Cleaning Out The In-Box -- Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- November 4, 2019

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First things first:

LaDainian Tomlinson's Arby's Steakhouse
LaDainian Tomlinson: wiki. 

Barron's: two companies that raise their dividends quarterly, not annually -- Penske and ONEOK.

Hess: Mercer Capital, October 9, 2019. 3Q19 earnings; Bakken is huge for Hess.

Barron's: Berkshire stock could get a lift as earnings, cash pile grow.

Kallanish Energy: oil production increases 20% at CLR, November 1, 2019.

Kallanish Energy: Bakken shale oil production boots Hess, October 31, 2019.

Motley Fool: Hess is about to stop on the gas, October 30, 2019.

AirPods Pro: in The WSJ -- big improvement, the new air pods. Article itself got nice reviews. Like the US debt, price for Apple products no longer matter. (Actually, never did, except maybe once.)

Credit cards have gone out of style in China: in MarketWatch, November 3, 2019.

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The Book Page

After going through this book for the fourth time, I have finally decided to move on.

The book: And Then There Was Life: The Plausibility Of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma, Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, c. 2005. Link here for notes.

I learned a lot from the book but at the end of the day, a book for the library, but not a "top shelf" book. The best thing it did was help me ask more questions.

I realized I had forgotten an important part of genetics. I don't have the book with me, but I'm going to have look at it again. I don't recall the authors using the word "epigenetics." If that's accurate, that was a huge omission.

• Forbes, 2017 -- how do Darwin's finches change their beaks so quickly? 
• Epigenetics: wiki.

I'm surprised Stephen Meyer, David Gelernter, et al, didn't mention epigenetics.

Not only does epigenetics provide a huge explanation for phenotypic changes, but more importantly, the epigenetics points out again, how incredibly "amazing" DNA is. I assume it's already been discussed but epigenetics also explains the "Lamarckian" phenonmen. LOL.  Just connecting the dots.

Later, November 6, 2019:

The Origin of Prebiotic Information System in the Peptide/RNA World: A Simulation Model of the Evolution of Translation and the Genetic Code, Life, received 13 December 2018; published 1 March 2019.

Information is the currency of life, but the origin of prebiotic information remains a mystery.

We propose transitional pathways from the cosmic building blocks of life to the complex prebiotic organic chemistry that led to the origin of information systems.

The prebiotic information system, specifically the genetic code, is segregated, linear, and digital, and it appeared before the emergence of DNA.

In the peptide/RNA world, lipid membranes randomly encapsulated amino acids, RNA, and peptide molecules, which are drawn from the prebiotic soup, to initiate a molecular symbiosis inside the protocells. This endosymbiosis led to the hierarchical emergence of several requisite components of the translation machine: transfer RNAs (tRNAs), aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS), messenger RNAs (mRNAs), ribosomes, and various enzymes. When assembled in the right order, the translation machine created proteins, a process that transferred information from mRNAs to assemble amino acids into polypeptide chains. This was the beginning of the prebiotic information age.

The new buzzword in evolution: information. Did Stephen Meyer and the "intelligent designer" proponents co-opt the "biologic origin of information systems"? Tag to include: Sankar Chatterjee and Surya Yadav.
 

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Some Guys Have All The Luck 

Some Guys Have All The Luck, Rod Stewart