Category Archives: Evolution

Ever since the Cloud First initiative in 2010, agencies have been moving toward a hybrid approach. Some applications and data will remain on premise while others will move to public or private clouds.

This is and will continue to be a fact of federal technology for the foreseeable future.

Gartner Research found the use of public cloud services are expected to grow by 17% on average through 2021.

Deltek also estimates that spending on cloud services is expected to grow to more than $9 billion by 2024, which is a five times increase over what they spent in 2016.

And agencies have learned over the last few years, and particularly during the coronavirus pandemic the value of having this multi-cloud approach.

The General Services Administration laid out the simple and straightforward benefits of a hybrid cloud approach in a 2016 white paper that still resonate today. It says hybrid cloud is valuable for dynamic or highly changeable workloads that can deal with significant demand spikes. This is especially true as agencies push the cloud to the edge.

Another good hybrid cloud use case is big data processing where an agency could use hybrid cloud storage to retain its accumulated data and run analytics against it.

But GSA also says agency CIOs must identify operational and business benefits of implementing a hybrid cloud and build the business case to support their strategy because as with any technology there are risks.

Cameron Chehreh, the federal chief technology officer for Dell Technologies, said agencies need to live by the three laws of cloud:

The Current Cloud Approach

Over the last 10 years our strategy has changed dramatically and now we are at the point where the departments look is really cloud first and traditional hosting or traditional data centers or even hybrid cloud capabilities as kind of a secondary focus. There is more and more of a push to move to a software-as-a-service in a pure cloud environment using hybrid cloud really for how do we transition the more legacy type applications into the cloud environment.

Chief, Cloud Services, Defense Information Systems Agency

Cloud Tools and the User Experience

This is the new normal. It will not be the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. It will be the new network. 9/11, in some ways, revolutionized security where there was a forcing function and forced a harder look at security. You are seeing this with the pandemic, [as we are] taking a harder look at the network and the capability to do analytics because analytics is the key to success to opening things back up.

Vice President and General Manager, Equinix Government Solutions

Addressing Security in the Cloud

With COVID-19 and the advent of TIC 3.0, which provides for that ability to set up your security in a more point of presence nature, we have been leaning very heavily into leveraging that to expand our telework capacity. We are doing a lot with application defenses and leveraging a lot of cloud native monitoring and instrumentation capabilities.

Director, Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office, Department of Veterans Affairs

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How the pandemic is a forcing function for the hybrid cloud evolution - Federal News Network

By: Michael Bamberger June 3, 2020

World Golf Hall of Fame member Gary Player has learned a lot since his time growing up in South Africa.

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This week in Bamberger Briefly, Michael Bamberger offers five pieces about where golf is in this odd spring, with the PGA Tour on deck for next week. Part I: Bryan Zuriff, Match II Producer. Part II: Superstars Among Us.

All people, and all institutions, can bend toward justice. Toward fairness, civility, peace. Gary Player was talking about this very thing the other day. Ive said things I regret, have changed my opinion about things, and people say I have flip-flopped, but there is nothing wrong with that, we all

He was searching for a word, which is not a common occurrence for him, because Player has the best words.

Evolve? I offered tentatively.

We were sitting on beach chairs, on the front porch of his daughters house in the far reaches of suburban Philadelphia. Songbirds were singing. Fifty or so miles away, in the heart of the citys downtown, there were peaceful marches in the name of social justice and, later, violent looting as anarchy raised its desperate head. The mom-and-pop Greek restaurant thats next door to my sons apartment building, a half-mile from Independence Hall, had its windows smashed in.

Evolve! Player said. I made a friend in Charlie Sifford. I made a friend in Lee Elder. I brought Lee Elder to South Africa, in a stand in opposition to apartheid. I was called a traitor. And when Charlie Sifford was inducted into the [World Golf] Hall of Fame, he asked me to introduce him. A white man, from South Africa. And when Lee Elder won the Bobby Jones Award, he had me introduce him.

I am proud that my thinking changed. I saw how much Charlie Sifford hurt. I saw Charlie smash a scorecard pencil, he had so much anger for how he was being treated. I asked him, How can you stand it? How do you do it? But adversity can be a gift.

American Golf, for all the many gifts it bestows upon so many of us, has often been a disaster in the area of social justice. (This is a column, folks; opinions will be expressed.) American golf has far too often become a place to practice separation by economic status, by social status, by religion, by gender, by race.

