29 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
The Past is a Brutally Foreign Place
If the past is a foreign country, it is a shockingly violent one. It is easy to forget how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence. Cultural memory pacifies the past, leaving us with pale souvenirs whose bloody origins have been bleached away. A woman donning a cross seldom reflects that this instrument of torture was a common punishment in the ancient world; nor does a person who speaks of a whipping boy ponder the old practice of flo... 1 
notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Technology is Preserving Our Ghosts
Our technology is giving us progressively greater power to keep alive our ancestors' ghosts. First the invention of writing allowed us to preserve their words. Painting and photography allowed us to preserve their faces. The phonograph preserves their voices and the videotape recorder preserves their movement and gestures. But this is only the beginning. Soon we shall acquire the technology to preserve a permanent record of the sequence of bases in the DNA of their cells. This means that we s...
1 24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Dilemma of Human Diversity Across the Cosmos
When life spreads out and diversifies in the universe, adapting itself to a spectrum of environments far wider than any one planet can encompass, the human species will one day find itself faced with the most momentous choice that we have had to make since the days when our ancestors came down from the trees in Africa and left their cousins the chimpanzees behind. We will have to choose, either to remain one species united by a common bodily shape as well as by a common history, or to let our...21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Why Black Bears Sleep in Trees
The ancestors of modern North American bears evolved in Asia during the Pleistocene, wandering over to Alaska during several appearances of the Bering land bridge, between the Bering and Kamchatka Peninsulas. Advancing and receding glaciers, fueled by evaporating sea water, caused ocean levels to alternately drop and rise, exposing and resubmerging the Bering Strait. The ancestors of black bears came across half a million years ago, and it is suspected that black bears adapted to climbing tr...Folksonomies: evolution black bears
Folksonomies: evolution black bears
1 notes
notesIt's an evolutionary adaptation to survive short-faced bears and sabertooth tigers.
27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Science is the "Crucible" for Extending Life
People are living longer and societies are getting grayer. You hear about it all the time. You read about it in your newspapers. You hear about it on your television sets. Sometimes I'm concerned that we hear about it so much that we've come to accept longer lives with a kind of a complacency, even ease. But make no mistake, longer lives can and, I believe, will improve quality of life at all ages.
Now to put this in perspective, let me just zoom out for a minute. More years were added to av...Our culture, our memes account for our extended lifespans.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Plasticity is a double-edged sword
Plasticity is a double-edged sword; the more flexible an organism is the greater the variety of maladaptive, as well as adaptive, behaviors it can develop; the more teachable it is the more fully it can profit from the experiences of its ancestors and associates and the more it risks being exploited by its ancestors and associates. Folksonomies: evolution plasticity
Folksonomies: evolution plasticity
1 notes
notesQuoting Donald Symons: Too much plasticity and the organism can gain maladaptations, too little and it cannot adapt at all.
22 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Beauty of Being Ancestor to an Ape
Man is no new-begot child of the ape, bred of a struggle for existence upon brutish lines—nor should the belief that such is his origin, oft dinned into his ears by scientists, influence his conduct. Were he to regard himself as an extremely ancient type, distinguished chiefly by the qualities of his mind, and to look upon the existing Primates as the failures of his line, as his misguided and brutish collaterals, rather than as his ancestors, I think it would be something gained for the et... 1 notes
notesIs the ancient nature of our existence, and the ability to see ourselves as superior to other primates in mental function.
31 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Ontogeny and Phylogeny
The History of Evolution of Organisms consists of two kindred and closely connected parts: Ontogeny, which is the history of the evolution of individual organisms, and Phylogeny, which is the history of the evolution of organic tribes. Ontogency is a brief and rapid recapitulation of Phylogeny, dependent on the physiological functions of Heredity (reproduction) and Adaptation (nutrition). The individual organism reproduces in the rapid and short course of its own evolution the most important ... 1 notes
notesHaekle explains the difference.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Bible was Like Wikipedia
The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible’s authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as “the literal word of God.” If we take a nonmetaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window into human nature and our cultural origins, and can be used as a source of solace and inspiration. Someone who believes in a person... 1 notes
notesWritten anonymously by many authors, which produced an oracle quality about it that allow it to become a tool for manipulation.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
We are Part of the Cosmos
Charles Darwin's insights into natural selection have shown that there are no
evolutionary pathways leading unerringly from simple forms to Man; rather,
evolution proceeds by fits and starts, and most life forms lead to evolutionary
dead-ends. We are the products of a long series of biological accidents. In the
cosmic perspective there is no reason to think that we are the first or the last or
the best.
These realizations of the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are profound –
and, to s... 1 notes
notesAs it is, not as we wish it to be.
