harrystottle's favorite evolution pages, page 1

Last login: 13 hours agoHarrystottle: Harry is a guy from Bristol, England, UK.; Likes 3,770 pages, 126 videos, 20 photos • 95 fans • Received 13 reviews; Member since Oct 03, 2005

Favorites » His evolution pages

TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy: Aug 19, 4:12pm 75 reviews evolution
http://www.talkorigins.org/

Series Overview - The Genius of Charles Darwin - from channel4.com: Aug 11, 2:55pm 1 review evolution, politics, darwin, dawkins, social-darwinism
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/F/famelab/darwin/series/prog2.html; This will, I believe, shortly be available to view online. I fucked up and failed to record this episode. (I've got prog 1 though, so I'll post that somewhen) Caught the last 25 mins though and really pissed off that I missed the rest.

Here - without even recognising it himself - Dawkins gets right to the heart of the major political dividing line in the human species. Are you Altruist or "Self Interested". More later...

The Genius of Charles Darwin - FameLab from channel4.com: Aug 6, 8:42am 1 review evolution, religion, science
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/F/famelab/; I'll watch it all, but I'm skeptical about his chances of preaching to anyone but the choir...

Follow me: The origins of leadership - being-human - 11 June 2008 - New Scientis…: Jul 16, 4:16am 1 review evolution, democracy
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19826601.900-follow-me-the-...; I'll have to respond to this more fully in the light of my own chapter on Leadership, but first impression is that it misses the mark.

They assume that evolution produced a tendency towards egalitarian "democratic" social structures. This is based on observation of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies in the 21st century. They then argue that this changed with the agricultural revolution 13000 years ago and we began a spiral of increasing autocracy driven by the newfound possibility of acquiring surplus wealth and that only since the industrial revolution have we begun to reverse this trend.

First, and typically, this ignores Athens, or at least makes it even more newsworthy.

Second, if the tendency to democratic egalitarianism was indeed in our genes, my self-appointed task (of persuading society to "revert" to democracy) would be a doddle. It clearly isn't. There are deeply ingrained sheeplike tendencies in the majority of humans which fundamentally challenge any notion of genetic democratic leanings, so I'm forced to conclude that their initial assumptions are deeply flawed.

Scientists Close to Reconstructing First Living Cell: Scientific American: Jul 13, 6:27am 5 reviews evolution, science
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-close-to-recon; looks like another gap in the evolutionary record is about to be filled...

Rats feel peer pressure too - life - 11 May 2008 - New Scientist: Jun 15, 3:09am 1 review cognitive-science, evolution, conformity
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19826554.500-rats-feel-peer-pressu...; this begins to explain the sheep like tendencies we see in humans. After all, if the pressure to conform exhibits itself this far down the food chain, it must be pretty powerful by the time it manifests itself in homo sapiens sapiens...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080613/sc_afp/spacesciencebiochemistrybiology_0806…: Jun 14, 6:19pm 4 reviews evolution, science
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080613/sc_afp/spacesciencebiochemistrybiology_0...; looks like more convincing evidence for the Hoyle-Wickramsinghe panspermia hypothesis. And it implies a high probability of the ubiquity of dna based organic lifeforms. On planets in the "comfort zone" with the same approximate chemical mix, mass and atmosphere as Earth, Venus, Mars, Life might be viable on 10-40% - which in turn implies trillions of life bearing planets throughout the universe. Among which it would extremely surprising if there were not at least millions, possibly billions of lifeforms at or above our own level. Think about that...

Nudibranchs Sea Slugs - As Beautiful As They Are Toxic! | Frostfirezoo.com: Jun 7, 4:36pm 2 reviews evolution, bizarre
http://frostfirezoo.com/nudibranchs-sea-slugs-as-beautiful-as-they-are-toxic; frankly I still doangeddit. Without culture, the only way to spread the message is by evolving. OK, the predator learns a lesson. Presumably by dying and by failing to pass on its genes, we gradually evolve predators who don't attack the slug, but surely that couldn't happen fast enough to prevent all the slugs being eaten in the "experiment" that teaches the predators. Presumably some statistician has modelled this somewhere and can explain how it works. Wake me up when you find it...

Men fighting over women? Its nothing new, suggests research: Jun 5, 3:26pm 1 review anthropology, biology, evolution
http://www.physorg.com/news131687661.html; On what possible basis can this be considered a "discovery" rather than confirmation of the bleedin obvious? There isn't a mammalian species on the planet that doesn't fight for access to females. It isn't cultural, its basic biology.