Slashdot Mirror
Human Genes Still Evolving
MediumFormat writes "The New York Times is running an article that discusses the continuing evolution of human genes. From the article: 'The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.' Darwin Awards aside, what made people think that evolution stopped with the modern era?"
The PLOS biology article is available to everyone via Open Access.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
We'll it would have been if it wasn't for this damned webbing between my fingers.
its not that its stopped, its that 5,000 years is an insignificant spec of time.
-ashot
Darwin Awards aside, what made people think that evolution stopped with the modern era?
Applying natural selection as a template, lets look at what it really is. Natural selection is the phenomena of being removed from the gene pool prior to reproduction. Anything else that happens will allow your genes to carry on, which is how evolution works. People probably assumed that evolution stopped because they assume that most people manage to successfully reproduce prior to their death.
Evolution involves the death of weaker individuals before they can breed. With soap (the yardstick of civilisation), surgery, rescue helicopters, dentistry, wheelchairs etc, weaker individuals aren't killed off so easily before they can breed.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
I think it will be really interesting to see what happens to humanity (genetically) over the next several thousand years. The article makes it sound like bioinformatics could really take off in an effort to better ourselves by artificial selection.
A number of things have changed that will greatly impact our evolution that hasn't been experienced by our species before:
1. Ease of migration allowing for extreme mixing of previously separated social groups (this has been in decline over the last few thousand years, but now that you can travel between continents relatively quickly and cheaply, the impact will be much much greater.)
2. Knowingly allowing, accepting, and encouraging reproduction of individuals, who...shouldn't (No, I don't mean Bush). There's some bad genes out there. Some that shouldn't be passed on. While we're at a point where we can curtail some of this through prescreening parents for likely inherited traits, we continue to become more accepting of people with, well, bad genes. Aren't we effectively letting people piss into the pool?
3. Will this spawn a new race (as in car) by parents to "maximize" the brain genes described in TFA? Do I have to listen to soccer mom's brag about their kids DNA now?
4. How will this impact governments? And more importantly, dating websites?
I guess only time will tell.
I mean really? Come on...
You go to college, work your arse off, earn lots of money, die without kids, the race doesn't get your genes. You're a single parent living on state benefit with 12 kids... big contribution to the gene pool.
Deleted
Part of evolution is adaptation to the environment. We are changing the environment (civilization, medicine, technology, etc.) far faster than evolution can react to it, so to speak, given the length of a human generation. We are seriously adapting the environment to us, rather than the other way around.
That evolution doesn't give a toss about your concept of strength or of fitness, and guess what... poor people have more children than rich people do...
Deleted
Yesterday, I read this in the Guardian. It's a very interesting article about how, over the last 10.000 years, our DNA has been altered by what we eat and where we live.
42 + 1 = 42
Genetically, we have a concept called races.
No, we don't. Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I hate to see all these comments talking about how evolution mechanisms are failing in the modern world.
We can't escape natural selection, no matter how many pills and safety mechanisms we introduce into society.
Women just tend to become more and more picky with whom they mate. And while things like good eye sight become less important, other things take their place. Things like having lots of money, social skills/social network, an athletic body, cooking skills and so on.
Here in Europe, the number of babies born per adult keep falling. This means it is actually getting harder to reproduce than it was in a past, poorer Europe.
Will code a sig generator for food
- the humane genes are still evolving
- they are evolving at a rapid rate
- they are evolving in the wrong direction
Oh yeah, and:
- it's not 'designed'
- it's certainly not 'intelligent'
If we want to preferentialy breed inteligence into future generations we're going to have to do it intentionaly, either by a direct process of eugenics (possibly by giving financial benefits to inteligent people who have children and heavily taxing less inteligent people who do ... which runs into the problem of how you measure inteligence reliably) or by human genettic engineering.
One interesting possibility would be to have everybody sterilised with reproductive material kept on ice, and then when a woman wants to have children give her artificial insemination with an embryo who's biological parents are of "aproved stock". Yeah, somewhat abusable by whomever has control over the system - not to mention the unfortuante problem of monoculture if enough genetic diversity doesn't get into teh next generation as a result.
