Have you ever taken a course where after just the first class you knew the entire year would follow the same boring routine? Chances are, that even after a short amount of time, students can make a reasonably accurate assessment on the effectiveness of a professor. This idea of making an accurate assessment after a short period of observation is supported by the research of psychologist Nalini Ambady. Her study found that the assessment college students gave a professor’s effectiveness after watching a two second clip of their teaching was the same as the assessment of students who took the professor’s class for a full semester.

Traditionally, we are taught not to make what seem like impulsive decisions and to gather as much information as possible before reaching a conclusion. However, advice like “stop and think” might not yield any better of a decision than our instinctive inclinations. Gladwell describes the concept of “thin-slicing” which is “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.” He analyzes this concept through the evolutionary perspective, arguing that over time, humans have learned to make better snap decisions that would facilitate their survival. A modern example of this is a basketball player’s “court sense,” his ability to assess the current game situation, predict future actions of the play, and respond accordingly.

Overall, Blink offers a unique perspective on the psychology behind quick decision making. Most of the process is already pre-wired into our unconscious, which might help explain why we can make up our minds so effectively under pressure.

Source: Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: [the Power of Thinking without Thinking]. New York: Time Warner Audio, 2005. Print.

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Q #1 You think we come from monkeys?

Oh no, no, no, no, no. NO. We are not descended from monkeys. There is an enormous difference between monkeys and great apes. And not we are not descended from great apes. We share a common ancestor. That means that somewhere along the line, our common ancestors split and one group’s traits changed to best solve their niche. This is why there is such a big difference between a human and a chimpanzee.

Q #2 Why are there still Great Apes?

Even though we are not direct descendants from today’s great apes this is still a redundant point. This is like asking if America is derived from Britain, why are there still British people?

Q #3 Evolution is just a theory.

This is a misconception of definitions. A theory in scientific terms is pretty much a fact. It is an idea that is heavily supported by evidence and has passed the scientific method. Gravity is still just a theory.

Q #4 Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics

This is a misunderstanding of both evolution and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I would recommend going to a lecture on thermodynamics, but in short I will just say that life is not a closed system, so the 2nd law of thermodynamics cannot be related to it.

Q #5 Evolution has not been observed

Oh how wrong you are. Evolution can be defined as a transition of species to species in a rash oversimplified sense. The thing that mainly separates one species from another is that they cannot create viable offspring. Now when two groups of a species become separated for too long, and they are reintroduced, they cannot create viable offspring making them different species. This has been recreated in labs with animals of short lifespans.archeopteryx

Q #6 Evolution is not supported by the fossil record

Again this is wrong, there are many examples of transitional fossils in the fossil record. Everything from Australopithecus to Archaeopteryx.

Q #7 The earth was created in six days

lol.

I think the human race will never be one hundred percent sure on how we came or got here… but, evolution has the most scientific logic behind it. I am a very big stickler for proving things with facts. To me evolution makes much more sense than a God or a lot of Gods. A lot of animals represent features carried by computer genorated pictures of dinosours. I also believe that humans came from monkeys. In a few ways we resemble monkeys. And, just to throw this out there, I think it is absolutely ridiculous that in 1925 John Scopes got fired from being a high school teacher for teaching evolution. Although it’s in the past, I just wanted to throw that in there. And if you think about it, the Scopes Trial wasn’t even a hundred years ago. Crazy how society works…

Charles Darwin was the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Many studies and experiments have been done to prove this teory right or wrong, and so far it’s been right. I am not telling you to stop believeing in whatever you do believe in, I’m am simple stating facts.

The way Natural Selection works is simple. Let’s take the finches that Darwin observed for example. There are two variations of the bird: a bird with a thin, slender beak, and a bird with a large, strong beak. There are far more small beaked birds than large beaked birds. The small beaked birds excell at catching insects. The large beaked birds can easily crack open nuts for their food. Suddenly, all the insects in the area die out for whatever reason. The large beaked finches continue eating nuts from trees unaffected, and the small beaked finches struggle to find food. Slowly, the small beaked finches die out and because there are only large beaked finches left to mate with, generally only large beaked finches are born. See how the population minority and majority switched?

Another example: giraffes. Say giraffes start out really short. We all know that they all eat out of the trees. Naturally, there is variation in the species and there are short giraffes (we’ll just say about 6 feet tall) and taller giraffes (we’ll say 10 feettall). Obviously, the taller giraffes have an easier time getting food than the short ones. The short giraffes die off, leaving mostly tall giraffes. The only mates tall giraffes can find are tall giraffes, so more tall giraffes are born. From there, the giraffes who have the easiest time getting their food survive. So say we’re down to only 10 ft tall giraffes. Because some offspring are going to be taller than others, we might have 12 feet tall giraffes and so on. Because they have the genes for being even taller than average, slowly the species will get taller because of variation, until eventually they get taller and taller. So it’s r

Creationism is the belief that God made humans in his image from the dirt in the ground. That is if my memory serves correct anyway.  The story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis explains that one if you need to catch up on that belief.

