Little Kid

I like the idea regarding bridge techniques mentioned by brianshark.

It seems like there is more or less a consensus to bid 3♦. At the table I bid the slightly optimistic 3♣, which I now realise is probably too agressive. The hand had an interesting development though when 3♣ got passed out after about about 30 seconds of thought from partner. The full hand was: [hv=d=n&v=n&n=sj763ht964d9652c2&w=sq8hkq873d84cak87&e=sakt2haj5dcqt9653&s=s954h2dakqjt73cj4]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] This made for a grand total of 0 tricks and -900. As soon as I had recovered from the shock of playing my 1st 2-1 fit and having my trumps drawn in two rounds, it suddenly dawned upon me that if the diamonds dont break, they probably have grand slam! At the other table our team mates got to 7♥ making, shipping us a nice 12 IMPs for going down 9 r/w!

[hv=d=n&v=n&s=s954h2dakqjt73cj4]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] N E S W P 1♣ ?

A husband and wife are shopping in their local Wal-Mart.. The husband picks up a case of Budweiser and puts it in their cart. 'What do you think you're doing?' asks the wife. 'They're on sale, only $10 for 24 cans,' he replies. 'Put them back, we can't afford them,' demands the wife, and so they carry on shopping. A few aisles further on along the woman picks up a $20 jar of face cream and puts it in the basket. 'What do you think you're doing?' asks the husband. 'Its my face cream. It makes me look beautiful,' replies the wife. Her husband retorts: 'So does 24 cans of Budweiser and its half the price.' On the PA system: 'Cleanup needed on aisle 25......man down!'

Boston Legal rocks!

I think as mentioned previously, playing Q then A spades doesn't do any harm. You might even get a count signal from your opponents which could help in sorting out the spade situation before you take any further action.

I would assume diamond rkc as it is the last bid suit, South could probably have bid 4♣ or so if he really wanted to set up clubs as trump in search of slam.

I never claimed it would, but hardly anybody seems to want to discuss what I would have liked to discuss. The most interesting part for me, was just ignored by most. I just wanted to provide some feedback on what the discussion for msot did seem to revolve around, at least to the extent I could make sense of some of the posts.

In the OP I asked about concrete evidence of the mechanisms generating novel gene traits, not just observed examples of them happening today or the past(eg. citrate metabolising E. coli or the classic example of the speckled moth) or even the mechanisms that "could" do so. However, It seems that little of you seem to be interested in that and rather debate about the theory of evolution itself. Personally I feel that the evidence for this is fairly strong but that it has not yet been investigated to such an extend that all the gaps are filled. Before I get accused of being ignorant creationist again I'll back up my views and provide you with a few thoughts from prominent scientists in the field of evolution. They were asked what they thought to be the "biggest gaps" remaining in evolutionary theory. "We still don't know what the last common ancestor of the humans and chimpanzees looked like, where and how it lived, and what processes sent us down our separate evolutionary paths. There are now a few important fossils from Africa in the likely time period of between 7 and 5 million years ago, but for me they have not necessarily brought us close to an answer." Chris Stringer, Department of Paleontology at the Natural History Museum in London "The biggest gap in evolutionary theory remains the origin of life itself. We know that life began, probably near volcanically active zones, about 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago, at a time when tehre was no free oxygen in the atmosphere. In the laboratory it has been possible to replicate such conditions and produce amino acids, primitive membrane-like structures and some of the building blocks of DNA and RNA. More recently, it has been found that, along with protein enzymes, RNA can catalyse chemical reactions, and it has even been possible to construct RNA molecules that can copy parts of themselves. But the gap between such a collection of molecules and even the most primitive cell remains enormous." Chriss Wills, biology professor at University of California, San Diego "Which facts of evolution had to be true and which just happened to be true? Did the genetic code have to be digital in order for natural selection to work? Could any other classes of molecules have substituted for proteins? How inevitable was the evolution of sex? Eyes? Intelligence? Language? Consciousness? Was the origin of life itself a common event, and therefore is life common in the universe?" Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford "Evolution's biggest gap? Quite simple, old boy." Professor Mortimer leaned back and grinned. "Evolution equals change? Naturally, but that is only one step. What is life? A spectacular tightrope walk on a gossamer thread between the vast regions of crystalline immobolity and chaotic flux. If you don't like that metaphor, try thinking of a pack of cards a mile high with an elephant perfectly balanced on top. And then there is this uncanny self-organisation. Cells to consciousness - impressive isn't it? Darwin got it right, but so did Newton. But then physics had Einstein. Perhaos now it is biology's turn." Simon Conway Morris, professor in Department of Earth Sciences at University of Cambridge

First of all I'd like to thank Hrothgar for the link as it is probably what I am looking for. I must confess however that my mathematical analysis skills are not so advanced and that I can't quite intuitively make sense of the article. That being said I think I need to clarify a few points because I think people are getting the wrong idea of me... As I stated before I am not a creationist, nor any other form of theist for that matter, I'm an atheist. The sole purpose of this thread was for me to be able to make sense of the basis of genetic change in organisms. If I was just trying to hate on evolution without trying to learn anything I would not have started this topic and would most certainly not be studying as a 2nd year Molecular Biologist. I never claimed evolution to be a hoax and all the evidence just to be coincidental. I accept that genetic variation arises and that it is naturally selected for by the environment. The question I asked was HOW it arises. Many of the mechanisms that mentioned be create this genetic variation seem (to me anyway) to be more of a means to distribute it than form it. I might just be interpreting everything wrongly, but I'll have a look at this Dawkins fellow that was mentioned and hopefully it will clear things up.

