You will not be happy with Bear's "Vitals". George A
----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 10:55 AM Subject: Re: First real post - Hugo Noms > In a message dated 1/26/2003 6:38:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > > Darwin's Radio, the Nebula winner a year or so > > back. Looking forward to "Darwin's Children" due out in > > April I think. > > I could not enjoy the story because the science was so flawed. Darwin is turning over in his grave the way his theory was abused. The notion that the genome can respond by producing an evolutionary jump means that the genome has to anticipate future problems but whether or not a gene will be improve an organism's survival is totally dependent upon the environment (including of course all of the organisms in the local ecosystem). There are no genetic changes that are a priori good. The change itself, the ability to instantaneously remember new languages (if I remember corectly) is also scientifically untenable. The ability to learn languages is certainly genetic and one might be able to learn languages faster with genetic changes but the specific language has to be learned. It has to be learned during a specific period of developement. This cannot happen in utero without causing a major change in brain maturation. One of the major trends in human evolution/developement has ! > been the prolongation of brain developement into the first year of life. The book postulates that final speciation that created homo sapiens was just such a jump. This should just offensive to people who believe in science as the worst creatonist crap. We evolved in the ordinary from our ancestors. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that Darwin was wrong and that speciation occurs because of some genetic mumbo jumbo. Finally it would be unlikely that humans would welcome what is an essentially new species. Our genes do things have direct effects and one of those effects would be to destroy potential usurpers. The book is at its base nonsense so I found it hard to accept the > > _______________________________________________ > http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l > _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
