A cultured evolution?

Can perceptions arising out of cultural needs override evolutionary goals in the long-run?

For example, in India, the average marriage-age is in the late 20s now. Here, the (popular) tradition is to frown down upon, and even ostracize, those who would engage in premarital sex.

So, after 10,000 years, say, are Indians more likely to have the development of their sexual desires postponed to occur in their late 20s (if they are not exposed to any avenues of sexual expression)?

This question arose as a consequence of a short discussion with some friends on an article that appeared in SciAm: about if (heterosexual) men and women could stay "just friends".

To paraphrase the principal question in the context of the SciAm-featured "study":

1. Would you agree that the statistical implications of gender-sensitive studies will vary from region to region simply because the reasons on the basis of which such relationships can be established vary from one socio-political context to another?


2. Assuming you have agreed to the first question: Would you contend that the underlying biological imperatives can, someday, be overridden altogether in favor of holding up cultural paradigms (or vice versa)?

Is such a thing even possible? (To be clear: I'm not looking for hypotheses and conjectures; if you can link me to papers that support your point of view, that'd be great.)

Universality of the Lotka-Volterra equations

If humankind were to discover a planet that harbours water, and if, by some provenance, the same unicellular organisms that were the precursors to Earth-bound evolution were to be introduced into this environment...

1. Would the significant differences between our evolutionary pattern and their evolutionary pattern be equivalent in any measure to the significant differences between our environment and theirs? (akin to linguistic relativity; see Whorf-Sapir hypothesis) How might we measure these differences?


2. How would the second-degree Kolmogorov model predator/prey population functions change? (Lotka-Volterra equations)


3. Will the timeframe for "onset" of intelligence be determinable? Will intelligence manifest itself again at all? (Naturalism)


4. Will the Earthborn megapode be able to recognize the "alien" megapode (or vice versa)? (Vitalism)


5. Will evolutionary parameters in similar environments be similar, or will small changes in the evolution of genetic components manifest as large deviations in the final morphology?

Winterwolf VII

At that moment, the semi-AI beeped completion, and 34 jumped out of the chair in one fluid motion and lunged at 32, pinning him to the floor as the gun spilled from his hand and clattered a few feet away. Did you upgrade yourself?! 32 simply smiled. I REPEAT, DID YOU UPGRADE YOURSELF?! “No!” Why not? “Because I want to stop this war. I want to go home.” No, you don’t. “I don’t?” The grip loosened and 32 was able to turn his head to face 34’s. You must be upgraded. “No!” He screamed without regard, and incessantly, struggling all the while, kicking and grabbing at 34’s crystal frame; however, neither relented in their individual efforts. Eventually, just as the final pellet was about to be fired, 32 was strapped in and the semi-AI had been mounted to the binary-encryption projector. There is no time. They are coming. I will not let you receive all the memories. Know simply what is to be known, for your future is short.

32’s scream was abruptly silenced, casting upon his person a ghostly sheen, because wherefrom the alarm had issued there was only an faint-blue darkness, the face contorted with terror and the jaw held open by the lack of electric impulse.



Twelve minutes later, the door banged open and six members of the crew tumbled in, clumsily wielding guns and looking around frantically. When they spotted the two cyborgs standing next to the viewing port, they held their guns up and advanced.

“You! What’re you doing here? What happened to Commander Fanderay?!” The two part-machines turned around to face the advancing belligerents, a strange expression on their faces: their eyebrows were flicking, cheeks flushing and unflushing over and over. The Earthborn couldn’t understand any of it, and in response, they brought their guns closer and closer. “Which of you killed Commander Fanderay?” one of them yelled. One of the cyborgs answered in the negative, and the men immediately trained their guns on the other one, and saw a quick transition in his facial features. The gel in 32’s eyes was diluted by an array of microfluid valves set behind his “eyes”, quickly expanding and pushing the iris films out. His eyebrows adjusted and consequently widened across the structure of his square face, but only by a few millimeters. The hydraulic pistons underneath his jaw went slack and muscle control across most of his limbs was lost, rendering them momentarily slackened. All this 34 observed with indifference: 32 was finally human.

