by George Dvorsky
A new study published in Trends in Genetics is suggesting that humans are slowly but surely losing their intellectual and emotional capacities. According to Stanford University’s Gerald Crabtree, humanity peaked in intelligence about 2,000 years ago, and we’ve been heading downhill since then, owing to genetic mutations that aren’t being selected against.
As Crabtree notes, human intelligence is the result of thousands of different genes that arose during the course of our evolution. And indeed, human intelligence — from a genetic perspective — reached its current configuration some time during the Paleolithic era of our ancestry (about 6,000 years ago).
This level of intelligence was very likely a requirement for survival; those who were less intellectually endowed were unlikely to pass on their genes. As Crabtree noted in his paper, “A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny.”
But now, says Crabtree, life is easy and we no longer have to be smart to survive and produce offspring. As a result, we are no longer reinforcing the genetic integrity of our intelligence through extreme selectional processes. And it’s because of this that our brains are withering away like our appendixes. Given enough time, Crabtree suspects that we will become increasingly susceptible to mutations that will lead to intellectual disabilities (and registering to vote as democrats).
In terms of specifics, Crabtree has calculated that the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that code for human intelligence will start to degrade appreciably in about 3,000 years — about 120 generations from now. At that point, he predicts that we will have sustained at least two or more mutations severe enough to stunt our intellectual or emotional stability.
Some are getting smarter. For example “Two and a Half Men” star Angus T. Jones has gone from decent kid to decent adult. Of course he is being ridiculed and lambasted by the left for it and is being labeled a hypocritical extremist Christian loon who became wealthy off the filth he helped produce.
Such is what American progressive culture has become. Crude, rude, and socially unacceptable vampirism that feeds off itself and then guts and feeds off its own soul-searching children who reject it.
Being the socially conservative prude that I am, I admit to getting more than a few laughs from “Two and a Half Men”, but nevertheless, the show has little to no socially redeeming value. It is, for the most part, a boorish indulgence into self indulgence. As is what passes for most sit-coms these days.
http://gawker.com/5963315/two-and-a-half-men-star-sees-the-light-tells-viewers-to-stop-watching-his-filthy-show?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
I am one of the people not impressed with Angus T. Jones. I’m glad he grew up enough to speak out, but I haven’t heard that he quit the show or anything. And I could never understand his parents allowing him to be on that show in the first place. It is hard for me to be impressed with a person’s supposed morals and values when they continue to cash checks.
I agree that the program is total filth and should be on HBO instead of network television. I have noticed that filth creeping into other network comedies as well. Pretty much family TV time is a thing of the past.
But I’m not impressed with a lecture from a kid who got rich on a morally corrupt show; telling me not to watch him on it.
Give me a break.
My impression is that Angus T. Jones bears his soul, his recent epiphany, and his growth into manhood. Princess calls it a “lecture”.
*Yawn*
I am not impressed with Princess and wish Mr. Jones well. We shall see if he follows up. Maybe this is his way of breaking a contract he could not otherwise get out of without a legal battle. In the meantime the Princess can gripe and lambaste and continue to choke on her own bile for all I care. There must be a pea in her mattress.
I am glad that he’s speaking out against “Two and a Half Men,” because that show is awful. I have no idea how John Cryer keeps getting Emmys year after year over way more deserving actors. It’s the same plot every single week. I am not opposed to sexual humor, when done in a clever way, but this show usually does it in the most banal and mysoginistic way possible.
But I wish he’d chosen a less loony church. Forerunner Chronicles has made videos detailing Jay-Z’s connections to the Freemasons and hidden Satanic messages in Beyonce songs. So…I worry that this kid is just looking for answers in the wrong places, and being manipulated.
This reminds me of when Robia La Morte became an evangelist and started speaking out against her work on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” I loved her on that show. But now she comes across as someone who is trying desperately to fill some void in her life. I am all for people exploring their spirituality and coming to their own conclusions about the divine, but for a small minority of people, religion simply becomes a replacement for old addictions rather than a corrective to them.
Re: “But I wish he’d chosen a less loony church. Forerunner Chronicles has made videos detailing Jay-Z’s connections to the Freemasons and hidden Satanic messages in Beyonce songs. So…I worry that this kid is just looking for answers in the wrong places, and being manipulated.”
This from the thoroughly twisted and manipulated conspiracy theorist loon who asserts banks are out to control our schools, our elected officials, the middle class, and the world.
Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!
I’ve said that Wall Street has too much influence in all of those things, yes. This is backed up by plenty of evidence. Some of which was provided by Jack a few weeks ago when he wrote about Prop 30 funds going to pay back bad bets. His source article states:
“These swap deals are part of a dramatic change in UC’s relationship with Wall Street. In 1990, none of UC’s top management or regents had direct ties to the major Wall Street banks. Today, those banks have a growing foothold among top UC management with direct oversight over UC’s finances.
