Some people are not convinced of evolutionary biology. I believe that the reasons for this have nothing to do with evidence or theory. The reason is because most of us need meaning, purpose and moral guidance in our lives. The real issue is that people seem to think it’s impossible to find these things if we accept that evolution is the real story of our origin. It is also assumed by many that if our origins are traced back to a purposeless and materialistic force such as evolution by means of natural selection, then our lives therefore have no purpose, and without creation we have no morals. It is suggested that if we accept the laws of evolution as fact, then nothing is stopping us from behaving like primal beasts (although it could be strongly argued that we already do).

The very people that believe this belong to the same group of people that have convinced our society (or propagated the belief) that there is a lack of evidence and that evolution is an unproven ‘theory’ (by the way, the definition of a ‘scientific theory’ is much different than the every day usage of the word, for example gravity, germs and atoms are all theories). A small group of young-earth creationists have somehow convinced a large amount of western society that evolutionary biology is a farce, and to top it off, that various evidence has been forged.

The truth is, evolution is a fact, although it will likely continue to be disputed for centuries to come anyway, solely due to religious pressures. Hundreds of independent scientific societies around the world have looked at evidence from many areas, including but not limited to: the fossil record, biogeography, embryology, vestigial structures, suboptimal design, and so on. In every single tested prediction, experiment, or analysis (and there have been millions) every single shred of evidence has supported evolution.
We’ve seen new species form, both in the fossil record and in real time. Scientists have found transitional forms between major groups, such as whales and land mammals.

“Through evolutionary biology we can predict where fossils will be found (take Darwin’s prediction that human ancestors would be found in Africa), we can predict when common ancestors would appear (for example, the discovery of the ‘fishapod’ Tiktaalik in 370-million year old rocks), and we can predict what those ancestors should look like before we find them. Scientists predicted that they would find fossils of marsupials in antarctica, and they did. We can also predict that if we find an animal species in which males are brightly colored and females are not, that the species will have a polygynous mating system.
Every day hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. And every fact that has anything to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don’t have a single one. We don’t find mammals in precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossil out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record and, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that benefit only a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to scientific truth.”
- Jerry A. Coyne, Ph. D., Professor at the University of Chicago, Author of “Why Evolution is True”

Evolution has been tested and proven from many different angles, but the most compelling section of the evidence has to be the fossil record. When the majority of people are shown this evidence (i.e. transitionary fossils demonstrating whales ancestors being 4-legged land mammals), they are convinced and usually have little problem agreeing. The real problem is when the evolution of humans is mentioned. People like to think that we are superior to all other animals and that, although maybe other animals evolved over millions of years, humans were specially created. The idea that humans evolved along with every other species has been around since the 1700s. Obviously it was met with huge backlash. Still, for hundreds of years the theory was developed, and more and more evidence would pile up supporting that humans evolved. Most people having an ‘I have to see it to believe it’ attitude did not accept it, until 1924 when Raymond Dart discovered a human transitional fossil in africa (as predicted). What he discovered was australopithecus africanus, a species that resembled a human with ape-like features. within the next 70 years, more were found. The oldest being about 3.5 million years old, a species almost entirely ‘chimp-like’ but with human-like legs for walking bipedally (try to picture an ape walking upright like a human). As evolutionary order would follow, more fossils very clearly demonstrate the evolution of humans.

If you ask me, evolution is not just fact, it is also the amazing connection between us and nature. It shows that we are all related, not just to other humans but to other animals, plants and the earth. Evolution over such vast amounts of time have molded our brains to be so complex that we are capable of doing almost anything. It has made us the only known species so developed that we can actually understand the laws of nature that govern us.

I was living without the Discovery and National Geographic Channels for almost a year and totally forgot how much I miss/love them. I have watched a few shows lately related to space and they just blow my mind. I am a bit of a geek though, most people watch these shows and think nothing of them afterward… where I make a point to remember the theoretical physicist’s names, look them up later and subscribe to their blogs. Some of the stuff I have been reading however has forced me to remember that I am nowhere near as educated or intelligent as these people. I was reading about black holes and the first paragraph made me go cross-eyed. Even if I re-read it 3 times slowly I couldn’t wrap my head around it. This quote is one that completely blew my mind, however. The reason it is so intense is because it’s a quote from a letter written to The Royal Society in 1783 by John Michell:

If the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun were to exceed that of the Sun in the proportion of 500 to 1, a body falling from an infinite height towards it would have acquired at its surface greater velocity than that of light, and consequently supposing light to be attracted by the same force in proportion to its vis inertiae, with other bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it by its own proper gravity. —John Michell

Yeah, 1783. What the fuck does that even mean?