James P. Barrett
Of course human genes are still evolving; you just have to examine what it is these days that limits people in reproductivity, and what encourages them. It's obvious that we, as a species, should ever so slightly more alcohol-resistant, because drunk driving kills a lot of young people before they can reproduce.
Humans of European ancestory are already more resistant to alchol than most mammals. Because for a long time brewing was the normal method of purifying drinking water. Cars have only been around for just over a century, where as water living pathogens have been around a lot longer.
A few generations are enough, particularly in areas with high mortality rates, high levels of disease. It just doesn't apply to the individual.
Deleted
I think that article isn't seeing the forest for the trees.
In fact, natural selection has clearly operated at a huge scale, when Europeans settled every corner of the globe, while indiginous populations have disappeared or mingled. Genes associated with those Europeans have spread, while many others have nearly disappeared.
This is an example of group selection, and it has selected many genes at once; some of them may have helped Europeans in their conquests, others may have just been along for the ride.
On the flipside, medical and environmental advances probably are causing us to lose functions at a massive rate: no need to deal with food-born pathogens if you don't encounter any.
Evolution isn't as neat and simple as "better mammal wins" or "better gene gets selected".
The Chinese are illustrative of another interesting development in evolution: limiting population growth in the absence of high child mortality and in the presence of modern medical technologies and genetic testing. Whatever policies nations adopt in that environment, they'll end up acting as "natural" selection as well.
That's exactly the mistake that most people make when they talk about evolution. It's not just down to the ability to stay alive long enough, i.e. not all selectors involve organism death.
Some people lead long, healthy active lives and never reproduce through choice, lack of opportunity or possibly just inadequate social skills. Isaac Newton famously died a virgin.
People may also reproduce but choose the best partner to reproduce with, thus ensuring their line dies out in the future. Or social fashions may influence the reproductive choices of generations, i.e. big is beautiful, or slender, Blonde or brunette etc.
And lets not even start on the concept of nations and other communal groupings competing with each other...
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
If you want to evolve
Individuals don't evolve.
sudo ergo sum
Just look at the average football player's chance to reproduce compared to the average /.er's chance...
I challenge everyone here to do their part in raising the IQ of humanity (go get yourself laid damnit!)
Evolution happens when those too weak/unable to adapt to their surroundings don't get to breed, so only the successful genes survive. Straightforward, and of course we aren't going to stop evolving just because Darwin was wrong and God is bored with the game after a few thousand years.
Now I know this is a short-term perspective, but who knows how long this will go on - look at women these days (and for the last century). If women want to work and have a career, then they'd do well to be smart enough not to have children. So essentially, modern society removes a good deal of good genes from the gene pool. Female academics have much fewer children, they're pickier about who they marry/have those children with. And there's very little sign that this is going to ease up anytime soon It's much easier for you guys - when you're an academic and successful, picking up a woman isn't that hard, so you'll get to pass on your genes. Just watch out you don't have daughters, because if they inherit your intelligence, your genes may be in a dead end there.
An evolutionary advantage is whatever passes your genes on to the next generation. Hence it is the poor not the rich that have it. Quality of life doesn't make a difference. Evolution is a simple dumb process, it holds no moral judgements whatsoever.
James P. Barrett
Bullshit. Culture has never been a static, unchanging entity. Culture is whatever we as a society wish it to be, and it changes all the time.
Indeed, science has had an amazing impact on culture in the last 100 years. We moved from a culture of travel by foot and horse to an automotive culture. We've gone from Uncle George playing a banjo to carrying whatever music we want wherever we want on portable music devices. We've gone from having to spend hours at the library to look up an obscure fact to having information at our fingertips 24 hours a day. We've gone from candles and oil lamps to electric lights. And perhaps most noticably, we've gone from getting together with friends and family, or reading a book, or playing a board game, to sitting in front of the TV set.
