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Steve Hayes · Guest

On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 03:02:26 GMT, wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:

[quote]Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote:
Have you seen "The webbed feet monologues"?

Coming soon to a theatre near you!

Gack. Are we going to get a monologue from every uninteresting part of
the body? I>ll do the navel monologues, with my mouth stuffed full of
cotton wool...
[/quote]
That has a nice ring to it.

Steve Hayes
hayesmstw@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm

Martin Phipps · Guest

"Representative Trantis" <a@a.com> wrote in message news:<bor5dj$d29$1@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>...
[quote]Why does a human female>s vagina point forwards, not back, as it does in
quadrapeds.
[/quote]
Forgive me, but I can think of some real possible answers to this
apparent attempt at trolling.

1) Perhaps naked women are more attractive this way and thus produce
more offspring.

2) Perhaps women can clean themselves more easily this way and thus
don>t have to worry so much about infection.

3) Perhaps it has to do with the fact that humans squat to relieve
themselves and quadrapeds don>t so this positioning actually makes
sense.

4) Given that the location of the vagina on the woman is the same as
the location of the penis on a man, perhaps it is just more convenient
for a man to have his penis facing forward than hanging between his
legs.

Martin

Philip Deitiker · Guest

On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 03:02:26 GMT, wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John
Wilkins) did some sarious thank>n and scribbled:

[quote]Gack. Are we going to get a monologue from every uninteresting part of
the body? I>ll do the navel monologues, with my mouth stuffed full of
cotton wool...
[/quote]
Cute, but I can do the colon monologue with my wetted hand
under my armpit.

John Wilkins · Guest

Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote:

[quote]On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 03:02:26 GMT, wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:

Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote:
Have you seen "The webbed feet monologues"?

Coming soon to a theatre near you!

Gack. Are we going to get a monologue from every uninteresting part of
the body? I>ll do the navel monologues, with my mouth stuffed full of
cotton wool...

That has a nice ring to it.

No, that>s *another* uninteresting part of the body :-)[/quote]
--
John Wilkins
DARK IN HERE, ISN>T IT?
wilkins.id.au

Nim · Guest

Please see in.

"charles" <lmno@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3FD521A4.8050005@mindspring.com...
[quote]I think this is only partly true, but "science" (the fMRI & brain-injury
studies) cannot be completely certain.
[/quote]
Brain studies seem to show that the majority of our brain is used for motor
functions - and that we do use ALL of our brains, not just 10%. (Damasio
and others). They also show that if you don>t know something with somatic
markers intact, you don>t really know it at all - that is, you might
cerebrally learn it, but fail in the ability to apply it, or variations of
it, in real life when opportunity arises.
[quote]
We had to have a brain-change in order to begin writing, not just the
dexterity. it seems that writing may have "stolen" some brain areas
previously used by other functions.
[/quote]
I disagree. The brain change can be there - but without the dexterity,
without 5 figers, it>s not gonna happen. We wouln>t have technology.

Writing is probably related to
[quote]increased arithmetic ability. At any rate, it does seem to be about the
same time as increased agriculture... say, about 12 kya in the middle
east. all of this is beside your point.
[/quote]
Drawings, if pictograms can be considered writing, predate agriculture.
This is not to say we>ve found all the samples of this, or even samples of
humans making marks on things. Arithmetic ability, especially of a certain
kind, was found to be centered in the limbic brain - not the frontal. It
was a shown to neurologists.
[quote]--chas

Nim wrote:

You actually think that if an animal "willed" to have something because
it
wanted to be able to DO something - that this would evolve? LMAO.

We write BECAUSE we have dextrous fingers. We did not "evolve
dexterity" so
that we would be able to write because a group of humans wanted to
write.

MOST mutations are disadvantagous. Not all. Whether or not mutations
are
advantageous or not have to do with the environment the organism is in.

"Need to have" has nothing to do with the organs/limbs we have.
"Needing to
have fingers" is not why we have fingers. You lose a tail. If it>s
advantageous there is selection for no tails - and they either out
compete
the animals with tails, or speciate.

