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Earth

Humans Evolving Faster Than Ever 253

Kwyj1b0 writes "In a massive study on genetic variation among humans, researchers found that most changes have occurred in the last 200 generations, too fast for natural selection to catch up. Recent papers show that rare genetic variations have a more drastic effect than previously believed. Another result shows that 'we carry a much larger load of deleterious variants' (as well as positive variants) than our ancestors 200 generations ago."

Comment Re:good (Score 1) 783

Its disingenuous to say that Faith is without evidence. I have faith that my chair will not collapse every time I sit in it. Did I independently have it verified or did I even inspect it? Nope. I just know it worked last time and it should work again. That's a little like how faith is with God. Many many many things point to God but you can't "prove" his existence. However you can take the facts you have and combine it with faith and still believe. By the way, none of this requires suspending any known facts whatsoever. It is a cheap ploy used by deniers to say that you have to ignore science to believe in God.

Comment Re:good (Score 1) 783

Yep, it has no real application in real life for humans at least. Humans have figured out how to stop it by enabling the worst of society to breed and prosper at the expense of the rest. There are few other areas of nature where the weakest / laziest are rewarded.

haha, this is so true. This is why Idiocracy is such a great movie. It was way ahead of its time.

Comment Re:good (Score 1) 783

I grew up in a fundamentalist atheist household. And inflicting the communicable memetic disease of faith on children and brainwashing them to believe in the evil of religion is absolutely child abuse. It imposes a severe mental, emotional and ethical harm to children's minds before they are capable of fighting off the infection. In most cases this harm is permanent, and the child never recovers and becomes healthy again.

FTFY

Comment Re:good (Score 1) 783

...

And I certainly don't share your belief that evolution is unimportant. It's not the only, not the most important theory in science. But it is definately one of the biggies. Given that biology is one of the core scientific subjects, and understanding evolution is pretty important within that.

No its not. Its not important at all. Show me even one place where it makes any difference at all in the understanding of how biology works. Just one example. BTW, you can understand mutation and RNA replication errors and DNS degradation and all that and still be a creationist.

Comment Re:good (Score 1, Interesting) 783

Obviously, this doesn't amount to child abuse. You sir are a troll. The theory of Evolution has almost no application in real life. Even for invertebrate zoologists. Some of the most widely respected invertebrate zoologists I know are also creationists. It just doesn't affect the understanding of the science at all. I know I shouldn't argue with trolls but your argument assumes so many wrong things that I feel like I need to point them out.
Education

UK Government Mandates the Teaching of Evolution As Scientific Fact 783

An anonymous reader writes "A story at the BBC explains how the UK government has put an extra clause into a funding bill to ensure that any new 'free schools' (independent schools run by groups of parents or organizations, but publicly-funded) must teach evolution rather than creationism or potentially lose their funding. 'The new rules state that from 2013, all free schools in England must teach evolution as a 'comprehensive and coherent scientific theory.' The move follows scientists's concerns that free schools run by creationists might avoid teaching evolution. Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said it was 'delighted.' Sir Paul told BBC News the previous rules on free schools and the teaching of evolution versus creationism had been 'not tight enough.'"
Government

Syria Drops Off the Internet Grid 156

hypnosec writes "Amidst the ongoing civil war, Syria has gone off the Internet as of a few hours ago, with all the 84 IP block within the country unreachable from the outside. Renesys, a research firm keeping tabs on the health of the Internet, reported at about 5:25 ET that Syria's Internet connectivity has been shut down. The internet traffic from outside to Syrian IP addresses is going undelivered, and anything coming from within the country is not reaching the Internet. Akamai has tweeted that its traffic data supports what Renesys has observed." Reader trickstyhobbit adds a report from Slate that the connection "appear[s] to have been knocked off line by heavy fighting earlier this morning. They are also reporting that the shutdown may have been intentional to aid in a government operation."

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