I know Ive been part of the problem. If I can take Henni Zuels recent call-to-action personally, I can be part of the solution:

If you have someone in your friendship circle who is black or in a minority group invite them to golf! A call to action by way of Twitter, by a GolfTV presenter. Include them. Let them know that you acknowledge the biases. That golf is a wonderful game that should be enjoyed by ALL and that you will stand by them.

Amen.

The single best thing about serious competitive golf, why many of us are drawn to it without ever making this calculation, is that its fair. Its fair! If youre playing by the rules and youre shooting the scores, your right to be there is equal to any other persons.

The reality is the most common path to that level is bound in good equipment, junior play, quality instruction, the time and the means and the opportunity to travel. And all that requires wealth. Wealth aligns closely to education throughout the world, but in America especially. And when it comes to education, all students are not created equal. Not by a long shot.

Tiger Woods knows this territory, how education and critical thinking shapes lives. His fathers mother was a maid. Earl Woods earned a masters degree and he and Tida, Tigers mother, had enough money to get Tiger everything he needed to help him become the best, by far, amateur golfer of his era. His two years at Stanford enriched Woods in every possible way.

In a recent statement, Woods said, My heart goes out to George Floyd, his loved ones and all of us who are hurting right now. I have always had the utmost respect for our law enforcement. They train so diligently to understand how, when and where to use force. This shocking tragedy clearly crossed that line. I remember the L.A. riots and learned that education is the best path forward. We can make our points without burning the very neighborhoods that we live in. I hope that through constructive, honest conversations we can build a safer, unified society.

As a collection of words, its bland. It lacks emotion. It has no call to action. But Tiger Woods is not built for calls to action. Hes not going to sing Amazing Grace to the world, as one of his golf partners once did. (Barack Obama, June 26, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, nine days after nine black people were murdered in that church in a spree of hate.) But one word shines among the 100 or so Woods committed to social media: education.

Players education was not, principally, in a classroom. He learned about the evils of racism by putting his feet in another mans shoes. Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, others. In time, Player buried the racism he knew as a young man in every way a person can. In his political life, his social life, his religious life, his public life, his private life.

He knows that golf can be a great teacher, if you let it. Golf is a place to pursue equal opportunity under the law. (Witness the life and times of Bobby Jones and Calvin Peete and 10,000 others.) How good it would be if the world would follow suit.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael_Bamberger@GOLF.com.

Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and contributes to GOLF.com. He also participates in podcasts, primarily in tandem with Alan Shipnuck. Earlier in his career, he was a senior writer for Sports Illustrated for 23 years and a reporter on The Philadelphia Inquirer for nine years before that. He has written a half-dozen books about golf and other subjects. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on a utility golf club called the E-Club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organizations highest honor.

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The evolution of Gary Player, and what we can learn from... - Golf.com

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a well-done film is worth ten thousand or more. Several new short films effectively combine mathematics, biology, and awesome wonder with high production quality.

Five years ago, Ann Gauger writing at Evolution News recommended a must-see film film by Cristbal Vila, a gifted animator from Spain with a penchant for geometry. The film, Nature by Numbers (2010), has become a YouTube classic with over 5 million views and three thousand comments. Still a must-see, it shows in stunning beauty the connection of biological objects to the Fibonacci Series and Golden Ratio.

In 2013, Vila added another masterful work to his YouTube site called Lux Aeterna. This film focuses on light particularly sunlight connecting the emissions of the sun and stars to the beauty and functional requirements of life on earth. This film would make a good companion to Michael Dentons book Children of Light, and to Dentons ID the Future podcasts about the specific properties of the solar spectrum that provide exactly the right energy within very narrow requirements for photosynthesis. Vilas film does not explain the coincidental connections between biology and light in the way Denton does, but the film certainly makes for pleasurable viewing and for appreciating sunlight in its various manifestations during our most memorable moments of awe.

Now, Vila has outdone himself. He has released a new film that tops Nature by Numbers for emotional power. Connecting mathematics, biology and architecture, his film Infinite Patterns starts with a simple triangle and builds to the most magnificent representations of human and natures designs, from the honeybee in a flower to soaring spires of magnificent religious buildings.

The biomimetic connections between natures designs and artificial designs is clearly shown in a seamless and powerful way. Notice and enjoy the tie-in to the structure of the double helix in DNA, and the bases that comprise it. Nobody around here knows Vilas position on intelligent design, but his short film makes ID look awesome!