Take wild types. Genes drop out. If you regard a gene deletion as a
mutation, or something similar, then go from there. Genes drop out -
you
end up with a variant of the wild type. Speciation occurs eventually.
big snip
[/quote]

charles · Guest

hi. yes, please see in.

Nim wrote:
[quote]Please see in.

"charles" <lmno@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3FD521A4.8050005@mindspring.com...

I think this is only partly true, but "science" (the fMRI & brain-injury
studies) cannot be completely certain.

Brain studies seem to show that the majority of our brain is used for motor
functions - and that we do use ALL of our brains, not just 10%.
[/quote]
an old fallacy. of course we use our whole brain. but many or most of
us never reach our potential mentally or physically. (and clark is
laughing right now.) my concern in my professional life is that I teach
a child to fully exploit the entirely of the developmental phase...
learn everything during their sensitive period that they are capable.

but it is also true that very discreet portions of the brain do very
precise activities.

(Damasio
[quote]and others). They also show that if you don>t know something with somatic
markers intact, you don>t really know it at all - that is, you might
cerebrally learn it, but fail in the ability to apply it, or variations of
it, in real life when opportunity arises.
for all physical-movement related action i presume. dreaming, which is[/quote]
of course not unique to humans, may be purely ideated. maybe that>s not
a good example.. since a mechanism shuts off the physical movemnet part.
how about Einstein sitting in a post office and coming up with general
relativity? or you and i sitting here and thinking that we are just a
wee speck on the outer fringe of some galaxy. these are intellectual
exercises that may not have a physical counterpart.

[quote]
We had to have a brain-change in order to begin writing, not just the
dexterity. it seems that writing may have "stolen" some brain areas
previously used by other functions.

I disagree. The brain change can be there - but without the dexterity,
without 5 figers, it>s not gonna happen. We wouln>t have technology.
well, yes, naturally. but it is beleived that after the thought is[/quote]
formed and sent thru Broca>s and Weirnecke>s area, and the Angular
Gyrus, that it hits an area of the brain that is finger-movement related
specific to writing...maybe. when i was actually researching this two
years ago, it was an unknown.

IMHO, when we are looking at HSS, it must be assumed that EVERYTHING has
a counterpart in the brain. a "control center" of some sort. a few
pain receptors interact at the spinal cord (which is merely an extension
of the brain anyway.)

in montessori education (which is my field and the bias from which i
speak), it is beleived that every new child development milestone first
has the corresponding development occur in the brain and then it is
practiced repeatedly in the physical movement until mastered. (and in
the case of say, typing, once learned and mastered, then a different
portion of the brain my be "used" for the "writing" activity. like
riding a bike... once it is learned, it doesn>t have to be thought
about.) the issue is, for me anyway, did a portion of the brain
"change" or "evolve" in order for 12 kya humans to begin writing?
[quote]
Writing is probably related to

increased arithmetic ability. At any rate, it does seem to be about the
same time as increased agriculture... say, about 12 kya in the middle
east. all of this is beside your point.

Drawings, if pictograms can be considered writing, predate agriculture.
This is not to say we>ve found all the samples of this, or even samples of
humans making marks on things. Arithmetic ability, especially of a certain
kind, was found to be centered in the limbic brain - not the frontal. It
was a shown to neurologists.
[/quote]
although it is species-specific the degree to which the limbic brain can
recognize "four." some animals don>t seem to have kept that ability.

I assume that art or cave painting or what-have-you "evolved" at the
same moment as modern humans (HSS) ... what... 200 kya? depends on who
you talk to for that number. somewhere between 1.8 mya and now.

i am thinking specifically of the "counting" of agricultural products
that seems to have arisen simultaneously with increased population
size.. villages perhaps... and trade and city states and all that ...
about 12 kya ago. The current "belief" (since evidence may one day show
differently) is that people counted, for example, bushels of wheat, and
put a token into a clay ball to represent that. then marked the outside
of the clay with how many were inside. then later that became just an
impresison on clay and then suddenly writing sprang from that. in the
classic sense of evolution, there was no time for selection or anything.
did this also happen at an earlier time with speech? which is known
to have specific function areas in the brain? That would argue FOR a
portion of the brain to now be devoted to writing. That is, where is
the line of demarcation between evolution and cultural advancement?
--chas
[quote]
--chas

Nim wrote:

You actually think that if an animal "willed" to have something because

it

wanted to be able to DO something - that this would evolve? LMAO.

