Darwin 200 Options

[Brainiac]

though that link is pretty cool.

If I was around 1.8 million years ago, I'd definitely have hit on that Asian woman (template photo)... She looks like she'd have made a lot of homos erectus...

[Brainiac]

Blog for Darwin has done a great job of aggregating as much as possible of the blogosphere's orgasmic adoration of Darwin over the past few days, so check it out if you fancy a few cool pieces.

With Darwin's 200th birthday just passed and the 150th anniversary of Origin of Species coming up in November, 2009 looks set to be Darwin Year. (muahahaha!)

In the meantime, weird sex in the animal kingdom.

[Dhyana]

Thanks for the laughs, Brainiac!

[angrezi]

Thanks for the laughs, Brainiac!

If the animated devolution showed the relative penis enhancement there would be no laughter

[Brainiac]

I neglected to mention a rather important and real-life implication of evolution: the emergence of HIV-resistant immune systems.

For some reason or other, some individuals appear to have a genetic structure that is naturally resistant to the HIV virus. I wrote about this some time ago on my blog: Genius of Charles Darwin, where I reviewed a recent TV documentary (you can watch the embedded video if you like). Dawkins travelled to Kenya where he visited a Kenyan prostitute and interviewed her about her resistance. There have been such cases before but they have been mainly anecdotal, but a few years ago a British man went rather public when he claimed to be cured of HIV.

In an interesting development, a case report has recently been published about a man who had become 'cured' of HIV after undergoing stem-cell treatment for leukaemia. They are being cautious about claiming a 'cure', but the principle is that the donated bone marrow came from an individual who possessed the 'immunity' genes. Just to consider how this is going to significantly enhance gene therapy, I'm going to dig around and see if I can read a copy of the case report. This is stupendous, though!

Now that I review what I wrote on my blog, it sounds a bit chilling what I wrote:

As some individuals have an in-built resistance to HIV locked away in their genotypes they will survive and pass their genes to the next generation to bring about 'stronger' and HIV-resistant humans, whereas unfortunate individuals who contract HIV that develops into AIDS will be driven extinct by such natural processes. Natural selection is a cruel mechanism indeed.

[Brainiac]

Last night I caught up with the BBC documentary series - Darwin's Dangerous Idea - presented by BBC journalist Andrew Marr. It was the second part, and Marr was explaining how Darwin's ideas of natural selection had been co-opted into someone else's phrase of 'survival of the fittest', leading to the 'new' science of eugenics, bettering the world population through selective breeding.

In retrospect we can see that eugenics was a horrible and racist perversion of Darwin's idea, based on subjective notions of 'perfection' and the type of genes that would be desirable to inherit and allow to proliferate. And of course this came to a head with Hitler's vile Final Solution. It is important to note that as well as having a pathological hatred of Jews (anti-Semitism was de rigeur at the time), not much is known about earlier American research by Charles Davenport. Eugenics, at the time, was de rigeur and seen as a noble thing to do. Elder statesmen such as Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt supported scientific endeavours to forcibly sterilise those that they considered unfit for breeding, and famed authors such as HG Wells used eugenics as the subtext to his book The Time Machine. Economists calculated that "weaklings" and "feeble minded" etc were a burden on national finances. The case of Carrie Buck is particularly notorious in this regard, the Supreme Court Justice who heard her case dclared:

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. - Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11.

Between 1907 and 1970, over 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilised. And Hitler of course, gassed six million Jews. He also systematically killed Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, some religious sects (Jehovah's Witnesses) and political dissidents, making the total somewhere between 10 and 14 million. These were clear moves to eliminate the "degenerate". In the end, Darwin's idea was rescued and properly enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as per the UN.

As I was watching all of this, it seemed to me that the Srimad Bhagavatam also seems to propound these racist ideas, accepting the dwindling standards of degenerate humanity as inevitable and beyond help. Even the doctrine of avatarana, God's (or Chaitanya's) taking an incarnation to redeem mankind, redeem them from what exactly? I thought that it was lamentable that these sections of the Bhagavatam are considered "prophecies", what kind of prophecies are they? That mankind degenerates into crap? How nice. See the BBT SB translations:

SB 12.2.1: Śukadeva Gosvāmī said: Then, O King, religion, truthfulness, cleanliness, tolerance, mercy, duration of life, physical strength and memory will all diminish day by day because of the powerful influence of the age of Kali.

As the earth thus becomes crowded with a corrupt population, whoever among any of the social classes shows himself to be the strongest will gain political power. Losing their wives and properties to such avaricious and merciless rulers, who will behave no better than ordinary thieves, the citizens will flee to the mountains and forests. Harassed by famine and excessive taxes, people will resort to eating leaves, roots, flesh, wild honey, fruits, flowers and seeds. Struck by drought, they will become completely ruined. The citizens will suffer greatly from cold, wind, heat, rain and snow. They will be further tormented by quarrels, hunger, thirst, disease and severe anxiety. The maximum duration of life for human beings in Kali-yuga will become fifty years. By the time the age of Kali ends, the bodies of all creatures will be greatly reduced in size, and the religious principles of followers of varṇāśrama will be ruined. The path of the Vedas will be completely forgotten in human society, and so-called religion will be mostly atheistic. The kings will mostly be thieves, the occupations of men will be stealing, lying and needless violence, and all the social classes will be reduced to the lowest level of śūdras. Cows will be like goats, spiritual hermitages will be no different from mundane houses, and family ties will extend no further than the immediate bonds of marriage. Most plants and herbs will be tiny, and all trees will appear like dwarf śamī trees. Clouds will be full of lightning, homes will be devoid of piety, and all human beings will have become like asses. At that time, the Supreme Personality of Godhead will appear on the earth. Acting with the power of pure spiritual goodness, He will rescue eternal religion.

