A fine example of a baseless attack
MODERATOR EDIT TO ADD:
I have to side with Gil on this one. We already know we disagree, but I think Gil is perfectly sincere in his belief. Stating WHY we disagree is OK, but lets draw a line between the belief and the contradictions of that belief. – Dan
Wrong again, for the vera causa of these codes is a special attribute of human, namely intelligence. Note that the idea that a semiotic code such as the genetic code required a non human intelligence has been contemplated by Crick, reason why he devised his panspermia hypothesis.
???
Thank you
I think that might be what @Giltil means. He’s right that a symbol need not have any connection to its meaning. Sometimes it is mission critical to keep the symbol utterly unrelated to the meaning, and you agree with that. This means that there is no inherent necessity in that relationship. If Gil (who does, in fact, make stuff up on the fly) thinks that lack of a connection is somehow part of symbolic syntax, then of course he’s just feeding us more 
but in this case (yeah, I’m a generous guy) I don’t think that’s what he meant. YMMV.
And you haven’t even mentioned UK roadsigns.
This one is a personal favourite of mine:
It means “Toxic to the environment.” My daughter actually has it as a tattoo.
Yeah, OK. I should have realized it was too much.
Ehh no. That wasn’t what his panspermia hypothesis drew from the code to argue. Rather, it was the code’s universality, with only minor variants known to exist, that seemed surprising to him. It’s not that he thought the code couldn’t evolve and required an intelligent designer to come into existence, in fact he explicitly suggested alternative codes might have existed at the origin of life on another planet in that very paper on his directed panspermia hypothesis:
Crick & Orgel, 1972: Our second example is the genetic code. Several orthodox explanations of the universality of the genetic code can be suggested, but none is generally accepted to be completely convincing. It is a little surprising that organisms with somewhat different codes do not coexist. The universality of the code follows naturally from an “infective” theory of the origins of life. Life on Earth would represent a clone derived from a single extraterrestrial organism. Even if many codes were represented at the primary site where life began, only a single one might have operated in the organisms used to infect the Earth.
There isn’t anything in this paper that attempts to argue that the genetic code could not evolve. They were proposing an explanation for the code being basically universal in life on Earth. Today this isn’t remotely as controversial as Crick and Orgel here make it seem (it’s not clear it even was at the time, as the term “completely convincing” seems to be saying it should leave no room for doubt, which is more a statement about psychology than epistemology).
The standard genetic code is universal because of common descent (that’s basically what Crick is here arguing, not that it couldn’t originate through evolution or some other natural process), and while alternative codes likely existed, they went extinct (probably because the standard genetic code was among the most fit codes around).
You just can’t catch a break from being wrong. Let me remind you of the first law of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging!
This one means “don’t freeze” but can be interpreted as “no penguins allowed” or even “no tuxedos allowed”
Maybe even “No frying an egg on the penguin”?
If it’s wider than it’s long, it’s a reconstructive urologist’s mortgage payment.
. . . such as the English language alphabet where they are basically arbitrary but NOT in the ancient Phoenician letters upon which they are based where each is non-arbitrary and always has a quite fascinating story behind it. (For example “A” in English is basically an upside-down and cleaned-up Aleph letter (looking like a bull’s head) in Hebrew and Phoenician—and ALEPH means “bull” in those languages.)
I love UK road signs:
Squeezy toothpaste:
Man struggling with umbrella:
Medium format SLRs ahead:
And my favorite, which gives me a smile every time I enter Dartmoor:
Or “penguins shall not look to the right”
Well, there’s an insupportable assertion, and of a purely verbal nature, too. One can just as easily say that since intelligence does not create codes in the real world without manipulating physical objects and forces, the vera causa is physical action. But, of course, other physical things in the universe also have access to this vera causa, so that leaves us back at the start.
Again: philosophy CANNOT help you here. Nothing but facts can. Do you have any evidence that the genetic code can only be the product of intelligence? It seems plain that you do not.
Instead of “squeezy toothpaste” I saw a warning that somebody stole one of the poles which supported a hammock—and a strong wind has made that loose hammock especially treacherous.
As to “Sheep lying on road”, I would color him orange with bad comb-over hair and add a cartoon speech balloon so that the sheep says, “I never said that Zelinsky was a dictator.”
Ahhh! That brings back memories. In particular, that infamous volume won acclaim for using a photo of a fish that was quickly discredited, mostly because it was clearly a fishing lure with a prominent metal hook.
I’ve just watched the recording of the White House meeting. Words fail to express how I feel about that.
Regarding that “sheep lying on road” sign, I can attest that it is very true; you can be on one of the main roads crossing Dartmoor, come around a bend, and find the road ahead dotted with sheep, who do not intend to move out of your way. Caution is definitely advised.
But the most remarkable moment I had was leaving Dartmoor once, when I saw two sheep, one large and one small, ahead. I slowed down to pass them safely, and as I approached, I saw that they were linked by an umbilical cord. The sign should probably also say “sheep lying-in on road.”
Wow. I had not seen that archaic use of “lying-in” for many many years! (I used to see the expression in my grandfather’s personal journal of his entire adult life starting in year 1900. He included notes on the birth of each of his many children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. So if a mother wasn’t back in the kitchen within a few hours peeling potatoes and fixin’ supper, he’d call that “lying-in”.)
Your memory is slightly off. The photo (actually several of them) was of a fishing lure, but it was an insect, a mayfly if I remember. My favorite: every photo supposedly of a living crinoid was actually a featherduster worm.
Acording to QI thtr’s a sign on Hawaii that says “Beware of invisible cows”