We write BECAUSE we have dextrous fingers. We did not "evolve

dexterity" so

that we would be able to write because a group of humans wanted to

write.

MOST mutations are disadvantagous. Not all. Whether or not mutations

are

advantageous or not have to do with the environment the organism is in.

"Need to have" has nothing to do with the organs/limbs we have.

"Needing to

have fingers" is not why we have fingers. You lose a tail. If it>s
advantageous there is selection for no tails - and they either out

compete

the animals with tails, or speciate.

Take wild types. Genes drop out. If you regard a gene deletion as a
mutation, or something similar, then go from there. Genes drop out -

you

end up with a variant of the wild type. Speciation occurs eventually.
big snip

[/quote]

charles · Guest

P.S. did anybody actually say anything interesting about the vagina? I
cannot seem to figure out where this thread started or went.... all bs
or what? :)

Nim wrote:

> <all snip>

Tedd Jacobs · Guest

"charles" <lmno@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3FD6994C.2070803@mindspring.com...
[quote]P.S. did anybody actually say anything interesting about the vagina? I
cannot seem to figure out where this thread started or went.... all bs
or what? :)
[/quote]
mostly all bs. the most i remember is there was more discussion about the
original poster than the original post.

it got lost because most people let it disappear from their screens and then
someone decided it was time to revive the dead thread. and so we>ve ended up
here again.

Mario Petrinovich · Guest

"Nim" <yuggya@ppc.com> wrote in message
news:hJ8Bb.6308$Ho3.84@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
[quote]Whatever caused a HUGE mutation to happen (involving uptake of calcium)
during the Cambrian - that>s what we see here now - they survived. You
would NOT call that a mutation? I mean mutation - a change in the genes.
All the phyla that came into existence then are around now - tho there are
millions of species that can trace back to those very few phyla now. They
didn>t get to be separate species, genera, families, classes, etc. by
"deciding" to be different. That is what it sounds like YOU are saying.
It>s rubbish.

There isn>t enough even known about how things really speciate for you to
even comment on it - but it sure the hell is NOT use and disuse. Other
primates have genes similar to ours, but different. Dogs have similar
genes
to us - but MORE different. You think they got to be different from just
desiring it?
[/quote]
Everything changes. Genes change too. According to some rules. Not
just like that. Any change isn>t mutation. Mutation is a change which
happens without rules. This is a mutation. Logical change is evolution. A
mutation is something magical. But, there are no magic.
Lets see humans. Unlike other primates, our cripples can survive.
Can grow old enough to produce offspring, and they have much more chance to
do just that, than cripples in any other species. And yet, AFAIK, we have
the least genetic diversity (or something like that, I am not an expert).
Wouldn>t it have to be the other way around. And what about mutations rich
environment (we had few nuclear bombs dropped). Any new species arose from
that? I did read that species which are living in environments with more
radiation evolve like faster, but still didn>t see any kind of evolution
you>ve mentioned. It was just faster evolution, probably generated by bigger
pressure.
Why don>t you see all those cripples of Chernobil. Anything
beneficial from that? -- Mario

Mario Petrinovich · Guest

John Wilkins :
[quote]Webbed interdigits are easy to produce - it is a simple matter of a
slight change in the signal for cell death during development.
[/quote]
As long as it is slight, it is OK with me. Mutation doesn>t care if
it changes original condition slightly or for any other amount. -- Mario

John Wilkins · Guest

Mario Petrinovich <mario.petrinovic@zg.tel.hr> wrote:

[quote]John Wilkins :
Webbed interdigits are easy to produce - it is a simple matter of a
slight change in the signal for cell death during development.