(SB 12.2.7-16)

I have a huge collection of spiritual books and I'm sure I can dig out some more of these Vedic end-time "prophecies" if anyone wants, including "local" scriptures, they are often much more graphic and detailed about the degeneration of the human race and their descent into oblivion. Fair enough, the Bhagavatam is talking about the situation as a whole, but it is clear that the conception of humans is very low indeed. Which is why Kalki will advent according to Srila Prabhupada:

"Kalki's nature, that is described in Bhāgavata. He will come just like a prince, royal dress with sword, and on horseback, simply killing, no preaching. All rascals killed. No more preaching. (laughing) That is the last. There will be no brain to understand what is God." - Room Conversation with Allen Ginsberg -- May 13, 1969, Columbus, Ohio

"There will be no candidate for learning. You have to kill everyone. That will be at the end, Kalki-avatāra, simply killing, bas, finish. They'll have no capacity to understand." - Room Conversation with Ratan Singh Rajda M.P. -- April 15, 1977, Bombay

But of course we know that it isn't completely over, because:

"When Lord Vāsudeva, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, appears in their hearts in His transcendental form of goodness, the remaining citizens will abundantly repopulate the earth." (SB 12.2.22)

What remaining citizens? Clearly those who are "fit" for "survival", presumably devotees according to the viewpoint of the shastra, but fit nevertheless. So it seems to me that even the Bhagavata isn't immune to these racist notions that were behind eugenics; get rid of the degenerates and repopulate the earth with the fit to bring about the Satya-yuga. At the very least it preaches a worldview that teaches it's followers to expect what to happen, which I think is the root cause behind all the anti-materialism and "fallen" rhetoric that plagues so much of their preaching. The fatalism is scriptural law.

Any thoughts?

[Brainiac]

So no one thought much of the inherent racism in the Bhagavata? Oh well...

Spider sex violent but effective

A violent but evolutionarily effective mating strategy has been spotted in spiders from Israel. Males of the aptly-named Harpactea sadistica species pierce the abdomen of females, fertilising their eggs directly in the ovaries. The so-called traumatic insemination gives the first male to inseminate a reproductive advantage by bypassing structures in the females' genitalia. The findings are reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Insects including mites and bedbugs have been spotted using a similar strategy, but this is the first time that it has been seen in spiders. Typically, spider males deliver their genetic package via sperm that is deposited into a small web and manually inserted using a pair of appendages on their undersides known as pedipalps. The sperm are then held in a receptacle between the ovipore and ovary known as a spermatheca until an egg is released. However, the spermatheca is a "last in, first out" structure, so that if any further males inseminate a female, the last mate's sperm is the first in line to fertilise an egg.

Direct route

Milan Rezic, an entomologist at the Crop Research Institute in Prague, has spotted a spider circumventing this problem by delivering sperm directly to the ovaries via holes that the males bore directly in the females' abdomens. Naming the species H. sadistica, Dr Rezac noted that the species has specialised sex organs at the ends of its pedipalps, with one part specialised for gripping and another, hypodermic needle-like structure for injecting sperm. Like many spider mating rituals, H. sadistica's approach follows an elaborate pattern, with the male tapping the female, subduing her, and wrapping himself around her to properly position the sex organs. He then alternates between the two, piercing and injecting the sperm on one side, then the other, forming two neat rows of holes in her abdomen. An analysis of the females of the species has shown that relative to other spiders, their spermathecae are atrophied, or shrunken.

In an apparent case of co-evolution, they seem to be slowly shrinking into nonexistence now that their purpose is being bypassed by the males' more direct approach. "In insects there is a co-evolutionary development of female physiological responses to the male sperm that gives her at least some control of fertilisation," said William Eberhard, an expert in the mating habits of insects and spiders at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "Something similar might occur here."

Dr Rezac suggests equally that a means to avoid the injury caused by the males might drive the evolution of secondary genitalia nearer to the ovaries, which have been seen in some spiders and butterflies. "The evolution of these features has been heretofore difficult to explain," he said. "Perhaps the secondary genital structures of butterflies and spiders could have originated via traumatic insemination."

Source: BBC News (with video clip)

[Dhyana]

Insects including mites and bedbugs have been spotted using a similar strategy, but this is the first time that it has been seen in spiders. Typically, spider males deliver their genetic package via sperm that is deposited into a small web and manually inserted using a pair of appendages on their undersides known as pedipalps. The sperm are then held in a receptacle between the ovipore and ovary known as a spermatheca until an egg is released. However, the spermatheca is a "last in, first out" structure, so that if any further males inseminate a female, the last mate's sperm is the first in line to fertilise an egg.

/snip/
Like many spider mating rituals, H. sadistica's approach follows an elaborate pattern, with the male tapping the female, subduing her, and wrapping himself around her to properly position the sex organs. He then alternates between the two, piercing and injecting the sperm on one side, then the other, forming two neat rows of holes in her abdomen. An analysis of the females of the species has shown that relative to other spiders, their spermathecae are atrophied, or shrunken.

What an emphatic case for natural selection's "blind wisdom." It seems a safe guess that spider males cannot possibly know about this "last in, first out" system.