Winterwolf VI

“Right. Caution. Good. Anyway, where was I? Yes! Evolution! This race of new humans was enabled to evolve at an accelerated pace, to mutate and reform within a decade without having to wait for a million years, with a genetically implanted trigger that would terminate mutatory control once human intelligence was reached.” The New Chance. “Fantastic! Yes! And do you know who they really are?” Humans? “They are us, you idiot! We are the New Chance!” Silence. “Hmm. The people of the New Chance quickly attained human intelligence, in a little less than two centuries, in fact, but the trigger never went off. Why? Can you tell me why, 34?” Because the New Chance lived through an alternate history, the quick development of intelligence was used by the bodies developing in the local environment to acquire complementary adaptation systems. The trigger did go off, but it had as consequence… nothing. “Yes! We were as babies born with super-human intelligence!”

“And then, 2051 arrived when the Earthborn discovered that we had colonized almost seven arcseconds of the Milky Way. And, I suppose, this is where our ‘histories’ start to differ?” I suppose so, too. “As for the logical consistency–” There were no logical inconsistencies. “So you agree with me?!” 32 was elated. I don’t. “Why not?!” Deflation. Because I can tell you five stories, ten stories… no, I can tell you a thousand stories that comprise the facts in your knowledge and yet amount to disparate conclusions. “Are you telling me my facts weren’t unique?” I’m telling you that no fact is unique. “Oh…” You seem confused. “How do you affirm your disbelief, then?” Because, now, I am equipped only to serve Master Fanderay, whom you have slain. “What?!” Because, now, even though your facts may be just as unique as mine are, we are part of a reality that is antecedent to our actions. I understand you. You wish to terminate this mission because you believe the Winterwolf is a warship conceived to join war with the New Chance IV, the last outpost of the New Chance. , however, believe that and your… adopted kind squandered your intelligence, corrupted your purpose, and abused the world around. Now, you are faced with nuclear war.

Winterwolf V

The alarms didn’t bother him; no one would believe an upgraded cyborg could have committed murder. On the other hand, the CEs 32 and 34 were the only cyborgs aboard the Winterwolf, and would quickly turn suspect if the intervention of any other Earthborn could be ruled out. Of course, the Earthborn were quite capable of suspecting themselves with greater conviction than any outsider: such was their legacy. After inspecting the scene of his crime, 32 turned around and sprinted to Bay 32. There, he found CE34 staring out through the window, and quietly closed the door behind him.

“Thirty Four?” Yes, Master Fander – You are not Master Fanderay. 32 laughed. “Of course I’m not. I am Thirty Two.” You are task-mate Thirty Two! Welcome, comrade. Where have you been? Master Fanderay was looking for you! “I had… sent myself in for maintenance.” Indeed! I will inform Master Fanderay that you have returned. 32 quickly thrust an arm out and held 34 against his shoulder, pressing him from moving any further. “You will do nothing of the sort.” Why not? “Fanderay is dead.” There was an uncharacteristic pause. Whether 34’s compiler was computing the causes or the implications of the information, 32 couldn’t tell. After a few thousand microseconds, though, shock registered on 32’s face: the gel in his eyes was diluted by an array of microfluid valves set behind his “eyes”, quickly expanding and pushing the iris films out. His eyebrows adjusted and consequently widened across the structure of his square face, but only by a few millimeters. The hydraulic pistons underneath his jaw went slack and muscle control across most of his limbs was lost, rendering them momentarily slackened. All this 32 observed with disdain: 34 was finally human.

How? When? Where? “Calm down.” 32 quickly realized that was a stupid thing to say to an assembly of chips and wires. “I killed him.” He would later think that 34’s systems hadn’t been reprogrammed with the possibility of having to register incredulity in mind, but the “matured” idiot’s face did come pretty close. When no other reactions seemed forthcoming, 32 spoke. “I fired a bullet through his head and killed him. He is not one of us, cannot be resurrected. Now, you must help me–” Who instructed you to fire a bullet through his head? Who served the orders? What do you mean he is not one of us? We are Earthborn and must protect each other in this time of distress! Who served the orders? Do you require my help to steady our crew’s moral and instate a substitute leader?

