Quote notes (#89)
Taken from the second chapter of Matt Ridley’s Genome (1999), a superb popularization of human genetics:
… the remarkable truth is that we [humans] come from a long line of failures. We are apes, a group that almost went extinct fifteen million years ago in competition with the better-designed monkeys. We are primates, a group of mammals that almost went extinct forty-five million years ago in competition with the better-designed rodents. We are synapsid tetrapods, a group of reptiles that almost went extinct 200 million years ago in competition with the better-designed dinosaurs. We are descended from limbed fishes, which almost went extinct 360 million years ago in competition with the better-designed ray-finned fishes. We are chordates, a phylum that survived the Cambrian era 500 million years ago by the skin of its teeth in competition with the brilliantly successful arthropods. Our ecological success came against humbling odds.
we are whites a group that almost went extinct against better designed Blacks and Asians
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Posted on June 15th, 2014 at 11:58 am | Quote[…] Source: Outside In […]
Posted on June 15th, 2014 at 12:31 pm | QuoteJesus admin, I can see what you mean about the comments section devolving here. The comment above might not even be wrong per se (actually I think it is) but it needs to be re-directed to amren.
Genome is a great book, skip to pg 154 for some fascinating stuff about how social status affects heart disease.
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admin Reply:
June 16th, 2014 at 1:37 am
Michael’s comment is OK. Makes me wonder if you’ve ever seen a devolved comments section!
Yes, really impressed by the Ridley book so far.
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And we didn’t get sucked into The Great Attractor either! Yet.
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Posted on June 15th, 2014 at 10:42 pm | QuoteI’ve begun a long and rambling thought about how we stitch the image back together ( http://nrxnpoem.tumblr.com/post/88964931655/the-seed-after-its-own-kind ) – looking at aspects of the tradition of scripture itself and showing that they retain their acuity and don’t fundamentally contradict the theory of evolution. They may also serve to broaden the idea of evolution past mere genes into a general procession of forms and functions.
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Posted on June 16th, 2014 at 4:23 pm | Quote