As long as it is slight, it is OK with me. Mutation doesn>t care if
it changes original condition slightly or for any other amount. -- Mario
[/quote]
Given a single base pair change in a regulatory gene, and the phenotypic
effects can be as large as you like.
--
John Wilkins
DARK IN HERE, ISN>T IT?
wilkins.id.au

Philip Deitiker · Guest

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:46:42 GMT, wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John
Wilkins) did some sarious thank>n and scribbled:

[quote]Mario Petrinovich <mario.petrinovic@zg.tel.hr> wrote:

John Wilkins :
Webbed interdigits are easy to produce - it is a simple matter of a
slight change in the signal for cell death during development.

As long as it is slight, it is OK with me. Mutation doesn>t care if
it changes original condition slightly or for any other amount. -- Mario

Given a single base pair change in a regulatory gene, and the phenotypic
effects can be as large as you like.
[/quote]
In C. elegans we worked with a number of arrested
development mutants, some arrested in the 2 fold egg.
Answering the question How Lethal? Single based pair in
myosin A, dominant.

Nim · Guest

See in, please.

"charles" <lmno@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3FD694EC.4030407@mindspring.com...
[quote]hi. yes, please see in.

Nim wrote:
Please see in.

"charles" <lmno@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3FD521A4.8050005@mindspring.com...

I think this is only partly true, but "science" (the fMRI & brain-injury
studies) cannot be completely certain.

Brain studies seem to show that the majority of our brain is used for
motor
functions - and that we do use ALL of our brains, not just 10%.

an old fallacy. of course we use our whole brain. but many or most of
us never reach our potential mentally or physically. (and clark is
laughing right now.) my concern in my professional life is that I teach
a child to fully exploit the entirely of the developmental phase...
learn everything during their sensitive period that they are capable.
[/quote]
Best way is to start from the day a child is born by exposing him to many
things to see, bright rooms, people, and etc. VISUAL stimuli. Let the
child also hear a lot of things, talk to the child (not in goo goo gah gah
talk), speak real language to the child. A child kept in a semi-dark room
with no VISUAL stimuli is a child that>s going to be neurologically held
back. When I say child, I mean from the day the child is born.
[quote]
but it is also true that very discreet portions of the brain do very
precise activities.

(Damasio
and others). They also show that if you don>t know something with
somatic
markers intact, you don>t really know it at all - that is, you might
cerebrally learn it, but fail in the ability to apply it, or variations
of
it, in real life when opportunity arises.

for all physical-movement related action i presume.
[/quote]
No, that>s not what Damasio and others show. I mean in the mental realm
when it comes to application of what they think they know. Memorizing
things, math or otherwise, doesn>t mean the person can logically apply such
things. They fail at the last stages of logic in real life, often enough.
As Damasio puts it "they don>t even know what it is they don>t know," they
lack the ability.

dreaming, which is
[quote]of course not unique to humans, may be purely ideated. maybe that>s not
a good example.. since a mechanism shuts off the physical movemnet part.
how about Einstein sitting in a post office and coming up with general
relativity?
[/quote]
How about Ramanujan coming up with immediate answers to math problems not
previously solved (and what he claimed happened OH well)... I>d say it>s
limbic. Seeing something that way is a lot different from using logic to
solve it. I>ve had the experience. It>s like "sight" - you know the answer
without having done the actual math (and since it>s math, it>s provable).
Einstein did say he knew it from his muscles. I.e., he felt it. Then he
concluded it.

or you and i sitting here and thinking that we are just a
[quote]wee speck on the outer fringe of some galaxy. these are intellectual
exercises that may not have a physical counterpart.
[/quote]
Sure it does - extrapolation, analogy, conclusion. Once you know that
galaxies exist, you can think that way. You see ants. They are tiny. What
are ants crawling on a human? Tiny. What might ants think about the
surface they are crawling on? Do they know what a human is? Or is "a
human" just a huge thing, almost as huge, for instance, as the galaxy
compared to us. That>s how such thought actually form; they are grounded in
as-givens we already have with those as-givens sometimes merged and
synthesized. Take the idea of "ray guns" in fiction. Lightening. Bow and
Arrow. Combine: arrows of lightening. Guns: ray guns. It>s still
building on something we know already.
[quote]

We had to have a brain-change in order to begin writing, not just the
dexterity. it seems that writing may have "stolen" some brain areas
previously used by other functions.