Evolution is the theory that humans have evolved from apes. We are indeed extremely similar to apes as well. Nevertheless, it is an interesting theory. Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man made it clear that it was a theory!

Anyway, I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God so I don’t believe in the made from the ground thing. Though if memory serves correct humans are made up of 75% water. I could be remembering that wrong. I also don’t believe in the theory of evolution. We are similar to apes no doubt, but if we evolved from apes, I think they would have been extinct long before we came into the picture.

I’m not sure how humans got here or how humans were made. I have a theory we are aliens but that doesn’t make sense since we need trees for our oxygen. Really, I have no idea. I have no idea what the point of this article is either. I just know I don’t believe the creation myth of the theory of evolution.

Enjoy debating!

2. When two animals have babies, the babies will all look mostly similar to the parents, but will all be slightly different (some will be a little taller, shorter, stronger, darker, etc.)

3. The majority of all animals die in infancy in the wild.

4. The babies that have the most useful features for their environment will be more likely to survive than those with features that are less useful (e.g. babies with better immune systems, chubbier babies, stronger babies, babies that aren’t blind, etc.)

5. The surviving babies will mostly have the features that are useful to their environment. On average, they will have every so slightly more of these features than their parents (e.g. the will be slightly taller, stronger, etc.)

6. When this generation has babies, the same thing happens: the new babies are all different, but similar to their parents, with some taller, some bigger, etc.

7. The same few useful features survive or become bigger and are passed on to the next generation.

8. The average slowly changes with each generation. A feature like dark hair colour or long necks is gradually chosen more and more in each generation, until all the animals have very dark fur or very long necks.

9. Therefore, over time, if animals are put in an environment where certain features are more useful than others, these features become bigger or better and the other features become smaller or lesser.

10. This surviving of the best adapted animals and the inheritance throughout the generations is called evolution.

It should be added that the word “theory” has a different meaning than usual in the scientific use. “Theory”, in science, means an idea which is supported by evidence and has no evidence that goes against it. A theory is completely true based on all human knowledge at the time. A theory is not merely an idea that some people think is plausable. It is something that is true according to everything we know. Other theories are the theory of gravity (objects with mass attract each other) and germ theory (some diseases are caused by germs).

Sometimes when we find new knowledge, we find out that a particular theory isn’t correct. Then we change the theory or just get rid of it. So any theory is always correct at the time it is in. In the past, people had some theories that were shown to be incorrect, so they discarded them. Other theories have been altered so that they are still correct. This is important to realise. A theory is always correct based on what we know. And we know an awful lot.

The theory of evolution is not a vague idea. It is based on hundreds of years of research and people trying to disprove it. At the moment, there is no evidence that evolution is incorrect. Actually, just like the theory of gravity, the ten points above are so easy to understand that many educated people are able to realise that it almost certainly will never be shown to be incorrect. There is just too much evidence supporting it. People evolve animals all the time as part of studies. The theory of evolution will never be thrown away. At the most it might be tweaked or changed a little if some new information comes to light, but until then, it is the truth based on the whole sum of human knowledge.

The majority of religious people on Earth can quite easily understand this. When evolution was first proposed, many people were ecstatic because, to them, it finally explained just how God created things. It was, and still is by many, seen as merely the method God used to create His wonderful animals and plants.

God put all the evidence there for us to find. He gave us logical brains to understand it. Isn’t it a bit rude to go against these two great gifts?

Usually, when people think of dreams, they figure them just to be erratic scenes of little importance in which they have no control. Some may find they prove useful given that they remember its scenario. Some dream content can be so exotic in nature that the person ends up confused and wouldn’t even begin to know how or where to decipher it. Some may be so frightening that the person will choose to place a mental block in order to keep its contents from interfering with their life in general. 

But it isn’t like there’s an ‘off’ switch for dreams, so wouldn’t it be beneficial to learn key details which would aid in the understanding of how dreams function? There could actually be somewhat of an exclusive form of communication happening which most aren’t even aware of. When approached with the idea, you often get excuses that contribute to the ignorance that now plagues society(for another topic). When examined, most dreams seem to act as a personal GPS for life, that if you fail to listen to directions, you could end up lost. Since the conscious mind likes to take charge of everything, the only setting another form of guidance could take place is during sleep when the conscious mind has less chance of interfering.

Even though dreams tend to be cyptic and unrelated to they way we are used to communicating, suppose in time there will be a seperate language developed to support its symbolic format. There might actually be way for someone to explain how they suddenly end up in free fall down the side of a cliff or soaring though the air with a celebrity. Maybe that knowing awaits in the next stage of social evolution.