In both films, the geometric formulas that Vila includes in passing fly by on the screen too quickly to comprehend, other than to know they exist. They could be explained in more detail in a viewers guide to the film, should a mathematician like to take that up as a project. For math teachers or biology teachers, these films should be required viewing. They could easily inspire students to enter biology or mathematics as a career, hopefully with the attitude that such magnificent wonders could not happen by chance.

The producers of The Privileged Planet, Metamorphosis, and Darwins Dilemma are reaching new audiences with short films free online. In their new series 2-Minute Wonders, they take single subjects and pack awesome design stories into just a few minutes. These are easy to share, and satisfy the short attention spans of modern viewers who are inundated with things to watch. Parents cast into the role of home school teachers will appreciate these films that take simple, everyday living things and make them showcases of design science.

The latest release, An Uplifting Story, explains why dandelion seeds fly so far. Theres more to the story than it might seem at first sight, including mathematical optimization (see also, Flight: The Genius of Seeds). This self-explanatory film, beautifully rendered, is better viewed than described in words:

Other episodes in the 2-Minute Wonders series take stories from the feature-length Design of Life films and condense them into short featurettes:

Packages of Life is another release in the 2-Minute Wonders series that may be new to Illustra fans:

It tells the story of a simple pine cone an unusual one with a very important role to play in forest ecology. For the math angle, be sure to notice the perfect spiral spin of its seeds, shown near the end. They look like miniature helicopters, by design. Again, watching may be even more effective than reading about it.

Photo: An image from An Uplifting Story, courtesy of Illustra Media.

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Mathematics, Biology, and Awesome Wonder - Discovery Institute

Men and women carry signs during the Gay Pride parade in New York City, June 1984. Photo: Barbara Alper/Getty Images

Bob Ahern, the Director of the Getty Images archive, is the caretaker of a vast collection of LGBTQ history. While some of the most famous photos from queer history are part of the archive, there is also an untold number of lesser-known pictures that havent been displayed publicly.

Ahern is sharing some of his favorite photos with LGBTQ Nation for pride month. Fifty years after the first pride parade, festivals nationwide have been canceled, but a look back through the years at parades from around the country proves one important thing We will persevere and we will win equality.

Related: Pride in Pictures: I felt like I was being represented

Dated June 28, 1970 this photo of the first Stonewall anniversary was taken in by photographer Fred McDarrah, the then Director of Photography for the Village Voice magazine. McDarrah, whos regular beat was covering the artists, musicians and the movers and shakers of underground New York in the 60s had been present at the Stonewall riots, documenting the scene through just a handful of pictures. He would go on to chronicle the changing faces of gay life in New York from the early marches to the more celebratory parades of the 1980s.

Stonewall, some six years earlier, meant that that gay life was now out on the street and to be seen, as reflected here in another photo from Village Voice veteran Fred McDarrah. This time a notably relaxed and informal portrait of parade-goers as they pose, smiling straight camera, during the sixth annual Gay Provide March in New York. Photo dated June 29, 1975.

By the 1980s parades had become much larger affairs. Gay life across parts of America was becoming more integrated and major cities were hosting their own events. In this color photo shot by freelance photographer Barbara Alper, we can see the geographic diversity of the U.S. in one frame as parade-goers convened in New York. But by the mid-1980s the world was also in the midst of combating HIV/AIDS which would cast its shadow over the decade and beyond.

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Archived Getty Images photos show the evolution of Pride through the years - LGBTQ Nation

ISCA, the International Symposium for Computer Architecture is an IEEE conference that usually we dont tend to hear from all that often in the public. The main reason for this is that most sessions and papers tend to be more academically oriented, and thus generally quite a bit further away from the practice of what we see in real products. This year, the conference has changed its format in adding an industry track of sessions, with presentations and papers from various companies in the industry, covering actual commercial products out there in the wild.

Amongst the sessions, Samsungs SARC (Samsung Austin R&D Centre) CPU development team has presented a paper titled Evolution of the Samsung Exynos CPU Architecture, detailing the teams efforts over its 8-year existence, and presented some key characteristics of its custom Arm CPU cores ranging from the Exynos M1, to the most recent Exynos M5 CPU as well as the unreleased M6 design.