Sorry, but our culture is very heavily influenced by science. It wasn't that long ago in certain parts of the Western world where the area you were allowed to sit in on the bus was determined by the colour of your skin -- something which is no longer part of any Western culture (except in the minds of a few deluded racists who think that culture is static and unchanging, so long as they get to dictate what culture is).
Yes, some parts of culture are sufficiently ingrained that it is hard to overcome their momentum -- but it is hardly impossible to do so. Major events and new ideas and inventions are changing culture every day.
I'm sure 10+ years ago there were some old white guys in South Africa who were convinced that Apartheid would never end as well -- and yet here we are. Women are allowed to vote everywhere in the Westernized world as well, in case nobody had bothered to tell you.
Sorry, but you come across as an appologist for racists and bigots with a dumb comment like that. Culture changes. Get used to it. Discrimination is not a given -- it's a completely learned trait
Yaz.
This is a very good point that quite a lot of people don't seem to get. Anything that causes a person not to reproduce is (eventually) selected against. For example, being sensitive to the meme "there are too many people on this world" is an evolutionary disadvantage and will eventually be removed from the genepool. The same goes for high intelligence (being that intelligent people often don't reproduce).
:)
That's probably also why religion is so prevalent in human populations: the evolutionary advantage it gives should not be underestimated.
So if you consider people like you to be a good addition to the human gene pool, breed!
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
With genetically engineered plants, this may stop being true. It's not uncommon for such plants to be modified to produce sterile seeds. The idea is, of course, that farmers will have to buy their next seed from the producer as well. Of course this means that if you can't get new seeds from such a company (maybe because those companies all died due toeconomy collapse), and if the farmer doesn't happen to have traditional seed around (which is likely if GM food gets the norm), then the farmer will not be able to produce food anymore, neither for himself, nor for anyone else.
Ok, this could also be seen as an evolutionary force: Those who don't use such plants will have an evolutionary advantage. Most interestingly, many of them will, again, most probably be poorer farmers who just cannot afford to buy the GM seed.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Darwin Awards aside, what made people think that evolution stopped with the modern era?
The fact that through medical care and technology, we have almost eliminated "survival of the fittest" (better written as "survival of the best fit to their habitat")?
People now live and have children when they would previously have died, either through diseases, or harsh environmental conditions. The elimination of the process of natural selection should see to it that evolution in humans no longer occurs, at least not in any beneficial way. Bad genes that lead to people having chronic medical conditions are not removed from the gene pool by those people dying without producing offspring. Humankind needs to step in with more advanced medical care and gene therapy to replace what was once done by nature.
Just my $0.02 of course!
Most whites have a gene that gives partial resistance to Bubonic Plague, as those Europeans who didn't have it 600 years ago don't have living descendants now.
Will the next big evolutionary change be (partial?) resistance to Bird-flu or Ebola ?
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
While we're at a point where we can curtail some of this through prescreening parents for likely inherited traits, we continue to become more accepting of people with, well, bad genes. Aren't we effectively letting people piss into the pool?
No. No. No. Eugenics is not just wrong. It's painfully stupid.
Why does evolution work? What is the secret. The secret my friends is randomness.
Randomness is the process which drives evolution. The universe is a vast, unpredicable chaotic system. It is only by randomly searching through many possible solutions that a species can hope to adapt to any enviornment.
The minute you take out randomness, by taking away genes or introducing them, you've stopped evolving, and have started specialising. And guess what happens to specialist species when their enviornment changes? That's right. They die.
Evolve dolphins with bigger lungs so they can dive deeper, kill off all lesser lunged dolphins. Then earths 02 levels drop by 2%. Ooops. Specialised, deep sea feeding dolphins are dead meat. With a random system, there would still be some lower lung capacity dolphins around.
Think this doesn't apply to people? Ask yourself this? Can you say with certainty what genes will be beneficial or detrimental to humanities survival in 1 million years time? What about 10,00 years time? 100 years? 10 years? Who would have predicted even 20 years ago that "geek" traits would be in such demand? Can you say what genes are beneficial or detrimental right now!?
Yet you want to throw out the single most powerful aspect of evolution. Random chance. It's got us where we are today, and if you think anyone can engineer an entire planet and its ecosystem half as well as random evolution, I'd like to see you try.