I disagree. The brain change can be there - but without the dexterity,
without 5 figers, it>s not gonna happen. We wouln>t have technology.

well, yes, naturally. but it is beleived that after the thought is
formed and sent thru Broca>s and Weirnecke>s area, and the Angular
Gyrus, that it hits an area of the brain that is finger-movement related
specific to writing...maybe. when i was actually researching this two
years ago, it was an unknown.
[/quote]
Too much is still unknown about the brain. Neurology is an infant science.
I know a neurotoxicologist and have seen some seriously "non layman" papers
that got published that he wrote. I don>t hear a peep about any of it in the
layman>s press. The stuff>s so complex that a regular M.D. can>t read it
with understanding. I asked!
[quote]
IMHO, when we are looking at HSS, it must be assumed that EVERYTHING has
a counterpart in the brain. a "control center" of some sort. a few
pain receptors interact at the spinal cord (which is merely an extension
of the brain anyway.)
[/quote]
I>d say that this is true whether the organism is HSS or not! I>d assume
that a dog>s brain is greatly involved with the sense of smell. More or
less, dogs might "see" in a world of smell. We don>t. We can>t even
imagine what that might be like.
[quote]
in montessori education (which is my field and the bias from which i
speak), it is beleived that every new child development milestone first
has the corresponding development occur in the brain
[/quote]
Never heard of Montessori, but otherwise I understand what you said. Yes.
I>d say that all somatic things are also brain things. Also you then must
be familiar with the idea that every physical "scar" or emotional "scar"
done to a child has a corresponding "scar" in the brain - it just can>t be
seen as visibly. You can see changes in behavior (sometimes!) - but if so,
then there is a corresponding change in neurological development. Or,
things that should have developed do not develop, or develop improperly.

and then it is
[quote]practiced repeatedly in the physical movement until mastered. (and in
the case of say, typing, once learned and mastered, then a different
portion of the brain my be "used" for the "writing" activity. like
riding a bike... once it is learned, it doesn>t have to be thought
about.) the issue is, for me anyway, did a portion of the brain
"change" or "evolve" in order for 12 kya humans to begin writing?
[/quote]
That>s a tricky question. Firstly, there>d have to be something useful to
write upon before that AND for it to have sustained wear through the years
for us to find it later on. You>d need three things to be present:
something able to make marks or stains; something to write on or stain; and
something used that would last for quite a long time, long enough for us to
go find it. We have found few samples of writing, in caves, etc. Surely,
that>s not all there was!
[quote]
Writing is probably related to
increased arithmetic ability. At any rate, it does seem to be about
the
same time as increased agriculture... say, about 12 kya in the middle
east. all of this is beside your point.
[/quote]
Mmm, no, disagree. There are too many primitive humans (even today) that do
a form of agriculture that had no writing at all until very very recently -
and they lived that way for thousands of years. There has to, above all, be
the NEED for writing. There are tribes even 100 years ago that had only
oral traditions, no writing or reading. They (the ones I know of in the
Arctic areas) were easily able to learn reading/writing when they had to
learn it (by law). They also prove to be quite intelligent (high IQ too).
Humans can write because humans have hands - but that doesn>t mean that
groups of humans WILL write. Looking at history, it shows that humans did
not write unless they had to, they found it useful in order to do something
other than just write something down. Personal anecdote. Prior to
internet, I seldom wrote anyone a letter and never wrote my own family a
letter. I used the phone instead. Be that as it may, phone is oral
communication. Much preferred. Humans that had no writing, proved to be
quite capable of thinking very abstractly, including methematically. They
had no need for writing.
[quote]

Drawings, if pictograms can be considered writing, predate agriculture.
This is not to say we>ve found all the samples of this, or even samples
of
humans making marks on things. Arithmetic ability, especially of a
certain
kind, was found to be centered in the limbic brain - not the frontal.
It
was a shown to neurologists.

