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Why do strangers cooperate? Help each other? And practice fairness -- even when there is no direct benefit to themselves? Researchers have long puzzled over this. Is it an evolutionary thing? Or is it cultural? Using behavioural experiments that looked at notions of fairness in relation to a society's economic integration and how much the individuals subscribed to a world religion, a team of researchers have found that the answer may be cultural. Notions of fairness -- that fairness is a good thing, and unfairness should be punished -- was stronger in economically integrated societies. Societies that lacked economic integration, didn't see much need for fairness -- or much need to punish unfairness. The researchers also found that one's propensity for fairness was also strongly linked to a subscription to a world religion. Religion does bring moral codes, and belief in an omniscient god who punishes bad behaviour and doles out rewards for the good, should favour th...

They seem to be everywhere these days, and it's friggin' scary. It's scary that at this point in humanity's progress, we're encountering a concerted effort to take us back to the dark days when irrationality was the norm. More and more, irrational minds are making it to institutions of higher education -- which is a failure of our education system. The fact that irrational people are, 1) not being taught how to think rationally; and 2) making it into institutions of high education, is alarming. If they're not learning how to think rationally in school, then they are not being educated -- and if they are making it to post-secondary, then secondary schools are failures -- because these idiots should be failed there, and not allowed to continue any further. There is a bare minimum that is required to be able to continue. Why are they being allowed to squeak by? in reference to: "A 21-year-old medical student and member of the Islamic Society, who did not...

The Y chromosome is rapidly losing genes , and could eventually disappear completely -- in a few millennia. For the scientific illiterate and other creationist types, the Y chromosome is what makes men, men -- in the genetic sense of the word. Men, currently, are still an active participant in the propagation of the species. If the Y chromosome disappears, we will have some serious problems keeping the species going. Of course, with enough genetic engineering, the ladies should be able to continue just fine, without us guys. Alas, the disappearance of males is not likely -- at least not due to the continued deterioration of the Y chromosome. There are many other forces arrayed against the males of our species -- mostly chemical in nature. If the Y chromosome was to disappear, most likely a new pair of sex chromosomes will rise to replace the X and Y. At that point of course, the human species may have ended, only to be replaced by another.

The Daily Galaxy has a post on a Stephen Hawking lecture, in which the physicist postulates that humans are entering a new phase of "self design evolution" -- in which we purposely affect change on our genetic code to some , hopefully, useful end. (I will refrain from making any intelligent design jokes at this point.) It is an interesting idea, but Hawking downplays the role of the traditional Darwinian evolution in his next phase of evolution. I'm actually surprised at that, because, while it's true that evolution does take a damn long time, it should be noted that our evolutionary history to modern humans was a result of two factors -- random mutations & natural selection; and, reproduction. Reproduction prior to modern humans was limited to smaller populations. So, if the rate of random mutations has stayed the same, the reproduction rate of our species has increased exponentially since the industrial revolution. A result from this should more changes ...

First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe. Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort...

Whoo-hoo! Louisiana has voted to stunt progress and scientific literacy in the state! Governor Bobby Jindal, a biology major that apparently wasted his time in school, signed into law yesterday, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). The LSEA seeks to promote critical thinking in education, especially in the areas of evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning. Yet again, logic and intelligence has given way to religious fanaticism. The dumb just keeps getting dumber.

The US National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine has just published Science, Evolution, and Creationism -- a book "designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom." In the book , the Academy makes it quite clear that evolution is central to modern biology, yet continues to be challenged in the classroom by proponents of creationism and intelligent design. The Academy states in the book that science and religion can coexist, and present different ways of understanding the world. This book is an update from previous versions published in 1984 and 1999. The Academy is trying to appeal to religious moderates in the face of rising religious fundamentalism in the US and educate the masses of uneducated in the US (aka: the general public). In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based...

Humans have had a short and spectacular history on this planet. Short. Extremely short. To some of the species we're busily taking to extinction, we've just barely blinked into existence. We're quite the surprise for the planet. Follow this link for an animated view of how we took over the planet. In a brief period of time, we've forced frightening changes on our world -- but the planet has seen its share of disasters. It has bounced back from mass extinctions . It will survive the one we're bringing. Will we?

Back in 2002, Scientific American published 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense -- an attempt to rebut "some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution." Having to refute creationists arguments against evolution isn't a new thing. As SciAm points out, Charles Darwin was similarly challenged in his day by scientists, until evidence from numerous scientific disciplines mounted a bulwark against "creationist nonsense." Today of course, science faces a the challenge of misunderstanding, misinformation and just plain lies. Even the informed is challenged to face the barrage of idiocy. Here's some help then. 15 common arguments that creationists raise, and answers you could wield to knock them back to the dark ages (let's face it, some will never see the light). Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those...

A Newsweek poll on the belief of god finds that Americans are deeply religious. 91% of Americans believe in god -- and 82% of them are Christians. Further, 48% of Americans think the scientific theory of evolution is a load of shit -- with 34% of college graduates believing the Bible's take on creation is fact. Goes to show you -- we really do need population control.

You'd be amazed by what parasites can tells us about our evolution. A group of scientists that had previously published findings on human head lice, just published recent research that looked at the co-evolution of human pubic lice (crabs) with humans. The findings are interesting, raise more questions than they answer -- but provide a different lens through which human evolution can be studied. Pubic lice (Pthirus pubis) has at least a thirteen million year history with us -- going on the evolutionary journey with the distant ancestors of today's great apes and the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees. Somewhere on the journey however, Pthirus pubis became extinct on the human/chimp lineage. Then about three and half million years ago, Pthirus pubis from the gorilla lineage, reappeared on our hominid ancestors. What happened? Pthirus pubis is only shared via close contact, which implies that our hominid ancestors shared more with the ancestors of gorillas than had previo...