You ask "If we evolved from earlier apes, why haven't other apes similarly developed?". The anser is that your question contains an error - the other apes have also evolved! At one time, there were apes which were the ancestors of modern gorillas, modern humans, modern gibbons, and other modern apes. Then these families diverged. One family evolved into gibbons, and another evolved differently, into another species of ape (a species which is no longer extant). Eventually this species diverged again, and again, producing at various times, orang-utans, gorillas, humans, bonobos, and chimpanzees. Over time, all of these families became more distinct from their common ancestors, and from each other. Modern gorillas are emphatically NOT identical to those early ancestors.
As for your other question, about why aren't there more intermediate species extant today - the answer is that they became extinct. Why did e.g. Neanderthals become extinct? Some people think that Homo Sapiens Sapiens were better adapted to the warming climate, being lighter. Who knows? It's an interesting historical research area for paleoanthropologists, but I don't see why it should cast any doubt on the idea that humans evolved from apes! I mean - who else could we have evolved from?! Cats?:-)
"Actually, Caesar (Trajan) did invade Iraq (Parthia). I don't know if he used catapults, but I wouldn't be surprised. Nuclear weapons were definitely not used."
Let's just say that the proof of WMD use has not been conclusively established. Maybe they were spirited away to Persia on the backs of camels with four eyes.
Heh heh, you're right! One day some archeologist may just dig up an ancient Roman nuke... I should reserve my judgement:-)
Yet apes exist, and in great variety... but there is no variety in the developmental stages of humans.
There has been a lot of variety, though many of the other branches of our extended family have become extinct. The reason that you think that "only apes are left" is just that this word "apes" has traditionally been applied precisely to the ones that are left, and not to us. So it says a lot about how we name things, but nothing about the actual states of affairs (i.e. who evolved from whom, and when). It's purely semantic - it's like wondering "when I finish eating, why is that the only things left are leftovers?":-)
The apes we are descended from have not changed much in thousands of years, meanwhile we've developed from apes and there are none of our anscestor species in the world today.
This causes me great confusion.
It is confusing, because evolutionary biologists have changed their minds a lot, as evidence has accumulated over the years.
So basically, you mean to say, we are evolved from apes, and there are some apes that didn't evolve, so they are still around. Many species of apes, really.
Actually, we evolved from earlier apes (but we are still a kind of ape!), and in the meantime other kinds of ape also evolved from those same ancestors. There's a whole family tree there (a "super-family") - at one point our species diverged into proto-gorillas and proto-human-chimps, and later the human-chimps diverged into humans and chimps (so humans and chimps are like brothers, and gorillas are our cousins).
Then we have men, who have evolved from a common anscestor, and we just didn't look back, we kept going. We had a number of physiological changes and migrations throughout Africa, but we never diverged into seperate population groups, and every single population group (dispersed throughout Africa) simultaneously evolved (with variations of a thousand years here or there)...... then as we moved out of Africa, we had no splinter groups, all over the world... no lost chains? We all evolved at almost the same rate (again with minutely small variations)... and now we are equally developed... while the apes remain incredibly diverse (and largely unchanged)...
Perhaps you can see why I am confused...
Yes... you sure are:-)
You need to abandon the misconception that apes and humans are something distinct. This is empirically false, and it's leading you astray. Many people find it something shameful to think of themselves as an ape (don't know if that's you) but really it's nothing to be ashamed of at all. Have a banana!
PS In regard to "lost chains" etc, haven't you heard of "Neanderthals"? - they were a kind of human which died out quite recently.
Actually, Caesar (Trajan) did invade Iraq (Parthia). I don't know if he used catapults, but I wouldn't be surprised. Nuclear weapons were definitely not used.
No-one was tortured at Abu Ghraib - not while it was under American control.
Rape, sexual abuse, beatings, setting dogs onto prisoners... this is all documented. Several people were convicted of these crimes and are are serving time in jail right now.
But the truly outrageous thing about it is not just the crimes themselves; bad enough, though hardly a patch on Saddam's boys. No, what's even more outrageous is that the American regime actually claims that this is not torture. They say it's "technically different". Oh that's ok then.