although it is species-specific the degree to which the limbic brain can
recognize "four." some animals don>t seem to have kept that ability.
[/quote]
No no, it was found that the higher mathemtical abilities that very few
people have, were rooted in the limbic brain. Check up on it. I don>t have
a citation. Math ability was also seen to be related to musical ability -
that is, if you have the math you have the music. But if you have the
music, you do not necessarily have the math!
[quote]
I assume that art or cave painting or what-have-you "evolved" at the
same moment as modern humans (HSS) ... what... 200 kya? depends on who
you talk to for that number. somewhere between 1.8 mya and now.
[/quote]
Probably so, but I never forget that this is "all we found so far" and that
most of what might have been there might not have been durable. (Use any
paint lately? LOL) What gets found would have had to have been in an area
that was isolated for a long time, not erased, not written over, not chopped
up and used for something else. That goes for runes on rocks, too. Say I
find some slap of rock with scribbles on it and have no idea what it is. It
could be early HSS writing, then again it could be some gang that wrote it
last week. I need the slab for something and I smooth it out. The writing
is gone.
[quote]
i am thinking specifically of the "counting" of agricultural products
that seems to have arisen simultaneously with increased population
size.. villages perhaps... and trade and city states and all that ...
about 12 kya ago. The current "belief" (since evidence may one day show
differently) is that people counted, for example, bushels of wheat, and
put a token into a clay ball to represent that. then marked the outside
of the clay with how many were inside. then later that became just an
impresison on clay and then suddenly writing sprang from that. in the
classic sense of evolution, there was no time for selection or anything.
did this also happen at an earlier time with speech? which is known
to have specific function areas in the brain? That would argue FOR a
portion of the brain to now be devoted to writing. That is, where is
the line of demarcation between evolution and cultural advancement?
[/quote]
Not sure if a line can be drawn. Also consider that with cultural
advancement, evolution is changed, and vice versa.. Even what we eat
changes us as we change/alter the foods. Say, for example, your diet and
mode of work is back breaking and not easy like gathering or hunting was.
It>s two ways. What is a life of such aching work, especially if you eat
things that give you tooth decay, doing to do for the way you THINK? It>s
definitely going to change the way you think! With agriculture came a lot
of pain and tooth decay. We start thinking about things differently based
on the WORK we have to do - in different environments - in our daily lives.
The "I need two bushels and let this one mark stand for 2 bushels" is a nice
theory. But it doesn>t explain how people with no writing did the same
things.

[quote]--chas

--chas

Nim wrote:

You actually think that if an animal "willed" to have something because

it

wanted to be able to DO something - that this would evolve? LMAO.

We write BECAUSE we have dextrous fingers. We did not "evolve

dexterity" so

that we would be able to write because a group of humans wanted to

write.

MOST mutations are disadvantagous. Not all. Whether or not mutations

are

advantageous or not have to do with the environment the organism is in.

"Need to have" has nothing to do with the organs/limbs we have.

"Needing to

have fingers" is not why we have fingers. You lose a tail. If it>s
advantageous there is selection for no tails - and they either out

compete

the animals with tails, or speciate.

Take wild types. Genes drop out. If you regard a gene deletion as a
mutation, or something similar, then go from there. Genes drop out -

you

end up with a variant of the wild type. Speciation occurs eventually.
big snip

[/quote]

Nim · Guest

LMAO, I>m not sure - but I got flamed and called a troll (I am not) enough
to realize that I should not have responded at all to someone that "everyone
knows" is a troll. Well excuse me! I didn>t know. I>m not on here enough
to know who is who.

I saw some --- HILARIOUS --- answers to the original poster "Trantis," or
something like that.

I did say something about that when I realized what the original poster
asked, but someone snipped it off. I wasn>t trying to contribute to bs - I
was being serious.

I took it to mean - he was asking WHY the pelvis is straight and not bent in
humans. Well, that>s like asking why we have bones when so many animals do
not have them. Since so many of "those in The Know" accused Trantis of
being sexual and giving them heebie jeebies, I commented on dogs and humans
regarding sexual positions - and gave an honest answer.