It was really funny, the string of these words, because they were uttered without intonation or emphasis, anywhere and in any measure, but were simply blurted out just like any Turing machine would: receive input, compile, communicate output. The anomaly heartened 32 – his brain commanded his body’s core temperature to rise by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in line with some external command. This provided a better ambient environment for the metabolic, defensive, and nephrological systems to function. As soon as this happened, then, the neural feedback system conveyed this development to the brain, which, in return for 32’s external action that initiated this progression sequence, let him laugh.

32 laughed. “Why are we orbiting the NC4, 34?” We are on a mission to rescue the stricken inhabitants of NC4 from a self-precipitated nuclear winter. “Bullshit.” I repeat, we are on a mission to rescue the stricken inhabitants of NC4 from a self-precipitated nuclear winter. Do you possess any evidence to dispute this fact? 32 stared. “Can you tell me what you saw through that window a few minutes past?” I saw an RF monitor detach itself from the Winterwolf and launch itself into the planet’s atmosphere.



“An RF monitor?!” Yes. “What the hell is an RF monitor?!” It is a device that monitors communication signals in the RF band. “And why the hell are we deploying one?!” We are to monitor alternate channels of communication amongst the inhabitants of NC4 once the Tesla coils fail under the ionizing impact of the radioactive clouds. 32’s core temperature dropped. His brain commanded him to frown and he frowned. He didn’t know what to say or do: it seemed as if 34’s new memories prevented him from picking out any logical fallacies in the constructed reality he was now firmly a part of. Yet, 32 decided to try his best. He seated 34 on the chair once more. “Listen to me carefully. Let me narrate to you a story.” No! We must reinstate a leader for the Winterwolf and inform the captain and the crew of your actions! “No! We must not!” So saying, 32 thrust the cables lying on the floor back into sockets on 34’s torso and pelvis, leaving him temporarily without access to his limbic stimulants as the semi-AI commenced a long scan to check if his systems were on track.

“Let me narrate to you a story. You must listen to the story and determine its logical consistency. Then, you must determine whether or not to help.” Before 34 could interrupt, he added, “Your conclusion in this endeavour is presupposed on your listening to the story and assimilating the information it contains and its implications.” 34 fell silent. “Good.”

“In the year 1610, the Earthborn discovered the first free-floating Earth-like planet N4C17. It was inundated with water, the entire planet, and all of it was trapped, preserved rather, beneath a thick layer of ice. Almost four centuries passed before an astronomer named Aloia Lee Gill proposed an experiment to transport genetically reprogrammed humans to N4C17 after drilling through and breaking the ice, to have them under constant observation to understand how humans evolved, how natural selection functioned, and to see if alternate evolutionary outcomes showed themselves.” Eugenics. “Yes– Wait, you don’t dispute the contents of my narration?” Yet.

Winterwolf IV

CE34 came to life. He felt great innocence, although that could have meant nothing in particular to CE34 because he wouldn’t have known the corruption of innocence. The room he was in was empty. Nothing odd about that. His memories, his knowledge signaled nothing disturbing or being as cause for concern. He looked down. His body seemed complete: part human, part metal, part plastic. He removed himself from the chair he was on and stood up, erect, and even as he did, the wires connected to him automatically disconnected and dropped to the floor. At that moment, he could feel a vibration beneath his feet, even as with a terribly loud clunk that seemed to quake the room he was in, CE34 observed through the viewing port with awe as a giant metal bird crawled into view, just simply floating there. A few seconds later, as he gaped agog, his elbows resting on the rails and him craning his neck to see as much as of the apparition as possible, the bird jerked downward and then blasted off. Its journey took it slowly out of sight of CE34, the spiral path it followed dragging it to the location of a Tesla coil.