But this is not my point, I got those examples off the top of my head (knowing little about biological evolution) when I was writing them when I probably should have looked them up first. I wrote the post for was ask what you think about the random mutation part in evolution and its contribution to genetic change in a good way. I personally can't seem to get my head around it and haven't found any material that helps me to a satisfactory level. Maybe you can?

Sure, there are theories to account for flagellal and eye evolution, but if it is all as clearcut as you claim it to be, why do I find articles like this from December in less than 5 mins on Pubmed? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1908172...Pubmed_RVDocSum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1908104...Pubmed_RVDocSum

Somehow my sarcasm detector seems to have gone off. EDIT: I got link to the other thread O.o

Firstly I would like to point out that I am NOT yet another creationist trying to bash evolution just for the sake of making it easier for me to accept my faith by thwarting alternate "solutions", quite the opposite. I am consistenly awestruck when I find out the multitude of ingenious ways in which organisms make the most complicated of problems at a cellular level seem trivial. With none is this more the case than the wonderful notion of "evolution", which not only is extremely elegant in its own design but allows everything to fall into place. As a result I can get agitated quite easily when people dismiss the notion of natural selection and evolution without even considering it and admiring the extent to which is allows us to make some sense of a microscopic world of which we, in the end know relatively little about. However, it is also my opinion that the scientific community is very much lopsided in its opinion regarding a hypothesis that has not been proven as a fact at a fundamental level (to my knowledge anyway). And as much I endorse the ideas behind evolution, I can get easily irritated when people simply look down on others when they do not believe in evolution (Yes, I know I am a difficult person :)). As I understand it, evolution has been "proven" as a fact regarding genetic change in organisms through generation, but it has NOT been "proven" with respect to the reasons as to why genetic change arises. I'll try and convey my thoughts on this and why I myself can't accept it as "fact". The general reasons as to why variation arises seem to be the following: - Combination of parental genomes - Recombination - Random mutation in germ line cells Combination of parental genomes: This is not as much as a source of genetic variation as it is a way to randomly distribute the existing gene pool. I believe it can most certainly act as a means to propagate the "natural selection" of favourable traits, but I think that is a far cry from generating an eye from one generation to the next. And no, it does not make sense to start with part of an eye and then gain more and more bits of it through subsequent generation because accumulating "partial eyes" would challenge the very theory of natural selection that supposedly drives it. Recombination: Shuffling DNA sequences may result in wonderful new DNA sequences, identical ones, different ones with same function or damaging ones. However, the truth remains that the chances of favourable change are extremely remote and the chances of damaging ones are orders of magnitude higher. Perhaps a more intruiging point is that even though most organisms reproduce sexually and employ the above mechanisms, it seems to be an inferior form of reproduction when compared to parthenogenesis. Perhaps these processes do not have the exact functions that we thought them to possess. Recombination for instance has been considered a way for sexual organisms to bypass problems associated with Muller's ratchet. Parental recombination clearly functions much better to transfer naturally selectable traits than to actually form them. Random mutations in germ cell lines: Notwithstanding the exhilarating notion of standing and admiring everything around me and being able to attribute it to randomness, it seems a little farfetched. It basically boils down to getting randomly mutated DNA becoming so incredibly beneficial that it will get selected over other mutations. Realistically I don't think this is very likely. Firstly the mutations in coding DNA are so rare and secondly, for every beneficial mutation, dozens of harmful ones will occur. The gene pool would be cluttered with damaging mutations and could not be selected against because then they would be selecting against the beneficial mutations too. The biochemical world is full of anomalies that random mutation can not account for: gastrulation, endosymbiotic theory or even flagella suddenly appearing on bacteria at some point in history can not be explained by a couple of "lucky mutations". It seems to me, that the scientific community is overzealous to embrace an idea because it explains so much of what we see, feel, touch, hear and smell around us. You might be thinking that I am just somebody who likes to criticise others without giving any alternatives myself. Well, I do have one, I think that genetic variation arises through regulated mutation, something along the lines of intragenerational selective gametogenesis. Anyway, I'm curious to hear what you think about this.

At the table I played on the spades discarding a heart, thinking it more likely for them to return that than find a club switch. I also played that line because I thought the possible overtrick also might give me an advantage against people in 3NT. It turned out my line was one that didn't work with all other tables making 3NT.

Ok, I tried to work it out and got the following: Trumps first works if 2-2 or J single. 2-2 = 40% 3-1 with single Jack = 50%/ 4 = 12.5% So I'm guessing taking trumps will work about 53% of the time? Comparing spades to trumps: If Spades 3-3, will make +1 compared to taking trumps? So 36% of time this line gets one more trick than taking trumps? If 4-2, then overruff diamonds or discard heart to get same or potentially better result than taking trumps? So 49% time same or potentially better result? 16% time there is a worse spade distribution and will score worse than taking trumps unless the player with short spade has singleton ace. So I'm guessing that brings it to 53% chance making for taking trumps and the spade play achieving the same or doing better 70% of the time roughly?

♦I held the following hand on a club night: [hv=d=s&s=skthajdt987632cj4]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] Partner deals, opens and opps remain silent: 1♠-2♦ 3♣-3♦ 5♦-p First question: Do you agree with the 2♦ and 3♦ bids playing simple 5 card majors? After the Q♥ lead partner puts down: [hv=d=s&s=skthajdt987632cj4]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] Second question: Do you take trumps or try to discard a heart on the third spade in dummy before they gain the lead?

I play 2/1, or at least I try to.

I thought 2♣ is only forcing to game if the 2♣ bidder does not rebid 2NT? But I'm probably mistaken...

lol

1NT-3♥

3NT

2♦ :D