"charles" <lmno@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3FD6994C.2070803@mindspring.com...
[quote]P.S. did anybody actually say anything interesting about the vagina? I
cannot seem to figure out where this thread started or went.... all bs
or what? :)

Nim wrote:

all snip
[/quote]

Nim · Guest

OMG. See inside.

"Mario Petrinovich" <mario.petrinovic@zg.tel.hr> wrote in message
news:br6mgi$3d5$1@ls219.htnet.hr...
[quote]
"Nim" <yuggya@ppc.com> wrote in message
news:hJ8Bb.6308$Ho3.84@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
Whatever caused a HUGE mutation to happen (involving uptake of calcium)
during the Cambrian - that>s what we see here now - they survived.
You
would NOT call that a mutation? I mean mutation - a change in the
genes.
All the phyla that came into existence then are around now - tho there
are
millions of species that can trace back to those very few phyla now.
They
didn>t get to be separate species, genera, families, classes, etc. by
"deciding" to be different. That is what it sounds like YOU are
saying.
It>s rubbish.

There isn>t enough even known about how things really speciate for you
to
even comment on it - but it sure the hell is NOT use and disuse. Other
primates have genes similar to ours, but different. Dogs have similar
genes
to us - but MORE different. You think they got to be different from
just
desiring it?

Everything changes. Genes change too. According to some rules.
[/quote]
Eh, you mean according to "rules" we are trying to figure out and
categorize, define, using hindsight to try to categorize these rules. Let>s
see them predict using those rules. Heh. When it comes to Nature and what
happens, I call that rules for fools.

Not
[quote]just like that. Any change isn>t mutation. Mutation is a change which
happens without rules. This is a mutation. Logical change is evolution.
[/quote]
That is on hindsight, hence teleological. Advantageous changes, whether
they are due to genes dropping out (MUTATIONS) or selection in favor of
certain traits that end up breeding out anything else, that lead to
survival - is evolution - and you are calling that evolution There is
nothing all that logical about it, unless you APPLY some kind of method to
it on hindsight. The organism would have selected and deselected differntly
in another environment. Let>s see you use logic and PREDICT the next
evolutionary change in man. Try it. With math, you can use logic. Not so
with evolution, imo. Making up "logic" to FIT what already happened is
nonsense.

A
[quote]mutation is something magical.
[/quote]
LOL - magical? LOL.

But, there are no magic.
[quote]Lets see humans. Unlike other primates, our cripples can survive.
[/quote]
Same with some chimps that care for the crippled. Fact. Same with dogs
born with 3 legs. Fact. Or cats with 3 legs - even 2 legs. Facts. It
doesn>t matter if they were born that way and managed to survive the mother
killing it, or if they got injured later on. They survive and produce
offspring. The offspring generally are NOT crippled.

[quote]Can grow old enough to produce offspring, and they have much more chance
to
do just that, than cripples in any other species.
[/quote]
Totally not so. You need to check up on other species if you think that,
for instance those frogs with extra appendages that are doing just fine -
and who also have offspring.

And yet, AFAIK, we have
[quote]the least genetic diversity (or something like that, I am not an expert).
Wouldn>t it have to be the other way around. And what about mutations rich
environment (we had few nuclear bombs dropped). Any new species arose from
that? I did read that species which are living in environments with more
radiation evolve like faster, but still didn>t see any kind of evolution
you>ve mentioned.
[/quote]
Mutations don>t necessarily make evolution happen. I would think that
speciation does that. For information on speciation, see Niles Eldredge.
There is quite a bit known about phylogeny - but not WHY things diverged so
far from each other that they are different classes now. Eg. worm and
octopus. For that matter, humans and worm. Same ancestor.

It was just faster evolution, probably generated by bigger
[quote]pressure.
Why don>t you see all those cripples of Chernobil. Anything
beneficial from that?
[/quote]
We humans have not been here long enough to see anything quite as BIG as the
"chimp/hominid" split happen. That>s why. We have ONLY hindsight - the new
genetics, some info on phylogeny and whatever - bits and pieces.

-- Mario
[quote]
[/quote]


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