There is an entire field dedicated to people who study visual science and how our brain and eyes work together, perceiving the things we see. Some of these optical illusions really demonstrate how we can never really trust what we think we are seeing.

When you look at block A and block B, we assume they are different colors, when in fact they are the exact same shade of gray. I didn’t even believe it until covering the squares with my hands to compare each one. Check out the picture below which is the exact same picture with gray lines connecting the two squares.

Our brain is trained to interpret shadowed surfaces as being lighter than they actually are, thus our brain sees B as lighter than A, since it has a shadow cast over it.

Apparently with this illusion, there isn’t a sound scientific explanation yet, other than the phenomenon occurs in the primary visual cortex, which is the part of the brain that processes information about static and moving objects. Stare at the blinking green dot for about 15 seconds, and the yellow dots will start to disappear and flash in and out of the clip.

The last one tricks our brain into focusing on the moving blank dot, and changes it to a different more visible color (green), while the pink dots slowly fade away. Stare at the middle crosshair for 10 seconds or so:

Borderlands is a first person shooter set in a sort of post-apocalyptic world of criminals, transients and weird monsters. It’s kind of an RPG mixed with a shooter, as it has a lot of character development features like you might see in Fallout, Fable and other games like that, but then it has a fast paced FPS (first person shooter) aspect as well which makes it both fun and addictive.

At the start of the game you choose 1 of 4 character types, each with a unique special skill and you build that character up as you gain experience. This is what makes the game addictive. The game itself is actually lacking in quite a few areas in my opinion. There are moments when I am sick of it, and don’t like the constant running around and finding things, or even the impossibly difficult battles. Yet I can’t stop because I want to keep building my character, move up a level and get better weapons.

I’d give this game overall a 7/10 since I can’t stop playing it. It’s really just holding me over until Gears of War 3 though.

The new Assassin’s Creed installment is out, Brotherhood. I’m not going to say it’s the best game I have ever played but if you are a fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise then this game will do you no wrong.

The game is 99% set in Rome (with a short beginning in Monteriggioni). As always this game is fairly accurate historically which is one of the most enthralling aspects. You can scale your way up the Coliseum, various Duomos and landmarks in Rome, just as they were in the late 1400′s and early 1500′s. The creators of these games have done their homework, and although the overall plotline is completely fictional, it is based on real history, real people and real events. For example at the very start of the game, Ezio’s hometown of Monteriggioni is attacked by Cesare Borgia’s army which actually happened in real life in 1499. Throughout the game you are engaged in a struggle with the Borgia army and the Pope,  being closely allied with Niccolo Machiavelli. All real people and based on real events.

Personally this is my favorite part of the game. In Assassin’s Creed 2 you could freely run around Florence. Having been to Florence it was pretty cool to see things I recognized, but how they would have been in the late 1400′s.  The overall layout of the city was dead on. The game is almost educational in a sense. At each landmark you can press a button and see a quick history lesson on the landmark, who it was built by, etc.

The game itself gets a little repetitive and is not challenging at all. I passed the game fairly quickly and may have died once or twice by accidentally falling off a building. There are a lot of extras in the game that you can try to complete, or you can also ignore them with no consequence. I’m not a gamer who has to pass the game 100%. As long as I get to the end I’m good. This made the game pretty short.

The sword fighting is pretty wicked, but becomes repetitive and ridiculously easy once you get the hang of it. Assassin’s Creed 2 definitely did a better job of adding various combination moves and skills as you get further through the game. Since AC Brotherhood is just a continuation of AC2, you start out with most of those skills and there is very little improvement from there. There is a new execution feature where you can get on a pretty good roll executing guy after guy, but even that gets old pretty quickly. After a while you are just going through the motions and holding one button and mashing the other.

The addition of banks, owning shops, renovating landmarks and riding horses within the city are all good enhancements to the game but they need to make some improvements to the real meat and potatoes of the game, which in my opinion is the fighting and the stealth aspects.

If you haven’t spent your money on an Assassin’s Creed game yet but are thinking you want to give it a try, get AC2. You won’t miss anything major from AC1 and you will enjoy yourself more than you would with Brotherhood.