“What are you doing?” I am looking out the window. Who are you? “My name is Doriant Fanderay.” Master Fanderay. I remember your name from… from, uh… somewhere. “Don’t push yourself. Here, come, sit down.” Yes, Master Fanderay. “You can call me Doriant.” Yes, Master Fanderay. “Fine. What’s your name?” My name is Thirty Four, Master Fanderay. “What class are you?” I’m a computational engine, Master Fanderay. “Hmm. Where are you from?” I am from the planet called Earth, Master Fanderay. “Who created you?” I was manufactured by Starlight Systems in the year 2051, Master Fanderay. “Good, good. Can you tell me where we are?” Yes, Master Fanderay. We are on a mission to rescue the stricken inhabitants of NC4 from a self-precipitated nuclear winter. “Yes, and how will be of help to us?” I have knowl –… I seem to have knowledge… of the planet’s geography, topology and weather, Master Fanderay.

Doriant stood up suddenly. “Where’s your mate?” Who, Master– “Where’s CE32?!” The huge man ran frantically to the door, and as soon as he was on command deck on his portion of the bay area, he picked up a communicator and yelled quick words to his captain at the other end of the line. Just as he set down the transmitter, a bustling commotion could be discerned from the lower levels, and the sights and sounds of strobes and alarms catapulted back to life. Even so, he still heard the click behind him, and a moment later, dropped dead to the floor, the control panel spattered with his blood and brains.

Winterwolf III

Noiselessly, the two jaws holding the first pellet, nicknamed the Bald Eagle, unclamped and withdrew, the hydraulic pistons powering their ductile muscles being emptied of all air. As the cylinders withdrew slowly, the pellet came loose, for a moment just hanging limp in space before a trigger went off deep within its titanium heart, igniting the secondary boosters. Directing itself downward and transmitting the coordinates of its location every second to the Winterwolf, the Bald Eagle started its gentle descent into the atmosphere of New Chance IV.

*

The Tesla coil went dead. One moment, there were sparks, and then the next, the ladder was gone. Hundreds of miles above its zenith, the sky was graying, turning slowly from a deep hue of green-blue to a pale shade of gray. Like a blot of ink on flimsy paper tissue, it was spreading, eating into the sky, a deadly flower blooming to herald the coming of a blighted spring, a malformed foetus come to disrupt a tradition of beauty. The faint odour of ozone was thinning, gradually but steadily, even as the temperature in a large hemisphere around the coil began to drop. Communication around the tower went limp with it. The sparks couldn’t permeate the airs anymore as gusts blowing within their invisible veins turned neutral, dampened infinitely, and were goaded no longer to swing or lunge. A sulfurous stench was becoming prevalent, too. A dragon was coming.

*

To call the Bald Eagle a pellet was stupidity. Tip to tip, it measured 89 feet, more than ten-times the wingspan of a full-grown Earthborn albatross, and from its helm to tail, 11 feet. Calling such a thing a pellet was derogatory, pejorative even, and some would say it was absolutely warranted. Its body was curved like a bow’s, although not quite as heavily, and its underside was pocked with miniscule half-gouges and textured rough. As it accelerated through the dense atmosphere, the gouges prompted the construction’s shell to wear off in slivers at first and then as shards and then as chunks of metal, exposing flasks of combustible chemicals. As the temperature reached magnanimous proportions, the flasks’ lining tore off and set the liquids on fire, which in turn set off small explosives positioned in a ring. Each detonation blew out hundreds and hundreds of pellets of thorium-232, each of which had been “activated” only moments earlier with an electron laser. At the end of the next 24 months, the thorium would decay into protactinium and then to the highly radioactive uranium-232, and New Chance IV would be blanketed with death.



