Blondes and evolution

[wtrfall]

We are so luvable!

that could also be a ticking bomb??

[Minimalist]

LOL.

One of the best quotes I ever saw about the difference between men and women was from columnist, Dave Barry.

"The difference between men and women is that a woman, given the choice of saving a baby's life or catching a fly ball will instinctively choose to save the baby without even stopping to consider if there are men on base."

[Beagle]

I agree with Daybrown that the HNS genome is still among us. I don't agree with everything she says - but much of it. I realize that flies in the face of recent mtDNA conclusions but it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

The rapid rise in life expectancy in the 20th century is attributed to the medical advances in pregnancy, delivery, post partum care, and neonatal care. Since very few women die in childbirth or soon after, and children have a greater chance of reaching adulthood we are living longer.

Along the same lines that have been posted on this subject I haven't seen any mention of the differences in blood types in the human family. Maybe that should be a separate thread.

[Der Lange]

Sometime in the very late 1960's or early 1970's, the American Science Fiction monthly magazine Science Fiction and Fantasy published a marvelous essay about how to create a "cyborg," or "cybernetic organism," that could survive on the Moon without using a protective suit. The creature was a Frankenstein's monster assembled from the parts and genes of most human races, with the Asian and Negroid dominating because their physical forms were far better suited to survival in the harsh conditions of the Moon.

This was a revelation to a youngster just out of college with zero knowlede of the topic - that being me.

Since then I've paid a LOT of attention to the subject.

One of the things I learned along the way is that the Mediterranean Sea, as someone here mentioned in an earlier post, was NOT a bar to the northward movement of early humans or our cousins on the evolutionary tree. Seems there was this earthquake, dropped the land a goodly ways and opened up a little bottleneck we call the Strait of Gibraltar to admit the Atlantic Ocean. That happened quite a long time after humans began their northward movement from the cradle of our species, Africa.

In addition, even after that even, there were long, long, long periods of time - say about 20,000 years back, when the sea levels were much lower. Places like Malta, Siciliy and Sardinia were much larger and getting around the globe generally was a great deal easier for humans migrating to all manner of places. Until 8,000 years ago, humans could walk from continental Europe to England! Check an historical atlas for this, the maps are astonishing.

Especially in a time when the human family tree still sported a number of branches - Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and Sapiens Sapiens all lived in overlapping epochs - the human critter seems to have been quite an experimental animal, and highly adaptable. The somewhat rapid evolution of different physical characteristics as a survival adaptation - including skin, hair and eye color - is a good example.

All this leads me to wonder a lot about those "extra" pieces of coding in the human genome. Lots and lots of them the scientists say are just leftover junk with no functional value.

Wonder whether these bits of "code" are the accumulated blocks that prevent further speedy evolution once the species came to a somewhat stabilized physical state in the environment?

According to all the joke makers, this would explain the continued presence of blondes in an advanced society, too.

[stan]

This is very interesting, Der Lange..
So there is a built-in time clock in humans that has
put a stop to all that evolving?

ARe these leftover bits of junk in the genome likely to
recur in the manner of recessive traits?

[Der Lange]

Are these leftover bits of junk in the genome likely to
recur in the manner of recessive traits?

Stan, i really don't know. However, it seems that active genes, which include both dominant and recessive, are not the "junk" code the scientists speak of. Instead, there are strings and strings of code that seem to have no function whatsoever and do not act upon the body.

My speculation was whether this "inactive" code tends to serve as a kind of on-off switch for more responsive adapability of the human critter today. And speculation here is not offering an answer but even just asking the question!

[stan]

ditto the shock face.

This is new territory for me, and I guess our discussion is
an example of the kind of groping (at least by me) to come
to grips with these interesting discoveries.

Another new territory:
Today Ira Flatow, on NPR's Science Friday, dealt with
nanotechnologies...as if they are commonplace!
Someone had bought some
jeans, I believe, whose fabric had been nano- engineered
to repel water.

And yet another: bio-electronics...in which microprocessors
are made of biological material....oy veh!

[Der Lange]

Some of the so-called "nano tech" items, such as those jeans, are really quite primitive and may even be much less than the formal definition of the technology imputes.

This entire aea is really just beginning to develop. It has been under study for a good 20 or more years. The "bio-engineered" computer technology is also a new field; it was only a couple of years ago that someone announced the creation of a micro-processor using DNA and I think stuff from either sharks or jellyfish.

The promise of nano-tech, however, has really caught the imaginations of a great many folk. Like genetic engineering of crops, it may be both a boon and a bane. More than a few people are appropriately worried that nano-tech items may escape into an environment vulnerable to their influences.

This subject is now a commonplace in some of the "hard science" science fiction writing. I suggest you look up some David Drake novels for both entertaining tales of mercenaries in space and all manner of really solid speculation about such things as nano-tech.

[stan]

thanks...

[Der Lange]

Hey, this is an interesting topic. We can't just let it deflate and blow away.

We have blondes, climate, migratory patterns of early humans and early proto-humans, earthquakes and oceans, cyborgs on the Moon, nano-tech and evolution all in one subject area! Ray Bradbury or Harry Harrison could so SO much with this stuff already!

And best of all, for the most part (the cyborgs are kinda out there) this is all REAL stuff.

Except maybe the blondes. I am absolutely CERTAIN the one I had a couple of martinis with last night is not truly a blonde. I think she tried for artificial stupidity by dying her hair, but it wasn't strong enough to smarten her up any.

[Beagle]

I agree, this thread could have lot of lively discussion. Let's try to keep it going. We'll need a lot of help though.

[Leona Conner]

know what they call a blonde who dyes her hair brown?

Artificial intelligence.

I'm going to have to read this whole thread from the beginning before I can contribute anything. Especially the stuff from DB, I need some of whatever it is she's taking. And I ain't even blonde.

[Beagle]

Hi Leonna. I'm looking forward to getting in on this thread. I wasn't with you all in the beginning of it. Daybrown has not been here recently so I think I'm gonna be all alone with my beliefs. ( except that I'm a 56yo male and not a feminist). I do agree with most of the things she had to say and would like to add a few of my own thoughts. Thanks for keeping the thread up.



Good joke.

[Leona Conner]

Welcome. I don't know if you have read any of the other threads, but if you go to the one about Noah's Flood you will get a good dose of DB. My problem is that she is really into Marija Gimbutas and her folowers. Gimbatus was just becoming known when I was forced into reading her for one of my Anthropology classes back in the 50s. Granted this was just before the feminist movement, so maybe that's why I don't buy the feminincentric (my word) ideas she expounds. But just a Arch manages to hold everything up to the Bible, DB holds everything up to Gimbutas.

I though the discussion here was suppose to be about the eveolution of hair coloring, etc., now your talking about nanotechnology. THAT'S way over my head.

[Minimalist]

But just a Arch manages to hold everything up to the Bible, DB holds everything up to Gimbutas.

Gimbutas at least has a chance of being right.