The nature of reality has been widely explored since the beginning of humanity’s evolution. A bit of data here and there that will, in time, reveal more and more of the ever expanding picture that is our future. There are literally countless forms of reality that can be used in the acquisition of knowledge on certain truths. So when we look at how dreams behave, many of them might actually be the result of alternate localization. 

Whether intentional or not, dreams exhibit a state that only seems involuntary when the conscious mind is made aware. Other than that, you could be totally immersed in an environment as if you somehow expected it to happen. Lucid Dreams are said to be consciously manipulated by the observer. So what are dreams that are manipulated, or even orchestrated, by the subconscious? 

It would seem impractical that the physical body itself, would spontaneously transport to an alternate form of reality, or even transform into an entirely different form to adapt to surroundings. The body might not be what transports, but the mind. Like a virtual simulation or continuation of experience for the mind while the body recharges and heals, like a ships captain dismounting after docking. People spend nearly half of their lives asleep. All that extra time could be used to implement certain beneficial teachings into subconscious memory to later be used during crucial periods in life.

The Internet is a tool, and just like a pipe wrench, if we choose to use that tool in the way it was designed, we will certainly benefit because of it. Inversely, if we choose to pound ourselves in the hand with it, we will certainly suffer because of it. It is pointless to decide whether or not a tool is constructive or destructive by itself, because it is the operator that decides the usefulness of the tool. To not only stereotype a group, but an entire generation as not using a given tool correctly is behavior that I would expect from an unintelligent individual who does not have the ability to grasp the idea of individual worth. Not that I’m talking about Mark Bauerlein or anything; He’s got a degree that clearly states his intelligence level above those without said degree. The idea of him exhibiting unintelligent behavior is unfathomable.

Let’s say for instance that the Internet was actually causing us to become a lazier—a common key element of defining ’stupidity’ for many ‘experts’—and that we could prove it. Will the threat of a crumbling civilization or rapidly depleting brain cells cause today’s youth to fear and abhor the Internet/ Not any more than they currently fear and abhor prolonged exposure to an operating television screen, something that is already proven to cause “…childhood obesity, poor brain development, lagging educational performance, sleep disturbances, diminished physical activity” (Conger 1), “…tobacco use, drug and alcohol use, poor achievement in school, as well as sexual and attention problems” (Weil 1).

Not unlike an elementary school playground where older children tease younger children, Mark Bauerlein—English professor at Emory University—wrote a book called The Dumbest Generation, wherein he stereotypes individuals under the age of thirty (at the time of his writing) to be substantially less ‘intelligent’ than those of his generation: the digital pioneers. An old English proverb reinforces the advice our moms gave us when dealing with playground bullies “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” But of course, there will always be that one kid who just can’t ignore a bully and has to stand up and defend us as a people, whether or not we’d like to be defended, and says “Nuh-uh!” as David Feldmen—Emory College grad—so thankfully elected himself to do. And in what better way than on CNN, home of children trapped in adults’ bodies, throwing tantrums? Bauerlein wants to stereotype everyone under thirty as ignorant children, but the statistics that he uses to condemn people under the age of thirty to a life of ignorant bliss could just as easily condemn him to a life of broken hips and complaining about how everything hurts. To which, I’m sure, he would return with a very convincing “No you!”

Bauerlein reinforces his claim by adding that people under the age of thirty have become “insulated in [a] stultifying cocoon of bad spelling [and] civic illiteracy” (Drutman 2), but due to the cultivation of technology, our whole world has been evolving at an accelerated pace, so what has previously evolved at an unnoticeable rate, is all of a sudden noticeable, and it scares certain individuals despite the fact that it has been happening long before they were born and will continue long after they die. I’m sure at the end of the Middle English period people were freaking out when ‘Verily’ was removed from the vernacular. Shakespeare would roll over in his grave at the abominable English we’re using today that has mutated since his reign on earth, and that includes the collection and arrangement of words that comprise Bauerlein’s book, so is Bauerlein really the best judge of what does and doesn’t constitute decent English? Are we a generation of lesser intelligence than the graduation class of 1650? Who can say? But if that were the case, our debilitating ignorance that has only had hundreds of years to worsen certainly didn’t stop us from figuring out how to make cars, computers and spaceships. Even through the rise of other technological advancements like the mechanical clock and typewriter that would, according to a paranoid world, accelerate the decay of our brains, have we been able to move forward at an ever increasing speed.

So shouldn’t we continue to move forward? I understand that people are afraid of what they don’t understand, and would love to bring the progress of society to a staggering halt for their own peace of mind, but nothing they can do or say will stop it. Why not let society make the mistakes that it chooses to make, and sit by quietly until the opportune moment when things go wrong and these individuals that are afraid of bad things happening can jump up and say “I TOLD YOU SO”? Why do they have to drag people into their own ’stultifying cocoons’ of worriment and fear? I’ll never understand.