The time-period of two years was chosen to provide the rebels with a chance to relent and surrender, at which point the Winterwolf would send down lead-secured rescue-ferries. At the same time, for each day that they postponed their decision, tens and then thousands would die, and future generations forever doomed to evolutionary insufficiency. It was first thought this could be achieved with full-scale war, but the rebels’ ability to construct cyborgs from decapitated body parts would significantly reduce attrition on the battlefield. Instead, two cyborgs had been kidnapped and their memories extracted, and the Earthborn learnt of the Tesla coils. Simply destroying them wouldn’t do – more would come up. Instead, shutting them down permanently and causing significant biological distress would cripple their beloved New Chance one and for all.

Winterwolf II

Snapping him out of attention, suddenly, was a long-toned beep from the semi-AI monitoring CE34’s upgrade. “Warning! Sentience encountered!” the screen displayed in bold, green lettering. CE32 didn’t understand: 34’s quantum compiler had activated itself even though the activation sequence had been carefully subtracted from his pseudo-memories. Within 32’s bulbous silicone head, a small screen lit up adjacent to the fronto-temporal module, while a projector readied the binary encryption for “Interesting”.

 *

There was a sudden tug, and the entire Winterwolf jolted itself out of its monotonous stupor. Alarms blared and red-blue strobes went wild, but on the upper bays, their light was visible from behind the hinges of loose-fitted doors, the sounds through ventilations shafts. On the bay areas, like at all times, darkness prevailed. Fanderay, though, was unperturbed. He picked up a communicator – it was jammed. White noise. With a grunt, he turned away from the deck and strode to Bay 32, where the last cyborg maturation was being performed. “Is everything all right?” Oh, yes. The upgrade’s on track. “Good, good.” What was the disturbance? “Oh, nothing. We’ve crossed into the flux belt. Assault’s… what? Four minutes away.” Alright.

He shut the door quietly behind him and walked back to the deck, to drown himself in the faint blue.



 

Winterwolf I

A Tesla coil stood alone in the middle of a vast desert, the manganese-rich pink-red dust characteristic of the planet whipped around its splayed feet by incessant winds. The coil itself was actually a tower a mile high, and halfway to its top, a series of coaxial superconducting rings were held in position by nanotube scaffolding. At the tower’s peak was a forking: through each prong flowed electric current at a very high voltage, resulting in highly energetic sparks rooted in each prong “climbing” up and up, like a moving ladder. At the very end of the fork, they arced out and disappeared, but not before strongly ionizing the air around the Tesla coil. The ions were then guided by the planet’s strong magnetic field around the planet; the stream of flowing charges, as it were, was used for radio-communication, and had been installed there by the rebels. There were thousands of such Tesla coils strewn around on the surface of New Chance IV.

*

The ship cruised in its path around the planet, the pale orange-hued orb dominating the view from the viewing port through which CE32 stared. His mate, CE34, lay lifeless on a reclined chair behind him. Wires embraced his torso and pelvis, culminating as plastic-sleeved cables that disappeared into the floor. There was an occasional faint beep that each coincided with the completion of a data-feed cycle, a monstrously long series of 0s and 1s that compiled into strange cushioning memories. The past wouldn’t have to come crashing into their minds, they were told, and CE32 was responsible for “maturing” all cyborgs from 28 to 37. CE34 was the last. The sequence would halt, however, only when the pellets were triggered off, sent plummeting into the planet’s upper atmosphere.

A few bays to his right stood Doriant Fanderay, commander of the Winterwolf. His view, uniquely, was an endless dark blue, the perfect stillness of black made impossible by the light of some distant galaxies. The countdown was already running, but Fanderay paid the timer little attention; just the cursory glance to ensure everything was running fine. His mind wandered, reached out to fill the yawning emptiness he saw ahead: once the planet’s atmosphere was contaminated, the last outpost of the New Chance would be eliminated from the race to history. Humans and machines alike would be suffocated, strangled, and forced to yield to the ultimatum, if not to the ultimate. And then, the Earthborn could return to the status quo of 2051. It didn’t matter – not to the many billions back home – that the synthetic race they had strived to conceive now awaited death at their creators’ hands.