For an example of the superiority of evolution over engineering, just check out evolved antennas. NASA seems to think random evolution is just fine.
May the Maths Be with you!
Lets put it this way, humans are not going to ever loose their pinky finger if modern society goes on the way it is.
I don't think you can expect any MAJOR changes in an evolutionary model that does not ELIMINATE unfavorable characterists. We live in society's in which pretty much everybody reproduces and most of those reproductions end up reproducing themself. For those who cannot cope with society, we have public assistance and jail.
If anything, I believe modern evolutionary pressure (the last three hundred years) is producing more of the genes from people who have poor family planning skills and just cannot grasp or accept birth control. I fear what this pattern may produce in 20,000 years where people with less cognitive skills have 3-4 times more children than those with more cognitive skills. That and the other pressure for religious fanatics to have more children than those who take rational views of the world. Those with deep intellect could be forced to create a "Zardoz" society to protect themselves.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
>>Genetically, we have a concept called races.
G enetics
e
>No, we don't. Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
Really? Explain that to my black friend in 8th grade as he suffered during a sickle-cell anemia crisis.
I'm sure he'd be happy to know that he can't have a disease that affects primarily African-Americans, because there are no genetic differences in races.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#
Or to my Chinese roommate who lacks alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes in his liver and so has one drink and turns bright red. Embarassing for a guy who was in a frat that prized heavy drinking skills very highly. The enzyme deficiency has a huge penetration in Asia, something like up to 70% in some countries, a couple percent in Germany, 0% in Ireland. Go figure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_dehydrogenas
Or the Jewish student organization that sponsored a free screening day for Tay-Sachs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease
The concept that race is solely a cultural construct is mere wishful thinking: "I wish there were no genetic differences in people, because then there'd be no racism, and we'd all live in a world filled with flowers and ponies." No, as we discover more about genetic diversity we learn which genes have greater tendencies in certain ethnic groups. This is NOT an excuse for racism -- the concept that one person can be somehow metaphysically superior than another due to skin pigmentation is absurd -- but denying uncontroversial science for political reasons is troubling as well.
But what's in the DNA doesn't correlate particularly well with what we have culturally labelled 'races'. The genetic difference between a European, an Arab, an Indian, a Chinaman, an aboriginal, and a native American isn't all that much, compared to the genetic difference between African tribe A and African tribe B. And yet we consider David Smith and Tanaka Jiro to be of different 'races', while two Africans of far greater genetic diversity from each other we lump together as 'black'.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
And you miss the fact that, in the case of an economic collapse large enough to cause starvation in high society in the First World, the farmland will get burned there.
Maybe, depending on how things go, even likely. That said, we have seen economic and social collapse without this happening (see the end of the former soviet union for a nice example)
Regardless, you are right that a hunter-gatherer has an even better chance, but that is only in line with the argument I was trying to make.
Less dependence on society + technology == better chance on survival when society collapses.
Exactly right.
Evolution doesn't necessarily mean "good"--or at least not in any sense that we'd usually use the word.
Common misconception.
Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
At the risk of sounding abrasive, that statement is a simplification. It is true that there is more genetic variability within a 'race' than between 'races', and that one cannot determine 'race' using a DNA test. However, there are very real medical conditions that are exhibited more frequently in specific 'races' because those conditions have a genetic basis. These differences are of interest genetically.
But who would you say is intelligent? It seems to me like you are confusing making a carreer for yourself with beeing genetically superior in terms of intelligence.
How many great minds are not being spent looking for food on garbage dumps in Africa? Or go their whole life without ever getting access to even basic education? If you examine the phd's of the world and compare their genes to the genes of the homeless, it would be very surprising if you found any regular difference.
Genetically, you are not in any way inferior because you spend your days trying to survive starvation, or flip burgers for minimum-wage at McDonalds.
Darwin Awards aside, what made people think that evolution stopped with the modern era?"
The problem evolution is having now is that in order for the primary mechanism of evolution to "work", a significant portion of the members of a population have to die. (not survive long enough to reproduce) In today's modern human socity, life is valued and society helps people to survive that without help would not have made it.
