ever going to get better, I kept going this year, and made a whole bunch of new friends. I got the fuck over stupid boy and didn't care anymore. I wasn't thinking about other past boys either. Everything was just OK. But then after the mid-year break, things started to go downhill again. I don't know why. Probably just because I hadn't actually had my depression treated, and it's too hard to deal with it yourself. But stress with money, and this random guy who was living in our house pissing me off, and the fact that almost all of the friends I'd made in first semester weren't in my classes anymore - it all just built up, and I started to feel that same way again. Couldn't go to class without feeling faint and nauseous and anxious. Couldn't go out in public without feeling like everybody was looking at me. Didn't want to do anything. Then I had the breakdown (admittedly, one shouldn't get wasted when already depressed that day) and it made me realise things were wrong again.

So I think slowly it's getting OK again, but I've made some active decisions. Like not bothering with people who aren't real friends. I've had enough. I've decided that anyone who doesn't come to my 21st can basically get fucked. I don't want to be friends with people who can't be at the biggest birthday of my life. I've tried to stop worrying about boys because I know that eventually I'm gonna have to have some better luck than I've had. That list of boys that have fucked me over...they can all go to hell. I don't wanna know about it anymore. I've made a few more friends now and slowly started to have a better social life, as difficult as that is when you have trouble going out without an anxiety attack. Going out even just once or twice a fortnight now is far better than not at all. And you have to start somewhere.

And then there's next year to look forward to. When I eventually decide a department! But I'm thinking of it like a new start - a new group of people to be friends with, to make a fresh impression on, a different environment, and really feeling like I'm actually doing what I love rather than just sitting in lectures hearing about it. And feeling like I'm actually achieving something. Because that's what I'm working on now - just forgetting all the shit. I can't solve everything right away, but I'm starting, and I have a long time to do it. My past is my past, it's made me what I am now, it's taught me what I know, and it might be hard to understand this unless you've been depressed, but I don't think you can know what true happiness is until you've been at rock bottom. Because let me tell you that once you've experienced rock bottom, when you've been centimetres from killing yourself (and not like a fucking emo - don't ever judge suicide like that unless you've felt that way yourself), then even just normality, feeling OK, feeling like maybe you don't want to kill yourself, is something beyond description. It's fantastic. And happiness, too many people take it for granted, they don't appreciate it, but when you've been as low as you can go then you sure as hell will never ever ever take feeling good for granted. And believe me I won't. :)

....is so tough!

Well not the degree bit. The 'which department should I do honours in' bit!

Up until this year I was dead-set on doing honours in genetics, as I want to be a geneticist. Then I took Molecular Cell Biology (biochem subject), and it completely captivated me. Since then I haven't been able to choose. I went to honours information sessions for both departments, all that made me do is want to do projects in both of them. I read all the projects available for both departments, and there is no one project in either department which stands out and says "pick me!" If there was one on the genetics of cancer I'd do it, but alas, there isn't.

So I've started seeing all my potential supervisors. I saw one guy for Biochem the other day, in the lovely big pretty Bio21 institute, and he almost completely convinced me that I should do honours in his lab. He remembered when I'd talked to him about six weeks ago at an info session and all the subjects I was doing, which made me feel very flattered, and he was talking about all the ideas he had for stuff I could do with my genetics background. So the whole idea of working with him using all those techniques, and working in the Bio21 institute, was really exciting, and I was all set to ditch genetics. And it turns out that one of the assessment modules in the biochem honours year can be taken from the genetics department, so I can do that if I want still to learn some more genetics. And of course I can still go and do my PhD in genetics after doing a biochem honours, provided I get a good honours mark and have done the undergraduate genetics major, which obviously I have. Anyway, you can make an arrangement in applying for biochem honours, where if the supervisor thinks you're suitable and have a good background and stuff, they'll agree to take you on provided you get the right score. As opposed to the other system of ranking projects by preference (which is the only way to do it in genetics, and you can also do this in biochem), and seeing what you get into. Which I was going to do for both departments and see what I got into. But now this lecturer is keen to have me in his lab, so I could make that arrangement to work there, and the idea has really grabbed me.

But then I went and spoke to two genetics supervisors this morning, and the thing is that their two projects involve a lot of the techniques I want to learn, and are definitely really interesting projects. Particularly the one that's involved in studying things involved in memory/learning/development. I mean, this stuff involves mutagenesis, gene knockouts, gene targeting, etc etc, all of which I want to learn. I guess if I go and do a PhD in genetics later, I'll learn them anyway. But that doesn't really help me make a decision now. I think I need to speak to the biochem supervisor again to talk about my ideas for what I could do, how much gene knockout and mutagenesis stuff I could do - he said I can do some, but how much, is the question.

Everyone keeps telling me I should do what I love the most, or what feels right. But the problem is that I love both areas, and I feel like whatever I do, there'll be something else I'm missing out on. I had this same problem choosing third year subjects - there were just so many I wanted to do and ones that I ended up not being able to do. Why did I have to want a double major? Does this make me too nerdy? I don't know, I just really love learning. And it makes things so damn difficult. I can't make this decision!! And I've only got about three more weeks to decide. I'm seeing more supervisors in that time, but I don't think it's gonna make much difference if I can't choose a department. Neither will affect my future career options, it's the fact I've done honours that's important. Ultimately I want to work in the genetics of signalling pathways in diseases - particularly cancer - and none of these offer a real advantage to that path. And as such I just can't decide what I want most right now.

Help! :(