For instance, the chief financial officer, Peter Taylor, came to UC from Lehman Bros., where he was managing director for public finance until Lehman collapsed in the largest bankruptcy in American history. While Taylor was at Lehman, the company was hired to help expand UC’s debt load. Lehman ultimately was party to one of UC’s interest rate swaps – a bad deal that has already cost the university more than $23 million.
California taxpayers have entrusted the regents with stewardship of the university, but the regents’ cozy ties to Wall Street raise questions about their financial priorities. It’s time for the UC Board of Regents to stop gambling with California’s future.”
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Prop-30-funds-for-UC-will-go-to-Wall-Street-4031472.php#ixzz2DTej8Fat
There’s no conspiracy, Pie. The growing influence of Wall Street in politics and education is a fact. You’re purposefully overreacting, as usual, simply because you hate liberals.
Poor Chris, it seems he cannot admit his plain and clear statement about banks and now seems to want to extend it (water it down?) to the thoroughly evil “Wall Street”.
“You’re purposefully overreacting, as usual, simply because you hate liberals.”
How would know what is in my mind? Take your arrogant, personal attack, left wing psycho-babble garbage and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
I don’t hate you or liberals and you, sir, are no liberal. If I hate anything, it is the sheer stupidity you so often demonstrate. To me you are merely a mindless progressive conspiracy theorist moron whom I love to tweak with your own words.
So take your ad hominem psycho-babble about my mental state and stick it where the sun don’t shine, chump.
Not only UC regents invest, you hapless progressive twit from moron hell. Labor unions, corporate, group and individual pension funds invest. In every investment the is a particle of risk. Your completely idiotic notion that banks or Wall Street collude to suck investors into bad investments is — AT FACE VALUE — so stupid as to be beyond belief, besides being factually baseless. Some people on Wall Street have done such to enrich themselves and have been caught at. Investment houses want their customers to make money, otherwise no one will invest through them! GET IT? It goes much deeper than your pathetic conspiracy theory to the analysis of investment risk and modeling and what drives the economy that you progressives are working so hard to completely destroy.
UC made some bad investments and from that you draw your conspiracy theory. You do disgust me. That is not the same as hate, Chris. Perhaps such is far too nuanced for an ignorant progressive conspiracy theorist simpleton like you who considers Wall Street (which you formerly
called banks) as some sort of monolithic conspiratorial entity trying to influence education and politics and control the middle class and the world. (There must be a Dr. Evil here somewhere!)
Everyone from pro-life groups to unions to LGBT-enviro-nazis to farmers to progressive morons from hell are trying to influence education and politics. Taking your view, we are surrounded by conspiracies. I call it freedom.
“So take your ad hominem psycho-babble about my mental state and stick it where the sun don’t shine, chump.”
This is ridiculous. All you write on this blog is ad hominem. You’re using ad hominem in the very sentence where you criticize me for using ad hominem!
And no, it is not ad hominem to say that someone is “purposefully overreacting.”
It is ad hominem to call someone a “chump,” “hapless progressive twit from moron hell,” a “mindless progressive conspiracy theorist moron,” “an ignorant progressive conspiracy theorist simpleton,” and “LGBT-enviro-nazis.”
You can’t constantly call people these types of names and then try and claim you don’t “hate” them, Pie. I don’t care about your “mental state.” Hate is not just thoughts or feelings; hate is something you do, and you are constantly hateful to anyone who dares to disagree with you on this blog.
You can’t get through ONE comment without this kind of bullying and verbal abuse. I have never spoken to you this way, and I never will. I do not deserve this kind of treatment and I demand that you knock it off.
Chris: “The growing influence of Wall Street in politics and education is a fact.”
What kind of influence are you talking about?
The influence I see is this gang of CEOs trying to plan how to reduce the debt. Well, not bailing them out would be a great place to start. CEOs can stick with running their companies with no government funds and government can stick to running the country.
Sheesh Chris, are you an oblivious hypocrite or what? Your idiotic dance, feint, and complaints are nothing more than a gaping FAIL.
At least I am plain damn honest about it. I make a point to take a giant personal attack dump on whenever you exercise as what you think is disguised and clever ad hominem. In your face, jerk.
Until you start to be honest, I will treat this way. As soon as you stop being a moronic jerk, I will start treating you as a moronic jerk.
Re: You can’t get through ONE comment without this kind of bullying and verbal abuse.
Shall I deconstruct this oily, moronic, scumbag, progressive hypocrite again? I suppose I could but what purpose would it serve?