Some of the most extreme examples include people that have a genetic defect that would normally be fatal, but due to modern medical technology they are able to go on living. They have children, some of which inherit those different genes and also suffer from the same genetic condition. 500 years ago this would not have happened because the original defect would have been "weeded out of the gene pool" and there would have been no children with the same defect.
Evolution may still be occurring, but it is very likely going a lot slower than it was even a decade ago. It's also likely working a little different now than it did in the past - the other functional feature of evolution is natural selection, and the random attributes that people find attractive in finding a partner have probably changed over time and this also would affect evoltion - I'd expect this to now be the dominent influence on human evolution.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Blahblahblahblah free market blahblahblah extreme individualism blahblah
If all you have seen is the social security system in the USA then I can hardly blame you for your opinion, that system is horribly broken.
There are extremely well working social security systems in other countries, take a look at most of Scandinavia for a good example of that. Interestingly, people there are not angry at 'the weak' at all, only at those who actually abuse the system.
It is the free market fundamentalists that undo most of the help that is being given to third world countries, but despite that, a lot of help is going their way.
For the rest, you are so caught up in free market fundamentalism that you cannot see beyond your own situation. Too bad your own situation is completely irrelevant. Please go learn something about this world and the different societies on it before believing that you have a solution for anything.
It's nice to know that a post composed primarily of logically flawed, inaccurate arguments still gets +5.
Without disagreeing with you, what part of your argument refutes the idea that the concept of race is not supported by genetics?
All you've done is give examples of genetic anomalies that are present in populations. Those genetice anomalies are a response to environment, and have nothing to do with the race of the individual.
To explain it to you so you understand, if you moved groups of different "races" around, they would eventually develop similar genetic anomalies.
I think you're trying to wedge a social argument into a discusiion of genetics, but none of what you say is supported by fact.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
What many people fail to realize is that it takes "evolution" on the order of tens to hundreds thousands of years to "invent" a gene.
Random mutations have to encode for a new protein that activates in the right cells and "does the right thing". From then on, this is likely to become a "gene": Almost any random mutation will invalidate the protein, and disable the "feature".
Suppose such a new "invention" is not always advantageous. Say, only during an ice age. During ice ages, those carrying the intact encoding for the protein (we say they "have the gene"), will survive best, those that don't have it will drop in numbers. Once such a condition is over (say ice age stops), natural selection suddely starts to favor those that "do not have the gene". Still, as they decend from a population where most had the gene to survive, they remain "genetically close", and the gene will easily activate and proliferate during the next ice age.
A real world example is Sicle Cell Anemia. It is a genetic disease: You're born with or without it. Advantage of HAVING the disease? You don't die of Malaria (you do die of the disease, but most have had children by then).
So depending on the amount of malaria mosquitos around, the percentage of people with the Sicle Cell Anemia gene varies a lot. Natural selection at work!
Now, if you look at 10000 to 15000 years, it is unlikely that "evolution" has "invented" a lot of new genes. That however genes have activated and deactivated is however very likely.
If the "running fast" gene was "mostly essential" 10000 years ago in africa, but now not any more, then natural selection would have ensured that 90-95% of the population had that gene 10000 years ago. Nowadays, there is no longer a selection for-or-against this gene. So, the percentage of the people having the gene will slowly drop (I don't work in the field, I have no idea how fast this goes).
Did you ever notice that different children "don't like" different foods? This is a genetic safeguard to preserve the species. Evolution apparently "invented" that a long time ago.
If five percent of your tribe "Simply doesn't like to eat chicken", and the H5N1 Chicken flue comes around, about 5% of the tribe is likely to survive to pass on a much elevated "don't like chicken" gene.
Most likely the "common knowledge" about what to eat and what not to eat has leveled out the "taste" genes: They no longer significantly influence survival.
The question of "race" is problematic, as the parent post itself shows. For examples of race, the poster gives "African-American," "Chinese," and "Jewish."
