Bric a brac
Dec. 24th, 2007 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easy'Missing link' between whales and land-dwellers is found
Humans are still evolving - and it's happening faster than ever - this is fascinating, because I'd absorbed from somewhere the assumption that technology means and end to selective pressure. Well, of course it doesn't. In fact, our evolution is speeding up: there are way more of us, so a larger change of a useful mutation popping up, like the handy ability to digest milk properly in adulthood. (Here, "evolution" means "a change in the frequency of genes in a population in response to selection" - for example, if food is scarce and only some people can digest milk, those lucky folks are more likely to survive and have kids, so there'll be more people who can digest milk in the next generation.)
Alison Bechdel saw, and painted, an ermine.
A report on trends in baby names informs us that "NSW is awash with little Jacks." Wonder how that happened...
The Ongoing Battle Over Deli Cats - in New York delis, cats are engaging in their long-traditional role of eating the rats and mice.
Caitlin Moran reviews Voyage of the Damned: "I know with scientific certainty that my sister Weena will take to moaning 'Tennant's eyes' at around 7.04pm, and not really stop until December 28. 2009." One of us! One of us! (Weena?)
Humans are still evolving - and it's happening faster than ever - this is fascinating, because I'd absorbed from somewhere the assumption that technology means and end to selective pressure. Well, of course it doesn't. In fact, our evolution is speeding up: there are way more of us, so a larger change of a useful mutation popping up, like the handy ability to digest milk properly in adulthood. (Here, "evolution" means "a change in the frequency of genes in a population in response to selection" - for example, if food is scarce and only some people can digest milk, those lucky folks are more likely to survive and have kids, so there'll be more people who can digest milk in the next generation.)
Alison Bechdel saw, and painted, an ermine.
A report on trends in baby names informs us that "NSW is awash with little Jacks." Wonder how that happened...
The Ongoing Battle Over Deli Cats - in New York delis, cats are engaging in their long-traditional role of eating the rats and mice.
Caitlin Moran reviews Voyage of the Damned: "I know with scientific certainty that my sister Weena will take to moaning 'Tennant's eyes' at around 7.04pm, and not really stop until December 28. 2009." One of us! One of us! (Weena?)