Excuse me sir, but I have not treated you any different than you have treated the folks of Post Scripts or me. Have you EVER held a mirror up to yourself? I keep trying to clue you by jumping in your face, but evidently you are the paradigm of the progressive — an oblivious, hate filled, angry, ignorant, jackass from hell on a mission.
Try that on for size, chump.
And you trust them to know what they are doing?
I was talking about Chris’s comment referring back to another another article:
What influence and why not hold the regents responsible? They are the ones with the moral and fiduciary responsibility. Wall Street and banks can advise but they make the decisions.
Here is another example of corporate takeover of education. Michigan is trying to pass laws that force school districts to sell or lease their publicly-paid-for buildings to private charter schools. This letter is from the superintendent of schools from Mitt Romney’s home district. Not the ghetto.
http://www.bloomfield.org/news/item/index.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=215&ModuleID=167&NEWSPID=1
From the letter:
“I’ve never considered myself a conspiracy theorist—until now. This package of bills is the latest in a yearlong barrage of ideologically-driven bills designed to weaken and defund locally-controlled public education, handing scarce taxpayer dollars over to for-profit entities operating under a different set of rules. I believe this is fundamentally wrong. “
Princess, not sure what your concern is, but thought you’d like to see what Calif’s Ed Code says about selling public schools to charter/(private) schools and to the private sector. Calif. already sells its surplus property and has for as long as I can remember.
Many of the high schools that were opening in the 1960s when I was a HS student have been closed and sold to both private schools or turned into shopping centers.
“…the governing board of a school district may sell,
for less than fair market value, a schoolsite that is deemed to be
surplus property of the school district and for which a charter
school has not accepted an offer to purchase or lease pursuant to
Section 17457.5,…”
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=edc&group=17001-18000&file=17230-17234
EDUCATION CODE
SECTION 17230-17234
17230. Notwithstanding the provisions of Article 4 (commencing with
Section 17455) of Chapter 4 and in addition to the requirements
placed upon school districts pursuant to Section 54222 of the
Government Code, the governing board of a school district may sell,
for less than fair market value, a schoolsite that is deemed to be
surplus property of the school district and for which a charter
school has not accepted an offer to purchase or lease pursuant to
Section 17457.5, to a park district, city, or county in which the
school district is wholly or partially situated for use or partial
use as park or recreational purposes or open-space purposes if the
governing board of the school district adopts a resolution specifying
that it will sell or transfer the property for less than fair market
value to such an entity for that purpose. The offer to sell shall be
made in writing, but the terms by which the property may be sold or
transferred need not be specifically provided.
17231. The sale or transfer may be made for cash and other valuable
consideration, or for other valuable consideration, as deemed
appropriate by the governing board of the school district. The sale
or transfer may be made without first taking a vote of the electors
of the district.
Continued…
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=edc&group=17001-18000&file=17455-17484
EDUCATION CODE
SECTION 17455-17484
In part:
17457.5. (a) Notwithstanding Article 8 (commencing with Section 54220) of Chapter 5 of Part 1 of Division 2 of Title 5 of the Government Code, the governing board of a school district seeking to sell or lease real property designed to provide direct instruction or instructional support it deems to be surplus property shall first offer that property for sale or lease to any charter school that has submitted a written request to the school district to be notified of surplus property offered for sale or lease by the school district, pursuant to the following conditions: (1) The real property sold or leased shall be used by the charter school exclusively to provide direct instruction or instructional support, for a period of not less than five years from the date upon which the real property is made available to that charter school, pursuant to the sale, or, in the event of a lease, until the real property is returned to the possession of the school district, whichever occurs earlier.
Continued..
California Education Code: Home
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.html/edc_table_of_contents.html
Princess your concern puzzles me.
The district would be selling the buildings, which means they would receive money in exchange. Depending on when the building was first built or purchased the school system will likely make money out of the deal. I doubt they would consider selling if they weren’t getting a fair return.
Also it is the state of Michigan. What does any of this have to do with corporations?
Tina: “What kind of influence are you talking about?”
Other than the story of Wall Street’s growing influence over the education system we just discussed, there’s also Wall Street’s central role in sub-prime lending, which led to the economic crisis. Before you try pinning this on Fannie, Freddie, and the CRA again, remember that lenders not subject to the CRA accounted for the vast majority of subprime loans.
Sheila C. Blair has written a book on Wall Street corruption before, during, and after the crisis, taking special aim at Treasury Secretary Tim Geither. This article summarizes her allegations.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/ex-regulator-has-harsh-words-for-bankers-and-geithner/?src=dlbksb
Many have also blamed Geithner as well as Wall Street pressure for Obama’s choice not to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer watchdog agency she created (the article is long, but good):
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/11/elizabeth-warren-201111