Which of these are "races"? Is race determined by continent of origin? Country? Region (Tay-Sachs affects the Ashkenazi Jews--are they a separate race from the Sephardic)?
Of course there are genetic differences between groups. But these variations do not match up very well with conventional (cultural) concepts of race, which are often based simply on skin color or other physical attributes, and sometimes on national origin.
I am not suggesting free trade is a bad thing, but alone it doesn't solve much.
If India didn't try to educate its people (on tax money) there would be no programmers for hire there.
China has an education and healthcare system in line with socialist ideals, all state provided.
It is not accidental that those are among the very few countries in the developing world that are making some real economic progress.
There is trade with them because they actually have something to offer, and they have something to offer exactly because of spending tax money on helping those who cannot afford education and such themselves initially.
When left to a pure 'free market' you get something like Nigeria. Lots of money available in theory, trade due to natural resources, but a population living in poverty and not able to provide anything worth trading.
No gene is trying to overcome overpopulation (or anything else), and in fact number of descendents is the way we measure successful genes, so a large population is a sign of success not failure (from an evolutionary winners/losers perspective).
Anyway, there are factors that tend to counter overpopulation, such as transmittable diseases (our population is their environment), and a population that is growing faster than it's food supply, so over-population (in any evolutionarily meaningful sense) can only ever be a temporary phenomenon - it's self correcting.
If you end Aparthied in South Africa you simply are creating a new form of Aparthied somewhere else.
Of course. I'd forgotten the law of conservation of Apartheid.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Two things...
... the average height and brawn of the american has demonstratably increased steadily since colonization (freaks like lincoln aside)... This is something known as contextual adaptation, and as been seen in the fossil record many a time (mini versions of various well known dinosaurs caught on new islands for milliions of years, etc and so on).
... but the enlargement of the american colonist over 200-400 years due to the bounty of the land shows that, well, in fact, our genome is more than simply an accident... it is code and capable of reactions to bounty, stresses, and environment. When we live in a place that can support larger bodies (again, no reference to fat), it will because a larger animal is less likely to be a target for predators... however, if yer stuck in no-man's-land or on tiny islands, well, you'll shrink because you want to remain viable even without enormous bounties of food to be had. That's a form of genetic adaptation that has been shown to occur very fast (in the greater scheme of things)
1) the evolving american: One very interesting and MEASURABLE transition in human genome has occurred right here in america, and in a geological/evolutionary blink of an eye... Our tallness (no, not fatness)
Some above have said that, 'well sure evolution exists, but it is purely accidental and could never adjust for overpopulation, etc'
2) the swimming primate: Has anyone noticed, that of all the primates in existance, humans are the best adapted to swimming? How many other primates concentrate their populations on shorelines? How many can swim at all? From what I hear, very few... As one who has faith in our internal programmings, I am very curious where we are headed and why...
No, it can only be selected if there is genetic differentiation in it. So if susceptibility levels to the "full world" meme vary for different alleles of the same gene, the less susceptible versions will be selected for. But if that genetic variation doesn't exist, it can't be selected for.
It works the other way round, too. Anything that has evolved has clearly been subject to inheritable differences in the past, and it probably still is, unless the selective pressure for it is so strong that the population is essentially homeogenous. This is the strongest argument for there being a genetic basis to intelligence level, since intelligence has clearly evolved in the fairly recent past.
If you're looking for a massive plague that would have conferred resistance on survivors, that would suit the argument.
(And yet we're looking at the bird flu now. Also the pandemics of 1957 and 1968. The picture's muddied by modern vaccination practices, which were having some grab by '57.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It is a bad thing. We've lost the filter aspect of evolution. Sure, the genes are changing, but it's no longer survival of the fittest. Say 100 years ago disease X killed all carriers of the defective gene before they could breed. With modern medicine, they can live a full life. The side-effect is that if they then have children, the defective gene gets passed down. Given enough generations, every one will be carrying it eventually. This doesn't count for fatal diseases, for example I believe that in 100 years or so everyone will have poor eyesight. It's so easy to rectify, so the poorly-sighted hunter/gatherers no longer go hungry.