Even more disgusting (to me, at least, since I had no respect for Rumsfeld et al anyway) is the capacity for self-delusion shown by some apparently ordinary American citizens who will publicly sign up to this double-speak, and join in the fun of papering over evil acts with "nice" words.
I'm sure when Bush nukes some Arab country there'll be plenty more idiots prepared to line up behind their fuhrer and promise themselves that it was all for the freedom and democracy and apple pies. The rest of the world can do stuff-all about it, but don't expect us to actually believe the "beacon of freedom" bullshit.
Iraq, for example, had NO conflict with the US in its sphere of influence
Actually I don't think this is true: prior to the invasion, Iraq had started to sell its oil in Euros instead of US dollars. As long as the world's oil trade is conducted in dollars, the world is essentially lending the US vast sums of money, loans which are backed by the assets of oil exporters. That's why the US "sphere of influence" includes the entire international oil trade.
If international oil trade were generally conducted in Euros, these benefits would accrue to the European Union. Or if OPEC denominated their product in a currency of their own (a hypothetical petro-dinar), then they could get the benefits themselves! There are other good reasons for OPEC states to drop the dollar, so IMHO the US government was quite right to be concerned that this might trigger a sell-off of dollars. This, I believe, was the real trigger for the invasion, not WMDs, human rights, political reform, terrorism, or whatever the latest excuse is.
let's argue that it is indeed bonded servitude (which it's not)
OK, let's argue:-)
Bonded servitude is the practice of contracting ("bonding") someone to work only for one employer for a fixed term, and is different from regular (capitalist) employment where the worker is (theoretically) free to work more than one job, and to quit a job at will and take up another one.
By contrast, this kind of clause is sometimes called a "restraint of trade" because it's precisely an attempt to restrict the basic freedom that workers are supposed to have in capitalist economies - to be able to choose their employer. Bonded servitude is mid-way between capitalist employment and good old-fashioned slavery.
...what matters is that YOU signed it
Well, that clearly matters to Microsoft, but I don't see why it should matter to the employee? In practice what matters is:
will the contract stand up in court?
Probably not because basic human rights are supposed to trump contracts - not every contract is legal. For instance, in most countries you can't legally sell yourself into slavery
True enough, though to me the interesting thing is that this clause in the contract is not really capitalist. Capitalism is supposed to be about individual freedom and free markets, right? This clause is instead a kind of bonded servitude.
The interesting thing about this is that the UK newspapers are being forced to support their competition through taxes. They're forced to pay the government to dig their own economic graves.
The govt does a lot of useful things... who cares if the private sector could make lots of money by doing the same thing less efficiently and accessibly? I certainly couldn't give a rats' arse about these record companies' profits.
I think this is true... but it doesn't mean that "blood for oil" doesn't work as a rationale, though.
Pre-2001, it used to be possible to hijack planes by threatening to blow them up. Obviously blowing up a plane doesn't get you to where to you want to go, but as a threat it can work.
Similarly, invading Iraq, while not exactly securing Iraqi oil, can work as a means of keeping the other oil-mongering regimes in the region in line. Following through on your threats once in a while helps to keep the threat credible.
There are situations where [opening a new window is] actually the most user-friendly thing to do, like when you're editing or entering information and need to display detailed instructions without losing the form
You can do this with CSS, and without having to call back to the server for the "help" content as another web page
Define your help notes as divs which are hidden (display:none). Then you have your "help" hyperlinks point to those divs, which can then become visible (because they have the focus a different CSS rule applies and they can get display:block or whatever).
Opening new windows is almost always a bad idea. "User-friendly" depends not just on the technique but also on the user. For some people it may work, in some circumstances, but for other people (people with visual impairments, for instance) it is never friendly.
The stated goal of the United States during the Cold War included very little about free trade and open markets. But of course, it's not hip these days to acknowledge that, on the whole, the US is a force for human rights, economic progress, and democratization.
Excuse me, but what the fuck do people's "stated goals" have to do with it? Judge people by what they do, not what they say.
e.g. dropping tonnes of bombs and chemicals on Viet Nam was a very eloquent way to say "fuck off and die", meanwhile "stated goals" of freedom and democracy were for American domestic consumption.