As a bit of background, Samsungs SARC CPU team was established in 2011 to develop custom CPU cores that Samsung LSI would then deploy in its Exynos SoCs, ranging from the first-generation Exynos 8890 released in 2015 in the Galaxy S7, up till the most recent Exynos 990 with its M5 cores in the Galaxy S20. SARC had completed the M6 microarchitecture before the CPU team had gotten news of it being disbanded in October of 2019, effective last December.

The ISCA paper is a result of Samsungs willingness to publish some of the development teams ideas that were considered worthy of preserving in the public, essentially representing a high-level burn-through of 8 years of development.

The paper presents a gross overview table of the microarchitectural differences between Samsungs custom CPU cores:

The disclosure covers some of the well-known characteristics of the design as had been disclosed by Samsung in its initial M1 CPU microarchitecture deep dive at HotChips 2016, to the more recent M3 deep dive at HotChips 2018. It gives us an insight into the new M4 and M5 microarchitectures that we had measured in our S10 and S20 reviews, as well as a glimpse of what the M6 would have been.

The one key characteristic of Samsungs design was over the years, it was based off the same blueprint RTL that was started off with the M1 core in 2011, with continuous improvements of the functional blocks of the cores over the years. The M3 had been a big change in the design, widening the core substantially in several aspects, such as going from a 4-wide design to a 6-wide mid-core.

The new disclosures that werent public before regard the new M5 and M6 cores. For the M5, Samsung had made bigger changes to the cache hierarchy of the cores, such as replacing private L2 caches with a new bigger shared cache, as well as disclosing a change in the L3 structure from a 3-bank design to a 2-bank design with less latency.

The unreleased M6 core that had been in development was seemingly to be a bigger jump in terms of the microarchitecture. The SARC team here had prepared large improvements, such as doubling the L1 instruction and data caches from 64KB to 128KB a design choice thats currently only been implemented before by Apples CPU cores starting with the A12.

The L2 is said to have been doubled in its bandwidth capabilities to up to 64B/cycle, and also there would have been an increase in the L3 from 3 to 4MB.

The M6 would have been an 8-wide decode core, which as far as we know would have been the widest commercial microarchitecture that we know of at least on the decode side of things.

Interestingly, even though the core would have been much wider, the integer execution units wouldnt have changed all that much, just seeing one complex pipeline adding a second integer division capability, whilst the load/store pipelines would have remained the same as on the M5 with 1 load unit, 1 store unit, and one 1 load/store unit.

On the floating-point/SIMD pipelines we would have seen an additional fourth unit with FMAC capabilities.

The TLBs would have seen some large changes, such as the L1 DTLB being increased from 48 pages to 128 pages, and the main TLB doubling from 4K pages to 8K pages (32MB coverage).

The M6 would also have ben the first time since the M3 that the out-of-order window of the core would have been increased, with larger integer and floating-point physical register files, and an increase in the ROB (Reorder buffer) from 228 to 256.

One key weakness of the SARC cores seems to still have been present in the M5 and upcoming M6 core, and thats its deeper pipelines stages resulting in a relatively expensive 16-cycle mispredict penalty, quite higher than Arms more recent designs which fall in at 11 cycles.

The paper goes into more depth into the branch predictor design, showcasing the cores Scaled Hashed Perceptron based design. The design had been improved continuously over the years and implementations, improving the branch accuracy and thus reducing the MPKI (mis-predicts per kilo-instructions) continuously.

An interesting table thats showcased is the amount of storage structures that the branch predictor takes up within the front-end, in KBytes:

Were not aware of any other vendor ever having disclosed such figures, so its interesting to put things into context of what a modern front-end has to house in terms of storage (and this is *just* the branch predictor).

The paper goes onto further detail onto the cores prefetching methodologies, covering the introduction of a OP cache in the M5 generation, as well as the teams efforts into hardening the core against security vulnerabilities such as Spectre.

The paper further describes efforts by the SARC team to improve memory latency over the generations. In the M4 core, the team had included a load-load cascade mechanism that reduced the effective L1 cycle latency from 4 cycles to 3 on subsequent loads. The M4 had also introduced a path bypass with a new interface from the CPU cores directly to the memory controllers, avoiding traffic through the interconnect, which explains some of the bigger latency improvements that weve seen in the Exynos 9820. The M5 had introduced speculative cache lookup bypasses, issuing a request to both the interconnect and the cache tags simultaneously, possibly saving on latency in case of a cache miss as the memory request is already underway. The average load latency had been continuously improved over the generations, from 14.9 cycles on the M1 down to 8.3 cycles on the M6.