What's the solution? Give up medicine all together? Cull the weak? Ban genenicly deficient people from having children? Somehow, everything that might solve this is infinately worse than the problem itself. I guess we'll just need to get used to depending on medicine as a race in order to continue.
There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed, but
I've never been one of them.
I'm a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They'll take you as soon as you're warm.
You don't have to be a six-footer.
You don't have to have a great brain.
You don't have to have any clothes on. You're
A Catholic the moment Dad came,
Because
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can't be found.
Every sperm is wanted.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.
Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood!
Every sperm is useful.
Every sperm is fine.
God needs everybody's.
Mine! And mine! And mine!
Let the Pagan spill theirs
O'er mountain, hill, and plain.
God shall strike them down for
Each sperm that's spilt in vain.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite iraaaaate!
Ignore this signature. By order.
humans are not going to ever loose their pinky finger if modern society goes on the way it is.
I sure hope not!
You can't take the sky from me...
It is a conceit of the intelligent that intelligence drives human evolution. The skeletons of early hominids show evidence of the support of unproductive individuals within communities. Skeletons with broken but healed limbs, crippling arthritis, debilitating head wounds show that individuals that had been injured or were elderly were cared for by their peers/relations. The intelligent thing to do would be to ditch the dead weight and ease pressure on resources. Instead the human attributes demonstrated are compassion and co-operation. As for man getting less-healthy, no-one can tell which genes will be be favoured by the whims of nature and the wider the gene pool the better. In Europe sickle cell anaemia is an illness, in malarial zones it's an eveolutionary adaptation that aids survival. Who is to say what's healthy and what isn't. We have survived and prospered through our abilities to communicate and co-operate. Intelligence has followed on the coattails of our advancement and has not driven it. If a near-extinction meteor impact were to occur, would the species' best hope of survival lie with a select group of the Intelligensia or a select group of fertile people with excellent parenting skills? Think on this: You, dear reader, may regard yourself as intelligent and may pride yourself on your ability to read PERL or code in binary but that doesn't make babies. It is true that the "intelligent" breed less. The brutal fact is the geekier you are the less likely you are to reproduce and so when you have finished that algol compiler you've been working on and want to pat yourself on the back for being clever, remind yourself that you are not the pinnacle of human evolution and just an offshoot. The single mother successfully stretching out her budget raising four kids is more likely to leave an indelible imprint on the evolution of Man than you are.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Dunno, maybe it's the same thing that seemingly makes some people believe there were no extinctions until Man invented the chainsaw. It's hard to believe in something you can't see happening -- you need tools to help your senses. Some folks never pick up those tools.
Still it's good to have actual data to back up the reasonable assumption that evolution hasn't stopped since we see nothing that would have stopped it. (Tools again!) We get a kick out of scientists breathlessly announcing things that "everybody knows", but there's a long and growing list of things "everybody knew" that turned out to be wrong. When studying the obvious, occasionally you find useful things that nobody saw, because the truth was so "obvious".
I remember reading the story in Ishmael about the jellyfish's history of the world. Basically the jellyfish is the highest evolved creature in the story and it ends with "And then, there was the jellyfish!" And at the time I read it (13), it was an eye opener because I believe I had thought like a lot of people think still that we were just the top of the food chain and nothing better would ever come along. I guess from the tag of this article most people haven't read that book or had that thought, that perhaps we aren't the most evolved thing Earth has ever seen, and we'll probably be a more primal species like a monkey is to us in a matter of millions of years. I can't believe anyone actually thought evolution stopped.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Latex allergies mean - - no condoms (other materials are definately not as effective).
Therefore, more offspring.
Latex allergy is a genetic condition. So some of those offspring will also be allergic to latex.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Sooner or later the social health system fails - which is actually already forseeable in most european countries. It worked for about 2 generation and I give them maybe one more generation, maybe 2, tops.
1) Because of a background assumption in most cultures that people were brought into being, without preamble, a few thousand years ago.
2) Within the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition, the widespread belief that the Lord will be wrapping things up, shortly, so that there won't be time for further/any evolutionary activity.