Bauerlein wanted to sell books so he intentionally picked a controversial topic so there would be a lot of buzz on the issue and consequent free publicity. You know what the Internet calls those people? Trolls. The only way to get rid of a troll is to ignore it.

The English language, as we know it today is barely recognizable from its Germanic roots, and the modern reader may experience some difficulty interpreting the meaning from the terminology of most people living from 1100 through the 1500’s.  This era, in terms of language development and evolution, is characterized by what is termed “Middle English.” This epoch utilized certain aspects of French vocabulary, and we can see evidence of this throughout the works of Chaucers’ famed “Canterbury Tales,” and other masterpieces.  

Many of the modifications are trivial, and are easily identifiable by applying spelling and pronunciation differences, for example; “younge sonne,” “melodye,” and “slepen nyght;” however, some terms are not so easy to determine meaning or context for the casual reader, including; “durste,” “clepe,” and the term “I wot.” 

The easily recognizable terms that were prominent in Chaucer’s era are words still in use today, and do still bear some resemblance to the Middle English form.  Oftentimes, the reader can discern the context by analyzing the other words within the same sentence or line of poetry.  The term “younge sonne” even to the casual reader is readily identifiable to refer to a “young son.”  Similarly, “melodye,” can be translated as “melody.”  These are good examples of this phonetic resemblance; it would appear that only the spellings are altered.  Even, the term “slepen nyght,” can still be identified as referring to “sleeping night,” in spite of the visual differences between the Middle and Modern versions by simply uttering the words aloud.  Therefore, readers of Chaucer and other Middle English authors can faithfully rely on their acquired knowledge of phonetics, vocabulary and word recognition to assist them with comprehension and thus, decipher context from the reading.

With that said, many words circulating during this time are no longer used today or “has become obsolete or has changed its meaning over the centuries.”  Many of the terms have ambiguous meanings, or have differing meanings for differing contexts.  One such situation occurs when attempting to decipher the meaning of the word “durst.”  The Concise Dictionary of Middle English offers several synonyms for “durst,” ranging from “I dare,” to “dear.”  Michael Murphy, a scholar who has extensively researched Middle to Modern translations, and who has specifically concerned himself with the work of Chaucer, proclaims the proper interpretation of “dare” is a more accurate clarification of Chaucer’s’ writing.  Murphy’s work can be found online here; http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury/1intro.pdf

There seems to be less disagreement with the term “clepe,” and is taken to mean to “call.”  The Concise Dictionary of Middle English however, defines the term as a similar verb, translating as “recall.”  Alphadictionary.com is in agreement with Murphys’ translation  and clarifies that “clepe” means to call out a name.

The third term to be discussed, “I wot” seems to have derived from Shakespearian old English, and means, “I know,” and once again, is in agreement with Murphys’ analysis. 

Probably the best evidence to explain changes in pronunciations is a trend that has been termed “The Great Vowel Change,” which began in “the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth century.”  However, the most prominent changes occurred during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  Harvard University scholars maintain this change occurred because “Old and Middle English were written in the Latin alphabet and the vowels were represented by the letters assigned to the sounds in Latin.” Consequently, there had been an increased awareness that there was a need to create a new alphabet, because “the pronunciation of English had moved so far from its visual representation.”  The sixteenth century saw the beginning of the English language reformation, a movement that scholars at Harvard insist, is “still active today.” (L. D. Benson)  The Great Vowel Change had a huge impact on Chaucers’ writings. 

Michael Murphy points out that the changes that ensued in the English language were not consistent.  Words that once rhymed in Chaucer’s poetry suddenly were no longer phonetically similar.  For example, when Chaucer was writing, the words “hood,” “blood,” and “mood,” all rhymed  with one another, as did “save,” “heart,” and “convert,” and we can see that the “most observable shift [is evident in the vowels] from o to u.”  (Murphy)

If the Harvard scholars are correct, and that the evolution of the English language is a continual process then we may never find a proper or standardized version.  It is interesting to note that there are many variations of the language in use today, accounting for educational and cultural differences and the problem of ensuring a consistent form may be more complicated that scholars thought in the beginning of this project.  There are generational differences in the way language is used in the current era, easily recognizable by the younger population using acrostics or “text talk” to convey a message.

To highlight this point, a quick “Google” search provides several results translating the Middle English term “wot” to “waste of time,” and given the artistic flair of language during the Old and Middle English period, it is difficult to determine whether Shakespeare and Chaucer would be amused or mortified by the contemporary changes in communication forms.

Those with a passive interest in languages will note that almost all Germanic and French influences, at least phonetically, are obsolete in the Modern form, yet we retain certain spelling similarities.  However, even this is not consistent considering regional dialects and geographic location. It is assumed then, that the English language will continue to make changes and evolve until the end of time and will provide a continual source of study for language majors.