Thursday, August 9, 2007

Non-Linear evolution?

So I'm sure many of you out there have probably read the news story being written about in almost any well known science journal regarding the newly discovered set of fossils that were unearthed in northern Kenya. Well if you haven't here is a short description of what the whole story is about, so recently scientists from the Leakey team, which I haven't just started to read about and from wikipedia, Richard Leakey is a well known paleontologist/archaeologist/conservationist born and currently residing in Kenya. Ok back to the article, so the 2 new fossils that have been discovered seem to be that of a Homo Habilis and of Homo Erectus, 2 species that according to evolutionary theory are supposed to be descendent's, Homo Erectus, the direct ancestors of Homo Sapiens, being the descendant of Homo Habilis. According to the article, when some dating was done on the 2 fossils it turns out that both seemed to have inhabited earth at the same time, during the same time period, which would contradict the claim that H. Erectus is a descendant of H. Habilis, and according to the article, puts a spur in the linear graph of evolution that we known of today, and makes the graph look much more branched. On yahoo, the article says that if the 2 species did live during the same time period then there must have been very little interaction between the 2, going further to state that H. Habilis and H. Erectus may have had different nutritional lifestyles, H. Habilis of course being vegetarians and H. Erectus being meat eaters, so now that is a point I found interesting, does that mean that vegetarians such as myself are part of a completely different species, I didn't need a set of fossils to tell me this, but still an interesting conjecture :). Also all you creationists out there, you know who you are... you are probably all reeling in joy at this news because it's another bit of arsenal to add to your attack on evolution, but there was a nice quote from the article that I thought I'd share: "This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points," Anton said. "This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn't do. It's a continuous self-testing process."... Another revision of course I'm sure you're all aware of that was made much earlier was that the original theory that H. Sapiens descended from Neanderthals was proven false because they lived during the same time period and of course there is the question of whether the 2 species mated, cause I know a few people who may be classified as Neanderthals :).

Saturday, August 4, 2007

First things...

So why did I finally start a blog after many many years of being not very outspoken about thoughts and ideas and just interesting tidbits that I may have picked up along my path of knowledge and daily life. Well I guess I was just a very introspective person, which may seem hypocritical, being introspective perhaps conveys the idea that you can express thoughts on anything you think about, but it's one thing to be introspective and another to be able to express what you've learned about from introspecting, ok I think I've used the word introspective to the point of no return. So anyway, well to start off with, I was born in India, raised by very loving parents who wanted the best life for their kids, and because of that, we decided to pack up and come to the US many many years go, it's hard looking back at what it was like making the transition from a culture that was still quite conservative and not as westernized as it is today to a society where people are much more liberal and far more outspoken.
I remember being very shy my first day of class. But perhaps that shyness came from not knowing what to expect when you talked to someone and you had a different accent or perhaps the shyness came from my fear of being in a new place with many many new faces unbeknownst to me. But I think I eventually assimilated into the class and began making friends and began my path towards becoming an IBCD (Indian Born Confused Desi).