Agreed - capitalism is what defines us and separates us from the apes. You can try to deny your capitalist urges, but do you want to be a monkey?
Bollocks
For a start, humans are very much like apes. Really we are a variety of ape. Some humans have a superior attitude to other apes but genetically there's fuck-all separating us from them. Just because humans have their own latin name doesn't mean shit. It's a kind of bigotry, in my book, a variety of racism. In fact chimpanzees are much more closely related to humans than to other apes, let alone to monkeys (which are not the same as apes).
What distinguishes us from other apes is our language skills and manual dexterity, not capitalism. Humans and others apes have been much the same genetically for many many thousands of years, but capitalism is a very recent phenomenon. For almost all of human history we were all communists. Indeed, many humans are still communists, though some Americans apparently don't realise this.
Yours isn't the first industry to be decimated by progress.
Quite right, parent should be modded insightful.
It's not like this hasn't happened before, after all...
There's the occupation known as "scribe"; a person who, for a fee, writes letters, petitions, etc, for illiterate people. This occupation is in demand where literacy levels are low (and sadly, this is still the case in many poorer countries today). In more developed countries, it's common for the mass of the population to be able to read and write by themselves, without assistance. Tough luck if you used to be a scribe...
... but hey! which situation is better? Who would seriously reject mass literacy because it's tough on scribes? Only a complete idiot/sociopath like Daniel Wallace.
In Haiti, you know why we went there? Mostly because we were asked to.
Riiiiiight... so if I asked the Martians to invade the United States, would that make it OK? On slashdot.org.mars there'd be Martians saying
oh, we were
asked to invade, we didn't really want to, but we felt morally obliged to kidnap GW and exile him to the moon, just to help out the little guys... the uh... the uh... the Mexicans, and uh... you know... those other little guys..."
For the sake of argument I will agree that the reasons used to persuade the world we needed to invade Iraq turned out be flawed.
Perhaps "reasons used to try to persuade the world"... because let's face it, the world was not persuaded. Actually the reasons were really only good for domestic consumption.
However we have already invaded Afganistan, and I belive most people would say that was justified, so our strike rate is already 50%, and would go to 66%. If you disagree, than the strike rate would be 33%. If we have invaded another country, please advise and I will stand corrected.
LOL! How many countries has the US invaded?!!
For over a hundred years the US has been invading countries all over the world, from Mexico, to Russia, to Nicaragua, to Vietnam... must have been literally dozens of places, even if you leave the World Wars out of it. Bogus justifications (e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin "incident") are the rule rather than the exception.
But if you're talking about invasions in the last few years then you'll have to include Haiti, supposedly invaded to bring peace and respect for human rights to that troubled country... starting by kidnapping the democratically elected president and sending him to Africa. I don't think that one does the US "strike rate" any good either.
BTW Stanislaw Lem wrote an excellent short story (purportedly a book review) along the same lines... "Non Serviam" in which a computer scientist creates a virtual universe and populates it with simulated intelligences.
Slashdot Mirror
ha! where are my mod points? :-D
You ask "If we evolved from earlier apes, why haven't other apes similarly developed?". The anser is that your question contains an error - the other apes have also evolved! At one time, there were apes which were the ancestors of modern gorillas, modern humans, modern gibbons, and other modern apes. Then these families diverged. One family evolved into gibbons, and another evolved differently, into another species of ape (a species which is no longer extant). Eventually this species diverged again, and again, producing at various times, orang-utans, gorillas, humans, bonobos, and chimpanzees. Over time, all of these families became more distinct from their common ancestors, and from each other. Modern gorillas are emphatically NOT identical to those early ancestors.
:-)
As for your other question, about why aren't there more intermediate species extant today - the answer is that they became extinct. Why did e.g. Neanderthals become extinct? Some people think that Homo Sapiens Sapiens were better adapted to the warming climate, being lighter. Who knows? It's an interesting historical research area for paleoanthropologists, but I don't see why it should cast any doubt on the idea that humans evolved from apes! I mean - who else could we have evolved from?! Cats?