3) The popular conception that evolutionary change is always macroscopic and immediately apparent to the casual observer (ie. X-men).
Luke, help me take this mask off
Is there some inherent cap on human intelligence?
Quite possible. Considering that brains are sort of our specialty as a species, we tend to think that smart is good. But as far as natural selection is concerned, we may just need to be smart enough. It could be that excessively intelligent people are more likely to get distracted into activities that compete with their real business (evolutionarily speaking) of spreading their genes as widely as possible.
I'd say you're as full of shit as the southern dodos in the US who were too stupid and inflexible to adapt to change and are still trying to make a case for stupidity and interbreeding.
Oh, really? http://www.fixedearth.com/
(Yes, this nutcase is serious. I have a copy of his book, though I don't know why.)
Required reading for internet skeptics
How was this modded UP!? I feel so strongly about what you wrote I'm trying to make a rare comment which'll probably never see the light of day on /. Still, a fellas gotta take a swing when people get outright dangerous spreading the kind of crap you're spouting. I don't know where to start, your comments are so off the wall I can't tell if you get this stuff off of T.V. or not. Certainly not slashdot, which I read everyday, and I've not heard this kind of total crap before.
First of all NOBODY has done ANY survey of AFRICAN I.Q.s There are 54 countries and a plethora of territories in Africa, a BILLION+ people, and more than 5,000 tribes who are culturally, linguistically and genetically differentiated - and range from the absolutely languid to those who make the Swiss seem relaxed. The total number of languages and dialects is UNKNOWN. In Nigeria alone there are more than 470 distinctive languages and dialects. English is NOT the majority language on the continent as almost EVERYONE has a primary native tongue and may or may not ADDITIONALLY speak - from broken to fluent - English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Afrikaans, or German, as a second or third tongue, though most people speak at least two languages other than European ones because of the local variety. So give your CNN (which I watch a lot) viewpoint a rest.
I never cease to marvel at the rude comments people make about how badly "Africans" (which ones?) speak English on TV when interviewed. How many languages do you speak other than your native tongue? And how many of those, if any, do you speak fluently? The point is any of the IQ tests you might refer to - Raven's math matrices or not - are administered in European languages and anybody with an IQ over 12 who has looked at or read the extensive literature on the construction of those tests knows they are culturally loaded and biased in a lot of ways, including how the math questions are constructed (context not content). And No, they have not been fixed. (I took one for fun a few weeks ago and if that's fixed I think you mean "fixed".
When you say "Asians" are you making the same hand-waving racial and langauge generalization as before? Or do you differentiate between Asian-Americans (a complex category) and Asians outside of America? Does that include Turkmen, Mongolians, Burmese, and Malaysians - or did you have a well-picked few in mind? Give me a break pleeease! I'd like to see you take an IQ test in a second language you don't speak well and do as well. Set your time machine for the 21st century dude and bring your mind back from its comforting romantic and historical Victorian travels about Africans (or did you really mean "Blacks"?) having IQs lower than your own.
More relevantly, do you personally know anything about the University of Witwatersand? And its tests? (in Afrikaans) For that matter do you know anything about Afrikaans and how South Africans of non-European descent feel about it even though they're were required to learn it? Or about South Africa and its pre- and post-apartheid educational and ethnic research? These are the same kinds of folks who were researching how to build a genetic virus that would selectively eradicate the native Zulu and other native African tribal populations in South Africa so they could inherit the land. And despite all you've seen on American TV (Wow!) including 'Tsotsi' just winning an academy award, believe it or not, your argument went deep south in a blasted hurry the moment you put "University of the Witwatersrand" and "(a liberal college in South Africa)" in the same sentence. What planet do you live on?
On a personal level I'm from Nigeria and went to poor but good schools in Lagos. I've learnt English as a second language and was, as far as the results of intellectual efforts were concerned, a wee bit more than average with respect to my classmates - many of whom were and are seriously smarter than I was or presumably am. My IQ, when then tested, was 183. So give me some oxygen fella, unless you've been running some massive covert