The tyrannical human

In David Eagleman's book, "Incognito", he says that evolution is more intelligent than anything else. He may be right for one very important reason: evolution works with the principle popularly called the survival of the fittest. Within this program, multiple entities engage with each other and their environs in a struggle toward adaptation and, ultimately, survival without aiming themselves at it directly. In other words, the struggle for survival is woven into their lives in terms of needs like food, shelter and dominance, and at no point are they conscious of their march toward becoming a naturally sustainable variant of their species, whichever species that may be.

That said, consider the results of just the last million years of evolution—in flora as well as in fauna. Plants, at their microscopic scale all the same, are of various kinds because of the various conditions they exist in all around the world. Animals have learnt how to hunt and forage more efficiently. Humans have hunted, gathered, civilized themselves, and taught themselves. With intelligence serving as the sole difference, we have set ourselves apart from other animals in various ways. Intelligent thought gave us the capacity to think differently, to remember and to evoke, to mimic, reason, understand, socialize, and defend. Then, at some point, we believed we were equipped enough to simply attempt to recreate the intelligence that nature birthed in our form, and in doing so, we found that we were but ill-equipped.

Intelligence has been described in various ways, and they can all be summarized by the ability of intelligent life-forms to reason. While reasoning, we assess the problem statement, break it down into individual components that each make some sense, understand how they work with each other to create the problem, isolate the resources we may need to arrive at a solution, and then continuously deploy and eliminate our options until we arrive at the answer. In retrospect, isn't this how evolution works? Even though there may seem to exist only a few species of animals, nature contrives to create factions within each species divided solely on the lines of biological specifications, and lets these factions fight against each other until the best answer is arrived at.

Is this technique of combative problem-solving what makes evolution so intelligent? Is combative problem-solving the key to progress and evolution? Has anyone ever heard of cooperative problem-solving as being very intelligent, too? When we are stymied by what seems to be a complex problem, we often "put our heads together" to arrive at a solution. In that case, are we really cooperating? I don't think we are. When we "put our heads together", we increase the amount of intelligence that is available to assess each option before it is eliminated, in the process simply reducing the time taken to arrive at a solution. Why must we compete for the same resources in order for the best of us to become established, as it were? Why can't we simply identify the best traits in each one of us and then strive toward them?

That nature has no way of identifying, by itself, the best traits in each one of us could be an incentive for this process of elimination to exist. Being in no position to identify what we need to become, evolution's survival program is genius because it lets us define what we need to become and subsequently ensures that only those of us who have become it to survive. However, the question remains: does intelligence work the same way? Now, instead of saying humankind is the pinnacle of all evolution, let us assume that intelligence is. Being born out of the survival program like every other living thing on the planet, is intelligence, too, subject to the command of combative problem-solving? Does our faculty that assists with reasoning and logical assimilation naturally offer competing points of view for each problem? Or, more importantly, does our faculty that assists with learning and cognition develop in any sense when we engage in a dialectic with ourselves?

Every consideration, ultimately, boils down to a resolution of disagreement. When there is an absence of consensus, is consensus brought upon us simply by the elimination of the dissenting parties? Remove combative problem-solving from the process of problem-solving in general and disagreement becomes meaningless. When cooperative problem-solving is implemented, dissent is integrated into the problem-solving process, making it more democratic. However, the dissent itself is not eliminated, and cannot remain until the end or we would never have a "tipping in favour" of something.

[caption id="attachment_22938" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Fractals display an internal symmetry, where the shape of the innermost branch is geometrically similar to the shape of the whole - much like intelligence and evolution?"][/caption]

Returning to the larger plot: it seems as if the way we think mimics the way evolution happens. Every time we reason, we deploy an algorithm that considers multiple points of view and then selects one after letting the two points of view battle it out with reference to a frame, a logical statement that we hold to be true. Does this mean combative problem-solving is hardwired into the human brain? Is that the signature of intelligence? And considering evolution is what gave birth to intelligence, is intelligence's hallmark also its creation-machine? Are we a composition of multitudes that cooperate, somehow, to give rise to what we perceive as being firm decisions? Is it at all possible that we can learn without "combative" thinking?