In terms of IPC improvements, the SARC team had managed to get to an average of 20% annual improvements over the 8 years of development. The M3 had been in particular a big jump in IPC as seen in the graph. The M5 roughly correlates to what weve seen in our benchmarks, at around 15-17% improvement. IPC for the M6 is disclosed at having ended up at an average of 2.71 versus 1.06 for the M1, and the graph here generally seems to indicate a 20% improvement over the M5.

During the Q&A of the session, the papers presenter, Brian Grayson, had answered questions about the programs cancellation. He had disclosed that the team had always been on-target and on-schedule with performance and efficiency improvements with each generation. It was stated that the teams biggest difficulty was in terms of being extremely careful with future design changes, as the teamnever had the resources to completely start from scratch or completely rewrite a block. It was said that with hindsight, the teamwould have done different choices in the past with of some of the design directions. This serial design methodology comes in contrast to Arms position, havingmultiple leapfrogging design centres and CPU teams, allowing them to do things such as ground-upre-designs, such the Cortex-A76.

The team had plenty of ideas for improvements for upcoming cores such as the M7, but the decision to cancel the program was said to have come from very high up at Samsung. The SARC CPU cores were never really that competitive, suffering from diminished power efficiency, performance, and area usage compared to Arms designs. With Arms latest Cortex-X1 divulged last week going for all-out performance, it looks to me that SARCs M6 design would have had issues competing against it.

The paper's authors areextremely thankful for Samsungs graciousness in allowing the publication of the piece, and thankthe SARC leadership for their management over the years on this moonshot CPU project. SARC currently still designs custom interconnects, memory controllers, as well as working on custom GPU architectures.

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ISCA 2020: Evolution of the Samsung Exynos CPU Microarchitecture - AnandTech

The Black Sea coast of Crimea, vacationing on the beaches Gurzuf

Even hardened Soviet women werent above putting on skimpy bikinis and showing off their bodies! This is how the gradual transition took place.

Its hard to picture a working woman or a kolkhoznitsa (collective farmer) in a swimsuit - let alone a bikini, wouldnt you say? In these rare 1920-30s photos, we can often glimpse swimsuits with little shorts, and on rare occasions encounter what would become the future bikini (invented by Parisian fashion designer Jacques Heim in 1946), albeit with the belly button still covered up.

The first bikinis began to appear in the USSR only in the 1950s. Open strapless tops elicited shocked reactions - worn mostly by actresses or members of the bohemian circle. However, the high-cut bottoms - which we refer to as retro today - would not go out of style until the start of the 1980s. During the period this photo was taken, however, many women still felt a bit uneasy about exposing their bodies, and preferred one-piece swimsuits.

The 1960s saw much more frequent bikinis. During that decade, the belly button was finally freed. However, swimsuits and certain other wardrobe items were in a substantial deficit, so the fashion lovers of the day made their own with chintz, satin and other available materials they could get their hands on.

Yacht outings, 1963

People vacationing on the beach in Sochi, 1960s

At the beach in Estonian SSR, 1960s

At the Palanga resort, Lithuanian SSR, 1964

Its 1969. The cult movie Brilliantovaya Ruka (The Diamond Hand) had come out, in which Svetlana Svetlichnaya showed up in a very provocative bikini by the standards of that day. She played a cunning seductress, and forever earned a reputation of a sex symbol of Soviet cinema (as well as the envy of every Soviet woman).

Still from The Diamond Arm

In the 1970s-80s, an opportunity finally arose to get ones hands on super-expensive - but incredibly trendy - Western swimwear. The beaches were starting to come alive with colorful swimwear and various new fashion trends. And, finally, the first skimpy bottoms appeared on the scene - the bikini had arrived.

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What is and is not possible for natural evolution may be explained using models and calculations from theoretical physics, say researchers in Japan.

Theoretically, every component of every chemical in every cell of all living organisms could vary independently of all the others, a situation researchers refer to as high dimensionality. In reality, evolution does not produce every possible outcome.

Experts have consistently noticed that organisms seem to be restricted to a low level of dimensionality, meaning that their essential building blocks appear to be linked to each other. For example, if A increases, then B always decreases.