Heh heh, you're right! One day some archeologist may just dig up an ancient Roman nuke
There has been a lot of variety, though many of the other branches of our extended family have become extinct. The reason that you think that "only apes are left" is just that this word "apes" has traditionally been applied precisely to the ones that are left, and not to us. So it says a lot about how we name things, but nothing about the actual states of affairs (i.e. who evolved from whom, and when). It's purely semantic - it's like wondering "when I finish eating, why is that the only things left are leftovers?" :-)
It is confusing, because evolutionary biologists have changed their minds a lot, as evidence has accumulated over the years.
Why not check up the great article on Wikipedia about apes, and get it straight in your mind?
Actually, we evolved from earlier apes (but we are still a kind of ape!), and in the meantime other kinds of ape also evolved from those same ancestors. There's a whole family tree there (a "super-family") - at one point our species diverged into proto-gorillas and proto-human-chimps, and later the human-chimps diverged into humans and chimps (so humans and chimps are like brothers, and gorillas are our cousins).
Yes ... you sure are :-)
You need to abandon the misconception that apes and humans are something distinct. This is empirically false, and it's leading you astray. Many people find it something shameful to think of themselves as an ape (don't know if that's you) but really it's nothing to be ashamed of at all. Have a banana!
PS In regard to "lost chains" etc, haven't you heard of "Neanderthals"? - they were a kind of human which died out quite recently.
Actually, Caesar (Trajan) did invade Iraq (Parthia). I don't know if he used catapults, but I wouldn't be surprised. Nuclear weapons were definitely not used.
+V ridiculus
Rape, sexual abuse, beatings, setting dogs onto prisoners ... this is all documented. Several people were convicted of these crimes and are are serving time in jail right now.
But the truly outrageous thing about it is not just the crimes themselves; bad enough, though hardly a patch on Saddam's boys. No, what's even more outrageous is that the American regime actually claims that this is not torture. They say it's "technically different". Oh that's ok then.
Even more disgusting (to me, at least, since I had no respect for Rumsfeld et al anyway) is the capacity for self-delusion shown by some apparently ordinary American citizens who will publicly sign up to this double-speak, and join in the fun of papering over evil acts with "nice" words.
I'm sure when Bush nukes some Arab country there'll be plenty more idiots prepared to line up behind their fuhrer and promise themselves that it was all for the freedom and democracy and apple pies. The rest of the world can do stuff-all about it, but don't expect us to actually believe the "beacon of freedom" bullshit.
Actually I don't think this is true: prior to the invasion, Iraq had started to sell its oil in Euros instead of US dollars. As long as the world's oil trade is conducted in dollars, the world is essentially lending the US vast sums of money, loans which are backed by the assets of oil exporters. That's why the US "sphere of influence" includes the entire international oil trade.
If international oil trade were generally conducted in Euros, these benefits would accrue to the European Union. Or if OPEC denominated their product in a currency of their own (a hypothetical petro-dinar), then they could get the benefits themselves! There are other good reasons for OPEC states to drop the dollar, so IMHO the US government was quite right to be concerned that this might trigger a sell-off of dollars. This, I believe, was the real trigger for the invasion, not WMDs, human rights, political reform, terrorism, or whatever the latest excuse is.
OK, let's argue :-)
Bonded servitude is the practice of contracting ("bonding") someone to work only for one employer for a fixed term, and is different from regular (capitalist) employment where the worker is (theoretically) free to work more than one job, and to quit a job at will and take up another one.
By contrast, this kind of clause is sometimes called a "restraint of trade" because it's precisely an attempt to restrict the basic freedom that workers are supposed to have in capitalist economies - to be able to choose their employer. Bonded servitude is mid-way between capitalist employment and good old-fashioned slavery.
Well, that clearly matters to Microsoft, but I don't see why it should matter to the employee? In practice what matters is:
will the contract stand up in court?
Probably not because basic human rights are supposed to trump contracts - not every contract is legal. For instance, in most countries you can't legally sell yourself into slavery
will the contract deter MS employees from moving?
