Mike-
I disagree (I’m making a habit of it, aren’t I?)
That is-I disagree with the idea that man is independent of nature (its environment). A man may think/perceive that he is independent of nature, but man is just as dependent on it now as ever, if not moreso than in the past. By society growing as large and cumbersome as it is, it’s much more difficult for it to adapt to changes, and thus we suffer when nature throws us a curve ball. Maybe not from the perspective of your average yuppy (young, urban professional), but the people on the fringes (farmers, producers, etc) feel it worse than ever.....maybe this is a positive, maybe not.

Also-One could argure (so I will) that a man is more dependent on nature than in the past as well. Before urbanization, you could move a guy from, say, Mexico and put him in, say, Alaska, and he would survive. He might not like it a great deal (he would be one cold motherfscker for the first winter), but life would go on. Now you could say that we [mankind] have created our own environment. The life of couches and cushy cars and our whole climate-controlled world has softened a vast portion of humankind. Take a desk-jockey, Lexus-driving, air-conditioned wennie from anywhere, north america, and dump him in Alaska, forget about it. He’d be nothing more than walking fertilizer [until he became actual fertilizer (dead), and it wouldn’t take too long]. Therefore our environment is affecting the evolution of the human animal, because we have a created a world in which the need to adapt isn’t the same as it used to be. There are a few key examples of this.
One: every succeeding generation is taller than the one before it [or shorter]. The "average" height is becoming more of a mathematical figure.
Two: humans are reaching reproductive age much sooner now. Scientists are trying to figure out why, but it seems to be simply genetic.

You could say, also, that our "nuclear family" and "better [?] living through chemicals" environment we’ve created has a part in the evolution of humans. Even though these chemicals we surround ourselves with have been "approved and tested to be safe" there is no way to examine the long-term genetic effects in a laboratory.


I do, however, agree with "Meat Robots"


Remember, though, the fact that we’ve multiplied and covered the earth is due to the individual adaptations of the indiginous peoples of the areas covered. If the entire of humanity were reduced to, say, Inuit [or any other people of an extreme climate], the world wouldn’t be nearly as covered as it is with nasty little humans [we really are foul creatures]
Because of the evolution of the past, the peoples of different parts of the world, we were able to cover it with humanity. The evolutions in question were for the most part complete several thousands of years ago, as all the early histories we have show the people of those areas roughly as they are today.

So I don’t really know where I was planning to go with this, but I guess I’m here for now.


Jesse-
ok I apologize, but I did semi-retract it by saying "Or so it seems at first.....but his standards are conspicuously high." I agree, you do rant more about the things you like, but the list of things you like seems to be shorter than the list of things you dislike.

As far as OS X goes [you should know I won’t let this one go] your standards are way to high. You hate it coming from the standpoint of someone who can actually make their way around in a command-prompt interface [very small % of computer users]. And someone who seemingly expected a lot from a UNIX shell on the first try [wtf do you want, microsuck has been trying on Windoze for a LONG time, and they have yet to get it right. They still use DOS, so it’ll never be on par with X until they do. Say what you will about NT DOS, it’s still DOS. It’ll never have the features of a UNIX kernel, no matter how many times they try.]
Sure, it’s not perfect. At least Apple is trying. That’s more than you can say for most software companies. They have a hold (small though it may be) on a section of the market, an are doing the right thing by trying with UNIX. X might not have all the features that, like, Slackware, has. But does the average person [or anybody not doing some serious shit with their computer] really need the things they left out of the consumer version of X? If so, go get OS X server. When all’s said and done, X will see more computers sitting on actual people’s desks than any other form of LINUX/FREENIX yet. I’d be willing to bet it’ll see more consumers’ desks than all others put together. Mainly because of the simple fact that it’s easy to use. Redhat is not. Nor is Slackware. Or any other you can name. So, in closing, [and I mean this in the nicest way possible] BITE MY ASS IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT. No hard feelings.


In case you couldn’t tell, I’ve begun to feel better.



Later.