Bacteria have thousands of types of proteins, so in theory those could be thousands of dimensional points in different environments. However, we see the variation fits a one-dimensional curve or low-dimensional surface regardless of the environment, said Professor Kunihiko Kaneko, a theoretical biology expert from the University of Tokyo Research Center for Complex Systems Biology and an author of the recent research publication.

To explain this low dimensionality, researchers simplified the natural world to fit idealized physics models and searched for any mathematical structure within biological complexity.

Researchers have long used statistical physics models to characterize certain materials transitions from nonmagnetic to magnetic states. Those models use simplified representations of the spinning electrons in magnets. If the spins are aligned, the ensemble of spins shows ordered and magnetic arrangement. When the spins lose alignment, there is a transition to a disordered and nonmagnetic state. In the researchers model of biology, instead of a spin being up or down, a gene could be active or inactive.

We applied the same method to this experiment, to observe what conditions were necessary to go from a disordered, high-dimensionality state to an ordered, low-dimensionality state, said Associate Professor Ayaka Sakata from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, first author of the research publication.

An essential component of those statistical physics models is background noise, the level of inherent unpredictability that can be quiet and nearly nonexistent or loud and totally overpowering. For living organisms, noise represents tiny environmental variations that can change how genes are expressed, causing different gene expression patterns even between organisms with identical genes, like twins or plants that reproduce by cloning.

In researchers mathematical models, changing the volume of environmental noise changed the number of dimensions in evolutionary complexity.

Computer-simulated evolution of hundreds of genes under low levels of environmental noise led to high dimensionality, gene expression varying in too many ways without organized changes. Simulated evolution under high levels of environmental noise also led to high variability where gene expressions change randomly, meaning no organization nor functional states of gene expression.

We can imagine that organisms at either of those extreme noise conditions would not be evolutionarily fit they would go extinct because they could not respond to changes in their environment, said Kaneko.

When the noise levels were moderate, computer-simulated evolution of hundreds of genes led to a model where the change in gene expression followed a one-dimensional curve, as seen in real life.

With the appropriate environmental noise level, an organism that is both robust and sensitive to its environment can evolve, said Kaneko.

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Limits on evolution revealed by statistical physics - Mirage News

There are quite a few two-stage evolutionary families in the Pokmon world. Over the years, some have been given pre-evolutions or new stages, making them into a three-stage line or even a branched evolution. But still, there are quite a few two-stage lines that are due for a new, third stage.

RELATED:10 Weird Facts You Might Not Know About Psychic-Type Pokmon

Some of these Pokmon need a new evolution because their design seems unfinished, others need some competitive viability, and some just need to be refreshed because they're forgotten or boring. Here are some of the two-stage lines that need another evolution.

Crustle is a Pokmon that was introduced in Generation V. It evolves from Dwebble at level 34. Both are Rock/Bug-type and feature a large rock-like shell on their crab-like bodies.

Crustle needs a new evolution because of its design. Sure, it's already pretty great, but it's basically being crushed by the giant block of sedimentary rock on its back. It would be great to see a new evolution that further incorporates the rock into the Pokmon's body, harnessing its defensive power.

Poor Ledian. This Bug/Flying-type from Generation II evolves from Ledyba at level 18. It's been the subject of the question "Is Ledian the worst Pokmon" more than once, making it definitely clear that it needs a new evolution.

RELATED:Ranking Every Pokmon Sword & Shield Legendary By Design

Ledian also seems unfinished in its design. If it were to be said that Ledian evolves into something, few people would probably be surprised. Its counterpart, Ariados, is much more "finished"-looking. Ledian could also use a stat boost its current base stat total is only 390.

This very loveable and interesting Pokmon evolves from Cherubi at level 25. Both are pure Grass-types introduced in Generation IV. Cherrim is one of the many Pokmon with a form difference it opens up into a pink blossom in sunny weather, otherwise remaining mostly shrouded by its outer petals.

Cherrim could definitely see an interesting evolution. Perhaps some type of flower- or leaf-inspired Pokmon that harnesses the power of the sun in its design. Maybe it could even be the first Fire/Grass-type Pokmon.

One of the more forgotten Pokmon from Generation I is Primeape a pure Fighting-type that evolves from Mankey at level 28. Primeape is okay as a competitive battler, but is definitely outclassed by many others. It would be great to see it evolve into something more viable.

As for its design, it's definitely a clear inspiration and uses the whole "it's super angry" lore well. However, it could be further developed into a hulking monkey beast that truly harnesses the power of its anger in its design.