Quite possibly
True enough, though to me the interesting thing is that this clause in the contract is not really capitalist. Capitalism is supposed to be about individual freedom and free markets, right? This clause is instead a kind of bonded servitude.
The govt does a lot of useful things ... who cares if the private sector could make lots of money by doing the same thing less efficiently and accessibly? I certainly couldn't give a rats' arse about these record companies' profits.
WOW! mod parent INFORMATIVE
I think this is true ... but it doesn't mean that "blood for oil" doesn't work as a rationale, though.
Pre-2001, it used to be possible to hijack planes by threatening to blow them up. Obviously blowing up a plane doesn't get you to where to you want to go, but as a threat it can work.
Similarly, invading Iraq, while not exactly securing Iraqi oil, can work as a means of keeping the other oil-mongering regimes in the region in line. Following through on your threats once in a while helps to keep the threat credible.
mod parent up!
You can do this with CSS, and without having to call back to the server for the "help" content as another web page
Define your help notes as divs which are hidden (display:none). Then you have your "help" hyperlinks point to those divs, which can then become visible (because they have the focus a different CSS rule applies and they can get display:block or whatever).
Opening new windows is almost always a bad idea. "User-friendly" depends not just on the technique but also on the user. For some people it may work, in some circumstances, but for other people (people with visual impairments, for instance) it is never friendly.
this was modded flamebait???
Excuse me, but what the fuck do people's "stated goals" have to do with it? Judge people by what they do, not what they say.
e.g. dropping tonnes of bombs and chemicals on Viet Nam was a very eloquent way to say "fuck off and die", meanwhile "stated goals" of freedom and democracy were for American domestic consumption.
Bollocks
For a start, humans are very much like apes. Really we are a variety of ape. Some humans have a superior attitude to other apes but genetically there's fuck-all separating us from them. Just because humans have their own latin name doesn't mean shit. It's a kind of bigotry, in my book, a variety of racism. In fact chimpanzees are much more closely related to humans than to other apes, let alone to monkeys (which are not the same as apes).
What distinguishes us from other apes is our language skills and manual dexterity, not capitalism. Humans and others apes have been much the same genetically for many many thousands of years, but capitalism is a very recent phenomenon. For almost all of human history we were all communists. Indeed, many humans are still communists, though some Americans apparently don't realise this.
Embrace your inner ape!
Apes don't let other apes do DRM!
Doesn't that make them more advanced than us?
Quite right, parent should be modded insightful.
It's not like this hasn't happened before, after all...
There's the occupation known as "scribe"; a person who, for a fee, writes letters, petitions, etc, for illiterate people. This occupation is in demand where literacy levels are low (and sadly, this is still the case in many poorer countries today). In more developed countries, it's common for the mass of the population to be able to read and write by themselves, without assistance. Tough luck if you used to be a scribe ...
... but hey! which situation is better? Who would seriously reject mass literacy because it's tough on scribes? Only a complete idiot/sociopath like Daniel Wallace.
Well ... our atoms still have nuclei, you know ...
Riiiiiight ... so if I asked the Martians to invade the United States, would that make it OK? On slashdot.org.mars there'd be Martians saying
Perhaps "reasons used to try to persuade the world" ... because let's face it, the world was not persuaded. Actually the reasons were really only good for domestic consumption.
LOL! How many countries has the US invaded?!!
For over a hundred years the US has been invading countries all over the world, from Mexico, to Russia, to Nicaragua, to Vietnam... must have been literally dozens of places, even if you leave the World Wars out of it. Bogus justifications (e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin "incident") are the rule rather than the exception.
But if you're talking about invasions in the last few years then you'll have to include Haiti, supposedly invaded to bring peace and respect for human rights to that troubled country ... starting by kidnapping the democratically elected president and sending him to Africa. I don't think that one does the US "strike rate" any good either.
That is the catch
Good refutation of Pascal's bizarre wager.
... "Non Serviam" in which a computer scientist creates a virtual universe and populates it with simulated intelligences.
BTW Stanislaw Lem wrote an excellent short story (purportedly a book review) along the same lines