Let us take a simple case-study. When humans build robots to solve problems intelligently (in some part), how do the programmers know what the best way to solve a problem is? There are two options here. The first is that "the best way to solve a program is the best known way to solve it." In this case, the robot will borrow, and suffer, from the programmer's knowledge of the problem and the set of tools that are available to construct a solution. The second option is that "the best way to solve a program is to build into it the tools with which to construct different solutions and also the tools required to make an appropriate selection." A robot that entombs the former logic is called a machine and a robot that entombs the latter logic is termed as being artificially intelligent (AI). (Then again, AI also suffers from an inherited deficiency in terms of the programmer's knowledge of his "tools", but that is too deep a depth to plumb right now.)

Therefore, the creation of intelligence seems to lie within the capacity of thinking up solutions. Instead of asking what the best way to solve a problem is, it seems we must ask if there are different ways to solve a problem. Then, it is only a matter of pitting one solution against another and testing for greatest compatibility. However, even at this juncture, I can't help but think how much life would be different if cooperative problem-solving was the order of the day, if instead of eliminating different points of view and therefore deciding for ourselves what we must strive toward, we included different points of view and decided what we must strive against.

Or is that the ultimate goal?

Science, too, evolved.

From an article on LiveScience today:

New Hampshire House Bill 1148 would "require evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism." The second proposal in the New Hampshire House, HB 1457, does not mention evolution specifically but would "require science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes."

The bills, introduced by Jerry Bergevin, a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, require evolution to be taught as a philosophy in schools and teachers to pay some attention to the "fact" that science often contradicts itself as a result of new evidence being found everyday. Perhaps someone should inform Mr. Bergevin that science has never contradicted itself except in the case of explicitly stated paradoxes. In every other case, if two paradigms seem to contradict each other, the one less compatible with the more carefully-made observations is discarded and is no longer considered a part of science. And if he thinks that's the reason science cannot be trusted, I'm very scared to consider Mr. Bergevin's opinion of a democracy.

And what's with Republicans and Darwinian theories, anyway?

Civilization

All that is about the human condition will endure!
All the way into future's filthy slums for sure!
All the lies, the profanity and the broken words
Will fly the infinite distance like tireless birds!

The cause of money is its undying plastic will:
What do you care as long as it buys you the thrill?!
What do you care when it reworks all of history,
And erases the gifts of simple truths for a small fee?!

You should be spending your time saving this earth
For all those kids to have a clean place of birth,
Or so I've been told in a school where the rich study
While the poor dig the sewers where the water's bloody!

Gods and goats and pigs and perverts and pinheads
Know it's got to be done in a time for desperate measures!
When the rich fly their smoking choppers to keep time,
Atlas shrugged his shoulders to profit from crime!

In a Vietnamese grave lies my rotting arm and my glory!
God bless civilization because this is the only story!
Isn't all this food what we always wanted, oh, dining fine-
Don't give a damn and enjoy this night, this moonshine!

A Fatidical Caliginosity

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="130" caption="Here, there, everywhere!"][/caption]

As I sat absterging the world wide web for methods to model vortex streets, I came across one particularly agrestic site featuring, inadvertently, a vaticinating article on the caducity of some olidly spelt and nitidly pronounced words of the English language. A malison seemed to descend on the article that had included them, archetypically having been done so as roborants.

Those are only few of the fubsy words facing extinction from a language that continues to evolve with no mansuetude, constantly borrowing words to appease its speakers and exuviating words as and when the same speakers are done using them. A smart language, in other words, and over the course of the 20th century, it has come a long way in restructuring itself to be spoken more easily and, consequently, become more accessible and less embrangled in the eyes of those for whom it is a second language. As words changed, portmonteaus took shape and sentences became shorter, those encapsulations of meaning that were too specific to salvage any versatility - so very important these days - were sidelined with often methodical oppugnance. I don't think it's surprising at all that a language that is mutated on a daily basis begins to show Darwinian characteristics of evolution over the course of two centuries.