Onix is one of the only Pokmon that might actually need a pre-evolution or Baby Pokmon added to its evolutionary family. This Rock/Ground-type snake already received a new evolution with Steelix's introduction in Generation II, but it could have a pre-evolution for sure.

RELATED:Pokmon: The 10 Hardest Unova Pokmon To Catch, Ranked

Onix seems very developed for a base-stage Pokmon, design-wise. Of course, there's nothing wrong with this, but it could easily have a simpler and more concise-design as a pre-evolution, perhaps a small snake made from a couple rock segments.

Some of the most hated Pokmon in franchise history are the elemental monkeys Pansage, Pansear, Panpour, and their evolutions. For whatever reason, the fanbase have responded extremely negatively to these designs.

Giving them an evolution might not completely save them from the ire of the fans, but it could help. As it stands now, the final stages of each are pretty well-developed, but they can always improve. Like Primeape, turn them into hulking gorillas! Why not? Oh, and give them a secondary type, too. It would be fun.

While the elemental monkeys are easily remembered due to the fact that they are widely-criticized, Lumineon finds itself at the opposite end of the spectrum. This poor Water-type fish introduced in Generation IV is often called the most forgotten or forgettable Pokmon ever made. It's basically just a blue fish that evolves from a blue fish. There are already a ton of Water-type fish Pokmon, so it's understandable that Lumineon falls under the radar.

If it were given a new evolution that expanded its frilly fins into something more sea monster-esque, maybe people would remember it.

Lumineon might be one of the most boring designs, but its Generation IV friend Bronzong is quite the opposite. This Steel/Psychic-type evolves from Bronzor at level 33 and is based on a bell or gong, specifically the dotaku or an old Japanese legend about a group of priests building a bell for their temple from bronze mirrors.

RELATED:Pokmon: 10 Things You Missed In FireRed & LeafGreen

That legend tells the story of a woman whose mirror won't melt because of her regret of donating it. This legend could be expanded further, giving the next stage of the story to Bronzong's design.

One of the only Pokmon with gender differences that matter beyond appearance is Meowstic. Male and female Meowstic have different stats and movesets, which is pretty interesting. Since Espurr evolves into these two pretty different forms depending on its gender, the developers could take it a step further.

After Espurr evolves into female or male Meowstic, the two could both receive a new, branched evolution that is based on gender. These two new Pokmon could be completely different, like Gardevoir and Gallade.

Like some of the other entries on the list, Sunflora is frequently criticized and laughed at for being incredibly weak. After being exposed to a Sun Stone, Sunkern will evolve into Sunflora. Sunkern itself has one of the lowest base stat totals in series history, and Sunflora doesn't do a great job of improving on it.

Design-wise, Sunflora could also see some improvement through an evolution. It's basically a sunflower with arms and legs. The developers of the series can go way further with this theme, and they should.

NEXT:Every Pokmon That You Can Ride In Let's Go, Ranked

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Michael is a journalist with several years of experience writing about video games, television, and social issues. He loves playing indie platformers, old games he's already finished ten times, and Pokemon. Michael also enjoys cold weather and drinking too much coffee.

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Pokmon: 10 Pokmon That Need A Third Evolution | TheGamer - TheGamer

Scorching images from across the country fill our screens, a reminder that the racial past remains an unhealed burn in Americas present. The mood in our own area is shocked and anxious, as we watched violence and looting spread from Seattle to outlying cities like Bellevue and Tukwila. It is getting very close to home.

Some have called racism Americas historical original sin. Where did many white people of the past get the wicked idea that their lives matter more than black lives? The question is complex but, without doubt, Darwinian theory helped to fuel our present racial fire.

Comprehending the national burden of hatred is a task not only for scholars but for all Americans. So too with understanding the origins of the opportunistic criminality that has piggybacked on heartfelt protests against racism and police brutality. As others have pointed out, forcing young males to sit idle for months in an open-ended lockdown was to invite an eventual explosion. But the history, of course, goes back much further.

The pandemic has been a seminar on how science intersects with culture. Now add to that the cross-country chaos of the past few nights, a convulsion that has a stout tendril tracing back to scientific thinking. Its a good time to review that legacy by watching the documentary Human Zoos: Americas Forgotten History of Scientific Racism, written and directed by Discovery Institute Vice President John West.

