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Showing posts from September, 2010

More on near term evolution

Full program over on Fora.tv :  http://fora.tv/2009/03/26/Professor_Christopher_Dye_Are_Humans_Still_Evolving

Solving the Is/Ought conflict~Morality from Science

brain size and social contract/communal bonds

Full program:  http://fora.tv/2010/02/18/Robin_Dunbar_How_Many_Friends_Does_One_Person_Need#Is_Monogamy_Linked_to_Brain_Size

Another article on rapid evolution

August 29, 2010 Fast Evolution For the 10th-anniversary issue of   The Chronicle Review,   we asked scholars and illustrators to answer this question: What will be the defining idea of the coming decade, and why? Jonathan Haidt The Human Genome Project failed to deliver what it promised—a code book in which we could identify the genes responsible for many diseases. But the reason for this failure is itself a major discovery: The genome is far more dynamic and variable than we thought. Gene activity varies within each person, across the life span, and in response to changing environments. Genes vary at high levels across people, ethnic groups, and eras. This is big news, and I predict that it's going to rock many boats, in many academic departments. When I was in graduate school in the 1990s, the prevailing view was that evolution was so slow that there could be no meaningful genetic differences among human groups. The genetic "blueprint" was assumed to have been finalized