(MG hijacks the blog at this point.)
I don't care what you say; AC/DC are the best rock and roll band in the WORLD; BAR NONE! The Rolling Stones are mere amateurs! Yes, Malcolm is prey to Alzheimer's, the drummer is suspected of murder and Brian and Angus must be 'feeling the the weight of the years' but just listen to 'Shot down in flames' (or anything else for that matter) from the 2013 'Live at the River Plate' to appreciate how awesome they could they be, and were, and still, relatively speaking, are! I rate AC/DC above Led Zep as a live band and that says something!
Malcolm Young better than Jimmy Page at generating 'riffs'; Yep! Angus Young better as a soloist than Page? No! Angus sucks as a soloist; I can do better. But as a band they were simply the best! And they still, by and large, seem to sound the same, with all that energy, as when Bon Scott carried Angus, playing all the while through the medium of recently introduced wi-fi, on his shoulders up and down the Hammersmith Odeon. I defy you to listen to AC/DC live and not shake your head backwards and forwards like a demented, head-banging idiot. You can't help it!
I'm not even sure now whether the death of Bon Scott was not a 'step up' for the band; I remember Brian when he used to be in 'Geordie'. He must surely thank his lucky stars that AC/DC found him; the nicest retirement fund ever and all in return for a gravel-voice and piss-poor lyrics! (Most of the staples of the second half of a show, the stuff the fans actually want/crave, are usually Bon Scott penned lyrics.) And I am so glad that 'technology' allowed the creation of the 'balloon' that is 'Rosie' - as in 'Whole lotta Rosie'; whoever dreamed that up deserves a medal or, at least, an OBE!
(MG now relinquishes control of this blog and retreats to the sanctuary of vintage 'Mock the Week' and Frankie Boyle.)
Thank you, MG, for giving me my blog back!
A couple of recent articles have piqued my interest over the last few days but I don't know if I should discuss them; my knowledge is, I think, too poor but, nonetheless they are sea-borne creatures such as I, and so, perhaps I should comment.
The articles refer to octopuses (or octopodes if you want to be pedantic as the 'pus' part is derived from the Greek for 'foot' not Latin as most seem to think). One was a short piece about the hunting habits of a small octopus, 'tapping' shrimps on the shoulder, which seems to momentarily startle them, before engulfing them with their 'arms' about them, and the other, perhaps far more interesting, although 'hyped' beyond belief by the journos, was about how different an octopus' DNA seems to be, when compared to other creatures (or at least those creatures which have had their DNA sequenced).
Now, as far as I can determine, octopuses belong to the invertebrate class Cephalopoda which in addition to the 300 or so species of octopus includes the nautiloids, the cuttle fishes and squids (my favourites, they are so tasty). They seem to be, to my eyes at least, perhaps the most evolved of their class. Nautiloids have retained the compartmentalised shell of their mollusc ancestors; cuttle fish retain the large, internalised shell, the 'cuttle-bone', long favoured amongst keepers of captive budgerigars for keeping the bill from overgrowing; squid retain a thin internal 'shell', almost transparent, but most species of octopus are entirely without a vestige of a shell, whether internal or external, which enable them to perform their 'disappearing act' when startled; flowing into holes or gaps, however small, as though by magic. Indeed, some octopus species carry shells of other molluscs, coconuts or even bottles around with them to hide in and thus escape the attentions of potential predators; they are mostly of modest size and, like fleas, always have larger potential predators*.
Their ability to change their skin colour and even the texture of the skin on a highly selective basis to match their immediate surroundings, whether it be a uniform or variegated colour or texture, is truly remarkable; the transformation is almost instantaneous and, I suspect, cannot be mediated or entirely under the control of a 'central' brain and must be, to some extent, under the control of its highly decentralised neuronal system, although I have no evidence whatsoever to support this assertion. It just seems to me to be more logical, although nature doesn't have to follow the rules of quasi-human logic; if it did I wouldn't be freezing my arse off for four months of the year; every year! This ability may have evolved both for protection or ambush; it does not really matter. Once acquired, it is able to perform both functions irrespective of its origin, although given the other methods that the octopus has to evade predators, squirting 'black ink', 'flying' off at high speed by 'jet propulsion' and trailing its legs behind, thus making the 'brain' the furthest from a predator, makes me think that its 'camouflage', developed for defence, initially.
They appear to be the most intelligent of all the invertebrates, being able to resolve a number of 'human designed' problems, although exactly how intelligent they are is widely contested among researchers. However, many countries have placed them on a list of animals that are 'sentient', at least in so far as legislation regarding animal experimentation is concerned, which implies, at least, that the octopus has a fair degree of the 'benefit of the doubt' regarding its supposed intelligence, which no doubt pleases the octopodes in the main.
However, the most startling fact, from an analysis of one particular species of octopus, the California Two-Spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides), the only cephalopod thus far to have had its genome sequenced, shows a striking dissimilarity with the genomes of other species which have been sequenced, leading journos to dub the octopus 'alien'; as one researcher has said, it was like putting the genome into a blender and re-arranging everything that is found to be somewhat common amongst diverse species and classes. However, until other species of octopus and their cephalopod cousins are sequenced, currently underway, it will be impossible to determine whether this is a novel re-arrangement possibly unique to the last common ancestor of the octopus or whether its roots lie further back along the cephalopod tree of descent.
I, personally, am sceptical of the assertions of 'alien-ness'. It is impossible to extract, from the fossil record, the DNA of extinct species (it is largely unstable outside the living organism) and so this gross shuffling of the genetic code may be a not infrequent event promoted, for instance, by increased bombardment of high-energy photons or by increased solar radiation due to, for example, fluctuating levels in the ozone layer which provide a protection against ionising radiation from high-energy gamma rays and UV light. Perhaps the major divisions which scientists see in the various 'kingdoms', bacteria, fungi, plants, invertebrates, vertebrates all came about through the gross presence in past geological time of such mutagens.
The origin of multi-cellular life is still shrouded in a good deal of mystery, although the basic mechanics of how such life might have originated give good grounds for a speculative theory; symbiotic parasites invading single cells, dragging their DNA with them. Any organism which could co-opt these 'parasites' to serve 'its own purpose' would probably gain an advantage over those which could not.
Without a time machine to allow the examination of long extinct species, there will never be any certainty of how life originated and how it developed through its many phases; even lifeforms which seem to mirror their long-extinct ancestors, still must change, if only through genetic drift. More importantly, we do not yet understand the purpose, if any, of all of the 'junk-DNA' which seems not to have any function; perhaps, nature, by accumulating DNA which serves no purpose in the living organism, allows for a greater ability to evolve by mutating the very DNA which serves no current purpose. It can, may, fundamentally alter ontogeny (and thus phylogeny) without disturbing the fundamental ontogeny of the basal organism. Nature seems like an obsessive hoarder; throwing nothing away on the grounds that it one day, with a subtle mutation, could come in handy.
As the human-influenced planet grinds inextricably towards catastrophe, perhaps in the life span of humans born this year, it is comforting to note that, as Ian Michael (Jeff Goldblum) points out in Jurassic Park, life will always find a (an intelligent) way!
*
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet in his kind
Is bit by him that comes behind.
(Jonathan Swift, Poetry, A Rhapsody.)
AND
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
(Augustus de Morgan).
I seriously can't be arsed to see which came first; life is too short, especially in my case!
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