As Charles Darwin conceived it, evolution posits a racial hierarchy. Thats not surprising, since the theory sees all of life as a vast smudge, graduating from the simplest to the most complex animal life. In any hierarchy, someone has to be at the bottom. As Darwin stated explicitly in The Descent of Man, that place was occupied by Africans. For generations, American public school children learned from their biology textbooks the pseudoscience that Caucasians are more advanced on the evolutionary ladder than Africans. Yet this was the scientific consensus of its day. Listen to the scientists, I imagine that 19th- and 20th-century racists might have instructed us. In the multiple award-winning Human Zoos, Dr. West unearths a forgotten but instructive chapter in that painful history.

As Wesley Smith noted here the other day, one of the tragic trends in thinking about evolution has been to blur the distinction between humans and animals. History warns us not to regard this lightly. Indeed, dehumanizing Africans and others is not only part of Americas but of evolutionary biologys terrible burden. Near the turn of the last century, in New York City, St. Louis, Seattle, and elsewhere, Africans and other native people were put on exhibit in zoos, as animals. Human Zoos recounts, among other heart-breaking stories, the life of African pygmy Ota Benga (1883-1916). He was bought in a slave auction and displayed in 1906 alongside an orangutan in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo. The organizers intended this as a lesson for the public illustrating the scientific truths of Darwinian theory. African-American clergy at the time spoke out against the insult to their dignity, only to be dismissed by the New York Times, which explained that the pygmies are very low in the human scale.

That may seem long ago. But as Human Zoos also documents, present-day racists of the Alt-Right continue to drawn on Darwinian racial theory.

Over this past weekend, at the South Bronx intersection called The Hub, peaceful protesters called for racial justice, remembering George Floyd and his death at the end of Minneapolis police. I wonder how many who came out to demand life We deserve to live! also remembered the horrific injustice that occurred, in the name science, just a few miles away. Ota Bengas own protest I am a man! I am a man! summarizes the very best message of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Human Zoos reminds us that this history must not be forgotten. What is going in our country at this moment cant be grasped without it. Please consider sharing the film, already seen by nearly a million viewers on YouTube, with your friends and family.

Photo: A peaceful protest in Minneapolis, by Fibonacci Blue / CC BY.

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Human Zoos How Science Fueled the Racial Fire - Discovery Institute

Naturally the automobile much like later developments such as radios, television, motor cycles, electrical equipment, 35mm cameras and plastic materials was adopted eagerly by anyone with a few extra dollars or pounds to spare and is wasnt long before there were thousands of them chugging about our roads. That was when both the big money and the world of design took over the situation.

First it was the introduction of the production line, invented by a genius named Henry Ford, which meant that cars could be built in minutes, instead of days, which both increased his profit and the popularity of the car. Then the designers really stepped in, thinking up all sorts of things that the car simply could not do without(in their opinion), such as semaphore turning signal or the electrical windscreen wiper to remove rain spots in inclement weather and movable seats, so that each person taking over to drive could adjust their position for maximum comfort and visibility.

At first progress was fairly slow. It was after World War II, once car manufacturers got back to building cars instead of tanks, that real progress started to be made.

The car designers discovered something the aircraft builders already knew aerodynamics! If the cars body was made in a particular shape it travelled much faster and at the same time was much more economical in the use of fuel. This led to one small undesirable effect most makes of car started to look very much like their competitors; aerodynamics demanded it, so the designers had to dream up other ways of attracting customers to their brand. Some used extravagant tail structures, great fins sticking up like some space rocket, while others attracted attention with massed chromium parts, bumpers, mud guards, window strips, hinges, door handles and mirrors got the chrome treatment; you could barely look at a car in those days, if the sun was shining!

Then of course, the electronic age arrived and the car manufacturers were all compelled to install CD players into our cars, plus radios, satellite navigation, heated seats, electrically adjusted mirrors, power steering, anti-skid devices, airbags, turbos, fuel injection, cruise control and all manner of other devices. Designers had the bit between their teeth by now, and they started going off the planet with their suggestions, so that we are now looking forward to (with some trepidation I believe), driverless cars, electric cars and cars that run on hydrogen!

I guess it wont be long before we have to absorb such notions as cars that fly, instead of running on roads, or perhaps, in the extreme future we might be able to beam ourselves to where we want to go, with no vehicle at all, just like those folk on Star Trek had us imagining! It all makes for a rather frightening future, doesnt it?

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Behold the future: A brief look at the evolution of modern cars - Starts at 60